‘Ye-es.’ She clearly didn’t know what he meant, but that didn’t matter.
‘It’s very important that you tell him there’ll be no action taken against him and that he should talk to me personally. Is that clear?’
‘Yes. I don’t know what all this is about, but I’ll do as you say. And thank you.’
‘Thank you.’ Banks headed for a pub lunch in the Queen’s Arms. It was too early to celebrate anything yet, but he kept his fingers crossed as he walked in the thin November sunshine across Market Street.
9
Norma Cheverel’s luxury flat was every bit as elegant and expensively furnished as Banks had expected. Some of the paintings on her walls were originals, and her furniture was all hand-crafted, by the look of it. She even had an oak table from Robert Thompson’s workshop in Kilburn. Banks recognized the trademark: a mouse carved on one of the legs.
When Banks and Susan turned up at seven-thirty that evening, Norma had just finished stacking her dinner dishes in the machine. She had changed from her work outfit and wore black leggings, showing off her shapely legs, and a green woollen sweater that barely covered her hips. She sat down and crossed her legs, cigarette poised over the ashtray beside her.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Do I need my solicitor yet?’
‘I think you do,’ said Banks. ‘But I’d like you to answer a few questions first.’
‘I’m not saying a word without my solicitor present.’
‘Very well,’ said Banks. ‘That’s your right. Let me do the talking, then.’
She sniffed and flicked a half-inch of ash into the ashtray beside her. Her crossed leg was swinging up and down as if some demented doctor were tapping the reflex.
‘I might as well tell you first of all that we’ve got Michael Bannister’s testimony,’ Banks began.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you do. It was you who took those photographs at the banquet and in the hotel room afterwards. It was you who spent the night with Michael Bannister, not Kim Fosse.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No, it’s not. You told him later that if anyone asked he’d better say it was Kim Fosse he slept with or you’d tell his wife what he’d done. You knew Lucy had a weak heart, and that he thought such a shock might kill her.’
Norma had turned a shade paler. Banks scratched the small scar beside his right eye. Often, when it itched, it was telling him he was on the right track. ‘As it turns out,’ he went on, ‘Lucy Bannister was well aware that her husband occasionally slept with other women. It was just something they didn’t talk about. He thought he was protecting her feelings; she thought she was protecting his. I suggested they talk about it.’
‘Bastard,’ Norma Cheverel hissed. Banks didn’t know whether she meant him or Michael Bannister.
‘You seduced Michael Bannister and you planted incriminating photographs on Kim Fosse’s living-room table after you’d killed her in the hope that we would think her husband had done it in a jealous rage, a rage that you also helped set us up to believe. We’ve checked the processing services, too. I’m sure you chose Fotomat because it’s busy, quick and impersonal, but the man behind the counter remembers you picking up a film on Wednesday, not Kim Fosse. Beauty has its drawbacks, Norma.’
Norma got up, tossed back her hair and went to pour herself a drink. She didn’t offer Banks or Susan anything. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said. ‘And a hell of an imagination. You should work for television.’
‘You knew that David Fosse walked the dog every evening, come rain or shine, between six forty-five and seven-thirty. It was easy for you to drive over to the house, park your car a little distance away, get the unsuspecting Kim to let you in, and then, still wearing gloves, hit her with the trophy and plant the photos. After that, all you had to do was convince us of her infidelity and her husband’s violent jealousy. There was even a scrap of truth in it. Except you didn’t bargain for Lucy Bannister, did you?’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Norma said. ‘What about the film that was in the camera? You can’t prove any of this.’
‘I don’t believe I mentioned that there was a film in the camera,’ said Banks. ‘I’m sure it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but that film couldn’t possibly have been taken by Kim’s camera, either, or Michael Bannister wouldn’t have had red eyes.’
‘This is just circumstantial.’
‘Possibly. But it all adds up. Believe me, Norma, we’ve got a case and we’ve got a good chance of making it stick. The first film wasn’t enough, was it? We might have suspected it was planted. But with a second film in the camera, one showing the same scene, the same person, then there was less chance we’d look closely at the photographic evidence. How did it happen? I imagine Kim had perhaps had a bit too much to drink that night and you put her to bed. When you did, you also took her room key. At some point during the night, when you’d finished with Michael Bannister, you rewound your second film manually in the dark until there was only a small strip sticking out of the cassette, then you went to Kim Fosse’s room and you put it in her camera, taking out whatever film she had taken herself and dumping it.’
‘Oh, I see. I’m that clever, am I? I suppose you found my fingerprints on this film?’
‘The prints were smudged, as you no doubt knew they would be, and you wiped the photographs and camera. When you’d loaded the film, you advanced it in the dark with the flash turned off and the lens cap on. That way the double exposure wouldn’t affect the already exposed film at all because no light was getting to it. When you’d wound it on so that the next exposure was set at number eight, you returned it to Kim Fosse’s room.’
‘I’m glad you think I’m so brilliant, Inspector, but I-’
‘I don’t think you’re brilliant at all,’ Banks said. ‘You’re as stupid as anyone else who thinks she can get away with the perfect crime.’
In a flash, Norma Cheverel picked up the ashtray and threw it at Banks. He dodged sideways and it whizzed past his ear and smashed into the front of the cocktail cabinet.
Banks stood up. ‘Time to call that solicitor, Norma.’
But Norma Cheverel wasn’t listening. She was banging her fists on her knees and chanting ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ over and over again.
SOME LAND IN FLORIDA
The morning they found Santa Claus floating face down in the pool, I had a hangover of gargantuan proportions. By midday I was starting to feel more human. By late afternoon, on my third Michelob at Chloe’s, I was almost glad to be alive again. Almost. I was also coming to believe that Santa’s death hadn’t been quite the accident it appeared.
‘Happy Hour’ at Chloe’s – a dim, horseshoe-shaped bar adjoining a restaurant – lasts from eleven a.m. to seven p.m., and by late afternoon the desperation usually starts to show through the cracks: the men tell the same joke for the third or fourth time; the women laugh just a little too loudly.
The afternoon after Santa’s death I found myself sitting opposite his small coterie. They were an odd group, the three of them who formed the central core. There was a grey-haired man, about sixty, who always looked ill to me, despite his brick-red complexion; a size fourteen woman in her mid forties who wore size ten clothes; and a pretty blonde, no older than about twenty-five. Maybe I’m being sexist or ageist or whatever, but I could only wonder why she was hanging around with such a bunch of losers. Christ, didn’t she know that if she played her cards right she could have me?