‘Get me a beer,’ Sam said.
Katie got him a can of Long Life from the fridge. She knew it was no good telling him he’d had enough already. Besides, on nights like this, when he’d had a bit more than usual, he tended to fall asleep as soon as he got to bed.
‘And don’t forget the Colliers’ party next week,’ he added, ripping open the can. ‘I want you looking your best.’
Katie had forgotten about the garden party. The Colliers had two or three every summer. She hated them.
In the morning, Sam had a thick head and remembered very little about the night before. He sulked until after breakfast, then managed a welcome for the new guest before disappearing somewhere in the Land Rover. Katie showed Richmond his room, then went to get on with her work.
So there was a policeman in the house. She wondered why he was there. Perhaps he was on holiday. Policemen must have holidays too. But if he was from Eastvale, he was hardly likely to travel only twenty-five miles to Swainshead. Not these days. He’d be off to Torquay, or even the Costa del Sol. Katie didn’t know how much policemen got paid, so she couldn’t really say. But he wouldn’t come to Swainshead, that was for sure. He was a spy, then. He thought nobody would recognize him, so he could keep an eye on their comings and goings while the little one with the scar was in Toronto and the big one was God knows where.
And Katie knew who he was. The problem now was what to do with her knowledge. Should she tell Sam, put him on his guard? He’d spread the word then, like he always did, and maybe he’d be grateful to her. But she couldn’t remember anything about Sam’s gratitude. It just didn’t stand out in her memory like the other things. Did she need it? On the other hand, if Sam had done something wrong — and she didn’t know whether he had or not — then the policeman, Richmond, if that was his real name, might find out and take him away. She’d be free then. It was an evil thought, and it made her heart race, but…
Katie paused and looked out of the back window at the gauze of mist rising like breath from the bright green slopes of Swainshead Fell. It would take a bit of thinking about, this dilemma of hers. She knew she mustn’t make a hasty decision.
‘I’m afraid there’s hardly anybody here to talk to, Mr… er…?’
‘Banks. Alan Banks. I was a friend of Bernard Allen’s.’
‘Yes, well, the only person I can think of who might be able to help you is Marilyn Rosenberg.’ Tom Jordan, head of the Communications Department at Toronto Community College, looked at his watch. ‘She’s got a class right now, but she should be free in about twenty minutes, if you’d like to wait?’
‘Certainly.’
Jordan led him out of the office into a staff lounge just big enough to hold a few chairs and a low coffee table littered with papers and teaching journals. At one end stood a fridge and, on a desk beside it, a microwave oven. The coffee machine stood on a table below a connecting window to the secretary’s office, beside a rack of pigeonholes for staff messages. Banks poured himself a coffee and Jordan edged away slowly, mumbling about work to do.
The coffee was strong and bitter, hardly the thing to drink in the thirty-three-degree heat. What he really needed was a cold beer or a gin and tonic. And he’d gone and bought Scotch at the duty-free shop. Still, he could leave it as a gift for Gerry Webb. It would surely come in handy in winter.
It was Monday morning. On Sunday, Banks had slept in and then gone for a walk along the Danforth. He had noticed the signs of yuppification that Gerry had mentioned, but he had found a pleasant little Greek restaurant which had served him a hearty moussaka for lunch. Unlike Gerry, Banks enjoyed Greek food.
After that, he had wandered as far as Quinn’s. Over a pint, he had asked around about Bernie Allen and shown Anne Ralston’s photograph to the bar staff and waitresses. No luck. One down, two dozen to go. He had wandered back along the residential streets south of Danforth Avenue and noticed that the small brick house with the green and white porch fence and columns was a sort of Toronto trademark.
Too tired to go out again, he had stayed in and watched television that evening. Oddly enough, the non-commercial channel was showing an old BBC historical serial he’d found boring enough the first time around, and — much better — one of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes. The only alternatives were the same American cop shows that plagued British TV.
He had woken at about nine o’clock that Monday morning. Still groggy from travel and culture shock, he had taken a shower and had had orange juice and toast for breakfast. Then it was time to set off. He slipped a 1960s anthology tape of Cream, Traffic and Rolling Stones hits in the Walkman and put it in the right-hand pocket of his light cotton jacket. In the left, he placed cigarettes and Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the only book he’d brought with him.
Jacket slung over shoulder, he set off, following Gerry’s directions. A rolling rattling streetcar ride took him by the valley side, rife with joggers. The downtown towers were hazy in the morning heat. Finding the westbound platform at Broadview subway station was every bit as straightforward as Gerry had said, but changing trains at Yonge and getting out to the street at St Clair proved confusing. All exits seemed to lead to a warren of underground shopping malls — air-conditioned, of course — and finding the right way out wasn’t easy.
Still, he’d found St Clair Avenue after only a momentary diversion into a supermarket called Ziggy’s, and the college was only a short walk from the station.
Now, from the sixth floor, he looked out for a while on the office buildings opposite and the cream tops of the streetcars passing to and fro below him, then turned to the pile of journals on the table.
Halfway through an article on the teaching of ‘critical thinking’ he heard muffled voices in the corridor, and a young woman with a puzzled expression on her face popped around the door. Masses of curly brown hair framed her round head. She had a small mouth and her teeth, when she smiled, were tiny, straight and pearly white. The greyish gum she was chewing oozed between them like gum disease. She carried a worn overstuffed leather briefcase under her arm, and wore grey cords and a checked shirt.
She stretched out her hand. ‘Marilyn Rosenberg. Tom tells me you wanted to talk to me.’
Banks introduced himself and offered to pour her a cup of coffee.
‘No thanks,’ she said, grabbing a Diet Coke from the fridge. ‘Far too hot for that stuff. You’d think they’d do something about the air-conditioning in this place, wouldn’t you?’ She pulled the tab and the Diet Coke fizzed. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘I want to talk about Bernard Allen.’
‘I’ve been through all that with the police. There wasn’t really much to say.’
‘What did they ask you?’
‘Just if I thought anyone had a reason to kill him, where my colleagues were over the last few weeks, that kind of thing.’
‘Did they ask you anything about his life here?’
‘Only what kind of person he was.’
‘And?’
‘And I told them he was a bit of a loner, that’s all. I wasn’t the only one they talked to.’
‘You’re the only one here now.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ She grinned again, flashing her beautiful teeth.
‘If Bernard didn’t have much to do with his colleagues here, did he have a group of friends somewhere else, away from college?’
‘I wouldn’t really know. Look, I didn’t know Bernie that well…’ She hesitated. ‘Maybe it’s none of your business, but I wanted to. We were getting closer. Slowly. He was a hard person to get to know. All that stiff-upper-lip Brit stuff. Me, I’m a simple Irish-Jewish girl from Montreal.’ She shrugged. ‘I liked him. We did lunch up here a couple of times. I was hoping maybe he’d ask me out sometime but…’