It might be nothing. An easy mistake to make. But now this. The BMW number. And it was true that Phil had only come onto the scene last summer, when both Roland Gardiner and Thomas McMahon had told people their fortunes were on the rise. Annie had only met him herself at the Turner reception, and he had phoned her a month or so later, determined not to take no for an answer.
Annie didn’t like the direction in which her thoughts were turning, but even as she fought against the growing realization, she found herself remembering the night she was called away from her dinner at The Angel with Phil to the Jennings Field fire. Of course the accelerant didn’t match the petrol from the Jeep Cherokee’s fuel tank. Phil had been in his own car that evening, the BMW. He could hardly turn up for dinner in the rented Cherokee the police were all looking for, and he wouldn’t have had time both to return it and to get cleaned up. Worth the risk for the alibi. Annie herself. A perfect alibi. And a source of information on the shape the investigation was taking. The horse’s mouth. Horse’s arse, more likely.
“There could be a simple explanation,” Winsome suggested. “It was well before the murders, too. Maybe it’s just coincidence?”
“I know that,” said Annie, remembering that it was also around the time he had phoned and asked her out for the first time. “But we have to find out.”
Her hand was shaking, but she dialed Phil’s mobile number.
No answer. Just the voice mail.
She phoned Banks at home.
No answer. After a few rings she was patched through to the answering service. She didn’t leave a message. She tried his mobile, too, but it was turned off.
That was odd. Banks had said he was going straight home. Of course, he could have gone somewhere else, or maybe he just wasn’t answering the telephone. There were any number of explanations. But when Banks was on a case, especially one that seemed so near to its conclusion, he was always on call one way or another. She had never, in all the time they had worked together, been unable to get ahold of him at any hour of the day or night.
Annie felt confused and uneasy. She couldn’t just sit there. This had to be settled one way or the other, and it had to be settled now.
“Winsome,” she said. “Fancy a drive out in the country?”
Chapter 18
It was a struggle just to cling to consciousness, Banks found. But the longer he stayed awake, the better his chances of staying alive. He could hardly move; his body felt like lead. He knew that he had to conserve whatever strength he had, if he had any, because when Keane set the fire, as he was certain to do, he was going to leave, and Banks might have just one slight opportunity to get out alive. If he was still conscious. If he could move. Neither McMahon nor Gardiner had got out alive, and the thought sapped his confidence, but he had to cling to what little hope he could dredge up.
“I’m doing this,” Keane said, “because you’re really the only one who suspects me. Annie doesn’t. And she won’t. I know you haven’t shared your suspicions with her or anybody else. I’d have been able to tell from the tone of her voice. I’m not an official suspect. And I’m pretty certain I’ve covered my tracks well enough that with you out of the way, I’m in the clear.”
Burgess, Banks found himself thinking, in his muddled, muddied way. Dirty Dick Burgess. Keane had no way of knowing that Banks had enlisted Burgess’s help. He also knew that if anything happened to him, Dirty Dick would have a good idea who was behind it, and that he wouldn’t rest until he’d tracked Keane down. But a fat lot of consolation that was to him if he was dead.
Banks felt himself slipping in and out of consciousness as Keane’s words washed over him, some of them resonating, some not connecting at all. All he could think, if you could call it thinking, was that he was going to die soon. By fire. He remembered again the image of the little girl etched forever into his mind, sculpted by the fire into an attitude of prayer, kneeling by her bed, a charred angel. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
Banks heard the door open and felt a brief chill as the draft blew in. It revitalized him enough to make that one last attempt to move, but all he could manage was to roll off the sofa and bang his head on the sharp edge of the low coffee table. As he lay on the floor, the blood dripping in his eye, fast losing consciousness, he heard the door shut again and then the sloshing of petrol from the can. He could smell it now, the fumes overwhelming him, and all he wanted to do was hug the floor and fall asleep. The andante from “Death and the Maiden” was playing, and Banks’s final thought was that this was the last piece of music he was ever going to hear.
Annie felt no real sense of urgency as they drove along the Dale to Banks’s cottage. Only that she had to see Banks, to talk to him about what she had discovered and what she was beginning to suspect. But Winsome was behind the wheel, and whatever inner alarms were ringing in Annie seemed to have communicated themselves to her, and she was doing her best Damon Hill imitation.
She slowed down as they passed through Fortford. A few lights showed behind drawn curtains, and here and there Annie could make out the flickering of a television set. One bent old man was walking his collie toward the Rose and Crown. There was a long stretch of uninhabited road between there and Helmthorpe, nothing but dark hills silhouetted against the night sky, distant farm lights and the sleek shimmer of moonlight on the slow-flowing river.
There were a few people out on Helmthorpe High Street, mostly heading for folk night at the Dog and Gun, Annie guessed. The general store was still open and the fish-and-chip-shop queue was almost out into the street. Annie was still hungry, despite the salad sandwich. She thought of asking Winsome to stop. She didn’t eat fish, but if the chips had been cooked in vegetable oil, then they might go down nicely with a pinch of salt and a dash of malt vinegar. But she held her hunger pangs at bay. Later.
Winsome turned sharp left, past the school, with only a slight screeching of rubber on Tarmac, and slipped smoothly down into second for the hill up to Gratly. Just before the village was a narrow laneway to the right, leading to Banks’s cottage, and as they approached, a car came out and turned right, heading away from them. It wasn’t Banks’s Renault.
“That looks like Phil’s car,” Annie said.
“Are you sure?” Winsome asked.
“It can’t be. He told me he was still in London.”
Winsome stopped before turning into Banks’s drive. “Shall I follow it?”
Annie thought for a moment. It would be good to know for certain. But if it was Phil, what on earth had he been doing visiting Banks? “No,” she said. “No point in a car chase over the moors. Let’s do what we came here for and see if Alan’s in.”
Winsome turned into Banks’s drive, and ahead she and Annie could see the flames climbing up the curtains in the living room. Christ, no! Annie thought. No. Not after all this. She couldn’t be too late. But they were flames, all right, and they were all over the front room.
“Call the fire brigade,” Annie said, unbuckling her safety belt and jumping out before the car had even come to a full halt. “And tell them there’s danger to life. A police officer’s life.” That might speed them up a bit, Annie thought. The local station was staffed by retained men, and it would take an extra five minutes for them to respond to their personal alerters and get to the station. Rural response time was eighteen minutes, and there’d be nothing left of the cottage by then.