“Calm down, Jamie,” Ms. Melchior said. “Is this going anywhere?”
she asked Banks.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Isn’t it, Jamie? You know where it’s going, don’t you? Saturday the seventeenth of March. Saint Patrick’s Day.
What was special about that day?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“Some yobbos wrecked your toilets, didn’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened? Did they find your peephole from the storeroom to the ladies’?”
Murdoch froze. “What?”
It had been a long shot on Banks’s part—no one had mentioned such a thing—but it was turning out to be a good guess. It was exactly the sort of thing he thought someone like Murdoch would do. “We’ll leave that for the moment,” Banks went on. “Hayley was looking particularly good that night, wasn’t she? The short skirt, low top. Looked a bit like a tart, didn’t she?”
“DCI Banks,” Ms. Melchior interrupted. “Fewer of those sorts of comments, if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry,” said Banks. “But you fancied her, didn’t you, Jamie?”
“She was very attractive.”
“And you’d wanted her for a long time.”
“I liked her, yes.”
“And she knew it?”
“I suppose she did.”
“And then this business with the toilets came up.”
“She should never have said the things she did.”
“She humiliated you in front of everybody, didn’t she?”
“She shouldn’t have called me those names.”
“What names, Jamie?”
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“Terrible names. About my manhood and things.” He gave a shifty glance toward Ms. Melchior, who seemed enthralled.
“She called you impotent, didn’t she? ‘Limp dick.’ That really got your goat, didn’t it?”
“How could she say something like that? She knew I . . . knew I liked her. How could she be so cruel?”
“She was drunk, Jamie. And she needed a piss.”
“Mr. Banks!”
Banks held his hand up. “Sorry.”
“I couldn’t help that, could I?” said Jamie. “It wasn’t me wrecked the fucking bogs!”
Banks heard a tap at the door. Winsome answered, came back and whispered in his ear.
“This interview is suspended at six-thirteen p.m.,” Banks said. “DCI Banks and DC Jackman are leaving the room, PC Mellors is entering to keep an eye on the suspect.” Banks glanced at Ms. Melchior. “You coming?”
She seemed torn between her client and whatever new revelation had just come up. “You’ll be all right, Jamie?”
“He’ll be all right, ma’am,” the PC said.
Jamie nodded, eyes averted.
“Very well, then.” Ms. Melchior gathered up her papers and briefcase and strutted out after Banks and Winsome, across the market square to The Fountain. A brisk wind had sprung up, and she had to hold her lilac skirt down with one hand as she walked. There was already a crowd gathered outside the pub, and the two uniformed constables were doing a sterling job of defending the crime scene.
Once they had signed the sheet, Banks and the others were allowed inside The Fountain, where a thorough search had been in progress ever since they had taken Jamie Murdoch over to the station, all legal and aboveboard. The SOCOs were dressed in protective clothing and wore breathing filters against the dust, and an assistant handed out the same gear to Banks, Winsome and Ms. Melchior, who seemed a bit embarrassed in her hard hat, overalls and face mask.
The pub was a shambles. There were dust and crumbled plaster everywhere. The landlord would go crazy when he found out, Banks F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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thought, though with any luck that would be the least of his problems.
They followed Stefan Nowak upstairs to one of the storerooms above the bar that abutted on Taylor’s Yard and The Maze. Someone had moved a piece of the old wainscoting away to reveal a hole big enough for a man to get through. Banks could hear voices and see the beam of a torch waving around on the other side.
