A Necessary End (25 page)

The only trip that made any sense in the area was Stranraer to Lame. Then Boyd would be in Northern Ireland. From there, he didn't need a passport to cross the border to the Republic. Boyd was from Liverpool, Banks remembered, and probably had Irish friends.

So the first call he made, after giving Richmond and Hatchley the task of informing the other Scottish ferry ports just in case, was to the police at Stranraer. He was told that there had been no sailings the previous day because of a bad storm at sea, but this morning was calm. There were sailings at 1130, 1530, 1900 and 0300, all with easy connections from Edinburgh or Glasgow. Banks gave Boyd's description and asked that the men there keep a special watch for him, especially at ferry boardings. Next he issued the new description to police in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee, and passed a list of smaller places to PCs Craig and Tolliver downstairs. Then he phoned Burgess, who had been keeping a low profile in his hotel room since their drunken night, and gave him the news.

Banks knew from experience that leads like this could bring results in a matter of minutes or days. He was impatient to have Boyd in and get the truth out of him, as much to test his own theories as anything else, but he'd get nowhere pacing the room. Instead, he sent for some coffee and went over the files Richmond had put together.

Information is a policeman's life-blood. It comes in from many sources: interviews, gossip, criminal records, informers, employers, newspaper reporters, and registries of births, marriages and deaths. It has to be collated, filed and cross-referenced in the hope that one day it will prove useful. DC Richmond was the best ferret they had at Eastvale, in addition to being practically invisible on surveillance and
handy in a chase. Sergeant Hatchley, though tough, tenacious and good at interrogation, was too lazy and desultory to tie everything together. He overlooked minor details and took the easy way out. Put more simply, Richmond enjoyed gathering and collating data, whereas Hatchley didn't. It made all the difference.

Banks spread out the sheets in front of him. He already knew a bit about Seth Cotton, but he had to be thorough in his revision. In the end, though, the only extra knowledge he gleaned was that Cotton had been born in Dewsbury and that in the mid-seventies he had settled in Hebden Bridge and led a quiet life, as far as the local police were concerned. Richmond had picked up the accident report on Alison Cotton, which didn't say very much. Banks made a note to look into it further.

There was nothing new on Rick Trelawney, either, apart from the name and address of his wife's sister in London. It might be worth a call to get more details on the divorce.

Zoe Hardacre was a local girl. Or near enough. As Jenny had said, she hailed from Whitby on the east coast, not far from Gill's home town, Scarborough. After school she had tried secretarial work, but drifted away. Employers had complained that she couldn't seem to keep her mind on the important tasks they gave her, and that she always seemed to be in another world. That other world was the one of the occult: astrology, palmistry and tarot card readings. She had studied the subjects thoroughly enough to be regarded as something of an expert by those who knew about such things. Now that the occult seemed to have come into fashion among the New Age yuppie crowd, she made a living of sorts producing detailed natal charts and giving tarot readings. Everyone seemed to agree that Zoe was harmless, a true flower child, though too young to have been part of the halcyon days of the sixties. She seemed about as political as a flower, too: she supported human rights, and she wanted the bomb banned, but that was as far as it went.

As far as Banks could make out, she had never come into contact with PC Gill. Banks imagined him bursting into her booth at Whitby, truncheon raised, and arresting her for charlatanism; or perhaps she had read his palm and told him he was a repressed homosexual. The absurdity of Banks's theories served only as a measure of his frustration
over motive. The connection between one of the suspects and Gill's murder was there somewhere, but Banks didn't have enough data yet to see it. He felt as if he were trying to do a join-the-dots drawing with too few dots.

While Banks was almost convinced that Mara Delacey had been at the farm looking after the children at the time PC Gill was stabbed, he glanced over her file anyway. She had started out as a bright girl, a promising student, gaining a good degree in English, but she had fallen in with the hippie crowd when LSD, acid rock, bandanas and bright caftans were all the rage. The police knew she took drugs, but never suspected her of dealing in them. Despite one or two raids on places where she happened to be living, they had never even been able to find her in possession.

Like Zoe, Mara had done occasional stints of secretarial work, most often as a temp, and she had never really put her university education to practical use. She'd spent some time in the USA in the late seventies, mostly in California. Back in England, she had drifted for a while, then become involved with a guru and ended up living in one of his ashrams in Muswell Hill for a couple of years. After that, the farm. There was nothing to tie Mara to PC Gill, unless he had crossed her path during the two years she had been in Swainsdale.

Banks walked over to the window to rest his eyes and lit a cigarette. Outside, two elderly tourists, guidebooks in hand, paused to admire the Norman tower, then walked into the church.

Nothing in what Banks had read seemed to get him any further. If Gill did have a connection with someone at the farm, it was well buried and he'd have to dig deep for it. Sighing, he sat down again and flipped open the next folder.

Tim Fenton had been born in Ripon and was now in his second year at Eastvale College of Further Education. With Abha Sutton, he ran the Students Union there. It was a small one, and usually stuck to in-college issues, but students were upset about government health and education policies—especially as far as they were likely to affect grants—and took every opportunity to demonstrate their displeasure. Tim, whose father was an accountant, was only nineteen and had no blots on his copy-book except for attending the seminar that got him into Special Branch's files.

Abha Sutton was born in Bradford of an Indian mother and a Yorkshire father. Again, her upbringing had been solidly middle-class, and like Tim, as Richmond had tried to tell Burgess, she had no history of violence or involvement in extremist politics. She had been living with Tim for six months now, and together they had started the college Marxist Society. It had very few members, though; many of the college students were local farmers' sons studying agriculture. Still, the Social Sciences department and the Arts faculty were expanding, and they had managed to recruit a few new members among the literary crowd.

Banks read even more closely when he got to Dennis Osmond's file. Osmond was thirty-five, born in Newcastle-on-Tyne. His father had worked in the shipyards there, but unemployment had forced the family to move when Osmond was ten. Mr Osmond had found a job at the chocolate factory, where he'd been known as a strong union man, and he had been involved in the acrimonious and sometimes violent negotiations that marked its last days. Osmond himself, though given at first to more intellectual pursuits, had followed his father politically.

A radical throughout university, he had dropped out in his third year, claiming that the education he was being given was no more than an indoctrination in bourgeois values, and had taken up social work in Eastvale, where he'd been working now for twelve years. During that period, he had become one of the town's chief spokesmen, along with Dorothy Wycombe, for the oppressed, neglected and unjustly treated. He had also beat up Ellen Ventner, a woman he had lived with. Some of his cronies were the kind of people that Burgess would want shot on sight—shop stewards, feminists, poets, anarchists and intellectuals.

Whatever good Osmond had done around the place, Banks still couldn't help disliking the man and seeing him, somehow, as a sham. He couldn't understand Jenny's attraction to him, unless it was purely physical. And Jenny, of course, still didn't know that Osmond had once assaulted a woman.

It was after one o'clock, time for a pie and a pint in the Queen's Arms. But no sooner had Banks settled down in his favourite armchair by the fire to read the
Guardian
than PC Craig came rushing into the pub.

“They've got him, sir,” he said breathlessly. “Boyd. Caught him trying to get on the half-past eleven ferry to Larne.”

Banks looked at his watch. “It's taken them long enough to get onto us. Are they holding him?”

“No, sir. They're bringing him down. Said they should be here late this afternoon.”

“No hurry, then, is there?” Banks lit a cigarette and rustled his paper. “Looks like it's all over.”

But it didn't feel as if it was all over; it felt more like it was just beginning.

II

Burgess paced the office like an expectant father, puffing on his cigar and glancing at his watch every ten seconds.

“Where the bloody hell are they?” he asked for what seemed to Banks like the hundredth time that afternoon.

“They'll be here soon. It's a long drive and the roads can be nasty in this weather.”

“They ought to be here by now.”

The two of them were in Banks's office waiting for Paul Boyd. Scenting the kill, Burgess didn't seem able to relax, but Banks felt unusually calm. Along Market Street the shopkeepers were shutting up for the day, and it was already growing dark. In the office, the heater coughed and the fluorescent light hummed.

Banks stubbed out his cigarette and said, “I'm off for some coffee. Want some?”

“I'm jittery enough as it is. Oh, what the hell. Why not? Black, three sugars.”

In the corridor, Banks bumped into Sergeant Hatchley on his way downstairs. “Anything?” he asked.

“No,” said Hatchley. “Still waiting to hear. I'm on my way to check with Sergeant Rowe if there's been any messages.”

Banks took the two mugs of coffee back to his office and smiled when Burgess jumped at the sound of the door opening. “It's all right,” he said. “Don't get excited. It's only me.”

“Do you think the silly buggers have got lost?” Burgess asked, scowling. “Or broken down?”

“I'm sure they know their way around just as well as anyone else.”

“You can never be sure with bloody Jocks,” Burgess complained. Eastvale was the farthest north he had ever been, and he had already made it quite clear that he didn't care to venture any farther. “If they've let that bastard escape—”

But he was interrupted by the phone. It was Sergeant Rowe. Boyd had arrived.

“Tell them to bring him up here.” Burgess took out another Tom Thumb. He lit it, brushed some ash off his shirt and picked up his coffee.

A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and two uniformed men entered with Paul Boyd between them. He looked pale and distant—as well he might, Banks thought.

“Sorry, sir,” said the driver. “We had a delay setting off. Had to wait till the doc had finished.”

“Doctor?” Burgess said. “Why, what's wrong? Young dick-head here didn't hurt anyone, did he?”

“Him? No.” The constable gave Paul a contemptuous glance. “Fainted when they caught him, that's all, then came round screaming about walls closing in. Had to get the doc to give him a sedative.”

“Walls closing in, eh?” Burgess said. “Interesting. Sounds like a touch of claustrophobia to me. Never mind. Sit him down, and you two can bugger off now.”

“See the desk sergeant about expenses and accommodation,” Banks said to the two Scotsmen. “I don't suppose you'll be wanting to set off back tonight?”

The driver smiled. “No, sir. Thanks very much, sir.”

“Thank
you
,” Banks said. “There's a good pub across the road. The Queen's Arms. You can't miss it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Burgess could hardly wait to close the door behind them. Paul sat facing Banks in a tubular metal chair with a wooden seat and back. Burgess, preferring a free rein and the advantage of height, chose to lean against the wall or stride around as he talked.

“Get the sergeant in, will you?” he asked Banks. “With his notebook.”

Banks sent for Hatchley, who arrived red-faced and out of breath a minute later. “Those bloody stairs again,” he grumbled. “They'll be the death of me.”

Burgess pointed to a chair in the corner and Hatchley sat down obediently. He found a clean page in his notebook and took out his pencil.

“Right,” said Burgess, clapping his hands. “Let's get cracking.”

Paul looked over at him, hatred and fear burning in his eyes.

If Burgess had one professional fault, Banks thought, it was as an interrogator. He couldn't seem to take any part but that of his own pushy, aggressive self. It wouldn't prove half as effective with Boyd as the Mutt & Jeff routine Banks and Hatchley had worked out, but it would have to do. Banks knew he would be forced into the role of the nice guy, the father confessor, for the duration.

“Why don't you just tell us about it?” Burgess began. “That way we won't have to resort to the Chinese water torture, will we?”

“There's nothing to tell.” Boyd glanced nervously at the window. The slats of the venetian blind were up, letting in grey light from the street below.

“Why did you kill him?”

“I didn't kill anyone.”

“Did you just lose your temper, is that it? Or did someone pay you? Come on, we know you did it.”

“I told you, I didn't kill anyone.”

“Then how come that knife with PC Gill's blood on it also hap pens to have your dabs all over it too? Are you trying to tell me you never touched it?”

“I didn't say that.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Paul licked his lips. “Can I have a cigarette?”