Though the area had been given a facelift not so long ago, it was starting to become shabby again, Banks thought. That was partly because the renovations had never been completed. Some of the buildings condemned ages ago were still clinging on, a boarded-up pub, an empty shop, though the old Clock School, like Armley Park, had been converted into offices.
‘I’d like to speak to Mr Charlton, please,’ Banks said to the receptionist in her little alcove.
‘Who may I say is calling?’
Banks flashed his warrant card. ‘Detective Superintendent Banks.’ He had almost said DCI, having still not got used to referring to himself as ‘superintendent’. There was no decent abbreviation for the rank, either. Det. Supt. didn’t sound right, and DS already stood for Detective Sergeant, so he was lumbered with the full moniker.
‘Just a minute.’ The receptionist picked up the phone and announced him.
‘He says to go through,’ she said, pointing to the door marked M. CHARLTON ELECTRICAL. Banks found himself in a large open-plan area with work benches, various pieces of electrical equipment, testing machines and wires and a desk in a corner by the window for the boss. It wasn’t much of a view, just the estate over the road. People worked at the various benches, and another desk was occupied across the room. Banks could smell solder and burned rubber.
‘Superintendent?’ said Charlton, waving him over. ‘Do sit down. There, move those files.’
Banks picked up the batch of files on the chair.
‘Just dump them on top of that cabinet there, if you don’t mind.’
Banks did as Charlton asked and sat down.
Charlton tapped his fleshy lower lip with his pen, contemplating Banks, then said. ‘Well, it’s not every day we get a visit from the boys in blue. What can I do for you?’
No point beating about the bush, Banks thought. ‘It’s about what happened in 1964. The Wendy Vincent business.’
‘Wendy? I thought that was all over and done with now you finally got your man.’
‘I still have a few questions. Would you prefer to go somewhere more private?’
Charlton leaned back in his chair. ‘It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve got nothing to hide. I must admit I’m curious what it is you’re after, though.’
‘Just information,’ said Banks.
‘Then I’m your man. I was there, got the T-shirt.’
‘Did you know Wendy Vincent and her friend Maureen Grainger?’
‘Not very well, no. I knew who they were, of course, but they were older than us and, well, when you’re eleven or so, you’re interested in other things than fifteen-year-old girls, aren’t you?’
‘Like cricket and model aeroplanes?’
‘And stamp collecting, trainspotting. That sort of thing, yes. Anything, in fact. And they don’t want anything to do with you, either. It’s all pop stars and Jackie and make-up.’
‘And there was the gang, wasn’t there? You and your mates.’
Charlton laughed. ‘I’d hardly call that ragtag collection of misfits I belonged to a gang. At least not in the sense that people use the word today.’
‘Who were the members?’
‘There was Mark Vincent, Billy Dowson, Ricky Bramble, Tommy Jackson and me.’
‘Just the five of you?’
‘Most weeks, yes.’
‘Frank Dowson?’
‘No. Too old for us.’
‘Did you ever have a member called Gord? Or Gordon?’
‘No.’
‘Did you follow the reports in the papers when the case came back into the limelight a couple of years ago?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did it surprise you, Frank Dowson being found guilty?’
‘Not at all. I always thought he was creepy.’
‘In what way?’
‘Just creepy.’
‘Did you see him often?’
‘Hardly ever. It was Billy’s gang, mostly because it was his dad’s garage we used to meet in, but Frank was away at sea most of the time. Besides, like I said, he was too old to be interested in anything like that, anything we were doing.’
‘Still, you knew him, didn’t you, and he raped and murdered a girl you knew. It must have had some effect on you?’
‘Oh, I’m not saying I wasn’t shocked or upset. Horrified. Creepy as he was, I never thought of Frank Dowson as a murderer. But the more I thought about it, the less surprised I was.’
‘Because he was creepy?’
For the first time, Charlton seemed to become guarded in his responses. Banks could sense a curtain closing, and he wanted to wrench it open. ‘That’s a part of it. Yes. He hardly ever spoke, and when he was around, he had a habit of just appearing there out of nowhere. Like, he was a big bloke and all, but quiet as a mouse.’
‘Did he ever come to your gang meetings?’
Charlton glanced towards the wall. ‘Like I said, he was too old to be in the gang.’
‘That’s not what I asked,’ Banks said.
Charlton sighed. ‘There’s a pub up on Town Street,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Maybe we could talk more comfortably there.’
Banks stood up. ‘Your choice.’
Gerry Masterson stood alone in the boardroom of Eastvale Police HQ with a huge Ordnance Survey map of the area spread open on the desk. She was used to the large space being filled with officers for a briefing, the sort of thing she had done at the beginning of what was now becoming known as the Edgeworth Case. Though she could hear occasional voices and various office noises from the corridor outside, the boardroom seemed to have a muffled atmosphere all of its own, partly due to the wainscoting and the long polished oval table with its matching high-backed chairs, not to mention the silent and disapproving stares of the men with mutton-chop whiskers and red faces in gilt frames around the walls. The woollen merchants who, along with the lead miners before them, had been responsible for whatever prosperity and population Swainsdale possessed.
The lead mines were all in ruins now, tourist attractions, and though you’d be hard pushed to go very far without bumping into a sheep in North Yorkshire, the cloth and woollen industries had long fallen victim to cheap imports; first, legitimately from India, but more recently from Asian sweat shops or child labour. It had also lost a lot of ground to synthetics over the years, though sheep-shearing was still a regular occurrence — and another tourist attraction — it was the meat rather than the wool that people were interested in these days.
Gerry rested her palms on the smooth wood and scanned the map. When it came to maps, she thought, you could only get so far with computers. They were great for the details and for suggesting or calculating routes, but for sheer scale you needed real sheets, not a computer screen, and to get that effect she had spread out the large OS Landranger map on the table and marked the perimeters according to places the killer was known, or highly suspected, to have visited. Maps told you a lot if you could read them well enough, and Gerry had learned that skill at school, then honed it later on country walks. She could follow the contours of a hill, the boundaries of a field and the progress of a footpath with the same ease that most people could read a book.
Close to the River Swain were Fortford, where it all started, Helmthorpe, where the matching sets of clothing were bought, and Swainshead, where Martin Edgeworth had lived. North of there was the Upper Swainsdale District Rifle and Pistol Club, to which Edgeworth had belonged, and to the east, over the moors, was Lyndgarth, the first place the killer had tried to buy his clothing.
If Gerry drew a line linking all these places she ended up with a wonky rectangle. None of its sides were exactly the same length, but the west — east lines were the longest sides. She also pencilled in an extension from Fortford to include Eastvale in the bottom south-east corner and joined that line to Lyndgarth.