“Give me your telephone number. I’ll see to it personally.”
Knox gave him the number. “Thanks,” he said.
When Knox had left, Banks walked over to his window. The CD had come to the Four Last Songs now, Banks’s favorites. He remembered an occasion some years ago, before everything went wrong, when he had arrived home very late after attending the scene of a teenage girl’s murder in an Eastvale cemetery. He had sat up smoking, drinking Laphroaig and listening to the Four Last Songs, Gundula Janowitz’s version that time, and his daughter, Tracy, had woken up and come down to see what was wrong. They had talked briefly – Banks deliberately not telling her about the murder – then they had shared mugs of cocoa as they cuddled up on the sofa and listened to the Strauss songs. It was a moment forever etched in his memory, all the more so because it could never be repeated. Tracy was gone now, grown up, living her own life. Sandra was gone, too. And Brian.
The day was still gray but fairly warm outside. Lucky for Mark. There were plenty of people crossing the market square, shopping along Market Street and York Road. The church facade was covered in scaffolding, like an exoskeleton, and the weather was good enough for the restorers to get up there and work away at the ancient stonework and lead roofing. He thought of Mark, who had said he wanted to do church restoration work. Banks knew Neville Lauder, the stonemason in charge of the project, from the Queen’s Arms. Maybe he could put in a word. He had to maintain his objectivity, though. Much as he thought Lenny was right in his assessment of Mark, and much as Banks liked the kid, felt sorry for him, there was still a chance that Mark Siddons was a killer.
“Got a minute, sir?”
Banks looked up. DS Hatchley. “Come in, Jim,” he said. “How you doing?”
“Not too badly, thanks.” Jim Hatchley sat down and ran his hand over his untidy straw-colored hair. He still looked tired, Banks thought, with bags under his eyes and puffy, blotchy skin. Still, not only was he just recovering from a nasty bout of flu, but his youngest was teething. Having babies would do that to you. Would Sandra lose sleep? he wondered. She had looked good when he last saw her, but that could change when little Sinéad started teething.
“What is it?” Banks asked. “Anything on Whitaker’s alibi?”
“Checks out so far,” Hatchley said. “But it’s early days yet. Anyway, that other job you asked me to do. Mark David Siddons.”
“Yes?”
Hatchley shook his head. “Poor bastard,” he said.
“What can you tell me?”
“His mother’s Sharon Siddons, a right slag if ever there was one. I thought the name rang a bell. They lived on the East Side Estate, where else? She died a year ago. Lung cancer.”
“Father?”
“Dunno,” said Hatchley. “Sharon was an alcoholic as well as a slag. Started young. She worked as a prossie for a while, till she got pregnant at seventeen. After that there was a long line of men in her life. Most of them losers, and none of them lasting very long. Last one was a charmer by the name of Nicholas Papadopoulos. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
“Crazy Nick?”
“One and the same.”
Banks had indeed heard of Crazy Nick. You couldn’t be a copper in Eastvale for five minutes without hearing of him. Disturbing the peace, breaking and entering, assault, GBH, drunk and disorderly. You name it, and if it took no brains, Crazy Nick had done it. Stopping just short of murder. The last time he’d been arrested it had taken four strapping PCs to hold him down and bring him in. He never stopped swearing and struggling the whole time, and once he was in the cell he drove the custody section insane with his nonstop stream of curses and banging.
“Isn’t he a guest of Her Majesty at the moment?”
“Indeed he is,” said Hatchley. “Strangeways. And he won’t be out for quite a while. Whacked a night watchman with a hammer during a warehouse break-in and fractured his skull.”
“How long was he with the Siddons woman?”
“Until she started to show the cancer symptoms,” said Hatchley. “Then he was off like a shot. Died alone, and in agony, poor cow.”
“Was he around when Mark ran off?”
“Yes. Probably the reason. Believe it or not, Mark gave him a bloody good hiding. Enough to put him in hospital for a couple of days, at any rate. Broken nose. Couple of ribs. Twenty stitches in his scalp. Concussion. Took him by surprise. Went crazy on him, according to the neighbors. Even his mother couldn’t drag him off.”
“Good for him,” Banks said. “And Nick didn’t take his revenge? That’s not like him.”
“Couldn’t find the kid, then he got caught for that warehouse job.”
“But Mark’s got no form, himself?”
“No. We’ve had him in on sus for a couple of house-breakings, and he once got caught shoplifting in HMV. Charges dropped. That’s all.”
“Anything important we haven’t got him for?”
“No. At least I can’t find any rumors.”
And if anyone could, Banks knew, it was probably Hatchley, with his long list of snitches and a pair of eyes in practically every pub in Eastvale. “So he’s basically a clean kid?” he said.
“Looks that way,” Hatchley agreed. “He attended Eastvale Comprehensive, but was truant as often as not. Didn’t get into much trouble there, apart from a bit of a shoving match with one teacher, but he didn’t exactly shine academically, either. Good at games, though. Want me to keep on digging?”
“Anything to do with fires come up in connection with him?”
“Not that I can find.”
“He didn’t try to set fire to the school, or to the house after he beat up Crazy Nick?”
“Just ran off. Never went back.”
“Sensible,” said Banks. Given the sort of background Mark had endured, both with his mother and her earlier men friends, and with Crazy Nick Papadopoulos, it was no surprise that he was willing to believe Tina’s tale of woe without question. It didn’t mean she wasn’t telling the truth, however, and Banks had certainly sensed something wrong in the Aspern household. There was another thing, too; from what Hatchley had told Banks, Mark certainly had a violent temper, no matter how justifiable his uprising against Crazy Nick had been. The lad needed watching.
“Okay, Jim,” Banks said. “Thanks very much.”
“Cheers,” said Hatchley. “My pleasure.”
By Monday afternoon, Mark was close to Sutton Bank, and starving. He was glad he had gone back into the pub for his lunch the previous day after the shock of seeing Tina’s image on the TV screen. The landlord had given him a dirty look, but other than that, his abrupt departure and return hardly raised an eyebrow. That evening he had eaten fish and chips and kipped down in another old barn. He had got up earlier on Monday morning, with only enough money for a chocolate bar left in his pocket. After walking a few miles, he realized he wasn’t trying to do the coast-to-coast walk, that was for anoraks, so he might as well at least try to get a lift.
Just outside Northallerton, a man towing a horse box gave him a lift to Thirsk. All the way he had been aware of the horse shifting nervously behind him, and he thought he could smell manure. The driver hadn’t said much, just dropped him off in the High Street, and now he was on the Scarborough Road hoping for another kind soul to stop for him.
It was a gray afternoon, the clouds so low and the air so moist it was almost, but not quite, raining. “Mizzling,” they called it in Yorkshire, describing that bone-chilling combination of mist and drizzle. There wasn’t much traffic, and most of the cars and vans that passed just whizzed by without even slowing down. If he got to Scarborough, Mark knew, there was a good chance he’d be able to pick up some casual laboring work. It didn’t matter what – ditch-digging, demolition, construction – he could turn his hand to almost anything as long as it didn’t involve being educated. School had hardly been more than a mild distraction throughout his childhood and adolescence.