Owen leaned against the tank and sobbed until he couldn’t get his breath, then he ran to the bathroom and rinsed his face in cold water. After that, he stood gripping the cool sides of the sink until he stopped shaking. In his bedroom, most of his clothes had been ripped or cut up with scissors and scattered over his bed.
In the kitchen, the contents of the fridge and cupboards had been dumped on the lino and smeared in the manner of a Jackson Pollock canvas. The resultant gooey mess of old marmalade, eggs, baked beans, instant coffee, sour milk, cheese slices, sugar, tea bags, butter, rice, treacle, corn flakes and a whole rack of herbs and spices looked like a special effect from a horror film and smelled worse than the yeast factory he had once worked in as a student. Right in the middle, on top of it all, sat what looked like a curled, dried turd.
He knew he should call the police, if only for insurance purposes, but the last people on earth he felt like dealing with right now were the bloody police.
And he couldn’t face cleaning up.
Instead, he decided to give up on his first day of freedom. It was only about nine o’clock, just after dark, but Owen swept the torn and snipped-up clothes from his bed, burrowed under the sheets and pulled the covers over his head.
Chapter 14
I
Like Canute holding back the tide, or the Greeks fighting off the Trojans, Banks could only postpone the inevitable, not avoid it altogether. In fact, the inevitable was waiting for him at eight o’clock on Thursday morning when he got to his office-coffee in hand, listening to Barber’s setting of “Dover Beach” on his Walkman-in the strutting, fretting form of Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle.
“Banks, take those bloody things out of your ears. And where the hell do you think you were yesterday?”
Banks told him about talking to Batorac and Jelačić while he was in Leeds, but omitted Pamela’s chamber music concert and his quick visit to the Classical Record Shop.
Riddle’s presence called for a cigarette, he thought. He was trying to cut out the early morning smokes, but under the circumstances, lighting up now might achieve the double purpose of both soothing his nerves and aggravating Riddle into a cardiac arrest. He lit up. Riddle coughed and waved his hand about, but he wasn’t about to be distracted, or to die.
“What have you got to say about that fiasco in court yesterday?” the chief constable asked.
Banks shrugged. “There’s nothing much to say, sir,” he replied. “The jury found Pierce not guilty.”
“I know that. Bloody idiots.”
“That may well be, sir,” said Banks, “but there’s still nothing we can do about it. I thought we had a strong case. I’m certain the Crown will appeal. I’ll be talking to Stafford Oakes about it when the fuss dies down.”
“Hmph. We’re going to look like real idiots over this one, Banks, as if we haven’t got enough problems already.” Riddle ran his hand over his red, shiny head. “Anyway, I want you to know that I’ve asked Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe to have a look over the case files. Maybe he can bring a fresh viewpoint. Either you get more evidence on Pierce or, if he really didn’t do it, you damn well find out who did. I’ve decided I’m going to give you a week to redeem yourself on this before we hand it over to a team of independent investigators. I don’t want to do that, I know how bad it looks, an admission of failure, but we’ve no bloody choice if we don’t get results fast. I need hardly remind you of the impact a negative result might have on your future career, need I?”
“No, sir.”
“And go easy on the Harrisons. They’re bound to be upset by Pierce getting off, after everything they’ve been through. Tread softly. Understand?”
“I’ll tread softly, sir.”
Stupid pillock, Banks cursed after Riddle had left the office. A whole bloody week. And how, he wondered, could he do his job with one hand tied behind his back, and tied because of bloody privilege, class and wealth, not by compassion for a bereaved family? Again, he had the feeling he would soon be walking on very thin ice indeed if he were to get to the bottom of things.
He walked over to the window, pulled up the venetian blind and opened the sash a couple of inches. It was too early for tourists, but the market square was busy with Eastvalers starting their day, heels clicking on the cobbles as bank cashiers, dentists and estate agents went to work in the warren of offices around the town center. The shops were opening and the smell of fresh-baked bread spilled in with sunlight.
Looking to his right, Banks could see south along Market Street, with its teashops, boutiques, and specialty shops, and out front was the square itself, with the NatWest bank, an estate agent, the EI Toro coffee bar and Joplin’s newsagent’s at the opposite side. Over the shops were solicitors’ offices, dentists’ and doctors’ surgeries.
With a sigh, Banks walked over to his filing cabinet, where he kept his own records of the salient points of the Harrison case. The tons of paperwork and electromagnetic traces that a murder case generated couldn’t possibly be stored in one detective’s office, but most detectives had their own ways of summarizing and keeping track of the cases they worked on. Banks was no exception.
His filing cabinet contained his own notes on all the major cases he had been involved with since coming to Eastvale, plus a few he had brought with him from the Met. The notes might not mean much to anyone else, but with the use of his keen memory, Banks was able to fill in all the gaps his shorthand left out. His own notes also contained the hunches and accounts of off-the-record conversations that didn’t make their way into the official files and statements.
It was time, he thought, to clear his mind of Owen Pierce for the moment and go back to basics. Two possibilities remained: either Deborah Harrison had been murdered by someone she knew, or a stranger other than Owen Pierce had killed her. Putting the second possibility aside, Banks picked up the names and strands of the first. Before the Pierce business, he had believed that Deborah might have arranged to meet someone on her way home from the chess club. He would spend the morning reading his notes and thinking, he decided, then after lunch he would go back to where it all started: St. Mary’s graveyard.
II
“Siobhan would bloody well kill me if she knew I was here with you now,” Ivor said. “You don’t understand what it’s been like, mate. She’s still convinced you did it.”
They were standing at the bar of the Queen’s Arms on Thursday lunch-time, after Owen had spent the entire morning cleaning up his house.
“That’s ridiculous,” said Owen. “I know she never really liked me, but I thought she had more sense than that. Is that why you didn’t report the break-in?”
“I told you, it only happened the other day. You don’t know what it’s been like for us.”
“Tell me.”
Ivor sighed and took a swig from his pint. “You should have seen some of the things you got through your letterbox, for a start.”
“What things?”
“Shit, hate-letters, used johnnies, death threats, something that looked like a lump of kidney or liver. I had to go in and clean it all up, didn’t I?”
“I’m sorry. Did you report it to the police?”
“Of course I did. They sent a man round, but he didn’t do anything. What can you expect?”
“The police thought I was guilty. They still do.” Along with the rest of the world, he thought.
“Still,” Ivor said, “you weren’t living next door. You didn’t have to put up with it all.”
“Right. I was safely locked up in prison, all nice and comfortable in my little cell. Fucking luxury.”