Blood At The Root

Jason.”

Frank nodded. “Nay, lass… Police getting anywhere?”

“Even if they were,” Josie sniffed, “they wouldn’t tell us, would they?”

The kettle boiled. Frank moved to rise, but Maureen sprang to her feet. “I’ll get it, Granddad. Stay where you are.”

“Thanks, lass,” he said gratefully, and sank back into his armchair. “What have they told you?”

“They’ve got some lads helping them with their inquiries,” Josie said. “Pakistanis.” She sniffed. “They think it might have started as an argument in a pub, and that these lads followed our Jason, or waited for him in the ginnel and beat him up. The police think they probably didn’t mean to kill him.”

“What do you think?” Frank asked.

Maureen came back with the teapot and raised her eyebrows at the question. “We haven’t really had much time to think about it at all yet, Granddad,” she said. “But I’m sure the police know their business.”

“Aye.”

“What is it?” Steven Fox said, speaking for the first time. “You don’t think they’ll do a good job?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Frank said.

“Well, what is it, then?” Josie Fox repeated her husband’s question. Maureen started pouring milk and tea into mugs, spooning in sugar.

“Nowt,” said Frank. He fingered the folded, creased sheet of paper in his top shirt pocket and pulled it out.

“What’s that, Granddad?” Maureen asked.

“Just something I got in the post.”

Maureen frowned. “But what… I don’t…”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Frank, his patience with them finally snapping. “Don’t you know what happened? Don’t you know anything? Did you all turn your bloody backs?” He turned toward Maureen. “What about you?” he snapped. “I’d have expected more of you.”

Maureen started to cry. Frank felt the familiar pain, almost an old friend now, grip his chest. Hand shaking, he tossed the sheet toward Josie. “Go on,” he said. “Read it.”

III

Banks crossed the factory yard, dodging puddles rainbowed with oil. Crates and chunks of old machinery were stacked up by the sides of long one-story buildings with rusty corrugated iron roofs. Machine noises buzzed and roared from inside. Forklifts beetled back and forth across the uneven yard, carrying boxes on pallets. The place smelled of diesel oil and burned plastic.

He soon found the old office building, which had probably been adequate in the early days, before the company grew. There was no receptionist, just a large open area with desks, computers, telephones and people. Filing cabinets stood against the walls. At the far end of the room, several small offices had been partitioned off, their lower parts wood and the upper parts, above waist height, glass.

A woman dashed by Banks on her way to the door, a couple of file folders stuffed under her arm. When he asked her if David Wayne was around, she nodded and pointed to the middle office. Banks walked between the rows of desks, attracting no attention at all, then knocked on the door that bore the nameplate DAVID C. WAYNE.

The man who invited him in was younger than Banks had expected. Late twenties, early thirties at the most. He wore a white shirt with a garish tie, wavy brown hair falling over his collar. He had one of those high foreheads with little shiny red bumps at each side that made his hairline seem to be prematurely receding, and he smelled of Old Spice. A dark sports jacket hung over the back of his chair.

He frowned as he studied Banks’s warrant card, then gestured to the spare chair and said, “How can I help you?”

Banks sat down. “I’m making inquiries about Jason Fox,” he said. “I understand he used to work here?”

Wayne ’s frown deepened. “That’s going back a bit.”

“But you do remember him?”

“Oh, yes. I remember Jason all right.” Wayne leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. The telephone rang; he ignored it. In the background, Banks could hear the hubbub of the office through the flimsy partition. “Why do you want to know?” Wayne asked.

Much as Banks hated parting with information, it would do no harm in this case, he thought, and it might get Wayne to open up more quickly. He could already sense that something was not quite right, and the woman in the Human Resources Department had implied some sort of cover-up. So he told Wayne that Jason had been found dead, and that his parents had said he worked for this company.

“After all this time.” Wayne shook his head slowly. “Amazing.”

“Why did he leave?”

“He didn’t leave. Not exactly.”

“He was fired?”

“No.”

“Made redundant?”

“No.”

Banks sighed and shifted position. “Look, Mr. Wayne,” he said, “I didn’t come here to play a guessing game. I came to get information that might be important in a serious police investigation.”

“I’m sorry,” said Wayne, scratching his head. “It’s all still a bit embarrassing, you see.”

“Embarrassing? In what way?”

“I wasn’t in management back then. I was just one of Jason’s co-workers. I had more experience, though. In fact, I was the one who trained him.”

“Was he a poor worker?”

“On the contrary. He was very good at his job. Bright, energetic, quick to learn. Showed an extraordinary aptitude for computers, considering he’d had no formal training in that area. Still, that’s often the case.”

“Then what-”

“The job isn’t everything, Chief Inspector,” Wayne went on quickly. “Oh, it’s important, I’ll grant you that. You can put up with a lot of idiosyncrasies if someone’s as good as Jason was. We’ve had our share of arseholes in our time and, by and large, if they’re competent, hardworking arse-holes, you just tend to put up with them.”

“But it was different with Jason?”

“Yes.”

“In what way?”

“It was his attitude,” Wayne explained. “I suppose you’d call it his political beliefs.”

“Which were?”

“To put it in a nutshell, Jason was a racist. White power and all that. And it didn’t take a lot to get him on his hobby horse. Just some item in the newspaper, some new opinion poll or crime statistics.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“You name it. Asians and West Indians were his chief targets. According to Jason, if something wasn’t done soon, the immigrants would take over the country and run it into the ground. Anarchy would follow. Chaos. The law of the jungle. He said you only had to look around you to see what damage they’d done already. AIDS. Drugs. Unemployment. He put them all down to immigrants.” Wayne shook his head again. “It was disgusting, really sick, some of the things he came out with.”

“Is that why he left?”

Wayne nodded. “As I said, he didn’t exactly leave. It was more of a mutual parting of the ways, maybe a little more desired on our side than his. But the company paid him off adequately and got rid of him. No blemish on his references, either. I suppose whoever employed him next found out what the bugger was like soon enough. I mean, it’s all very well to crack the odd… you know… off-color joke, have a bit of a laugh. We all do that, don’t we? But