Children of the Revolution

Chapter 13

The red sports car was parked in its usual place on the gravel drive outside Brierley House. Clearly, Lady Chalmers’ local garage hadn’t got around to taking it in for repairs yet. When Banks got out of the Porsche, he walked over to the MG to check out the damage. It wasn’t too bad, he thought. The front headlamp was smashed, the tyre ripped, the fender and passenger door gouged and dented by the crash through the fence. But all that could be easily fixed. What interested Banks were the scratches and dents on the driver’s side. They could hardly have been caused by the fence.

Neither Oriana nor Lady Chalmers was in immediate evidence, and it was a dishevelled Sir Jeremy who opened the door. Wearing a baggy grey sweater and faded jeans, he was unshaven and looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. The telltale tufts of hair sculpted into whorls and flattened areas by a pillow showed that he had at least tried to catch a nap.

‘Banks, it’s you,’ he said, clearly distraught. ‘Have you seen it? We were expecting it back yesterday, but it didn’t get here until this morning, just before you arrived. Come in. I want to talk to you.’

He led Banks into a study, or office, that was clearly his, with theatrical posters on the walls, the iconic Les Mis and Cats, along with some for his own productions: The Power and the Glory, Carmilla and On the Beach. There were a number of trophies and awards of various shapes, sizes and materials on the bookcases, slotted between rows of theatre books and bound scripts. The wainscoting was dark and the wallpaper above it not much lighter. This room didn’t have the panoramic view of the town, but of the house next door across the separating lawn. Banks guessed that Sir Jeremy probably didn’t spend a lot of time here, as he had offices in London and spent a great deal of time travelling.

‘Sit down. Sit down.’ It sounded more like a command than a request. Banks sat. Sir Jeremy flopped into his leather swivel chair. ‘You saw it?’

‘I take it you mean the damage to Lady Chalmers’ car?’ he said.

‘Well, of course. What do you think? What do you make of it?’

‘She was lucky it was a barbed-wire fence she drove through,’ said Banks. ‘A drystone wall would have been a lot more serious, even if she hadn’t gone into the river.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Sir Jeremy, ‘but I mean the other side. The driver’s side.’

‘What did Lady Chalmers say?’

‘She was still very groggy from the sedative when I spoke to her, but she said she doesn’t know how it happened. Perhaps someone ran into the car while it was parked somewhere.’

‘Have you seen the marks before?’

‘No, but I’ve been away, and I must admit I’ve been so busy it’s been a long time since I actually paid any attention to Ronnie’s car.’

‘Wouldn’t she have had the damage fixed rather than leave it for so long?’

‘Hmm,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘I’m not so sure. Ronnie can be remarkably blasé about material things. She’s been known to procrastinate. If it were left to Ronnie, it would probably sit in the drive for a week or two first. Usually I organise things like that, or Oriana might if I’m away.’

‘The damage seems fresh to me.’

‘Me, too. That’s just it. Now she’s drawn in on herself. Put the shutters up. She says she just wants to be left alone for a while, that she’s fine and needs a bit of peace and a little space to regroup. Fair enough. But I’m worried, Banks.’

‘What do you think happened?’

‘I think it’s more than likely that someone deliberately ran her into that fence, no doubt with the thought that she would land in the river and drown.’

‘You think it was attempted murder?’

‘Well, what does it look like to you, man?’

‘Who could have done that?’

‘No idea. Someone must have followed her, seized the opportunity.’

‘Why?’

‘How should I know? That’s your job. But if you ask me, it was probably something to do with whoever killed this Gavin Miller.’

‘What did the Derbyshire police say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Have they started an investigation?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. According to Oriana, the officers who brought Ronnie home just wanted to make sure she was all right. They were very polite. They didn’t ask any questions. I think she had already told them what happened.’

‘And she hadn’t mentioned any other car being involved?’

‘Apparently not. Is that what it is, though? What I thought when I saw the damage? What I just told you?’

‘There could be other explanations,’ said Banks. ‘We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.’

‘What other explanation?’

‘You said yourself that it might be older damage she hadn’t got around to getting repaired.’ But even as he spoke, Banks doubted this explanation. He had visited Brierley House a few times, and had on at least one occasion admired the old red MG parked there. He didn’t remember seeing any damage at all; the car had always seemed superbly well cared for, in the way you often find with antique motors. ‘Or it could have been an accident,’ he went on.

‘But Ronnie didn’t mention another car. That’s just it. She said she went off the road, and the damage on the driver’s side is old. Is she lying to me?’

Banks wasn’t going to tell him that he suspected Lady Chalmers had been doing a lot of lying lately. ‘The weather conditions were dreadful,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Lady Chalmers didn’t even notice that another car glanced into her side?’

‘Oh, come on. You’re grasping at straws.’

‘So you’re convinced that someone gave her a nudge towards that river?’

‘What else could it be? The scratches, the way she seemed so frightened, so shocked.’

‘That could all have been due to the accident,’ Banks said. ‘But I take your point seriously. Any idea who might have done such a thing?’

‘None at all.’

‘Do you mind if we take the car in for a forensic examination? That should tell us a great deal about how the damage occurred, and it might even give us a way of identifying the other car involved if there was one.’

‘Be my guest.’

‘And there’s one more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do I have your permission to talk to Lady Chalmers again? Alone.’

It was a fine late afternoon, the rain staying at bay for the second day in a row, with even a little weak sunshine breaking through the cloud cover, and temperatures in the mid-teens. Warm enough, at any rate, to go without an overcoat. It had taken Gerry a good part of the day to fill in the gaps Banks needed filling in before paying his next visit to Lady Chalmers, but thanks to her determination and resourcefulness, he thought he had what he needed now.

Lady Chalmers was sitting in the garden, a dark blue knitted shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her flaxen hair resting on it straight and damp, as if fresh from the shower. From that angle, Banks could even see a little grey in it. When he came up beside her to take the other wicker chair, she turned and looked up at him. He saw some of the beauty that Joe Jarvis must have seen in her forty years ago: the eyes, the porcelain complexion. Then she smiled sadly at him, and he saw the beauty of that, too. He also saw the bruise on her left temple and the cut and swollen lower lip, but those were the only visible results of her accident.

‘I thought you’d come,’ she said. It wasn’t an accusation or a complaint, just a weary statement of fact.

Banks sat down. ‘Will you tell me what happened?’

Lady Chalmers gazed at the view below, the cobbled market square, the castle on its hill, the formal gardens leading down to the river, the old church in the foreground, the constant background noise of the terraced falls. The shadows, where there were any, were lengthening as the winter sun was setting fast. ‘I’d like to tell you,’ she said. ‘It’s tearing me apart. I feel if I don’t tell someone soon, I’ll... I don’t know what. But it’s so hard. You see, I’ve never told anyone. Not Jem, not Francesca, not Sam or Angelina, not Oriana. Not anyone.’

‘Not even Joe Jarvis?’

She looked at Banks, just a hint of surprise in her expression. ‘Not even Joe. You’ve talked to him?’

‘Yes.’

‘I should have known you’d find out about him. How is he?’

‘Not so good.’ Banks stopped short of going into detail. ‘He’s very ill, in fact.’

It was as if a cloud passed over her face. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I haven’t seen or heard from him in over forty years, but I’m still sorry to hear that.’ She put her hand over her heart. ‘Do you understand that?’

‘I think so.’

‘I love my family, Mr Banks. I’d do anything to protect them. I think you know that, too.’

‘That’s not always possible, but if it’s me you’re worried about, you needn’t be. All I want is the person who killed Gavin Miller. I’m not in the business of spilling family secrets.’

‘That would be inevitable, I think,’ she said. ‘If I’m right. But I think you may also suspect that much already.’

‘I still need to hear it from you. If it helps, you’re right, I do think I know most of it already.’

‘A reward for your persistence?’

‘A ghost to be laid. A festering wound to be cleansed.’

‘If only.’ She stared out at the view again.

‘I’m still only guessing at this point, but I think Oliver Litton is your son. Am I right?’

Lady Chalmers said nothing for a long time. Banks saw a muscle tic beside her jaw. In the end, she inclined her head in the slightest of nods. ‘How do you know?’

‘I said it was a guess, and it was. Mostly. I spotted a resemblance when I examined some old photos of Joe Jarvis, back in his political firebrand days. It was just a little thing, hardly realised consciously, but it stuck in my mind. There were the photos of you and Oliver together on your screen saver, as well, the last time we talked. There wasn’t such a strong resemblance — he takes mostly after his father — but you and your sister were alike, and there was definitely something in his looks that made me think of her. Or you. And there was definitely something about the way you looked standing together that felt like more than just aunt and nephew. It just sort of snagged in my memory.’ Banks remembered a similar photograph of his mother and his late brother Roy that had that same indefinable quality of mother and son. Pride, definitely, a sort of ‘I made this’ expression.

‘Then I did the maths,’ Banks went on. ‘When I heard that you went down to Buxton for Oliver’s birthday on such a miserable night, I wondered why, and when I found out that Oliver was indeed born in November 1972, which meant that he was conceived in January or February, I became even more convinced that I might be on to something. That was when Joe Jarvis and the South Yorkshire miners were in residence at Rayleigh. And when my colleague then discovered that you didn’t return to the University of Essex for your second year until December, two months into the first term, that did it for me. It could be easily proven, of course, by DNA tests.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Lady Chalmers said.

‘What happened? How did Gavin Miller find out?’

‘Mostly doing the maths, I should imagine. But he had a lot more than you to go on to start with. I think he always knew, or suspected. Don’t forget: he was there. He walked in on me and Joe once.’

‘I know about that.’

‘Well, Gavin was a bit of a pest, to be honest, following me about and such. We did go out for a while, but I broke it off with him at the end of the first term, before Christmas. He didn’t want to take no for an answer. Nothing violent or anything, just a constant, irritating presence. He may well have followed me to Buxton and spied on me over the summer. I thought I saw him on the one or two rare occasions I ventured into town.’

‘That was while you were pregnant?’

‘Yes, but before I was showing. I was lucky, I suppose, in that my “baby bump”, as they call them these days, was easy to cover up with loose clothing for quite a long time into the pregnancy. As you have probably guessed, I didn’t want the baby, but the idea of abortion was abhorrent to me. I knew that Tony and Fran had been trying for a baby for ages without any success, so it seemed the perfect solution. Fran and I were very close. When I got pregnant, I ran crying to her and told her everything. But I didn’t want anyone else to know, not my parents, not anyone except the three of us.’

‘And that was how it stayed?’

‘That was how it stayed. I finished out the first year, then I went to stay at Buxton for the “confinement”. And, believe me, it was a confinement. We couldn’t go through official channels, of course, but Tony was a practising gynaecologist. He took care of everything. He so wanted a son. We simply made out that my sister was pregnant, and that I was there to be with her. Everyone knew we were close. Neither of us went out much at all during that last month or two. It was hot, too, but no bikinis in the garden. If Fran ever went out, she shoved a cushion down her front. It was so funny. She was terrified someone would ask if they could touch her tummy and feel the baby move. But people didn’t do that so much back then, at least not in our circles. It would have been considered vulgar.’

‘It seems like a complicated way to go about things, hiding one pregnancy and faking another. If they wanted a baby so much, what about IVF, or straightforward official adoption?’

‘IVF wasn’t available then. That didn’t come in until the late seventies. Tony actually worked on it in the early days, but they decided once they had Oliver that it wasn’t for them. Oliver was enough, and they certainly didn’t want the risk of triplets or quadruplets. And as for official adoption, that would have involved the authorities. None of us wanted that. I didn’t want my parents to know I’d had a baby, for a start.’

‘But why not?’

‘You don’t understand. You didn’t know them. I’d caused them enough... they’d have disowned me. I didn’t want that. I was very confused.’

‘OK,’ said Banks.

‘And Tony and Fran didn’t want even the slightest risk of losing the child. Fran also loved the idea of the baby being mine, family. It was the next best thing to having her own. And you know as well as I do that things can easily go wrong once you bring the social services into anything.’

‘So you brought it off.’

‘With ease. Oliver went to full term and I went back to Essex in December. By then, of course, Fran and Tony were already the proud parents of a fine baby boy. And that’s how it stayed.’

‘Why did Gavin Miller leave it so long to approach you?’

Lady Chalmers adjusted the shawl around her shoulders. Banks looked down on the square and saw the local bus bouncing its way over the cobbles. ‘You have to understand, Mr Banks, that Gavin Miller wasn’t a bad person. Not by his nature. He did what he did because he was desperate. He wasn’t a habitual criminal, and he clearly wasn’t very good at it. He told me that he had always suspected from the evidence at the time, because he paid such close attention to me. He could probably even tell when I came back in December, when term had already begun, that I’d had a baby, because, as you said, the timing was right, and what possible reason could I have for missing the first two months of my second year? I also didn’t have my usual slim figure back by then, of course, so I still wore loose clothing. That wasn’t so odd in itself. Most people were neither interested nor particularly suspicious — lots of girls wore loose clothing and it meant nothing — but Gavin was still something of a stalker, though we didn’t call them that back then. But the real reason Gavin called when he did is a simple one. Oliver is tipped to be the next Home Secretary in the forthcoming cabinet reshuffle, as you know. And even if he doesn’t get the position this time around, everyone knows he’s set for great things in the future. He has the perfect image, him and his lovely wife Tania, their two beautiful children Miles and Primrose. Imagine how it would go down if it suddenly came out that he was the bastard son of a spoiled little Marxist rich girl and a striking coal miner, with connections to the Communist Party, once suspected of being a Russian spy? You see, I’ve followed Joe’s career closely.’

‘I still don’t see how it’s worthy of blackmail,’ said Banks. ‘Surely nobody would care about Joe Jarvis’s politics these days? He’s hardly a force to be reckoned with. Those communist connections came later, anyway, after you had parted. And none of it is Oliver’s fault. There’s no wrongdoing on his part in any of this.’

‘What do they say? No smoke without fire? Dirt sticks? All the clichés apply. It’s not so much the politics, not in isolation. You must know even better than I do what sort of spin an unscrupulous journalist would put on a story like that. And let’s not forget that Fran and Tony broke the law in passing Oliver off as their own son without going through the proper adoption process. Me, too, perhaps, by letting them. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d had a baby, and they wanted the world to think they had. And imagine the effect on poor Oliver, himself, after all this time.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t let it happen. I’d never forgive myself. Perhaps Tony and I are the only ones left who know the secret, but Tony never showed that he realised how much Oliver meant to me. I was his mother. I took as much pride as Tony and Fran in his achievements. I loved him every bit as much as they did, only I could never say so, never show it. Not to him. Not to anyone.’ She sniffed and rummaged for a handkerchief somewhere inside her shawl. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to be. I know you love Oliver. What I need to know is who killed Gavin? Was it the same person who tried to run you into the river?’

‘You think it was me, don’t you? That I hired someone. That maybe I drove myself into the river.’

‘The thought crossed my mind, and now you’ve just given me a motive.’

‘Gavin rang out of the blue. The phone call you came to ask me about. He told me he knew about Oliver and that DNA would prove it, as you said. He asked for five thousand pounds to keep quiet. He promised me that would be the only payment. He was almost apologetic, not like a hardened blackmailer at all, though I have no experience of such people. A desperate man, a man at the end of his tether. Even so, the call shook me to my roots. We arranged to meet on the bridge in a week’s time.’

‘You’d been there before?’

‘Never. But I knew where he meant. I’d driven through Coverton a few times on the way to Barnard Castle.’

‘But you didn’t turn up at the meeting.’

‘No.’

‘What happened?’

She paused, as if she were having difficulty getting the words out. ‘This is really hard, even after all that’s happened.’

‘Take your time.’

Lady Chalmers shot him a glance. ‘As if that would help.’ She took a deep breath. A couple of crows set up squawking in one of the trees beyond the bottom of the garden. ‘All right. As soon as I’d finished talking to Gavin, I phoned Tony. He was livid. He had so much more to lose than I did. Or so he thought. His son — or apparent son — about to become Home Secretary, brought down by some sordid scandal. He couldn’t face something like that. He asked me the details and said to forget about it and leave it to him. Tony was always capable of handling things, the way he did when Oliver was born. I couldn’t forget, of course. The phone call was always on my mind. The proposed meeting gnawed away at me all week. People must have noticed. I’m sure Oriana did. Anyway, the next thing I heard was that Gavin had been found dead under the bridge, and then you turned up.’

‘What did you think?’

She clutched the shawl around her neck. ‘I didn’t know what to think at first.’

‘Did you talk to Tony again?’

‘Yes. Several times. Especially after you came around. He was interested in how the investigation was progressing.’

‘I’ll bet he was. Did he say anything?’

‘I asked him what happened, naturally, and he told me that Gavin said this was only the first payment, that there would be more, and when Tony objected, Gavin became upset, then angry, demanding more money right there on the spot. Tony said he acted like he was on drugs or something. He grabbed Tony and tried to snatch his wallet from his inside pocket. They struggled. There was a scuffle, and Gavin fell off the bridge. Tony said he simply panicked and ran off and drove home.’

Banks knew that it couldn’t have happened as easily as that. The side of the bridge was too high for Gavin Miller simply to fall over it. He had to have been at least partially lifted off his feet and bundled over. Tony Litton was powerful enough to do that. There was nothing to be gained from telling Lady Chalmers this, though. She could hardly handle the fact that Tony had killed Gavin Miller accidentally, let alone that he had deliberately murdered him, and tried to murder her.

‘So you believed that Gavin Miller’s death was a tragic accident?’

‘Yes. Of course. At the time. Tony told me that there was no reason to do or say anything. If I just sat it out, he said, stuck to the story, then everything would blow over and we’d all be fine. Naturally, I didn’t want him to go to trial, or to jail. But it worried me. And you kept coming back, kept asking questions, uncovering fragments of my past, getting closer to the truth. That’s why he tried to have you taken off the case. He said he would be able to handle the police.’

‘Why did you phone me from London?’

Lady Chalmers looked away. ‘I was a bit drunk. Things weren’t sitting easily with me. Jem was back, but I couldn’t talk to him. I was confused, worried. I thought maybe if we made a personal connection, then you’d realise it wasn’t me and go away.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘When I went down for Oliver’s birthday, Oliver left for London immediately after dinner. He hadn’t seen his wife and children for some days. He had a driver waiting. Tony could see what a state I was in, and he was worried I was on the verge of telling all. I think I was pretty close to breaking point. He wanted me to stay the night in the guest bedroom, but I think I was scared that he might do something. I don’t know what, but the whole set-up was making me nervous. I don’t suppose I was entirely convinced that what happened to Gavin was a complete accident. There was always something about Tony. Something a bit cold and calculating. Pragmatic. There were only the two of us, and we were the only ones in the world who knew. I was scared. Of my own brother-in-law. So I insisted on going home. I’ve always been a good driver. The MG’s a bit leaky perhaps, but it holds the road well. I wasn’t too worried about driving home.’

‘Do you think it was Anthony Litton who nudged you into the river?’

‘I was on a narrow country lane beside the river. It was dark, no streetlights, just the car’s headlamps, and the rain was coming down in buckets. The windscreen wipers couldn’t keep up with it. Everything was blurred. I was slowing down, thinking of stopping for a while until it eased off. I didn’t see the car. I felt a bump, and then I was losing control, crashing through the fence.’

‘But ever since then, you’ve been terrified because you think it was Tony, don’t you, and it’s been eating away at you?’

‘I couldn’t accept it at first. I told myself that even if there had been another car, and it wasn’t just my imagination, me losing control in the rain, then it was still an accident, just some stranger who was having trouble staying on the road, too. Admittedly, he shouldn’t have been overtaking under such conditions, but... well, you know what some drivers are like.’

‘Indeed. What changed your mind?’

‘When I was lying there, in hospital, while they checked me out, I realised that it had to be him, that it was no accident. We were the only two left who knew. We’d argued, after Oliver left. I said Tony should tell you the truth, if it had all been an accident. He said he couldn’t. I don’t think he trusted me to keep quiet any more. He was afraid of what any kind of trouble with the police would do to Oliver’s career prospects. I was worried about Oliver, too, of course, and it was tearing me apart. But Tony had staked his whole life on Oliver, and he couldn’t bear the thought of it all unravelling, even at the expense of his sister-in-law, the true mother of his child. Can you imagine what it’s like, knowing that your own brother-in-law is trying to kill you?’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Banks.

‘Before that realisation came to me, I never would have said a thing, no matter what I suspected about Gavin’s death. That’s the irony, Mr Banks. If Tony hadn’t tried to kill me, he could have still kept everything he wanted. I would have kept his secret, even if it destroyed my sanity. Now... what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Banks. ‘A detailed forensic examination of your car should be able to link it with the car that nudged you off the road, and tell us whether it was Anthony Litton’s. That’s not enough evidence in itself, though. A good lawyer could argue that you’d been in the same place together all evening, that you could have easily bumped into his car on your way out, for example. And it’s certainly not enough evidence to convict him of Gavin Miller’s murder.’ Even taking into consideration the height of the bridge’s side, Banks thought, this same good lawyer could still make a strong case for accidental death, manslaughter at the most. But if any of that happened, as Lady Chalmers had said, there was every chance that Oliver Litton’s promising future would be ruined, through no fault of his own. Litton was a rare politician in that he was popular with the people and most of his peers. He stood a little to the right of his party, and even the police welcomed some of the reforms he had promised to bring in if he was given the job.

‘Will I go to jail?’

Banks looked out over Eastvale, its beauty spread out below him under the grey sky, his mind working furiously. A cool breeze shook the tops of the trees, and the crows flew off noisily. ‘What for?’ he said. ‘I’d be a liar if I promised I could predict how this is all going to turn out in court, if it ever gets there.’ Then he turned to Lady Chalmers. ‘There is one thing I can promise you, though. I will do my best to see that you don’t go to prison.’ Banks thought of his visit to Kyle McClusky and the sound of heavy doors being locked, weighed it against Veronica’s deceptions and prevarications. ‘I certainly don’t want to see you there. I don’t think you could have foreseen Gavin’s murder. You foolishly protected your brother-in-law, even after you came to suspect him of murder, but that would also be very hard to prove in court. Even if it could be proven, there would no doubt be a great deal of jury sympathy for you. I don’t have anything to arrest you for. Maybe we could make a case out for obstructing the police in their inquiries, wasting police time, failing to register the birth of a child, even aiding and abetting, which is a lot more serious, but then, Anthony and Oliver Litton have powerful friends. You and Sir Jeremy have powerful friends. Who knows what sort of influence could be brought to bear? As a politician, I’m sure that Oliver is also bound to have enemies and rivals, even in his own party, who will be sniffing around for anything that can be used against him. I can’t promise to keep this from the press or the courts, but it’s not my intention to make it public.’

‘But do you have to tell anyone?’

‘I have to tell my boss. She’ll determine what’s to be done then. And what I want you to do is to tell your husband and your children. Oriana, too. They deserve to know. It won’t be easy, but they’re your family. You told me you’d do anything to protect them, and it may seem like this would do just the opposite, but believe me, it won’t. They’ll stand by you. In the end, it will bring you closer and make you stronger.’

‘And Tony? What about him?’

‘I think you’d better leave Mr Litton to me,’ said Banks.