Cold Is The Grave

EPILOGUE: CHRISTMAS DAY

Banks woke up early on Christmas morning, and after sitting quietly in the kitchen for a while drinking his tea and enjoying the peace he always felt there, he went into the living room, turned the tree lights on, slipped his Buena Vista Social Club CD in the stereo and went back to the kitchen, humming along with “Chan Chan” as he stood over the large free-range chicken that lay splayed on the chopping block, a copy of Delia Smith’s Christmas open flat beside it.

He was going to make the traditional pork, sage and onion stuffing, for which he had purchased all the ingredients yesterday. He was shocked to read that Delia Smith said you should make your stuffing on Christmas Eve, but he decided that was perhaps because the enormous turkey she was cooking would probably take all day. He’d be fine. He looked at his watch. Plenty of time.

His back ached because he had had to sleep on the small sofa downstairs. It was a small price to pay for having both of his kids with him for Christmas, though.

A couple of days ago, Brian had phoned to say that he had bought the car he’d been after and he had a few days free. He offered to pick up Tracy in Leeds on his way to Gratly if Banks had room for them both. Banks was over-joyed. Of course he had room. He immediately went out and bought more presents: a three-CD history of the Blue Horizon label for Brian, and some of the finest, most-expensive makeup brushes he could find for Tracy, along with a few odds and ends to fill out their stockings.

They were both staying until Boxing Day, when Brian would drive Tracy down to London to see her mother and Sean, who were spending Christmas in Dublin. Annie was with her father and the rest of his colony of oddballs in Cornwall, but that was all right. She would be back soon, and they had a date for New Year’s Eve.

So this was his imperfect Christmas with his imperfect family, but at least, he reminded himself, he still had a family, despite the damage done over the last year. All Rosalind Riddle had was a young son who would be forever asking where his daddy and his big sister had gone, and a long-abandoned daughter facing charges for murdering her half-sister; though Banks had a feeling that Ruth Walker would probably be committed to a mental hospital rather than sent to prison.

Many times over the past week or so Banks had remembered that expression of despair on Rosalind’s face as she sat amid the packing crates and sheeted furniture listening to him tell her the full story of Ruth’s obsession. He also remembered the sound of the crystal glass shattering against the door as he left. It had worried him so much that he had called on Rosalind’s closest neighbor, Charlotte King, on his way home, and asked her to keep an eye on Rosalind.

He had also attended Jimmy Riddle’s funeral, with full police honors, a week before Christmas. Rosalind had been there, along with Benjamin and her parents, but she had ignored him. Another person who had opened up to him too much, like Jenny Fuller, and revealed far too much of the raw, naked self below the surface, then regretted it and turned away.

Afterward, he heard, they had all gone down to Barnstaple, and the Old Mill was on the market. He wished Rosalind well; God knew, she had suffered enough.

Banks peered at the recipe. He had just mixed the bread crumbs, sage and onion with the boiling water when his telephone rang. Who the hell could that be at nine o’clock on Christmas morning? he wondered, as he put the bowl aside and went into the living room.

“Merry Crimble, Banks.”

Bloody hell! It was Dirty Dick Burgess. “Merry Christmas,” Banks said. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Got a Christmas present for you.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t.”

“Okay, I give up. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I thought it would come better from me, rather than you reading about it when it’s all over the papers or watching it on television.”

“What would?”

“Barry Clough.”

“Barry Clough? What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Stop talking like a bloody parrot, Banks. Yes. Dead. DEAD Dead.”

Banks gripped the handset tighter and sat down. “Tell me what happened.”

As far as Banks knew, after he and Annie had gone to see Stafford Oakes at the CPS Office a week or so ago, all charges against Clough had been dropped. It turned out that the tire match probably wouldn’t withstand a close cross-examination, and someone had cocked up on the warrant for the search of Jamie Gilbert’s car, rendering all evidence found therein inadmissible. British justice. To add to their troubles, the witness who said she had seen Jamie Gilbert with Charlie Courage had begun having mysterious lapses of memory.

“In the early hours of the morning,” Burgess said, “Clough was coming out of a nightclub in Arenys de Mar, just up the coast from Barcelona, and somebody shot him. Dead.”

“Who?”

“Girl named Amanda Khan. Supposed to be some kind of pop star – that’s why it’s going to be a big story – but I can’t say as I’ve ever heard of her. Sounds like an A-rab to me.”

“She’s half Pakistani,” said Banks. Amanda Khan. Clough’s new girlfriend. Emily’s replacement.

“Whatever. Anyway, it sounds like the classic love triangle from what I’ve managed to pick up so far. Seems that Clough jilted her for some dago bimbo, and this Amanda was a few stops closer to Barking than he realized. Funny old world, innit?”

“You can say that again.” Banks didn’t usually smoke in the mornings, but he reached for his cigarettes.

“What makes it even funnier,” Burgess went on, “is that she used one of Clough’s own guns. Fine irony, that. She was staying at his villa, and apparently he was carrying on with this Dolores Somebody-or-other right under her eyes and trying to palm Amanda off on one of the servants. She picked up one of Clough’s guns and waited for them until they came out of the club. Shades of Ruth Ellis.”

“Indeed.” Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in England; she had shot her lover outside a London pub. “Was the girl hurt?”

“Winged. One bullet in her upper arm. Flesh wound. Nothing serious. According to my Spanish sources, the Khan woman fired six shots. Two of them hit Clough: one in his ugly mug and one in his miserable bloody heart. Wonder it didn’t just bounce off, but he was dead before he hit the ground. Two hit Jamie Gilbert: one in the chest and one in the groin. He’s not dead, but they say he’ll never be quite the same again and his voice has gone up a few octaves. One shot hit the girl, and the last hit an innocent bystander in the hand, a local teenager. He lost two fingers.”

“So,” said Banks, “justice of a kind.”

“Best we’ll get.”

“Thanks for calling. The girl, how is she?”

“Amanda Khan? Why? Don’t tell me you know her, too?”

“No. I was just wondering.”

“As well as anyone in the custody of the Spanish police can expect to be. Bye-bye, Banks. Have a good Christmas.”

“You, too.”

Banks put the phone down slowly. Clough dead. He could only feel a sense of relief that something had finally gone wrong for the bastard. For a while, Clough had seemed able to get away with anything and everything and thumb his nose at the rest of the world while he was doing it. No more. It probably wasn’t very Christian to celebrate another man’s death, especially on Christmas Day, but Banks would have been a hypocrite if he hadn’t admitted to himself that he was glad Clough wouldn’t be around to wreak his peculiar brand of havoc on the world