‘No problem,’ said Banks. He hated dealing with the media, anyway.
‘Surely you’ve got other promising lines of inquiry to pursue?’ Gervaise added. ‘I’ve read all the statements and reports that have come in. I’m up to speed. What about that drug dealer Miller got kicked out of Eastvale College? Kyle McClusky. He sounds like a nasty piece of work. Or the girls who accused Miller of sexual harassment? Or Lisa Gray, another drug dealer? Who’s working on all that?’
‘DS Jackman, mostly, ma’am, and DI Cabbot and DCs Masterson and Watson. We also have some of the local Coverton officers helping out. As you know, we’re short staffed.’
‘You’d be able to manage perfectly well if you didn’t go around tilting at windmills,’ added McLaughlin.
Gervaise went on, reading from her copy of the file. ‘Then there’s a woman called Dayle Snider, who clearly had no time for Miller. There could be some sort of sexual angle involved. Not to mention his two lecturer colleagues, Trevor Lomax and Jim Cooper. There could be something there, too, going back to his dismissal. Yet you choose to spend your time sniffing around one of Eastvale’s most prominent citizens who just happened to go to the same university as the victim forty years ago.’
‘Is that what it is, Alan?’ said McLaughlin. ‘That working-class chip on your shoulder again? Can’t you accept that anyone who comes from a background of wealth and privilege can be any good? Do they always have to be crooks and liars? Is that what it’s all about?’
Banks struggled to remain calm. He knew that the ACC had a point. ‘We’ll investigate all those avenues,’ he said. ‘And any others we may come across. It’s still something of a scattershot approach.’
‘Well, just keep Lady Chalmers out of your sights,’ McLaughlin said. ‘That’s all.’ He got up, dusted off his trousers and stalked out of the office.
‘Ma’am, I—’
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Gervaise said. ‘You know the lie of the land, Alan. Remember what we talked about the other day. Concentrate on the drugs angle. You’re on a very short leash. Now get back to work and find us a killer.’
In the car heading back to Eastvale, Winsome seemed unusually quiet. Gerry concentrated on the driving, enjoying snatches of countryside every now and then, the lemon and red leaves still clinging to the trees, and replayed the interview in her mind. After a while, she risked a sideways glance. ‘Anything wrong, boss?’
‘No.’
‘You sure? You’re awfully quiet.’
There was a longish pause, then Winsome said, ‘I just wish you hadn’t mentioned Lady Chalmers to Beth Gallagher. That’s all.’
‘But I wanted to see her reaction.’
‘I can understand that, but by mentioning her, you’ve put the idea in Beth’s head that Lady Chalmers might have something to do with the Gavin Miller case.’
‘Well, she might.’
‘Yes, but do you really trust someone like Beth Gallagher to keep her mouth shut, especially after what she just told us? How do you know she won’t go blabbing to the press?’
‘She only told us because she thinks she’s safe now, that we can’t touch her.’
‘We can’t.’
‘I was thinking about that, boss,’ said Gerry after a few moments. ‘Maybe there’s a way we can.’
‘Oh. How?’
‘Well, we can’t prosecute her, right, and we can’t get Gavin Miller his job or his life back, but we could blacken her character with her employers, make sure she suffers for what she’s done by losing her job, like he did, her prospects.’
‘That would be revenge.’
‘But look at what she did. She colluded with her friend to ruin a man’s life because of a worthless drug dealer, and because she thought it would be fun.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Winsome said. ‘That’s not part of our job. Revenge isn’t for us to mete out. If she’s meant to suffer for her sins, it’ll happen without our interference.’
‘What? Like karma?’
‘Something like that.’
‘But isn’t that rather like the story of the drowning man who refused all the help that was offered to him because he believed God would save him, then cried about being abandoned?’
‘And God told him he had been given every opportunity to escape but that he had turned them all down? I don’t really think so. Honestly, Gerry, I’ve thought about it. Believe it or not, I have the same impulse for revenge as you. Those girls deserve to suffer for what they did to Gavin Miller. But we’re not the instruments of that kind of justice. If we could build up some sort of case against her, fair enough, but it’s not our job to go around and tell her employer that we think she once did a bad thing. Beth Gallagher confessed to something we suspected anyway. She only did so because she thought it didn’t matter any more. From now on, it’s between her and her conscience. I’d say she has at least the beginnings of one. She’s certainly not entirely comfortable with what she’s done. Maybe a few sleepless nights is the best punishment we can expect for her.’
‘Are you religious, boss?’
Winsome thought for a moment. ‘No, not really. I mean, I had a religious upbringing, Sunday School and all that, but I don’t go to church or anything. Only weddings, christenings and funerals. Why?’
‘But do you believe in God?’
‘Yeah,’ said Winsome. ‘Yeah, I suppose I do. You?’
‘I don’t know. I try to be a good person.’
Winsome turned and smiled at her. ‘Well, that’s a start.’
‘I wish I shared your certainty about Beth Gallagher having a conscience.’
Winsome glanced at her. ‘I don’t have any more certainty about that than you do,’ she said. ‘Just hope. But I’ll save my anger for the one person who probably could have done something about Miller’s predicament when he was offered the chance.’
‘Trevor Lomax?’
‘Indeed. Left here.’
They sat in silence for a while, and Gerry digested what Winsome had said. ‘There’s probably not much we can do about Lomax, either, you know,’ she said, ‘except try to make him feel guilty, too.’
‘Well, if we can manage that, at least it’s a start, isn’t it.’ Winsome paused. ‘You know what really disappoints me about our trip this afternoon?’
‘No,’ said Gerry. ‘What?’
‘We didn’t see any stars.’
Banks supposed he was sulking, though he preferred to think of it as nursing his wounds. Either way, he had driven off in a huff after his session with Red Ron and Madame Gervaise. After splashing around some of the more remote dales roads, by fields half submerged in water tinged reddish with mud, he decided that he was hungry. It was after two thirty, so he didn’t expect much in the way of pub grub, but a sandwich would fill the gap nicely, and if he couldn’t get any food, then a pint and a packet of crisps would do.
Turning a tight bend at a dip in an unfenced moorland road running north-west out of Lyndgarth, he came to a pub he had never seen before. At least he thought it was a pub. It didn’t have the most welcoming of facades, only large blocks of weathered limestone darkened by the morning’s showers. Banks could imagine that the walls were probably about three feet thick to survive the wind and cold up here in winter. The swinging sign was so cracked and weather-beaten that he could hardly read it, though he thought it said ‘Low Moor Inn.’ The wind was howling around the moors, but though the ground was boggy, it had the advantage of being high, and much of the moisture had drained off into the system of becks and streams that criss-crossed the lower pastures and fed eventually into the Swain, now close to bursting its banks and flooding the Leas, just outside Eastvale. Up here, there were only the tangled roots of gorse and heather under a huge iron-grey sky; a few sheep wandered, bleating as they searched for anything they could find to eat in the woody undergrowth.