Abattoir Blues: The 22nd DCI Banks Mystery (Inspector Banks 22)

by Peter Robinson

  ‘He entered via the Catterick junction at 3.05 on Tuesday afternoon.’

  ‘Tuesday? That’s just after Caleb Ross’s van went over the Pass. Anything definite on Mr Havers?’

  ‘No. That’s the problem. The NCA are working with us on this, too.’

  ‘Can I talk to him?’

  Joanna paused. ‘Normally we’d say no, in case you scare him off. But Monty doesn’t scare easily. We’ve questioned him on a few occasions, as have agents of the NCA, and he’s always ended up as cocky and squeaky clean as ever. Maybe a fresh face would be a good thing. I doubt he’ll give anything away, though. He’s too canny. And don’t beat him up. He knows his rights.’

  Banks laughed. ‘As if I would. Thanks, Joanna. Can you give me his details?’

  ‘He works out of an office building just off the Euston Road. That dodgy part to the north between St Pancras and Regent’s Park.’ She gave Banks an address. ‘Apparently he used to be something in the City back when the Conservatives took away all the trading restrictions in the eighties.’

  ‘What a coincidence. Just like John Beddoes. How does rural crime come into it?’

  ‘Through his contacts. They run the routes. But we haven’t been able to pin anything on him. It’s mostly guilt by association. He’s the man standing over the road with his hands in his pockets, whistling when the building on the other side blows up. He’s the one who visits Norfolk or North Yorkshire before or after a big job. It may mean nothing, but you asked, and he’s all we’ve been able to come up with. We don’t have time or the resources to scroll through the list of all the cars that left the A1 at the exit for your airfield, and nothing else has come up that sets off our radar. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Banks. ‘It was a long shot. But I like the sound of this guy.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Only too glad to help. I’m thinking maybe I should have waited until tomorrow morning to tell you, and I might have got a free lunch out of it.’

  Banks laughed. ‘Maybe I’ll take you to dinner when it’s all over.’

  ‘And pigs will fly.’

  When Banks hung up the phone, he realised that he still felt some sort of connection with Joanna. The loneliness she’d talked about over lunch the other day was in some ways at odds with his own previous contemplation of the joys of solitude, but she made him realise that he really had no friends outside the job, either, and that he neglected the ones he had. He hadn’t been to see ex-Superintendent Gristhorpe in ages, for example; Jim Hatchley had also retired and wasn’t interested in anything but his garden, his kids, darts and Newcastle United; he saw Ken Blackstone only on sporadic visits to Leeds; and even Dirty Dick Burgess only turned up when the shit hit the fan, as a rule. As for his ex-wife Sandra, she had her new family and her new life. His job had lost her to him. These days, it seemed, it was the job or nothing. He didn’t even see his own grown-up children Brian and Tracy all that often.

  Why did he seem to be letting everyone go? Why didn’t he make more of an effort to keep in touch with his friends? Sometimes he felt he had nothing to say, nothing to add to the lively company of a boozy evening in the pub. It wasn’t true, though; he always enjoyed himself when he made the effort; it had just got harder to make that effort.

  Maybe he should have suggested that Joanna meet him for a drink tonight, he thought. Maybe he should ring her back and ask her. Then he thought of Oriana. They had spoken nothing of fidelity, commitment, or any of those big, difficult subjects. They had made one another no promises, but he knew that if he asked Joanna out and didn’t tell Oriana, he would be cheating in a way, and she would be hurt. Even though she would be off to Australia, fighting off all those virile young journalists who wanted to interview Lady Veronica Chalmers. He also knew that if he rang Joanna back and asked her out for a drink, it wouldn’t end there. The attraction had been obvious even when they had been at odds in Tallinn, and it was still there. With Oriana away for three weeks, there would be too many opportunities for mischief. The last thing he needed at his age was to be a two-timing bastard.

  Besides, he needed his sleep if he was to be sharp for an early interview tomorrow.

  He finished stripping the cellophane off the Bond movie and slipped it in the player. Easier just to give himself over to a fantasy world. While the preliminaries were showing, he went back into the kitchen and fetched the rest of the bottle of wine.

  Chapter 10

  As things turned out, the interview was delayed until Alex Preston had picked out Ronald Tanner from the VIPER display, much relieved that she could go through the process on a large TV screen instead of having to stand in front of him again. After that, Tanner requested a second consultation with his lawyer. Banks used the extra time to prepare himself for the interview, gathering all the evidence they had against Tanner in one folder and everything they suspected him of being involved with in another. Alex’s identification certainly strengthened the case against him, so it was worth the delay. The only new evidence came in the form of a partial fingerprint found in the hangar. There weren’t enough points of comparison to declare that it actually was Tanner’s, but it was something Banks felt he could use as extra ammunition in an interview.

  According to his file, Ronald Tanner was forty-six, a car mechanic by trade from Chester-le-Street. After spells in London, Bristol and Birmingham in the nineties and early noughties, he had been living in Darlington since 2004. In addition to his arrests for breaking and entering, assault, theft and GBH, the local police were also interested in him as part of a wide-ranging porn and prostitution investigation, linked to some of the places he had worked as a club bouncer. Both Tanner’s prison sentences had been significantly reduced for good behaviour. Apparently, he was a model prisoner. As Banks read over the files for the fourth or fifth time, he yawned. He had stayed up too late watching the Bond movie, and even the double hit of espresso from AC Gervaise’s private machine hadn’t given him much of a second wind.

  He selected Gerry Masterson to accompany him. She had the training, but lacked the experience. After all, most interviews were carried out by detective sergeants and constables, and it was only at Banks’s own insistence that he had managed to keep his hand in all these years. Nowadays, there was even talk about training civilians to carry out police interviews in order to free up officers for other duties and show more of a presence in the communities and on the streets. Banks wasn’t too sure about that. Mostly, it was matter of getting the experience, not being trained by a psychologist. He wasn’t as skilled in all the fancy modern psychological techniques as someone like Gerry would be, after all the courses she had done, but he usually knew how to get what he wanted out of someone without resorting to torture, which was, after all, the point of a police interview. However he proceeded, there was no chance of using the casual, friendly approach in the hope to getting Tanner to admit to something in a weak moment; the man was far too experienced for that.

  They walked into the interview room at 9.35 a.m. Tanner was sitting beside his brief with his arms folded, brow furrowed and a scowl on his face, wearing his disposable ‘Elvis’ suit while his clothes were being forensically examined. Banks could hardly blame him for scowling after the morning he’d had. The locals had busted down his door at five o’clock and hustled him out in the cold pre-dawn. Then he had sat in a holding cell down in the basement while the various formalities, including Alex Preston’s identification, were completed. The only advantage he had gained from all this was that it had given him time to get his solicitor there.

  Her name was Cassandra Wakefield, and she was one of the better-known advocates in the county. No lowly legal-aid lawyer for Tanner. Even so, Banks was surprised by the firepower he had managed to acquire, especially at such short notice. He was a habitual criminal, but how had he got to know Ms Wakefield? And how could he afford her? Banks suspected the hand of a bigger player in this, but he knew it would be impossible to discover who was actually paying for Tanner’s defence. Cassand
ra Wakefield was too good to let anything like that slip through the cracks. After all, how was she to pay for her trips to Harvey Nicks? She certainly wasn’t a Primark sort of woman. Rumour had it she had more shoes than Imelda Marcos. She was a thoroughly professional lawyer in her mid-forties, very attractive, always immaculately and fashionably turned out, with a great deal of charm and far more alluring beauty than an interviewing cop wanted sitting opposite him at a time like this. Distractions were all very well in their place, but Ms Wakefield knew the value of what she had, and she wasn’t afraid to exploit it. The extra button on the blouse undone, the full, shiny lips, long wavy auburn hair, slightly hooded green eyes, and the entirely deceptive dreamy bedroom look. At least, Banks thought it was deceptive. She was good in court, too. Gone were the times when only a barrister could represent a client – now people like Cassandra Wakefield offered the full service criminal defence. She had obtained her Higher Rights of Audience and could, theoretically, appear in any courtroom in the land.

  Pleasantries out of the way, Banks turned on the recording machine and clearly stated the necessary details. Gerry Masterson seemed nervous – she was playing with her hair too much – but he had advised her to observe for the most part, unless she was struck with a sudden inspiration. He imagined she would settle into her role when the interview got going. The room was stuffy but bearable. Hot enough that Tanner’s shaved head was damp and shiny with sweat and Banks felt like taking his jacket off. With its beige walls, a high window covered with a grille, one overhead light fixture similarly covered and scuffed concrete floor, it was meant to be neutral, but it erred more on the side of unpleasantness. It needed to be the kind of place that those not used to such institutional claustrophobia wanted to get out of quickly, thereby encouraging their willingness to talk. Sometimes it even worked.

  ‘So, Ronald,’ he began. ‘What’s your story?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

  ‘That’s true. But you might want to help yourself a little by helping me.’

  ‘You lot always say that. Why would I want to help you?’

  ‘Do you know why you’re here?’

  ‘Because a gang of coppers broke into my house at the crack of dawn and dragged me here.’

  ‘We’ve had a serious complaint about you,’ Banks went on. ‘A woman alleges that you talked your way into her home by impersonating a police officer, and that once inside, you threatened and intimidated her and her child.’

  ‘What a load of bollocks.’

  ‘She further alleges that you destroyed her mobile telephone and that you badly damaged her index finger by treading on it while she was lying on the floor, pushed there by you. How am I doing so far?’

  ‘You tell a good story.’

  ‘She picked you out of a VIPER identification parade.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Come on, Ronald, don’t play the innocent. How long since your last arrest? Move with the times. Video Identification Parade Electronic Recording. A bit awkward when you say it all out loud, but VIPER works quite well, I think. Most apt.’

  ‘Can you cut out the innuendos, DCI Banks,’ said Cassandra Wakefield, rolling her eyes. ‘I mean, really.’

  ‘We’re not in court, you know,’ Banks shot back. ‘There’s no jury.’

  ‘Even so. Let’s all get along here, shall we?’

  Banks turned back to Tanner. ‘How about giving me your version of events?’

  ‘How about I don’t?’

  ‘Did you visit Alex Preston and her son Ian at flat 81 Hague House on the evening of Monday the twenty-fifth of March? That’s last Monday, in case you’re confused.’

  ‘I’m not confused. I’ve never heard of the woman or the kid. Or Hague House, for that matter.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve got an alibi, then?’

  Tanner just smiled. He might as well have said, ‘I can rustle one up if you want.’

  Banks shuffled his papers and slid over the sketch artist’s likeness so that both Tanner and Cassandra Wakefield could see it. ‘Would you say this bears a reasonable resemblance to you?’ he asked Tanner.

  ‘Could be anyone. Lots of blokes shave their heads these days.’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s not just the shaved head. There’s the broken nose. Quite distinctive, that. And the shifty eyes. It’s you, all right. This description was worked out between Alex Preston, the alleged victim, and a police sketch artist. I’d say, as these things go, it’s a good likeness.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d get very far with that in court, Mr Banks, as I’m sure you know,’ said Cassandra Wakefield. ‘These sorts of concocted identifications can be incredibly unreliable. The witness could easily have been describing someone she’d seen in the street, someone she had a grudge against. And there’s evidence that witnesses simply pick out faces they don’t like from VIPER displays. My client can’t help being . . . er . . . distinctive.’

  ‘It’s because he’s distinctive that we were able to identify him so quickly,’ said Banks. ‘And everything was done according to correct legal procedure, so I think it will be up to a court to decide, not you.’ He returned to Tanner. ‘There’s the fingerprint, too. Let’s not forget that. It was on a card Ms Preston says you handed to her.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ Tanner said. ‘Give her a card? Assuming I’d ever met her, of course, which I haven’t.’

  ‘Are you saying you didn’t?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Can you explain the card with your fingerprints and a telephone number on it being in the possession of Alex Preston?’

  ‘Maybe it was something I threw away in the street and she picked up? A handout of some sort. Did the number have anything to do with me?’

  ‘We called the number. There was silence, then dead air. The number is untraceable. A pay-as-you-go cheapie, unregistered and disposable.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ said Tanner. ‘The wonders of modern technology.’

  ‘Except for your fingerprints on the card.’

  ‘And I’m saying that maybe someone handed it to me in the street or something and I threw it away. Jehovah’s Witnesses or someone. What are you going to do, arrest me for littering?’

  ‘DCI Banks, do you have anything other than this remarkably circumstantial evidence for holding my client against his will?’

  ‘I would think that when a young woman reports the events Ms Preston reported and presents us with the evidence she has presented us, in the form of the sketch, a broken finger, the fingerprints and the VIPER identification, it’s a little more than circumstantial. It’s certainly something we all ought to take seriously.’

  Ms Wakefield glanced at her watch. ‘As you will. But please hurry up. I have appointments.’

  ‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Banks went immediately back to Tanner. ‘Where were you on Monday evening, Ronald?’

  ‘Home, I suppose. I haven’t been out much all week. The weather, you know. Plays havoc with my rheumatism.’

  ‘Can anyone corroborate that?’

  ‘I’m not married, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  It was no alibi, but Banks knew that most alibis were thin. If you had someone who would lie for you, it helped, of course, but Tanner could just have easily have said he went for a walk on the moors, and it would have been as hard to disprove, unless he had been seen elsewhere. The damn thing was they had only Alex Preston’s statement to go on. Not that Banks doubted her for a moment, but it might not be enough when people like Ronald Tanner and Cassandra Wakefield were involved. Officers were still asking questions round Alex Preston’s tower block, but Banks held out little hope that anything would come from that. The residents of the East Side Estate were hardly known for helping the police. ‘Are you currently employed?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘What do you do for money?’

  ‘Benefits. The social. I’m entitled.’

  ‘Did yo
u know a lad called Morgan Spencer?’

  ‘Can’t say as I did. Past? Is he dead or something?’

  He was lying, Banks could tell from his change in tone. Cassandra Wakefield knew it too, but she was doing her best not to react. ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ Banks continued. ‘Murdered. Were you anywhere near the Riverview Caravan Park on Monday night?’

  ‘Why would I go there?’

  ‘To burn down Morgan’s caravan after you’d had a good look for anything that might incriminate you or your mates.’

  ‘Incriminate how? What mates?’

  ‘What about Caleb Ross?’

  Tanner looked just surprised enough at the question that Banks guessed he did know Caleb Ross.

  ‘No,’ Tanner went on. ‘Funny name, Caleb. I think I’d remember.’

  ‘Mr Ross used to drive for Vaughn’s ABP. He is also deceased.’

  ‘Murdered?’

  ‘We’re not sure. What kind of work did you do before you became unemployed?’

  ‘I’m a motor mechanic. Skilled, trained, experienced, and all that, but it doesn’t seem to matter these days when they can get someone half my age with half the experience for half the money. Last while I’ve been doing a bit of club work.’

  ‘Bouncer?’

  ‘Crowd maintenance, noise control, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Odd that,’ Banks said. ‘About you being a motor mechanic and all. Caleb Ross died in a motor accident.’

  ‘Treacherous time of year on the roads.’

  ‘Have you ever worked in an abattoir?’

  ‘You must be joking. Me? In one of those places? I couldn’t stand the stink, for a start.’

  ‘But killing the animals wouldn’t bother you?’