He slipped the reports into his briefcase and again decided to walk back to the hotel. It was that twilight hour between the evening rush-hour and going-out-on-the-town time. The city center was practically deserted; the shops had closed, workers had gone home, and only a few people lingered in the few cafés and restaurants still open in the arcades and pedestrian precincts off Vicar Lane and Briggate. The sun had at last won its day-long battle with cloud; it lay in proud gold pools on the dusty streets and pavements, where last night’s rain was a dim memory; it cast black shadows that crept slowly up the sides of buildings; it reflected harshly in shop windows and glittered on the specks of quartz embedded in stone surfaces.

Back at the hotel, he picked up his jacket, which he had handed over to be mended before leaving for The Vic. There was one message for him: “Please come to Room 408 as soon as you get back, where you will find out some useful information.” It wasn’t signed.

That was odd. Informers didn’t usually operate this way. They certainly didn’t book rooms in hotels to pass along their information.

“Who’s staying in room 408?” Banks asked, slipping his jacket on. After the obligatory refusal to give out such information on the part of the clerk, and the showing of a warrant card on the part of Banks, he discovered that the occupant of said room was a Mr. Wilson. Very odd indeed. It was a common enough name, but Banks couldn’t remember, offhand, and Mr. Wilson.

He was tempted to ignore the message and carry on with what he planned, but curiosity got the better of him, as it always did.

When the lift stopped at the fourth floor, he poked his head through the doors first to see if there was anyone in the corridor. It was empty. He followed the arrow to room 408, took a deep breath and knocked. He debated whether to stand aside, but decided it was only in American films that people shot holes through hotel doors. Still, he found himself edging away a little, so he couldn’t be seen through the peep-hole.

The door opened abruptly. Banks tensed, then let out his breath. Before him stood Dirty Dick Burgess.

“You again? What the hell?” Banks gasped. But before he could even enter the room Burgess had put on a leather jacket and taken him by the elbow.

“About bloody time, Banks,” he said. “I’m sick of being cooped up in here. There’s been developments. Come on, let’s go get a drink.”

Chapter 14

1

Despite Burgess’s protest that it would be full of commercial travellers and visiting rugby teams, Banks insisted on their drinking in the Holiday Inn’s idea of a traditional English pub, the Wig and Pen. He did this because his car was nearby and he still held hopes of getting back to Eastvale that evening. As it turned out, Burgess seemed to take a shine to the place.

He sat at the table opposite Banks with his pint of McEwan’s lager, lit a Tom Thumb and looked around the quiet pub. “Not bad,” he said, tapping his cigar on the rim of the ashtray. “Not bad at all. I never did like those places with beams across the ceiling and bedpans on the walls.”

“Bed warmers,” Banks corrected him.

“Whatever. Anyway, what do you think of those two over there as a couple of potential bed warmers? Do you think they fancy us?”

Banks looked over and saw two attractive women in their late twenties or early thirties who, judging by their clothes, had dropped by for a drink after working late at one of the many Wellington Street office buildings. There was no doubt about it, the one with the short black hair and the good legs did give Burgess the eye and whisper something in her friend’s ear.

“I think they do,” said Burgess.

“Didn’t you say something about developments?”

“What? Oh, yes.” Burgess looked away from the women and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “For a start, Fraud Squad think they’ve found definite evidence in Daniel Clegg’s books and records that Clegg and Rothwell were laundering money for Martin Churchill.”

“That hardly counts as a development,” Banks said. “We were already working on that assumption.”

“Ah, but now it’s more than an assumption, isn’t it? You’ve got to hand it to those Fraud Squad boys, boring little fuckers that they are, they’ve been burning the candle at both ends on this one.”

“Have you any idea why Churchill would use a couple of provincials like Rothwell and Clegg?”

“Good point,” said Burgess. “As it happens, yes, I do know. Daniel Clegg and Martin Churchill were at Cambridge together, reading law. Simple as that. The old boy network. I’d reckon the one knew the other was crooked right from the start.”

“Did they keep in touch over the years?”

“Obviously. Remember, Clegg’s a tax lawyer. He’s been using St. Corona as a tax shelter for his clients for years. It must have seemed a natural step to call on him when Churchill needed expert help. You can launder money from just about anywhere, you know. Baby Doc used a Swiss lawyer and did a lot of his business in Canada. You can take it out or bring it into Heathrow or Gatwick by the suitcase-load, using couriers, or you can run it through foreign exchange, wire services, whatever. Governments keep coming up with new restrictive measures, but it’s like plugging holes in a sieve. It’s easy if you know how, and a tax lawyer and a financial consultant with a strong background in accounting certainly knew how.”

“What made Clegg choose Rothwell as his partner?”

“How would I know? You can’t expect me to do your job for you, Banks, now can you? But they clearly knew one another somehow. Clegg must have known that Rothwell was exceptionally good with finances and none too concerned about their source. Takes one to know one, as they say.”

Burgess looked over at the two women, who had got another round of drinks, and smiled. The black-haired one crossed her long legs and smiled back shyly; the other put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

“My lucky night, I think,” Burgess said, clapping his hands and showering cigar ash over his stomach. He had a disconcerting habit of sitting still for ages then making a sudden, jerky movement. “I’ll say one thing for the north,” he went on, “you’ve got some damned accommodating women up here. Damned accommodating. Look, why don’t you get a couple more pints in, then I’ll tell you something else that might interest you? And mine’s lager, remember, not that pissy real ale stuff.”

Banks thought about it. Two pints. Yes, he would be fine for driving back to Eastvale, if he got the chance. “All right,” he said, and went to the bar.

“Okay,” said Burgess, after his first sip. “The two men, the white one and the darkie who were following you around?”

Banks lit a cigarette. “You know who they are?”

“I’ve got to admit, I wasn’t entirely truthful with you last time we met.”

“When have you ever been?”

“Unfair.”

“So you knew who they were last time we talked?”

“Suspected. Now we’ve got confirmation. They’re Mickey Lanois and Gregory Jackson, two of Churchill’s top enforcers. They came into Heathrow last Friday. The way it looks is that Churchill asked Clegg to get rid of Rothwell, and after he did it he took off with a lot of money, probably figuring that he might be next. Churchill heard about Clegg’s scarpering pretty quickly and sent his goons to do some damage control. You know what their favorite torture is, Banks?”

Banks shook his head. He didn’t want to know, but he knew Burgess would tell him anyway.

“They get a handful of those little glass tubes the doctors use to keep liquid in. What do you call them, vials, right? Really thin glass, anyway. And they put them in the victim’s mouth, lots of them. Then they tape the mouth shut securely and beat him a bit about the face. Or her. Churchill himself thought that up. He likes to watch. Think about it.”