“Took the evening off, Mr Banks. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Said there’d be three of us so we should be able to cope. Dead cagey, he was too.
Still, he’s the boss, isn’t he? He can do what he likes.”
“True enough, Rosie,” Banks said. “I’ll have two pints of your best bitter, please.”
“Right you are, Mr Banks.”
They stood at the bar and chatted with the regulars, who knew better than to ask too many questions about their work. Banks was beginning to feel unusually pleased with himself, considering he still hadn’t found the answer. Whether it was the chat with Sandra, the nap, Richmond’s success or the drink, he didn’t know. Perhaps it was a combination of all four. He was close to the end of the case, though, he knew that. If he could solve the problem of two mutually exclusive explanations for Gill’s and Seth’s deaths, then he would be home and dry. Tomorrow should be an interesting day. First he would track down Liz Dale and discover what she knew; then there was the other business. … Yes, tomorrow should be very interesting indeed. And the day after that, Sandra was due home.
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“Last orders, please!” Rosie shouted. “Shall we?” Richmond asked.
“Go on. Why not,” said Banks. He felt curiously like celebrating.
292
I
Dirty Dick was conspicuous by his absence the following morning. Banks took the opportunity to make a couple of important phone calls before getting an early start.
Just south of Bradford, it started to rain. Banks turned on the wipers and lit a cigarette from the dashboard lighter. On the car stereo, Walter Davis sang, “You got bad blood, baby,
It was so easy to get lost in the conurbation of old West Yorkshire woollen towns. Built in valleys on the eastern edges of the Pennines, they seemed to overlap one another, and it was hard to tell exactly where you were. The huge old textile factories, where all the processes of clothes-making had been gathered together under one roof in the last century, looked grim in the failing light. They were five or six storeys high, with flat roofs, rows of windows close together, and tall chimneys you could see for miles.
Cleckheaton, Liversedge, Heckmondwike, Brighouse, Rastrick, Mirfield-the strange names Banks usually associated only with brass bands and rugby teams-flew by on road signs. As he drew nearer to Huddersfield, he slowed and peered out through his rain-spattered windscreen for the turnoff.
Luckily the psychiatric hospital was at the northern end of the town, so he didn’t have to cross the centre. When he saw 293
the signpost, he followed directions to the left, down a street between two derelict warehouses.
The greenery of the hospital grounds came as a shock after so many miles of bleak industrial wasteland. There was a high brick wall and a guard at the gate, but beyond that, the drive wound its way by trees and a well-kept lawn to the modern L-shaped hospital complex. Banks parked in the visitors’ lot, then presented himself at reception.
“That’ll be Dr Preston,” said the receptionist, looking up Elizabeth Dale in her roll file. “But the doctor can’t divulge any information about his patients, you know.”
Banks smiled. “He will see me, won’t he?”
“Oh, of course. He’s with our bursar right now, but if you’ll wait he should be finished in ten minutes or so. You can wait over in the canteen if you like. The tea’s not too bad.”
Banks thanked her and walked towards the cluster of bright orange plastic tables and chairs.
“Oh, Mr Banks?” she called after him.
He turned.
She put her hands to the sides of her mouth and spoke quietly and slowly, mouthing the words as if for a lip- reader. “You won’t wander off, will you?” She flicked her eyes right and left as if to indicate that beyond those points lay monsters.
Banks assured her that he wouldn’t, bought a cup of tea and a Penguin biscuit from the pretty teenage girl at the counter and sat down.
There was only one other person in the canteen. A skinny man with a pronounced stoop and hair combed straight back from his creased brow, he was dressed as a vicar. Seeing Banks, he brought his cup over and sat down. He had a long, thin nose and a small mouth. The shape of his head, Banks noticed, was distinctly odd; it was triangular, and the forehead sloped sharply backwards. With his hair brushed straight back, standing at forty-five degrees, he looked as if his entire face had been sculpted by a head-on wind.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked, smiling in a way that screwed up his features grotesquely.
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“Not if you don’t mind my smoking,” Banks replied.
“Go ahead, old chap, doesn’t bother me at all.” His accent was educated and southern. “Haven’t seen you here before?”
It should have been a comment, but it sounded like a question.
“That’s not surprising,” Banks said. “I’ve never been here before. I’m a policeman.”
“Oh, jolly good!” the vicar exclaimed. “Which one? Let me guess: Clouseau?
Poirot? Holmes?”
