'What's Lenny doing?'
'Still in The Smoke setting up a business deal. Bit tight-lipped about it, right now.'
'When's he coming back?'
'Don't know. Few days. A week.'
'When are we going to get rid of the stuff?'
'What the bloody hell's wrong with you tonight, Trev? Nothing but fucking moan, moan, moan. You haven't spent all your readies yet, have you?'
'No. I just don't like the idea of that jewelry lying about, that's all.'
'Don't worry. I told you it's safe. He'll be back soon.'
'Heard from him, have you?'
'Got a letter from him this morning. Careful, our Lenny is. Thinks the blower might be tapped. He said he thought it'd be a good idea if we laid off on the jobs for a while. Just till things cool down, like.'
'I've not noticed any heat.'
'Bound to be going on, though, ain't it, behind the scenes. Stands to reason. There's been a lot of bother lately, and the rozzers must be getting their bleeding arses flayed. Mark my words, mate, they'll be working their balls off. Best lay off for a few weeks. We've got plenty to be going on with.' It wasn't the money that interested Trevor so much; it was the thrill of breaking in, the way it made his heart beat faster and louder in the darkness, pen-lights picking out odd details of paintings on walls or bottle-labels and family snapshots on tables. But he couldn't explain that to Mick.
'Well, what do you think?' Mick asked.
'I suppose he's right,' Trevor answered, his mind wandering to the possibility of doing jobs alone. That would be much more exciting. The privacy, too, he could savour. Somehow, Mick just seemed too coarse and vulgar to appreciate the true joy and beauty of what they were doing.
'So we lie low, then?'
'All right.'
'Till we hear from Lenny?'
'Yes.'
A train rumbled over on the tracks above the Ginnel.
Mick looked at his watch and grinned. 'Late.'
'What is?'
'Ten-ten from 'Arrogate. Twenty minutes late. Typical bloody British Rail.'
Chapter THIRTEEN
I
Banks spent most of the week in his office brooding on the three cases and smoking too much, but the figures refused to become clear; the shadowy man in the dark, belted raincoat seemed to float around in his mind with the two faceless youths, watching them watching the sailors on the deck of Alice Matlock's ship in a bottle, the Miranda. And somewhere among the crowd were all the people he had talked to in connection with the cases: Ethel Carstairs, the Sharps, 'Boxer' Buxton the headmaster, Mr. Price the form-master, Dorothy Wycombe, Robin Allott, Mr. Patel, Alice Matlock herself, dead on the cold stone flags, and Jenny Fuller.
Jenny Fuller. Twice during the week he picked up the phone to call her, and twice he put it down without dialling. He had no excuse to see her-nothing new had happened-and he felt he had already misled her enough. When, on Wednesday evening, Sandra suggested that they invite Jenny to dinner, a silly argument followed, in which Banks protested that he hardly knew the woman and that their relationship was purely professional. His nose grew an inch or two, and Sandra backed down gracefully.
Richmond and Hatchley were in and out of his office with information, none of it very encouraging. Geoff Welling and Barry Scott appeared to be normal enough lads, and they had gone off on holiday to Italy the day before the Carol Ellis incident, so that let them out.
Sandra continued talking to the neighbors, but none of them had anything to add to Selena Harcourt's information.
The search continued for passersby, shopkeepers and bus drivers who might have been near The Oak the night Mr. Patel saw the loiterer. Yes, one of the bus drivers remembered seeing him, but no, he couldn't offer a description; the man had been standing in the shadows and the driver had been paying attention to the road. All the shopkeepers had closed for the night and none of them lived, like Mr. Patel, above their premises. So far, no pedestrians had come forward, despite the appeal in the Yorkshire Post.
Richmond had conducted a thorough search of Alice Matlock's cottage, but no will turned up. Alice had nothing to her name but a Post Office Savings Account, the balance of which stood at exactly one hundred and five pounds, fifty-six pence on the day of her death. She seemed to be one of that rare breed who do not live beyond their means; all her life, she had made do with what she earned, whether it was her nurse's salary or her pension. Ethel Carstairs said she had never heard Alice talk of a will, and the whole motive of murder for gain crumbled before it was fully constructed.
On Friday morning, Banks walked into the station, absorbed in Monteverdi's Orfeo. Orpheus was pleading with Charon to allow him to enter the underworld and see Eurydice.
Non viv'io, no, chepoi de vita e priva Mia cara sposa, U cor non e piu meco, Esenza cor com'esserpud ch'io viva? sang the man who could tame wild beasts with music: 'I am no longer alive, for since my dear wife is deprived of life, my heart remains no longer with me, and without a heart, how can it be that I am living?'
He didn't notice the woman waiting by the front desk to see him until the desk-sergeant coughed and tapped him on the arm as he drifted by, entranced. The embarrassed sergeant introduced them, then went back to his duties as Banks, awkwardly removing his headphones, led the woman, Thelma Pitt, upstairs to his office.
She seemed very tense as she accepted the chair Banks drew out for her. Though her hair was blond, the dark roots were clearly visible, and they combined with the haggard cast of her still-attractive, heart-shaped face and a skirt too short for someone of her age to give the impression of a once gay and beautiful woman going downhill fast. Beside her right eye was a purplish-yellow bruise.
Banks took out a new file and wrote down, first, her personal details. He vaguely recognized her name, then remembered that she and her husband, a local farm laborer, had won over a quarter of a million pounds on the pools ten years ago. Banks had read all about them in the Sunday papers. They had been a young married couple at the time; the husband was twenty-six, Thelma twenty-five. For a while, their new jet-setting way of life had been a cause celebre in Eastvale, until Thelma had walked out on her husband to become something of a local femme fatale. (Why, wondered Banks, were these delicate phrases always in French, and always untranslatable?) Thelma's legendary parties, which some said were thinly disguised orgies, involved a number of prominent Eastvalers, who were all eventually embarrassed one way or another. When the party was over, Thelma retreated into well-heeled obscurity. Her husband was later killed in an automobile accident in France.
It was a sad enough story in itself; now the woman sat before Banks looking ten years older than she was, hands clasped over her handbag on her lap, clearly with another tale of hard times to tell.
'I want to report a robbery,' she said tightly, twisting a large ruby ring around the second finger of her right hand.
'Who was robbed?' Banks asked. 'I assume it was…'
'Yes, it was me.'
'When did it happen?'
'Monday evening.'
'At your home?'
'Yes.'
'What time?'
'It was just after ten. I got home early.'
'Where had you been?'
