“I think I know the answer to that,” Banks said. “Rebecca Charters surprised someone in the graveyard yesterday, in the wooded area behind the Inchcliffe Mausoleum. I thought nothing of it at the time-she didn’t get a good look at whoever it was-but now it seems too much of a coincidence. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny it was Jelačić.”
“It was hidden there?”
Banks nodded. “And he knew where. He’d seen her hide it. When Pierce was released, and I went to question Jelačić again last week, he must have remembered it and thought there might be some profit in getting hold of it. It’s ironic, really. That open satchel always bothered me. When I first saw it, I thought the killer might have taken something incriminating and most likely got rid of it. But Lady Harrison told me Deborah had lost her diary. I saw no reason why either of them would lie about that.”
“Unless there were secrets in it that Deborah didn’t want anyone to stumble across?”
“Or Lady Harrison. If you think about it, either of them could have lied. Sir Geoffrey had already told me that Deborah did have a diary, so his wife could hardly deny its existence.”
“But she could say Deborah had told her she lost it, and we’d have no way of checking.”
“Yes. And we probably wouldn’t even bother looking for it. Which we didn’t.”
“Didn’t the SOCOs search the graveyard the day after Deborah’s murder?”
“They did a ground search. We weren’t looking for a murder weapon, just Deborah’s knickers and anything the killer might have dropped in the graveyard. All we found were a few empty fag packets and some butts. Most of those were down to Jelačić, who we knew had worked in the graveyard anyway. We put the rest down to St. Mary’s girls sneaking out for a smoke. Besides, it’s only in books that murderers stand around smoking in the fog while they wait for their victims. Especially since now everyone knows we’ve a good chance of getting DNA from saliva.”
“What about the Inchcliffe Mausoleum? Deborah could have gained access to that, couldn’t she?”
“Yes. But we searched that, too, after we found the empty bottles. At least-”
The phone rang. Banks grabbed the receiver.
“Alan, it’s Ken Blackstone. Sorry it took so long.”
“Any luck?”
“We’ve got him.”
“Great. Did he give you any trouble?”
“He picked up a bruise or two in the struggle. Turns out he’d just left Pavelič’s house when our lads arrived. They followed him across the waste ground. He saw them coming and made a bolt for it, right across York Road and down into Richmond Hill. When they finally caught up with him he didn’t have the diary.”
Banks’s spirits dropped. “Didn’t have it? But, Ken-”
“Hold your horses, mate. Seems he dumped it when he realized he was being chased. Didn’t want to be caught with any incriminating evidence on him. Anyway, our lads went back over the route he’d taken and we found it in a rubbish bin on York Road.”
Banks breathed a sigh of relief.
“What do you want us to do with him?” Blackstone asked. “It’s midnight now. It’ll be going on for two in the morning by the time we get him to Eastvale.”
“You can sit on him overnight,” Banks said. “Nobody in this case is going anywhere in a hurry. Have him brought up in the morning. But, Ken-”
“Yes, it is Deborah Harrison’s diary.”
“Have you read it?”
“Enough.”
“And?”
“If it means what I think it does, Alan, it’s dynamite.”
“Tell me about it.”
And Blackstone told him.
Chapter 20
I
At ten o’clock the next morning, with Jelačić cooling his heels in a cell downstairs, Banks sat at his desk, coffee in hand, lit a cigarette and opened Deborah Harrison’s diary. Ken Blackstone had given him the gist of it over the phone the previous evening-and he had not slept well in consequence-but he wanted to read it for himself before making his next move.
Like the inside of the satchel flap, it was inscribed with her name and address in gradually broadening circles, from “Deborah Catherine Harrison” to “The Universe.”
First he checked the section for names, addresses and telephone numbers, but found nothing out of the ordinary, only family and school friends. Then he started to flip the pages.
He soon found that many of her entries were factual, with little attempt at analysis or poetic description. Some days she had left completely blank. And it wasn’t until summer, when she had supposedly “lost” it, that the diary got really interesting:
August 5
Yawn. This must be the most boring summer there has ever been in my entire existence. Went shopping today in the Swainsdale Center, just for something to do. What a grim place. Absolutely no decent shoes there at all and full of local yokels and horrible scruffy women dragging around even more horrible dirty children. I must work hard on mummy and persuade her to take me shopping to Paris again soon or I swear I shall just die from the boredom of this terrible provincial town. In the shopping center, I met that common little tart Tiffy Huxtable from dressage. She was with some friends and asked if I’d like to hang around with them. They didn’t look very interesting. They were all just sitting around the fountain looking scruffy and stupid, but there was one fit lad there so I said I might drop by one day. Life is so (yawn) boring that I really might do. Oh, how I do so need an adventure.
There were no entries for the next few days, then came this:
August 9
Tiffy’s crowd are a bunch of silly, common bores, just as I thought. All they can talk about is television and football and sex and pop music. I mean, really, darling, who gives a damn? I’m sure not one of them has read a book in years. Quite frankly, I’d rather stay at home and watch videos. Tracy Banks seems quite intelligent, but it turns out that she’s a policeman’s daughter, of all things. One boy looks a bit like that really cool actor from “Neighbors” and wears a great leather jacket. He really does have very nice eyes, too, with long lashes.
After that, things started to move quickly:
August 12
John (Oh, such disappointment! What a terribly common, dull and ordinary name, like “Tracy”!) stole a car tonight and took me for a joy-ride. Me!! Little miss goody-two-shoes. It was brill! If Daddy knew about it he would have apoplexy. It wasn’t much of a car, just a poky little Astra, but he drove it really fast out past Helmthorpe and parked in a field. It was so exciting even though I was a bit frightened we’d get caught by the police. When we parked he was like an octopus! I told him I’m not the kind of girl who does it the first time you go out, even if he did steal a car for me. Lads! I ask you. He asked me what he could do the first time, and I told him we could just kiss. I really didn’t mind when he put his tongue in my mouth but I wouldn’t let him touch my breasts. I didn’t tell him I had never done it before. Though I came close with Pierre at Montclair last year, and if he hadn’t been too much in a hurry and had that little accident first we might have done it.
Then, three days later, she wrote:
August 15
Tonight, in another “borrowed” car, as John calls them, we actually did it for the first time! I made him take a van this time, because it’s cramped in a little Astra, and we went in the back. I wasn’t going to go all the way at first but things just got out of control. It didn’t hurt, like they say it does. I don’t know if I like it or not. I did feel excited and sinful and wicked but I don’t think I had an orgasm. I don’t really know, because I don’t know what they feel like, but the earth didn’t move or anything like that, and I didn’t hear bells ringing, just a funny feeling between my legs and I felt a bit sore after. I wonder if I will ever have multiple orgasms? Charlene Gregory at school told me she can have orgasms just from the vibrations of the engine when she’s on a bus, but I don’t believe her. And Kirsty McCracken says she can get them from rubbing against her bicycle saddle while she’s riding. Maybe that’s true. I sometimes feel a bit funny when I’m horse-riding. Anyway, when he finished, it was really disgusting the way he just tied a knot in the condom and threw it out of the window into the field, and then he didn’t even seem to want to talk to me all the way back. Is this what happens when you give in to lads and let them have what they want? That’s what Mummy would say, even though she is French and they’re supposed to be so sexy and all.