And suddenly she crumpled and fell in tears on the sofa. Banks sat down opposite her in an armchair. It was best to let her cry, he thought, as the great chest-racking sobs came from her, even though she buried her face in a cushion. He gestured for DS Palmer to leave the room and carry on with the search. Jessica was still a little overweight, as she was in the family photo, and the baggy jumper and shapeless peasant skirt she wore didn’t flatter her. Her face, when Banks saw it again, was pretty enough, but dotted with teenage acne as well as streaked with tears. Her tangled hair hadn’t been washed or brushed for a few days. She seemed to be what his old politically incorrect colleague DS Jim Hatchley would have described as ‘a hairy-legged eco-feminist,’ though Banks could vouch for neither the legs nor the eco-feminism.
‘Jessica,’ he said, when she had been quiet for a while, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to walk in on this. But it has to be done, and quickly.’
Jessica reached into her shoulder-bag for a tissue and rubbed her eyes and nose. ‘I know. I’m sorry, too,’ she said. ‘It was just driving up here all by myself, knowing about Dad... it got to me. I just got into a terrible state. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was lucky I didn’t have an accident.’
‘One of our cars would have brought you.’
‘No, I wanted to drive myself. Really. I needed... just to be alone. The last place I wanted to be was in the back of a police car. I used to think it was exciting when I was young, when Dad...’ She started crying again, more softly this time, and took out another tissue. ‘You must think I’m a terrible softie.’
‘Not at all,’ said Banks. ‘Where’s your brother?’
‘Robbie’s on his way. We talked on the mobile. He was just leaving when I got to my turn-off. You know Keele. It’s in the middle of bloody nowhere, and he doesn’t have a car. I just had to drive along the M62.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘I can’t believe this. How could it happen? First Mum, and now Dad. My God, we’re orphans now.’ She cried again.
‘I know it’s a terrible shock,’ said Banks, ‘but I do need to ask you some questions. How about a cup of tea before we start? It’s a bit of a cliché, but I could really do with one myself.’
Banks followed Jessica into the kitchen. He offered to make the tea, but she told him to sit down, she knew where everything was. Banks sat at the solid pine table while Jessica set about boiling the kettle and putting two tea bags into a white teapot with red hearts all over it. The kettle didn’t take long. As she poured the boiling water, Jessica looked at the sink and rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. ‘Typical Dad. He just lets things pile up like that. All neat and tidy and clean, of course, but honestly, I mean, who else would just leave a dish rack full of dishes if he knew he was going away for two weeks? And I’ll bet he didn’t think to empty out the fridge. I don’t even dare open it.’
‘It’s not too bad,’ said Banks. ‘There’s a bit of green stuff here and there, but at least it doesn’t smell. The milk’s off.’ His own fridge went like that occasionally, too, with things changing colour and starting to smell a bit, but he saw no point in admitting that to Jessica.
‘Men. Just sugar do, then?’
‘Please. Two teaspoons.’
The tea ready, Jessica poured, set the two mugs down on the table and slumped in a chair, resting her chin in her hands. ‘I just can’t get my head around this.’ She gave Banks a sudden sharp glance. ‘What happened? Will I have to identify the body?’
‘Somebody will,’ said Banks. ‘You or your brother. Don’t worry. The family liaison officer will deal with all that. She should be here soon. Didn’t they tell you what happened?’
‘Only that he was dead.’
‘He was murdered, Jessica. That’s why we’re here. That’s why there are men searching the house.’
‘Murdered? Dad? But he wasn’t even at work. He was...’
‘I know. He was killed in the grounds of St Peter’s. It was quick. He wouldn’t have suffered.’
Her eyes brimmed with tears again. ‘They always say that. How do you know? I’ll bet you suffer a lot if you know you’ll be dead in even a split second.’
There was no reply to that. Banks sipped the hot, sweet tea. Just what he needed.
‘There’s been a break in here,’ he said. ‘We think it’s connected. They’ve been through your dad’s study. Maybe you can help us determine what’s missing.’
‘I’m only here in the holidays. I wouldn’t know what’s supposed to be where, especially in Dad’s study. None of us were allowed in there.’
‘Do you know whether your father owned a laptop?’
‘Yes, he did.’
Well, that was one question answered, but it begged another. ‘Did he use it much? I’m wondering why he didn’t take it with him to St Peter’s. I mean, laptops are small and light enough to carry around. That’s what they’re for. As far as I know, they had Wi-Fi available up there.’
Jessica gave him a sad, indulgent smile. ‘Dad was such a Luddite when it came to things like that. Oh, he had one — he could just about do email and stuff like that — but it was always me or Robbie had to sort it out for him whenever we came up. He was always messing it up, getting viruses, ignoring error messages. If something didn’t work immediately, he just kept pressing the “enter” key or clicking the mouse. Honestly, he’d have about ten copies of Internet Explorer open at the same time, and he wondered why it was running so slowly. He was hopeless.’
‘Did he use it for writing or anything else? Facebook?’
‘Writing? Dad hated writing. Reports were the bane of his life. And Facebook... well, I’d blush if I had to tell you what he thought about social networks. No, if anything, he probably used it a bit for surfing the Internet, you know fishing and gardening sites, that sort of thing. And he did manage to work out Skype so we could talk for free during term time. Half the time he couldn’t get the video bit working, though, so it was voice only.’
‘Games?’
‘I doubt it. He wasn’t much of a one for computer games. Now trivia, that’s another thing. He probably used Wikipedia a lot.’
Banks smiled. He supposed, then, that there wasn’t much, if anything, of value on Quinn’s laptop, except, perhaps, for some emails. Whoever had taken it had probably done so as a safety measure, just in case there was something incriminating on it, or because he believed it contained information he wanted. In either case, he was probably out of luck. If Quinn wasn’t a big computer fan, they had a far better hope of finding something interesting in his phone call logs than in his emails, Banks reckoned. ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm your father?’ he asked.
‘No. I mean, really. I suppose maybe some of those villains he caught. But he was well liked. He didn’t have a lot of close friends outside of work. He was a bit of a loner, bit of an anorak, if truth be told. He liked being off by himself fishing and bird-watching. And working on his allotment. I used to go with him and help him sometimes when I was younger, especially on the allotment, but you know... you change... lose interest... grow apart. Robbie used to go to the tarn sailing model boats with him. He used to build them himself. Lovely, some of them, the detail. Now we just tease him about being an old anorak.’ She put her hand to her face and stifled a sob. ‘Sorry.’
Banks could feel sympathy. His own children had been the same, interested in whatever seven-day wonder he had been passionate about at the time until they were about thirteen, and then they didn’t want to know; they just wanted to be off with their friends. He made a mental note to ask Keith Palmer’s lads to check out Quinn’s allotment. The odds were that he’d have at least a little gardening shed there. It might be just the sort of place to hide something, and the burglar would probably not have known about it.