Blood at the Root (20 page)

“Yes.”

“And the two of you weren’t close friends?”

“No. I’ve told you. We worked together. That’s all.”

“So what were you doing pubbing with him in the Jubilee? Eastvale’s a long way from your normal stamping ground, isn’t it? Can you explain that?”

“He said he was going up to Eastvale to play football. I felt like a night out, that’s all. Somewhere different. Just for a change. Sheri knew I’d been a bit down lately, like, about the business and all, and she said she didn’t mind staying home with Connor. The Jubilee gets really good bands on a Saturday night, and I like live music.”

“So you drove all the way up from Castleford to spend a social evening with a business associate you didn’t particularly like, someone who believed your wife and all her kind should be packed off in boats back to the Caribbean?”

Mark shrugged. “I went to see the band. Jason said he’d come along, as he’d be in town anyway, that’s all. I thought it might make a change from Razor’s Edge and Celtic Warrior and all that other crap he listens to. Hear some decent music for once. The Jubilee’s got a good reputation all over the north. Just ask anyone. And it’s not that far. Straight up the A1. Doesn’t take more than a hour and a half or so each way.”

“That’s three hours’ driving, Mark.”

“So? I like driving.”

“Where did you go after you left Jason?”

“I drove straight back home. I wasn’t over the limit, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“But you still came all this way knowing you’d be drinking and having to drive back?”

Wood shrugged. “I’m not a big boozer. I can handle three or four pints over the course of an evening.”

“Are you sure you didn’t have more than that, Mark?”

“I had three pints. Four at the most. If that put me over the limit, charge me.”

“Are you sure you didn’t have too much to drink and ask Jason if you could stay at his house? Are you sure you didn’t walk down-”

“No. I told you. I drove straight home.”

“All right, Mark. If you say so. I do, however, have one more question for you before I leave you to think over our little discussion.”

“What’s that?”

“If you gave Jason the beer bottle, and he drank from it on his way home, then why didn’t we find
his
fingerprints on it, too?”

The girl was incredibly beautiful, Banks thought. Part Oriental, she had long, sleek black hair, a golden complexion, a heart-shaped face with perfect, full lips and slightly hooded eyes. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty years old.

At the moment, she was sitting on a chair bathed in the red neon glow, wearing dangling silver earrings and a black lace bra and panties. Nothing else. Her slender legs were parted slightly at the inner thighs so the plump mound of her pudendum was clear to see. She had a tiny tattoo – a butterfly, it looked like – on the inside of her left thigh.

And she was smiling at Banks.

“No,” said Burgess. “Not that one. She’s got no tits.”

Banks smiled to himself and came back to earth. Lovely as the girl was, he could no more think of sleeping with her than he could with one of Tracy’s friends. Though he was quite happy to wander around the red-light district window-shopping with Burgess, he had never intended to buy anything on offer there. Nor, he suspected, did Burgess, when it came right down to it. And after three or four pils with jenever chasers, it was doubtful whether either of them was even capable of much in that direction anyway.

Amsterdam was especially beautiful at night, Banks thought, with the necklaces of lights strung over the bridges mirrored in the canals, and the glowing, candlelit interiors of glass-covered “lovers’” tour boats spilling Mantovani violins as their wake made the reflections shimmer in the dark, oily water. He wished Sandra were with him, and not Burgess. They would wander the canals all night and get hopelessly lost again, just as they had done all those years ago.

At night the red-light district had much more of an edge than during the day, when it was basically just another stop on a sightseeing tour. Most tourists stayed away at night, but as far as Banks could tell, it wasn’t any more dangerous than Soho. His wallet was safely zipped in the inside pocket of his suede jacket, and he had nothing else worth stealing. And if it came to violence, he could handle himself. Though he felt a bit light-headed, he wasn’t drunk.

They wandered along, jostled by the crowds, stopping to look into the occasional window and surprised, more often than not, by the beauty and youth of the prostitutes on display. At one point someone bumped into Burgess and Banks had to step in and prevent a fight. Wouldn’t go down well, that, he thought: SENIOR SCOTLAND YARD DETECTIVE ARRESTED FOR ASSAULT IN AMSTERDAM’S RED-LIGHT DISTRICT. Maybe, he thought with a smile, he should have let it go on.

After a while the crowds had a claustrophobic effect on Banks, and he was thinking of going back to his hotel when Burgess said, “Fuck it. You know what, Banks?”

“What?”

“Hate to admit it, but I probably couldn’t even get it up if I tried. Let’s have another drink. A nightcap.”

That seemed like a good idea to Banks, who fancied a sit-down and a smoke. So they nipped into a bar on a street corner, and Burgess promptly ordered pils and jenever again for both of them.

They chatted about mutual friends on the force over the loud music – some sort of modern Europop, Banks thought – and watched the punters come and go: sailors, punks, prostitutes, the occasional dealer shifting some stuff. When they’d finished their drinks, Burgess suggested another round but Banks said they should find somewhere nearer the hotel while he could still remember his way.

“Fuck the hotel. We can take a taxi anywhere we want,” Burgess protested.

“I don’t know where the nearest taxi rank is. Besides, it’s not far. The walk’ll do you good.”

Burgess was truly over the top by now. He insisted on just one more jenever, which he downed in one, and then, after a bit more grumbling, he agreed to walk and stumbled out after Banks into the street. They soon got out of the red-light district and onto Damrak, which was still busy, with Burgess meandering from side to side, bumping into people. Banks remembered that Dirty Dick’s second nickname on the Met was “Bambi,” on account of the way his physical coordination went all to pieces when he was pissed.

“Got a joke,” Burgess said, nudging Banks in the ribs. “This bloke goes into a pub with an octopus, and he says to the lads in the band, ‘I’ll bet any of you a tenner my pet here can play any instrument you care to give him.’”

They took one of the narrow streets that crossed the canals toward Keizersgracht. Banks found his attention wandering, Burgess’s voice in the background. “So one of the lads brings him a clarinet, and the bloody octopus plays it like he was Benny Goodman. Another bloke brings him a guitar and it’s Django fucking Reinhardt.”

Banks fancied a coffee and wondered if he could get one at the hotel. If not, there was bound to be a café nearby. He looked at his watch. Only ten o’clock. Hard to believe they’d done so much in such a short time. A small café would actually be better than the hotel, he decided. He would dump Burgess, pick up his Graham Greene and find a place to sit, read and people-watch for a while.

“Anyway, this goes on for ages, instrument after instrument. Bongos, trombone, saxophone. You name it. Bring him a ukulele, and it’s George Formby. The octopus plays them all like a virsh… a virsh… a virt-you-oh-so. Finally, one of the musicians, he’s had enough and he goes out and finds a set of bagpipes. He gives them to the octopus and the octopus looks at them, frowns, turns them every which way, then back again. ‘Looks like you’re about to lose your tenner, mate,’ the musician says. Christ, I need a piss.”

Burgess tottered toward the quayside, hands working at his fly, head half-turned to look back at Banks, a crooked smile on his face. “So the guy says, ‘Hang on a minute, mate. When he finds out he can’t fuck it, he’ll play it. Get it? Argh! Shi-it!”

It happened so quickly that Banks didn’t even have a chance to take half a step. One moment Burgess was pissing a long, noisy arc into the canal, the next, he had toppled forward with an almighty splash, followed by a string of garbled oaths.

By Saturday morning, Susan guessed, Mark Wood must be feeling like one of those mice that has wandered into a humane trap; it can’t find its way back out, and it is just beginning to realize that it’s in a trap. Even when the mice do get released, she realized, they generally find themselves a long way from home.

“Your solicitor, Mr. Varney, rang,” said Gristhorpe. “He’s sorry, he was out last night. Anyway, he’s on his way up from Leeds. What can we do for you in the meantime? Coffee? Danish?”

Wood reached forward and helped himself to a pastry. “I don’t have to talk to you until he gets here,” he said.

“True,” said Gristhorpe. “But remember that caution I read you yesterday? If you don’t say anything now, it could go very badly for you later when you try to change your story again.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You’re a liar, Mark. You’ve already given us half a dozen old wives’ tales. The more lies you tell, the lower your credibility rating falls. I’m offering you a chance to sweep the board clean, forget the lies and tell me the truth once and for all. What happened after you and Jason Fox left the Jubilee last Saturday night? Your solicitor will only give you the same advice. Tell the truth and I’ll turn on the tape recorders.”

“But I’ve already told you.”

Gristhorpe shook his head. “You lied. The bottle. The fingerprint, Mark. The fingerprint.”

Susan hoped to hell that Gristhorpe did get somewhere before Giles Varney arrived, because he’d milked that fingerprint for far more than it was worth already. They couldn’t be certain it was Wood’s, and Gristhorpe had framed his references to it with great care when the tapes were running, saying it was a “close match” rather than an identical one.

Even “close match” was pushing it a bit. One of the first things Varney would do was look at the forensic evidence and tell his client just how flimsy it was. Then Wood would clam up. Susan had phoned the lab just a few moments ago, and while they said they might get some results before the morning was out, it certainly wouldn’t be within the hour.

Even then, she knew, these would only be preliminary results. But they might, at a pinch, at least be able to determine whether there was human blood on Wood’s clothing and whether it matched Jason Fox’s
general
type. For more specific and solid evidence, such as DNA analysis, they would have to wait much longer. Even a general grouping, Susan thought, along with an identification and statement from the landlord of the Jubilee, would be more than they had right now. And it might be enough to convince the magistrates to remand Wood for a while longer.

“Nobody touched that bottle but you, Mark,” Gristhorpe went on. “The fingerprint proves that.”

“What about the bloke I bought it off? Why weren’t his fingerprints on it?”

“That’s not important. Mark. What matters is that
your
fingerprints were on it and Jason’s weren’t. There’s no getting away from that, solicitor or no solicitor. If you tell me the truth now, things will go well for you. If you don’t… well, it’ll be a jury you’ll have to explain yourself to. And sometimes you can wait months for a trial. Years, even.”

“So what? I’d be out on bail and you can’t prove anything.”

True, Susan thought.

“Wrong,” Gristhorpe said. “I don’t think you’d get bail, Mark. Not for this. It was a vicious murder. Very nasty indeed.”

“You said it might not be murder.”

“That depends. The way things are looking now, you’d have to
confess
to make us believe it was manslaughter, Mark. You’d have to tell us how it really happened,
convince
us it wasn’t murder. Otherwise we’ve got you on a murder charge. Concealing evidence, not coming forward, lying – it all looks bad to a jury.”

Wood chewed on his lower lip. Susan noticed the crumbs of pastry down the front of his shirt. He was sweating.

“You’re a clever lad, aren’t you, Mark?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know all about computers and the Internet and all that stuff?”

“So?”

“Now, me, I don’t know a hard drive from a hole in the ground, but I
do
know you’re lying, and I
do
know that your only way out of this tissue of lies you’ve got yourself well and truly stuck in is to tell me the truth. Now.”

Finally, Wood licked his lips and said, “Look, I didn’t kill anyone. All right, I was there. I admit it. I was there when it started. But I didn’t kill Jason. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Why do I have to believe you, Mark?” Gristhorpe asked softly.

“Because you do. It’s true.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”

“Can I have a smoke?”

“No,” said Gristhorpe. “After you’ve told me.
If
I believe you.” He turned on the dual cassette recorder and made the usual preamble about the time, date and who was present.

Wood sulked and chewed his lip for a moment, then began: “We left the Jubilee just after closing time, like I said. I had a bottle with me. Jason didn’t. He didn’t drink much. In fact, he had a thing about drink and drugs. Into health and fitness, was Jason. Anyway, we took the short cut – at least that’s what he told me it was – through some streets across the road, and where the streets ended there’s a ginnel that leads between two terrace blocks to some waste ground.”

“The rec,” said Gristhorpe.

“If you say so. I didn’t know where the fuck we were.”

“Why were
you
also heading in that direction? I thought you said your car was parked on Market Street.”

“It was. Jason asked me back to his place for a drink. That’s all. I know I shouldn’t have been drinking so much when I was driving, but…” He grinned. “Anyway, it was like you said yesterday. If I thought I’d had too much, I would’ve stopped the night.”

“At Jason’s house?”

“His parents’ house, yes.”

“Carry on.”

“Well, the ginnel looked a bit creepy to me, but Jason went ahead. Then, all of a sudden, they came at us, three of them, from where they’d been waiting at the other end. The rec end.”

“Three of them?”

“That’s right. Asian lads. I recognized them. Jason had had a minor run-in with one of them earlier, in the pub.”

“What happened next?”

“I dropped the bottle and scarpered fast. I thought Jason was right behind me, but by the time I looked back he was nowhere in sight.”

“You didn’t see what happened to him?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t go back?”

“No way.”

“All right. What
did
you do next?”

“I kept going until I got to the car, then I drove home.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

Wood scratched his neck and averted his eyes. “I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t think of it, really. And I’d been drinking.”

“But your friend – sorry, your business associate – was in danger. He could at least expect a severe beating, and all you could do was scarper. Come on, Mark, you can’t expect me to believe that. Surely you’ve got more bottle, a fit lad like you?”

“Believe what you want. I didn’t know Jason was in danger, did I? For all I knew he’d run off in a different direction. I’d have been a proper wally to go back there and get my head kicked in.”

“Like Jason.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t know what happened, did I?”

“Did you really believe that Jason had got away too?”

“He could have done, couldn’t he?”

“Okay. Now tell me: if you’d done nothing wrong, why didn’t you come forward later, after you
knew
Jason had been killed?”

Mark scratched the side of his nose. “I didn’t know till I read it in the papers a couple of days later. By then I thought it would look funny if I came forward.”

Gristhorpe frowned. “Look funny?”

“Yeah. Suspicious.”

“Why?”

“Because I hadn’t said anything at the time. Isn’t that something makes you blokes suspicious?”

Gristhorpe spread his hands. “Mark, we’re simple souls, really. We’re just thrilled to bits when someone decides to tell us the truth.”

“Yeah, well… I must admit I wasn’t too proud of myself.”

“What for? Running away? Deserting your mate when he needed your help?”

Wood looked down at his hands clasped on his lap. “Yes.”

“Any other reason you kept out of it?”

“Well, if they killed Jason, whether they meant to or not… I mean, I’ve got a wife and kid. Know what I mean? I wouldn’t want to put any of us in danger by testifying if there were likely to be… you know… recriminations.”

“Recriminations? By the three attackers?”

“By them, yes. Or people like them.”

“Other Pakistani youths?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, they stick together, stand up for one another, don’t they? I didn’t want to put my wife and kid at risk.”

Gristhorpe shook his head slowly. “This isn’t making any sense to me, Mark. You look like a strong lad. Why didn’t you stay and fight with Jason, give him a bit of support?”

“I told you, I was thinking of Sheri and Connor. I mean, how would they manage without me, if I got hurt, put in hospital?”

“Same way they’ll have to manage without you when you get put in jail, I suppose,” said Gristhorpe. “You’re telling me you ran away out of concern for your wife and child?”

Wood’s face reddened. “I’m not saying that’s what I thought straight off. It was instinctive. I didn’t have much choice, did I? And like I said, I thought Jason was right behind me. It was three against two.”

“It was three against one after you ran off, Mark. What sort of choice did Jason have? The two of you could have taken those three easily. I’d have put
my
money on you.”

Wood shook his head.

“Are you telling me you’re a coward, Mark? Strong-looking lad like you? Bet you lift weights, don’t you? Yet when it comes to the crunch you bugger off and leave your mate to die alone.”

“Look, will you shut up about that?” Wood leaned forward and banged his fist down. The metal table rattled. “The point is that I
didn’t do anything
. It doesn’t matter whether I ran away. Or why I ran away. All that matters is that I didn’t kill Jason!”

“Calm down, Mark.” Gristhorpe raised his hand, palm out. “What you’re saying is true. Technically, at any rate.”

“What do you mean, technically?”

“Well, if what you’re telling us is the truth at last-”

“It is.”

“ – then you didn’t kill Jason in any legal, criminal sense of the word. But I’d say you’re morally responsible, wouldn’t you? I mean, you could have saved him, but you didn’t even try.”

“I told you to stop it with that. You can’t prove it would have done any good if I’d stayed. Maybe I’d have got killed, too. What good would that have done anyone? I don’t care about fucking
morality
. There’s nothing you can charge me with.”

“How about leaving the scene?”

“That’s crap, and you know it.”

“Maybe so,” Gristhorpe admitted. “Nevertheless, deserting your mate the way you did… That’s something you’ll have to live with forever, isn’t it, Mark?”

Gristhorpe went to the door and asked the two uniformed officers to come in and take Wood back to his cell, then he and Susan picked up their coffees and left the stuffy interview room for Gristhorpe’s office. Up there, in a comfortable chair, with plenty of space and clean air to breathe, Susan felt herself relax.

“What do you think of his story?” Gristhorpe asked.

Susan shook her head. “He’s certainly a bit of a chameleon, isn’t he? I hardly know what to think. I’ll tell you one thing, though, sir; I think I caught him in at least one more lie.”

Gristhorpe raised his bushy eyebrows. “Oh, aye? And which lie would that be?”

“Mark told us that when they left the Jubilee, Jason invited him back to his house for a drink, and maybe to stop overnight. Jason wouldn’t have done that. His parents insisted he
never
brought his friends to their house.”

“Hmm. Maybe they’re the ones who are lying?”

“I don’t think so, sir. Why should they? If you think about it, Jason lived most of his life in Leeds. He only came home on weekends occasionally, mostly to play football for United, spend a little time with his parents, get his washing done, maybe visit his granddad. He never told any of them what he was up to in Leeds. It’s easy to see why he wouldn’t want to mention Neville Motcombe or explain how he got fired from the plastics factory. And that meant he couldn’t mention the computer business either. He could have simply lied from the start, told them he’d left the factory of his own free will for something better, but he didn’t. Didn’t want to face the questions, I suppose. After that, all the lies became interconnected. Who knows what Mark might have let slip to Jason’s parents?” She shook her head. “Unless Mr. and Mrs. Fox are lying, which I doubt, then it’s hardly likely Jason would suddenly decide to take one of his Leeds mates back to the Eastvale house on a whim. Too risky. And there’s another thing. Jason didn’t keep anything to drink at the Eastvale house. In fact, according to all accounts, he hardly drank at all.”

“Maybe he was intending to give Mark some of his dad’s Scotch or something?”

“It’s possible, sir,” Susan said. “But as I say, I doubt it.”

“And maybe he would have bent the rules a bit if his mate had had too much to drink and needed somewhere to sleep it off? That might also explain why Mark didn’t drive down from Market Street to Jason’s place.”

“Again, sir,” said Susan, “it’s possible.”

“But you’re not convinced. Do you think he did it?”

“I don’t know, sir. I just don’t trust his story.”

“Make that
stories
. All right, I’ll bear your reservations in mind. I can’t say I like them much, either.” He shook his head slowly. “Anyway, we’d better arrange to bring in George Mahmood and his pals again.”

“Even though the forensic evidence supports George’s story?”

“Even so.”

“Chief Constable Riddle will love that, sir.”

“The way I see it, Susan, we’ve got no choice. Mark Wood says he saw three Asian lads attack Jason Fox. Unless we can prove he’s lying, it doesn’t matter what we think. We
have
to bring them in.”