Author: Peter Robinson
Category: Other
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Banks had managed to get a decent picture of the victim’s face in profile with his mobile, and he showed it to her. ‘Do you recognise him at all?’ he asked.
Mrs Grunwell studied the image for a long time then shook her head. ‘So very young. No, I don’t recognise him.’
‘Have you seen anyone like him around the estate lately?’
‘What? You mean a darkie?’
Banks swallowed. ‘Well . . . I . . . yes, I suppose. A Middle Eastern youth, at any rate.’
‘George always called them darkies. Nothing against them, like, so long as they kept themselves to themselves.’ She paused. ‘But we don’t get them around here. Hardly ever. I mean, I think I would have noticed him.’
That was true enough. There was a white belt between industrial West Yorkshire and Teesside. Even the chefs and waiters from the local Indian and Thai restaurants commuted to Eastvale from Leeds and Bradford, or Darlington and Middlesbrough after their shifts. The only truly multicultural area of Eastvale was around the college campus, and even that was probably below the national average. There had never been anything to attract immigrants to rural areas like Swainsdale, not even in the post-war years when the first arrivals from Pakistan and the West Indies started to come into the country, mostly in the north, to work in the cotton and woollen mills of the Pennine valleys between Leeds and Manchester. There were no factories in the Dales, no real service industries to speak of, and farm labour wasn’t very open to outsiders. Nor were rural communities. Things were changing these days, of course, but not a great deal, and not very quickly.
‘Do you get out and about much?’ Banks asked. ‘I mean, do you think if he had been local you might have seen him anywhere around the estate, or in town?’
‘Don’t think that just because I’m eighty-five I can’t do my own shopping or enjoy a walk down by the river, young man. I’ll have you know I make a point of going out every morning for my newspaper, and as I don’t drive, I don’t go the supermarket like everyone else. I use the local shops as and when I need them. We have a perfectly good butcher down the road, and a fine greengrocer.’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest that you’re housebound, Mrs Grunwell,’ said Banks. ‘I just wanted some idea of how well you know the area. Whether you would have noticed if someone like the victim had been hanging around.’
‘I’m sure there are plenty of people on the estate I never see. Some don’t come out until after dark. But I do get out and about. I wouldn’t say I notice any more or less than some of the younger people in the neighbourhood.’
‘I can’t imagine this, but I have to ask,’ said Banks. ‘Do you know of anyone who might want to do you harm? Anyone who bears you a grudge, who might have wanted to play such a terrible trick on you? Someone who wanted to scare you, or might even have thought it was some kind of sick joke?’
‘Good Lord, no.’ Mrs Grunwell clutched her handkerchief to her chest. ‘I never even thought of that. No. I’m quite sure there’s no one like that.’
‘Do you get along well with your neighbours?’
‘Yes, for the most part. They’re very nice. Some of them help me out with little things, now and then. You know, carry my shopping if they see me struggling. Mr Dunne at number fourteen even takes me to the supermarket on occasion. I don’t like it, but it would be impolite to say no, wouldn’t it?’
‘Did you hear anything during the night? A car, or anyone messing about with the bins?’
‘We get a few cars going by the end, Malden Road, like, at all hours, so it’s nothing unusual. But Sunday’s usually very quiet. Come to think of it, I do believe I heard a car quite late last night. And before that it sounded as if someone kicked the bin. Kids do that sometimes, and I thought it was either that or next door’s cat, but . . . I don’t know.’
‘This sound – might it have been the bin lid closing?’
‘It might have been.’
‘And you heard a car stop before this?’
‘No. I heard a car engine turning over. That was after I’d heard the bin sound. Then it made a terrible noise, like when the gears crunch. I’m just assuming it had stopped first, or why would it have made that awful crunching sound starting up? And before you ask, I was quite wide awake. I like to read in bed, and usually I’m asleep after a chapter or so, depending on the book. Last night I was reading Barbara Cartland. I do so like Barbara Cartland. She usually sends me off to sleep in no time.’
‘But not last night?’
‘No. For some reason, my eyes just wouldn’t close. Sleep refused to come. It happens sometimes when you’re my age. Old folks don’t need as much sleep, they say. Which is just as well, as we can’t seem to get it.’
‘Can you tell me anything else about this car? Did you hear anyone speak, say anything? Did you hear the car door or boot slam?’
‘No. I don’t remember anything like that. I was feeling anxious, all tensed up, for some reason. Don’t ask me why. I don’t believe in premonitions or anything silly like that. There’s no reason why I should, except it happens sometimes. If I can’t get to sleep I start to feel apprehensive.’
‘I know the feeling,’ said Banks. ‘What time was this?’
‘I can’t say exactly, but it wouldn’t have been that long after I went to bed. Around eleven o’clock, perhaps? Maybe half past at the latest.’
Between eleven and half past. That fit the time span Dr Burns had already indicated, Banks thought. ‘And you thought you heard a car engine turning over, then start up noisily, after someone had kicked or opened and closed your bin?’
‘Yes.’ Mrs Grunwell was twisting the handkerchief between her gnarled fingers. ‘How can someone do something like that, Mr Banks? Kill a poor, defenceless young man and put his body in a rubbish bin. I’m frightened. What if they come back? What if it’s a drug gang? What if they think I might have seen something?’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Mrs Grunwell. Half the street might have seen or heard something. The gears screeching or the noise from the bin. They can’t come back and eliminate everyone.’ He realised before he finished that he never should have opened his mouth.
Mrs Grunwell put her hand to her chest. ‘Eliminate? Do you think it could come to that?’
‘Of course not. And there’s no evidence of gang involvement. I can understand why you might be frightened, but really there’s nothing to worry about. Perhaps it would make you feel more at ease if there’s someone you can call. Your children, perhaps?’
‘They flew the coop years ago. One lives in Inverness and the other in Toronto. Couldn’t get far enough away. Besides, they’re all grown up with families and responsibilities of their own. I’m a great-grandmother, you know. But there’s Eunice. Eunice Kelly. She’s my best friend. She used to live right next door but now she’s in sheltered housing out Saltburn way, by the sea.’
‘Do you think she would come and stay with you if you explained the situation? Would it make you feel better to have a friend nearby?’
‘Oh, yes. I think so. But I’d rather go and stay with her until you catch whoever did this. She’s not got a lot of room, but I’m sure she would clear a little corner for me. I don’t need much. And a few days at the seaside would do my nerves the world of good.’
Banks nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We can handle that. Will you ring her and make the arrangements, and I’ll make sure we get a car to drive you to Saltburn. Until then, there’ll be a police officer posted by your door.’
‘Really? You can do that?’
‘Of course I can,’ said Banks. Edith Grunwell didn’t need to know that they didn’t have a budget yet. Hadn’t even got the green light for a full investigation. But they would, Banks felt certain. There was no doubt that it was murder, and a nasty one at that. And the victim was so young, not to mention Middle Eastern. Besides, if Area Commander Gervaise didn’t approve the budget, then he would bloody-well drive Edith Grunwell to Saltburn himself.
Trevor. Zelda
realised she had never known Hawkins’s first name until now. ‘Dead?’ she repeated. ‘I can’t believe it. How? What happened?’
Danvers arranged a row of coloured paperclips and rubber bands on Hawkins’s blotter. The gesture annoyed Zelda, perhaps as much for its prissiness as for its presumption. To her, it was still Hawkins’s desk. His paperclips. His rubber bands.
‘That’s a matter for the coroner to decide,’ Danvers said. ‘What we’re interested in is any information his staff feel might relate to his death.’
‘Are you saying he was murdered?’
‘Why would you assume that?’ Deborah Fletcher butted in from the sidelines.
‘Because you said there were suspicious circumstances.’
Deborah shrugged. ‘That could mean anything.’
Zelda could see her co-workers, pale and worried, at the far end of the office. It had never been a joyous place to work, and she hadn’t really felt that she had got to know any of the others at all well. She hadn’t been fully accepted by them, had always been regarded as some kind of freak, an outsider. But now Zelda felt the beginnings of a strange bond with the people behind the glass. She turned to face Deborah Fletcher. ‘Perhaps my assumption has something to do with the way you’re questioning me,’ she said.
‘Been questioned in a murder investigation before, have you?’ Danvers asked.
Zelda froze. The department knew quite a lot about her and her past, naturally, but she was sure they didn’t know everything. Not about Darius, surely. ‘That’s absurd,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think it was an unreasonable question.’
‘Well, seeing as you ask,’ Danvers went on, ‘no, we don’t think Mr Hawkins was murdered. We don’t think anything yet. But I’m sure you understand that, given his position, given the work you all do here, questions have to be asked. So I’ll repeat my question: do you know anything that might relate to his death?’
‘How would I know anything about his death? I’ve only just heard about it from you and, quite frankly, I’m a bit upset.’
‘I’m sorry we were so abrupt.’ Danvers gave Deborah a sharp glance. ‘It’s been a long day already, and not even noon. Is there anything at all you can tell us? Did you never socialise as a group? It would be perfectly natural.’
‘No. At least, I never did. There was a sort of department mixer at his house a while ago, but that’s all.’ Zelda gestured towards the partition. ‘I can’t speak for them because I am only part-time. Very part-time. I only work here for two or three days each month, usually.’
Danvers raised a bushy grey eyebrow. ‘Yes, that’s clear from your file. A civilian employee. And the rest of your time?’
‘Is really nobody’s business but mine.’
‘Ms Melnic,’ said Danvers, ‘believe me, in these matters, everything I want to be my business is my business.’
‘In what matters?’
‘I think it would be best if you just answered our questions. We already know, for example, that you’re an artist, going by the name of “Zelda”, and that you live in North Yorkshire with another artist called Raymond Cabbot, who is more than forty years your senior. You say you were abducted some years ago and forced into the sex trade. We know you met Mr Cabbot in London three years ago, then lived with him in an artists’ colony in St Ives for some time before moving north about a year ago.’ Danvers smirked and tapped the folder. ‘See. It’s all in there. At my fingertips.’
How little you really know, thought Zelda. Even so, she felt a surge of anger at the way Danvers laid out his facts as if they were accusations, or evidence of moral lapses on her part, at the very least. ‘You say you were abducted.’ An artist ‘going by the name of Zelda’. Like the artist previously known as Prince, she thought. ‘More than forty years your senior.’ She never thought of Raymond in that way. He was Raymond – bright, solid, brilliant, bubbling over with enthusiasm for life. Raymond. She said nothing. She was certainly not going to fill Danvers in on the details missing from his files. She folded her arms. ‘I don’t see what any of this has to do with you,’ she said.
‘Why are you so hostile?’ Deborah asked.
‘Hostile? How would you feel if you arrived at work to find strangers in your boss’s office who tell you he’s dead and start interrogating you about your past?’
‘I’d feel I was only doing my duty by answering their questions.’
Zelda paused, then said, ‘Well, I suppose that is one difference between you and me.’
‘Nelia Melnic,’ Danvers said. Deliberately pronouncing the final ‘ic’ as ‘itch’ again. ‘You’re not British, are you? That’s not a British name, is it? And, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I detect a slight accent.’
‘I’m a French citizen. I have a French passport.’
Danvers frowned and turned to his folder again. ‘Ah, yes, for “services to the French government”.’
Zelda smiled. ‘You could call it that.’
‘What else? How did you really get French citizenship? They don’t give it out with the garlic, you know.’
‘The French value their whores, Mr Danvers. Didn’t you know that? They offered me the Légion d’honneur, too, but I turned it down. I thought that would be going a bit too far.’
Danvers banged his fist on the desk. ‘Don’t be flippant with me, Ms Melnic. This is a serious business and you’re wasting my time.’
‘Then don’t ask me stupid questions. I applied. They granted it. It did no harm that I had done the police a few favours, that’s all.’
‘What kind of—’
‘Not that kind of favour. I helped them take down some very dangerous men. Same as I try to do here.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t have some dirt on someone?’
Zelda smiled. ‘You’d be surprised how many people I have dirt on, Mr Danvers. That just means that a lot of people are dirty.’
‘You’re not answering my questions.’
‘It’s the best answer you’ll get from me.’
Zelda had to keep reminding herself that, however much they knew, they didn’t know everything. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell them any more than she had to. She wasn’t even going to tell them about Hawkins meeting Keane. She said nothing.
‘Before France,’ Danvers said, calming down. ‘Is that an Eastern European accent I detect? Romanian, is it?’
Zelda sighed. ‘I was born in Moldova, Mr Danvers, as you can no doubt see for yourself from my file, in a town called Duba˘sari, in Transnistria, on the river Dniester, not far from the Ukraine border. It’s not a part of the world many people know well. And the “c” in Melnic is hard, more of a “k” than a “ch”. It’s a common enough surname in that part of the world.’ Zelda paused, tired of the pointless sparring. ‘If you think I know anything, and you want to find out what it is, why don’t you tell me what happened and then ask me what I think about it?’
‘We don’t think you know anything, Ms Melnic. But if it will help to improve your attitude and general level of cooperation, I can tell you that Mr Hawkins died in a fire at his home on Saturday night.’
‘A fire?’
‘Yes. According to all the evidence, it appears to have been a chip-pan fire.’
Zelda shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. What is a chip-pan fire?’
‘It’s just a general term. A chip-pan fire is when someone puts a pan full of oil on the burner to heat up and falls asleep, usually because he’s the worse for drink. It catches fire, and Bob’s your uncle.’
Zelda had read enough and been around English people enough to consider herself fairly proficient in the quirks and oddities of their language – including ‘Bob’s your uncle’ – but she had never heard the term ‘chip-pan fire’. Who on earth would want to make chips when they got drunk? Were fish and chips so important to them? It was yet another English eccentricity she would simply have to accept.
But Hawkins? She hadn’t known him well, but one passion of his that was hard to mi
ss was his love of gourmet food and fine wine. She had seen the foodie magazines on his desk from time to time, even heard him discussing reservations at well-reviewed new restaurants over the phone. It would hardly be the epitome of snobbishness to assume that Hawkins had probably never eaten fish and chips in his life, let alone that he had owned a chip pan and cooked them up for himself at home. As for his being drunk, as far as she knew, Hawkins wasn’t much of a drinker. Of course, she realised that some drinkers can hide their addiction well, just as a chip-pan fire may not necessarily require the making of chips. She supposed that Hawkins might have had a glass of wine too many and heated up a pan of oil to make tempura, samosas or some such exotic deep-fried treat. It merely seemed unlikely. ‘Mrs Hawkins?’ she asked.
‘Away at her sister’s in Bath for the weekend.’
‘It must be terrible for her,’ Zelda said.
Danvers inclined his head slightly. ‘Naturally.’
‘Where were you on Saturday night?’ Deborah asked.
‘As a matter of fact, I was in Croatia. Staying with an old friend. On Saturday night we went down into the village for dinner then out on the town dancing.’
‘Dancing?’
‘Why not?’
Deborah shook her head. She looked as if she had never danced in her life. ‘No reason. And your friend’s name and address?’
‘I would rather not say.’
‘Oh. Why is that?’
Zelda turned to address her remarks to Danvers. ‘Her work is secretive and dangerous. The fewer people who know her identity and location the better.’
‘Surely you can’t think . . .? Oh, well, never mind,’ said Danvers. ‘It’s not essential. If you could perhaps produce your flight details and boarding passes, that should suffice for the moment. You understand this is simply for the purposes of elimination?’