towns, all the cafes seemed to close at five or six.
“Not bad,” said Gristhorpe, “but they do them better up north.”
“If you like them greasy.”
“Traitor. I keep forgetting you’re still just a southerner underneath it all.”
Banks tossed his empty carton into a rubbish-bin and looked out to sea. Close to shore, bright stars shone through gaps in the clouds and reflected in the dark water. Farther out, the cloud-covering thickened and dimmed the quarter moon. The breeze that was slowly driving the clouds inland carried a chill, and Banks was glad he had put on a pullover under his sports jacket. He sniffed the bracing air, sharp with ozone. A few cars droned along The Esplanade, and the sound of people talking or laughing in the night drifted on the air occasionally, but mostly it was quiet. Banks lit a cigarette and drew deep. Silly, he thought, but it tasted better out here in the sea air pervaded with the smells of saltwater and
seaweed.
“Do you know,” said Banks finally, “I think I’m developing a feel for Chivers. I know he’s been here. I know he killed the girl.”
Gristhorpe gave him a steady, appraising look. “Not turning psychic on me, are you, Alan?”
Banks laughed. “Not me. Look, there’s the white Fiesta, the smile, the blonde, the neatness of the hotel room. You’ll agree the incidents have those things in common?”
“Aye. And tomorrow morning we’ll have a word with the hotel staff and look over Loder’s reports, see if we can’t amass enough evidence to be sure. Maybe then we’ll know what the next move is. If that bastard’s slipped away abroad …” Gristhorpe crumpled up his cardboard box and tossed it in the bin.
“We’ll get him.”
Gristhorpe raised an eyebrow. “More intuition?”
“No. Just sheer dogged determination.”
Gristhorpe clapped Banks lightly on the shoulder. “That I can understand. I think I’ll turn in now. Coming?”
Banks sniffed the night air. He felt too restless to go to bed so soon. “Think I’ll take a walk on the prom,” he said. “Just to clear out the cobwebs.”
“Right. See you at breakfast.”
Banks watched Gristhorpe, a tall, powerful man in a chunky Swaledale sweater, cross the road, then he started walking along the promenade. A few couples, arms around one another, strolled by, but Weymouth at ten-thirty that Friday evening in late September was as dead as any out-of-season seaside resort. Over the road stood the tall Georgian terrace houses, most of them converted into hotels. Lights shone behind some curtains, but most of the rooms were dark.
When he got to the Jubilee Clock, an ornate structure built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, Banks took the steps down to the beach. The tide hadn’t been out long and the glistening sand was wet like a hardening gel under his feet. The footprints he made disappeared as soon as he moved on.
As he walked, it was of John Cowper Powys he thought, not Thomas Hardy. Somebody had mentioned Weymouth Sands to him around Christmas time and, intrigued, he had bought a copy. Now, as he actually trod Weymouth sands himself for the first time since he was a child, he thought of the opening scene where Magnus Muir stood meditating on the relationship between the all-consuming unity of the sea and the peculiar and individual character of each wave. The Esplanade lights reflected in the wet sand, which sucked in the remaining moisture with a hissing sound every time a wave retreated.
Heady thoughts for a lowly chief inspector. He stood for a moment and let the waves lick at his shoes. Farther south, the lights of the car ferry terminal seemed to hang suspended over the water. Loder was right, he thought: Chivers would have been a fool to take his car. Much easier to mingle with the foot-passengers and rent one wherever he went. Or, even more anonymous, travel by train if he got to France.
Seeing the dead woman in the hotel had shaken Banks more than he realized. Wondering why, as he doubled back along the ribbed sand at the edge of the beach, he felt it was perhaps because of Sandra. There was only a superficial resemblance, of course, but it was enough to remind him of Sandra in her twenties. Though Sandra had ridiculed the idea, the photo of Gemma Scupham had also reminded him of a younger Tracy, albeit a less doleful- looking one. Tracy took after Sandra, whereas
Brian, with his small, lean, dark-haired Celtic appearance, took after Banks. There were altogether too many resemblances for comfort in this case.
Banks thought about what he had said earlier, the feel he was developing for the way Chivers operated. Then he thought about what he hadn’t told Gristhorpe. Standing in that room and looking down at the dead woman, Banks had known, as surely as he knew what happened at Johnson’s murder, that Chivers had been making love to her, smiling down, and that as he was reaching his climax?that brief pause for a sigh that Les Poole had mentioned?he had taken the pillow and held it over her face. She had struggled, scratching and gouging his skin, but he had pushed it down and ejaculated as she died.
Was he really beginning to understand something of Chivers’s psychopathic thought processes? It was a frightening notion, and for a moment he felt himself almost pull in his antennae and reject the insight. But he couldn’t.
The blonde woman?he wished he knew her name? must somehow have started to become a liability. Perhaps she was having second thoughts about what they’d done to Gemma; maybe she was overcome by guilt and had threatened to go to the police. Perhaps Chivers had conned her into thinking they were taking the child for some other reason, and she had found out what really happened. She could have panicked when she saw the newspaper likenesses, and Chivers didn’t feel he could trust her any longer. Or maybe he just grew tired of her. Whatever the reason, she ceased to be of use to him, and someone like Chivers would then start to think of an interesting way to get rid of her.
He must be easily bored, Banks thought, remembering what he and Jenny had talked about in the Queen’s
Arms. A creative intelligence, though clearly a warped one, he showed imagination and daring. For some years, he had been able to channel his urges into legitimate criminal activity—a contradiction in terms, Banks realized, but nonetheless true. Chivers had sought work from people who had logical, financial reasons for what they employed him to do, and however evil they were, whatever harm they did, there was no denying that at bottom they were essentially businessmen gone wrong, the other side of the coin, not much different from insider traders and the rest of the corporate crooks.
Now, though, perhaps because he was deteriorating, losing control, as Jenny had said, Chivers was starting to create his own opportunities for pleasure, financed by simple heists like the Fletcher’s warehouse job. The money he got from such ventures would allow him the freedom to roam the country and follow his fancy wherever it led him. And by paying cash, he would leave no tell-tale credit-card traces.
