Banks grinned. “Just an idea, but I’d like to find out if Les really does know anything about Gemma’s abduction. I had a phone call just after I’d finished with Poole. Jim Hatchley’s coming into town. Seems his mother-in- law’s commissioned him to install a shower—”
Gristhorpe slapped the table. One of the customers at the bar turned and looked. “No, Alan. I’m not having any of Hatchley’s interrogation methods in this one. If Gemma’s abductors get off because we’ve bent the rules I’d never bloody forgive myself. Or Sergeant Hatchley, for that matter.”
“No,” said Banks, “that’s not what I had in mind.” He outlined his plan and both of them ended up laughing.
“Aye,” said Gristhorpe, nodding slowly. “Aye, he’d be the best man for that job, all right. And it might work, at that. Either way, we’ve nothing to lose.”
Banks washed his sandwich down with a swig of Theakston’s bitter and lit a cigarette. “So where do we go now?” he asked.
Gristhorpe leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “Let’s start with a summary. I find it helps to get everything as clear as possible. In the first place, we know that a couple who called themselves Chris and Connie Manley rented a cottage and changed their appearance. Then they ‘borrowed’ a dark blue Toyota from Bruce Parkinson, passed themselves off as social workers called Mr Brown and Miss Peterson, and conned Brenda Scupham into handing over her daughter on Tuesday afternoon. After that, they drove a hundred and twenty-seven miles before returning the car to its owner.
“As far as we know, they left the cottage on Thursday in a white Fiesta. We don’t have the number, and Phil’s already checked and re-checked with the rental outlets.
Nothing. And it hasn’t been reported stolen. We could check the ownership of every white Fiesta in the country, and we bloody well will if we have to, but that’ll take us till doomsday. They might not be registered as owners, anyway. Nobody saw them with the child in Eastvale, and there was no evidence of a child’s presence in the cottage, but she could have been there—the whitewash supports that—and we found her prints in Parkinson’s car. Why they took her, we don’t know. Or where. All we know is they most likely didn’t bring her back, which to me indicates that she could well be lying dead and buried somewhere in a hundred-and-twenty-mile radius. And that includes the area of the North York Moors where we found the bloodstained clothes. Vic says there wasn’t enough blood on them to cause death, but that doesn’t mean the rest didn’t spill elsewhere, or that she might not have died in some other way. Poole told you that this Chivers person was involved in the porn trade in London, so that’s another ugly possibility to consider. I’ve been onto the paedophile squad again, but they’ve got nothing on anyone of that name or description.
“Anyway. Next we find Carl Johnson’s body in the old lead mine on Friday morning. Dr Glendenning says he was probably killed sometime after dark on Thursday. You follow all the leads you can think of in the Johnson murder, and we arrive at this same man called Chivers with a smile that people notice, a blonde girlfriend and a nasty disposition. You think Poole knows a bit more. Maybe he does. There are too many coincidences for my liking. Chivers and the girl are the ones who took Gemma. Maybe one or both of them also killed Carl Johnson. Chivers, most likely, as it took a fair bit of strength to rip his guts open. But why? What’s the connection?”
“Johnson could have double-crossed them on the warehouse job, or maybe he knew about Gemma and threatened to tell. Whatever Johnson was, he wasn’t a paedophile.”
“Assuming he found out they’d taken her?”
“Yes.”
“That’s probably our best bet. Makes more sense than killing over a bloody TV set, though stranger things have happened.”
“Or it could have been over the girlfriend,” Banks added. “Especially after what Poole told me about the knifing.”
“Aye,” said Gristhorpe. “That’s another strong possibility. But let’s imagine that Carl Johnson found out Chivers and his girlfriend had taken Gemma and … well, done whatever they did to her. Now Johnson’s no angel, and he seems to have an unhealthy fascination with bad ‘uns, from what you tell me, but somehow, they’ve gone too far for him. He doesn’t like child-mo lesters. He becomes a threat. They lure him out to the mine. Maybe the girl does it with promises of sex, or Chivers with money, I don’t know. But somehow they get him there and …” Gristhorpe paused. “The mine might be a connection. I know the area’s been thoroughly searched already, but I think we should go over it again tomorrow. There’s plenty of spots around there a body could be hidden away. Maybe the clothes on the moors were just a decoy. What do you think, Alan?”
Banks frowned. “It’s all possible, but there are still too many uncertainties for my liking. I’d like to know more about the girl’s part in all this, for a start. Who is she? What’s in it for her? And we’ve no evidence that Chivers killed Johnson.”
“You’re right, we don’t have enough information to come to conclusions yet. But we’re getting there. I
thought you fancied Adam Harkness for the Johnson murder?”
“I did, though I’d no real reason to. Looks like I might have been wrong, doesn’t it?”
Gristhorpe smiled. “Happens to us all, Alan. You always did have a chip on your shoulder when it came to the rich and influential, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Nay, Alan, I’m not criticizing. You’re a working-class lad. You got where you are through brains, ability and sheer hard slog. I’m not much different myself, just a poor farm-boy at heart. I’ve no great love for them as were born with silver spoons in their mouths. And I don’t mind sticking up for you when Harkness complains to the ACC about police harassment. All I’m saying is be careful it doesn’t blur your objectivity.”
Banks grinned. “Fair enough,” he said. “But I haven’t finished with Mr Harkness yet. I called the Johannesburg police and set a few enquiries in motion. You never know, there might be something to that scandal yet. And I called Piet in Amsterdam to see if he can track down Harkness’s ex-wife. There’s still a chance Harkness might have been involved somewhere along the line. What about your black magician, Melville Westman?”
“Nothing,” said Gristhorpe. “The lads did a thorough job. He looks clean. It’s my bet that Gemma was in the Manleys’ cottage at some point, and that’s where the whitewash on her clothes came from. That’s not to say I won’t be having another word with Mr Westman, though.” Gristhorpe smiled. His own feelings about people like Melville Westman and Lenora Carlyle were not so different from Banks’s feelings about the rich and powerful, he realized: different chip, different shoulder, but a prejudice, nonetheless.
“I’m going to call my old mate Barney Merritt at the
Yard first thing in the morning,” Banks said. “He ought to be able to get something out of Criminal Intelligence about Chivers a damn sight quicker than the formal channels. The more we know about him, the more likely we are to be able to guess at the way he
