Not Safe After Dark

1

‘And exactly how many times have you died, Mr Singer?’

‘Fourteen. That’s fourteen I’ve managed to uncover. They say that each human being has lived about twenty incarnations. But it’s the last one I’m telling you about. See, I died by violence. I was murdered.’

Detective Constable Susan Gay made a note on the yellow pad in front of her. When she looked down, she noticed that she had doodled an intricate pattern of curves and loops, a bit like Spaghetti Junction, during the few minutes she had been talking to Jerry Singer.

She tried to keep the scepticism out of her voice. ‘Ah-hah. And when was this, sir?’

‘Nineteen sixty-six. July. That makes it exactly thirty-two years ago this week.’

‘I see.’

Jerry Singer had given his age as thirty-one, which meant that he had been murdered a year before he was born.

‘How do you know it was nineteen sixty-six?’ Susan asked.

Singer leaned forward. He was a remarkably intense young man, Susan noticed, thin to the point of emaciation, with glittering green eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He looked as if the lightest breeze would blow him away. His fine red hair had a gossamer quality that reminded Susan of spiders’ webs. He wore jeans, a red T-shirt and a grey anorak, its shoulders darkened by the rain. Though he said he came from San Diego, California, Susan could detect no trace of suntan.

‘It’s like this,’ he began. ‘There’s no fixed period between incarnations, but my channeller told me-’

‘Channeller?’ Susan interrupted.

‘She’s a kind of spokesperson for the spirit world.’

‘A medium?’

‘Not quite.’ Singer managed a brief smile. ‘But close enough. More of a mediator, really.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Susan, who didn’t. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, she told me there would be a period of about a year between my previous incarnation and my present one.’

‘How did she know?’

‘She just knows. It varies from one soul to another. Some need a lot of time to digest what they’ve learned and make plans for the next incarnation. Some souls just can’t wait to return to another body.’ He shrugged. ‘After some lifetimes, you might simply just get tired and need a long rest.’

After some mornings, too, Susan thought. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘let’s move on. Is this your first visit to Yorkshire?’

‘It’s my first trip to England, period. I’ve just qualified in dentistry, and I thought I’d give myself a treat before I settled down to the daily grind.’

Susan winced. Was that a pun? Singer wasn’t smiling. A New Age dentist, now there was an interesting combination, she thought. Can I read your tarot cards for you while I drill? Perhaps you might like to take a little astral journey to Neptune while I’m doing your root canal? She forced herself to concentrate on what Singer was saying.

‘So, you see,’ he went on, ‘as I’ve never been here before, it must be real, mustn’t it?’

Susan realized she had missed something. ‘What?’

‘Well, it was all so familiar, the landscape, everything. And it’s not only the déjà vu I had. There was the dream, too. We haven’t even approached this in hypnotic regression yet, so-’

Susan held up her hand. ‘Hang on a minute. You’re losing me. What was so familiar?’

‘Oh, I thought I’d made that clear.’

‘Not to me.’

‘The place. Where I was murdered. It was near here. In Swainsdale.’

2

Banks was sitting in his office with his feet on the desk and a buff folder open on his lap when Susan Gay popped her head around the door. The top button of his white shirt was undone and his tie hung askew.

That morning, he was supposed to be working on the monthly crime figures, but instead, through the half-open window, he listened to the summer rain as it harmonized with Michael Nyman’s soundtrack from The Piano, playing quietly on his portable cassette. His eyes were closed and he was daydreaming of waves washing in and out on a beach of pure white sand. The ocean and sky were the brightest blue he could imagine, and tall palm trees dotted the landscape. The pastel village that straddled the steep hillside looked like a cubist collage.

‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ Susan said, ‘but it looks like we’ve got a right one here.’

Banks opened his eyes and rubbed them. He felt as if he were coming back from a very long way. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I was getting a bit bored with the crime statistics, anyway.’ He tossed the folder onto his desk and linked his hands behind his head. ‘Well, what is it?’

Susan entered the office. ‘It’s sort of hard to explain, sir.’

‘Try.’

Susan told him about Jerry Singer. As he listened, Banks’s blue eyes sparkled with amusement and interest. When Susan had finished, he thought for a moment, then sat up and turned off the music. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘It’s been a slow week. Let’s live dangerously. Bring him in.’ He fastened his top button and straightened his tie.

A few moments later, Susan returned with Jerry Singer in tow. Singer looked nervously around the office and took the seat opposite Banks. The two exchanged introductions, then Banks leaned back and lit a cigarette. He loved the mingled smells of smoke and summer rain.

‘Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning,’ he said.

‘Well,’ said Singer, turning his nose up at the smoke, ‘I’ve been involved in regressing to past lives for a few years now, partly through hypnosis. It’s been a fascinating journey, and I’ve discovered a great deal about myself.’ He sat forward and rested his hands on the desk. His fingers were short and tapered. ‘For example, I was a merchant’s wife in Venice in the fifteenth century. I had seven children and died giving birth to the eighth. I was only twenty-nine. In my next incarnation, I was an actor in a troupe of Elizabethan players, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. I remember playing Bardolph in Henry V in 1599. After that, I-’

‘I get the picture,’ said Banks. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, Mr Singer, but maybe we can skip to the twentieth century?’

Singer paused and frowned at Banks. ‘Sorry. Well, as I was telling Detective Constable Gay here, it’s the least clear one so far. I was a hippie. At least, I think I was. I had long hair, wore a caftan, bell-bottom jeans. And I had this incredible sense of déjà vu when I was driving through Swainsdale yesterday afternoon.’

‘Where, exactly?’

‘It was just before Fortford. I was coming from Helmthorpe, where I’m staying. There’s a small hill by the river with a few trees on it, all bent by the wind. Maybe you know it?’

Banks nodded. He knew the place. The hill was, in fact, a drumlin, a kind of hump-backed mound of detritus left by the retreating ice age. Six trees grew on it, and they had all bent slightly to the south-east after years of strong north-westerly winds. The drumlin was about two miles west of Fortford.

‘Is that all?’ Banks asked.

‘All?’

‘Yes.’ Banks leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. ‘You know there are plenty of explanations for déjà vu, don’t you, Mr Singer? Perhaps you’ve seen a place very similar before and only remembered it when you passed the drumlin?’

Singer shook his head. ‘I understand your doubts,’ he said, ‘and I can’t offer concrete proof, but the feeling is unmistakable. I have been there before, in a previous life. I’m certain of it. And that’s not all. There’s the dream.’

‘Dream?’

‘Yes. I’ve had it several times. The same one. It’s raining, like today, and I’m passing through a landscape very similar to what I’ve seen in Swainsdale. I arrive at a very old stone house. There are people and their voices are raised, maybe in anger or laughter, I can’t tell. But I start to feel tense and claustrophobic. There’s a baby crying somewhere and it won’t stop. I climb up some creaky stairs. When I get to the top, I find a door and open it. Then I feel that panicky sensation of endlessly falling, and I usually wake up frightened.’

Banks thought for a moment. ‘That’s all very interesting,’ he said, ‘but have you considered that you might have come to the wrong place? We’re not usually in the business of interpreting dreams and visions.’

Singer stood his ground. ‘This is real,’ he said. ‘A crime has been committed. Against me.’ He poked himself in the chest with his thumb. ‘The crime of murder. The least you can do is do me the courtesy of checking your records.’ His odd blend of naivety and intensity charged the air.

Banks stared at him, then looked at Susan, whose face showed sceptical interest. Never having been one to shy away from what killed the cat, Banks let his curiosity get the better of him yet again. ‘All right,’ he said, standing up. ‘We’ll look into it. Where did you say you were staying?’

3

Banks turned right by the whitewashed sixteenth-century Rose and Crown in Fortford, and stopped just after he had crossed the small stone bridge over the River Swain.

The rain was still falling, obscuring the higher green dale sides and their latticework of drystone walls. Lyndgarth, a cluster of limestone cottages and a church huddled around a small village green, looked like an Impressionist painting. The rain-darkened ruins of Devraulx Abbey, just up the hill to his left, poked through the trees like a setting for Camelot.

Banks rolled his window down and listened to the rain slapping against leaves and dancing on the river’s surface. To the west he could see the drumlin that Jerry Singer had felt so strongly about.

Today it looked ghostly in the rain, and it was easy to imagine the place as some ancient barrow where the spirits of Bronze Age men lingered. But it wasn’t a barrow; it was a drumlin created by glacial deposits. And Jerry Singer hadn’t been a Bronze Age man in his previous lifetime; he had been a sixties hippie, or so he believed.

Leaving the window down, Banks drove through Lyndgarth and parked at the end of Gristhorpe’s rutted driveway, in front of the squat limestone farmhouse. Inside, he found Gristhorpe staring gloomily out of the back window at a pile of stones and a half-completed dry-stone wall. The superintendent, he knew, had taken a week’s holiday and hoped to work on the wall, which went nowhere and closed in nothing. But he hadn’t bargained for the summer rain, which had been falling nonstop for the past two days.

He poured Banks a cup of tea so strong you could stand a spoon up in it, offered some scones, and they sat in Gristhorpe’s study. A paperback copy of Trollope’s The Vicar of Bullhampton lay on a small table beside a worn and scuffed brown leather armchair.

‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’ Banks asked.

Gristhorpe considered the question a moment. ‘No. Why?’

Banks told him about Jerry Singer, then said, ‘I wanted your opinion. Besides, you were here then, weren’t you?’

Gristhorpe’s bushy eyebrows knit in a frown. ‘Nineteen sixty-six?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was here, but that’s over thirty years ago, Alan. My memory’s not what it used to be. Besides, what makes you think there’s anything in this other than some New Age fantasy?’

‘I don’t know that there is,’ Banks answered, at a loss how to explain his interest, even to the broad-minded Gristhorpe. Boredom, partly, and the oddness of Singer’s claim, the certainty the man seemed to feel about it. But how could he tell his superintendent that he had so little to do he was opening investigations into the supernatural? ‘There was a sort of innocence about him,’ he said. ‘And he seemed so sincere about it, so intense.’

‘ “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” W. B. Yeats,’ Gristhorpe replied.

‘Perhaps. Anyway, I’ve arranged to talk to Jenny Fuller about it later today.’ Jenny was a psychologist who had worked with the Eastvale police before.

‘Good idea,’ said Gristhorpe. ‘All right, then, just for argument’s sake, let’s examine his claim objectively. He’s convinced he was a hippie murdered in Swainsdale in summer, nineteen sixty-six, right?’

Banks nodded.

‘And he thinks this because he believes in reincarnation, he had a déjà vu and he’s had a recurring dream?’

‘True.’

‘Now,’ Gristhorpe went on, ‘leaving aside the question of whether you or I believe in reincarnation, or, indeed, whether there is such a thing – a philosophical speculation we could hardly settle over tea and scones, anyway – he doesn’t give us a hell of a lot to go on, does he?’

‘That’s the problem. I thought you might remember something.’

Gristhorpe sighed and shifted in his chair. The scuffed leather creaked. ‘In nineteen sixty-six, I was a thirty-year-old detective sergeant in a backwoods division. In fact, we were nothing but a subdivision then, and I was the senior detective. Most of the time I investigated burglaries, the occasional outbreak of sheep stealing, market-stall owners fencing stolen goods.’ He sipped some tea. ‘We had one or two murders – really interesting ones I’ll tell you about someday – but not a lot. What I’m saying, Alan, is that no matter how poor my memory is, I’d remember a murdered hippie.’

‘And nothing fits the bill?’

‘Nothing. I’m not saying we didn’t have a few hippies around, but none of them got murdered. I think your Mr Singer must be mistaken.’

Banks put his mug down on the table and stood up to leave. ‘Better get back to the crime statistics, then,’ he said.

Gristhorpe smiled. ‘So that’s why you’re so interested in this cock and bull story? Can’t say I blame you. Sorry I can’t help. Wait a minute, though,’ he added as they walked to the door. ‘There was old Bert Atherton’s lad. I suppose that was around the time you’re talking about, give or take a year or two.’

Banks paused at the door. ‘Atherton?’

‘Aye. Owns a farm between Lyndgarth and Helmthorpe. Or did. He’s dead now. I only mention it because Atherton’s son, Joseph, was something of a hippie.’

‘What happened?’

‘Fell down the stairs and broke his neck. Family never got over it. As I said, old man Atherton died a couple of years back, but his missis is still around.’

‘You’d no reason to suspect anything?’

Gristhorpe shook his head. ‘None at all. The Athertons were a decent, hard-working family. Apparently the lad was visiting them on his way to Scotland to join some commune or other. He fell down the stairs. It’s a pretty isolated spot, and it was too late when the ambulance arrived, especially as they had to drive a mile down country lanes to the nearest telephone box. They were really devastated. He was their only child.’

‘What made him fall?’

‘He wasn’t pushed, if that’s what you’re thinking. There was no stair carpet and the steps were a bit slippery. According to his dad, Joseph was walking around without his slippers on and he slipped in his stockinged feet.’

‘And you’ve no reason to doubt him?’

‘No. I did have one small suspicion at the time, though.’

‘What?’

‘According to the post-mortem, Joseph Atherton was a heroin addict, though he didn’t have any traces of the drug in his system at the time of his death. I thought he might have been smoking marijuana or something up in his room. That might have made him a bit unsteady on his feet.’

‘Did you search the place?’

Gristhorpe snorted. ‘Nay, Alan. There was no sense bringing more grief on his parents. What would we do if we found something, charge them with possession?’

‘I see your point.’ Banks opened the door and put up his collar against the rain. ‘I might dig up the file anyway,’ he called, running over to the car. ‘Enjoy the rest of your week off.’

Gristhorpe’s curse was lost in the sound of the engine starting up and the finale of Mussorgsky’s ‘Great Gate of Kiev’ on Classic FM, blasting out from the radio, which Banks had forgotten to switch off.

4

In addition to the cells and the charge room, the lower floor of Eastvale Divisional Headquarters housed old files and records. The dank room was lit by a single bare light bulb and packed with dusty files. So far, Banks had checked nineteen sixty-five and sixty-six but found nothing on the Atherton business.

Give or take a couple of years, Gristhorpe had said. Without much hope, Banks reached for nineteen sixty-four. That was a bit too early for hippies, he thought, especially in the far reaches of rural North Yorkshire.

In nineteen sixty-four, he remembered, the Beatles were still recording ballads like ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’ and old rockers like ‘Long Tall Sally’. John hadn’t met Yoko, and there wasn’t a sitar within earshot. The Rolling Stones were doing ‘Not Fade Away’ and ‘It’s All Over Now’, the Kinks had a huge hit with ‘You Really Got Me’, and the charts were full of Dusty Springfield, Peter and Gordon, the Dave Clark Five and Herman’s Hermits.

So nineteen sixty-four was a write-off as far as dead hippies were concerned. Banks looked anyway. Maybe Joseph Atherton had been way ahead of his time. Or perhaps Jerry Singer’s channeller had been wrong about the time between incarnations. Why was this whole charade taking on such an aura of unreality?

Banks’s stomach rumbled. Apart from that scone at Gristhorpe’s, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, he realized. He put the file aside. Though there hardly seemed any point looking further ahead than nineteen sixty-six, he did so out of curiosity. Just as he was feeling success slip away, he came across it: Joseph Atherton. Coroner’s verdict: accidental death. There was only one problem: it had happened in 1969.

According to the Athertons’ statement, their son wrote to say he was coming to see them en route to Scotland. He said he was on his way to join some sort of commune and arrived at Eastvale station on the London train at three forty-five in the afternoon, 11 July 1969. By ten o’clock that night he was dead. He didn’t have transport of his own, so his father had met him at the station in the Land Rover and driven him back to the farm.

Banks picked up a sheet of lined writing paper, yellowed around the edges. A separate sheet described it as an anonymous note received at the Eastvale police station about a week after the coroner’s verdict. All it said, in block capitals, was, ‘Ask Atherton about the red Volkswagen.’

Next came a brief interview report, in which a PC Wythers said he had questioned the Athertons about the car and they said they didn’t know what he was talking about. That was that.

Banks supposed it was remotely possible that whoever was in the red Volkswagen had killed Joseph Atherton. But why would his parents lie? According to the statement, they spent the evening together at the farm eating dinner, catching up on family news, then Joseph went up to his room to unpack and came down in his stockinged feet. Maybe he’d been smoking marijuana, as Gristhorpe suggested. Anyway, he slipped at the top of the stairs and broke his neck. It was tragic, but hardly what Banks was looking for.

He heard a sound at the door and looked up to see Susan Gay.

‘Found anything, sir?’ she asked.

‘Maybe,’ said Banks. ‘One or two loose ends. But I haven’t a clue what it all means, if anything. I’m beginning to wish I’d never seen Mr Jerry Singer.’

Susan smiled. ‘Do you know, sir,’ she said, ‘he almost had me believing him.’

Banks put the file aside. ‘Did he? I suppose it always pays to keep an open mind,’ he said. ‘That’s why we’re going to visit Mrs Atherton.’

5

The Atherton farm was every bit as isolated as Gristhorpe had said, and the relentless rain had muddied the lane. At one point Banks thought they would have to get out and push, but on the third try the wheels caught and the car lurched forward.

The farmyard looked neglected: bedraggled weeds poked through the mud; part of the barn roof had collapsed; and the wheels and tines of the old hayrake had rusted.

Mrs Atherton answered their knock almost immediately. Banks had phoned ahead so their arrival wouldn’t frighten her. After all, a woman living alone in such a wild place couldn’t be too careful.

She led them into the large kitchen and put the kettle on the Aga. The stone-walled room looked clean and tidy enough, but Banks noted an underlying smell, like old greens and meat rotting under the sink.

Mrs Atherton carried the aura of the sickroom about with her. Her complexion was as grey as her sparse hair; her eyes were dull yellow with milky blue irises; and the skin below them looked dark as a bruise. As she made the tea, she moved slowly, as if measuring the energy required for each step. How on earth, Banks wondered, did she manage up here all by herself? Yorkshire grit was legendary, and often as close to foolhardiness as anything else, he thought.

She put the teapot on the table. ‘We’ll just let it mash a minute,’ she said. ‘Now, what is it you want to talk to me about?’

Banks didn’t know how to begin. He had no intention of telling Mrs Atherton about Jerry Singer’s ‘previous lifetime’, or of interrogating her about her son’s death. Which didn’t leave him many options.

‘How are you managing?’ he asked first.

‘Mustn’t grumble.’

‘It must be hard, taking care of this place all by yourself?’

‘Nay, there’s not much to do these days. Jack Crocker keeps an eye on the sheep. I’ve nobbut got a few cows to milk.’

‘No poultry?’

‘Nay, it’s not worth it any more, not with these battery farms. Anyway, seeing as you’re a copper, I don’t suppose you came to talk to me about the farming life, did you? Come on, spit it out, lad.’

Banks noticed Susan look down and smile. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hate to bring up a painful subject, but it’s your son’s death we want to talk to you about.’

Mrs Atherton looked at Susan as if noticing her for the first time. A shadow crossed her face. Then she turned back to Banks. ‘Our Joseph?’ she said. ‘But he’s been dead nigh on thirty years.’

‘I know that,’ said Banks. ‘We won’t trouble you for long.’

‘There’s nowt else to add.’ She poured the tea, fussed with milk and sugar, and sat down again.

‘You said your son wrote and said he was coming?’

‘Aye.’

‘Did you keep the letter?’

‘What?’

‘The letter. I’ve not seen any mention of it anywhere. It’s not in the file.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? We don’t leave scraps of paper cluttering up the place.’

‘So you threw it out?’

‘Aye. Bert or me.’ She looked at Susan again. ‘That was my husband, God rest his soul. Besides,’ she said, ‘how else would we know he was coming? We couldn’t afford a telephone back then.’

‘I know,’ said Banks. But nobody had asked at the railway station whether Bert Atherton actually had met his son there, and now it was too late. He sipped some tea; it tasted as if the teabag had been used before. ‘I don’t suppose you remember seeing a red Volkswagen in the area around that time, do you?’

‘No. They asked us that when it first happened. I didn’t know owt about it then, and I don’t know owt now.’

‘Was there anyone else in the house when the accident occurred?’

‘No, of course there weren’t. Do you think I wouldn’t have said if there were? Look, young man, what are you getting at? Do you have summat to tell me, summat I should know?’

Banks sighed and took another sip of weak tea. It didn’t wash away the taste of decay that permeated the kitchen. He signalled to Susan and stood up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’ve nothing new to tell you, Mrs Atherton. Just chasing will o’ the wisps, that’s all.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go chase ’em somewhere else, lad. I’ve got work to do.’

6

The Queen’s Arms was quiet late that afternoon. Rain had kept the tourists away, and at four o’clock most of the locals were still at work in the offices and shops around the market square. Banks ordered a pork pie, then he and Jenny Fuller took their drinks to an isolated corner table and settled down. The first long draught of Theakston’s bitter washed the archive dust and the taste of decay from Banks’s throat.

‘Well,’ said Jenny, raising her glass of lager in a toast. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’

She looked radiant, Banks thought: thick red hair tumbling over her shoulders, emerald green eyes full of humour and vitality, a fresh scent that cut through the atmosphere of stale smoke and made him think of childhood apple orchards. Though Banks was married, he and Jenny had once come very close to getting involved, and every now and then he felt a pang of regret for the road not taken.

‘Reincarnation,’ said Banks, clinking glasses.

Jenny raised her eyebrows. ‘You know I’ll drink to most things,’ she said, ‘but really, Alan, isn’t this going a bit far?’

Banks explained what had happened so far that day. By the time he had finished, the barman delivered his pork pie, along with a large pickled onion. As Jenny mulled over what he had said, he sliced the pie into quarters and shook a dollop of HP Sauce onto his plate to dip them in.

‘Fantasy,’ she said finally.

‘Would you care to elaborate?’

‘If you don’t believe in reincarnation, then there are an awful lot of strange phenomena you have to explain in more rational ways. Now, I’m no expert on parapsychology, but most people who claim to have lived past lifetimes generally become convinced through hypnosis, dreams and déjà vu experiences, like the ones you mentioned, or by spontaneous recall.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Exactly what it sounds like. Remembering past lifetimes out of the blue. Children playing the piano without lessons, people suddenly speaking foreign languages, that kind of thing. Or any memory you have but can’t explain, something that seems to have come from beyond your experience.’

‘You mean if I’m walking down the street and I suddenly think of a Roman soldier and remember some sort of Latin phrase, then I’m recalling a previous lifetime?’

Jenny gave him a withering look. ‘Don’t be so silly, Alan. Of course I don’t think that. Some people might, though. People are limitlessly gullible, it seems to me, especially when it comes to life after death. No, what I mean is that this is the kind of thing believers try to put forward as proof of reincarnation.’

‘And how would a rational psychologist explain it?’

‘She might argue that what a person recalls under hypnosis, in dreams, or wherever, is simply a web of fantasy woven from things that person has already seen or heard and maybe forgotten.’

‘But he says he’s never been here before.’

‘There’s television, books, films.’

Banks finished his pork pie, took a swig of Theakston’s and lit a Silk Cut. ‘So you’re saying that maybe our Mr Singer has watched one too many episodes of All Creatures Great and Small?’

Jenny tossed back her hair and laughed, ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’ She looked at her watch, then drained her glass. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I must dash.’ And with that, she jumped up, pecked him on the cheek and left. Jenny was always dashing, it seemed. Sometimes he wondered where.

Banks thought over what she had said. It made sense. More sense than Singer’s reincarnation theory and more sense than suspecting Joseph Atherton’s parents of covering up their son’s murder.

But there remained the unsubstantiated story of the letter and the anonymous note about the red Volkswagen. If somebody else had driven Joseph Atherton to the farm, then his parents had been lying about the letter. Why? And who could it have been?

7

Two days later, sorting through his post, Banks found a letter addressed to him in longhand. It stood out like a sore thumb among the usual bundle of circulars and official communications. He spread it open on his desk in front of him and read.

Dear Mr Banks,

I’m not much of a one for letter writing so you must forgive me any mistakes. I didn’t get much schooling due to me being a sickly child but my father always told us it was important to read and write. Your visit last week upset me by raking up the past I’d rather forget. I don’t know what made you come and ask those questions but they made me think it is time to make my peace with God and tell the truth after all these years.

What we told the police was not true. Our Joseph didn’t write to say he was coming and Bert didn’t pick him up at the station. Joseph just turned up out of the blue one afternoon in that red car. I don’t know who told the police about the car but I think it might have been Len Grimond in the farm down the road because he had fallen out with Bert over paying for repairs to a wall.

Anyway, it wasn’t our Joseph’s car. There was an American lass with him called Annie and she was driving. They had a baby with them that they said was theirs. I suppose that made him our grandson but it was the first time we ever heard about him. Our Joseph hadn’t written or visited us for four years and we didn’t know if he was alive or dead. He was a bonny little lad about two or three with the most solemn look on his face.

Well it was plain from the start that something was wrong. We tried to behave like good loving parents and welcome them into our home but the girl was moody and she didn’t want to stay. The baby cried a lot and I don’t think he had been looked after properly, though it’s not my place to say. And Joseph was behaving very peculiar. His eyes looked all glassy with tiny pupils. We didn’t know what was the matter. I think from what he said that he just wanted money.

They wouldn’t eat much though I cooked a good roast for them, and Yorkshire puddings too, but our Joseph just picked at his food and the girl sat there all sulky holding the baby and wanting to go. She said she was a vegetarian. After we’d finished the dinner Joseph got very upset and said he had to go to the toilet. By then Bert was wondering what was going on and also a bit angry at how they treated our hospitality even if Joseph was our son.

Joseph was a long time in the toilet. Bert called up to him but he didn’t answer. The girl said something about leaving him alone and laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. We thought something might be wrong with him so Bert went up and found Joseph with a piece of string tied around his arm heating something in a spoon with a match. It was one of our silver anniversary spoons he had taken from the kitchen without asking. We were just ignorant farmers and didn’t know what was happening in crime and drugs and everything like you do, Mr Banks, but we knew our Joseph was doing something bad.

Bert lost his temper and pulled Joseph out of the toilet. When they were at the top of the stairs, Joseph started swearing at his father, using such words I’ve never heard before and would blush to repeat. That’s when Bert lost his temper and hit him. On God’s honour, he didn’t mean to hurt him. Joseph was our only son and we loved him even though he was breaking my heart. But when Bert hit him Joseph fell down the stairs and when he got to the bottom his head was at such a funny angle I knew he must have broken his neck.

The girl started screaming then took the baby and ran outside and drove away. We have never seen her again or our grandson and don’t know what has become of him. There was such a silence like you have never heard when the sound of the car engine vanished in the distance and Joseph was laying at the bottom of the stairs all twisted and broken. We tried to feel his pulse and Bert even put a mirror to his mouth to see if his breath would mist it but there was nothing.

I know we should have told the truth and we have regretted it for all those years. We were always brought up to be decent honest folk respecting our parents and God and the law. Bert was ashamed that his son was a drug addict and didn’t want it in the papers. I didn’t want him to go to jail for what he had done because it was really an accident and it wasn’t fair. He was suffering more than enough anyway because he had killed his only son.

So I said we must throw away all the drugs and needle and things and take our Joseph’s shoes off and say he slipped coming down the stairs. We knew that the police would believe us because we were good people and we had no reason to lie. That was the hardest part. The laces got tied in knots and I broke my fingernails and in the end I was shaking so much I had to use the scissors.

And that is God’s honest truth, Mr Banks. I know we did wrong but Bert was never the same after. Not a day went by when he didn’t cry about what he’d done and I never saw him smile ever again. To this day we still do not know what has become of our grandson but whatever it is we hope he is healthy and happy and not as foolish as his father.

By the time you read this letter I’ll be gone to my resting place too. For two years now I have had cancer and no matter what operations they do it is eating me away. I have saved my tablets. Now that I have taken the weight off my conscience I can only hope that the good Lord sees fit to forgive me my sins and take me unto his bosom.

Yours sincerely,

Betty Atherton

Banks put the letter aside and rubbed his left eye with the back of his hand. Outside, the rain was still falling, providing a gentle background for Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto on the portable cassette. Banks stared at the sheets of blue vellum covered in Betty Atherton’s crabbed hand, then he cursed, slammed his fist on the desk, went to the door and shouted for Susan Gay.

8

‘Her name is Catherine Anne Singer,’ said Susan the next afternoon. ‘And she was relieved to talk to me as soon as I told her we weren’t after her for leaving the scene of a crime. She comes from somewhere called Garden Grove, California. Like a lot of young Americans, she came over to “do” Europe in the sixties.’

The three of them – Banks, Susan and Jenny Fuller – sat over drinks at a dimpled, copper-topped table in the Queen’s Arms listening to the summer rain tap against the diamonds of coloured glass.

‘And she’s Jerry Singer’s mother?’ Banks asked.

Susan nodded. ‘Yes. I just asked him for her telephone number. I didn’t tell him why I wanted it.’

Banks nodded. ‘Good. Go on.’

‘Well, she ended up living in London. It was easy enough to get jobs that paid under the counter, places where nobody asked too many questions. Eventually, she hooked up with Joseph Atherton and they lived together in a bedsit in Notting Hill. Joseph fancied himself as a musician then-’

‘Who didn’t?’ said Banks. He remembered taking a few abortive guitar lessons himself. ‘Sorry. Go on.’

‘There’s not a lot to add, sir. She got pregnant, wouldn’t agree to an abortion, though apparently Joseph tried to persuade her. She named the child Jerry, after some guitarist Joseph liked called Jerry Garcia. Luckily for Jerry, Annie wasn’t on heroin. She drew the line at hash and LSD. Anyway, they were off to join some Buddhist commune in the wilds of Scotland when Joseph said they should drop in on his parents on the way and try to get some money. She didn’t like the idea, but she went along with it anyway.

‘Everything happened exactly as Mrs Atherton described it. Annie got scared and ran away. When she got back to London, she decided it was time to go home. She sold the car and took out all her savings from the bank, then she got the first flight she could and settled back in California. She went to university and ended up working as a marine biologist in San Diego. She never married, and she never mentioned her time in England, or that night at the Atherton farm, to Jerry. She told him his father had left them when Jerry was still a baby. He was only two and a half at the time of Atherton’s death, and as far as he was concerned he had spent his entire life in southern California.’

Banks drained his pint and looked at Jenny.

‘Cryptomnesia,’ she said.

‘Come again?’

‘Cryptomnesia. It means memories you’re not consciously aware of, a memory of an incident in your own life that you’ve forgotten. Jerry Singer was present when his grandfather knocked his father down the stairs, but as far as he was concerned consciously, he’d never been to Swainsdale before, so how could he remember it? When he got mixed up in the New Age scene, these memories he didn’t know he had started to seem like some sort of proof of reincarnation.’

Sometimes, Banks thought to himself, things are better left alone. The thought surprised him because it went against the grain of both his job and his innate curiosity. But what good had come from Jerry Singer presenting himself at the station three days ago? None at all. Perhaps the only blessing in the whole affair was that Betty Atherton had passed away peacefully, as she had intended, in her pill-induced sleep. Now she wouldn’t suffer any more in this world. And if there were a God, Banks thought, he surely couldn’t be such a bastard as to let her suffer in the next one, either.

‘Sir?’

‘Sorry, Susan, I was miles away.’

‘I asked who was going to tell him. You or me?’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Banks, with a sigh. ‘It’s no good trying to sit on it all now. But I need another pint first. My shout.’

As he stood up to go to the bar, the door opened and Jerry Singer walked in. He spotted them at once and walked over. He had that strange naive, intense look in his eyes. Banks instinctively reached for his cigarettes.

‘They told me you were here,’ Singer said awkwardly, pointing back through the door towards the Tudor-fronted police station across the street. ‘I’m leaving for home tomorrow and I was just wondering if you’d found anything out yet?’