“And because of this you assumed he was having sexual relations with a teacher. That’s a bit of a far stretch, isn’t it?”
“
You
didn’t see them together.”
“Did you see them kissing, touching, holding hands?”
“Of course not. They were too careful to do anything like that in public, weren’t they?”
“What then?”
“The way they looked at each other. The way she always left him alone in class. The way they talked. The way he made her laugh.”
“You were just jealous, weren’t you, Rose? That’s why you’re saying all this. Because you couldn’t get along with Luke, but Miss Anderson could.”
“I was
not
jealous! Certainly not of that ugly old bitch.”
For a moment, Banks wondered if there was anything in what Rose Barlow was telling him other than sour grapes. It may have been innocent, a true teacher-pupil relationship, but Banks had enough experience to know that anything involving two people of the opposite sex–or the same sex for that matter–in close proximity could turn into something sexual, no matter what the difference in their ages. He had also read about such things in the newspapers. He would keep an open mind and have another talk with Lauren Anderson when he got back
from Peterborough, push her a little harder and see if any cracks showed.
“What do you think of Miss Anderson?” he asked Rose.
“She’s all right, I suppose.”
“You just called her an ugly old bitch.”
“Well…I didn’t mean…I was angry…I mean she’s okay as a teacher. All right?”
“Do you get on well with her in class?”
“Okay.”
“So if I ask any of the other pupils in the class they’d tell me that you and Miss Anderson get along just fine?”
Rose reddened. “She picks on me sometimes. She put me in detention once.”
“What for?”
“Not reading some stupid Shakespeare play. So I was reading a magazine under the desk. So what? I can’t be bothered with all that boring
English
stuff.”
“So you had a few run-ins with her?”
“Yes. But that’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I’m telling you what I know.”
“I’m sure it’s not, Rose, but you have to admit it does give you a bit of a motive to cause trouble for Miss Anderson, especially if you also tried to get Luke to be
your
boyfriend.”
Rose jumped to her feet. “Why are you being so horrible to me? I come here to help you and give you important information and you treat
me
like a criminal. I’m going to tell my
father
about you.”
Banks couldn’t help smiling. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been reported to the headmaster,” he said.
Before Rose could respond, two things happened in quick succession. First, there came an urgent tap at his door and Annie Cabbot walked in, a handkerchief to her mouth covered with what looked like blood. But before Annie could speak, Kevin Templeton poked his head around the door behind her, his gaze resting on Rose for a few seconds too long for her comfort, and said to
Banks, “Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but we think we’ve got a positive ID on you-know-who.”
Banks knew who he meant. The mystery girl. So she
did
exist.
“Better than that,” Templeton went on. “We’ve got an address.”
Michelle discovered from DC Collins that Shaw had gone home after lunch, complaining of a stomach upset. Collins’s tone was such as to suggest it might be more a matter of the number of whiskies Shaw had downed at lunch. He had been taking quite a lot of time off lately. At least that left the coast clear for Michelle. She didn’t want to see Shaw, especially after what had happened in her flat on Saturday. Sometimes, when she let her guard down, it was him she saw in her imagination, going through her bedside drawers, cutting Melissa’s dress in half. It wasn’t such a stretch to imagine him driving the beige van that bore down on her as she crossed the road earlier, either; he had been out of the station at the time. And the whiskies? Dutch courage?
It was time to stop idle speculation and follow up on what she had discovered from Mrs. Walker. Michelle picked up the telephone and an hour or so later, after a lot of false trails and time wasted on hold, she managed to reach one of the retired Carlisle police officers who had looked into Donald Bradford’s death: ex–Detective Sergeant Raymond Scholes, now living out his retirement on the Cumbrian coast.
“I don’t know what I can tell you after all this time,” Scholes said. “Donald Bradford was just unlucky.”
“What happened?”
“Surprised a burglar. Someone broke into his house, and before Bradford could do anything he got beaten so badly he died of his injuries.”
Michelle felt a chill. The same thing might have happened to her on Saturday, if she’d been home earlier. “Ever catch the burglar?” she asked.
“No. He must have taken Bradford by surprise, though.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he was a pretty tough customer, himself.
I
wouldn’t have fancied tackling him. Way it looks is the burglar must have heard him coming and hid behind the door, then bashed the back of Bradford’s head in with a cosh of some kind.”
“You never found a weapon?”
“No.”
“No clues? No prints?”
“Nothing usable.”
“No witnesses?”
“None that we could find.”
“What was taken?”
“Wallet, a few knick-knacks, by the looks of it. Place was a bit of a mess.”
“Did it appear as if someone had been
looking
for something?”
“I never really thought about that. As I say, though, it was a mess. Turned upside down. Why the sudden interest?”
Michelle told him a little bit about Graham Marshall.
“Yes, I’ve read about that. Terrible business. I hadn’t realized there was a connection.”
“Was Bradford married?”
“No. He lived alone.”
Michelle could sense him pause, as if he was going to add something. “What?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Bit of a laugh, really.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Well, afterwards, you know, we had to have a look around the house and we found…well…at the time it seemed quite risqué, though by today’s standards…”
Out with it, man,
Michelle found herself thinking.
What are you talking about?
“What was it?” she asked.
“Pornographic magazines. A bundle of them. And some blue films. I won’t go into detail, but they covered quite the range of perversions.”
Michelle found herself gripping the receiver tighter. “Including pedophilia?”
“Well, there were some pretty young-looking models involved, I can tell you that. Male and female. Not kiddy-porn, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Michelle supposed there was a distinction to be made. In some ways, once you had pubic hair, breasts and all the rest, you didn’t qualify as “kiddy-porn,” but you still might only be fourteen years old. Grey area.
“What happened to all this stuff?”
“Destroyed.”
But not before you and your lads had a good look at it, I’ll bet, Michelle thought.
“We didn’t let anything slip at the time,” he went on, “because it didn’t seem…well, the bloke
had
just been killed, after all. There seemed no point in blackening his name with that sort of thing.”
“Understandable,” said Michelle. “Who claimed the body?”
“Nobody. Mr. Bradford had no immediate family. The local authorities took care of everything.”
“Thank you, Mr. Scholes,” she said, “You’ve been a great help.”
“Think nothing of it.”
Michelle hung up and nibbled the end of her pencil as she thought about what she’d heard. She hadn’t come to any conclusions yet, but she had a lot to discuss with Banks when he arrived.
PC Flaherty, who had tracked down the mystery girl’s address, had been asking around Eastvale College, thinking that maybe a girl who looked like she did would be a student. As it turned out, she wasn’t, but her boyfriend was, and one of the people he spoke to remembered seeing her at a college dance. The boyfriend’s name was Ryan Milne and the girl was known as Elizabeth Palmer. They lived together in a flat above a hat shop on South Market
Street, the direction in which Luke Armitage had been walking when he was last seen.
Annie insisted that she felt well enough to make the call. She was damned, she told Banks, if she was going to be excluded after all the footwork she’d done just because some over-testosteroned lout had punched her in the mouth. It was her pride that hurt more than anything. After she’d cleaned up the wound, it didn’t look too bad, anyway. Some women, she went on to say, paid a fortune for collagen shots to make themselves look like she did. Banks decided he would make the call with her before setting off for Peterborough. He phoned and arranged to meet Michelle in a city-centre pub at nine o’clock, just to be on the safe side.
Martin Armitage was cooling off in the custody suite and Norman Wells was in Eastvale General Infirmary. No doubt there would be recriminations from Armitage’s pal the chief constable, but for the moment he could stay where he was. They could also charge him with assaulting a police officer. After they had visited the mystery girl.
Within twenty minutes of getting the address, Banks and Annie climbed the lino-covered stairs and knocked on the door. The building seemed so silent that Banks couldn’t imagine anyone being at home, but only seconds later a young woman opened the door.
The
young woman.
“DCI Banks and DI Cabbot,” Banks said, flashing his card. “We’d like a word.”
“You’d better come in then.” She stood aside.
One reason why it had taken so long to locate her was obvious to Banks: she didn’t look anywhere near as
weird
as the description Josie Batty had drawn of her, which was hardly surprising when you imagined that most young people probably looked weird to Josie Batty.
The pixyish facial features were right enough, the heart-shaped face, large eyes and small mouth, but that was about all. She was far prettier than Josie Batty had indicated to the police artist, and she had a pale, flawless
complexion. She also had the sort of breasts adolescent boys, and many grown men, dream about, and her smooth cleavage was shown to advantage by the laced-up leather waistcoat she wore. The small tattoo on her upper arm was a simple double helix, and there was no sign of body-piercing anywhere except the silver spider-web earrings dangling from her ears. Her short black hair was dyed and gelled, but there was nothing weird about that.
The flat was clean and tidy, not a filthy crack house full of sprawled drug-addled kids. It was an old room with a fireplace complete with poker and tongs, which must only have been for show, as a gas fire filled the hearth. Sunlight shone through the half-open window and the sounds and smells of South Market Street drifted up: car exhaust and horns, warm tar, fresh-baked bread, take-away curry and pigeons on the rooftops. Banks and Annie walked around the small room, checking it out, while the girl arranged beanbag cushions for them.
“Elizabeth, is it?” asked Banks.
“I prefer Liz.”
“Okay. Ryan not here?”
“He’s got classes.”
“When will he be back?”
“Not till after tea time.”
“What do you do, Liz?”
“I’m a musician.”
“Make a living at it?”
“You know what it’s like….”
Banks did, having a son in the business. But Brian’s success was unusual, and even that hadn’t brought in heaps of money. Not even enough for a new car. He moved on. “You know why we’re here, don’t you?”
Liz nodded. “About Luke.”
“You could have come forward and saved us a lot of trouble.”
Liz sat down. “But I don’t know anything.”
“Let us be the judge of that,” said Banks, pausing in his examination of her CD collection. He had noticed a cassette labelled “Songs from a Black Room” mixed in with a lot of other tapes.
“How was I to know you were looking for me?”
“Don’t you read the papers or watch television?” Annie asked.
“Not much. They’re boring. Life’s too short. Mostly I practise, listen to music or read.”
“What instrument?” Banks asked.
“Keyboards, some woodwinds. Flute, clarinet.”
“Did you study music professionally?”
“No. Just lessons at school.”
“How old are you, Liz?”
“Twenty-one.”
“And Ryan?”
“The same. He’s in his last year at college.”
“He a musician, too?”
“Yes.”
“Do you live together?”
“Yes.”
Annie sat down on one of the beanbags, but Banks went to stand by the window, leaning the backs of his thighs against the sill. The room was small and hot and seemed too crowded with three people in it.
“What was your relationship with Luke Armitage?” Annie asked.
“He’s…he
was
in our band.”
“Along with?”
“Me and Ryan. We don’t have a drummer yet.”
“How long have you been together?”
She chewed on her lip and thought for a moment. “We’ve only been practising together since earlier this year, after we met Luke. But Ryan and me had been talking about doing something like this for ages.”
“How did you meet Luke?”
“At a concert at the college.”
“What concert?”
“Just a couple of local bands. Back in March.”
“How did Luke get into a college concert?” Banks asked. “He was only fifteen.”
Liz smiled. “Not to look at. Or to talk to. Luke was far more mature than his years. You didn’t know him.”
“Who was he with?”
“No one. He was by himself, checking out the band.”
“And you just started talking to him?”
“Ryan did, first.”
“And then?”
“Well, we found out he was interested in music, too, looking to get a band together. He had some songs.”
Banks pointed towards the tape. “Those? ‘Songs from a Black Room?’”
“No. Those are more recent.”
“How recent?”
“Past month or so.”
“Did you know he was only fifteen?”
“We didn’t find out until later.”
“How?”
“He told us.”