“In what way was he rum?” Banks asked.
Harry nudged Banks’s father. “Always the copper, your lad, hey?”
Arthur’s brow darkened. Banks knew damn well that his father had never approved of his choice of career, and that no matter how well he did, how successful he was, to his father he would always be a traitor to the working class, who traditionally feared and despised coppers. As far as Arthur Banks was concerned, his son was employed by the middle and upper classes to protect their interests and their property. Never mind that most coppers of Arthur’s own generation came from the working classes, unlike today, when many were middle-class university graduates and management types. The two of them had never resolved this problem, and Banks could see even now that his father was bothered by Harry Finnegan’s little dig.
“Graham was a friend of mine,” Banks went on quickly, to diffuse the tension. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“Is that why you’re down here?” Norman asked.
“Partly, yes.”
It was the same question Mrs. Marshall had asked him. Perhaps people assumed that because he was a policeman, and because he knew Graham, he would be assigned to this particular case. “I don’t know how much I can help,” Banks said, glancing sideways at his father, who was working on his beer. He had never told either of his parents about what had happened down by the river, and he wasn’t about to do so now. It might come out, of course, if his information led anywhere, and now he had an inkling of what the many witnesses who lied to avoid disclosing a shameful secret had to be anxious about. “It’s just that, well, I’ve thought about Graham and what happened on and off over the years, and I just thought I ought to come and try to help, that’s all.”
“I can understand that,” said Norman, relighting his pipe. “I think it’s been a bit of a shock to the system for all of us, one way or another.”
“You were saying about Graham’s father, Dad?”
Arthur Banks glanced at his son. “Was I?”
“You said he was strange. I didn’t know him well. I never really talked to him.”
“Course not,” said Arthur. “You were just a kid.”
“That’s why I’m asking you.”
There was a pause, then Arthur Banks looked over at Harry Finnegan. “He was shifty, wouldn’t you say so, Harry?”
“He was indeed. Always an eye for a fiddle, and not above a bit of strong-arm stuff. I wouldn’t have trusted him as far as I could throw him. And he was a big talker, too.”
“What do you mean?” Banks asked.
“Well,” his father said. “You know the family came up from London?”
“Yes.”
“Bill Marshall worked as a bricklayer, and he was a good one, too, but when he’d had a drink or two he’d start letting things slip about some of his other activities in London.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“He was a fit bloke, Bill. Strong. Big hands, powerful upper body. Comes from carrying those hods around the building sites.”
“He used to get into fights?”
“You could say that.”
“What your dad’s saying,” explained Harry, leaning forward, “is that Bill Marshall let slip he used to act as an enforcer for gangsters down the Smoke. Protection rackets, that sort of thing.”
The Smoke? Banks hadn’t heard that term for London for years. “He did?” Banks shook his head. It was hard to imagine the old man in the chair as having been some sort of gang enforcer, but it might help explain the fear Banks remembered feeling in his presence all those years ago, the threat of violence. “I’d never have-”
“How could you?” his father cut in. “Like I said, you were just a kid. You couldn’t understand things like that.”
The music had changed, Banks noticed. Herb Alpert and his bloody Tijuana Brass, just finishing, thank God. Banks had hated them back then and he hated them now. Next came The Bachelors, “Marie.” Mum and Dad music. “Did you tell the police?” he asked.
The men looked at one another, then Arthur looked back at Banks, his lip curling. “What do you think?”
“But he could-”
“Listen. Bill Marshall might have been a big talker, but he had nothing to do with his son’s disappearance.”
“How can you know that?”
Arthur Banks snorted. “You police. All the bloody same, you are. Just because a man might be a bit dodgy in one area, you’re ready to fit him up with anything.”
“I’ve never fitted anyone up in my life,” said Banks.
“What I’m saying is that Bill Marshall might have been a bit of a wild man, but he didn’t go around killing young lads, especially not his own son.”
“I didn’t say I thought he did it,” Banks said, noticing that the others were watching him and his father now, as if they were the evening’s entertainment.
“Then what did you mean?”
“Look, Dad,” Banks said, reaching for a cigarette. He had been determined not to smoke in front of his father, mostly because of the old man’s health, but not smoking in The Coach and Horses was as pointless as swimming in the no-pissing section of a swimming pool, if such a section were ever to exist. “If there was any truth in what Bill Marshall said about his criminal background in London, then isn’t it possible that something he’d done there came back to haunt him?”
“But nobody hurt Bill.”
“Doesn’t matter, Dad. These people often have more devious ways of getting back at their enemies. Believe me. I’ve come across more than a few of them in my time. Did he ever mention any names?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean in London. The people he worked for. Did he ever mention any names?”
Harry Finnegan gave a nervous laugh. Arthur shot him a glance and he shut up. “As a matter of fact,” said Arthur, pausing dramatically, “he did.”
“Who?”
“The Twins. Reggie and Ronnie Kray.”
“Bloody hell!”
Arthur Banks’s eyes shone with triumph. “Now do you see why we just thought he had a big mouth on him?”
For the second time that day, Annie turned up at Swainsdale Hall, only this time she felt the butterflies in the pit of her stomach. People like Martin Armitage were difficult enough to deal with in the first place, and he wouldn’t like what she had to say. Still, she thought, for all his tough bluster he hadn’t done much but kick a ball around most of his life. Robin was another matter. Annie sensed that she might feel relieved to have someone else to share her fears with, and that underneath her accommodating exterior and her air of vulnerability, there was a strong woman who was capable of standing up to her husband.
Josie answered the door, as usual, holding a barking Miata by the collar. Annie wanted to talk to Josie and her husband, Calvin, but they could wait. For the moment, the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better. Robin and Martin were both out in the garden sitting at a wrought-iron table under a striped umbrella. It was a warm evening, and the back garden faced south, so there was plenty of honey-tinted sunlight and dark shadows cast by tree branches. Annie felt like reaching for her sketch pad. Beyond the high drystone wall that marked the property boundary, the daleside stretched up in a patchwork of uneven fields, green until the sere bareness of the higher slopes, where it rose more steeply to merge into the wild stretch of heather moorland that separated the Dales.
Neither Martin nor Robin seemed to be enjoying the beautiful evening or the long cool drinks that sat in front of them. Both seemed pale, tense and preoccupied, and the mobile perched on the table like an unexploded bomb.
“What are you doing here?” Martin Armitage said. “I told you Luke was on his way home and I’d be in touch when he got here.”
“I take it he’s not arrived yet?”
“No.”
“Heard from him again?”