Peter Robinson - Cold Is The Grave

“I phoned Craig last night. The last time I interviewed him he said he’d like to be there, and I could see no reason why not. He must have contacted Ruth.”

Rosalind shook Banks’s hand and walked over with her mother and father toward Ruth’s car. Banks also saw Darren Hirst and the others who had been in the Bar None with Emily on the night of her death, Tina and Jackie. They all looked shell-shocked. Darren nodded and walked by. That reminded Banks of a glimmer of an idea he’d had, something he wanted to ask Darren. Not now, though; it would keep. Leave the poor lad to his grief for a while.

Back at the office, before Banks could even get his overcoat off and sit down, DS Hatchley knocked on his door and entered.

“How’s it going, Jim?” Banks asked.

“Fine. The funeral?”

“What you’d expect.”

Hatchley shut the door behind him and sat down opposite Banks. He was the opposite of Annie when it came to looking comfortable, always perched at the edge of the chair, squirming as if something sharp were digging into his arse. He took his cigarettes out and glanced at Banks for permission. Banks got up and opened the window, despite the cold, and both of them lit up.

“It’s about Castle Hill Books,” said Hatchley. “I sent young Lose-Some out there yesterday afternoon and she came back with an interesting haul.”

“Go on.”

“The owner’s a slimy little sod called Stan Fish. He’s been selling porn on the side for years. Anyway, it turns out he’s got a whole cupboardful of pirated computer software, games and music CDs. He says he got them from a chap he knows only as Greg. This Greg comes around every couple of weeks in a white van with a selection. So Lose-Some whips out her picture of Gregory Manners, and bob’s-your-uncle.”

“Good,” said Banks. “That’ll give us a bit of extra ammunition.” He looked at his watch. “Manners is on his way here as we speak.”

“Lose-Some also brought in a few samples of the goods,” Hatchley went on. “Vic Manson’s checking them for prints now. I’ll get him to put a rush on it. If he can match them with Manners’s…”

“It still doesn’t give us much, though,” said Banks. “Even if we can do Manners for pirating and distributing copyrighted software, it’s hardly a serious charge.”

“It might give you a handle on this other villain you’re after, though.”

“Barry Clough?”

“Aye.” Hatchley stubbed out his cigarette. “Yon Lose-Some has also been showing Manners’s picture around Daleview and a couple of people recognized him.”

“Nobody’s seen Clough, Andy Pandy or Jamie Gilbert around there, though?”

“Not yet, but we’re still asking.” Hatchley got up to leave. Before he could go, the door opened and Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe barged in brandishing one of the more notorious London tabloids. Gristhorpe sniffed the air, scowled at both of them, then said, “Seen the papers this morning, Alan?”

Banks looked at the newspaper. “Even if I’d had time,” he said, “it wouldn’t have been that one.”

A smile split Gristhorpe’s ruddy, pockmarked face. “Wouldn’t be my first choice either,” he said. “More the sort of thing you’d be reading, eh, Sergeant Hatchley?”

“If I’d time, sir,” muttered Hatchley, edging his way out of the office, winking at Banks as he shut the door behind him.

Gristhorpe dropped the tabloid on Banks’s desk. “You’d better have a gander, Alan,” he said. “It looks as if I’m going to be on damage control for the rest of the day.” Then he left as abruptly as he’d entered.

The color cover photo in itself was almost enough to give Banks a heart attack. There were two photos, actually, one of Barry Clough leaving a Soho restaurant, thrusting his palm toward the cameraman, and one of Jimmy Riddle leaving police headquarters. The way the photos were arranged together made it look as if the two men were meeting face-to-face. Centered below them was a photograph of Emily. It was a good one, professional, and it featured her “sophisticated” heroin-chic look. She had her blond hair piled up in an expensive mess and wore a strapless black evening gown. Not the same dress she’d been wearing the night of the hotel room, but a similar one. Banks had seen the picture before, or one very much like it, in Craig Newton’s house. Could Craig have sold it to the newspapers? Was he still that bitter over his split-up with Emily? More likely, Banks thought, that Barry Clough had got hold of some copies when Emily was living with him and that this was his response to Emily’s death and Riddle’s silence.

The headline screamed up at him: “CHIEF CONSTABLE’S DAUGHTER MURDER CASE: WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?” The story went on to tell of Emily’s association with “well-known club owner and man-about-town Barry Clough,” a man “the same age as her senior policeman father.” After a couple of not so subtle indications that “well-known club owner and man-about-town” was sort of shorthand for gangster, there were a couple of morally high-handed digressions of the “Do you know what your daughter’s doing and who she’s with tonight?” sort before the reporter got the real nitty-gritty: speculation about Clough’s expanding his “business empire” up north, and about his and Riddle’s being involved in some sort of crooked partnership. Emily’s role in all this was left to the readers to guess.

The article had obviously been vetted by the paper’s solicitors, and it stopped just short of libel. For example, never at any point did the reporter state that Riddle and Clough had met and talked, or that Riddle had known about Emily’s relationship with Clough – the reporter clearly hadn’t found out about Scarlea House yet – but the whole thing was a masterpiece of innuendo, and the implications in themselves were damaging enough. Banks could only imagine how Riddle’s political cronies would react to it.

Banks also realized that the damage wouldn’t stop with the political set either; this sort of thing could also easily make Riddle a pariah on the Job. Whether there was anything in them or not, such rumors could effectively end his police career. Already Banks suspected there were mutterings at high levels about a chief constable so careless as to let his own daughter get murdered while snorting cocaine in a nightclub. Not to mention the rumors of drugs and sex that went with it all. One way or another, as a politician or as a high-ranking copper, Banks imagined that Jimmy Riddle’s tenuous reign had come to an end. Humpty-Dumpty.

What surprised Banks was that he felt sorry for the poor bastard.

And what about Rosalind and Benjamin? What would all this do to them?

Banks still remembered Ruth Walker’s final question to him only last Saturday: Why did Emily’s father want her back, when he hadn’t appeared to care about her before? Banks had thought about that a lot since. At first he had suspected Riddle wanted her back to avoid more damage to his career and, to credit him with some fatherly feelings, because he was worried about her after he saw the photos on the porno Web site. Perhaps he was wrong about that. At some point in the investigation, the Riddles themselves had joined the group of suspects in Banks’s mind.

The big problem with Jimmy Riddle as a suspect was that whichever way you looked at it, Emily’s murder only made things worse for him. Sure, her continuing existence had always held out the risk of scandal, but her death guaranteed it. On the other hand, given the pressure that Riddle might have been under since Clough’s approach at Scarlea, something could have snapped in him.

And what about Rosalind? She hadn’t particularly wanted Emily back at home. She had made that clear from the start. What if she had a good reason for it, and Emily had become, somehow, a threat to her? But how? Why? It still didn’t feel right, especially given the method, but perhaps it was time to start pushing the grieving parents a bit harder.