Burgess wanted to know how much Zelda knew, or suspected, and perhaps when Banks knew that, he would be better able to gauge any danger to her. Burgess was right, though; neither he nor Ray could protect her full-time, and they couldn’t expect the police to do it. He could only hope that she was not in danger. If she was, it was probably his fault for bringing Phil Keane to her attention in the first place. But that photograph of Keane with Tadić, if that was who it was, hadn’t led to anything. Surely Hawkins would have had nothing to report about her, even if he had been working for the traffickers. Zelda wasn’t the only one in her office, the only threat to them, and Tadić’s gang could hardly murder them all. The thought calmed him down a little, but even then, he couldn’t get rid of that nagging worry at the back of his mind. He would call her tomorrow, find out when she was coming home.
As he finished his wine, Banks found his thoughts turning to Samir. He was still feeling depressed from his meeting with the boy’s uncle and aunt on Thursday. Samir had come on ahead to ‘light the way’ and make money to send his family so they might follow him, but somehow or other he had lost the address of his aunt and uncle and had probably — so Banks thought — ended up drifting into, or being forced into, working for a county lines drug dealer. Perhaps he was earning good money, or perhaps, like so many trafficked refugees, he was working off a debt which only grew bigger day by day. For Samir, in a way, had been stolen from his normal life, just as surely as Zelda had been stolen from hers. They had both made long journeys and encountered many obstacles. And the damned thing was that Samir’s parents had been killed in an explosion after he had left Syria, and he had had no idea that they were dead. He had been working to make money that could never bring him what he wanted. His family. And now he was dead, too.
Banks drained his glass, climbed back over the drystone wall and crossed his gravel drive to the cottage. Perhaps just a touch more Negroamaro and some Dylan before bed. The Nico moment had passed. He had been listening to the fragments and outtakes of Blood on the Tracks recently, and for some reason that had given him the desire to listen to its predecessor, the underrated Planet Waves, for the first time in a few years.
Chapter 11
Banks listened to Carolyn Sampson singing Bach’s ‘Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut’ as he drove to Blaydon’s house. A Bach cantata seemed appropriate for Sunday morning. The traffic was light, and soon he was driving once again through the wrought-iron gates and along the winding drive under an arch of trees to Blaydon’s estate, focused on the job at hand.
There were several cars parked at various angles on the gravel apron in front of the house, and someone had put a bowler hat on the head of one of the stone cherubs. When Banks turned off his engine and got out of the car, he could hear music coming from inside the house. Not a thumping, pounding beat, but something a bit more middle of the road. It took him a few moments to realise it was Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rhiannon’.
He rang the doorbell, expecting Roberts the butler to answer, but Blaydon himself opened the door. He was wearing an orange terry cloth robe and had a white towel draped around his neck.
‘Banks,’ he said. ‘What a surprise! You’ve caught me quite unexpectedly. But then I suppose that’s your intention, isn’t it? Anyway, do come in. There’s a bit of a party still going on, I think, but it shouldn’t interrupt our business. Whatever that may be.’
Banks followed him across the cavernous hallway. ‘Party?’ he said. ‘It’s almost noon on Sunday.’
‘Is it? I believe we started on Saturday afternoon, but you know how hard it is to get rid of guests sometimes. One can’t simply ask them to leave. Anyway, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. Is there ever a bad time for a party?’
On their way to Blaydon’s office, a teenage girl in a pair of stiletto heels, and nothing else, walked past them. She looked a bit lost, so Blaydon pointed and said, ‘The pool’s that way, Steffi, love.’
She wobbled off. ‘Granddaughter?’ said Banks.
Blaydon laughed. ‘Niece, I think. But not mine, thank God.’
‘Have you ever come across a Croatian called Tadić?’ Banks asked as they entered the office, which was in much the same state as it had been the last time he visited. ‘Petar Tadić?’
‘I can’t say as I have. What business is he in?’
Banks nodded towards the departing girl’s behind. ‘Supplying young girls like her.’
The corner of Blaydon’s mouth twitched in a semblance of a smile. ‘Then I’d have to say no. Honestly, I have no idea where she came from. I suppose I must have invited her.’
‘Unless she came with one of your guests.’
‘There’s always that.’
They settled down in the office, and Banks studied Blaydon. He seemed fairly fresh and youthful, considering he’d been throwing a party since the previous afternoon. Perhaps he had slept, or perhaps it was down to the white powder Banks guessed was around somewhere. But he wasn’t interested in that. If he wanted, he could call in the drugs squad and get a search warrant, but that wasn’t his intention, either. ‘There’ve been some developments since we last talked,’ he said. ‘I wanted to sound you out on a few things.’
‘Oh? Such as?’
‘For a start, we’ve identified the dead boy as Samir Boulad, a migrant from Syria. We’ve also been able to link him with a house on Hollyfield Lane, where we found the body of an old junkie called Howard Stokes. The house is owned by Tommy and Timmy Kerrigan.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Blaydon. ‘But what’s that—’
‘We think the boy was working as a cuckoo in Stokes’s house, selling drugs in the Eastvale area.’
‘I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. A “cuckoo”? Is that slang for something?’
‘You’ve heard of county lines?’
‘Read about them in the papers. Whatever will these blokes come up with next?’
‘We also know that Leka Gashi is most likely involved, taking over a number of county lines based in Leeds and supplying the outlying rural areas, including Eastvale. Remember him? Last time I talked to you, you said you’d never heard of him. But you’ve been seen with him, and we also happen to have found out that the two of you have known one another for about ten years, through your home on Corfu. He lived just over the bay, in Sarandë.’
‘I know a lot of people in that area,’ said Blaydon. ‘Nothing wrong with that. I’ve been a resident there on and off for almost twenty years.’
‘But Gashi is Albanian Mafia, and we think you’ve been helping him set up his operations locally.’
‘Me? Seriously?’
Banks nodded. ‘Seriously. A favour here, a favour there.’
‘But why would I need to resort to criminal activity when I’m making a bloody fortune legally?’
‘I’d say, for a start, you rather fancy yourself in with the big bad boys, but perhaps even more important than that, your business isn’t doing too well these days. You’re not making a fortune. The property development business in general is in a depression. Shopping centres are closing down, and there’s a slump in the housing market. All of which means you have a lot of real estate and a lot of debts, but no obvious way of improving your profits or your cash flow in the immediate future. Things could only get worse, of course, the political situation being what it is.’
‘Interesting economic analysis,’ said Blaydon. ‘Completely wrong, but interesting.’
‘So your business is doing fine?’
‘I’ve diversified enough to compensate for a bumpy ride in the property markets,’ he said. ‘And the Elmet Centre will be built, and it will be a great success. Multiplex cinema, restaurants, high-end stores and boutiques, the lot. It’s what Eastvale has been wanting for a long time. Not only that, it’ll be a destination for people from more depressed areas further north — Darlington, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Chester-le-Street. Because you know as well as I do that no matter how depressed an urban area is, most of the people still have a car and a steady supply of booze, fags and fish and chips. And they like to have fun.’