As far as Banks knew, Charlie Courage had lived there for years. Whatever Charlie had done with his ill-gotten gains, he certainly hadn’t invested them in improving his living conditions. It was a syndrome Banks had seen before in even more successful petty crooks than Charlie. He had even known one big-time criminal who must have brought in seven figures a year easily, yet still lived hardly a notch above squalor in the East End. He wondered what on earth they used the money they stole for, except in some cases to support mammoth drug habits. Did they give it to charity? Use it to buy their parents that dream house they had always yearned for? People had odd priorities. Charlie Courage, though, had not been a drug addict, was not known for his charity, and he didn’t have any living relatives. A mystery, then.

First, Banks knocked on the neighbor’s door, which was opened by a short, stocky man in a wrinkled faun V-necked pullover, who looked unnervingly like Hitler, even down to the little mustache and the mad gleam in his eyes. He stood in the doorway, the sound of the television coming from the room behind him.

Banks showed his identification. “Knightley,” the man said. “Kenneth Knightley. Please come in out of the rain.” Banks accepted his invitation. The drizzle was the kind that immediately seemed to get right through your raincoat and your skin, all the way to your bones.

Banks followed him into a small, neat living room with rose-patterned wallpaper and a couple of framed local landscapes hanging above the tile mantelpiece. Banks recognized Gratly Falls, just outside his own cottage, and a romantic watercolor of the ruins of Devraulx Abbey, up Lyndgarth way. A fire blazed in the hearth, making the room a bit too hot and stuffy for Banks’s liking. He could already smell the steam rising from his raincoat.

“It’s about your neighbor, Charles Courage,” he said. “When did you last see him?”

“I don’t have much to do with him,” said Knightley. “Except to say hello to, like. He always keeps to himself, and I’ve not been the most sociable of fellows since Edie died, if truth be told.” He smiled. “Edie didn’t like him, though. Thought he was a wrong ’un. Why? What’s happened?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Courage is dead. It looks as if he’s been murdered.”

Knightley paled. “Murdered. Where? I mean, not…”

“No. Not next door. Some distance away, actually. Down Leicester way.”

“Leicester? But he never went anywhere. One time I did talk to him, I remember him telling me you’d never catch him going to Torremolinos or Alicante for his holidays. Yorkshire was good enough for him. Charlie didn’t like foreign places or foreigners, and they began at Ripon as far as he was concerned.”

Banks smiled. “I’ve met a few people like that, myself. But one way or another, he did end up in Leicestershire. Dead.”

“That’s probably what killed him then. Finding himself in Leicestershire.” Knightley paused and ran his hand across his brow. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be so flippant. A man’s dead, after all. I don’t see how I can help you, though.”

“You said you saw him last a couple of days ago. Can you be more precise?”

“Let me think. It was early Sunday afternoon. It must have been then because I was just coming back from The Oak. I always go there on a Sunday lunchtime for a game of dominoes.”

“About what time would this be?”

“Just after two. I can’t be doing with all these new hours, all-day opening and whatnot. I stick to the old times.”

“How did he seem?”

“Same as usual: a bit shifty. Said hello and that was that.”

“Shifty?”

“He always looked shifty. As if he’d just that minute done something illegal and wasn’t quite sure he’d got away with it yet.”

“I know what you mean,” said Banks. Charlie Courage usually had just done something illegal. “So there was nothing odd or different about his behavior at all?”

“Nothing.”

“Was he alone?”

“Far as I could tell.”

“Coming or going?”

“Come again?”

“Was he just arriving home or leaving?”

“Oh, I see. He was going out.”

“Car?”

“Aye. He’s got a blue Metro. It’s usually… just a minute…” Knightley stood up and went to the curtain, which he pulled back a few inches. “Aye, there it is,” he said, pointing. “Parked right outside.” Banks saw the car in front of his and made a mental note to have it searched.

“Did you see or hear anyone with him in the house over the last few days?”

“No. I’m sorry I can’t be much help. Like I said, there was nothing unusual at all. He went off to work, then he came home. Quiet as a mouse.”

“Work? Charlie?”

“Oh, aye. Didn’t you know? He’d got a job as a night watchman at that new business park down Ripon Road. Daleview, I think it’s called.”

“I know the one.”

Business park. Another to add to Banks’s long list of oxymorons, along with military intelligence. That was an interesting piece of news, anyway: Charlie Courage with a job. A night watchman, no less. Banks wondered if his employers knew of his past. It was worth looking into.

“Is there anything else you can help me with, Mr. Knightley?”

“I don’t think there is. And it’s no use asking Mrs. Ford on the other side. She’s deaf as a post.”

“I don’t suppose you have a key to Mr. Courage’s house, do you?” he asked.

“Key? No. Like I said, we didn’t do much more than pass the time of day together out of politeness’s sake.”

Banks stood up. “I’m going to have to have a good look around the place. If there’s no key, I’ll have to break in somehow, so don’t be alarmed if you hear a few strange noises next door.”

Knightley nodded. “Right. Right, you are. Charlie Courage. Murdered. Bloody hell, who’d credit it?”

Banks walked around the back of the terrace block to see if he could find an easy way into Charlie’s place. A narrow cobbled alley ran past Charlie’s backyard. Each house had a high wall and a tall wooden gate. Some of the walls were topped with broken glass, and some of the gates swung loose on their hinges. Banks lifted the catch and pushed at Charlie’s gate. It had scratched and faded green paint and one of the rusty hinges had broken, making it grate against the flagstone path as he opened it. It wasn’t much of a backyard, and most of it was taken up by a murky puddle that immediately found its way through his shoes. First, out of habit, Banks tried the doorknob.

The door opened.

Perhaps Charlie hadn’t had time to lock up properly before being abducted, Banks thought, as he made his way inside the dark house. He found a light switch on the wall to his right and clicked it on. He was in the kitchen. Nothing much there except for a pile of dirty dishes waiting to be washed. They never would be now.

He walked through to the living room, which was tidy and showed no signs of a struggle. Noting the new-looking television and DVD setup, not what you could afford on a night watchman’s salary, Banks got some idea of what Charlie had done with his money. He went upstairs.

There were two small bedrooms, a bathroom with a stained tub and a tiny WC with a ten-year-old Playboy magazine on the floor and a copy of Harold Robbins’s The Carpetbaggers resting on the roll of toilet paper. One bedroom was empty except for a few cardboard boxes filled with magazines – mostly soft porn – and secondhand paperbacks, and the other, Charlie’s, revealed only an unmade bed and a few clothes.

Downstairs, in one of the sideboard drawers, Banks found the only items of interest: the title deed to the house, Charlie’s driving license, a checkbook, and a bankbook that indicated Charlie had made five cash deposits of £200 each over the past month, in addition to what seemed to be his regular paycheck. A thousand quid. Interesting, Banks thought. That would at least account for the new TV and DVD setup. What had the crooked little devil been up to? And had it got him killed?