‘She also raised the spectre of county lines, as did AC Gervaise earlier this morning. It makes a lot of sense when you consider the age of the victim and the drugs link. We’ve known that city dealers have been using kids as young as twelve or thirteen to transport and deal drugs for them in small towns and villages all over the country for some time now, though we haven’t got hold of anyone to confirm it’s happening here yet. Maybe our Mr Blaydon is a middleman in something like that? Maybe he’s just starting up? It seems he likes to play with the big boys. He’s got some sort of a gangster complex. Gerry, I’d like you to do your thing and put together a dossier on him. DI MacDonald said she’d send over her files this morning. I’ll make sure you get them. Have a word with the drugs squad, too. See if any of this rings any bells with them. But be careful what you let slip.’
‘Got it, guv,’ said Gerry. ‘I’m to ask the drugs squad if they know anything about Blaydon dealing drugs without mentioning that I’m asking about Blaydon dealing drugs.’
Banks grinned. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a way, Gerry.’
‘Yes, guv. What else is Blaydon into?’
‘Bit of everything, it seems,’ said Banks. ‘Your typical all-round equal opportunity criminal. Dodgy property deals, pop-up brothels—’
‘Pop-up brothels?’ said Gerry. ‘In Eastvale?’
‘Not yet, as far as I know. But stranger things have happened.’
‘I can just see your Mrs Grunwell running one of those,’ Annie said.
Banks smiled at the thought. ‘You may be right at that. There are stranger things than an eighty-five-year-old madam. Perhaps someone can ask her about it when we talk to her again. In the meantime, you’ve all got your tasks to do.’
Zelda had no idea what she would gain from visiting Hawkins’s house — probably nothing — but at least it got her out of the hotel room and gave her something to think about other than her bad dreams and her traumatic past. It was a fine spring day, and hordes of tourists with jackets or sweaters tied around their waists, mixed with the joggers on the wharf, stood with their backs to the river taking selfies with St Paul’s in the background. Zelda had chosen jeans, a black T-shirt and a tan kidskin jacket to wear for her outing, with her shoulder bag strapped across her chest and her black hair tied in a ponytail.
Across the Thames, sunlight reflected on the windows of the traffic jammed up on Victoria Embankment. Just past the Oxo Tower, she had to weave her way through a rowdy group of Italian schoolchildren, whose teachers didn’t seem to be making much of an attempt to keep them disciplined. At Waterloo Bridge, she climbed the steps between the National Theatre and the BFI and turned left towards Waterloo Underground station, where she took the Northern Line.
Zelda had almost as good a memory for directions as she did for faces. She had only visited Hawkins’s house once before, briefly, over a year ago, for a ‘department mixer’, but the minute she got off the tube at Highgate and made her way up the steps to Archway, she knew instinctively to turn left down the main road, then left again into a residential area of semi-detached houses. Some were painted in light pastel colours, but she remembered that Hawkins’s house had kept its basic red-brick facade, with white trim around the bay windows, a porch with two white Doric columns and a postage-stamp lawn behind a low brick wall and trimmed privet hedges. A short flight of steps led up to the front porch. Today, though, it would have stood out on any street. The windows were all gone and the garden was piled with burned sticks of furniture.
The neighbours were lucky, Zelda thought, when she spotted Hawkins’s burned-out house. Though their house appeared to be relatively undamaged, it was also cordoned off, and Zelda imagined the owners had been told to move out until the fire investigators were certain it was safe to return home.
Hawkins’s house was still structurally intact — and the only areas that showed fire damage were around the windows and door — but Zelda knew that the inside would be a mess of charred wood, twisted metal, melted plastic, glass and worse. She remembered the kitchen from her one brief visit. It had seemed very modern and high-tech to her, all brushed steel surfaces and professional cookware, which went hand in hand with the idea of Hawkins as a gourmet. She couldn’t have said for certain, but she didn’t think there had been a chip pan in sight.
What surprised her now was that there was still so much activity around the place. Though the fire engines must have been and gone, a fire inspector’s van was parked outside along with two police patrol cars. One uniformed officer stood on guard under the front porch, and as she passed, Zelda noticed a man in a white coverall walking out carrying a cardboard box, which he placed in the boot of an unmarked car. He paused to talk with another uniformed officer, who was sitting in one of the cars, before going back into the house again. Then a woman came out, also wearing a white coverall and carrying a cardboard box. Did they do this at every domestic fire scene? She could see one or two curtains twitching in the nearby houses.
Zelda didn’t want to be caught dawdling. They might think she was suspicious if they saw her watching them. She also wondered whether they had CCTV nearby, or someone noting down all passers-by who showed an interest. But it was like a car crash; a person could hardly walk by without stopping for a peek at whatever was going on. So she allowed herself to stand for a few moments. Perhaps she was getting paranoid, or she had read too many spy novels, but she also kept an eye out for signs of anyone following her. She hadn’t seen anyone, but that didn’t mean no one was there. She was already starting to feel out of her depth in this sleuthing game.
A man came out of one of the houses just in front of her, gave her a quick glance, then crossed the road and went into Hawkins’s house. The policeman at the door seemed to know him. It looked to Zelda as if he had probably been questioning the neighbour across the street, and probably not for the first time, as it was nearly three days since the fire. That indicated to her that they might not be quite satisfied with the chip-pan theory.
Zelda started walking down the street and noticed a pub sign about a hundred yards ahead. She checked her watch and saw it was almost one o’clock. Lunchtime. Why not treat herself to a pub lunch and make a few discreet inquiries while she was there?
If Blaydon’s mansion wasn’t quite as large as Banks had expected, his extensive gardens certainly made up for it. Banks drove through the open wrought-iron gates in a high surrounding wall of dark stone. A gravel drive wound first through woods of ash, hazel, beech and yew trees, which formed a natural tunnel, then through carefully designed and cultivated gardens — a trellised arbour, a wisteria grove or rose garden here, and a gazebo there — leading ultimately past neatly trimmed topiary and imitation Greek and Roman statuary, complete with missing limbs and lichen stains, to a large pond scabbed with water lilies. At its centre stood an elaborate fountain. Water sprayed in all directions from the mouths of cherubim and seraphim with puffy cheeks and curly hair. And was that a maze Banks glimpsed beyond the fountain?
‘Bloody hell,’ said Banks. ‘You’d think he’s had Capability Brown in to come up with this lot.’
Though the grounds resembled those of a Tuscan villa, the house itself was bland. It was certainly large, however — three storeys of limestone and brick, complete with bay windows, gables and a low pitched, slate roof. At the front stood an ostentatious porch supported by stone columns.