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Wednesday morning dawned every bit as dismal as Tuesday. It was still dark when Banks drove into Eastvale, sipping hot black coffee from a specially designed carrying mug on the way. The other CID officers were already in the office when he got there, and DS Hatchley, in particular, looked down-hearted that he had missed the opportunity of a day trip to Leicestershire. Or perhaps he was jealous that Banks had A
“You’ll be driving, I suppose?” A
That was another thing Banks appreciated about A
Banks slipped a tape of Mozart wind quintets in the Cavalier’s sound system as he turned out of the car park. “Mmm, that’s nice,” said A
“How are you liking it at Eastvale?” Banks asked as they joined the stream of traffic on the A1.
“Hard to say yet. I’ve hardly got my feet under the desk.”
“What about the traveling?”
“Takes me about three-quarters of an hour each way. That’s not bad.” She glanced sideways at him. “It’s about the same for you, as I remember.”
“True. Have you thought of selling the Harkside house?”
“I’ve thought of it, but I don’t think I will. Not just yet. Wait and see what happens.”
Banks remembered A
He negotiated his way from the A1 to the M1. Lorries churned up oily rain that coated his windscreen before the wipers could get through it; there were more long delays at roadwork signs where nobody was working; a maniac in a red BMW flashed his lights about a foot from Banks’s rear end and then, when Banks changed lanes to accommodate him, zoomed off at well over a ton.
“What did you find out about Charlie?” he asked A
A
“Tell me anyway.”
“He was born Charles Douglas Courage in February 1946-”
“You don’t have to go that far back.”
“I find it helps. It makes him one of the generation born immediately after the war, when the men came home randy and ready to get on with their lives. He’d have been ten in 1956, too young for Elvis, perhaps, but twenty in 1966, and probably just raring for all the sex, drugs and rock and roll you lot enjoyed in your youth. Maybe that was where he got his start in crime.”
Banks risked a glance away from the road at her. She still had her eyes closed, but there was a little smile on her face. “Charlie wasn’t into dealing drugs,” he said.
“Maybe it was the rock and roll, then. He was first arrested for distribution of stolen goods in August 1968 – to wit, long-playing records. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, to be exact, stolen directly from a factory just outside Manchester.”
“A music lover, our Charlie,” he said. “Carry on.”
“After that comes a string of minor offenses – shoplifting, theft of a car stereo – then, in 1988, he was arrested for theft of livestock. To be exact, seventeen sheep from a farm out Relton way. Did eighteen months.”
“Conclusion?”
“He’s a thief. He’ll steal anything, even if it walks on four legs.”
“And since then?”
“He appears to have gone straight. Helped Eastvale police out on a number of occasions, mostly minor stuff he found out about through his old contacts.”
“Got a list?”
“DC Templeton’s working on it.”
“Okay,” said Banks. “What next?”
“A number of odd jobs, most recently working as a night watchman at the Daleview Business Park. Been there since September.”
“Hmm. They must be a trusting lot at Daleview,” said Banks. “I think one of us might pay them a visit tomorrow. Anything else?”
“That’s about it. Single. Never married. Mother and father deceased. No brothers or sisters. Fu
“What is?”
A
“We don’t know where he was murdered yet.”
“An inspired guess. You don’t shoot someone in the chest with a shotgun and then drive him around bleeding in a car for three hours, do you?”
“Not without making a mess, you don’t. You know, it strikes me that Charlie might have been taken on the long ride.”
“The long ride?”
Banks glanced at her. She looked puzzled. “Never heard of the long ride?”
A
“Just a minute…” A slow-moving local delivery van in front of them was sending up so much spray that the windscreen wipers couldn’t keep up with it. Carefully, Banks changed lanes and overtook it. “The long ride,” he said, once he could see again. “Let’s say you’ve upset someone nasty – you’ve had your fingers in the till, or you’ve been telling tales out of school – and he’s decided he has to do away with you, right?”
“Okay.”
“He’s got a number of options, all with their own pros and cons, and this is one of them. What he does – or rather, what his hired hands do – is they pick you up and take you for a ride. A long ride. It’s got two main functions. The first is that it confuses the local police by taking the crime away from the patch that gave rise to it. Follow?”
“And the second? Let me guess.”
“Go on.”
“To scare the shit out of him.”
“Right. Let’s say you’re driven from Eastvale to Market Harborough. You know exactly what’s going to happen at the end of the journey. They make sure you have no doubt about that whatsoever, that there’s going to be no reprieve, no commuting of the death sentence, so you’ve got three hours or thereabouts to contemplate your life and its imminent and inevitable end. An end you can also expect to be painful and brutal.”
“Cruel bastards.”
“It’s a cruel world,” said Banks. “Anyway, from their perspective, it acts as a deterrent to other would-be thieves or snitches. And, remember, it’s not as if we’re dealing with lily-whites here. The victim is usually a small-time villain who’s done something to upset a more powerful villain.”