“Can you tell me exactly what happened, sir?” she asked.
“We were driving down the street and Olivia thought she saw something moving on the waste ground at the end of that passage under the railway lines there. I . . . well, I wasn’t going to stop, quite frankly, because I didn’t like the look of the place, but it was unmistakable. A person. The white T-shirt. There was somebody on the ground there, rolling, you know, as if he was in pain. At first, of course, we thought it might have been a woman who’d been attacked and raped. There’s such a lot of it around these days.”
“So you stopped to help?”
“Yes. I got out and . . . well, as soon as I saw the blood I got straight back in the car and phoned the ambulance and police on my mobile.”
“Did you see anyone else around?”
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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Paxton paused. “I’m not really sure. I mean, it was quite dark, even then.”
“But?”
“Well, I thought I saw a dark hooded figure running up the passage.”
“Dark as in . . . ?” asked Winsome.
“Oh, no,” Paxton said. “No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply . . .
No. Just that it was in shadow.”
“Male or female?” Annie asked.
“Male, I think.”
“Could you give a description?”
“I’m afraid not. It
“I understand,” said Annie. “Did you see anyone else?”
“There were a couple of people walking up that cross street, about a hundred yards away. A man walking his dog. And I got the most f leeting impression . . . I don’t know, just before we got there and saw the figure on the ground, that there was a group of people sort of scattering.”
“Scattering?”
“Yes. All going in different directions, disappearing around corners and down passageways.”
“Could you describe any of them?”
“No. They were either in the shadows or wearing those hoods like they do these days so you can’t make out their faces.”
“Hoodies?”
“Is that what you call them?”
There were two gangs, if you could call them that, operating on the East Side Estate, Annie had learned: one to the north, centered around the two tower blocks, and the other here, to the south, hanging out around “glue- sniffers’ ginnel.” Though ASBOs abounded on both sides, they had never caused any serious problems outside the odd scrap, graffiti, shoplifting in the Swainsdale Centre and threatening behavior. But the mood had been changing lately; knives had arrived, baseball bats, and there were rumors of heavier drugs coming in from down south and from Manchester.
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P E T E R R O B I N S O N
Paxton’s description of the people he had seen “scattering” from the scene fitted with the kind of uniform the gang members wore, and Donny Moore, the victim, was right up there with them. Most of their names were on file, so they shouldn’t be hard to track down.
Whether the police would get anything out of them was another matter. People on the East Side Estate were notoriously closemouthed when it came to talking to the police.
“Did you see anything else?” she asked.
“No,” said Paxton. “I went back to the car and waited. The ambulance was quick. The boy was very still. I thought he was dead.”
“And you saw no one else?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay,” said Annie. “You can go home now. Leave an address with DS Jackman here and we’ll be in touch about a formal statement. It’s just a formality.” She turned to go and talk to the officers on crowd control. The citizens were getting restless for information.
“Thank you,” said Paxton.
As Annie walked away, she heard him ask Winsome, “Er . . . do you think you could possibly tell me the way to Lyndgarth?”
Annie had to smile. If you want to know the way, ask a policeman.
She turned and winked at Winsome, who took the address and gave Paxton directions.
S I N C E H I S talk with Edwina Silbert, Banks had found himself thinking a lot about the fact that Laurence Silbert had been a spy. He didn’t know very much about the intelligence services, which was probably the way they liked to keep it, but he knew enough to be aware that Silbert might have got up some pretty nasty business and
