Chapter 6

1

In Park Square on that fine Monday morning in May, with the pink and white blossoms still on the trees, Banks could easily have imagined himself a Regency dandy out for a stroll while composing a satire upon the Prince’s latest folly.

Opposite the Town Hall and the Court Center, but hidden behind Westgate, Park Square is one of the few examples of elegant, late-eighteenth-century Leeds remaining. Unlike most of the fashionable West End squares, it survived Benjamin Gott’s Bean Ing Mills, an enormous steam-powered woollen factory which literally smoked out the middle classes and sent them scurrying north to the fresher air of Headingley, Chapel Allerton and Roundhay, away from the soot and smoke carried over the town on the prevailing westerly winds.

Banks faced the terrace of nicely restored two- and three-story Georgian houses, built of red brick and yellow sandstone, with their black iron railings, Queen Anne pediments and classical-style doorways with columns and entablatures. Very impressive, he thought, finding the right house. As expected, it was just the kind of place to have several polished brass nameplates beside the door, one of which read “Daniel Clegg, Solicitor.”

A list on the wall inside the open front door told him that the office he wanted was on the first floor. He walked up, saw the name on the frosted-glass door, then knocked and entered.

He found himself in a dim anteroom that smelled vaguely of paint, where a woman sat behind a desk sorting through a stack of letters. When he came in, he noticed a look of fear flash through her eyes, quickly replaced by one of suspicion. “Can I help you?” she asked, as if she didn’t really want to.

She was about thirty, Banks guessed, with curly brown hair, a thin, olive-complexioned face and a rather long nose. Her pale green eyes were pink around the rims. She wore a loose fawn cardigan over her white blouse, despite the heat. Banks introduced himself and showed his card. “I’d like to see Mr. Clegg,” he said. “Is he around?”

“He’s not here.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.” It sounded like “dough.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

“ Elizabeth. Elizabeth Moorhead. I’m Mr. Clegg’s secretary. Everyone calls me Betty.” She took a crumpled paper tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and blew her nose. “Cold,” she said. “Godda cold. In May. Can you believe it? I hate summer colds.”

“I’d like to see Mr. Clegg, Betty,” Banks said again. “Is there a problem?”

“I should say so.”

“Can I help?”

She drew back a bit, as if still deciding whether to trust him. “What do you want him for?”

Banks hesitated for a moment, then told her. At least he would get some kind of reaction. “I wanted to ask a few questions about Keith Rothwell.”

Her brow wrinkled in a frown. “Mr. Rothwell? Yes, of course. Poor Mr. Rothwell. He and Mr. Clegg had some business together now and then. I read about him in the papers. It was terrible what happened.”

“Did you know him well?”

“Mr. Rothwell? No, not at all, not really. But he’d been here, in this office. I mean, I knew him to say hello to.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Just last week, it was. Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. He was standing right there where you are now. Isn’t it terrible?”

Banks agreed that it was. “Can you try and remember which day it was? It could be important.”

She muttered to herself about appointments and flipped through a heavy book on her desk. Finally, she said, “It was Wednesday, just before I finished for the day at five. Mr. Rothwell didn’t have an appointment, but I remember because it was just after Mr. Hoskins left a client. Mr. Rothwell had to wait out here a few moments and we chatted about how lovely the gardens are at this time of year.”

“That’s all you talked about?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“Then Mr. Clegg came out and they went off.”

“Do you know where?”

“No, but I think they went for a drink. They had business to discuss.”

So Rothwell had visited Clegg in Leeds the day before his murder, almost two weeks after the letter ending their association. Why? It certainly hadn’t been noted in his appointment book. “How did Mr. Rothwell seem?” he asked.

“No different from usual.”

“And Mr. Clegg?”

“Fine. Why are you asking?”

“Did you notice any tension between them?”

“No.”

“Has anything odd been happening around here lately? Has Mr. Clegg received any strange messages, for example?”

“No-o.” Some hesitation there. He would get back to it later.

Banks glanced around the small, tidy anteroom. “Does everything go through you? Mail, phone calls?”

“Most things, yes. But Mr. Clegg has a private line, too.”

“I see. How did he react to the news of Mr. Rothwell’s death?”

She studied Banks closely, then appeared to decide to trust him. She sighed and rested her hands on the desk, palms down. “That’s just the problem,” she said. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since. He’s not here. I mean, he’s not just out of the office right now, but he’s disappeared. Into thin air.”

“Disappeared? Have you told the local police?”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to look a fool.”

“Has he done anything like this before?”

“No. Never. But if he has just gone off… you know. With a woman or something… I mean he could have, couldn’t he?”

“When did you last see him?”

“Last Thursday. He left the office about half past five and that was the last I saw of him. He didn’t come in to work on Friday morning.”

“Have you tried to call him at home?”

“Yes, but all I got was the answering machine.”

“Did he say anything about a business trip?” Banks asked.

“No. And he usually tells me if he’s going to be away for any length of time.”

“Do you know what kind of business relationship Mr. Clegg had with Keith Rothwell?”

“No. I’m only his secretary. Mr. Clegg didn’t take me into his confidence. All I know is that Mr. Rothwell came to the office now and then and sometimes they’d go out to lunch together, or for drinks after work. I knew Mr. Rothwell was an accountant, so I supposed it would be something to do with tax. Mr. Clegg specializes in tax law, you see. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

“Maybe you can be. It seems a bit of a coincidence, doesn’t it, Mr. Rothwell getting killed and Mr. Clegg disappearing around the same time?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t hear about Mr. Rothwell’s death until Saturday. I just never thought… ”

“Have you ever heard of someone called Robert Calvert?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Did Mr. Clegg never mention the name?”

“No. He wasn’t a client. I’m sure I’d remember.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch with the police when you realized Mr. Clegg had disappeared and you heard about Mr. Rothwell’s murder?”

“Why should I? Mr. Clegg had a lot of clients. He knew a lot of businessmen.”

“But they don’t usually get murdered.”

She sneezed. “No. As I said, it’s tragic what happened, but I don’t see how as it connects with Mr. Clegg.”

“Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t,” Banks said. “But don’t you think that’s for us to decide?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She reached for the tissue again. This time it disintegrated when she blew her nose. She dropped it in the waste-paper bin and took a fresh one from the box on her desk.

Banks regarded her closely. He didn’t think she was lying or evading the issue; she simply didn’t understand what he was getting at. He sometimes expected everyone to view the world with the same suspicious mind and jaundiced eye as he did. Besides, she didn’t know about the letter Rothwell had left in the locked file.

He sat on the edge of the desk. “Right, Betty, let’s go back a bit. When I came in, you were frightened. Why?”

She paused for a moment, then said, “I thought you might be one of them again.”

“One of whom?”

“On Saturday morning I was here doing some filing and two men came in and started asking questions about Mr. Clegg. They weren’t very nice.”

“Is that what you were thinking of when I asked you earlier if anything odd had been going on?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?”

“It… I… I didn’t connect it. You’ve got me all confused.”

“All right, Betty, take it easy. Did they hurt you?”

“Of course not. Or I certainly would have called the police. You see, sometimes in this business you get people who are… well, less than polite. They get upset about money and sometimes they don’t care who they take it out on.”

“And these men were just rude?”

“Yes. Well, just a bit brusque, really. Nothing unusual. I mean, I’m only a secretary, right? I’m not important. They can afford to be short with me.”

“So what bothered you? Why does it stick in your mind? Why were you frightened? Did they threaten you?”

“Not in so many words. But I got the impression that they were testing me to see what I knew. I think they realized early on that I didn’t know anything. If they’d thought differently, I’m sure they would have hurt me. Don’t ask me how I know. I could just feel it. There was something about them, some sort of coldness in their eyes, as if they’d done terrible things, or witnessed terrible things.” She shivered. “I don’t know. I can’t explain. They were the kind of people you look away from when they make eye contact.”

“What did they want to know about?”

“Where Mr. Clegg was.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes. I asked them why they wanted to know, but they just said they had important business with him. I’d never seen them before, and I’m sure I’d know if they were new clients.”

“Did they leave their names?”

“No.”

“What did they look like?”

“Just ordinary businessmen, really. One was black and the other white. They both wore dark suits, white shirts, ties. I can’t remember what colors.”

“What about their height?”

“Both about the same. Around six foot, I’d say. But the white one was burly. You know, he had thick shoulders and a round chest, like a wrestler or something. He had very fair hair, but he was going bald on top. He tried to disguise it by growing the hair at the side longer and combing it right over, but I just think that looks silly, don’t you? The black man was thin and fit looking. More like a runner than a wrestler. He did most of the talking.”

Banks got her to describe them in as much detail as she could and took notes. They certainly didn’t match Alison Rothwell’s description of the two men in black who had tied her up and killed her father. “What about their accents?” he asked.

“Not local. The black one sounded a bit cultured, well educated, and the other didn’t speak much. I think he had a slight foreign accent, though I couldn’t swear to it and I can’t tell you where from.”

“You’ve done fine, Betty.”

“I have?”

Banks nodded.

“There’s something else,” she said. “When I came in this morning, I got the impression that someone had been in the place since then. Again, I can’t say why, and I certainly couldn’t prove it, but in this job you develop a feel for the way things should be – you know, files, documents, that sort of thing – and you can just tell if something’s out of place without knowing what it really is, if you follow my drift.”

“Were there any signs of forced entry?”

“No. Nothing obvious, nothing like that. Not that it would be difficult to get in here. It’s hardly the Tower of London. I locked myself out once when Mr. Clegg was away on business and I just slipped my Visa card in the door and opened it.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oops. I don’t suppose I should be telling you that, should I?”

Banks smiled. “It’s all right, Betty. I’ve had to get into my car with a coat-hanger more than once. Was anything missing?”

“Not so far as I can tell. It’s pretty secure inside. There’s a good, strong safe and it doesn’t look as if anyone tried to tamper with it.”

“Could it have been Mr. Clegg?”

“I suppose so. He sometimes comes in on a Sunday if there’s something important in progress.” Then she shook her head. “But no. If it had been Mr. Clegg I’d have known. Things would have looked different. They looked the same, but not quite the same, if you know what I mean.”

“As if someone had messed things up and tried to restore them to the way they were originally?”

“Yes.”

“Do you employ a cleaning lady?”

“Yes, but she comes Thursday evenings. It can’t have been her.”

“Did she arrive as usual last Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“May I have a look in the office?”

Betty got up, took a key from her drawer and opened Clegg’s door for him. He stood on the threshold and saw a small office with shelves of law books, box files and filing cabinets. Clegg also had a computer and stacks of disks on a desk at right angles to the one on which he did his other paperwork. The window, closed and locked, Banks noticed, looked out over the central square with its neatly cut grass, shady trees and people sitting on benches. The office was hot and stuffy.

Certainly nothing looked out of the ordinary. Banks was careful not to disturb anything. Soon, the Fraud Squad would be here to pore over the books and look for whatever the link was between Rothwell and Clegg.

“Better keep it locked,” he told Betty on his way out. “There’ll be more police here this afternoon, most likely. May I use the phone?”

Betty nodded.

Banks phoned Ken Blackstone at Millgarth and told him briefly what the situation was. Ken said he’d send a car over right away. Next he phoned Superintendent Gristhorpe in Eastvale and reported his findings. Gristhorpe said he’d get in touch with the Fraud Squad and see if they could coordinate with West Yorkshire.

He turned back to Betty. “You’ll be all right here,” he said. “I’ll wait until the locals arrive. They’ll need you to answer more questions. Just tell them everything you told me. What’s your address, in case I need to get in touch?”

She gave him the address of her flat in Burmantofts. “What do you think has happened?” she asked, reaching for her tissue again.

Banks shook his head.

“You don’t think anything’s happened to him, do you?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Banks said, without conviction. “Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“It’s just that Melissa will be so upset.”

“Who’s Melissa?”

“Oh, didn’t you know? It’s Mrs. Clegg. His wife.”

2

After a hurried bowl of vegetable soup in the Golden Grill, Susan Gay walked out into the street, with its familiar smells and noises: petrol fumes, of course; car horns; fresh coffee; bread from the bakery; a busker playing a flute by the church doors.

In the cobbled market square, she noticed an impromptu evangelist set up his soapbox and start rabbiting on about judgment and sin. It made her feel vaguely guilty just hearing him, and as she went into the station, she contemplated asking one of the uniforms to go out and move him on. There must be a law against it somewhere on the books. Disturbing the peace of an overworked DC?

Charity prevailed, and she went up to her office. It faced the car park out back, so she wouldn’t have to listen to him there.

First, she took out the blue file cards she liked to make notes on and pinned them to the cork-board over her desk. It was the same board, she remembered, that Sergeant Hatchley had used for his pin-ups of page-three girls with vacuous smiles and enormous breasts. Now Hatchley was due back any moment. What a thought.

Then, after she had made another appointment to talk to Laurence Pratt, she luxuriated in the empty office, stretching like a cat, feeling as if she were in a deep, warm bubble-bath. Out of the window she could see the maintenance men with their shirtsleeves rolled up washing the patrol cars in the large car park. Sun glinted on their rings and watch-straps and on the shiny chrome they polished; it spread rainbows of oily sheen on the bright windscreens.

One of the men, in particular, caught her eye: well-muscled, but not overbearingly so, with a lock of blond hair that slipped over his eye and bounced as he rubbed the bonnet in long, slow strokes. The telephone broke into her fantasy. She picked it up. “Hello. Eastvale CID. Can I help you?”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“Detective Constable Susan Gay.”

“Is the superintendent there?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“And Chief Inspector Banks?”

“Out of the office. Can I help you? What’s this about?”

“I suppose you’ll have to do. My name is Mary Rothwell. I’ve just had a call from my son, Tom.”

“You have? Where is he?”

“He’s still in Florida. A hotel in Lido Key, wherever that is. Apparently the British newspapers are a couple of days late over there, and he’s just read about his father’s murder. It’s only eight in the morning there. He can’t get a flight back until this evening. Anyway, he said he should get into Manchester at about seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m going to meet him at the airport and bring him home.”

“That’s good news, Mrs. Rothwell,” Susan said. “You do know we’d like to talk to him?”

“Yes. Though I can’t imagine why. You’ll pass the message on to the Chief Inspector, will you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. And by the way, I’ve made funeral arrangements for Wednesday. That is still all right, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“Very well.”

“Is there anything else, Mrs. Rothwell?”

“No.”

“Goodbye, then. We’ll be in touch.”

Susan hung up and stared into space for a moment, thinking what an odd woman Mary Rothwell was. Imperious, highly strung and businesslike. Probably a real Tartar to live with. But was she a murderess?

Though it would take the Fraud Squad a long time to work out exactly how much Rothwell was worth – and to separate the legal from the illegal money – it was bound to be a fortune. Money worth killing for. The problem was, though Susan could imagine Mary Rothwell being coldblooded enough to have her husband killed, she could not imagine her having it done in such a bloody, dramatic way.

The image of the kneeling, headless corpse came back to her and she tasted the vegetable soup rise in her throat. No, she thought, if the wife were responsible, Rothwell would have been disposed of in a neat, sanitary way – poison, perhaps – and he certainly wouldn’t have made such a mess on the garage floor. What was the phrase? You don’t shit on your own doorstep. It was too close to home for Mary; it would probably taint Arkbeck Farm for her forever.

Still, there was a lot of money involved. Susan had seen Rothwell’s solicitor that morning, and, according to him, Rothwell had owned, or part-owned, about fifteen businesses, from a shipping company registered in the Bahamas to a dry cleaner’s in Wigan, not to mention various properties dotted around England, Spain, Portugal and France. Of course, the solicitor assured her, they were all legitimate. She suspected, however, that some had served as fronts for Rothwell’s illegal activities.

As Susan was wondering if Robert Calvert’s money would now simply get lumped in with Keith Rothwell’s, she became aware of a large shadow cast over her desk by a figure in the doorway.

She looked up, startled, right into the smiling face of Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley. So soon? she thought, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Now she knew there really was no God.

“Hello, love,” said Hatchley, lighting a cigarette. “I see you’ve taken my pin-ups down. We’ll have to do something about that now I’m back to stay.”

3

At one-thirty, the hot, smoky pub was still packed with local clerks and shopkeepers on their lunch break. When Banks had phoned Pamela Jeffreys before leaving for Leeds that morning, she had suggested they meet in the pub across from the hall in West Leeds, where she was rehearsing with a string quartet. There was no beer garden, she said, but the curry of the day was usually excellent. Though he had to admit to feeling excitement at the thought of seeing Pamela again, this wasn’t a meeting Banks was looking forward to.

She hadn’t arrived yet, so Banks got himself a pint of shandy at the bar – just the thing for a hot day – and managed to grab a small table in the corner by the dartboard, fortunately not in use. There, he mulled over Daniel Clegg’s disappearance and the mysterious goons Betty Moorhead had seen.

There was no end of trouble a lawyer could get himself into, Banks speculated. Especially if he were a bit crooked to start with. So maybe there was no connection between Clegg’s disappearance and Rothwell’s murder. But there were too many coincidences – the letter, the timing, the shady accounts – and Banks didn’t like coincidences. Which meant that there were two sets of goons on the loose: the ones who killed Rothwell, and the ones who scared Clegg’s secretary. But did they work for the same person?

He was saved from bashing his head against a brick wall any longer by the arrival of Pamela Jeffreys, looking gorgeous in black leggings and a long white T-shirt with the Opera North logo on front. She had her hair tied back and wore black-rimmed glasses. As she sat down, she smiled at him. “The professional musician’s look,” she said. “Keeps my hair out of my eyes so I can read the music.”

“Would you like a drink?” Banks asked.

“Just a grapefruit juice with an ice-cube, please, if they’ve got any. I have to play through ‘Death and the Maiden’ again this afternoon.”

While he was at the bar, Banks also ordered two curries of the day.

“What’s been happening?” Pamela asked when he got back.

“Plenty,” said Banks, hoping to avoid the issue of Calvert’s identity for as long as possible. “But I’ve no idea how it all adds up. First off, have you ever heard of a man called Daniel Clegg?”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t say as I have.”

“He’s a solicitor.”

“He’s not mine. Actually, I don’t have one.”

“Are you sure Robert never mentioned him?”

“No, and I think I’d remember. But I already told you, he never talked about his work, and I never asked. What do I know or care about business?” She looked at him over the top of her glass as she sipped her grapefruit juice, thin black eyebrows raised.

“Did you ever introduce Robert to any of your friends?”

“No. He never seemed really interested in going to parties or having dinner with people or anything, so I never pushed it. They probably wouldn’t have got on very well anyway. Most of my friends are young and artsy. Robert’s more mature. Why?”

“Did you ever meet anyone he knew when you were out together, say in a restaurant or at the casino?”

“No, not that I can recall.”

“So you didn’t have much of a social life together?”

“No, we didn’t. Just a bit of gambling, the occasional day at the races, then it was mostly concerts or a video and a pizza. That was a bit of a problem, really. Robert was a lot of fun, but he didn’t like crowds. I’m a bit more of a social butterfly, myself.”

“I don’t mean to embarrass you,” Banks said slowly, “but did Robert show any interest in pornography? Did he like to take photographs, make videos? Anything like that?”

She looked at him open-mouthed, then burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, patting her chest. “You know, most girls might be insulted if you suggested they moonlighted in video nasties, but it’s so absurd I can’t help but laugh.”

“So the answer’s no?”

“Don’t look so embarrassed. Of course it’s no, you silly man. The very thought of it… ” She laughed again and Banks felt himself blush.

Their curries came and they tucked in. They were, as Pamela had said, delicious: delicately spiced rather than hot, with plenty of chunks of tender beef. They exchanged small talk over the food, edging away from the embarrassing topic Banks had brought up earlier. When they had finished, Pamela went for more drinks and Banks lit a cigarette. Was she going to ask now, he wondered, or was he going to have to bring it up? Maybe she was avoiding the moment, too.

Finally, she asked. “Did you find out anything? You know, about Robert and this Rothwell fellow.” Very casual, but Banks could sense the apprehension in her voice.

He scraped the end of his cigarette on the rim of the red metal ashtray and avoided her eyes. A group at the next table burst into laughter at a joke one of them had told.

“Well?”

He looked up. “It looks very much as if Robert Calvert and Keith Rothwell were the same person,” he said. “We found fingerprints that matched. I’m sorry.”

For a while she said nothing. Banks could see her beautiful almond eyes fill slowly with tears. “Shit,” she said, shaking her head and reaching in her bag for a tissue. “Sorry, this is stupid of me. I don’t know why I’m crying. We were just friends really. Can we… I mean… ” She gestured around.

“Of course.” Banks took her arm and they left the pub. Fifty yards along the main road was a park. Pamela looked at her watch and said, “I’ve still got a while yet, if you don’t mind walking a bit.”

“Not at all.”

They walked past a playground where children screamed with delight as the swings went higher and higher and the roundabout spun faster and faster. A small wading-pool had been filled with water because of the warm weather and more children played there, splashing one another, squealing and shouting, all under their mother’s or father’s watchful eyes. Nobody let their kids play out alone these days, as they used to do when he was a child, Banks noticed. Being in his job, knowing what he knew, he didn’t blame them.

Pamela seemed lost in her silent grief, head bowed, walking slowly. “It’s crazy,” she said at last. “I hardly knew Robert and things had cooled off between us anyway, and here I am behaving like this.”

Banks could think of nothing to say. He was aware of the warmth of her arm in his and of her scent: jasmine, he thought. What the hell did he think he was doing, walking arm in arm in the park with a beautiful suspect? What if someone saw him? But what could he do? The contact seemed to form an important link between Pamela and something real, something she could hold onto while the rest of her world shifted under her feet like fine sand. And he couldn’t deny that the touch of her skin meant something to him, too.

“I was wrong about him, wasn’t I?” she went on. “Dead wrong. He was married, you say? Kids?”

“A son and a daughter.”

“I should know. I read it in the paper but it didn’t sink in because I was so sure it couldn’t have been him. Robert seemed so… such a free spirit.”

“Maybe he was.”

She glanced sideways at him. “What do you mean?”

They stopped at an ice-cream van and Banks bought two cornets. “It was a different life he lived with you,” he said. “I can’t begin to understand a man like that. It’s not that he had a split personality or anything, just that he was capable of existing in very different ways.”

“What ways?” Pamela stuck out her pink tongue and licked the ice-cream.

“The people in Swainsdale knew him as a quiet, unassuming sort of bloke. Bit of a dry stick really.”

“Robert?” she gasped. “A dry stick?”

“Not Robert. Keith Rothwell. The hard-working, clean-living accountant. The man who put his spent matches back in the box in the opposite direction to the unused ones.”

“But Robert was so alive. He was fun to be with. We laughed a lot. We dreamed. We danced.”

Banks smiled sadly. “There you are, then. Keith Rothwell probably had two left feet.”

“Are you saying it wasn’t the same man?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying. Just that your memories of Robert Calvert won’t change, shouldn’t change. He’s who he was to you, what he meant to you. Don’t let this poison it for you. On the other hand, I need to know who killed Keith Rothwell, and it looks as if there might be a connection.”

She put her arm in his again and they walked on. There was hardly any breeze at all, but they passed a boy trying to fly a red-and-green kite. He couldn’t seem to get it more than about twenty feet off the ground before it came flopping down again.

“What do you mean, a connection?” Pamela asked, shifting her gaze from the kite back to Banks.

“Maybe something in his life as Robert Calvert spilled over into his life as Keith Rothwell. Are you sure you didn’t know he was married, you didn’t suspect it?”

She shook her head. “No. I’ve been a right bloody fool, haven’t I? Muggins again.”

“But you were sure he’d found a new girlfriend?”

“Ninety-nine percent certain, yes.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“What?”

“His new girlfriend. How did you feel about her? On the one hand you tell me you shouldn’t be so upset, you hardly knew Robert Calvert, and your relationship had cooled off anyway. On the other hand, it seems to me from what you say and the way you behave that you were extremely fond of him. Maybe in love with him. What’s the truth? How did you really feel when someone else came along and stole him from you? Surely you must have felt hurt, angry, jealous?”

Pamela pulled back her arm and stepped aside from him, an expression of pain and anger shadowing her face. She dropped her ice-cream. It splattered on the tarmac path. “What’s that got to do with anything? What are you saying? What are you getting at? First you imply that I’m some kind of porn actress, and now you’re implying that I killed Robert out of jealousy?”

“No,” said Banks quickly. “No, nothing like that.”

But she was already backing away from him, hands held up, palms out, as if to ward him off.

“Yes, you are. How could you even…? I thought you… ”

Banks stepped toward her. “That’s not what I mean, Pamela. I’m just-”

But she turned and started to run away.

“Wait!” Banks called after her. “Please, stop.”

One or two people gave him suspicious looks. As he set off walking quickly after her, a child’s colored ball rolled in front of him, and he had to pull up sharply to avoid knocking into its diminutive owner, whose large father, fast approaching from the nearest bench, didn’t seem at all happy about things.

Pamela reached the park exit and dashed across the road, dodging her way through the traffic, back toward the hall. Banks stood there looking after her, the sweat beading on his brow. The remains of his ice-cream had started to melt and drip over the flesh between his thumb and first finger.

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath. Then louder, “Shit!”

The little boy looked up, puzzled, and his father loomed closer.

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