Not Safe After Dark (27 page)

She put the phone down. ‘You can’t prove it was me. I defy you.’

Banks stood up. He was loath to admit it, but she was right. Short of finding someone who had seen her or her car in the vicinity of the Fosse house around the time of the murder, there was no
proof. And Norma Cheverel wasn’t the kind to confess. The bluff was over. But at least Banks and Susan
knew
as they walked out of the office that Norma Cheverel had killed Kim Fosse.
The rest was just a matter of time.

8

The break took
two days to come, and it came from an unexpected source.

The first thing Banks did after his interview with Norma Cheverel was organize a second house-to-house of Fosse’s neighbourhood, this time to find out if anyone had seen Norma Cheverel or
her car that evening. Someone remembered seeing a grey foreign car of some kind, which was about the closest they got to a sighting of Norma’s silver BMW.

Next, he got a list of all 150 conventioneers and set a team to phone and find out if anyone remembered Norma Cheverel taking photos on the evening of the banquet. They’d got through
seventy-one with no luck so far, when Banks’s phone rang.

‘This is Carla Jacobs, Inspector Banks. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Mr Bannister’s secretary.’

‘I remember you,’ said Banks. ‘What is it?’

‘Well, I was going to ask you the same thing. You see, I’ve been talking to Lucy, and she’s so worried that Michael is in trouble it’s damaging her health.’

‘Mr Bannister is in no trouble as far as I know,’ said Banks. ‘He just committed an unfortunate indiscretion, that’s all. No blame.’

‘But that’s just it,’ said Carla Jacobs. ‘You see, she said he’s been acting strangely. He’s depressed. He shuts himself away. He doesn’t talk to her.
Even when he’s with her she says he’s withdrawn. It’s getting her down. I thought if you could talk to her . . . just set her at ease.’

Banks sighed. Playing nursemaid. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll call her.’

‘Oh, will you? Thank you. Thank you ever so much.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Mr Bannister is in his office now. She’ll be by the phone at home.’

Lucy Bannister answered on the first ring. ‘Yes?’

Banks introduced himself.

‘I’m so worried about Michael,’ she said, in that gushing manner of someone who’s been waiting all week to pour it all out. ‘He’s never like this. Never. Has
he done something awful? Are you going to arrest him? Please, you can tell me the truth.’

‘No,’ said Banks. ‘No, he hasn’t, and no we’re not. He’s simply been helping us with our enquiries.’

‘That could mean anything. Enquiries into what?’

Banks debated for a moment whether to tell her. It would do no harm, he thought. ‘He was at a business convention in London last weekend. We’re interested in the movements of someone
else who was there, that’s all.’

‘Are you sure that’s all?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s nothing serious?’

‘Not for your husband, no.’

‘Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.’ He could hear the relief in her voice. ‘Because of my heart condition, you see, Michael is a bit over-protective. I
don’t deny I’m weak, but sometimes I think he just takes too much upon himself.’ She paused and gave a small laugh. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.
It must be because I’m so relieved. He’s a normal man. He has needs like any other man. I know he goes with other women and I never mention it because I know it would upset him and
embarrass him. He thinks he keeps it from me to protect me from distress, and it’s just easier to let him think that.’

‘I can appreciate that,’ Banks said, only half listening. Why hadn’t he realized before? Now he knew what Michael Bannister had lied about, and why. ‘Look, Mrs
Bannister,’ he cut in, ‘you might be able to help us. Do you think you could talk to your husband, let him know you know?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to upset him.’

Banks felt a wave of annoyance. The Bannisters were so damn busy protecting one another’s feelings that there was no room for the truth. He could almost hear her chewing her lip over the
line. He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘It could be very important,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure it won’t do any harm. If that’s what he’s
feeling guilty about, you can help him get over it, can’t you?’

‘I suppose so.’ Hesitant, but warming to the idea.

‘I’m sure you’d be helping him, helping your relationship.’ Banks cringed to hear himself talk. First a nursemaid, now a bloody marriage guidance counsellor.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then you’ll do it? You’ll talk to him?’

‘Yes.’ Determined now. ‘Yes, I will, Mr Banks.’

‘And will you do me one more favour?’

‘If I can.’

‘Will you give him these telephone numbers and tell him that if he thinks of anything else he can call me without fear of any charges being made against him?’ He gave her his work
and home phone numbers.

‘Ye-es.’ She clearly didn’t know what he meant, but that didn’t matter.

‘It’s very important that you tell him there’ll be no action taken against him and that he should talk to
me
personally. Is that clear?’

‘Yes. I don’t know what all this is about, but I’ll do as you say. And thank you.’

‘Thank you.’ Banks headed for a pub lunch in the Queen’s Arms. It was too early to celebrate anything yet, but he kept his fingers crossed as he walked in the thin November
sunshine across Market Street.

9

Norma Cheverel’s luxury
flat was every bit as elegant and expensively furnished as Banks had expected. Some of the paintings on her walls were originals, and
her furniture was all hand-crafted, by the look of it. She even had an oak table from Robert Thompson’s workshop in Kilburn. Banks recognized the trademark: a mouse carved on one of the
legs.

When Banks and Susan turned up at seven-thirty that evening, Norma had just finished stacking her dinner dishes in the machine. She had changed from her work outfit and wore black leggings,
showing off her shapely legs, and a green woollen sweater that barely covered her hips. She sat down and crossed her legs, cigarette poised over the ashtray beside her.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Do I need my solicitor yet?’

‘I think you do,’ said Banks. ‘But I’d like you to answer a few questions first.’

‘I’m not saying a word without my solicitor present.’

‘Very well,’ said Banks. ‘That’s your right. Let me do the talking, then.’

She sniffed and flicked a half-inch of ash into the ashtray beside her. Her crossed leg was swinging up and down as if some demented doctor were tapping the reflex.

‘I might as well tell you first of all that we’ve got Michael Bannister’s testimony,’ Banks began.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I think you do. It was
you
who took those photographs at the banquet and in the hotel room afterwards. It was
you
who spent the night with Michael Bannister, not Kim
Fosse.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘No, it’s not. You told him later that if anyone asked he’d better say it was Kim Fosse he slept with or you’d tell his wife what he’d done. You knew Lucy had a
weak heart, and that he thought such a shock might kill her.’

Norma had turned a shade paler. Banks scratched the small scar beside his right eye. Often, when it itched, it was telling him he was on the right track. ‘As it turns out,’ he went
on, ‘Lucy Bannister was well aware that her husband occasionally slept with other women. It was just something they didn’t talk about. He thought he was protecting her feelings; she
thought she was protecting his. I suggested they talk about it.’

‘Bastard,’ Norma Cheverel hissed. Banks didn’t know whether she meant him or Michael Bannister.

‘You seduced Michael Bannister and you planted incriminating photographs on Kim Fosse’s living-room table
after
you’d killed her in the hope that we would think her
husband had done it in a jealous rage, a rage that you also helped set us up to believe. We’ve checked the processing services, too. I’m sure you chose Fotomat because it’s busy,
quick and impersonal, but the man behind the counter remembers
you
picking up a film on Wednesday, not Kim Fosse. Beauty has its drawbacks, Norma.’

Norma got up, tossed back her hair and went to pour herself a drink. She didn’t offer Banks or Susan anything. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said. ‘And a hell of an
imagination. You should work for television.’

‘You knew that David Fosse walked the dog every evening, come rain or shine, between six forty-five and seven-thirty. It was easy for you to drive over to the house, park your car a little
distance away, get the unsuspecting Kim to let you in, and then, still wearing gloves, hit her with the trophy and plant the photos. After that, all you had to do was convince us of her infidelity
and her husband’s violent jealousy. There was even a scrap of truth in it. Except you didn’t bargain for Lucy Bannister, did you?’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Norma said. ‘What about the film that was in the camera? You can’t prove any of this.’

‘I don’t believe I mentioned that there was a film
in
the camera,’ said Banks. ‘I’m sure it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but
that
film
couldn’t possibly have been taken by Kim’s camera, either, or Michael Bannister wouldn’t have had red eyes.’

‘This is just circumstantial.’

‘Possibly. But it all adds up. Believe me, Norma, we’ve got a case and we’ve got a good chance of making it stick. The first film wasn’t enough, was it? We might have
suspected it was planted. But with a second film
in
the camera, one showing the same scene, the same person, then there was less chance we’d look closely at the photographic evidence.
How did it happen? I imagine Kim had perhaps had a bit too much to drink that night and you put her to bed. When you did, you also took her room key. At some point during the night, when
you’d finished with Michael Bannister, you rewound your second film manually in the dark until there was only a small strip sticking out of the cassette, then you went to Kim Fosse’s
room and you put it in her camera, taking out whatever film she had taken herself and dumping it.’

‘Oh, I see. I’m that clever, am I? I suppose you found my fingerprints on this film?’

‘The prints were smudged, as you no doubt knew they would be, and you wiped the photographs and camera. When you’d loaded the film, you advanced it in the dark with the flash turned
off and the lens cap on. That way the double exposure wouldn’t affect the already exposed film at all because no light was getting to it. When you’d wound it on so that the next
exposure was set at number eight, you returned it to Kim Fosse’s room.’

‘I’m glad you think I’m so brilliant, Inspector, but I—’

‘I don’t think you’re brilliant at all,’ Banks said. ‘You’re as stupid as anyone else who thinks she can get away with the perfect crime.’

In a flash, Norma Cheverel picked up the ashtray and threw it at Banks. He dodged sideways and it whizzed past his ear and smashed into the front of the cocktail cabinet.

Banks stood up. ‘Time to call that solicitor, Norma.’

But Norma Cheverel wasn’t listening. She was banging her fists on her knees and chanting ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ over and over again.

The morning they
found Santa Claus floating face down in the pool, I had a hangover of gargantuan proportions. By midday I was starting to feel more human. By late
afternoon, on my third Michelob at Chloe’s, I was almost glad to be alive again. Almost. I was also coming to believe that Santa’s death hadn’t been quite the accident it
appeared.

‘Happy Hour’ at Chloe’s – a dim, horseshoe-shaped bar adjoining a restaurant – lasts from eleven a.m. to seven p.m., and by late afternoon the desperation usually
starts to show through the cracks: the men tell the same joke for the third or fourth time; the women laugh just a little too loudly.

The afternoon after Santa’s death I found myself sitting opposite his small coterie. They were an odd group, the three of them who formed the central core. There was a grey-haired man,
about sixty, who always looked ill to me, despite his brick-red complexion; a size fourteen woman in her mid forties who wore size ten clothes; and a pretty blonde, no older than about twenty-five.
Maybe I’m being sexist or ageist or whatever, but I could only wonder why she was hanging around with such a bunch of losers. Christ, didn’t she know that if she played her cards right
she could have me?

OK, so I’m no oil painting. But despite a bit of a beer gut, I’m reasonably well-preserved for a man of my age and drinking habits. I’ve still got a fine head of hair, even if
it is grey. And I may be a bit grizzled and rough-edged, but I’ve been told I’m not without a certain cuddly quality.

Anyway, in my humble opinion, Santa – in reality Bud Schiller, a retired real estate agent from Kingston, Ontario – was a total asshole. Most people only needed to spend a couple of
minutes in his company before heading for the hills. But not these three. Oh, no. They laughed at all his jokes; they hung on his every word. Of course, Schiller bought most of the drinks, but I
thought his company was a hell of a price to pay for the occasional free beer.

‘So, who do you think did it, then, Jack?’

Al French had slipped onto the empty stool beside me. Al was a cross between a loner and a social butterfly: he seemed to know everyone, but like a butterfly he never lit in any one place for
long. He said he was a writer from Rochester, but I’ve never seen any of his books in the shops. If you ask him to be more specific, he just gets evasive.

Al tipped back his bottle and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He was a skinny little guy with a long nose, slicked back hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. Today he
was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts.

‘It was an accident,’ I said.

‘Bullshit. And you know it.’ Al put his bottle down and whispered in my ear. He sounded as if he’d had a few already. ‘When a jerk like Bud Schiller dies, there has to be
something more behind it than mere accident. Come on, buddy, you’re supposed to be the private eye.’