wife as if she were bloody royalty.’
‘It’s only natural, though. We all have some morbid curiosity.’
‘Not me. Look,’ Banks said, ‘we haven’t been out for a long time, and there’s supposed to be a good folk singer on in Helmthorpe tomorrow. Do you fancy going?’
‘Changing the subject, eh? Helmthorpe? Isn’t that where the Steadmans live?’
‘Yes.’
‘This isn’t work, is it, Alan? It’s not connected to the case?’
‘Cross my heart. We’ll just go and listen to some good folk music like we’ve done plenty of times before. Ask Harriet and David along, too.’
‘If they can get a sitter. It’s such short notice. What about Jenny Fuller? Think she might like to come?’
‘She’s in France,’ Banks said. ‘Don’t you remember? That wine-tasting tour. Took off as soon as term ended.’
‘Lucky her. All right, then, I’ll call Harriet. As long as you promise it’s nothing to do with work! I don’t much fancy sitting there like a spare part while you grill some suspect.’
‘Scout’s honour. And I’m not sure I like what you’re implying. I don’t grill people.’
Sandra smiled. Banks moved closer and put his arm around her. ‘You know-’ he began.
‘Ssshhh…’ Sandra put her finger to his lips. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
‘What’s wrong with the sofa?’ Banks asked, and pulled her gently towards him.
FOUR
Sally Lumb was finding it difficult to get to sleep. She had put aside Wuthering Heights because her eyes were getting tired, but sleep just would not come.
First she thought of Kevin. She would have to give in soon or he’d be off after someone more experienced. He was right on the edge and she couldn’t tease him for much longer. She didn’t want to, anyway. The last time they’d been together, the day they saw Penny Cartwright, she had let him put himself close to her sex; she had felt his heat and hardness right at her very entrance and it made her tremble and go all wet, just like it said in the books. It had been cruel to stop him then, she knew, but they had no protection; she didn’t want to get pregnant. There were ways around that, though. Next time…
Turning over and praying for sleep to come, she started thinking about the implications of what she had remembered that afternoon. Not the car on Saturday night – that was nothing – but something she hadn’t fully perceived at the time that now had more sinister far-reaching possibilities. It was her first real clue, and she had to decide what to do about it. She wouldn’t go to the police, that was for certain – a proper fool she’d make of herself if she was wrong! Besides, she was already determined to solve the affair herself. Perhaps she might even become a heroine.
And the police were fools anyway; she could easily one-up them. That man from London had treated her like a silly child. And what had he done that was so wonderful? Given up an exciting metropolitan life for the boredom of Swainsdale, that’s what he’d done. Lord, the man could have been working for Scotland Yard!
And so, as her mind tossed and turned towards sleep, the first step became clear. If she was right, then someone was in danger; a warning had to be given. She would arrange a secret meeting, and maybe after that, if her suspicions were proved correct, she could go about setting a trap. That thought worried her, as she really would be making herself vulnerable. But she could always rope Kevin in; he was a big strong lad, and he’d do anything for her.
As Sally finally drifted into the dream world that usually puzzled and irritated her, she could see the lights of London strung out before her like a diamond necklace. Why stop there? the dream insisted. And the images progressed, built up from magazine photographs and television programmes: Vogue models sashayed down the Champs Elysees, famous actresses stepped out of limousines under the neons of Sunset Strip, and all the well- known television personalities she had ever seen chatted over cocktails at a party in Manhattan… But soon it all faded, and what she remembered in the morning was a rather absurd image of being in Leeds, a place she had visited several times on shopping expeditions with her mother. In the dream it felt like a foreign city. There were uniformed policemen all over the place, and Sally had to push her bicycle because she didn’t have a licence – at least, not one that was valid in Leeds. She was there, she vaguely remembered, because she was searching for a bird, a white one that had flown from her garden, a vast dark expanse like a tilled field after rain. She didn’t know if the bird had been her pet, her responsibility, or just a wild creature she had taken a fancy to, but it was important, and she was there in an alien familiar city pushing her bicycle among the policemen looking for it…
FIVE
Banks slipped Finzi’s choral setting of ‘Intimations of Immortality’ into the car stereo as he turned off the A1 at the Wetherby roundabout and took the A58 to Leeds. It was eleven thirty on Friday morning, just five days after the discovery of Steadman’s body. Hatchley, under the weather on Thursday morning after his visit to Darlington, had checked Hackett’s alibi thoroughly and found that it held. Barnes, too, was out of the running; though he was unmarried and had no one to confirm that he went straight home after visiting Mrs Gaskell, his finances were in order and there had never been even the slightest hint of malpractice or wrongdoing of any kind during his twenty years as a doctor in Helmthorpe.
In his office earlier that morning, Banks had completed the mass of paperwork he had started the day before: transcripts of interviews, maps and timetables of people’s movements, lists of unasked or unanswered questions. He had gone over the forensic evidence again, but found nothing new. Constable Weaver and his reinforcements were still asking questions around the village, the campsite and outlying farms, but the likelihood of their turning up new evidence after so long was fast diminishing.
The hushed choir entered, repeating the opening theme, ‘There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream…’ over the baritone’s solo line, and Banks forgot his frequently distasteful job for a few moments. Finzi’s music made Wordsworth’s poem bearable.
The drive, which he took slowly, turned out to be quite pleasant once he’d left the Great North Road and its never-ending stream of lorries. It was the quickest way, the same route as he had taken on his last trip to Leeds, to interview a pawnbroker in connection with a series of robberies. But that had been a grey, rainy day in late October. Now it was summer and he drove through the kind of peaceful green countryside one so often finds close to large English cities.
Banks puffed at his pipe as Finzi played on, not bothering to relight it after the second time it went out, and soon found himself in the Seacroft area. He had to concentrate hard on directions; the tower blocks all looked much the same and there were few landmarks to go by. He came out finally through an underpass near the city centre and parked close to the Town Hall. From there, he could see the high white tower of the library building, something Gristhorpe had told him about that morning in his potted history of the city and its architecture.
Banks had no fixed ideas about how to approach the academics; he intended to play it by ear. He had called earlier and arranged to have lunch with Darnley and Talbot in a pub near the university. Though term was officially over, they still travelled to their offices almost every day to carry on with their research or simply to get out from under their wives’ feet. Darnley, to whom Banks had spoken, seemed quite excited by the prospect of a chat with the police, or so he had said in a rather detached way, as if he were discussing the mating habits of lemurs.
Banks still had an hour to kill, so he decided to take Gristhorpe’s advice and take a look at the Town Hall. It was an impressive Victorian edifice, complete with fluted columns, huge domed roof, clock and a pair of lions guarding the entrance by the broad flight of stone steps. The stone, sandstone by the look of it, seemed light and clean. Gristhorpe had told him it had been sandblasted a few years ago, as few such structures had withstood a hundred years or more of industry without turning black.
Banks admired the bulk of the place and the bold classical lines of its design. He felt he could grasp, just by looking, some of the civic pride that had gone into its construction. Queen Victoria herself had attended the grand
