to listen. Nicholas, in fact, seemed the only unconcerned one among them. He smiled and nodded at customers who came and went, whereas the other three hardly seemed to notice them.
Richmond wished he could get closer and overhear what they were saying, but all the nearby tables were full. It would look too suspicious if he went and stood behind them.
He ordered another pint. ‘And I’ll have a panatella too, please,’ he said. He felt like indulging in a rare treat: a cigar with his beer. ‘What party’s this?’ he asked.
‘A Collier do. Reg’lar as clockwork in summer.’
‘Can anyone go?’
Tha must be joking, lad.’
Richmond shrugged and smiled to show he was, indeed, jesting. ‘What’s wrong with them all, then?’ he asked. ‘You’re right. They don’t look like they’re contemplating a booze-up to me.’
Metcalfe scratched his mutton chops. ‘I can’t be certain, tha knows, but it’s summat to do wi’ that London copper taking off for Canada. Talk about pale! Ashen, they went. But I’ll tell tha summat, it were good for business. Double brandies all round!’ Freddie nudged Richmond and laughed. ‘Aye, there’s nobody drinks like a murder suspect.’
Richmond drew on his cigar and looked over at the table. Outside some enemy back in Toronto, it came down to these four. Come on, he thought to himself, make a bolt. Run for it, you bugger, just try it!
FOUR
‘I don’t know what people do where you come from, but over here we like a bit of advance warning if some foreigner’s come to invade our territory.’
Banks listened. There was nothing he could say; he had been caught fair and square. Fortunately, Staff Sergeant Gregson of the Toronto Homicide Squad was nearing the end of what had been a relatively mild bollocking, and even more fortunately, smoking was allowed - nay, encouraged - in his office.
It was an odd feeling, being on the carpet. Not that this was the first time for Banks. There had been many occasions at school, and even one or two in his early days on the Metropolitan force, and they always brought back those feelings of terror and helplessness in the face of authority he had known as a working-class kid in Peterborough. Perhaps, he thought, that fear of authority might have motivated him to become a policeman in the first place. He knew he didn’t join in order to inflict such feelings on others, but it was possible that he did it to surmount them, to conquer them in himself.
And now here he was, tongue-tied, unable to say a word in his own defence, yet inwardly seething with resentment at Gregson for putting him in such a position.
‘You’ve got no power here, you know,’ Gregson went on.
Finally, Banks found his voice. Holding his anger in check, he said, ‘I wasn’t aware that I needed any special power to talk to people - either in England or in Canada.’
‘You won’t get anywhere being sarcastic with me,’ Gregson said, a smile tugging at the corners of his tightly clamped mouth.
He was a round man with a square head. His grey hair was closely cropped, and a brush-like wedge of matching moustache, nicotine-yellow around the ends of the bristles, sprouted under his squashed nose. As he spoke, he had a habit of running his fingers under the collar of his white shirt as if it was too tight. His skin had a pinkish plastic sheen, like a balloon blown up too much. Banks wondered what would happen if he pricked him. Would he explode, or would the air hiss out slowly as his features folded in on themselves?
‘What have you got against irony, Sergeant?’ Banks asked. That felt odd, too: being hauled up before a mere sergeant.
‘You know what they say about sarcasm being the lowest form of wit, don’t you?’ Gregson responded.
‘Yes. But at least it is a form of wit, which is better than none at all.’
‘I didn’t bring you here to bandy words.’
‘Obviously.’
Banks lit another cigarette and looked at the concrete and glass office blocks out of the window. His shirt was stuck with sweat to the back of the orange plastic chair. He felt his anger ebb into boredom. They were somewhere downtown in a futuristic air-conditioned building, but the office smelt of burning rubber and old cigar smoke. That was all he knew.
‘What are you going to do, then?’ Banks asked. ‘Arrest me?’
Gregson shrugged. ‘For what? You haven’t done anything wrong.’
Banks leaned forward. ‘Then why the bloody hell did you get Laurel and Hardy out there to bundle me in the back of a car and bring me here against my will?’
‘Don’t be like that,’ Gregson said. ‘When Jordan phoned me and said there was a suspicious Englishman asking questions about Bernard Allen, what the fuck else could I do? What would you have done? Then it turned out to be you, a goddamn police inspector from England. And I hadn’t even been advised of your visit. I considered that an insult, which it is. And I didn’t find your remark on the phone about getting my man particularly funny, either. I’m not a Mountie.’
‘Well, I’m sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused you, Sergeant,’ Banks said, standing up, ‘but I’d like to enjoy the rest of my holiday in peace, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Gregson said, making no move to stop him walking over to the door. ‘I don’t mind at all.
But I think you ought to bear a few things in mind before you go storming off.’
‘What things?’ Banks asked, his palm slippery on the doorknob.
‘First of all, that what I said to you on the phone before is true: we don’t have the resources to work on this case. Secondly, yes, you can talk to as many people as you wish, providing they want to talk to you. And thirdly, you should have damn well asked for permission before jumping on that fucking jet and flying here half-cocked. What if you find your killer? What are you going to do then? Have you thought about that? Smuggle him out of the country? You could be getting yourself into a damn tricky legal situation if you’re not very careful.’ Gregson rubbed his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘All I’m saying is that there are things you can’t do acting alone, without authority.’
‘And you don’t have the resources. I know. You told me. Look, this is where I came in, so if you don’t mind-’
‘Wait!’ Gregson jumped to his feet and reached for his jacket.
‘Wait for what?’
Gregson pushed past him through the door. ‘Come on,’ he said, half turning. ‘Just come with me.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘What for?’
‘I’m going to save you from yourself.’
Banks sighed and followed the sergeant down the corridor and down in the lift to the car park.
There was enough room for a football team on the front seat of Gregson’s car. With the open windows sucking in what hot wet air they could, the staff sergeant drove up Yonge Street and turned right at the Hudson’s Bay building. On the crowded street corner, vendors sold icecream, T-shirts and jewellery; one man, surrounded by quite a crowd, was drawing large portraits in coloured chalk on the pavement.
Farther along, Banks recognized the stretch of the Danforth he’d walked the previous day: the Carrot Common shopping centre; the little Greek restaurant where he’d eaten lunch; Quinn’s pub. They came to an intersection called Coxwell, and Gregson turned left. A few blocks up, he pulled to a halt outside a small apartment building. Sprinklers hissed on the well kept lawn. Banks was tempted to run under one for a cold shower.
They walked up to the third floor, and Banks followed Gregson along the carpeted corridor to apartment 312.
‘Allen’s place,’ the staff sergeant announced.
‘Why are you helping me?’ Banks asked, as Gregson fitted the key in the door. ‘Why are you bringing me here? You said your department didn’t have the resources.’
‘That’s true. We’ve got a hunt on for a guy who sodomized a twelve-year-old girl, then cut her throat and dumped her in High Park. Been looking for leads for two months now. Twenty men on the case. But this is personal time. I don’t like it that a local guy got killed any more than you do. So I show you where he lived. It’s no big deal. Besides, like I said, I’m saving you from yourself. You’d probably have broken in, and then I’d have had to arrest you. Embarrassing all round.’
‘Thanks anyway,’ Banks said.
They walked into the apartment.
‘Building owner’s been bugging us to let him rent it out again, but we’ve been stalling. He knows he’s sitting on a gold mine. We’ve got a zero vacancy rate in Toronto these days. Still, Allen paid first and last month when he moved in, so I figure he’s got a bit of time left. To tell you the truth, we don’t know who’s gonna take care of the guy’s stuff.’
There wasn’t much: just a lot of books, Swedish assemble-it-yourself furniture, pots and pans, a few withered house plants and a desk and typewriter by the window. Bernard Allen had lived simply.
The room was hot and stuffy. There was no sign of an air-conditioner, so Banks went over and opened a window. It didn’t make much difference.
‘What kind of search did your men do?’ Banks asked.
‘Routine. We didn’t open up every book or read every letter, if that’s what you mean. The guy didn’t keep much personal stuff around, anyway. It was all in that desk drawer.’
Banks extracted a messy pile of bills and letters from the drawer. First, he put aside the bills then examined the sheaf of personal mail. They were all dated within the last six months or so, which meant that he threw his letters out periodically instead of hoarding them like some people. There were letters from his parents in Australia and one brief note from his sister acknowledging the dates of his proposed visit. Banks read these carefully, but found nothing of significance.
It was a postcard from Vancouver dated about two weeks before Allen set off for England that proved the most revealing, but even that wasn’t enough. It
