“I do see what you mean,” said Blackstone. “It would bugger up everything, wouldn’t it?”
“Hmm.” Banks finished his meal and washed away some of the spicy heat with a swig of watery lager. His lips still burned, though, and he felt prickles of sweat on his scalp. The signs of a good curry.
“Did the suspects in the Jeffreys beating know about Rothwell?” Blackstone asked.
Banks shook his head. “Don’t know. They haven’t been seen locally, and they certainly don’t match the daughter’s description of his killers.”
“How old is she?”
“Alison? Fifteen.”
“She didn’t see their faces. Could she be wrong?”
“It’s possible, but not that wrong, I don’t think. Nothing matches.”
“Just a thought. I mean, if Rothwell and Clegg were in the laundering business together, and whoever they were working for sent a couple of goons to find Clegg and whatever money he’s made off with, you’d think they’d start with Rothwell’s family, wouldn’t you?”
“Perhaps. But we’ve been keeping too close a watch. They wouldn’t dare show up within twenty miles of Arkbeck Farm.”
“And another thing: if they killed Rothwell, why did they use different people to chase down Clegg? It seems a bit excessive, doesn’t it?”
“Again,” said Banks, “I can only guess. I think some of what’s been happening took them by surprise. It’s possible that they asked Clegg to get rid of Rothwell and he hired his own men. As you know, we’re looking into what connections he might have had with criminal types.”
Blackstone nodded. “I see,” he said. “Then Clegg became a problem and they had to send their own men?”
“Something like that.”
“Makes sense. Clegg was a bit of a ladies’ man, you know, according to my DC who talked to his colleagues,” Blackstone said.
“Yes. His estranged wife, Melissa, suggested as much. Did he have a girlfriend?”
“Yes. Apparently nothing serious since he split up with his wife. Prefers to play the field. Recently he’s been seeing a receptionist from Norwich Insurance. Name of Marci Lapwing, if you can believe that. Aspiring actress. DC Gaitskill had a word with her this morning. Says she’s a bit of a bimbo with obvious attractions. But he’s a bit of an asshole himself, is Gaitskill, so I’d take it with a pinch of salt. Anyway, they saw each other the Saturday before Clegg’s disappearance. They went for dinner, then to a nightclub in Harehills. She spent the night with him and he took her home – that’s Seacroft – after a pub lunch out at the Red Lion in Burnsall on Sunday afternoon. She hasn’t seen or heard from him since.”
“Is she telling the truth?”
“Gaitskill says so. I’d trust him on that.”
“Okay. Thanks, Ken.”
“Clegg had a reserved parking space at the back of the Court Centre. According to what we could find out, he used to eat at a little trattoria on The Headrow after work on Thursdays. The waiters there remember him, all right. Nothing odd about his behavior. He left about six-thirty or a quarter to seven last Thursday, heading west, toward where his car was parked, and that’s the last sighting we have.”
“The car?”
“Red Jag. Gone. We’ve put it out over the PNC along with this.” Blackstone took a photograph from his briefcase and slid it over the tablecloth. It showed the head and shoulders of a man in his early forties, with determined blue eyes, a slightly crooked nose, fair hair and a mouth that had a cruel twist to its left side.
“Clegg?”
Blackstone nodded and put the photograph back in his briefcase. “We’ve also been through Clegg’s house in Chapel Allerton. Nothing. Whatever he was up to, he kept it at the office.”
“Anything on Hamilton and the other car?”
“The boffins are still working on the car. I pulled Hamilton ’s record myself and we had another chat with him at the station this afternoon.” He shook his head. “I can’t see it, Alan. The man’s as thick as two short planks. I don’t think he’s even
“It was just a thought. Thanks for giving it a try.”
“No problem. We’ll have another shot in a day or two, just in case. And we’ll keep a discreet eye on him. Look, back to what I was saying before. How do you think the goons knew about Pamela Jeffreys if she wasn’t involved?”
Banks felt the anger flare up inside him again, but he held it in check. “That’s all too easy,” he said. “Remember, they were also following me around yesterday. I think they started at Clegg’s office first thing yesterday morning and one, or both of them, stayed on my tail until I spotted them outside Calvert’s flat that evening. They didn’t know who the hell I was, and the only other person I met that they hadn’t talked to already was Pamela Jeffreys. They must have thought we were in it together. I met her near the hall where she was rehearsing, and either one of them hung around to follow her home, or they found out some other way who she was and where she lived.
“She must have looked like their best lead so far. They thought she had some connection with Clegg and that she knew where he was or was holding something for him. Clegg has obviously got something they want. Most likely money. If he was laundering for their boss, then it looks like he might have skipped with a bundle. Either that or he’s got some sort of evidence for blackmail – books, bank account records. And that’s probably what they were looking for when they tore her place apart. Back to square one. The goons worked Pamela over because they thought she knew something, or had something of theirs. She didn’t. And I blame myself. I should have bloody well known I was putting her at risk.”
“Come off it, Alan. How could you know?”
Banks shrugged and tapped out a cigarette. He was the only smoker in the entire restaurant and had to ask the waiter specially for an ashtray. It was getting like that these days, he noted glumly. He’d have to stop sometime soon; he knew he was only postponing the inevitable. He had thought about getting a nicotine patch, then quickly dismissed the idea. It was the feel of the cigarette between his fingers he wanted, the sharp intake of tobacco smoke into the lungs, not some slow oozing of poison through his skin into his blood. Pity about the health problems.
He felt rather like St. Augustine must have felt when he wrote in his
“You know what really pisses me off?” Banks said after he had lit the cigarette. “Dirty Dick Burgess was following me around that day, too, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’d seen them outside Melissa Clegg’s shop.”
“How would he know who they are?”
“Oh, I think he knows them, all right.”
“Even so, what could he have done? They hadn’t broken any laws.”
Banks shrugged. “I suppose not. It’s too bloody late now, anyway,” he said. “Let’s just hope they don’t go back to see Betty Moorhead and Melissa Clegg.”
“Don’t worry. Charlie Waltham will have them both covered by now. He’s a good bloke, Alan. And he’ll have descriptions of Mutt and Jeff out, too. They won’t get far.”
“I hope not,” said Banks. “I bloody hope not. I’d like a few minutes alone with them in a quiet cell.”
3
