The killer had been a little sloppy, otherwise Banks wouldn’t have been standing where he was, but whoever did it would no doubt have counted on the police being so overjoyed that they had solved their crime, caught their killer, that they wouldn’t dig any deeper than they had to. In that, he hadn’t been entirely wrong. Until now. The only real risk was that someone might have paid a call on Edgeworth while the shooting was taking place, and found the body. But that was most unlikely. He lived alone, and if someone had knocked on the door and got no answer, that person would have gone away, only adding to the evidence that Edgeworth was out shooting the wedding party. A visitor would hardly have entered the house uninvited and discovered a body.
Finally, Banks stepped down into the musty, dank cellar and gave a shiver. As he had told Dr Glendenning, all Edgeworth’s tools had been taken away, but nobody had got around to scrubbing away the blood spatter yet, and it was easy enough for Banks to find the exact spot where the body had lain. On the surface, everything had been consistent with a self-administered gunshot. Banks could visualise Edgeworth sliding to the floor, leaning back against the wall, legs stretched out, putting the gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
Only it was beginning to appear very much as if it hadn’t happened that way at all. Now Banks imagined a shadowy figure hitting Edgeworth from behind with a hammer, shifting him to the floor, into position, then placing the gun in his hand and carefully positioning it in his mouth so that the bullet smashed through that part of the skull he had hit with the hammer.
He bent to examine the spot on the wall where the back of Edgeworth’s head had hit. The forensics team had finished their tests, so he knew it was OK to touch the surface, and he found that Glendenning was right. The whitewashed stone was smooth around there, certainly not rough or bumpy enough to cause an indentation like the one in Edgeworth’s skull.
He stood back and tried to imagine what had gone on in the mind of Edgeworth’s killer. He had probably taken Edgeworth by surprise, and if the killer intended to fake a suicide, he wouldn’t want to risk poison or sleeping tablets in a cup of tea. He would have known that the police would carry out toxicology tests and that anything unusual would be a flagged. So he waited until Edgeworth’s back was turned and stunned him with a blow to the back of the head, then arranged him on the floor against the wall and shot him. It was certainly a plausible explanation.
If someone else had done it and assumed Edgeworth’s identity, then Edgeworth must have been killed before the church massacre. Even Dr Glendenning had admitted this could have easily been the case. There were no indications in the post-mortem that his body had been restrained in any way. To make everything work, the killer must have got into the house in the morning, done his business in the cellar, then driven off in Edgeworth’s RAV4, with his AR15, wearing clothing identical to that he had left in the cellar neatly piled by the body. And the odds were that Edgeworth had let him in, or taken him back there after meeting on a walk, for example, as there had been no signs of forced entry.
And if the killer had gone to such lengths and thought things out that much, Banks was probably dealing with a more intelligent person than someone who had simply snapped and started shooting people at random. Which meant there was likely to be a motive somewhere, something very important that he didn’t know yet, hidden away in all this, however deep it may be buried and however tricky it might be to find.
Banks found Roger behind the bar again when he called at the Upper Swainsdale District Rifle and Pistol Club that Friday afternoon. ‘Boss around today?’ he asked.
Roger regarded him as if he were mad, then recognition dawned. ‘Oh, it’s you again,’ he said. ‘Sorry. As a matter of fact, Mr McLaren is in today. I’ll just let him know you’re here.’
As Roger disappeared through a door behind the bar, Banks leaned on the polished dark wood and waited. The dining area was much busier than on his previous visit, and most of the tables were occupied by late lunchers. Banks tried to pick out George and Margie Sykes among the diners but couldn’t see them. He wondered what drew people to shooting, never having had much inclination or aptitude for it, himself, though he had completed a number of firearms courses both during his training and later. It was probably something you couldn’t imagine people enjoying unless you actually took it up yourself, like trainspotting or running marathons. Maybe it was somewhere between the absorption and soothing influence of a hobby and full-throttled adrenalin-fuelled obsession with speed or distance.
‘This way. Second on the left.’
Roger held the bar flap up and Banks walked through. The business section of the club wasn’t quite as well appointed as the public area, but everything was recently polished, and the air smelled of fresh lemons. Not a whiff of cordite anywhere. Banks walked along the corridor past an open storeroom then tapped on the door marked MANAGER. A reedy voice bade him enter.
Geoff McLaren sat behind a large desk of imitation teak. At least, Banks assumed it was imitation. Real teak was prohibitively expensive these days. It was a tidy desk, and the laptop computer that sat on it was closed. McLaren’s large bald head shone as if it had been polished as recently as the woodwork, and his handshake was a little too damp and limp for Banks’s liking.
‘Can I get you anything?’ McLaren asked, when both were settled in their chairs.
‘Nothing, thanks,’ Banks said. ‘I don’t think I’ll take up much of your time.’
McLaren’s expression and voice turned funeral-director deep and sympathetic. ‘It’s about poor Martin, isn’t it, I assume? What a terrible, terrible tragedy.’
‘Did you know Martin Edgeworth personally, or was it merely in your professional capacity?’
McLaren made a pyramid with his fingertips on the desk. ‘I’d like to think Martin and I were friends, or at least very good acquaintances. We lunched together on occasion. Not here, of course. My place of business. That wouldn’t do. But at his local down in Swainshead sometimes. In Eastvale once or twice. When he had the dental practice, I was a patient. Martin was one of our longest-standing members, and he helped out with a lot of the committee work, competitions, legal paperwork, that sort of thing.’
‘Vetting new members?’
McLaren pursed his lips, then spoke. ‘On occasion. But only in the preliminary stages, you understand. The rest has been done with the correct legal authorities, by the book.’
‘Of course.’
‘We take law and safety very seriously here, Mr Banks.’
‘I’m sure you do. Did Mr Edgeworth vet any new applications for you recently, or perhaps propose any new members?’
‘It doesn’t exactly work that way, but no, he didn’t.’
‘Anything unusual at all happen?’
‘Not that I can think of.’ McLaren frowned. ‘What sort of thing were you thinking of?’
‘Any unpleasant incidents. Arguments. Accidents. Threats. Thefts.’
‘No, nothing of that sort. We run a tight ship.’
‘So nobody got drunk and shot up the restaurant?’
McLaren’s smile was little more than a polite flicker. ‘Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, it’s not exactly the wild west out here. We don’t permit any firearms in the restaurant and bar area. They have to be securely locked in the specified areas under the specified conditions when not out in use out on the ranges.’