“How is he?” Banks asked.
“Thriving, he said. He’s jetting off to America for some business meetings, so he just wanted us to know he’d be away for a few days in case we were worried or anything.”
“Oh, good,” said Banks who, much to his mother’s chagrin, he imagined, never jetted anywhere – unless Greece counted. Just like brother Roy to let his mother know what a high-powered life he was leading. He wondered what kind of shady dealings Roy was up to in America. None of his business.
“There was a program on telly the other night about that police corruption scandal a few years back,” Banks’s father said. “Interesting, some of the things your lot get up to.”
Banks sighed. The defining event of Arthur Banks’s life was not the Second World War, which he had missed fighting in by about a year, but the miners’ strike of 1982, when Maggie Thatcher broke the unions and brought the workers to their knees. Every night he had been glued to the news and filled with the justified outrage of the workingman. Over the years, Banks knew, his father had never been able to dispel the image of policemen in riot gear waving rolls of overtime fivers to taunt the starving miners. Banks had been working undercover in London then, mostly on drugs cases, but he knew that in his father’s mind he was one of them. The enemy. Would it never end? He said nothing.
“So where are you going tonight, love?” Ida Banks asked. “Are you seeing that policewoman again?”
She made it sound like a date. Banks felt a brief wave of guilt for thinking of it that way himself, then he said, “It’s police business.”
“To do with Graham?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said that wasn’t your case,” his father chipped in.
“It’s not, but I might be able to help a bit.”
“Helping police with their inquiries?” Arthur Banks chuckled. It turned into a coughing fit until he spat into a handkerchief.
Fortunately, before anyone could say another word, the Coronation Street theme music started up and all conversation ceased.
It wasn’t often that Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe visited the Queen’s Arms, but after they had finished the interviews and put Ryan Milne and Liz Palmer under lock and key for the night, he suggested to Annie that they discuss the results over a bite to eat. Hungry and thirsty, Annie thought it a good idea.
Gristhorpe, like a true gentleman, insisted on going to the bar to get their drinks, though Annie would have been happy to go herself. Instead, she sat down and made herself comfortable. Gristhorpe still intimidated her a little, though she didn’t know why, but she felt easier with him in an environment like the Queen’s Arms than in his book-lined office, so she was doubly glad he had suggested the pub. She definitely had a loose tooth, though, so she would have to be careful how she ate.
Gristhorpe returned with a pint of bitter for her and a half of shandy for himself. They glanced over the menu chalked on the blackboard, and Annie went for a vegetarian lasagne, which ought to be easy on her tooth, while Gristhorpe settled on fish and chips. The old man was looking healthier than he had in quite a while, Annie thought. The first few times she had seen him after his accident he had seemed pale, gaunt and drawn, but now he had a bit more flesh on his bones and a warm glow to his pockmarked face. She supposed that accidents and illness took a lot more out of you the older you got, and that recovery took longer. But how old was he? He couldn’t have been all that much over sixty.
“How’s your mouth feeling?” he asked.
“The pain seems to have gone for now, sir, thanks for asking.”
“You should have gone to the hospital.”
“It was nothing. Just a glancing blow.”
“Even so… these things can have complications. How’s Wells?”
“Last I heard still in the infirmary. Armitage gave him a real going-over.”
“He always was a hothead, that one. Even as a football player. Now what about the Palmer girl? Anything interesting there?”
Annie recounted what little she had got from Liz Palmer, then Gristhorpe sipped some shandy and told her about Ryan Milne’s interview. “He said he knew nothing about the bag, just like his girlfriend. He told me he was out that day and didn’t see Luke at all.”
“Did you believe him, sir?”
“No. Winsome went at him a bit – she’s very good in interviews, that lass, a real tigress – but neither of us could shake him.”
“So what are they hiding?”
“Dunno. Maybe a night in the cells will soften them up a bit.”
“Do you think they did it, sir?”
“Did it?”
“Killed Luke and dumped the body.”
Gristhorpe pursed his lips, then said, “I don’t know, Annie. Milne’s got an old banger, so they had the means of transport. Like you, I suggested some sort of romantic angle, something going on between Luke and Liz, but Milne didn’t bite, and to be quite honest I didn’t notice any signs I’d hit the nail on the head.”
“So you don’t think there was any romantic angle?”
“Luke was only fifteen, and Liz Palmer is what?”
“Twenty-one.”
“As I remember, the last thing a twenty-one-year-old woman would want is a fifteen-year-old boyfriend. Now maybe if she were forty-one…”
Annie smiled. “A toyboy?”
“I’ve heard it called that. But I still think fifteen’s too young.”
“I don’t know,” said Annie. “The head teacher’s daughter told DCI Banks she thought Luke was having it off with his English teacher, and she’s pushing thirty.”
“Lauren Anderson?”
“That’s the one.”
“Stranger things have happened. What does Alan think?”
“That little Miss Barlow had reasons of her own for causing trouble for Miss Anderson.” Annie sipped some beer. Nectar. “But I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question that Luke was having relations with someone older than himself. Everything I’ve heard about him indicates he seemed much older than his age, both physically and mentally.”
“How about emotionally?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s the one that counts,” Gristhorpe mused. “That’s what causes people to get out of their depth. They can understand something intellectually, accomplish something physically, but the emotional aspect can hit them like a sledgehammer if they’re not mature enough. Teenagers are particularly vulnerable.”
Annie agreed. She’d had enough experience with troubled teens in her job to know it was true, and Luke Armitage had been a complex personality, a mass of conflicting desires and unresolved problems. Add to that his creativity, his sensitivity, and Luke was probably as volatile to handle as nitroglycerine.
“Does the Anderson woman have a jealous boyfriend?” Gristhorpe asked.
“Not according to Winsome. She did a bit of digging. Only bit of dirt on Ms. Anderson is that her brother Vernon’s got a record.”
Gristhorpe raised his bushy eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Nothing really nasty. Just dodgy checks.”
“I’ve written a few of those in my time, according to my bank manager. What about the other teacher, Alastair Ford?”
“Kevin Templeton says there are rumors he’s gay, but only rumors. As far as anyone knows he has no sex life at all.”
“Any evidence that Luke Armitage was gay, too?”
“None. But there’s no evidence he was straight, either. Ford has a temper, though, like Armitage, and he’s been seeing a psychiatrist for several years now. Definitely the unstable kind.”
“Not to be ruled out, then?”
“No.”
“And Norman Wells?”
“Looking less likely, isn’t he?”
When their food arrived, both were hungry enough to stop talking for a while and eat, then Gristhorpe slowed down. “Any ideas of your own about how Luke’s bag ended up where it did, Annie?” he asked.
Annie finished her mouthful of lasagne, then said, “I think Luke went there after his run-in with the three bullies in the market square. What happened after that, I don’t know, but either he died there or something happened that made him run off without his bag, which I don’t think he’d do under any normal circumstances.”