Mohawk, studded leather vests, short bleached hair, earrings, nose rings, pierced eyebrows.
Banks found the taxi rank nearby. He would have liked to walk after being cooped up on the plane and the bus, but he hadn’t got his bearings yet. He didn’t even know how to get to the hotel, or how far it was.
The taxi was clean and the driver seemed to recognize the name of the hotel. Soon he had negotiated his way out of the square and they were heading along a broad, busy street lined with trees, arcades, shops and cafes. The pavements were crowded with tourists, even in early October, and Banks noticed that some of the cafes and restaurants had tables out on the street. He opened the window a little and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee came in. God, it was like a summer’s day.
The driver turned, crossed a picturesque bridge, then continued along one of the canals. Finally, after a few more turns, he pulled up in front of the hotel on Keizersgracht. Banks paid what seemed like an exorbitant amount of guilders for such a short trip, then hefted his holdall out of the boot.
He looked up at the unbroken row of buildings in front of him. The hotel was small and narrow, about six floors high, with a yellow sandstone facade and a gabled roof. It was wedged in a long terrace of uneven seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings that had once, Banks guessed, probably been merchants’ houses. Some were built of red brick, some of stone; some had been painted black or gray; some had gables, some had flat roofs. All of them seemed to have plenty of windows.
Banks dodged a couple of cyclists and walked into the hotel lobby. The man at the desk spoke good English. Banks remembered from his previous trip that most people spoke good English in Amsterdam. They had to do. After all, how many English people bothered to learn Dutch?
Yes, the man said, his room was ready, and he was delighted to be able to offer a canal view. Breakfast would be served in the ground-floor lounge between seven o’clock and nine. He was sorry that the hotel had no bar of its own, but there were plenty of fine establishments within a short walking distance. He hoped Mr. Banks would be comfortable.
When Banks pulled out his credit card, the clerk waved it away, telling him the room was fully paid for until Monday morning. Banks tried to discover who had paid for it, but the clerk became extremely coy, and his English went downhill fast. Banks gave up.
Then the clerk handed him a message: a single sheet of paper bearing a typed message that read “De Kuyper’s: 16:00hr.”
Banks asked what “De Kuyper’s” meant and was told it was a brown cafe – a sort of Dutch local pub – about a hundred meters to his left along the canal. It was on a quiet street corner and would probably have a few tables outside. A very nice place. He couldn’t miss it.
The room was a gabled attic up five flights of narrow stairs. When Banks got there, he was panting and beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead.
Though there was hardly room to swing a dead cat and the bed was tiny, the room was clean, with black timber beams and pale blue wallpaper. It smelled pleasantly of lemon air freshener. A blue ashtray stood on the bedside table, beside the reading light and telephone. There were also a small television set and en suite facilities.
The canal view more than made up for any inadequacies. Banks particularly liked the way the ceiling and the black-painted beams sloped down toward the gabled window, drawing the eye to its perspective. And sure enough, he looked down on Keizersgracht and the tall, elegant facades of the buildings opposite. The room was a little too warm and stuffy, so he opened the window, letting in hints of distant street sounds. He looked at his watch. Just after two. Plenty of time for a shower and a nap before the mystery meeting. But first he headed for the telephone. There was always a chance that Sandra had changed her mind.
II
Susan Gay was worried about Banks. Kicking her heels back in her office with black coffee and a so-very-sinful KitKat, she thought about the brief, puzzling phone call. What the hell did he think he was doing, taking a few days off in the middle of a major investigation? Just when they were getting close to tracking down Mark Wood. All right, so it was the weekend. Or almost. But didn’t he know that Jimmy Riddle would go spare if he found out? Even Superintendent Gristhorpe would be annoyed.
There had to be more to it. The way he had sounded on the phone bothered her. Abrupt. Distracted. Not like him at all.
Was it the Amsterdam thing? Is that what had him so worried? Was there some danger involved, or something illegal? Banks didn’t often act outside the law, not like some coppers Susan had known, but he did sometimes – they all did – if he felt there was no other way. Was he up to something?
Well, she concluded, she didn’t know, and there was probably no way of finding out until he got back and revealed all, if he did. Until then, the best thing to do was get on with her work and stop behaving like a mother hen.
She hadn’t had a lot of luck tracking Mark Wood down so far. It would take her forever to check out all the listings in the telephone directory. Even then, he might not live in the Leeds area or have a telephone. Sergeant Hatchley was in Leeds today with one of his old cronies from Millgarth visiting the properties Motcombe owned. Maybe they would turn up something, but she doubted it.
She was just about to pick up the phone and start dialing down her list when it rang.
“Is that DC Gay?” the voice said. “Susan?”
“Yes.” She didn’t know who it was.
“It’s Vic here, Vic Manson, from Fingerprints.”
“Ah, of course. Sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice for a moment. How’s it going?”
“I was trying to call Alan, but apparently he’s not in his office. All I could get at home was his answering machine. Do you know where he is?”
“I’m afraid he won’t be in at all today.”
“Not ill, I trust?”
“Can I help, Vic?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Do you know much about fingerprints?”
“Not a lot. Have you got some news?”
“Well, yes, in a way. Though it’s not very good, I’m afraid. Not as good as I’d hoped for.”
“I’m listening.”
“Right. Well, when I talked to Alan earlier in the week I was testing the glass from the broken bottle found near Jason Fox’s body.”
“I remember,” Susan said. “He said something about spraying it with SuperGlue in an aquarium.”
Manson laughed. “Yes. Cyanoacrylate fuming, as a matter of fact.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Yes… well, I’m sorry, but it didn’t work. We found nothing on the glass. Probably because of the rain.”
“And that’s it?”
“Not entirely. Do you know anything at all about ninhydrin?”
“Isn’t it a chemical for getting prints from paper?”
“Sort of, yes. What ninhydrin does is it makes visible the amino acids you deposit with sweaty fingers, especially on paper.”
“I see. But I thought we were concerned with
“Ah, yes,” said Manson. “We were. That is until it got us nowhere. But I found a couple of fragments of glass that were also covered by part of the
“You got a fingerprint?”
“Now, hold on. Wait a minute,” said Manson. “I told you from the start it’s not a major breakthrough. What I
