Peter Robinson - Innocent Graves

Immaculately dressed as usual, Blackstone made Banks aware that his top collar button was undone and his tie a little askew. Blackstone looked like an academic, with his wire-rimmed glasses, bookworm’s complexion and thinning sandy hair, a little curly around the ears, and he was, in fact, something of an expert on art and art fraud. Not that there was often much call for his area of expertise in Leeds. Nobody had knocked off any Atkinson Grimshaws recently, and only an idiot would try to fake a Henry Moore sculpture.

“Jelačić’s alibi checks out,” Blackstone said as they walked towards the entrance. “For what it’s worth. And we’ve had a poke about his flat. Nothing.”

“What do you think it’s worth?” Banks asked.

Blackstone pursed his cupid’s-bow lips. “Me? About as much as a fart in a bathtub. There were three of them-all Croatian. Stipe Pavič, Mile Pavelič and Vjeko Batorac. They’d probably swear night was day to protect one another from the police. Here it is. Take my word, the lift doesn’t work.”

Banks looked through the open sliding doors. The walls of the lift were covered in bright, spray-painted graffiti, and even from where he stood he could smell glue and urine. They took the stairs instead, surprising a couple of kids sniffing solvent on the third-floor stairwell. The kids ran. They knew the only people dressed like Blackstone in that neighborhood were likely to be coppers.

There were a few times when Banks regretted smoking, and the climb to the sixth-floor flat was one of them. Puffing for breath and sweating a little, he finally arrived at the outside walkway that went past the front doors.

Number 604 had once been red, but most of the paint had peeled off. It also looked as if it had been used for knife-throwing practice. Jelačić answered on the first knock, wearing jeans and a string vest. His upper body looked strong and muscular, and tufts of thick black hair spilled through the holes in the vest. With his height, longish hair and hooked nose, he certainly resembled the descriptions of the man seen in St. Mary’s yesterday evening.

“Why you bother me?” he said, standing aside to let them in and letting his eyes rest on Susan for longer than necessary. “I tell you already, I have done nothing.”

Inside, the flat was small enough to feel crowded with four people in it and tidy enough to surprise Banks. If nothing else, Ive Jelačić was a good housekeeper. An ironing board stood in one corner, with a shirt spread over it, and there was a small television set in the opposite corner. No video or stereo equipment in sight. The only other furniture in the room consisted of a battered sofa and a table with three chairs. Family photographs and a couple of religious icons stood on the mantelpiece over the electric fire.

“How are you making a living now, Mr. Jelačić?” Banks asked.

“Dole.”

“Do you own a car?”

“Why?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Da. Is old Ford Fiesta.”

“Did you drive it to Eastvale yesterday?”

Jelačić looked at Blackstone. “Ne. I tell him already. I play cards. Vjeko tells you. And Stipe and Mile.”

Jelačić sat down on his sofa, taking up most of it, and lit a cigarette. The room quickly began to fill with smoke. Blackstone stood with his back against the door, and Banks and Susan sat on the wooden chairs. Banks soon noticed the way Jelačić was sliding his eyes over Susan’s body, and he could tell Susan noticed it too, the way she made sure her skirt was pulled down as far over her knees as it would go and the way she kept her knees pressed tight together. But still Jelačić ogled.

“The thing is,” Banks said, “that people will often lie to cover for their friends, if they think a friend is in trouble.”

Jelačić leaned forward aggressively, muscles bulging in his arms and shoulders. “You call my friends liars! Jebem ti mater! You tell that to their face. Fascist police. upak.”

Banks held out a photograph of Deborah Harrison. “Did you know this girl?”

Jelačić glared at Banks for a moment before glancing towards the photo. He shook his head.

“Are you sure?”

“Da.”

“She went to St. Mary’s, sang in the church choir, used to walk through the graveyard on her way home.”

He shook his head again.

“I think you’re lying, Mr. Jelačić. You see, she complained about you. She said you used to make lewd, sexual comments and gestures towards her. What do you think about that?”

“Is not true.”

“Father Charters said you were drunk most of the time, you didn’t do your job properly and you bothered the girls. Is that true?”

“Ne. He is liar. All St. Mary’s people lie, get Ive in trouble, make him lose job.”

“Did you ever enter the Inchcliffe Mausoleum.”

“Nikada. Is always locked.”

Banks looked at Ken Blackstone and rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Ive. We found your fingerprints all over the empty vodka bottles in there.”

“Vrag ti nosi!”

“We know you went down there. Why?”

Jelačić paused to sulk for a moment, then said, “All right. So I go down there sometime in summer when it get too hot. Just for cool, you understand? Maybe I have a little drink and smoke. Is not crime.”

“Did you ever take anyone else down there? Any girls?”

“Nikada.”

Banks waved the photograph. “And you swear you didn’t know this girl?”

Jelačić leaned back on the sofa. “Maybe I just see her, you know, if I am working and she walk past.”

“So you do admit you might have seen her?”

“Da. But that is all.”

“Mr. Jelačić, what were you wearing last night?”

Jelačić pointed towards a coat-hook by the door. A red windcheater hung on it.

“Shoes?”

Frowning, Jelačić got to his feet and picked up a pair of old trainers from the mat below the hook. Banks looked at the soles and thought he could see gravel trapped in the tread and, perhaps, bits of leaves. There was also mud on the sides.

“How did your shoes get in this state?” he asked.

“I walk back from Mile’s.”

“You didn’t drive?”

Jelačić shrugged. “Is not far.”

“We’d like to take your shoes and windcheater in for testing,” Banks said. “It would be easiest if you gave us permission. You’ll get a receipt.”

“If I do not?”

“Then we’ll get a court order.”

“Is okay. You take them. I have nothing to hide.”

“Were you standing on the Kendal Road bridge around six o’clock yesterday evening?”

“Ne. I go to Mile’s house. We play cards until late.”

“Did you have two pints of beer and a double whisky in the Nag’s Head, opposite St. Mary’s Park?”

“I tell you. I go to Mile’s and we play cards and drink.”

“Daniel Charters told us you’d been back to Eastvale to extort money from him. Is that true?”

“Vra je! I tell you, that man, he is Satan’s tool, an evil liar.”

“So it’s not true that you offered to withdraw the charges in exchange for money?”

“Is not true. Ne. And I have nothing more to say.” Jelačić looked at Susan again, letting his eyes travel slowly from her feet all the way up to her breasts, where they lingered. He didn’t exactly lick his lips, but he might as well have done. Banks saw Susan flush with embarrassment and rage.

“Well, let me just get clear what you have told us,” Banks said. “Last night, you were playing cards with friends who will vouch for you, right?”

Jelačić nodded.

“You didn’t know the girl in the photograph, though you might have seen her in passing.”