“What about Paul Boyd?” he asked.
Jenny paused. “He’s quite new up there. I can’t say I know him well. To tell you the truth-and to speak quite unprofessionally-he gives me the creeps. But Mara’s very attached to him, like he’s a younger brother, or a son, even. There’s about seventeen years between them. He’s another generation, really-punk, post-sixties. Mara thinks he just needs tender loving care, something he’s never had much of, apparently.”
“What do you think of Paul professionally?”
“It’s hard to answer that. As I said, I haven’t really talked to him that much.
He seems angry, antisocial. Maybe life at the farm will give him some sense of belonging. If you think about it, what reason does he have to love the world? No adult has ever given him a break, nor has society. He feels worthless and rejected, so he makes himself look like a reject; he holds it to him and shouts it out, as people do. And that,” Jenny said with a mock bow, “is Dr Fuller’s humble opinion.”
Banks nodded. “It makes sense.”
“But it doesn’t make him a killer.”
“No.” He couldn’t think of any more questions without returning to the dangerous territory of Dennis Osmond, and things had gone so well for the past half hour or so that he didn’t want to risk ending the evening on a sour note. Jenny was bound to be guarded if he really started pushing about Osmond again.
Banks picked up the bill, which Jenny insisted on sharing, and they left. The drive home went smoothly, but Banks felt guilty because he was sure he was a bit over the limit, and if anyone ought to know better about drunken driving, it was a policeman. Not that he felt drunk. After all, he hadn’t had much to drink, really. He was perfectly in control. But that’s what they all said when the crystals changed colour. Jenny told him not to be silly, he was quite all right.
When he dropped her off, there was no invitation to come in for a coffee, and he was glad of that.
117
Luckily, he thought as he tried to fall asleep, Jenny hadn’t pushed him about his own theories. If she had, he would have told her-and trusted her to make sure it got no further -about his little chat with Tony Grant on Marine Drive, the implications of which put a different light on things.
On the one hand, what Grant had told him made the possibility of a personal motive for killing Gill much more likely. He didn’t know who might have had such a motive yet, but according to what Tim and Abha had said, almost any of the demonstrators-especially the organizers or people close to them-would have known to expect Gill at the demo. And if Gill was there, wasn’t it a safe bet that violence would follow?
On the other hand, Banks found himself thinking that if Gill had enemies within the force, perhaps a fellow policeman, not a demonstrator, might have taken the opportunity to get rid of him: someone whose wife or girlfriend Gill had fooled around with, for example; or a partner in crime, if he had been on the take.
Tony Grant hadn’t thought so, but he was only a naive rookie, after all.
It wasn’t an idea Banks would expect Burgess to entertain for a moment; for one thing, it would blow all political considerations off the scene. But another policeman would have expected Gill to cause trouble, could have arranged to be on overtime with him and could have been sure of getting away. None of which could be said for any of the demonstrators. Nobody searched the police; nobody checked their uniforms for Gill’s blood.
Maybe it was the kind of far-fetched theory one usually got on the edge of sleep and would seem utterly absurd in the morning light. But Banks couldn’t quite rule it out. He’d known men on the Metropolitan force more than capable of murdering fellow officers, and in many cases, the loss would hardly have diminished the quality of the human gene pool. The only way to find out about that angle, though, was to press Tony Grant even further into service. If there was anything in it, the fewer people who knew about Banks’s line of investigation, the better. It could be dangerous.
And so, the Sauternes still warm in his veins and a stretch 118 118
of cold empty bed beside him, Banks fell asleep thinking of the victim, convinced that someone not too far away had had a very good reason for wanting PC Edwin Gill dead.
119
I
Banks turned up the track to Gristhorpe’s old farmhouse above Lyndgarth, wondering what the superintendent was doing at home on a Wednesday morning. The message, placed on his desk by Sergeant Rowe, had offered no explanation, just an invitation to visit.
Pulling up in front of the squat, solid house, he stubbed out his cigarette and ejected the Lightning Hopkins cassette he’d been listening to. Breathing in the fresh, cold air, he looked down over Swainsdale and was struck by the way Relton and Maggie’s Farm, directly opposite on the south side of the dale, formed almost a mirror image of Lyndgarth and Gristhorpe’s house. Like the latter, Maggie’s Farm stood higher up the hillside than the village it was close to-so high it was on the verge of the moorland that spread for miles on the heights between dales.
Looking down the slope from the farmhouse, Banks could see the grey-brown ruins of Devraulx Abbey, just west of Lyndgarth. On the valley bottom, Fortford marked the western boundary of the river-meadows. Swainsdale was at its broadest there, where the River Swain meandered through the flats until it veered south-east to Eastvale and finally joined the Ouse outside York.
In summer, the lush green meadows were speckled with 120
golden buttercups. Bluebells, forget-me-nots and wild garlic grew by the riverside under the shade of ash and willow. The Leas, as they were called locally, were a favourite spot for family picnics. Artists set up their easels there, too, and fishermen spent idle afternoons on the riverbank and waded in the shallows at dusk. Now, although the promise of spring showed in the grass and clung like a green haze around the branches of the trees, the meadows seemed a haunted and desolate spot. The snaking river sparkled between the trees, and a brisk wind chased clouds over from the west. Shadows flitted across the steep green slopes with a speed that was almost dizzying to watch.
Gristhorpe answered the door and led Banks into the living-room, where a peat fire burned in the hearth, then disappeared into the kitchen. Banks took off his sheepskin-lined car-coat and rubbed his hands by the flames. Outside the back window, a pile of stones stood by the unfinished dry-stone wall that the superintendent worked on in his spare time. It fenced in nothing and went nowhere, but Banks had enjoyed many hours placing stones there
