Abattoir Blues (39 page)

Banks scratched his chin. He needed a shave. He had gone a couple of days without. His gut instinct did tell him that Michael Lane hadn’t killed anyone, Lane could help them find out who did, and his girlfriend had persuaded him to talk. Now they had to act.

‘OK,’ said Banks. ‘We send Gerry Masterson over to babysit Alex Preston, and we go in with an open mind. We don’t waste time throwing accusations at him. All right?’

‘Fine with me,’ said Annie.

‘And Alex and Ian are our trumps. You saw the two of them there; he’d do anything for her. Even lie.’

‘Look,’ said Annie, ‘maybe he helped Morgan occasionally. I don’t know. But are we going after him for that, or are we after the people who killed Spencer?’

‘Mainly the latter, of course. But we’ll take what we can get.’

Annie stood up. ‘Fine. I’m ready.’

Banks followed suit. ‘Let’s go, then.’

The library at Eastvale Police HQ wasn’t much more than a standard-size office with a few bookshelves mostly full of law reference books and a desk and chair. There was no librarian, and everyone was responsible for reshelving whatever reference they had used. As a result, the shelves were chaotically arranged, and it was hard to find anything. Winsome sometimes even wondered how many of her colleagues knew the alphabet. The library did, however, boast a magnificent selection of local Ordnance Survey maps in just about every scale you could imagine.

Winsome knew she could access maps on her computer, that digital was all the rage these days, but she still preferred the real thing: the well-worn folds, the thick and serious texture of the older cloth maps, the colours, contours, dots and dashes. She had a strong memory of the detailed map of the Springfield area on the wall of her father’s office back in Jamaica, showing just about every homestead. Winsome could still remember gazing at that map as a child and naming in her mind the people who lived in every marked dwelling. She had learned to read other maps only later, in the potholing club at university, and it was a skill that occasionally came in useful in the course of her work. Homicide and Major Crimes covered the whole of North Yorkshire, as opposed to the smaller patch of the old Western Area, and that meant a lot of moorland and open countryside as well as a few larger towns, such as Harrogate and Scarborough. She certainly couldn’t name everyone who lived at every farm, but the 2-1/2-inch to a mile map should show her some possibilities as to where Caleb Ross may have been during the missing hour before his death.

With the map unfolded and covering the table, she stood and leaned over it, pinpointing Garsley Farm with the magnifying glass that hung on a chain from the table. That was Ross’s last stop, only about a fifteen-minute drive from Belderfell Pass. She had driven that road just yesterday, and there was nothing on it to detain anyone: no houses, no farm, no shops, no pub. She also ruled out everywhere east of the farm. If Ross had wanted to make a longer stop anywhere there, he would most likely have done so
before
visiting Mr Wythers and avoided retracing his tracks. She concentrated on the western and northern moorlands.

There wasn’t much to see. She could follow the heights of the various mountains from the way the contour lines grew closer, traced the dotted lines of footpaths that seemed to disappear in the middle of nowhere, spotted ancient stone circles, deep gullies, old riverbeds, abandoned lead mines and slate quarries. She saw Woadly Edge, which she knew to be a rock face rising steeply at a right angle from the landscape and framing an entrance to the cave system she had explored on numerous occasions. She knew the place well and didn’t remember any buildings in the vicinity, which was why the tiny words high point farm caught her attention. When she looked more closely at the map, the contours showed it was hidden from Woadly Edge and the access road the club had used by a small hill, perhaps a drumlin left by the retreating glacier thousands of years ago. In fact, the farm was set in a hollow all of its own, a sort of dimple in the landscape, or so it seemed on the map. It was odd to call a farm in a hollow High Point, but then Winsome realised the hollow itself was on fairly high ground.

Carefully, Winsome scoured the map within the range she estimated Ross could have driven in the time he had, perhaps picked up an unauthorised load, and stopped for a brief chat, then made it to the point on Belderfell Pass, where he met his death. High Point Farm was the only place that fit the bill. It hadn’t been on Ross’s official pickup list, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t had business of his own there. Ross smoked marijuana, Winsome remembered, and there were plenty of hydroponic growers tucked away in the rolling dales and remote moorland. Maybe High Point Farm was such a place.

A quick check of the land registry, also kept in the library, revealed that High Point Farm was owned by one Kenneth Atherton, a name unfamiliar to her.

A quick jolt of excitement throbbing through her veins, she went back to the squad room. Gerry was gone, so Winsome left a brief note on her desk, checked her mobile batteries and left the building.

‘I suppose you were listening in back there, when Alex and I were talking,’ said Michael Lane. They were in a different interview room, and Banks and Annie sat opposite him at the battered metal table. He didn’t look much the worse for his few days of sleeping rough, Banks thought, a stubbly beard and tangled hair that needed a good wash and brush being about the only obvious signs. He was a handsome kid, and he looked mature for his age, though he still had the aura of youth about him. Banks could understand what Alex Preston, eternally hopeful, saw in him: perhaps someone she could change and forge a future with. Someone who might lack ambition and wealth but who would cherish her and treat her with kindness and love. Someone who would look after her and Ian. Wouldn’t we all want someone like that?

They had already cautioned Lane, who had refused a legal-aid solicitor since his talk with Alex, and set the tape machine running. ‘We were offering you a courtesy by allowing you a few minutes with Alex Preston,’ Banks said. ‘We didn’t have to do that. In fact, it’s against regulations. We were just being nice.’

‘Sure.’

‘Can we proceed with the interview, Michael?’ said Annie. ‘The sooner we get it over with, the sooner you can be with Alex and Ian again.’

Lane studied her. ‘You’re the one she talked about, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Annie something?’

‘DI Cabbot to you.’

‘Have it your way. She said you were all right.’

‘You’ll have to make up your own mind about that, won’t you? Why don’t you start by telling us about what happened last Sunday morning at the abandoned airfield near Drewick?’

‘You don’t mess about, do you?’

‘Michael,’ said Banks. ‘It won’t do any good stalling or making offensive comments. It won’t make things go any quicker. We have a few ideas of our own, and you might not like some of them, but here we’re giving you a fair chance to tell us your version. Contrary to what you said earlier, nobody’s going to “fit you up” with anything you didn’t do, and running away in itself is no crime unless you’re running from a criminal act you committed.’

‘It doesn’t mean you’ll believe me, though, does it?’

‘That remains to be seen. At the moment all I know is that you were observed fleeing a crime scene, and I’m on the verge of holding you for that, lacking any reasonable explanation. Only you can talk me out of it.’

‘I wasn’t fleeing a crime scene!’

‘What were you doing, then?’

‘I was running for my life.’

‘That’s better,’ said Banks. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Lane appeared to go through a brief inner struggle with himself, apparent from his changing facial expressions and nervous twisting of a silver ring. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Morgan Spencer was a sort of mate of mine. I mean, we weren’t that close, didn’t hang out or stuff like that. He was a few years older than me, and he liked to hang out at the club scene in Leeds or Manchester or Newcastle. That’s not my thing at all.’

‘So what did you do together?’

‘Worked, mostly. Morgan had a removal van, and I’d help him shift stuff for people. We’d have the occasional jar or pub lunch together.’

‘What sort of stuff did you move?’

Lane looked at Banks as if he were backward. ‘Furniture, of course.’

‘OK, go on.’

‘And we did odd jobs around the dale. Bit of roofing, general fixing things up. He was good with motors, too, was Morgan.’

‘What else did you do to make a living?’

‘I happen to be not bad at sheep shearing. It was something my dad taught me. I just seemed to pick it up easily. But Morgan was no good with animals.’

‘When did you last see Morgan before you went out to the hangar on Sunday morning?’

‘Friday. We were doing some work on a barn out Lyndgarth way.’

‘Did you tell him that Beddoes was in Mexico?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘So he could steal Beddoes’ tractor. I’m sure you knew about the holiday, either from your dad, who was looking after Beddoes’ farm, or from Alex. He booked the trip at the agency where she works. Did it come in conversation, you know, idle chatter while you were working?’

‘I might have mentioned it. It was a cold day. I might have said something about some lucky bastards getting to go to Mexico. But I had nothing to do with stealing the tractor.’

If that was when Spencer had first heard about the Beddoes’ farm being empty, it explained why he had stolen the tractor so late in the week. If he’d known earlier and done it Monday or Tuesday, it would probably have been safe at its destination by the time Beddoes got back and missed it. As it was, it had ended up near Dover. ‘OK. Let’s move on to Sunday morning.’

‘Right. Well, Alex was just getting ready to go to church with Ian. She’s not really religious, like, but she thinks it’s a good idea to bring him up right, you know, and he likes the Bible stories.’ Lane smiled to himself. ‘Probably the violent bits, like his video games. Anyway, Morgan texts me and says to meet him at the hangar, that he might need help with something.’

‘What sort of help? Did he mention the tractor?’

‘No. He doesn’t say. It’s just a text, you know, not an explanation.’

‘What did you think he meant?’

‘A removal job or something.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, as I said, he’s a sort of mate, and he’s helped me out from time to time, so if he needed me in a bit of a hurry, I could hardly say no, could I?’

‘Didn’t you at least suspect that it might be something illegal?’

‘No. Why should I?’

‘Had you ever met him at the hangar before?’

‘No. I knew where it was, like, but it wasn’t somewhere I’d been. No reason.’

‘Go on.’

‘When I got there, I couldn’t see his van or his bike, but there were a couple of cars I didn’t recognise outside in the yard. I left my car just down the road, by the turn-off south of Drewick. That was the road someone must have seen me on later. It leads to the Thirsk Road and the A19.’

‘Why did you leave your car there?’

‘I don’t know. Just a gut feeling. I didn’t know who was there, did I?’

‘But why would you be worried if you didn’t suspect anything criminal was going on?’

‘Something felt not quite right. And by the way Morgan talked sometimes.’

‘What way?’

‘Like he was in on things, knew people.’

‘Criminals? Gangs?’

‘That sort of thing, yeah. He talked big. Liked to impress. That gangsta rap stuff. Said he met people in the clubs, contacts, people who could help him if he helped them. He wanted to be a rap singer.’

That was an oxymoron as far as Banks was concerned. ‘So you were nervous about who he was with, who might be in the cars, so you stopped short and made a silent approach?’

‘That’s right. I was being careful. Maybe he really did have gangsta friends.’

‘What kind of cars were in the yard?’

‘There were two. An old Corsa and a red pickup truck.’

Ronald Tanner drove a Corsa, Banks remembered. He didn’t know who drove a red pickup truck. Montague Havers drove a BMW 3 Series, but they already knew he didn’t arrive in the area until Sunday afternoon, after the deed had been done. The CSIs hadn’t done very well with tyre tracks from the crime scene, but they had got a couple of partial fingerprints, one of which was a close match to Ronald Tanner, but not good enough for court. Maybe the other matched whoever had driven the red pickup truck. One of them, Tanner or the mystery man, must have brought a passenger, because after Spencer’s murder, three vehicles were driven away from the hangar compound. It also made sense that two of them held Spencer’s arms while the third, perhaps Kieran Welles, shot him between the eyes with the bolt gun. He wondered whether they were expecting that, or did it surprise and shock them? Banks put his money on Tanner bringing Utley, the crooked ex-lorry driver they still hadn’t found, and Welles driving the red pickup truck. ‘What did you find when you got to the hangar?’ he asked Lane.

‘I didn’t get there, did I? You know how open it is there, on the airfield. They were all inside. I could hear voices, so I figured it was safe enough to creep up, using the cars for cover. Then the voices got louder, people shouting, arguing.’

‘Could you hear what they were saying?’

‘Not at first. The voices got lost in the hangar.’

‘But later?’

‘I started backing off. I mean, it sounded really bad. I didn’t know if Morgan knew he was walking into something dangerous and wanted me to fight with him, or what, but I’m no fighter. I suppose I was torn. I mean, we were sort of mates, after all. I didn’t like to think I was leaving him.’

‘But you were scared?’

Lane looked down at the table. ‘Yeah.’

‘How many voices were there?’

‘I can’t say. Mostly it was Morgan, and he was arguing with someone, protesting about something, and occasionally someone else would chip in. Maybe three altogether.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Like I said, I was backing off by then. I mean, if he was mixed up with a dangerous crowd, I thought they might have knives or something. I thought the best thing I could do was get away from there and call the police.’