“Thank you,” Banks said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Have I?” She shrugged. “Oh well, always a pleasure to oblige.”
Banks walked out into the street and mulled over what he had learned from Miss Gerrard. Johnson had been working for Adam Harkness, probably for cash in hand, no questions asked. That might explain the thousand or so pounds in the envelope. On the other hand, surely gardening didn’t pay that much? And why did he hide the money? To guard against thieves, perhaps? Having sticky fingers himself, Johnson would probably be all too aware of the danger of leaving large sums of money lying around the place. Maybe he didn’t have a bank account, was the kind who hid his fortune in a mattress or, in this case, under the cistern lid. But it still didn’t ring true. Banks looked at his watch. Almost four in the afternoon. Time to pay Adam Harkness a visit before dinner.
IV
Detective Sergeant Philip Richmond’s eyes were beginning
to ache. He saved his data, then stood up and
stretched, rubbing the small of his back. He’d been at it
for four hours, much too long to sit staring at a screen. Probably get cancer of the eyeballs from all the radiation it emitted. They were all very well, these computers, he mused, but you had to be careful not to get carried away with them. These days, though, the more courses he took, the more he learned about computers, the better his chances of promotion were.
He walked over to the window. Luckily, the new computer room faced the market square, like Banks’s office, but the window was tiny, as the place was nothing but a converted storage room for cleaners’ materials. Anyway, the doctor had told him to look away from the screen into the distance occasionally to exercise his eye muscles, so he did.
Already many of the tourists were walking back to their cars?no doubt jamming up many of Eastvale’s sidestreets and collecting a healthy amount in tickets? and some of the market stalls were closing.
He’d knock off soon, and then get himself ready for his date with Rachel Pierce. He had met her last Christmas in Barnard Castle, at the toy shop where she worked, while checking an alibi on a murder case, and they had been going steady ever since. There was still no talk of wedding bells, but if things continued going as well as they had been for much longer, Richmond knew he would seriously consider tying the knot. He had never met anyone quite as warm and as funny as Rachel before. They even shared a taste for science fiction; they both loved Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny. Tonight they would go and see that new horror film at the Crown?new for Eastvale, anyway, which was usually a eood few months behind the rest of the country. Rachel loved scary films, and Richmond loved the way they made her cling to him. He looked at his watch. Barring rmergencies. he would be with her in a couple of hours.
The phone rang.
Richmond cursed and answered it. The switchboard operator told him it was someone calling for Superintendent Gristhorpe, who was out, so she had put the call through to Richmond.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice came on the line.
Richmond introduced himself. “What can I do for you?”
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “I really wanted the man in charge. I called that temporary number, you know, the one you mentioned in the paper, and the constable there told me to call this number if I wanted to talk to Superintendent Gristhorpe.”
Richmond explained the situation. “I’m sure I can help you,” he added. “What’s it about?”
“All right,” she said. “The reason I’m calling you so late is that I’ve only just heard it from the woman who does the cleaning. She does it once a week, you see, on Saturday mornings.”
“Heard what?”
“They’ve gone. Lock, stock and barrel. Both of them. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if they aren’t fully paid up or anything, and I wouldn’t say they looked exactly like the couple the papers described, but it is funny, isn’t it? People don’t usually just take off like that without so much as a by-your-leave, not when they’ve paid cash in advance.”
Richmond held the receiver away from his ear for a moment and frowned. Why didn’t this make any sense? Was he going insane? Had the computer radiation finally eaten its way into his frontal lobes?
“Where are you calling from?” he asked.
She sounded surprised. “Eastvale, of course. My office. I’m working late.”
“Your name?”
“Patricia. Patricia Cummings. But?”
“One thing at a time. You said your office. What kind of office?”
“I’m an estate agent. Randall and Palmer’s, just across the square from the police station. Now?”
“All right,” Richmond said. “I know the place. What are you calling about?”
“I thought I’d made myself perfectly clear, but apparently you need it spelled out.”
Richmond grinned. “Yes, please. Spell it out.”
“It’s about that girl who disappeared, Gemma Scupham. At least it might be. That’s why I wanted to speak to the man in charge. I think I might know something about the couple you’re looking for, the ones who did it.”
“I’ll be right over,” Richmond said, and hung up. He left a message at the front desk for Gristhorpe and dashed out into the market square.
I
As Banks drove west towards Fortford again, the low sun
silhouetted the trees ahead. Some of them, stripped bare
by Dutch elm disease, looked like skeletal hands clawing
their way out of the earth. An evening haze hung over
Fortford and softened the edges of the hills beyond the
village. It muted the vibrant greens of the ryegrass on the
lower dalesides and washed out the browns and greys of
