“Yes.”
After she’d gone, Banks relaxed and savoured the rest of his beer. The meeting had gone better than he’d expected, and he had actually learned something about the knife. Mara had been evasive, mostly to avoid incriminating herself, but that was only to be expected. He didn’t blame her for it.
Banks decided to keep his knowledge from Burgess for a while. He didn’t want Dirty Dick to go charging in like a bloody elephant and frighten everyone into their corners as usual. Banks had managed to overcome some of Mara’s general resentment for the police-whether through Jenny’s influence, his taste in music, or sheer charm, he wasn’t sure-but if Burgess turned up again, Mara’s hatred for him would surely rub off on Banks as well.
By the time he set off back to Eastvale, his head had stopped aching and he felt able to tolerate some music. But he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was missing something obvious. He had the strange sensation that two insignificant things either he or Mara had said should be joined into one truth. If they made contact, a little bulb would light up and he would be that much closer to solving the case. Billie Holiday sang on regardless: Sad am I, glad am I
For today I’m dreaming of
Yesterdays.
II
Mara walked along the street, head down, thinking about her talk with Banks.
Like all policemen, he asked nothing but bloody awkward questions. And Mara was sick of awkward questions. Why couldn’t things just get back to normal so she could get on with her life?
“Hello, love,” Elspeth greeted her as she walked into the shop.
“Hello. How’s Dottie?”
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“She won’t eat. How she can expect to get better when she refuses to eat, I just don’t know.”
They both knew that Dottie wasn’t going to get better, but nobody said so.
“What’s wrong with you?” Elspeth asked. “You’ve got a face as long as next week.”
Mara told her about Paul.
“I don’t want to say I told you so,” Elspeth said, smoothing her dark tweed skirt, “but I thought that lad was trouble from the start. You’re best rid of him, all of you.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Mara didn’t agree, but there was no point arguing Paul’s case against Elspeth. She hadn’t expected any sympathy.
“Go in the back and get the wheel spinning, love,” Elspeth said. “It’ll do you a power of good.”
The front part of the shop was cluttered with goods for tourists. There were locally knit sweaters on shelves on the walls, tables of pottery-some of which Mara had made-and trays of trinkets, such as key-rings bearing the Dales National Park emblem-the black face of a Swaledale sheep. As if that weren’t enough, the rest of the space was taken up by fancy notepaper, glass paperweights, fluffy animals and fridge-door magnets shaped like strawberries or Humpty Dumpty.
In the back, though, the set-up was very different. First, there was a small pottery workshop, complete with wheel and dishes of brown and black metallic oxide glaze, and beyond that a drying room and a small electric kiln. The workshop was dusty and messy, crusted with bits of old clay, and it suited a part of Mara’s personality. Mostly she preferred cleanliness and tidiness, but there was something special, she found, about creating beautiful objects in a chaotic environment.
She put on her apron, took a lump of clay from the bin and weighed off enough for a small vase. The clay was too wet, so she wedged it on a flat concrete tray, which absorbed the excess moisture. As she wedged-pushing hard with the 170
heels of her hands, then pulling the clay forward with her fingers to get all the air out-she couldn’t seem to lose herself in the task as usual, but kept on thinking about her conversation with Banks.
Frowning, she cut the lump in half with a cheese-wire to check for air bubbles, then slammed the pieces together much harder than usual. A fleck of clay spun off and hit her forehead, just above her right eye. She put the clay down and took a few deep breaths, trying to bring her mind to bear only on what she was doing.
No good. It was Banks’s fault, of course. He had introduced her to speculations that caused nothing but distress. True, she didn’t want Paul to be guilty, but if, as Banks had said, that meant someone else she knew had killed the policeman, that only made things worse.
Sighing, she started the wheel with the foot pedal and slammed the clay as close to the centre as she could. Then she drenched both it and her hands with water from a bowl by her side. As the wheel spun, clayey water flew off and splashed her apron.
She couldn’t believe that any of her friends had stabbed Gill. Much better if Osmond or one of the students had done it for political reasons. Tim and Abha seemed nice enough, if a bit naive and gushing, but Mara had never trusted Osmond; he had always seemed somehow too oily and opinionated for her taste.
But what about Rick? He had strong political views, more so than Seth or Zoe.
He’d often said someone should assassinate Margaret Thatcher, and Seth had argued that someone just as bad would take her place. But it was only a policeman who’d been killed, not a politician. Despite what Rick said about the police being mere instruments of the state, paid enforcers, she couldn’t believe that would make him actually kill one of them.
She leaned forward, elbows in, and pushed hard to centre the clay. At last, she managed it, and, allowing herself a smile of satisfaction, stuck her thumb in the top and pushed down about an inch. She then filled the hole with water and began
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