‘Edgeworth was just a child in 1964.’
‘Later, then. Some point over the last fifty years.’
‘That’s stretching it a bit,’ said Banks.
Gerry could sense his frustration. She felt it, herself, but she also felt she was on to something. ‘It’s the only angle I’ve come up with so far, sir. I drew a blank with the bridesmaids and the maid of honour. You’ve already interviewed Katie Shea’s boyfriend and the father of her unborn child, Boyd Farrow, and his alibi stands up. The Wendy Vincent murder is all we’ve got so far. However tenuous the link may be. Otherwise, it’s back to Martin Edgeworth. And Maureen Tindall was definitely strange when we talked to her, as if she was remembering a long way back and seeing a possibility she didn’t want to admit.’
‘Are you sure that’s not just your imagination after the fact?’
‘Maybe, sir. But if her best friend was murdered, and we were asking her if she could think of anyone, no matter how long ago, who might want to do her family harm, and she seemed to remember something she wouldn’t tell us, don’t you think it’s worth following up on?’
She watched as Banks leaned back and drank more wine.
‘I’m still curious as to why you came all the way out here to tell me this,’ he said. ‘What you’ve told me is interesting, yes, but surely the telephone would have done?’
Gerry hesitated. There was something she hadn’t told him yet that had made her irrationally determined to put the facts of the case before him in person. ‘Well, you’ll have to be the judge of that, yourself, sir,’ she said. ‘It was just that a name came up once or twice in the old newspaper reports from 1964, someone we might want to talk to.’
‘A name?’
‘Yes. One of the investigating officers. I did a bit of checking around and found out he’s someone you know. I just wanted to run the name by you before going off half-cocked. I mean, with all the press criticism of the original investigation and so on.’
‘Don’t tell me it was DI Chadwick again?’ Banks said.
‘No, sir. Definitely not Chadwick. It was someone called Gristhorpe. A DC Gristhorpe. Apparently, he used to be your boss.’
Chapter 10
Banks and Jenny Fuller drove down the rutted drive to ex-Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s farmhouse outside the village of Lyndgarth late the following morning. The sky looked like a pot full of boiling oily rags, and the air was so moist that it was hard to breathe, but at least it wasn’t raining. Which was just as well. All the meteorological reports stated that the ground was so waterlogged already that one more spell of heavy rain would cause even more serious flooding.
The car splashed up water from the puddles, and Banks finally brought it to a halt outside the back door. He hadn’t been to visit the old man in quite a while, but not much had changed. The drystone wall that went nowhere and fenced in nothing still ran through his large back garden, but ended jaggedly and abruptly. There had been no decent weather for working on it lately. It was Gristhorpe’s hobby — he said it was therapeutic, kept him calm and focused — and whenever he came to the end of his allotted pile of stones, he dismantled the wall then mixed them up like a bag of dominoes, adding a few new ones, and started all over again.
The green paint on the heavy back door was so fresh Banks could smell it. He rang the bell. They didn’t have long to wait before it opened and the tall, bulky figure of Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe stood there beckoning them in, wearing a pair of old brown cords and a dark woolly jumper.
‘Well, look at you, lass,’ he said to Jenny. ‘It’s been years since I last saw you, and you’ve hardly changed at all. You’re still a right bobby-dazzler.’
Jenny blushed and gave him a hug. ‘You silver-tongued old devil. It’s been a long time. How are you?’
‘Can’t complain, though I wouldn’t recommend old age,’ said Gristhorpe as he led them into his wood-panelled, book-lined living room and bade them sit in the worn leather armchairs. There was a fire crackling in the hearth and a book on the table beside Gristhorpe’s chair. Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, Banks noticed. So the old man was still rereading the classics. ‘First, tea.’ Gristhorpe rubbed his hands together. ‘Then talk.’ He disappeared into the kitchen.
Jenny smiled at Banks. ‘It brings back so many memories, just seeing him again. Hearing his voice.’ Her eyes were shining.
‘How long has it been?’ Banks asked.
‘More years than I’d care to remember.’
Banks stared into the flames in silence, thinking about time and age and Emily and death, then Gristhorpe reappeared with the tea and mugs on a tray. He moved his book and set the tray down on the table, rubbing his hands together. ‘We’ll let it mash for a while first.’
Gristhorpe eased himself into his chair. Banks thought he noticed a grimace of pain flash briefly across his features. The old man always did suffer from back problems and a touch of arthritis. Otherwise, he seemed hale and hearty. He had the same weathered, pock-marked face, and the unruly thatch of hair might have turned a bit greyer and thinner since the last time they met, but it was still mostly all there.
When the tea was ready, Gristhorpe poured them each a mug, opened a tin of ginger nut biscuits and sat down again, cradling the mug on his lap. ‘You mentioned something on the telephone about the Wendy Vincent case,’ he said to Banks.
‘Yes. It came up in some research Gerry — that’s DC Masterson — was doing on the wedding shooting.’
‘Nasty business that. But I thought it was all over and done with. I thought you got your man?’
‘We’re not exactly sure about that.’
‘The man we found didn’t match any profile I could come up with for a mass murderer or spree killer,’ Jenny added. ‘Not that such things are always an accurate guide — I’d be the first to admit — but there are certain parameters.’
‘Exception to the rule?’
‘Could be,’ Jenny admitted. ‘But I think Alan also has a number of forensic issues and other concerns.’
‘When you add it all together,’ Banks said, ‘I think the case merits further investigation.’
He told Gristhorpe about Dr Glendenning’s doubts and added a few of his own. Gristhorpe took a mouthful of tea and dunked his ginger biscuit as he listened.
When Banks had finished, Gristhorpe frowned. ‘I’ll go along with you for the time being,’ he said. ‘Maybe it does deserve a bit more attention. But where does Wendy Vincent come into it? I remember that case well. It was one of my very first, and it was a complete bloody disaster. It still galls me to this day, even though they finally caught the bastard. We should have had the gumption to question Frank Dowson back at the time of the crime — it’s not as if he was unknown to us — but he was a merchant seaman, and nobody told us he was in the area at the time.’
‘When your name came up,’ Banks said, ‘Gerry found your connection with me, and she thought I might want your name kept out of it. So she came to me with the story first, in person.’
‘She thought I might resent my failure being broadcast around again?’
‘It may have crossed her mind. She’s young. And she doesn’t know you like I do.’
‘She’ll probably go far, then.’ Gristhorpe slurped some tea. His eyes twinkled.
‘One of the members of the wedding was Maureen Tindall, née Grainger,’ Banks went on. ‘DC Masterson’s discovered in the course of her research that she was Wendy Vincent’s best friend.’