The office was well enough appointed. Banks’s desk was large and solid, he had a small flat-screen TV attached to the wall, on which he could watch relevant breaking news stories and police press conferences on cases with which he was involved, and there was a low round table for small, informal meetings. He also had a Nespresso-like machine, a promotion present from his Homicide and Major Crimes Squad team, and Annie had made it clear when she presented it to him that she and the others expected to be allowed to nip in for a cup of coffee whenever they needed one. Banks had brought in his own Bose mini sound-dock, with a Bluetooth facility for his Nano. The little iPod didn’t have much memory, but he rotated its contents fairly often from the large music library on his computer at home.
He was reading over the statements taken so far and listening to the Brahms ‘Clarinet Quintet’, whose melancholy edge seemed nicely attuned to the weather outside.
Just as Banks was about to tidy up his desk and go home to enjoy one final night of peace and quiet in Newhope Cottage, the sound of his telephone startled him. It was going on for ten o’clock. He picked up the receiver. It was Chief Superintendent Gervaise.
‘Still at it?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Banks. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just about to head out.’
‘How do you fancy a pint over the road? On me?’
Banks almost dropped the receiver. He had never been for a drink with Catherine Gervaise before; she had always kept a professional distance. He wondered what it was about. ‘Of course, ma’am,’ he said.
‘On one condition.’
‘Yes?’
‘That you don’t call me ma’am.’
The Queen’s Arms was almost deserted at that time on a wet Sunday night. Cyril himself was working behind the bar, and true to her word, AC Gervaise folded up her umbrella, went up and bought two pints of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord Bitter, one for herself and one for Banks.
‘I understand this is one of your favourite tipples,’ she said, setting the glasses on the table. She had changed out of her uniform and wore a simple cream blouse and navy skirt with a matching jacket.
‘To what do I owe this honour?’ Banks asked.
Gervaise said nothing, just shuffled in her seat and made herself comfortable. Banks drank some beer. Cyril had one of his interminable sixties’ playlists going, and Gene Pitney was singing ‘That Girl Belongs to Yesterday’ in the background.
‘It’s something I wanted to tell you in person,’ she said. ‘It’s been a trying two days, and I’m afraid I’m not going to make things any better.’
‘Oh?’
‘I just got a call from James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough. Katie Shea died on the operating table at five past nine tonight.’
Banks felt the beer turn to lead in his stomach. His teeth clenched and his chest tightened. He felt like standing up and kicking the table over, throwing a chair through the window. Instead, he took several deep breaths, only vaguely aware of Gervaise’s hand on his forearm.
‘I suppose I knew it was bound to happen,’ he said eventually. ‘Gerry will be devastated.’
‘I heard about DC Masterson in the churchyard,’ said Gervaise. ‘She’ll be fine, Alan. She’s young and resilient. It’s you I’m worried about.’
Banks gave her a flicker of a smile. ‘Me being old and weak?’
‘You having had rather too much misery for one weekend. I wasn’t there, but I understand Katie Shea was in very poor shape.’
‘She was holding her guts in with her hands and a bit of material Terry had found for her,’ Banks said. ‘Begging for help, but the bloody gunslingers didn’t get there for three-quarters of an hour, and it was almost as long again before they let any medics in.’
‘You know that’s the protocol, Alan. It was nobody’s fault. Certainly not the AFOs’. Nobody but the killer’s.’
‘Even so...’
‘You’d like to throttle someone. I understand.’
Banks drank some more beer. For the second night in a row he felt like getting rat-arsed, but he couldn’t. He had a feeling that no matter how much he drank, it would have no effect on him, anyway; it wouldn’t take the anger and sadness away, would hardly even dull it. A sudden image of Katie Shea propped against the gravestone flashed through his mind. The expression on her face, the fear, pain and despair there, as if she knew what was going to happen, knew she was down to her last few sacred minutes on earth. Perhaps he was being fanciful, but that was what he had felt. A young woman who not long earlier had her whole life ahead of her was now facing certain death, and she knew it. He didn’t know whether Katie had any religious faith. That might have given her some comfort towards the end. Banks hoped so, for her sake, though he had no such faith himself. He remembered, too, the look on Gerry’s face. She had seen death before, but nothing quite like Katie. It had shaken her to the core. Yes, she was young and resilient, but she wouldn’t forget that day in St Mary’s churchyard; she would carry it with her always; it would change her.
‘Don’t make it personal,’ Gervaise went on. ‘Your old sweetheart’s death is personal, but this is what your job is about. It wasn’t only Katie Shea. Laura Tindall died from a gunshot wound to the heart. Her maid of honour had her head almost blown off. Need I go on?’
Banks shook his head and finished his drink. Gervaise had about three-quarters of a pint left.
‘Want another?’ she said. ‘Or a whisky perhaps?’
‘Are you trying to get me drunk, ma—’ Banks managed to stop himself before he got the title out.
‘Furthest thing from my mind, but you’ve got an empty glass in front of you, and you’re not going anywhere yet. Don’t worry about driving. Leave your car and I’ll drop you off home.’ She pushed her beer aside. ‘I don’t even want this. I’m a white wine spritzer girl, myself. So what’s it to be?’
‘Macallan, please,’ said Banks. ‘If that’s OK.’ He couldn’t face another beer.
With that, Gervaise went to the bar and got him another drink. ‘Cyril said it’s on the house,’ she said when she got back. ‘Double. Says you look as if you need it.’
Banks glanced over at Cyril, who gave him a nod and a wink. ‘Taking bribes from the publican,’ he said. ‘What will it come to next?’ The song changed. Skeeter Davis, ‘The End of the World’.
‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ he went on. ‘But thanks for telling me in person, not over the phone, and thanks for the drinks. That makes four dead now, right?’
‘Yes. And Benjamin Kemp is hanging on by a thread. They don’t think he’ll make it through the night.’
‘What about Diana Lofthouse?’
‘The spinal cord was severed. There were other injuries, internal organs, but that’s by far the worst. It’s unlikely she’ll walk again. As yet, they’re not sure if she’ll be a quad or a para.’
‘What a bloody mess. And we’ve no leads at all so far yet.’
‘It’s early days,’ said Gervaise. ‘There is one more thing, though, and it might be something of a development. When the surgeons were working on Katie Shea, they discovered that she was pregnant. The foetus was unharmed by the gunshot, but, of course, it didn’t survive. She wasn’t married — not that that means anything these days — but there has to be a father somewhere.’
‘And we’ll find him,’ said Banks. ‘How far along was she?’
‘I don’t know all the details yet. Dr Glendenning will be doing the post-mortem tomorrow morning, so we’ll no doubt find out more then.’
Chapter 5
‘There it is for you,’ said Dr Glendenning. ‘The tally. Nicely laid out in layman’s terms as close as I could get to the order they were hit in, according to your notes.’