‘Did you find a phone among his stuff?’
‘I think there was one zipped up in the jacket pocket. It felt heavy and bulky like a mobile, anyway.’
‘But you didn’t examine it?’
‘No. I just carried the stuff back to the Merc, bunged it in the boot and drove back to the market square.’
The CCTV had lost the Merc after it had left The Oak’s car park, so Banks had no way of knowing whether Wallace had made any other stops on his way. He doubted it, though, as the timing worked out. Besides, Mrs Grunwell had said she heard a crunching of gears as the car set off, and the Merc’s gears were smooth as silk. ‘What about later, when you picked up Blaydon and the Kerrigans?’
‘It wasn’t much later. Ten or fifteen minutes. Naturally, Mr Blaydon wanted to know where the boy was, but he wasn’t going to ask in front of those two numpties. After I’d dropped them off, he asked me, and I told him.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He was a bit pissed off, but not that much. Seemed glad I’d got the backpack, most of all.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Annie. ‘The Albanians would no doubt want their drugs back.’
Frankie grunted. ‘I don’t know nothing about that.’
‘What happened to the backpack?’ Banks asked.
‘I don’t know. I never saw it again. Mr Blaydon took it and the jacket with him when I got him home.’
Banks figured that Blaydon got the phone call in Le Coq d’Or from Gashi, who may have answered the dedicated county line call from Samir, or had the message passed on to him by one of his minions. As Gashi was far away in London, he asked Blaydon to go fetch the boy and his drugs and get them back to Leeds. It didn’t matter that Blaydon was already in Eastvale. Gashi had no reason to know that; it was a mere coincidence, and a convenience. He would have expected Blaydon to drive up to Eastvale from Harrogate, anyway. It was a lot closer than London, and that was probably exactly the kind of favour Gashi asked for to get Blaydon even more deeply enmeshed in his games. As far as Samir was concerned... well, he’d freaked out and run away, and Gashi and Blaydon would both no doubt have imagined that he would make his way back to Leeds eventually, that he just got scared and bolted. Even if he never made it back, it didn’t matter to them; he was hardly likely to talk, and he was expendable. There were plenty more where he came from. Most important, they’d got their drugs back. All they had to do was lie low until the fuss died down and then start up again somewhere else. No doubt by that time, however, Gashi would have started to have doubts about Blaydon, and just how much use he was to them, especially now the Elmet deal was going sour and the Hollyfield house was no longer available.
‘What time did you see Samir running out of the house?’
‘Samir?’
‘The Middle Eastern boy who was killed.’
‘That was him? I’d no idea. I couldn’t see the colour of his skin. He was fast, I’ll say that for him.’
‘What time?’
‘A bit after ten. Ten past, maybe.’
‘And you got back to the market square when?’
‘Maybe half an hour later. Bit more. Mr Blaydon doesn’t like me smoking in the car, so I had a couple of cigarettes in The Oak car park, then drove around a bit.’
‘Why?’
‘I like driving. It relaxes me. And to be honest, I was a bit disturbed.’
‘By what you’d seen?’
‘By everything that had happened.’
‘Did you have any idea what was really going on that night?’ Banks asked.
‘No,’ said Frankie. ‘I was just doing my job. I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know.’
Banks couldn’t tell whether he was lying, but it didn’t matter. Whatever part Frankie had played, it was a minor one. ‘Tell me, Frankie,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you didn’t run after the lad and catch him? Then one thing led to another?’
‘There you go, see,’ Frankie spat. ‘Typical copper talk. Tell you what I know and that’s the thanks I get.’
‘Maybe you’re just telling me as much as you want me to know. Or as much as Blaydon wants me to know.’
‘Well, you can think what you like, but you’ll not get any more from me, and you’ll not prove anything is other than what I’ve told you, either.’
‘And the boy?’
‘No idea. Never saw him again.’
‘The last you saw of him?’
‘I told you. Running up the street, vanishing into the night.’
Into the park, Banks thought.
After leaving Frankie Wallace to his packing, Banks got home to Newhope Cottage early enough to cook himself a reasonably healthy meal of salmon, rice and asparagus — mostly in the microwave — and do a spot of tidying up around the place before Zelda came. She had replied to the message he had left and suggested she would drop by later in the evening.
Banks went around the cottage putting CDs and DVDs back in their cases and on the shelves, washing yesterday’s dishes, giving the wood floor and carpets a quick run around with the vacuum cleaner, dumping the contents of the laundry basket into the washing machine and generally getting in touch with his domestic side. When he looked out of the conservatory on to his small back garden and saw the bindweed and the mint growing wild, he knew he would have to find a weekend afternoon to spend out there. He wasn’t much of a gardener — even basic maintenance was a chore — and he usually hoped poor weather would provide him with an excuse for staying indoors, or for venturing out for a long walk around Tetchley Fell — for good walking weather and fine gardening weather were not the same thing at all in his book.
Before leaving York, Banks and Annie had struggled with whether to arrest Frankie, and decided in the end against it. Let him run off back to Glasgow. He was clearly scared — and if a hard man like Frankie Wallace was scared, then there was something to be scared of. They could lock him up, even if only for a short period of custody, but what would be the point? They would have to let him go eventually, as they had no case against him, no evidence. Best to let him go. He had always been at best a minor villain, hired muscle, and he had certainly had no reason to kill Samir.
And the timing didn’t work. According to Dr Galway, hypostasis indicated that Samir had been dead on his back for between an hour and an hour and a half, and the witnesses on Malden Terrace had heard the car close to half-past eleven. By then, Blaydon’s Merc had already been spotted by ANPR well on its way out of town. Besides, Banks believed his story and was starting to have a few new ideas about that whole business.
Even if they found evidence later that Frankie had been involved, it wouldn’t be too difficult to track him down in Glasgow, or wherever he went. Banks had asked the local forces to keep a discreet eye on him, and his car number plate had been flagged for ANPR recognition. Wherever Frankie Wallace went, he wouldn’t be completely out of their sight until this was all over. In addition, Banks had already arranged to send out a CSI team from York CID to carry out some blood tests on Blaydon’s Merc and have a good poke around his mansion and grounds. Just in case.
It was getting dark. The sun was setting west of Tetchley Fell outside the conservatory windows, and the sky between the hills was streaked with vermillion, purple and grey. Satisfied the place was as spic and span as he could get it without hired help, he checked Apple Music on his mobile — set up for him by his son Brian on his last visit — and streamed a Sally Beamish viola concerto. Then he poured himself a glass of Nero d’Avola and settled down to read Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor and wait.