Strange Affair (35 page)

“Yes?”

“I think he wanted to get involved in that sort of thing again. At least, it might be a direction worth looking in. I mean, Roy had been making a few noises, you know, sounding me out, asking about old contacts and such.”

“On Friday?”

“Yes. In the club.”

“And?”

“I told him I’d lost touch. Which is true. The world has changed, Mr. Banks, in case you haven’t noticed. And I warned him off.”

“How did he respond?”

Lambert clapped a hand on Banks’s shoulder as they stood near the door. “You know Roy,” he said. “Or maybe you don’t. Anyway, once he’s on the trail of something, he’s not easily deterred. He persisted, got a bit pissed off with me, as a matter of fact, thought I was holding out on him, depriving him of a business opportunity.”

“So you ended the evening on a sour note?”

“He’d have got over it.”

“If he hadn’t been killed?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you fall out with Julian Harwood, by the way?”

Lambert looked surprised. “You know about that?”

“Yes.”

“It was years ago. Storm in a teacup. Harwood insisted I’d cheated him out of some money in a land sale, that I knew the new motorway was going to run right by it.”

“And did you?”

Lambert did his best to look innocent and outraged but it came out like a poor parody. “Me? Of course not. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“Of course not,” Banks echoed. “Is there anything more you can tell me?”

“I’m afraid not. Except…”

“What?”

Lambert stood by the door and scratched his temple. “Don’t take this amiss,” he said. “Just a piece of friendly advice. Roy’s
dead. I can’t change that. I don’t know anything about it, and I certainly don’t know who did it, but don’t you think you should think twice, take heed of what you’re getting into, and perhaps be a bit more careful lest you disturb a nest of vipers?”

“Is that a warning, Mr. Lambert?”

“Take it as you will.” Lambert looked at his watch. “Now I’m afraid I really must head for the office. I’ve got business to take care of.”

Annie hardly had time to call at her cottage in Harkside and water the wilting potted plants before heading to Eastvale for the three o’clock team meeting. It was another beautiful Dales day, a little cooler than it had been, with one or two fluffy white clouds scudding across the pale blue sky, but she didn’t have time to pause and enjoy any of it. Sometimes she wondered what the point of living in the country was, given her job and the hours she put in.

They were all waiting in the boardroom: Gristhorpe, Hatchley, Winsome, Rickerd, Templeton and Stefan Nowak, Crime Scene Co-ordinator. The long table was so highly polished you could see your reflection in it, and a whiteboard hung on the wall at one end of the room surrounded by corkboards where Stefan had pinned the crime-scene photographs. They made quite a contrast to the paintings of the wool barons on the other walls.

After Annie had brought everyone up to speed on the Berger-Lennox Centre, Roy Banks, Carmen Petri and their possible connection with Jennifer Clewes’s murder, Gristhorpe handed the floor over to Stefan Nowak.

Stefan stood by the boards and the photographs and cleared his throat. Not for the first time Annie wondered what sort of
life Stefan led outside of work. He was one of the most charming and elegant men she had ever known, and his life was a complete mystery to her.

“First of all,” said Stefan, “we have fingerprints from DCI Banks’s door that don’t match the builders’, we have tire tracks from his drive and…” Here he paused dramatically and lifted up a plastic bag, “we also have a cigarette end found near the beck on DCI Banks’s property, fortunately before the rain came. From this we have been able to get the saliva necessary for DNA.”

“What about the tire tracks?” Annie asked.

“They’re Michelins, of a type consistent with tires often used on a Mondeo,” said Stefan. “I’ve sent the necessary information to Essex for comparison with what’s left of the Mondeo that crashed outside Basildon. I’m still awaiting results.”

“So,” Gristhorpe said, “you’ve got prints, tire tracks and DNA from DCI Banks’s cottage, and if and when we find a suspect, these will tie him to the murder of Jennifer Clewes and Roy Banks?”

“Well,” said Stefan, “they’ll tie him to DCI Banks’s cottage.”

“Exactly,” said Gristhorpe. “And no crime was committed there.”

“That’s not strictly true, sir,” said Annie. “Someone definitely broke in.”

Gristhorpe gave her a withering look and shook his head. “Not enough. Is there anything else?”

“We’ve got Jennifer Clewes’s mobile records from the network,” Winsome said. “Not that they tell us a great deal. As far as I can gather the calls are all to and from friends and family.”

“What about the last call?” Annie asked. “The one Kate Nesbit remembered on Friday evening.”

“Yes, I was coming to that,” said Winsome. “Jennifer received a phone call at 10:43 p.m. on Friday, the eleventh of June, duration three minutes. The problem is that it’s an ‘unknown’ number. I’ve got the mobile company working on it, but they’re not offering a lot of hope.”

“Thanks for trying,” said Annie.

Gristhorpe looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ve got ACC McLaughlin and the press breathing down my neck. I appreciate your progress so far, but it’s not enough. We need results, and we need them fast. Annie, you’d better get back down to London tomorrow and keep pushing the Berger-Lennox connection. The rest of you keep at it up here. Winsome, get back to the mobile company and see if they can come up with a number for us. Get them to cross-check with Jennifer’s outgoing calls. That’s it for now.”

When Gristhorpe left the room, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“He’s in a bit of a grumpy mood this morning, isn’t he?” said Stefan to Annie as they all filed out a few moments later.

“I think he’s had the chief constable as well as ACC McLaughlin on his case,” said Annie. “And it’s my guess that however enlightened he thinks he is, he still doesn’t like being given a bollocking by a woman.”

Stefan smiled. “Ouch,” he said.

“Ma’am, can I have a word?”

It was DC Templeton. “Of course, Kev,” said Annie, waving goodbye to Stefan. “Let’s grab a coffee in the canteen.”

Templeton pulled a face. “With all due respect, Ma’am…”

“I know,” said Annie. “It tastes like cat’s piss. You’re right. We’ll go to the Golden Grill.”

They threaded their way through the crowd of tourists on Market Street and were lucky to find a free table. The sole
waitress was rushed off her feet but she managed to bring them each a cup of filter coffee quickly enough. “What is it, Kev?” Annie asked.

“It’s this Roger Cropley business,” Templeton said. “I haven’t bothered you with it much so far because, well, you’ve been down south and you’ve had lots of other things on your plate. I mean, it might be a bit tangential, but I really think we’re on to something here.”

“What?”

“The Claire Potter murder.”

“I don’t know,” said Annie. “Seems like a bit of a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what I thought at first,” said Templeton, warming to the subject, “but if you really think about it, if Cropley has been preying on young women alone on the motorway on Friday nights, then the only coincidence is that he was at the Watford Gap services at the same time as Jennifer Clewes, and that’s exactly the kind of coincidence he’d always be hoping for. He trolls those places: Watford Gap, Leicester Forest, Newport Pagnell, Trowell. Claire Potter and Jennifer Clewes were exactly what he was looking for.”

“I see your point,” said Annie. “But I mean it’s a coincidence that this time he picked on a girl who was already singled out by someone else to die.”

“Okay, but strange things happen sometimes. It still doesn’t mean Cropley’s harmless.”

“You don’t need to tell
me
that, Kev,” said Annie.

“There was another woman, too: Paula Chandler. Someone drove her off the road late on a Friday night in February and tried to open her car door, only it was locked and she managed to get away.”

“Did she get a good look at him?”

“Just his hand.”

Annie thought for a moment. “It still doesn’t mean Cropley’s the killer.”

“Maybe there’s a way we can find out.”

“Go on.”

Templeton leaned forward, the excitement clear in his eyes. “I met with DS Browne from Derby,” he went on, “and she agrees it’s worth a shot. I’ve talked with Cropley and his wife again since then and I’m still convinced there’s something there. Anyway…” He went on to tell Annie about the dandruff.

“I must say,” Annie commented when he’d finished, “that’s very clever of you, Kev. I didn’t know they could get DNA from dandruff.”

“They can,” said Templeton. “I checked it out with Stefan and DS Browne confirmed it when she phoned to tell me she put a rush on it. They can also process DNA pretty quickly these days when they’ve a mind to.”

“Leaving aside the problem of its being inadmissible,” Annie went on, “what do you expect to happen next?”

“It doesn’t need to be admissible,” Templeton explained, as he had done to DS Browne. “We just need some concrete evidence that we’ve got the right guy, then we can pull out all the stops and nail him the right way. We get legitimate DNA samples. We interview him again. We get him to account for every minute of every Friday night he’s ever spent on the motorway. We get his co-workers and his employers to tell us what they know about him and his movements. We interview people at all the motorway garages and cafés again. All the late-night lorry drivers.
Someone
has to have seen
something
.”

Templeton was looking at her with such keenness that Annie felt it would be churlish to disappoint him, despite her misgivings. And if Derby CID was involved, too, at least he
couldn’t go too far off the rails. Templeton was beginning to show all the signs of becoming a bit like Banks, Annie thought, and two of them she didn’t need. But he had at least talked to her, told her about his thoughts, which was more than Banks did most of the time.

“Okay,” she said finally. “But I want you to work directly with Derby CID on this. If you talk to Cropley, I want this DS Browne or someone else from Derby with you. I don’t want you going off on your own with this, Kev. Understood?”

Templeton nodded, still looking like the dog who’d got the bone. “Yes, Ma’am. Don’t worry. It’ll be a solid case, by the book.”

Annie smiled. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said. “But when it comes to it, I do expect a case that CPS will be willing to take to court.”

“That’s a tall order.”

Annie laughed. The Crown Prosecution Service was notoriously reluctant to take on anything they didn’t feel gave them 100 per cent chance of getting a conviction. “Do your best,” she said. “Let’s get back to the office.”

They finished their coffees, paid and set off back across Market Street. Annie had no sooner got inside the station doorway than her mobile rang. She gestured for Templeton to go on ahead of her.

“Detective Inspector Cabbot?” a familiar voice asked.

“Yes, Dr. Lukas.”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Not on the telephone. Can we meet?”

Well, thought Annie, there went her evening at home relaxing in the tub with a good book. It had better be worth it. “I’m up north,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s twenty to four
now. Depending on the trains I should be able to get down there by about eight.”

“That will be fine.”

“At the house, then?”

“No.” Dr. Lukas named a French restaurant in Covent Garden. “I will wait for you there,” she said, and hung up.

After his talk with Gareth Lambert, Banks took the tube to Charing Cross and headed for the Albion Club. It didn’t open until late evening and the doors were locked. He tried knocking a few times, then he rattled them, but no one answered. A few passers-by gave him disapproving glances, as if he were an alcoholic desperate for a drink. In the end he gave the door a hard kick, then walked to Trafalgar Square and wandered among the hordes of tourists for a while, trying to rid himself of the sense of frustration and anxiety that had been building up in him ever since he had seen Roy’s body laid out on the shingle.