“David Grenfell, Paul Major, Steven Hill and you. I’ve only had time to track down and speak to David and Paul on the phone so far, though neither of them was able to tell me very much. Go on.”

“I haven’t seen any of them since I left for London when I was eighteen.”

“You only knew Graham for a year?”

“Yes. He was a new kid in our class the September before he disappeared, so it wasn’t quite a full year even. His family had moved up from London that July or August, the way quite a lot of people were already doing then. This was before the huge influx; that came later in the sixties and the early seventies, the new town expansion. You probably weren’t around then.”

“I certainly wasn’t here.”

“Where, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I grew up in Hawick, border country. Spent most of my early police career with Greater Manchester, and since then I’ve been on the move. I’ve only been here a couple of months. Go on with your story.”

“That explains the accent.” Banks paused to sip beer and smoke again. “I grew up here, a provincial kid. ‘Where my childhood was unspent.’ Graham seemed, I don’t know, sort of cool, exotic, different. He was from London, and that was where it was all happening. When you grow up in the provinces, you feel everything’s passing you by, happening somewhere else, and London was one of those ‘in’ places back then, like San Francisco.”

“What do you mean by ‘cool’?”

Banks scratched the scar beside his right eye. Michelle wondered how he’d got it. “I don’t know. Not much fazed him. He never showed much emotion or reaction, and he seemed sort of worldly-wise beyond his years. Don’t get me wrong, though; Graham had his enthusiasms. He knew a lot about pop music, obscure B-sides and all that. He played guitar quite well. He was crazy about science fiction. And he had a Beatle haircut. My mother wouldn’t let me have one. Short back and sides all the way.”

“But he was cool?”

“Yes. I don’t know how to define the quality, really. How do you?”

“I think I know what you mean. I had a girlfriend like that. She was just like…oh, I don’t know…someone who made you feel awkward, someone you wanted to emulate, perhaps. I’m not sure I can define it any more clearly.”

“No. Just cool, before it was even cool to be cool.”

“His mother said something about bullying.”

“Oh, that was just after he arrived. Mick Slack, the school bully. He had to try it on with everybody. Graham wasn’t much of a fighter, but he didn’t give up, and Slack never went near him again. Neither did anybody else. It was the only time I ever saw him fight.”

“I know it’s hard to remember that far back,” said Michelle, “but did you notice anything different about him toward the end?”

“No. He seemed much the same as always.”