“Of course,” Banks agreed. “And a long way away.”
“Yes…well. Look, about this Jelačić character. That’s a disturbing piece of news. Are you going to bring him in?”
“We’re pursuing inquiries in a number of directions,” Banks said as he and Susan walked to the door, annoyed at himself for sounding as if he were talking to the press.
Outside, they ducked through the reporters beyond the gate and got back into Banks’s car out of the rain.
“Interesting, don’t you think?” Banks said. “About the boyfriend.”
“Yes, sir. Either he really didn’t know, or he was lying.”
“But why lie?”
“Perhaps Deborah really did keep it a secret from him? If he’s a strict father, I could see her doing that.”
“Possibly. What about his alibi?”
“Very plausible,” said Susan. “I noticed you didn’t ask his wife for hers.”
“One at a time, Susan. One a time. Besides, I hardly think Sylvie Harrison murdered her own daughter. She’s not tall or strong enough, for a start.”
“If she goes to a health club, she’s probably strong enough,” Susan pointed out. “Maybe she stood on a stone?”
Banks sneezed into his handkerchief.
“Bless you sir,” Susan said.
They headed towards North Market Street. “You know,” said Banks, “I think there’s a lot more to Deborah’s life than people know, or are saying. I’d like to have another talk with her mother, alone if possible. Michael Clayton was right, teenagers don’t have a lot of time for adults, but daughters do sometimes confide in their mothers. And I’d like to find this John, if he exists.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does, sir. Deborah was an attractive girl. And she was sixteen. I’d be very surprised indeed if she had nothing at all to do with boys.”
Banks’s car phone beeped. He picked it up.
“DI Stott here.”
“What’s up, Barry?”
“I think we should meet up back at the station. We’ve got a description of a possible suspect in the Deborah Harrison murder, and it could be Jelačić. Vic Manson called, too. Jelačić’s prints are all over the vodka bottles.”
“We’re on our way.” Banks switched off the phone and put his foot down.
IV
All the way home on the rickety bus, Rebecca chewed her nails. She didn’t look once at the fading autumn scenery beyond the rain-streaked windows: the muted gold, russet and lemon leaves still clinging to the roadside trees, fragile and insubstantial as the moon’s halo; the soft greens and browns of the fields; the runic patterns of the drystone walls. She didn’t notice the way that the dale to her west, with its gradually steepening valley sides, was partially lost in mist and drizzle, making it look just like a Chinese water-color.
Rebecca just chewed her nails and wished that tight, tearing, churning feeling inside her would go away. She felt constantly on the verge of screaming, and she knew if she started she could never stop. She took deep breaths and held them to calm herself. They helped.
By the time the bus lumbered into Eastvale, she had regained some control of her emotions, but she still felt devastated, as if her world had been suddenly blown apart. She supposed it had to happen, that she had been living a lie, living on borrowed time, or whatever other cliché she could come up with to describe the last few months of her life.
Looking at it now, her life had simply become one hangover after another; either from booze or infidelity, it didn’t seem to make any difference. What pleasures she had found in getting drunk or having sex were so fleeting and so quickly overwhelmed by the pains-headaches, stomachache, guilt, shame-that they no longer seemed worthwhile. But was it too late now? Had she lost Daniel?
Almost there.
She pushed the bell and felt the driver and other passengers giving her strange looks as she waited for the bus to stop. What could they sense about her? Could they smell sex on her? She hadn’t washed before leaving Patrick in Richmond; she had simply pulled her clothes on as quickly as possible and left. But her raincoat covered the torn blouse. God, what could she do about that? If Daniel were home, he would notice. But what did it matter now? He knew anyway. Even so, she couldn’t stand the thought of his knowing she had been with Patrick this afternoon.
As the bus approached the stop, she saw the knot of reporters hanging about by the church walls and knew why the passengers were looking at her. She was getting off at St. Mary’s, the scene of the most horrible crime Eastvale had experienced in decades.
The bus came to a sharp halt and Rebecca would have tumbled forwards if she hadn’t been holding onto the metal pole. When the doors opened, she jumped off and dashed past the policeman at the gate, then ran through the churchyard to the vicarage.
When she got there she flung open the door and called out for Daniel. Silence. Thank God, he wasn’t home. Pulling off her torn blouse, she ran upstairs to the bathroom to wash the smell of sex from her body. Then she would be ready to face Daniel. She would have to be.
V
Ive Jelačić lived on the sixth floor of a ten-story block of flats in Burmantofts, off York Road. In the gray November drizzle, the maze of tall buildings reminded Banks of a newspaper picture he’d seen of workers’ quarters in some Siberian city.
“Charming, isn’t it?” said Detective Inspector Ken Blackstone, waiting for them outside. He looked at his watch. “Do you know, the council had to put slippery domes on all the roofs to stop kids climbing down on the upper balconies and breaking in through people’s windows?”
Immaculately dressed as usual, Blackstone made Banks aware that his top collar button was undone and his tie a little askew. Blackstone looked like an academic, with his wire-rimmed glasses, bookworm’s complexion and thinning sandy hair, a little curly around the ears, and he was, in fact, something of an expert on art and art fraud. Not that there was often much call for his area of expertise in Leeds. Nobody had knocked off any Atkinson Grimshaws recently, and only an idiot would try to fake a Henry Moore sculpture.
“Jelačić’s alibi checks out,” Blackstone said as they walked towards the entrance. “For what it’s worth. And we’ve had a poke about his flat. Nothing.”
“What do you think it’s worth?” Banks asked.
Blackstone pursed his cupid’s-bow lips. “Me? About as much as a fart in a bathtub. There were three of them-all Croatian. Stipe Pavič, Mile Pavelič and Vjeko Batorac. They’d probably swear night was day to protect one another from the police. Here it is. Take my word, the lift doesn’t work.”
Banks looked through the open sliding doors. The walls of the lift were covered in bright, spray-painted graffiti, and even from where he stood he could smell glue and urine. They took the stairs instead, surprising a couple of kids sniffing solvent on the third-floor stairwell. The kids ran. They knew the only people dressed like Blackstone in that neighborhood were likely to be coppers.
There were a few times when Banks regretted smoking, and the climb to the sixth-floor flat was one of them. Puffing for breath and sweating a little, he finally arrived at the outside walkway that went past the front doors.
Number 604 had once been red, but most of the paint had peeled off. It also looked as if it had been used for knife-throwing practice. Jelačić answered on the first knock, wearing jeans and a string vest. His upper body looked strong and muscular, and tufts of thick black hair spilled through the holes in the vest. With his height, longish hair and hooked nose, he certainly resembled the descriptions of the man seen in St. Mary’s yesterday evening.
“Why you bother me?” he said, standing aside to let them in and letting his eyes rest on Susan for longer than necessary. “I tell you already, I have done nothing.”
Inside, the flat was small enough to feel crowded with four people in it and tidy enough to surprise Banks. If nothing else, Ive Jelačić was a good housekeeper. An ironing board stood in one corner, with a shirt spread over it, and there was a small television set in the opposite corner. No video or stereo equipment in sight. The only other furniture in the room consisted of a battered sofa and a table with three chairs. Family photographs and a couple of religious icons stood on the mantelpiece over the electric fire.