Gallows View (23 page)

Mrs Markham paled. “Call Sheila, then,” she shouted. “Just you ask her. She was already there. I was late.”

“Sheila would lie her pants off to protect you, and you bloody well know it. Who is he, you bitch?”

He got to his feet as if to strike her, and Banks stepped forward to push him back down.

“It’s all right,” Markham said bitterly. “I wouldn’t hit her. She knows that. Who is he, you slut?”

At this point, Mrs Markham started weeping and complaining about being neglected. Banks, depressed by the entire scene and angry that it had not been the peeper they had caught, made his exit quietly.

A chill wind blew through Glue-Sniffers’ Ginnel, where Mick and Trevor stood, jackets buttoned uptight, smoking and chatting.

“Did you like it, then, last night?” Mike asked.

“Not much,” Trevor answered. “I suppose it was all right, but . . .”

“What? Too tight?”

“Yeah. Hurt a bit. Dry as a bone at first.”

“Just wait till you get one that’s willing. Slides in easy, then, it does. Plenty of ’em like it the hard way, though. You know, they like you to show ’em who’s boss.”

Trevor shrugged. “Where’s the loot?”

“Got it hidden at my place. It’s safe. Looks like we’ve struck the jackpot there, too, mate. Never seen any that sparkled so much.”

“That depends on Lenny, doesn’t it?”

“I told you, he’s got the contacts. He’ll get us the best he can. Probably a few G, there.”

“Sure. And how much of that will we see?”

“Oh, don’t go on about it, Trev,” Mick grumbled, shifting from one foot to the other as if he had ants in his pants. “We’ll get what’s coming. And you did get a little bonus, didn’t you?” he leered.

“What’s Lenny doing?”

“Still in The Smoke setting up a business deal. Bit tight-lipped about it, right now.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“Don’t know. Few days. A week.”

“When are we going to get rid of the stuff?”

“What the bloody hell’s wrong with you tonight, Trev? Nothing but fucking moan, moan, moan. You haven’t spent all your readies yet, have you?”

“No. I just don’t like the idea of that jewellery lying about, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry. I told you it’s safe. He’ll be back soon.”

“Heard from him, have you?”

“Got a letter from him this morning. Careful, our Lenny is. Thinks the blower might be tapped. He said he thought it’d be a good idea
if we laid off on the jobs for a while. Just till things cool down, like.”

“I’ve not noticed any heat.”

“Bound to be going on, though, ain’t it, behind the scenes. Stands to reason. There’s been a lot of bother lately, and the rozzers must be getting their bleeding arses flayed. Mark my words, mate, they’ll be working their balls off. Best lay off for a few weeks. We’ve got plenty to be going on with.”

It wasn’t the money that interested Trevor so much; it was the thrill of breaking in, the way it made his heart beat faster and louder in the darkness, pen-lights picking out odd details of paintings on walls or bottle-labels and family snapshots on tables. But he couldn’t explain that to Mick.

“Well, what do you think?” Mick asked.

“I suppose he’s right,” Trevor answered, his mind wandering to the possibility of doing jobs alone. That would be much more exciting. The privacy, too, he could savour. Somehow, Mick just seemed too coarse and vulgar to appreciate the true joy and beauty of what they were doing.

“So we lie low, then?”

“All right.”

“Till we hear from Lenny?”

“Yes.”

A train rumbled over on the tracks above the ginnel. Mick looked at his watch and grinned. “Late.”

“What is?”

“Ten-ten from ’Arrogate. Twenty minutes late. Typical bloody British Rail.”

Banks spent most of the week in his office brooding on the three cases and smoking too much, but the figures refused to become clear; the shadowy man in the dark, belted raincoat seemed to float around in his mind with the two faceless youths, watching them watching the sailors on the deck of Alice Matlock’s ship in a bottle, the
Miranda
. And somewhere among the crowd were all the people he had talked to in connection with the cases: Ethel Carstairs, the Sharps, “Boxer” Buxton the headmaster, Mr Price the form-master, Dorothy Wycombe, Robin Allott, Mr Patel, Alice Matlock herself, dead on the cold stone flags, and Jenny Fuller.

Jenny Fuller. Twice during the week he picked up the phone to call her, and twice he put it down without dialling. He had no excuse to see her—nothing new had happened—and he felt he had already misled her enough. When, on Wednesday evening, Sandra suggested that they invite Jenny to dinner, a silly argument followed, in which Banks protested that he hardly knew the woman and that their relationship was purely professional. His nose grew an inch or two, and Sandra backed down gracefully.

Richmond and Hatchley were in and out of his office with information, none of it very encouraging. Geoff Welling and Barry Scott appeared to be normal enough lads, and they had gone off on holiday to Italy the day before the Carol Ellis incident, so that let them out.

Sandra continued talking to the neighbours, but none of them had anything to add to Selena Harcourt’s information.

The search continued for passers-by, shopkeepers and bus drivers
who might have been near The Oak the night Mr Patel saw the loiterer. Yes, one of the bus drivers remembered seeing him, but no, he couldn’t offer a description; the man had been standing in the shadows and the driver had been paying attention to the road. All the shopkeepers had closed for the night and none of them lived, like Mr Patel, above their premises. So far, no pedestrians had come forward, despite the appeal in the
Yorkshire Post
.

Richmond had conducted a thorough search of Alice Matlock’s cottage, but no will turned up. Alice had nothing to her name but a Post Office Savings Account, the balance of which stood at exactly one hundred and five pounds, fifty-six pence on the day of her death. She seemed to be one of that rare breed who do not live beyond their means; all her life, she had made do with what she earned, whether it was her nurse’s salary or her pension. Ethel Carstairs said she had never heard Alice talk of a will, and the whole motive of murder for gain crumbled before it was fully constructed.

On Friday morning, Banks walked into the station, absorbed in Monteverdi’s
Orfeo
. Orpheus was pleading with Charon to allow him to enter the underworld and see Eurydice.

Non viv’io, no, che poi de vita è priva

Mia cara sposa, il cor non è più meco,

E senza cor com’esser può ch’io viva?

sang the man who could tame wild beasts with music: “I am no longer alive, for since my dear wife is deprived of life, my heart remains no longer with me, and without a heart, how can it be that I am living?”

He didn’t notice the woman waiting by the front desk to see him until the desk-sergeant coughed and tapped him on the arm as he drifted by, entranced. The embarrassed sergeant introduced them, then went back to his duties as Banks, awkwardly removing his headphones, led the woman, Thelma Pitt, upstairs to his office.

She seemed very tense as she accepted the chair Banks drew out for her. Though her hair was blonde, the dark roots were clearly visible, and they combined with the haggard cast of her still-attractive, heart-shaped face and a skirt too short for someone of her age to give
the impression of a once gay and beautiful woman going downhill fast. Beside her right eye was a purplish-yellow bruise.

Banks took out a new file and wrote down, first, her personal details. He vaguely recognized her name, then remembered that she and her husband, a local farm labourer, had won over a quarter of a million pounds on the pools ten years ago. Banks had read all about them in the Sunday papers. They had been a young married couple at the time; the husband was twenty-six, Thelma twenty-five. For a while, their new jet-setting way of life had been a
cause célèbre
in Eastvale, until Thelma had walked out on her husband to become something of a local
femme fatale
. (Why, wondered Banks, were these delicate phrases always in French, and always untranslatable?) Thelma’s legendary parties, which some said were thinly disguised orgies, involved a number of prominent Eastvalers, who were all eventually embarrassed one way or another. When the party was over, Thelma retreated into well-heeled obscurity. Her husband was later killed in an automobile accident in France.

It was a sad enough story in itself; now the woman sat before Banks looking ten years older than she was, hands clasped over her handbag on her lap, clearly with another tale of hard times to tell.

“I want to report a robbery,” she said tightly, twisting a large ruby ring around the second finger of her right hand.

“Who was robbed?” Banks asked. “I assume it was . . .”

“Yes, it was me.”

“When did it happen?”

“Monday evening.”

“At your home?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“It was just after ten. I got home early.”

“Where had you been?”

“Where I usually go on Mondays, the Golf Club.”

“Are you a player?”

“No,” she smiled weakly, relaxing a little. “Just a drinker.”

“You realize it’s Friday now?” Banks prompted her, eager to set her at ease but puzzled about the circumstances. “You say the robbery took place on Monday . . . . It’s a long time to wait before reporting it.”

“I know,” Thelma Pitt said, “and I’m sorry. But there’s something else . . .”

Banks looked at her, his wide-open eyes asking the question.

“I was raped.”

Banks put his pen down on the table. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to see a policewoman?” he asked.

“No, it doesn’t matter.” She leaned forward. “Inspector, I’ve lived with this night and day since Monday. I couldn’t come in before because I was ashamed to. I felt dirty. I believed it was all my fault—a punishment for past sins, if you like. I’m a Catholic, though not a very good one. I haven’t left the house since then. This morning I woke up angry, do you understand? I feel angry, and I want to do whatever I can to see that the criminals are caught. The robbery doesn’t matter. The jewels were worth a great deal but not as much . . . not as much . . .” She gripped the sides of her chair until her knuckles turned white, then struggled for control of her emotions again.

Banks, who had been thinking that now the peeper had escalated to more serious crimes, was surprised by Thelma’s description.

“Criminals?” he asked. “You mean there was more than one?”

“There were two of them. Kids, I think. They were wearing balaclavas. Only one of them raped me. The other said he didn’t fancy ‘sloppy seconds.’ That’s the way he put it, Inspector, his exact words—‘sloppy seconds.’” She pointed to her bruise. “He’s the one that kicked me.”

Banks didn’t know what to say, and into the uneasy silence Thelma dropped what turned out to be the best lead of all.

“There’s another thing,” she said, looking away from him towards the wall as if she were examining the idyllic autumn scene on the calendar. “I’ve got VD.”

Over the next half-hour, Banks listened to the details of Thelma Pitt’s story as PC Susan Gay transcribed them.

Every Monday night Thelma went to the bar of the Eastvale Golf Club, where she kept up her association with some of the people she
had got to know in earlier, better days. There was one man in particular, a Lewis Micklethwaite, with whom she had been going out for several weeks.

During a long weekend in London with a female friend a couple of weeks ago, Thelma had, while not entirely sober, allowed herself to be picked up by a younger man in a pub and had subsequently spent the night with him. She didn’t remember much about the experience, but the following morning she felt terrible: physically and emotionally hungover. The young man lived in a small flat off the Brixton Road, and Thelma rushed outside as fast as she could and, unable to find a taxi, took the first bus into central London, returning to her friend at the hotel.

“To cut a long story short,” she said, “I found out just over a week later that the bastard had kindly passed on his disease to me—gonorrhoea.”

That was why she had left the Golf Club early. She didn’t want to tell Lewis, nor did she want to infect him. They argued. He seemed unusually perturbed about her going, but she ran off anyway. And as a result of that, she had disturbed the burglars and got herself raped.

“Can you describe them at all?” Banks asked. “You said they were wearing balaclavas?”

“Yes.”

“What colour?”

“Grey. Both grey.”

“Any idea how old they were?”

“By the way they spoke and acted, I’d say they were both in their teens.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The one who raped me was inexperienced. It was all over mercifully fast. I’d say it was his first time. A woman can tell these things, you know, Inspector.”

“What about the other?”

“I think he was scared. He talked tough, but I don’t think he dared do anything. He was smaller, more squat, and he had a very ugly voice. Raspy. And piggy eyes. He was edgy. I think he might have been on drugs. The one who raped me was leaner and taller. He
didn’t say an awful lot. I noticed nothing peculiar about his voice. His eyes were blue, and his breath didn’t smell too good.”

“Did they call each other by name?”

“No. They were careful not to do that.”

“What about the rest of their clothing? Anything distinctive?”

Thelma Pitt shook her head. “Just what lots of kids wear these days. Bomber jackets, jeans . . .”

“There’s nothing else you can remember?”

“Oh, I remember it all quite vividly, Inspector. I’ve replayed it over in my mind a hundred times since Monday. But that’s all there is that’s likely to help you. Unless it’s of any use to know that the boy who raped me was wearing white Y-fronts. Marks and Sparks, I think,” she added bitterly. Then she put her head in her hands and started to weep. Susan Gay comforted her, and after a few moments, Thelma Pitt again made the effort to control her feelings.