Roy gave money to beggars in the street but complained when he thought he was being overcharged in shops and restaurants. He could be moody, and Corinne had to confess that she never quite knew what was going on in his mind. But she loved him, as she told Banks when her tears flowed for the second time, after the third glass of wine; no matter that she hadn’t known where she stood with him for weeks, no matter that he had left her largely alone to deal with the trauma of her abortion. She had still hoped, somehow, that he would tire of his new conquest and come back to her.
There was only one family photograph in Roy’s entertainment room, and Banks walked over to look at it. It was taken on the promenade at Blackpool, he remembered, in August 1965, and you could see the Blackpool Tower in the background.
There they stood, all four of them, parents on the inside and flanking them Roy, freckled then, his hair a lot fairer than it was when he got older, and Banks at fourteen looking moody and what he supposed passed for cool back then, in his black drain-pipe trousers and polo-neck Beatles jumper. He hadn’t really looked at the photo closely before, but when he did he realized that it must have been taken by Graham Marshall, who had accompanied the Banks family on that holiday only a month or so before he disappeared during his Sunday-morning paper round.
This was the holiday when Banks had fallen for the beautiful Linda, who worked behind the counter at the local coffee bar. She was far too old for him, but he had fallen nonetheless. Then he and Graham had picked up a couple of girls at the Pleasure Beach, Tina and Sharon, and taken them under the pier for a bit of hanky-panky. He didn’t remember having the photograph taken, but that was no surprise. He hardly remembered Roy’s being on that holiday, either. What fourteen-year-old would waste his time hanging around with his nine-year-old brother?
Graham Marshall was dead, another murder victim, and now Roy. Banks looked at his father in an old gray V-necked pullover, shirtsleeves rolled up, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, hair swept back with Brylcreem. Then he looked at his mother, hardly a dolly bird, but surprisingly young and pretty, with a full-bodied perm and a summer dress showing off her trim waist, smiling into the camera. What would they find when they explored her insides next week? Banks wondered. Would she survive? And his father, after all this trauma? Banks was beginning to feel as if everyone he came into contact with was cursed, that all his companions became hostages to death, like the wraiths that haunted “Strange Affair.”
Then he told himself to stop being so maudlin. He had solved Graham Marshall’s murder over thirty-five years after it had been committed, his mother would survive the operation, and his father’s heart would go on beating for a long time yet. Roy was dead and Banks would find out who killed him. And that was that.
As Banks was getting ready to head out to try Gareth Lambert again, his mobile rang.
“Alan, it’s Annie.”
“Thought you were on your way home.”
“So did I, but something’s come up.”
Banks gripped the phone tighter. “What?”
“Technical support have worked out where the digital photo on your brother’s mobile was taken.”
“How on earth did they manage that?”
“From the list of abandoned factories,” Annie said. “There were some letters visible on a wall in the background: NGS and IFE. One of the factories listed was Midgeley’s Castings, and one of the older detectives on the team remembered he used to pass by the place on his way to school and they had a sign that read ‘Midgeley’s Castings: Cast for Life.’ The place shut down in 1989 and nobody’s done anything with it since.”
“Where is it?”
“By the river down Battersea way. I’m sorry to be so brutal, Alan, but the tide experts also agree that it’s very likely the area where your brother’s body was dumped in the river, so it’s looking more and more as if it was Roy in foreground of the picture. We’re heading out there now. Want to come?”
“You know I do. What does Brooke have to say?”
“He’s okay with it. Meet us there?”
“Fine.”
Annie gave him an address and directions and Banks hurried out to his car.
“DS Browne?”
“Speaking.”
“This is DC Templeton from Eastvale. How are things down your way?”
“Fine, thanks. Anything new?”
“Maybe,” said Templeton, fingering the plastic bag on the desk in front of him. “I went to talk to Roger Cropley’s wife and found him at home. Says he’s got a summer cold but I didn’t notice any sniffles. Anyway, I think I rattled him a bit more. He seemed a bit nervous when I told him that Paula Chandler, the woman who got away, thought she might be able to recognize her attacker.”
“But that’s not true,” Susan said.
“Cropley doesn’t know that. And I think his wife might know a bit more than she’s letting on, too. Anyway, I’ve got an idea. Did your SOCOs do a thorough trace-evidence search of the victim’s car?”
“I’m sure they did,” said Susan. “But there was no evidence that the killer was ever in the car. He clearly dragged her out and into the bushes.”
“But he’d have to lean in to apply the chloroform.”
“True. What are you getting at?”
“You’ve still got all the collected samples, I assume? Hair? Skin?”
“Of course.”
“And the car?”
“That, too. Look, what’s going on?”
“Can you check if they found any dandruff on the seat back?”
“Dandruff?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll check,” said Susan. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve been on the Web, and it all sounds a bit complicated, but as far as I can gather, you can get DNA from dandruff. I mean it is just skin, isn’t it?”
“It won’t do us much good,” said Susan, “unless we have a sample for comparison.”
“Er… well, as a matter of fact, we might have.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got a sample of Cropley’s dandruff. Can I send it down to you?”
“I trust you didn’t ask Mr. Cropley for this?”
Templeton laughed. “No. Believe me, he gave it quite freely, though.”
“That’s not the point,” Susan said. “I’m sure you know as well as I do that you have to get the suspect’s written permission even for a non-intimate sample, unless you’ve detained him for a serious offense and the super gives permission to take one.”
“I know my PACE regulations,” said Templeton. “What I’m saying is that this could confirm my suspicions. If you knew it was him, if we knew it was him, then it would make a difference and we could start to build a real case. He doesn’t have to know about the previous sample. Nobody does except you and me. Right now we’ve got no real grounds to arrest him and demand a sample, but if the sample he gave me matches any of the dandruff found in the car, then we’d know where to look and you can be damn sure we’d come up with something to arrest him for. After that… well, then we’d get an official sample, of course.”
“What if it’s not him?”
“Then he’s off the hook.”
“But there’d be records, paperwork relating to the first test. These things are expensive.”
“I know that, but so what? It needn’t come out. Surely you must know someone at the lab with a bit of discretion? How is anybody going to know?”
“A good defense lawyer would use it as ammunition against our case.”
“Only if he found out. Besides, it wouldn’t matter. By that point we’d have officially matching DNA, which we’d have no trouble getting admitted, all by the book. You can’t argue with that. Christ, I’ll even pay for the test myself if that’s your problem.”