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“Did Graham have any problems you were aware of? Was he upset about anything?”
“No.”
“School?”
“We’re on holiday.”
“I know that, but I mean in general. It was a new school for him, wasn’t it? He’d only been there one year. Did he have any problems with the other boys?”
“No, not really. He had a fight with Mick Slack, but he’s just a bully. He picks fights with all the new kids.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen any strange men hanging around the area lately?”
“No.” Banks probably blushed as he lied. He certainly felt his cheeks burning.
“Nobody?”
“No.”
“Did Graham ever mention anyone bothering him?”
“No.”
“All right, then, son, that’s it for now. But if you can think of anything at all, you know where the police station is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m sorry about your budgie, really I am.”
“Thank you.”
They seemed all set to go then and got to their feet. Just before they left, they asked Roy and Banks’s parents a few general questions, and that was it. When they shut the door, everyone was quiet. There were still ten minutes of Coronation Street left, but nobody thought of switching on the television set again. Banks remembered turning to Joey’s empty cage and feeling the tears gather in his eyes.
A
They passed through tiny Mortsett, which didn’t even have a pub or a general store, and A
She got out and prepared to show her warrant card and ask the driver to get out of the way – there was a passing area about twenty yards farther along – when she noticed Armitage pull over and stop about half a mile beyond the village. She had a clear view of the open road, so she brought out the binoculars she kept in her glove compartment and watched him.
Armitage got out of the car with his briefcase, looked around and started walking over the grass toward a squat stone shepherd’s shelter about eighty yards off the road, up the daleside, and she didn’t think he was nervous because he was breaking the government foot-and-mouth regulations.
When he got there, he ducked inside the shelter, and when he came out he wasn’t carrying his briefcase. A
“Birds, is it?” a voice asked, disturbing A
“What?” She turned to face the deliveryman, a brash gelhaired youngster with bad teeth.
“The binoculars,” he said. “Bird-watching. Can’t understand it, myself. Boring. Now, when it comes to the other sort of birds-”
A
“All right, all right,” he said. “No need to get shirty. There’s no one home, anyway. Never is in this bloody godforsaken hole.”
He drove off and A
A
A
She put the briefcase back where it was and returned to her car. She couldn’t just sit there by the roadside waiting for something to happen, but she couldn’t very well leave the scene, either. In the end, she drove back to Mortsett and parked. There was no police station in the tiny hamlet, and she knew it would be no use trying to use her UHF hand radio behind so many hills, and at such a distance. Besides, it only had a range of a couple of miles. She was driving her own car, as she often did, and she hadn’t got around to having the more powerful VHF radio installed. It hardly seemed necessary, as she wasn’t a patrol officer and, more often than not, she simply used the car to drive to work and back, and perhaps to interview witnesses, as she had done that morning. Before she headed out on foot to find a good spot from which to watch the shelter without being seen, A
And wouldn’t you know it – the damn mobile didn’t work. Out of cell range. Bloody typical. She should have known. She was quite close to Gratly, where Banks lived, and her mobile didn’t work there, either.
There was an old red telephone box in the village, but the phone had been vandalized, the wires torn from the cash box. Damn! Unwilling to take her eyes off the shelter for too long, A
A
Chapter 5
Nick Lowe’s The Convincer ended and Banks slipped in David Gray’s White Ladder. As he approached the turn-off to Peterborough, he wondered what to do first. He had rung his parents to let them know he was coming, of course, so perhaps he should go straight there. On the other hand, he was closer to Police HQ, and the sooner he introduced himself to Detective Inspector Michelle Hart, the better. So he headed for the police station in its idyllic setting just off the Nene Parkway, between the nature reserve and the golf course.
In the reception area, he asked to speak to the detective in charge of the Graham Marshall investigation, introducing himself only as Alan Banks, a childhood friend. He didn’t want to appear to be pulling rank or even introduce himself as a fellow copper, at least not at first, not until he saw which way the wind was blowing. Besides, just out of curiosity, he wanted to know how they treated an ordinary member of the public who came forward with information. It would do no harm to play a bit of a game.
After he had been waiting about ten minutes, a young woman opened the locked door that led to the main part of the station and beckoned him inside. Conservatively dressed in a navy-blue suit, skirt below the knees, and a button-down white blouse, she was petite and slim, with shoulder-length blond hair parted in the middle and tucked behind her small, delicate ears. She had a jagged fringe that came almost down to her eyes, which were a startling green, a color Banks remembered seeing somewhere in the sea near Greece. Her mouth was slightly down-turned at the edges, which made her look a bit sad, and she had a small, straight nose. All in all, she was a very attractive woman, Banks thought, but he sensed a severity and a reserve in her – a definite “No Entry” sign – and there was no mistaking the lines that suffering had etched around her haunting and haunted eyes.