He was saved from bashing his head against a brick wall any longer by the arrival of Pamela Jeffreys, looking gorgeous in black leggings and a long white T-shirt with the Opera North logo on front. She had her hair tied back and wore black-rimmed glasses. As she sat down, she smiled at him. “The professional musician’s look,” she said. “Keeps my hair out of my eyes so I can read the music.”
“Would you like a drink?” Banks asked.
“Just a grapefruit juice with an ice-cube, please, if they’ve got any. I have to play through ‘Death and the Maiden’ again this afternoon.”
While he was at the bar, Banks also ordered two curries of the day.
“What’s been happening?” Pamela asked when he got back.
“Plenty,” said Banks, hoping to avoid the issue of Calvert’s identity for as long as possible. “But I’ve no idea how it all adds up. First off, have you ever heard of a man called Daniel Clegg?”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t say as I have.”
“He’s a solicitor.”
“He’s not mine. Actually, I don’t have one.”
“Are you sure Robert never mentioned him?”
“No, and I think I’d remember. But I already told you, he never talked about his work, and I never asked. What do I know or care about business?” She looked at him over the top of her glass as she sipped her grapefruit juice, thin black eyebrows raised.
“Did you ever introduce Robert to any of your friends?”
“No. He never seemed really interested in going to parties or having dinner with people or anything, so I never pushed it. They probably wouldn’t have got on very well anyway. Most of my friends are young and artsy. Robert’s more mature. Why?”
“Did you ever meet anyone he knew when you were out together, say in a restaurant or at the casino?”
“No, not that I can recall.”
“So you didn’t have much of a social life together?”
“No, we didn’t. Just a bit of gambling, the occasional day at the races, then it was mostly concerts or a video and a pizza. That was a bit of a problem, really. Robert was a lot of fun, but he didn’t like crowds. I’m a bit more of a social butterfly, myself.”
“I don’t mean to embarrass you,” Banks said slowly, “but did Robert show any interest in pornography? Did he like to take photographs, make videos? Anything like that?”
She looked at him open-mouthed, then burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, patting her chest. “You know, most girls might be insulted if you suggested they moonlighted in video nasties, but it’s so absurd I can’t help but laugh.”
“So the answer’s no?”
“Don’t look so embarrassed. Of course it’s no, you silly man. The very thought of it… ” She laughed again and Banks felt himself blush.
Their curries came and they tucked in. They were, as Pamela had said, delicious: delicately spiced rather than hot, with plenty of chunks of tender beef. They exchanged small talk over the food, edging away from the embarrassing topic Banks had brought up earlier. When they had finished, Pamela went for more drinks and Banks lit a cigarette. Was she going to ask now, he wondered, or was he going to have to bring it up? Maybe she was avoiding the moment, too.
Finally, she asked. “Did you find out anything? You know, about Robert and this Rothwell fellow.” Very casual, but Banks could sense the apprehension in her voice.
He scraped the end of his cigarette on the rim of the red metal ashtray and avoided her eyes. A group at the next table burst into laughter at a joke one of them had told.
“Well?”
He looked up. “It looks very much as if Robert Calvert and Keith Rothwell were the same person,” he said. “We found fingerprints that matched. I’m sorry.”
For a while she said nothing. Banks could see her beautiful almond eyes fill slowly with tears. “Shit,” she said, shaking her head and reaching in her bag for a tissue. “Sorry, this is stupid of me. I don’t know why I’m crying. We were just friends really. Can we… I mean… ” She gestured around.
“Of course.” Banks took her arm and they left the pub. Fifty yards along the main road was a park. Pamela looked at her watch and said, “I’ve still got a while yet, if you don’t mind walking a bit.”
“Not at all.”
They walked past a playground where children screamed with delight as the swings went higher and higher and the roundabout spun faster and faster. A small wading-pool had been filled with water because of the warm weather and more children played there, splashing one another, squealing and shouting, all under their mother’s or father’s watchful eyes. Nobody let their kids play out alone these days, as they used to do when he was a child, Banks noticed. Being in his job, knowing what he knew, he didn’t blame them.
Pamela seemed lost in her silent grief, head bowed, walking slowly. “It’s crazy,” she said at last. “I hardly knew Robert and things had cooled off between us anyway, and here I am behaving like this.”
Banks could think of nothing to say. He was aware of the warmth of her arm in his and of her scent: jasmine, he thought. What the hell did he think he was doing, walking arm in arm in the park with a beautiful suspect? What if someone saw him? But what could he do? The contact seemed to form an important link between Pamela and something real, something she could hold onto while the rest of her world shifted under her feet like fine sand. And he couldn’t deny that the touch of her skin meant something to him, too.
“I was wrong about him, wasn’t I?” she went on. “Dead wrong. He was married, you say? Kids?”
“A son and a daughter.”
“I should know. I read it in the paper but it didn’t sink in because I was so sure it couldn’t have been him. Robert seemed so… such a free spirit.”
“Maybe he was.”
She glanced sideways at him. “What do you mean?”
They stopped at an ice-cream van and Banks bought two cornets. “It was a different life he lived with you,” he said. “I can’t begin to understand a man like that. It’s not that he had a split personality or anything, just that he was capable of existing in very different ways.”
“What ways?” Pamela stuck out her pink tongue and licked the ice-cream.
“The people in Swainsdale knew him as a quiet, unassuming sort of bloke. Bit of a dry stick really.”
“Robert?” she gasped. “A dry stick?”
“Not Robert. Keith Rothwell. The hard-working, clean-living accountant. The man who put his spent matches back in the box in the opposite direction to the unused ones.”
“But Robert was so alive. He was fun to be with. We laughed a lot. We dreamed. We danced.”