But it wouldn’t do, he told himself. Feeling sorry for himself just wouldn’t bloody well do. So he wasn’t perfect. He had contemplated committing adultery. So what? He wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last. He felt responsible for Pamela Jeffreys’s injuries. Maybe, just maybe, he should have acted differently when he knew he was being followed – put a guard on everyone he had talked to – but it was a big maybe. He wasn’t God almighty; he couldn’t anticipate everything.
Most detective work was pissing about in the dark, anyway, waiting for the light to grow slowly, as it was doing now outside. On rare occasions, the truth hit you quick as a lightning flash. But they were very rare occasions indeed. Even then, before the lightning hit you, you had spent months looking for the right place to stand.
So last night, in the alley, he had lost it. So what? Two yobbos had tried to mug him and he had gone wild on them, plastered them all over the walls. Most of it was a blur now, but he remembered enough to embarrass him.
They had just been kids, really, early twenties at most, out looking for aggro. But one had been black and one white, like the men who had put Pamela Jeffreys in hospital. Banks knew in his mind that they weren’t the same ones, but when the bubble of his anger burst and the fury unleashed itself, when the blood started to flow, they were the ones he was lashing out at. No wonder they ran away shitting bricks. There was nothing rational about it; blinded by rage, he had thought he was hurting the people he really wanted to hurt. He had taken out his anger on two unwary substitutes. They had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Still, he told himself, they bloody well deserved it, bleeding amateurs. At least he might have discouraged two apprentice muggers from their chosen career. And nobody would ever know what happened. They certainly wouldn’t say anything. After all, he hadn’t killed them; they had managed to run away and lick their wounds. They would survive to fight again another day, if they got back the bottle. It wasn’t the worst thing he had ever done. And soon, surely, that feeling of being a total fucking idiot would go away and he could get on with his life.
He dozed briefly and woke again at five forty-one. Not quite as bad as four thirty-two, he thought, at first glance. He got up and looked outside at the gray morning. The road and pavement were still awash with puddles. Green double-decker buses were already running people to work, splashing up the water where it had collected in the gutters. Banks was on the fifth floor, and he could see the gray sky streaked with blood and milk behind the majestic dome of the Town Hall. Already, dim shadows were shuffling out of the Salvation Army shelter opposite.
Banks made a cup of instant coffee with the electric kettle and sachet provided and took it back to bed with him. He turned on the bedside light and picked up the copy of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy he had brought with him. Guy Crouchback’s misadventures should cheer him up a bit. At least he didn’t have that much misfortune.
He would put last night behind him, he decided, sipping the weak Nescafé. A man was allowed his mistakes; he had just better not cling to them or they would drag him down to the bottom of the abyss.
2
At nine o’clock that morning, Susan Gay sat alone on the second pew from the back of the small non-denominational chapel at Eastvale Crematorium. It was cool inside, thanks to a large fan below the western stained-glass window, and the lighting was suitably dimmed. The place smelled of shoe polish, not the usual musty hymn-books she associated with chapels.
The service went briskly enough. The rent-a-vicar said a few words about Keith Rothwell’s devotion to his family and his dedication to hard work, then he read Psalm 51. Susan thought it particularly apt, all that guff about being cleansed of sin. “Bloodguiltiness” was a word she hadn’t heard before, and it made her give a little shudder without knowing why. The mention of “burnt offering” brought the unwelcome image of Rothwell’s corpse, the head a black mess, as if it had indeed been burned, but “Wash me; and I shall be whiter than snow” almost made her laugh out loud. It brought to mind an old television advert for detergent, then Rothwell’s money-laundering.
After the vicar read a bit from “Revelation” about a new heaven and a new earth and all sorrow, pain and death disappearing, it was all over.
The Rothwells, all suitably dressed in shades of black for the occasion, sat in the front row. Throughout the ceremony, Mary sat stiffly, Alison kept glancing around her at the stained-glass and the font, and Tom sat hunched over. As far as Susan could tell from behind, nobody reached for a handkerchief.
When she watched them walk out into the sunlight, she could tell she was right: dry eyes; not a tear in sight; Mary Rothwell doing her stiff-upper-lip routine, bearing her loss and grief with dignity.
Everyone ignored Susan except Tom, who approached her and said, “You’re the detective who was at our house when I got back from the States, aren’t you?”
“Yes. DC Susan Gay, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I hadn’t forgotten. What are you doing here?”
“I’d like a word with you, if you can spare a few minutes.”
Tom took a silver pocket-watch from his waistcoat and looked at it. Susan saw it was attached by a chain to one of his belt loops. Somehow, it seemed like a very affected gesture in one so young. Maybe it had impressed the Americans. He slipped it back in his pocket. “All right,” he said. “But I can’t come just now. Everyone’s going back to Mr. Pratt’s for coffee and cake. I’ll have to show up.”
“Of course. How about an hour?”
“Okay.”
“Look, it’s a fine morning,” Susan said. “How about that café by the river, the one near the pre-Roman site?”
“I know it.”
Susan busied herself with paperwork back at the station for three quarters of an hour, then set off to keep her appointment.
The River Swain was flowing swiftly, still high after the spring thaw. On the grass by the bank, the owner of the small café had stuck a couple of rickety white tables and chairs. Susan bought a tin of Coke for Tom and a pot of tea for herself and they sat by the water. Two weeping willows framed the rolling farmland beyond. Right across, in the center of the view, was a field of bright yellow rape-seed.
Flies buzzed around her head, and Susan kept fanning them away. “How was it?” she asked.
Tom shrugged. “I hate those kinds of social gatherings,” he said. “And Laurence Pratt gets on my nerves.”
Susan smiled. At least they had something in common. She let the silence stretch as she looked closely at the youth sitting opposite her. Wavy brown hair fell over his ears about halfway down his neck. He was tanned, slender, handsome, and he looked as good now in his mourning suit as he had in torn jeans and a denim shirt. The more she let herself simply feel his presence, the more she was sure she was right about him.