Final Account

“Can’t I, love? Do you mean I have to be announced all formally, like?” Hatchley took out his identification and held it close to her eyes. She squinted as she read. “Maybe you’d like to get out your salver?” he went on. “Then I can put my calling card on it and you can take it through to Mr. Drake and inform him that a gentleman wishes to call on him?”

“Sod off, clever arse,” she said, slouching aside to let them pass. “You’re no fucking gentleman. And don’t call me love.”

“Who have we got here, then?” Hatchley stopped and said. “Glenda Slagg, feminist?”

“Piss off.”

They went through without further ceremony into the back room, an office of sorts, and Susan saw Mr. Drake sitting at his desk.

Below the greasy black hair was the lumpiest face Susan had ever seen. He had a bulbous forehead, a potato nose, and a carbuncular chin, over all of which his oily, red skin, pitted with blackheads, stretched tight, and out of which looked a pair of beady black eyes, darting about like tiny fish in an aquarium. His belly was so big he could hardly get close enough to the desk to write. A smell of burned bacon hung in the stale air, and Susan noticed a hotplate with a frying-pan on it in one corner.

When they walked in, he pushed his chair back and grunted, “Who let you in? What do you want?”

“Remember me, Jack?” said Hatchley.

Drake screwed up his eyes. They disappeared into folds of fat. “Is it…? Well, bugger me if it isn’t Jim Hatchley.”

He floundered to his feet and stuck out his hand, first wiping it on the side of his trousers. Hatchley leaned forward and shook it.

“Who’s the crumpet?” Drake asked, nodding toward Susan.

“The ‘crumpet,’ as you so crudely put it, Jack, is Detective Constable Susan Gay. And show a bit of respect.”

“Sorry, lass,” said Drake, executing a little bow for Susan. She found it hard to hold back her laughter. She knew that old-fashioned sexism was alive and well and living in Yorkshire, but it felt strange to have Sergeant Hatchley defending her honor. Drake turned back to Hatchley. “Now what is it you want, Jim? You’re not still working these parts, are you?”

“I am today.”

Drake held his hands out, palms open. “Well, I’ve done nowt to be ashamed of.”

“Jack, old lad,” said Hatchley heavily, “you ought to be ashamed of being born, but we’ll leave that aside for now. Girlie magazines.”

“Eh? What about ’em?”

“Still in business?”

Drake shifted from one foot to the other and cast a beady eye on Susan, guilty as the day is long. “You know I don’t go in for owt illegal, Jim.”

“Believe it or not, at the moment I couldn’t care less. It’s not you I’m after. And it’s Sergeant Hatchley to you.”

“Sorry. What’s up, then?”

Hatchley asked him about the masked killer with the puppy-dog eyes. Drake was shaking his head before he had finished.

“Sure?” Hatchley asked.

“Aye. Swear on my mother’s grave.”

Hatchley laughed. “You’d swear night was day on your mother’s grave if you thought it would get me off your back, wouldn’t you, Jack? Nonetheless, I’ll believe you, this time. Any ideas where we might try?”

“What have you got?”

“Shaved pussies, excited penises. Right up your alley, I’d’ve thought.”

Drake turned up his misshapen nose in disgust. “Shaved pussies? Why, that’s pretty much straight stuff. Nay, Jim, times have changed. They’re all into the arse-bandit stuff or whips and chains these days.”

“I’m not just talking about the local MPs, Jack.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny. Even so.”

Hatchley sighed. “Benny still in business?”

Drake nodded. “Far as I know. But he deals mostly in body-piercing now. Very specialized taste.” He looked at Susan. “You know, love – pierced nipples, labia, foreskins, that kind of thing.”

Susan repressed a shudder.

“Bert Oldham?” Hatchley went on. “Mario Nelson? Henry Talbot?”

“Aye. But you can practically sell the stuff over the counter, these days, Ji – Sergeant.”

“It’s the ‘practically’ that interests me, Jack. You know what the law says: no penetration, no oral sex, and no hard-ons. Anyway, if you get a whiff of him, phone this number.” He handed Drake a card.

“I’ll do that,” said Drake, dropping back into his chair again. Susan thought the legs would break, but, miraculously, they held.

The girl didn’t look up from her magazine as they went out. “Better give that reading a rest, love,” said Hatchley. “It must be hell on your lips.”

“Fuck off,” she said, chewing gum at the same time.

Shit, thought Susan, it’s going to be one of those days.

2

Banks was right, he saw, as he stood on the threshold of Robert Calvert’s flat and surveyed the wreckage. The only difference between this and Pamela Jeffreys’s flat was that there had been no human being hurt and no prized possessions utterly destroyed. Stuffing from the sofa lay strewn over the carpet, which had been partly rolled up to expose the bare floorboards. In places, wallpaper had been ripped down, and the television screen had been shattered.

So they had come back. It supported his theory. They obviously didn’t know that Banks was a policeman, didn’t know that Calvert’s flat had already been thoroughly searched by professionals. If they had known, they would never have come here.

It was as he had suspected. They had started following him when he left Clegg’s Park Square office on Monday morning. They must have seen the police arrive first, but from their point of view, the police arrived sometime after Banks, and he left alone, so there was no reason to make a connection, certainly none to suspect that he was a policeman. For all they knew, he could have been a friend of Betty Moorhead’s, or a colleague of Clegg’s.

Still looking for clues to Clegg’s whereabouts, they had trailed Banks on his lunch date with Pamela and noted where she was rehearsing. One of them must have found out where she lived. They didn’t know about the Calvert flat until Banks led them there, and they must have thought the place had something to do with Clegg. Finally, when Banks saw them from the window, they ran off, only to come back later and search the place when the coast was clear.

Where were they now? Already, their descriptions had been sent to other police forces, to the airports and ports. If the men had any sense, they would lie low for a while before trying to leave the country. But criminals don’t always have sense, Banks knew. In fact, more often than not, they were plain stupid.

And what about Rothwell’s killers? If the man Melissa Clegg remembered was involved – and it was a big if – then he was local. Was he the kind to stay put or run? And what about his partner?

No one else was at home in the building, and there was no point looking over the rest of the flat. From the box at the corner of the street, Banks went through the motions of calling the local police to