“Bugger low fat,” said Arthur Banks. “I’ll have the special and chips. Just make sure there’s no bloody chop suey or sweet and sour sauce gone anywhere near it.” Banks winked at his mother and walked over to the shop.
The strip of shops across the main road, set back by a stretch of tarmac for customer parking, had gone through dozens of changes over the years. When Banks first moved to the estate, he remembered, there had been the fish and chips shop, a ladies’ hairdresser, a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s and a launderette. Now there was a video-rental shop, a take-away pizza and tandoori place called Caesar’s Taj Mahal, a minimart and a unisex hair salon. The only constants were the fish and chips shop, which now also sold take-away Chinese food, and the newsagent’s, which, according to the signs, was still run by the Walkers, who had taken over from Donald Bradford all those years ago, in 1966. Banks wondered what had become of Bradford. He was said to have been devastated over what had happened to Graham. Had the local police ever followed up on him?
Banks waited to cross the busy road. To the left of the shops stood the remains of the old ball-bearing factory, still untouched for some reason. It could hardly be for historical preservation, as it was a real eyesore. The gates were chained and padlocked shut, and it was surrounded by high wire-mesh fencing with barbed wire on top, the windows beyond covered by rusty grilles. Despite these security precautions, most of the windows were broken anyway, and the front of the blackened brick building was covered in colorful graffiti. Banks remembered when the place was in full production, lorries coming and going, the factory whistle blowing and crowds of workers waiting at the bus stop. A lot of them were young women, or girls scarcely out of school – a rough lot, his mother called them – and Banks often used to time his visits to the shops to coincide with the factory gates opening because he lusted after some of the girls.
There was one girl in particular, he remembered, who used to stand at the bus stop smoking, a faraway look in her eyes, scarf done up like a turban on her head. Even her serviceable work clothes couldn’t disguise the curves, and she had pale smooth skin and looked a bit like Julie Christie in Billy Liar. When Banks used to walk as casually as possible past the bus stop, he remembered as he stood in the fish and chips shop queue, the other girls used to tease him with lewd comments and make him blush.
“Hey, Mandy,” one of them would call out. “Here comes that lad again. I think he fancies you.”
They would all howl with laughter, Mandy would tell them to shut up and Banks would blush. Once, Mandy tousled his hair and gave him a cigarette. He smoked it over a week, taking a few drags at a time, then nicking it to save for later. In the end it tasted like something he might have picked up from the gutter, but he finished it anyway. After that, Mandy would sometimes smile when he passed by. She had a nice smile. Sometimes strands of hair escaped from under her turban and curled over her cheek, and other times she might have a smudge of oil or dirt on her face. She must have been about eighteen. Four years age difference. Far from an impossible gap when you get older, but wider than the Grand Canyon at that age.
Then, one day, he noticed that she had started wearing an engagement ring, and a few weeks later she no longer stood at the bus stop with the others, and he never saw her again.
Where was Mandy now? he wondered. She’d be in her fifties if she was still alive, older than Kay Summerville. Had she put on a lot of weight? Had her hair turned gray? Did she look old and worn after years of struggle and poverty? Had she stayed married to the same man? Had she won the lottery and gone to live on the Costa del Sol? Did she ever think of that lovestruck adolescent who used to time his visits to the shops so he could see her waiting at the bus stop? He doubted it very much. The lives we leave behind. So many people. Our paths cross for a while, even as fleetingly as his had crossed Mandy’s, and we move on. Some encounters are impressed indelibly in our memories; others slip away into the void. Of course Mandy never thought of him; he was a mere passing amusement to her, whereas she fed deeper into his adolescent dreams of sex, and in his memory she would always be standing there with her hip against the bus stop, smoking with a faraway look in her eyes, a loose lock of hair resting softly against her pale cheek, always beautiful and always eighteen.
“Two specials and chips and one fish cake.”
Banks paid for the fish and chips and set off back home carrying the paper bag. No newspaper-wrapped fish and chips anymore. Dirty. Not healthy.
“There was a telephone call for you while you were out, Alan,” his mother said when he got back.
“Who was it?”
“Same woman as called last night. Have you got a new girlfriend already?”
Already. Sandra had been gone nearly two years, was pregnant with another man’s child and about to marry him. Had Banks got a new girlfriend already?
“No, Mum,” he said. “It’s one of the local coppers. You already know that from last night. They let women on the force these days.”
“No need to be cheeky. Eat your fish and chips before they go cold.”
“What did she say?”
“To ring her back when you had a moment. I wrote down the number just in case you’d forgotten it.”
Banks’s mother rolled her eyes when he left the table and headed toward the telephone. His father didn’t notice; he had his fish and chips on the paper on his lap and was eating them with his fingers, engrossed in the one-thirty from Newmarket, glass of beer balanced precariously on the arm of the chair.
The number scribbled on the pad by the hall telephone wasn’t familiar. It certainly wasn’t Thorpe Wood. Curious, Banks dialed.
“DI Hart here. Who’s speaking?”
“Michelle? It’s me. Alan Banks.”
“Ah, DCI Banks.”
“You left a message for me to call. Is this your mobile number?”
“That’s right. Look, first off, I’m sorry about Detective Superintendent Shaw this morning.”
“That’s all right. Not your fault.”
“I just felt… well, anyway, I’m surprised he’s taking such an interest. It’s not even his case. I had him marked down as just putting in time till his retirement; now he’s all over me like a dirty shirt.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Are you going home?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. This afternoon. This evening. No point hanging around where I’m not wanted.”
“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. It doesn’t suit you. Only I was wondering if you’d like to meet up for a chat before you go, if you’re not in a hurry?”
“Any particular reason?”
“Perhaps because I didn’t treat you like an undesirable alien, despite your less than polite introduction.”
“Yes, okay. Why not?”
“Shall we say half past five in Starbucks, Cathedral Square?”
“There’s a Starbucks? In Peterborough?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. We’re very with-it these days. There’s a McDonald’s, too, if you’d prefer?”
“No. Starbucks will do fine. Half-five it is. That’ll give me plenty of time to pack and say my good-byes. See you there.”
Annie and Gristhorpe arrived at Hallam Tarn in time to see two police frogmen haul up the body and pull it back to shore with them. Peter Darby, crime scene photographer, sat in a dinghy nearby and videotaped everything. He had already taken several stills and Polaroids of the spot where the body had been first seen by Andrew Naylor. One of the lads at Helmthorpe had found a dry set of clothes for Naylor, and he stood with the small group, chewing his fingernails as the frogmen edged closer to shore.
Once on shore, they laid the body on the grass at the feet of Dr. Burns, the police surgeon. Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, was unavailable that day, as he had been called in to help a colleague with a difficult case in Scarborough. Detective Sergeant Stefan Nowak, crime scene coordinator, and his scene-of-crime officers were on their way.