Peter Robinson - Blood At The Root

“Okay,” said Gavin, gazing at her coolly. “So the chief constable wanted to be informed about what was going on at Eastvale. So what? He’s like that. Unlike his predecessor, he likes to be in the know. Hands on. It’s easy for you. You don’t have to work close to him, day in, day out, do you?” He pointed his thumb at his chest. “I do. And we all have our careers to consider, don’t we? What’s so wrong with that?”

Susan could hardly believe what she was hearing, even though it was exactly what she had expected. “So you admit it? Just like that? You used me to spy on my colleagues?”

“Well, seeing as you have the evidence, there’s not a lot else I can say, is there? I can hardly deny it. Yes. Mea culpa .”

“I don’t understand, Gavin. How could you do that?”

Gavin shrugged. “I never thought it would come to anything like this,” he said. “For crying out loud, it was only little tidbits, nothing important. Like I said, Riddle just wanted to be kept informed. But that wasn’t why I asked you out in the first place. That only came later. When he found out I was going out with you. And believe me, I didn’t tell him. He’s got quite a network, has Riddle.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really think it would do any harm.”

“Did he want to be kept informed about Eastvale in general, or DCI Banks in particular?”

Gavin shifted from foot to foot. “Well, he did ask about Banks in particular. He never really approved of Banks, you know. Thought he was a bit of a maverick, if truth be told.”

“I know that,” said Susan. “He never liked him. Right from the start. I remember the Deborah Harrison case, when Banks upset some of Riddle’s important friends. He was just looking for something to use against him. And you used me to get it for him. That’s what I can’t forgive.”

“Like I said, I didn’t really think I was doing anything-”

“Oh, stuff it, Gavin. I’m not interested in your excuses. You used me to scupper Banks’s career, and that’s all I care about.”

“If that’s how you want to see it.”

“Is there any other way?”

“I take it things are over between us, then?”

Susan could only look at him and shake her head. Then she turned to leave.

“What is it, Susan?” Gavin called after her. “Fancy him yourself, do you? You should listen to the way you talk about him. Like a lovesick teenager. Believe me, it wasn’t very difficult to get you talking about him. The hardest thing was getting you to stop. Even in bed.”

Susan slammed the door behind her and got back in her car. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn the key in the ignition. All she could do was sit there, hands gripping the steering wheel, shaking. She took deep breaths.

And then Susan did something she hardly ever did, something she always hated herself for when it happened. She started to cry. Bloody great convulsive sobs. Because, fuck it, she said to herself, Gavin was right. She had never admitted it, but she had known it for ages. It was Banks she cared about; it was Banks she fancied. And, dammit, he was a married man, he was her senior officer, and he wouldn’t look at her that way in a month of Sundays. She was just another stupid girl in love with her boss and there was no way she could stay in Eastvale now, not after this.

It had long since turned dark when Banks got home. For hours, it seemed, he had driven around the Dales, hardly noticing where he was, or what music kept repeating on the cassette player. His knuckles still hurt, but the shaking inside had stopped. Had he really done it? Punched Jimmy Riddle? He realized he had, and he also realized that at the moment the anger had burst out of him, it was Sandra he had been thinking of, not the bloody job.

The house was quiet and empty. A different quality of silence and emptiness than he had ever felt there before. First, he had a look around to see if anything was missing. Sandra hadn’t taken very much. Most of her clothes were still in the wardrobe, the scent of her hair still lingered on the pillows, and her photograph of the misty sunset above Hawes still hung over the fireplace in the living room.

It made him think how only on Sunday, yesterday, he had wandered the Amsterdam museums in the rain, a pilgrim marveling at Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in the Rijks-museum, unsettled by Crows in the Wheatfield in the Van Gogh Museum, and, finally, elated by the bright, whimsical Chagalls in the Stedelijk Museum.

All the while thinking how Sandra would have loved it, and how he would like to treat her to a visit one weekend in spring, perhaps as a belated birthday present.

But Sandra was gone.

He noticed the red light blinking on the telephone answering machine. Thinking it might be Sandra, he got up and pressed the replay button. One call was Vic Manson, two were hang-ups, but the next four were from Tracy. On the last one, she said, “Dad, are you there? It’s Sunday now. I’ve been trying to ring you all weekend. I’m worried about you. If you are there, please answer. I talked to Mummy and she told me what happened. I’m so sorry. I love you, Daddy. Please give me a ring.”

Banks stood by the phone for a moment, head in his hands, tears burning in his eyes. Then he did what any reasonable man would do in his situation. He cranked Mozart’s Requiem up as loud as he could bear it and got rat-arse drunk.

When Banks stirred on the sofa at about four o’clock in the morning, Mozart’s Requiem was still playing on “repeat.” And a more fitting piece of music he couldn’t imagine. It was playing loudly, too, and he was surprised that none of his neighbors had called the police. Still, he was the police. Or used to be.

Wishing he were still unconscious, he groaned, rubbed his stubble, rolled off the sofa and put some coffee on, turning the volume down on the stereo as he went. Then he stumbled upstairs and swallowed a handful of aspirins, washed down with two glasses of water to irrigate his dehydrated brain cells.

Back downstairs, as the coffee dripped through the filter with frustrating slowness, he surveyed the damage: twelve cigarette ends in the ashtray; no burns on the sofa or carpet; about two fingers of Laphroaig left. If he was going to keep up this rate of drinking, he would have to start buying cheaper Scotch. Still, it could have been a lot worse, he concluded, especially as he remembered the bottle had only been about three-quarters full when he started.

When the coffee was ready, he decided to switch from the Requiem to the C Minor Mass, something to bring a little more light and hope into his bleak world, then he tried to collect his thoughts.

He had punched Jimmy Riddle; that was the first memory to come back. And he had skinned knuckles to prove it. Well, that had been a stupid thing to do, he realized now, and it had also probably put the mockers on his career.

Jobless, then. Also wifeless and hung over. At least the hangover would go away. It could be worse, couldn’t it? Yes, it could, he realized. He could have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He racked his brains to see if that had, in fact, happened, but could find no memory of it. It would probably happen today the way his lungs felt after all those cigarettes.

So what was he going to do? Become a private eye? Enter a monastery? Get a job with some security outfit? Or should he just carry on and solve the Jason Fox case on his own to run rings around Jimmy Riddle, just as Sherlock Holmes did around Inspector Lestrade? Alan Banks, Consulting Detective. Had a nice ring to it.