“What is what? Is nothing.”
“You remembered something?”
But it was gone. “No,” said Jelacic. “Like I say, I only see her when she walk home sometimes. She never stay, never meet anyone. That is all.”
He was lying about something, Banks was certain. But he was equally certain Jelacic was too stubborn to part with whatever he had remembered right now. Banks would have to find more leverage. Sometimes he wished he had the freedom and power of certain other police forces in certain other countries-the freedom and power to torture and beat the truth out of Jelacic, for example-but only sometimes.
There was no point going on. Banks said goodbye and opened the door to leave. Before he had got ten feet away from the flat, he heard the sound on Jelacic’s television shoot up loud again.
III
It was late that Wednesday evening when Owen finally got home. After he had picked up his belongings from the prison, he decided he didn’t want to spend even one or two hours of such a beautiful day-his first moments of freedom in over six months-trapped in a car with Gordon Wharton. So he begged off, walked into town and just wandered aimlessly for a while, savoring his liberty. Late in the afternoon, he went into a pub on Boar Lane and had a pint of bitter and a roast beef sandwich, which almost made him gag after months of prison food. Then he walked over to the bus station, and by a circuitous route and a surprising number of changes, he managed to get himself back to Eastvale.
When Owen finally put his key in the lock, the door swung open by itself. He stood in the silence for a moment but could hear nothing. That seemed wrong. He knew there should have been a familiar sound, even if he couldn’t, right now, remember what it was. His house had never been in such complete silence. No place ever is. And there was an odd smell. Dust he had expected, after so long away, perhaps mildew, too. He couldn’t expect Ivor or Siobhan next door to do his cleaning for him. But this was something else. He stayed by the door listening for a while, then went into the living-room.
It looked like the aftermath of a jumble sale. Someone had pulled the books from the shelves, then ripped out pages and tossed them on the floor. Some of the torn pages had curled up, as if they had been wet and had dried out. Compact disc cases lay strewn, shattered and cracked, along with them. The discs themselves were mostly at the other side of the room, where marks on the wall showed that they had probably been flipped like Frisbees. The TV screen had been smashed. Scrawled on the wall beside the door, in giant, spidery red letters, were the words “JAILS TOO GOOD FOR FILTHY FUCKING PERVERTS LIKE YOU!”
Owen sagged against the wall and let his bag drop to the floor. Just for a moment, he longed for the stark simplicity of his prison cell again, the intractable order of prison life. This was too much. He didn’t feel he could cope.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped over the debris and went into the study. His photos and negs lay ripped and snipped up all over the carpet. None of them looked salvageable, not even the inoffensive landscapes. His cameras lay beside them, lenses cracked in spider-web patterns. His art books had also been taken from their shelves and pages of reproductions ripped out by the handful: Gauguin, Cezanne, Renoir, Titian, Van Gogh, Vermeer, Monet, Caravaggio, Rubens, everything. That was bad enough-all or any of that was bad enough-but the thing he hadn’t dared look at until last, the thing he had sensed as soon as he entered but hadn’t quite grasped, was the worst of all.
The aquarium stood in darkness and silence, lights, pumps and filters switched off. The fish floated on the water’s surface-danios, guppies, angelfish, jewelfish, zebrafish-their once-bright colors faded in death. It looked as if the intruder had simply switched off their life-support and left them to die. For Owen, this was the last straw. Misguided vindictiveness against himself he could understand, but such cruelty directed against the harmless, helpless fish was beyond his ken.
Owen leaned against the tank and sobbed until he couldn’t get his breath, then he ran to the bathroom and rinsed his face in cold water. After that, he stood gripping the cool sides of the sink until he stopped shaking. In his bedroom, most of his clothes had been ripped or cut up with scissors and scattered over his bed.
In the kitchen, the contents of the fridge and cupboards had been dumped on the lino and smeared in the manner of a Jackson Pollock canvas. The resultant gooey mess of old marmalade, eggs, baked beans, instant coffee, sour milk, cheese slices, sugar, tea bags, butter, rice, treacle, corn flakes and a whole rack of herbs and spices looked like a special effect from a horror film and smelled worse than the yeast factory he had once worked in as a student. Right in the middle, on top of it all, sat what looked like a curled, dried turd.
He knew he should call the police, if only for insurance purposes, but the last people on earth he felt like dealing with right now were the bloody police.
And he couldn’t face cleaning up.
Instead, he decided to give up on his first day of freedom. It was only about nine o’clock, just after dark, but Owen swept the torn and snipped-up clothes from his bed, burrowed under the sheets and pulled the covers over his head.
Chapter 14
I
Like Canute holding back the tide, or the Greeks fighting off the Trojans, Banks could only postpone the inevitable, not avoid it altogether. In fact, the inevitable was waiting for him at eight o’clock on Thursday morning when he got to his office-coffee in hand, listening to Barber’s setting of “Dover Beach” on his Walkman-in the strutting, fretting form of Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle.
“Banks, take those bloody things out of your ears. And where the hell do you think you were yesterday?”
Banks told him about talking to Batorac and Jelacic while he was in Leeds, but omitted Pamela’s chamber music concert and his quick visit to the Classical Record Shop.
Riddle’s presence called for a cigarette, he thought. He was trying to cut out the early morning smokes, but under the circumstances, lighting up now might achieve the double purpose of both soothing his nerves and aggravating Riddle into a cardiac arrest. He lit up. Riddle coughed and waved his hand about, but he wasn’t about to be distracted, or to die.
“What have you got to say about that fiasco in court yesterday?” the chief constable asked.
Banks shrugged. “There’s nothing much to say, sir,” he replied. “The jury found Pierce not guilty.”
“I know that. Bloody idiots.”
“That may well be, sir,” said Banks, “but there’s still nothing we can do about it. I thought we had a strong case. I’m certain the Crown will appeal. I’ll be talking to Stafford Oakes about it when the fuss dies down.”
“Hmph. We’re going to look like real idiots over this one, Banks, as if we haven’t got enough problems already.” Riddle ran his hand over his red, shiny head. “Anyway, I want you to know that I’ve asked Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe to have a look over the case files. Maybe he can bring a fresh viewpoint. Either you get more evidence on Pierce or, if he really didn’t do it, you damn well find out who did. I’ve decided I’m going to give you a week to redeem yourself on this before we hand it over to a team of independent investigators. I don’t want to do that, I know how bad it looks, an admission of failure, but we’ve no bloody choice if we don’t get results fast. I need hardly remind you of the impact a negative result might have on your future career, need I?”
“No, sir.”
“And go easy on the Harrisons. They’re bound to be upset by Pierce getting off, after everything they’ve been through. Tread softly. Understand?”
