“That’s the one. When it comes down to it, I dare say she was like the rest, though. If some bandwagon came along, they jumped on it.”
“Ever heard of a PC Gill, 1139, from Scarborough?”
“Only what I’ve read in the papers, sir. I hope you catch the bastard who did it.”
“So do I. What about a friend of Cotton’s called Elizabeth Dale? Heard of her?”
“Oh, aye. Liz Dale hung around with the Cotton crowd all right. Thick as thieves. I felt sorry for her, myself. I mean it’s like a sickness, isn’t it, when you get so you need something all the time.”
“Was she a registered addict?”
“Aye. She never really gave us any trouble. We just like to keep an eye on them, that’s all, make sure they’re not selling off half their prescriptions.”
“What kind of person is she?”
“Moody,” Brooks said. “She got off drugs, but she were never really right afterwards. One day she’d be up, the next down. Right bloody yo-yo. But there was a lass with strong political opinions.”
“Liz Dale was political?”
“Aye. For a while, at least. Till she got it out of her system. Like I said, bandwagon.”
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“But she was keener than the rest?”
“I’d say so, yes. Now Seth, he was never much more than partly interested.
Rather be slicing up a piece of wood. And Alison, like I said, well, she had a lot of energy and she had to put it somewhere, but she was more your private, artistic type. But Liz Dale, she was up to her neck in everything at one time.”
“Were Liz Dale and Alison Cotton especially close?”
“Like sisters.”
Banks thought of the complaint Dale had made against PC Gill. From that, he already knew she had attended at least one demonstration and come across him.
Perhaps there had been others, too. Alison Cotton could have been with her.
Perhaps this was the link he was looking for. But so what? Alison was dead; Reginald Lee had run her over by accident. It still didn’t add up, unless everyone was lying and Liz Dale had been at Maggie’s Farm and at the Eastvale demonstration. Banks didn’t know her, but if she did have a history of drug abuse, there was a chance she might be unbalanced.
“Thanks a lot,” Banks said. “You’ve been a great help.”
“I have? Oh, well-“
“Just one more thing. Do you know where Liz Dale lives?”
“Sorry, I can’t help you there, sir. She’s been away from here a few years now.
I’ve no idea at all.”
“Never mind. Thanks anyway.”
Banks broke the connection and walked over to the window. At the far side of the square, just outside the National Westminster bank, a rusty blue Mini had slammed into the back of a BMW, and the two drivers were arguing. Automatically, Banks phoned downstairs and asked Sergeant Rowe to send someone over. Then he lit a cigarette and started thinking.
He certainly needed to know more about Liz Dale. If he could prove that she had been in the area at the time of the demo, then he had someone else with a motive for wanting to harm Gill. The Dale woman could easily have visited the farm one day earlier that week and taken the knife-Mara said that no one paid it any mind as a rule. If nobody had
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seen her, perhaps she had walked in and taken it while everyone was out. But was she at the demo? And why use Seth’s knife? Did she have some reason other than revenge for wanting Gill dead? Obviously the best way to get the answer to that was to find Dale herself. Surely that couldn’t prove too difficult.
As PC Craig approached the two drivers in the market square, Banks walked over to his filing cabinet.
IV
Mara stood inside the porch with Rick and Zoe and waved goodbye to Dennis Osmond and the others as they drove off. The sky was darkening in the west, and that early-evening glow she loved so much held the dale in its spell, spreading a blanket of silence over the landscape. Flocks of birds crossed the sky and lights flicked on in cottages down in Relton and over the valley in Lyndgarth.
“What do you think?” she asked Rick, as they went back inside. The evening was cool. She hugged herself, then pulled on a sweater and sat in the rocking chair.
Rick’s knees cracked as he knelt at the grate to start the fire. “I think it’ll work,” he said. “We’re bound to get the newspapers interested, maybe even TV.
The police might try and discredit us, but people will get the message.”
Mara rolled a cigarette. “I’ll be glad when it’s all over,” she said. “The whole business seems to have brought us nothing but trouble.”
