Blood At The Root

Susan looked at her watch. Just after five.

First, she drove the short distance to Banks’s house. As she drove, she chewed on her lip wondering if she was doing the right thing. She wished Superintendent Gristhorpe were here to advise her, but he’d gone off to teach a two-week course at Bramshill that morning. She didn’t even know what she was going to say to Banks. After all, he was her senior officer. What could she, a mere DC, do to help?

But there were things she wanted to know. She had worked with Banks for several years now and had come to know his moods pretty well. She had seen him angry, sad, hurt and frustrated, but she had never seen him like this. Nor would she ever have thought him the kind of person to do something as stupid and impulsive as punching Jimmy Riddle.

Call it woman’s intuition, a term she had a lot more respect for than she would ever care to admit in front of a roomful of male colleagues, but she felt something was seriously wrong. And it wasn’t only to do with Riddle. All she could think of was that something had happened in Amsterdam. But what?

She walked up the front path to Banks’s semi. Standing on the doorstep, she took a deep breath, counted to three, and rang the bell.

Nothing happened.

She rang again.

Still nothing.

She waited a few minutes more, tried knocking and ringing the bell. Still nothing. Where the hell was he? Looking around, she couldn’t see his car.

She dashed down the path and jumped back in her Golf. She was starting to feel angry now, not a good emotional state for driving, but at least anger would sustain her all the way and help her do what she had to. She headed out of town through the darkening countryside at a dangerous speed, crossed over the A1 and headed southeast, then hurtled through the dark, through villages where families were just settling down to tea and an evening with the telly.

Soon she was on the outskirts of Northallerton, pulling up outside Gavin’s modest terrace house.

Gavin answered on the first ring and smiled when he saw Susan. “Come in,” he said, standing aside. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”

Susan walked into the hall and Gavin leaned forward to plant a kiss on her cheek. She jerked back and slapped him hard across the face. Gavin staggered back a step or two. “You bastard,” Susan said. “You bastard. How could you do it?”

Gavin looked surprised. He held his hand to the reddening weal on his cheek. “Do what? What the hell did you do that for?”

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t. Look, take your coat off and come through. Then you can tell me what you’re on about.”

Susan followed him into the living room but she didn’t take her coat off. “I won’t be stopping,” she said. “I’ll just say what I have to say and go.”

Gavin nodded. He leaned against the wall with his arms folded. He was wearing tartan slippers, Susan noticed, and looked ridiculous. Somehow, that helped.

“All right,” he said. “I’m listening. And it’d better be good after what you just did to me.”

“Oh, it’s good all right,” Susan said. “It took me a while. I don’t know. Maybe I’m thick, maybe I’m a fool, but I worked it out in the end.”

“Well, you are supposed to be a detective, after all. But look, I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Will you back up a little and explain?”

Susan shook her head. “You’re so damn smooth, aren’t you, Gavin? You used me. That’s what I mean.”

“How did I use you? I thought you enjoyed-”

“I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about information. All the time we were going out together, all the things I told you in private, all the station gossip. You passed it all on to Jimmy Riddle, didn’t you? Even what I told you in bed on Saturday.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But he looked away from her eyes, down at his slippers. Susan had seen that guilty gesture in enough criminals to know it meant Gavin was lying. “Yes, you bloody well do,” she went on. “How else could Riddle have known everything he did? I should have twigged much earlier, then maybe none of this would have happened.”

“What?”

“Riddle suspended Banks this afternoon. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

Gavin shrugged. “Oh, that. Well, it’s the chief constable’s pre-”

“Don’t give me that crap. You got me to talk about Banks in private. Shop talk. It was me who told you he liked to call at the Classical Record Shop whenever he had to go to Leeds. When Riddle mentioned that to me a few days ago, I didn’t even think at the time about where he might have got it from. It was me who told you about Pamela Jeffreys, too, the violist involved in that case a couple of years ago, the one he felt guilty about. And on Saturday night, in bed, I told you Banks was in Amsterdam. My fault for being such a fool. Blame it on the wine. But you… you… You’re beneath contempt.”

“Okay,” said Gavin, gazing at her coolly. “So the chief constable wanted to be informed about what was going on at Eastvale. So what? He’s like that. Unlike his predecessor, he likes to be in the know. Hands on. It’s easy for you. You don’t have to work close to him, day in, day out, do you?” He pointed his thumb at his chest. “I do. And we all have our careers to consider, don’t we? What’s so wrong with that?”

Susan could hardly believe what she was hearing, even though it was exactly what she had expected. “So you admit it? Just like that? You used me to spy on my colleagues?”

“Well, seeing as you have the evidence, there’s not a lot else I can say, is there? I can hardly deny it. Yes. Mea culpa.”

“I don’t understand, Gavin. How could you do that?”

Gavin shrugged. “I never thought it would come to anything like this,” he said. “For crying out loud, it was only little tidbits, nothing important. Like I said, Riddle just wanted to be kept informed. But that wasn’t why I asked you out in the first place. That only came later. When he found out I was going out with you. And believe me, I didn’t tell him. He’s got quite a network, has Riddle.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really think it would do any harm.”

“Did he want to be kept informed about Eastvale in general, or DCI Banks in particular?”

Gavin shifted from foot to foot. “Well, he did ask about Banks in particular. He never really approved of Banks, you know. Thought he was a bit of a maverick, if truth be told.”

“I know that,” said Susan. “He never liked him. Right from the start. I remember the Deborah Harrison case, when Banks upset some of Riddle’s important friends. He was just looking for something to use against him. And you used me to get it for him. That’s what I can’t forgive.”

“Like I said, I didn’t really think I was doing anything-”

“Oh, stuff it, Gavin. I’m not interested in your excuses. You used me to scupper Banks’s career, and that’s all I care about.”

“If that’s how you want to see it.”

“Is there any other way?”

“I take it things are over between us, then?”

Susan could only look at him and shake her head. Then she turned to leave.

“What is it, Susan?” Gavin called after her. “Fancy him yourself, do you? You should listen to the way you talk about him. Like a lovesick teenager. Believe me, it wasn’t very difficult to get you talking about him. The hardest thing was getting you to stop. Even in bed.”

Susan slammed the door behind her and got back in her car. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn the key in the ignition. All she could do was sit there, hands gripping the steering wheel, shaking. She took deep breaths.

And then Susan did something she hardly ever did, something she always hated herself for when it happened. She started to cry. Bloody great convulsive sobs. Because, fuck it, she said to herself, Gavin was right. She had never admitted it, but she had known it for ages. It was Banks she cared about; it was Banks she fancied. And, dammit, he was a married man, he was her senior officer, and he wouldn’t look at her that way in a month of Sundays. She was just another stupid girl in love with her boss and there was no way she could stay in Eastvale now, not after this.