Peter Robinson - A Necessary End

"And now?"

"She's getting there. It's a long road, though, alcoholism."

"Did Pam ever have any connections up north?"

"Up north? Good Lord, no. I don't think she's ever been farther north than Hendon."

"Not even for a visit?"

"No. What's there to visit, anyway? It's all canals and slag heaps, isn't it?"

"So she's spent most of her life in either London or Cornwall?"

"Yes. They had a few months in France some years ago. Most painters seem to gravitate towards France at one time or another. But that's all."

"Have you ever heard her mention a policeman called Gill — PC Edwin Gill, number 1139?"

"I've never heard her mention any policemen. No, I tell a lie. She said the local pub in Cornwall stayed open till all hours when the bobby was there. But I don't think that'd be your PC Gill."

"No," Banks said, "it wouldn't. Did she ever attend political demonstrations — Greenham Common, the Aldermaston march, that kind of thing?"

"Pam's never been very political. Wisely so, if you ask me. What's the point? You can't trust one lot more than the other. Is that all, Chief Inspector?"

"Is she there? Can I talk to her?"

There was a short pause and Banks heard muffled sounds from the other end of the line. Finally, he could hear the phone changing hands and another voice came on — husky and weary, as if doped or ill.

"Yes?"

Banks asked her the same questions he'd asked her sister, and the answers were the same. She spoke hesitantly, with long pauses between each sentence.

"Are the police involved in this custody battle?" Banks asked.

"Uh, no," she answered. "Just… you know… lawyers."

Naturally, Banks thought. "And you've never heard of PC Gill?"

"Never."

"Has your sister visited Yorkshire recently?" Banks asked the question as soon as it came to him. After all, the sister might have got herself involved somehow.

"No. Here… looking after me. Can I go now? I've got to… I don't know anything."

"Yes," Banks said. "That's all. Thanks for your time."

He hung up and made notes on the conversation while it was fresh in his mind. The one thing that struck him as odd was that neither of the women had asked about Julian, about how he was. Why, he wondered, did Rick's wife want custody if she didn't even care that much about the child? Spite? Revenge? Julian would probably be better off where he was.

Next he called the Hebden Bridge police and asked for PC Brooks.

"Sorry to bother you again, Constable," he said. "I should probably have asked you all this before, but there's been rather too much going on here. Can you tell me anything about Alison Cotton, the woman who was killed in the car accident?"

"I remember her all right, sir," Brooks said. "It was my first accident and I… well… I, er…"

"I know what you mean. It happens to us all. Did you know her before the accident?"

"Oh, aye. She'd been here a few years, like, ever since the artsy types discovered us, you might say."

"And Alison was artsy?"

"Aye. Helped organize the festival, poetry readings, that kind of thing. She ran the bookshop. I suppose you already know that."

"What kind of a person was she?"

"She were a right spirited lass. Proper bonny, too. She wrote things. You know, poems, stories, stuff like that. I tried reading some in the local paper but I couldn't make head nor tail of it. Give me 'Miami Vice' or 'Dynasty' any day."

"Was she ever involved in political matters — marches, demos, things like that?"

"Well," PC Brooks said, "we never had many things like that here. A few, but nowt much. Mostly 'Save the Whales' and 'Ban the Bomb.' I don't know as she was involved, though she did sometimes write bits for the paper about not killing animals for their fur and not making laboratory mice smoke five hundred fags a day. And about them women outside that missile base."

"Greenham Common?"

"That's the one. When it comes down to it, I dare say she was like the rest, though. If some bandwagon came along, they jumped on it."

"Ever heard of a PC Gill, 1139, from Scarborough?"

"Only what I've read in the papers, sir. I hope you catch the bastard who did it."

"So do I. What about a friend of Cotton's called Elizabeth Dale? Heard of her?"

"Oh, aye. Liz Dale hung around with the Cotton crowd all right. Thick as thieves. I felt sorry for her, myself. I mean it's like a sickness, isn't it, when you get so you need something all the time."

"Was she a registered addict?"

"Aye. She never really gave us any trouble. We just like to keep an eye on them, that's all, make sure they're not selling off half their prescriptions."

"What kind of person is she?"

"Moody," Brooks said. "She got off drugs, but she were never really right afterwards. One day she'd be up, the next down. Right bloody yo-yo. But there was a lass with strong political opinions."

"Liz Dale was political?"

"Aye. For a while, at least. Till she got it out of her system. Like I said, bandwagon."

"But she was keener than the rest?"

"I'd say so, yes. Now Seth, he was never much more than partly interested. Rather be slicing up a piece of wood. And Alison, like I said, well, she had a lot of energy and she had to put it somewhere, but she was more your private, artistic type. But Liz Dale, she was up to her neck in everything at one time."

"Were Liz Dale and Alison Cotton especially close?"

"Like sisters."

Banks thought of the complaint Dale had made against PC Gill. From that, he already knew she had attended at least one demonstration and come across him. Perhaps there had been others, too. Alison Cotton could have been with her. Perhaps this was the link he was looking for. But so what? Alison was dead; Reginald Lee had run her over by accident. It still didn't add up, unless everyone was lying and Liz Dale had been at Maggie's Farm and at the Eastvale demonstration. Banks didn't know her, but if she did have a history of drug abuse, there was a chance she might be unbalanced.

"Thanks a lot," Banks said. "You've been a great help."

"I have? Oh, well—"

"Just one more thing. Do you know where Liz Dale lives?"

"Sorry, I can't help you there, sir. She's been away from here a few years now. I've no idea at all."

"Never mind. Thanks anyway."

Banks broke the connection and walked over to the window. At the far side of the square, just outside the National Westminster bank, a rusty blue Mini had slammed into the back of a BMW, and the two drivers were arguing. Automatically, Banks phoned downstairs and asked Sergeant Rowe to send someone over. Then he lit a cigarette and started thinking.

He certainly needed to know more about Liz Dale. If he could prove that she had been in the area at the time of the demo, then he had someone else with a motive for wanting to harm Gill. The Dale woman could easily have visited the farm one day earlier that week and taken the knife — Mara said that no one paid it any mind as a rule. If nobody had seen her, perhaps she had walked in and taken it while everyone was out. But was she at the demo? And why use Seth's knife? Did she have some reason other than revenge for wanting Gill dead? Obviously the best way to get the answer to that was to find Dale herself. Surely that couldn't prove too difficult.

As PC Craig approached the two drivers in the market square, Banks walked over to his filing cabinet.

Mara stood inside the porch with Rick and Zoe and waved goodbye to Dennis Osmond and the others as they drove off. The sky was darkening in the west, and that early — evening glow she loved so much held the dale in its spell, spreading a blanket of silence over the landscape. Flocks of birds crossed the sky and lights flicked on in cottages down in Relton and over the valley in Lyndgarth.