The Hanging Valley

8

The powerful jet engines roared and Banks felt himself pushed back in his seat. It was his first time in a jumbo. The plane lumbered along the runway at Manchester International Airport, fixtures and fittings shaking and rattling, as if defying anyone to believe that a machine of such bulk could fly. But it did. Soon, Lancashire was a chequerboard of wet fields, then it was lost completely under the clouds. The NO SMOKING sign went off and Banks lit up.

In a few moments, the blue-uniformed stewardess with her shocking pink lipstick and impossibly white teeth — the same one who had managed to put such drama into the routine demonstration of the use of the life jacket — came around with more boiled sweets and personal headphones in plastic bags. Banks took a set, as he knew there would be a film later on, but he gave the designer music a miss and took out his own Walkman. Soon the plane was over Ireland, an occasional flash of green between the clouds, the Beatles were singing ‘Dear Prudence’, and all was well with the world.

Banks ordered Scotch on the rocks when the trolley came around and relaxed with his miniature Johnnie Walker Red. Closing his eyes, he settled back to reconsider the events that had led to his present unnatural position — about 35,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, hurtling at a speed of roughly 600 miles an hour towards a strange continent.

It was Saturday, 3 July, almost a month since the Bernard Allen case had stalled. Banks had visited Swainshead once or twice and found things relatively quiet. Stephen and Nicholas Collier had remained polite in their arrogant way; Sam Greenock had been surly, as usual; Katie Greenock still seemed troubled and distracted; and John Fletcher had expressed passing interest in the progress of the case.

The problem was that there really wasn’t a case any more. Enquiries had turned up neither new witnesses nor motives. A number of people had had the opportunity to kill Bernard Allen, but no one had a clear reason. As long as the suspects stuck to their stories, it didn’t matter whether they were lying or telling the truth; there was no solid evidence to break the case. That was why it was vital for Banks to find Anne Ralston — she was the link between the Addison and Allen murders — and he had convinced Gristhorpe he could do it in a week.

‘How?’ the superintendent had asked. ‘Toronto’s a strange city to you. A big one, too.’

‘Where would you head if you were an Englishman living abroad?’

Gristhorpe rubbed his chin. ‘I’d seek out the expatriate community, I suppose. The club. I’d want to be among my own.’

‘Right. So, given we’re not dealing with the gentry, I’d expect Allen to hang around the English-style pubs. Every big city has them. His brother-in-law, Les Haines, told me Allen liked his ale and had found a pub where he could get imported British beer. There can’t be all that many of them in Toronto.’

‘But it’s Anne Ralston we’re looking for, remember that.’

‘I know. I’m just assuming that if Allen was a bit standoffish with his mates at work, he had a crowd of fellow émigrés he hung around with in his spare time. The odds are they’d meet up in a pub and stand at the bar quaffing pints. They might know the Ralston woman.’

‘So you want to go on a pub crawl of Toronto?’

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’

‘Better not tell Jim Hatchley or you’ll get nowt out of him for a month or more. Why can’t you get the Toronto police to find her?’

‘For a start, I got the impression on the phone that they didn’t have time or didn’t give a damn, or both. And anyway, they wouldn’t know how to question her, what to ask. Someone would have to brief them on two murder investigations, the sociology of the Yorkshire village, the history of—’

Gristhorpe held up his hand. ‘All right, all right, I get the point.’

‘And I think they’d scare her off, too,’ Banks added. ‘She was nervous enough about what she knew to warn Allen not to spread it around, so if she thinks the police are after her, the odds are she’ll scarper.’

‘Have you considered that she might not be using her own name?’

‘Yes. But I’ve got her photograph from our missing persons files — it’s a bit old, but it’s all we’ve got — and I think I know where to look. Being English myself gives me an advantage in that kind of environment, too. Do you think it makes sense?’

‘It’s all a bit iffy, but yes, yes I do, on the whole. If you can track down Allen’s drinking companions, there’s a good chance he’ll have told them about Anne Ralston. She might even drop in at his local herself from time to time, if she’s the kind that likes to be among her own.’

‘So you’ll see what you can do about getting me over there?’

Gristhorpe nodded. ‘Aye. I’ll see what I can do.’

About a week later, on a Thursday morning, the superintendent had asked Banks to come to his office. Banks stubbed out his cigarette and carried his full coffee mug carefully along the corridor. As usual, Gristhorpe’s door was slightly ajar. Banks nudged it open with his shoulder and entered the cosy book-lined room. He took his usual seat and put his coffee on the desk in front of him.

Gristhorpe pushed a long envelope over the blotter.

‘You’ve done it?’

‘Open it.’

Inside was a return ticket on a charter flight from Manchester to Toronto.

‘There’s an important international conference on policing the inner city in London, Ontario. I thought you ought to go.’

‘But this ticket’s for Toronto.’

‘Aye, well, there isn’t an international airport in London.’

‘And Eastvale doesn’t have an inner city.’

Gristhorpe scratched his hooked nose. ‘We might have, one day. We did have a riot a few months ago, didn’t we? It pays to be prepared.’

‘Will you be expecting a report?’

‘Oh, a brief verbal account will do.’

Banks grinned.

‘There’s one catch, though.’

‘Oh?’

‘Money. All I could scrounge was the ticket and a bit of loose change for meals. You’ll have to supply most of your own pocket money.’

‘That’s all right. I’m not likely to be spending a fortune. What about accommodation, though?’

‘You’ll be staying with my nephew — at least, you can stay in his apartment. He’s off to Banff or some such place for the summer. Anyway, I’ve been in touch and he says he’ll be happy to meet you at the airport. I described you to him, so just stand around and look lost. He’s rather a lanky lad, as I remember. His hair’s a bit too long and he wears those silly little glasses — granny glasses, I think they’re called. He’s a nice enough lad — graduate student, organic chemistry or some such thing. He says he lives downtown, whatever that means. You told me a week, Alan. I’m depending on you.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Banks said, pocketing the ticket.

‘Find Anne Ralston and discover what she knows. I don’t care how you do it, outside torture. And for Christ’s sake, keep away from the local police. They wouldn’t appreciate your trespassing on their patch. You’re a tourist, remember that.’

‘I’ve been wondering why you’re sending me,’ Banks said. ‘You’re very much concerned with this case yourself, especially the connection with the Addison murder. Why don’t you go?’

‘I would,’ Gristhorpe said slowly. ‘Believe me, I would.’ He looked sideways towards the open window. ‘I did my National Service in the RAF. I’d always hero-worshipped fighter pilots in the war and I suppose, in my folly, I wanted to be just like them. First time up one of the engines caught fire. If the pilot hadn’t been so damn good we’d have both been dead. Even so… I’ve never fancied the idea since.’

‘I can’t say I blame you,’ Banks said. ‘I’ll find her, don’t worry. At least I’ve an idea where to look.’

And that was that. Sandra and the children were excited and, of course, disappointed that they couldn’t go with him. Sergeant Hatchley acted as if Banks had been given a free holiday in an exotic place. And now here he was, high above the Atlantic Ocean, the pink lips and white teeth leaning over him with a tray of food.

Banks took off his headphones and arranged the tray in front of him. The main course appeared to be a small shrivelled chicken leg with pale wrinkled skin, accompanied by tiny potatoes and carrots covered in gravy. On further inspection, Banks discovered that one half of the meal was piping hot and the other still frozen solid. He called the attendant, who apologized profusely and took it away. When she delivered it again, the frozen side was warm and the other overcooked. Banks took a few mouthfuls and gave up in disgust. He also felt no inclination to investigate the mound of jelly-like substance with a swirl of cream on its top, or the limp lettuce leaves that passed for a salad. Instead, he turned to his cheese and biscuits which, being wrapped in cellophane, were at least fresh, and washed them down with a small plastic bottle of harsh red wine.

Feeling the onset of heartburn, Banks declined the offer of coffee and lit a cigarette. After the trays had been cleared, more drinks came. They really were very generous, Banks thought, and wondered what havoc a plane full of drunks might wreak — especially if the booze ran out. But it didn’t. He was kept well supplied with Johnnie Walker Red — a kind of sedation, he supposed, insurance against restless and troublesome passengers — and soon people were asked to pull down their blinds against the blazing sunlight in preparation for the movie. This turned out to be a dreadful cops-and-robbers affair full of car chases and shoot-outs in shopping precincts. After about ten minutes, Banks put his headset aside, closed his eyes and went over in his mind the questions he wanted to ask Anne Ralston. The jet engines were humming, the Scotch warmed his veins, and soon he fell into a deep sleep. The last thing he remembered was the crackly voice of the pilot saying they were soon going to reach the tip of Newfoundland and would then fly along the St Lawrence River.

While Banks was asleep somewhere over Quebec City, Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe sat hunched over a pint of Theakston’s bitter and a veal and egg pie in the Queen’s Arms, waiting for Sergeant Hatchley.

Frowning, he looked at his watch. He’d told Hatchley to arrive no later than seven thirty. He glanced out of the window at the market square, but saw no sign of the sergeant. It was still raining. That very morning the clouds had closed in again, draining the valley sides of their lush greens and flattening the majestic perspective of fells and moors.

At last Hatchley burst in and looked anxiously around for the superintendent. His hair was slicked down by the rain, emphasizing the bullet shape of his head, and the shoulders of his beige trench coat were splotched dark with wet patches.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he apologized, sitting opposite Gristhorpe. ‘The damn weather’s slowing down traffic all along the dale.’

Gristhorpe could smell the beer on his breath and guessed that he’d probably stopped for a quick one in Helmthorpe on his way, or maybe he had even made a minor diversion to the Black Sheep in Relton, where the landlord brewed his own prize-winning beer on the premises. He said nothing though. Without Banks around, Hatchley and Richmond were all he had, and he had no wish to alienate the sergeant before putting his plan into action.

Gristhorpe accepted Hatchley’s offer of another pint and leaned back in his seat to avoid the drift of smoke when the sergeant lit a cigarette.

‘Did you tell them?’ Gristhorpe asked.

‘Aye, sir. Found them all in the White Rose.’

‘I hope you weren’t too obvious.’

Hatchley looked offended. ‘No, sir. I did it just like you said. When Freddie Metcalfe started probing and prodding about why I was there, I just told him it was a few loose ends I had to tie up, that’s all.’

‘And then?’

‘Ah, well. Then, sir, I got myself invited over to the table. It was all very casual, like, chatting about the cricket and the local markets as if we was old mates. Then Sam Greenock asked me where my boss was.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Just what you told me, sir. I said he’d gone off to Toronto to talk to Anne Ralston.’

‘And?’

‘And what, sir?’

‘What happened next, man? How did they react?’

Hatchley took a long pull at his beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hairy hand. ‘Oh, they just looked at one another and raised their eyebrows a bit.’

‘Can you be a bit more specific, Sergeant? What did Sam Greenock say?’

‘He didn’t really say anything. Seemed excited to hear the news. I got the impression it made him a bit angry. And Stephen Collier went distinctly pale. That poncy brother of his just looked down his nose like I was something the cat dragged in.’

‘Who else was there?’

‘Only John Fletcher.’

‘Did he react in any way?’

Hatchley scratched his ear. ‘I’d say he got a bit tight-lipped. You wouldn’t really say he reacted, but it was as if it rang a bell somewhere and sent him off in his own world. More puzzled and worried than anything else.’

Gristhorpe thought over the information and filed it away in his mind. ‘Good work, Sergeant,’ he said finally. ‘You did well.’

Hatchley nodded and started casually rocking his empty pint glass on the table. ‘What now, sir?’ he asked.

‘We keep an eye on them. Tomorrow I’m going to send DC Richmond to stay at the Greenock Guest House for a few days. I don’t think his face is well known in Swainshead.’ Gristhorpe turned up his nose and leaned forward to grind out Hatchley’s cigarette butt, which still smouldered in the ashtray. ‘We keep an eye on them,’ he repeated. ‘And we watch very carefully for one of them to make a slip or try and make a run for it. All right, Sergeant. You don’t have to break the bloody glass on the table. I know it’s my round. Same again?’

Somewhere, with maddening metronomic regularity, a bell was ringing. Banks rubbed his eyes and saw the seat-belt sign was lit up. The no smoking sign was still out, so he lit a cigarette immediately to clear his head. Looking out of the window, he saw a vast urban area below. It was too far down to distinguish details, but he could make out the grid system of roads and fancied he could see cars flash in the sun.

The attendant said something over the PA system about a final descent, and passengers were then asked to extinguish their cigarettes. Banks’s ears felt funny. He swallowed and yawned to clear them, and the noise of the plane roared in again. All the way down he had to keep repeating the process every few seconds.

The plane banked to the left and now individual buildings and moving vehicles stood out quite clearly. After a long turn, a great expanse of water came into sight on the right and a cluster of tall buildings appeared on the waterside. The plane was dropping quickly now, and within moments it touched the runway smoothly. The loud retro-jets kicked in. They felt like ropes tied to the back of the plane, dragging it to a halt. Several nervous passengers applauded.

After some delay, the doors slid open and the slow line of people left the aircraft, running a gauntlet of fixed smiles from the attendants. Banks negotiated the stairs and corridors, then found himself in a long queue at Immigration. After that, there was another wait until the baggage came round on the carousel. Clutching his small suitcase, duty-free Scotch and cigarettes, he walked past the customs officers, who paid him no attention, and out into the throng of people waiting to welcome friends and relatives. As Gristhorpe suggested, he stood to one side and looked lost. It was easy.

Soon he noticed an Adam’s apple the size of a tennis ball stuck in a long skinny neck below a head covered with long brown hair making its way through the crowd. As the head also wore a pair of ridiculously old-fashioned granny glasses, Banks risked a wave of recognition.

‘Gerry Webb,’ the man said, shaking hands. ‘Are you Chief Inspector Banks?’

‘Yes. Just call me Alan. I’m not here officially.’

‘I’ll bet,’ Gerry said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

They pushed their way through the crowds of relatives embracing long-lost children or parents, and took a lift to the multi-storey car park.

‘This is it,’ Gerry said, pointing proudly to a saffron Volkswagen bug. ‘I call her Sneezy because she’s a bit of a dwarf compared to most of the cars here, and she makes a funny noise when I try to start her in the mornings, especially during winter. Still, she gets me around.’ He patted Sneezy on the bonnet and opened the boot at the front. Case and duty-free securely stored, Banks got in the passenger door after a false start on the left.

‘It always happens when people visit from England,’ Gerry said, laughing. ‘Without fail. Just wait until you try and cross the road.’

The first thing Banks noticed as Gerry drove out on to the expressway were the huge cars and the stifling heat. It was like trying to breathe at the bottom of a warm bath. In no time, his shirt was stuck to his skin. He took off his jacket and tossed it on the back seat. Even the draught through the open window was hot and wet.

‘You’ve come in the middle of a heatwave, I’m afraid,’ Gerry explained. ‘It’s been between thirty-three and thirty-six degrees for the past three days now. Above ninety per cent humidity, too.’

‘What’s a hundred like?’

‘Funny, that,’ Gerry said. ‘We never get a hundred. Not even during a thunderstorm. Summer can be a real bitch here. Toronto’s a city of extremes as far as climate is concerned. In winter it’s bloody cold, real brass monkey weather, and in summer it’s so hot and humid it’s unbearable, as you can tell. Pollution count goes way up, too.’

‘What about spring?’

‘We don’t have one. Just a lot of rain and then the sun. Fall’s the best. September. October. Warmish days, cool evenings. Beautiful.’ He glanced sideways at Banks. ‘I suppose you were expecting icicles and snowmen?’

‘Not exactly. But I didn’t expect the heat to be this bad.’

‘You should see the Americans,’ Gerry said. ‘I lived in Windsor for a while when I was doing my M.Sc, and I worked for customs during summer. They’d come over the border from the Detroit suburbs in the middle of July with skis on top of their cars and fur coats on the back seats. What a laugh that was. Americans know bugger all about Canada.’

‘I can’t say I know much, myself,’ Banks admitted.

‘Worry not. Keep your eyes and ears open and all will be revealed.’ Gerry had an odd accent, part Yorkshire and part North American, with a mixed vocabulary to match.

They swung eastwards around a bay. For a moment, Banks thought they were on the wrong side of the road. He tensed and the adrenalin prickled in his veins. Then, again, he realized he was in Canada.

On the right was Lake Ontario, a ruffled blue sheet with millions of diamonds dancing on it. The white triangular sails of yachts leaned at sharp angles. There seemed to be at least a cooler breeze coming from the water and Banks envied the idle rich who could spend their days sailing like that.

‘Those are the Islands over there,’ Gerry said, pointing towards a low hazy blur of green. ‘They’re just a long sandbar really, but everyone calls them islands. People live on the far ones, Ward’s and Algonquin, but the politicians want to chuck them off and make a heliport or a mini golf course.’

‘That sounds typical,’ Banks said, recalling the various schemes for developing adventure playgrounds and safari parks in the Dales.

‘A lot of trouble over it,’ Gerry said. ‘At first, the islanders even got themselves a home guard organized — hard hats, the lot. They were prepared to fight off an invasion.’

‘What happened?’

‘It’s still going on really. Oh, various bright sparks come up with ideas for long-term leases and whatnot, but there’s always trouble brewing. It’s jealousy, I think. Most of the people who live there now are academics or artists and a lot of people stuck in the city envy them their lives. They think only the filthy rich ought to be able to afford such a pleasant environment.’

‘What about you?’

‘I don’t envy anyone who survives winter after winter out there in not much more than a wooden shack. Look.’ He pointed ahead.

In front of them a cluster of tall buildings shimmered in the heat like a dot matrix block graph. A few were black, others white, and some even reflected the deep gold of the sun. Close to the lake, dominating them all, was a tapering tower with a bulbous head just below its long needle-point summit. It was a phallic symbol of such Olympian proportions that it made the London Post Office Tower look like it had a serious sexual dysfunction.

‘The CN Tower,’ Gerry said. ‘Toronto’s pride and joy. Tallest free-standing structure in the world — or at least it will be until the Japanese build a bigger one. See those elevators going up the outside?’

Banks did. The mere thought of being in one made him feel dizzy. He wasn’t afraid of heights up to a certain point, but he’d never felt like risking a meal in a revolving restaurant at the top of a tower.

‘What’s it for?’ he asked.

‘Well you may ask. For show really.’

‘What’s at the top?’

‘A restaurant, what else? And a disco, of course. This is the height of Western civilization. A feat on a par with the Great Pyramids and Chartres cathedral.’

‘A disco?’

‘Yes. Honest. Oh, I suppose I’m being flippant. They do use the place as a radio and TV transmitter, but it’s basically just one of man’s muscle-flexing exercises. This is downtown.’

The expressway, on a kind of elevated ramp, rolled past the backs of warehouses and billboards. Because the buildings were so close, the speed the car was travelling at was exaggerated and Banks felt as if he was on a roller coaster.

Finally, Gerry branched off, drove through an industrial wasteland of dirty old factories with external plumbing, then turned on to a busy street. Most of the buildings seemed quite old and run-down, and Banks soon noticed that nearly all the shop signs were in Chinese. Roast ducks hung by their feet in shop windows and teeming stalls of colourful fruit and vegetables blocked the pavements in front of grocery stores. One shop displayed a handwritten sign offering a mysterious combination of LIVE CRABS & VIDEOS. The street was bustling with people, mostly Chinese, pushing and shoving to get to the best deals, picking up and examining wares. The rich smell of food gone bad in the heat, mingled with the aroma of exotic spices, drifted into the car along with the suffocating air. A red and cream tram rattled along its track beside them.

‘Chinatown East,’ Gerry said. ‘Not far to go now.’

He continued up the street past a prison and a hospital. To the left was a broad green valley. Beside the road, it sloped like a huge lawn down to the broad bottom, where a busy expressway ran beside the brown river. Above the trees on the far side, the downtown towers shimmered, greyish blurs in the heat haze. Gerry turned right into a tree-lined street and pulled up in the driveway of a small brick house with a green and white porch.

‘Home,’ he announced. ‘I’ve got the bottom floor and there’s a young couple upstairs. They’re generally pretty quiet, so I wouldn’t worry too much about noise.’ He put his key in the lock and opened the door. ‘Come on in. I’m dying for a cold beer.’

The place was small and sparsely furnished — apparently with cast-offs bought from second-hand shops — but it was clean and comfortable. Books stuffed every possible shelf and cavity. The Gristhorpe clan certainly seemed to be great readers, Banks thought.

Gerry led him into the small kitchen and took two cans of Budweiser from the fridge. Banks pulled the tab and poured the iced, slightly malty beer down his throat. When Gerry tipped back his can to drink, his Adam’s apple bobbed wildly.

‘That’s better,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘I’m sorry it’s so hot in here too, but I can’t afford an air-conditioner. Actually, I’ve lived in worse places. There’s a good through-draught, and it does cool down a bit at night.’

‘What’s this area of town called?’ Banks asked.

‘Riverdale. It’s gone very yuppie in the past few years. Property values have shot up like crazy. You’ll see the main drag, the Danforth, if you walk or take a streetcar up to the corner. It used to be all Greek cafés, restaurants and twenty-four-hour fruit and vegetable stores. Now it’s all health foods, late-night bookshops, and bistros with long-stemmed wineglasses and coral-pink tablecloths. All right if you like that kind of thing, I suppose.’

‘And if you don’t?’

‘There’s a few unpretentious places left. You get some good blues at the Black Swan on Saturday afternoons. And then there’s Quinn’s, not a bad pub. Some of the old Greek places are still around, but I can’t say I’ve ever been fond of Greek food myself — it’s all greasy lamb, eggplant and sticky desserts as far as I’m concerned.’

They sat down on the sofa, an overstuffed maroon 1950s monstrosity with arms like wings, and finished their beers.

‘Your uncle said you had to go to a conference somewhere,’ Banks said. ‘I hope I’m not driving you out?’

‘Not at all. Actually, the conference isn’t so important, but Banff is a great place — right on the edge of the Rockies — so I’ll get a bit of hiking and partying done too.’

‘How are you getting there?’

‘Sneezy.’

‘How far is it?’

‘A couple of thousand miles. But you get used to distances like that here. Sneezy’s done it before. She quite likes long journeys. I’ll take my tent and camp out on the way. If you need a car…’

Banks shook his head. ‘No. No, I wouldn’t dare drive on the wrong side of the road. What’s the public transport like?’

‘Very good. There’s a subway, buses and the streetcars you’ve seen. We don’t call them trams here.’

‘I was surprised,’ Banks said. ‘I haven’t been on one of them since I was a kid.’

‘Well, now’s your chance to make up for lost time. I use them a lot myself to get around the city. Often it’s not worth the bother of parking in town, and the cops can be pretty sticky about drinking and driving. Oops, sorry.’

Banks laughed.

‘Anyway,’ Gerry went on, delving into a drawer and bringing out a couple of maps, ‘this is the city — easy to find your way about as it’s mostly an east-west, north-south grid system. And here’s the transit map. It’s not as complicated as the London Underground, so you shouldn’t have much trouble.’

And Gerry went on giving information about subway tokens and free transfers from one mode of transport to another. But after the journey and in the sweltering heat, Banks felt his eyes closing. He could do nothing about it.

‘Here,’ Gerry said, ‘I’m boring you to death. I don’t suppose you’re taking any of this in.’

‘Not much.’

‘Do you want to go to bed?’

‘I wouldn’t mind a nap.’

Gerry showed him the bedroom.

‘Isn’t this your room?’ Banks asked.

‘It’s OK. I’ll bed down on the couch tonight.’

‘I can do that.’

‘Not necessary. I’m off early in the morning anyway. This’ll be your room for the next week.’

Too tired to argue more and, frankly, grateful for a bed, Banks undressed, sank on to the mattress and fell asleep within seconds.

When he woke he was disoriented at finding himself in an unfamiliar bed. It took him a few moments to remember where he was. It was hot and dark, and the sheets felt moist with sweat. Hearing sounds in the front room, Banks rubbed his eyes, pulled on his trousers and walked through. He found Gerry stuffing clothes into a huge backpack. For a moment, it made him think of Bernard Allen.

‘Hi,’ Gerry said. ‘I thought you were out for the count.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Ten o’clock. Three in the morning, your time.’

‘I just woke up suddenly. I don’t know why.’

‘Jet lag does funny things like that. It’s much worse going the other way.’

‘Wonderful.’

Gerry grinned. ‘Beer?’

‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

‘Sure. We’re not all coffee-drinking barbarians out here, you know.’

Gerry switched on the television and went into the kitchen. Banks sank into the sofa and put his feet up on a battered pouffe. A pretty woman was talking very intensely about a debate in the House of Commons. Again Banks felt the shock of being in a foreign land. The TV newscaster spoke with an odd accent — less overbearing than the Americans he had heard — and he knew none of the politicians’ names.

Gerry brought the tea and sat beside him.

‘There might be a couple of things you can help me with,’ Banks said.

‘Shoot.’

‘Where can I find Toronto Community College?’

‘Easy. The subway’s the quickest.’ And Gerry told him how to get to Broadview station by streetcar or on foot, where to change trains, and where to get off.

‘There’s another thing. Do you know anything about the English-style pubs in town? Somewhere that sells imported beer.’

Gerry laughed. ‘You’ve certainly got your work cut out. There’s dozens of them: the Madison, the Sticky Wicket, Paupers, the Hop and Grape, the Artful Dodger, the Jack Russell, the Spotted Dick, the Feathers, Quigley’s, not to mention a whole dynasty of Dukes. I’ll try and make a list for you. What’s it all about, by the way, if that’s not top secret?’

‘I’m looking for a woman. Her name’s Anne Ralston.’

‘What’s she done?’

‘Nothing, as far as I know.’

‘How very secretive. You’re as bad as Uncle Eb, you are.’

‘Who?’

‘Uncle Eb. You mean you don’t know…?’

Banks shook his head. Gristhorpe had never mentioned his first name, and his signature was an indecipherable scrawl.

‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you. He won’t thank me for it, if I know him.’

‘I won’t tell him I know. Scout’s honour. Come on.’

‘It’s short for Ebenezer, of course.’

Banks whistled through his teeth. ‘No wonder he never lets on.’

‘Ah, but that’s not all. His father was a grand champion of the labouring man, especially the farm workers, so he called his oldest son Ebenezer Elliott — after the “Corn Law Rhymer”.’

Banks had never heard of Ebenezer Elliott but made a mental note to look him up. He was always interested in new things to read, look at or listen to.

‘Ebenezer Elliott Gristhorpe,’ he repeated to himself. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘Thought you’d like that,’ Gerry said, grinning. ‘It does have a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? My poor mum got lumbered with Mary Wollstonecraft. Very progressive, Grandad was, respected the rights of women, too. But my dad was plain old George Webb, and thank the Lord he’d no hobby horse to tie his kids to.’

On the news, a gang of street kids in Belfast threw stones and tossed Molotov cocktails at police in riot gear. It was night, and orange flames blossomed all along the street. Black smoke rose from burning tyres. The world really was a global village, Banks thought, feeling his attention start to slip. Consciousness was fading away again. He yawned and put down his teacup on the low table.

‘You can tell me something now,’ Gerry said. ‘Where did you get that scar?’

Banks fingered the white scar by his right eye. ‘This? I passed out from lack of sleep and hit my head on the corner of a table.’

Gerry laughed. ‘I get the point. I’m keeping you up.’

Banks smiled. ‘I’m definitely falling asleep again. See you in the morning?’

‘Probably not,’ Gerry said. ‘I’ve got a long way to go and I’m setting off at the crack of dawn. There’s coffee and sugar in the cupboard above the sink. Milk and stuff’s in the fridge. Here’s a spare door-key. Make yourself at home.’

Banks shook his bony hand. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I will. And if you’re ever in England…’

‘I’ll be sure to visit Uncle Ebenezer. I always do. And we’ll have a jar or two in the Queen’s Arms. Goodnight.’

Banks went back into the bedroom. A light breeze had sprung up to ease the suffocating heat a little, but it was still far from comfortable. He flopped down on the damp sheets. Outside, a short distance away, he heard a streetcar rattle by and remembered exciting childhood trips to big cities when the trams were still running. He thought of the Queen’s Arms on the edge of sleep, and pictured the pub on the corner of Market Street and the cobbled square. He felt very far from home. The Queen’s Arms was a long, long way away, and there was a lot to do if he was to track down Anne Ralston before the week was over.

9

They were going to church: the women smiling in their wide-brimmed hats and cotton print dresses, the men ill at ease in tight ties and pinching waistcoats.

Every Sunday morning Katie watched them as she cleaned the rooms, and every week she knew she should be with them, dragging Sam along with the promise of an hour in the pub for him later while she cooked dinner. But he went to the pub anyway, and she cooked dinner anyway. The only thing missing was the hour in church. And that she couldn’t face.

All through her childhood, Katie had been forced to go to the Gospel with her grandmother, and the icy devotion of the congregation had scared her half to death. Though they were praising God, they hardly dared sing so loud for fear He would think they were taking pleasure in the hymns. Katie could never understand the readings or the lessons, but she understood the passionate menace in the tones of those who spoke; she understood the meanings of the spittle that sometimes dribbled over their lips and the way their eyes glazed over. As she grew older, all her fear affixed itself to the sights, sounds and smells of the church: the chill mustiness rising from worn stone flags; the pews creaking as a bored child shifts position; the unearthly echo of the minister’s voice; the wooden board announcing the hymn numbers; the stained glass fragmenting colour like broken souls. Just thirty seconds in a church meant panic for Katie; she couldn’t breathe, she started trembling, and her blood turned to stone.

But she knew she should go. It was, after all, God’s Mansion on Earth, and she would never escape this vale of tears if she didn’t give herself to Him completely. Instead, she watched the rest of the village go off in their finery and listened to the hymns on the radio as she dusted, tidied and swept, humming along very quietly under her breath. Surely, surely, He would approve? She was working, doing her duty. It was the sabbath, of course, but there were still guests to take care of, and she suspected deep in her heart that the sabbath was only meant for men anyway. Surely He would approve. Her work would count in her favour. But it was a sin, she remembered vaguely, to court His favour, to say, ‘Look what I’ve done, Lord.’ It was the sin of pride. At least some said it was. She couldn’t remember who, or whether she had been told to believe or disbelieve them — there were so many heresies, traps awaiting those impure in body and mind — but words such as faith, works and elect circled one another in her thoughts.

Well, Katie concluded dismally, working on Sundays could only add to the weight of sin she carried already. She picked up the black plastic bag. There were still three more rooms to do, then there was dinner to see to. When, she wondered, was it all going to end?

She went downstairs to put the roast in and immediately recognized the new guest standing over the registration book in the hall. He signed himself in as Philip Richmond, from Bolton, Lancashire, and he told Sam, who was dealing with the details, that he was simply after a few relaxing days in the country. But Katie remembered the moustache and the athletic spring in his step; it was the man she had seen with Chief Inspector Banks and Sergeant Hatchley the day she had run away to Eastvale.

Seeing him there brought back the whole day. Nothing had come of it really, except that she had caught a minor cold. The housework got done. Not on time, but it got done. Sam never even found out, so there was no retribution at his hands. Nor were there any outbreaks of boils, thunderbolts from heaven, plagues of locusts or other such horrors her grandmother had assured her would happen if she strayed from the path.

She felt as if she had lost sight of the path completely now. That was all she really knew about what was happening to her. The conflicting voices in her mind seemed to have merged into one incomprehensible rumble, and much of the time she felt as if she had no control over her thoughts or deeds.

There were clear moments though. Like now. Outside, the landscape was fresh after the previous few days’ rain, which was now rising in sun-charmed wraiths of mist from the lower fell sides and the valley bottom. And here, in their hall, stood a man she recognized as having a close association with the police.

She hadn’t seen what all the fuss was about the previous evening, when Sam had stumbled home from the White Rose in a very bad mood.

‘He’s gone to find her,’ he had said, scowling. ‘All the way to bloody Canada. Just to find her.’

‘Who?’ Katie had asked quietly, confused and frightened of him. In moods like this he was likely to lash out, and she could still feel the pain in her breast from the last time.

‘Anne Ralston, you silly bitch. That copper’s taken off to Toronto after her.’

‘Well, what does it matter?’ Katie had argued cautiously. ‘If she killed that man all those years ago, they’ll put her in jail, won’t they?’

‘You don’t know nothing, woman, do you? Nothing at all.’ Sam hit out at her and knocked the wooden cross off the mantelpiece.

‘Leave it,’ he snarled, grabbing Katie by the arm as she bent to pick it up. ‘Can’t you think of anything but bloody cleaning up?’

‘But I thought you wanted me—’

‘Oh, shut up. You don’t know nothing.’

‘Well, tell me. What is it? Why does it matter so much that he’s gone chasing after Anne Ralston in Canada? You hardly knew her. Why does it matter to us?’

‘It doesn’t,’ Sam said. ‘But it might to Stephen. She might make things difficult for him.’

‘But Stephen hasn’t done anything, has he? How could she harm him?’

‘She was his fancy woman, wasn’t she? Then she ran off and left him. She could tell lies about his business, about… hell, I don’t know! All I know is that it’s all your bloody fault.’

Katie said nothing. Sam’s initial rage was spent, she could tell, and she knew she would remain fairly safe if she kept quiet. It was tricky though, because he might get angry again if she didn’t give the proper response to his ranting.

Sam sat heavily on the sofa and turned on the television. There was an old black and white film about gangsters on. James Cagney shot Humphrey Bogart and ran for it.

‘Get me a beer,’ Sam said.

Katie got him a can of Long Life from the fridge. She knew it was no good telling him he’d had enough already. Besides, on nights like this, when he’d had a bit more than usual, he tended to fall asleep as soon as he got to bed.

‘And don’t forget the Colliers’ party next week,’ he added, ripping open the can. ‘I want you looking your best.’

Katie had forgotten about the garden party. The Colliers had two or three every summer. She hated them.

In the morning, Sam had a thick head and remembered very little about the night before. He sulked until after breakfast, then managed a welcome for the new guest before disappearing somewhere in the Land Rover. Katie showed Richmond his room, then went to get on with her work.

So there was a policeman in the house. She wondered why he was there. Perhaps he was on holiday. Policemen must have holidays too. But if he was from Eastvale, he was hardly likely to travel only twenty-five miles to Swainshead. Not these days. He’d be off to Torquay, or even the Costa del Sol. Katie didn’t know how much policemen got paid, so she couldn’t really say. But he wouldn’t come to Swainshead, that was for sure. He was a spy, then. He thought nobody would recognize him, so he could keep an eye on their comings and goings while the little one with the scar was in Toronto and the big one was God knows where.

And Katie knew who he was. The problem now was what to do with her knowledge. Should she tell Sam, put him on his guard? He’d spread the word then, like he always did, and maybe he’d be grateful to her. But she couldn’t remember anything about Sam’s gratitude. It just didn’t stand out in her memory like the other things. Did she need it? On the other hand, if Sam had done something wrong — and she didn’t know whether he had or not — then the policeman, Richmond, if that was his real name, might find out and take him away. She’d be free then. It was an evil thought, and it made her heart race, but…

Katie paused and looked out of the back window at the gauze of mist rising like breath from the bright green slopes of Swainshead Fell. It would take a bit of thinking about, this dilemma of hers. She knew she mustn’t make a hasty decision.

‘I’m afraid there’s hardly anybody here to talk to, Mr… er…?’

‘Banks. Alan Banks. I was a friend of Bernard Allen’s.’

‘Yes, well, the only person I can think of who might be able to help you is Marilyn Rosenberg.’ Tom Jordan, head of the Communications Department at Toronto Community College, looked at his watch. ‘She’s got a class right now, but she should be free in about twenty minutes, if you’d like to wait?’

‘Certainly.’

Jordan led him out of the office into a staff lounge just big enough to hold a few chairs and a low coffee table littered with papers and teaching journals. At one end stood a fridge and, on a desk beside it, a microwave oven. The coffee machine stood on a table below a connecting window to the secretary’s office, beside a rack of pigeonholes for staff messages. Banks poured himself a coffee and Jordan edged away slowly, mumbling about work to do.

The coffee was strong and bitter, hardly the thing to drink in the thirty-three-degree heat. What he really needed was a cold beer or a gin and tonic. And he’d gone and bought Scotch at the duty-free shop. Still, he could leave it as a gift for Gerry Webb. It would surely come in handy in winter.

It was Monday morning. On Sunday, Banks had slept in and then gone for a walk along the Danforth. He had noticed the signs of yuppification that Gerry had mentioned, but he had found a pleasant little Greek restaurant which had served him a hearty moussaka for lunch. Unlike Gerry, Banks enjoyed Greek food.

After that, he had wandered as far as Quinn’s. Over a pint, he had asked around about Bernie Allen and shown Anne Ralston’s photograph to the bar staff and waitresses. No luck. One down, two dozen to go. He had wandered back along the residential streets south of Danforth Avenue and noticed that the small brick house with the green and white porch fence and columns was a sort of Toronto trademark.

Too tired to go out again, he had stayed in and watched television that evening. Oddly enough, the non-commercial channel was showing an old BBC historical serial he’d found boring enough the first time around, and — much better — one of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes. The only alternatives were the same American cop shows that plagued British TV.

He had woken at about nine o’clock that Monday morning. Still groggy from travel and culture shock, he had taken a shower and had had orange juice and toast for breakfast. Then it was time to set off. He slipped a 1960s anthology tape of Cream, Traffic and Rolling Stones hits in the Walkman and put it in the right-hand pocket of his light cotton jacket. In the left, he placed cigarettes and Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the only book he’d brought with him.

Jacket slung over shoulder, he set off, following Gerry’s directions. A rolling rattling streetcar ride took him by the valley side, rife with joggers. The downtown towers were hazy in the morning heat. Finding the westbound platform at Broadview subway station was every bit as straightforward as Gerry had said, but changing trains at Yonge and getting out to the street at St Clair proved confusing. All exits seemed to lead to a warren of underground shopping malls — air-conditioned, of course — and finding the right way out wasn’t easy.

Still, he’d found St Clair Avenue after only a momentary diversion into a supermarket called Ziggy’s, and the college was only a short walk from the station.

Now, from the sixth floor, he looked out for a while on the office buildings opposite and the cream tops of the streetcars passing to and fro below him, then turned to the pile of journals on the table.

Halfway through an article on the teaching of ‘critical thinking’ he heard muffled voices in the corridor, and a young woman with a puzzled expression on her face popped around the door. Masses of curly brown hair framed her round head. She had a small mouth and her teeth, when she smiled, were tiny, straight and pearly white. The greyish gum she was chewing oozed between them like gum disease. She carried a worn overstuffed leather briefcase under her arm, and wore grey cords and a checked shirt.

She stretched out her hand. ‘Marilyn Rosenberg. Tom tells me you wanted to talk to me.’

Banks introduced himself and offered to pour her a cup of coffee.

‘No thanks,’ she said, grabbing a Diet Coke from the fridge. ‘Far too hot for that stuff. You’d think they’d do something about the air-conditioning in this place, wouldn’t you?’ She pulled the tab and the Diet Coke fizzed. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘I want to talk about Bernard Allen.’

‘I’ve been through all that with the police. There wasn’t really much to say.’

‘What did they ask you?’

‘Just if I thought anyone had a reason to kill him, where my colleagues were over the last few weeks, that kind of thing.’

‘Did they ask you anything about his life here?’

‘Only what kind of person he was.’

‘And?’

‘And I told them he was a bit of a loner, that’s all. I wasn’t the only one they talked to.’

‘You’re the only one here now.’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ She grinned again, flashing her beautiful teeth.

‘If Bernard didn’t have much to do with his colleagues here, did he have a group of friends somewhere else, away from college?’

‘I wouldn’t really know. Look, I didn’t know Bernie that well…’ She hesitated. ‘Maybe it’s none of your business, but I wanted to. We were getting closer. Slowly. He was a hard person to get to know. All that stiff-upper-lip Brit stuff. Me, I’m a simple Irish-Jewish girl from Montreal.’ She shrugged. ‘I liked him. We did lunch up here a couple of times. I was hoping maybe he’d ask me out sometime but…’

‘It never happened?’

‘No. He was too damn slow. I didn’t know how much clearer I could make it without ripping off my clothes and jumping on him. But now it’s too late, even for that.’

‘How did he seem emotionally before he went to England?’

Marilyn frowned and bit her bottom lip as she thought. ‘He hadn’t quite got over his divorce,’ she said finally. ‘So I guess he might have been off women for a while.’

‘Did you know his ex-wife?’

‘No, not really.’

‘What about her lover?’

‘Yeah, I knew him. He used to work here. He’s a louse.’

‘In what way?’

‘Every way. Strutting macho peacock. And she fell for it. I don’t blame Bernie for feeling bad, but he’d have been well rid of her anyway. He’d have got over it.’

‘But he was still upset?’

‘Yeah. Withdrawn, sort of.’

‘How did he get on with his students?’

‘Well enough, considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘He cared about literature, but most of the students don’t give a damn about James Joyce or George Orwell. They’re here to learn about business or computers or electrical engineering — you know, useful stuff — and then they think they’ll walk into top high-paying jobs. They don’t like it when they find they all have to do English, so it makes our job a bit tough. Some teachers find it harder than others to adjust and lower their expectations.’

‘And Bernie was one?’

‘Yeah. He complained a lot about how ignorant they were, how half of them didn’t even know when the Second World War was fought or who Hitler was. And, even worse, they didn’t care anyway. Bernie couldn’t understand that. He had one guy who thought Shakespeare was a small town in Saskatchewan. That really got to him.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Banks said. ‘How could someone like that get accepted into a college?’

‘We have an open-door policy,’ Marilyn said. ‘It’s a democratic education. None of that elitist bullshit you get in England. We don’t send our kids away to boarding schools to learn Latin and take a lot of cold showers. All that Jane Eyre stuff.’

Banks, who had not attended a public school himself, along with the majority of English children, was confused. ‘But don’t a lot of them fail?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t it waste time and money?’

‘We don’t like to fail people,’ Marilyn said. ‘It gives them a poor self-image.’

‘So they don’t need to know much to get in, and they aren’t expected to know much more when they leave, is that it?’

Marilyn smiled like a nurse with a particularly difficult patient.

‘What did Bernie think about that?’ Banks hurried on.

She laughed. ‘Bernie loved youth, young people, but he didn’t have much respect for their intelligence.’

‘It doesn’t sound like they had much.’

‘There, you see. That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d say. You’re so sarcastic, you Brits.’

‘But you liked him?’

‘Yeah, I liked him. We might have disagreed on a few things, but he was cute and I’m a sucker for an English accent. What can I say? He was a nice guy, at least as far as I could tell. I mean, he might not have thought much of his students, but he treated them well and did his damnedest to arouse some curiosity in them. He was a good teacher. What are you getting at, anyway? Do you think one of his students might have killed him over a poor grade?’

‘It sounds unlikely, doesn’t it?’

‘Not as much as you think,’ Marilyn said. ‘We once had a guy come after his English teacher here with a shotgun. Luckily, security stopped him before he got very far. Still,’ she went on, ‘I shouldn’t think an irate student would go to all the trouble of following him over to England and killing him there.’

‘What did Bernie do when he went home after work? Did he ever mention any particular place he went to?’

Marilyn shook her head and the curls danced. ‘No. He did once say he’d had a few pints too many in the pub the night before.’

‘The pub?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He didn’t say which pub?’

‘No. He just said he’d had six pints when five was his limit these days. Look, what is all this? What are you after? You’re not one of those private eyes, are you?’

Banks laughed. ‘No. I told you, I’m a friend of Bernie’s from England. Swainsdale, where he grew up. I want to piece together as much of his life as I can. A lot of people over there are hurt and puzzled by what happened.’

‘Yeah, well… me too. He wasn’t the kind of guy who gets himself killed. Know what I mean?’

Banks nodded.

‘Swainsdale, you said?’ she went on. ‘Bernie was always going on about that place. At least the couple of times we talked he was. Like it was some paradise on earth or something. Especially since the divorce, he started to get homesick. He was beginning to feel a bit lost and out of place here. It can happen, you know. So he took the thousand-dollar cure.’

‘The what?’

‘The thousand-dollar cure. I guess it’s gone up now with inflation, but it’s when Brits take a trip back home to renew their roots. Used to call it the thousand-dollar cure. For homesickness.’

‘Did he ever talk of going back to Swainsdale to stay?’

‘Yeah. He said he’d be off like a shot if he had a job, or a private income. He said there was nothing for him here after he split up with Barbara. Poor guy. Like I said, he got withdrawn, dwelled on things too much.’

Banks nodded. ‘There’s nothing else you can tell me? You’re sure he didn’t name any specific pub or place he used to hang out?’

‘Sorry.’ Marilyn grinned. ‘I’d remember if he had because I’d have probably dropped in there one evening. Just by chance, you know.’

Banks smiled. ‘Yes. I know. Thanks anyway. I won’t waste any more of your time.’

‘No problem.’ Marilyn tossed her empty can into the waste-paper basket. ‘Hey!’ she called, as Banks left the staff lounge. ‘I think your accent’s cute, too.’

But Banks didn’t have time to appreciate the compliment. Coming along the corridor towards him were two very large police officers.

‘Mr Banks?’ the taller one asked.

‘Yes.’

‘We’d like you to come with us, if you don’t mind.’

‘What for?’

‘Just a few questions. This way, please.’

There was hardly room for them to walk three abreast down the hallway, but they managed it somehow. Banks felt a bit like a sardine in a tin. As they turned the corner, he noticed from the corner of his eye Tom Jordan wringing his hands outside his office.

Banks tried to get more out of the officers in the lift, but they clammed up on him. He felt a wave of irrational fear at the situation. Here he was, in a foreign country, being taken into custody by two enormous uniformed policemen who refused to answer his questions. And the feeling of fear intensified as he was bundled into the back of the yellow car. The air smelled of hot vinyl upholstery; a strong wire mesh separated him from the men in the front; and the back doors had no inside handles.

‘What does tha write, then?’ Freddie Metcalfe asked, expertly refilling the empty pint glass with Marston’s Pedigree Bitter.

‘Science fiction,’ said Detective Constable Philip Richmond. In his checked Viyella shirt and light brown cords, he thought he looked the part. Posing as a writer would make him less suspicious, too. He would be expected to spend some time alone in his room writing and a lot of time in the pub, with perhaps the occasional constitutional just to keep the juices flowing.

‘I knew a chap used to write books once,’ Freddie went on. ‘Books about t’ Dales, wi’ pictures in ’em. Lived down Lower ’Ead.’ He placed the foaming pint in front of Richmond, who paid and drained a good half of it in one gulp. ‘I reckon one of them there detective writers would ’ave a better time of it round ’ere these days.’

‘Why’s that?’

Freddie leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Murder, that’s why,’ he said, then laughed and picked up a glass to dry. ‘Right baffled, t’ police are. It’s got that southron — little chap wi’ a scar by ’is eye — it’s got ’im running around like a blue-arsed fly, it has. And t’ old man, Gristhorpe — well, we all know he durst hardly show his face around ’ere since t’ last one, don’t we?’

‘Last what?’

‘Murder, lad! What’s tha think I’m talking about? Sheep-shagging?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Think nowt on it. I’m forgetting tha’s a foreigner. Tha sounds Yorkshire to me. Bit posh, mind you, but Yorkshire.’

‘Lancashire, actually,’ Richmond lied. ‘Bolton.’

‘Aye, well, nobody’s perfect. Anyroads, as I were saying — blue-arsed flies, t’ lot of ’em.’

An impatient customer interrupted Freddie’s monologue, and Richmond took the opportunity to sip more beer. It was eight thirty on Monday evening, and the White Rose was about half full.

‘Keep your eyes skinned, lad,’ Sergeant Hatchley had instructed him. ‘Watch out for anybody who looks like doing a bolt.’ The orders couldn’t have been more vague. What on earth, Richmond wondered, did someone about to do a bolt look like? Would he have to sit up all night and watch for the culprit stealing down by the Swain with his belongings tied in a bag on the end of a stick slung over his shoulder, faithful cat at his heels, like Dick Whittington? Richmond had no idea. All he knew was that all the suspects had been told Banks had gone to Toronto.

Richmond also had strict instructions not to identify himself and not to push himself forward in any way that might make the locals suspicious. In other words, he wasn’t to question anyone, no matter how casually. He could keep his ears open then, he was relieved to hear, especially for anything Sam Greenock might let slip over breakfast, or some titbit he might overhear in the White Rose. At least he’d pack away a few pints of Marston’s tonight. Maybe even smoke a panatella.

‘Where was I?’ Freddie asked, leaning on the bar again.

‘Murder.’

‘Aye, murder.’ He nodded in the direction of the table in the far corner and whispered again. ‘And them there’s all t’ suspects.’

‘What makes them suspects?’ Richmond asked, hoping he was not exceeding his brief by asking the question.

‘’Ow would I know? All I know is that t’ police ’ave spent a lot of time wi’ ’em. An’ since yesterday they’ve all been on hot coals. Look at ’em now. You wouldn’t think they ’ad a big party coming up, would you?’

It was true that the group hardly seemed jolly. John Fletcher chewed the stem of his stubby pipe; his dark brows met in a frown. Sam Greenock was staring into space and rocking his glass on the table. Stephen Collier was talking earnestly to Nicholas, who was trying very hard not to listen. Nicholas, in fact, seemed the only unconcerned one among them. He smiled and nodded at customers who came and went, whereas the other three hardly seemed to notice them.

Richmond wished he could get closer and overhear what they were saying, but all the nearby tables were full. It would look too suspicious if he went and stood behind them.

He ordered another pint. ‘And I’ll have a panatella too, please,’ he said. He felt like indulging in a rare treat: a cigar with his beer. ‘What party’s this?’ he asked.

‘A Collier do. Reg’lar as clockwork in summer.’

‘Can anyone go?’

Tha must be joking, lad.’

Richmond shrugged and smiled to show he was, indeed, jesting. ‘What’s wrong with them all, then?’ he asked. ‘You’re right. They don’t look like they’re contemplating a booze-up to me.’

Metcalfe scratched his mutton chops. ‘I can’t be certain, tha knows, but it’s summat to do wi’ that London copper taking off for Canada. Talk about pale! Ashen, they went. But I’ll tell tha summat, it were good for business. Double brandies all round!’ Freddie nudged Richmond and laughed. ‘Aye, there’s nobody drinks like a murder suspect.’

Richmond drew on his cigar and looked over at the table. Outside some enemy back in Toronto, it came down to these four. Come on, he thought to himself, make a bolt. Run for it, you bugger, just try it!

‘I don’t know what people do where you come from, but over here we like a bit of advance warning if some foreigner’s come to invade our territory.’

Banks listened. There was nothing he could say; he had been caught fair and square. Fortunately, Staff Sergeant Gregson of the Toronto Homicide Squad was nearing the end of what had been a relatively mild bollocking, and even more fortunately, smoking was allowed — nay, encouraged — in his office.

It was an odd feeling, being on the carpet. Not that this was the first time for Banks. There had been many occasions at school, and even one or two in his early days on the Metropolitan force, and they always brought back those feelings of terror and helplessness in the face of authority he had known as a working-class kid in Peterborough. Perhaps, he thought, that fear of authority might have motivated him to become a policeman in the first place. He knew he didn’t join in order to inflict such feelings on others, but it was possible that he did it to surmount them, to conquer them in himself.

And now here he was, tongue-tied, unable to say a word in his own defence, yet inwardly seething with resentment at Gregson for putting him in such a position.

‘You’ve got no power here, you know,’ Gregson went on.

Finally, Banks found his voice. Holding his anger in check, he said, ‘I wasn’t aware that I needed any special power to talk to people — either in England or in Canada.’

‘You won’t get anywhere being sarcastic with me,’ Gregson said, a smile tugging at the corners of his tightly clamped mouth.

He was a round man with a square head. His grey hair was closely cropped, and a brush-like wedge of matching moustache, nicotine-yellow around the ends of the bristles, sprouted under his squashed nose. As he spoke, he had a habit of running his fingers under the collar of his white shirt as if it was too tight. His skin had a pinkish plastic sheen, like a balloon blown up too much. Banks wondered what would happen if he pricked him. Would he explode, or would the air hiss out slowly as his features folded in on themselves?

‘What have you got against irony, Sergeant?’ Banks asked. That felt odd, too: being hauled up before a mere sergeant.

‘You know what they say about sarcasm being the lowest form of wit, don’t you?’ Gregson responded.

‘Yes. But at least it is a form of wit, which is better than none at all.’

‘I didn’t bring you here to bandy words.’

‘Obviously.’

Banks lit another cigarette and looked at the concrete and glass office blocks out of the window. His shirt was stuck with sweat to the back of the orange plastic chair. He felt his anger ebb into boredom. They were somewhere downtown in a futuristic air-conditioned building, but the office smelt of burning rubber and old cigar smoke. That was all he knew.

‘What are you going to do, then?’ Banks asked. ‘Arrest me?’

Gregson shrugged. ‘For what? You haven’t done anything wrong.’

Banks leaned forward. ‘Then why the bloody hell did you get Laurel and Hardy out there to bundle me in the back of a car and bring me here against my will?’

‘Don’t be like that,’ Gregson said. ‘When Jordan phoned me and said there was a suspicious Englishman asking questions about Bernard Allen, what the fuck else could I do? What would you have done? Then it turned out to be you, a goddamn police inspector from England. And I hadn’t even been advised of your visit. I considered that an insult, which it is. And I didn’t find your remark on the phone about getting my man particularly funny, either. I’m not a Mountie.’

‘Well, I’m sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused you, Sergeant,’ Banks said, standing up, ‘but I’d like to enjoy the rest of my holiday in peace, if you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Gregson said, making no move to stop him walking over to the door. ‘I don’t mind at all. But I think you ought to bear a few things in mind before you go storming off.’

‘What things?’ Banks asked, his palm slippery on the doorknob.

‘First of all, that what I said to you on the phone before is true: we don’t have the resources to work on this case. Secondly, yes, you can talk to as many people as you wish, providing they want to talk to you. And thirdly, you should have damn well asked for permission before jumping on that fucking jet and flying here half-cocked. What if you find your killer? What are you going to do then? Have you thought about that? Smuggle him out of the country? You could be getting yourself into a damn tricky legal situation if you’re not very careful.’ Gregson rubbed his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘All I’m saying is that there are things you can’t do acting alone, without authority.’

‘And you don’t have the resources. I know. You told me. Look, this is where I came in, so if you don’t mind—’

‘Wait!’ Gregson jumped to his feet and reached for his jacket.

‘Wait for what?’

Gregson pushed past him through the door. ‘Come on,’ he said, half turning. ‘Just come with me.’

‘Where?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘What for?’

‘I’m going to save you from yourself.’

Banks sighed and followed the sergeant down the corridor and down in the lift to the car park.

There was enough room for a football team on the front seat of Gregson’s car. With the open windows sucking in what hot wet air they could, the staff sergeant drove up Yonge Street and turned right at the Hudson’s Bay building. On the crowded street corner, vendors sold icecream, T-shirts and jewellery; one man, surrounded by quite a crowd, was drawing large portraits in coloured chalk on the pavement.

Farther along, Banks recognized the stretch of the Danforth he’d walked the previous day: the Carrot Common shopping centre; the little Greek restaurant where he’d eaten lunch; Quinn’s pub. They came to an intersection called Coxwell, and Gregson turned left. A few blocks up, he pulled to a halt outside a small apartment building. Sprinklers hissed on the well kept lawn. Banks was tempted to run under one for a cold shower.

They walked up to the third floor, and Banks followed Gregson along the carpeted corridor to apartment 312.

‘Allen’s place,’ the staff sergeant announced.

‘Why are you helping me?’ Banks asked, as Gregson fitted the key in the door. ‘Why are you bringing me here? You said your department didn’t have the resources.’

‘That’s true. We’ve got a hunt on for a guy who sodomized a twelve-year-old girl, then cut her throat and dumped her in High Park. Been looking for leads for two months now. Twenty men on the case. But this is personal time. I don’t like it that a local guy got killed any more than you do. So I show you where he lived. It’s no big deal. Besides, like I said, I’m saving you from yourself. You’d probably have broken in, and then I’d have had to arrest you. Embarrassing all round.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ Banks said.

They walked into the apartment.

‘Building owner’s been bugging us to let him rent it out again, but we’ve been stalling. He knows he’s sitting on a gold mine. We’ve got a zero vacancy rate in Toronto these days. Still, Allen paid first and last month when he moved in, so I figure he’s got a bit of time left. To tell you the truth, we don’t know who’s gonna take care of the guy’s stuff.’

There wasn’t much: just a lot of books, Swedish assemble-it-yourself furniture, pots and pans, a few withered house plants and a desk and typewriter by the window. Bernard Allen had lived simply.

The room was hot and stuffy. There was no sign of an air-conditioner, so Banks went over and opened a window. It didn’t make much difference.

‘What kind of search did your men do?’ Banks asked.

‘Routine. We didn’t open up every book or read every letter, if that’s what you mean. The guy didn’t keep much personal stuff around, anyway. It was all in that desk drawer.’

Banks extracted a messy pile of bills and letters from the drawer. First, he put aside the bills then examined the sheaf of personal mail. They were all dated within the last six months or so, which meant that he threw his letters out periodically instead of hoarding them like some people. There were letters from his parents in Australia and one brief note from his sister acknowledging the dates of his proposed visit. Banks read these carefully, but found nothing of significance.

It was a postcard from Vancouver dated about two weeks before Allen set off for England that proved the most revealing, but even that wasn’t enough. It read:

It was perfectly innocent on the surface — just a postcard from a friend — so there was no reason why Gregson or his men should have been suspicious about it. But it was definitely from Anne Ralston, and it told Banks that she was going under the name of Julie now.

‘Looks like you’ve found something,’ Gregson said, looking over Banks’s shoulder.

‘It’s from the woman I’m looking for. I think she knows something about Allen’s murder.’

‘Look,’ Gregson said, ‘are we talking about a criminal here? Are there charges involved?’

Banks shook his head. He wasn’t sure. Anne Ralston could certainly have murdered Raymond Addison and run for it, but he didn’t want to tell Gregson that and risk the local police scaring her off.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They used to know each other in Swainshead, that’s all.’

‘And now they’ve met up over here?’

‘Yes.’

‘So?’

Banks told him about Ralston’s disappearance and the Addison murder, stressing that she wasn’t seriously implicated in any way.

‘But she might have known something?’ Gregson said. ‘And told Allen. You think that’s what might have got him killed?’

‘It’s possible. We know that she asked him to keep quiet about meeting her over here, and we know he didn’t.’

‘Who did he talk to?’

‘That’s the problem. Someone who makes it his business to make sure that everyone who counts knows.’

‘It won’t be easy.’

‘What?’

Gregson tapped the postcard. ‘Finding her. No address. No phone number. Nothing.’

Banks sighed. ‘Believe me, I know. And all we’ve got is her first name. I’m just hoping I can dig out some of the spots she might turn up. She mentioned the pub, so at least I was right about her drinking with him there.’

‘Know how many pubs there are in Toronto?’

‘Don’t bother to tell me. I’d only get discouraged. It’s the kind of job I should have sent my sergeant on.’ Banks explained about Hatchley’s drinking habits and Gregson laughed.

‘Can I have a good look around?’ Banks asked.

‘Go ahead. I’ll be down in the car. Lock up behind you.’

After the staff sergeant left, Banks puzzled over him for a moment. He was beginning to warm to Gregson and get some understanding of Canadians, especially those of distant British origin. They behaved with a strange mixture of patronage and respect towards the English. Perhaps they’d had British history rammed down their throats at school and needed to reject it in order to discover themselves. Or perhaps the English had simply become passé as far as immigrants went, and had been superseded by newer waves of Koreans, East Indians and Vietnamese.

The next item of interest Banks found was an old photograph album dating back to Allen’s university days. There were pictures of his parents, his sister, and of the Greenocks standing outside a typical Armley back-to-back. But the most interesting was a picture dated ten years ago, in which Allen stood outside the White Rose with a woman named as Anne in the careful white print under the photo on the black page. The snap was a little blurred, an amateur effort with a Brownie by the look of it, but it was better than the one he’d got from Missing Persons. Anne looked very attractive in a low-cut T-shirt and a full, flowing Paisley skirt. She had long light brown hair, a high forehead and smiling eyes. Her face was heart-shaped and her lips curved up slightly at the corners. That was ten years ago, Banks thought, carefully taking the photo from its silver corners and pocketing it. Would she look like that now?

He went on to make a careful search of the rest of the apartment, and he did take out every book and flip through the leaves, but he came up with nothing else. The postcard signed ‘Julie’ and the old photograph were all he had to go on. By the time he’d finished, his shirt was stuck to his back.

Outside, Gregson seemed quite at ease smoking in his hot car.

‘Find anything?’ he asked.

‘Only an old photograph. Probably useless. What time is it?’

‘Ten after four.’

‘I suppose I’d better make my way home.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘Riverdale.’

‘That’s not far. How about a beer first?’

‘All right.’ It was impossible to resist the thought of an ice-cold beer.

Gregson drove back downtown and pulled into a car park behind a grimy cinder-block building with a satellite dish on the roof.

Despite the warm gold sunlight outside, the bar was dark and it took a while for Banks’ eyes to adjust. He did notice though, that it was cold, gloriously cold. There wasn’t any sawdust on the floor, but he got the feeling there ought to be. It was a high-ceilinged room as big as a barn, peppered with black plastic tables and chairs. At one end was the bar itself, a feeble glimmer of light in the distance, and at the other was a stage littered with amps and speakers. At the moment a rather flat-chested young girl was dancing half-naked in a spotlight to the Rolling Stones’ ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. The volume was much too high. Against a third wall was a huge TV screen on which a game of baseball was in progress.

A waitress sashayed over, shirt-ends tied in a knot under her ample breasts, and took their orders with a weary smile. Shortly, she returned with the drinks on a tray. As Banks looked around, other figures detached themselves from the gloom and he saw that the place was reasonably full. Smoke swirled and danced in the spot beam. Whatever this bar was, it wasn’t one of the English-style pubs where Bernard Allen went for his pint. The four glasses of draught beer in front of them were tiny and tapered to thick heavy stems.

‘Cheers.’ Gregson clinked glasses and practically downed his in one.

‘If you have to order two each at a time,’ Banks asked, leaning over and shouting against the music, ‘why don’t they switch to using bigger glasses?’

Gregson shrugged and licked foam off his moustache. ‘Tradition, I guess. It’s always been like this as long as I can remember.’ He offered Banks a cigarette. It was stronger than the ones he usually smoked.

The music ended and the girl left the stage to a smattering of polite applause.

Gregson nodded towards the TV screen. ‘Get baseball back home?’

Banks nodded. ‘We do now. My son likes it, but I’m a cricket man myself.’

‘Can’t figure that game at all.’

‘Can’t say I know much about baseball, either.’ Banks caught the waitress’s attention and put in another order, changing his to a bottle of Carlsberg this time. She smiled sweetly at him and made him repeat himself.

‘Likes your accent,’ Gregson said afterwards. ‘She heard you the first time. You’ll be all right there, if you’re interested.’

‘Married man.’

‘Ah. Still, while the cat’s away… And you are in a foreign country, a long way from home.’

Banks laughed. ‘The problem is, I have to take myself with me wherever I go.’

Gregson nodded slowly. ‘I know what you mean.’ He tapped the side of his square head. ‘There’s a few pictures stuck in here I wish I could throw out, believe me.’ He looked back at the screen. ‘Baseball. Greatest game in the world.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Listen, if you’ve got a bit of time, how about taking in a game next Saturday? I’ve got tickets. Jays at home to the Yankees.’

‘I’d like that,’ Banks said. ‘Look, don’t get me wrong, but I got the impression you were distinctly pissed off with me a few hours ago. Now you’re inviting me to a baseball game. Any reason?’

‘Sure. You were out of line and I did my duty. Now I’m off duty and someone’s got to show you there’s more to Canada than snow, Mounties, beavers and maple trees.’

‘Fair enough. Don’t forget the Eskimos.’

‘Inuit, we call them now.’

Banks finished his beer and Gregson ordered more. The spot came on again and an attractive young woman with long wavy black hair and brown skin came on to the stage.

Gregson noticed Banks staring. ‘Beautiful, eh? She’s a full-blooded Indian. Name’s Wanda Morningstar.’

She certainly was beautiful, in such an innocent natural way that Banks found himself wondering what the girl was doing taking her clothes off for a bunch of dirty old men in the middle of a summer’s afternoon. And, come to think of it, what the hell was he doing among them? Well, blame Gregson for that.

More drinks came, and more strippers walked on and off the stage, but none could hold a candle to Wanda Morningstar. It was after ten when they finally left, and by then Banks felt unusually merry. Because the beer was ice-cold it had very little taste and therefore, he had assumed, little strength. Wrong. It was stronger than what he was used to, and he felt light-headed as he followed Gregson to the car.

Gregson paused as he bent to put his key in the door. ‘No,’ he said to himself. ‘Time to take a cab. You’ve been leading me astray, Alan. It’d be damned embarrassing if I got done for drunken driving in my own city, wouldn’t it?’

They walked out on to the street. It was still busy, and many of the shops were open — all-night groceries and the ubiquitous Mac’s Milk. Or was this one Mo’s, Mc’s or Mick’s? You’d never get anything but an off-licence open past five thirty in Eastvale, Banks reflected.

Gregson waved and a cab pulled up. They piled in the back. The driver, an uncommunicative West Indian, nodded when he heard the directions. He dropped Banks off first outside Gerry’s house, then drove on with Gregson waving from the back.

Banks walked into the hot room and slumped in front of the TV. A rerun of Perry Mason came on. Finally, a little dizzy and unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he went into the bedroom and lay down. The events of the day spun round chaotically in his mind for a while, but the last image, the one that lulled his consciousness to sleep, was of Wanda Morningstar dancing naked, not on a stage in a seedy bar but in a clearing somewhere in the wilderness, her dark skin gleaming in firelight.

But the scene shifted, as it does in dreams, and it was no longer Wanda Morningstar dancing but Anne Ralston running ahead of him in her long Paisley skirt. It was a typical policeman’s dream too, for try as he might, he just couldn’t run fast enough. His feet felt as if they were glued to the earth. Every so often, she would pause and beckon him, smiling indulgently when she saw him try to drag himself along. He woke at six, covered with sweat. Outside, the birds were singing and an early-morning streetcar clattered by. He got up and took a couple of Gerry’s aspirins with a pint of water, then drifted off to sleep again.

10

The sun had just gone down behind Adam’s Fell, silhouetting the steep hillside against its deep crimson glow. The guests milled around in the Colliers’ large garden. Doors to both parts of the house were open, allowing access to drinks and a huge table of cheeses, pâtés, smoked salmon and fresh fruit. Music drifted out from Stephen’s stereo. Now it was Mozart, but earlier there had been Motown and some ersatz modern pop. The crowd was mostly early to mid thirties, apart from one or two older landowners and friends of the family. There were a couple of bright young teachers from Braughtmore, several members of Stephen’s management staff, and a great assortment of entrepreneurs, some with political ambitions, from all over the dale. The parties were a fairly regular affair; they helped maintain the social status of the Colliers and introduce those who had something to those who might be willing and able to pay for it.

Katie stood alone by the fountain, with a glass of white wine in her hand. She had been holding it so long it was warm. Occasionally a well dressed young man would approach her and begin a conversation, but after a few minutes of her averted looks, blushes and monosyllabic answers, he would make an excuse to get away.

As usual, Sam had insisted she come.

‘I didn’t buy you those bloody expensive dresses for nothing, you know,’ he had railed when she told him at the last minute that she didn’t want to go.

‘I didn’t ask you to buy them,’ Katie said quietly. ‘I don’t even want them.’ And it was true. She felt uncomfortable in finery, full of pride and vanity.

‘You’ll damn well do as I say. There’ll be some important people there and I want you to make a good impression.’

‘Oh, Sam,’ she pleaded, ‘you know I never do. I can’t talk to people at parties. I get all tongue-tied.’

‘Have a few drinks like everyone else, for a change. That’ll loosen you up. For Christ’s sake, can’t you let your hair down for once?’

Katie turned away.

Sam grasped her arm. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’re coming with me and that’s that. If you’re so worried about talking to people, then just stand around and look decorative. At least you can do that. But you are coming. Got it?’

Katie nodded and Sam let go of her. Rubbing her arm, she went up to her room and picked out a cotton print dress just right for the occasion, gathered at the waist and cut low down the back. It looked particularly good if she tied her hair up. She decided to take a fringed woollen shawl, too; sometimes, even in July, the evenings got chilly. After Sam had approved of her appearance and suggested a bit more eye make-up, they left.

She could see Sam in his white suit talking and laughing with a couple of local businessmen. He had a glass of wine too, though she knew he hated the stuff. He only drank it because that was the thing to do at the Colliers’ parties.

Katie looked around for John Fletcher, but she couldn’t see him. John was always kind and, of all of them, she found him the easiest to talk to, or even to be silent with. She liked Stephen Collier, but felt more comfortable with John Fletcher. He was a sad and haunted man since his wife ran off, but at least she hadn’t gone because he mistreated her. Maureen Fletcher, Katie remembered, had been beautiful, vain, haughty and foolhardy. The small community of Swainshead couldn’t hold her. Katie thought John ought to be glad to be rid of her, but she never said anything to him. They never discussed anything personal, but he seemed, beyond the depths of his sadness, a good man.

Katie shivered. The sunset had faded, leaving the sky above Adam’s Fell a deep dark violet colour. Even over the clinking glasses and the Motown music, which had started up again because some people wanted to dance, she could hear the eerie mournful call of a curlew high on the fell. She began to make her way into Nicholas’s part of the house to pick up her shawl where Sam had left it, then decided she wanted to go to the bathroom too. Pausing on the way, she admired the oak panelling and the old-fashioned style of his living room, with its watercolours of Nelson and Wellington on the walls, and its rows of leather-bound books. She wondered if he ever read them. On a small teak table by the Adam fireplace stood a bronze bust. Looking closer, Katie saw the name Oscar Wilde scratched into the base. She’d heard the name before somewhere, but it didn’t mean very much to her. What a beautiful place for a monster like Nicholas Collier to live. It would be difficult to clean though, she thought, taking in all the nooks and crannies with a professional eye.

Finally, she found the toilet, which was more modern than the rest of the house. There, she poured her drink down the bowl and hid for a while, idly glancing at one of the copies of Yorkshire Life so thoughtfully set out by the bath. Then she got worried that Sam might be looking for her.

On her way back down the hall, she met Nicholas coming up. He was walking unsteadily, and his bright eyes were glassy. A stubborn lock of hair near his crown stood straight up. He looked like a naughty schoolboy.

‘Ah, Katie my dear,’ he said, reaching out and holding her shoulders. His voice was slurred and his cheeks were flushed with drink. ‘Come to me, for thy love is better than wine.’

Katie blushed and tried to wriggle free, but Nicholas only tightened his grip. He looked behind him.

‘Nobody around,’ he whispered. ‘Time for a little kiss, my rose of Sharon, my lily of the valley.’

Katie struggled, but he was too strong. He held her head still, brought his mouth closer to hers and seemed to suffocate her with a long wet kiss. His breath tasted rank with wine, garlicky pâté and Stilton cheese. When he stopped, she gulped in the air. But he didn’t let her go. One hand was on her bare back now and the other was feeling her breasts.

‘Ah, thy breasts are like two young roes that are twins,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘Come on, Katie. In here. In the bedroom.’

‘No!’ Katie shouted. ‘If you don’t let me go I’m going to scream.’

Nicholas laughed. ‘I like a girl with a bit of spirit. Come on, I’ll make you scream, sure enough. But not yet.’ He put one hand over her mouth and started dragging her along the hall. Suddenly, she heard a familiar voice behind them and Nicholas’s grip loosened. She shook herself free and turned to hear John Fletcher tell Nicholas to take his hands off her.

‘You go to hell!’ Nicholas said, clearly too far gone in temper to pull back. ‘Who are you to tell me what to do? You’re nothing but a jumped-up farm boy.’

And suddenly, John hit him. It was a quick sharp blow to the mouth, and it stopped Nicholas in his tracks. He glared at John as the blood welled to his lips and a thin line trickled down his chin. Out in the garden, a glass smashed and somebody giggled loudly above Mary Wells’ ‘My Guy’. Nicholas bared his teeth at John, put his hand over his mouth and stalked off to the bathroom.

Fletcher rubbed his knuckles. ‘Are you all right, Katie?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes, thank you.’ Katie stared down at the patterned carpet as she spoke. ‘I–I’m sorry… I’m so embarrassed. It’s not the first time he’s tried to touch me, but he’s never been that rough before.’

‘He’s drunk,’ Fletcher said, then smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.’

‘But what will he do? He looked so angry.’

‘He’ll cool off. Come on, let’s get back to the others.’

Katie picked up her shawl, and they walked back into the garden, which was lit now by strategically placed antique lanterns. Katie excused herself, thanking John again, and sneaked around the side of the house into the street. She felt she needed to be out of there for a while, at least until her heart stopped beating so wildly and she could catch her breath again. Her flesh felt numb where Nicholas’s hands had touched her. She shuddered.

There was no one in the street. Even the old men had gone from the bridge. The lights were on in the White Rose though, and Katie heard the sound of laughter and talk from inside. She thought the young policeman would be in there, the one nobody knew about but her. He hadn’t been invited to the party, of course, so he wouldn’t get the chance to spy on them that night. She wondered why he was really in the village. He hadn’t asked any searching questions of anyone; he just seemed to be there, somehow, always in sight.

Sighing, Katie crept back into the garden. A slow song was playing and some of the couples held each other close. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her back and flinched.

‘It’s only me. Dance?’

‘B-but I… can’t…’

‘Nonsense,’ Stephen Collier said. ‘It’s easy. Just follow what I do.’

Katie had no choice. She saw Sam looking on and smiling with approval from Stephen’s doorway. She felt like she had two left feet, and somehow her body just wouldn’t respond to the music at all. It felt like wood. Soon, she began to feel dizzy and everything went dark. At the centre of the darkness was a biting, sooty smell. She stumbled.

‘Hey, I’m not as bad as all that.’ Stephen supported her with one arm and led her to the fountain.

Katie regained her balance. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I told you I was no good.’

‘If I didn’t know better,’ Stephen said, ‘I’d say you’d had too much to drink.’

Katie smiled. ‘About one sip of white wine. It’s too much for me.’

‘Katie?’ Stephen suddenly seemed earnest.

‘Yes?’

‘I enjoyed our little chat in your kitchen that time. It’s good to have someone… someone outside to talk to.’

‘Outside what?’

‘Oh, business, family…’

The occasion seemed so long ago that Katie could hardly remember. And Stephen had ignored her ever since. She certainly hadn’t imagined it as an enjoyable occasion for either of them. But there was something so little-boyish about Stephen, especially now when he seemed so nervous and serious. The muscle in the corner of his left eye had developed a tic.

‘Remember what we talked about?’ he went on.

Katie didn’t, but she nodded.

He looked around and lowered his voice. ‘I think I’ve made my mind up. I think I’m going to leave Swainshead.’

‘But why?’

Stephen noticed a couple of his senior executives heading in their direction. ‘We can’t talk here, Katie. Not now. Can I see you on Friday?’

‘Sam goes to—’

‘Yes, I know Sam goes to Eastvale on Fridays. I don’t want to see Sam, I want to see you. We’ll go for a walk.’

‘I–I don’t know.’

His tone was urgent and his eyes were pleading with her. The two men had almost reached them. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘A walk. A little one.’

Stephen relaxed. Even the tic in his eye seemed to disappear.

‘Ah, Stephen, here you are,’ one of the executives, a plump florid man called Teaghe, said. ‘Trust you to corner the prettiest filly at the party, eh?’ He cast a lecherous glance at Katie, who smiled politely and made an excuse to leave.

She poured herself another glass of wine for appearance’s sake and leaned by the side of the French windows, watching the lantern-lit dancers in relief against the huge black mass of Adam’s Fell. The garden was a tangled web of shadows, crossing and knotting like an enormous cat’s cradle. As the warm light caught their features at certain angles, some of the dancers looked positively satanic.

So, although she had never thought of herself as a sympathetic listener — so bound up in her own shyness and discomfort was she — Stephen had asked her to be his confidante and she had agreed to go for a walk with him, to listen to his problems. It was more than Sam ever asked her to do. There were only two things he wanted from her: work and sex.

She trusted Stephen as far as she could trust any man. He hadn’t tried anything last time, when he could have, and he’d been distinctly cool towards her since. But why did he want to leave Swainshead? Why did he seem so on edge? Was he running away from something? Still, she thought, if he was going away, and he really liked her, then there was just a chance he might take her with him.

She suspected that it might be a sin to desert her husband, but she had thought so much about it that she decided it was worth the risk. Surely God would forgive her for leaving a man with such vile and lascivious appetites as Sam Greenock? She could make amends, do good works. She might have to give Stephen her body too, she knew that. If not on Friday, then later, if he took her away with him. But that was one sin nobody could catch her out on. She had learned how to comply with all the things men wanted, but she got no pleasure from them herself. She thought it was just because of Sam, her only lover for years, but when Bernie had forced himself on her and she hadn’t had the energy or the power to fight him off, she knew that she could never enjoy the act with any man. Bernie had at least been kind and gentle when he got her where he wanted her, but it made no difference to the way she felt about what he was doing.

She looked at the lantern-lit guests again. Sam was dancing with an attractive brunette, probably from Collier Foods, and Nicholas was back in circulation, talking and laughing by the fountain with a group of commuters who lived in Swainsdale and made their money elsewhere. His lower lip was swollen as if he’d been stung by a bee. When he caught her glance, he glared at her with such lust and hatred that she shivered and pulled her shawl up more tightly around her shoulders.

In Toronto, Banks combined sightseeing with his search for Anne Ralston in the English-style pubs. The weather remained uncomfortably hot and humid, and a window-rattling thunderstorm one night only seemed to make things worse the next day.

Banks gave the CN Tower a miss, but he walked around the Eaton Centre, a huge shopping mall with a glass roof and a flock of sculptured Canada geese flying in to land at one end, and he visited Yonge and Dundas after dark to watch the hookers and street kids on the neon strip. He took a ferry to Ward’s Island and admired the Toronto skyline before walking along the boardwalk on the south side. Lake Ontario glittered in the sun, as vast as an ocean. He went to Harbourfront, where he sipped Carlsberg on a waterfront patio and watched the white sails of the yachts cut slow as knives through treacle in the haze.

One morning he took a bus to Kleinburg to see the McMichael collection. Sandra, he thought, would love the Lawren Harris mountain-scapes and the native art. Also in the collection was a painting by Emily Carr that he associated with Jenny Fuller, a psychologist friend who sometimes helped with cases in Eastvale. She had a print of it on her living-room wall, and it was at her suggestion that he had made the visit.

Nor could he bear to miss Niagara Falls. If anything, it was even more magnificent than he had expected. He went out on the Maid of the Mist, wrapped up in oilskins, and the boat tossed like a cork when it reached the bottom of the falls. From a certain angle, he could see a rainbow cut diagonally across the water. When the boat got closer, the spray filled his eyes like a mist and he could see nothing; he could hear only the primeval roar of the water.

The rest of the time, he visited pubs. Allowing an hour or so in each, he would sit at the bar, show the photographs and ask after Bernard Allen and Anne Ralston of bar staff and customers.

This part of the job was hard on his liver and kidneys, so he tried to slow down his intake and pace himself. To make the task more interesting — for solo pub-crawling is hardly the most exciting pastime in the world — he sampled different kinds of draught beer, both imported and domestic. Most of the Canadian beers tasted the same, and they were uniformly gassy. The English beers, he found, didn’t travel well. Double Diamond and Watney’s he determinedly ignored, just as he did back home. By far the best were the few local brews that Gerry Webb had told him about: Arkell Bitter, Wellington County Ale, Creemore Springs Lager and Conner Bitter. Smooth and tasty, they had body and, when required, boasted fine heads.

Despite good beer, he was heartily sick of pubs. He was smoking too much, drinking too much and eating too much fried food. On Tuesday, after getting back from Kleinburg, he had tried the Sticky Wicket, the Madison and the Duke of York, all close to the university. No luck. On Wednesday, after his return from Niagara Falls, he had started out at the Spotted Dick, then made his way down busy Yonge Street among the shoppers and pleasure-seekers to the Hop and Grape, via the Artful Dodger and the Jack Russell. He had sat in the Hop and Grape, on the ground floor of an office block near Yonge and College, and watched long-haired heavy metal fans in the street flock towards a rock concert at Maple Leaf Gardens. His clothes were soaked with sweat and his feet hurt. The pub was quiet at that time, as the office workers had gone home and the evening crowds hadn’t yet turned up. There were only two days left, and he was very much conscious of time’s winged chariot at his rear. Fed up, he had gone back to the house for an early night.

He knew he had to be right though; Bernard Allen had frequented an English-style pub, and he must have had drinking companions who would be mourning his loss.

On Thursday at about three fifteen, Banks got off a streetcar outside the Feathers, in the east end of the city. The inside door opened opposite a small darts area: two boards against a green baize backing, pockmarked with misses. To his left was the pub itself, all darkly gleaming wood, polished brass and deep red velvet upholstery. And it was cool.

The wall opposite the bar was covered with framed photographs, mostly of English and Scottish scenes. Banks recognized a pub he knew in York, Theakston’s brewery in Masham, a road sign he’d often passed on the way to Ripon and, most surprising of all, a photo of the Queen’s Arms in Eastvale’s cobbled market square. It was an odd sensation, seeing that. He was in a pub over three thousand miles from home looking at a photo of the Queen’s Arms. Eerie.

The place was almost empty. Near the door sat a group of four or five people listening to a silver-haired man with a lived-in face and a Lancashire accent complain about income tax.

Banks stood at the bar close to a very tall man with short neat hair. He was smoking a pipe and staring abstractedly into space as if musing about the follies of mankind. Behind the bar, above the till, was a small Union Jack.

‘I’ll have a pint of Creemore, please,’ Banks said, noticing the logo on one of the pumps.

The barmaid smiled. She had curly auburn hair and brown eyes full of humour and mischief. When she walked over to the end of the bar to fill a waitress’s order, Banks noticed she was wearing a very short skirt. It did more than justice to a fine pair of legs.

‘Quiet,’ Banks commented, when she placed the ice-cold pint in front of him.

‘It usually is at this time,’ she said. ‘We get busy around five when people drop in after work.’

Banks took a deep breath and reached for the photographs in his jacket pocket. They were getting dog-eared. He was so used to disappointment that he put hardly any enthusiasm into his question: ‘I don’t suppose you had a regular here by the name of Bernard Allen, did you?’

‘Bernie?’ she said. ‘Bernie who got killed over in England?’

Banks could hardly believe his ears. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Did you know him?’

The barmaid’s eyes turned serious as she spoke. ‘He was a regular here,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say I really knew him, but I talked to him now and then. You know, like you do when you’re waitressing. He was a nice guy. Never made any trouble. It was terrible what happened.’

‘Did he drink alone?’

‘No. There was a group of them — Bernie, Glen, Barry and Ian. They always sat on that corner over there.’ She pointed to a round table opposite the far end of the bar.

‘Was there ever a woman with them?’

‘Sometimes. But I never talked to her. Why do you want to know all this? Are you a cop or something?’

Banks decided on honesty. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I’m here unofficially. We think Bernie met an old friend over here who might have some information for us. It could help us find out who killed him.’

The barmaid rested her elbows on the bar and leaned forward.

Banks showed her the photographs. ‘Is this her?’

She looked closely and frowned. ‘It could be. The shape of the face is the same, but everything else is different. These must be old photos.’

‘They are,’ Banks said. ‘But it could be her?’

‘Yes. Look, I’m sorry, I can’t stand here talking. I honestly don’t know much more. Jack over there used to talk to Bernie sometimes. He might be able to help.’

She pointed to a man on the periphery of the group near the entrance. He was a solidly built man with a moustache and a fine head of greyish hair, in his mid to late thirties, Banks guessed. At the moment he seemed to be poring over a crossword puzzle.

‘Thank you.’ Banks picked up his half-finished pint and walked over to the table. He introduced himself and Jack told him to pull up a chair. The Lancastrian at the next table lit a cigarette and said, ‘I’ll just have another gin and tonic, then I’ll go.’

‘We weren’t really close friends,’ Jack said when Banks had asked about Bernie, ‘but we had some decent conversations.’ He had a Canadian accent, which surprised Banks. He’d assumed that apart from the bar staff all the regulars were British.

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Books, mostly. Literature. Bernie was about the only other guy I knew who’d read Proust.’

‘Proust?’

Jack gave him a challenging look. ‘Greatest writer who ever lived. He wrote Remembrance of Things Past.’

‘Maybe I’ll give him a try,’ Banks answered, not sure what he was letting himself in for. He tended to follow through on most of his self-made promises to read or listen to things other people recommended, though time constraints always ensured he had a huge backlog.

‘Do that,’ said Jack. ‘Then I’ll have someone to talk to again. Excuse me.’ He got up and went to the washroom.

The Lancastrian belched and said to the waitress, ‘Gin and tonic please, love. No fruit.’

Banks observed the other people at the table: a small slim youth with an earring and a diamond stud in his left ear; a taller thin-faced man with a crewcut and glasses; a soft-spoken man with a hint of an Irish accent. They were all listening to a Welshman telling jokes.

Jack sat down again and ordered another pint of Black Label. The waitress, a nicely tanned blonde with a beautiful smile, took Banks’ order for another Creemore too, and delivered both drinks in no time. Banks paid, leaving her a good tip — one thing he’d soon learned to do on his pub crawl of Toronto.

‘Did you know any of Bernie’s friends?’ he asked.

Jack shook his head. ‘Self-important Brits, for the most part. They tend to pontificate a bit too much for my liking. But Bernie seemed to have transcended the parochial barriers of most English teachers.’

Marilyn Rosenberg, at Toronto Community College, had said much the same thing in a different way. Whether it was a plus or a minus in her eyes, Banks hadn’t been sure.

‘When do they usually come in?’

‘About five, most days.’

Banks looked at his watch; it was just after four.

‘Thanks a lot,’ he said. ‘By the way, six across is sculls. “Rows — of heads, we hear!” Head… skull. To row… to scull.’ Jack raised his eyebrows and filled in the answer.

They worked at the crossword together for the next hour as the place filled up. At quarter past five, they were puzzling over ‘Take away notoriety and attack someone (6)’ when two men in white shirts and business suits walked in.

‘That’s them over there,’ Jack said. ‘Excuse me if I don’t join you.’

Banks smiled. ‘Thanks for your help, anyway.’

‘Nice meeting you,’ Jack said, and they shook hands. ‘Defame. Of course!’ he exclaimed just before Banks moved away. ‘“Take away notoriety and attack someone.” Defame. Amazing how you get so much more done when there are two minds working at it.’

Banks agreed. It was the same with police work. He could certainly have done with some help on this trip. Not Sergeant Hatchley — he hadn’t the self-control to separate work from a pub crawl — but DC Richmond would have been fine.

When he got to their table, the two men had already taken the opportunity to loosen their ties, take off their suit jackets and roll up their sleeves. One was tall and skinny with a bony face and fine blond hair plastered flat against his skull to cover the receding hairline; the other, who only came up to his friend’s shoulders, was pudgy and also balding. What little hair he had stood out like a kind of mist or halo around his head. He wore a fixed smile on his lips, and his dark eyes darted everywhere.

Banks walked over to them and told them why he was in Toronto.

‘I’m Ian Grainger,’ said the tall blond one. ‘Sit down.’

‘Barry Clark,’ the other said, still smiling and looking everywhere but at Banks.

‘Glen should be along in a while,’ Ian said. ‘How can we help you?’

‘I’m not sure if you can. I’m looking for Anne Ralston.’

For a moment, both men frowned and looked puzzled.

‘You might know her as Julie.’

‘Oh, Julie. Yes, of course,’ Barry said. ‘You lost me there for a second. Sure we know Julie. But what could she have to do with Bernie’s murder?’ His accent was English, as was Ian’s, but Banks couldn’t place either of them exactly.

‘I don’t honestly know if she had anything to do with it,’ Banks said, ‘but she’s the only real lead we’ve got.’ He explained about her disappearance just after the Addison murder.

The drinks arrived just before Glen Tadworth, a dark-bearded, well padded young man with a pronounced academic stoop and a well developed beer belly, walked over to join them. His red shirt seemed glued to his skin, and there were wet patches under the arms and across the chest. He carried a battered black briefcase stuffed with papers, which he plonked on the floor as he sat down and sighed.

‘Bloody students,’ he said, running his hand through his greasy black hair. ‘“Dover Beach” — a simple enough poem, you’d say, wouldn’t you?’ He looked at Banks as he talked, even though they hadn’t been introduced. ‘One bright spark came up with the theory that it was about Matthew Arnold’s hangover. Quite elaborate, it was too. The “grating roar” was the poet being sick. And as for the “long line of spray”… Well, I suppose one should be grateful for their inventiveness, but really…’ He threw his hands up, then reached over and took a long swig from Ian’s pint.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Barry said, managing to keep his eyes on Banks for a split second as he spoke. ‘He’s always like this. Always complaining.’ And he introduced them.

‘From Swainsdale, eh?’ Glen said. ‘A breath of fresh air from the old country. Lord, what I’d give to be able to live back there again. Not Swainsdale in particular, though it’d do. I’m from the West Country myself — Exeter. The accent’s flattened out a bit over the years here, I’m afraid.’

‘Why can’t you go back if you want to?’ Banks asked, reaching for another cigarette. ‘Surely you weren’t sent into permanent exile?’

‘Metaphorically, my dear Chief Inspector, metaphorically. You know, some people have got hold of the idea that we expatriates, scattered around the ex-colonies and various watering holes of Europe and Asia, are all pipe-puffing Tories enjoying life without income tax.’

‘And aren’t you?’

‘Far from it. Where is that waitress? Ah, Stella, my dear, a pint of Smithwick’s please. Where was I? Exile. Yes. If the government really did seek our proxy votes in the next election, I think they’d bloody well regret it. Most of us feel like exiles. We have skills that no one back home seems to value any more. It’s hard enough getting jobs here, but at least it’s possible. And they pay well. But I, for one, would be perfectly happy to do the same work back home for less money. There’s hardly a day goes by when I don’t think about going back.’

‘What about Bernie?’

‘He was as bad as Glen, if not worse,’ Barry said. ‘At least recently he was. Full of nostalgia. It’s time-travel they’re after really, you know, not just a flight across the Atlantic. All of us baby boomers are nostalgic when it comes down to it. That’s why we prefer the Beatles to Duran Duran.’

Banks also liked the Beatles better than Duran Duran, a group that his son, Brian, had inflicted on him once or twice before moving on to something new. He thought it was because of the quality of the music, but maybe Barry Clark was right and it was more a matter of nostalgia than anything else. His own father had been just the same, he remembered, going on about Glenn Miller, Nat Gonella and Harry Roy when Banks had wanted to listen to Elvis Presley, The Shadows and Billy Fury.

‘The longer you’re away, the more you idealize the image of home,’ Barry went on, eyes roving the room. The place was packed and noisy now. People stood three deep at the bar. Jack, Banks noticed, had been joined by a small pretty woman with short dark hair laid flat against her skull. The Lancastrian and his friends had left. ‘Of course, what people don’t realize is that the country’s changed beyond all recognition,’ Barry continued. ‘We’d be foreigners there now, but to us home is still the Queen’s Christmas message, the last night of the Proms, Derby Day, a Test Match at Lords, the FA Cup Final — without bloodshed! — leafy lanes, a green and pleasant land. Ordered and changeless. Bloody hell, even the dark Satanic mills have some sort of olde worlde charm for homesick expatriates.’

‘Damn right,’ Glen said. ‘I’d work in a bloody woollen mill in Bingley if it meant being back home. Well, maybe… It’s the wistfulness of the exile, you see, Chief Inspector. You get it a lot in poetry. Especially the Irish.’

Banks was beginning to see what Jack had meant.

‘Bernie was just the same,’ Ian said. ‘You should have heard him going on about Yorkshire. It was bloody Dales this and bloody Dales that. You’d think he was talking about paradise. You’ll never catch me going back to live over there. Canada’s a great place as far as I’m concerned.’

‘That’s because you’re in real estate,’ Glen said. ‘You’re making a bloody fortune. Is that all you care about — the material things? What about your soul, your roots?’

‘Oh, shut up, Glen. You’re getting tiresome.’

‘If he could have got a job over there,’ Banks asked, ‘do you think he would have gone back?’

‘Like a shot,’ Ian answered. The others agreed.

‘Did he ever mention anything about a job?’

‘He did say there was a chance of getting back to stay,’ Glen said. ‘Lucky bastard. But I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.’

‘What was this chance?’

‘He didn’t say. Very hush-hush, apparently.’

‘Why?’

Glen scratched his shoulder and tried to unstick the shirt from his armpit. ‘Dunno. It was just one of those nights when you’ve had a few too many, if you know what I mean. Bernie said something about a plan he had to get himself back home.’

‘But he gave you no details?’

‘No. Said he’d let us know after he got back.’

‘Was it a job he mentioned?’

‘Not specifically, no. Just a chance to get back. I assumed it must have been some possible job offer. How else would he be able to live?’

‘How attached was he to teaching?’

‘He liked it up to a point,’ Glen answered. ‘It was something he was good at. He should have been teaching at university. He was good enough, but there aren’t any jobs. Like most of us though, he hated the conditions he had to work in and he despised the students’ wilful ignorance. They don’t know anything and they don’t want to know — unless it’s in a ballpark or on video. They expect you to spoon-feed them knowledge, then ask them to regurgitate it in a test. For that they expect to be given an A-plus, no matter how bad their writing or how inaccurate their answers. I could go on—’

‘You usually do, Glen,’ Barry cut in, ‘but I don’t think Mr Banks wants to hear it.’

Banks smiled. ‘Actually, I am running out of time,’ he said. ‘I need to find Julie as quickly as possible. Do you know where she lives?’

‘No,’ said Ian. ‘She just comes in on a Friday after work for a couple of drinks.’

‘It’s somewhere near here, I think,’ Barry added. ‘She mentioned sunbathing in Kew Gardens once.’

‘Have you any idea what surname she’s using?’

‘It’s Culver, isn’t it?’ Barry said. ‘Or Cleaver, Carver, something like that.’

None of the others could improve on Barry’s contribution.

‘Do you know where she works?’

‘In one of those towers near King and Bay,’ Ian answered. ‘The TD Centre or First Canadian Place. She complained that the elevators made her ears go funny.’

‘That’s a lot of help,’ Glen said. ‘Do you know how many businesses operate from those places?’

Ian shrugged. ‘Well, that’s all I know. What about you?’

Glen and Barry both shook their heads.

‘She should be in here at about six tomorrow though,’ Barry said. ‘She hasn’t missed a week yet.’

‘Fine. Look, would you do me a favour? If she turns up early or if I’m late, please don’t tell her I want to see her. It might scare her off. You know how some people react to the police.’

‘Are you sure you’re not after her for something?’ Glen asked suspiciously.

‘Information. That’s all.’

‘All right,’ Glen agreed. ‘If it’s going to help catch Bernie’s killer, we’ll do whatever you want.’ He paused to pick up his pint glass and raise it for a toast. ‘There is one good thing in all this, you know. At least Bernie died in the place he wanted to live.’

‘Yes,’ Banks said. ‘There is that.’

And they all drank to dying where they wanted to live.

11

‘John told me about Nick’s behaviour at the party the other night,’ Stephen Collier said. ‘I’m sorry. I warned you to stay away from him.’

Katie looked down at the stony path and blushed. ‘I didn’t go seeking him,’ she said. ‘He’s an animal, a filthy animal.’

‘But he is my brother, Katie. He’s the only family I’ve got left. I know he acts outrageously sometimes, but… I promise it won’t happen again.’

Katie remembered a phrase from the Bible: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Could Stephen keep Nicholas like an animal in a zoo? He looked strained, she thought. He poked at the stones and sods with his ashplant stick as they walked; his face was pale and the tic in his eye was getting worse.

It was fine walking weather: warm but not hot, with a few high white clouds and no sign of rain. Sam was in Eastvale for the day — not that Katie’s walking out with Stephen would have mattered to him, she thought; he practically threw her at the Colliers as if she were his membership ticket to some exclusive club.

They took the diagonal path up the side of Swainshead Fell, heading for the source of the river. The air was clear, and after a few minutes’ walking even Stephen’s pallid cheeks began to glow like embers.

At last they reached their destination. The source of the River Swain was an unspectacular wet patch on the side of Swainshead Fell. All around it, the grass was greener and grew more abundantly than anywhere else. Only yards away was the source of another river, the Gaiel, which, when it reached the valley below, perversely turned north towards Cumbria.

Stephen had brought a flask of coffee and some dark chocolate. They sat down to eat on the dry grass above the source and looked back on Swainshead. A lapwing went into his extended ‘pee-wit’ song as he wove through the air, plummeted and levelled out just before hitting the ground. His wings beat like sheets flapping in a gale.

‘He must be trying to attract a mate,’ Stephen said.

‘Or scare us away.’

‘Perhaps. Coffee? Chocolate?’

Katie accepted the plastic cup of black coffee. She usually liked hers with plenty of milk and a spoonful of sugar, but she took it as it came without complaint. The dark bitter chocolate puckered her taste buds.

‘I shouldn’t be here, you know,’ she said, pushing back a stray wisp of fair hair behind her ear.

‘Relax,’ Stephen said. ‘Sam’s in Eastvale.’

‘I know. But that’s not the point. People will talk.’

‘Why should they? There’s nothing to talk about. Everybody knows we’re all friends. You’re so old-fashioned, Katie.’

Katie flushed. ‘I can’t help it. I wish I could,’ she added in a whisper.

‘Look,’ Stephen went on in a soothing voice, ‘we’ve just gone for a short walk up the fell side, as many people do. Where’s the harm in that? We’re not hiding from anyone, we’re not sneaking off. You act as if we’re guilty of something terrible.’

‘It just feels wrong,’ Katie said, managing a brief smile. ‘Oh, don’t mind me. I’m trying, I really am. I’m just not very good with people.’

‘Don’t you feel comfortable with me?’

Katie fidgeted with the silver paper from the chocolate wrapper, folding it into a neat shiny square. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel afraid.’

Stephen laughed. ‘At least that’s a start. But seriously, Katie, sometimes it’s necessary to talk. I told you the other night I’ve got nobody. Nick’s hardly the type to make a good listener, and the people at work are just that: employees, colleagues, not friends.’

‘What about all those guests at the party?’

‘Nick’s people, most of them. Or from work, business acquaintances. Don’t you ever need to talk to someone real, Katie? Don’t you ever have problems you want to let out and share?’

Katie frowned and stared at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course I do. But I’m no good at it. I don’t know where to start.’

‘Start with your life, Katie. Are you happy?’

‘I don’t know. Am I supposed to be?’

‘That’s what life’s for, isn’t it, to be enjoyed?’

‘Or suffered.’

‘Are you suffering?’

‘I don’t think I’m happy, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Why don’t you do something about it?’

‘There’s nothing I can do.’

‘But there must be. You must be able to change things if you want.’

‘I don’t see how. What would I do? Without the guest house I’ve got nothing. Where would I go? I don’t know anywhere outside Leeds and Swainsdale.’ She toyed with a stray tress of hair. ‘I could just see me down in London or somewhere like that. I wouldn’t last five minutes.’

‘Cities aren’t quite as bad as you think they are. You only see the worst on television. Many people live happy lives there.’

‘Still,’ Katie said, ‘I’d be lost.’ She finished the coffee and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

‘Perhaps by yourself you would be.’

‘What do you mean?’

Suddenly Stephen seemed closer, and somehow he seemed to be holding her hand. Katie tensed. She didn’t want to upset him. If he wanted to touch her she would have to let him, but her stomach clenched and the wind roared in her ears. His touch was oddly chaste though; it didn’t seem to threaten her at all.

‘I don’t know, Katie,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure what I’m saying. But I’ve got to go away. I can’t stay around here any longer.’

‘But why not?’

She felt him trembling as he moved even closer and his grip tightened on her hand. ‘There are things you don’t know anything about, Katie,’ he said. ‘Dear, sweet Katie.’ And he brushed his fingers down her cheek. They felt cold.

Katie wanted to move away, but she didn’t dare struggle. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she burst out. ‘Sam’s always telling me I know nothing, too. What is it? Am I so blind or so stupid?’ There were tears in her eyes now, blurring her vision of the valley below and the water that bubbled relentlessly from the source.

‘No,’ Stephen said. ‘No, you’re not blind or stupid. But things aren’t always what they seem; people aren’t what they pretend to be. Listen, let me tell you…’

The woman who sat opposite Banks in the dining section of the Feathers had changed considerably from the one in Bernard Allen’s photograph, but it was definitely the same person. She wore her hair cut short and tinted blonde now, and was dressed in a cream business suit. When she sat down and fished in her bag for a cigarette, Banks also noticed that the carefree laughter in her eyes had hardened into a wary, suspicious look. Her long cigarette had a white filter which soon became blotched with lipstick; she had a habit of tapping it on the edge of the ashtray even when there was no ash, and she held it straight out between the V of her first two fingers like an actress in an old movie, pursing her lips to inhale. Her nails were long and painted red.

She had turned up at six, as Glen had said, and she and Banks had left the others to go and talk privately over dinner. There wasn’t much separation between the two areas of the pub except for the way the seating was arranged, and they could still hear the conversations at the bar and the tables.

The waitress, a petite brunette with a twinkle in her eye and a cheeky smile, came up and gave them menus. ‘Something to drink?’ she asked.

Julie ordered a White Russian and Banks a glass of red wine, just for a change.

‘I need to know why you left Swainshead in such a hurry,’ he said, when the waitress had gone for the drinks.

‘Can’t a woman do as she pleases? It’s not a police state, you know. Or it wasn’t when I was last there.’

‘Nor is it now. It was your timing that interested us.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘We tend to be suspicious of someone who disappears without a trace the day after a murder.’

‘That was nothing to do with me.’

‘Don’t play the innocent. What did you expect us to think? You could have been in danger yourself, or you could have been the killer. For all we knew you could have been buried down a disused mineshaft. You didn’t stop to let anyone know what had happened to you.’

‘Well, I’m telling you now. That killing had nothing to do with me.’

‘How do you know about it? You don’t seem at all surprised at my mentioning it, but the body wasn’t discovered until after you’d left.’

Julie ground her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘Don’t try your tricks on me,’ she said. ‘I read the papers. I know what happened.’

The waitress arrived with the drinks and asked if they were ready to order. Banks asked for a few more minutes and she smiled and went away. Julie turned to her menu.

‘What would you recommend?’ Banks asked.

She shrugged. ‘The food’s always good here. It depends what you fancy. The prime-rib roast and Yorkshire pudding on special is excellent, if you don’t mind being reminded too much of home.’

Banks looked around at the decor and the photos on the walls. ‘Not at all,’ he said, smiling.

This time a different waitress came for their orders, an attractive woman with reddish blonde hair and a warm manner. Banks hoped he hadn’t offended the other.

‘Where did you go?’ he asked Julie, as soon as they’d ordered their meals.

‘None of your damn business.’ She sipped her White Russian.

‘A week after you left,’ Banks pressed on, ‘the body of a London private detective called Raymond Addison was discovered in Swainshead. He’d been murdered. Did you know anything about that?’

‘No.’

‘We’ve got good reason to think you did. Listen, if you want to make things difficult, Miss Ralston—’

‘It’s Culver, Mrs. Mrs Julie Culver. And it’s quite legal. Julie’s my middle name and Culver is my husband’s. Ex-husband’s, I should say.’

‘Why change your name if you’ve nothing to hide?’

She shrugged. ‘It was a new start. Why not a new name?’

‘Not very convincing. But Mrs Culver it is. We’re on good terms with the Canadian government. We have extradition arrangements and a mutual help policy. If I wanted to, I could make enough fuss to have you sent back to England to answer my questions. This is the easy way.’

Julie lit another cigarette. ‘I don’t believe you. I’m a Canadian citizen now. You can’t touch me at all.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Banks said. ‘You’re connected to a murder in England. Don’t expect your government to protect you from that.’

‘But you can’t prove I had anything to do with it. It’s just a coincidence I went away then.’

‘Is it? What about your involvement with Stephen Collier?’

Julie paled. ‘What about it? What’s he been telling you?’

‘Nothing. What does he know?’

‘How should I know?’

Banks sighed. ‘A few weeks ago a friend of yours, Bernard Allen, was murdered in the hanging valley just over Swainshead Fell.’

‘I know the place,’ Julie said sadly. ‘I’ve been there with him. It always looked like autumn. But what makes you think his death had anything to do with me? I wasn’t even in the country. I was here. It could have been a thief or a psycho… or a…’

There was something in her tone that let Banks know she was interested now, no longer so hostile. ‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘we know that you told him not to let anyone know he’d met you here, which is suspicious enough in itself. And in the second place, he did tell someone: a woman called Katie Greenock. Her heart seems to be in the right place, but she told her husband, Sam, who soon broadcasted it to the whole White Rose crowd. In the third place, Bernard had been talking about going home to stay, and there’s no evidence he had a job lined up. Then Bernard got killed before he had a chance to leave the dale. What does all that indicate to you?’

‘You’re the sleuth. You tell me.’ Julie blew cigarette smoke down her nose.

Banks leaned forward. ‘The way I read it,’ he said, ‘is that you knew something about Raymond Addison’s murder. Something incriminating. I’m not sure who else was involved, or why, but it had to be someone with money. I’d guess that Stephen Collier played a large part. I think you told Bernard what you knew and he intended to use that knowledge to blackmail his way to what he wanted most — his return to Swainshead.’

‘My God! I… Are you trying to say I’m responsible for Bernie’s death?’

‘I’m not placing any blame, Mrs Culver. I simply want to know what happened. I want to nail Bernie’s killer.’

Julie seemed to be thinking fast. Conflicting emotions flashed across her face. ‘I’m not guilty of anything,’ she said finally. ‘I’ve nothing to be afraid of. And I don’t believe you. Bernie could never have been a blackmailer.’

The waitress brought their food. Before she left, they ordered another round of drinks, then Banks tucked into his roast while Julie picked at a Caesar salad. They remained silent while they ate. It wasn’t until they both pushed their plates aside and reached for their cigarettes that Julie started to talk again.

‘It’s been such a long time, you know,’ she began. ‘A lot’s happened. There’ve been long stretches when I haven’t thought about Swainshead at all.’

‘Not homesick?’

‘Me? I’m at home anywhere. Almost anywhere. Though I can’t say I cared for the Middle East much.’

‘Bernie was homesick.’

‘He was the type though, wasn’t he? If you’d known him you’d have understood. The place was in his blood. He couldn’t even really settle down in Leeds. Yes, Bernie wanted to go back. Which was a shame. I’d kind of been hoping…’

‘You and Bernie? Again?’

She raised a thin dark-pencilled eyebrow. ‘You know about that?’

‘It was hardly a state secret.’

‘True. Anyway, why not? We were both free agents again.’

‘Tell me what happened five years ago that sent you running off around the world.’

The waitress came to pick up their plates. Banks ordered a pint of Creemore this time and Julie asked for a coffee and a double cognac. All the spaces were occupied now. Next to them, a group of eight people had pulled two tables together.

‘It seems more like a million years ago,’ Julie said when she got her drink. ‘I suppose I was a naive young thing back then. My education really began after I left.’

She was stalling for time, Banks thought, telling the story her own way. Perhaps she wasn’t sure yet whether she was going to tell him the truth or not. The best thing for now, he decided, was to let her go with it and subtly steer her in the right direction. ‘Where did you go?’ he asked.

‘First I went to Europe. I’d been saving up for quite a long time — kept my money under the mattress, believe it or not — just waiting for the day when I knew I would take off and never come back. I took a boat over to Holland and ended up in Amsterdam for a while. Then I bummed around France, Italy, Germany. To cut a long story short, I met a man. A Canadian. This’d be about a year later. He took me back to Vancouver with him and we got married.’ Julie blew out a steady stream of smoke. ‘Life was fine for a while… then he decided I wasn’t enough for him. Two can play at that game, I thought… Anyway, it ended.’

‘When did you first get in touch with Bernie?’

‘About eighteen months ago. That was after I split up with Charles. Bernie was having marriage problems of his own, I soon found out, and he seemed happy enough to hear from me. I might have got in touch with him earlier, but I’d been wary about doing so. I knew he was here, of course. He left Swainshead before I did. But I felt that I’d burned all my bridges.’

‘What made you contact him, then?’

‘Circumstances, really. I’m a freelance publicity agent. I started the business in Vancouver because I liked the idea and it gave me something to do while my husband was… not around.’ She tapped her cigarette against the glass ashtray. ‘It turned out I had a knack, a flair, so I decided to open an office in Toronto as well. I don’t know how much you understand about Canada, but Toronto is pretty much the centre of the universe here. I knew Bernie lived in the city, so I thought what the hell. Any trouble I might have caused would have blown over by now anyway.’

‘Trouble?’

She narrowed her eyes and looked at him closely. ‘I had thought Bernie might not want to see me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I went out with Stephen Collier.’

‘But Bernard was over here by then. What was that to him?’

‘It’s not that. Bernie and I were never much more than childhood sweethearts anyway. But we were close friends, like brother and sister. I was hoping that might change here…’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, it’s just that Stephen… well… he’s a Collier.’

‘And Bernie was very class conscious?’

‘Yes.’

‘So he’d feel betrayed.’

‘Something like that.’

‘And did he?’

‘He wrote me some pretty nasty letters at the time. Then, when I went away, we lost touch for a while. But when we met up again here it had all blown over. Bernie was compassionate. He understood. That’s why I can’t believe he was a blackmailer.’

‘He might not have been. I can’t be sure. He might just have opened his mouth out of turn.’

Julie smiled. ‘That sounds more like him.’

‘What about Nicholas Collier?’ Banks asked. ‘Were you ever involved with him?’

Julie raised her eyebrows. ‘What on earth do you think I am?’ she asked, smiling. ‘I didn’t get around that much. And credit me with some taste. Nicky really did nothing for me, though I caught him giving me the eye once or twice.’

‘Sorry,’ Banks said. ‘I’m not trying to insinuate you’re a—’

‘Tart? Slut? Harlot? Jezebel? Loose woman? Believe me, I’ve been called much worse.’ The old laughter lit up Julie’s eyes for a moment. ‘Do you know the difference between a slut and a bitch?’

Banks shook his head.

‘A slut is a woman who sleeps with anyone; a bitch is a woman who sleeps with anyone but you.’

Banks laughed. ‘That’s from the man’s point of view, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘So what happened?’ he asked. ‘What made you leave when you did?’

‘You’re a persistent man, Mr Banks,’ Julie said, lighting another long white cigarette. ‘Even my tasteless jokes don’t seem to deflect you for very long. But I’m still not sure I ought to tell you.’

Banks caught her eyes and held them. ‘Mrs Culver,’ he said quietly, ‘Bernard Allen — your childhood sweetheart, as you called him — was murdered. All murders are cruel and vicious, but this one was worse than many. First he was stabbed, and then his face was slashed and beaten in with a rock so nobody could recognize him. When we found him he’d been hidden away in the hanging valley for nearly two weeks and there were maggots crawling out of his eye sockets.’

Julie turned pale and gripped her cognac glass so tightly Banks thought she was going to shatter it. Her jaw was clenched and a muscle just below her ear twitched. ‘Bastard,’ she whispered.

The silent tension between them seemed to last for hours. Banks could hear the aimless chatter around him as if it were from a distant movie soundtrack: snippets of conversation about marathon running, beer, cricket and teaching native children up north, all in a medley of Canadian, Yorkshire, London and Scottish accents. Julie didn’t even seem to realize he was there any more. She was staring at the wall just to the left of him. He half turned and saw a photograph of a wooded valley. The leaves were russet, yellow and orange.

He lit a cigarette. Julie finished her cognac and a little colour returned to her cheeks. The waitress came and they ordered another round.

When they had their drinks, Julie shook her head and regarded Banks with something close to hatred. ‘For Bernie, then,’ she said, and began: ‘The night before I left I was supposed to see Stephen. We’d arranged to go to dinner at the Box Tree in Ilkley. He picked me up about half an hour late and he seemed unusually agitated — so much so that he pulled into a lay-by after we’d not gone more than four or five miles. And then he told me. He said there’d been some trouble and someone had got hurt. He didn’t say killed at that time, just hurt. He was in a terrible state. Then he said something about the past catching up, that it was connected with something that had happened in Oxford.’

‘When he was at university there?’

‘I suppose so. He did go to Oxford. Anyway, this man, a private investigator, had turned up out of the blue and was intent on causing trouble. Stephen told me that Sam Greenock called and said there was someone looking for a Mr Collier. Sam was a bit suspicious about the newcomer asking questions and didn’t give anything away. The man said he was going for a short evening walk up the valley. Stephen said he went after him and they talked and the man was going to blackmail the family.’

‘About this event that had occurred in Oxford?’

‘Yes. According to Stephen, tempers were raised, they fought and the man was hurt, badly hurt. I told Stephen he should call an ambulance.

‘He got angry then and told me I didn’t understand. That was when he said the man was dead. He went on to say there was nothing to connect them. Sam would keep quiet if they humoured him and let him play the local squire. Stephen just had to tell someone, to unburden himself, and he didn’t really have anyone else he felt he could talk to but me.’

‘What was your reaction?’

Julie lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of her old one. ‘You have to understand Stephen,’ she said. ‘In many ways he’s a kind, considerate, gentle man. But he’s also a businessman and he can be ruthless when he feels the need. But more than all that, he’s a Collier. There are few things more important to him than the good name of his family and its history. I wouldn’t say I was in love with him, but I thought a lot of him and I didn’t want to see him suffer. Needless to say, we didn’t have dinner that night. We stopped at the nearest pub and had a bit too much to drink, then we—’ Julie stopped. ‘The rest is of no interest. I never saw him again after that night.’

‘Why did you leave the next day? Did he suggest it to you?’

‘No. I think he trusted me. He knew I was on his side.’

‘So why did you go?’

‘For my own reasons. First, and perhaps least, I’d been thinking about making a break for a while. I’ve no family. My parents died ten years ago and I just kept on the cottage. I had no real ambitions, no plans for my life. I was getting bored with my job and I was realistic enough not to see myself as the future Mrs Stephen Collier. Stephen wasn’t going to propose, and I’d had hints from him that Nicholas didn’t consider me to be of the right class, as if I wasn’t aware of that already. These new events just hurried me along a bit. Secondly, I didn’t trust myself. I thought if the police came around and started asking me questions, they’d know something was wrong and they’d keep pressuring me until I gave Stephen away. I didn’t want to let that happen. I’m not a good liar, Mr Banks, as you can see.’

‘And third?’

‘Fear.’

‘Of Stephen?’

‘Yes. As I said, he’s a complex man. There’s a dark side to him. He’s vulnerable in some ways, but very practical in others. Sentimental and pragmatic. It can sometimes make for a frightening combination. Didn’t someone once say that Mafia dons are very sentimental people? Don’t they send flowers to the widow when they’ve killed someone? And weren’t the Nazis sentimental too? Anyway, he’d done it before, confided in me one day then cut me dead the next — no pun intended — just pretended we’d never been intimate at all. Basically, Stephen couldn’t get close to anyone. He’d try, and one of the ways he did it was by confiding. But then he’d regret it the next day and turn cold. What worried me was the importance of this confidence. It was the kind of thing he might not be able to live with, someone as weak as me knowing his secret.’

‘In other words, you were worried you might become his next victim.’

‘I know it sounds a horrible thing to say about someone you basically like and respect — even loved, perhaps, once — but yes, it did cross my mind. Much easier to disappear, as I’d been thinking of it anyway. And there was no one to make a fuss about my going.’

‘What kind of things did he confide in you about before?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Perhaps a slightly shady business deal; he was pleased if he’d put one over on somebody. Or an income tax fiddle. He hated the Inland Revenue.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘No. Not until that time.’

They sipped their drinks and let the conversations flow around them. Julie seemed more relaxed now she had told her story, and Banks could see no traces of that hateful look left in her eyes.

‘Did he say anything else about this incident in Oxford?’ he asked.

Julie shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

‘So you don’t know what happened there, or who else might have been involved?’

‘No. I’m sorry. At the time I never even thought to ask. It was all hard enough to take in as it was.’

Banks sighed. Still, even if he hadn’t uncovered the whole story yet, he’d done well. The trip had been worthwhile. Julie rejoined the others. Banks said his farewells and left. It was about nine o’clock, a hot humid evening. Instead of taking the bus, he crossed Kingston Road and started walking towards the lake. The road sloped steeply at one point, crossed another main street with tram rails, then a hundred yards or so farther on ended at a beach.

Couples walked hand in hand along the boardwalk or sat on benches and stared out at the water. Some people jogged by, sweating, and others ambled along with dogs on leashes. Banks made his way over the soft sand to where a group of rocks stuck out into the lake. He clambered as far forward as he could and sat down on the warm stone. Water slopped around just below his feet. The horizon was a broad mauve band; above it, the sky’s pink was tinged with misty grey. Banks lit a cigarette and wondered if it was the United States he could see in the distance or just a low narrow layer of mist.

He’d got what he came for, though he still couldn’t put everything together. At least when he got back he would be able to question Stephen Collier more thoroughly, no matter what the man’s influence with the deputy chief constable. Collier had killed Raymond Addison, and he might even have killed Bernard Allen too. There was no proof as yet, but Banks would find some if it took him a lifetime. Collier wasn’t going to escape justice because of influence or social position, of that Banks would make sure.

By the time he had finished his cigarette, the sun had gone down much lower and the sky had changed. The horizon was now grey and the mauve band much higher in the sky. The lake seemed scattered with pink, as if the colour had transformed itself into raindrops and shattered the ice-blue surface of the water. Carefully, Banks got to his feet on the angled rock and made his way back towards a streetcar stop.

Earlier that day, back in Swainsdale, Detective Constable Philip Richmond had sat on a knoll high on Adam’s Fell and unwrapped his cheese and pickle sandwiches. He flicked away the flies that gathered and poured some coffee from his flask. Up there, the air was pure and sharp; below, the sun glinted on the steel kegs in the back yard of the White Rose and flashed in the fountain playing in the Colliers’ huge garden behind the ugly Gothic mansion. The old men stood on the bridge, and the Greenocks’ front door was closed.

Sam had driven off on one of his regular jaunts to Leeds or Eastvale, and Katie had gone for a walk with Stephen Collier up Swainshead Fell. He thought he could see them across in the north-east, near a patch of grass that was greener than that around it, but it could have been someone else.

Sipping the bitter black coffee, Richmond had reminded himself that tomorrow was his last day in Swainshead. He was expected back at the station with a report on Sunday morning. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed himself — it had been very much like a week’s holiday — but he longed to get back to his Eastvale mates. Tomorrow the rugby team was playing Skipton, a game he would have to miss. There was always a good booze-up and sing-song after the match, and it would be a shame to miss that too. Jim Hatchley was usually there for the booze, of course. An honorary member they called him now he wasn’t fit enough to play any more. But even the sergeant’s presence didn’t spoil Richmond’s fun: a few jars, a good sing-song, then, with a bit of luck, a kiss and a cuddle with Doreen on the way home. He prided himself on being a man of simple tastes, yet he also liked to think that nothing else about him was simple.

Finishing his sandwich, he unwrapped a Kit-Kat and picked up The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, the last of the four Philip K. Dick books he’d brought along. But he couldn’t concentrate. He began to wonder why nothing had happened during Banks’ absence. Was the killer certain that the chief inspector would find out nothing in Toronto? Or was there, perhaps, no connection at all between the Addison and Allen murders?

Certainly there had been a bit of a fuss or flap, as Freddie Metcalfe had said, earlier in the week. But it had soon died down and everyone carried on as normal. Was it a false sense of security? The lull before the storm. Perhaps they knew who Richmond was and were being especially careful? He certainly couldn’t keep an eye on all of them.

He stroked his moustache and turned back to his book. Not ours to reason why… But still, he thought, an arrest would have helped his career. A thrilling car chase, perhaps, or a cross-country marathon. He pictured himself bringing in the killer, arm twisted up his back, and throwing him in Eastvale nick under Banks’ approving smile. Then he laughed at himself, brushed a persistent wasp away and went back to Philip K. Dick.

That Saturday, the afternoon of his last day in Toronto, Banks went to his first baseball game. The retractable roof was open and a breeze from the lake relieved some of the humidity at the SkyDome, where the Toronto Blue Jays were playing the New York Yankees, but the temperature was still almost thirty degrees. In England, people would have been fainting from the heat.

Banks and Gregson sat in the stands, ate hot dogs and drank beer out of flimsy plastic cups.

‘Lucky to be drinking it at all,’ Gregson said when Banks complained. ‘It took a lot of doing, getting drinking allowed at ball games.’

A fat boy of about twelve sitting next to Banks stopped shovelling barbecue-flavoured potato crisps into his maw to stand up and hurl obscene death threats at the Yankees’ pitcher. His equally obese mother looked embarrassed but made no attempt to control him.

Banks wished his son, Brian, could be there. Unlike Banks, he had watched enough baseball on Channel 4 to be able to understand the game. When Banks first took his seat, the only baseball term he knew was home run, but by the end of the third innings, Gregson had explained all about RBIs, the tops and bottoms of the innings, designated hitters, knuckle balls, the bullpen, bunting, the balk rule, pinch hitters and at least three different kinds of pitches.

The game mounted to an exciting conclusion, and the boy next to him spilled his crisps all over the floor.

Finally, the home crowd went wild. Down five-four at the bottom of the ninth, with two out, the sixth Blue Jay up drove one home with all the bases loaded — a grand slam, Gregson called it. That made the score eight-five, and that was how the game ended.

They pushed their way out of the stadium, and Gregson negotiated the heavy traffic up Spadina to Bloor, where they stopped in at the Madison for a farewell drink.

‘Are you planning to do anything about the Culver woman?’ Gregson asked.

Banks sipped his pint of Conner bitter. They were out on the patio, and the late afternoon sun beat down on his shoulders.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘What did she do, after all?’

‘From the sound of it, she withheld evidence. She was a material witness. If she’d spoken up, this new homicide might never have happened.’

Banks shook his head. ‘She didn’t have much choice really. I know what you mean, but you’ve got to understand what things are like around Swainshead. It’s not like Toronto. She couldn’t tell what she knew. There was loyalty, yes, but there was also fear. The Colliers are a powerful family. If she’d stayed we might have got something out of her, but on the other hand something might have happened to her first.’

‘So she left under threat?’

‘That’s the way I’d put it, yes.’

‘And you think this Collier guy killed Allen because he knew too much?’

‘I think it was more to do with what Allen intended to do with his knowledge. I can’t prove it, but I think he was going to blackmail Stephen Collier. Julie Culver disagrees, but from what one of Allen’s boozing buddies told me, he had some plan to get back home to England. I think he asked Collier for the money to come home and live in Swainshead again, or maybe to fix him up with a job. Collier’s brother teaches at a small public school, and Allen was a teacher. Maybe he suggested that Stephen tell Nicholas to get him a job there. Instead, Stephen decided to get rid of Allen the same way he did with Addison.’

‘Shit,’ said Gregson. ‘I’d no idea Toronto was so bad that people would stoop to blackmail to get out of here.’

Banks laughed. ‘Maybe it’s just that Swainsdale is so beautiful people would do anything to get there. I don’t know. Allen was seriously disturbed, I think. A number of things took their toll on him: the divorce, the distance from home, the disappointment of not getting the kind of job that would really challenge his mind. Someone told me that he had gone beyond the parochial barriers of most English teachers, but he found himself in a system that placed no value on the exceptional, a system that almost imposed such barriers. The teaching he was doing was dreary, the students were ignorant and uninterested, and I think he tended to blame it on the local educational system. He thought things would be better in England. He probably remembered his own grammar school days when even poor kids got to learn Latin, and he thought things were still like that. Perhaps he didn’t even think he was doing anything really bad when he approached Collier. Or maybe he did. He had plenty of cause to resent him.’

‘That old British class system again?’

‘Partly. It’s hard to figure Allen out. Mostly, he seems like a decent person gone wrong, but he also had a big chip on his shoulder all along. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what really motivated him.’

‘But you do have your killer.’

‘Yes — if he hasn’t done a bunk. But we’ve no proof yet.’

‘He knows you’re here, on to the girl?’

‘The whole village knows. We’ve got a man there.’

‘Well, then… What time’s your flight?’

‘Nine o’clock.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Christ, it’s six now. I’d better get back and pick up my stuff.’

‘I’ll drive you,’ Gregson said. ‘I’m off duty all day, and it can be a real hassle getting to the airport.’

‘Would you? That’s great.’

At the house, Banks packed his meagre belongings and the presents he had bought for his family, then left a thank-you note with the bottle of Scotch for Gerry. In a way, he felt sad to leave the house and neighbourhood that had become familiar to him over the past week: the sound of streetcars rattling by; the valley with its expressway and green slopes; the downtown skyline; the busy overflowing Chinese shops at Broadview and Gerrard.

The traffic along Lakeshore Boulevard to the airport turn-off wasn’t too heavy, and they made it with plenty of time to spare. The two policemen swapped addresses and invitations outside the departures area, then Gregson drove straight off home. Banks didn’t blame him. He’d always hated hanging around airports himself if he didn’t have a plane to catch.

After the queue at the check-in desk, the trip to the duty-free shop and the passage through security and immigration, it was almost time to board the plane. As they took off, Banks looked out of the window and saw the city lit up in the twilight below him: grids and figure eights of light as far as he could see in every direction except south, where he could pick out the curve of the bay and the matt silver-grey of Lake Ontario.

Once in the air, it was on with the Walkman — Kiri te Kanawa’s soaring arias seemed most appropriate this time — down the hatch with the Johnnie Walker and away with the food. A seasoned traveller already. This time even the movie was tolerable. A suspense thriller without the car chases and special effects that so often marred that type of film for Banks, it concentrated on the psychology of policeman and victim.

He slept for a while, managed to choke down the coffee and roll that came for breakfast, and looked out of the window to see the sun shining over Ireland.

It was nearly ten o’clock in the morning, local time, when he cleared customs and reclaimed his baggage. Among the crowd of people waiting to welcome friends and relatives stood Sandra, who threw her arms around him and gave him a long kiss.

‘I told Brian and Tracy they should come, too,’ she said, breaking away and picking up the duty-free bag, ‘but you know what they’re like about sleeping in on Sunday mornings.’

‘So it’s not that they don’t love me any more?’

‘Don’t be silly. They’ve missed you as much as I have. Almost.’

She kissed him again, and they set off for the car.

‘It’s a bloody maze, this place,’ Sandra complained, ‘and they really fleece you for parking. Then there’s roadworks everywhere on the way. They’re still working on Barton bridge, you know. It was misty too, high up in the Pennines. Oh, I am going on, aren’t I? I’m just so glad to see you. You must be tired.’

Banks stifled a yawn. ‘It’s five in the morning where I am. Where I was, rather. And I can’t sleep on planes. Anything interesting happen while I was away?’

Sandra frowned and hesitated. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you,’ she said, loading the small case and the duty-free bag into the boot of the white Cortina, ‘at least not until we got home. Superintendent Gristhorpe called this morning just before I set off.’

‘On a Sunday morning? What about?’

‘He said he wants to see you as soon as you get back. I told him what state you’d be in. Oh, he apologized and all that, but you’ve still got to go in.’

‘What is it?’ Banks lit cigarettes for both Sandra and himself as she drove down the spiral ramp from the fourth floor of the multi-storey car park out into the sunlit day.

‘Bad news,’ she said. ‘There’s been another death in Swainshead.’