Past Reason Hated

ONE

It wasn’t until the Intercity train pulled out of Leeds City Station that Veronica Shildon seemed to relax.

Banks had met her at Eastvale Station early that morning and they had paced the platform, shivering and breathing plumes of mist, until the overheated old diesel rattled in and carried them off. Silent but for small talk, they’d watched the shrouded landscape roll by. South of Ripon, the dales and moors to the west gave way to rolling farmland, where patches of frozen brown earth and clumps of bare trees showed through the gauze of snow, and, finally, to the suburbs and industrial estates of the city itself. They had endured a half-hour wait on the cold, grimy platform at Leeds, breathing in the diesel smell of warm engines and listening to the crackly voice over the loudspeaker.

Now, well past the sign at the station’s entrance in honour of the local beer magnate – ‘Joshua Tetley Welcomes You to Leeds’ – Banks looked over his shoulder and watched the city recede into the distance. First it filled the horizon, an urban sprawl under a heavy sky. Tall chimneys and church spires poked through the grey-brown snow; the town hall dome and the white university library tower dominated the distance. Then the city was gone and only bare fields stretched east and west.

Veronica took off her heavy blue winter coat and, folding it carefully, placed it in the luggage rack. Then she smoothed her tweed skirt and sat back down opposite Banks, resting her hands on the table between them.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said with an embarrassed smile. ‘I know I must be a burden, but I didn’t like the idea of travelling down by myself. It’s a while since I’ve been anywhere alone.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Banks, who had been uncharitably wishing he could spend the journey with the Guardian crossword and some Poulenc chamber music on his Walkman. ‘Coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

The buffet car hadn’t opened yet, but a British Rail steward was making his way slowly along the corridor with an urn and a selection of biscuits. Banks headed him off, bought two coffees and pushed one over the smooth table to Veronica. Automatically, he reached for his cigarettes, then remembered he was in a non-smoking carriage.

It wasn’t Veronica’s fault; she would have been happy to sit anywhere with him since he had allowed her to come along. The problem was that there was only one smokers’ car on the entire train and, as usual, it was almost full and completely unventilated. Even Banks refused to sit in it. He could do without a cigarette for a couple of hours, easily. It might even do him good. As an alternative, he caught up with the steward and bought a Penguin biscuit.

After Wakefield, they sped along past dreary fields and embankments trying to sip the hot, weak coffee without spilling any. Their carriage was unusually quiet and empty. Perhaps, Banks guessed, this was because they were in that limbo between Christmas and New Year. Everyone was both broke and in need of a brief hibernation period of recovering between the two festive occasions.

Deep into South Yorkshire, Banks noticed Veronica looking out at the desolate landscape of pit wheels and slag heaps and asked her what she was thinking about.

‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘but I was thinking how I still feel only half there. Do you know what I mean? I can accept that Caroline is gone, that she’s dead and I’ll never see her again, but I can’t believe that my life is whole, or even real, without her.’ She nodded towards the window. ‘Even the world out there doesn’t seem real, somehow. Not any more.’

‘That’s understandable,’ Banks said. ‘It takes time How did you meet her?’

Veronica gave him a long, appraising look and then leaned forward and rested her arms on the table, clasping her slim, freckled hands.

‘It must seem very odd to you. Perverted, even. But it’s not. There was nothing sordid about it.’

Banks said nothing.

Veronica sighed and went on. ‘I first met Caroline at the café where she worked. I used to go for long walks by the river… oh, just thinking about my life and how empty it felt… somehow, the moving water seemed to help soothe me. We got on speaking terms, then once I saw her in the market square and we went for a coffee. We discovered we were both in therapy. After that… well, it didn’t happen quickly.’

‘What attracted you to her?’

‘I didn’t even know I was attracted to her at first. Could you imagine someone like me admitting I’d fallen in love with a woman? But Caroline was so alive, so childlike in her enthusiasm for life. It was infectious. I’d felt half dead for years. I’d been shutting the world out. It’s possible to do that, you know. So many people accept what life dishes out to them. Apart from the occasional daydream, they never imagine it could be any different, any better. Even the half-life I have now is preferable to what my life was like before Caroline. There’s no going back. I was living like a zombie, denying everything that counts, until Caroline came along. She showed me how good it was to feel again. She made me feel alive for the first time. She got me interested in things because she was so passionate about them herself.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, theatre, books, film. So many things. And music. Claude was always trying to get me interested in music, and it really frustrated him that I didn’t seem to care as much as he did, or notice as much about it as he did. I suppose I loved opera most of all, but he never had much time for it. Most seasons I went to Leeds to see Opera North by myself. I liked to listen – I still do like classical music – but I never actually bought records for myself. There always seemed something stuffy about the music we listened to, perhaps because Claude hated anything popular, anything outside the classical field. But with Caroline it was jazz and blues and folk music. Somehow it just seemed more alive. We even went to clubs to see folk groups perform. I’d never done that before. Ever.’

‘But your husband’s a musician himself. He loves music. Didn’t he mean anything to you? Why couldn’t you respond to his enthusiasm?’

Veronica lowered her head and scratched the table surface with her thumb nail. The train hit a bumpy stretch of track and rocked.

‘I don’t know. Somehow I just felt completely stifled by his existence. That’s the only way I can put it. Like it didn’t matter what I thought or felt or did because he was the one our lives revolved around. I depended on him for everything, even for my tastes in music and books. I was suffocated by his presence. Anything I did would have been insignificant beside what he did. He was the great Claude Ivers, after all, always the teacher, the master. One dismissive comment from him on anything that mattered to me and I was reduced to silence, or tears, so I learned not to let things matter. I was the great man’s wife, not a person in my own right.’

She sat up straight, her brow furrowed. ‘How can I explain it to you? Claude wasn’t cruel, he didn’t do any of it on purpose. It’s just the way he is, and the way I am, or was. I still have my problems, more than ever now Caroline’s gone, I suppose, but when I look back I can’t believe I’m the same person I was then. She worked an act of magic – she breathed life into dust. And I know I can carry on somehow, no matter how hard, just because of her, just because I had her in my life, even for such a short time.’ She paused and glanced out the window. Banks could read the intense feeling in the set of her jaw, the way the small muscles below her cheekbones seemed drawn tight.

‘Do you see?’ she went on, turning her clear, grey-green eyes on Banks. ‘It wasn’t black and white. He wasn’t a bad husband. Neglectful, maybe. Certainly the last few years he was far too wrapped up in his work to notice me. And I was dying, drying up inside. If Caroline hadn’t come along I don’t know what would have become of me.’

‘But you started seeing the therapist before you met Caroline,’ Banks said. ‘What made you do that?’

‘Desperation, despair. I’d read an article about Jungian therapy in a women’s magazine. It sounded interesting, but not for me. Time passed and I became so miserable I had to do something or I was frightened I would try to kill myself. I suppose I told myself therapy was a sort of intellectual fun, not anything deep and personal. More like going to an evening class – you know, pottery, basket weaving or creative writing. It wasn’t like going to the real doctor or to a psychiatrist, and somehow I could handle that. It still took a lot of nerve, more than I believed I ever had. But I was so unhappy. And it helped. It can be a painful process, you know. You keep circling things without ever really zooming in on them, and sometimes you feel it’s a waste of time, it’s going nowhere. Then you do focus on things and you find you were circling them for good reason. Occasionally you get some kind of insight, and that sustains you for a while. Then I met Caroline.’

‘Had you experienced feelings like that before?’ Banks asked.

‘Towards another woman?’

‘Yes.’

Veronica shook her head. ‘I hadn’t experienced feelings like that for anyone before, male or female. Somehow or other, her being a woman just wasn’t an issue. Not after a while, anyway. Everything began to feel so natural I didn’t even have to think.’

‘What about your past, your upbringing?’

Veronica smiled. ‘Yes, isn’t it tempting to try and put everything down to that? I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I don’t think it’s so. I had no horrible experiences with men in my past. I’d never been abused, raped or beaten.’ She paused. ‘At least not physically.’

‘What was your family background like?’

‘Solid, suburban, upper middle class. Very repressed. Utterly cold. We never spoke about feelings and nobody told me about the facts of life. My mother was well bred, very Victorian, and my father was kind and gentle but rather distant, aloof. And he was away a lot. I never had much contact with boys while I was growing up. I went to convent school, and even at university I didn’t mix very much. I was in an all-girls residence and I tended to stay at home and study a lot. I was shy. Men frightened me with their deep voices and their aggressive mannerisms. I don’t know why. When I met Claude he was a guest lecturer for a music appreciation course. It was the kind of thing genteel young ladies did, appreciate music, so I took the course. I was fascinated by his knowledge and his obvious passion for his subject – the very things I came to hate later. For some reason he noticed me. He was an older man, much safer than the randy boys in the campus pub. I was twenty-one when I married him.’

‘So you never had any other boyfriends?’

‘Never. I was reclusive, frightened as a mouse. Believe it or not, when Claude seemed to lose interest in sex, that suited me fine. Now, when I look back, I can’t remember what I did from day to day. How I got through. I was a housewife. I had no outside job. I suppose I cleaned and cooked and watched daytime television in a kind of trance. Then there was the Valium, of course.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘We were together for fifteen years. I never complained. I never took an interest in life outside his circle of friends and acquaintances. I had no passions of my own. I don’t blame Claude for that. He had his own life, and music was more important to him even than marriage. I think it has to be like that with a great artist, don’t you? And I believe Claude is a great artist. But great artists make lousy husbands.’

‘Did you ever think of having children?’

‘I did. But Claude thought they would interfere with his peace and quiet. He never really liked children. And I suppose I was, am, afraid of childbirth. Terrified, to be honest. Anyway, he just went ahead and had a vasectomy. He never even told me until it was done. What do you think of childless marriages, Mr Banks?’

Banks shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Never had one.’

‘Some people say there’s no love in them, but I don’t agree. Sometimes I think it would be best if we were all childless. Childless and parentless.’ She caught the paradox and smiled. ‘Impossible, I realize. There’d be no one here to feel anything. I know I feel alone and it hurts because Caroline isn’t here. But at the same time I seem to be saying we’d all be better off without any feelings or any other attachments. I want it both ways, don’t I?’

‘Don’t we all? Look, this philosophy’s made me thirsty. I know it’s early, but how about a drink?’

Veronica laughed. ‘Have I driven you to drink already? All right, I’ll have a gin and tonic.’

Banks made his way down to the buffet car, holding on to the tops of seats to keep his balance in the rocking train. Most of the other passengers seemed to be business people with their heads buried deep in the Financial Times or briefcases full of papers open in front of them. One man even tapped away at the keys of a laptop computer. After a short queue, Banks got Veronica’s drink and a miniature Bell’s for himself. Going back one-handed was a little more difficult, but he made it without falling or dropping anything.

Back in his seat, he poured the drinks. They passed a small town: smoking chimneys; grimy factory yards stacked with pallets; a new red-brick school with hardly any windows; a roundabout; snow-covered playing fields as white as the rugby posts. The train’s rhythm was soothing, even if it wasn’t the same as the steam-train journeys Banks remembered taking with his father when he was young. The sound was different, and he missed the tangy smell of the smoke, the sight of it curling over trees by a wooded embankment where the track curved and he could see the engine through the window.

Veronica seemed content to sip her drink in silence. There was so much more he wanted to ask her, to understand about her relationship with Caroline Hartley, but he didn’t feel he could justify his questions. He thought of what she had said about a childless and parentless life and remembered the Philip Larkin poem, which he had recently reread. It was certainly depressing – the ending as much as the beginning – but he found something in the wit and gusto of Larkin’s colloquial style that brought a smile to the lips, too. Perhaps that was the secret of great art, it could engender more than one feeling in the spectator at the same time: tragedy and comedy, laughter and tears, irony and passion, hope and despair.

‘What’s your wife like?’

The suddenness of the question surprised Banks, and he guessed he must have shown it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Veronica went on quickly, blushing, ‘I hope I’m not being presumptuous.’

‘No. I was just thinking about something else, that’s all. My wife? Well, she’s just an inch or so shorter than I am. She’s slim, with an oval face, blonde hair and dark eyebrows, what I’d call a no-nonsense personality and… let me think…’

Veronica laughed and held up her hand. ‘No, no. That’ll do. I didn’t want a policeman’s description. I suppose I hadn’t thought how difficult it is to answer off the cuff like that. If anyone had asked me to describe Caroline I wouldn’t have known where to start.’

‘You did well enough earlier.’

‘But that was just scratching the surface.’

She drank some more gin and tonic and looked at her reflection in the window, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

‘I suppose my wife and I are still together,’ Banks said, ‘because she has always been determined and independent. She’d hate to be a housewife worrying about meals and threepence-off coupons in the papers. Some people might see that as a fault, but I don’t. It’s what she is and I wouldn’t want to turn her into some sort of chattel or slave. And she wouldn’t want to depend on me to entertain her or keep her happy. Oh, we’ve had some dull patches and a few close shaves on both sides, but I think we do pretty well.’

‘And you put it down to her independence?’

‘Mostly, yes. More an independent spirit, really. And intelligence. It’s very hard being a policeman’s wife. It’s not so much the worry, though that’s there, but the long absences and the unpredictability. I’ve seen plenty of marriages go down the tubes because the wife hasn’t been able to take it any more. But Sandra has always had a mind of her own. And a life of her own – photography, the gallery, friends, books. She doesn’t let herself get bored – she loves life too much – so I don’t feel I have to be around to entertain her or pay attention to her all the time.’

‘That sounds like Caroline and me. Though I suppose I depended on her quite a lot, especially at first. But she helped me become more independent, she and Ursula.’

Banks wondered why on earth he had opened up that way to Veronica. There was something about the woman he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A terrible honesty, a visible effort she made to communicate, to be open. She was working at living, not simply coasting through life like so many. She didn’t shirk experience, and Banks found it was impossible not to be as frank in return with someone like that. Was he letting his feelings overrun his judgement? After all, this woman could be a murderess.

‘How long had you known Caroline before you left your husband?’ Banks asked.

‘Known her? A few months, but mostly just casually.’

‘But how did you know how you felt, what you wanted to do?’

‘I just knew. Do you mean sexually?’

‘Well…’

‘I don’t know,’ she went on, cutting through his embarrassment. ‘Certainly it wasn’t anything I’d experienced or even thought about before. I suppose I must have, but I don’t remember. Of course, there were crushes and a little petting at school, but I imagine everyone indulges in that. I don’t know. It was awkward. We were at her flat and she just… took me. After that, I knew. I knew what had been missing in my life, what I had been repressing, if you like. And I knew I had to change things. I was buoyant with love and I suppose I expected Claude to understand when I told him.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘It was the closest he ever came to hitting me.’

Banks remembered the ex-husband’s anger, his humiliation. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, I know what I did wrong now. At least I think I do.’ She laughed at herself. ‘I was crazy with joy then. I expected him to feel happy for me. Can you believe that? Anyway, I moved out the next day and went to live with Caroline in her flat. Then he sold the house and left Eastvale. Later we got the little place on Oakwood Mews. The rest you know.’

‘And you never looked back.’

‘Never. I’d found what I was looking for.’

‘And now?’

Veronica’s face darkened. ‘Now I don’t know.’

‘But you wouldn’t go back to him?’

‘To Claude? I couldn’t do that. Even if he wanted to.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘No, whatever the future holds for me, it’s certainly not more of my miserable mistake of a past.’

In the silence that followed, Banks glanced out the window and was surprised to find the train was passing Peterborough. The landmarks were so familiar: the tall kiln chimneys of the brick factory growing straight from the ground; the white sign of the Great Northern Hotel against its charcoal-grey stone; the truncated cathedral tower.

‘What is it?’ Veronica asked. ‘You look so engrossed. Have you seen something?’

‘My home town,’ Banks explained. ‘Not much of a place, but mine own.’

Veronica laughed.

‘Where do you come from?’ Banks asked.

‘Crosby. Near Liverpool, but light-years away, really. It’s a horribly stuck-up suburb, at least it was then.’

‘I’d hardly say Peterborough was stuck-up,’ Banks said. Doesn’t your poet, Larkin, have something to say about childhood places?’

‘You’ve been doing your research, I see. Yes, he does. And he set it on a train journey like this. It’s very funny and very sad. It ends, “Nothing, like something, can happen anywhere.”’

‘Do you read a lot of poetry?’

‘Yes. Quite a bit.’

‘Do you read any journals?’

‘Some. The Poetry Review occasionally. Mostly I read old stuff. I prefer rhyme and metre, so I tend to stay away from contemporary work, except Larkin, Seamus Heaney and a couple of others, of course. That’s one area Caroline and I disagreed on. She liked free verse and I never could see the point of it. What was it Robert Frost said? Like playing tennis without a net?’

‘But you’ve never noticed Ruth Dunne’s name in print, never come across her work?’

Veronica tightened her lips and looked out the window She seemed irritated that Banks had broken the spell and plunged into what must have felt like an interrogation.

‘I don’t remember it, no. Why?’

‘I just wondered what kind of stuff she writes, and why Caroline didn’t tell you about her.’

‘Because she tended to be secretive about her past. Sketchy, anyway. I also suspect that maybe she didn’t want to make me jealous.’

‘Were they still seeing one another?’

‘As far as I know, Caroline made no trips to London while we were together, I haven’t even been myself for at least three years. No, I mean jealous of a past lover. It can happen, you know – people have even been jealous over dead lovers – and I was especially vulnerable, being in such a new and frightening relationship.’

‘Frightening?’

‘Well, yes. Of course. Especially at first. Do you imagine it was easy for me, with my background and my sheltered existence, to go to bed with a woman, to give up my marriage and live with one?’

‘Was there anyone else who might have been jealous enough of Caroline’s relationship with you?’

Veronica raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re never very far away from your job, are you? It makes it hard to trust you, to open up to you. I can never tell what you’re thinking from your expression.’

Banks laughed. ‘That’s because I’m a good poker player. But seriously, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am a human being. And I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that the foremost thing on my mind is catching Caroline’s killer right now. The work is never far away. That’s because somebody took something they had no right to.’

‘And do you think catching and punishing the criminal will do any good?’

‘I don’t know. It becomes too abstract for me at that point. I told you, I like concrete things. Put it this way, I wouldn’t like to think that the person who stabbed Caroline is going to be walking around Eastvale, or anywhere else for that matter, whistling “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ “ for the rest of his or her life. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Revenge?’

‘Perhaps. But I don’t think so. Something more subtle, more right than mere revenge.’

‘But why do you take it so personally?’

‘Somebody has to. Caroline isn’t around to take it so personally herself.’

Veronica stared at Banks. Her eyes narrowed, then she shook her head.

‘What?’ Banks asked.

‘Nothing. Just trying to understand, thinking what a strange job you do, what a strange man you are. Do all policemen get as involved in their cases?’

Banks shrugged. ‘I don’t know. For some it’s just a day’s work. Like anyone else, they’ll skive off as much as they can. Some get very cynical, some are lazy, some are cruel, vicious bastards with brains the size of a pea. Just people.’

‘You probably think I don’t care about revenge or justice or whatever it is.’

‘No. I think you’re confused and you’re too shaken by Caroline’s death to think about whoever did it. You’re also probably too civilized to feel the blood lust of revenge.’

‘Repressed?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Then perhaps a little repression is a good thing. I’ll have to tell Ursula that before she releases the raging beast inside me.’

Banks smiled. ‘I hope we’ve got the killer safely behind bars long before that.’

The train passed a patch of waste ground scattered with bright yellow oil drums and old tyres, then a factory yard, a housing estate and a graffiti-scarred embankment. Soon, Banks could see Alexandra Palace through the window.

‘Better get ready,’ he said, standing up and reaching for his camel-hair overcoat. ‘We’ll be at King’s Cross in a few minutes.’

TWO

Half an hour later, Banks looked across the street at the Gothic extravaganza of St Pancras, complete with its chimneys, crocketed towers and crenellated gables. So, here he was, back in London for the first time in almost three years. Black taxis and red double-decker buses clogged the roads and poisoned the streets with exhaust fumes. Horns honked, drivers yelled at one another and pedestrians took their lives into their hands crossing the street.

Veronica had taken a taxi to her friend’s house. For Banks, the first priority was lunch, which meant a pint and a sandwich. He walked down Euston Road for a while, taking in the atmosphere, loving it almost as much as he hated it. There didn’t appear to have been much snow down here. Apart from occasional lumps of grey slush in the gutters, the streets were mostly clear. The sky was leaden, though, and seemed to promise at least a cold drizzle before the end of the day.

He turned down Tottenham Court Road, found a cosy pub and managed to elbow himself a place at the bar. It was lunchtime, so the place was crowded with hungry and thirsty clerks come to slag the boss and gird up their loins for another session at the grindstone. Banks had forgotten how much he liked London pubs. The Yorkshire people were so proud of their beer and their pubs, it had been easy to forget that a London boozer could be as much fun as any up north. Banks drank a pint of draught Guinness and ate a thick ham and cheese sandwich. As always in London, such gourmet treats cost an arm and a leg; even the pint cost a good deal more than it would in Eastvale. Luckily, he was on expenses.

The raised voices all around him, with their London accents, brought it all back, the good and the bad. For years he had loved the city’s streets, their energy. Even some of the villains he’d nicked had a bit of class, and those that lacked class at least had a sense of humour.

He pushed his plate aside and lit a cigarette. The bottles ranged at the back of the bar were reflected in the gilt-edged mirror. The barmaid had broken into a sweat trying to keep up with the customers – her upper lip and brow were moist with it – but she managed to maintain her smile. Banks ordered another pint.

He couldn’t put his finger on when it had all started to go wrong for him in London. It had been a series of events, most likely, over a long period. But somehow it all merged into one big mess when he looked back: Brian getting into fights at school; his own marriage on the rocks; anxiety attacks that had convinced him he was dying.

But the worst thing of all had been the job. Slowly, subtly, it had changed. And Banks had found himself changing with it. He was becoming more like the vicious criminals he dealt with day in, day out, less able to see good in people and hope for the world. He ran on pure anger and cynicism, occasionally thumped suspects in interrogation and trampled over everyone’s rights. And the damnedest thing was, it was all getting him good results, gaining him a reputation as a good copper. He sacrificed his humanity for his job, and he grew to hate himself, what he had become. He had been no better than Dirty Dick Burgess, a superintendent from the Met with whom he had recently done battle in Eastvale.

Life had dragged on without joy, without love. He was losing Sandra and he couldn’t even talk to her about it. He was living in a sewer crowded with rats fighting for food and space: no air, no light, no escape. The move up north, if he admitted it, had been his way of escape. Put simply, he had run away before it got too late.

And just in time. Whilst everything in Eastvale hadn’t been roses, it had been a damn sight better than those last months in London, during which he seemed to do nothing but stand over corpses in stinking, run-down slums: a woman ripped open from pubes to breast bone, intestines spilling on the carpet; the decaying body of a man with his head hacked off and placed between his legs. He had seen those things, dreamed about them, and he knew he could never forget. Even in Eastvale, he sometimes awoke in a cold sweat as the head tried to speak to him.

He finished his pint quickly and walked outside, pulling up his overcoat collar against the chill. So, he was back, but not to stay. Never to stay. So enjoy it. The city seemed noisier, busier and dirtier than ever, but a fresh breeze brought the smell of roast chestnuts from a street vendor on Oxford Street. Banks thought of the good days, the good years: searching for old, leather-bound editions of Dickens on autumn afternoons along Charing Cross Road; Portobello Road market on a crisp, windy spring morning; playing darts with Barney Merritt and his other mates in the Magpie and Stump after a hard day in the witness box; family outings to Epping Forest on Sunday afternoons; drinks in the street on warm summer nights at the back of Leicester Square after going to the pictures with Sandra, the kids safe with a sister. No, it hadn’t all been bad. Not even Soho. Even that had its comic moments, its heart. At least it had seemed so before everything went wrong. Still, he felt human again. He was out of the sewer, and a brief visit like this one wasn’t going to suck him back into it.

First he made a phone call to Barney Merritt, an old friend from the Yard, to confirm his bed for the night. That done, he caught the Tube to the Oval. As he sat in the small compartment and read the ads above the windows, he remembered the countless other Underground journeys he had made because he always tried to avoid driving in London. He remembered standing in the smoking car, crushed together with a hundred or more other commuters, all hanging on their straps, trying to read the paper and puffing away. It had been awful, but part of the ritual How he’d managed to breathe, he had no idea. Now you couldn’t even smoke on the platforms and escalators, let alone on the trains.

He walked down Kennington Road and found the turn-off, a narrow street of three-storey terrace houses divided into flats, each floor with its own bay window. At number twenty-three, a huge cactus stood in the window of the middle flat, and in the top oriel he could see what looked a stuffed toy animal of some kind. Her name was printed above the top bell: R. Dunne. No first name, to discourage weirdos, but all the weirdos knew that only women left out their first names. There was no intercom. Banks pushed the bell and waited. Would she be in? What did poets do all day? Stare at the sky with their eyes in a ‘fine frenzy rolling’?

Just when he was beginning to think she wasn’t home, he heard footsteps inside the hall and the door opened on a chain. A face – the face – peered round at him.

‘Yes?’

Banks showed his identification card and told her the purpose of his visit. She shut the door, slid off the chain and let him in.

Banks followed the slender, boyish figure in turquoise slacks and baggy orange sweatshirt all the way up the carpeted stairs to the top. The place was clean and brightly decorated, with none of the smells and graffiti he had encountered in such places so often in the past. In fact, he told himself, flats like this must cost a fortune these days. How much did poets make? Surely not that much. It would be rude to ask.

The flat itself was small. The door opened on a narrow corridor, and Banks followed Ruth Dunne to the right into the living room. He hadn’t known what to expect, had no preconceived idea of what a poet’s dwelling should look like, but whatever he might have imagined, it wasn’t this. There was a divan in front of the gas fire covered with a gaudy, crocheted quilt and flanked on both sides by sagging armchairs, similarly draped. He was surprised to find no bookshelves in evidence and assumed her study was elsewhere in the flat, but what was there surprised him as much as what wasn’t: several stuffed toys – a green elephant, a pink frog, a magenta giraffe – lay around in alcoves and on the edge by the bay window, and on three of the four walls elaborate cuckoo clocks ticked, all set at different times.

‘It must be noisy,’ Banks said, nodding at the clocks.

Ruth Dunne smiled. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Why the different times?’

‘I’m not interested in time, just clocks. In fact my friends tell me I’m a chronically late person.’

On the low table between the divan and the fire lay a coffee-table book on watch making, a couple of bills, an ashtray and a pack of unfiltered Gauloises.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ve never been interrogated by the police before. At least not by a detective chief inspector. Would you like some coffee?’

‘Please.’

‘It’s instant, I’m afraid.’

‘That’ll do fine. Black.’

Ruth nodded and left the room. If Banks had expected a hostile welcome, for whatever reason, he was certainly disarmed by Ruth Dunne’s charm and hospitality. And by her appearance. Her shiny brown hair, medium length, was combed casually back, parted at one side, and the forelock almost covered her left eye. Her face was unlined and without make-up. Strong-featured, handsome rather than pretty, but with a great deal of character in the eyes. They’d seen a lot, Banks reckoned, those hazel eyes. Felt a lot, too. In life, she looked far more natural and approachable than the arrogant, knowing woman in the photograph, yet there was certainly something regal in her bearing.

‘How did you find me?’ she asked, bringing back two mugs of steaming black coffee and sitting with her legs curled under her on the divan. She held her mug with both hands and sniffed the aroma. The gas fire hissed quietly in the background. Banks sat in one of the armchairs, the kind that seem to embrace you like an old friend, and lit a cigarette. Then he showed her the photograph, which she laughed at, and told her.

‘So easy,’ she said when he’d finished.

‘A lot of police work is. Easy and boring. Time-consuming, too.’

‘I hope that’s not a subtle way of hinting I should have come forward earlier?’

‘No reason to, had you? Did you know about Caroline’s death?’

Ruth reached for the blue paper packet of Gauloises, tapped one out and nodded. ‘Read about it in the paper. Not much of a report, really. Can you tell me what happened?’

Banks wished he could, but knew he couldn’t. If he told her, then he’d have no way of checking what she already knew.

She noticed his hesitation and waved her hand. ‘All right. I suppose I should think myself lucky to be spared the gory details. Look, I imagine I’m a suspect, if you’ve come all this way. Can we get that out of the way first? I might have an alibi, you never know, and it’ll make for a hell of a more pleasant afternoon if you don’t keep thinking of me as a crazed, butch dyke killer.’ She finally lit the cigarette she’d been toying with, and the acrid tang of French tobacco infused the air.

Banks asked her where she had been and what she had been doing on 22 December. Ruth sucked on her Gauloise, thought for a moment, then got up and disappeared down the corridor. When she reappeared, she held an open appointment calendar and carried it over to him.

‘I was giving a poetry reading in Leamington Spa, of all places,’ she said. ‘Very supportive of the arts they are up there.’

‘What time did it start?’

‘About eight.’

‘How did you get there?’

‘I drove. I’ve got a Fiesta. It’s life in the fast lane all the way for us poets, you know. I was a bit early, too, for a change, so the organizers should remember me.’

‘Good audience?’

‘Pretty good. Adrian Henri and Wendy Cope were reading there, too, if you want to check with them.’

Banks noted down the details. If Ruth Dunne had indeed been in Leamington Spa at eight o’clock that evening, there was no conceivable way she could have been in Eastvale at seven twenty or later. If she was telling the truth about the reading, which could be easily checked, then she was in the clear.

‘One thing puzzles me,’ Banks said. ‘Caroline had your picture but we couldn’t find a copy of your book among her things. Can you think why that might be?’

‘Plenty of reasons. She wasn’t much of a one for material possessions, wasn’t Caroline. She never did seem to hang on to things like the rest of us acquire possessions I always envied her that. I did give her a copy of the first book, but I’ve no idea what happened to it. I sent the second one, too, the one I dedicated to her, but I wasn’t sure what her address was then. The odds are it went to an old address and got lost in the system.’

Either that or Nancy Wood had run off with both of them, Banks thought, nodding.

‘But she hung on to the photograph.’

‘Maybe she liked my looks better than my poetry.’

‘What kind of poetry do you write, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I don’t mind, but it’s a hard one to answer.’ She tapped the fingers holding the cigarette against her cheek. The short blonde hairs on the back of her hand caught the light. ‘Let me see, I don’t write confessional lesbian poetry, nor do I go in for feminist diatribes. A little wit, I like to think, a good sense of structure, landscape, emotion, myth… Will that do to be going on with?’

‘Do you like Larkin?’

Ruth laughed. ‘I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s hard not to. I never much admired his conservative, middle-class little Englandism, but the bugger certainly had a way with a stanza.’ She cocked her head. ‘Do we have a literary copper here? Another Adam Dalgliesh?’

Banks smiled. He didn’t know who Adam Dalgliesh was. Some television detective, no doubt, who went around quoting Shakespeare.

‘Just curious, that’s all,’ he answered. ‘Who’s your favourite?’

‘H. D. A woman called Hilda Doolittle, friend of Ezra Pound’s.’

Banks shook his head. ‘Never heard of her.’

‘Ah. Clearly not a literary copper then. Give her a try.’

‘Maybe I will.’ Banks took another sip of his coffee and fiddled for a cigarette. ‘Back to Caroline. When did you last see her?’

‘Let me see… It was years ago, five or six at least. I think she was about twenty or twenty-one at the time. Twenty going on sixty.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Banks remembered Caroline as beautiful and youthful even in death.

‘The kind of life she was leading ages a woman fast – especially on the inside.’

‘What life?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘Tell me.’

Ruth shifted into the cross-legged position. ‘Oh, I get it. You ask the questions, I answer them. Right?’

Banks allowed himself a smile. ‘I’m not meaning to be rude,’ he said, ‘but that’s basically how it goes. I need all the information I can get on Caroline. So far I don’t have a hell of a lot, especially about the time she spent in London. If it’ll make talking easier for you, I can tell you that we already know she had a conviction for soliciting and gave birth to a child. That’s all.’

Ruth looked down into her coffee and Banks was surprised to see tears rolling over her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting the mug down and wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘It just sounds so sad, so pathetic. You mustn’t think I’m being flippant, the way I talk. I don’t get many visitors so I try to enjoy everyone I meet. I was very upset when I read about Caroline, but I hadn’t seen her for a long time. I’ll tell you anything I can. A marmalade cat slipped into the room, looked once at Banks, then jumped on the divan next to Ruth and purred. ‘Meet T.S. Eliot,’ Ruth said. ‘He named so many cats, so I thought at least one should be named after him. I call him T.S. for short.’

Banks said hello to T.S., who seemed more interested in nestling into the hollow formed by Ruth’s crossed legs. She picked up her coffee again with both hands and blew gently on the surface before drinking.

‘Caroline started as a dancer,’ she said. ‘An exotic dancer, I believe they’re called. Well, it’s not too much of a leap from that to pleasing the odd, and I do mean odd, punter or two for extra pocket money. I’m sure you know much more about vice here than I do, but before long she was doing the lot: dancing, peep shows, turning tricks She was a beautiful child, and she looked even younger than she was. A lot of men around that scene have a taste for fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds, or even younger, and Caroline could fulfil that fantasy when she was eighteen.’

‘Was she on drugs?’

Ruth frowned and shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know. Not like some of them. She might have had the odd joint, maybe an upper or a downer now and then – who doesn’t? – but nothing really heavy or habitual. She wasn’t hooked on anything.’

‘What about her pimp?’

‘Bloke called Reggie. Charming character. One of his women did for him with a Woolworth’s sheath knife shortly before Caroline broke away. You can check your records, I’m sure they’ll have all the details. Caroline wasn’t involved, but it was a godsend for her in a way.’

‘How?’

‘Surely it’s obvious. She was scared stiff of Reggie. He used to bash her about regularly. With him out of the way, she had a chance to slip between the cracks before the next snake came along.’

‘When did she break away?’

Ruth leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘About a year before she went back up north.’

‘And you knew her during that period?’

‘We lived together. Here. I got this place before the prices rocketed. You wouldn’t believe how cheap it was. I knew her before for a little while, too. I’d like to think I played a small part in getting her out of the life.’

‘Who played the biggest part?’

‘She did that herself. She was a bright kid and she saw where she was heading. Not many you can say that about. She’d been wanting out for a while, but Reggie wouldn’t let go and she didn’t know where to run.’

‘How did you come to meet her?’

‘After a poetry reading. Funny, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Out in Camden Town. All we had in the audience was a prostitute and a drunk who wanted to grab the mike and sing ‘Your Cheating Heart’. He did, too, right in the middle of my best poem. Afterwards we drove down to Soho – not the drunk, just me and my fellow readers – to the Pillars of Hercules. Know it?’

Banks nodded. He’d enjoyed many a pint of draught Beck’s there.

‘We just happened to be jammed in a corner next to Caroline and another girl. We got talking, and one thing led to another. Right from the start Caroline struck me as intelligent and wise, wasted on that scummy life. She knew it too, but she didn’t know what else she could do. We soon became close friends. We went to the theatre a lot and she loved it. Cinema, art exhibitions.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Anything but classical music or opera. She didn’t mind ballet, though. It was all a world she’d never known.’

‘Was that all there was to your relationship?’

Ruth paused to light another Gauloise before answering. ‘Of course not. We were lovers. But don’t look at me as if I was some kind of corrupter of youth. Caroline knew exactly what she was doing.’

‘Were you the first woman she’d had such a relationship with?’

‘Yes. That was obvious right from the start. She was shy about things at first, but she soon learned.’ Ruth inhaled the smoke deeply and blew it out. ‘God, did she learn.’

One of the cuckoo clocks went through its motions. They waited until it stopped.

‘What do you think turned her into a lesbian?’ Banks asked.

Ruth shifted on the sofa and T.S. scampered off. ‘It doesn’t happen like that. Women don’t suddenly, quote, turn into lesbians, unquote. They discover that’s what they are, what they always were but were afraid to admit because there was too much working against them – social morality, male domination, you name it.’

‘Do you think there are a lot of women in that situation?’

‘More than you imagine.’

‘What about the men in her life?’

‘Work it out for yourself. What do you think it does to a woman to have gross old men sticking their willies in her and meek suburban husbands asking if they can pee in her mouth? You’ve got the pimp at one end and the perverts at the other. No quarter.’

‘So Caroline discovered her lesbianism under your guidance?’

Ruth flicked a column of ash into the tray. ‘You could put it like that, yes. I seduced her. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she loathed and feared sex with men. The only difficult thing was overcoming the taboos and learning how to respond to a woman’s body, a woman’s way of making love. And I’m not talking about dildos and vibrators.’

‘Why did you split up?’

‘Why does anybody split up? I think we’d done what we could for each other. Caroline was restless. She wanted to go back up north. There were no great rows or anything, just a mutual agreement, and off she went.’

‘Did you know she had a baby?’

‘Yes. Colm’s. But that was before I met her. She told me she’d just arrived in London and was lucky enough to meet Colm in a pub. Apparently he was a decent enough bloke, just broke all the time. Some of his mates weren’t so decent and that’s partly what got Caroline involved in the game to start with. You know, just a temporary dancing job at this club, no harm in it, is there? Bit of extra cash, no questions asked. Creeps. In all fairness, I don’t think Colm knew. At least not for a while. Then she had his baby and they put it up for adoption.’

‘Do you remember the name of the club?’

‘Yes. It was the Hole-in-the-Wall, just off Greek Street Dingy looking place.’

‘This Colm,’ Banks asked. ‘Do you know his second name?’

‘No. It’s funny, but come to think of it, Caroline never used last names when she spoke about people.’

‘Seen him lately?’

‘Me? I’ve never seen him.’

‘How come you know so much about him?’

‘Because Caroline told me about him when we were first getting to know each other.’

‘Where did he live?’

‘Notting Hill somewhere. Or it could have been Muswell Hill. I’m not sure. Honestly, I can’t help you on that one. She never was much of a one for details, just the broad gesture.’

‘Are you sure Caroline wasn’t already pregnant when she arrived in London?’

Ruth frowned and paused, as if she had suddenly remembered something. She turned her eyes away, and when she spoke there was an odd, distant tone to her voice. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘As far as I know she wasn’t. Unless she was lying to me. I suppose Colm will be able to confirm it if you can find him.’

‘Why did that question upset you so much?’

She put her hand to her chest. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re more defensive than you were earlier.’

Ruth shrugged. ‘It just reminded me of something, that’s all.’

‘Reminded you of what?’

Ruth reached for her coffee cup, but it was empty. Banks waited. He noticed her hand was shaking a little.

‘Something that was bothering Caroline. It’s not important,’ Ruth said. ‘Probably not even true.’

‘Let me decide.’

‘Well, it was those dreams she’d been having, and the things she’d been remembering. At least she thought she had. She didn’t really know if they were memories or fantasies.’

‘What about?’

Ruth looked him in the eye, her cheeks flushed. ‘Oh hell,’ she said. ‘Caroline was beginning to think she’d been molested as a child. She felt she’d repressed the incident, but it was making its way back up from her subconscious, perhaps because of all the weird johns she was servicing.’

‘Molested? When? Where? Who by?’

‘I’ve told you, she wasn’t sure she believed it herself.’

‘Do you know?’

‘Shit, yes. When she was a kid. At home. By her father.’