He intended to part company with Stott after the next drink and visit an old friend while he was in Leeds: Pamela Jeffreys, a violist with the English Northern Philharmonic orchestra. About a year ago, she had been badly hurt in an attack for which Banks still blamed himself. She wasn’t back in the orchestra yet, but she was working hard and getting there fast, and this afternoon, she was playing a chamber concert at the university’s music department. It might go some small way towards making up for the disappointment in court this morning.
He might also, while he was so close, drop in at the Classical Record Shop and see about the Samuel Barber song collection he had been wanting for a while. Listening to Dawn Upshaw singing “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” on the drive down had made him think about it.
On the other hand, the not-guilty verdict changed things. While he was in Leeds, he would also phone DI Ken Blackstone and see about having a chat with one of Jelačić’s card-playing cronies. He might even have another word with Jelačić himself.
Though the Crown would probably appeal the verdict, as far as Banks was concerned it was back to the drawing-board for the time being, a drawing-board he was beginning to feel he should never have left in the first place. And Ive Jelačić was certainly high on his list of loose ends.
“Damn that judge,” said Stott when he had thanked Banks for the drink. “Just thinking about it makes my blood boil.”
“I’m not convinced Michelle Chappel’s testimony would have helped as much as you think, Barry,” Banks said.
“Why not? At least it proves he had homicidal tendencies towards young women of Deborah Harrison’s physical type.”
“It proves nothing of the kind,” said Banks. “Okay, I’ll admit, I was as excited about the psychological possibilities it opened up as you were. And, yes, I was bloody annoyed that Simmonds excluded it. But now I think about it, looking at her in court, I’m not so sure.”
Stott scratched the back of his left ear and frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I think that defense lawyer, Shirley Castle, would have made mincemeat of her, that’s why. In the final analysis, she’d have had the jury believing that Michelle Chappel was lying, that she did what she did out of pure vindictiveness towards Pierce, for revenge, because she harbored a grudge for the way he treated her.”
“And rightly so, after what he did to her.”
“But don’t you see how it would discredit her testimony, Barry, make her seem like a lying bitch? Especially with such criticisms coming from another woman. That could be pretty damning. She’s good is Ms. Castle. I’ve been up against her before. She’d have made sure that Pierce convinced them with his version of that night’s events. And if they believed that he had simply been warding off the frenzied attack of a hysterical woman, then he could have gained their sympathy.”
Stott took off his glasses and polished them with a spotless handkerchief. “I still think it would have helped us get a conviction.”
“Well there’s no way of knowing now, is there?”
“I suppose not,” Stott said glumly. “What do we do now?”
“There’s not much more we can do.”
“Reopen the investigation?”
Banks sipped some beer. “Oh, yes. I think so, don’t you? After all, Barry, someone out there killed Deborah Harrison, and according to all the hallmarks, it looks very much like someone who might do it again.”
Chapter 13
I
Vjeko Batorac was out when Banks called in the afternoon, and a neighbor said he usually came home from work at about five-thirty. Ken Blackstone, who said Batorac was probably the most believable of Jelačić’s three card-playing cronies, had given Banks the address.
Grateful for the free time, Banks played truant; he went up to the university and spent a delightful hour listening to Vaughan Williams’s String Quartet No. 2.
And he was glad he did. As he watched and listened, all the stress and disappointment of the verdict, all his fears of having persecuted the wrong man in the first place, seemed to become as insubstantial as air, at least for a while.
As he watched Pamela Jeffreys play in the bright room, prisms of light all around, her glossy raven hair dancing, skin like burnished gold, the diamond stud in her right nostril flashing in the sun, he thought not for the first time that there was something intensely, spiritually erotic about a beautiful woman playing music.
It seemed, as he watched, that Pamela first projected her spirit and emotions into her instrument, the bow an extension of her arm, fingers and strings inseparable, then she became the music, flowing and soaring with its rhythms and melodies, dipping and swooping, eyes closed, oblivious to the world outside.
Or so it seemed. Though he had taken a few hesitant steps towards learning the piano, Banks couldn’t actually play an instrument, so he was willing to admit he might be romanticizing. Maybe she was thinking about her pay-check.
Erotic fantasies aside, it was all perfectly innocent. They had coffee and a chat afterwards, then Banks headed back to Batorac’s house.
Vjeko Batorac lived in a small pre-war terrace house in Sheepscar, near the junction of Roseville Road and Roundhay Road, less than a mile from Jelačić’s Burmantofts flat. There was no garden; the front door, which looked as if it had been freshly painted, opened directly onto the pavement. This time, a few minutes before six o’clock, Banks’s knock was answered by a slight, hollow-cheeked young man with fair hair, wearing oil-stained jeans and a clean white T-shirt.
“Molim?” said Batorac, frowning.
“Mr. Batorac?” Banks asked, showing his warrant card. “I wonder if I might have a word? Do you speak English?”
Batorac nodded, looking puzzled. “What is it about?”
“Ive Jelačić.”
Batorac rolled his eyes and opened the door wider. “You’d better come in.”
The living-room was sunny and clean, and just a hint of baby smells mingled with those of cabbage and garlic from the kitchen. What surprised Banks most of all was the bookcase that took up most of one wall, crammed with English classics and foreign titles he couldn’t read. Serbo-Croatian, he guessed. The “Six O’Clock News” was on Radio 4 in the background.
“That’s quite a library you’ve got.”
Batorac beamed. “Hvala lipo. Thank you very much. Yes, I love books. In my own country I was a school-teacher. I taught English, so I have studied your language for many years. I also write poetry.”
“What do you do here?”
Batorac smiled ironically. “I am a garage mechanic. Fortunately for me, in Croatia you had to be good at fixing your own car.” He shrugged. “It’s a good job. Not much pay, but my boss treats me well.”
A baby started crying. Batorac excused himself for a moment and went upstairs. Banks examined the titles in more detail as he waited: Dickens, Hardy, Keats, Austen, Balzac, Flaubert, Coleridge, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Milton, Kafka…Many he had read, but many were books he had promised himself to read and never got around to. The baby fell silent and Batorac came back.
“Sorry,” he said. “We have a friend takes care of little Jelena during the day, while we work. When she comes home she…how do you say this…she misses her mother and father?”
Banks smiled. “Yes, that’s right. She has missed you.”
“Has missed. Yes. Sometimes I get the tenses wrong. What is it you wanted to see me about? Sit down, please.”
Banks sat. This didn’t look or smell like the kind of house where one could smoke, especially with the baby around, so he resigned himself to refrain. It would no doubt do him good. “Remember,” he asked, “a few months ago when the local police asked you about an evening you said you played cards with Ive Jelačić?”