And just in time. Whilst everything in Eastvale hadn’t been roses, it had been a damn sight better than those last months in London, during which he seemed to do nothing but stand over corpses in stinking, run-down slums: a woman ripped open from pubes to breast bone, intestines spilling on the carpet; the decaying body of a man with his head hacked off and placed between his legs. He had seen those things, dreamed about them, and he knew he could never forget. Even in Eastvale, he sometimes awoke in a cold sweat as the head tried to speak to him.
He finished his pint quickly and walked outside, pulling up his overcoat collar against the chill. So, he was back, but not to stay. Never to stay. So enjoy it. The city seemed noisier, busier and dirtier than ever, but a fresh breeze brought the smell of roast chestnuts from a street vendor on Oxford Street. Banks thought of the good days, the good years: searching for old, leather-bound editions of Dickens on autumn afternoons along Charing Cross Road; Portobello Road market on a crisp, windy spring morning; playing darts with Barney Merritt and his other mates in the Magpie and Stump after a hard day in the witness box; family outings to Epping Forest on Sunday afternoons; drinks in the street on warm summer nights at the back of Leicester Square after going to the pictures with Sandra, the kids safe with a sister. No, it hadn’t all been bad. Not even Soho. Even that had its comic moments, its heart. At least it had seemed so before everything went wrong. Still, he felt human again. He was out of the sewer, and a brief visit like this one wasn’t going to suck him back into it.
First he made a phone call to Barney Merritt, an old friend from the Yard, to confirm his bed for the night. That done, he caught the Tube to the Oval. As he sat in the small compartment and read the ads above the windows, he remembered the countless other Underground journeys he had made because he always tried to avoid driving in London. He remembered standing in the smoking car, crushed together with a hundred or more other commuters, all hanging on their straps, trying to read the paper and puffing away. It had been awful, but part of the ritual How he’d managed to breathe, he had no idea. Now you couldn’t even smoke on the platforms and escalators, let alone on the trains.
He walked down Kennington Road and found the turn-off, a narrow street of three-storey terrace houses divided into flats, each floor with its own bay window. At number twenty-three, a huge cactus stood in the window of the middle flat, and in the top oriel he could see what looked a stuffed toy animal of some kind. Her name was printed above the top bell: R. Dunne. No first name, to discourage weirdos, but all the weirdos knew that only women left out their first names. There was no intercom. Banks pushed the bell and waited. Would she be in? What did poets do all day? Stare at the sky with their eyes in a ‘fine frenzy rolling’?
Just when he was beginning to think she wasn’t home, he heard footsteps inside the hall and the door opened on a chain. A face – the face – peered round at him.
‘Yes?’
Banks showed his identification card and told her the purpose of his visit. She shut the door, slid off the chain and let him in.
Banks followed the slender, boyish figure in turquoise slacks and baggy orange sweatshirt all the way up the carpeted stairs to the top. The place was clean and brightly decorated, with none of the smells and graffiti he had encountered in such places so often in the past. In fact, he told himself, flats like this must cost a fortune these days. How much did poets make? Surely not that much. It would be rude to ask.
The flat itself was small. The door opened on a narrow corridor, and Banks followed Ruth Dunne to the right into the living room. He hadn’t known what to expect, had no preconceived idea of what a poet’s dwelling should look like, but whatever he might have imagined, it wasn’t this. There was a divan in front of the gas fire covered with a gaudy, crocheted quilt and flanked on both sides by sagging armchairs, similarly draped. He was surprised to find no bookshelves in evidence and assumed her study was elsewhere in the flat, but what was there surprised him as much as what wasn’t: several stuffed toys – a green elephant, a pink frog, a magenta giraffe – lay around in alcoves and on the edge by the bay window, and on three of the four walls elaborate cuckoo clocks ticked, all set at different times.
‘It must be noisy,’ Banks said, nodding at the clocks.
Ruth Dunne smiled. ‘You get used to it.’
‘Why the different times?’
‘I’m not interested in time, just clocks. In fact my friends tell me I’m a chronically late person.’
On the low table between the divan and the fire lay a coffee-table book on watch making, a couple of bills, an ashtray and a pack of unfiltered Gauloises.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ve never been interrogated by the police before. At least not by a detective chief inspector. Would you like some coffee?’
‘Please.’
‘It’s instant, I’m afraid.’
‘That’ll do fine. Black.’
Ruth nodded and left the room. If Banks had expected a hostile welcome, for whatever reason, he was certainly disarmed by Ruth Dunne’s charm and hospitality. And by her appearance. Her shiny brown hair, medium length, was combed casually back, parted at one side, and the forelock almost covered her left eye. Her face was unlined and without make-up. Strong-featured, handsome rather than pretty, but with a great deal of character in the eyes. They’d seen a lot, Banks reckoned, those hazel eyes. Felt a lot, too. In life, she looked far more natural and approachable than the arrogant, knowing woman in the photograph, yet there was certainly something regal in her bearing.
‘How did you find me?’ she asked, bringing back two mugs of steaming black coffee and sitting with her legs curled under her on the divan. She held her mug with both hands and sniffed the aroma. The gas fire hissed quietly in the background. Banks sat in one of the armchairs, the kind that seem to embrace you like an old friend, and lit a cigarette. Then he showed her the photograph, which she laughed at, and told her.
‘So easy,’ she said when he’d finished.
‘A lot of police work is. Easy and boring. Time-consuming, too.’
‘I hope that’s not a subtle way of hinting I should have come forward earlier?’
‘No reason to, had you? Did you know about Caroline’s death?’
Ruth reached for the blue paper packet of Gauloises, tapped one out and nodded. ‘Read about it in the paper. Not much of a report, really. Can you tell me what happened?’
Banks wished he could, but knew he couldn’t. If he told her, then he’d have no way of checking what she already knew.
She noticed his hesitation and waved her hand. ‘All right. I suppose I should think myself lucky to be spared the gory details. Look, I imagine I’m a suspect, if you’ve come all this way. Can we get that out of the way first? I might have an alibi, you never know, and it’ll make for a hell of a more pleasant afternoon if you don’t keep thinking of me as a crazed, butch dyke killer.’ She finally lit the cigarette she’d been toying with, and the acrid tang of French tobacco infused the air.
Banks asked her where she had been and what she had been doing on 22 December. Ruth sucked on her Gauloise, thought for a moment, then got up and disappeared down the corridor. When she reappeared, she held an open appointment calendar and carried it over to him.
‘I was giving a poetry reading in Leamington Spa, of all places,’ she said. ‘Very supportive of the arts they are up there.’
‘What time did it start?’
‘About eight.’
‘How did you get there?’
‘I drove. I’ve got a Fiesta. It’s life in the fast lane all the way for us poets, you know. I was a bit early, too, for a change, so the organizers should remember me.’