Blood At The Root

do you? You just go straight to your bloody opera without even thinking.”

Banks stood up again. “Look, I said I’m sorry. Okay? I’ll take it off if it bothers you so much.”

“I told you to leave it. It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Oh, Alan, give it a rest. Can’t you see I’ve got work to do?” She gestured at the transparencies spread out across the table.

“Fine,” said Banks. “Fine. You’re pissed off, but you don’t want to talk about it. You hate opera, but you want me to leave it on. I’m the one who never considers your needs or feelings, but right now you’ve got work to do. Well, just bloody fine.”

Banks tossed back the rest of his Laphroaig, grabbed his coat from the hall stand and slammed the front door behind him.

FOUR

I

Banks was first to arrive at Tuesday morning’s CID meeting in the “Boardroom” of Eastvale Divisional Police HQ, shortly followed by DC Susan Gay, Superintendent Gristhorpe and, finally, Sergeant Hatchley.

Having been warned by Susan, Banks was dreading that Jimmy Riddle himself would show up. Riddle was a notorious early riser, and the thirty miles or so of country roads from Regional HQ to Eastvale at such an hour would mean nothing to him. Especially if it gave him an opportunity to cause Banks grief.

Banks knew he would have to face the CC before long – Gristhorpe said he had already received his bollocking for letting his DCI too far off the leash – but he just didn’t want it first thing in the morning, never his favorite time of day. Especially after he’d gone down to the Queen’s Arms after his argument with Sandra the previous evening and had a jar too many. He hadn’t handled that situation well, he knew. He hadn’t been at all reasonable. He had lived with Sandra long enough to know that when she lashed out like that – which was rare – it meant she had something important on her mind. And he hadn’t bothered to find out what it was. Instead, he had stormed out like a petulant teenager.

As it happened, Jimmy Riddle hadn’t turned up by the time coffee and biscuits were served. That probably meant he wouldn’t come, Banks thought with relief; usually Riddle liked to be first there, sparkling and spotless, to get a jump on everyone.

“Right,” said Gristhorpe. “What have we got so far? Alan, have you talked to the lab?”

Banks nodded. “Nothing yet. They’re still trying, but they haven’t found anything on the shoes or clothes we sent over for analysis. There’s a lot of mud on George Mahmood’s shoes, consistent with walking over the rec in the rain, and some sort of substance that looks a bit suspicious. But the lad was wearing trainers, for Christ’s sake. Hardly what you’d choose if you were intending to kick someone’s head in.”

“But we don’t know that he was intending to do anything, do we?” Gristhorpe pointed out.

“True. Still, it’d be difficult to kick someone to death wearing trainers. Dr. Glendenning specified heavy boots. Or Doc Martens, something like that.”

“Wouldn’t the rain have washed any traces of blood away?” Susan asked.

“Lab says not. If there’s enough of it, which there was, and if it gets in the stitching and seeps between the sole and upper, they say it’s damn near impossible to get rid of.”

Susan nodded.

“Vic Manson’s working on fingerprints, too,” Banks said to Gristhorpe, “but he doesn’t hold out a lot of hope.”

“Fingerprints from where?”

“The broken bottle. According to the postmortem, there were fragments of broken glass embedded in the back of Jason Fox’s skull, and they match the fragments we found near the body. It looks as if he was hit with a bottle and then kicked. Anyway, Vic says the rain has probably buggered up his chances, but he’s busy spraying SuperGlue into aquariums and Lord knows what else.”

“What did you find out yesterday?” Gristhorpe asked.

“Quite a lot.” Banks told them in detail about Jason Fox’s losing his job, his false address in Leeds, and the Albion League. “I also checked out this Milly and her boyfriend,” he went on. “The West Indian woman Jason insulted at work. Seems she’s gone back to live with her family in Barbados.”

“Chalk up one victory to Jason Fox, then,” said Gristhorpe. “Any idea where Jason lived when he wasn’t at his parents’ house?”

Banks smiled and produced an address in Rawdon.

“How did you find out?”

“Telephone directory. It doesn’t seem as if Jason was making any particular secret out of where he lived. He just neglected to let his parents know he’d moved.”

“For eighteen months?”

Banks shrugged. “Jason’s relationship with his parents obviously wasn’t close. There’s a lot they don’t know about him. I’m not entirely sure whether they didn’t want to know, or whether he didn’t want them to. From what I’ve seen so far, the Foxes aren’t a particularly close family.”

“How did he make his living these past two years?” Gristhorpe asked. “Do we know that?”

Banks shook his head. “No. But according to the DSS he wasn’t on the dole. His grandfather mentioned something about him studying computers, too, so that might be something he’s got into. I’ve asked Ken Blackstone to give us a hand down there, checking the local college courses. And we can check tax records, see if he got another job somewhere.”

Gristhorpe nodded. “Know anything about this Albion League?”

Banks’s only experience with neo-Nazis had been with the National Front in the seventies, when he was a young copper on the Met. He had read about the more recent, smaller and tougher groups, like Combat 18 and Blood and Honour, with all their concomitant white-power rock bands and magazines, but he hadn’t actually come across any of them in the line of duty. “Not yet,” he said. “And nobody else around here seems to have heard of them, either. Anyway, I faxed the Yard. They’ve got a special squad dealing with neo-Nazi groups.”

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Have you got anything to add, Sergeant Hatchley?”

“The uniformed lads canvassed the whole Market Street area again yesterday,” said Hatchley. “Pubs, cafes, fish-and-chip shops, bed-and-breakfasts, the lot. Some people remember Georgie Mahmood and his two mates in the fish-and-chip shop, all right, but no one saw them heading for the ginnel. And no one remembers seeing Jason and his mate. We’ve managed to get an artist’s impression of the lad who was with Jason, but I wouldn’t expect too much.” Hatchley scratched his nose. “I’m wondering if it was something to do with drugs, sir, the Jubilee being the sort of place it is. A deal gone wrong, maybe?”

“Have we got anything from the Drugs Squad on the victim or suspects?”

Hatchley shook his head. “No, sir. I’ve already checked with records. But still…”

“Well, we’ll bear it in mind, anyway. Anything else?”

“Aye, sir. I had a chat with a couple of Jason’s teammates from Eastvale United. He had a jar with them after the game, right enough, but none of them admit to seeing him Saturday night, and none of them recognize the lad in the artist’s impression.”

“Why hasn’t Jason’s mate come forward?” Gristhorpe mused aloud. “Does he even know what’s happened?”

“It’s possible he doesn’t, sir,” said Hatchley. “If he lives far off, like, doesn’t watch much telly or read the papers.”

Gristhorpe nodded and turned to face everyone. “Either that or he did it. Let’s dig a little deeper into the