There was an interesting framed photograph on the wall, quite a few years old by the look of it, showing a younger Shaw and Jet Harris standing by an unmarked Rover looking for all the world like John Thaw and Dennis Waterman in The Sweeney. Or was it Morse and Lewis? Is that how Shaw saw himself, as Sergeant Lewis to Harris’s Chief Inspector Morse?
The bookcase held mostly binders and back issues of the Police Review. Mixed in were a few legal texts and an American textbook called Practical Homicide Investigation. Banks was browsing through this and trying not to look at the gruesome color illustrations when, after half an hour, Shaw came back, followed by a rather embarrassed-looking DI Michelle Hart.
“Sorry about that,” said Shaw, sitting down opposite Banks. “Something came up. You know how it is.” Michelle sat to one side looking uncomfortable.
“I know.” Banks put the book aside and reached for a cigarette.
“There’s no smoking in here,” said Shaw. “Not anywhere in the building, not for any of us, these days. Maybe you’re still a bit behind the times back up in Yorkshire?”
Banks had known that he probably couldn’t smoke, though Shaw had the nicotine-stained fingers of a heavy smoker, but he thought it at least worth a try. Obviously, though, this was going to be played the hard way, even though they had done him the courtesy of conducting the interview in the superintendent’s office rather than in a dingy interview room. He didn’t feel nervous, just puzzled and pissed off. What was going on?
“So, what can I do for you, Superintendent Shaw?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Shaw stared at Banks, and Banks searched through his store of faces for a match. The ginger hair was thin on top, one long side strand combed over to hide the bald patch, but not fooling anyone; hardly any eyebrows; freckles, pale blue eyes, the face filled out and jowly; the fleshy, red-veined nose of a seasoned drinker. He was familiar, but there was something different about him. Then Banks knew.
“You’ve had your ears fixed,” he said. “The wonders of modern medicine.”
Shaw reddened. “So you do remember me.”
“You were the baby DC who came to our house after Graham disappeared.” It was hard to believe, but Shaw would have been about twenty-one at the time, only seven years older than Banks, yet he had seemed an adult, someone from another world.
“Tell me,” said Shaw, leaning forward across the table so Banks could smell the minty breath of a man who drinks his breakfast. “I’ve always wondered. Did you ever get your budgie back?”
Banks leaned back in his chair. “Well, now we’ve got all the pleasantries out of the way, why don’t we get on with it?”
Shaw jerked his head at Michelle, who slid a photograph across the desk to Banks. She looked serious with her reading glasses on. Sexy, too, Banks thought. “Is this the man?” she asked.
Banks stared at the black-and-white photo and felt a rush of blood to his brain, ears buzzing and vision clouding. It all flooded back, those few moments of claustrophobia and terror in the stranger’s grip, the moments he had thought were his last.
“Are you all right?”
It was Michelle who spoke, a concerned look on her face.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You look pale. Would you like a drink of water?”
“No, thank you,” said Banks. “It’s him.”
“Are you certain?”
“After all this time I can’t be a hundred percent positive, but I’m as certain as I’ll ever be.”
Shaw nodded, and Michelle took the picture back.
“Why?” Banks asked, looking from one to the other. “What is it?”
“James Francis McCallum,” Michelle said. “He went missing from a mental institution near Wisbech on Thursday, June seventeenth, 1965.”
“That would be about right,” said Banks.
“McCallum hadn’t been involved in any violent activity, but the doctors told us that the possibility always existed, and that he might be dangerous.”
“When was he caught?” Banks asked.
Michelle glanced at Shaw before answering. He gave her a curt nod. “That’s just it,” she went on. “He wasn’t. McCallum’s body was fished out of the River Nene near Oundle on the first of July.”
Banks felt his mouth open and shut without any sound coming out. “Dead?” he managed.
“Dead,” echoed Shaw. He tapped his pen on the desk. “Nearly two months before your friend disappeared. So you see, DCI Banks, you’ve been laboring under an illusion for all these years. Now, what I’m really interested in is why you lied to me and DI Proctor in the first place.”
Banks felt numb from the shock he had just received. Dead. All these years. The guilt. And all for nothing. The man who assaulted him on the riverbank couldn’t have abducted and killed Graham. He should have felt relieved, but he only felt confused. “I didn’t lie,” he muttered.
“Call it a sin of omission, then. You didn’t tell us about McCallum.”
“Doesn’t seem as if it would have mattered, does it?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Look, I was just a kid. I hadn’t told my parents because I was scared how they’d react. I was upset and ashamed by what happened. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but that’s how I felt. Dirty and ashamed, as if it was somehow my fault for inviting it.”
“You should have told us. It could have been a lead.”
Banks knew that Shaw was right; he had told reluctant witnesses the same thing himself, time after time. “Well, I didn’t, and it wasn’t,” he snapped. “I’m sorry. Okay?”
But Shaw wasn’t going to be so easily put off, Banks could tell. He was enjoying himself, throwing his weight around. It was the bully mentality. To him, Banks was still the fourteen-year-old kid whose budgie had just flown out the door. “What really happened to your friend?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
Shaw scratched his chin. “I remember thinking at the time that you knew something, that you were holding something back. I’d like to have taken you to the station, had you down in the cells for an hour or so, but you were a minor, and my senior officer Reg Proctor was a bit of a softie, when it came right down to it. What really happened?”
“I don’t know. Graham just disappeared.”
“Are you sure you and your mates didn’t set on him? Maybe it was an accident, things just went too far?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m suggesting that maybe the three of you ganged up on Graham Marshall for some reason and killed him. These things happen. Then you had to get rid of the body.”
Banks folded his arms. “And tell me how we did that.”
“I don’t know,” Shaw admitted. “But I don’t have to. Maybe you stole a car.”
“None of us could drive.”
“So you say.”
“It wasn’t the way it is today, with ten-year-olds behind the wheel.”
“Is that how it happened? A fight broke out and Graham got killed? Maybe fell and smashed his skull, or broke his neck? I’m not saying you intended to kill him, but it happened, didn’t it? Why don’t you come clean with me, Banks? It’ll do you good to get it off your chest after all these years.”
“Sir?”
“Shut up, DI Hart. Well, Banks? I’m waiting.”
Banks stood up. “You’ll have a bloody long wait, then. Good-bye.” He walked toward the door. Shaw didn’t try to stop him. Just as Banks had turned the handle, he heard the superintendent speak again and turned to face him. Shaw was grinning. “Only teasing, Banks,” he said. Then his expression became serious. “My, but you’re sensitive. The point I want to make is that you’re on my turf, and it turns out you can’t help us any more now than you could all those years ago. So my advice to you, laddie, is to bugger off back up to Yorkshire, go shag a sheep or two, and forget about Graham Marshall. Leave it to the pros.”
“Bloody good job the pros did last time,” said Banks, leaving and slamming the door behind him, annoyed at himself for losing his temper, but unable to prevent it. Outside the station, he kicked a tire, lit a cigarette and got in his car. Maybe Shaw was right and he should just head back up north. He still had over a week’s holiday left and plenty to do around the cottage, whereas there was nothing more he could do down here. Before driving off, he sat for a moment trying to digest what Michelle and Shaw had told him. His guilt over the years had been misplaced, then; McCallum was in no way responsible for Graham’s abduction and, by extension, neither was Banks. On the other hand, if he had reported the incident, there was a chance that McCallum might have been apprehended and hospitalized instead of drowning. More guilt, then?