him. At the front, Gill’s immediate family-mother, two sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces-snuffled and slipped each other wads of Kleenex.
When it was over, everyone filed out and waited for the cars to take them to the funeral lunch. The oaks and beeches lining the cemetery drive shook in the brisk wind. One moment the sun popped out from behind the clouds, and the next, a five-minute shower took everyone by surprise. It was that kind of day: chameleon, unpredictable.
Banks stood with DC Richmond by the unmarked black police Rover-his own white Cortina was hardly the thing
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for a funeral-and waited for someone to lead the way. He wore a light grey raincoat over his navy-blue suit, but his head was bare. With his close-cropped black hair, scar beside the right eye, and lean, angular features, he thought he must look a suspicious figure as he held his raincoat collar tight around his throat to keep out the cold wind. Richmond, rangy and athletic, wearing a camel-hair overcoat and trilby, stood beside him.
It was early Tuesday afternoon. Banks had spent the morning reading over the records Richmond had managed to gather on Osmond and the Maggie’s Farm crowd.
There wasn’t much. Seth Cotton had once been arrested for carrying an offensive weapon (a bicycle chain) at a modsandrockers debacle in Brighton in the early sixties. After that, he had one marijuana bust to his credit-only a quid deal, nothing serious-for which he had been fined.
Rick Trelawney had been in trouble only once, in St Ives, Cornwall. A tourist had taken exception to his drunken pronouncements on the perfidy of collecting art, and a rowdy argument turned into a punch-up. It had taken three men to drag Rick off, and the tourist had ended up with a broken jaw and one permanently deaf ear.
The only other skeleton in Rick’s cupboard was the wife from whom he had recently separated. She was an alcoholic, which made it easy enough for Rick to get custody of Julian. But she was now staying with her sister in London while undergoing treatment, and there was a legal battle brewing. Things had got so bad at one point that Rick had applied for a court order to prevent her from coming near their son.
There was nothing on Zoe, but Richmond had checked the birth registry and discovered that the father of her child, Luna, was one Lyle Greenberg, an American student who had since returned to his home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
On Mara there was even less. Immigration identified her as Moira Delacey, originally from Dublin. With her parents, she had come to England at the age of six, and they had settled in Manchester. No known Republican connections.
Most interesting and disturbing of all was Dennis Osmond’s criminal record. In addition to arrests for his part in
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anti-government demonstrations-with charges ranging from breach of the peace to theft of a police officer’s helmet -he had also been accused of assault by a live-in girlfriend called Ellen Ventner four years ago. At the woman’s insistence, the charges had later been dropped, but Ventner’s injuries-two broken ribs, a broken nose, three teeth knocked out and concussion-had been clearly documented by the hospital, and Osmond came out of the affair looking far from clean. Banks wasn’t sure whether to bring up the subject when he met Jenny for dinner that evening. He wondered if she already knew. If she didn’t she might not take kindly to his interference. Somehow, he doubted that Osmond had told her.
They were still waiting for the information from Special Branch, who had files on Osmond, Tim Fenton, the student leader, and five others known to have been at the demo. Apparently, the Branch needed Burgess’s personal access code, password, voice-print and genetic fingerprint, or some equally ludicrous sequence of identification. Banks didn’t expect much from them, anyway. In his own experience, Special Branch kept files on everyone who had ever bought a copy of Socialist Weekly.
Today, while Banks and Richmond were attending Gill’s funeral, Burgess was taking Sergeant Hatchley to do the rounds again. They intended to revisit Osmond, Dorothy Wycombe, Tim Fenton and Maggie’s Farm. Banks wanted to talk to the students himself, so he decided to call on them when he got back that evening-if Burgess hadn’t alienated them beyond all communication by then.
Burgess had been practically salivating at the prospect of more interrogations, and even Hatchley had seemed more excited about work than usual. Perhaps it was the chance to work with a superstar that thrilled him, Banks thought. The sergeant had always found “The Sweeney” much more interesting than the real thing. Or maybe he was going to suck up to Dirty Dick in the hope of being chosen for some special Scotland Yard squad. And the devil of it was, perhaps he would be, too.
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Banks had mixed feelings about that possibility. He had got used to Sergeant Hatchley sooner than he’d expected to, and they had worked quite well together.
But Banks had no real feeling for him. He couldn’t even bring himself to call Hatchley by his first name, Jim.
In Banks’s mind, Hatchley was a sergeant and always would be. He didn’t have that extra keen edge needed to make inspector. Phil Richmond did, but unfortunately there wasn’t anywhere for him to move up to locally unless Hatchley was promoted, too. Superintendent Gristhorpe wouldn’t have that, and Banks didn’t blame him. If Burgess liked Hatchley enough to suggest a job in London, that would solve all their problems. Richmond had already passed his sergeant’s exams-the first stage on the long road to promotion-and perhaps PC
Susan Gay, who had shown remarkable aptitude for detective work, could be transferred in from the uniformed branch as a new detective constable. PC Craig would be opposed, of course. He still called policewomen “wopsies,” even though the gender-specific designation, WPC, had been dropped in favour of the neutral PC as far back as 1975. But that was Craig’s problem; Hatchley was everyone’s cross to bear.
Finally, the glossy black cars set off. Banks and Richmond followed them through the dull, deserted streets of Scarborough to the reception. There was nowhere quite as gloomy as a coastal resort in the off-season. If it hadn’t been for the vague whiff of sea and fish in the air, nobody would have guessed they were at the seaside.
“Fancy a walk on the prom after lunch?” Banks asked.
Richmond sniffed. “Hardly the weather for that, is it?”
