with the things. Still, they have their uses. Look lad, do you know Melville Westman?”
“Yes.”
“Anything on him? I’m not asking for anything that might be on record, you understand, just rumours, suspicions?”
Weaver shook his head. “Not really, sir. I mean, we know he’s one of those black magicians, but he’s not stepped out of line in any real way. Can’t say I believe in it myself, curses and whatnot.”
“What about the sheep?”
“Aye, well we suspected him, all right?still do, for that matter?but there was nowt we could prove. Why, sir?”
“It might be nothing, but I’d like you to keep a discreet eye on him, if you can. And keep your ears open for gossip.”
“Is this about the young lass, sir?”
“Yes. But for Christ’s sake don’t spread it around.”
Weaver looked hurt. “Of course not, sir.”
“Good. Let me know if you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, and try not to let him know you’re watching. He’s a canny bugger, that one is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gristhorpe walked outside and headed for his car. Westman was probably telling the truth, he thought, but there had been so many revelations about the links between child abuse and satanic rituals in the past few years that he had to check out the possibility. It couldn’t
happen here, everyone said. But it did. His stomach rumbled. Definitely time to head back to Eastvale.
Ill
Banks believed you could tell a lot about people from
their homes. It wasn’t infallible. For example, a normally
fastidious person might let things go under pressure. On
the whole, though, it had always worked well for him.
When he stood in the tiny living-room of Flat 6, 59 Calvin Road and tried to figure out Carl Johnson, he found very little to go on. First, he sniffed the air: stale, dusty, with an underlying hint of rotting vegetables. It was just what one would expect of a place unoccupied for a couple of days. Then he listened. He didn’t expect to hear ghosts or echoes of the dead man’s thoughts, but homes had their voices, too, that sometimes whispered of past evils or remembered laughter. Nothing. His immediate impression was of a temporary resting-place, somewhere to eat and sleep. What furniture there was looked second-hand, OXFAM or jumble-sale stuff. The carpet was worn so thin he could hardly make out its pattern. There were no photos or prints on the cream painted walls; nor was there any evidence of books, not even a tattered bestseller.
The kitchen was simply a curtained-off portion of the room, with a hotplate, toaster and a little storage space. Banks found a couple of dirty pans and plates in the sink. The cupboards offered nothing more than tea-bags, instant coffee, sugar, margarine and a few cans of baked beans. There was no refrigerator, and a curdled bottle of milk stood by the sink next to some mouldy white bread and three cans of McEwan’s lager.
The bedroom, painted the same drab cream as the
living-room, was furnished with a single bed, the covers in disarray, pillow greasy and stained with sweat or hair-cream. Discarded clothes lay in an untidy heap on the floor. The dresser held socks and underwear, and apart from a couple of checked shirts, sneakers, one pair of Hush Puppies, jeans and a blouson jacket, there was little else in the closet. Banks could spot no evidence of Johnson having shared his flat or bed with anyone.
Banks had never seen a place that told so little about its occupier. Of course, that in itself indicated a number of things: Johnson clearly didn’t care about a neat, clean, permanent home; he wasn’t sentimental about possessions or interested in art and literature. But these were all negatives. What did he care about? There was no indication. He didn’t even seem to own a television or a radio. What did a man do, coming home to such surroundings? What did he think about as he sat in the creaky winged armchair with the threadbare arms and guzzled his baked beans on toast? Did he spend every evening out? At the pub? With a girlfriend?
From what Banks knew of his criminal record, Carl Johnson was thirty years old and, after a bit of trouble over “Paki-bashing” and soccer hooliganism in Bradford as a lad, he had spent three years of his adult life in prison for attempted fraud. It wasn’t a distinguished life, and it seemed to have left nothing of distinction to posterity.
Banks felt oppressed by the place. He levered open a window and let some fresh air in. He could hear a baby crying in a room across the street.
Next, he had to do a more thorough search. He had found no letters, no passport, no bills, not even a birth certificate. Surely nobody could live a life so free of bureaucracy in this day and age? Banks searched under the sofa cushions, under the mattress, over the tops of the
doors, deep in the back of the kitchen and bedroom cupboards. Nothing. There aren’t many hiding places in a flat, as he had discovered in his days on the drug squad, and most of them are well known to the police.
Carl Johnson’s flat was no exception. Banks found the thick legal-sized envelope taped to the underside of the cistern lid?a fairly obvious place?and took it into the front room. He had been careful to handle only the edges. Now he placed it on the card table by the window and slit a corner with his penknife to see what was inside. Twenty-pound notes. A lot of them, by the looks of it. Using the knife, he tried to peel each one at a time back and add it up. It was too awkward, and he kept losing his place. Patience. He took an evidence bag from his pocket, dropped the money in and took one last look around the room.
The whole place had a smell of petty greed about it, but petty criminals of Johnson’s kind didn’t usually end up gutted like a fish in old lead mines. What was different about Johnson? What had he been up to? Blackmail? Banks could read nothing more from the flat, so he locked up and left.
Across the hallway, he noticed a head peeping out of Flat 4 and walked over. The head retreated and its owner tried to close the door, but Banks got a foot in.
“I didn’t see anything, honest, mister,” the woman said. She was about twenty-five, with straight red hair and a pasty, freckled complexion.
“What do you mean?”
