Not Safe After Dark

1

Banks pulled up outside his parents’ council house and parked his Renault by the side of the road. He wondered if it would be safe left out overnight. The estate had had a bad reputation even when he grew up there in the sixties, and it had only got worse over recent years. Not that there was any alternative, he realized, as he made sure it was locked and the security system was working; his parents didn’t own a garage.

He couldn’t very well remove the CD player for the weekend, but to be on the safe side he stuffed the CDs themselves into his overnight bag. He didn’t think any young joyriders would want to steal Thelonious Monk, Cecilia Bartoli or the Grateful Dead, but you couldn’t be too careful. Besides, he had a portable disc player now, and he liked to listen to music in bed as he drifted off to sleep.

Banks’s parents’ house stood near the western edge of the estate, close to the arterial road, across from an abandoned factory and a row of shops. Banks paused for a moment and took in the red-brick terrace houses – rows of five, each with a little garden, low wall and privet hedge. His family had moved here from the tiny, grim back-to-back when he was twelve, when the houses were new.

It was a Friday afternoon near the end of October, and Banks was home for the weekend of his parents’ golden wedding anniversary that Sunday, only his second overnight stay since he had left home at the age of eighteen to study business at London Polytechnic. When that didn’t work out, and when the sixties lost their allure in the early seventies, he joined the police. Since then, long hours, hard work, and his parents’ overt disapproval of his career choice had kept him away. Visiting home was always a bit of a trial, but they were his mother and father, Banks reminded himself; he owed them more than he could ever repay, he had certainly neglected them over the years, and he knew they loved him in their way. They weren’t getting any younger either.

He took a deep breath, opened the gate, walked up the path and knocked on the scratched red door, a little surprised by the loud music coming from the next house. He saw his mother approach through the frosted-glass pane. She opened the door, rubbed her hands together as if drying them and said, ‘Alan, lovely to see you. Come on in, love, come in.’

Banks dropped his overnight bag in the hall and followed his mother through to the living room. It stretched from the front of the house to the back, and the back area, next to the kitchen, was permanently laid out as a dining room. The wallpaper was a wispy brown autumn leaves pattern, the three-piece suite a matching brown velveteen, and a sentimental autumn landscape hung over the electric fire.

His father was sitting in his usual armchair, the one with the best straight-on view of the television. He didn’t get up, just grunted, ‘Son, nice of you to come.’

‘Hello, Dad. How are you doing?’

‘Mustn’t complain.’ Arthur Banks had been suffering from mild angina for years, ever since he’d been made redundant from the sheet-metal factory, and it seemed to get neither better nor worse as time went on. He took pills for the pain and didn’t even need an inhaler. Other than that, and the damage booze and fags had wreaked on his liver and lungs over the years, he had always been as fit as a fiddle. Hollow-chested and skinny, he still sported a head of thick dark hair with hardly a trace of grey. He wore it slicked back with lashings of Brylcreem.

Banks’s mother, Ida, plump and nervy, fussed a little more about how thin Banks was looking, then the kitchen door opened and a stranger walked into the room.

‘Kettle’s on, Mrs B. Now, who have we got here? Let me guess.’

‘This is our son, Geoff. We told you he was coming. For the party, like.’

‘So this is the lad who’s done so well for himself, is it? The Porsche and the mews house in South Kensington?’

‘No, that’s Roy, the other one. He’s not coming till Sunday afternoon. He’s got important business. No, this is our eldest, Alan. I’m sure I told you about him. The one in that picture.’

The photograph she pointed to, half-hidden by a pile of women’s magazines on one of the cabinet shelves, showed Banks at the age of sixteen, when he captained the school rugby team for a season. There he stood in his purple and yellow strip, holding the ball, looking proud. It was the only photograph of him they had ever put on display.

‘This is Geoff Salisbury,’ said Ida Banks. ‘Geoff lives up the street at number fifty-five.’

Geoff moved forward, hand stretched out like a weapon. He was a small, compact man, with lively, slightly watery eyes and cropped grey hair, about Banks’s age. His smile revealed what looked to Banks like a set of perfect false teeth. His handshake was firm, and his hands callused and ingrained with oil or grease from manual labour.

‘Pleased to meet you, Alan,’ he said. ‘I’d love to stay and chat, but I can’t just now.’ He turned to Banks’s mother. ‘Have you got that shopping list, Mrs B? I’ll be off to Asda now.’

‘Only if you’re sure it’s no trouble.’

‘Nothing’s too much trouble for you, you know that. Besides, I have to go there myself.’

Banks’s mother picked up her handbag, took out her purse and gave Geoffrey a handwritten list and a twenty-pound note. ‘Will that cover it?’

‘Easily, Mrs B. Easily. I’ll be back in a tick. Coach and Horses tonight, Arthur?’

‘Maybe. We’ll see how I feel,’ said Banks’s father. On closer examination, he did look tired and drawn, Banks thought. More than when he had last seen him in the summer. His eyes had the look of milky marbles and his skin was the colour of porridge. It could be the strain of preparing for the upcoming party – Arthur Banks, while gregarious enough in the pub, had never liked a house full of relatives – but most of the organization, Banks guessed, would have fallen to his mother. Perhaps it was simple old age catching up fast.

Geoff Salisbury left, and Banks saw him go up to the red Fiesta with the rusted chassis, parked behind Banks’s Renault. Geoff paused and looked Banks’s car over before getting into his own and driving off.

‘Who’s that?’ Banks asked his mother.

‘I told you. Geoff Salisbury. He’s a neighbour.’

‘He seems at home here.’

‘I don’t know what we’d do without him,’ said Mrs Banks. ‘He’s just like a son to us. Anyway, sit yourself down. Have a cuppa.’

Banks sat and his mother poured. ‘So Roy’s not coming till Sunday, then?’ he said.

‘No. He rang us last night, didn’t he, Arthur?’ She said it as if it were some momentous event. Arthur Banks nodded. ‘He’s got an important business meeting all day Saturday,’ she went on. ‘Something to do with some Yanks flying in, and they have to be back in New York by evening… I don’t know. Anyway, he says he should be here by Sunday lunchtime.’

‘Good of him to bother,’ Banks muttered.

His mother cast him a long-suffering glance. Banks knew she had been used to the brothers’ bickering when they both lived at home, and it was no surprise whose side she usually took. ‘What time are you planning on starting the party?’ Banks asked.

‘We told everyone to come about six o’clock. That’ll give us time to clear up and get things ready after lunch. By the way, I don’t suppose you’ve heard yet, but Mrs Summerville passed away.’ She announced it in the sort of soft and solemn tones generally reserved for those who had passed away.

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Banks. Mrs Summerville was the mother of the first girl he had ever slept with, though he had always believed that neither the late Mrs Summerville nor his own mother knew that. ‘What did she die of?’

‘It wasn’t anything suspicious, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Perish the thought.’

His mother studied him, frowning. ‘Yes… well, it was a blessing really. She’d been very poorly. Died in her sleep, according to Alice Green.’

‘Still-’ said Banks, uncertain what to say. He sipped some tea. As usual, it was milky and sweet, though he had stopped taking milk and sugar twenty years ago.

‘And how are the Marshalls?’ he asked. The Marshalls were the parents of Banks’s school friend Graham, who had disappeared at the age of fourteen and whose body had been discovered the previous summer. Banks had come down to help the locals work on the case and the solution hadn’t pleased anyone. It was during that time he had met Detective Inspector Michelle Hart, whom he had been seeing on and off ever since. Pity she wasn’t around this weekend, he thought.

‘Same as ever, I suppose,’ said Mrs Banks. ‘We don’t see much of them, do we, Arthur?’

Arthur Banks shook his head.

‘It’s as if they’ve shut themselves away since you were last down.’ Banks’s mother cast him an accusing glance, as if their becoming recluses were his fault. And maybe it was, in a way. The truth is rarely as liberating as people would have us believe; it often binds more than it frees.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said.

‘You know,’ his mother went on, ‘while you’re here, you ought to go and see Mrs Green. She keeps asking about you, and she was very put out you didn’t drop by and see her in the summer. She still thinks very fondly of you, though I can’t see why, the noise you lot used to make at her house.’

Banks smiled. He remembered Mrs Green fondly, too. She was the mother of an old school friend, Tony Green, whom Banks hadn’t seen since he left home. Tony hadn’t been one of the real in-crowd, but he had been in the rugby team with Banks, and Banks had always liked Mrs Green. Most of the kids did. She didn’t stop them from smoking in her house, and she didn’t mind them playing the sort of music – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones mostly – that most adults hated. Once or twice she had given Banks and Tony half a crown apiece and sent them off to the pictures out of her way. She had also been very pretty, with the kind of bosom young boys dream about, and she certainly had a mouth on her. Mrs Green had a reputation for speaking her mind, nobody ruffled her feathers and got away with it. Tony had gone off to Canada, Banks remembered. And Mr Green had died of emphysema about nine months ago. His mother had told him over the telephone, and he had sent a sympathy card. Yes, he would pay Mrs Green a visit.

2

So Banks sipped tea with his mother and father, catching up on the local gossip. The usual stuff: another school friend had emigrated to Australia, an old neighbour, who had moved into a home a year ago, had died, and the Venables lad from number sixty-six had been sent to Borstal for mugging a pensioner. Banks didn’t bother telling his mother that it wasn’t called ‘Borstal’ any more but ‘detention centre’ or ‘youth custody centre’. They weren’t much interested in what he’d been doing, outside of the divorce from Sandra. They were more interested in Brian and Tracy, and they expressed regret that neither could come to the party on Sunday: Brian’s band was playing an important series of gigs in Germany, and Tracy had flu. Not entirely convinced this wasn’t some excuse, Banks had dropped by and offered to drive her from her university residence in Leeds, but when he saw her, he took pity and said he’d look in again on his way back. Fortunately, she had friends there who would feed her chicken noodle soup and Lemsip in the meantime.

‘Have you seen who’s moved in next door?’ Mrs Banks asked.

‘No,’ said Banks, ‘but I heard them.’

‘Not that side. The other. A Paki family, that’s who. I must say, though,’ she went on, ‘they seem really nice. Very quiet they are, even the kids, aren’t they, Arthur? And polite. Always say good morning and ask how you’re doing. Talk just like us, they do. Makes a change from that lot on the other side.’

‘Who are they?’ Banks asked.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t even know their name. They moved in about two weeks ago. They’re not very friendly neighbours. Don’t know how many of them live there, either. Shifty-looking lot. Comings and goings all hours of the day and night. Noise. And the place is a pigsty.’

It sounded like a drug house. Banks made a mental note to keep his eyes open. If he noticed anything suspicious, he’d get on to the local police.

Banks’s father picked up the remote control and turned the television on at half-past five, as Banks remembered he did every weekday. ‘Is that the time?’ said Ida Banks. ‘I’d better get the tea on. Pork chops, peas and chips all right?’

‘Fine,’ said Banks, his stomach sinking. As if there was a choice.

‘And a nice bit of steamed pudding and custard for sweet.’

‘I’ll help.’ Banks followed her into the kitchen.

True to his word, Geoff Salisbury came back from Asda with a bag of groceries. He dumped it on the kitchen table and handed Ida Banks two pound coins in change, then they went through to the living room. Banks, peeling potatoes at the time, started to unload the groceries. As he did so, he came across the printed receipt stuck by condensation to the side of a bottle of chilled apple juice.

The print was a little blurred, but even so he could see that the total came to £16.08, which left a discrepancy of £1.92 between that and the £2 Geoff had handed his mother. Holding the receipt, Banks went into the living room.

‘I think you’ve got the change wrong,’ he said, holding out the receipt for Geoff to see.

Banks’s mother frowned. ‘Alan! Must you?’ Then she turned to Geoff. ‘I’m so sorry. Our Alan’s in the police and he can’t seem to let us forget it,’ she said with a dismissive sniff.

‘One of the boys in blue, eh?’

‘CID, actually,’ said Banks.

‘Ah. All that Sherlock Holmes stuff.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Let’s see, then.’ Geoff took a pair of bifocals from his shirt pocket and squinted at the list. ‘Bloody hell, you’re right,’ he admitted, blushing. He showed the receipt to Ida Banks. ‘It’s a fair cop. See there, Mrs B? It looks like an eight to me but it’s really a six. That’s what comes of being too vain to wear my glasses in the supermarket.’

Ida Banks laughed and slapped him on the arm playfully. ‘Oh, get away with you, Geoff. Anyone could make a mistake like that.’

Geoff counted out the rest of the change into her hand. He glanced sideways at Banks, still slightly red with embarrassment. ‘I can see I’ll have to watch myself now there’s a copper around,’ he joked.

‘Yes,’ said Banks, not laughing. ‘I think you better had.’

3

‘There was no need for that, Alan,’ Banks’s mother said after Geoff Salisbury had left. ‘Embarrassing us all.’

‘I wasn’t embarrassed,’ Banks said. ‘Besides, he tried to cheat you.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s like he said, he couldn’t see the figures properly.’

‘Does he do this often?’

‘Do what?’

‘Go shopping for you.’

‘Yes. We can’t get around like we used to, you know, what with your dad’s angina and my legs and feet.’

‘Legs and feet?’

‘My varicose veins and bunions. Getting old is no treat, Alan, I can tell you that much. You’ll find out yourself one day. Anyway, he’s been good to us, has Geoff, and now you’ve gone and upset him.’

‘I don’t think he’s upset at all.’

‘Only here five minutes, and there’s trouble already.’

‘Mum, I really don’t think I upset him. Maybe he’ll just be more careful in future.’

‘And maybe we’ll have to find someone else who’ll do our shopping for us and give the place a good dust and a vacuum every now and then. Fat chance of that.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be fine.’

‘Well, I just hope you’ll apologize next time you see him.’

‘Apologize?’

‘Yes. You as good as called the man a thief.’

‘Fine,’ said Banks, raising his hands in surrender. ‘I’ll apologize.’

His mother gave another disapproving little sniff. ‘I’d better see to those pork chops.’ Then she strode off into the kitchen and shut the door behind her.

4

The Coach and Horses, about a hundred yards away on the main road, was one of those pubs that had hardly changed at all in the past forty years or so. True, they’d got in a jukebox and a few video machines, and the brewery had forked out for a minor facelift sometime in the eighties, hoping to pull in a younger, freer-spending crowd. But it didn’t take. The people who drank at the Coach and Horses had, for the most part, been drinking there most of their lives. And their fathers had supped there before them.

Though there were few young people to be seen, it still managed to be a warm and lively pub, Banks noticed as he walked in with his father just after eight o’clock that night, the steamed pudding and custard still weighing heavy in his stomach. His father had managed the walk without too much puffing and wheezing, which he put down to having stopped smoking two years ago. Banks, who had only stopped that summer, still felt frequent and powerful urges.

‘Arthur! Arthur! Come on, lad, come on over.’ It was Geoff Salisbury. He was sitting at a table with an elderly couple Banks didn’t recognize and two other men in their sixties he remembered from his previous visit. They cleared a little space when Banks and his father walked over to join them.

‘My shout,’ said Geoff. ‘Name your poison.’

‘No,’ said Banks, still standing. ‘I’m the visitor. Let me buy the first round.’

That got no argument, so Banks wandered off to the bar. He hardly had to fight his way through the crowds of impatient drinkers. The bartender, the same one Banks remembered when he had last been in the Coach that summer, nodded a curt greeting and proceeded to pull the pints. When Banks carried the tray back to the table, his father was already talking football with one of his old pals, Harry Finnegan. Harry looked up and said hello to Banks, asked him how he was doing.

‘Fine,’ said Banks. ‘You’re looking well yourself.’

‘Fair to middling. Sorry to hear about you and that young lass of yours splitting up.’

Sandra. No secrets here. He wondered if they also knew about Sean and the imminent baby. ‘Well,’ said Banks, ‘these things happen.’ More to his generation than theirs, he realized. Theirs tended to stick at marriage even when all the love had gone out of it. He didn’t know if that was better or worse than changing wives every decade. Probably best not to get married at all, he suspected.

But his mother and father still loved one another, or so he believed. Fifty years together meant they probably didn’t have much new to say to one another any more, and the passion might have disappeared from their relationship years ago, but they were comfortable together. Besides, passion is transitory and infinitely transferable, anyway, Banks believed. What his parents had was stronger, deeper, more permanent; it was what he would never get to experience with Sandra: growing old together. He was used to the loss by now, but every now and then he still felt a pang of regret for what might have been and a lump came to his throat.

Harry introduced Banks to the couple at the table, Dick and Mavis Conroy. The other man, Jock McFall, said hello and shook hands.

‘I hear you’re a Leeds United supporter these days, Alan,’ said Harry, a twinkle in his eye.

Banks nodded. ‘For my sins. Not that I get the chance to go to Elland Road very often. Match of the Day is usually the closest I get.’

‘Elland Road,’ his father said. ‘You’d not be able to bloody afford it on what a copper earns, son.’ They all laughed.

Banks laughed with them. ‘Too true.’

As the conversations went on in that vein, people started to pair off: Dick and Mavis talking to Jock McFall about the latest supermarket price wars; Harry and Arthur Banks discussing Peterborough United’s miserable performance that season. Banks edged his chair closer to Geoff Salisbury’s.

‘Sorry about that business with the change,’ said Geoff. ‘My eyesight’s not what it used to be. Honest mistake.’

Banks nodded. ‘Honest mistake. No offence,’ he said, though he still wasn’t convinced. It was the closest he was willing to get to an apology, so it would just have to do. There was certainly no point in antagonizing Geoff and upsetting his mother even more. After all, he was only down for the weekend; these people had to live close to one another day in day out. And if Banks couldn’t be around to help his parents with their shopping and house-cleaning, then it was a good thing Geoff Salisbury was.

‘How long have you lived on the estate, Geoff?’ Banks asked.

‘About a year.’

‘Where did you live before?’

‘Oh, here and there. Bit of a wanderer, really.’

‘What made you settle down?’

Geoff laughed and shrugged. ‘My age, I suppose. I don’t know. Wandering lost its appeal.’

‘Well, there’s something to be said for knowing you’ve always got a roof over your head.’

‘There is that.’ Geoff took a stick of chewing gum from his pocket. When he had unwrapped it and put it in his mouth, he folded the silver paper time and time again until it was just a tiny square, which he set down in the ashtray. He noticed Banks watching him and laughed. ‘Habit,’ he said. ‘Stopped smoking five years ago and got addicted to this bloody stuff. Wish I’d stuck with cigarettes sometimes.’

‘You’re probably better off as you are,’ Banks said. ‘What line of work are you in?’

‘Odd jobs, mostly.’

‘What? Fixing things? Carpentry?’

‘Cars, mostly. Tinkering with engines. I used to be a mechanic.’

‘Not any more?’

‘Got made redundant from the last garage I worked at, and I just couldn’t seem to get taken on anywhere else. My age, I suppose. Again. They can get young kids still wet behind the ears and pay them bugger all to do the same job.’

‘I suppose so,’ Banks said. ‘So you work for yourself now?’

‘I don’t need much, just enough to keep the wolf from the door.’

‘And you help out Mum and Dad?’

‘Grand folk, Arthur and Ida,’ Geoff said. ‘Been like a mother and father to me, they have.’

If there was any irony intended in the remark, Geoff didn’t seem aware of it.

‘How long have you known them?’ Banks asked.

‘Since not long after you’d left this summer. They told me about that business with the missing lad. Terrible. Anyway, they always said hello right from the start, you know, like, when they saw me in the street. Invited me in for a cup of tea. That sort of thing. And with them not being… well, you know what I mean, not as able to get around as well as they used to do, I started doing them little favours. Just washing, cleaning, shopping and the like, helping them out with their finances. I like to help people.’

‘Finances?’

‘Paying bills on time, that sort of thing. They do get a bit forgetful sometimes, just between you and me. And taking the rent down to the council office. It’s an awful bother for them.’

‘I’m sure they appreciate it, Geoff.’

‘I think they do.’ He nodded. ‘Another?’

Banks looked at his empty glass. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Go on, then. One more.’ He looked over at his father. ‘All right, Dad?’

Arthur Banks nodded and went back to his conversation with Harry Finnegan. The pub had filled up in the last half hour or so, and Banks thought he recognized some of the faces. One or two people looked at him as if they knew him, then decided perhaps they didn’t, or didn’t want to. Banks watched Geoff Salisbury at the bar. He seemed to know everyone; he was shaking more hands and patting more backs than a politician on election day. Popular fellow.

Geoff came back with the drinks and excused himself to talk to someone else. Banks chatted with Dick and Mavis for a while – they wanted to know if he’d helped catch the Yorkshire Ripper – then, after his second drink, his father said he was tired and would like to go home. ‘You can stay if you like,’ he said to Banks.

‘No, I’ll walk back with you. I’m feeling a bit tired myself.’

‘Suit yourself.’

They said their goodbyes and walked out into the cool autumn night. It was mild for the time of year, Banks thought: light jacket weather rather than overcoats, but the leaves were changing colour, winter was in the air and the weather forecast said they had a shower or two in store. Neither Banks nor his father had anything to say on the way home, but then Arthur Banks needed all his breath for walking.

5

Banks’s bedroom, he had been amazed to discover that summer, was almost exactly as it had been when he first left home. Only the wallpaper, curtains and bedding had been changed. The bed itself was also the same one he had had since he was about twelve.

As he squeezed himself between the tightly tucked sheets on his narrow bed, he remembered how he used to hold the old transistor radio to his ear under the sheets, listening to Radio Luxembourg amidst the whistles and crackles. First, Jimmy Saville playing the latest top-ten hit from ‘member number 11321’, Elvis Presley. Then, a few years later, came the pirate stations, with even more static and interference: John Peel playing the Mothers of Invention, Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe and the Fish, names from another world, music so startling and raw it transcended even the poor radio reception.

Banks’s eyes were too tired and scratchy from the smoky pub to read his Graham Greene, so he put on the Cecilia Bartoli CD of Gluck arias and listened as he drifted towards sleep.

As he lay there, he couldn’t help but think about Geoff Salisbury. Something about the man put Banks on his guard. It wasn’t just the wrong change – that could have been an honest mistake – but the manner in which he seemed to have insinuated himself into the lives of Banks’s parents, the ease with which he breezed in and out of the house. Banks wouldn’t be surprised if Geoff had a key. He switched off the CD and turned on his side, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling, telling himself he was being too mistrusting, and that he probably only felt this way because he felt guilty he wasn’t taking care of his ageing parents himself. He knew he ought to be glad that someone was doing the job; he only wished that someone wasn’t Geoff Salisbury.

6

Banks awoke with a start the following morning and experienced a moment of absolute panic when he had no idea who or where he was. It was as if he had woken from a coma after many years, all memory gone and the world around him totally changed, or as if he had been abducted and had woken up in an alien spaceship.

But it only lasted a second or two, thank God, and after that he managed to orient himself and his heartbeat slowed to normal. He was in his old bedroom, of course, the room he had slept in between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It was at the back of the house and looked over back yards, an alleyway and a stretch of waste ground to the north, where he and his friends used to play. When Banks looked out of his window, he noticed that the builders had moved in since his last visit and laid the foundations for yet more houses. As if Peterborough needed to grow any more. Since the mid-sixties, when the developers decided to make it a catchment area for London’s overcrowded suburbs, it had done nothing but grow, swamping outlying villages with housing estates and business parks. The planners and promoters said it blended old and new in unique and interesting ways. Even so, Banks thought, King Paeda, who had founded the city, would turn in his grave.

On a Saturday morning, the building site was deserted; concrete mixers sat idle and quiet, and the thick sheets of polythene covering pallets of bricks or boards flapped in the wind. It was another grand autumn morning: sunshine, bright blue sky and a cool wind to make everything look and feel fresh. Banks checked his watch. It was after nine o’clock, and he was surprised he had slept so long and so deeply; he couldn’t remember having any dreams at all. He listened for sounds of life from downstairs and thought he could hear talking on the radio and dishes rattling in the sink. They were up.

Desperate for tea or coffee, Banks dressed quickly and made his way downstairs. In the living room, his father looked up from his paper and grunted, ‘Morning, son.’

‘Morning, Dad,’ Banks replied, glancing out of the window to make sure his car was still there. It was. His father’s newspaper rustled back into position, and the local radio station, according to the DJ, was about to play a request for ‘Memories Are Made of This’ by Val Doonican, for Mrs Patricia Gaitskell, of 43 Wisteria Drive, Stamford. Jesus, thought Banks, he could have been caught in a time warp while he slept, back to the B-side of 1967. Perhaps that was why he had felt so disorientated the minute he awoke.

He walked through to the kitchen, where his mother, washing the breakfast dishes, gave him a cursory glance and said, ‘Well, you’ve decided to get up at last, have you?’ It was exactly what she used to say when he was a teenager and liked to lie in bed most of the morning. The only thing that saved him from seriously doubting his sanity was the little television on the kitchen table showing a breakfast programme. That hadn’t been there all those years ago; nor had breakfast television.

Banks made some comment about having had a long drive and put on the kettle. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ he asked his mother.

‘No, thanks. We had ours ages ago.’

‘Well, you could have another.’

She gave him a withering look, and he busied himself looking for the tea bags, telling himself that his parents really weren’t being especially nasty to him. They had their routine; it just took a little getting used to.

‘They’re where they’ve always been,’ his mother told him.

That didn’t help much, as he couldn’t remember where they’d always been. A terracotta jar in the cupboard with TEA engraved on the front looked promising, but it turned out to be empty. Beside it, however, Banks found a jar of instant coffee. Might as well, he thought. As long as you convince yourself it’s a different drink, not really coffee at all, then it doesn’t taste too bad. The kettle boiled and Banks made himself a cup of instant coffee. Specks of undissolved powder floated on the surface no matter how much he stirred it.

‘Don’t you want any breakfast?’ his mother asked, drying her hands on her pinafore. ‘We got some Sugar Puffs in for you specially. You always used to like Sugar Puffs.’

When I was about twelve, thought Banks. ‘I’ll give them a miss this morning,’ he said. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

He wandered into the living room again, his mother not far behind. Val Doonican had given way to the Searchers singing ‘Some Day We’re Gonna Love Again’. An improvement, Banks thought. Funny how the Searchers were exactly the kind of ‘pop rubbish’ his parents dismissed thirty-five years ago, but now they were as acceptable as Val Doonican.

Banks needed a newspaper to complete his morning ritual. His father was still buried deep in the Daily Mail, which, being a Labour man, he only read so he could find things to complain about. The Mail wasn’t Banks’s kind of paper anyway. No real meat on its bones. Especially at the weekend. He needed something with a bit more writing and fewer pictures, like the Independent or the Guardian.

‘I’m off to the newsagent’s for a paper,’ he announced. ‘Anything I can get for you?’

‘You’ll be lucky if they’ve got any left at this time,’ his mother said. His father just grunted.

Banks took their responses as a ‘no’ and set off. In the house next door the upstairs windows were all open and music thudded out. It definitely wasn’t Val Doonican or the Searchers; more like Nine Inch Nails or Metallica. Banks studied the house. There were no curtains on the windows, and the front door was wide open. As he was looking, a scruffy couple walked out onto the overgrown path. They looked like Fred and Rosemary West on acid. The man’s eyes, in particular, reminded Banks of the opening of Vertigo.

‘Morning,’ said Banks. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’

They looked at him as if he were from Mars – or as if they were on it – so he shrugged and walked down to the newsagent’s across the main road. The short strip of shops there, set back from the road by a stretch of tarmac, had gone through dozens of changes over the years. When he first moved to the estate, Banks remembered, there had been a fish and chip shop, a ladies’ hairdresser, a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s and a launderette; now there was a video-rental shop, a takeaway pizza and tandoori place called Caesar’s Taj Mahal, a minimart and a unisex hair salon. The only constants were the fish and chip shop, which now sold takeaway Chinese food, too, Banks noticed, and Walker’s, the newsagent’s.

Banks waited to cross the busy road. On the other side, lower down from the shops, stood the remains of the old ball-bearing factory. The gates were chained and padlocked shut and it was surrounded by high wire-mesh fencing with barbed wire on top, the windows beyond covered by rusty grilles. Despite these security precautions, most of them were broken anyway, and the front of the blackened brick building was covered in colourful graffiti.

Banks remembered when the place was in production, lorries coming and going, factory whistle blowing and crowds of workers waiting at the bus stop. A lot of them were young women, or girls scarcely out of school, and he had a crush on one of them. Called Mandy by her friends, she used to stand at the bus stop smoking, a faraway look in her eyes, scarf done up like a turban on her head. She had pale smooth skin and lips like Julie Christie, whom Banks had gone to see in Darling with a couple of school friends because she did a nude scene in it. They had only been fourteen or fifteen at the time, but the bored woman in the ticket office at the local fleapit hardly even looked at them before issuing their one and threepennies. The nude scene was terrific, but he didn’t understand much of the rest of the film; it didn’t make the same sense as Billy Liar did for him when he saw it only a few months later. Escaping a boring environment was something he could easily relate to.

One day Mandy started wearing an engagement ring, and a few weeks later she no longer stood at the bus stop with the others, and he never saw her again. He spent ages in his room moping, and even a few years later, when he bought Beggars Banquet and listened to ‘Factory Girl’, he thought of her.

Banks went into the newsagent’s. Mrs Walker moved much more slowly now, and the joints on her left hand were swollen. Arthritis by the look of it. There was still a small pile of Independents under the magazine rack, so Banks picked one up and took it to the counter.

‘You’re the Banks lad back again, aren’t you?’ she said.

‘That’s me,’ said Banks.

‘I thought so. My body might be falling to pieces but my mind’s still all right. Haven’t seen you since that business in the summer. How are you doing?’

‘Fine, thanks. I see you’re still soldiering on.’

‘I’ll be here till I drop.’

‘I’m surprised you can manage all by yourself.’

‘Oh, I’ve got help. Some local lads help with the papers, and there’s Geoff helps with going to wholesalers, stocktaking and whatnot.’

‘Geoff?’

‘Geoff Salisbury. Nice lad. Well, I say “lad”, but he’s probably your age or older. Always there when you need him is Geoff. And with a smile on his face, too. There’s not too many folk you can say that about these days.’

‘True enough,’ Banks agreed. So the ubiquitous Geoff Salisbury had his feet under Mrs Walker’s table, too. Still, he did say he did odd jobs, and Banks assumed Mrs Walker paid him for his ‘help’. He had to make a living somehow. It didn’t seem that one could go far around the estate, though, without finding some traces of its patron saint, Geoff bloody Salisbury.

The bell jangled and someone else walked into the shop. Banks half-expected it to be Salisbury himself, but when he turned he was gobsmacked by who he saw. It was Kay Summerville. And looking hardly a day older than when he had last seen her thirty years ago. That was an exaggeration, of course – her eyes had gathered a few crow’s feet, and the long blonde hair that still cascaded over her shoulders now showed evidence of dark roots – but she still had her figure and her looks.

A hoarse ‘Kay’ was about all he could manage.

She seemed equally stunned. ‘Alan.’

‘Are you two going to stand there gawping at one another all afternoon or are you going to step aside, young man, and let the lady get what she’s come for?’ said Mrs Walker.

‘Of course.’ Banks moved aside.

Kay smiled. She was wearing a thin white T-shirt under a blue denim jacket, and hip-hugging blue jeans. The hips looked as if they were worth hugging. She caught him looking at her and gave him a shy smile.

‘Packet of Polo mints, please, Mrs Walker, and -’ she turned to the magazine rack and picked out a copy of Marie Claire – ‘and I’ll take this, too.’

Banks stood by the door and loitered, pretending to be looking at a display of anniversary cards. When Kay had finished, she walked towards him.

‘Walk back with you?’ he said.

She did a little curtsy. ‘Why, thank you, kind sir.’

Banks laughed. He had been sixteen when he had first met Kay, and just about to go into the lower sixth. Kay had been fifteen, about to enter her O level year. Her family had just moved up from north London, and Banks had seen her walking along the street in her blue jeans and orange jacket, or in her school uniform – white blouse, maroon jacket, grey skirt probably just a couple of inches too short for the principal’s liking – pouty lips, pale skin, head in the air, and her long blonde hair trailing halfway down her back.

She had seemed unobtainable, ethereal, like Mandy from the factory and, if truth be told, like most of the women or girls Banks lusted after, but one day they met in the newsagent’s, just like today, both wanting the latest issue of New Musical Express. There was only one copy left, so Banks, being the gentleman, let Kay take it. They walked back to the estate together, chatting about pop music. Both were Cream fans, upset about the band splitting up that summer. Both loved Canned Heat’s ‘On the Road Again’ and hated Mary Hopkins’s ‘Those Were the Days’. Kay said she would lend her NME to Banks when she had finished with it. He asked her when that would be, and she said probably Saturday. Emboldened, he went on and asked if she’d like to go to the pictures with him on Saturday night. He could have dropped in his tracks when she said yes.

They went to see Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, on a double bill with I’ll Never Forget Whatshis-name, and that was it, the start of Banks’s first serious relationship.

‘I heard about your mother,’ Banks said, holding the door for her. ‘I’m sorry.’

Kay pushed a stray tress of hair from her forehead. ‘Thank you. She’d been ill for a long time. She was riddled with cancer and her heart wasn’t strong. I know it’s a cliché, but in this case it really was a blessing.’

‘Is that why you’re up here?’

‘Yes. I’ve got to deal with the house before the council relets it. The rent’s paid up till the end of the month, so I thought I’d take a few days and get it all sorted. You?’

‘It’s Mum and Dad’s golden wedding tomorrow.’

‘That’s marvellous.’

‘It is pretty remarkable, isn’t it? Fifty years. What kind of work do you do?’

‘Investment banking.’

‘Oh.’

Kay laughed. ‘Yes, that’s usually the reaction. Quite a conversation stopper.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t…’

She smiled at him. ‘It’s OK. Most people don’t. Even the ones who do it. What about you? I seem to remember Mum saying you had something to do with the police.’

‘True. Detective Chief Inspector, CID, Major Crimes.’

‘Well, well, well. I am impressed. Just like Morse.’

It was Banks’s turn to laugh. ‘Except I’m not on telly. I’m real. And I’m still alive. Like your job, it’s usually a conversation stopper. You must be the first person who hasn’t jumped a mile when I told them what I do for a living. No skeletons in your closet?’

She wiggled her eyebrows. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

They reached Banks’s parents’ house and stopped on the pavement, both a little awkward, embarrassed. It was one of those moments, Banks felt, like the one thirty years ago when he had asked her out for the first time. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘seeing as we’re both up here this weekend, would you like to go out tonight, maybe find a country pub, have a bite to eat or a drink, do a bit of catching up? I mean, bring your husband, by all means, you know-’

Kay smiled at his discomfort. ‘Sorry, there’s only me,’ she said. ‘And yes, I’d love to. Pick me up at half past seven?’

‘Good. Great, I mean.’ Banks grinned. ‘OK, then, see you this evening.’

Banks watched Kay walk away, and he could have sworn she had a bit of a spring in her step. He definitely had one in his, which couldn’t be dampened even by the sight of Geoff Salisbury talking to his mother in the hall when he opened the front door.

‘Morning, Alan,’ Geoff said. ‘Have a good time last night?’

‘Fine,’ said Banks.

‘That the Summerville girl you were talking to?’

‘Yes,’ said Banks. ‘We’re old friends.’

Geoff frowned. ‘I was sorry to hear about her poor mother. Anyway, must dash. Just a passing visit.’ He turned back to Ida Banks. ‘Right, then, Mrs B, don’t you fret. I’ll pick up everything we need for tomorrow, and I’ll pop around in the morning and do a bit of tidying and vacuuming for you. How’s that?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Banks. ‘I can do that.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ his mother chided him. ‘You don’t know one end of a vacuum cleaner from the other.’ Which might have been true at one time but certainly wasn’t any more. ‘That’ll be just dandy, Geoff,’ she said, handing him a plastic card, which he put quickly in his pocket. ‘I know we can always rely on you.’

It was too late to argue. With a smile and a wave, Geoff Salisbury was halfway down the path, whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’ as he went.

‘I mean it,’ said Banks. ‘Anything needs doing, just ask me.’

His mother patted his arm. ‘I know, son,’ she said. ‘You mean well. But Geoff’s… well we’re used to having him around. He knows where everything is.’

Does he, indeed? thought Banks. ‘By the way,’ he asked, ‘what was that you just gave him?’

‘What?’

‘You know. The card.’

‘Oh, yes. That’s the Abbeylink card. He’ll need some cash, won’t he, if he’s going to get the food and drink in for tomorrow?’

Banks almost choked. ‘You mean he knows your PIN number?’

‘Well, of course he does, silly. A fat lot of use the card would be to him without it.’ Shaking her head, she edged past Banks towards the living room. ‘And what’s this about you and Kay Summerville?’ she asked, turning. ‘Didn’t you two used to go out together?’

‘That was a long time ago. Actually, we’re going to have dinner together tonight.’

His mother’s face dropped. ‘But I was going to make us toad-in-the-hole. Your favourite.’

True, Banks had once expressed an enthusiasm for toad-in-the-hole when he was about fourteen. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s the only chance we’ll get to catch up.’

‘Well,’ his mother said, that familiar, hurt, hard-done-by tone in her voice. ‘I suppose if that’s really what you want to do. I must say, she always seemed like a nice lass. Her mother and me weren’t close at all, just to say hello to in passing, like, but you tell her she’s welcome to drop by tomorrow, for the party. I’d like to offer her my condolences.’

‘I’ll ask her,’ said Banks, then he hurried upstairs.

7

With his bedroom window open, Banks could hear the polythene from the building site flapping in the breeze and the cars whooshing by on the main road. He could also hear a dull, bass rumbling from next door along with the occasional shout and bang. Their back garden, he noticed, was full of rubbish like a tip: broken furniture, rocks, a dismantled bicycle. Maybe there was even a body or two buried there.

His knees cracked as he squatted to read the spines of the books in the old glass-fronted bookcase. There they were, a cross-section of his early years’ reading, starting with the large, illustrated Black Beauty, which his mother had read to him when he was small, old Beano, Dandy and Rupert annuals, and Noddy books – the originals, where Noddy and Big Ears slept together, hung out with Golliwog, and ‘gay’ meant ‘cheerful’. He must have kept Enid Blyton in luxury almost single-handed, he thought, as he had moved on to the Famous Five and the Secret Seven.

Then came his high school reading: Billy Bunter, Jennings and William, followed by war stories such as Biggles, The Wooden Horse, The Guns of Navarone and Camp on Blood Island. Next to these were several editions of the Pan Book of Horror Stories, from a phase he went through in his teens, along with some H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James. There wasn’t much crime fiction, but he did still have a few dog-eared old Saint paperbacks, the Father Brown stories and a complete Sherlock Holmes. The James Bond books were all there, too, of course, and a few Sexton Blakes.

There were also history books, the kind with lots of illustrations, some Oxford and Penguin anthologies of poetry and those children’s illustrated encyclopaedias that came out with a letter a week, none of which he’d got beyond C or D.

In addition, on the bottom shelf, there were books about his many hobbies, including photography, coins, birds, stamps and astronomy, and several Observer books of cars, aircraft, geology, trees, music and pond life. He’d seen these old editions in second-hand book shops and some of them were worth a bit now. Maybe he should take them back up to Yorkshire with him, he thought. Would that upset his parents? Were his books and his room some sort of virtual umbilical cord that was all that tied him to them now? It was a depressing thought.

One book stood out. Sitting between Enid Blyton’s The River of Adventure and The Mountain of Adventure was a used, orange-spined Penguin edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a 1966 reprint with Richard Hoggart’s introduction. Curious, Banks picked it out. He didn’t remember buying it and was surprised when he opened it up and saw written on the flyleaf: ‘Kay Summerville, London, June 7th, 1969’. Banks remembered that day well. Smiling, he put it aside. He would give it back to her tonight.

The more he thought about his ‘date’ with Kay the more he looked forward to it. Not only was she an extremely attractive woman, she was also intelligent and she shared some of his past with him. He didn’t imagine the date would lead to anything of a sexual nature – he certainly wasn’t out to seduce her – but you never knew. He wondered how he would feel about that. Michelle Hart was on holiday in Tuscany. Besides, they had made no commitments, and Michelle always seemed to be holding back, on the verge of ending the tenuous relationship they did have. Banks didn’t know why, but he sensed she had deep and painful secrets she didn’t want to share. It seemed that all the women he had met since parting with Sandra – including Annie Cabbot back up in Yorkshire – shied away from intimacy.

Banks stood up and looked down at the books. Well, there they all were, for what they were worth, like those strata of different coloured rock or the layers of antiquities at an archaeological dig. His mother called up: ‘Alan, are you coming down? Lunch is on the table. It’s potted meat sandwiches.’

Banks sighed. ‘Coming,’ he shouted. ‘I just have to wash my hands. I’ll be right there.’ True, he had once loved potted meat, the same way he had liked Sugar Puffs and toad-in-the-hole, when he was a teenager, but he hadn’t touched the stuff in years.

8

The people next door were out in force, Banks noticed, on his way to see Mrs Green after lunch. There was an unmarked delivery van outside their house, and two strapping young lads were carrying what looked like a fifty-inch television set up the path. It hardly looked as if it would fit through the door. Fred and Rosemary stood on the lawn, rubbing their hands together in glee, practically salivating at the sight, and their various children, aged between about five and fifteen, milled about beside them. Banks hadn’t seen so many shaved heads since the nit nurse had visited his school. He tried wishing them good morning again, but everyone was far too intent on the imminent television even to notice him. He would have bet a pound to a penny it was stolen.

The wind had picked up even more, Banks noticed, bringing a few fast-flying clouds and a chill with it, and there was a smell of rain in the air. Banks zipped his leather jacket all the way up and walked the short distance to the close, where Mrs Green lived. She answered Banks’s knock and expressed delight at seeing him again. She had certainly aged – thickened at the waist, drooped at the bosom – but she had lost none of her sprightliness, and she fussed around making tea and bringing out a plate of scones. Her living room was sparsely decorated – plain cream wallpaper, no prints or paintings – and a few framed family photographs stood on the mantelpiece.

‘How’s Tony doing?’ Banks asked. ‘I’ve always regretted we didn’t manage to stay in touch.’

‘These things happen,’ said Mrs Green. ‘People drift apart over the years. It’s only natural. It doesn’t mean they don’t share good memories, though.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Anyway, Tony’s doing fine. He lives in Vancouver now, you know. He’s a tax lawyer. This is him about two years ago.’ She picked up one of the photographs and handed it to Banks. It showed the smile he remembered, the mischief in the eyes, surrounded by a bald head on a pudgy body in brightly coloured shorts and a red T-shirt. Tony stood with a relaxed, smiling woman Banks took to be his wife, and two bored and /or cool-looking teenage children. They were on a beach and there were cloud-topped mountains in the background. ‘I’ll let him know you were asking about him,’ Mrs Green said.

‘Please do.’ Banks replaced the photo on the mantelpiece. ‘I’ve been to Toronto, but never Vancouver.’

‘You should go if you get a chance. Bill and I visited him there five years ago. It’s a lovely city. I’m sure Tony and Carol would be happy to have you stop with them. They’ve got a big house.’

‘Maybe I will,’ said Banks.

‘We don’t see you down here very often, do we?’

‘Well,’ said Banks, feeling guilty he hadn’t made time for Mrs Green on his previous visit, ‘I keep pretty busy up north. You know how it is.’ He sipped some tea.

‘Your parents are really very proud of you, you know.’

Banks almost choked on his tea. Where had that come from?

Mrs Green considered him through her tortoiseshell glasses. ‘You might not think so,’ she said, ‘and they might not admit it, but they are. Especially since that business last summer.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Oh, don’t think I don’t know about your differences. They never did approve of what you chose to do with your life, did they? Your dad thought you’d joined the enemy and your mother thought you’d let her down. That was clear enough to anyone who knew them.’

‘Was it?’

‘Oh, yes. And I knew where they were coming from, of course.’

‘What do you mean?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, don’t be so obtuse, Alan. You always did have that infuriating habit of pretending not to see the obvious. You wouldn’t have got far in your chosen career if you couldn’t even add together the basics. You had all the opportunities; they had none. They had to settle for their lot in life. And the Thatcher years were pretty tough around here. How do you think your dad felt when he saw coppers laying into workers on the news? Miners, whatever they were, they were still working men, like himself. How do you think he felt when he saw the police in riot gear waving their overtime pay in the faces of men who’d lost everything? Do you think he actually enjoyed working at that factory every day of his life? I’d say it was a cause for celebration when they made him redundant, but for him it was a blow to his pride. And your mother, cleaning up other folk’s messes? They made a lot of sacrifices for you, so you could do better than they had. And what did you do? You joined the police force. You must have known how people around here felt about the police.’

‘I’d say they expect us to make sure their cars are safe and keep the muggings and gang fights to a minimum.’

‘You always were a cheeky young beggar, Alan Banks. Perhaps now they do. But not back then.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Banks.

‘But what I’m telling you is they know you’ve done well for yourself now. Every time you got a promotion they told me, and you should have heard the pride in their voices. “Our Alan’s a detective sergeant now,” they’d say. Or “They’ve made Alan detective chief inspector now!” I got sick of hearing about you. It just took them a long time to work it out, and they don’t find it easy to express. It also helped that you came down on the right side last time you were here. Of course, they always did dote on that useless brother of yours.’

‘Roy.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, but you know I’ve always spoken my mind, and I can’t say I ever took to him. Sly, he seemed to me, two-faced, always up to something behind your back. You were no angel, mind, but you weren’t sly.’

Banks smiled as he buttered his scone, thinking about the time he had orchestrated going to bed with Kay while his parents were visiting his granny, and the time he and Tony Green had drunk some of Mr Green’s whisky and topped the bottle up with water. Whether he spotted it or not they never knew. Sly? All kids are sly, Banks thought; they have to be in their constant struggle with the inexplicable and unreasonable rules and regulations imposed on them by adults. But Banks knew how to take a compliment when he was offered one, even at the expense of his brother.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Roy could be a bit of a handful.’

‘To say the least. Anyway, I don’t see much of your mum and dad any more, except when I bump into Ida on the street,’ Mrs Green went on. ‘That’s how I knew about the golden wedding. She invited me. It’s sad, though. People seem to isolate themselves when they get old. They don’t get out as much, and I don’t go to the Coach and Horses. How are they?’

‘Same as ever,’ said Banks. ‘Mum’s complaining about varicose veins and her bunions, but she doesn’t seem to do too badly. Dad’s still got his angina, but it doesn’t seem any worse. There’s a neighbour helps out. Bloke called Geoff Salisbury. Know him?’

Banks couldn’t swear to it, but he thought Mrs Green’s expression darkened for a moment. Her lips certainly tightened.

‘I know him,’ she said.

Banks leaned forward in his armchair. ‘You don’t sound so thrilled about it.’

‘Can’t say as I am. Oh, he’s a charmer all right is Geoff Salisbury. Bit too much of one for my liking.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘He seems to have some sort of radar for all the old folks in trouble on the estate. He turns up everywhere at one time or another. Usually when you need help.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘More tea?’

‘Please.’ Banks held out his cup.

‘You know, you can smoke if you like.’ She smiled. ‘If I let you do it when you were fifteen, I can hardly stop you now you’re… what would it be?’

‘A lot older.’ Banks put his hand to his left temple. ‘Can’t you tell by the grey?’

Mrs Green laughed and touched her own head. ‘You call that grey?’ It was true, she had an entire head of fluffy grey hair.

‘Anyway,’ Banks said, remembering what Mr Green had died of, ‘thanks, but I’ve stopped.’

‘I won’t say that’s not good news. If only we’d all known all along what it was doing to us.’

‘You were saying? About Geoff Salisbury.’

‘I was, wasn’t I?’ She sat back in her chair, tea and saucer resting on her lap. ‘Oh, you know me. I tend to go off half-cocked on things.’

‘I’d still be interested to hear your thoughts,’ said Banks. ‘To be honest, I haven’t really taken to him myself, and he seems to be spending an awful lot of time around Mum and Dad.’

She waved a hand. ‘It’s nothing, really. He started coming around when Bill was sick. It was near the end and Bill was in a wheelchair, breathing from that horrible oxygen tank.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Want? Nothing. He never asked for a thing. Only to help. Give him his due, he’s a hard and willing worker, and he was certainly useful at the time. He fixed a few things around the house, ran errands.’

‘So what was the problem?’

‘You’ll think I was imagining things.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Well, it wasn’t any one thing, really. Just little things. The wrong change, or one of Bill’s tools would go missing. Nothing you could really put your finger on.’

Banks remembered the short change Geoff Salisbury had handed his mother yesterday evening. ‘Anything else?’

‘Ooh, just listen to us,’ said Mrs Green, refilling her teacup. ‘I’m being questioned by a policeman.’

Banks smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to seem like that. Comes with the territory, I suppose.’

She laughed. ‘It’s all right, Alan. I was only teasing. But it’s hard to talk about. It was only a feeling.’

‘What feeling?’

She clasped the collar of her frock. ‘That he was… hovering… like the Angel of Death or something. Listen to me now. What a fool I sound.’

‘You don’t think Geoff Salisbury had anything to do with your husband’s death, do you?’

‘Of course not. No, it’s nothing like that. It was a faulty valve, they said, on the oxygen tank.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘Someone told me if we’d been living in America I’d have got millions of dollars in compensation.’

‘That’s probably true.’

‘Yes, well, if we’d been living in America we probably wouldn’t have been able to afford the medical treatment in the first place, and Bill would have died a lot sooner.’

‘Also true,’ said Banks. ‘Can you explain a bit more clearly? About this feeling you had.’

‘I’m not sure. I felt as if he were, you know, waiting, waiting in the wings until Bill died.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know. So he could take over more, maybe, manipulate me more.’

Banks smiled at her. ‘He obviously didn’t know who he was dealing with.’

She didn’t smile back. ‘You’d be surprised how easy it is to take advantage when people are vulnerable.’ She looked at him. ‘Or maybe you wouldn’t. You probably see a lot of it in your job. Anyway, I felt as if he was hovering, waiting for Bill to die so that he could be more in control.’

‘But what could possibly have been in it for him?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, I was probably imagining things anyway.’

‘I don’t suppose you won the lottery recently?’

‘Never bought a ticket.’

‘And you don’t have a million pounds hidden in the mattress or anything?’

She laughed. ‘Wish I had. No, there’s nothing, really. Bill’s insurance policy. Old-age pension. I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s enough to get by on.’

‘What happened?’

‘After Bill died, I gave Geoff Salisbury his marching orders. I was nice about it. I thanked him for his help, but said I was perfectly capable of managing by myself and I’d prefer it if he didn’t come around any more. It wasn’t that I couldn’t still have used the sort of help he had to offer, but I just didn’t feel comfortable having him around. Maybe I was being oversensitive as well as ungrateful.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Banks. ‘As I said, I haven’t taken to him myself and I’m not sure why.’

‘You’ll be feeling guilty because he’s looking after your parents while you’re not there to do it.’

‘Perhaps. Partly, yes. But there’s more. I don’t trust him. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I don’t trust him. Maybe it’s copper’s instinct.’

‘Well, I can tell you one thing for a start: you’ll get no thanks around these parts for going after Geoff Salisbury.’

‘Popular, is he?’

‘To hear some talk, you’d think the sun shone out of his… well, you know what.’

Banks smiled. ‘I think I can guess. How did he take your rejection?’

Mrs Green shrugged. ‘Well enough, I suppose. At least he didn’t bother me after that. Oh, I see him around now and then, and he always smiles and says hello as if nothing ever happened. It’s just that-’

‘What?’

‘Oh, probably me being silly again. But it feels just skin deep, as if underneath it all, if you were just to strip off the surface that, well, you’d find something else entirely under there. Something very nasty indeed.’

9

Banks decided to pay a quick visit to the city centre that afternoon. He needed to pick up a couple of things from the shops for tomorrow, such as a nice anniversary card and some candles. He asked his parents if they needed anything, but they said no (implying, Banks thought, that Geoff Salisbury was taking care of everything), so off he went. Rather than search the side streets for a vacant parking space, he parked in the short stay behind the town hall and walked through to Bridge Street.

Of course, the city centre had changed quite a lot since his schooldays. Most cities had changed a lot in the past thirty years, but Peterborough more so than many others. Gone were the small record shop in the back alley, where he used to buy a new single nearly every week and LPs whenever he could afford them – usually only Christmas and birthdays – and the musty used book shop, where he used to browse for hours among the dog-eared paperbacks, the one where the sour-faced woman behind the counter used to watch him like a hawk the entire time he was in there. The open-air market had closed; some of the pubs he used to drink in when he was sixteen and seventeen had disappeared and new ones had sprung up; an old cinema, after several years as a bingo hall, was now a nightclub; department stores had disappeared, moved or been given facelifts; Cathedral Square was now a pedestrian precinct.

Only yards from the Queensgate Centre stood the ancient cathedral itself. Throughout Banks’s childhood, the majestic structure had simply been there. It didn’t dominate the city the way York Minster did, and like most of the other local kids he had paid it scant attention unless school projects and organized visits demanded otherwise. After all, what kid was interested in a boring old cathedral where boring old farts had gone to pray and where even more boring ones were buried? But now he found himself admiring the west front, with its three soaring Gothic arches flanked by twin-pinnacled towers, the stone cream-coloured in the autumn sunshine.

In the Queensgate Centre, Banks bought an expensive golden anniversary card and some gold candles, then he browsed around for a while and picked up a CD he thought Kay would enjoy listening to on their way to dinner. It was one oldie he didn’t have, and he had been aware of the gap in his collection for some time.

He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. He thought he just had time for a quick walk by the river before driving back to his parents’ house.

As he walked down Bridge Street past the Magistrates’ Court and the police station, he realized that he hadn’t been able to put Geoff Salisbury out of his thoughts completely. Something about the man was still nagging away at him. Mrs Green had been partly right; of course he felt guilty that Geoff was doing all the things for his ageing parents that a good and dutiful son ought to be doing. But also, as the astute Mrs Green had realized, there was more to it than that. If nothing worse, he certainly got the impression that Geoff Salisbury was a petty thief.

He glanced towards the old Customs House with its light on top to guide the ships navigating the River Nene, then he made his way down to the footpath that ran along the Nene Way. There he found a bench and, away from the crowds, took out his mobile and phoned the detectives’ room back at Eastvale. DI Annie Cabbot and DC Winsome Jackman were on weekends at Western Area HQ, and it was Annie who answered.

‘DCI Banks, what a pleasant surprise. Can’t leave us alone for a minute, can you, sir?’

‘I take it you’re not alone in the office?’

‘That’s right, sir. Just Winsome and I, as per the duty roster.’

‘Everything all right?’

‘Fine. Business as usual. Couple of fights after closing time last night and a sexual assault on the East Side Estate. We’ve got a man in for questioning.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Honestly, we’re on top of it. Relax. Enjoy yourself.’

‘I’m trying, Annie, I’m trying. Actually, I wasn’t calling to check up on you. I’m sure everything’s under control. I need you to do a little detective work for me.’

‘Detective work?’

‘Yes. I want you to check on a name for me. See if you come up with anything.’

‘I don’t believe it. Even at your parents’ golden wedding anniversary you’re still on the job?’

‘You know the rules, Annie, we can’t ignore wrongdoing whether we’re on or off duty.’

‘Oh, what a load of bollocks. OK. Go ahead.’

Banks gave her Geoff Salisbury’s name and address, along with the number of his Fiesta, which he had memorized, for good measure.

‘What’s it about?’ Annie asked.

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Banks. ‘Probably nothing. Just a suspicious character in the neighbourhood. I want to know if he’s got form, first of all, then anything else you can dig up on him.’

‘Will do. Where can I get in touch with you?’

‘Call my mobile number. I’ll leave it switched on.’ Banks didn’t want the call arriving at his parents’ house. ‘If there’s no answer, don’t worry. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

‘OK. Will do.’

Feeling vaguely guilty, though he had done nothing to feel in the least bit guilty about, Banks put the phone in his pocket and walked back towards his car.

10

Bath water was always at a premium, even now they had a house with a real bathroom, and Banks had to be careful not to use all the hot water. After a short soak and a shave, he was ready. Not expecting to be going out on a date, he hadn’t brought a great selection of clothes with him, so he had to settle for some casual grey cotton trousers and a blue button-down Oxford shirt. He first checked the pockets of his sports jacket for car keys and wallet, then slipped in the copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover he had found in his bookcase before he went downstairs.

Annie hadn’t rung back yet, and given that it was past seven on a Saturday evening, Banks guessed she probably wouldn’t until tomorrow. He certainly didn’t want his mobile ringing in the restaurant, so he turned it off for the evening. There was no real urgency about the matter, anyway; he just wanted to know if Geoff Salisbury had form.

‘Here,’ his mother said, ‘you’d better take a key. You’ll probably be late back.’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Banks.

‘Take one anyway. I don’t want you hammering on the door waking us up at some ungodly hour in the morning.’

Banks pocketed the key. ‘We’re only going out for dinner.’

‘And be quiet when you do come in,’ his mother went on. ‘You know your father’s a light sleeper.’

The only thing Banks knew was that his mother had always complained of being a light sleeper, but he said nothing except goodnight and that he wouldn’t be late.

11

Kay came to the door in a long, dark, loose skirt, white blouse tucked in the waistband, soft suede jacket on top. Banks complimented her on her appearance, feeling for all the world like that awkward teenager taking her to the ABC to see Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. The film had only exacerbated his teenage angst about living in a provincial town – and a ‘New Town’ at that – but the music, mostly by Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group, was as good as it got and, what’s more, a young and lovely Judy Geeson starred in it.

The main attraction of the evening, of course, had been Kay Summerville.

There, on the back row with the other would-be lovers, Banks had somehow found the bottle to put his arm around Kay, and she hadn’t seemed to mind. After a while, though, his arm had started to ache like hell, then he had felt it going numb, but he was damned if he was going to remove it after all the courage it had taken to put it there in the first place. Some of his school friends had told him that they had unbuttoned their girlfriends’ blouses and felt their breasts in that very cinema, but Banks hadn’t the nerve to try that. Not on their first time out together.

On their way home, they had held hands and necked for a while in the bus shelter, and that was as far as things had gone that night. Banks remembered it all vividly as Kay arranged herself next to him in the car: the warm, slightly hazy evening smearing the city lights; noise from a nearby pub; the fruity, chemical taste of her lipstick; the softness of her neck just below her ear; the way it made him tingle and turn hard as he touched her; the warmth of her small breasts crushed against him.

‘Any ideas?’ Kay asked.

‘Ideas? What ideas?’

‘About where to go. I’m almost as much a stranger to these parts as you are.’

‘Oh, that. I thought I’d just drive out Fotheringhay way. It’s not too far, and we ought to be able to find somewhere decent to eat.’

Kay laughed. ‘It’ll probably be called the Mary Queen of Scots or something.’

‘She certainly did get around, that woman.’

‘Didn’t have much choice, did she? What a miserable existence.’

‘Never wanted to be royalty?’

Kay shook her head. ‘Not me. I’m happy being a commoner.’

Banks slipped the Blind Faith CD he had bought that afternoon into the stereo and Stevie Winwood’s ‘Had to Cry Today’ came out as crisp and heart-rending as the day it was cut.

‘That’s not-’ Kay began, then she put her head back. ‘My God, I haven’t heard that in decades. You still listen to this sort of stuff?’

‘A lot of old sixties and early seventies stuff, yes,’ said Banks. ‘I reckon those eight or nine years or so between “Love Me Do” and the time everyone died produced about the best rock we’ll ever hear.’

‘That’s a very sweeping statement. What about punk?’

‘Too much noise and not enough talent. The Clash were all right, though.’

‘Roxy Music? Bowie? REM? The Pretenders?’

‘There are exceptions to every rule.’

Kay laughed. ‘And what else, these days?’

‘I’m a hip-hop fan, myself. What about you?’

Kay nudged him in the ribs. ‘Seriously.’

‘Mostly jazz and classical. But I still listen to a fair bit of rock and folk: Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, Beth Orton.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t listen to much at all these days,’ said Kay. ‘Don’t have the time. I have the radio on sometimes while I’m in the bath, but I hardly notice what’s being played. I suppose if I had to pick something I’d choose a string quartet or some sort of chamber music. Schubert, perhaps.’

‘Nothing wrong with old Franz. What about this place?’

By the time the band had got to ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’, one of Banks’s favourites, he had wandered off the main road, and they were passing through a small village of grey stone, thatched cottages clustered around a broad green. Lights shone behind curtains, and here and there a television set flickered. The pub was not called the Mary Queen of Scots but a far more lowly Fox and Hounds. Banks parked the car out front and turned off the music.

Banks and Kay ducked as they walked under the low beam of the door. Already the place was busy, emanating that rosy glow of a village pub popular with the city crowd. They went up to the bar, where Banks ordered a pint of bitter and Kay a vodka and tonic, then a young girl, who looked no more than about sixteen, seated them in the dining area and pointed out that the evening’s menu was written on the blackboard by the window. Just one glance told Banks they’d come to the right sort of place: a wide selection of real ale and good food beyond basic pub fare, but nothing too ambitious. The noise level was perfect, only the buzz of conversation from other tables, the thud of darts in the board at the opposite end, sometimes accompanied by a mild oath or a cheer, and the sounds of the cash register.

‘Cheers,’ said Banks when they’d sat down and had a good look at the blackboard. ‘To – to-’

‘To times gone by,’ said Kay.

‘To times gone by.’

They clinked glasses and each took a sip. Banks felt the need for a cigarette, partly from nerves and partly from habit – he was in a pub, after all – but he rode out the craving and soon forgot about it.

‘Do you remember that concert?’ he asked.

Kay’s eyes sparkled. ‘Of course I do. Well, not so much the music… I mean, if you asked me I couldn’t tell you what they played or who else was on… but the occasion… yes, how could I forget? My mother wouldn’t let me out of the door for a week afterwards, except to go to school.’

Banks laughed. ‘Mine, too.’

On 7 June 1969, earlier on the day Kay had bought Lady Chatterley’s Lover at a second-hand book shop on Charing Cross Road, Banks and Kay had taken the train to London for the free Blind Faith concert in Hyde Park. Through a combination of circumstances – partly to do with going off to smoke dope in a flat in Chelsea with some people they met – they had missed their train back and ended up getting home very early the following morning. Needless to say, parental recriminations had been severe.

‘So,’ said Kay, ‘tell me about the last thirty years. I suppose you’re married? Children?’

‘Two children: one girl at university, and one boy in a rock band. And don’t say it serves me right.’

Kay laughed. ‘Heaven forbid. Maybe he’ll make enough money to keep you in your old age.’

‘That’s what I’m banking on.’

‘What about your wife?’

The waitress came over, notepad in hand. ‘Have you decided yet?’

Banks glanced at Kay, who nodded and ordered the sole and salad. Banks went for venison medallions in port and mushroom sauce.

‘More drinks?’

Banks looked at his half-full glass and shook his head. Kay asked for a glass of white wine with her meal.

‘You were saying?’ Kay went on when the waitress had gone away. ‘About your wife.’

Banks paused. ‘I’m divorced.’

‘How long?’

‘Two years. She’s already remarried.’

Kay whistled. ‘That’s pretty fast. Usually you’d expect some sort of… well… I don’t know…’

‘Period of mourning?’

‘That’s not the term I was looking for, but I suppose it’ll do.’

‘It took me by surprise too. I can’t say I’m in any hurry to get married again.’

‘Is there someone?’

Banks thought of Michelle and Annie, and experienced another pang of guilt as he said, ‘No one serious. It’s too soon for that.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You?’

‘Me? What?’

‘Are you still married?’

‘Not for the past five years.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You needn’t be. He ran away with his secretary.’

‘That must have been tough.’

‘At the time, yes, I’d say it was a bit of a blow to the old self-esteem. She was much younger than me, of course. But I’m over it now.’

‘Someone new?’

‘No one special.’ Kay smiled and gave a slight blush as she picked up her glass and sipped. It was the same smile and blush Banks remembered from all those years ago when he had first asked her out. What had happened to them? he asked himself. Why had they split up? But he knew the answer: it had been his fault.

Their meals arrived and Kay’s glass of wine soon followed. Banks stuck with his one pint, as he had to drive. ‘How are you coping about your mother?’ he asked, after they had both eaten a couple of mouthfuls.

‘Not bad. I think. I’ve got most of it done except the cleaning.’ She smiled. ‘Never was my strong suit, not even in my own home. I’ll probably do it tomorrow. Anyway, a local dealer’s coming to take away the furniture on Monday morning. Didn’t offer much for it, but what the hell… The rest is already packed and ready to go to my house.’ She shook her head. ‘It was difficult going through someone’s life like that. Your own mother’s memories. Do you know, I found letters to her from a young man – this was before she and Dad met, of course – but they were love letters. Quite spicy, too, one or two of them.’

‘It is hard to imagine your parents having lives of their own, isn’t it?’

Kay nodded. ‘There was lots of other stuff, too. Old photos. Me when I was a kid at the seaside. Letters from me, too, when I was at university. Full of energy and ambition.’ Tears glistened in her eyes.

‘And now?’

Kay wiped away the tears. ‘Oh, I suppose I’m still ambitious enough. I work practically all the hours God sends. I know I neglected Mum, especially after Dad died.’ Banks remembered hearing that Kay’s father had been killed ten years ago in a car accident, an accident her mother survived. It had been the talk of the estate for weeks, so his mother had told him. Kay laughed and made a dismissive gesture. ‘I don’t know, maybe there’s something Freudian about it – I always was Daddy’s little girl – but my career really started to take off around then, too. Life was exciting at last: lots of travel, parties, financial success. I hardly ever made time to come home and help Mum, even when she was ill. For crying out loud, I was in Zurich when she died. I barely managed to get back in time for the funeral. Some daughter. Some mother, too. Even my kids say they never see me.’

‘Kids?’

‘Three girls. All married. I’m a grandmother, Alan. Can you believe it? A bloody grandmother.’

‘It’s hard to believe, looking at you.’

She blushed and smiled again. ‘Why, thank you. I’ll tell you, though, it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of investment in potions and salves these days. Remember when we were kids? We thought we were immortal, that we’d be young for ever.’

‘True enough,’ Banks agreed. ‘I’m still waiting for the wisdom that’s supposed to come with age.’

‘Me, too.’

They paused to eat in comfortable silence. Banks watched Kay break off flakes of moist sole with the edge of her fork. His venison was good, tender and tasty. He decided he could risk one more drink and asked the waitress to bring him a glass of red wine.

‘How are your parents?’ Kay asked.

‘Fine. Oh, that reminds me: Mum asked me to invite you to drop by tomorrow, if you want.’

Kay nodded slowly. ‘Yes. All right, that would be nice.’

‘About six, OK?’

‘Fine. Just for half an hour or so.’ Kay frowned. ‘You know, there is one thing that puzzles me a bit about Mum,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

‘It’s nothing, really, but I was going through her finances yesterday, and I noticed she’d withdrawn a hundred pounds from the cash machine the day she died, but I can’t find it. There’s only about six or seven pounds in her purse, and she wasn’t the type to hide her money under the mattress.’

The little scar beside Banks’s right eye began to itch. ‘Maybe she had bills to pay, or she owed it to someone?’

‘Neither a lender nor a borrower be. That was Mum’s motto. And all her bills had been paid. No, it’s a mystery. What do you have to say, O great detective?’

‘I still think there’s probably a logical explanation.’

‘Probably. The other thing that puzzles me, though, is how did she get it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, she was bedridden for the last few days. There was a nurse on call twenty-four hours a day, of course, and Dr Grenville dropped by quite often, but… I just don’t see how she could even have got to the cash machine.’

The itch got stronger. Banks scratched the side of his eye. ‘Have you ever heard of a fellow called Geoff Salisbury?’ he asked her.

Kay frowned. ‘The name sounds vaguely familiar. I think he introduced himself to me at the funeral. A neighbour. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Banks. ‘Nothing important. Dessert?’

12

‘Would you like some music on?’ Kay asked. They were back at her parents’ house, and Banks had accepted her invitation to come in for a nightcap – a half-bottle of ‘medicinal’ brandy that Kay had found while tidying out the kitchen cupboards. They drank it out of cracked teacups that she had been about to put in the dustbin.

‘Sure,’ said Banks.

Kay walked over to the old stereo system. ‘Let’s see,’ she said, flipping through a box of LPs. ‘I packed these last night but I didn’t really pay much attention. There’s probably not a lot of choice. Dad only liked the stuff he used to listen to in the war, and Mum wasn’t much interested in music at all. As you can see, they don’t own a CD player. I think the last LP they bought was in 1960.’

Banks went over and joined her, looking at the old-fashioned covers. At least he could read what was written on the backs of them, unlike the tiny print on CDs. ‘That’s after 1960,’ he said, pointing to Beatles for Sale.

‘That must be one of mine,’ Kay said. ‘I didn’t even notice it.’

Banks flipped open the cover. Written inside, in tiny blue ballpoint over the photograph, were some words. They were hard to make out, but he thought they said, ‘Kay Summerville loves Alan Banks.’ Banks passed it to Kay, who blushed and put it away. ‘I lent it to Susan Fish,’ she said. ‘The sneaky devil. I didn’t know she’d done that.’ She pulled out another LP. ‘Ah, this will do fine.’

The needle crackled as it hit the groove, a sound that gave Banks an unexpected frisson of delight and nostalgia, and then Billie Holiday started singing ‘Solitude’.

‘Couldn’t do much better,’ he said.

‘Dance?’ Kay asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Banks. ‘Remember the vicar wouldn’t allow dancing at the youth club because he said it led to sex?’

Kay laughed. ‘Yes, I remember.’

Then she was in his arms, Billie was singing about solitude, and they were doing what passed for dancing.

13

‘A wise man, that vicar,’ said Banks about an hour later, as he lay back on the sofa, Billie Holiday long finished, a naked Kay half on top of him, her head resting on his chest, fingertips trailing languorously over his skin. It had been good – no doubt much better than their youthful fumblings, which he could scarcely remember now – though there had been something a little melancholy and desperate about it, as if both had been straining to capture something that eluded them.

‘What happened to us?’ Kay asked. ‘All those years ago.’

‘We were just kids. What did we know?’

‘I suppose so. But have you ever wondered what would have happened? You know, if we hadn’t-’

‘Of course I have.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard for me to imagine a life without Sandra and the kids.’

‘I know that. I mean, even though it ended badly, me and Keith had some good times. And the kids are marvellous. It’s just a game. Imagining. You know, sometimes I’ve been places or experienced things and thought I’d have liked you there to share it.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. Haven’t you ever felt the same?’

‘I can’t say I have,’ said Banks, who had.

She nudged him in the ribs. ‘Bastard.’

‘There’s something I never told you before,’ Banks said, stroking her silky blonde hair and touching the soft skin on her neck, just below her ear.

‘And you want to tell me now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘The timing seems right.’

‘Why?’

‘No particular reason.’

Kay shifted position. ‘OK. Go ahead.’

‘You know that first time when my parents were out and you came over to the house? The day we’d decided we were finally going to do it?’

‘How could I forget? I was about to lose my virginity. I was scared silly.’

‘Me too. On both counts. Nervous as hell.’

Banks remembered that, as the months went on, he and Kay had graduated from kissing in the bus shelter to touching above the waist, first with clothing intact, then under her jumper, with only the thin bra between his hands and her bare, swollen flesh. After a few weeks of that, and much trouble fumbling with the clasp that held the thing on, he got beyond the bra to the unimaginably firm and tender mounds beneath.

They had been going out nearly a year before the subject of moving to below the waist came up, and both were understandably a bit nervous about it. This might have been the swinging sixties, when kids were making love openly at Woodstock, but Banks and Kay were young, unsophisticated, provincial kids, and the antics of drug-taking pop stars and free-loving hippies seemed as fantastic as Hollywood films.

But they had done it.

‘Well,’ Banks went on. ‘I had to go and get some… you know… Durex.’

‘Rubber Johnnies? Yes, I suppose you did. Do you know, I never really thought about that.’

‘Well, I couldn’t very well go to the local chemist’s or the barber’s, could I? They knew me there. Someone would have been bound to tell my parents.’

Kay propped herself on one elbow and leaned over him, her nipple hard against his chest. He could smell white wine and cheap brandy on her breath, see sparks of light dancing in her dark blue eyes. ‘So what did you do? Where did you go?’ she asked.

‘I walked miles and miles to the other side of town and found a barber’s where I was certain no one would recognize me.’

Kay giggled. ‘Oh, how sweet.’

‘I’m not finished yet.’

‘Go on.’

‘Do you know how the old barbers’ shops had a sort of hallway with a counter between the outer and inner door, nice and private, where you could buy shampoo and razor blades and stuff?’

‘And rubber Johnnies?’

‘And rubber Johnnies.’

‘I remember. My dad used to take me to the barber’s with him sometimes when I was a little girl.’

‘Right,’ Banks went on. ‘Well, as I said, I’d walked halfway to Cambridge and there I was, bold as brass, outside a barber’s on a street where not a soul could possibly know who I was.’

Kay smiled. ‘What happened?’ She moved her head and her hair tickled his chest.

‘Well, wouldn’t you know it, but this particular establishment didn’t have a discreet sales area. Oh no. I opened the front door and I found myself standing right by the barber’s chair. He was giving a bloke a shave, I remember, and the place was full of grown men. I mean, every chair in the waiting area was taken, and I swear that the minute I walked in there they all looked up from their newspapers and every eye was on me.’

‘My God! What did you do?’

‘What could I do? I’d gone too far to turn back. I stood my ground and I said, in as deep a voice as I could manage, “Packet of three, please.”’

Kay put her hand to her mouth to hold back the laughter. ‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘You’re joking?’

‘No word of a lie.’

‘What did he say? The barber.’

‘Not a word. He stopped mid-shave, straight-blade razor in his hand, and he went to his cabinet and got them for me. But you should have heard the other buggers laugh and cheer. You’d think Peterborough United had won a game. I went red as a beet.’

Kay burst into a fit of laughter and couldn’t stop. Banks started laughing with her, holding her against his chest, and after a while laughter turned to lust.

14

It was after two o’clock when Banks slipped the key into the door of his parents’ house and turned the lock as quietly as he could. He shut the door slowly behind him, without making much noise, and made sure the chain and bolt were on. The stairs creaked a little as he tiptoed up to bed. He couldn’t very well go and brush his teeth as he would have to put the bathroom light on and the tap would make a noise. He thought he could just about manage to undress and crawl into bed in the dark. The bed would creak too, but that couldn’t be helped. Fortunately, he’d had the foresight to use the toilet before leaving Kay’s.

The minute he got to the landing he heard his mother muttering something to his father, who muttered something back. He couldn’t catch the words but knew they were about him, how late he was. He felt himself blushing. Christ, it really didn’t matter how quiet he had tried to be; she’d been lying awake until he came home, just like she used to do when he was a teenager.

15

Despite his late night, Banks woke early on Sunday morning to the sound of rain blowing in sharp gusts against his bedroom window. The rest of the house was quiet, and he didn’t think his parents were awake yet. His first thought on finding consciousness was to wonder what the hell he and Kay had thought they were up to last night, but the more he remembered the less he regretted. Blame it on Billie Holiday, if you will, on dancing, the old estate and the romance of the past, but whatever it was, it was something special and he refused to feel guilty.

He only hoped Kay felt the same way in the damp grey of dawn.

Two memories assailed him almost simultaneously as he got out of bed and went over to the wardrobe for his overnight bag: that he had forgotten to give Kay her old copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and that he was certain he had seen a tiny, neatly folded square of silver paper in the bathroom waste bin. Perhaps Mrs Summerville had taken to chewing gum in her final days, though he doubted it, or maybe Kay did, though he had seen no evidence of it last night, and he remembered that she had bought mints at the newsagent’s, not gum. Which left him with the strongest suspicion that Geoff Salisbury had been there sometime over the past few weeks, leaving Banks little doubt as to where the hundred pounds had gone.

What to do about him, that was the question.

Banks stretched as he pulled out his bag and decided to start the day dressed simply, in jeans and a polo-neck sweater. He would change for the party later. Today was his parents’ big day, and Roy was due to come up from London. Banks resolved to be nice to Roy for his parents’ sake.

As Banks put his bag back in the wardrobe, he noticed some cardboard boxes on the far side. On his previous visit he had found some old records and diaries, which were still there, but now it looked as if there was more. Curious, he opened the other door and lifted a box out. The flaps were shut, but not sealed, and written across the top, in his mother’s inimitable scrawl, was his name: Alan. More childhood stuff, then.

On top he found yet more old school reports, from the grammar school this time, most of them urging him to try harder and assuring him he could do better if he only put his shoulder to the wheel etc. The reports were handwritten in black ink, and Banks occasionally had difficulty reading the comments. He remembered some of the teachers’ names – Mr Newman, Mr Phelps, Mr Hawtry – but most of them were a blur.

Along with the reports was a class photograph dated 14 May 1967. There they all were, three rows of teenage boys in their school uniforms. Banks remembered several of the faces: Steve Hill, Paul Major, Dave Grenfell, his best friends, then Tony Green, John McLeod, the school bully, and Ian Marston, who, so Banks’s mother had told him, committed suicide seven or eight years ago after his courier business failed. The rest of them he hardly remembered except for the odd feature here and there, such as a long, freckled face, a big nose, or prominent ears, but he couldn’t put a name to them. He had met up with Dave Grenfell and Paul Major on his previous visit, and he had found out then that Steve Hill had died of lung cancer, but what had become of everyone else he had no idea. Others would be dead, some would be dying, some would be successful, some would be failures, some would be criminals, many would be divorced. There was one angry-looking kid glaring into the camera with a cocky expression on his face, black hair just a little bit too long, tie slightly askew, top button undone against school regulations. Himself. Even more of a mystery than all the rest.

Next came a few school exercise books full of sums and compositions. One of them contained some poems Banks had written when he went through that stage of adolescence in which poetry was an acceptable means of expression as long as you kept it to yourself. It was with excruciating embarrassment that he looked over them again now, with the autumn rain starting to spatter against his bedroom window.

There were lines about the awkwardness of being an adolescent, love poems to Julie Christie and Judy Geeson, poems about how phony the world was. None of them rhymed, of course, nor were any overly concerned with metrics; the lines simply ended where he had decided to end them, for no other reason than that it looked like poetry on the page. There were no capital letters, either. Still, Banks reflected, from what he had seen that wasn’t a hell of a lot different from the sort of thing most published poets did today. Awful lines and images jumped out at him, such as ‘I feel like a corpse/in the coffin of your mind.’ What on earth had prompted him to write that? About what? He couldn’t even remember whose mind was supposed to be the coffin. And then there was a poem marked, ‘For Kay’, in which these immortal lines appeared:

i skimmed across

your life

like a pebble

on the water’s surface

i sank

quickly

the tide went out

What had he been thinking of? There was another image about her being ‘naked/on a sheepskin/by the crackling fire’, but as far as Banks could remember, they had never lain on a sheepskin rug, and electric fires, which everyone on the estate had, didn’t crackle. Poetic licence?

He remembered that first time up in this same room while his parents were out. The event was awkward and far less momentous for both of them than his imagination had convinced him it would be, but it went well enough in the end and they decided they liked it and would certainly try again. They got better and better over the next few months, stealing an hour or two here and there while parents were absent. Once they almost got caught when Kay’s mother came home sooner than expected from a dental appointment. They just managed to get their clothes on and tidy up the bed in time to tell her they’d been listening to records, though judging by the expression on Mrs Summerville’s face when she saw her daughter’s dishevelled hair, Banks didn’t think she was convinced. Kay told him later that that very evening she had got a lecture about the dangers of teenage pregnancy and what men think of women who haven’t ‘saved themselves’ for marriage, though no overt mention was made of Banks or that afternoon’s events, and nobody tried to stop them seeing one another.

Smiling at the memory, Banks slipped the exercise book of poetry into his overnight bag, determined to remember to feed it to the fire when he got back to his Gratly cottage. As he moved it, a newspaper cutting slipped out from between some of the unfilled pages. It was a report in the local paper on the disappearance of Graham Marshall, a school friend of Banks’s, and the reason for his visit home in the summer. Alongside the article was a photograph of Graham with his fair hair, melancholy expression and pale face, like some fin de siècle poet.

Banks moved on to the bottom of the box, where he found more old forty-fives, ones he had forgotten he had: Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, ‘Juliet’ by the Four Pennies, ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Summer in the City’, ‘Devil in Disguise’ by Elvis Presley and ‘Still I’m Sad’ by the Yardbirds.

Banks put the box back on top of one marked Roy and tiptoed downstairs into the kitchen for a cup of tea. His heart almost stopped when he saw Geoff Salisbury sitting at the kitchen table eating buttered toast.

‘Morning, Alan,’ Geoff said. ‘I’ve come to do some cleaning up. Already took your em and pee a cup of tea up, bless ’em. It’s a big day for them, you know. Like a cuppa yourself?’

Banks felt like saying he would make his own tea, but he remembered he hadn’t been able to find the tea bags. Instead, he got himself a mug. ‘Thanks,’ he grunted.

‘Not much of a morning person?’ Geoff asked. ‘Still, I imagine after a late night like you had you must be feeling even more tired. Your poor old mum was lying awake worrying where you’d got to.’ Salisbury winked. ‘Having a good time with that Summerville girl, were you?’

So Banks’s mother had already told Geoff that her son had been out with Kay Summerville and had not returned home until the early hours of the morning. He knew all this, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Geoff Salisbury was starting to get really annoying. Even though Banks hadn’t had a chance to call Annie back about criminal records, he decided that now would be as good a time as any to go on the offensive and make a couple of things clear to him.

‘I’m glad you’re here, actually,’ Banks said. ‘I’ve been wanting to have a quiet word with you.’

‘Oh? What about?’

‘Your sticky fingers.’

‘Come again?’

‘You know what I’m talking about. Don’t come the innocent. It doesn’t work with me.’

‘I understand that your job must make you cynical, but why are you picking on me? What have I done?’

‘You know what you’ve done.’

‘Look, if it’s that business about the change, I thought I’d already made it clear to you it was a genuine mistake. I thought we’d put it behind us.’

‘I might have done if it hadn’t been for a few other interesting titbits I’ve heard since I’ve been down here.’

‘It’s that Summerville girl, isn’t it? If she’s been saying things, she’s lying. She doesn’t like me.’

‘Well,’ said Banks, ‘that at least shows good taste on her part. It doesn’t matter who’s been saying what. The point is that I’ve been hearing from a number of independent sources about things sort of disappearing when you’re in the vicinity. Money, for example.’

Salisbury turned red. ‘I resent that.’

‘I should imagine you do. But is it true?’

‘Of course it isn’t. I don’t know who’s-’

‘I told you, it doesn’t matter who.’

Salisbury stood up. ‘Well, it does to me. You might not believe it, but there are people who have it in for me. Not everybody appreciates what I do for the decent folk around here, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Never you mind. Now, if you’ve finished with your groundless accusations, I’ve got work to do. Your parents’ golden wedding might not be important to you, but it is to me. Arthur and Ida mean a lot to me.’

Before Banks could say another word, Salisbury had gone into the front room and started up the vacuum. Irritated both by Salisbury’s reaction and his own fumbling accusation, Banks went across to the newsagent’s to see if he could pick up a Sunday Times.

16

Banks went to the Bricklayer’s Inn by himself for a quiet pint on Sunday lunchtime, taking the newspaper with him and promising to be back by two o’clock for lunch. It felt like his first real break that weekend, and he made the most of it, even getting the crossword three-quarters done, which was good for him without Annie’s help. On his way home he took cover in the rain-lashed bus shelter by the gates of the derelict factory to call Annie in Eastvale. Though the shelter hadn’t been there all those years ago, Banks still couldn’t help but think of Mandy, with her Julie Christie lips and the faraway look in her eyes. He wondered what had happened to her, whether she had ever found that distant thing she had seemed to be dreaming of. Probably not; most people didn’t. Though it seemed like another age, she would only be in her early fifties, after all, and that no longer sounded very old to Banks.

DC Winsome Jackman answered his ring. ‘Is DI Cabbot not in?’ Banks asked.

‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ said Winsome. ‘She’s out on the East Side Estate interviewing neighbours about that sexual assault.’

‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

‘No, sir. Sorry, but you’ll just have to make do with me.’

Banks could hear teasing humour in her voice, the way it tinged her lilting Jamaican speech. Did she know that Annie and he used to have a thing? He wouldn’t be surprised. No matter how much you try to keep something like that a secret, there are always people who seem able to pick up on it intuitively.

‘DI Cabbot did leave a message for you, though, sir,’ Winsome went on.

‘Yes?’

‘That man you were asking about, Geoffrey Salisbury.’

‘Right. Any form?’

‘Yes, sir. One conviction. Six years ago. Served eighteen months.’

‘What for?’

‘Fraud, sir. To put it in a nutshell, he tried to swindle a little old lady out of her life savings, but she was a lot smarter than he reckoned on.’

‘Did he indeed?’ Banks said. ‘What a surprise.’

‘Sir?’

‘Nothing. Where did this happen?’

‘Loughborough, sir.’

That wasn’t very far away, Banks thought. ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said. ‘And thank DI Cabbot. That’s a great help.’

‘There’s more, sir. DI Cabbot said she’s going to try to talk to the local police, the ones who handled the case. She said it looks like there might be more to it than meets the eye.’

‘What did she mean by that?’

‘Don’t know, sir. Shall I ask her to ring you when she’s been in touch with Loughborough police?’

‘If you would, Winsome. And thanks again.’

‘No problem, sir. Enjoy the party.’

17

Roy didn’t turn up in time for Sunday lunch, which was pretty much what Banks had expected. They ate without him, Ida Banks fretting and worrying the whole time, unable to enjoy her food. Arthur tried to calm her, assuring her that nothing terrible had happened and that Roy wasn’t trapped in a burning car wreck somewhere on the M1. Banks said nothing. He knew his mother well enough to realize that anything he said regarding Roy would only succeed in adding fuel to the fire. Instead, he ate his roast beef and Yorkshires like a good boy – and a fine lunch it was, too, especially if you liked your meat and vegetables overcooked – and counted his blessings. In the first place his mother was far too distracted to go on at him for being late home last night, and in the second place Geoff bloody Salisbury had buggered off home and wasn’t eating with them, though he had promised to come back early to help set up for the party.

The phone finally rang at about half past two, just as they were starting their jam roly-poly, and Banks’s mother leapt up and dashed into the hall to answer it. When she came back she was much calmer, and she informed Banks and his father that poor Roy had had a devil of a job getting away on time and the rain had caused some terrible delays. There was also a pile-up on the M25, so he was stuck in traffic there at the moment and would arrive as soon as he could.

‘There you are, you see,’ Arthur said. ‘All that fretting for nothing. I told you he was all right.’

‘But you never know, do you?’ she said.

Banks offered to do the dishes and his offer was, to his surprise, accepted. His father had a nap with the open newspaper unread on his lap, and his mother went for a short lie-down to calm her nerves. When Banks had finished the dishes, he sneaked a couple of fingers of his father’s Johnnie Walker to calm his nerves. He had no sooner downed it than the explosion went off.

At least that was what it sounded like at first. Eventually, Banks’s ears adjusted enough to discern that it was music coming from next door. Heavy-metal gangsta rap, music only if you used the term very loosely indeed. Banks’s father stirred in his armchair. ‘At it again,’ he grumbled. ‘Never get a moment’s peace.’

Banks sat by him on the arm. ‘Does this happen a lot?’ he asked.

His father nodded. ‘Too often for me. Oh, I’ve tried having a word, but he’s an ignorant bugger. If I were twenty or thirty years younger-’

Banks heard his mother’s footsteps on the landing. ‘At it again, I hear,’ she called down.

‘It’s bad for her nerves,’ Arthur Banks said.

‘Have you talked to the council?’

‘We’ve tried, but they say, apart from issuing a warning, they can’t do anything.’

‘What about Geoff Salisbury?’

‘Geoff’s got his strengths, but he’s not got a lot of bottle. Proper tough guy him next door.’

‘Right,’ said Banks, standing up. ‘Give me a few minutes.’

‘Where are you going, Alan?’ his mother asked, coming down the stairs as he got to the front door.

‘Just off to have a quiet word with next door, that’s all.’

‘Don’t you go causing any trouble. Do you hear? You just be careful. And remember we have to live here after you’ve gone, you know.’

Banks patted his mother’s arm. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m doing. I’ll make sure I don’t cause you any trouble.’

It was still raining outside. Banks knocked on the door, but got no answer. Hardly surprising, as he supposed nobody could hear him over the music. The windows were all open and the angry heavy-metal rap spilled out into the street, someone bragging about raping a bitch and offing a pig.

Banks tried the front door. It was open. He found himself in a small hallway, where the stairs led up to the bedrooms. The wallpaper was peeling and something that looked like a sleeping bag lay on the staircase. Banks nudged it with his foot. It was empty.

He didn’t like just walking in unannounced, but it seemed the only option. He called out a few times while he stood still in the hallway but he could hardly even hear his own shouts.

Finally, he went through into the living room. Now he knew why they kept the windows open; the smell was overwhelming. It was a mixture of things – human smells, definitely, such as sweat and urine, but also rotten vegetables, burnt plastic and marijuana. There were piles of old newspapers and other rubbish on the floor and it looked as though a dog had chewed up the furniture, though there wasn’t one in evidence. Thankful for small mercies, Banks thought; they probably had a pit bull. Three people were slumped on sofas and armchairs, and one of them stood up when Banks walked in.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he shouted.

‘I’m not a lip-reader,’ Banks said, stepping over to the mound of stereo equipment and turning the volume down. ‘That’s better.’

It was the man of the house – Fred West to a T, eyebrows and all. The woman Banks assumed was his wife watched from one of the chairs. A girl Banks guessed to be about thirteen or fourteen sat in the other chair staring blankly at him.

The man squared up to Banks and gestured to the door with his thumb. ‘Right, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m done being polite. On your bike.’

‘I came to ask you to turn down the music,’ Banks said. ‘We can hardly hear ourselves think next door.’

‘What’s it to you? You’re not from around here.’

‘I was here a long time before you came on the scene. I grew up here. It’s my parents’ house and today’s their wedding anniversary.’

‘Well, bully for you. Sorry we forgot to buy them a present. Now just fuck off before I do you some real damage.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Banks, slipping his warrant card out. ‘I’m a police officer and I’m asking you nicely to keep the noise down.’

The man actually leaned forward and scrutinized the card. ‘North Yorkshire!’ he said. ‘You’ve got no powers down here. You’re out of your jurisdiction, mate.’

‘Big word that. I’m surprised you didn’t choke on it.’

‘I’m not scared of you. Now fuck off!’

‘You should be,’ said Banks.

The man walked over to the stereo and cranked up the volume again. The girl and the woman hadn’t moved. They were just watching. Banks guessed they were stoned on something or other. He thought he could see a crack pipe half-hidden under a newspaper on the floor, but it wasn’t crack they were on. These two weren’t jerky or manic; they were practically comatose. Downers or smack, most likely.

With a sigh, Banks walked over to the stereo, picked up the CD player, ripped out the wires and dropped it on the floor. The music stopped. The women still didn’t move, but Fred came right at him. He was a couple of inches taller than Banks, and thickset, muscular in the upper body. But Banks had his wiry and deceptive strength and speed going for him. He grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it so that he soon had him on his knees, arm up his back, foot placed solidly on his left kidney. By exerting just a little more pressure on the arm, Banks could make the pain excruciating. Even more pressure and the arm would snap or the shoulder joint would pop. The women just looked on, goggle-eyed. They’d never seen anything like this before.

‘I’ll do you for this!’ the man yelled. ‘I’ll see you bloody locked up, copper or no. You’ve got no right going around destroying a man’s private property.’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Fred,’ said Banks. ‘It was probably nicked, anyway.’

‘My name’s Lenny. You’ve got the wrong bloke.’

‘My mistake. Sorry, Lenny. Are you listening?’

‘I’m still not scared of-’

Banks gave a little twist and Lenny screamed. Banks let him relax a moment and then repeated his question.

‘All right,’ said Lenny. ‘All right, I’m listening. Let go.’

Banks didn’t. ‘I’m sorry about your CD player,’ he said. ‘I’m a music lover, myself, so it hurt me almost as it hurt you. I’m sure it’ll be OK; it’s just had rather a nasty shock, that’s all. If it’s not, then I’m sure you’ll have no problem lifting another. But first I’d like a promise out of you.’

‘What promise?’

Banks gave another little twist. Lenny screamed, his face red with pain. The woman Banks assumed was his wife lit a cigarette and contemplated the scene before her with great interest, as if she was watching a television programme. The girl started buffing her nails. Banks listened in the silence after the CD player’s sudden demise, but he could hear no other sounds coming from anywhere in the house. A good sign. No ambush imminent.

‘I’d like you to promise me that you won’t ever, ever, play your music so loud again that it disturbs my mum and dad next door. Do you think you can do that, Lenny?’

‘It’s my house. I’ll do what I like in my own fucking house.’

Twist. Scream.

‘Lenny, you’re not listening. If you really mean what you just said, you ought to consider moving to a detached house, you know, miles away from your nearest neighbours. Besides, it’s not your house. It’s the council’s house. You just rent it.’

‘You’re a bastard, you are,’ Lenny said, gasping. ‘You’re worse than the fucking criminals you put away. Filth!’ He spat on the floor.

‘Yeah, yeah. It’s all been said before. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about your promise.’

‘What promise? I haven’t made any fucking promise.’

‘But you’re going to, aren’t you?’

Lenny said nothing. The woman frowned as she looked at him. Banks could tell the suspense was killing her. Will he or won’t he? The young girl got up and made to leave the room.

‘Where are you going?’ Banks asked her.

‘Bog,’ she said, making a squatting gesture.

Banks was a little concerned that she might reappear with a weapon. ‘Hold on a minute, love,’ he said. ‘Wait till I’m finished here.’

‘I’ll piss myself.’

‘I said hold on. You’ll live with it.’

‘These are me new jeans.’

Banks turned back to Lenny. The girl slumped against the doorpost, legs crossed. Banks kept a close eye on her. She chewed on her lower lip and looked sulky.

‘Right, Lenny, the quicker you give me your promise, the quicker your lass here will get to go to the toilet.’

‘She’s not my lass. Let her piss herself. I don’t care. Won’t be the first time.’

Banks gave a harder twist and Lenny cursed. ‘What I want you to promise,’ Banks said slowly, ‘is that you won’t play your music so loud that it upsets my mum and dad, remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘And if you do,’ Banks said, ‘I’ll have the local drugs squad over here before you can flush a tab of E down the toilet. Is that clear?’

‘It’s clear.’

‘Is it a promise?’

‘I-’

Banks twisted again. ‘Is it a promise?’

‘All right, all right! Jesus Christ, yes, it’s a fucking promise!’

‘And if you do anything – anything at all – to harm or intimidate them in any way, I’ll consider that promise broken. And I deal with broken promises myself. North Yorkshire’s not that far away. Got it?’

‘Got it. Let me go.’

Banks let go and Lenny squirmed on the floor for a while, rubbing his arm and his shoulder before subsiding into his armchair and lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.

‘You’re a nutter, you are,’ he said. ‘You ought to be locked up.’

‘You’ve got that right.’

‘Is it over?’ the girl by the door asked. ‘Are you done? Are you? ’Cos I’m bleeding bursting here.’

‘It’s over, love,’ said Banks. ‘Off you go.’

‘About fucking time.’ She dashed upstairs. The woman on the sofa looked at Lenny with contempt, but still said nothing.

‘You in charge here, Lenny?’ Banks asked, catching her look. ‘Because there’s no point my talking to the monkey, if you catch my drift.’

‘I’m in fucking charge,’ he said, glaring at the woman. ‘They know that.’

She sniffed, but Banks could see fear in her eyes, the first emotion he had noticed in her. Lenny was in charge all right, and he probably used the same tactics Banks had just used to rule his roost. That didn’t make Banks feel particularly good, but needs must. He wondered what other sorts of abuse went on in this house, in addition to drugs. The young girl, for example, or the other kids, wherever they were. Nothing would have surprised him. Maybe he’d call in the drugs squad, anyway, and the social. Someone ought to keep a close eye on this lot, that was for certain.

He heard the toilet flush as he left.

18

Roy’s arrival at about four o’clock broke the tension for Banks. Until then he had been helping Geoff set up the bar and buffet on tables in the kitchen, keeping a tight rein on his temper for his parents’ sake, even though Geoff treated him like an employee. ‘Now, Alan, if you wouldn’t mind just moving that over there… That’s a good lad… If you could nip over to the shops and pick up…’ And so on. He had also been wanting to get Geoff alone and have another go at him in the light of Win-some’s information, but his mother was always around issuing instructions too. Wisely, his father had gone upstairs to ‘rest’.

When the doorbell rang, Ida Banks practically ran to the front door, and Banks heard her shouts of glee as she greeted Roy. After divesting himself of his raincoat, the man himself came through to the living room, clutching a bottle-shaped bag, and with a young woman in tow. She looked about twenty, Banks thought, with short, shaggy hair, black streaked with blonde, a pale, pretty face, with beautiful eyes the colour and gleam of chestnuts in September. She also had a silver stud just below her lower lip. She was wearing jeans and a short woolly jumper, exposing a couple of inches of bare, flat midriff and a navel with a ring in it.

‘This is Corinne,’ said Roy. ‘Say hello to my brother, Alan, Corinne.’

Corinne shook Banks’s hand and said hello. She gave him a shy smile and averted her eyes.

Roy looked at Geoff, free hand stretched out, smiling like a salesman. ‘And you are-?’

‘Geoff. Geoff Salisbury.’

‘Geoff. Of course! Pleased to meet you, Geoff. I’ve heard a lot about you. Mum and Dad say they’d be lost without you.’

Geoff beamed and shifted from foot to foot. ‘Well… that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration.’

Very ’umble, Banks thought.

‘Not at all,’ said Roy. ‘Not at all.’ He gave Geoff a firm handshake and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good to meet you at last.’

Geoff basked in the glow of Roy’s charm like a child in his mother’s embrace.

All this time, Ida Banks had stood by, smiling on. Roy turned to her again and gave her a hug. Then he handed over the package he’d been carrying. Ida Banks opened it. It was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Vintage.

She turned to her husband. ‘Ooh, look at this, Arthur! Champagne.’

‘It’s the real stuff, too,’ Roy said, with a wink at Banks. ‘None of your Spanish cava or New World sparklers.’

Arthur Banks grunted. Banks happened to know that his father hated champagne, as much because it was a symbol of the upper classes as for its taste.

‘I’d better put it away for a special occasion,’ said his mother, taking it through the kitchen and placing it into the dark depths of the larder, where it would probably remain. Banks thought to mention that today was as special an occasion as they were likely to have in a while, but he knew it was best to keep quiet when Roy was in full benevolent swing. He’d bought a few cans of beer and lager, himself, and he knew that they would be emptied that very evening, without a doubt.

‘Now, then,’ said Ida Banks, rubbing her hands together and reaching out to touch Corinne’s shoulder, ‘what about a drink for everyone? Corinne, love, what’ll you have?’

‘Lager and lime?’

‘Right you are, love. And you, Roy?’

‘Just a Perrier for me, Mum,’ said Roy. ‘Driving.’

‘Of course.’ Ida Banks frowned. ‘What did you say? Perrier? I don’t think we have any of that, do we, Alan?’

Banks shook his head. ‘Only tap water.’

‘Well, that won’t do, will it?’ his mother said scornfully.

‘It’s all right, Mrs B,’ chimed in Geoff, ‘I’ll just nip over the road. Old Ali’s bound to have some. He sells everything.’ And before anyone could stop him he was off.

Ida Banks turned to Roy again. ‘You won’t be driving for ages yet, I hope, son. Won’t you have a glass of something a bit stronger first?’

‘Oh, go on, then,’ said Roy. ‘You’ve twisted my arm. I’ll have a glass of white wine.’

Banks’s mother gave him a questioning glance. ‘We’ve got that, Mum,’ he said, then looked at his brother. ‘Screw top OK, Roy?’

‘Whatever,’ said Roy, his lip curling.

Banks and his father both opted for beer.

‘Come on, then, Corinne, love,’ said Ida Banks, taking Corinne by the arm. ‘You can keep me company and help me pour.’

Banks couldn’t believe it. His mother was fawning all over Roy’s twenty-something bit of fluff, the sort of girl who’d have been granted no more than a sniff of distaste if Banks had brought her home. Still, he should have expected it. Roy was Banks’s younger brother by five years. He had grown up watching Banks do everything wrong and getting caught for it – staying out too late as a teenager, listening to the radio under the bedsheets when he should have been asleep, smoking, leaving home to go to college in London, joining the police – and Roy had keenly observed his parents’ reactions. Roy had learned well from his brother’s mistakes, and he had done everything right. Now, in his mother’s eyes, Roy could do no wrong, and even Arthur Banks, not given to expressions of any kind, didn’t seem to disapprove of Roy as much as he did of Banks. Which was odd, indeed, Banks thought, as Roy was the consummate capitalist.

Roy sat down, first pulling at the razor-sharp crease of his black suit trousers. ‘So how’s life at the cop shop?’ he asked, looking away even before he’d got the words out, indicating to Banks that he didn’t have the slightest iota of interest.

‘Fine,’ said Banks.

‘Is that your Renault out there?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Not bad. Only it looks new. Been on the take?’

‘Oh, you know me, Roy. A few thousand here, a few thousand there.’

Roy laughed. Corinne and Ida Banks, best friends now, came through with the drinks on a tray at the same time Geoff came back from the shop. ‘Sorry, they didn’t have any Perrier,’ he said. ‘I got this other stuff Ali recommended. St… something or other… I can’t pronounce it. OK?’

‘It’ll do,’ said Roy. ‘Be a good bloke and pop it in the fridge, would you, Geoff?’

Geoff seemed only too pleased to oblige.

‘Isn’t this lovely?’ said Ida Banks, handing out the drinks. ‘We can have our own little family party before the rest of our guests arrive. Corinne tells me she’s an accountant, Roy.’

‘That’s right, Mum. Saved me a fortune in taxes.’

Corinne sat on the floor near his feet and rested her head against his thigh. He stroked her hair the way one would a faithful dog. ‘She’s very good with figures, aren’t you, Corinne?’

Corinne blushed. ‘If you say so, Roy.’

She really did seem like a ‘nice’ girl to Banks, and that made him wonder all the more what she was doing with Roy. Not that Roy wasn’t handsome or charming. In fact he possessed both of those attributes in spades. Under his suit, he wore a pale blue silk polo-neck. His hair, not quite so black as Banks’s, was long, over his ears and collar, expensively cut, and he had a small shaving nick near the cleft of his chin. His energetic blue eyes resembled Banks’s, except that they were predatory and calculating, whereas Banks’s were curious and intense.

Banks had thought more than once that his brother Roy fitted the classic definition of the psychopath: he was glib and superficial, egocentric, manipulative, shallow and completely lacking in any feelings of remorse, empathy or guilt. Certainly all his behaviour and his emotional responses were learned, assumed through close observation of others as the best way to get on in the world. Underneath it all, Banks guessed, the only things that mattered to him were his needs, and how he could meet them, and his success, measured, of course, by money and power. Perhaps that was why he had already gone through three wives.

‘Oops, mustn’t forget,’ Roy said, putting his glass down and getting suddenly to his feet. Corinne almost fell over sideways. ‘Sorry, love.’ He patted her shoulder. ‘Just got to nip down to the Porsche. Forgot something. Wouldn’t want to leave it out there too long. You never know on an estate like this. Give us a hand, will you, Geoff?’

Geoff, returned from the kitchen, beer in hand, stated that he was only too willing to do anything for Roy, and set his glass down on the table. Corinne smiled shyly as the two of them went out. Banks hadn’t heard her speak yet and wondered what her voice was like, her accent. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked, just to find out.

‘Canterbury,’ she said. ‘Well, I grew up there. After that I went to Manchester University.’

She didn’t have much of a regional accent, Banks learned. She was well spoken, clearly educated, and her voice was pleasant, soft and musical, a little reedy.

‘How long have you known Roy?’

‘About three months.’

‘They’re getting engaged,’ Ida Banks said. ‘So now we’ve really got something to celebrate.’

Corinne blushed.

‘That true?’ Banks asked.

She smiled and nodded. He felt like warning her off. Roy had been married three times and two of his wives had ended up confiding in Banks about what an unfaithful, cruel bastard Roy was. He had never actually hit either of them – so they both swore – but he curtailed their freedom and terrorized them psychologically. The second, a particularly bright neurosurgeon called Maria, ended up seeing a psychiatrist for years after they split up, trying to splice together the frayed strands of her self-esteem. Banks had seen her change – albeit at infrequent intervals – from a secure, confident young doctor into an apologetic, tongue-tied wreck whose hands shook so much she couldn’t thread a needle. The third wife, thank God, had seen the signs before it got too late and left Roy in time.

Roy and Geoff came back carrying large cardboard boxes, which they set down on the living-room floor. ‘Happy anniversary,’ Roy said. ‘Go on. Open them.’

Banks’s parents looked at one another, then his mother got some scissors from the kitchen drawer and came back and knelt by the largest box. Roy and Geoff helped, and soon between them had managed to drag out the computer monitor, processor unit and keyboard.

‘It’s a computer,’ said Ida Banks, clearly at a loss.

‘Now you’ll be able to go on the Internet,’ said Roy. ‘We’ll be able to send each other email.’

‘Will we?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s so… so expensive.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. Everyone should have a computer these days. They’re the future.’

Ida Banks reached out and touched it gingerly, as if it might bite. ‘The future-’

‘We’d better get it out of the way for the time being,’ said Arthur Banks. ‘Our guests will be arriving soon.’

‘Right.’

Between them, Geoff, Roy and Banks took the computer upstairs and set it up on the desk in the spare room.

‘That’ll be nice for them,’ said Geoff.

Banks thought it was the stupidest present he could think of. His parents were in their seventies; they weren’t going to learn how to use a computer. His own present, a particularly moody Yorkshire landscape painting he had found in an antique shop in Richmond, had met with polite praise, but he felt it was probably destined for the back of the wardrobe. The computer, he suspected, would sit at this desk, not even plugged in, just gathering dust. Unless Geoff Salisbury decided to use it.

Just as the three of them started downstairs, the front doorbell rang.

‘Here come the first guests,’ said Geoff. ‘It’s started.’

19

First to arrive were Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet, and after that Banks began to lose track. Here came relatives he hadn’t seen for years, cousins he never even knew existed. It was only to be expected with both his mother and father coming from large families – six and four respectively – but it was a shock nonetheless.

Geoff took to bartending duties like a fish to water, and Roy worked the room like a politician, all hail-fellow-well-met, as if these people he had probably never seen before meant more to him than his own life. If the truth were known, he had been home even less often than Banks and hardly ever in touch with the more distant relatives.

Arthur Banks seemed bewildered by it all, tired, sticking to his armchair, glass of beer at hand, though Ida got into the party spirit and Banks fancied she even became a little tipsy. Music played quietly in the background, mostly crooners and big bands, though pop entered the mix when someone found an old compilation album. It was pretty much the same stuff as Banks had found in his room, or at least softer stuff from the same period – Cliff Richard, Eden Kane, Frank Ifield, Billy Fury, the Bachelors and the ubiquitous Val Doonican – but it was only for background, wallpaper music.

In a lull after the first few guests had arrived, Banks managed to get Roy alone for a few minutes while a couple of young cousins, similarly bedecked, admired Corinne’s body-piercing,

‘I’ve been wanting a word in your ear,’ Banks said. ‘It’s about that Geoff Salisbury.’

‘What about him? Seems like a decent chap. Takes good care of Mum and Dad.’

‘That’s just it. I think he steals from them.’

‘Oh, come on, Alan. It’s that suspicious copper’s mind of yours working overtime again.’

‘No. It’s more than that.’ Banks told him about the short change.

‘Could have been any reason for that,’ Roy said. ‘A genuine mistake. You don’t always have to think the worst of people, you know.’

‘He’s got their PIN number. They give him their Abbeylink card.’

‘He takes care of their finances. For crying out loud, somebody’s got to do it. I mean it’s not as if you’re around much, is it?’

Banks realized he was fighting a losing battle. Roy didn’t want to believe that Geoff was anything other than a godsend, and he would resist any evidence to the contrary. ‘He’s got a criminal record,’ Banks went on nevertheless, pissing against the wind. ‘Swindling old folk out of their life savings.’

Roy just laughed. ‘Mum and Dad haven’t got anything worth swindling. You know that. And besides, don’t you believe in rehabilitation? I assume he’s paid his debt to society?’

‘Yes, but-’

‘Well, then.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Roy. I caught him red-handed.’

‘Listen, big brother. So what if he’s pocketing a bob or two here and there? He practically does all their shopping for them, house cleaning, too. Isn’t it worth it?’

‘That’s not the point. If he wants paying for what he does, that’s different.’

‘Maybe it’s just his way.’

‘It’s a funny bloody way.’

Roy shrugged and laid his arm across Banks’s shoulders. ‘Like I said, it’s not as if you’re around to do it, is it, eh? I say count your blessings and let sleeping dogs lie. Look, there’s Uncle Ken. See you later.’

Banks muttered to himself under his breath. He should have known approaching Roy was a waste of time. Anybody suspected of swindling a penny out of him and he’d probably put a contract out on them, but his own parents… On the other hand, was Roy right? Was Banks making too much out of all this? Being a party pooper? He looked at his parents. They seemed happy enough – his mother did, anyway – what right had he got to challenge that? What gave him the moral justification to come down here once in a blue moon and spoil what little good fortune they had going for them? His mother clearly adored Geoff – he could tell by the way she looked at him and talked about him – and having him around made life a hell of a lot easier for his father, too. Roy was right. Banks had been interfering too much, and it was about time he backed off and left people to get on with their lives.

‘Penny for them?’

Banks turned. It was Kay. ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you.’

She smiled and touched his arm. ‘Nice to see you, too. I was just talking to your mother. She offered her condolences.’

She was wearing a lemon summer dress, which fell to just below her knees and she had her hair tied up and held in place with a patterned leather barrette.

‘You look wonderful,’ Banks said.

Kay blushed. ‘Thank you. How about a drink for the lady?’

‘Of course. Vodka and tonic?’

‘That’ll do nicely.’ She took hold of his arm. ‘And don’t go too far away. I don’t know anyone else here.’

‘Of course you do,’ said Banks. ‘You know my parents.’

‘I haven’t seen them for years.’

‘And my brother Roy.’

‘He was just a little kid when we were together. Around too often, if I remember correctly.’

Banks nodded. He remembered being blackmailed into giving Roy money to get lost on more than one occasion. ‘You know Geoff Salisbury,’ he said, nodding to where Geoff stood by the fireplace talking to some cousin whose name Banks couldn’t remember.

Kay gave a little shudder. ‘Yuck. I don’t know about you, but he gives me the creeps.’

They got their drinks.

‘Come on,’ Banks said to Kay. ‘Let’s get some fresh air.’

They went out to the back step. Banks could hear music next door, but only softly. The rain had stopped earlier that afternoon and it had turned into a pleasant evening. The sky was already darkening and the stars coming out. There was even a pale quarter moon low in the sky. Banks leaned against the wall. Kay stood quietly beside him.

‘Last night-’ he began.

But Kay hushed him, putting a finger to his lips. ‘No. Don’t say anything. That was marvellous. Special. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’

‘If you like,’ Banks said. He’d been thinking the same thing. What had happened had been about the past, unfinished business, passing magic. It had been time out of time. Tomorrow they would both go back to their real lives and probably never see one another again. Banks thought about how their relationship had ended all those years ago, and how he had believed he would never see her again after he went to London. This was enough. This was more than enough. It had to be.

They went back inside. The party went on, as these things do. Banks and Kay talked to Mrs Green for a while, and Banks promised not to be such a stranger. Aunt Florence regaled him with her cataracts, and Aunt Lynn went on about her gall-bladder operation. He also heard about Cousin Patrick’s prostate problems, Uncle Gerald’s haemorrhoids and Cousin Louise’s manic depression. It was enough to make him want to kill himself before he got old. Then there was Cousin Beth’s divorce, Nick and Janet’s third baby, a girl they had named Shania, Sharon’s promotion, Gail’s miscarriage and Ayesha’s boob job. All the while Kay stood politely by, asking questions and making sympathetic comments or noises. Roy continued to work the room, seemingly indefatigable.

Inevitably, Uncle Ted fell asleep. Cousin Angie had too much to drink and was sick in the kitchen sink, dislodging a nose stud in the process, which she nearly inhaled. Uncle Gerald and Uncle Frank almost came to blows. Aunt Ruth wet herself, and young, lovely, anorexic Cousin Sue, with all the self-esteem of a blade of grass, became tearful and made a pathetic attempt to seduce Banks.

All in all, it was just another typical family do.

Roy and Corinne left early. They sought out Banks and Kay to say their goodbyes, and as usual Roy invited Banks to the South Kensington house, said they really must see more of one another and that he hoped Banks could make it to the wedding next year. Banks promised he would try, gave the blushing bride-to-be a chaste kiss on her pale, cool cheek, and they were gone.

When Banks looked around, he noticed that Geoff Salisbury had left too. Only one or two relatives remained, and they were either very close or very drunk. Banks found his mother having a heart-to-heart with her sister, Flo, and said he’d see Kay home and be right back.

The street was quiet, the evening air cool. They saw only a few people as they walked the short distance to Kay’s house.

‘I’d better not come in,’ he said at the doorstep.

‘No.’

He wondered what would happen if he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. Would their resolve melt? Somehow, he didn’t think it was very strong.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘if you’re ever up Eastvale way-’

‘Of course I will.’ She gave him the sort of smile that said she never would be, then after a quick kiss on the cheek, the door opened and closed and Banks was left standing there alone.

He didn’t want to go back to the dregs of the party immediately, didn’t want to face the drunken relatives desperately sobering up for the drive home, didn’t want to face the mess of spilled drinks and food smeared on the carpets. He knew he would have to – he owed it to his parents to help clean up at least – but he could put it off for a little while longer.

The moon was higher now and Banks could see stars, planets, constellations even, beyond the amber glow of the street lights. He wandered the quiet Sunday night streets of the estate feeling oddly melancholy, past the maisonettes where he used to deliver newspapers, past the house where his old, late friend Steve Hill used to live. Steve had kept toads in a bell jar at the bottom of the garden, Banks remembered, but he was forgetful, and one summer he neglected them for so long that they shrivelled up and died. They looked like dried mushrooms. That was what happened to living things you were supposed to love and care for but neglected.

His melancholy was probably something to do with Kay, he realized, though he hadn’t really wanted to repeat last night, either. Last night had had a magic about it that any attempt at repetition would fall well short of. He remembered how their relationship had fallen apart all those years ago. His fault.

It had all started to change when Kay left school at sixteen and got a job at Lloyd’s bank in the town centre. She made new friends, had money to spare, started going for drinks with the office crowd regularly after work on a Friday. Banks was still at school, having stayed on for his A levels, and somehow a schoolboy had less appeal than these slightly older, better dressed, more sophisticated men of the world at the office. They had more money to flash around and, even more important, some of them had cars. One pillock called Nigel, with a plummy accent and a Triumph MG, particularly got up Banks’s nose. Kay insisted there was no hanky-panky going on, but Banks became tortured with jealousy, racked by imagined infidelities, and in the end Kay walked away. She couldn’t stand his constant harping on about who she was seeing and what she was doing, she said, and the way he got stroppy if she even so much as looked at another man.

The irony was, given that his A level results weren’t good enough for university – the first bone of contention between him and his parents – he might as well not have bothered staying on. He’d spent far too much time with Kay, away from his studies, listening to Hendrix, Dylan and Pink Floyd, reading books that weren’t on the syllabus.

Shortly after the break up, Banks moved to London and went to pursue business studies at the poly. A year or two after that and several brief, unsatisfactory, casual relationships later, he met Sandra.

A dog barked as he reached the edge of the estate by the railway lines. A local train rattled by, one or two silhouettes visible through the windows. Banks started towards home. He had only got a few yards when the mobile in his pocket rang. He had forgotten to turn it off.

‘Alan? I hope I’m not disturbing your party.’

It was Annie Cabbot. Banks wondered how he would have felt if he had gone in with Kay and the phone had rung just as they were… it didn’t bear thinking about.

‘No,’ he said quietly. He happened to be passing the telephone boxes at the end of the street, so he decided to stand inside one and take the call. That way he didn’t seem like one of those silly buggers walking around talking to his girlfriend on his mobile phone.

‘I’m sorry to call so late,’ Annie said.

‘That’s all right. Aren’t you off duty?’

‘Yes, but I was waiting to hear from DS Ryan in Loughborough. He was out at the pictures.’

‘DS Ryan? So this is about Geoff Salisbury?’

‘Yes. What’s wrong, Alan? You sound funny. Distant.’

‘So would you if you were standing in the middle of a council estate talking on your mobile.’

Annie laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m not quite as conservative as you are.’

‘OK. Point taken. What did this DS Ryan come up with?’

‘It’s interesting, actually,’ said Annie. ‘At least, I thought you’d want to know.’

‘Fill me in.’

‘As Winsome told you, Salisbury was actually convicted of fraud. It was a neighbour, an elderly woman, and he started by helping out around the place, that sort of thing.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ said Banks. ‘Go on.’

‘Seems he managed to come between her and her children and get himself written into her will. She didn’t have much. Only a few hundred quid and an insurance policy, but he copped for most of it.’

‘What happened?’

‘The family contested it. Undue influence, that sort of thing. Hard to prove. Anyway, in the end Mr Salisbury won out.’

‘Where does the conviction come in?’

‘Just getting to that. During proceedings, it came out that Geoff Salisbury had persuaded the woman to invest in a non-existent business venture of his. A garage.’

‘Ah-hah.’

‘Again, it wasn’t much. Only two hundred quid.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Banks. ‘Is a man who preys on the poor any less guilty than one who preys on the rich?’

‘I’m afraid that’s a bit too philosophical for me at this time on a Sunday evening, but at a guess I’d say even more so, wouldn’t you?’

‘I would. Thanks a lot, Annie. Above and beyond, and all that.’

‘Oh, that’s not all.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. While all this was going on, Mr Salisbury’s mother died. Well, she was old and-’

‘Sick?’

‘How did you guess? She had diabetes. Anyway, she died. Or-’

Banks felt a tingle go up his spine. ‘Or what?’

‘Or he helped her on her way. Nothing was ever proven. There weren’t even any charges. But DS Ryan was one of the investigating officers, and he says he was suspicious enough to ask for an autopsy. Negative. The woman was old, she went hypoglycaemic, and that was that.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Hypoglycaemic? It’s something that happens to diabetics, apparently, caused by too much insulin or low food intake.’

‘He gave her an overdose of insulin?’

‘No evidence of that.’

‘But someone could have brought it about, this hypoglycaemic coma?’

‘Yes. Hard to prove, though.’

‘What did DS Ryan say?’

‘DS Ryan said that his older sister is a diabetic and she always keeps her bedside drawer full of Mars bars or chocolate of some kind for just that sort of eventuality.’

‘But I thought diabetics had to avoid sugar like the plague?’

‘So did I. Apparently, they do. Unless they go hypoglycaemic. Then they need a hit of sugar.’

‘Or?’

‘Coma. Death. And in this case there were other complications. Weak heart, for example.’

‘And DS Ryan says?’

‘DS Ryan says the doctor didn’t find any traces of sugar products close to Mrs Salisbury’s bed, and he found that in itself suspicious. In his opinion – DS Ryan’s, that is – Geoff Salisbury was responsible, knowing it was just a matter of time before she’d need a sugar fix.’

‘He killed his own mother. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Mercy killing, but killing all the same.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Banks. ‘This changes things.’

‘It does?’

‘I’d been thinking of leaving well alone.’

‘But not now?’

‘Not now. Thanks a lot, Annie.’

‘My pleasure. See you tomorrow?’

‘OK. And thanks again.’

Missing Mars bars. A faulty oxygen-tank valve. Banks wondered who else Geoff Salisbury had assisted in their final moments on earth. He also wondered how long it would be before his own father suffered that fatal angina attack and was unable to find his nitroglycerine tablets in time. Putting his phone in his pocket, he headed straight for Geoff Salisbury’s house.

20

‘Look, I can see you’re not going to let this drop, are you?’ said Salisbury when Banks had told him he knew about the conviction. ‘So I’ve been to prison. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I served my time.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Banks, ‘it is something to be ashamed of. But those who’ve been there rarely seem to think so. Innocent, were you, like everyone else?’

‘No. I did it. I was desperate and she didn’t need the money, so I conned her. I’m not saying I’m proud of that, what I did, but like I said, I served my time, paid my debt to society.’

Debt to society. Roy’s words exactly and an odd phrase when you really thought about it. ‘Would that it were as simple as that,’ Banks said. Salisbury’s living room wasn’t quite as clean and tidy as he had expected, but perhaps he used all his energy on other people’s homes and had none left for his own. Dust gathered in the corners, the carpet was threadbare and lumps of mould floated on the half-empty coffee cup on the table.

‘All right,’ said Salisbury, ‘suppose, just suppose that I was ripping people off. Some people might actually believe I’m a power for good around here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘An estate like this, the old folks need someone on their side, someone to look out for them. They die off, you see, and when they do it’s mostly young ’uns come in off the waiting list. You know the sort. Young lasses barely out of school with three kids and no father in sight. Or that lot next door to your mum and dad’s. Scum. Now you’re a copper, Alan, you tell me if he doesn’t have prison written all over him. And as for the kids, well, it’ll only be a matter of time. And if it’s not scum like that it’s foreigners. Gyppos. Darkies. Pakis. Them with the turbans. All with their funny ways, slaughtering goats in the street and whatever, not giving a toss for our customs and traditions and way of life. See, the old folks, they get frightened when everything around them starts to feel threatening and unfamiliar. Their world’s changing so fast and their bodies can’t do what they used to do, so they end up feeling lost and scared. That’s where someone like me comes in. I reassure them, do odd jobs, give them a friendly and familiar face to relate to. So what if I make a few bob out of it? Hypothetically.’

‘I’d say, hypothetically, that it makes you a thief.’

‘Words, Alan, just words.’

‘Actually, no. Legal concepts.’

‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Here’s another one to try on for size. Murder.’

Salisbury blinked and stared at him. ‘What?’

‘You heard me, Geoff. Oh, you might have a more fancy name for it, something high-sounding and moral, such as mercy killing, but in my eyes it’s murder plain and simple.’

Salisbury sat back in his chair. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, I think you do. There was your own mother for a start. Don’t tell me a woman who’s been a diabetic for a good part of her life doesn’t know to keep some sugar on hand in case she goes hypoglycaemic.’

Salisbury banged his fist on the chair arm. ‘That’s over and done with,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t there. Nobody ever proved anything against me!’

‘I’m not saying you haven’t been clever, Geoff. You never were there, were you? Mr Green’s faulty valve, for example. Wouldn’t be difficult for a car mechanic, would it? And what about Mrs Summerville, Geoff, gentle pillow over the face as she slept, was it? Nobody would ask too many questions. Or perhaps a little too much morphine? She was alone. You had a key. They always give you a key, don’t they? And what about the hundred quid you drew out with her bank card the day she died. Mistake, that. She couldn’t get it herself, remember – she was bedridden – and her daughter could find no sign of the money.’

Salisbury got to his feet. ‘You can’t prove a damn thing. Get out of here! Go on, get out!’

Banks didn’t move. ‘You don’t get away with it that easily, Geoff, especially not when it’s my parents you’re playing with now. I saw the piece of silver paper you folded and dropped in the bin at Mrs Summerville’s house. I’ll bet it has your prints on it.’

‘So I went there. I helped her. Like I helped the others. So what? That doesn’t prove anything.’

‘I’ll bet if we exhumed the body, though, we’d find some evidence of tampering, some evidence of what you did. She hasn’t been dead as long as the others, Geoff. There’ll be forensic evidence. In the house, too.’

For the first time, Banks saw Salisbury falter and sit down again. He knew he had been guessing, taking a stab in the dark, but it seemed to have touched a nerve. ‘She had cancer and a weak heart,’ Banks went on. ‘All it took was a little pressure. She didn’t even have the strength to fight back, did she?’

‘What do you mean forensic evidence?’ Geoff asked. ‘They’d never dig her up.’

‘Oh yes, they would. On my say-so. And you know exactly what they’d find, don’t you?’

‘But the doctor signed the death certificates. There wasn’t even an inquest, nothing suspicious at all.’

‘Why would there be, Geoff? Don’t you know how it goes? All your victims were medically attended during their illnesses, they’d all been seen by their doctors within fourteen days of death, and they were all terminally ill, likely to die at any time. There were no grounds for a coroner’s inquest. And remember: none of them was alone with family members when they died. Not even your mother. You made sure you were out of the house that night, didn’t you?’

‘This is absurd. They’ll never open up her coffin.’

‘Yes, they will. We’d just better thank the Lord that she was buried and not cremated, don’t you think? What will they find? Tell me.’

Salisbury licked his lips, staring at Banks, and said nothing for a long time. ‘You think you’re clever, don’t you?’ he said at last. ‘You don’t know nothing about it.’

‘About what?’

‘Suffering.’

‘Tell me about it, Geoff. I want to know.’

‘Why should I? You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Believe me, I’ll try. And it’ll go better for you if you do. If we don’t have to exhume the body. That’s a lot of work. And messy. Nobody wants to do it. I think we’d be able to prove a case against you, Geoff, I really do, but if you help us, if you tell me about it, it’ll go a lot easier for you.’

‘Why do you think they let me cheat them, take their money?’

Banks frowned. ‘Come again?’

‘You don’t think they didn’t know what I was doing, do you? They knew all right and they let it go on. Payment. That’s what it was. They just couldn’t come right out and say it. What they really wanted me to do. But it was their way of paying me, of letting me know what they wanted me to do.’

‘Hang on a minute, Geoff,’ said Banks. ‘Let me get this straight. Did you kill Mr Green and Mrs Summerville?’

‘Yes. No. I put them to sleep. I ended their suffering.’

‘And your mother?’

‘It was what she wanted. It was what they all wanted. It was beautiful.’

‘What was?’

Salisbury’s eyes shone. ‘The transformation. From pain to peace. Suffering to grace. It was like being God.’

‘Did either Mrs Green or anyone from the Summerville family suggest that you do what you did?’

‘Not in so many words, no.’

‘But that was how you interpreted their actions in letting you get away with stealing money?’

‘Like I said, they knew. It was their way of paying for what they wanted done. Close family couldn’t do it, could they? They’d soon be suspects, or they didn’t care enough and were never around, like you and that Summerville girl. You don’t see their suffering. I do. Day in, day out. I was their saviour. Somebody had to be.’

Banks got up.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to ring the local police now, and I want you to tell them what you’ve just told me. Tell them everything. Maybe you’re sick. Maybe you need help. I don’t know.’ All I do know, Banks thought as he took out his mobile, is that I want you off this estate and as far away from my parents as possible.

21

It was about an hour later when two uniformed constables and one detective sergeant, grumpy at being dragged out of the Sunday night pub darts match, arrived at Geoff Salisbury’s house.

‘You know, with all due respect to your rank and all, sir, we don’t particularly appreciate North Yorkshire CID poking around on our patch, doing our job for us,’ said the surly DS, whose name was Les Kelly and who was going prematurely bald. Luckily, Banks hadn’t encountered DS Kelly on his last trip to Peterborough.

Banks smiled to himself. It would probably have been his reaction, too, had Kelly come up north. At least it would have been if he had been a DS and ten years younger.

‘Believe me, DS Kelly, it wasn’t my intention,’ he said. ‘I just came for the party.’

‘You what?’

Banks sighed. ‘I was brought up around here. Down the street. I came home for my parents’ golden wedding and this is what I found going on.’ He gestured towards Salisbury, who was giving his statement to the uniformed officers.

‘How about we go outside for a minute?’ said Kelly. ‘The uniforms can deal with his statement, and I fancy a smoke.’

Banks and Kelly stood on the path. Kelly lit a cigarette and Banks craved one. A few locals had noted the arrival of the police and a small crowd had gathered just beyond the patrol car. Not that police cars were a novelty on the estate, but it was nearly bedtime on a Sunday.

‘I was winning, too,’ said Kelly.

‘What?’

‘The darts match.’

Banks smiled. ‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘Never mind. We never sleep. Always ready to bring another wrongdoer to justice. I just transferred here from West Midlands, myself. You say you’re from around these parts?’

‘Uh-huh. Long time ago. Came here when I was twelve. Grew up just down the street. Used to go out with the girl whose mother that bastard killed.’

‘They’ll put him in the nut house.’

‘Likely. As long as he’s locked up.’

Kelly looked around and sniffed the air, then he took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew out a long plume of smoke. ‘I grew up on an estate pretty much like this one,’ he said. ‘Barrow-in-Furness.’

‘Not a part of the world I know.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘Look, while you’re here,’ said Banks, ‘there is another small matter you might be able to help with.’

‘Oh? And what’s that?’

‘The family that lives next to my parents,’ said Banks. ‘I don’t know their names but the bloke looks like Fred West-’

‘Ah, the Wyatts.’

‘Is that their name?’

‘Well, it’s easier that way. To be honest, though, I think he’s the only true Wyatt there. She’s a Fisher. Had kids with a Young and Harrison and a Davies. Need I go on?’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘According to the council, only five. That’s all the place is big enough for.’

‘I saw a sleeping bag on the staircase.’

‘You were in there?’

‘Noise complaint.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, our latest estimation is about twelve, give or take a couple.’

‘Can you do anything?’

‘About what?’

‘Drugs, for a start. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those kids are being sexually abused.’

‘Nor me.’ Kelly finished his cigarette and stamped it out on the path. ‘It’s only a matter of time,’ he said. ‘You know how these things can drag on. But we’ve got an eye on them, and the social’s investigating them, too, so sooner or later one of us will come up with something.’

‘And then?’

Kelly laughed. ‘And then? You know as well as I do. Then the farce just begins. They’ll end up on another estate much like this one, most likely, and it’ll start all over again.’

The uniforms came out with Geoff Salisbury, slump-shouldered, between them. ‘Done,’ one of them said. Salisbury gave Banks a look that was half pleading for understanding and forgiveness, and half pure hatred. Banks didn’t know which half he liked less.

‘Right.’ Kelly clapped his hands. ‘Let’s go see what the custody sergeant has to say, shall we? And I’ll say goodnight to you, for the moment, DCI Banks. We might need you again.’

Banks smiled. ‘I’m only a phone call away.’

22

By Monday morning, when Banks awoke to sunshine and the sound of birds beyond his thin curtains, news of Geoff Salisbury’s arrest had spread around the entire estate. When he went down for breakfast, he found his parents sitting quietly at the table. He poured himself a cup of tea. His mother wouldn’t look at him when he walked into the room.

‘You’ve heard, then?’ he asked.

‘About Geoff?’ she said, tears in her eyes. ‘Mrs Wilkins came to tell me. That was your doing, wasn’t it?’

‘I’d no choice, Mum,’ said Banks, resting his hand on her arm. She jerked it away.

‘How could you do that? You know what he meant to us.’

‘Mum, Geoff Salisbury was a murderer. He killed Mr Green and he killed Kay’s mother.’ Not to mention his own mother, Banks thought. ‘I don’t see how you can defend him. You knew those people. They were your neighbours.’

Mrs Banks shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it. Not Geoff. He wouldn’t do anything like that. He’s gentle as a kitten.’

‘He admitted it.’

‘You must have forced him. Interrogated him until he didn’t know what he was saying.’

‘I don’t work like that, Mum. Believe me, he did it. He might have thought he was doing good, doing the families a favour, but he did it.’

Banks looked at his father, who caught his eye. He knew right away that they were thinking the same thing: who was next?

Banks stood up. ‘Look, Mum, I’ve got to go now.’

‘All you brought was trouble. It was supposed to be a happy occasion. Now look what you’ve gone and done. Spoiled it all, as usual. I wish our Roy was here.’

Banks’s heart felt heavy, but there was nothing more he could say. There was as much point in telling his mother that Roy didn’t give a shit as there was in telling her that Geoff Salisbury was a cold-blooded murderer.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said, then dashed upstairs to throw his few belongings in his bag. He looked at the boxes of records and exercise books again and decided to leave them. All he took was the poetry.

Let go.

He was standing at the door of his room when he saw his father come slowly up the stairs. They stood on the landing facing one another. ‘She’s upset,’ said Arthur Banks. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s saying. I’ll take care of her. I’ll make sure she knows what’s what.’

‘What is what, Dad? I’m not even sure I know. Did I do the right thing?’

‘Only you know that for certain, lad. But you did your job. You’d no choice. You’re a copper and he was a bad ’un. Your mother’ll get over it. She really liked him, that’s all. He was useful around the house. And he could be a right charmer.’

‘I know,’ said Banks. ‘His type usually is.’

‘You know she never likes admitting she’s wrong about people. But if he killed those people, you were right. You were only doing your job. I don’t mind a bob or two here and there – and don’t think I didn’t notice, I just kept quiet for your mother’s sake – but I draw the line at killing.’ He laughed. ‘Who’s to say it wouldn’t have been me next, eh?’

They both knew there was a lot more truth in that fear than either cared to explore.

‘Bye, Dad,’ Banks said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

‘Don’t be a stranger, son. And don’t worry. Your mother’ll get over it. I’ll tell her to ring you in a day or so, shall I?’

‘Please do.’

His father smiled. ‘Or send you an email?’

Banks moved forward impulsively and hugged him. It was quick, and he felt only the slightest pressure of his father’s hand on the back of his shoulder, but it was enough.

Banks dashed down the stairs and walked down the path to his car, tears prickling his eyes. He felt a weight in the side pocket of his jacket and realized it was Kay’s copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Now he decided he might as well keep it. Maybe he would even get around to reading it, over thirty years after he’d borrowed it.

When he got to the driver’s side of his car, he cursed out loud. Some bastard had taken a coin or a nail and made a deep scratch along the paintwork all the way from back to front. He thought he saw someone watching from an upstairs window of the Wyatt house.

Bugger them. Bugger the lot of them, he thought, and got into his car and drove away.

Peter Robinson