“Good lord, no. Not in here,” said Watson, as if prison were the last place on earth where one would expect to find real evil-doers. “He was never in with any of the really hard, serious lags. We keep them separate as best we can.”
“But someone could have involved him in a criminal scheme, something that went wrong? Drugs, perhaps?”
“I suppose it’s possible. But Rodgers was only in for possession of marijuana. He wasn’t a dealer.”
“What about the business fraud?”
“Like I said, he was harmless enough. Just the old purchasing scam.”
Susan nodded. She had come across that before. A purchasing officer for a large company simply rents some office space, a phone and headed stationery, then he “supplies” his company with goods or services that don’t exist and pockets the payment. He has to be careful to charge only small amounts, so the purchase orders don’t have to go to higher management for signing. If it can be worked carefully and slowly over a number of years, the purchasing scam can prove extremely lucrative, but most practitioners get greedy and make mistakes.
“Could he have got Johnson involved in something more ambitious? After all, Johnson was a bit of a con-man himself.”
Watson shook his head. “Prison took the life out of Addison. It does that to some people. You’re on the job long enough you get to recognize the signs, who’ll be back and who won’t. Addison won’t. He’ll be straight as a die from now on. He was just a mild-mannered clerk fancied a crack at the high life.”
Susan nodded, but she had already noted Addison’s name in her book. “What about the others?”
“Aye.” Watson lifted his hand again. “Who did we say… Addison, then the possession fellow, Rodgers. Then there was Poole. I wouldn’t worry about him, either.”
“Poole?” said Susan, suddenly alert. “What was his first name?”
“Leslie. But everyone called him Les. Funny-looking bloke, too. One of those old-fashioned Elvis Presley haircuts.” Watson laughed. “Until the prison barber got to him, that is. From what he said, though, the women seemed—”
But Susan was no longer listening. She couldn’t help but feel a sudden surge of joy. She had one-upped Richmond. With all his courses, caches and megabytes, he hadn’t discovered what she had by sheer old-fashioned legwork. He was working on the Gemma Scupham case, of course, not the Johnson murder, but still…
“Sorry for interrupting,” she apologized to Watson, then looked at Mackenzie. “May I use your phone, sir?”
TEN
I
In the evening beyond the venetian blinds in Banks’s office, puddles gleamed between the cobbles, and water dripped from the crossbars of lamp-posts, from eaves and awnings. Muted light glowed behind the red and amber windows of the Queen’s Arms, and he could hear the buzz of laughter and conversation from inside. The square itself was quiet except for the occasional click of high-heels on cobbles as someone walked home from work late or went out on a date. An occasional gust of cool evening air wafted through his partly open window, bringing with it that peculiar fresh and sharp after-the-rain smell. It made him think of an old John Coltrane tune that captured in music just such a sense of an evening after rain. He could make out the gold hands against the blue face of the church clock: almost eight. He lit a cigarette. The gaslights around the square — an affectation for tourists — came on, dim at first, then brighter, reflecting in twisted sheets of incandescent light among the puddles. It was the time of day Banks loved most, not being much of a morning-person, but his epiphany was interrupted by a knock at the office door, shortly followed by PC Tolliver and DC Susan Gay leading in an agitated Les Poole.
“Found him at the Crown and Anchor, sir,” explained Tolliver. “Sorry it took so long. It’s not one of his usual haunts.”
“Bit up-market for you, isn’t it, Les?” Banks said. “Come into some money lately?”
Poole just grunted and worked at his Elvis Presley sneer. Tolliver left and Susan Gay sat down in the chair beside the door, getting out her notebook and pen. Banks gestured for Poole to sit opposite him at the desk. Poole was wearing jeans and a leather jacket over a turquoise T-shirt, taut over his bulging stomach. Even from across the desk, Banks could smell the beer on his breath.
“Now then, Les,” he said, “you might be wondering why we’ve dragged you away from the pub this evening?”
Les Poole shifted in his chair and said nothing; his features settled in a sullen and hard-done-by expression.
“Dunno.”
“Have a guess.”
“You found out something about Gemma?”
“Wrong. I’m working on another case now, Les. The super’s taken that one over.”
Poole shrugged. “Dunno then. Look, shouldn’t I have a brief?”
“Up to you. We haven’t charged you with anything yet. You’re just helping us with our enquiries.”
“Still… what do you want?”
“Information.”
“About what?”
“Can you read, Les?”
“Course I can.”
“Read the papers?”
“Now and then. Sporting pages mostly. I mean, most of your actual news is bad, isn’t it? Why bother depressing yourself, I always say.”
Banks scratched the thin scar beside his right eye. “Quite. How about the telly? That nice new one you’ve got.”
Poole half rose. “Now look, if this is about that—”
“Relax, Les. Sit down. It’s not about the Fletcher’s warehouse job, the one you were going to tell me you know nothing about. Though we might get back to that a bit later. No, this is much more serious.”
Poole sat down and folded his arms. “I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Then let me make it clear. I can do it in two words, Les: Carl Johnson. Remember, the bloke I asked you about a couple of days ago, the one you said you’d never heard of?”
“Who?”
“You heard.”
“So what. I still don’t know no Ben Johnson.”
“It’s Carl, Les. As in Carl Lewis. Better pay more attention to those sporting pages, hadn’t you? And I think it was a bit too much of a slip to be convincing. Don’t you, Susan?”
Banks looked over Poole’s shoulder at Susan Gay, who sat by the door. She nodded. Poole glanced around and glared at her, then turned back, tilted his head to one side and pretended to examine the calendar on the office wall, a scene of the waterfalls at Aysgarth in full spate.
“According to the governor of Armley Jail,” Susan said, reading from her notes to give the statement authority, “a Mr Leslie Poole shared a cell with a Mr Carl Johnson for six months about four years ago.”
“Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, Les?” Banks said.
Poole looked up defiantly. “What if it is? I can’t be expected to remember everyone I meet, can I?”
“Have we refreshed your memory?”
“Yeah, well… now you mention it. But it was a different bloke. Same name, all right, but a different bloke.”
“Different from whom?”
“The one you mean.”
“How do you know which one I mean?”
“Stands to reason, dunnit? The bloke who got killed.”
“Ah. That’s better, Les. And here was me thinking you weren’t up on current affairs. How did you hear about it?”
“Saw it on the telly, didn’t I? On the news. Someone gets croaked around these parts you can’t help but hear about it somewhere.”
“Good. Now seeing as this Carl Johnson you heard about on the news is the same Carl Johnson you shared a cell with in Armley Jail—”