And it wasn’t just a fantasy. Had things turned out differently, he would have phoned Pamela Jeffreys again and would probably be having dinner or drinks with her right now, plucking up the courage to ask her up to his hotel room, Bell’s at the ready. Well, he would never know the outcome now; his virtue hadn’t even been put to the test. Hadn’t St. Augustine said something about that, too, or was that someone else?
He phoned the hospital, and after a bit of officious rank-pulling, actually got a doctor on the line. Yes, Ms. Jeffreys was stable but still in intensive care… no, she was still unconscious… there was no way of telling when or if she would come round… no idea yet if there was any permanent damage. He didn’t feel any better when he hung up.
It was just after nine-thirty. He knocked back the rest of the glass of Scotch, grabbed his sports jacket and went out. Maybe a walk would help, or the anonymous comfort of a crowded pub, not that he expected Leeds city center on a Tuesday evening to be the West End.
He walked along Wellington Street past the National Express coach station and the tall Royal Mail Building to City Square, which was deserted except for the silent nymphs, who stood bearing their torches around the central statue of the Black Prince on his horse. From somewhere along Boar Lane, a drunk shouted in the night; a bottle smashed and a woman laughed loudly.
Banks crossed City Square. He walked fast, trying to burn off some of his rage, and soon found himself in the empty Bond Street Centre with only his reflection in the shop windows he passed.
His memories of Leeds city center were vague, but he was sure that somewhere among the jungle of refurbished Victorian arcades and modern shopping centers there were a number of pubs down the dingy back alleys that riddled the heart of the old city center.
And he was right.
The first one he found was an old brass, mirrors and dark wood Tetley’s house with a fair-sized crowd and a jukebox at tolerable volume. He ordered a pint and stood sideways at the bar, just watching people chat and laugh. It was mostly a young crowd. Only kids seemed to venture into the city centers at night these days. Perhaps that was why their parents and grandparents stayed away. The pubs in Armley and Bramley, in Headingley and Kirkstall, would be full of locals of all age groups mixed together.
As he leaned against the bar, drinking and smoking, nobody paid him any attention. Banks had always been pleased that he didn’t stand out as an obvious policeman. There’d be no mistaking Hatchley or Ken Blackstone no matter how “off duty” they were, but Banks could fit in almost anywhere without attracting too much attention. Over the years, he had found it a useful quality. It wasn’t only that he didn’t look like a copper, whatever that meant, but for some reason his presence didn’t set off the usual warning bells. At the same time, he didn’t like to sit or stand with his back to the door, and he didn’t miss much.
He finished his pint quickly and ordered another one, lighting up again. He was smoking too much, he realized, and he would feel it in the morning. But that was the morning. In the meantime, it gave him something to do with his hands, which, left to their own devices, curled and hardened into fists.
His second pint went down easily, too. The ebb and flow of conversation washed over him. Loudest was a group of two middle-aged couples sitting behind the engraved smoked glass and dark wood at the side of the door. The only people over twenty-five, apart from Banks and the bar staff, they had all had a bit too much to drink. The men were on pints of bitter, and the women on oddly colored concoctions with umbrellas sticking out of them and bits of fruit floating around. By the sound of things they were celebrating the engagement of one couple’s daughter, who wasn’t present, and this brought forth all the old, blue jokes Banks had ever heard in his life.
“There’s these three women,” said one of the men. “The prostitute, the nymphomaniac and the wife. After sex, the prostitute says, ‘That’s it, then,’ all businesslike. The nympho says, ‘That’s it?’ And the wife says, ‘Beige. I think the ceiling should be beige.’”
They howled with laughter. One of the women, a rather blowsy peroxide blonde, like a late-period Diana Dors, with too much make-up and unfocused eyes, looked over and winked at Banks. He winked back and she nudged her friend. They both started to laugh. A man Banks assumed to be her husband popped his head around the divide and said, “Tha’s welcome to her, lad, but I’ll warn thee, she’ll have thee worn out in a week. Bloody insatiable, she is.” She hit him playfully and they all laughed so much they had tears in their eyes. Banks laughed with them, then turned away. The barmaid raised her eyebrows and drew a finger across her throat. Banks drank up and moved on.
Outside, he noticed that the evening had turned a little cooler and dark clouds were fast covering the stars. There was an electric edge to the air that presaged a storm. As if he didn’t feel tense and wound up enough already without the bloody weather conspiring against him, too.
The next pub, down another alley off Briggate, was busier. Groups of young people stood about outside leaning against the wall or sitting on the wooden benches. The place danced with long shadows like something out of an old Orson Welles film. Banks took his pint out into the narrow, whitewashed alley and rested it on a ledge at elbow level, like a bar.
He thought of his last meeting with Pamela Jeffreys. She had run off in tears and he had stood there like an idiot in the park watching his ice-cream melt. He had wanted to apologize for treating her feelings so shoddily, but at the same time another part of him, the professional side, knew he had had to ask, and knew an apology would never be completely genuine. Still, he was only human; susceptible to beauty, he found her attractive, and he liked her warm, open personality, her enthusiasm for life and her sense of humor. Her connection with music also excited him. How much of that would she have left when she came out of hospital? If she came out.
Now, slurping his ale in a back alley in Leeds, he considered again what Blackstone had suggested about her involvement in the affair, but he didn’t think Pamela Jeffreys was that good an actress. She had liked Calvert; they had had simple fun together, with no demands, no strings attached, no deep commitment. And what was wrong with that? She may have felt hurt when he found someone else – after all, nobody likes rejection – but she had liked him enough to swallow her pride and remain friends. She was young; she had energy enough to deal with a few hard knocks. If she had been jealous enough for murder, she would have killed Robert Calvert, probably in his Leeds flat, and if she had been involved in the laundering operation with Rothwell and Clegg, she wouldn’t have phoned the Eastvale station and told them about Calvert.
It was close to eleven; most of the people had gone home. Banks ordered one more for the road, as he would be walking beside it, not driving on it. He was glad he had taken a little time out. The drink had helped douse his anger, or at least dampen it for a while. He was also rational enough to know that tomorrow he would be the professional again and nobody would ever know about his complex, knotted feelings of lust and guilt for Pamela Jeffreys.
He drained his glass, put his cigarettes back in his jacket pocket and set off down the alley. It was long and narrow, rough whitewashed stone on both sides, and lit only by a single high bulb behind wire mesh. When he was a couple of yards from the end, two men walked in from the street and blocked the exit. One of them asked Banks for a light.
Contrary to what one sees on television, detectives rarely find themselves in situations where immediate physical violence is threatened. Banks couldn’t remember the last time he had been in a fight, but he didn’t stop to try to remember. A number of thoughts flashed through his mind at once, but so quickly that an observer would not have seen him hesitate for a second.