just clam up on us. If Sharp's our lad, we need evidence before we tackle him again or we'll lose him for good.'
Hatchley scratched the seat of his pants. 'What about the woman?' he asked.
'Thelma Pitt?'
'Yes.'
'She said she couldn't positively identify them. We don't want to take any risks on this. When we get him, I want him to stay, not walk off on some technicality. Besides, I'd rather not put her through it until we've got a bit more to go on. If it's Sharp, we know he's got the clap. Sooner or later, he'll turn up at one of the clinics. Then we'll haul him in.'
Hatchley nodded and went back downstairs.
When the coffee came, Banks realized all over again why he usually took his breaks in the Golden Grill. He sat with his chair turned to face the window, smoked and stared blankly over the market square, watching the first activities of the morning. Delivery vans double parked outside the shops; the minister, glancing at his watch, hurried into the church; a housewife in a paisley headscarf rattled the door of Bradwell's Grocery, which didn't appear to be open yet.
But all this was mere activity without meaning to Banks. He was close to solving the robberies and the rape of Thelma Pitt-he knew that, he could feel it in his bones-but there was nothing he could do to hurry things along. As so often in his job, he had to be patient; this time he literally had to let nature take its course.
Slowly, while he smoked yet another cigarette, the market square came to life. As the first tourists stepped into the Norman church, Bradwell's Grocery finally opened its doors and took delivery of boxes of fruit from an orange van with a sombrero painted on its side. The woman in the paisley headscarf was nowhere to be seen.
By mid-morning, Banks was sick of being cooped up in his office. He told Sergeant Rowe he was going out for half an hour or so, then went for a walk to burn off some of his impatience.
He hurried across the market square, fastening his overcoat as he went, then cut down the narrow back- streets and through the flower gardens to the riverside. The slowly increasing cloud cover had not yet quite blotted out the sun, but it had drawn a thin veil over it that weakened the light and gave the whole landscape the look of a watercolor in pale greens, yellows, orange, brown and red. The scent of rain came on a chilling wind, which seemed to be blowing from the northwest, along the channel of Swainsdale itself. The breeze hurried the river over the terraced falls and set up a constant skittering sound in the trees that lined the banks. Leaves were already falling and scraping along the ground. Most of them ended up in the water.
Across the Swain was another pathway, and behind that more trees and flowerbeds. The houses that Banks could just see through the waving branches were the ones fronting The Green, which separated them from the East Side Estate. Banks knew that Jenny's house was among them, but he couldn't tell which one it was from that distance and angle.
He pushed his hands deep into his overcoat pockets, hunched his shoulders and hurried on. The exercise was doing the trick, driving chaotic thoughts from his mind and helping him work up an appetite for lunch.
He doubled back around the castle to the market square. Hatchley and Richmond were lunching in the Queen's Arms when he got there, and Hatchley stopped in mid-sentence when he saw his boss enter. Banks remembered that he had been rude to the sergeant that morning and guessed that they were complaining about him. Taking a deep breath, he joined them at their table and set things right again by buying both his men a pint.
III
The York bus arrived at the station by the Roman wall at ten-thirty. Trevor walked along the wall, passed the railway station, then crossed the Ouse over Lendal Bridge by the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey and the Yorkshire Museum. After that, he wandered in a daze around the busy city until he felt hungry. Just after opening time, he found a pub on Stonegate-with his height and out-of-school dress he certainly looked over eighteen-where he ate a steak-and-mushroom pie along with his pint of keg beer.
He lingered there for almost two hours, nursing his pint and reading every word (including the 'Musicians Wanted' column) in his Melody Maker, before venturing out into the streets again. Everywhere he walked he seemed to stumble across pairs of American tourists, most of them complaining because they were inadequately dressed for the cool weather.
'Goddamn sun's out,' he heard one fat man in thin cotton slacks and a blazer grumble. 'You'd think there'd be some goddamn heat, for Christ's sake.'
'Oh, Elmer,' his wife said. 'We've been in Yoorp for a month now. You oughtta know it never gets hot north of Athens.'
Trevor sneered. Silly sods, he thought. Why even bother to come here and litter up the streets if they were too soft to take a bit of autumn chill. He imagined America as a vast continent baking in the sun-pavements you could fry eggs on; people stripped to the waist all the time having barbecues; enormous, uninhabitable stretches of desert and jungle.
About an hour later, he knew he was lost. He seemed to have wandered outside the city walls. This was no tourist area he was in; it was too working-class. The long straight rows of tiny back-to-backs built of dusty pink bricks seemed endless. Washing flapped on lines hung across the narrow streets. Trevor turned back, and at the end of the street saw the Minster's bright towers in the distance. He started walking in their direction.
He'd put it off for long enough, he decided. If he didn't want his penis to shrivel up and drop off, he'd better go for treatment, however frightening the prospect seemed.
In a newsagent's, he found time to look up the location of the clinic in a street guide before the suspicious owner told him to clear off if he wasn't going to buy anything.
'Bleeding Paki,' Trevor muttered under his breath as he found himself being ushered out. But he'd got what he'd come for.
The clinic, not very far from the hub of the city, was a squat, modern building of windowless concrete with a fiat, asphalt roof. Trevor presented himself at reception, where he was told to take a seat and wait until a doctor became available. There were two other people before him, a middle-aged man and a scruffy female student, and both of them looked embarrassed. As they waited, nobody spoke and they all avoided even accidental eye contact.
About an hour later, it was Trevor's turn. A bald, long-faced doctor led him into a small room and bid him sit in front of the desk. Trevor shifted anxiously, wishing to God the whole thing was over and done with. The place smelled of Dettol and carbolic; it reminded him of the dentist's.
'Right,' the doctor said brightly, after scribbling a few notes on a form. 'What can we do for you, young man?'
What a stupid question, Trevor thought. What the hell does he think I'm here for, to have my bunions seen to?
'I've got a problem,' he mumbled, and gave the doctor the details.
'What's your name?' the doctor asked, after umming and ahing over Trevor's description of his symptoms.
'Peter Upshaw,' Trevor answered smartly. It was something he'd had the foresight to work out in advance, a name he had picked out from the columns of Melody Maker.
'Address?'
'Forty-two Arrowsmith Drive.'
The doctor glanced at him sharply: 'Is that here, in York?'
'Yes.'
'Whereabouts?' He scratched his shiny pate with his ballpoint pen. 'I don't believe I know it.'
'It's by the Minster,' Trevor blurted out, reddening. He hadn't anticipated that the quack would be so inquisitive. 'The Minster? Ah, yes…'The doctor made an entry on the form. 'All right, Peter,' he said, putting down his pen. 'We'll have some tests to do, of course, but first I have to ask you where you caught this disease, who
