Banks talked to his daughter for a while about St Paul’s and the Tower of London, then Brian cut in and told him how great the record shops were down there. There was exactly the guitar he’d been looking for…. Finally, Sandra came back on again.
“Anything happening up there?”
“You could say that.” Banks told her about the demo and the killing.
Sandra whistled. “I’m glad I’m out of it. I can imagine how frantic things are.”
“Thanks for the support.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Remember Dick Burgess? Used to be a chief inspector at the Yard?”
“Was he the one who pawed the hostess and threw up in the geraniums at Lottie’s party?”
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“That’s the one. He’s up here, in charge.”
“God help you. Now I’m really glad I’m down here. He had his eyes on me, too, you know, if not his hands.”
“I’d like to say it was good taste, but don’t flatter yourself, love. He’s like that with everyone in a skirt.”
Sandra laughed. “Better go now. Brian and Tracy are at it again.”
“Give them my love. Take care. See you soon.”
After he’d hung up, Banks felt so depressed that he almost regretted phoning in the first place. Why, he wondered, does a phone call to a distant loved one only intensify the emptiness and loneliness you were feeling before you called?
At a loose end, he turned off the television in the middle of a pop-music special that Brian would have loved and put on the blues tape an old colleague had sent him from London. The Reverend Robert Wilkins sang “Prodigal Son” in his eerie voice, unusually thin and high-pitched for a bluesman. Banks slouched in the armchair by the gas fire and sipped his drink. He often did his best thinking while drinking Scotch and listening to music, and it was time to put some of his thoughts about Gill’s murder in order.
A number of things bothered him. There were demonstrations all the time, much bigger than the one in Eastvale, and while opposing sides sometimes came to blows, policemen didn’t usually get stabbed. Call it statistics, probability, or just a hunch, but he didn’t believe in Burgess’s view of the affair.
And that was a problem, because it didn’t leave much else to choose from. He still had uneasy feelings about some of the Maggie’s Farm crowd. Paul Boyd was a dangerous character if ever he’d met one, and Mara had seemed extremely keen to come to his defence. Seth and Zoe had been especially quiet, but Rick Trelawney had expressed more violent views than Banks had expected. He didn’t know what it added up to, but he felt that somebody knew something, or thought they did, and didn’t want to communicate their suspicions to the police. It was a stupid way to behave, but people did it all the time. Banks just hoped that none of them got hurt.
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As for Dennis Osmond, putting personal antipathy aside, Banks had caught him on two lies. Osmond had said he didn’t know Paul Boyd, when he clearly did, and Banks had also suspected him of lying when he denied knowing PC Gill. It was easy enough to see why he might have lied: nobody wants to admit a connection with a murdered man or a convicted criminal if he doesn’t have to. But Banks had to determine if there was anything more sinister to it than that. How could Osmond have known PC Gill? Maybe they’d been to school together. Or perhaps Gill had had occasion to arrest Osmond at some previous antinuclear protest. If so, it should be on the files. Richmond would have the gen from Special Branch in the morning.
Nothing so far seemed much like a motive for murder, though. If he was really cautious, he might be able to get something out of Jenny on Tuesday. She didn’t usually resent his trying to question her, but she was bound to be especially sensitive where Osmond was concerned.
Perhaps he had reacted unprofessionally on finding Jenny in Osmond’s bedroom and to Burgess’s approach to interrogation. But, he reminded himself, Dirty Dick had made him look a proper wally, and what was more, he had insulted Jenny.
Sometimes Banks thought that Burgess’s technique was to badger everyone involved in a case until someone was driven to try to throttle him. At least then he could lay a charge of attempted murder.
Halfway through his third Laphroaig and the second side of the tape, Banks decided that there was only one way to get back at the bastard, and that was to solve the case himself, in his own way. Burgess wasn’t the only one who could play his cards close to his chest. Let him concentrate on the reds under the bed. Banks would do a bit of discreet digging and see if he could come up with anyone who had a motive for wanting PC Edwin Gill, and not just any copper, dead.
But if Gill the person rather than Gill the policeman was the victim, it raised a number of problems. For a start, how could the killer know that Gill was going to be at the demo? Also, how could he be sure that things would turn violent 81 81
enough to mask a kill? Most puzzling of all was how could he have been certain of an escape? But at least these were concrete questions, a starting point. The more Banks thought about it, the more the thick of a political demonstration seemed the ideal cover for murder.
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I
The funeral procession wound its way from Gordon Street, where Edwin Gill had lived, along Manor Road to the cemetery. Somehow, Banks thought, the funeral of a fellow officer was always more solemn and grim than any other. Every policeman there knew that it could just as easily have been him in the coffin; every copper’s wife lived with the fear that her husband, too, might end up stabbed, beaten or, these days, shot; and the public at large felt the tremor and momentary weakness in the order of things.
For the second time in less than a week, Banks found himself uncomfortable in a suit and tie. He listened to the vicar’s eulogy, the obligatory verses from the Book of Common Prayer, and stared at the bristly necks in front of
