Children of the Revolution

Chapter 11

Banks wasn’t happy about visiting Lady Chalmers at her house again on Tuesday morning, but needs must. He would have much preferred an interview room, or his office, to the grand mansion, where he always felt intimidated by the ostentatious display of wealth. But he hadn’t wanted to let her know he was coming this time, and he knew there was no way she would agree to come down to the station, or go anywhere else with him, for that matter, without Ralph Nathan or Anthony Litton in tow. Besides, at least this way there was a chance that AC Gervaise wouldn’t find out so quickly, not if Lady Chalmers or Oriana didn’t tell her. He had made sure before turning into the drive that there were no signs of the media in the area.

Oriana seemed marginally more pleased to see him this time than when he had called by with Annie the other day. At least she greeted him with a smile, and it seemed genuinely warm. If she thought he was her ally in trying to plumb the depths of Lady Chalmers’ anxiety and depression, then she was right, in a way, though it was not perhaps for the same reasons.

When Oriana came back from consulting with Lady Chalmers, Banks found himself led towards a different room this time. Before he went in, Oriana touched his arm gently. He tried to ignore the electric tingle that her touch sent through him. When he looked at her, he could tell that she was both imploring him to be kind and encouraging him to uncover the reasons for her employer’s troubles. Banks hoped he could, but he had a sneaking feeling that the discussion would be more fractious than that. He gave Oriana an encouraging smile and went into the room.

It had the same view of the town centre, castle and river as its neighbour, but was much smaller, and most of the walls were covered by bookcases, many of them filled with copies of Charlotte Summers books in a variety of languages. A heavy mahogany desk stood under the window, and Lady Chalmers sat there in jeans and a white cashmere jumper, her desk littered with papers weighted down by a mug with ‘The trouble with being a famous writer is that sometimes you have to write’ written on it. There was also a large computer screen, the kind that didn’t need anything but a wireless keyboard and a mouse. She offered Banks the only other chair in the room and swivelled around so that she faced him. Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet was playing from speakers concealed somewhere in the room, or perhaps from the computer itself.

‘I like to listen to Mozart while I’m working,’ said Lady Chalmers. ‘It seems to help channel the creativity.’

‘He’s certainly good for that,’ said Banks. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work.’

‘That’s all right. I’m not having a particularly fruitful day. I can’t seem to concentrate. As a matter of fact, I’m glad for the interruption. It gives me an excuse to take a break for a while. I’d also like to apologise about our last meeting, or its aftermath. And for that rather silly telephone call.’ She blushed. ‘As you probably guessed, I was a little drunk. It doesn’t happen very often.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Banks. He was beginning to feel as if he were the one who had been summoned here. Behind Lady Chalmers’ shoulder, the computer screen-saver went through a random cycle of photographs. Exotic places — perhaps a Greek island, an ancient amphitheatre, the Champs-Élysées, an Asian street market, the Amalfi coast. There were also some family shots of the children, Angelina and Samantha, at various ages. Oriana in a bikini, which was a sight to behold, smiling, her sunglasses up on her forehead. Lady Chalmers and her husband, Banks assumed, standing on a yacht beside Anthony Litton, and a woman Banks took to be his late wife, Veronica’s sister, Francesca. He noticed a strong resemblance between the sisters. Oliver Litton came up, too, and he had some of his mother’s looks, though there was nothing feminine about him. With his handsome, chiselled features, bald head and broad shoulders, he looked more like a football player than a potential Home Secretary. The photographs were distracting, but Banks didn’t want Lady Chalmers to turn them off. He also hoped that Oriana in a bikini would come around again before he left. Naturally, there was no sign of Gavin Miller in any of the photos. None of them seemed older than ten or fifteen years as far as he could judge.

‘How can I help you this time?’ Lady Chalmers asked.

‘It’s a bit delicate,’ said Banks, ‘but first I’d like to ask you if there’s anything you’re worried about, afraid of, that sort of thing?’

Her answer came too fast and lacked conviction. ‘No. Why? Should I be?’

‘Not at all. It’s just... maybe an impression... your phone call and everything... that something may be troubling you.’

‘Then you have the wrong impression.’

But Banks could tell by the signs of strain in her expression, and the discolouration under her eyes, as well as the haunted look in them, that this was far from the case. She was looking closer to her true age today. She was also very subdued, but he could sense something powerful within, barely suppressed. What was she hiding? And why? It was obviously a great burden on her, yet she seemed determined to the point of self-sacrifice to bear it.

Could she possibly suspect someone close to her? Banks wondered. Were the three women lying about their alibi to protect one of their number? Oriana, Veronica, Angelina. Was one of them a killer? No, Banks couldn’t accept that. It didn’t make sense. It was a violent crime. Someone had beaten Gavin Miller, then literally picked him up and thrown him over the edge of the railway bridge like a sack of rubbish. Banks couldn’t see any of the three women doing that. But there was definitely something that felt wrong, something out of kilter in the household, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it. He decided to try a direct approach. ‘We now know that you knew Gavin Miller at university,’ he said. ‘That’s what I really wanted to talk to you about. Why you denied it.’

Lady Chalmers slumped a little in her chair. A head-and-shoulders photo of her standing with her nephew Oliver rose and faded on the screen, followed by the two of them standing in front of a cherry tree in blossom. It could have been taken in Tokyo, for all Banks knew. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said. ‘It was such a long time ago. If I knew him, it could only have been in passing.’

‘You went out with him for three or four months in late 1971 and perhaps a month or so more in early 1972.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

She wasn’t a good liar, and Banks could tell easily that she was simply denying by rote now. The game was already becoming tiresome to her. ‘Why are you lying to me about something I already know to be true, Lady Chalmers? Perhaps if you told me the truth, it would help clear this mess up, and you could get on with your life, get back to normal.’

She gave him a pitying look, as if such a thing were never to be. ‘Normal? What’s the truth, anyway? Why does everyone rate it so highly? Do you think it really sets you free?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Banks. ‘But let’s stick to the facts for now. Were you sleeping with Gavin Miller at university in the early seventies?’

‘If you think you already know the answer, why ask me? I slept with lots of boys at university. Does that shock you?’ When Banks didn’t appear shocked, she went on. ‘You can’t expect me to remember their names after all this time.’

‘This was different,’ Banks said. ‘He was in love with you.’

‘Oh, Mr Banks. How naive you are. They were all in love with me. At least to hear them speak. For a week or two, at any rate.’

‘You didn’t return his feelings.’

‘Am I supposed to feel guilty about that, or something? Do you think that’s why I killed him? Because he was in love with me forty years ago, and I didn’t love him back? I expect it was just a bit of fun, like all the rest. I was young. Impulsive. Capricious.’

‘So you do admit that you went out with him?’

‘How quaint that sounds. Went out. Perhaps. I’m just saying he was nothing special, and I don’t really remember anything about him.’

‘Would he have remembered you?’

‘I’d like to think so, but I doubt it. Tell me, Mr Banks, in all honesty, would you remember or recognise all or any of the girls you slept with when you were a student, if you were ever a student, that is.’

Banks ignored the implied jibe at his education. ‘There weren’t that many,’ he said.

‘You’re implying that I’m a slut?’

‘Nothing of the kind. You’re the one who said you slept with a lot of boys at university. I’m only asking about your relationship with Gavin Miller.’

‘Relationship? Would you really call it that?’

This was like trying to catch smoke between your fingers, Banks was beginning to feel. Then, when he looked again at Lady Chalmers’ eyes, he saw they were not only haunted but a little glazed, which indicated that she may have been drinking, or perhaps was on some sort of medication. He guessed the latter, as it was still morning, and he could neither smell nor see any signs of alcohol. Valium or something, then. To take the edge off, muffle the anxiety and make talking to her like trying to grasp smoke. There was nothing to do but persevere. ‘I wouldn’t know what to call it. I’m assuming it’s true that you did go out with Gavin Miller back then. Why not? After all, he was a handsome enough boy, and he probably flattered you. Wrote poems about you, perhaps? What I’d like you to tell me is why you denied this in all our conversations.’

‘Because I don’t remember,’ said Lady Chalmers. ‘I’m not saying I didn’t sleep with him, I just don’t remember it, that’s all.’

‘Why did you stop seeing him?’

‘I obviously got bored. Or I found a better lay.’

‘You don’t need to be crude. It doesn’t suit you.’

‘How do you know? How can you presume to know anything about me?’

‘I stand corrected. Let’s say you got bored with him, then, and you had a better opportunity waiting in the wings. When he rang you a couple of weeks ago asking for donations to the alumni society, did you know who he was?’

‘No. Of course not. It was over forty years ago. I wouldn’t have known him if I’d passed him in the street, let alone by just his voice. I certainly didn’t recognise him from that picture you showed me.’

Banks took the older photograph from his briefcase, the one they thought had been taken in the early eighties. ‘What about this?’ he asked, holding it in front of her.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, her eyes shutting slowly.

Banks put the photo away. ‘He didn’t mention your shared past when he phoned?’

‘Of course he did. But it meant nothing to me. You make it sound like some grand affair, for crying out loud. It was just a fuck.’

‘So you moved on to someone else?’

‘I suppose so. It wasn’t all to do with men, you know. I was also busy studying.’

‘And there was the Marxist Society, too, I believe?’

‘For a while.’

‘I hear you were keen, quite a firebrand.’

‘Are you trying to embarrass me with my youthful politics now, Mr Banks? What does that have to do with anything? Are you going to arrest me for being a communist forty years ago? Yes, I admit it, officer, I was a member of the Marxist Society. It was a long time ago. I was young and idealistic. Weren’t you ever young and idealistic? I thought communism would solve all the world’s problems. I still believe in equality, whatever you may think of me. Maybe you’d call me a champagne socialist. Isn’t that the term today for rich people like me who spout on and on about inequality and social injustice? Guardian readers? I think everyone should have Veuve Clicquot rather than Freixenet, if that’s what they want.’

‘Or a decent single malt whisky,’ said Banks. ‘I couldn’t agree more. Though I doubt the distillers and the winemakers would agree.’

Lady Chalmers smiled. ‘Capitalist pigs.’ She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘What can I say? We were young, naive, privileged intellectuals. There were people around then with the real will and power to do things, to change things, to do it violently, if necessary, through social upheaval. I was a bit too queasy for that. They could cause serious political and social unrest. We were intellectuals, theorists and ideologists. They were activists. The front line.’

‘The unions?’

‘Yes, for the most part. As you might remember, they were very militant back then. There was the romantic idea of the true revolutionary hero, the proud worker standing on the barricades brandishing the red flag, not the bloke you see by the roadside leaning on his shovel and having a cup of tea every time you pass by some roadworks. Establishing the true workers’ state. It was a very powerful idea. Very real.’

‘Mostly I remember the power cuts,’ said Banks. ‘Why did Gavin Miller telephone you after all this time?’

Lady Chalmers let out another breath and said, ‘He wanted to touch me for some money, for old times’ sake. A few hundred pounds, just to get him on his feet. Apparently he’d fallen on hard times.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘No, of course.’

‘And how did he react?’

‘Well, there wasn’t very much he could do, really, was there? He tried to bring up old times, how “fantastic” we were together, and he actually got a bit weepy. That did it for me. I think he was drunk or on drugs or something. In the end, I just told him quite firmly not to ring me again and put the phone down.’

Banks leaned back in his chair. ‘I don’t really understand any need for secrecy about all this. Why didn’t you tell me right from the start and have done with it? You could have saved us both a lot of trouble.’

‘Because I didn’t want to get involved, all right?’ said Lady Chalmers. ‘If you must know the truth, I was ashamed. I know that sounds like a cliché, but I had nothing whatsoever to do with Gavin Miller’s death, and I didn’t see why I had to answer all sorts of prying questions about my past and my personal life and open myself up to suspicion by admitting I knew him, even if it was years ago.’

‘But you opened yourself up to more suspicion by lying.’

Lady Chalmers gave Banks a brave smile. ‘I know that now. I really believed that you’d simply give up and go away. I thought I could hide behind who I am, what I am, my title, my status in the community.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘What a betrayal of those youthful ideals, don’t you think?’

‘If we all remained true to the dreams of our youth,’ said Banks, ‘it would be a very strange world indeed.’

‘But a better one, perhaps,’ Lady Chalmers whispered, almost to herself.

Banks sometimes wished he had followed Schiller’s advice himself. He had let some of those dreams go far too easily. But this was no time to get maudlin. ‘Had you ever seen him around town? Did you know he was living here in Eastvale?’

‘I wouldn’t have recognised him if I had seen him. Look, Mr Banks, we slept together for a few weeks a long time ago. I’m sure it was very nice, but I don’t remember it. We were kids. We were stoned most of the time. I don’t even remember seeing him around during the rest of my time at Essex, to tell the truth. Why would I know him here forty years later? It’s not as if we moved in the same circles, and I don’t mean to sound snobbish by saying that, but it’s true. And I certainly had nothing to do with his death.’

Banks imagined she might be telling the truth, or something close to it. By the time Ronnie Bellamy and Gavin Miller had ended up in Eastvale, they had both changed a great deal, and both had moved on. Ronnie Bellamy even had a new name, two if you counted her pseudonym. She was no longer the lovely young activist, Ronnie Bellamy, but Lady Chalmers, wife of multimillionaire Broadway and West End producer. Perhaps Gavin Miller had seen her about town and recognised her. It was possible. He was the one who had been in love, after all, and the unrequited lover has an entirely different perspective on the affair. But he certainly hadn’t had the courage or desire to approach her, and she had probably not recognised him, as she claimed, even if she had seen him. Perhaps that was the end of the story, if only Banks’s scar wasn’t itching, and he wasn’t convinced there was something he was missing.

Though Banks had told the truth about not sleeping with a lot of girls at college, there were still old girlfriends he wouldn’t recognise if he saw them in the street. So why did he find it so hard to accept that Lady Chalmers and Gavin Miller had managed to live in the same town for nearly three years or so without one knowing of the other’s existence? Miller’s grand passion had been a young man’s infatuation, no doubt quickly burned out once he had been rejected. Gerry had told him that even Judy Sallis had said Gavin had moved on to someone else fairly quickly. And Lady Chalmers hadn’t given a thought to the whole thing since. Why should she? She never had any shortage of suitors. Miller had simply been one in a long list of conquests.

So let it go, he told himself. You have your answers.

But he couldn’t. Because if Gavin Miller’s phone call was as innocent as Lady Chalmers made it out to be, why had she been so troubled for the whole of the following week, as Oriana had said she was? And why did she also appear to be frightened of something after Gavin Miller had been murdered? Because when he looked at her, even now, with the Valium or whatever it was dulling her anxieties, he could still see that she was troubled, and he realised that whatever she had told him, however much it had cost her pride, it was all calculated to get rid of him as soon as possible. She had told him nothing he didn’t already know. ‘What are you frightened of, Ronnie?’ he asked, staring into her cloudy green eyes.

She held his gaze for several moments, holding her head high, but obviously with difficulty. ‘Nothing,’ she said finally, turning away. ‘Now, I think you should go. I’ve told you everything you need to know. As far as I’m concerned, this whole business is over. I won’t say anything about this conversation to anyone. I’m sure you know what I mean. But if you keep pestering me, things might be different.’

Banks nodded. Dismissed, then. Behind her, on the screen, Oriana in a bikini came around again, but the real Oriana wasn’t around to show him to the door.

Just as Banks was about to get into his car, a silver E-Type Jaguar pulled into the drive and blocked his way. A man got out and walked towards him. Even without the clue of the customized JEM 1 number plate, Banks knew who he was. He got that sinking feeling. Shit. Still, he supposed, he would have to talk to him sometime.

‘Are you Banks?’ Sir Jeremy said.

Banks reached for his warrant card.

‘No need for that. Are you Banks?’

‘Yes.’

Sir Jeremy gestured with his thumb to the passenger side of his car. ‘Get in.’

Annie and Gerry Masterson didn’t talk much on the way to Leeds. Gerry kept her attention on the road, especially when they got close to the city itself, and they half-listened to talk shows on local radio. Annie said it was a relief not to have to suffer Banks’s musical tastes for a change. Gerry admitted that she didn’t understand half the pop-culture references he made. Annie said it was an age thing.

They had settled their differences the previous evening, when Gerry had given Annie a lift home from Newhope Cottage, both of them ending up laughing over what they imagined Banks’s reaction would be when they’d left. A sigh of relief, no doubt, Annie had guessed, probably followed by a large Laphroaig and some loud atonal music. Annie had apologised for getting too steamed up over the Lady Chalmers investigation, and the things she had said, and Gerry had apologised for losing her temper and getting personal. Secretly, Annie had been glad to see a spark of fire in Gerry, whom she had thought rather insipid until then, but she wasn’t going to tell her that. She was also dismayed to find out that the whole station knew about her and Banks, but she realised she should have expected that, given that the place had more grapevines than a vineyard.

Gerry drove through Otley, then on through Bramhope and Lawnswood towards Headingley. It was difficult finding somewhere to park near the university, but she managed to find a spot just large enough to squeeze the Ford Focus into on a side street of dark old brick houses with basements and dormers, all converted into student bedsits. They would have lunch in Leeds before going back, Annie said. Somewhere nice like that little Italian restaurant she remembered from a previous visit with Banks. Or even a nice country pub on the way home. That was one of the perks of a day out in the field. They might not be able to recoup expenses for it, but what the hell.

Annie had visited the University of Leeds campus before, though she couldn’t profess to know her way around. They walked down Woodhouse Lane and entered the university beside the broad steps of the Parkinson Building, below the tall white tower of the Brotherton Library. It was a very open campus, Annie had always thought, built on split levels, with a great deal of outdoor space, trees, little patches of green, a mix of old brick buildings and houses and sixties concrete and glass buildings in the style of Le Corbusier.

She stopped and asked directions from a passing student, who told her that the Social Sciences Building was the modern one just a little further ahead, on their left. After that, it was easy enough to find Dr Mandy Parsons’ office, a pleasant enough space, though cluttered, like most academic offices Annie had ever seen. It wasn’t quite as messy as Trevor Lomax’s, Annie thought, but she still had to clear a pile of student essays from the third chair before they could all sit down. The office smelled vaguely of cigar smoke under the veneer of air-freshener.

Annie’s patience was wearing thin after her dealings with Lomax and Cooper, and the prospects of sitting in yet another messy office listening to erudite witticisms didn’t appeal to her at all. These academics seemed to live in a rarefied world that she didn’t quite understand. Annie was no philistine, and she had done well in university herself, but she also believed that unless you got out there and really got your hands dirty, you couldn’t have much of an idea what life was all about. That was what all the best artists did, anyway; they stared at the world, took it apart and rearranged it just for the sake of it, or to understand it better, to make some sort of statement about what it was, could be or should be. Most academics only dreamed of somebody else rearranging it for them. Maybe Dr Mandy Parsons would turn out to be different, with her feminist and Marxist beliefs, but Annie doubted it. Anyway, she felt prickly even before the questions began. She would have to watch herself, let Gerry do most of the asking. After all, it was Gerry who had tracked her down.

‘Thanks for agreeing to see us at such short notice,’ said Gerry, proffering her hand.

‘It was you who called?’

‘Yes. This is my colleague, DI Annie Cabbot.’

Annie and Dr Parson shook hands. ‘I’d hardly have thought it would take two of you to handle me,’ Dr Parsons joked. ‘What am I supposed to have done?’

‘You?’ said Annie. ‘Nothing, as far as we know.’

‘Oh, that’s a pity. I do still try so hard to be a fly in the ointment.’

‘And I’m sure you are,’ Annie said. Mandy Parsons was tall and slim, with almost no hips or bust. She wore dark trousers and a plain pink shirt, and her cropped hair was shot through with grey. Black-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of her slightly hooked nose.

‘Tell me,’ Dr Parsons said, tapping her pen against the desk. ‘It must be difficult for a woman to get on in the police force, even today. After all, it’s still very much a male domain, isn’t it?’

‘Very much so,’ said Annie. ‘But we’ve made a few inroads, as you can see. There are two of us right here in your office as proof. Our area commander is a woman, too.’

‘Then there’s Winsome,’ Gerry reminded her.

‘Yes. There’s a black woman we work with, too. A detective sergeant. She’s very good. So that’s gold stars all round on the gender and race employment stats. In fact, I sometimes feel sorry for poor old DCI Alan Banks. But we’ve got him trained, haven’t we, Gerry? He’s well outnumbered. Only got young Harry Potter for solidarity.’

Dr Parsons seemed puzzled, and perhaps annoyed, but all she said was, ‘I take it that a DCI is higher in rank than a DI? So there’s still a long way to go?’

‘There’s always still a long way to go, isn’t there?’ Annie said.

‘But what about the sexist attitudes? I mean, don’t you come in for a lot of crude sexist jokes, the sort of thing that’s demeaning to women? There must still be a lot of policemen around who don’t think a woman’s place is in the police force at all.’

‘More than a few,’ said Annie, thinking back to the time she was raped by a colleague she had thought she could trust. ‘But we’re managing to whittle their numbers down slowly. We don’t want to take up too much of your time, but my colleague and I would like to have a chat with you about your years at the University of Essex, if that’s all right?’

Dr Parsons leaned back in her chair, put her pen down and linked her hands on the desk in front of her. She had large knuckles and long fingers, adorned with a few chunky rings, Annie noticed. ‘Perfectly fine with me.’

Gerry picked up the questioning. ‘Your name was given to us by another alumnus, Judy Sallis.’

Dr Parsons frowned. ‘I don’t remember knowing anyone by that name.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You probably didn’t know her. But she remembered you. Something in the papers jogged her memory recently. Something about female asylum seekers.’

‘Ah, yes, a hobby horse of mine, I’m afraid. The problem of female circumcision is—’

‘And she said you were head of the Marxist Society at Essex in the early seventies. Something like that.’

Dr Parsons paused, perhaps deciding whether to be annoyed by Gerry’s riding roughshod over her comment, then said, ‘Well, we didn’t exactly have a head, as such. That would be leaning far too close to the cult of the leader. I did a lot of the organisation, though, from writing to printing out pamphlets and manifestos — I think we had an old spirit duplicator back then, a Banda. You made a “spirit master” first, which I always found a slightly mystical and disturbing term, like something out of a horror novel. They came out purple. Remember that smell of spirit alcohol, the wet sheets? No, of course you wouldn’t. You’re too young. Anyway, we shared tasks at all levels. It seemed the only non-discriminating way to go about it.’

‘But weren’t some people better at doing some things than others?’ Gerry asked.

Dr Parsons gave her a long-suffering look. ‘Of course. But anybody can run off a few copies, hand them out on the street, sweep a floor, wash the dishes, can’t they, and there’s no reason why everybody shouldn’t have to do menial work like that, is there?’

‘I suppose not. Unless their time could be better spent doing something more valuable that nobody else could do as well.’

‘I can see you need a bit of re-education.’

‘Did you know a woman called Ronnie Bellamy?’

Dr Parsons clapped her hands together. ‘Ronnie Bellamy? Of course I did. She was one of our most capable members. Why do you ask?’

‘When did she join?’

‘Shortly after she started at the university,’ said Dr Parsons. ‘Perhaps November, December 1971. She was in her first year. Couldn’t wait to get cracking. I was already in my second year then, so I’d been around a while. I was able to show her the ropes and all.’

‘How to use the spirit duplicator?’

Dr Parsons laughed. ‘Yes. That as well. But Ronnie’s real skill was being able to write a coherent pamphlet, get across our ideas and persuade people to believe. It must have been all that expensive schooling, but her way with language was almost magical. She was a good speaker, too, and she had a lot of energy, but I must say that I often thought her looks rather got in the way of her delivery.’

‘I understand she was a very attractive young woman,’ Gerry said. ‘Nicely dressed, too.’

‘The kind of student casual elegance that costs a packet, yes. You see far more of it today then you did then, of course. Most of us were hardly walking adverts for the fashion industry. But you’re right. It could sometimes be a bit of a distraction for the male members of the society, or the men who attended our meetings in general.’

‘What? Beauty a distraction from Marxist ideology?’ Annie butted in. ‘Well, slap me around the head with a copy of Das Kapital.’ She knew she shouldn’t have interrupted but she couldn’t help herself.

Dr Parsons laughed, but it sounded hollow. ‘I take your point, DI Cabbot,’ she said. Then she leaned forward and clasped her hands again, elbows on the desk. ‘But this was a time of great struggle, and we were very sincere and very serious about what we were doing. We wanted a fairer society, and we believed that meant a socialist society. We thought that by getting rid of the capitalist system, we could bring about the end of famine, war, unemployment, pollution. You name it. All the evils of the world. Marx and Marxism seemed to offer an essential analysis of the capitalist society we lived in, and until we understood it, we could hardly go about dismantling it and changing it. Remember, we were students, young, full of idealism and vigour. We were also academics in training. Lenin said, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary action.” We believed him.’ She turned thoughtful for a moment. ‘Mind you, he also said, “Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.”’

Gerry laughed. ‘But what about Stalin?’ she asked. ‘Where does he come in? How do you explain him?’

Dr Parsons smiled indulgently, as if she had been asked this question many times before. ‘We didn’t have to explain Stalin. He was an aberration. It wasn’t about the cult of the leader for us. Or even about the expansion of the Soviet empire. If anything, we were against colonialism. We had enough of that in our past. It was the workers’ revolution that interested us. Yes, we wanted to spread the socialist doctrine, and hopefully the socialist system, to all corners of the world, but we were starting out in our little corner. That was all that counted. Overthrowing the capitalist system for a fairer, more equal one. The overthrow of the ruling class and the ascent of the workers to power. A true workers’ state.’

‘But wouldn’t it require some rather drastic measures?’

‘It would mean a rebuilding not only of the state as we knew it, but of the human social being. It wouldn’t be a time for the personal and the sensual, that’s for certain.’

‘Do you still believe in it?’

‘Unfashionable as it is today, I do, to some extent.’

‘You said Ronnie Bellamy was a good propagandist.’

Dr Parsons narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t recollect using the word “propagandist”. That’s a capitalist euphemism for anything they don’t want to hear. But yes. She was good with language, and she was an efficient mobiliser of people, a very persuasive dialectician.’

‘In what way?’

‘You have to consider the times,’ Dr Parsons went on. ‘It was a period of great social upheaval here. All over Europe, in fact. Remember, the Paris student demos and the Prague Spring weren’t so far in the past, and the Americans still had Nixon and Vietnam. And Watergate wasn’t so far in the future. At the time we’re talking about, though, late 1971 and early 1972, the miners’ strike was the biggest issue for us. It almost brought down the government. I don’t know if you know much about it, but one of the tactics the miners used was flying pickets. Groups of workers that could be transported quickly to bolster picket lines and blockade ports and power stations and such all over the country.’

‘It sounds like war,’ said Gerry.

‘It was. Class war. Them against us. Anyway, the point is, or one point is, that by late January 1972 we had over a thousand South Yorkshire miners allocated to help with flying pickets in East Anglia. Essex was a pretty volatile place politically at the time. We had Marxists, Trotskyists and International Socialists all over the place, and we agreed to offer accommodation in campus residences to as many miners as we could. Solidarity was important to us. The unity of theory and practice, ideology and action. We got away with it for a while, too, until the bloody university authorities threatened to take out a High Court injunction.’

‘And Ronnie Bellamy was involved in all this?’ said Gerry. ‘It’s hard to believe.’

‘Not at all. She was one of the powers behind the accommodation movement, almost got herself kicked out over it. And she was also one of the ones who got first dibs, you could say, though that hardly sounds very egalitarian, does it?’

‘What do you mean, first dibs?’ Gerry asked.

‘The miners, dear. Hunks. Right?’

Annie was confused. She had never thought of miners as hunks. Drunks, more like. She had assumed they were all rather grimy and coarse and mostly drunk when they weren’t underground. Not that she had ever met one. A distant great-uncle on her mother’s side had been a miner, but he had died before she was born. She didn’t think he was a hunk, though.

‘Oh, I see,’ Gerry said, blushing. ‘Do you mean there was... er...?’

‘Fraternisation?’

‘Yes.’

‘And fornication?’

‘Er... well... yes.’

Dr Parsons smiled at her discomfort. ‘Shagging like minks, dearie. Shagging like minks. I tell you, it was like a DH Lawrence novel come to life. Even Arthur Scargill admitted he had a devil of a time getting his men back home when the time came to go. Having too good a time of it, they were. Even a revolutionary has to get his leg over every now and then.’

‘And who was Ronnie Bellamy in all this?’ Gerry asked. ‘Lady Chatterley?’

‘Ha! Very good. I was thinking more of the miners in Sons and Lovers, actually, but you’ve got a point there. Very lady-like was our Ronnie, even back then. Very regal. I read a profile of her not so long ago in the Guardian. I understand she’s actually a real lady now?’

‘Indeed.’

‘So why are you investigating her?’

It was a shrewd question, Annie thought, and she hoped that Gerry was too smart to answer it.

‘As a matter of fact, we’re not. It’s just a lead-in to our investigation into the death of Gavin Miller. Apparently they knew one another back then, and we’re trying to find out as much about him as we can. You must excuse me, I’m quite new to all this, and I sometimes get sidetracked, just out of pure interest in something. You can learn so much on this job. It’s quite fascinating, I think, about the students putting up the miners.’

Very good, Annie thought. Nicely done.

‘Well, we had the ideology. We’d read our Marx, and we could go through all the arguments. Some of the miners were in the movement, and knew their Marx, but many of them had only the raw revolutionary spirit. Not to mention the brawn. It was a highly charged combination. And don’t forget, many of these miners were educated men. Up to a point. It was true that most of them had been denied a formal education by the corrupt capitalist education system, but they were far from stupid, and were easily able to grasp the basic tenets of Marxist dialectic and communism in general. A number of them were already members of the Communist Party. Arthur Scargill said during the 1984 miners’ strike that his father still read the dictionary every day because he felt a mastery of words was vital. It’s far too easy to dismiss the intellectual grasp and capacities of working men simply because they haven’t been exposed to literature — all those dead white male poets — and philosophy, and because they work with their hands rather than their minds. But you’d be surprised.’

‘I’m sure I would,’ said Gerry. ‘Was there any one who stands out in particular?’

‘For Ronnie? You’re telling me. Only the hunkiest.’

‘Was this... I mean, was it very public?’

‘Not really. It was all a bit undercover, in more ways than one. I’d say everyone was fairly discreet. I knew, of course, because I was helping to organise the accommodation, too, but I’d hardly say it was public knowledge. I remember things got a bit fraught once when her boyfriend walked in and caught them in flagrante.’

‘Gavin Miller?’

‘One and the same. He was one of the dopers, though I saw him at one of our meetings once. He came to impress Ronnie, I think. He had one of those superior cynical grins on his face the whole time. Stoned, most likely. Anyway, that would have taken the grin off his face. Caught them at it, shagging away, right there on the carpet in one of the residence flats.’

‘Were you there, too?’

‘No, Ronnie told me about later.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Gavin? Do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like most of the dopers, he didn’t do anything. Probably wrote a poem later about how bad it made him feel. And nor would you have done anything if you’d seen Joe Jarvis back then. Muscles on his arms like twisted steel cables. Pecs you wouldn’t believe. And what I believe they call a six-pack these days. But a gentle enough soul when you got to know him. A keen, hard intelligence, though, but unnurtured back then, or should I say unpolluted by any capitalist education indoctrination system.’

‘Do you still talk like that?’

Dr Parsons laughed. ‘We never did, really. Most of us, anyway. We just put it on for outsiders because they expect it.’

Gerry laughed. ‘Did Gavin Miller have anything to do with the Marxist Society?’

‘Other than attending that one meeting? No.’

‘What about you? With the miners?’

Dr Parsons gave a tight smile. ‘Thank you for thinking of me, my dear, but I’m afraid my persuasion was the same then as it is today.’ She paused, relishing her own words. ‘Their obvious charms were lost on me, but I still know a hunk when I see one.’

‘So let me get this clear,’ Annie cut in. ‘Ronnie Bellamy helped the Marxist Society by arranging accommodation for striking miners, somewhere they could stay and shag their brains out before blockading ports and power stations so the rest of the country could freeze in their homes?’

Dr Parsons tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, I suppose you could put it that way. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, as they say. But you must have been rather young to remember all that, mustn’t you?’

‘I don’t remember it at all. I was brought up in an artists’ colony in St Ives. A commune, if you like. My father’s an artist. We didn’t have electricity, at least not for quite a while, when I was really little. We were all bourgeois individualists with perhaps just a hint of socialism in the mix. At least, they had a kitty for the food and stuff — pay what you can — and we all took the household duties in turn.’

‘Admirable.’

‘Yes. When the lights went out all over the country, we all sat around the campfire singing Bob Dylan songs like we did most evenings. I think “The Times They Are a Changin”?’ was probably the first song I ever heard. Anyway, to get back to the point. Ronnie Bellamy had a stormy affair with Joe Jarvis?’

‘Yes. She did seem rather struck with him, at least for the time they were together.’

‘And after Gavin Miller walked in on them, was that the end for them?’ Annie asked. ‘I mean for Ronnie and Gavin?’

‘Well, I’d think so, wouldn’t you, dearie?’ said Dr Parsons, with arched brows. ‘Though as I recollect it, she’d finished with him some time before that, but he just didn’t want to let go. I can’t say I blame him. The one time Ronnie and I... well, never mind that.’

‘Are we talking about the Joe Jarvis?’

‘We are, indeed. But this was before his meteoric rise to fame.’

‘And fall from grace,’ Annie added. She glanced at Gerry to let her know that all would be revealed later, and Gerry indicated that she was going to pick up the thread of the interview again.

‘You said Gavin Miller just walked away when he found Ronnie with another man. Were there any repercussions?’

‘Do you mean did Ronnie appear with a black eye or something? No. None that I know of. I can’t say I ever heard or saw much of Gavin Miller after that.’

Judy Sallis had already filled in part of that story. Gavin had taken up with Nancy Winterson, and he had no further contact with Ronnie Bellamy, as far as they knew. ‘What about Ronnie and this Joe Jarvis? Did they continue to see one another through this time?’

‘The miners weren’t with us for very long, but I think they did, yes. For a couple of weeks, at least. Ronnie used to go out on the pickets, too, when she was allowed. It wasn’t quite legal. She wasn’t in the union.’

‘And after the strike?’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Dr Parsons. ‘I would guess that Joe Jarvis went back to his pit in Mexborough, and Ronnie moved on to her next conquest. You don’t expect me to remember them all, do you?’

‘No. It’s really only the dynamics of her relationships with Gavin Miller and Joe Jarvis we’re interested in. But it always helps to get as complete a sense of someone’s character as we can.’

‘Well, Ronnie always was a complex lady, that’s for sure. But Gavin Miller was just... I don’t know... a bit aimless. Wishy-washy. I didn’t know him well, of course, but I wasn’t averse to the odd toke myself now and then, and he or his friends usually had some of the best hash on campus. They also had some very lovely girls in their crowd, and they weren’t averse to being a bit experimental when the fumes got to them, so to speak. Oh, don’t look so disapproving, dear,’ said Dr Parsons, as if she could read Gerry’s thoughts on her face. ‘It just lowers the inhibitions, that’s all. It doesn’t cause unconsciousness or make anybody do what they don’t want to do. It’s not like roofies or anything.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Gerry. ‘Did you stay in touch with Ronnie and Gavin for the rest of your studies?’

‘No. As I said, Gavin sort of disappeared from the scene after his split with Ronnie, and I never got invited to their little soirées any more. As for Ronnie, I’ve never seen her so exhilarated as those weeks during the strike. There were many other battles to fight, too, ideological as well as practical, but the miners got what they wanted and went back to work, and Ronnie seemed to lose heart with the whole movement. She sort of withdrew from the scene before the end of the year. By her second year, which was my final, I hardly saw her at all. She said she was still committed, and she appeared at meetings occasionally, gave the odd speech, but she had a lot of time constraints. And I must confess that I had a lot of neglected work to catch up on, too, if I wanted a good degree, which I did. Even then, I wanted to teach. I thought it would be the best way I could contribute to the revolution. So I scaled down my own practical political activities, too. It’s always a good idea to give way to new blood, anyway, don’t you think?’

Gerry looked at Annie, who made a winding-up motion.

‘Thanks for your time,’ Gerry said, putting away her notebook.

‘I hope I’ve been helpful.’

‘I don’t suppose you remember anyone who might have wanted to harm Gavin Miller, do you?’ Gerry asked.

‘What? From forty odd years ago? No, I can’t think of anyone. What sort of thing are you talking about? Blood feud? Mafia vendetta, or something?’

‘No, of course not. Just thought I’d ask.’

‘Sorry I can’t help you.’

When they got out into the open air, Annie took a deep breath. ‘That was good, Gerry,’ she said. ‘Very good.’

‘It was fascinating,’ Gerry said. ‘But has it really got us anywhere? I get the feeling I asked all the wrong questions.’

They headed back up Woodhouse Lane to the car. ‘Not at all,’ said Annie. ‘Not at all. In fact, I think it’s got us quite a long way. Now, let me tell you what I know about Joe Jarvis, and you can fill in the gaps later with your research.’

Sir Jeremy Chalmers gave Banks a sidelong glance. ‘Don’t worry. Your car will be quite safe at Brierley until we get back.’

They were heading out of town, along the dale towards Helmthorpe, but Sir Jeremy turned off to the left on an unfenced road which meandered through a couple of sleepy hamlets up to the vast moors above. Banks thought the landscape looked more like a bog than the usual wilderness of gorse and heather, cut with steep, shallow ravines and peppered with rocky outcrops, all dark tones and lowering skies. He bet there was quicksand and mires, like the Dartmoor of The Hound of the Baskervilles. It wasn’t raining at the moment, but there had been so much of the wet stuff lately that, even up here, the ground was waterlogged for days after the last shower. Luckily, the cambered road surface was fine, apart from where it was full of potholes. Sir Jeremy splashed through them without even appearing to notice. They reached a passing place, and Sir Jeremy pulled in and turned off the engine. He took a couple of deep breaths, still holding the wheel, then got out. Banks followed suit. It had been a mostly silent journey so far.

Though the clouds were low, the view was staggering in all directions. Distant hilltops floated above the mist like disembodied monoliths, water trickled in a nearby gully, and a lone curlew cried above them. The peewits were silent, though; they had already moved down to the lower meadow for the winter.

Banks had the absurd idea at first that Sir Jeremy was going to hit him, but he did nothing.

‘I love it up here,’ Sir Jeremy said finally. ‘Far from the madding crowd. A man can think up here.’ He rested the backs of his thighs against the bonnet of the car and squinted at Banks. ‘You’ve been causing my family a lot of grief lately.’

‘It’s not my intention, believe me.’

‘I know. I suppose you’ll say you’re only doing your job.’

‘A man has been brutally murdered, Sir Jeremy. A man your wife knew, and whom she talked to on the telephone a week before he died.’

‘She knew him? This Miller person?’

Banks was surprised at the reaction. Sir Jeremy clearly didn’t know that. Had Lady Chalmers not told her husband about the phone call? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I assumed you would have known. They went out together for a while at university.’

‘Oh, that’s all,’ he said, clearly relieved. ‘I should imagine Ronnie went out with lots of boys at university. She was quite a beauty. I’ve never asked for a list of her conquests, and she’s never asked for a list of mine. You surely don’t think I believe I’m the first one?’ He paused. ‘You don’t...? Surely you don’t think I killed this Miller person out of jealousy?’

Though the thought had crossed Banks’s mind, it sounded absurd out in the open like that. ‘It’s not a matter of that,’ he said. ‘It’s the evasions. At first she denied knowing him, then, when we faced her with concrete evidence, she admitted that she did.’

‘So she lied. She didn’t want to get involved. Would you?’

Banks had realised many times before, when he had been asked this question, that he probably wouldn’t. But he could live with contradiction, and he certainly wasn’t going to admit as much to a witness or possible suspect. ‘People lie to us all the time in my business,’ he said.

Sir Jeremy gave a quiet laugh. ‘I wouldn’t, by any means, say it was restricted to your business.’

‘Perhaps not. But it happens enough to be an occupational hazard.’

‘I suppose it also makes you suspicious of everyone. You begin to think that people are going to lie before they even open their mouths.’

‘Sometimes. But I try to get over it.’ Banks sighed. ‘Look, we’re people, too. I don’t go about my job to cause anyone trouble. Except criminals. I happen to like Lady Chalmers. It would sadden me to hurt her. But if she had only explained from the beginning her connection with Gavin Miller, instead of weaving a tissue of lies, then I’d have an easier time believing what she says now. As it is at the moment, yes, I think I would treat any further utterance from her with suspicion.’

Sir Jeremy seemed to contemplate that for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ He next surprised Banks by taking a packet of Marlboros from his top pocket and lighting one. He offered Banks the packet, and for one terrible instant, the urge coursed through him again and almost overwhelmed him. ‘No, thanks,’ he said, brushing it aside. Ninety-nine per cent of the time he never thought about smoking, or the idea of it repulsed him, but that other one per cent he longed to return to being a smoker again, to being a member of that happy, carefree fraternity, now drawn even closer together as they were fellow outlaws, pariahs, in the eyes of most people.

‘I understand my brother-in-law Tony caused you a few problems?’ Sir Jeremy said.

‘He did.’

‘I’m sorry about that, but you must realise that we’re a close-knit family. He thought he was only protecting Ronnie. I’m very protective of my wife. I was too far away to be of any help, or I’d have done the same. It was a natural instinct.’

‘To pull strings, peddle influence?’

‘It’s one of the things I do well. It’s why I’m so successful at my business. Do you have any idea what it’s like to put together a multimillion-dollar Broadway musical?’

‘No. Do you have any idea what it’s like to catch a particularly slippery murderer?’

‘Touché, Mr Banks.’

‘What about Lady Chalmers’ circle. Oriana Serroni, for example?’ Banks asked.

Sir Jeremy frowned. ‘What about her?’

‘Do you think she might have anything to do with this business?’

‘I can’t imagine what. I’ve known Oriana more or less all her life, and as far as I’m concerned she’s above reproach.’ He gave Banks a curious glance. ‘She likes you.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘The way she defended you when Tony jumped in, or so Ronnie told me.’ Sir Jeremy paused. ‘And I believe she had lunch with you recently?’

So Oriana had told Sir Jeremy and, no doubt, Lady Chalmers, about the lunch. In a way, that pleased him. She had been adamant about not telling Nathan and Anthony Litton, which was what he cared about most. Banks remembered Oriana’s frostiness on the day he and Annie had confronted Lady Chalmers surrounded by her lawyer and brother-in-law. How easily we can misread or misinterpret events, he thought. Perhaps she was more disturbed by the lawyer’s presence than by Banks’ and Annie’s arrival.

A breeze sprang up and ruffled Sir Jeremy’s longish grey hair. He was wearing jeans and a zip-up leather jacket over a checked shirt, and he seemed warm enough in them. Banks was only wearing his best M&S suit, the one he always wore to go and talk to people who lived in big houses, the same one he’d been wearing all week, and he felt the chill.

‘I’m still surprised you didn’t know about your wife and Gavin Miller,’ Banks went on. ‘One thing I’ve been trying to clear up is whether they were in contact at all over the previous twenty-five years or so that you’ve lived in Eastvale. He actually taught at the college here for three years or so not long ago.’

‘I think I would have known about it if they had,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘I’m not always out of the country and, contrary to what you think, my wife is not a duplicitous woman. Besides, from what Tony tells me, he was a college lecturer who got dismissed for sexual misconduct and let himself go to seed. He was desperate for money, and I think he tried to play on old times to trick my wife out of some.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Banks agreed.

‘You mean there’s another?’

‘Gavin Miller was unjustly accused by two female students and dismissed for something he didn’t do, in revenge for something he had done to a friend of one of the girls. Something that actually benefitted the community.’ He knew that this was going too far, giving out such information to Sir Jeremy, but he felt that a certain level of frankness was called for.

‘You’re saying he was some kind of saint? You know this for a fact?’

‘We think we know what happened and why, yes. But I’m not saying he was a saint. Yes, he had let himself go to seed, and yes, he was desperate for money. His personal hygiene sucked, too. He may even have tried to con your wife out of some money. But he was still a human being, and he was badly abused.’

Sir Jeremy took it all in and said, ‘He still doesn’t sound like the kind of person Ronnie would hang about with.’

‘I agree,’ said Banks. ‘So you’d say that she’s had nothing to do with him since her university days?’

‘I would. I can’t prove it beyond any shadow of a doubt — I haven’t been with her every minute of every day — but that’s what I believe. I can certainly swear to you that, if she did, I had no knowledge of it. We all have people from our pasts we leave by the wayside. Sometimes they come back to haunt us. That’s what happened with this man. He thought an old girlfriend might be a soft touch. That he got murdered around the same time he tried to con my wife out of a few quid is mere coincidence. Do you really think Ronnie would murder someone for such a paltry amount? Or that I would? She’s not a violent person, I assure you. Her nature is actually very kindly, and about the only thing that really surprises me is that she didn’t give him what he asked for. She’s a sucker for street people and the like, always handing out money.’

‘Maybe if he’d asked her nicely?’ Banks said.

Sir Jeremy trod out his cigarette. ‘Yes. Maybe.’

‘Well maybe he did. Maybe she gave him some money, then someone who knew he had it on him murdered him. But he couldn’t get it. He heard someone coming, so he ran off. But the problem with that theory is that nobody could have walked along that railway track and not seen Gavin Miller’s body, yet it wasn’t discovered or reported until the following morning. Someone else who didn’t want to get involved, perhaps? Someone up to no good who couldn’t afford to be associated with a recently deceased loser?’

‘Hm,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘I can see you have a few more problems that need solving, but I honestly don’t think any of them are to do with Ronnie. She specifically says that she didn’t give Miller any money, and I believe her, just as I believe the three women spent the evening at Brierley as they say they did. The memories his telephone call triggered were probably not good ones for Ronnie, or they may have left her completely unmoved. He might have taken a hectoring tone, something I can tell you would be guaranteed to put her off, or maybe he said something she doesn’t want to tell me, or you, about. But I believe her.’

Banks was starting to get cold, wishing they could just get in the car again and drive away, but Sir Jeremy seemed especially communicative out here on the moors and he didn’t want to break the spell. ‘Did you ever meet Gavin Miller?’ Banks asked.

‘Me? No. I thought I’d already made that clear. I’d never even heard of him until Ronnie told me you’d been around asking about him, then I read about his death in the papers.’

‘So she didn’t tell you about his phone call at the time he made it?’

‘No. I don’t suppose she thought it was important.’ Sir Jeremy hesitated.

‘What is it?’ Banks asked.

Sir Jeremy pulled out another cigarette and lit it. After inhaling deeply and letting the plume of smoke disperse on the wind, he said, ‘It’s been a horrendously busy time for me. As you know, I’ve been over in New York trying to put this damn show together, then I had some difficult meetings in London about the UK production. Quite honestly, it’s all been a bit of a nightmare, and I’ve probably neglected Ronnie to some extent. Too much on my plate. I haven’t been there for her. She’s used to that, of course, but I might have missed a few signals this time.’

‘What do you mean?’ Banks asked.

‘Well, now I think about it, she seemed generally worried and distracted when I got back from New York. She never said why, and as she hadn’t told me about the phone call, I couldn’t make any sense of her behaviour. But I also had too much going on in my life to take the time and really talk to her, as I should have done, to try to find out what was happening. We do talk, you know. Ronnie isn’t secretive with me, and she does like to get things out in the open, problems and stuff. But I never asked her what was bothering her, and then I wasn’t around. The phone’s not the same, especially when you’re calling from thousands of miles away. To be honest, it was easier to blame you for all Ronnie’s distress, but when I think about it, I have to admit that it started before you first talked to her.’

Oriana had told Banks much the same thing, but he wasn’t going to rat her out to Sir Jeremy. ‘And since the murder?’

‘Well, obviously, she’s been even more upset. But again, I put that down to you and your persistent questions and insinuations. Perhaps she thought more of this Miller than I realised, or than she realised. The whole thing must have brought back some powerful memories. Perhaps she felt guilty. You know, maybe if she had given him money, he wouldn’t have died. That sort of thing. This was one time I really had no idea what was bothering her. Who knows how the human mind works, what torturous and labyrinthine paths we lead ourselves down?’

‘How was she before the phone call?’

‘Fine. As far as I know. Happy, healthy, productive. She’s always had problems with her nerves now and then. Just episodes. Nothing serious. It’s just her nature. Highly strung. She’s an idealist and a perfectionist, and that’s tough to keep up in this world. Easier perhaps when you’re young, but a damn sight harder as you get older. But she was fine. Since the phone call, it’s like the nerves have come back.’

He was being very open and forthright, Banks thought, wondering if there was a reason behind it. ‘And since the murder?’

Sir Jeremy gave Banks a direct look. ‘Again, I thought it was your fault. But I’ve found her crying for no reason, jumping at shadows. She’s been taking Valium again. I’m only grateful that Angelina and Oriana have been around to help keep her together. The strain is showing.’

‘What do you think it’s all about?’

‘I have absolutely no idea, but what bothers me most is that I think she’s scared of something. I’m worried that she might be in danger. I think we need your help, Mr Banks, and you can rely on me not to interfere at higher levels, if you take my meaning. But I don’t know what it is you’re supposed to do.’ Sir Jeremy checked his watch and pulled his jacket collar tight to keep out the chill. ‘Come on,’ he said, with a forced grin. ‘I’ve got a meeting in Edinburgh this evening. Let’s get back to that lovely Porsche of yours.’

The rain had started up again with a vengeance, a broad band of it all the way from the Midlands to the Scottish borders. A brisk wind lashed it against the conservatory windows and it swirled in dark, glistening patterns over the glass roof.

Banks sat listening to Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Does Your House Have Lions. When you got beyond the showmanship, playing three saxes at once, for example, the man could really play. After polishing off the remains of some takeaway pad Thai noodles that were fast approaching their chuck-out date, Banks had spent much of the early evening on the telephone and computer. It was partly work, partly family, including a long chat with Tracy in Newcastle and an email to his parents, who were still on the South-east Asia cruise. Brian was in Lyon, and most likely on stage, so Banks just left a brief message on his mobile.

Now he had just finished reading through the thick file on Joe Jarvis that Annie and Gerry had quickly put together for him after their visit to Dr Mandy Parsons. Banks already knew a fair bit about Jarvis — one of his father’s heroes — as did most people who followed the news with any level of interest, but there were always surprises. He hadn’t known that Jarvis was a devoted Shostakovich fan, for example, or that his favourite reading included Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov and Émile Zola, none of whom Banks had ever read, though he had seen various versions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma on TV and had watched a few episodes of The Paradise. He had always wanted to read Germinal and Chekhov’s short stories, and perhaps now was a good time. The second-hand copies he had bought years ago were still on his bookshelf.

There were plenty of photographs of Jarvis at various stages in his career in the file, and he had certainly been a ruggedly handsome young man in the early seventies when Ronnie had known him. As time went on, and his career path took him further and further from the pit, he had come to look more distinguished. He was certainly a familiar figure, at any rate, which was hardly surprising given the number of times he’d been splashed over the media.

As the rain poured down and Roland Kirk played on, Banks closed the folder on his knee. The basic facts were simple enough. Joe Jarvis was born in 1947 in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, into a mining family that went back three generations. He had started working down the pit at the age of sixteen, and at the time of the 1972 miners’ strike, he was a twenty-five-year-old coalface worker, just a few years older than Ronnie Bellamy, and from another universe entirely.

It was after the ’72 strike that things had started to get interesting, and complicated, in Jarvis’s career. He joined the Communist Party in 1973, quickly became a pit delegate, and after that it seemed there was no stopping him. A keen supporter of education through the Workers’ Education Association, he took a part-time course in Economics and International Politics at Sheffield University in the late seventies. He had also become more active in the National Union of Miners, and over the years he rose steadily through the ranks, or climbed higher up the greasy pole, depending on your point of view: shop steward, member of the branch committee, branch delegate, and from there he moved on to paid, full-time union positions, leaving the coalface behind for ever in 1982, though he never became president of the NUM. That position went to Arthur Scargill.

A vehement opponent of Margaret Thatcher, Jarvis often appeared on TV during the 1984 miners’ strike, and he was also pictured holding banners and linking arms at pickets. He had been one of the loudest protestors of the practice of bringing in extra police from the Met to bolster containment of the picketers. These were the men who were ‘up for it’, Banks remembered, ready to crack a few northern heads, the ones his father always brought up when the matter of Banks’s career arose, the ones who had waved their rolls of five-pound notes overtime pay at the starving miners, and used it to woo the local girls, some of whom were only too willing to be wooed. At least they didn’t rape and pillage, as the Russians had in Berlin after the war.

In turn vilified and lauded, Jarvis proved an able leader of men and a tricky opponent of the National Coal Board negotiators. Loyalty and solidarity were his keywords. He would have given his life for his fellow miners. Some said he was the man behind Scargill, others that he always played second fiddle. Whatever the truth was — and he never commented on his position himself — he was always right there, up at the front line when the going got tough, as it had over the last two or three years.

Some official papers found in a Moscow basement and finally released showed that Arthur Scargill had begged the Russians for money to support the 1984 strike and asked that its source be kept secret. Of course, Scargill bore the brunt of this publicly, and did so very well, but the shadowy figure of Jarvis, though retired by then, had plenty of his own explaining to do. He had been a key figure in the negotiations and had made frequent trips to Moscow during the time he was employed by the NUM. There were also accusations of financial ties with Colonel Gadaffi’s government in Libya.

During the Cold War, of course, the Russians were interested in doing all they could to wreck the capitalist system and foment uprising all over the world, and the Libyans had no great love for England, either. Jarvis was eloquent in his own defence, but a lot of mud was slung in the media, and some of it stuck. Jarvis had always been proud to tell people he was a member of the Communist Party, even when it was unfashionable, and when leaving it and joining the Labour Party, as Scargill had done, would have furthered his career. There were rumours of MI5 investigations and hints of espionage accusations, yet even his greatest detractors would have had to admit that Jarvis didn’t have access to any information the Russians would have been interested in. What he could do, though, was stir up unrest, help to bring about the ideal conditions for a workers’ revolution — work as an agent provocateur — and the climate in the miners’ strikes had been ideal for that. But no slush fund was found, and there was no secret Moscow money stashed away in numbered Swiss bank accounts. At least, not that HMG’s best could find.

Though it was well known that Jarvis strongly disagreed with Scargill’s policy of calling the 1984 strike without taking a ballot of members, he never publicly denounced his friend and mentor, even when the latter went so far as to defend Stalin and attack the Polish Solidarity movement, or when he later sued the NUM for kicking him out and claimed expenses from the union for his expensive Barbican flat.

No charges were ever brought against Jarvis, and when the hue and cry died down, he returned to his retirement and his silence, apparently spending most of his time on his allotment in Mexborough, reading his beloved Chekhov and growing vegetables. He didn’t have an expensive flat in London, but a modest terrace in Mexborough, not too far from where he had grown up.

His address had been easy enough to find; it was in the telephone directory.

The music had come to an end, and Banks had to go through to the entertainment room to change the disc. He could have made life easier by buying an automatic CD changer that held five or ten discs, but he found that the more complicated a piece of equipment was, the more likely it was to go wrong. Besides, he never knew what he wanted to listen to next, let alone three or four discs ahead. In the end he went for something a little more relaxing than Roland Kirk as it was getting close to bedtime — See You on the Ice by Carice van Houten — and poured himself a small nightcap of Laphroaig.

The rain was still hammering down. It was like living under a waterfall. Banks supposed it would end one day soon, then they would have snow and ice to look forward to. He remembered the Arizona desert and the balmy heat and unique light of Los Angeles — Santa Monica, the Hollywood Hills, Laurel Canyon, Mulholland Drive — the breathtaking beauty of the California coast all the way up to San Francisco. He also remembered Sophia, whose ghost he had been trying to lay to rest through his travels. The sun had shone all the time he was there, though one evening, while he was enjoying dinner in Tiburon on the other side of the bay with a charming divorcee he had met at the hotel, the cityscape across the water suddenly disappeared so completely that everyone in the restaurant gasped and thought the power had gone off. It was fog, though, rolled in so quickly under the Golden Gate Bridge that nobody had noticed it was coming, and most of it had dispersed when it was time to go back to the hotel. Perhaps it was time for another big trip, he thought, if he could afford it. India, perhaps. Or China, Vietnam, Brazil? There was no shortage of possibilities. There was no one he needed to forget this time, but why should one even need an excuse to go on a long journey? He glanced at a few tour itineraries on his tablet, then decided it was about time for bed.

The whisky in his glass was just about finished when his phone rang. He checked his watch. After midnight. Thinking it might be Brian returning his call after the concert, he picked up his mobile. He didn’t recognise the number, but he answered it anyway.

‘I’m sorry to be calling you so late,’ the familiar voice said, ‘but you did give me your card and said to call any time if I had something to tell you. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘You didn’t,’ said Banks, almost adding that it was nice to hear Oriana’s voice again, perhaps because Carice van Houten was singing ‘You. Me. Bed. Now.’ at the time. But something in her tone warned him this was not a social call, as if it ever could be. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Yes,’ said Oriana. ‘Something is very wrong. It’s Ronnie. There’s been an accident.’