“Do you remember the exact time?” Annie asked.
Alf Seaton glanced at the solid, ancient clock on the mantelpiece. “Ten past three,” he said. “I remember looking. Anyway, first I heard it, then I saw the lights. It parked just across the street there. Then another car pulled up behind it.”
“And you saw the driver?”
“Of the first car? Yes. Quite clearly. There’s a streetlight and my eyesight’s still pretty good for distances.”
“What can you tell us about him?” Annie asked, glancing at Brooke, who nodded, indicating that she should carry on asking the questions. Alf seemed comfortable talking with her.
“I was a bit nervous, I suppose,” said Seaton. “I mean, there’s been quite a lot of crime in the neighborhood and when you’re old and frail in your health like I am, you do worry a bit, don’t you? Twenty years ago I’d have given anyone a good run for his money, armed or no, but these days…”
“I understand,” said Annie. “But you did get a look, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t that scared. I like to know what’s going on in my street. Anyway, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so I turned the light off. I’m glad I did because I saw him look over at the house for a moment and pause, as if he was trying to decide whether there was anyone watching him. He seemed to look right at me, but he must have decided there wasn’t.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was a big fellow, hard-looking, as if he lifted weights. He was wearing a dark-colored track suit, the sort with a white stripe down the arm and the outside leg. His hair was a bit long, tied in a ponytail at the back like a right poofter. Black, it was, and shiny, as if he’d sloshed axle grease on it. And he had a heavy gold chain around his neck.”
It sounded like a better description of the man whom Roger Cropley had seen in the back of the Mondeo at Watford Gap, and whom the neighbor had noticed on Jennifer’s street around the time she set off for Banks’s cottage. “What happened next?” Annie asked.
“That’s when I saw him get in the other car.”
“Can you remember anything more about the second car?”
“No, except it was lighter than the first one, maybe cream or silver, something like that. There wasn’t really enough light to show up the color properly, everything was a sort of monochrome, but it was a bit more… I don’t really know cars… but it looked maybe more expensive, more flashy.”
“Did you notice any logos, ornaments, that sort of thing?”
“Sorry, no.”
“It’s okay. You’re doing fine. I don’t suppose you got the number, did you?
“No.”
“Did you get a good look at the driver?”
“Just a glimpse when the door opened and the inside light came on for a second. It was further back, out of the range of the street lamp.”
“Can you describe him?”
“All I could really see was that he had short fair hair. Really short. Cropped. Then the door shut, the light went off and they drove away.”
“What direction?”
“South. Toward the river. Not long after that I heard the kids talking and the car door slam. I just caught a glimpse of them, then they were gone. I know I should have called the police right there and then. Maybe then that poor boy wouldn’t have died. But I didn’t know what was going on and it doesn’t pay to get too involved unless you really have to.”
“It’s not your fault,” said Annie.
“Even so, I feel badly.”
“Mr. Seaton. Alf,” DI Brooke cut in, “do you think you would be able to work with a police artist on a sketch of the man you got a good look at?”
“I think so,” said Seaton. “I mean, I’ve got a fairly clear picture of him in my mind. It’s just a matter of getting it down.”
“That’s what the artist’s for. With a bit of luck, we might be able to get him here by tomorrow morning. Would that be all right?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good. I’ll make the arrangements. Is there anything else you can tell us?”
Seaton thought for a moment, then said, “No, I don’t think so. It all happened very quickly, and as I said, I didn’t know what was going on. Why would a man abandon a nice car like that in a neighborhood like this unless he wanted it to be stolen?”
“Exactly,” said Annie.
Banks fetched fish and chips from the Chinese chippie over the road for lunch, but his father just picked at them. He didn’t even complain the way he usually did that they tasted of chop suey, his only notion of Chinese food. After a cup of tea Banks was seriously thinking of heading back to London, but he sensed that he should stay. Not that his father asked him, or ever would, but it seemed the thing to do. The family should be together, at least for now.
He felt restless, though, cooped up, so he drove into town and wandered aimlessly around Cathedral Square and the Queensgate Centre. While he was there he remembered that he had left his mobile back in Gratly and he had given Roy’s to Brooke. If he was planning on heading back to London, which he was, he might need one. He went into the first electronics shop he saw and bought a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile and a ten-pound card. Once he’d got the battery charged back at his parents’ house it would be ready to use.
It was a cloudy afternoon, holding the threat of rain. A group of buskers was playing jigs and reels in the square, a small crowd gathered around them. A steady stream of tourists entered the Cathedral precints.
When Banks found himself wandering by the Rivergate Centre flats he thought of Michelle Hart, who used to live there, on Viersen Platz. On the opposite side of the river was Charters Bar, an old iron barge moored near Town Bridge, and Banks remembered the blues music he’d heard issuing from it on weekends he had stayed with Michelle.
Banks stared into the murky water and wondered if he should have tried harder with Michelle. He had let her slip away far too easily. But what could he do? Her career was important to her, and when the opportunity in Bristol came up, he could hardly plead with her not to go. Besides, there had been problems with the relationship well before the move, so many that Banks had often thought the new job was at least partly an attempt to put more distance between them.
He walked back to his car and just sat there for a while with the windows open, smoking. How bloody ironic it was, he thought, that he had only come to know his brother after his disappearance. If Roy had died two, three years ago, Banks would have grieved, of course, but he wouldn’t have felt the loss in such a personal way. Now, though, it actually hurt, squeezed at his heart. Now there was someone to miss, not just a distant memory.
It wasn’t so much that he had revised his opinion of Roy as that he had put it in a larger context. Roy was a rogue, no doubt about it; he had about as much sense of business ethics as a flea and he was a bastard to women. That he’d made a fortune, driven a Porsche and had women falling all over him was only a testament to one of those grim truths of life: that the bastards thrive. Maybe they get their just desserts in the afterlife, maybe they come back as cockroaches, but in this life, they thrive.
Roy’s crisis of conscience after witnessing the horror of 9/11, his turning to the church, had probably sharpened what moral instinct he had to some degree Had he stumbled across something in that last week that offended his sense of right and wrong? Had he gone through a struggle of conscience before ringing his policeman brother? Or had it been business much as usual? Throughout his life Roy had probably stolen, cheated and lied without giving a damn for the consequences, or a moment to worry over those whom he had hurt in the process. Had he changed that much? Banks wouldn’t find out in Peterborough, he knew that, so tomorrow he would have to head back to London and start digging again.