with two children – before finding out at the inquest into his suicide that he had been homosexual.
‘You still seem to be saying Michael did it,’ she said. ‘In fact, you’re hounding all of us – his friends. Why? Why pick on us? What about his enemies? Couldn’t it have been somebody just passing through who killed Harry?’
Banks shook his head. ‘Contrary to popular belief,’ he said, ‘very few murders happen that way. I think the myth of the wandering vagrant killer was invented by the aristocracy to keep suspicion away from their own doorsteps. Most often people are killed by family or friends, and motives are usually money, sex, revenge or the need to cover up damaging facts. In Harold Steadman’s case, we found no evidence of robbery and we’ve had no luck so far in digging up an enemy from his past. Believe me, Ms Cartwright, we dig deep. We’ve been checking the alibis of anyone outside his immediate circle who might have had even the remotest reason for killing him. Really, not many people walk around the country bashing others on the head for no reason. So far, statistics and evidence point to someone closer to home. According to his friends, though, he was too damn perfect to have an enemy, so where am I supposed to look? Obviously Mr Steadman was a far more complicated man than most people have admitted, and his network of relationships wasn’t a simple one either. His murder wasn’t a spur of the moment job, or at least the killer was frightened or coldblooded enough to throw us off the scent by moving the body.’
‘And you’re not going to stop pestering us until you know who it is?’
‘No.’
‘Are you close?’
‘I can’t see it if I am, but detection doesn’t work like that, anyway. It’s not a matter of getting closer like a zoom lens, but of getting enough bits and pieces to transform chaos into a recognizable pattern.’
‘And you never know when you have enough?’
‘Yes. But you can’t predict when that moment will come. It could be in the next ten seconds or the next ten years. You don’t know what the pattern will look like when it’s there, so you might not even recognize it at first. But, soon enough, you’ll know you’ve got a design and not just a filing cabinet full of odds and sods.’
‘What about money as a motive?’ Penny asked. ‘Harry was very well off.’
‘He didn’t leave a will, which was foolish of him. Naturally, it all goes to Mrs Steadman. It would have been more convenient for us if he’d left it all to the National Trust and we could have pulled in the first nutty conservationist we could find, but life isn’t as easy as fiction. Motive and opportunity just don’t seem to go together in this case.’
‘Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Have I explained why I’m pestering you so much now?’
‘Very clearly, thank you,’ Penny said, giving him a mock bow.
‘You don’t see Michael much these days?’
‘No, not often. Occasionally in the Bridge. He was always especially awkward with me after we split up, though. You’re not suggesting that Michael is still in love with me, are you? Let me get this right. He thought Harry and I were having an affair all those years ago and backed off. But all the time he’s been holding a grudge. He worked his way into Harry’s confidence over the years just looking for an opportunity to do away with him, and finally took his revenge. Am I right?’
Banks laughed, but it sounded hollow. Perhaps Ramsden did have sufficient motive, but he would have been hard-pushed to make an opportunity. First of all, he could hardly come to Helmthorpe and hang around in the car park all evening waiting, even if he was certain Steadman would be going there. And if Steadman had gone to York, how did his car get back to Helmthorpe? Ramsden could hardly have driven two cars, and he would have needed his own to get home. There were certainly no buses at that time of night, and he would not have risked arranging for a taxi.
‘It’s ludicrous,’ Penny said, as if she had been listening in on Banks’s thoughts. ‘I see what you mean when you say you’re stuck.’ She finished her drink, put down the glass, and stood up to leave.
Banks stayed on, drinking rather gloomily and craving another cigarette. Then Hatchley walked in. The sergeant brought two pints over and wedged himself into the chair Penny had just left.
‘Any developments?’ Banks asked.
‘Weaver’s men have talked to someone who saw Sally Lumb in the public call box on Hill Road at four o’clock Friday afternoon,’ Hatchley reported. ‘And someone else thinks he saw her walking along Helmthorpe High Street at about nine o’clock.’
‘What direction?’
‘East.’
‘She could have been going anywhere.’
‘Except west,’ Hatchley said. ‘By the way, I’ve been in touch with a mate of mine in York. Keeps tabs on all the queers and perverts down there, and there’s nothing on Ramsden at all. Not a dicky bird.’
‘I didn’t think there would be,’ Banks said glumly. ‘We’re barking up the wrong tree, Sergeant.’
‘That’s as maybe, but who’s going to lead us to the right ’un?’
Banks watched the rain stream down the dirty window-pane and sighed. ‘Do you think the two are linked?’ he asked. ‘Steadman and the Lumb girl?’
Hatchley wiped his lips with the back of his hand and burped. ‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? The girl has the only piece of real information we get about the dumping of Steadman’s body, and she goes missing.’
‘But she’d already told us what she knew.’
‘Did the killer know that?’ Hatchley asked.
‘It doesn’t matter, does it? He didn’t even know anybody had heard him burying Steadman below Crow Scar, unless…’
‘Unless the girl let him know.’
‘Right. Either intentionally or otherwise. But that still assumes she knew more than she told us, that she knew who it was.’
‘Not if it was unintentional,’ Hatchley pointed out. ‘A girl like that tells all her friends, maybe hints that she knows more than she does. This is a small place, remember. It’s not like London. It’s easy to be overheard here, and word travels quickly.’
‘The coffee bar,’ Banks muttered.
‘Come again?’
‘The coffee bar. The place she hung around with her friends. Come on, we’d better question those girls again. If they know what Sally knew, they could be in danger as well. I didn’t want them to think that Sally had been killed, or that her disappearance had anything to do with Steadman, but there’s no time for softly-softly any more.’
Hatchley gulped down the rest of his pint, then dragged himself to his feet and plodded along behind.
10
ONE
Anne Downes was both nervous and excited to find herself in the police station. Not that it was much of a place, but it was alive with important activity: people coming and going, phones ringing, the ancient telex machine clattering. The two other girls paid less attention to their surroundings and seemed more preoccupied with their internal sense of unease. Hazel was the worst, biting her nails and shifting position as if she had St Vitus’s dance; Kathy pretended to lounge coolly, casually uninterested in the whole affair, but she was biting her lower lip so hard it turned red.
The policewoman had been friendly enough when she’d picked them up at the coffee bar and driven them the short distance to the station, and the small attractive chief inspector had smiled and said he wouldn’t keep them long. But they all knew there was something going on.
Anne was the first to be called into the tiny interview room. Its walls were bare and the mere two chairs and a table made the place seem over-furnished. It was the kind of room that made you claustrophobic.
