Bad Boy (13 page)

“So it was politics? This woman, Janet Taylor, was a sacrificial lamb?”

“Hardly a lamb, but yes. Partly. It always is politics where the Chamberses of the world are concerned. You should know that. The higher you climb up the greasy pole, the more desperate you are to keep your grip.”

Nerys swallowed and sat for a moment, apparently contemplating what Annie had told her. “Can I count on your support?” she asked finally in a small voice.

Annie spluttered on a mouthful of wine and patted her chest as she coughed. “Christ, what on earth do you mean by that?” she said when she could talk again.

“I told you. I feel so alone. So isolated. I’ve got nobody to talk to.”

“You’re not alone. You’ve got your team beside you, your boss behind you. Besides, it’s not you Chambers is after, is it? It’s PC Warburton. He fired the Taser.”

“Don’t kid yourself. It’s all of us. If Warby hadn’t Tasered the bastard, I’d have shot him. Or one of the lads coming through the back would have.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Uh-huh. It was dark. The hall lightbulb blew when Warby turned it on. You don’t expect something like that. We knew there was a loaded gun in the house. We were already on high-tension alert.”

“Nobody even thought you’d have to go in that way,” said Annie. “And nobody could have known the lightbulb would choose that particular moment to blow.”

“We have to be prepared for eventualities like that. Act as if we
are
going in.” Annie topped up their wine. The bottle was empty now. “It was dark,” Nerys went on. “You could cut the tension with a knife. Like Warby said at the meeting, we didn’t know what might have happened since we were called in. They weren’t talking to us. The girl could have lost it, grabbed the gun. Anything. When he came out of the kitchen, Patrick Doyle, he was just a silhouette with what could’ve been a raised sword or baseball bat in his hand, even a shotgun. Warby just reacted first, that’s all. I might be the best marksman, but Warby’s got the fastest reaction time of us all.” She smiled to herself. “Would’ve made a great gunslinger in the old West. Fastest draw in the Wiske, we call him.”

“Why was the walking stick raised?”

“He was angry. Doyle. I think he’d already been having a row with his daughter. They’d been absorbed in their own little drama—and when we broke his door down and he heard that bloody almighty racket, well, people don’t take kindly to things like that, do they? He was just mad at us, that’s all, waving his stick about. Understandable. I don’t suppose he knew we were armed. He was just expecting an old mate to drop by—DCI Banks—not armed officers in full protective gear. He couldn’t see us, either. The light was on in the kitchen, so his eyes wouldn’t have adjusted that quickly. We probably looked like Martians in the darkness of the hall. It’s not something you expect, is it?”

“It certainly isn’t,” said Annie.

“So you know whose side public opinion is going to be on?”

“I can take a guess.”

Nerys shook her head slowly, then finished her wine. “It’s not fair. You can do all the training scenarios you want,” she said. “Just like Dirty Harry walking through a movie set shooting at cardboard cutouts. But when it’s real, it’s different. In training you
know
you can’t get shot or cut. But when it’s real…You don’t aim for an arm or a leg. Warby did the right thing. I’ll stick by him. I just want it to go down that way. I want them to see it for what it really was, mistakes and all, not set out to crucify one of us or sacrifice us to the press or
public opinion. We do a necessary job and a damn good one, but it’s messy sometimes, and for better or for worse, people need us. But that doesn’t mean they want to acknowledge us or give us medals. They certainly don’t have to like us. Mostly they want to forget we exist, or to bury us.”

“I can’t control that,” Annie said. “But there are enough checks and balances. I’m still sure they’ll do a good job, remain impartial.”

“I wish I had your faith. I’d better go.”

Annie stood up, but not so fast that she seemed as eager to get rid of Nerys as she really was. The thought crossed her mind that Nerys had drunk the lion’s share of the wine. Was she going to drive? Perhaps Annie should offer her a bed for the night? But she didn’t want to do that. Best just leave the subject alone entirely and not even ask about driving. Maybe it was irresponsible of her, but the alternative was a minefield of complications. “Okay,” she said. “I hardly need see you to the door. It’s not far. But I will.”

Nerys smiled. “Thanks.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Nerys opened the door. “For what it’s worth,” she said, pausing and resting her hand lightly on Annie’s arm, “I’ve heard good things about you, and I’ve seen you around County HQ a few times. I always rated you. I thought you were all right. I liked you from the start.” She leaned forward and quickly pecked Annie on the cheek, then glanced down shyly at the doormat.

Annie thought Nerys was looking at her legs, and she shifted awkwardly on her feet. Suddenly, she felt self-conscious that she was only wearing the black leggings and baggy white T-shirt she had put on for meditation and yoga. The T-shirt only came down as far as her hips, and she felt exposed. “Look, Nerys,” she said. “I’m flattered and all. I don’t know…you know…what ideas you’ve got about me or anything, what you might have heard, but I’m not…you know…”

“Oh, no. I know you’re not gay. It’s okay. Don’t worry. I wasn’t making a pass. Honest. Anyway, you’re not really my type. I just said I think you’re all right, that’s all.”

“Appearances can be deceptive.”

“I take my chances where I find them.”

When she had gone, Annie closed the door and leaned back against it.
Not my type
. What had Nerys meant by that? Should she feel insulted? What was wrong with her? Was it even true? Nerys’s actions had seemed to belie her words; she had definitely been flirting at times.

Annie was also struck by the troublesome thought that if Nerys Powell, Warburton and the rest of the AFO team were going to be sacrificed on the bloody altar of public opinion, then the detectives who were supposed to have briefed them thoroughly would be lucky if they got to walk away. The walking stick. The dicky heart. Should Annie or Gervaise somehow have been able to find out about those and warn the team that went in? And whether they could have or not, would they be expected to have done so? Because that was ultimately all that mattered: what Chambers and public opinion thought they
should
have done, not what had actually happened, or why. These were not comforting thoughts.

Annie locked the door, opened another bottle of wine and settled down to a nature documentary about elephants on BBC2.

BANKS OFFERED
to pay the bill, but Teresa would have none of it.

“My country, my treat,” she said.

In the end there was nothing he could do but capitulate. They had enjoyed a marvelous dinner at an intimate Italian restaurant she had chosen in North Beach, and the last thing he wanted to do now was spoil the mood with an argument over the bill. “Thank you,” he said. “It was a great choice. Wonderful.”

“Somehow, I think the company helps, don’t you,” she said, giving the maitre d’ a quick smile as he discreetly whisked away the tray.

Banks shared the last of the wine between them and set the bottle down on the red tablecloth. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it certainly does.”

“What’s wrong?” Teresa said. “You suddenly sound sad.”

“Do I?” Banks shrugged. “Maybe because it’s my last night here.”

“You mustn’t think that way.”

“I mustn’t?”

“No, of course not.” The waiter returned with the credit card re
ceipt. Teresa added a tip and signed it with a flourish. Then she picked up her purse. “Let me just visit the powder room,” she said, “then I want to show you something.”

Banks nodded. While she was away, he sipped his wine and glanced at the slightly garish commercial painting of Lake Como on the wall opposite him. Annie wouldn’t like it, he thought, finding it odd that he should suddenly think of Annie when she was thousands of miles away. Maybe it
was
time to go home. But he was certainly enjoying his evening with Teresa. She was recently divorced, she had told him over dinner, with grown-up kids and grandchildren, and she worked as a child psychologist back in Boston. This trip was a present to herself on her decree absolute coming through, and an excuse to visit her family. She was also, she told him, thinking of moving permanently to California and had been making a few exploratory calls regarding jobs and accommodation.

The little restaurant bar was to the right of Banks, and he could see out of the corner of his eye the rows of bottles gleaming. Should he suggest a Cognac? Perhaps it would be best to wait until they got to the hotel bar. After all, Teresa had already paid the bill here. And there was something she wanted to show him.

Teresa took his arm as they walked out on the quiet side street and made their way toward Columbus, busy and brightly lit, past the Condor on the intersection with Broadway. Instead of taking Grant, with its arches, pagodas, restaurants and cheap souvenir chops, they walked down Stockton, a street of small grocery stores with piles of exotic vegetables and dried goods out front. Even at ten o’clock it was still crowded with shoppers haggling over their purchases and testing the quality, spilling from the sidewalk onto the road. Banks remembered his old sergeant in London, Ozzy Albright, telling him that San Francisco had the biggest Chinatown outside of China itself. They had been in the London Chinatown at the time, much smaller, during his last case down there in 1985. It was a case that had come back to haunt him just before he came away, as such things often did, which was why he thought of it now. You might have to wait a lifetime for justice, but sometimes you got it in the end. Like karma.

Teresa was chatting away at his side, and Banks realized he hadn’t
been listening, had been drifting into times past. “Where did you say we were going?” he asked.

She gave him a sharp glance. “I didn’t,” she said. “It’s a surprise. I told you.”

“Right.”

Soon they left the crowds behind. There were fewer shops and the street became darker. “This is the Stockton Tunnel we’re walking on,” Teresa said. “And what we want is…” She looked around her, as if verifying something with her memory. “Over here.” She pointed to a small alley over to their right atop the tunnel off Bush Street, running parallel to Stockton. It was called Burritt Street, Banks noticed as they approached. “Sorry,” Teresa said. “It’s been a long time.”

“What is it?” Banks asked. “Are you leading me down a dark alley?”

Teresa laughed. “Not very far down,” she said. “It’s here. Look.”

And she pointed to a plaque on the wall. Banks could just about read it from the ambient streetlight.
ON APPROXIMATELY THIS SPOT MILES ARCHER, PARTNER OF SAM SPADE, WAS DONE IN BY BRIGID O’SHAUGHNESSY
.

Banks stopped and stared. So this was the place where it happened. He turned to face Teresa and grinned.

“Well, you did say you were a detective,” she said. “I just thought you might find it interesting.”

“I do. I’ve just started reading the book, too. I’d never realized…

I mean, I know the story isn’t true, but the city is so vivid in the book, almost a character in its own right. I never thought I’d…I’m stuck for words.” He read the plaque again. “But it gives away the ending.”

“Yes, it does, rather, doesn’t it? But is that so important?”

“I’ve never thought so,” said Banks. “Besides, I’ve already seen the movie, and so far the book is following pretty closely.”

“I think you’ll find it was the other way around. Here,” Teresa said, fumbling in her purse. “Stand right next to it. I’m going to take your picture.”

Banks stood. First came the flickering of the anti-red-eye, then the flash itself. While Banks was still blinded by the light, a voice came from the end of the alley.

“Would you like me to take one of the two of you together?”

By the time Banks could see again, Teresa had handed her camera to the man, whose wife, or girlfriend, stood looking on, smiling, and she took her place next to Banks, resting her head on his shoulder by the plaque. The camera flashed again. The man checked the display to see that it had come out all right and handed the camera back to Teresa, who thanked him.

“How did you know he wouldn’t just run off with your camera?” Banks asked as they went down the steps beside the tunnel.

“Oh, don’t be such a cynic. You have to have a bit of trust in people sometimes or it’s hardly worth living.”

“I suppose so,” said Banks.

“Besides, they were walking along hand in hand. People like that aren’t usually petty thieves.”

Banks laughed. “Maybe you’d make a good cop after all,” he said. Teresa smiled. “Surely it’s just common sense.”

They continued down Stockton Street, crossed Union Square and walked along Geary back to the hotel. A cable car bell dinged up Powell toward the Mark Hopkins, where Banks had drunk his martini on his first night in the city, and a crowd was coming out of the Geary Street theater as they passed. They were staging Noel Coward’s
Brief Encounter,
Banks noticed. There were a few of the regular street people around—Banks recognized the black man in rags and the old woman—but nobody bothered them.

When they got to the Monaco, Banks asked, “How about a quick nightcap in the bar?”

Teresa paused, still holding on to his arm. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “Too many people. They would spoil the mood. Too noisy. I’ve got a bottle of good Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon in my room. Why don’t you come up with me and we’ll have that nightcap?”

There was no mistaking the promise in her eyes. Banks swallowed. “Well,” he said. “That would just about make the perfect end to the perfect last day of a perfect holiday.”

J
AFF
?”

“Yeah, babe, what is it?”

“What exactly is going on?” Tracy asked. “I mean, why are we doing this? Why are we on the run? Why do you want to go to London and get across the Channel so badly?”

“It’s better you don’t know too much,” Jaff said. “Like I said, it’s my problem, not yours. I’m only grateful you’ve found me a place to lie low for a few days while I get things in motion down there.”

“But it’s my problem, too, now,” said Tracy. “Besides, I won’t say anything to anyone. I won’t talk. We’re in it together now, aren’t we? I’ve helped you so far, but I’m still in the dark. Sometimes you make me feel like a prisoner. Maybe I can do more to help.”

“You’re not a prisoner. We just have to be extra careful, that’s all, and I know how to do it. It’s better if you listen to me. You’ve already been a great help, Fran. Don’t think I’m not grateful. That’s why I don’t want to burden you with too much knowledge. You know what curiosity did, don’t you? Just believe me. It’s safer this way. Okay? Now come on, babe…”

“Oh, Jaff, no, not now, Jaff. Not again. We just—”

But before Tracy could say another word, Jaff had pulled her toward him and clamped his lips firmly on hers. She offered only token resis
tance. He was a good kisser; she had to admit that. And the rest of their lovemaking was pretty spectacular, too.

When they had finished, Jaff seemed to drift off to sleep again, and Tracy found herself returning to her growing concerns. This was the start of their second day in her father’s house, and she was beginning to feel a little uneasy about being there. She was hoping that Jaff would get bored with being in the country and decide they should leave for London soon. He had already made a number of long phone calls and seemed to sound pleased with the way things were going down there. Whatever those “things” were.

It had been okay at first, just a bit of harmless fun and a chance to vent her spleen against her absentee father, but now every moment longer they stayed, the more uncomfortable she began to feel. What had yesterday seemed like a mildly exciting lark was now turning out to be something more serious, and Tracy wasn’t sure if she could get out of it. Jaff needed her to get rid of any unwelcome callers, for one thing, though he said she wasn’t a prisoner. She could just walk away, she supposed, and leave Jaff to his fate, but for some reason she didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t only the thought of leaving him in her father’s house alone, she really
wanted
to be with him, wanted the adventure, so see it through, whatever it was. She did care about him. She just hated being kept in the dark. She wanted a bigger part in his plans. And she felt cut off from the world without her mobile. It scared her.

The cottage was also a total mess already, with empty wine bottles all over the place, stains on the carpets and furniture, and those CDs and DVDs scattered all over the entertainment room floor. Tracy wasn’t by nature a vandal, or even a messy person, and this chaos disturbed her. She had tried to clean up a bit last night, but had been too stoned to make much of a dent.

She was probably a fugitive, too, now. Or at least people might start to think so. Rose, for example. The police knew all about Erin and the gun, certainly, though there had been nothing on the news yet to indicate that they had found out it belonged to Jaff, or that they were even aware of his existence. But Tracy knew from her dad’s work that they often kept things back from the public. It doesn’t always do to put
your sirens on at full volume when you want to sneak up on someone and catch them unawares.

They could be closing the net at this very moment, Tracy thought; the cottage might already be surrounded. Then she admonished herself for being paranoid. Most likely, Erin had gone into one of her long silences, and the police couldn’t be too hard on her because they’d just killed her father, which had been on the news late yesterday.

That had knocked Tracy for a six. Mr. Doyle was a nice man, she remembered. He always gave her and Erin money for ice cream when they were kids playing in the street and the Mr. Whippy van came around. He’d taken them both to the Easter Fair in Helmthorpe once, Tracy remembered, when her dad had to work, as usual, and Mr. Doyle had let Tracy and Erin go on rides like the waltzers, the dodgems and the speedway. Her dad would never have let her go on them at her age then, just the boring swings or the merry-go-round with all the little kids.

Jaff stirred, threw the sheets back and got out of bed. It was almost midday, but then it had been another late night of wine, joints and movies. And sex. “I’m hungry,” he announced. “Why don’t you go down and make us some breakfast while I have a shower?”

“What did your last servant die of?” Tracy muttered as she dragged herself out of bed.

“What?” said Jaff. “What was that you said?”

“Nothing,” Tracy replied.

“Yes, it was.” Jaff held her chin. “You made some remark about servants. You think I should be a servant or something? Is that what you mean? Because my mother’s from Bangladesh? Because of the color of my skin?”

Tracy shook herself free. “Jaff, that wasn’t what I meant at all, and you know it wasn’t! It’s just a saying we have here when people ask you to do things they could easily do for themselves. For crying out loud, get a grip.”

“I know what fucking sayings you have here,” said Jaff, pointing his thumb at his own chest. “Where the fuck do you think I come from? Straight off the boat? I fucking grew up here.”

“All right, Jaff! I didn’t mean—”

“People never do. They just assume. All my life people have assumed things about me.” He pointed at her. “Don’t assume.”

Tracy held her hands up in mock surrender. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Sorr-ee.”

“And don’t take the piss.” Jaff glared at her. Tracy could hardly believe at that moment that she had once thought his eyes gentle and beautiful. They were cold and hard now, his mouth sulky. “You’d better mean it, Francesca,” he said at last, his voice a little softer but still not without a trace of menace. “I hate people who make assumptions about me. You don’t know what I am. Who I am. You know nothing about me.”

“Fine,” said Tracy, beginning to wish she’d never brought Jaff to her father’s house, wishing she’d never met him, never fancied him, never kissed him on the dance floor, never made love with him all night. She felt like crying. “I’ll just go and make some breakfast, shall I? Bacon and eggs do you okay?”

Jaff smiled. “Fantastic. And a big pot of coffee, too, babe. Good and strong. I’m off for that shower.” Then he simply turned and walked away whistling as if nothing had just happened between them.

Tracy stood there slowly shaking her head. She would have liked to have used the bathroom to clean herself up a bit first, but it was a small cottage, and there was only one. Instead she went downstairs and washed her hands and face in the kitchen sink. She realized she was still trembling a little. Jaff could be cruel without knowing it.

Tracy could hear the shower running upstairs as she gathered together the food for breakfast. A fry-up was the easiest option, she thought, if not healthiest, so she dug out a couple of frying pans and put them on the rings, adding liberal dollops of cooking oil. Cooking wasn’t exactly one of Tracy’s fortes, but she did know how to fry eggs and bacon, and you needed plenty of hot oil to splash over the eggs to get the tops done properly. First she put the coffee on, then she got the bacon crackling and turned her attention to the eggs. But before she put them in the pan, she fed two slices of toast into the toaster, then glanced toward the breakfast nook.

Tracy bit her lower lip as she thought about what to do. Jaff’s hold-all was on the bench behind the breakfast table. If she wanted her
mobile back, which she did, now was probably the best chance she was going to get. He probably wouldn’t even notice it was missing. The bacon was spitting and sizzling and the coffee pot making its usual gurgling sounds as it turned water into black gold. Tracy hoisted the hold-all onto the table and unzipped it.

What she saw inside took her breath away, but not so much that she didn’t first reach in and rescue her mobile, slipping it into a zipped pocket of her new shoulderbag. Then she went back to make sure that her eyes weren’t deceiving her. But no. There it all was, laid out for her to see. Wad after wad of twenty- and ten-pound notes, fastened with rubber bands. And mixed in with them, several brick-sized packages of white powder wrapped in plastic. She counted four altogether. Cocaine, Tracy thought. Or heroin. Four kilos, probably. She delved deeper, thrusting her hand between the wads of cash until, underneath everything, it touched something cool, hard and metallic.

It was only when she had her hand around the handle of the gun, still deep inside the hold-all, that she noticed Jaff leaning against the doorjamb, a white towel wrapped around his waist and a sheet of paper in his hand, head cocked to one side, watching her, a curious smile on his lips, but not in his eyes, she noticed, not by a long chalk. Christ, she thought, I should have trusted my instincts and run while I had the chance.

AS ANNIE
had expected, Western Area Headquarters was starting to feel like the main concourse at King’s Cross by early afternoon on Wednesday. Chambers was skulking around with his imported Mancunian sidekicks, whom Annie had christened Dumb and Dumber, and several AFOs were wandering around the corridors aimlessly, or cluttering up the small canteen, including Nerys Powell, who gave Annie a conspiratorial smile, then blushed and lowered her gaze as they passed each other on the stairs. Just what she needed.

Banks had once told Annie that Chambers reminded him of the Vincent Price character in
Witchfinder General,
and when Annie had watched the film with him later, she had seen what he meant. There was no great physical resemblance, of course, but he had that same air
about him, the barely controlled pious zeal that hinted he was satisfying unsavory personal appetites through his work, as well as serving public morality.

Annie would catch him staring at her now and then with a strange hungry look in his eyes that was only partly sexual, and occasionally he would go into a whispered conference with Dumb and Dumber, who would scribble notes, all calculated to cause maximum anxiety and paranoia, which it did. She knew that she and Chambers had parted on bad terms after she had told him exactly what she thought of his handling of the Janet Taylor case, and now she was beginning to think that he was the sort who bore a grudge. More than that, he was the type of person in whom slights and grudges fester for years, ultimately bursting out into vengeance.

Superintendent Gervaise had sent around a memo announcing a meeting of all the senior Serious Crimes staff at three o’clock in the boardroom, when they could expect a visit from the ballistics expert who had been working on the gun. Before that, Annie thought, she would take the opportunity to slip away for a quiet lunch and a pint—knowing that it might be her last chance for some time—and she would take Winsome with her. They had a lot to talk about. Winsome had been concluding the paperwork on her investigation into the hit and run, and she needed to be brought up to speed.

The Queen’s Arms was out of the question, as was the Hare and Hounds. Superintendent Gervaise had proved to be rather adept at tracking down the various watering holes Annie and Banks had started using. But with Winsome driving—she refused to drink a drop on duty, and hardly drank much at any other time—the whole of Swainsdale was their oyster. Well, within reason, Annie thought. But at least they could get out of the town center and find a little village pub with tables outside and a nice view. So many had closed down recently, after the smoking ban, the floundering economy, cheap booze shops and easy trips to fill up the boot in Calais. Some of the best pubs in Swainsdale opened for lunch only on weekends, but there were still a few good ones left.

They found a suitable place halfway up a hillside in a tiny village off the Fortford Road. It faced a small triangular green of well-kept grass
with a couple of park benches under an old elm tree. The pub had picnic tables out front, where Annie sipped her pint of Dalesman bitter and Winsome her Diet Pepsi as they waited for their food. If any of the other lunchtime customers were astonished at the sight of a six-foot black woman, long legs stretched out, encased in blue denim, they were much too polite to show it, which indicated to Annie that they must be tourists. Locals usually gawped at Winsome.

It was a fine enough day, warm and sunny again, though a few dark clouds were gathering in the west, and the only nuisances were the flies and the occasional persistent wasp. The swallows were still gathering.

Annie admired the pattern of drystone walls that straggled up the hillside to the sere reaches where the limestone outcrops began. To her right, she could see the lush green valley bottom, and the village of Fortford itself a couple of miles away, near the meandering tree-lined river. She could also see the flagstone roofs and the whitewashed facade of the Rose and Crown beside the mound of the old Roman settlement. The Roman road cut diagonally up the daleside and disappeared in the far distance. The air smelled of fresh-mown hay tinged with a hint of manure and smoke from a gardener’s fire. Despite the activity at the police station and the harbingers it brought, Annie nevertheless felt this was a good day to be alive as she breathed the late summer air. All mists and mellow fruitfulness. The kind of day that sticks in your memory. It made her think of the final lines of the Keats poem she had had to memorize at school: “Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft / The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”

“Zoo time back at the station, I see,” said Winsome.

“That’s why I wanted to get away for a while,” Annie said. “That and…”

Winsome raised a finely plucked eyebrow. “Come on. Give. I was thinking things have been dull around the place for a while now,” she said.

“Ever since you drop-kicked that drug dealer over a fourth-floor balcony?”