Wednesday's Child

I

Gristhorpe sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked police car with a road map spread out on his knees. Banks drove. He would have preferred his own Cortina, mostly because of the stereo system, but Sandra needed it for all her gallery work. Besides, Gristhorpe was tone deaf; for all his learning, he couldn’t appreciate music. Banks had packed his Walkman and a couple of tapes in his overnight bag; he knew it wouldn’t be easy getting to sleep in a strange hotel room, especially after what awaited them in Weymouth, and music would help.

They were heading down the M1 past Sheffield with its huge cooling towers, shaped like giant whalebone corsets, and its wasteland of disused steel factories. It was almost one-thirty in the afternoon, and despite the intermittent rain they were making good time.

Gristhorpe, after much muttering to himself, decided it would be best to turn off the motorway just south of Northampton and go via Oxford, Swindon and Salisbury. Banks drove as fast as he could, and just over an hour later they reached the junction with the A43. They skirted Oxford in the late afternoon and didn’t get held up until they hit Swindon at rush-hour.

After Blandford Forum, they passed the time reading signposts and testing one another on Hardy’s names for the places. They managed to keep abreast until Gristhorpe went ahead with Middleton Abbey for Milton Abbas.

After a traffic snarl-up in the centre of Dorchester, they approached Weymouth in the early evening. Loder had given clear directions to the hotel, and luckily it was easy to spot, one of the Georgian terraces on the Dorchester Road close to the point where it merged with The Esplanade.

A plump, curly-haired woman called Maureen greeted them in the small lobby and told them that Inspector Loder and his men had been gone for some time but had left a guard outside the room and requested she call them at the station as soon as Banks and Gristhorpe arrived. Their booking for the night had already been made: two singles on the third floor, one floor down from where the body had been discovered.

Out of courtesy, Banks and Gristhorpe waited for Loder to arrive before going up to the room. They had requested that, as far as possible, things should be left as they were when the chambermaid discovered the body that morning. Of course, Loder’s scene-of-crime men had done their business, and the Home Office pathologist had examined the body in situ, but the corpse was still there, waiting for them, in the position she been found.

Loder walked in fifteen minutes later. He was a painfully thin man with a hatchet face and a sparse fuzz of grey hair. Close to retirement, Banks guessed, and tired. His worn navy blue suit hung on him, and his wire-rimmed glasses seemed precariously balanced near the end of his long, thin nose. As he spoke, his grey-green eyes peered over the tops of the lenses.

After the formalities were over, the three men headed up the thickly carpeted stairs to room 403.

“We tried to do as you asked,” Loder said as they climbed. “You might see some traces of the SOCO team’s presence, but otherwise…” He had a local accent, a kind of deep burr like a mist around his vowels, and he spoke slowly, pausing between thoughts.

The uniformed constable stepped aside at Loder’s gesture, and they entered the room and turned on the light. They had no need to wear surgical gloves, as the forensic scientists had already been over the scene. What they were getting was part preservation, part re-creation.

First, Banks studied the room in general. It was unusually spacious for a seaside hotel room, with a high ceiling, ornate moulding and an oriel window overlooking the sea, now only a dim presence beyond the Esplanade lights. The window was open a fraction and Banks felt the pleasant chill of the breeze and heard the distant wash of waves on the beach. Gristhorpe stood beside him, similarly watchful. The wallpaper, a bright flower pattern, gave a cheerful aura, and a framed watercolour of Weymouth’s seafront hung over the writing-desk. There was little other furniture: armchair, television, dressing-table, wardrobe and bedside tables — and the large bed itself. Banks left that until last.

The shape of a woman’s body was clearly defined by the twisted white sheet that covered it. At first glance, it looked like someone sprawled on her back in the morning just before stretching and getting up. But instead of her head resting on the pillow, the pillow was resting on her head.

“Is this how you found her?” Banks asked Loder.

He nodded. “The doc did his stuff, of course, but he tried not to disturb her too much. We put the body back much as it was, as you requested.”

There was an implied criticism in his tone. Why on earth, Loder seemed to be asking, did you want us to leave the body? But Banks ignored him. He always liked to get the feel of a scene; somehow it told him much more than photographs, drawings and reports. There was nothing morbid in his need to see the body where it lay; in fact, in many instances, this included, he would far rather not. But it did make a difference. Not only did it give him some sort of contact with the victim, the symbolism of having touched the corpse, something he needed to fuel him through a murder investigation, but it also sometimes enabled him to enter the criminal’s and the victim’s minds. He didn’t think there was anything particularly psychic about this; it was more a Holmesian manner of working back from the little things one observed to the circumstances that created them. There was no denying, though, that sometimes he did get a true feel for the way the killer thought and what his next moves might be.

From the disapproval in his tone, Banks formed the impression that Loder was a highly moral man, outraged not only by the murder but by the delay in getting the corpse to its proper place. It was a woman’s body, too, and that seemed to embarrass him.

Slowly, Banks walked over to the bed and picked up the pillow. Gristhorpe stood beside him. The woman’s long blonde hair lay spread out on the undersheet. She had been beautiful, no doubt about that: fine bone structure, a clear complexion, full lips. Apart from her head, only her neck and shoulders were exposed, alabaster skin clouded with the bluish tinge of cyanosis.

Her left hand grasped the top of the sheet and bunched it up. She wore red nail polish, but Banks thought he could also detect traces of blood around the tips of her fingers and smeared on the white sheet. He lifted the sheet. She was naked underneath. Carefully, he replaced it, as if to avoid causing her further embarrassment. Loder wasn’t the only sensitive one, no matter what he thought.

Gristhorpe opened one of her eyelids. “See that,” he said pointing to the red pinpricks of blood in the once-blue eye.

Banks nodded. It was a petechial haemorrhage, one sign of asphyxiation, most likely in this case caused by the pillow.

Banks touched her right hand and shivered; it was cold and stiff with rigor.

“We’ve got the skin and blood samples, of course,” said Loder, when he saw Banks examining the nails. “Looks like she put up a bit of a struggle. We should be able to type the killer, maybe even do a DNA profile.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Gristhorpe said. “This one’s got to be stopped fast.”

“We-ell,” said Loder, in his slow burr, “at least it’ll come in useful in court. Is it her, the one you’re looking for?”

“We didn’t have a very good description,” Gristhorpe answered. “Alan?”

“Couldn’t say.” Banks turned to Loder. “She was with the man, though, you said?”

“Yes. The one with the nice smile. You mentioned it specifically in the papers. That’s why we called you boys in.”

“Any identification?” Gristhorpe asked.

Loder shook his head. “Nothing. Whoever did it took everything. Clothes, handbag, the lot. We tried her fingerprints but they’re not on file.” He paused. “It looks as if she was killed here, and the doc says she certainly hasn’t been moved since she died. He’s anxious to get to the PM, of course, but ruling out drugs, his findings so far are consistent with asphyxiation.”

“Any idea of the time?”

“Doc puts it between six and nine in the morning.”

“Anything else we should know?”

Loder glanced towards the body and paused for a moment before speaking. “Nothing else unusual about the body,” he said, “unless you count the fact that she’d had sex around the time she was killed.”

“Forced?”

“Not so far as the doc could make out.” Loder walked towards the window, leaned on the sill and looked out over the Esplanade lights. “But it probably wouldn’t be, would it, if she was sleeping with the bloke. Now, if you gentlemen are through, could we possibly get out of here? I seem to have spent far too much time with her already today.” He sounded weary, and Banks wondered if he were not only tired but ill; he certainly seemed unusually thin and pale.

“Of course,” said Gristhorpe, looking over at Banks. “Just a couple more questions first, while they’re fresh in my mind.”

Loder sighed. “All right.”

“I don’t suppose the chambermaid actually cleaned the room, did she, given what she found here?”

“No,” said Loder, a thin smile on his lips. “No, she didn’t. I’m sure you’ll want to talk to her yourselves, but the one odd thing — and I noticed it, too — was that the room looked as if it had just been cleaned. The SOCO team tried to disturb things as little as possible. They took their samples, dusted for prints and so on, but you can see what it was like.”

Indeed they could. The room looked spotless, clean and tidy. Under the thin patina of fingerprint powder, wood surfaces gleamed with recent polishing. Gristhorpe glanced in the small bathroom toilet, and it was the same, as if the fixtures and fittings had been scrubbed with Ajax, the towels hung neatly on the racks. There wasn’t a smear of toothpaste or a trace of stubble stuck to the sides of the sink.

“The cottage the Manleys left in Eastvale was just the same,” Gristhorpe said. “What do you make of it, Alan?”

Banks shrugged. “Partly getting rid of evidence, I suppose,” he said. “Though he kindly left us semen samples, not to mention blood and skin under her fingernails. Maybe he’s got a pathological obsession with cleanliness and neatness. I’ve heard it’s not uncommon among psychopaths. Something to ask Jenny about, anyway.” He pointed to two thin, glossy leaflets on the dressing-table. “Were those there when the chambermaid came in?”

“No,” said Loder. “Sorry. One of the crime-scene boys found them and forgot to put them back.”

“Would you show us where?”

Loder opened one of the drawers, which was lined with plain paper, and slipped the brochures under. “Like this,” he said. “I thought maybe he’d forgotten them, or they slipped under the lining by accident. The chambermaid said she cleans out the drawers thoroughly between guests, so they can’t have been there before. They’re ferry timetables, see. For Cherbourg and the Channel Islands. We reckon that’s where he must have gone.”

“What time do the ferries start?”

“Early enough.”

“Did he have a car?”

“Yes, parked out back. A white Fiesta. See, he wouldn’t need it to get to the ferry dock, and once he gets over to the Channel Islands or France, well… Anyway, our lads have taken it to the police garage.”

“Is there anything else?” Gristhorpe asked.

Loder shook his head.

“All right, let’s get out of here. Tell your boys they can get her to the mortuary. Will the pathologist be able to start the autopsy tonight?”

“I think so.” Loder closed the door behind them. “As I said, he’s been chomping at the bit all day as it is.” The police guard resumed his post and Loder led the way downstairs.

“Good,” said Gristhorpe. “I think we can leave it till morning to talk to the hotel staff. I trust your lads have already taken statements?”

Loder nodded.

“We’ll see what a good night’s sleep does for their memories then. Anything else you can think of, Alan?”

Banks shook his head, but couldn’t prevent his stomach from rumbling.

“Oh, aye,” said Gristhorpe. “I forgot we hadn’t eaten all day. Better see what we can rustle up.”

II

“Is this the place?” Susan Gay asked.

Richmond nodded. “Looks like it.”

Rampart Street sounded as if it should have been situated near the castle, but instead, for reasons known only to town-planners, it was a nondescript cul-de-sac running south off Elmet Street in Eastvale’s west end. One side consisted of pre-war terrace houses without gardens. Mostly they seemed in a state of neglect and disrepair, but some tenants had attempted to brighten things up with window-boxes and brass door-knockers.

The other side of the street, with a small Esso garage on the corner, consisted of several shops, including a greengrocer’s with tables of fruit and vegetables out front; a betting shop; a newsagent-cum-video rental outlet; and the incongruously named Rampart Antiques. However one defines “antique,” whether it be by some kind of intrinsic beauty or simply by age, Rampart Antiques failed on both counts.

In the grimy window, Susan spotted a heap of cracked Sony Walkmans without headphones, two stringless acoustic guitars and several dusty box-cameras, along with the occasional chipped souvenir plate with its “hand-painted” scene of Blackpool tower or London Bridge wedged among them. One corner was devoted to old LPs — Frank Sinatra, the Black Dyke Mills Band, Bobby Vinton, Connie Francis — covers faded and curled at the edges after too long in the sun. An old Remington office typewriter, which looked as if it weighed a ton, stood next to a cracked Coronation mug and a bulbous pink china lamp-stand.

Inside was no less messy, and the smell of dust, mildew and stale tobacco made Susan’s nose itch.

“Can I help you?”

The man sat behind the counter, a copy of Penthouse open in front of him. It was hard to tell how tall he was, but he certainly had the short black hair, the squarish face and the broken nose that the woman in Johnson’s building had mentioned.

“John Fairley?” Richmond asked.

“That’s me.”

Richmond and Susan showed their warrant cards, then Richmond said, in his formal voice, “We have received information which leads us to believe that there may be stolen property on these premises.” He handed over a copy of the search warrant they had spent all afternoon arranging. Fairley stared at it, open-mouthed.

By then, both Richmond and Susan were rummaging through the junk. They would find nothing on display, of course, but the search had to be as thorough as possible. Susan flipped through the stacks of old 45s on wobbly tables — Ral Donner, B. Bumble and the Stingers, Karl Denver, Boots Randolph, the Surfaris, names she had never heard of. One table groaned under the whole of Verdi’s Rigoletto on 78s. There were also several shelves of books along one wall: Reader’s Digest condensed editions; old Enid Blytons with torn paper covers that said 2/6 on the front; books with stiff pages and covers warped and stained by water-damage, most by authors she had never heard of. She doubted whether even Banks or Gristhorpe would have heard of them, either. Who on earth would want to buy such useless and smelly junk?

When they were satisfied that there were no videos or stereos hidden among the cracked figurines and rusted treadle sewing-machines, they asked Fairley if he would show them the rest of the premises. At first he hesitated, then he shrugged, locked the front door, turned the sign to read CLOSED, and led them through the moth-eaten curtain behind the counter. Silent so far, he seemed resigned to his fate.

The curtain led into a corridor with a filthy sink piled with cups growing mould from old tea leaves. Next to the sink was a metal counter-top streaked with rust, on which stood, among the mouse-droppings, a bottle of Camp coffee, a quarter of Typhoo tea, some curdled milk and a bowl of sugar lumps.

The corridor ended in a toilet with a stained bowl and washbasin, flaking plaster and spider-webs in the corners. It was almost impossible to open the door to the other room on the ground floor, but slim Richmond managed to slip in and discover that it was packed mostly with collapsed cardboard boxes. There were also some books, video cassettes and magazines of a slightly suspect eroticism, though perhaps not the more prosecutable variety of pornography.

After he had finished there, Richmond pointed to the other door off the corridor. “Where’s that lead?” he asked.

Fairley tried to bluff his way out of opening it. He said it led nowhere, wasn’t part of the premises, but Richmond persisted. They soon found themselves following Fairley down to a cellar with whitewashed walls. There, lit by a bare bulb, stood what looked like the remnants of the Fletcher’s warehouse job. Two television sets, three videos and a compact-disc player.

“Bankrupt stock,” said Fairley. “I was going to put them in the window when I’ve got room.”

Richmond ignored him and asked Susan to check the serial numbers on the cartons with the list that the manager of Fletcher’s had supplied. They matched.

“Right,” said Richmond, leaning back against the stack of cartons. “Before we go down to the nick, I’d like to ask you a few questions, John.”

“Aren’t you going to charge me?”

“Later.”

“I mean, shouldn’t I have a solicitor present or something?”

“If you want. But let’s just forget the stolen goods for the moment, shall we? Have you got any form, John?”

Fairley shook his head.

“That’s good,” Richmond said. “First offence. It’ll go better for you if you help us. We want to know about Carl Johnson.”

“Now look, I didn’t have nothing to do with that. You can’t pin that on me.”

It was interesting to watch Richmond at work, Susan thought. Cool, relaxed and looking as elegant as ever in the dingy room, careful not to lean against the wall for fear of marking his suit, he set Fairley at ease and led him gently through a series of preliminary questions about his relationship with Johnson and Poole before he got to Chivers. At the mention of the name, Fairley became obviously nervous.

“Carl brought him here,” he said, squatting miserably on a box. “I never liked him, or that girlfriend of his. They were both a bit doolally, if you ask me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that look he got in his eyes sometimes. Oh, he could be pleasant enough on the surface, but when you saw what was underneath, it was scary. I couldn’t look him in the eye without trembling.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“Did you ever think he might be concerned with Carl’s death?”

“I… well, to be honest, it crossed my mind. I don’t know why. Just the kind of person he seemed.”

“Yet you didn’t come forward?”

“Do you think I’m crazy or something?”

“Did you know of any reason he might have had for killing Johnson?”

Fairley shook his head. “No.”

“There was no falling out over the loot?”

“What loot?”

Richmond kicked a box. “The alleged loot.”

“No.”

“What about the girl? Did Johnson make a play for her?”

“Not that I know of. She was sexy enough, and she knew it, but she was Chivers’s property, no mistaking that. NO ENTRY signs on every orifice. Sorry, love.” He looked at Susan, who simply gave him a blank stare. “No,” he went on, turning back to Richmond, “I don’t think Carl was daft enough to mess with her.”

“What about Gemma Scupham?”

Fairley looked surprised. “The kid who was abducted?”

“That’s her.”

“What about her?”

“You tell me, John.”

Fairley tensed. A vein throbbed at his temple. “You can’t think I had anything to do with that? Oh, come on! I don’t go in for little girls. No way.”

“What about Chivers?”

“Nothing about him would surprise me.”

“Did he ever mention her?”

“No. I mean, I had heard of her. Les complained about her sometimes and Carl sympathized. Chivers just seemed to be standing back, sort of laughing at it all, as if such a problem could never happen to him. He always seemed above everything, arrogant like, as if we were all just petty people with petty concerns and he’d think no more about stepping on us if he had to than he would about swatting a fly. Look, why are you asking me about Gemma? I never even met the kid.”

“She was never in this shop?”

“No. Why should she have been?”

“Where is Chivers now?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know. He’s bad news.”

Richmond sat down carefully on a box. “Has it never struck you,” he said, “that if he did kill Johnson, then you and Les might be in danger, too?”

“No. Why? We didn’t do nothing. We always played square.”

“So did Carl, apparently. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me. It doesn’t seem to matter with Chivers, does it? Why do you think he killed Carl, if he did?”

“I told you, I don’t know. He’s a nutter. He always seemed to me like he was on the edge, you know, ready to go off. People like him don’t always need reasons. Maybe he did it for fun.”

“Maybe. So why not kill you, too? Might that not be fun?”

Fairley licked his lips. “Look, if you’re trying to scare me you’re doing a damn good job. Are you trying to warn me I’m in danger or just trying to make me talk? I think it’s about time I saw a solicitor.”

Richmond stood up and brushed off the seat of his pants with his palm. “Are you sure you have no idea where Chivers went after he left Eastvale?”

“None.”

“Did he say anything about his plans?”

“Not to me.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Dunno. He never talked about himself. Honest. Look, are you winding me up about all this?” Fairley had started to sweat now.

“We need to find him, John,” said Richmond quietly. “That’s all. Then we’ll all sleep a little easier in our beds.” He turned to Susan. “Let’s take him to station now and make it formal, shall we?” He rubbed the wall and held up his forefinger. “And we’d better get a SOCO team down here, too. Remember that whitewash on Gemma’s clothing?”

Susan nodded. As they left, she noticed that John Fairley seemed far more willing to accompany them to the station than most villains they arrested.

“I’ll tell you one thing for free,” he said as they got in the car.

“What’s that?” said Richmond.

“He had a gun, Chivers did. I saw it once when he was showing off with it in front of his girlfriend.”

“What kind of gun?”

“How would I know? I don’t know nothing about them.”

“Big, small, medium?”

“It wasn’t that big. Like those toy guns you play with when you’re a kid. But it weren’t no toy.”

“A revolver?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Never mind.”

“Isn’t it enough just to know the bastard’s got a gun?”

“Yes,” sighed Richmond, looking over at Susan. “Yes, it is.”

III

Banks and Gristhorpe leaned on the railings above the beach and ate fish and chips out of cardboard cartons. The hotel didn’t do evening meals, and, as in most seaside towns, all the cafés seemed to close at five or six.

“Not bad,” said Gristhorpe, “but they do them better up north.”

“If you like them greasy.”

“Traitor. I keep forgetting you’re still just a southerner underneath it all.”

Banks tossed his empty carton into a rubbish-bin and looked out to sea. Close to shore, bright stars shone through gaps in the clouds and reflected in the dark water. Farther out, the cloud-covering thickened and dimmed the quarter moon. The breeze that was slowly driving the clouds inland carried a chill, and Banks was glad he had put on a pullover under his sports jacket. He sniffed the bracing air, sharp with ozone. A few cars droned along The Esplanade, and the sound of people talking or laughing in the night drifted on the air occasionally, but mostly it was quiet. Banks lit a cigarette and drew deep. Silly, he thought, but it tasted better out here in the sea air pervaded with the smells of saltwater and seaweed.

“Do you know,” said Banks finally, “I think I’m developing a feel for Chivers. I know he’s been here. I know he killed the girl.”

Gristhorpe gave him a steady, appraising look. “Not turning psychic on me, are you, Alan?”

Banks laughed. “Not me. Look, there’s the white Fiesta, the smile, the blonde, the neatness of the hotel room. You’ll agree the incidents have those things in common?”

“Aye. And tomorrow morning we’ll have a word with the hotel staff and look over Loder’s reports, see if we can’t amass enough evidence to be sure. Maybe then we’ll know what the next move is. If that bastard’s slipped away abroad…” Gristhorpe crumpled up his cardboard box and tossed it in the bin.

“We’ll get him.”

Gristhorpe raised an eyebrow. “More intuition?”

“No. Just sheer dogged determination.”

Gristhorpe clapped Banks lightly on the shoulder. “That I can understand. I think I’ll turn in now. Coming?”

Banks sniffed the night air. He felt too restless to go to bed so soon. “Think I’ll take a walk on the prom,” he said. “Just to clear out the cobwebs.”

“Right. See you at breakfast.”

Banks watched Gristhorpe, a tall, powerful man in a chunky Swaledale sweater, cross the road, then he started walking along the promenade. A few couples, arms around one another, strolled by, but Weymouth at ten-thirty that Friday evening in late September was as dead as any out-of-season seaside resort. Over the road stood the tall Georgian terrace houses, most of them converted into hotels. Lights shone behind some curtains, but most of the rooms were dark.

When he got to the Jubilee Clock, an ornate structure built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, Banks took the steps down to the beach. The tide hadn’t been out long and the glistening sand was wet like a hardening gel under his feet. The footprints he made disappeared as soon as he moved on.

As he walked, it was of John Cowper Powys he thought, not Thomas Hardy. Somebody had mentioned Weymouth Sands to him around Christmas time and, intrigued, he had bought a copy. Now, as he actually trod Weymouth sands himself for the first time since he was a child, he thought of the opening scene where Magnus Muir stood meditating on the relationship between the all-consuming unity of the sea and the peculiar and individual character of each wave. The Esplanade lights reflected in the wet sand, which sucked in the remaining moisture with a hissing sound every time a wave retreated.

Heady thoughts for a lowly chief inspector. He stood for a moment and let the waves lick at his shoes. Farther south, the lights of the car ferry terminal seemed to hang suspended over the water. Loder was right, he thought: Chivers would have been a fool to take his car. Much easier to mingle with the foot-passengers and rent one wherever he went. Or, even more anonymous, travel by train if he got to France.

Seeing the dead woman in the hotel had shaken Banks more than he realized. Wondering why, as he doubled back along the ribbed sand at the edge of the beach, he felt it was perhaps because of Sandra. There was only a superficial resemblance, of course, but it was enough to remind him of Sandra in her twenties. Though Sandra had ridiculed the idea, the photo of Gemma Scupham had also reminded him of a younger Tracy, albeit a less doleful-looking one. Tracy took after Sandra, whereas Brian, with his small, lean, dark-haired Celtic appearance, took after Banks. There were altogether too many resemblances for comfort in this case.

Banks thought about what he had said earlier, the feel he was developing for the way Chivers operated. Then he thought about what he hadn’t told Gristhorpe. Standing in that room and looking down at the dead woman, Banks had known, as surely as he knew what happened at Johnson’s murder, that Chivers had been making love to her, smiling down, and that as he was reaching his climax — that brief pause for a sigh that Les Poole had mentioned — he had taken the pillow and held it over her face. She had struggled, scratching and gouging his skin, but he had pushed it down and ejaculated as she died.

Was he really beginning to understand something of Chivers’s psychopathic thought processes? It was a frightening notion, and for a moment he felt himself almost pull in his antennae and reject the insight. But he couldn’t.

The blonde woman — he wished he knew her name — must somehow have started to become a liability. Perhaps she was having second thoughts about what they’d done to Gemma; maybe she was overcome by guilt and had threatened to go to the police. Perhaps Chivers had conned her into thinking they were taking the child for some other reason, and she had found out what really happened. She could have panicked when she saw the newspaper likenesses, and Chivers didn’t feel he could trust her any longer. Or maybe he just grew tired of her. Whatever the reason, she ceased to be of use to him, and someone like Chivers would then start to think of an interesting way to get rid of her.

He must be easily bored, Banks thought, remembering what he and Jenny had talked about in the Queen’s Arms. A creative intelligence, though clearly a warped one, he showed imagination and daring. For some years, he had been able to channel his urges into legitimate criminal activity — a contradiction in terms, Banks realized, but nonetheless true. Chivers had sought work from people who had logical, financial reasons for what they employed him to do, and however evil they were, whatever harm they did, there was no denying that at bottom they were essentially businessmen gone wrong, the other side of the coin, not much different from insider traders and the rest of the corporate crooks.

Now, though, perhaps because he was deteriorating, losing control, as Jenny had said, Chivers was starting to create his own opportunities for pleasure, financed by simple heists like the Fletcher’s warehouse job. The money he got from such ventures would allow him the freedom to roam the country and follow his fancy wherever it led him. And by paying cash, he would leave no tell-tale credit-card traces.

Now, it seemed, Chivers was escalating, craving more dangerous thrills to satiate his needs. He was like a drug addict; he always needed more to keep him at the same level. Gemma Scupham, Carl Johnson, the blonde. How quickly was he losing control? Was he starting to get careless?

A wave soaked one foot and the bottom of his pant leg. He stepped back and did a little dance to shake the water off. Then he reached for a cigarette and, for some reason, thought of Brian, not more than seventy miles east of him, in Portsmouth. College had only just started, and he might be feeling lonely and alien in a strange city. It was so close, yet Banks wouldn’t be able to visit.

He missed his son. Much as Tracy had always seemed the favourite, with her interests in history and literature, her curiosity and intelligence, and Brian always the outsider, the rebel, with his loud rock music and his lack of interest in school, Banks missed him. Certainly he felt the odd one out now that Tracy was only interested in boys and clothes.

Brian was eighteen, and Banks had turned forty in May. With a smile, he remembered the compact disc of Nigel Kennedy playing the Brahms violin concerto that Brian had bought him for his birthday. Well, at least the thought was there. And he also remembered his recent row with Tracy. In a way, she had been right: Brian had got away with a lot, especially that summer, before he had left for the polytechnic: late-night band practices; a week-long camping trip to Cornwall with his mates; coming in once or twice a little worse for drink. But of one thing Banks was certain: Brian wasn’t taking drugs. As an experienced detective, he knew the signs, physical and psychological, and had never observed them in his son.

He turned from the beach and found a phonebox on The Esplanade. It was eleven o’clock. Would he be in? He put his phonecard in and punched in the number Brian shared with the other students in the house. It started to ring.

“Hello?”

A strange voice. He asked for Brian, said it was his father.

“Just a minute,” the voice mumbled.

He waited, tapping his fingers against the glass, and after a few moments Brian came on the line.

“Dad! What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’m just down the coast from you and I wanted to say hello. How are you doing?” Banks felt choked, hearing Brian’s voice. He wasn’t sure his words came out right.

“I’m fine,” Brian answered.

“How’s college?”

“Oh, you know. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Look, are you sure there’s nothing wrong? Mum’s okay, isn’t she?”

“I told you, everything’s all right. It’s just that I won’t be able to make the time to drop by and I thought, well, being so close, I’d just give you a ring.”

“Is it a case?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Are you still there, Dad?”

“Of course I am. When are you coming up to visit us again?”

“I’ll be up at Christmas. Hey, I’ve met some really great people down here. They play music and all. There’s this one guy, we’re going to form a band, and he’s been playing some great blues for me. You ever heard of Robert Johnson? Muddy Waters?”

Banks smiled to himself and sighed. If Brian had ever taken the trouble to examine his collection — and of course, no teenager would be seen dead sharing his father’s taste in music — he would have found not only the aforementioned, but Little Walter, Bessie Smith and Big Bill Broonzy, among several dozen others.

“Yes, I’ve heard of them,” he said. “I’m glad you’re having a good time. Look, keep in touch. Your mother says you don’t write often enough.”

“Sorry. There’s really a lot of work to do. But I’ll try to do better, promise.”

“You do. Look—”

His time ran out and he didn’t have another card. Just a few more seconds to say hurried goodbyes, then the electronic insect sound of a dead line. When he put the phone down and started walking back to the hotel, Banks felt empty. Why was it always like that? he wondered. You call someone you love on the phone, and when you’ve finished talking, all you feel is the bloody distance between you. Time to try sleep, perhaps, after a little music. Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care. Some hope.