Peter Robinson - A Necessary End

"Parka weather?"

"I'd say so, yes."

Burgess took the coat from the closet and examined it. He pulled the inside of each pocket out in turn, and when he got to the right one, he pointed out a faint discoloured patch to Banks. "Your men must have missed this the other day. Could be blood. He must have put the knife back in his pocket after he killed Gill. Hang on to this, Richmond. We'll get it to the lab. Why don't you two go have a look in the outbuildings? You never know, he might be hiding in the woodpile. I'll poke around a bit more up here."

Downstairs, Banks and Richmond went back into the kitchen and got Mara to accompany them with the keys. They left by the back door and found themselves in a large rectangular garden with a low fence. Most of the place was given over to rows of vegetables-dark empty furrows at that time of year — but there was also a small square sand-box, on which a plastic lorry with big red wheels and a yellow bucket and spade lay abandoned. At the far end of the garden stood a brick building with an asphalt roof, just a little larger than a garage, and to their left was a gate that led to the barn.

"We'll have a look over there first," Banks said to Mara, who fiddled with the key-ring as she followed them to the converted barn. It wasn't a big place, nowhere the size of many that had been converted into bunk barns for tourists, but it followed the traditional Dales design, on the outside at least, in that it was built of stone.

Mara opened the door to the downstairs unit first, Zoe's flat. Banks was surprised at the transformation from humble barn into comfortable living-quarters; Seth had done a really good job. The woodwork was mostly unpainted, and if it looked a little makeshift, it was certainly sturdy and attractive in its simplicity. Not only, he gathered, did each unit have its own entrance, but there were cooking and bathing facilities, too, as well as a large, sparsely furnished living-room, one master bedroom, and a smaller one for Luna. But there was no sign of Paul Boyd.

The places were perfectly self-contained, Banks noticed, and if Rick and Zoe hadn't become friendly with Seth and Mara, they could easily have led quite separate lives there. Noting Mara's reaction to Burgess's threat, and remembering what Jenny had said at dinner, Banks guessed that Mara's fondness for the children was one unifying factor — anyone would be glad of a built-in baby-sitter — and perhaps another was their shared politics.

Upstairs, the layout was different. Both bedrooms were quite small, and most of the space was taken up by Rick's studio, which was much less tidy than Zoe's large worktable downstairs, with books and charts spread out on its surface.

Seth had added three skylights along the length of the roof to provide plenty of light, and canvases, palettes and odd tubes of paint littered the place. From what Banks could see, Rick Trelawney's paintings were, as Tim Fenton had said, unmarketable, being mostly haphazard splashes of colour, or collages of found objects. Sandra knew quite a bit about art, and Banks had learned from her that many paintings he wouldn't even store in the attic were regarded by experts as works of genius.

But these were different, even he could tell; they made Jackson Pollock's angry explosions look as comprehensible as Constable's landscapes.

As he poked around among the stuff, though, Banks discovered a stack of small water-colour landscapes covered with an old sack. They resembled the one he'd noticed in the front room on his last visit, and he realized that they were, after all, Rick's work. So that was how he made his money! Selling pretty local scenes to tourists and little old ladies to support his revolutionary art.

Mara, who all the time had remained quiet, watching them with her arms folded, locked up as they left and led the way back to the house.

"You two go ahead," Banks said when he had closed the gate behind them. "I'm off to take a peek in the shed. It's not locked, is it?"

Mara shook her head and went back into the house with Richmond.

Banks opened the door. The shed was dark inside and smelled of wood shavings, sawdust, oiled metal, linseed oil and varnish. He tugged the chain dangling in front of him, and a naked bulb lit up, revealing Seth's workshop. Planks, boards and pieces of furniture at various stages of incompletion leaned against the walls. Spider webs hung in the dark corners. Seth had a lathe and a full set of well-kept tools — planes, saws, hammers, bevels — and boxes of nails and screws rested on makeshift wooden shelves around the walls. There was no room for anyone to hide.

At the far end of the workshop, an old Remington office typewriter sat on a desk beside an open filing cabinet. Inside, Banks found only correspondence connected with Seth's carpentry business: estimates, invoices, receipts, orders. Close by was a small bookcase. Most of the books were about antique furniture and cabinet-making techniques, but there were a couple of old paperback novels and two books on the human brain, one of which was called The Tip of the Iceberg.

Maybe, Banks thought, Seth harboured a secret ambition to become a brain surgeon. Already a carpenter, he probably had a better start than most.

He walked back to the door and was about to turn off the light when he noticed a tattered notebook on a ledge by the door. It was full of measurements, addresses and phone numbers-obviously Seth's workbook. When he flipped through it, he noticed that one leaf had been torn out roughly. The following page still showed the faint impression of heavily scored numbers. Banks took a sheet from his own notebook, placed it on top and rubbed over it with a pencil. He could just make out the number in relief: 1139. It was hard to tell if it was in the same handwriting as the rest because the numbers were so much larger and more exaggerated.

Picking up the workbook, he turned to leave and almost bumped into Seth standing in the doorway.

"What are you doing?"

"This book," Banks said. "What do you use it for?"

"Work notes. When I need to order new materials, make measurements, note customers' addresses. That kind of thing."

"There's a page missing." Banks showed him. "What does that mean — 1139?"

"Surely you can't expect me to remember that," Seth said. "It must have been a long time ago. It was probably some measurement or other."

"Why did you tear it out?"

Seth looked at him, deep-set brown eyes wary and resentful. "I don't know. Maybe it wasn't important. Maybe I'd written something on the back that I had to take with me somewhere. It's just an old notebook."

"But there's only one page missing. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"I've already said it doesn't."

"Did you tear out the page to give to Paul Boyd? Is it a number for him to call?

Part of an address?"

"No. I've told you, I don't remember why I tore it out. It obviously wasn't very important."

"I'll have to take this notebook away with me."

"Why?"

"There are names and addresses in it. We'll have to check and see if Boyd's gone to any of them. As I understand it, he did spend quite a bit of time working with you in here."

"But it's my notebook. Why would he be at any of those places? They're just people who live in the dale, people I've done work for. I don't want the police bothering them. It could lose me business."

"We still have to check."

Seth swore under his breath. "Please yourself. You'd better give me a receipt, though."

Banks wrote him one, then pulled the chain to turn off the light. They walked back to the house in silence.

Seth sat down again to finish his meal and Mara followed Banks towards the front of the room. They could hear Burgess and Richmond still poking about upstairs.

"Mr Banks?" Mara said quietly, standing close to him near the window.