“Thanks,” said Jazz. “Maybe I’ll have a look tomorrow. I have to go back to the lab now. Backlog. The Harrogate rape case. Is that OK?”

“Of course,” said Banks. “And thanks for all your efforts.”

Jazz skipped briskly from the room.

“And let’s not forget,” Banks said to the room at large in the silence after Jazz’s departure. “Even though we think we’ve found and identified Morgan Spencer, we still have to find Michael Lane. Hopefully alive and well. He may well be our only chance of a witness to what happened. And we aren’t the only ones who want him.”

“I managed to trace the number he called Alex Preston from last night,” Annie said. “It’s a public telephone on Coppergate in York.”

“We’ll alert the York police,” said Banks, “but I imagine he’ll be far away by now.”

After that, everyone submitted a brief summary of the day’s activities, questions and responses, what they had learned and what they suspected. It didn’t add up to a lot. The old wool barons on the walls looked sinister in the shadows, as if they were watching over the team, or sitting in judgment. A bloodred lance of dying sunlight managed to stab through a crack in the clouds and illuminate a particularly grim-­looking specimen.

“Do you think Keith Norrington at Venture had anything to do with it?” AC Gervaise asked.

Banks glanced at Annie. “No,” she said. “He’s just a creepy businessman covering his arse, ma’am. It won’t do any harm to check him out, though. Bound to be something dodgy in the company books.”

Gervaise managed a thin smile. “Well, don’t go too far,” she said. “We don’t want to be accused of harassing creepy businessmen.”

“No, ma’am.”

“What about Neil Vaughn?” Banks asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Winsome. “He seemed genuinely distressed about what had happened to Caleb Ross. He’d given his employees the day off. I know that doesn’t mean much, and he could be merely trying to manipulate what we think, but I didn’t notice any false steps. Gerry?”

“The one thing that struck me,” said Gerry Masterson, “was how easy he made it seem to get around the rules. I mean, a business like his is highly regulated. Has to be, doesn’t it? Stands to reason with all those animal carcasses and risks of disease and contagion. Vaughn himself might not be involved in anything, but he certainly gave the impression that it wouldn’t be too difficult for someone who did want to bend the rules.”

“I agree,” said Winsome. “And something he said gave us cause for concern about his brother, Charlie Vaughn. Apparently he’s not interested in the family business, which is nothing of itself, but he is interested in horses of the live kind. Live and running races.”

“So he’s a gambler?” said Banks.

“Yes. Winner or loser, I don’t know, but that’s the impression I got.”

“I’ve never known a gambler who was a winner,” said Banks. “They all win sometimes, even win big, but they lose it in the end. It’s the nature of the business. And when they lose big, things can get tough for everyone around them. It’s like a junkie in need of a fix. Know anything more?”

“Apparently, he’s got an alibi,” said Gerry. “He’s been out of the country the past two weeks. Spain.”

“Solid.”

“I think so,” said Gerry. “Want me to dig deeper?”

“No, not yet. We’ve got plenty to be going on with. Let’s keep him in our thoughts, though.”

“By the way, sir,” Gerry added. “Caleb Ross didn’t have muttonchops.”

Banks raised his eyebrows. “So he’s not our Sunday driver? I must say, I never really thought he was. Good work, though, Gerry.”

Gerry Masterson beamed.

AC Gervaise turned toward Stefan. “I understand you have something of interest to report, Mr. Nowak?”

“Yes,” said Stefan, with a gentlemanly nod toward Gervaise. “One of our search team found some marijuana in a tin at the crash site. It was actually in the van, more a part of the carburetor when we found it, and we’ll need to send it for analysis and do a number of tests to make certain. But the CSI who found it seems sure about what it was. He . . . er . . . he seems to know what he’s talking about.”

They all laughed.

Stefan smiled. “I believe him.”

“Could it have been a contributing factor to the accident?”

“It could have been,” said Stefan. “If he’d been smoking it at the time of the crash, it could certainly have interfered with his motor functions and his reaction times. All it would have taken in the conditions at that time would have been a momentary distraction. But we have no way of knowing whether he smoked it in the cab. Of course, Dr. Glendenning will order a tox screen on the remains and that might show up something, though I doubt it.”

“But in a way, that doesn’t matter, does it?” said Banks. “I mean whether he was sober or stoned when he crashed. Maybe to the insurance companies, perhaps even to the other driver and to Caleb’s friends and acquaintances. But it doesn’t matter to us.”

“What do you mean, Alan?” said Gervaise.

“It’s no great sin that Caleb Ross smoked a bit of marijuana now and then. In fact I’d be surprised to hear that he didn’t. Apparently he was a big prog rock fan, and prog rock and marijuana use go together like fish and chips. I even remember seeing a few ­people smoking and listening to Tales from Topographic Oceans when I was a student. Of course, I never touched the stuff myself.”

“Of course not,” said Gervaise. The thin smile drew her Cupid’s bow lips tight. “Or at least, if you did, you didn’t inhale.”

“I mean prog rock,” said Banks, deadpan.

They all laughed again. Gerry played mother and refilled everyone’s coffee cups. The biscuits were all gone.

“What I mean,” Banks went on, “is that what might be interesting is where he got his dope, and whether his dealer had some kind of hold over him. Perhaps there were even other, more serious, drugs involved.”

“We had a ­couple of local DCs search his house,” said Winsome. “They didn’t find anything. No drugs, no stash of money. Nothing of interest.”

“I suppose it’s still possible that Ross was somehow blackmailed into helping the gang,” said Banks. “Or even willingly paid in marijuana. Maybe that was their way to make him do their bidding. If nothing else, he would certainly have lost his job had it come out that he was a habitual pot smoker.”

“So we try to find his source?” said Winsome.

“We’ll keep a lookout. And we might as well have a good look at Caleb Ross again. Winsome?”

“As far as I could gather from all his coworkers I talked to, no one had a bad word to say about him. Salt of the earth. Honest as the day is long. All the usual clichés. None of his colleagues could believe that he could possibly have been up to no good. ‘Caleb? No way’ was the general response.”

“Maybe they just didn’t want to be heard speaking ill of the dead?” Annie suggested.

“I’m sure there was a bit of that involved. I mean, even with this new information, we still can’t say he was connected with the theft or the murder, can we? As the DCI says, it’s hardly a major crime to smoke marijuana. Maybe he was a minor player? It’s amazing how easily ­people can avert their eyes from what they just see as a harmless little fiddle, like nicking pens and writing pads from the office stationery, like it’s something you’re entitled to.”

“Good point,” said Banks. “But I still can’t shake the feeling that Ross and Lane are involved at some level. Ross might not have known what was in the extra packages he accepted, and he might well have balked if he had, but if he knowingly accepted them, he knew that what he was doing was against regulations, and that it probably involved forging official documents. And finding the marijuana does cast a slightly different light on him. It seems he wasn’t quite as honest and law-­abiding as everyone makes out. Look a bit deeper, Winsome. Maybe talk to some of the farmers he regularly picked up from, see what you can find out there.”