“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Hope so.” Banks showed her his card.
If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. “What is it?” she asked. “My name’s Mary, by the way. Mary Mason.”
“I’ve come about one of your employees. A lad called Jason Fox. I’d like to speak to his boss and workmates, if I can.”
Mary Mason frowned. “I don’t believe I know the name. Still, there’s a lot of people work here, and I’m quite new to the job.” She smiled. “Do you know what department he’s in?”
The Foxes hadn’t been that specific, Banks remembered. All he knew was that Jason worked in an office.
“Well,” Mary said, “at least that lets out the shop floor, doesn’t it? Just a minute.” She tapped away at her computer. A few moments later, she swiveled away from the screen and said, “No. It’s not just me. We don’t have a Jason Fox working here.”
Banks raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Are you sure?”
“According to payroll records.”
“Computers make mistakes sometimes.”
Mary laughed. “Don’t I know it. Every once in a while my mouse starts running wild, all over the place. Nobody’s managed to work out why yet, but they call it ‘mad mouse disease.’ In this case, though, I’d tend to believe the computer. Are you sure he was on the clerical staff?”
Banks scratched the scar beside his right eye. He wasn’t sure of anything now. “That’s what I was told. Would it be too difficult to check all your employees?”
Mary shook her head. “No. It’ll take just a little longer. One of the benefits of computers. They do things fast, then you can spend the rest of your time varnishing your fingernails.”
“I’ll bet.”
Mary tapped a few keys and did the Ouija-board thing with her mouse, which wasn’t running wild today as far as Banks could tell, then clicked the buttons a few times and squinted at the screen.
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “No Jason Fox anywhere in the company. Maybe he worked for another branch?”
“You have other branches?”
“ Rochdale. Coventry. Middlesbrough.”
“No. His parents definitely said he lived and worked in Leeds. Look, are there any back records you can check, just in case?” It was probably pointless, but it was worth a look while he was here.
“I can search the files for the past few years, if you’ve got a bit of patience left.”
Banks smiled. “If you would, please. I’ve got plenty of patience.”
Mary returned to her computer. Banks found himself tapping his foot on the floor as he waited. He wanted a cigarette. No chance in here; you just had to sniff the air.
Finally, with a frown creasing her brow, Mary whistled and said, “Well, what do you know…?”
“You’ve found him?”
“I have indeed.”
“And?”
“Jason Fox. Can’t be two, I don’t suppose?”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, according to our records, he left the company two years ago after working for us for only one year.”
Now it was Banks’s turn to frown. “He left? I don’t understand. Why?”
Mary stared at the screen and pressed her lips together in thought, then she looked at Banks with her warm, dark eyes, smiled and said, “Look, I appreciate that you’re a policeman, and a pretty senior one at that. I also appreciate this might be important, even though you haven’t told me a thing. But personnel records are private. I’m afraid I can’t just go around giving people any information they want at the drop of a hat, or a warrant card. I’m sure you could get a court order, if you really want to know. But I’m only doing my job. I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you any more, even if I knew.”
“I appreciate that,” said Banks. “Can you tell me anything at all about his time here, about his friends?”
She shook her head. “As I said, it was before my time. I’ve never heard of him.” She turned to face the others in the office. “Anyone remember a Jason Fox used to work here?”
All she got in return was blank stares and shaking heads. Apart from one woman, who said, “The name sounds familiar.”
“You’re thinking of Jason Donovan,” someone else said, and they laughed.
“Can you at least tell me what department he worked in?” Banks asked.
“That I can tell you,” Mary said. “He was in sales. Domestic. You’ll find them in the old office building, across the yard. And,” she said, smiling, “you should also find some of the people he worked with are still there. Try David Wayne first. He’s one of the regional sales managers now.”
“Just a minute,” came a voice from the back of the office. “Jason Fox, you said? Now I remember. It was a couple of years back. I’d just started here. There was some trouble, some sort of scandal. Something hushed up.”
II
The sound of the car pulling up woke Frank from his afternoon nap. Slowly, he groped his way back to consciousness – it seemed to take longer every time, as if consciousness itself were slowly moving farther and farther away from him – and walked over to the window. There they were: the three of them, struggling up the path against the wind. Well, he supposed they would have to come sometime; Josie had already telephoned and told him what had happened to Jason.
He answered the knock, let them in and told them to make themselves comfortable while he went to put the kettle on. The good old English custom of a nice cup of tea, he thought, had helped people avoid many an embarrassing moment. Not that they should be embarrassed about what had happened, of course, but Yorkshire folk, especially, often fell short of words when it came to strong emotions.
Josie gave him a silent hug when he came through from the kitchen, then she sat down. Grief suited her in a way, he thought; she had always looked a bit pinched to him. These days, she had also started to look more like mutton dressed as lamb, too, with that makeup, her roots showing, and those figure-hugging outfits she wore. At her age. Her mother would have been ashamed of her.
Steven looked as lackluster as ever. Couldn’t Josie, he wished again, have chosen someone with a bit of spunk in him?
Then there was Maureen. Good-natured, bustling, hard-working, no-nonsense Maureen. The best of the lot of them, in his book. A proper bonny lass, too; she’d break a few hearts in her time, with her laughing eyes and smiling lips and hair like spun gold all the way down to her waist. Well, not today. But that was how he remembered her. She had cut her hair short just after she started nurses’ training. A real shame, that, he thought.
“When’s the funeral?” he asked.
“Thursday,” Josie answered. “Oh, you should have seen what they’d done to him, Dad.” She sniffled. “Our poor Jason.”
Frank nodded. “Nay, lass… Police getting anywhere?”
“Even if they were,” Josie sniffed, “they wouldn’t tell us, would they?”
The kettle boiled. Frank moved to rise, but Maureen sprang to her feet. “I’ll get it, Granddad. Stay where you are.”
“Thanks, lass,” he said gratefully, and sank back into his armchair. “What have they told you?”
“They’ve got some lads helping them with their inquiries,” Josie said. “Pakistanis.” She sniffed. “They think it might have started as an argument in a pub, and that these lads followed our Jason, or waited for him in the ginnel and beat him up. The police think they probably didn’t mean to kill him.”
“What do you think?” Frank asked.
Maureen came back with the teapot and raised her eyebrows at the question. “We haven’t really had much time to think about it at all yet, Granddad,” she said. “But I’m sure the police know their business.”
“Aye.”
“What is it?” Steven Fox said, speaking for the first time. “You don’t think they’ll do a good job?”