Aftermath

It wasn’t very busy at that time of day, between the lunch-hour and the after-work crowd. Indeed, the Old Ship wasn’t busy very often at all, as few tourists liked the look of it, and most locals knew better places to drink. The interior was dim and the air stale and acrid with more than a hundred years’ accumulated smoke and beer spills. Which made it all the more surprising that the barmaid was a pretty young girl with short, dyed red hair and an oval face, a smooth complexion, a bright smile and a cheerful disposition.

Banks leaned against the bar. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cheese-and-onion sandwich, is there?”

“Sorry,” she said. “We don’t serve food after two. Packet of chips – sorry, crisps – okay?”

“Better than nothing,” said Banks.

“What flavor?”

“Plain will do fine. And a pint of bitter shandy, too, please.”

As she was pouring the drink and Banks was dipping into a packet of rather soggy potato crisps, she kept glancing at him out of the corner of her eye and finally said, “Aren’t you the policeman who was here about that girl who disappeared a month or so ago?”

“Lea

“I thought so. I saw you here. You weren’t the policeman I talked to, but you were here. Have you found her yet?”

“It’s Sha

She smiled. “You remember my name and you never even talked to me. I’m impressed.”

Sha

Banks lit a cigarette and looked around. A couple of old men sat smoking pipes by the window, not speaking, not even looking at one another. They seemed as if they might have been there since the place first opened in the nineteenth century. The floor was worn stone and the tables scored and wobbly. A watercolor of a huge sailing ship hung crookedly on one wall, and on the opposite one, a series of framed charcoal sketches of seagoing scenes, quite good to Banks’s untrained eye.

“I wasn’t trying to be nosy,” Sha

Banks looked at her, saw the i

“So you haven’t found her, then? Lea

“No.”

“It’s not that I knew her or anything. I only saw her once. But, you know, when something like that happens, like you think you might be the last person to have seen someone, well…” She rested her hand on her chest. “It sort of sticks with you, if you know what I mean. I can’t get the picture out of my mind. Her sitting over there by the fireplace.”

Banks thought of Claire Toth, whipping herself over Kimberley Myers’s murder, and he knew that anyone remotely co

One of the old men came up to the bar and plunked his half-pint glass down. Sha

“When you say you can’t get Lea

“Not really,” said Sha

“I’m starting to believe that might not be the case,” said Banks, putting his fear into words for the first time. “In fact, I’m begi

“I don’t understand.”

“Anyway,” Banks went on. “I just thought I’d drop by, see if you remembered anything you forgot to mention before, that sort of thing. It’s been a while.” And that, he knew, meant that any trail Lea

“I don’t know how I can help,” said Sha

“Tell me,” said Banks, “you say they were sitting over there, right?” He pointed to the table by the empty tiled fireplace.

“Yes. Four of them. At that table.”

“Did they drink much?”

“No. I told the policewoman before. They only had a drink or two each. I didn’t think she was old enough but the landlord tells us not to bother too much, unless it’s really obvious.” She put her hand over her mouth. “Shoot, I probably shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

“Don’t worry about it. We know all about Mr. Parkinson’s practices. And don’t worry about what you told us before, Sha

It was hard to explain to a civilian, but Banks needed the feel of investigating Lea

“Did Lea

“She was a bit giggly, a bit loud, as if maybe she wasn’t used to the drink.”

“What was she drinking?”

“I can’t remember. Not beer. Maybe wine, or it could have been Pernod, something like that.”

“Did you get the impression that the four of them had paired off? Anything along those lines?”

Sha

“Mick Blair,” said Banks.

“I don’t know their names. Anyway, I got the impression he might have been a bit keen, and she was flirting a bit, maybe because of the drinks.”

“Was he bothering her at all?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that, or I’d have a made a point of saying so before. No, just the way I caught him looking at her once or twice. They seemed comfortable enough together, but as I say, I just thought maybe he fancied her and she was playing him along a bit, that’s all.”

“You didn’t mention this before.”

“It didn’t seem important. Besides, nobody asked me. Back then, everyone was more concerned that she’d been abducted by a serial killer.”

True enough, Banks thought, with a sigh. Lea