Dry Bones That Dream, page 12
Finally, she asked. ‘Did you find out anything? You know, about Robert and this Rothwell fellow.’ Very casual, but Banks could sense the apprehension in her voice.
He scraped the end of his cigarette on the rim of the red metal ashtray and avoided her eyes. A group at the next table burst into laughter at a joke one of them had told.
‘Well?’
He looked up. ‘It looks very much as if Robert Calvert and Keith Rothwell were the same person,’ he said. ‘We found fingerprints that matched. I’m sorry.’
For a while she said nothing. Banks could see her beautiful almond eyes fill slowly with tears. ‘Shit,’ she said, shaking her head and reaching in her bag for a tissue. ‘Sorry, this is stupid of me. I don’t know why I’m crying. We were just friends really. Can we . . . I mean . . .’ She gestured around.
‘Of course.’ Banks took her arm and they left the pub. Fifty yards along the main road was a park. Pamela looked at her watch and said, ‘I’ve still got a while yet, if you don’t mind walking a bit.’
‘Not at all.’
They walked past a playground where children screamed with delight as the swings went higher and higher and the roundabout spun faster and faster. A small wading-pool had been filled with water because of the warm weather and more children played there, splashing one another, squealing and shouting, all under their mother’s or father’s watchful eyes. Nobody let their kids play out alone these days, as they used to do when he was a child, Banks noticed. Being in his job, knowing what he knew, he didn’t blame them.
Pamela seemed lost in her silent grief, head bowed, walking slowly. ‘It’s crazy,’ she said at last. ‘I hardly knew Robert and things had cooled off between us anyway, and here I am behaving like this.’
Banks could think of nothing to say. He was aware of the warmth of her arm in his and of her scent: jasmine, he thought. What the hell did he think he was doing, walking arm in arm in the park with a beautiful suspect? What if someone saw him? But what could he do? The contact seemed to form an important link between Pamela and something real, something she could hold on to while the rest of her world shifted under her feet like fine sand. And he couldn’t deny that the touch of her skin meant something to him, too.
‘I was wrong about him, wasn’t I?’ she went on. ‘Dead wrong. He was married, you say? Kids?’
‘A son and a daughter.’
‘I should know. I read it in the paper but it didn’t sink in because I was so sure it couldn’t have been him. Robert seemed so . . . such a free spirit.’
‘Maybe he was.’
She glanced sideways at him. ‘What do you mean?’
They stopped at an ice-cream van and Banks bought two cornets. ‘It was a different life he lived with you,’ he said. ‘I can’t begin to understand a man like that. It’s not that he had a split personality or anything, just that he was capable of existing in very different ways.’
‘What ways?’ Pamela stuck out her pink tongue and licked the ice-cream.
‘The people in Swainsdale knew him as a quiet, unassuming sort of bloke. Bit of a dry stick really.’
‘Robert?’ she gasped. ‘A dry stick?’
‘Not Robert. Keith Rothwell. The hard-working, clean-living accountant. The man who put his spent matches back in the box in the opposite direction to the unused ones.’
‘But Robert was so alive. He was fun to be with. We laughed a lot. We dreamed. We danced.’
Banks smiled sadly. ‘There you are, then. Keith Rothwell probably had two left feet.’
‘Are you saying it wasn’t the same man?’
‘I don’t know what I’m saying. Just that your memories of Robert Calvert won’t change, shouldn’t change. He’s who he was to you, what he meant to you. Don’t let this poison it for you. On the other hand, I need to know who killed Keith Rothwell, and it looks as if there might be a connection.’
She put her arm in his again and they walked on. There was hardly any breeze at all, but they passed a boy trying to fly a red-and-green kite. He couldn’t seem to get it more than about twenty feet off the ground before it came flopping down again.
‘What do you mean, a connection?’ Pamela asked, shifting her gaze from the kite back to Banks.
‘Maybe something in his life as Robert Calvert spilled over into his life as Keith Rothwell. Are you sure you didn’t know he was married, you didn’t suspect it?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I’ve been a right bloody fool, haven’t I? Muggins again.’
‘But you were sure he’d found a new girlfriend?’
‘Ninety-nine per cent certain, yes.’
‘How did you feel about that?’
‘What?’
‘His new girlfriend. How did you feel about her? On the one hand you tell me you shouldn’t be so upset, you hardly knew Robert Calvert, and your relationship had cooled off anyway. On the other hand, it seems to me from what you say and the way you behave that you were extremely fond of him. Maybe in love with him. What’s the truth? How did you really feel when someone else came along and stole him from you? Surely you must have felt hurt, angry, jealous?’
Pamela pulled back her arm and stepped aside from him, an expression of pain and anger shadowing her face. She dropped her ice-cream. It splattered on the Tarmac path. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? What are you saying? What are you getting at? First you imply that I’m some kind of porn actress, and now you’re implying that I killed Robert out of jealousy?’
‘No,’ said Banks quickly. ‘No, nothing like that.’
But she was already backing away from him, hands held up, palms out, as if to ward him off.
‘Yes, you are. How could you even . . .? I thought you . . .’
Banks stepped towards her. ‘That’s not what I mean, Pamela. I’m just—’
But she turned and started to run away.
‘Wait!’ Banks called after her. ‘Please, stop.’
One or two people gave him suspicious looks. As he set off walking quickly after her, a child’s coloured ball rolled in front of him, and he had to pull up sharply to avoid knocking into its diminutive owner, whose large father, fast approaching from the nearest bench, didn’t seem at all happy about things.
Pamela reached the park exit and dashed across the road, dodging her way through the traffic, back towards the hall. Banks stood there looking after her, the sweat beading on his brow. The remains of his ice-cream had started to melt and drip over the flesh between his thumb and first finger.
‘Shit,’ he cursed under his breath. Then louder, ‘Shit!’
The little boy looked up, puzzled, and his father loomed closer.
7
ONE
The Merrion Centre was one of the first indoor shopping malls in Britain. Built on the northern edge of Leeds city centre in 1964, it now seems something of an antique, a monument to the heady sixties days of slum clearance, tower blocks and council estates.
Covered on top, but open to the wind at the sides, it also suffers competition from a number of more recent, fully enclosed, central shopping centres, such as the St John’s Centre, directly across Merrion Street, and the plush dark green and brass luxury of the Schofields Centre, right on The Headrow.
Still, the Merrion Centre does have a large Morrison’s supermarket, Le Phonographique discothèque – the longest-surviving disco in Leeds – a number of small speciality shops, a couple of pubs, a flea market and the Classical Record Shop, which is how Banks had come to know the place quite well. And on a warm, windless May afternoon it can be pleasant enough.
Banks found Clegg’s Wines and Spirits easily enough. He had phoned Melissa Clegg an hour or so earlier, still smarting over his acrimonious parting with Pamela Jeffreys in the park, and she had told him she could spare a little time to talk. It was odd, he thought, that she hadn’t seemed overly curious about his call. He had said that it concerned her husband, yet she had asked for no details.
He opened the door and found himself in a small shop cluttered with bottles and cases. There were a couple of bins of specials on the floor by the door – mostly Bulgarian, Romanian and South African varietals, and some yellow ‘marked down’ cards on a few of the racks that lined the walls to his right and left, including a Rioja, a Côtes du Rhône and a claret.
Banks looked at the racks and thought he might take something home for dinner, assuming that he and Sandra ever got the chance to sit down to dinner together again, and assuming that she wanted to. Perhaps they could have that wine, candlelight and Chopin evening he had had to cancel when the Rothwell inquiry got in the way.
Behind the counter ranged the bottles of single malt Scotch: Knockando, Blair Athol, Talisker, Glendronach. Evocative names, but he mustn’t look too closely. He had a weakness for single malt that Sandra said hit them too hard in the pocket. Besides, he still had a drop of Laphroaig left at home.
The spotty young man behind the counter smiled. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ He wore a candy-striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his tie loose at the neck, the way Banks always wore his own when he could get away with it. His black hair had so much gel or mousse on that it looked like an oil slick.
‘Boss around?’ Banks asked, showing his card.
‘In the back.’ He lifted up the counter flap and Banks went through. Stepping over and around cases of wine, he walked along a narrow corridor, then saw on his left a tiny office with the door open. A woman sat at the desk talking on the phone. It sounded to Banks as if she were complaining over non-delivery of several cases of Hungarian Pinot Noir.
When she saw him, she waved him in and pointed to a chair piled high with papers. Banks moved them to the edge of the desk and she grinned at him over the mouthpiece. There were no windows, and it was stuffy in the back room, despite the whirring fan. The office smelled of freshly cut wood. Banks took his jacket off and hung it over the back of the chair. He could feel the steady draught of the fan on the left side of his face.
Finally, she put the phone down and rolled her eyes. ‘Some suppliers . . .’
She was wearing a yellow sun-dress with thin straps that left most of her nicely tanned and freckled shoulders and throat bare. About forty, Banks guessed, she looked as if she watched what she ate and exercised regularly, tennis probably. Her straight blonde hair, parted in the middle, hung just above her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face with high cheek-bones. It was a cheerful face, one to which a smile was no stranger, and the youthful, uneven fringe suited her. But Banks also noticed marks of stress and strain in the wrinkles under her blue-grey eyes and around her slightly puckered mouth. A pair of no-nonsense glasses with tortoiseshell frames dangled on a cord around her neck.
‘Your phone call piqued my curiosity,’ she said, leaning back in her chair and linking her hands behind her head. Banks noticed the shadow of stubble under her arms. ‘What has Danny-boy been up to now?’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Banks. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘Didn’t Betty tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Oh, God, that woman. Gormless. About Danny and me. We’re separated. Have been for about two years now. It was all perfectly amicable, of course.’
Of course, Banks thought. How often had he heard that? If it was all so bloody amicable, he wondered, then why aren’t you still together? ‘I didn’t know,’ he said.
‘Then I’m sorry you’re probably on a wild goose chase.’ She changed her position, resting her hands on the desk and playing with a rubber band. There were no rings on her fingers. ‘Anyway, I’m still intrigued,’ she said. ‘I am still fond of Danny. I would be concerned if I thought anything had happened to him. It hasn’t, has it?’
‘Do you still see one another?’
‘From time to time.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Hmm . . .’ She pursed her lips and thought. ‘A couple of months ago. We had lunch together at Whitelocks.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘Fine.’ She stretched the rubber band tight. ‘Look, you’ve got me worried. All this interest in Danny all of a sudden. First those clients of his. Now you.’
Banks pricked up his ears. ‘What clients?’
‘On Saturday. Saturday afternoon. Just a couple of businessmen wondering if I knew where he was.’
‘Did they know you were separated?’
‘Yes. They said it was a long shot and they were sorry to bother me but they’d had an appointment scheduled with him that morning and he hadn’t shown up. He’d mentioned me and the shop at some time or other, of course. He often does, by way of sending me business. What a sweetheart. Anyway, they asked if I had any idea where he was, if he’d suddenly decided to go away for the weekend. As if I’d know. It all seemed innocent enough. Is something wrong?’
‘What did they look like?’
She described the same two men who had visited Betty Moorhead. It wouldn’t have been difficult for them to find out about Melissa’s shop – perhaps even Betty had told them – and if they were looking for Clegg, it was reasonable to assume that his ex-wife might know where he was. She must have convinced them quickly that she neither knew nor cared.
The rubber band snapped. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ve a right to know if something’s happened to Danny, haven’t I?’
‘We don’t know if anything has happened to him,’ Banks said. ‘He’s just gone missing.’
She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘So that’s all.’
Banks frowned. ‘His secretary seems worried enough. She says it’s unusual.’
‘Oh, Betty’s a nice enough girl, but she is a bit of an alarmist. Danny always did have an eye for the ladies. That’s one reason we’re no longer together. I should imagine if he’s gone missing, then something came up, so to speak.’ She grinned, showing slightly overlapping front teeth.
‘Wouldn’t he at least let his secretary know where he was?’
‘I’ll admit that is a bit unusual. While Danny was never exactly tied to his desk, he didn’t like to be too far from the action. You know the type, always on his car phone to the office. Who knows? Maybe he’s having a mid-life crisis. Maybe he and his bit of crumpet have gone somewhere where there are no telephones. He’s such a romantic, is Danny.’
The phone rang and Mrs Clegg excused herself for a moment. Banks caught her half of the conversation about an order of méthode champenoise. A couple of minutes later she put the phone down. ‘Sorry. Where were we?’
‘Mrs Clegg, we think your husband might have been mixed up in some shady dealings and that might have had something to do with his disappearance.’
She laughed. ‘Shady dealings? That hardly surprises me.’
‘Do you know anything about his business activities?’
‘No. But dishonest in love . . .’ She let the thought trail, then shrugged. ‘Danny never was one of the most ethical, or faithful, of people. Careful, usually, yes, but hardly ethical.’
‘Would you say he was the type to get mixed up in something illegal?’
She thought for a moment, frowning, then answered. ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. If he thought the returns were high enough.’
‘Is he a greedy man?’
‘No-o. Not in so many words, no. I wouldn’t call him greedy. He just likes to get what he wants. Women. Money. Whatever. It’s more a matter of power, manipulation. He just likes to win.’
‘What about the risk?’
She tipped her head to one side. ‘There’s always some risk, isn’t there, Chief Inspector? If something’s worth having. Danny’s not a coward, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Did you know Keith Rothwell?’
‘Yes. Not well, but I had met him. Poor man. I read about him in the paper. Terrible. You’re not suggesting there’s any link between his murder and Danny’s disappearance, are you?’
She’s quicker on the ball than Betty Moorhead, Banks thought. ‘We don’t know. I don’t suppose you’d be in a position to enlighten us about their business dealings?’
‘Sorry. No. I haven’t seen Keith since Danny and I split up. Even then I’d just bump into him at the office now and then, or when he helped with my taxes.’
‘So you’ve no idea what kinds of dealings they were involved in?’
‘No. As I said, Keith Rothwell did my accounts a couple of times – you know, the wine business – when Dan and I were together, before things became awkward and our personal life got in the way. He was a damn good accountant. He saved me a lot of money from the Inland Revenue – all above board. Now, it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that if the two of them were in business together it probably involved tax havens of one kind or another, and that they both probably did quite well from it.’
‘Have you ever heard of a man called Robert Calvert?’
‘Calvert? No. I can’t say I have. Should I have? Look, I’m really sorry I can’t help you, Chief Inspector. And I certainly didn’t mean to sound callous at all. But knowing Danny, I’m sure he’s popped off to Paris for the weekend with some floozie or other and just got too overexcited to remember to let anyone know. He’ll turn up.’
Banks stood up. ‘I hope you’re right, Mrs Clegg. And if he gets in touch, please let us know.’ He gave her his card. She stood up as he left the office. He turned in the doorway and smiled. ‘One more thing.’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you recommend a decent claret for dinner, not too pricey?’
‘Of course. If you’re not absolutely stuck on Bordeaux, try a bottle of the Château de la Liquière. It’s from Faugères, in Languedoc. Very popular region these days. Lots of character.’ She smiled. ‘And you can even afford it on a policeman’s salary.’
After Banks thanked her, he made his way back down the corridor, dodging the wine cases, and bought the bottle she had suggested. Not an entirely wasted visit, he thought. At least he’d got a decent bottle of wine out of it. And then there was the Classical Record Shop just around the corner. He couldn’t pass so closely without going in. Besides, he needed balm for his wounds. He was still feeling annoyed with himself after the way he had messed things up with Pamela Jeffreys. The new CD of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto, if they had it, might just help make him feel better.
