When he thought of Annie, though, he felt his spirits rise. He knew not to expect too much – she had made that quite clear – but at least they had got beyond the rumors and fears they had been bogged down in the past week. Banks sensed the possibility of a new, deeper trust. It would have to develop naturally, though; there could be no pushing, not with someone as scared of intimacy as Annie was, or someone as recently battle-scarred as himself. Sandra’s asking for a divorce and telling him she wanted to marry Sean might have given him a sense of finality, of liberation, but the old wounds were still there. Which reminded him: he ought to respond to the second solicitor’s letter, or Sandra would think he had changed his mind.
Banks could see a knot of reporters outside the station. He looked at his watch: almost opening time. Pretty soon they’d all be ensconced in the Queen’s Arms padding out each other’s expense accounts. Riddle’s suicide was the kind of thing that got the London dailies this far up north. No official statements had been issued yet, and the Riddle house was still under secure guard. Of course, they could have a field day with this one: CHIEF CONSTABLE COMMITS SUICIDE WITH POLICE GUARD ONLY YARDS AWAY. They could spin that to read whatever way they wanted.
Rosalind was going down to stay with her parents in Barnstaple when she had made the funeral arrangements. Then, she had told Banks just before she left the previous evening, she would sell the house and decide what to do next. There was no hurry – she would be well provided for – but she would move as far away from Yorkshire as possible. Banks felt for her; he had absolutely no conception of how awful it must feel to lose a daughter and a spouse in the space of only a few days. He couldn’t even imagine how terrible it would be to lose Brian or Tracy.
Banks’s ancient heater hissed and sputtered as he sat down and thought over the previous evening’s conversation with Rosalind. One obvious point was that, by telling him what she had, she had inadvertently supplied him with a motive for getting rid of Emily. Or was it inadvertent? He had no doubt that Rosalind could be devious when she wanted to – after all, she was a lawyer – but he had no idea as to why she would want to incriminate herself that way. Put simply, though, if Rosalind wanted to keep Ruth’s existence from her husband, and if Emily was a loose cannon on the deck, then Rosalind had a motive for getting Emily out of the way.
And, by extension, she had an even better motive for wanting Ruth Walker out of the way permanently.
Since Riddle’s suicide, though, it was all academic. The money, the status, the celebrity, the possibility of political life – they had all vanished into thin air. Nothing remained for Rosalind except Benjamin and Ruth, and Banks doubted she would have anything more to do with Ruth after all that had happened. It was enough to prove the writer of Ecclesiastes right when he wrote that all is vanity.
Banks couldn’t bring himself to believe that Rosalind had actually given her own daughter cocaine laced with strychnine, or that she was right now plotting the demise of her other daughter, but at the same time he had to bear in mind that there was no love lost between any of them and that, once, Rosalind had given her child away to strangers and moved on to the wealth and power and their trappings she seemed to need so much. And when it came right down to it, no matter what Bank’s gut instinct told him, we are all capable of murder given the right incentive.
Whichever way he looked at it, Ruth Walker’s sudden prominence in the case was a complication he could do without. While Annie dug up information on Ruth’s background in Salford, Banks was trying to find out as much as he could about her present life in Kennington while he waited for a call from Burgess. He had already made several phone calls and had two pages of notes.
When his telephone rang, he thought it was Ruth’s boss calling him back, but it was the other phone call he’d been waiting for, Burgess’s the one that gave a green light for the second interview with Barry Clough. And not before time, too; they could only hang on to him for another couple of hours at most.
It seemed a pleasant enough neighborhood, Annie thought, standing by the side of the road looking at the houses. Not at all the sort of place you would expect in Salford, though if she was honest she would have to admit she had never been to Salford before and had no idea what to expect. Semi-detached houses lined both sides of the quiet road, each with a fair-sized front lawn tucked away behind a privet hedge. The cars parked in the street were not ostentatious, but they weren’t rusted and clapped-out ten-year-old Fiestas, either. Most of them were imported Japanese or Korean models, and Annie’s Astra didn’t look too out of place. Crime-wise, she guessed, the biggest problems would be the occasional break-in and car theft.
Number 39 was much like the other houses. As Whitmore had said, there was no indication whatsoever of the tragedy that had taken place there. Annie tried to imagine the flames, the smoke, the screams and neighbors standing out in their slippers and dressing gowns watching, helpless, as Ruth jumped from the upstairs window and her parents suffocated, unable even to get out of their beds.
“Help you, dearie?”
Annie turned and saw an elderly woman clutching a shopping bag with arthritis-crippled fingers.
“Only you look like you’re lost or something.”
“No,” said Annie, smiling to reassure the woman she wasn’t crazy or anything. “Just lost in thought, maybe.”
“Did you know the Walkers?”
“No.”
“Only you were looking at their house.”
“Yes. I’m a policewoman.” Annie introduced herself.
“Tattersall. Gladys Tattersall,” the woman said. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Don’t tell me you’re opening an investigation into the fire after all this time?”
“No. Do you think we should be?”
“Why don’t you come inside. I’ll put the kettle on. I’m at number thirty-seven here.”
It was the semi adjoining the Walker house. “It must have been frightening for you,” Annie said as she followed Mrs. Tattersall down the path and into the hall.
“I was more frightened during the bombing in the war. Mind you, I was just a lass then. Come in. Sit down.”
Annie entered the living room and sat on a plum velour armchair. A gilt-framed mirror hung over the fireplace and the inevitable television set sat on its stand in the corner. At the far end of the room was a dining table with four chairs arranged around it. Mrs. Tattersall went into the kitchen and came back. “Won’t be long,” she said, sitting on the sofa. “You’re right, though. It was a frightening night.”
“Was it you who called the fire brigade?”
“No. That was the Hennessy lad over the road. He was coming home late from a club and he saw the flames and smoke. It was him came knocking on our door and told us to get out fast. That’s me and my husband, Bernard. He passed away last winter. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Oh, it’s all right, lass. It was a blessing, really. It was in his lungs, though he was never a smoker. The painkillers weren’t doing him much good toward the end.”
Annie paused for a moment. It seemed appropriate after the mention of the late Mr. Tattersall. “Was your house damaged?”
Mrs. Tattersall shook her head. “We were lucky. The walls got a bit warm, I can tell you, but the fire brigade sprayed the exterior with enough water to start a swimming pool. It was August, you see, warm weather, and we’d left a window open, so a bit of it got inside and did some damage to the walls – peeling paper, stains, that sort of thing. But nothing serious. The insurance paid for it. Perhaps the worst that came out of it for us was having to live here while the people that bought the house after the fire hammered and banged away all hours of the day and night.”