Many Rivers to Cross

Chapter 16

There were no cars parked outside Connor Clive Blaydon’s villa when Banks and Gerry turned up there after the DNA tests had come up positive and Jason Bartlett had been charged with the murder of Samir Boulad. Annie was still working with the CPS on preparing the case for prosecution, along with that of Chris Myers as accessory. Gerry was quite happy to get out of the squad room for a road trip. Banks wondered how Blaydon managed without Frankie Wallace to drive him around. Maybe he’d hired a new chauffeur.

The judge had refused to grant a search warrant for Blaydon’s property on the scant evidence the police had presented, dismissing it as hearsay and circumstantial. Banks suspected there was more to it than that — perhaps the occasional golf game, tips on the property market — but he held his tongue. Even without a search warrant, they had one or two things they wanted to discuss in more detail with Blaydon.

They wouldn’t have expected to find any incriminating evidence at his house, anyway. Blaydon would be a bigger fool than Banks thought he was if he hadn’t quickly got rid of Samir’s backpack and jacket after Frankie had handed them over. Gashi would have wanted his drugs back, of course, and Blaydon would probably have burned the jacket. At best they might find a few grams of white powder left over from a party, but that was a charge a man like Blaydon could beat in his sleep with the lawyers he could afford.

The fountain seemed to have dried up, or someone had turned it off at the mains. A dead bird floated among fallen leaves in the brackish water that remained. It had been windy and raining just that morning, but now nothing stirred in the humid air. The topiaries looked frightening and made Banks think of Stephen King’s Overlook Hotel in The Shining, where the trimmed shapes came to life. Banks felt a trickle of sweat down his back as he walked to the front door and rang the bell. Nobody answered. As far as he could tell, all was silent inside. He touched the door and was surprised when it swung slowly open on its hinges. He glanced at Gerry, went into the hallway and called out Blaydon’s name. Nobody answered. Not even Roberts, the butler. His voice echoed in the cavernous space.

They crossed the entrance hall, footsteps echoing, and checked the office. Empty. The window was open a few inches, so Blaydon surely couldn’t be very far away. Thinking that maybe on a day like today he might be lounging by the pool with his headphones on, or taking a dip to cool himself off, they followed the maze of the corridors to the glassed-in pool area. Banks wasn’t sure at what point he noticed that the chlorine smell was mixed with something less easily defined, sweet yet metallic. Gerry was the first to mention it. ‘What’s that funny smell?’

When they got to the pool, Banks walked through the doorway.

Blaydon was in the water, all right. At least, Banks assumed it was Blaydon. It was hard to tell as the water was tinged red and whatever floated there lay face down, naked, with his arms stretched out at the sides like a cross. Underneath him spread what looked like a tangle of tentacles, as if they belonged to an octopus or a giant squid. A Hockney swimming pool painted by Francis Bacon.

Banks had just realised that the tentacles were Blaydon’s intestines when he remembered Gerry, and turned to stop her before she got too close. But he was too late. A swarm of flies that had somehow got in rose from the body at the sound of her footsteps echoing on the tiles. Gerry froze in the doorway, turned white and doubled over, vomiting against the wall.

‘I’m all right, guv,’ she protested, waving Banks away, obviously embarrassed, when he tried to comfort her. ‘It’s just the shock, that’s all. And that smell.’

‘You’re sure?’

She nodded. ‘Maybe a glass of water.’

There was a wet bar beside the pool. Banks poured some tap water into a glass. Gerry drank it and took out a handkerchief to wipe her lips. ‘That’s better.’

‘Look.’ Banks pointed across the pool.

They hadn’t noticed in the initial shock of seeing Blaydon’s floating body, but the butler Roberts lay slumped against the Plexiglas, down which ran a long, ugly smear of red. Roberts hadn’t been disfigured, by the looks of him, simply shot or stabbed. Whatever had happened, he was every bit as dead as his boss.

Banks reached for his mobile.

‘Christ, what an abattoir,’ said Gerry. ‘What could he have done to deserve this?’

Banks glanced at her. ‘Deserve? Nothing, I should imagine. With people like Gashi’s lot, the punishment is usually way out of proportion to any presumed sin.’

‘But he was in with them.’

‘To a point,’ Banks said. ‘Remember, I always said Blaydon was trying to play with the big boys. Out of his league. I even warned him about it the first time we met.’

‘He obviously didn’t listen.’

‘No. It doesn’t matter what he did, why they did it. For once motive isn’t really an issue. Maybe they thought he’d ripped them off? I’m sure he lost their laundered money on investments in the Elmet Centre development. Maybe they thought he’d stolen drugs from them, too, or was a police informer? Whatever it was, they clearly thought he had crossed or betrayed them in some way, and they wanted to make a point.’

‘They’ve certainly done that.’

Banks remembered acting like an old mate the last time he had seen Blaydon alive, patting him on the shoulder while the man in the suit and sunglasses was watching them from across the hall. Had his been the touch of Judas, the mark of death? Had they made the assumption that Blaydon was a police informer? Was he partly responsible for what had happened here?

But Banks brushed such wild and pointless thoughts aside. Blaydon had enjoyed flirting with the dark side, and it had swallowed him whole. Simple as that. Maybe they would catch the men who had done this, and maybe they wouldn’t. If the killers had any sense, they would be back in Albania by now.

‘Come on.’ Banks took Gerry gently by the arm and led her back outside, into the fresh air. She still seemed to be walking in a daze, and he wished he had a hip flask of whisky or brandy or something to put more of a spring in her step. There was sure to be some in the house, but it was best not to disturb anything more than he had done already.

They sat in silence on the parapet of the still fountain; only the birds singing in the trees that ringed the estate made any sounds. Banks phoned in for the full treatment — CSIs, uniformed officers, police surgeon, photographer, the lot — and before long he could hear the sounds of the emergency vehicles, distant at first, then getting louder and louder as they approached.

Raymond’s flight was late, and it had started to rain again by the time Zelda had negotiated their way out of Newcastle Airport. Leeds and Bradford would have been marginally closer, but the connection time with the flight from LA didn’t work out. So Newcastle it was.

They were soon heading south on the A1, past the Metro Centre, over the Tyne with its famous bridges and the Sage on its south bank in Gateshead. Then on past Team Valley and the Angel of the North, which Raymond said he had always thought looked like a rusty Spitfire standing on its tail.

But Raymond was tired after his long journey, and after a while of excited chat and numerous mentions of how glad he was to be back with Zelda, he drifted off to sleep in the passenger seat and Zelda concentrated on the road through the hypnotic rhythm of the windscreen wipers.

The rain was coming down quite heavily by the time they got back to the cottage above Lyndgarth, but inside it was still cosy and dry. While Raymond unpacked, Zelda put the kettle on and made a pot of tea, chatting about her time in London — the Picasso exhibition she had never seen, the theatre she had never attended, the book shopping she had never done. In his turn, Raymond told her about the parties and the meetings with fellow artists and gallery owners in New York and Los Angeles, and gave her as a present a tiny sketch by a famous artist he knew she admired.

Zelda made Raymond a bacon buttie — his favourite snack, and something he hadn’t been able to find in America. After that, they sat and sipped tea and talked until Raymond could no longer keep his eyes open.

While he slept, Zelda sat at the kitchen window with her laptop, half watching the rain running down the glass and distorting the rough moorland landscape beyond. She had certainly felt the isolation and wildness of the moors over the few days she had been alone there, after returning from Banks’s cottage. But she had adapted, got used to it again, and she thought she could be happy there.

As she flipped through her usual news sources, she came across a breaking story on Sky News headed POLICE FIND BODY OF MISSING WOMAN. It didn’t go into great detail but noted that the Metropolitan police had fished from the Thames the body of a woman called Faye Butler, who had been reported missing by her flatmate two days after failing to return home from her job at Foyles Books. The article didn’t say how she had died, but it made reference to multiple injuries and suggested that foul play was suspected.

Zelda felt her blood freeze in her veins. Faye Butler. She remembered talking to Faye, remembered her pixie-ish features, her excitement at believing she was talking to the NCA. They must have got to her very quickly, no doubt with Keane’s help. He knew where she worked.

The images whirled through Zelda’s mind — Petar Tadić and his thugs finding Goran’s body and removing it, following the trail of the mysterious woman Goran had met in the hotel bar, trying to work out where the connection lay, who had got to Goran and why, suspecting everyone close to them who was not one of them. Somehow or other — perhaps through Keane — the trail had led to Faye, an outsider who had hung out with them, and they had wanted to know who she had talked to and what she had told them. Perhaps Faye had simply ignored her advice and told them about the woman who had come to the store asking about her ex-boyfriend, or perhaps they had tortured her to get the information. They enjoyed inflicting pain. Maybe the interrogation had excited them, maybe they thought she knew more than she was telling. Whatever the reason, they really went to work on her, torturing her, no doubt, until she ended up dead.

But how much had Faye been able to tell them, and how much had they been able to work out from what she had said? Had they put two and two together?

Goran Tadić hadn’t recognised Zelda, she was certain of that, but it didn’t mean his brother wouldn’t, no matter how much she thought her appearance had changed. Most likely Petar and his cronies would have gained access to the hotel’s security cameras and captured her image from there. One thing was for certain: no matter how they might do it, if they found out who she was, they weren’t going to go to the police. Perhaps they didn’t know where Zelda lived yet, but they would find out. It was only a matter of how long it would take them. How could she stay here and put the man she loved in danger? But how could she just leave him? Should she put her trust in Alan Banks and tell him everything she knew? She might end up in jail, but at least she would still be alive and Raymond would be safe. But would he be? She remembered what had happened to Emile in Paris. When people like the Tadićs took their revenge, they took it on what you loved most.

Raymond stumbled down from the bedroom rubbing his eyes and asking what time it was. Zelda threw her arms around his neck, told him how much she loved him and how glad she was that he was back home, then she buried her head in the soft curve between his neck and shoulder and started to cry.