“What is it?”
“I don’t think it can be important, but it was the smell. I use Pledge Natural on the furniture. I’d know that smell anywhere. Very clean and… . But this was something else … a sort of pine-scented polish … I don’t know. Why would anybody want to polish furniture in a hotel room?”
“Thank you, Meg,” said Gristhorpe. “You can go now. You’ve been a great help.”
“I have? Thank you.” She went to the door and turned with her fingers touching the handle. “I’m not looking forward to this, sir,” she said. “Between you and me, I’m not looking forward to opening any doors in this hotel this morning.” And she left.
Gristhorpe reached into his side pocket, took out a pack of Rennies he carried for such emergencies as English breakfasts and southern fish and chips, and chewed two of them.
“All right?” Banks asked.
“Aye.” Gristhorpe pulled a face. “Just ought to watch my diet, that’s all.”
Next they saw the receptionist, Maureen, rather prickly at being called away from her domain. Gristhorpe basked in antacid relief and left Banks to do most of the questioning. She had very little to tell them save that the Barlows had checked in the evening of Wednesday, September 24, at about six o’clock with just one tan suitcase between them. She had told them about parking and got their car licence number, then he had signed the register Mr and Mrs Barlow and given an address in Lichfield. Loder had already checked this and found it didn’t exist. No, Maureen hadn’t asked for any identification. Why should she? And yes, of course he had skipped out on his bill. If you’d just murdered your lover, you’d hardly stop at the front desk and pay your hotel bill, would you? No, nobody had seen him leave. It wasn’t a prison camp or one of those Russian gulags, you know. What did she think of them? Just ordinary, no one you’d look twice at if you saw them in the street. Her, maybe, but he was just a nondescript bloke with a nice smile. In fact, Maureen remembered wondering what an attractive, if rather stuck-up, girl like her was
doing with the likes of him.
And that was it. They talked briefly with Mr Ballard, who didn’t remember seeing the Barlows at all, and to the bellboy who had carried their suitcase to their room and remembered nothing but the pound tip the bloke had given him. Nobody knew what they did with their time. Went for walks, the cinema in the evening, or to a pub. Nothing unusual about them. Nothing much else to do in Wey mouth.
By the time they had finished the interviews, it was eleven-thirty. DI Loder had said he would drop by that morning as soon as the autopsy results became available, and they met him walking into the lobby. He looked as if he had slept badly, too, Gristhorpe thought, with bags under his eyes and his long face pale and drawn. The three of them decided to take some fresh air on the prom while they discussed the results.
“Anything?” Gristhorpe asked as they leaned on the railings. A faint breeze ruffled his thick grey hair. The weather was overcast, but reasonably warm. Seagulls squawked overhead.
Loder shook his head slowly. “First, we’ve made enquiries at the ferry dock and no one remembers anyone of his description. We can’t really make too much of that, though, as it’s very busy down there. And the autopsy findings bear out what the doc suspected. She died of asphyxiation, and the pillow fibres in her lungs indicate that’s how it happened. No sign of drugs or anything, though it’ll be a while before all the test results come back. We’ve sent the tissue for DNA testingit looks like our man’s Group O, by the waybut that’ll take some time. She did have sex prior to death, and there were no signs of sexual assault, so we assume it was by consent. Otherwise healthy. Poor woman, we don’t even know her name yet. Only one surprise: she
was eight weeks pregnant.”
“Hmm,” said Gristhorpe. “I wonder if Chivers knew that.”
Loder shrugged. “Hardly a motive for murder.”
“I don’t think he needs much of a motive. It could have pushed him over the edge.”
“Or maybe it made her a liability,” Banks suggested. “Not so much just because she was pregnant but because it softened her, brought out the guilt over what they’d done? If she found out she was going to have a child of her own …”
“There’s no point in speculating,” said Gristhorpe. “It’s something we might never know. Anything else?”
“Nothing from the car,” Loder said. “A few partials … fibres and the like, but you know as well as I do most stuff’s mass-produced these days. Could have come from almost any blue cotton shirt. There’s not a lot else to say. We’ve got men asking around about him, if anyone saw him after he left the hotel. Nothing so far. Oh, and I informed Interpol and the authorities on the Channel Islands.”
“Good,” said Gristhorpe. “That seems to cover it all.”
“What next?” asked Loder.
“We can only wait, can’t we?”
“Looks like it. I’d better be off back to the station, keep on top of it.”
“Thanks.” Gristhorpe shook his hand. “Thanks a lot.”
They watched Loder walk off towards his car. “He’s got a point,” said Gristhorpe. “What do we do next?”
Banks shrugged. “I can only speculate.”
“Go ahead.”
Banks watched a ferry steam out of the dock. The flock of gulls swooped on a dead fish on the beach. “I’ve been thinking about Chivers,” he said, lighting a cigarette and looking out to sea. “Trying to fathom his
thought processes.”
“And?”
“And I’m not sure, but … look, he must know we’re after him by now. Surely he’s seen the stuff in the newspapers. What does he do? He kills the woman, too much extra baggage, and he takes off. Now a normal criminal would certainly head for the continent and disappear. But we know Chivers isn’t normal.”
“I think I follow your train, Alan. I’ve had the same thought myself. He’s playing a game, isn’t he? Laughing at us.”
Banks nodded. “And he likes the attention. Jenny said he’s likely to be egocentric, but he’s also probably impulsive and irresponsible. I’ve thought about that a lot.”
“So where would he head, given the way he thinks?”
“Back to where it started, I think,” said Banks. “I’ll bet you a pound to a penny the bastard’s back in Eastvale.”
II
It was late that Saturday evening when Banks and
Gristhorpe arrived back in Eastvale. They were delayed
by a six-car pile-up into a jackknifed lorry on the Ml just
south of Leicester, and as they passed by Pontefract and
Castleford on the Al, the rain fell in buckets, slowing
traffic to a crawl.
So it was that on Sunday morning, as the bells rang in the church and people crossed the market square in their Sunday best for the morning service, the members of Eastvale CID sat in the conference room around the large circular table drinking coffee and pooling their findings.
Richmond and Susan brought the others up to date on John Fairley’s information about Chivers and the fact
that he owned a gun.
“Fairley seems the least involved of them all,” said Richmond. “We had a good long chat when we brought him in. He’s got no prior form. I’m sure he’s dealt with stuff that fell off the back of a lorry before, but the Fletcher’s warehouse job is his first big bit of fencing, we’re sure ofthat. Susan?”
“I agree,” said Susan Gay, looking up from the notes in front of her. “Seems it was Johnson’s idea, and he recruited Les Poole easily. They were mates of Fairley’s, genuinely helping out at the shop for a bit of under-the- counter pocket money. Chivers was the prime mover. Without him, I don’t reckon the others would have had the guts to go through with it. It was Chivers drugged the guard dogs and cut through the chain-link fence. Poole drove the van, backed it up to the loading bay and away they went. The back of Fairley’s shop is just a quiet backstreet, so they got unloaded without any trouble. It was
n’t too hard to make a few sales through their pub mates, word of mouth, and they’d already got rid of most of the stuff by the time we called.”
“Was there any falling out over the loot?” Banks asked.
“No,” said Richmond. “Not as far as we could tell. Everyone seemed happy with his share. Poole took the television and stereo as part of his cut. Johnson got a thousand in cash. Fairley’s got no idea why Johnson was killed, though he said he wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Chivers had done him. Chivers scared him, seemed the type who’d do it for fun.”
“And he’s seen or heard nothing of him since?”
“No, sir. And doesn’t want to.”
“What about Gemma?” Banks asked. “Does Fairley know anything about what happened to her?”
“Just confirms what Poole told us, that’s all,” said
Richmond. “After we spotted the whitewash in the cellar, we had the team do a thorough search last night, but they’ve turned up nothing to indicate Gemma was there.”
“Right,” said Gristhorpe, standing up and looking at his watch. “I’ve told you what Alan thinks about Chivers being in the area, and I agree with him. What I propose is that we start trying to flush him out. Phil, I’d like you to muster as many men as you can and start knocking on doors, asking questions. Somebody must have seen the bastard. The station and the bus station are obvious places to start. He left his car in Weymouth and unless he stole one, the odds are that he took some other form of transport. The lads down there are doing their bit, too. We’re co-ordinating with a DI Loder. I’ll get in touch with the media and we’ll see if we can’t get something on the local news tonight. I want it all in the open. If he is here, I want him to know we’re closing in on him. I want him to panic and make a run for it.
“Susan, get in touch with as many of those concerned citizens who helped in the search for Gemma and get them to ask around. Tell them to make sure they don’t take any risks, though. This one’s dangerous. You know the kind of thing to ask about. Smoke from a cottage that’s supposed to be empty, odd noises, suspicious strangers, that kind of thing. Especially anyone who insists on paying cash in large amounts. We’d better put a watch on Fairley’s shop, Brenda Scupham’s place and the holiday cottage, too, just in case. And we’ll ask around the pubs. He’s not the type to lie low. He’ll be wanting to see the effect he’s having. And remember, he may have altered his appearance a bit. He’s done it before, so don’t rely on hair colour. The one thing he can’t change is that bloody smile. All right?”
Everyone nodded and dispersed. Banks returned to his office and looked out on the church-goers pouring into
the market square: women in powder blue suits holding onto their broad brimmed hats in the wind, clutching handbags; husbands in dark suits at their sides, collars too tight, shifting from foot to foot as their wives chatted, thinking maybe now they’d done their duty they’d be able to sneak off to the Queen’s Arms or the Crooked Billet for a quick one before dinner; restless children dreaming of an afternoon at Kinley Pond catching frogs, or climbing trees to collect birds’ eggs in Brinely Woodseither that or sniffing glue under the railway bridge and planning a bit of recreational B and E. And somewhere, in the midst of all that quotidian human activity and aspiration, was Jeremy Chivers.
Banks didn’t notice Susan in his doorway until she cleared her throat. He turned.
“Sorry, sir,” she said, “it slipped my mind at the meeting, but you had a call from Piet Kuypers, Amsterdam police. Said to call him back, you’d know what it was about.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“No. Just said he had a few interesting speculations for you.” Susan handed him a piece of paper. “The top’s his work number,” she said, pointing, “and that one’s home.”
“Thank you.” Banks took the paper and sat down. In the excitement of the chase for Chivers, he realized, he had quite forgotten asking Piet to check up on Adam Harkness. He hadn’t liked the man much, but as soon as it became clear that Chivers had more than likely killed Carl Johnson, there had seemed no real reason to consider Harkness any longer.
Puzzled, he dialled Piet’s home number. A child’s voice answered. Banks couldn’t speak Dutch, and the little girl didn’t seem to understand English. The phone banged down on a hard surface and a moment later a man’s voice came over the line, again in Dutch.
“Piet? It’s me. Alan Banks in Eastvale?”
“Ah, Alan,” said Piet. “That was my daughter, Eva. She only began to learn her English this year.” He laughed. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Piet. Hope I didn’t disturb your lunch but I’ve been out of town and I got a message to call you.”
“Yes. You have a moment?”
“Yes, of course.”
Banks heard the receiver placed, more gently this time, on the hard surface, and he put his feet on the desk and lit a cigarette while he waited for Piet to come back. He realized he had been talking too loudly, as one does on the telephone to foreigners, and reminded himself that Piet’s English was almost as good as his own.
“Sorry about that,” said Piet. “Yes, I did a little snooping, as you call it, about that man Harkness.” His voice bore only traces of a Dutch accent.
“Anything interesting?”
“Interesting, yes, I think so. But nothing but rumours, you understand. Hearsay. I found his wife. She has since remarried, and she didn’t want to talk about her relationship with Harkness, but she hinted that part of the reason they separated was that he had what she called filthy habits.”
“Filthy habits?”
“Yes. Like what, I thought? What do you English regard as a filthy habit? Picking his nose in bed? But I couldn’t get her to say any more. She is very religious. She had a strict Dutch Protestant upbringing in a small town in Friesland. I’m sorry, Alan, but I couldn’t force her to talk if she did not want to.”
Banks sighed. “No, of course not. What happened next?”
“I talked to some of my colleagues on drugs and vice, but they don’t know him. Mostly they’re new. You don’t
last that long working on drugs and vice, and Harkness has been gone, how long did you say, two years?”
“Something like that,” said Banks.
“So I had an idea,” Piet went on. “I went to see Wim Kaspar. Now Wim is a strange man. Nobody really knows how far it all went, but he was, how do you English say, made to leave work early?”
“Fired?”
“No. I know that word. Not exactly fired.”
“Made redundant?”
Piet laughed. “Yes, that’s it. Such an odd phrase. Well, there was something of a cloud over Wim, you see. Nobody could prove anything, but it was suspected he took bribes and that he was involved with the drugs and girls in the Red Light district. But Wim worked many years in the Red Light district, ever since patrolman, and he knows more than anybody else what goes on there. And I don’t care what people saymaybe it is truebut he is a good man in many ways. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” said Banks, remembering now that Piet was a nice bloke but took ages getting to the bloody point.
“Wim heard and saw many things that went no further. It’s give and take in that world. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Especially if what they say about him is true. So I talked to him and he remembers something. Now you must understand, Alan, that there is no proof of this. It’s just rumours. And Wim will never repeat officially what he told me.”
“Tell me, Piet.”
“According to Wim’s contacts, your Mr Harkness visited the Red Light district on several occasions.”
“Piet, who doesn’t visit the Red Light district? It’s one of your main tourist attractions.”
“No, wait. There’s more. There are some places, very
bad places. Not just the pretty women in the windows, you understand?”
“Yes?”
“And Wim told me that your Mr Harkness visited one o
f these places.”
“How did your source know who he was?”
“Alan, you must remember Mr Harkness is well known in Amsterdam, and not without influence. Do you want me to go on?”
“Yes, please.”
“It was a very bad place,” Piet continued. “You understand prostitution is not illegal here, that there are many brothels?”
“Yes.”
“And the live sex shows and the whips and chains and all the rest. But this one brothel, Wim says, was a very special place. A place that caters for people who like little girls.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“It happens, Alan. What can I say? Girls disappear from the big cities, they turn up in these places. Sometimes they are used for snuff films. You know what they are?”
“I know. Why wasn’t he arrested?”
“Sometimes it is better to leave the little fish. Also, Harkness was an important man and, how shall I say, perhaps pressure could be brought to bear. He could have been useful.”
Banks sighed. He knew the scenario. Get something on a man like Harkness and you’ve got him in your pocket: the police version of blackmail.
“Alan, in Amsterdam, just as, I suspect, in your London, you can get anything you want if you have the money to pay for it. Anything. If we can find these places and find evidence, we close them down and arrest
the people responsible. But these men are very clever. And sometimes policemen can be bought, protection can be paid. Or blackmailed. We all have skeletons in our closets. Alan? Are you still there?”
“Yes. Yes, Piet, I know. I was thinking. Listen, I’d like you to do me a big favour. I assume places like this are still in existence?”
“There is one place now we are suspicious of. On the surface, it seems like an ordinary brothel, but rumour has it that young girls can be had there, for a price. Our undercover men are watching, but we have no proof yet.”
“I’d like you to find out if there are any new girls.” He gave Piet Gemma’s description, praying he was wrong. At least it meant she might still be alive, if Harkness kept his connections in Amsterdam. He still couldn’t work out the whys and the wherefores, how everything linked up, but he knew it would not have been so difficult for Harkness or someone else to smuggle Gemma out of the country, even during the search. The ferry from Immingham, for example, was always crowded; it would be easy enough to slip in among the other families with a sleeping child on the overnight journey, when everyone was tired. “I don’t care whether you get enough proof to lock them up or not. Rumours will do fine for me. Use your contacts, informers. Maybe even your friend Wim might be able to help?”
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