He had also received a call from Gerry Masterson to inform him that DC Cabbot and Doug had got two names of possible bolt gun thieves out of Stirwall’s—­Ulf Bengtsson and Kieran Welles. Annie believed that Welles was their best bet, but the team was working on tracking both of them down.

Gerry also informed him that the Kent police had phoned to report that Morgan Spencer’s removal van had been found on some waste-­land on the outskirts of Dover. Inside were a Yamaha motorcycle and a Deutz-­Fahr Agrotron tractor. Both intact. The whole lot was being shipped up to North Yorkshire as soon as the locals could get transport organized. That came as a shock to Banks, but he filed it away for later.

“Well, it’s good to see you down here again,” said Burgess. “It’s been too long. When was the last time? That gay spook murder, wasn’t it?”

“Probably,” said Banks. “I forget the exact occasion. You’re well, I take it?”

Burgess looked more gaunt than usual, the belly that had been hanging over his belt the last time they met trimmed down, and the extra flab gone from his face, making his cheeks look hollow.

“Don’t let appearances deceive you, old mate. I’ve been working out at the gym. Given up the evil weed—­Tom Thumbs, that is—­and cut back on the demon alcohol. A little. You should try it. I had a minor health scare a while back, meant they had to shove a camera up my arse on a stick. I must say, though, with the drugs they give you if you go private, you can’t feel a thing. You can imagine my surprise when I found a note stuffed in my shoe afterward saying, ‘I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.’ Still, such is life.”

“It was a false alarm?”

“It wasn’t the big C, if that’s what you mean. A small operation soon put things right, and now it’s the healthy life for me.” He knocked back some lager.

Banks felt relieved to hear that Burgess’s problem wasn’t serious, and he realized that the man sitting opposite him was one of his few remaining friends, one of the few ­people he cared about, though he would never admit it. “It’s that stuff’ll kill you,” he said, pointing to Burgess’s quickly vanishing pint of lager. “All chemicals. You want something like this.” He held up his own pint. “Organic. Good for you. Or red wine.”

“Same old Banksy, it’s good to see.” Burgess clapped his hands together. “Anyway, enough of this banter. Let’s get down to brass tacks, as you lot say up north.”

Banks hadn’t heard anyone say that for a long time, except on television satires of northern life, but he let it go by. It was best to do that with many of the things Burgess said, he usually found. “Montague Havers?” Banks said.

“Yes, good old Monty.”

“Why is he still walking around free?”

“Because he’s a devious bastard,” said Burgess. “All right, I know. I’ll say it before you do. I’m a devious bastard, too, and not above bending the rules when it suits my purposes. You and I, we’re from the same side of the tracks. We should understand each other. Thing is, Monty is, too.”

“But he’s a crook. And he changed his name because he thought it sounded more posh.”

“It was a business decision. Monty grew up in the East End, like me, when it really was the East End, if you know what I mean. Thing is, when Thatcher started putting the economy to rights and commies like you went off feeling sorry for the poor fucking miners and electricians and factory workers, some of us knew a gift horse when it kicked us in the face, and we took our opportunities where we found them. There were billion-­pound privatizations, hostile takeovers, corporate raids, asset stripping. And very few rules. Great times, and open to all. You didn’t have to be from Eton and Oxbridge to make it back then. All you had to do was throw out your lefty social conscience—­something you could never do, old mate. Those City lads were practically printing money, and they came from the same place as you and me. The mean streets. Shitty council estates. Comprehensives. If I hadn’t already been busy climbing the greasy pole of policing, I might have been one of them, myself.”

“I’m sure you would have made a lot more money. But things have changed.”

“Tell me about it. Bunch of wankers we’ve got in there nowadays couldn’t manage a kid’s piggy bank, let alone a fucking economy. But that’s not our concern. If you want to understand ­people like Monty Havers, you’ve got to understand ­people like me. The barrow boys made good. We were young, we were quick-­witted and we were cocky. Not a shade of shit different from the criminal classes you might say, and you’d be right. But we had vim and vision and stamina and, by God, that’s what the country needed. We got things done. So what happened to them when the dream ended? Well, I imagine some of them were damaged for good by the lifestyles of excess, same way as the hippies who’d taken too much LSD. But the others, like Havers, wormed their way into legitimate businesses, like specialized banking, and learned the ropes and how to get around them. Like I said, we were bright and the rule book was out of the window. Now, if you ask me, there’s not a hell of a lot of difference between most of your merchant banks and organized crime, so it shouldn’t come as such a big surprise that Havers is bent. Thing is, he’s learned his tradecraft. He knows intimately the ins and outs of money laundering, invisible transfers, hidden accounts, offshore shelters, shell companies and so forth. He’s always one step ahead of the legislation. That’s why we know him only by his contacts, and by what they do. Some of them do very unsavory things, but Havers never puts his name to anything that can get back to him, never gets his hands dirty. He knows the ­people who can ship you anything anywhere anytime, for a price. He knows where you can get your hands on fake passports, phony bills of lading, thirteen-­year-­old virgins, you name it. He knows which palms need to be greased, and he might supply the funds—­from somewhere squeaky clean—­but he doesn’t do the greasing. See what I mean? He stays out of the world he helps to run, even socially. You’ll find him at the Athenaeum, not some dive in a Soho basement.”

“I suppose he just had to become a Montague, then. But why the rural crime? I mean stolen tractors, for crying out loud, when according to you Havers could make a million just by the blink of an eyelid. Where does that fit in?”

“Because there’s a market for them, old son. Multiply one tractor by ten, twenty, whatever. Do you know how much those things are worth? They’re not going to peasants in Bolivia, you know, Banksy. They’re going to ­people who can afford them. It’s not just tractors and combines and pitchforks and what have you, it’s forklifts, backhoes, Land Rovers, Range Rovers, along with all the Beemers and Mercs from the chop shops. Seems country ­people are often a lot more sloppy about security than us city dwellers. It’s easy pickings, and when you have the know-­how to get it from A to B, you’ve got it made.”

“There are a lot of ­people to pay off.”

“Peanuts. I know where you can get an arm broken for twenty quid, two for thirty.”

“Twenty quid? Them’s London prices, then?”

Burgess laughed. “Yes. I’m sure you can get it done for half in Yorkshire.” He finished his lager and set the glass heavily on the table.

“Another round?” Banks asked.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Banks walked back to the bar. It wasn’t too busy. He thought over what Burgess had said as he waited to get served. If Havers were even half as smart as Burgess gave him credit for, he would be very hard to bring down. On the other hand, Banks thought he’d put the wind up him by the end of their meeting. For one thing, he had let him know that the police knew the names of pretty much everyone they thought was involved. That ought to be cause for concern, even if two of them were dead and Havers believed none of the survivors would dare talk. Whether he would be cocky enough to carry on business as usual remained to be seen. In a way, it wasn’t so much him as the northern branch of his operation that Banks was interested in, especially the person who had killed and cut up Morgan Spencer. If Beddoes was involved, Banks would also make sure he went down one way or another. Someone would talk, given the option of a softer deal.