“Did this Chivers seem interested when you talked about Gemma?”
“Well, yeah, about as interested as he seemed in anything. He was a cool one. Cold. Like a fucking reptile. There was just no reading him. He’d ask about her, yeah, just over a few drinks, like, but I thought nothing of it. And once he told me about a case he’d read in the papers where some couple had pretended to be child-care workers and asked to examine a child. Thought that was funny, he did. Thought it showed bottle. I put it out of my mind. To be honest, soon as we’d done the Fl — soon as we’d finished our bit of business, I wouldn’t go near him or her. I can’t explain it. They seemed nice and normal enough on the surface, all charm and that nice smile of his, but inside he was hard and cold, and you never knew what he was going to do next. I suppose that’s the kind of thing she liked. There’s no figuring out some women’s taste.”
“So Chivers showed some interest in Gemma and he told you about the newspaper story, right?”
“Right. And that’s as far as it went.”
“Did Chivers give you any reason to believe he was interested in little children?”
“Well, no, not directly. I mean, Carl told me a few stories about him, how he’d been involved in the porn trade down The Smoke and how he wasn’t averse to a bit of bondage and that. Just titillating stories, that’s all. And when you saw him and his bird together, they were weird, like they had something going that no one could get in on. She hung on his every word and when he told her to do something, she did. I mean… it was… Once, we was in the car, like, plann — just talking, with them two in the front and me and Carl in the back, and he told her to suck him off. She got right down there and did it, and all the time he kept talking, just stopping once, like, to give a little sigh when he shot his load. Then she sat back up again as if nothing had happened.”
“But they never made any direct reference to children?”
“No. But you see what I mean, don’t you, Mr Banks? I mean, as far as I’m concerned, them two was capable of anything.”
“I see what you mean. What did you do?”
“Well, I kept quiet, didn’t I? I mean, there was no way of knowing it was them took Gemma. The descriptions weren’t the same. And then when Carl turned up dead, I had a good idea who might have liked killing someone that way and… I was scared. I mean, wouldn’t you be? Maybe Carl had made the same connection, too, and Chivers had offed him while the bint looked on and laughed. That’s the kind of feeling they gave you.”
“Do you have any evidence that Chivers killed Carl?”
“Evidence? That’s down to you lot, isn’t it? No, I told you. I kept away from him. It just seemed like something he would do.”
“Where are they now, Les?”
“I’ve no idea, honest I don’t. And you can turn your gorilla on me and I can’t tell you any different. I haven’t seen nor heard of them since last week. And I don’t want to.”
“Do you think they’re still in Eastvale, Les?”
“Be daft if they were, wouldn’t they? But I don’t mind saying I was scared shitless those two nights sleeping out. I kept thinking there was someone creeping up on me to cut my throat. You know what it’s like out in the country, all those animal noises and the wind blowing barn doors.” He shuddered.
“Is that everything, Les?”
“Cross my heart.”
Banks noticed he didn’t say “hope to die” this time. “It’d better be,” said Banks, standing and stretching. He walked over to the door and peered outside, then turned to Gristhorpe. “Looks like they’ve got Jim away somewhere. What shall we do now?”
Gristhorpe assessed Poole with a steady gaze. “I think he’s told us all he knows,” he said finally. “We’d better take him to the charge room then lock him up.”
“Good idea,” Banks said. “Give him a nice warm cell for the day. For his own safety.”
“Aye,” said Gristhorpe. “What’ll we charge him with?”
“We could start with indecent exposure.”
They spent another hour or so going over Poole’s statement with him, and Poole made no objections as the constable finally led him down to the charge room. He just looked anxiously right and left to make sure Hatchley wasn’t around. Banks wandered to his office for a cigarette and another cup of coffee. Gristhorpe joined him there, and a few minutes later Jim Hatchley walked in with a big grin on his face.
“Haven’t had as much fun since the last rugby club trip,” he said. “How did you know he’d be going for a piss anyway? I was getting a bit fed up stuck in there. I’d read the Sport twice already.”
“People want to urinate a lot when they’re anxious,” Banks said. “He did before. Besides, tea’s a diuretic, didn’t you know that?”
Hatchley shook his head.
“Anyway, he’d have wanted to go eventually. We’d just have kept him as long as necessary.”
“Aye,” said Hatchley, “and me in the fucking shithouse.”
Banks smiled. “Effective, though, wasn’t it? More dramatic that way.”
“Very dramatic. Thinking of doing a bit of local theatre, are you?”
Banks laughed. “Sometimes that’s what I think I am doing already.” He walked over to the window and stretched. “Christ, it’s been a long morning,” he muttered.
The gold hands against the blue face of the church clock stood at ten-twenty. Susan Gay walked in and out with the latest developments. Not much. There had been more reports of Chivers, from Welshpool, Ramsgate and Llaneilian, and all had to be checked out by the locals. So far, they didn’t have one clear lead. Just after eleven, the phone rang, and Banks picked it up.
“Detective Inspector Loder here. Dorset CID.”
Banks sighed. “Not another report of Chivers?”
“More than that,” said Loder. “In fact, I think you’d better get down to Weymouth if you can.”
Banks sat upright. “You’ve got him?”
“Not exactly, but we’ve got a dead blonde in a hotel room, and she matches the description you put out.”
TWELVE
I
Gristhorpe sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked police car with a road map spread out on his knees. Banks drove. He would have preferred his own Cortina, mostly because of the stereo system, but Sandra needed it for all her gallery work. Besides, Gristhorpe was tone deaf; for all his learning, he couldn’t appreciate music. Banks had packed his Walkman and a couple of tapes in his overnight bag; he knew it wouldn’t be easy getting to sleep in a strange hotel room, especially after what awaited them in Weymouth, and music would help.
They were heading down the M1 past Sheffield with its huge cooling towers, shaped like giant whalebone corsets, and its wasteland of disused steel factories. It was almost one-thirty in the afternoon, and despite the intermittent rain they were making good time.
Gristhorpe, after much muttering to himself, decided it would be best to turn off the motorway just south of Northampton and go via Oxford, Swindon and Salisbury. Banks drove as fast as he could, and just over an hour later they reached the junction with the A43. They skirted Oxford in the late afternoon and didn’t get held up until they hit Swindon at rush-hour.