“What do you mean?” Banks asked.

“Well,” his father said. “You know the family came up from London?”

“Yes.”

“Bill Marshall worked as a bricklayer, and he was a good one, too, but when he’d had a drink or two he’d start letting things slip about some of his other activities in London.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“He was a fit bloke, Bill. Strong. Big hands, powerful upper body. Comes from carrying those hods around the building sites.”

“He used to get into fights?”

“You could say that.”

“What your dad’s saying,” explained Harry, leaning forward, “is that Bill Marshall let slip he used to act as an enforcer for gangsters down the Smoke. Protection rackets, that sort of thing.”

The Smoke? Banks hadn’t heard that term for London for years. “He did?” Banks shook his head. It was hard to imagine the old man in the chair as having been some sort of gang enforcer, but it might help explain the fear Banks remembered feeling in his presence all those years ago, the threat of violence. “I’d never have—”

“How could you?” his father cut in. “Like I said, you were just a kid. You couldn’t understand things like that.”

The music had changed, Banks noticed. Herb Alpert and his bloody Tijuana Brass, just finishing, thank God. Banks had hated them back then and he hated them now. Next came The Bachelors, “Marie.” Mum and Dad music. “Did you tell the police?” he asked.

The men looked at one another, then Arthur looked back at Banks, his lip curling. “What do you think?”

“But he could—”

“Listen. Bill Marshall might have been a big talker, but he had nothing to do with his son’s disappearance.”

“How can you know that?”

Arthur Banks snorted. “You police. All the bloody same, you are. Just because a man might be a bit dodgy in one area, you’re ready to fit him up with anything.”

“I’ve never fitted anyone up in my life,” said Banks.

“What I’m saying is that Bill Marshall might have been a bit of a wild man, but he didn’t go around killing young lads, especially not his own son.”

“I didn’t say I thought he did it,” Banks said, noticing that the others were watching him and his father now, as if they were the evening’s entertainment.

“Then what did you mean?”

“Look, Dad,” Banks said, reaching for a cigarette. He had been determined not to smoke in front of his father, mostly because of the old man’s health, but not smoking in The Coach and Horses was as pointless as swimming in the no-pissing section of a swimming pool, if such a section were ever to exist. “If there was any truth in what Bill Marshall said about his criminal background in London, then isn’t it possible that something he’d done there came back to haunt him?”

“But nobody hurt Bill.”

“Doesn’t matter, Dad. These people often have more devious ways of getting back at their enemies. Believe me. I’ve come across more than a few of them in my time. Did he ever mention any names?”