‘We’d really like to find out who this girl is,’ Annie said, ‘and it goes without saying that we’d like to catch the man who raped her. If you remember anything, however insignificant it seems to you, please let us know.’ She passed Charlotte a card. ‘And we’d appreciate a list of names. Any guests you might remember, especially badly behaved ones, and the names and addresses of your employees who attended that party.’
‘Of course.’ Charlotte stood up again and touched her hair.
She showed them out and they saw her standing at the bay window watching as they got in the car. ‘What do you think?’ Gerry asked.
‘For all her shock and outrage,’ said Annie, ‘I don’t think she was telling us everything she knew.’
‘I got the impression that she was holding back, too. Maybe I should have a look into her background?’
‘And there was something else,’ Annie said.
Gerry headed for the ring road. ‘What?’
‘She never even offered us a bloody cup of tea.’
‘So you’re absolutely sure no one from the NCA or Immigration Enforcement is following Zelda, or making enquiries about her past?’
‘I told you, Banksy,’ said Burgess. ‘I’d know. And they’re not. Danvers and Debs aren’t convinced that Hawkins wasn’t bent, but they don’t think Zelda had anything to do with his death. They just want to know why she was poking around asking questions about him. What you’ve just told me about the Phil Keane problem should settle that line of inquiry for them. She was clearly doing it to help you.’
‘Have they been talking to immigration about her?’
‘Not their style.’
‘So I can tell Ray there’s nothing to worry about?’
‘Yes. At least nothing that I know of.’
‘OK. Thanks.’
‘No problemo. See you later.’
At least he didn’t say ‘alligator,’ Banks thought as he hung up. Burgess’s Americanisms were a bit hard to take sometimes, especially when they were archaic, too.
So that was that. First Banks had told Burgess the details of his talk with Zelda, then Burgess had told him how he was certain she wasn’t being targeted. He would find time to pop by and see Ray and Zelda together tomorrow morning and give them the good news. If Zelda was suffering from paranoia about the immigration process, nothing he said would cure that completely, but at least it would set Ray at ease and put him in the right state of mind to be there for her.
It was almost eight o’clock. After the phone call, Banks got in his car and picked up a Chinese takeaway in Helmthorpe, and before doing anything else, he tucked into his spring rolls, chicken fried rice, and garlic shrimps in the kitchen, drenching them with lashings of soy sauce and washing it all down with simple tap water.
It was another mild evening. After dinner, Banks took George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman at the Charge outside, along with a glass of Côtes du Rhône Villages, and sat in his lounge chair facing Tetchley Fell to read for a while.
At first, it was enough just to sip his wine and feel himself unwind as he gazed on the fellside with its criss-cross patterns of drystone walls and enjoyed the gentle breeze on his skin. The breath of wind took the edge off the heat and carried the sweet, dry smell of fresh-mown grass with it, along with a hint of wild garlic and mint. The green fields on the gentle lower slopes slowly gave way to sere grass higher up, where he had walked with Zelda, and finally to outcrops of grey limestone at the top like Henry Moore sculptures shining with an unexpected golden hue in the evening sunlight. Occasionally a sheep bleated way up on the hill, and the swifts made their graceful loops and spirals in the sky. There seemed to be fewer of them this year, he had noticed.
Often when Banks watched the aerial ballet, he thought of Bob Dylan’s line about a bird never being free from the chains of the sky. He had also been recently discussing some of Dylan Thomas’s poetry with his informal tutor, Linda Palmer, over Sunday lunches up at Low Moor Inn. As far as he was concerned, the jury was still out on the boozy, bardic Welshman, but he had loved the music of ‘Fern Hill,’ whatever the words meant, and the line ‘I sang in my chains like the sea’ had stuck with him. It was similar in meaning to the other Dylan’s observation, he thought.
But it didn’t do to overanalyse too much. He had learned that from Linda. Poetry wasn’t something to be translated or decoded into a ‘message,’ the way it had been taught at school. True, some poems were overburdened with learning and literary allusion, and they needed some level of exegesis, but most poems meant what they said and said what they meant in the best way, often the only way, possible.
It had certainly been an interesting day. First the walk with Zelda, then Ray’s angry visit. He knew that Zelda had gone away annoyed at him for pressing her on matters she would rather have kept to herself, no matter how hard he had tried to be understanding. The thing was, he still wasn’t certain that she had told him all she knew. She was holding back about something, but he didn’t know what it could be. She had told him only things she thought he already knew, or might suspect. Yes, she had come clean about seeing Keane with Hawkins and asking questions about her late boss, and she had told him about finding Faye Butler, and how that had led to a dead end. But had it? For some reason, he thought, there was more. And he couldn’t forget that Faye Butler had ended up dead — tortured and murdered — not so long after Zelda’s visit to her.
Ray’s concerns also worried him. It was natural enough that Ray would see possible immigration and residence problems as the main source of Zelda’s anxiety and depression, but Banks wasn’t convinced. Yes, she was worried about being deported back to Moldova, but he didn’t believe that was all that was worrying her. He remembered the times during their walk when she had looked over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed. Who else did she think was after her? Her old abductors and abusers? But why? Surely they had lost track of her by now. It was also unlikely that Tadić and his like would even remember Zelda, let alone recognise her after all these years. She was the super-recogniser, not him. But until she was willing to talk even more openly, he realised that he wasn’t going to find out anything else. And he was still no closer to Phil Keane than he had been when Zelda had first mentioned seeing the photo of him with Tadić, before last Christmas.
Banks opened his book and slipped back into Harry Flashman’s version of the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade as he sipped some more wine. Colonial Britannia at her best. And so the evening passed, quietly and pleasantly as the sun made its way down in the western sky, below the hills, painting an abstract design first of grey and pink behind the slow-moving strata of long thin clouds, then of crimson, orange and purple under the darker, heavier ones. In the distance, a car’s rear lights followed the winding road over Tetchley Pass into the next dale.
Banks sat on, sipping his wine and enjoying the nature show, until the evening’s chill made him shiver and there was no longer enough light left to read by. Then he took his wine and moved back inside. He checked his phone to see if he had missed any messages. He hadn’t.
When the evenings stretched out as they did in summer, he rarely watched television or movies, unless it was raining. He didn’t even listen to much music. Sometimes he played the guitar Brian had bought him, wondering when he would get the fingering of even the basic three chords exactly right. And that reminded him: it was only two days until the Blue Lamps’ farewell concert at the Sage. Tracy and Mark would be going with him, along with Ray and Zelda. It promised to be a fine evening. Maybe they would all manage to get together with Brian for a drink or two over the river afterwards.