Weary, cold and wet, Richmond mumbled, "Yes, sir," and settled down to comfort himself with thoughts of the beautiful Andrea Rigby not more than about seven or eight feet away from him through the wall. Taking out his notebook, he thought he might as well draft the outline of his report, and he began to look over his small, neat handwriting to see how it all added up.

Chapter FIVE

I

Wednesday was a difficult morning for Banks. His desk was littered with reports, and he couldn't get Jenny Fuller out of his mind. There was nothing wrong with his marriage-Sandra was all, if not more than, he had ever expected in a partner-so there was no reason, Banks told himself, why he should find himself interested in another woman.

It was Paul Newman, he remembered, who had said, "Why go out for hamburger if you can get steak at home?" But Banks couldn't remember the name of the subversive wit who had countered, "What if you want pizza?"

At thirty-six, he surely couldn't have hit middle-age crisis point, but there was no doubt that he was strongly attracted to the bright, redheaded Doctor of Philosophy. The sensation had been immediate, like a mild electric shock, and he was certain that she had felt it, too. Their two meetings had been charged with a strong undercurrent, and Banks didn't know what to do about it. The sensible thing would be to walk away and avoid seeing her anymore, but his job made that impractical.

He slugged back some hot, bitter station coffee and told himself not to take the matter so seriously. There was nothing to feel guilty about in fancying an attractive woman. He was, after all, a normal, heterosexual male. Another mouthful of black coffee tightened him back into the job at hand: reports.

He read over Richmond 's interview statements and thought about the young detective's reservations for a while before deciding that they should be pursued. He also remembered Trevor Sharp, who had been a suspect in a tourist mugging shortly after Banks had arrived in Eastvale. The boy hadn't been charged because his father had given him a solid alibi, and the victim, an "innocent abroad" from Oskaloosa, Iowa, wasn't able to give a positive identification when the case relied solely on his word.

Hatchley had wasted his time at The Oak. He had talked to the bar staff and to the regular customers (and would no doubt be putting in a lengthy expenses claim), but nobody remembered anything special about Carol Ellis that night. It had been a quiet evening, as Mondays usually were, and she had sat at a corner table all evening talking to her friend, Molly Torbeck. Both had left before closing time and had, presumably, gone their separate ways. Nobody had tried to pick either of them up, and nobody had spent the evening giving them the eye.

The sergeant had also talked to Carol, Molly and the three other victims. When it was all added up, two of the four, Josie Campbell and Carol Ellis, had been in The Oak on the nights in question, and the other two in pubs at opposite ends of Eastvale. It wasn't the kind of pattern Banks had been hoping to find, but it was a pattern: pubs. Jenny Fuller might have something to say about that.

Skipping his morning break al the Golden Grill, Banks tidied up his own report on the interview with Crutchley and left the file in his pending tray to await the artist's impression.

He missed his lunch, too, looking over the preliminary postmortem report on Alice Matlock, which offered no new information but confirmed Glendenning's earlier opinions about time and cause. The bruises on her wrists and arms indicated that there had been a struggle in which the woman had been pushed backwards, catching the back of her head on the table corner.

Glendenning was nothing if not thorough, and he had a reputation as one of the best pathologists in the country. He had looked for evidence of a blow by a blunt instrument prior to the fall, which might then have been engineered to cover up the true cause, but had discovered only a typical contre-coup head injury. Though the skull had splintered into the brain tissue at the point of impact, the occipital region, there was also damage to the frontal lobes, and that only occurs when the body is falling. The effect, Glendenning had noted, is similar to that of a passenger bumping his head on the windscreen when a car brakes abruptly. If, however, the blow is delivered while the victim's head is stationary, then the wound is restricted to the area of impact. The blow that killed Alice Matlock was the kind of blow that could have killed anyone-and she was old, her bones were brittle-but it wasn't necessarily murder; it could have been accidental; it could have been manslaughter.

A red-eyed Richmond brought in Ethel Carstairs' statement. Again, there was nothing new, but she had given an itemized description of the missing silverware. Manson had found only two different sets of fingerprints in the house: one belonged to the dead woman herself and the other to Ethel, who had been good enough to offer hers for comparison.

At about two-fifteen, Superintendent Gristhorpe stuck his head around the door. "Still at it, Alan?"

Banks nodded, gesturing to the papers that covered his desk.

Gristhorpe looked at his watch. "Go get a pie and a pint over the road. I think we'd better have a conference about three o'clock and I don't want your stomach rumbling all through it."

"A conference?"

"Aye. A lot's been happening. The peeper, the break-ins, now this Alice Matlock business. I don't like it. It's time we threw a few ideas around. Just me, you, Hatchley and Richmond. Have you read the young lad's reports, by the way?"

"Yes, I've just finished."

"Good, aren't they? Detailed, no split infinitives or dangling modifiers. He'll go far, that lad. See you at three in the boardroom."

II

The "boardroom" was so called because it was the most spacious room in the station. At its center was a large, shiny, oval table, around which stood ten matching, stiff-backed chairs. The set-up looked impressive, but the conference was informal; a coffee pot sat on its warmer in the middle, surrounded by files, pencils and notepads. There were no ashtrays, though; unless he was in a pub or a coffee shop, where it was unavoidable, Gristhorpe didn't approve of people smoking in his presence.

"Right," the superintendent announced when they had all arranged their papers and helped themselves to coffee. "We've got four break-ins-all at old people's houses-involving one assault and one death. We've also got a Peeping Tom running around town looking in any window he damn well pleases, and we've got hardly a thing to go on in either case. I reckon it's about time we pooled what brainpower we've got and let's see if we can't come up with some ideas. Alan?"

Banks coughed. He needed a cigarette but had to content himself by fiddling with a paper clip while he spoke. "I think Detective Constable Richmond should speak first, sir. He conducted interviews with the dead woman's neighbors last night."

Gristhorpe looked at Richmond, inviting him to begin.

"Well, sir, you've all seen copies of the report. I don't really have anything to add. We had a uniformed man on duty all night, and another made inquiries all the way down Cardigan Drive. A couple of people heard someone running, but that was all."

"We know who that someone was, don't we?" Gristhorpe asked.

"Well, not his identity, sir. But, yes, it was that chap who's been looking in on women getting undressed."

"Right," Gristhorpe said, turning over a page of the report in front of him. "Now, Andrea Rigby says that she heard running, then a knock at a door. Never mind the alternative explanations for the moment. Could there be any possibility that it was the peeper, not a burglar, who killed Alice Matlock? Maybe she knew him, maybe he came for help or protection, or to confess- she threatened to report him, they struggled and he pushed her? Manslaughter."