“I’ve given it a bit of thought,” said Kath, “but I can’t say as I have. I know I’ve seen them here, but I just can’t place them.”
“Let’s have a look, Kath,” said the girl. She didn’t look old enough to be drinking, but Annie wasn’t there to enforce the licensing laws. She was dressed all in black, including her lace-trimmed gloves, with orange hair and a pale, pixieish face.
She looked at Annie. “If that’s all right with you,” she added.
“That’s fine,” said Annie. “We need all the help we can get.”
“I’m Sam. Short for Samantha.”
Annie didn’t think it was short for Samuel, but you never knew. “Pleased to meet you, Sam.”
“Lousy picture,” Sam commented. “That from the Big Brother video?”
“Yes,” said Annie, “it’s from the CCTV cameras in the market square.”
“Talk about an invasion of privacy,” the girl began. “You know-”
“I’d like to spend some time arguing the pros and cons of city center CCTV with you, Sam,” said Annie sweetly. “Really I would, but a young girl, probably no older than you, was murdered in the Bar None last week, and we’re trying to find out who killed her.”
“Yeah, I heard,” said Sam, looking away. “It’s a fucking shame a woman can’t go anywhere by herself these days.”
“Any idea who they are?”
“Course I do.”
“Will you tell me?”
“Did they do it?”
“I very much doubt it. But they might have seen something.”
“It’s Alex and Carly. Alex Pender and Carly Grant. Carly and I do art together.”
“Know where they live?”
“They’ve got a flat on Sebastopol Avenue, you know, one of those big old Victorian terraces. Landlords divide them up into poky flats and rent them out for a fortune. Talk about exploitation.”
“Do you know the number?”
Sam told her.
Knowing now the reasons for Annie’s erratic behavior didn’t make Banks feel any better. In fact, as the afternoon wore on, it made him feel worse. When she had stormed out of his office, he had stood for a moment to let his realization sink in, then felt the bile rise and burn in his throat. He might not be sleeping with Annie anymore, but the thought of her being with Dalton hurt. He had been through the same thing with Sandra. For months after she left, when he knew she had moved in with Sean, the intolerable images crowded his mind, and during the long nights of drinking alone, with random phrases from bitter Bob Dylan love songs echoing around his mind, the jealousy burned like acid on his soul.
Perhaps it wasn’t even jealousy, but envy: he couldn’t have Annie, but he couldn’t bear thinking about Dalton having her. Whatever it was, it hurt, and Banks had to make an effort to put it out of his mind for the time being and get on with the job.
First, he sent DC Templeton off to get copies made of the photo of Clough he had got from Craig Newton. It was a good shot, candid or not, and Craig had cropped it so that it showed only Clough in full, mean face. When that was done, he would send a team out to check every hotel and guest house in the area to see if Clough had been staying there recently. He would also have Jim Hatchley and Winsome Jackman show it around Daleview and Charlie Courage’s neighborhood. In the meantime, information had started trickling in now the working week had begun again.
He didn’t learn much from the Riddles’ phone records. British Telecom’s Investigations Department had furnished DC Templeton with a list of numbers called on the Riddles’ house telephone for the last month, and a subscriber check had supplied the names and addresses. Most seemed to be political cronies of Jimmy Riddle, or calls to Rosalind’s law office. Someone, Emily presumably, had phoned Ruth Walker’s number twice, but not within ten days of her death. There were no calls to either Craig Newton, Andrew Handley or Barry Clough. The only other calls Emily seemed to have made had been to Darren Hirst and to a sixth-form college in Scarborough. Banks thought it might be a good idea to get hold of Craig’s and Clough’s records, and do a cross-reference. It would take time, but it might throw up a lead of some sort. Oddly enough, Banks couldn’t find the call that Emily had made to him the day before she died. Then he remembered the background noise and realized she must have used a public telephone.
Now that Jonathan Fearn was dead, Banks also had another murder on his plate, or manslaughter at least. Strictly speaking, it was DI Dalton’s case, the way Charlie Courage’s murder was Collaton’s, but there was a strong Eastvale connection, the Daleview Business Park and PKF Computer Systems being at the heart of both. Banks was just about to check if anything was happening in the incident room when his phone rang. It was Vic Manson, the fingerprints expert.
“It’s about that CD case you had sent over,” Manson said.
“Find anything?”
“Some very clear prints. I’ve checked the national index and, lo and behold, they belong to a bloke called Gregory Manners.”
“Who the hell’s he when he’s at home?”
“You may well ask. He’s been a naughty boy, though. Did six months a couple of years back for attempting to defraud Customs and Excise.”
“What?”
“Smuggling, to you and me.”
“Well, well, well.”
“Ring any bells?”
“So loud they’re deafening me. Thanks, Vic. Thanks a lot.”
“No problem.”
The minute Banks got off the phone with Manson he called Dirty Dick Burgess at the National Criminal Intelligence Service.
“Banks. Solved your murder yet?”
“Murders. And no, I haven’t.”
“How can I help?”
“I’ve got a few loose strands that seem to be coming together. Remember that PKF business I asked you about?”
“Something to do with computers, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. Charlie Courage, night watchman and one-time con, gets murdered the day after a van clears out PKF’s Daleview offices, heading for another business park up Tyneside way. Over the past four weeks he’s made five two-hundred-pound cash deposits at his bank. With me so far?”
“Hanging on your every word.”
“The van itself gets hijacked north of Newcastle and the entire contents disappear. The driver, Jonathan Fearn, who, by the way is a known associate of Courage’s, has just died of injuries received.”
“Another murder, then.”
“Looks that way. But let me finish. PKF is a phony company and we can’t trace anyone involved in it. The only bit of evidence we’ve got is a CD case.”
“That’s hardly evidence, is it?” Burgess commented. “Stands to reason there’ll be cases around computer people.”
“That’s not all. I’ve just found out that the prints on this CD case are those of one Gregory Manners, late of Her Majesty’s first-class hotel in Preston. Manners did six months for smuggling a lorryload of cigarettes through Dover. Or trying to. When questioned he said-”
“ – he was working alone, and nobody was able to prove any different. All right, you’ve got a point. As a matter of fact, I do remember that one. It was one of Customs and Excise’s few successes that year.”
“Let me guess who was behind it: Barry Clough?”
“The man himself. Seems he’s everywhere we look, isn’t he?”
“He certainly is. This Manners connection links him directly to PKF, whatever it was up to, and by extension to the murders of Charlie Courage and Jonathan Fearn.”
“Still like him for the girl’s murder, too?”
“Very much. But we don’t have enough to bring him in yet. You told me yourself how slippery he is.”
“As a jellied eel. You know what I’m thinking, Banks?”
“What?”
“This hijack you told me about. It sounds very much as if someone ripped Barry Clough off.”
“Indeed it does.”
“And we know Barry doesn’t like that. Barry throws tantrums when people upset him.”
“Enough for two people to end up dead?”