‘I’m not complaining,’ said Annie. ‘If I have one criticism of the way you handled yourself it was the use of “ma’am”. You know how I feel about that.’
‘But it worked, didn’t it? It made him feel even more superior, me tugging my forelock to you.’
Annie grinned. ‘I suppose so. What first set you off?’
‘When he called me your sidekick.’
Annie laughed and drank some beer. Dry days were all very well, but there was nothing like that first pint the day after two in a row. Gerry was on the diet ginger ale, she noticed, which wasn’t unusual. The pub was busy with the after-work crowd, and Annie smiled and said hello to a few familiar faces. Cyril was playing one of those interminable playlists that Banks seemed to love so much. Even she recognised ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ though she had no idea of the name of the group singing it. She quite liked it.
‘Actually, it started before that,’ Gerry went on, leaning forwards. ‘His whole attitude. Right from the start. How important his time was. The “Mr” bit. His tone of voice. The way he looked at me, as if I was something nasty he’d got on the bottom of his shoe.’
‘It’s been my experience,’ Annie said, ‘that quite a few doctors are arrogant and controlling megalomaniacs, and surgeons are among the worst. But what do you think? Anything there?’
Gerry tasted some diet ginger ale before answering. ‘Well, for a start,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe he was as shocked on hearing about Hadfield’s death as he let on.’
‘I agree. He knew already.’
Gerry nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘Then why didn’t he say so?’
‘That I don’t know. But you asked me.’
‘OK.’ Annie picked up her pint glass. ‘Go on.’
‘I wanted to test his temper, too, or his restraint. Did you notice how he almost lost it that one time, when I talked down to him, told him he’d nothing to be afraid of?’
‘How could I miss it? But what did it mean?’
‘Just that he’s got a temper and a short rein. If Hadfield was pushed into that gully, there’s a man who might have done it.’
‘If he’d had a reason.’
‘I admit I’m speculating. I’m not even saying I think he did it, or that anything was done. These are my impressions of the man. They could have had a falling out and things got physical. That business about the golf wasn’t convincing at all.’
‘What about that last phone call?’ Annie said. ‘It’s more than a bit late to be phoning someone under normal circumstances. Even a friend. And Randall didn’t leave a message.’
‘No,’ said Gerry. ‘And that’s odd, given that they’d had two previous conversations that day. Randall might almost have been expecting Hadfield not to answer. But, then, why call so late in the first place?’
‘I don’t know what the financial world is like, but could anything so urgent come up that late on a Saturday evening that would prevent Hadfield from answering his phone?’
‘A late meeting or something?’ Gerry suggested. ‘Some sort of business crisis?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘The financial world is probably still our best bet if we’re searching for someone who had a reason to harm Hadfield. I think we need to examine his business dealings more closely.’
‘Do you think you can do that?’
‘Sure. I can handle it. I’ve got a few contacts in the fraud squad and white collar crime, and I know my way around the Internet.’
‘What about the Pandora charm?’ Annie asked.
‘Well, I suppose it means there was a woman involved at some point, doesn’t it? But let’s not make the sort of mistake a man would make and assume that it’s impossible a woman had anything to do with the world of high finance.’
‘And Randall?’
‘We can hardly mount twenty-four seven surveillance on him, can we, but it would be interesting to see what he does now we’ve made ourselves known to him.’
‘I’ll have a word with Alan. See if his mate Ken Blackstone from West Yorkshire can help. And I’ll see if I can find out any more about that charm.’
‘We’re in business, then,’ said Gerry, raising her glass.
‘Indeed we are,’ said Annie, clinking.
It was after seven o’clock when Banks got home from Leeds. He had dropped in at the station on his way, found everyone gone and nothing new waiting for him, so he left. Maybe the connection between Adrienne Munro and Sarah Chen — a name and an unknown phone number — was a bit thin, but it wouldn’t get any stronger unless they worked at it. Tomorrow they would start to enter everything they had on the two cases into HOLMES, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, a computer programme developed to help with case management. It wasn’t a substitute for human intelligence, but it kept track of every little bit of information that was entered, and it sometimes came up with connections and inconsistencies that even the most perceptive of detectives missed, especially if the bits of connected information were on statements from two different county forces.
This escalation would mean a meeting with Area Commander Gervaise in the morning, possibly even with ACC McLaughlin. It would also mean begging for a bigger budget and more manpower. All in all, he felt he could do with a quiet evening at home before he took it all on tomorrow.
Picking up the bills and circulars after he had turned on the lights and turned up the heat a notch, Banks dumped the post on the table and walked down the hall to the kitchen. He hadn’t had a great deal of time for shopping in Leeds, but one thing he had done was drop in at Marks & Spencer’s and buy a ten-quid meal for two — including a bottle of Spanish Tempranillo — which consisted of a main of chilli and coriander chicken escalopes, a side dish of potato croquettes and a melting-middle chocolate pudding for dessert. He’d get two meals out that, at least, maybe three if he exercised a little portion control.
He picked out some chicken and croquettes and put them in the toaster oven to cook. He would see how he felt about the chocolate pudding later. That done, he poured himself a glass of wine and watched the Channel 4 news on the little television above his breakfast nook while he waited. There was nothing new, just war, famine, earthquakes, storms, scandals, trade wars, tariffs, political corruption and murder, as usual. Ken’s case got a brief mention, but not Banks’s. Another election in Africa had to be done all over again because of fraud. Italy was without a functioning government. Russia was causing trouble again. It was getting so they could write the news a few days ahead and all take a holiday for a while. About the only thing nobody ever got right in England was the bloody weather. Especially in Yorkshire. Maybe there was snow and ice ten miles down the road, but it was a clear night in Gratly, with the stars all brightly laid out on their black velvet cushion of night and a slip of a moon casting a ghostly glow over Tetchley Fell.
Banks ate at the breakfast nook while the news presenter interviewed an economic expert on today’s predictions for the country’s future. At the end of it, Banks didn’t know whether to withdraw all his savings and hide them under his mattress or plough more into his retirement fund. Economics had never been his strongest subject.
As he ate and half watched TV, he thought about the Blake quote Sarah Chen had tattooed on the back of her shoulder: ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’. Did it? He had heard it said many times before, back in the sixties, but always quoted very much out of context, which was a lengthy poem called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Opposites intrigued Blake. In the same poem, he had also written, ‘Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires’, which Banks hoped nobody took as literally as some did the excess quote.