Artists even more so. And I’m sure he’s a good father. Pam certainly wasn’t capable of taking care of Julian when they split up.”
“And now?”
“She’s getting there. It’s a long road, though, alcoholism.”
“Did Pam ever have any connections up north?”
“Up north? Good Lord, no. I don’t think she’s ever been farther north than Hendon.”
“Not even for a visit?”
“No. What’s there to visit, anyway? It’s all canals and slag heaps, isn’t it?”
“So she’s spent most of her life in either London or Cornwall?”
“Yes. They had a few months in France some years ago. Most painters seem to gravitate towards France at one time or another. But that’s all.”
“Have you ever heard her mention a policeman called Gill -PC Edwin Gill, number 1139?”
“I’ve never heard her mention any policemen. No, I tell a lie. She said the local pub in Cornwall stayed open till all hours when the bobby was there. But I don’t think that’d be your PC Gill.”
“No,” Banks said, “it wouldn’t. Did she ever attend political demonstrations-Greenham Common, the Aldermaston march, that kind of thing?”
“Pam’s never been very political. Wisely so, if you ask me. What’s the point?
You can’t trust one lot more than the other. Is that all, Chief Inspector?”
“Is she there? Can I talk to her?”
There was a short pause and Banks heard muffled sounds from the other end of the line. Finally, he could hear the phone changing hands and another voice came on-husky and weary, as if doped or ill.
“Yes?”
237
Banks asked her the same questions he’d asked her sister, and the answers were the same. She spoke hesitantly, with long pauses between each sentence.
“Are the police involved in this custody battle?” Banks asked.
“Uh, no,” she answered. “Just … you know … lawyers.”
Naturally, Banks thought. “And you’ve never heard of PC Gill?”
“Never.”
“Has your sister visited Yorkshire recently?” Banks asked the question as soon as it came to him. After all, the sister might have got herself involved somehow.
“No. Here … looking after me. Can I go now? I’ve got to… I don’t know anything.”
“Yes,” Banks said. “That’s all. Thanks for your time.”
He hung up and made notes on the conversation while it was fresh in his mind.
The one thing that struck him as odd was that neither of the women had asked about Julian, about how he was. Why, he wondered, did Rick’s wife want custody if she didn’t even care that much about the child? Spite? Revenge? Julian would probably be better off where he was.
Next he called the Hebden Bridge police and asked for PC Brooks.
“Sorry to bother you again, Constable,” he said. “I should probably have asked you all this before, but there’s been rather too much going on here. Can you tell me anything about Alison Cotton, the woman who was killed in the car accident?”
“I remember her all right, sir,” Brooks said. “It was my first accident and I … well … I, er…”
“I know what you mean. It happens to us all. Did you know her before the accident?”
“Oh, aye. She’d been here a few years, like, ever since the artsy types discovered us, you might say.”
“And Alison was artsy?”
“Aye. Helped organize the festival, poetry readings, that kind of thing. She ran the bookshop. I suppose you already know that.”
“What kind of a person was she?”
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“She were a right spirited lass. Proper bonny, too. She wrote things. You know, poems, stories, stuff like that. I tried reading some in the local paper but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Give me ‘Miami Vice’ or ‘Dynasty’ any day.”
“Was she ever involved in political matters-marches, demos, things like that?”
“Well,” PC Brooks said, “we never had many things like that here. A few, but nowt much. Mostly ‘Save the Whales’ and ‘Ban the Bomb.’ I don’t know as she was involved, though she did sometimes write bits for the paper about not killing animals for their fur and not making laboratory mice smoke five hundred fags a day. And about them women outside that missile base.”
“Greenham Common?”
