Strange Affair (12 page)

“Nothing’s happened, Mrs. Banks. As far as we know everything’s just fine. He’s on holiday this week, but I’m sure you know how it is with this job. I’m afraid we need him for something, and it’s rather urgent. He seems to have forgotten to take his mobile. I was wondering if you knew where he was.”

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Banks. “He never tells us where he’s going these days.”

“I don’t suppose he does,” said Winsome, “but it was worth a try. Have you spoken with him recently?”

“As a matter of fact he rang early this morning.”

“What about, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, I don’t mind, dear. It was a little bit odd. See, he was asking about his brother, about Roy, and…well, they’ve never been very close.”

“So it was unusual for DCI Banks to be asking about him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want to know?”

“He wanted to know if I knew where Roy was, just like you want to know where Alan is. What’s going on? Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Banks. We just need him to help us out with something, that’s all. Could you give me his brother’s address and phone number if you’ve got them?”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Banks. “I know his address by heart but I’m no good with numbers. You’ll have to wait a moment while I look it up.”

“That’s all right,” said Winsome. “I’ll hold.”

She heard the handset laid gently to rest on a hard surface, then the sound of muffled voices. A few seconds later, Mrs. Banks came back on the line and gave her the number. “He’s got one of those mobiles. Do you want that number, too?” she asked.

“Might as well.”

“Silly business, people having to stay in touch all the time,” said Mrs. Banks. “Makes you wonder how we managed without all these newfangled gadgets, but we did, didn’t we? Listen to me go on. You’re probably too young to remember.”

“I remember,” said Winsome, who had grown up in a shack high in Jamaica’s Cockpit Country, open to the elements, without telephone or electricity or any of the other myriad things that seemed so essential to life in twenty-first-century Britain.

Mrs. Banks gave her the number and Winsome said goodbye. For a moment she sat thinking, tapping her ballpoint on the pad, then she found DI Cabbot’s mobile number and picked up the phone again.

“Sorry about Blunt and Useless,” said DI Brooke. “They’re a right couple of prize plonkers, but it’s hard to get good help these days, and they just happened to be on duty.”

“Blunt and Useless?”

“Sharpe and Handy. Get it?”

Annie laughed. “It’s all right. We’ve got a few like that ourselves.”

They were sitting in a noisy pub on Brixton Road drinking pints of Director’s bitter. David Brooke was about Banks’s age, but he looked older and he was much more well-rounded, with a placid, moon-shaped, red face that always made Annie think of a farmer, and only a few tufts of ginger hair still clinging to his freckled skull. His navy blue suit had seen better days, as had his teeth, and he had taken off his tie because of the heat, which made him look even more like some yokel up from Somerset for a wedding or a football match.

Annie’s search of Jennifer Clewes’s room had yielded nothing of immediate interest – except that Jennifer collected porcelain figurines, mostly fairy-tale characters, liked Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald, and read hardly anything that wasn’t to do with business and commerce, apart from the occasional Mills & Boon novel. If her clothes were not for work, they were mostly casual: jeans, denim skirts and jackets, T-shirts, cotton tops. Nothing lacy or flouncy. She had one good frock and two pairs of black high-heeled shoes. The rest of her footwear consisted of trainers and sandals.

Her computer, at first glance, revealed nothing out of the ordinary. There was no diary and no personal papers, only a calendar, the days marked mostly with birthdays to remember. She had a dentist’s visit scheduled for the thirteenth. If there was anything else, it was for the computer experts to find. Annie did, however, acquire a much better photograph of Jennifer – alive and smiling against an ocean backdrop. Kate Nesbit told her it had been taken in Sicily the previous year, when Jennifer had gone there on holiday with Melanie Scott, her old schoolfriend from Shrewsbury.

When she had finished at the flat, Annie phoned and booked a room for two nights at a hotel by Lambeth Bridge, after first ringing Gristhorpe again and clearing it with him.
Tomorrow was Sunday, so the Berger-Lennox Centre would most likely be closed. Annie would pay her visit first thing Monday morning before heading back up north. On Sunday, she would go and talk to Melanie Scott. The local police would inform Jennifer’s parents of their daughter’s death and drive them to Eastvale to make a formal identification of the body.

“So how are things going, Dave?” Annie said. “It’s been a while.”

“Too long, if you ask me. Things are fine, thanks. Actually, the big news is that I’m up for promotion at last. Chief Inspector.”

“Congratulations, Dave,” said Annie. “Detective Chief Inspector Brooke. Has a sort of ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Brooke chuckled. “It does. How did the interview with the victim’s flatmate go?” he asked.

Annie sipped some beer. “Fine. I didn’t find out much, but at least I’m building up some sort of picture of Jennifer, however vague. You know what it’s like in the early stages.”

“I do indeed. A slow business.”

“The poor woman, though,” Annie went on. “Kate Nesbit, the flatmate. She was really upset. I finally managed to persuade her to let me fetch the woman from upstairs to sit with her until her parents can come over. I phoned them and they said they’d be there as soon as possible. What’ll happen after that I don’t know.”

“I’ll have someone keep an eye on her, if you like. Drop by now and then, see how she’s doing.”

“Not Blunt and Useless.”

Brooke smiled. “No, I wouldn’t wish them on the poor lass. We’ve got some good police community support officers.”

“All right,” said Annie. “It sounds like a good idea. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“I don’t like to ask,” she went on, “but do you think you could also spare a couple of DCs to do a house to house? I’d do it myself, but I’d like to go out to Hounslow to visit one of the victim’s close friends tomorrow.”

“And what would they be asking about?”

“If anyone has noticed anything unusual, or suspicious, strangers hanging about, that sort of thing.”

“I think we can manage that,” said Brooke. “Wouldn’t want our delicate DI’s feet getting sore, would we?”

“You’re a sweetheart, Dave.”

Annie’s mobile rang. She excused herself and walked outside so she could hear properly. When Winsome gave her Banks’s brother’s address and phone numbers and told her there was a possibility Banks might be there, she had to go back into the pub, take her notebook out of her briefcase and write the information down. She thanked Winsome and hung up.

“Important news?” Brooke asked.

“We may have a lead on our missing DCI,” Annie said.

“Missing DCI?”

“It’s a long story.”

Brooke nodded towards Annie’s empty glass. “Another?”

“Why not,” said Annie. “I’m not driving.”

“What about a bite to eat? Then you can tell me all about your DCI over dinner.”

“Here?”

Brooke looked around and pulled a face. “You must be joking. Let’s have one more drink here, then we’ll find somewhere decent over the river, if you’re up for it?”

“That’d be fine,” said Annie. “How are Joan and the kids?”

“Thriving, thank you.” Brooke paused. “You’re not very subtle, you know, Annie.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want to know if I’m still happily married, whether I represent any sort of threat to you. Well, I am, and I don’t. Do you behave like that whenever a man offers to buy you dinner?”

“Oh, you’re buying. I didn’t know that. That’s all right, then.”

“Now you’re hiding behind flippancy.”

“You’re right,” said Annie, “I’m sorry. I should know better. I’ve just had some bad experiences recently, that’s all.”

“Want to talk about them?”

Annie shook her head. The last thing she wanted to talk about was Phil Keane. Throttle him, maybe, hang, draw, and quarter him, even better, but talk about him, no way. Brooke wasn’t the type to make a pass, and under ordinary circumstances she would have realized it. He had been married to Joan all those years ago, when Annie was a fresh-faced young DC in Exeter and Brooke was her DS. He was rather unimaginative and plodding as a detective, but he had been kind to her, and they had kept in touch sporadically over the years. Anyway, his offer of a shared meal was exactly that and no more, and it bothered her that she reacted as if she could no longer trust an old friend.

“I’m sorry,” Annie said. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s all right. And I’m secretly flattered that you still think I’m a contender.”

Annie tapped him on the arm. “I’m sure you are,” she said. “But I’m bloody starving, so how about we skip that other drink here and have one when we get where we’re going? Does your offer still stand?”

“The West End awaits us,” said Brooke.

“Any chance we can go via South Kensington?”

It was late Saturday night, Kev Templeton thought gloomily, and he was supposed to be shagging that gorgeous new red-headed clerk in Records, the one with the big tits and legs right up to her arse, but instead he was driving up the M1 in rain so heavy that his windscreen wipers could barely keep up with it.

Still, this was the next best thing, he told himself, if not even better. The thrill of the chase. Well, not exactly a chase, but at least he was out of the office, on the road, tracking down a lead, driving through the night. This was the life. This was what he had joined the force for. Water cascaded from the windows, lightning streaked across the sky and he could hear the thunder even over the Chemical Brothers CD he was playing at earsplitting volume.

He knew they didn’t take him seriously back at headquarters, just because he was young and took a bit of pride in his appearance. They all thought he was some sort of club-crazy dandy. Well, he liked clubbing, and he liked to look good, but there was more to him than that. One day, he’d show them all. He’d pass his boards and rise up the ranks like a meteor.

Who did they think they were, anyway? Gristhorpe was due to retire any moment now, and he hadn’t done any real detecting in years, if ever. Banks was good, but he wasn’t a team player and he seemed to be quickly writing himself out of the script due to personal problems. Annie Cabbot wasn’t as shit-hot as she thought she was. Too emotional, Kev thought, like she was always on the rag. The only one that really scared him was Winsome. Awesome, as he called her secretly. She’d go far. He could see her as his sidekick when he made Superintendent. Could see shagging her, too. Just the thought of it made him sweat. Those thighs.

He had first driven non-stop to the end of the motorway, then turned around, hitting Toddington and Newport Pagnell
service stations on the northbound M1 already, showing Jennifer Clewes’s photo around without any success. He hadn’t eaten at either of the first two service stations – and now as he approached Watford Gap it was going on for midnight and he was feeling peckish. Needed a piss, too. He might as well stop there at the Road Chef. From what he had learned over the years, motorway cafés were all overpriced, and there wasn’t much to choose between them.

All the roadside cafés seemed to have a slightly seedy aura at that time of night, Templeton thought; or maybe Watford Gap services was always like that. It was something to do with the lighting and the clientele. Not many nice middle-class families on the road at that hour. Not many old folks either. Most of them, with the odd exception of a commercial traveller or a businessman on his way home from a late meeting, looked like villains. You probably wouldn’t go far wrong, Templeton thought, if you made the occasional swoop on motorway cafés. Bound to net a few faces from the wanted posters, at any rate. Maybe he’d pass on the idea to the brass. Then again, maybe not. They’d only steal the credit themselves.

A man came in the toilet and stood next to Templeton at the urinal, though there was plenty of free space elsewhere. When he started to open a conversation – the usual line about big knobs hanging out – Templeton zipped up, whipped out his warrant card and shoved it in the man’s face so hard he staggered back and lost directional control, pissing all over his shoes and trouser bottoms. “Fuck off, pervert,” Templeton said. “And think yourself bloody lucky I can’t be bothered to arrest you for soliciting. On your bike. Now!” Templeton clapped once, loudly.