Peter Robinson: Strange Affair

“Okay, but strange things happen sometimes. It still doesn’t mean Cropley’s harmless.”

“You don’t need to tell me that, Kev,” said Annie.

“There was another woman, too: Paula Chandler. Someone drove her off the road late on a Friday night in February and tried to open her car door, only it was locked and she managed to get away.”

“Did she get a good look at him?”

“Just his hand.”

Annie thought for a moment. “It still doesn’t mean Cropley’s the killer.”

“Maybe there’s a way we can find out.”

“Go on.”

Templeton leaned forward, the excitement clear. “I met with DS Browne from Derby,” he went on, “and she agrees it’s worth a shot. I’ve talked with Cropley and his wife again since then and I’m still convinced there’s something there. Anyway…” He went on to tell Annie about the dandruff.

“I must say,” Annie commented when he’d finished, “that’s very clever of you, Kev. I didn’t know they could get DNA from dandruff.”

“They can,” said Templeton. “I checked it out with Stefan, and DS Browne confirmed it when she phoned to tell me she put a rush on it. They can also process DNA pretty quickly these days when they’ve a mind to.”

“Leaving aside the problem of its being inadmissible,” Annie went on, “what do you expect to happen next?”

“It doesn’t need to be admissible,” Templeton explained, as he had done to DS Browne. “We just need some concrete evidence that we’ve got the right guy, then we can pull out all the stops and nail him the right way. We get legitimate DNA samples. We interview him again. We get him to account for every minute of every Friday night he’s ever spent on the motorway. We get his coworkers and his employers to tell us what they know about him and his movements. We interview people at all the motorway garages and cafés again. All the late-night lorry drivers. Someone has to have seen something.”

Templeton was looking at her with such keenness in his eyes that Annie felt it would be churlish to disappoint him, despite her misgivings. And if Derby CID was involved, too, at least he couldn’t go too far off the rails. Templeton was beginning to show all the signs of becoming a bit like Banks, Annie thought, and two of them she didn’t need. But he had at least talked to her, told her about his thoughts, which was more than Banks did most of the time.

“Okay,” she said finally. “But I want you to work directly with Derby CID on this. If you talk to Cropley, I want this DS Browne or someone else from Derby with you. I don’t want you going off on your own with this, Kev. Understood?”

Templeton nodded, still looking like the dog who’d got the bone. “Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry. It’ll be a solid case, by the book.”

Annie smiled. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said. “But when it comes to it, I do expect a case that CPS will be willing to take to court.”

“That’s a tall order.”

Annie laughed. The Crown Prosecution Service was notoriously reluctant to take on anything they didn’t feel gave them a hundred percent chance of getting a conviction. “Do your best,” she said. “Let’s get back to the office.”

They finished their coffees, paid and set off back across Market Street. Annie had no sooner got inside the station doorway than her mobile rang. She gestured for Templeton to go on ahead of her.

“Detective Inspector Cabbot?” a familiar voice asked.

“Yes, Dr. Lukas.”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Not on the telephone. Can we meet?”

Well, thought Annie, there went her evening at home relaxing in the tub with a good book. It had better be worth it. “I’m up north,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s twenty to four now. Depending on the trains, I should be able to get down there by about eight.”

“That will be fine.”

“At the house, then?”

“No.” Dr. Lukas named a French restaurant in Covent Garden. “I will wait for you there,” she said, and hung up.

After his talk with Gareth Lambert, Banks took the tube to Charing Cross and headed for the Albion Club. It didn’t open until late evening and the doors were locked. He tried knocking a few times, then he rattled them, but no one answered. A few passersby gave him disapproving glances, as if he were an alcoholic desperate for a drink. In the end he gave the door a hard kick, then walked to Trafalgar Square and wandered among the hordes of tourists for a while, trying to rid himself of the sense of frustration and anxiety that had been building up in him ever since he had seen Roy’s body laid out on the shingle bank.

It was mid-afternoon, and Banks felt hungry despite the full English breakfast at Annie’s hotel that morning. He found an American-style burger joint near the top of Old Compton Street, just across from a body-piercing studio, and ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke.

As he sat eating and watching the world go by outside, he thought about his talk with Gareth Lambert: the theatrics with the cigar, the joke about Carmen Electra, the reference to Roy’s being interested in arms deals again, the garbled warning as he was leaving – none of these things had been necessary, but Lambert hadn’t been able to resist. Innocence? Arrogance? It wasn’t always easy to tell them apart.

But there was something else that left him feeling very unsatisfied indeed. Banks, perhaps more than anybody, felt that Roy might have been less than legal in his business dealings over the years, and as Corinne had pointed out, Banks had always been ready to think the worst of his brother. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but he thought he was right.

After the talk with the Reverend Ian Hunt, though, not to mention after looking a bit deeper into Roy’s life, he had come to believe that Roy really had learned a lesson from the foolhardy arms deal he had been involved in once. What he had seen in New York on the eleventh of September, 2001, had shaken him to the core and had brought home to him the stark reality of terrorism. It was no longer a busful of strangers in Basra or Tel Aviv on a television screen, but people just like him going about their daily routine, some of whom he knew, dying right in front of his eyes.

Banks was starting to think that perhaps Gareth Lambert had overplayed his hand. He didn’t believe that Roy wanted to get into arms dealing again and had been asking Lambert about old contacts. Unless he intended to seek retribution, which was unlikely at this late stage in the game. If Roy had any old scores he wanted to settle, he would have done so years ago in the white heat of his rage after 9/11. But he hadn’t. Which made Banks think that Lambert was lying. And there was only one clear explanation of that – to put Banks off the scent, divert him from the real business. More and more he was beginning to believe that that had something to do with the goings-on at the Berger-Lennox Centre, with Jennifer Clewes and Roy, with Dr. Lukas, with the mysterious Carmen Petri and the late girls. But how Lambert himself fit in, Banks still didn’t know. So what was the missing piece?

He doubted that Lambert would give it up. He was far too shrewd for that. He had enjoyed toying with Banks, telling him he had seen Roy on Friday when he already knew from the newspapers that was the day Roy disappeared. But he had done that because he knew Banks had got a description from Malcolm Farrow and because he thought there was nothing in his actions that night to incriminate him. No doubt it was true that Roy had left the Albion Club between half past twelve and one o’clock, and that Roy hadn’t left till three. Banks would go back to the club and check later that evening.