arguing about whether to go home because of the rain or
carry on to the Bowes Museum.
“So you found the girl’s parents?” Banks asked.
“Uh-uh.” Susan put her hand to her mouth and wiped away some crumbs, then swallowed. “Sorry, sir. Yes, they were home. Seems like everyone except the Pakistanis around there is unemployed or retired.”
“Get anything?”
Susan shook her head. Tight blonde curls danced over her ears. Banks noticed the dangling earrings, stylized, elongated Egyptian cats in light gold. Susan had certainly brightened up her appearance a bit lately. “Dead end,” she said. “Oh, it happened all right. Right charmer Carl Johnson was, from what I can gather. But the girl, Beryl’s her name, she’s been living in America for the past five years.”
“What happened?”
“Just what his folks said. He got her in the family way, then dumped her. She came around to make a fuss, embarrass him like, at his twenty-first birthday party. He was still living at home then, off and on, and his parents invited a few close relatives over. There was a big row and he stormed out. Didn’t even take any of his clothes with him. They never saw him again.”
Banks sipped at his pint and thought for a moment. “So they’ve no idea who he hung around with, or where he went?”
“No.” Susan frowned. “They know he went to London, but that’s all. There was a chap called Robert Naylor. Mrs Johnson saw him as bad influence.”
“Has he got form?”
“Yes, sir. I checked. Just minor vandalism, drunk and disorderly. But he’s dead. Nothing suspicious. He was riding his motorbike too fast. He lost control and skidded into a lorry on the Ml.”
“So that’s that.”
“I’m afraid so, sir. From what I can gather, Johnson was the type to fall in with bad company.”
“That’s obvious enough.”
“What I mean, sir, is that both his parents and Beryl’s mother said he looked up to tough guys. He wasn’t much in himself, they said, but he liked to be around dangerous people.”
Banks took another sip of beer. One of the tourists bumped his elbow and he spilled a little on the bar. The woman apologized. “Sounds like the kind that hero-worships psychos and terrorists,” Banks said. “He’d probably have been happy working for the Krays or someone like that back in the old days.”
“That’s it, sir. He was a weakling himself, but he liked to boast about the rough company he kept.”
“It fits. Small-time con-man, wants to be in with the big boys. So you’re thinking that might give us somewhere to look for his killer?”
“Well, there could be a connection, couldn’t there?” Susan said, pushing her empty plate away.
Banks lit a cigarette, taking care that the smoke didn’t drift directly into Susan’s face. “You mean he might have been playing out of his league, tried a double-cross or something?”
“It’s possible,” said Susan.
“True. At least it’s an angle to work on, and there don’t seem very many. I dropped by The Barleycorn last night and found Les Poole. I just thought I’d mention Johnson to him, seeing as they’re both in the same business, so to speak.”
“And?”
“Nothing. Poole denied knowing him?well, of course he would?and he’s not a bad liar. No signs in his voice or his body language that he wasn’t telling the truth. But …” Banks shook his head. “I don’t know. There was something there. The only way I can describe it is as a whiff of fear. It came and went in a second, and I’m not
sure even Les was aware of it, but it was there. Anyway, no good chasing wul-o’-the-wisps. Adam Harkness’s Golf Club alibi checks out. I still think we might bring South Africa up whenever we question someone, though. Johnson could have been blackmailing Harkness, and Harkness could afford to pay someone to get rid of him. Have you had time to ask around the other flats?”
“Last night, sir. I meant to tell you, but I set off for Bradford so early. There’s a student on the ground floor called Edwina Whixley. She heard male voices occasionally from Johnson’s room. And she saw someone coming down the stairs one day she thought might have been visiting him.”
“Did you get a description?”
“Yes.” Susan fished for her notebook and found the page. “About five foot five, mid-thirties, cropped black hair and squarish head. He was wearing a suede zip-up jacket and jeans.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ring a bell?”
Susan shook her head.
“Me, neither. Maybe you can get her to come and look at some mugshots. And you might as well check into Johnson’s form, his prison mates, that kind of thing. See if you can come up with any local names, anyone fitting the description.”
“Yes, sir.” Susan picked up her bag and left.
She had a very purposeful, no-nonsense walk, Banks noticed. He remembered the trouble she had had not so long ago and decided it had actually done her good. Susan Gay wasn’t the kind to throw her hands up in the air and surrender. Adversity strengthened her; she learned from her mistakes. Maybe that hardened her a bit, made her more cynical and less trusting, but perhaps
they weren’t such bad qualities for a detective. It was hard not to be cynical when you saw so much villainy and human misery, but in many cases the cynicism was just a shell, as the sick jokes at crime scenes and postmortems were ways of coping with the horror and the
