The judge had refused to grant a search warrant for Blaydon’s property on the scant evidence the police had presented, dismissing it as hearsay and circumstantial. Banks suspected there was more to it than that — perhaps the occasional golf game, tips on the property market — but he held his tongue. Even without a search warrant, they had one or two things they wanted to discuss in more detail with Blaydon.
They wouldn’t have expected to find any incriminating evidence at his house, anyway. Blaydon would be a bigger fool than Banks thought he was if he hadn’t quickly got rid of Samir’s backpack and jacket after Frankie had handed them over. Gashi would have wanted his drugs back, of course, and Blaydon would probably have burned the jacket. At best they might find a few grams of white powder left over from a party, but that was a charge a man like Blaydon could beat in his sleep with the lawyers he could afford.
The fountain seemed to have dried up, or someone had turned it off at the mains. A dead bird floated among fallen leaves in the brackish water that remained. It had been windy and raining just that morning, but now nothing stirred in the humid air. The topiaries looked frightening and made Banks think of Stephen King’s Overlook Hotel in The Shining, where the trimmed shapes came to life. Banks felt a trickle of sweat down his back as he walked to the front door and rang the bell. Nobody answered. As far as he could tell, all was silent inside. He touched the door and was surprised when it swung slowly open on its hinges. He glanced at Gerry, went into the hallway and called out Blaydon’s name. Nobody answered. Not even Roberts, the butler. His voice echoed in the cavernous space.
They crossed the entrance hall, footsteps echoing, and checked the office. Empty. The window was open a few inches, so Blaydon surely couldn’t be very far away. Thinking that maybe on a day like today he might be lounging by the pool with his headphones on, or taking a dip to cool himself off, they followed the maze of the corridors to the glassed-in pool area. Banks wasn’t sure at what point he noticed that the chlorine smell was mixed with something less easily defined, sweet yet metallic. Gerry was the first to mention it. ‘What’s that funny smell?’
When they got to the pool, Banks walked through the doorway.
Blaydon was in the water, all right. At least, Banks assumed it was Blaydon. It was hard to tell as the water was tinged red and whatever floated there lay face down, naked, with his arms stretched out at the sides like a cross. Underneath him spread what looked like a tangle of tentacles, as if they belonged to an octopus or a giant squid. A Hockney swimming pool painted by Francis Bacon.
Banks had just realised that the tentacles were Blaydon’s intestines when he remembered Gerry, and turned to stop her before she got too close. But he was too late. A swarm of flies that had somehow got in rose from the body at the sound of her footsteps echoing on the tiles. Gerry froze in the doorway, turned white and doubled over, vomiting against the wall.
‘I’m all right, guv,’ she protested, waving Banks away, obviously embarrassed, when he tried to comfort her. ‘It’s just the shock, that’s all. And that smell.’
‘You’re sure?’
She nodded. ‘Maybe a glass of water.’
There was a wet bar beside the pool. Banks poured some tap water into a glass. Gerry drank it and took out a handkerchief to wipe her lips. ‘That’s better.’
‘Look.’ Banks pointed across the pool.
They hadn’t noticed in the initial shock of seeing Blaydon’s floating body, but the butler Roberts lay slumped against the Plexiglas, down which ran a long, ugly smear of red. Roberts hadn’t been disfigured, by the looks of him, simply shot or stabbed. Whatever had happened, he was every bit as dead as his boss.
Banks reached for his mobile.
‘Christ, what an abattoir,’ said Gerry. ‘What could he have done to deserve this?’
Banks glanced at her. ‘Deserve? Nothing, I should imagine. With people like Gashi’s lot, the punishment is usually way out of proportion to any presumed sin.’
‘But he was in with them.’
‘To a point,’ Banks said. ‘Remember, I always said Blaydon was trying to play with the big boys. Out of his league. I even warned him about it the first time we met.’
‘He obviously didn’t listen.’
‘No. It doesn’t matter what he did, why they did it. For once motive isn’t really an issue. Maybe they thought he’d ripped them off? I’m sure he lost their laundered money on investments in the Elmet Centre development. Maybe they thought he’d stolen drugs from them, too, or was a police informer? Whatever it was, they clearly thought he had crossed or betrayed them in some way, and they wanted to make a point.’
‘They’ve certainly done that.’
Banks remembered acting like an old mate the last time he had seen Blaydon alive, patting him on the shoulder while the man in the suit and sunglasses was watching them from across the hall. Had his been the touch of Judas, the mark of death? Had they made the assumption that Blaydon was a police informer? Was he partly responsible for what had happened here?
But Banks brushed such wild and pointless thoughts aside. Blaydon had enjoyed flirting with the dark side, and it had swallowed him whole. Simple as that. Maybe they would catch the men who had done this, and maybe they wouldn’t. If the killers had any sense, they would be back in Albania by now.
‘Come on.’ Banks took Gerry gently by the arm and led her back outside, into the fresh air. She still seemed to be walking in a daze, and he wished he had a hip flask of whisky or brandy or something to put more of a spring in her step. There was sure to be some in the house, but it was best not to disturb anything more than he had done already.
They sat in silence on the parapet of the still fountain; only the birds singing in the trees that ringed the estate made any sounds. Banks phoned in for the full treatment — CSIs, uniformed officers, police surgeon, photographer, the lot — and before long he could hear the sounds of the emergency vehicles, distant at first, then getting louder and louder as they approached.
Raymond’s flight was late, and it had started to rain again by the time Zelda had negotiated their way out of Newcastle Airport. Leeds and Bradford would have been marginally closer, but the connection time with the flight from LA didn’t work out. So Newcastle it was.
They were soon heading south on the A1, past the Metro Centre, over the Tyne with its famous bridges and the Sage on its south bank in Gateshead. Then on past Team Valley and the Angel of the North, which Raymond said he had always thought looked like a rusty Spitfire standing on its tail.
But Raymond was tired after his long journey, and after a while of excited chat and numerous mentions of how glad he was to be back with Zelda, he drifted off to sleep in the passenger seat and Zelda concentrated on the road through the hypnotic rhythm of the windscreen wipers.
The rain was coming down quite heavily by the time they got back to the cottage above Lyndgarth, but inside it was still cosy and dry. While Raymond unpacked, Zelda put the kettle on and made a pot of tea, chatting about her time in London — the Picasso exhibition she had never seen, the theatre she had never attended, the book shopping she had never done. In his turn, Raymond told her about the parties and the meetings with fellow artists and gallery owners in New York and Los Angeles, and gave her as a present a tiny sketch by a famous artist he knew she admired.
Zelda made Raymond a bacon buttie — his favourite snack, and something he hadn’t been able to find in America. After that, they sat and sipped tea and talked until Raymond could no longer keep his eyes open.