Tim Fenton had been born in Ripon and was now in his second year at Eastvale College of Further Education. With Abha Sutton, he ran the Students Union there.
It was a small one, and usually stuck to in-college issues, but students were upset about government health and education policies-especially as far as they were likely to affect grants-and took every opportunity to demonstrate their displeasure. Tim, whose father was an accountant, was only nineteen and had no blots on his copy-book except for attending the seminar that got him into Special Branch’s files.
Abha Sutton was born in Bradford of an Indian mother and a Yorkshire father.
Again, her upbringing had been solidly middle-class, and like Tim, as Richmond had tried to tell Burgess, she had no history of violence or involvement in extremist politics. She had been living with Tim for six months now, and together they had started the college Marxist Society. It had very few members, though; many of the college students were local farmers’ sons studying agriculture. Still, the Social Sciences department and the Arts faculty were expanding, and they had managed to recruit a few new members among the literary crowd.
Banks read even more closely when he got to Dennis Osmond’s file. Osmond was thirty-five, born in NewcastleonTyne. His father had worked in the shipyards there, but unemployment had forced the family to move when Osmond was ten. Mr Osmond had found a job at the chocolate factory, where he’d been known as a strong union man, and he had been involved in the acrimonious and sometimes violent negotiations that marked its last days. Osmond himself, though given at first to more intellectual pursuits, had followed his father politically.
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A radical throughout university, he had dropped out in his third year, claiming that the education he was being given was no more than an indoctrination in bourgeois values, and had taken up social work in Eastvale, where he’d been working now for twelve years. During that period, he had become one of the town’s chief spokesmen, along with Dorothy Wycombe, for the oppressed, neglected and unjustly treated. He had also beat up Ellen Ventner, a woman he had lived with. Some of his cronies were the kind of people that Burgess would want shot on sight-shop stewards, feminists, poets, anarchists and intellectuals.
Whatever good Osmond had done around the place, Banks still couldn’t help disliking the man and seeing him, somehow, as a sham. He couldn’t understand Jenny’s attraction to him, unless it was purely physical. And Jenny, of course, still didn’t know that Osmond had once assaulted a woman.
It was after one o’clock, time for a pie and a pint in the Queen’s Arms. But no sooner had Banks settled down in his favourite armchair by the fire to read the Guardian than PC Craig came rushing into the pub.
“They’ve got him, sir,” he said breathlessly. “Boyd. Caught him trying to get on the half-past-eleven ferry to Larne.”
Banks looked at his watch. “It’s taken them long enough to get onto us. Are they holding him?”
“No, sir. They’re bringing him down. Said they should be here late this afternoon.”
“No hurry, then, is there?” Banks lit a cigarette and rustled his paper. “Looks like it’s all over.”
But it didn’t feel as if it was all over; it felt more like it was just beginning.
II
Burgess paced the office like an expectant father, puffing on his cigar and glancing at his watch every ten seconds.
“Where the bloody hell are they?” he asked for what seemed to Banks like the hundredth time that afternoon.
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“They’ll be here soon. It’s a long drive and the roads can be nasty in this weather.”
“They ought to be here by now.”
The two of them were in Banks’s office waiting for Paul Boyd. Scenting the kill, Burgess didn’t seem able to relax, but Banks felt unusually calm. Along Market Street the shopkeepers were shutting up for the day, and it was already growing dark. In the office, the heater coughed and the fluorescent light hummed.
Banks stubbed out his cigarette and said, “I’m off for some coffee. Want some?”
“I’m jittery enough as it is. Oh, what the hell. Why not? Black, three sugars.”
In the corridor, Banks bumped into Sergeant Hatchley on his way downstairs.
“Anything?” he asked.
“No,” said Hatchley. “Still waiting to hear. I’m on my way to check with Sergeant Rowe if there’s been any messages.”
Banks took the two mugs of coffee back to his office and smiled when Burgess jumped at the sound of the door opening. “It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t get excited. It’s only me.”
“Do you think the silly buggers have got lost?” Burgess asked, scowling. “Or broken down?”
“I’m sure they know their way around just as well as anyone else.”
“You can never be sure with bloody Jocks,” Burgess complained. East vale was the farthest north he had ever been, and he had already made it quite clear that he didn’t care to venture any farther. “If they’ve let that bastard escape-“
But he was interrupted by the phone. It was Sergeant Rowe. Boyd had arrived.
“Tell them to bring him up here.” Burgess took out another Tom Thumb. He lit it, brushed some ash off his shirt and picked up his coffee.
A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and two uniformed men entered with Paul Boyd between them. He looked pale and distant-as well he might, Banks thought.
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