‘Well, this one seems to be lasting. Anyway, Gavin and Roxanne didn’t exactly part on the best of terms, and she spent most of the phone call telling me how useless and self-centred Gavin was.’
‘Sounds like a typical ex-wife’s complaint,’ said Banks. ‘Did she know anything about his university days? Canada? Lady Chalmers?’
‘No. They didn’t meet until later, when he was teaching in Exeter, and apparently he wasn’t so obsessed with the past back then.’
‘What about the university? Get anything from them?’
‘It wasn’t easy. Most of the staff aren’t there, of course. Some people still have the concept of weekends off, you know.’
‘I vaguely remember,’ said Banks, smiling in sympathy.
‘Anyway, I managed to get the class lists before end of play on Friday, and I’ve been going through them, trying to contact anyone who might have had classes with Veronica Bellamy or Gavin Miller back then.’
‘Any luck?’
‘It’s a long job. First you’ve got to track them down, then you’ve got to catch them in. Remember, it was forty years ago, and there are quite a few people on the lists. Some are dead, some have moved away, left the country. Someone did tell me that he thought that Ronnie Bellamy was a mover and shaker in the Marxist Society.’
‘Do we know if Gavin Miller was involved in that, too?’
‘Nothing so far.’
‘Pity. I was thinking maybe they were both recruited by Moscow as sleepers, and that’s why Lady Chalmers was so disturbed by Miller’s phone call and his murder.’
Gerry laughed. ‘Really, sir?’
‘Yes. He gave her the password that was deeply implanted in her brain, the one that activated her.’ Banks shrugged. ‘It was worth a try.’
‘Well, I did also manage to get through to someone who was sure that Veronica Bellamy lived in one of the student residences, a place called Rayleigh Tower, at least during her first year. I should be able to get through to student accommodation, and perhaps get copies of the old Marxist Society lists today, and they might have some records. After all, it’s not a very old university, and you’d think they’d want to keep a record right from the start. I should be able to find someone who was in the same residence at the same time as her.’
‘It’s possible. How will that help us?’
‘If Veronica Bellamy lived in a student residence, which it appears she did, then I can also check Gavin Miller and see if he was in the same building, or nearby, for a start. Then I can find out who else was living there and get in touch with them to see if they remember anything and are willing to talk about it. A neighbour might remember more about her than someone who merely went to lectures with her. Same with the Marxist Society, if there still is one, and if its members don’t see giving out any information to the police as consorting with the capitalist oppressors. But the written records won’t tell us much. They’re just the bare bones. The real story has to come from people who knew Ronnie Bellamy or Gavin Miller, preferably their friends. It’s all a matter of memory. We need to find someone who can place Veronica and Miller together back then in one way or another.’
‘Can you do all this on the quiet?’
‘I can do my best, sir, as long as the AC doesn’t come poking around in the squad room. I think DI Cabbot and DS Jackman are going to be out of the office questioning people most of the day.’
‘OK,’ said Banks, finishing off his teacake. ‘Do your best, and keep your head down. I’ll be out all day, but get in touch if you find out anything interesting.’
‘What do you want this time?’ asked Dayle Snider, when she opened her front door to Annie and Winsome later that morning. ‘It’s supposed to be my day off.’
‘So they told us at the centre,’ said Annie. ‘Mind if we come in?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘There’s always a choice,’ said Annie, following her into the hall.
Dayle was wearing a close-fitting tracksuit with a white stripe down the trouser legs and trainers with blue markings. Her brow seemed a little clammy, as if she had been working out. Almost as if she had intuited Annie’s line of thought, she said, ‘Yes, you did disturb me, actually. I was on the treadmill.’
‘Never understood the point of those things,’ said Annie. ‘Not when you’ve got such beautiful countryside all around you, in all directions.’
‘Have you checked the weather lately, Detective Inspector Cabbot?’
‘It’s a fine morning for a long walk.’
‘For once.’ She led them into a bright, compact kitchen that looked over the dale to the west, its steeply rising valley sides criss-crossed with drystone walls, slopes deep green from the summer’s rains rising to rocky outcrops and long scars of limestone, silver-grey in the pale November sun. The Leaview Estate, at the bottom of King Street, south-west of the town centre, had been built just after the war, and was starting to show it a little around the edges. Nonetheless, its elegant mix of Georgian semis, terraces and detached houses, built of limestone and gritstone, in harmony with much of the rest of Eastvale, was still one of the most desirable middle-class residential areas in town. All the streets were named after flowers, and Dayle Snider lived on Laburnum Close. The neighbourhood was certainly posh enough that it was attractive to burglars, but the police patrolled regularly and discreetly, and didn’t consign it to the same rubbish heap as they had the East Side Estate on the other side of town, where PCSOs often feared to tread, and crime reduction teams spent their time telling parents how to lock their doors properly while their children were out burgling houses down the street.
‘I suppose you’d like some tea?’ Dayle asked.
‘That would be nice,’ said Annie.
Winsome nodded. ‘Me, too, please.’
Dayle made a show of reluctantly filling the kettle and plugging it in, then emptying the teapot and searching for another teabag. Yorkshire Gold, Annie noticed. Her favourite. Dayle leaned against the counter while the kettle came to a boil. The tracksuit flattered her figure, Annie thought, showing her firm thighs and flat stomach to advantage. It made her realise that she needed to step up her exercise regime herself, if she hoped to get beyond all the aches and pains of her residual injuries, and lose those few pounds she had gained over the past year or so. It was matter of striking a balance between rest and exercise, and she hadn’t quite got it right yet.
While the tea was brewing, Dayle got down three bright yellow mugs from the cupboard over the counter area and set them in a row, a little jug of milk and bowl of sugar next to them. Annie and Winsome sat at the breakfast table by the window, gazing out at the view, Annie wondering whether the massing of grey clouds in the far west meant more rain later. If their silence made Dayle nervous, she wasn’t showing it.
‘OK, so what is it this time?’ Dayle said as she delivered the mugs of tea and took her seat at the table.
‘It’s really just a little point you might be able to help us clear up,’ said Annie.
Dayle blew on the surface of her tea. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘You’re a friend of Sally Lomax’s, right?’
‘Yes. We work together.’
‘How close are you?’
‘Sally’s a very good friend. I mean, we socialise outside work, go for a drink now and then, and so on, as friends do.’
‘And she brought you together with Gavin Miller for dinner at her house. Am I right?’
‘Yes. But you already know that.’
‘And though you and Miller got on OK for a while, the relationship didn’t take?’
‘No.’
‘So you ditched him.’
‘What is this? I’ve already told you all about that.’