Mara looked up at him and smiled. “I’ll manage.”
“Good.” He bent and kissed her, then went out back to his workshop.
But Mara wasn’t all right. Left to herself, she began to imagine all kinds of terrible things. The world of Maggie’s Farm had seemed at first to offer the stability, love and freedom she had always been searching for, but now it had broken adrift. The feeling was like that she remembered having during a mild earthquake in California, when she’d travelled around the States, with Matthew, eons ago. Suddenly, the floor of the room, the house’s foundations, the solid earth on which they were built, had seemed no more stable than water. A ripple had passed fleetingly under her, and what she had always thought durable turned out to be flimsy, untrustworthy and transient. The quake had only lasted for ten seconds and hadn’t registered above five on the Richter scale, but the impression had remained with her ever since. Now it was coming back stronger than ever.
On the mantelpiece, among the clutter of sea shells, pebbles, fossils and feathers, she could see the faint outline of dust around where the knife had been. As she wiped the surface clean, she thanked her lucky stars that the police had been looking for material things, not absences.
Banks drove along Foreshore Road and Sandside by the Old Harbour. The amusement arcades and gift shops were all closed. In season, crowds of holiday-makers always gathered around the racks of cheeky postcards, teenagers queued for the Ghost Train, and children dragged their parents to the booths that sold candy-floss and Scarborough rock. But now the prom was deserted. Even on the seaward side, there were no stalls selling cockles, winkles and boiled shrimp. A thick, high cloud-cover had set in, and the sea sloshed at the barnacle-crusted harbour walls like molten metal. Fishing
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boats rocked at their moorings, and stacks of lobster-pots teetered on the quayside. Towering over the scene, high on its promontory, the ruined castle looked like something out of a black-and-white horror film.
Banks dropped Richmond off at a pub near the West Pier and carried on along Marine Drive, parking just beyond the closed fun-fair. He buttoned up his raincoat tight and walked along the road that curved around the headland between the high cliff and the sea. Signs on the hillside warned of falling rocks. Waves hit the sea-wall and threw up spray onto the road.
Tony Grant was already there, leaning on the railing and staring out to the point where sea and sky merged in a uniform grey. He wore a navy duffle coat with the hood down, and his baby-fine hair fluttered in the wind. A solitary oil tanker was moving slowly across the horizon.
“I like it best like this,” he said as Banks joined him. “If you don’t mind getting a bit wet.”
They both looked out over the ruffled water. Salt spray filled the air and Banks felt the ozone freshen his lungs as he breathed deep. He shivered and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”
Grant hesitated. “Look, sir,” he said after staring at the oil tanker for half a minute, “I don’t want you to get me wrong. I’m not a grass or anything. I’ve not been long on the force, and mostly I like it. I didn’t think I would, not at first, but I do now. I want to make a career out of it.” He looked at Banks intensely. “I’d like to join the CID. I’m not stupid; I’ve got brains. I’ve been to university, and I could maybe have got into teaching-that’s what I thought I wanted to do-but, well, you know the job situation. Seems all that’s going these days is the police force. So I joined. Anyway, as I said, I like it. It’s challenging.”
Banks took out a cigarette and cupped his hand around his blue Bic lighter. It took him four attempts to get a flame going long enough. He wished Grant would get to the point, but he knew he had to be patient and listen. The kid was about to go against his peers and squeal on a colleague.
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Listening to the justification, as he had listened to so many before, was the price Banks had to pay.
“It’s just that,” Grant went on, “well… it’s not as clean as I expected.”
Naive bugger, Banks thought. “It’s like anything else,” he said, encouraging the lad. “There’s a lot of bastards out there, whatever you do. Maybe our line of work attracts more than-the usual quota of bullies, lazy sods, sadists and the like. But that doesn’t mean we’re all like that.” Banks sucked on his cigarette.
It tasted different, mixed with the sea air. A wave broke below them and the spray wet their feet.
“I know what you’re saying,” Grant said, “and I think you’re right. I just wanted you to know what side I’m on. I don’t believe that the end justifies the means. With me they’re innocent until proven guilty, as the saying goes. I treat people with respect, no matter what colour they are or how they dress or wear their hair. I’m not saying I approve of some of the types we get, but I’m not a thug.”
“And Gill was?”
“Yes.” A big wave started to peak as it approached the wall, and they both stepped back quickly to avoid the spray. Even so, they couldn’t dodge a mild soaking, and Banks’s cigarette got soggy. He threw it away.
“Was this common knowledge?”
“Oh, aye. He made no bones about it. See, with Gill it wasn’t just the overtime, the money. He liked it well enough, but he liked the job more, if you see what I mean.”
“I think I do. Go on.”
“He was handy with his truncheon, Gill was. And he enjoyed it. Every time we got requests for manpower at demos, pickets, and the like, he’d be first to sign up.
Got a real taste for it during the miners’ strike, when they bussed police in from all over the place. He was the kind of bloke who’d wave a roll of fivers at the striking miners to taunt them before he clobbered them. He trained with the Tactical Aid Group.”
The TAG, Banks knew, was a kind of force within a force. Its members trained together in a military fashion and
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learned how to use guns, rubber bullets and tear-gas. When their training was over, they went back to normal duties and remained on call for special situations-like demos and picket lines. The official term for them had been changed to PSU-Police Support Unit-as the TAGs got a lot of bad publicity and sounded too obviously martial. But it
