“I’ll bet it can. So far they’ve terrorized an innocent twenty-four-year-old girl and tied up and threatened a young man with torture. Real tough guys. Ever heard of a Victor Mallory?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“He’s an old university and public school pal of McCready’s.”
“The old boys’ network? Well, Jaff always did move in rarefied circles. A bit too rich for my blood. Cambridge does that to people, you know. I came up the hard way-sheer hard work, getting my hands dirty. I never went to university, and West Leeds Boys High is hardly a public school, so I wouldn’t know about all that. Wouldn’t know this Mallory, either. Jaff has a lot of friends I don’t know about and don’t want to know about. There’s a big age difference, for a start, then the employer-employee relationship. Hardly conducive to friendship. I should imagine Jaff’s friends are more his own age.”
“Do you know what information Ciaran and Darren wanted from the people they threatened?”
“Enlighten me.”
“They wanted to know where Jaffar McCready is heading.”
“Well, then, we’re back to square one, aren’t we?” Fanthorpe spread his hands. “That’s exactly what I’d like to know. Except nobody yet has mentioned the elephant in the corner of the room.”
“Meaning?” said Banks, though he had an inkling of what Fanthorpe was getting at, and the thought chilled him like a shadow crossing the high daleside.
Fanthorpe stood up, poured himself another generous shot and pointed at Banks. “Your daughter, Banks. Tracy. Nobody’s mentioned her part in all this yet, have they?” He leaned against the wall and grinned. “Now, if you ask me, you’re a man in a lot of trouble, Mr. Banks, a lot of grief and trouble. I have daughters, too. I can understand that. Who knows, if we put our heads together, then maybe we might even be able to help one another? What about it?”
JAFF LEFT the van behind a doorless Mini on blocks in a street of dirty redbrick terrace houses not far from Beeston Hill Cemetery. The tall prewar houses seemed to Tracy to loom menacingly over them in the growing dark as they walked away, watched closely by a gang of hooded youths congregating at the end of a ginnel, looking shifty and threatening by turns. There was a mosque on the corner with an ornate mosaic dome. Televisions flickered behind moth-eaten curtains. Canned laughter spilled out into the street and mingled with the beat of a distant pub band. The streetlights had just come on, a jaundiced yellow in the late twilight purple, and they were surrounded by haloes of haze. A hint of exotic spices filled the night air. Behind the high-pitched slate roofs, roiling dark clouds parted now and then to allow a lance of moonlight to break through. There was an edgy feel to the night, Tracy sensed, and the sky seemed to echo it. Perhaps a thunderstorm was on the way. Anything could happen.
One of the youths turned and called out something after them. Tracy couldn’t make out the words. She could see that Jaff had one hand in his bag, though, and a grim smile on his face. A “just let them try something” smile. Tracy felt her pulse quicken with her footsteps. But nobody followed them. Nobody threw anything. When they got to the well-lit arterial road with its people, pubs, hairdressers, Asian shops and curry houses, Jaff relaxed his grip and removed his hand from the bag. They caught the first bus into the city center and sat upstairs at the front. There were hardly any other passengers at that godforsaken time of the evening, well after office hours and before closing time.
“Isn’t it dangerous, going to a hotel?” Tracy said. “I told you they’ll be looking for the two of us together.”
Jaff gave her a sideways glance. “I’m not letting you go, so don’t start that again. We’ll be fine. I suppose you just want to go home to Daddy?”
Tracy said nothing. She did.
“Well, that’s not going to happen, so you’d better make the best of things. Don’t forget what I said back there in the van. I mean it.” He looked her up and down. “At least you’re reasonably presentable now. You’ll just about pass muster. Just. How about me?”
Jaff looked fine. Immaculate as usual. “You’ll do,” she said.
“It’s a nice hotel I’ve got in mind,” Jaff said. “Not some fleabag place. We’ll be able to have a shower, get room service, minibar, the lot.”
The bus lumbered on, around corners, across intersections, and finally made its way into the city center.
“What about the CCTV cameras?” Tracy asked, as she saw the familiar landmarks of the Corn Exchange and Kirkgate Market ahead.
“They’re only useful if someone’s watching them and knows what to look for,” said Jaff. “If you think how many of them there must be, you’ve got to realize that there can’t possibly be enough people to watch them all, or we’d be all watching each other all the time. Real Big Brother. It’s a risk, but a minor one. Especially here. Like I said, no one’s going to expect us to come back here. And by the time anyone gets to checking all the CCTV footage, we’ll be sunning it up on the Costa del Sol. At least, I will.” He grabbed the chrome rail.
“Come on. Our stop.”
“HELP ONE another? Where do you get that from?” said Banks.
Fanthorpe sat down and cradled his fresh drink, a superior grin on his face. “I would have thought it was obvious,” he said. Winsome cast Banks a puzzled glance.
“Go on,” Banks said. “Enlighten me.”
Fanthorpe sprawled in his chair. “We both know that Jaff McCready’s on the run with your daughter Tracy. I haven’t the least interest in her, but I do have a very strong interest in young Jaff. Like I said, he’s got something of mine, and I want it back.”
“So it’s I scratch your back and you scratch mine, is that it?”
“Something like that. I can guarantee your daughter’s safety, Banks-that is, if she’s still in one piece when Ciaran and Darren find her. Can you do that, with all your protocols and procedures and red tape? Can you?”
“Go on.”
Fanthorpe leaned forward. “I thought you’d be interested. My proposal is a simple one. Leave me to find Jaff and Tracy. When I do, she’s yours. Unharmed. As I said, I have daughters, too. Believe me, I understand how you must be feeling.”
“You understand nothing. Don’t try to tell me you give a damn about saving my daughter’s life. All you want to do is carry on making your illegal fortunes.”
“I can’t help it if I make a good living.”
“Off other people’s misery.”
“Giving people what they want.”
“Selling them drugs?”
“However you look at it, you can hardly say that you’ve made a hell of a lot of people happy in your life so far, can you? I mean, how many of the petty villains you banged up got rogered so often in prison that their arseholes turned black and blue? How many scared young kids got stabbed by makeshift shivs in the showers? You hardly go around spreading joy and sunshine, mate, so don’t give me that holier-than-thou shit. I’m giving you a chance here. A chance to save your daughter’s life. Don’t you throw it back in my face. I never make an offer more than once.”
Banks felt sick. The Farmer’s offer was tempting, way too tempting, and he could do as he said; he could deliver with a lot more chance of success than any police intervention could offer. You only had to look at the Patrick Doyle case to know that. Then Banks would have Tracy back and Jaff…well, Jaff was a waste of space, anyway. Who cared?
But it would mean ending up in Fanthorpe’s pocket. It wouldn’t stop there, either, with Tracy’s safe return. There would be more demands; a little insider information, a tip here, a tip-off there, polite requests to turn a blind eye, payments made. Before long, Banks wouldn’t be able to bear looking at his reflection in the mirror. And Winsome was here, too, his moral compass: a witness to it all. She would never agree, and she wouldn’t lie for him, no matter how rude The Farmer had been to her earlier.