Past Reason Hated

ONE

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Banks challenged Veronica Shildon later that evening. They were eating in an Indonesian restaurant in Soho. The view out of the window was hardly romantic – a peep show offering ‘NAKED GIRLS IN BED’ for 50p – but the food was excellent and the bar served Tiger beer.

Veronica played with her nasi goreng, mixing the shrimp in with the rice. ‘Knew what?’

‘About Caroline’s past.’

‘No. Not the way you think.’

‘You could have saved me a lot of time and effort.’

Veronica shook her head. Her eyes looked watery, on the verge of tears. Banks couldn’t be sure whether it was emotion or the hot chili peppers. His own scalp was prickling with the heat and his nose was starting to run. He took another swig of cold Tiger.

‘Some things I knew,’ she said finally. ‘I knew Caroline had been on the streets, but I didn’t know any of the names or places involved. When she talked about Ruth she always spoke with affection, but she never mentioned her second name or where they’d lived.’

‘You knew they were lovers, though?’

‘Yes.’

‘But weren’t you jealous? Didn’t you question Caroline about it?’

Veronica snorted. ‘I had little right to be jealous, did I? Remember where I was coming from. Caroline told me there’d been others. She was even living with Nancy Wood when I first met her. And I was with Claude. You must be very naive, Mr Banks, if you think we walked into our relationship like a couple of virgins with no emotional baggage. And, somehow, I don’t honestly believe you are naive.’

‘No matter what the rules are,’ Banks said, ‘no matter what people try to convince themselves about what they accept and understand, about how open-minded they are, they still can’t stop feeling things like jealousy, hatred and fear. Those are powerful, primitive emotions – instincts, if you like – and you can’t convince me that you were both so bloody civilized you calmly decided not to feel anything about one another’s pasts.’

Veronica put down her fork and poured some more beer into her half empty glass. ‘Quite a speech. And not so long ago you were telling me I was too civilized to feel the need to revenge Caroline’s murder.’

‘Perhaps you are. But that’s another matter. Can you answer my question?’

‘Yes. I didn’t feel jealous about Ruth Dunne. For one thing, it was years ago, and for another, from what I could gather she’d done Caroline a big favour, perhaps the same kind of favour Caroline later did for me. As I said, I didn’t know all the details, but I know the gist. And when I talked to Ruth this afternoon after you’d been to see her, I liked her. I was glad to think Caroline had met and loved someone like her. That’s my answer. Believe it or not, as you choose. Or do you think people like us are just so perverted that all we do is rip each other’s clothes off and jump into bed together?’

Banks said nothing. He ate a mouthful of pork satay and washed it down with beer. Attracting the waiter’s attention, he then ordered two more Tigers. He did believe Veronica. After all, she had felt secure in her relationship with Caroline, and Ruth Dunne had certainly posed no threat.

‘So why didn’t you tell me what you did know about Caroline’s past?’ he asked after the beers had arrived.

‘I’ve already told you. I hardly knew anything.’

‘Maybe not, but if you’d told us what you did know, it would have made it easier for us to find out the rest.’

Veronica slammed her knife and fork down. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes narrowed to glaring slits. ‘All right, damn you! So I’m sorry. What more do you want me to say?’

Some of the other diners looked around and frowned, whispering comments to one another. Veronica held Banks’s gaze for a few seconds, then picked up her fork again and speared a spicy shrimp far too violently. A few grains of rice skipped off the edge of her plate onto the napkin on her knee.

‘What I want to know,’ Banks said, ‘is why you didn’t tell me what you knew, and whether there’s anything else you’ve been keeping to yourself. See, it’s simple really.’

Veronica sighed. ‘You’re an exasperating man,’ she said. ‘Do you know that?’

Banks smiled.

‘All right. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to… to soil Caroline’s memory. She wasn’t that kind of person any more. I couldn’t see how it would do any good to drag all that up and let the newspapers get hold of it. Is that good enough?’

‘It’s a start. But I’ll bet there’s more to it than that.’

Veronica said nothing. Her mouth was pressed shut so tight the edges of her lips turned white.

Banks went on. ‘You didn’t want me or anyone else to think you were the kind of woman to be living with someone with such a lurid past? Am I right?’

‘You’re a bastard, is what you are,’ said Veronica through gritted teeth. ‘What you don’t understand is that it takes more than a couple of years of therapy to undo a lifetime’s damage. Christ, all the time I keep hearing my mother’s voice in my mind, calling me dirty, calling me perverted. Maybe you’re right and I didn’t want that guilt by association. But I still don’t see what good knowing that does you.’

‘The reason for Caroline’s murder could lie in her past. She was running with a pretty rough crowd. I know some of them. I worked the vice squad in Soho for eighteen months, and it’s not as glamorous as Miami Vice, you can be sure of that. Drugs. Prostitution. Gambling. Big criminal business. Very profitable and very dangerous. If Caroline maintained any kind of involvement with these people it could explain a lot.’

‘But she didn’t,’ Veronica insisted, pressing her hands together and leaning across the table. ‘She didn’t. I lived with her for two years. In all that time we never went to London and she never mentioned much about her life there. Don’t you see? It was the future we wanted, not the past. Both of us had had enough of the past.’

Banks pushed his empty plate aside, asked Veronica’s permission to smoke and reached for his cigarettes. When he’d lit one and inhaled, he took a sip of beer. Veronica folded her napkin in a perfect square and laid it on the coral tablecloth beside her plate. A small mound of rice dotted with chunks of garlic, onion and diced pork remained, but the shrimp were all gone.

Banks glanced out the window and watched a punter in a cloth cap and donkey jacket hesitate outside the peep show. He was probably having a hard time making up his mind with so much to choose from: NUDE NAUGHTY AND NASTY down the street, LIVE EROTIC NUDE BED SHOW next door, and now NAKED GIRLS IN BED opposite. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he hunched his shoulders and carried on towards Leicester Square. Either lost his bottle or come to his senses, Banks thought.

Veronica had been watching him, and when Banks turned back to face her she gave him a small smile. ‘What were you looking at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But you were watching so intently.’

Banks shrugged. ‘Coffee? Liqueur?’

‘I’d love a Cointreau, if they’ve got any.’

‘They’ll have it.’ Banks called the waiter. He ordered a Drambuie for himself.

‘What did you see out there?’ Veronica asked again.

‘I told you, it was nothing. Just a man, likely down from the provinces for a soccer match or something. He was checking out Soho. Probably surprised it was so cheap.’

‘What do you get for 50p?’

‘Brief glance at a naked tart, if you’re lucky. It’s a loss leader, really,’ Banks said. ‘Supposed to give you a taste for the real action. You sit in a booth, put your coin in the slot and a shutter slides so you can see the girl. As soon as your meter’s up, so to speak, the shutter closes. Of course, Soho’s been cleaned up a lot lately, but you can’t really keep its spirit down.’ Already, Banks noticed, his accent and his patterns of speech had reverted to those of his London days. He had never lost them in almost three years up north, but they had been modified quite a bit. Now here he was, to all intents and purposes a London copper again.

‘Do you approve?’ Veronica asked.

‘It’s not a matter of approval. I don’t visit the booths or the clubs myself, if that’s what you mean.’

‘But would you like to see it all stamped out of existence?’

‘It’d just spring up somewhere else, wouldn’t it? That’s what I mean about the spirit. Every big city has its vice area: the Red Light district in Amsterdam, the Reeperbahn, Times Square, the Tenderloin, the Yonge Street strip in Toronto… They’re all much the same except for what local laws do and don’t allow. Prostitution is legal in Amsterdam, for example, and they even have licensed brothels in part of Nevada. Then there’s Las Vegas and Atlantic City for gambling. You can’t really stamp it out. For better or for worse, it seems to be part of the human condition. I admire its energy, its vitality, but I despise what it does to people. I recognize its humour, too. In my job, you get to see the funny side from time to time. Maybe it actually makes policing easier, so much vice concentrated in one small area. We can keep closer tabs on it. But we’ll never stamp it out.’

‘I feel so sheltered,’ Veronica said, looking out the window again. ‘I never knew any of this existed when I was growing up. Even later, it never seemed to have anything to do with my life. I couldn’t even imagine what people did together except for… you know.’ She shook her head.

‘And now you’re wordly wise?’

‘I don’t think so, no. But after Caroline, after she brought me to life, at least I was able to see what all the fuss was about. If that’s what it felt like, then no wonder everyone went crazy over it. Do you know that Shakespeare sonnet, the one that starts ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’? I never understood it until a couple of years ago.’

‘It’s about lust, isn’t it?’ Banks said. ‘ “Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme.”’ Christ, he thought, I’m getting just like that Dalgliesh fellow Ruth Dunne mentioned. Better watch it. He nodded towards the window. ‘Suits that lot out there more than it suits you.’

Veronica smiled. ‘No, you don’t know what I mean. At last I could understand. Even lust I could finally understand. Do you see?’

‘Yes.’ Banks lit another cigarette and Veronica held the glass of Cointreau in her hand. ‘About Caroline’s child,’ he said.

‘She never told me.’

‘Okay. But did she ever make any references to a person called Colm?’

‘No. And I’m sure I’d remember a name like that.’

‘She had no contact with anyone you didn’t know, no mysterious letters or phone calls?’

‘Not that I ever found out about. I’m not saying she couldn’t have had. She could be very secretive when she wanted. What are you getting at?’

Banks sighed and swirled his Drambuie in its glass. ‘I don’t know. I thought she might have kept in touch with the foster parents, adopters, whatever.’

‘Surely that would have been too painful for her?’

‘Maybe so. Forgive me, I’m grasping at straws.’ And he was. The child must be about nine or ten now. Far too young to hunt out his mother and stab her with a kitchen knife for abandoning him, or her. Far too young to see the irony in leaving a requiem for himself on the stereo. ‘There is one thing you might be able to help me with, though,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Ruth mentioned that Caroline had begun to suspect she’d been sexually abused as a child. Do you know anything about that?’

Veronica blushed and turned her face to the window. Her profile looked stern against the gaudy neon outside, and the muscle at the corner of her jaw twitched.

‘Well?’

‘I… I can’t see what it’s got to do with-’

‘We’ve already been through that. Let me be the judge.’

‘Poor Caroline.’ Veronica looked directly at Banks again and her expression seemed to relax into sadness. Melancholy was a better word, Banks decided, a good romantic word. Veronica looked melancholy as she fingered her glass and tilted her head before she spoke. ‘I suppose I didn’t tell you for the same reason I didn’t tell you anything else about her past. I didn’t think it mattered and it would only look bad. Now I feel foolish, but I’m not afraid.’

‘Did she talk to you about it?’

‘Yes. At first it was like Ruth said. She had dreams, terrible dreams. Do you know what sexual abuse does to a child, Mr Banks?’

Banks nodded. Jenny Fuller, the psychologist who occasionally helped with cases, had explained it to him once.

‘Then you know they begin to hate themselves. They lose all self-respect, they get depressed, they feel suicidal, and they often seek reckless, self-destructive ways of life. All those things happened to Caroline. And more.’

‘Is that why she left home?’

‘Yes. But she’d had to wait a long time to get out. Till she was sixteen.’

‘What do you mean? When did this start happening?’

‘When she was eight.’

‘Eight? Jesus Christ! Go on. I take it this is fact, not fantasy?’

‘I can’t offer you irrefutable proof, especially now Caroline’s dead, but you can take my word for it if you’re willing. As I said, at first it was just dreams, fears, suspicions, then when she started working on it with Ursula, more memories began to surface. She’d buried the events, of course, which is perfectly natural under the circumstances. Just imagine a child’s confusion when the father she loves starts to do strange and frightening things with her body and tells her she must never tell anybody or terrible things will happen to her. It ties her in knots emotionally. It must be good, because Daddy is doing it Perhaps she even enjoys the attention. But it doesn’t feel good, it hurts. And why will she go to hell if she ever tells anyone?’

‘What happened?’

‘As far as she could piece it together, it occurred first when she was eight. Her mother was having a difficult pregnancy and spent the last two weeks of her term in hospital under close observation. Something to do with her blood pressure and the possibility of toxaemia. Caroline was left alone in the big house with her father, and he started coming to her bedroom at nights, asking her to be a good girl and play with him. Before long he was having intercrural sex with her. It’s not very clear how far he went. She remembered pain, but not extreme agony or bleeding. Obviously, he was careful. He didn’t want anyone to find out.’

‘What does “intercrural” mean?’ Banks asked. ‘I’ve never heard the word before.’

Veronica blushed. ‘I suppose it is a bit technical. It was Ursula who used it first. It means between the thighs, rather than true penetration.’

Banks nodded. ‘What happened when the mother came home?’

‘It continued, but with even more caution. It didn’t stop until she was twelve and had her first period.’

‘He wasn’t interested after that?’

‘No. She’d become a woman. That terrified him, or so Ursula reckoned.’

Banks drew on his cigarette and looked out at the peep show. Two swaying teenagers in studded leather jackets stood in the foyer now, arguing with the cashier. A girl slipped out past them. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen from what Banks could see of her pale drawn face in the street light. She clutched a short, black, shiny plastic coat tightly around her skinny frame and held her handbag close to her side. She looked hungry, cold and tired. As far as he could make out, she wasn’t wearing stockings or tights – in fact she looked naked but for the coat – which probably meant she was on her way to do the same job in another club nearby, after she’d stopped off somewhere for her fix.

‘Gary Hartley told DC Gay that his sister had always hated him,’ Banks said, almost to himself. ‘He said she even tried to drown him in his bath once when he was a baby. Apparently, she made his life a misery. Her mother’s, too. Gary blamed her for sending his mother to an early grave. I’ve met him myself, and he’s a very disturbed young man.’

Veronica said nothing. She had finished her drink and had only the dregs of her coffee left to distract her. The waiter sidled up with the bill.

‘What I’d like to know,’ Banks said, picking it up, ‘is did Gary know why she’d treated him that way right from the start? Just imagine the psychological effect. There he was, someone new and strange, the root and cause of all her suffering at her father’s hands. Her mother had deserted her, and now when she came back she was more interested in this whining, crying little brat than in Caroline herself. My sister was born when I was six and I clearly remember feeling jealous. It must have been countless times worse for Caroline, after what had happened with her father. Of course, Gary couldn’t have known at the time, not for years perhaps, but did she ever tell him that her father had abused her sexually?’

Veronica started to speak, then stopped herself. She glanced at Banks’s cigarette as if she wanted one. Finally, when she could find nowhere to hide, she breathed, ‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘As soon as she felt certain it was true.’

‘Which was?’

‘A couple of weeks before she died.’

TWO

Banks walked Veronica to Charing Cross Road and got her a taxi to Holland Park, where she was staying with her friend. After she’d gone, he paused to breathe the night air and feel the cool needles of rain on his face, then went back down Old Compton Street to clubland. It was Friday night, about ten thirty, and the punters were already deserting the Leicester Square boozers for the lure of more drink and a whiff of sex.

In a seedy alley off Greek Street, notable mostly for the rubbish on its pavements, Banks found the Hole-in-the-Wall. Remarkable. It had been there in his days on the vice squad, and it was still there, looking just the same. Not many places had such staying power – except the old landmarks, almost traditions by now, like the Raymond Revue Bar.

He kicked off a sheet of wet newspaper that had stuck to his sole and walked down the steps. The narrow entrance on the street was ringed with low-watt bulbs, and photos in a glass display case showed healthy, smiling, busty young women, some in leather, some in lacy underwear. The sign promised a topless bar and LIVE GIRLS TOTALLY NUDE.

The place was dim and smoky inside, noisy with customers trying to talk above the blaring music. It took Banks a minute or so to get his bearings. During that time, a greasy-haired lad with a sloth-like manner had relieved him of his admittance fee and indicated in slow-motion that there were any number of seats available. Banks chose to sit at the bar.

He ordered a half of lager and tried not to have a heart attack when he heard the price. The woman who served him had a nice smile and tired blue eyes. Her curly blonde hair framed a pale, moon-shaped face with too much red lipstick and blue eyeshadow. Her breasts stood firmly and proudly to attention, evidence, Banks was sure, of a recent silicone job.

Other waitresses out on the dim floor weaving among the smoky spotlights didn’t boast the barmaid’s dimensions. Still, they came, like fruit, in all shapes and sizes – melons, apples, pears, mangoes – and, as is the way of all flesh, some were slack and some were firm. The girls themselves looked blank and only seemed to react if some over-eager punter tweaked a nipple, strictly against house rules. Then they would either scold him and walk off in a huff, call one of the bouncers or make arrangements for tweaking the other nipple in private later.

On the stage, gyrating and chewing gum at the same time to a song that seemed to be called ‘I Want Your Sex’, was a young black woman dressed only in a white G-string. She looked in good shape: strong thighs, flat, taut stomach and firm breasts. Perhaps she really wanted to be a dancer. Some girls on the circuit did. When she wasn’t dancing like this to earn a living, Banks thought, she was probably working out on a Nautilus machine or doing ballet exercises in a pink tutu in a studio in Bloomsbury.

Watching the action and thinking his thoughts in the hot and smoky club, Banks felt a surge of the old excitement, the adrenaline. It was good to be back, to be here, where anything could happen. Most of the time his job was routine, but he had to admit to himself that part of its appeal lay in those rare moments out on the edge, never far from trouble or danger, where you could smell evil getting closer and closer.

The lager tasted like piss. Cat’s piss, at that. Banks shoved it aside and lit a cigarette. That helped.

‘Can I get you anything more, sir?’ the barmaid asked. He was sitting and she was standing, which somehow put her exquisitely manufactured breasts at Banks’s eye level. He shifted his gaze from the goosebumps around her chocolate-coloured nipples to her eyes. He felt his cheek burn and, if he cared to admit it, more than just that.

‘No,’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘I haven’t finished this one yet.’

She smiled. Her teeth were good. ‘I know. But people often don’t. They tell me it tastes like cat’s piss and ask for a real drink.’

‘How much does a real drink cost?’

She told him.

‘Forget it. I’m here on business. Tuffy in?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you? You ain’t law, are you?’

Banks shook his head. ‘Not down here, no. Just tell him Mr Banks wants to see him, will you, love?’

Banks watched her pick up a phone at the back of the bar. It took no more than a few seconds.

‘He said to go through.’ She seemed surprised by the instruction and looked at Banks in a new light. Clearly, anyone who got in to see the boss that easily had to be a somebody. ‘It’s down past the-’

‘I know where it is, love.’ Banks slid off the bar stool and threaded his way past tables of drooling punters to the fire door at the back of the club. Beyond the door was a brightly lit corridor, and at the end was an office door. In front stood two giants. Banks didn’t recognize either of them. Turnover in hired muscle was about as fast as that in young female flesh. Both looked in their late twenties, and both had clearly boxed. Judging by the state of their noses, neither had won many bouts; still, they could make mincemeat of Banks with their hands tied behind their backs, unless his speed and slipperiness gave him an edge. He felt a tremor of fear as he neared them, but nothing happened. They stood back like hotel doormen and opened the door for him. One smiled and showed the empty spaces of his failed vocation.

In the office, with its scratched desk, threadbare carpet, telephone, pin-ups on the wall and institutional green filing cabinets, sat Tuffy Telfer himself. About sixty now, he was fat, bald and rubicund, with a birthmark the shape of a teardrop at one side of his fleshy red nose. His eyes were hooded and wary, lizard-like, and they were the one feature that didn’t seem to fit the rest of him. They looked more as if they belonged to some sexy Hollywood star of the forties or fifties – Victor Mature, perhaps, or Leslie Howard – rather than an ugly, ageing gangster.

Tuffy was one of the few remaining old-fashioned British gangsters. He had worked his way up from vandalism and burglary as a juvenile, through fencing, refitting stolen cars and pimping to get to the dizzy heights he occupied today. The only good things Banks knew about him were that he loved his wife, a peroxide ex-stripper called Mirabelle, and that he never had anything to do with drugs. As a pimp, he had been one of the few not to get his girls hooked. Still, it was no reason to get sentimental over the bastard. He’d had one of his girls splashed with acid for trying to turn him in, though nobody could prove it, and there were plenty of women old before their time thanks to Tuffy Telfer. Banks had been the bane of his existence for about three months many years ago. The evil old sod hadn’t been able to make a move without Banks getting there first. The police had never got enough evidence to arrest Tuffy himself, though Banks had managed to put one or two of his minions away for long stretches.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Tuffy in the East-End accent he usually put on for the punters. He had actually been raised by a meek middle-class family in Wood Green, but few people other than the police knew that. ‘If it ain’t Inspector Banks.’

‘Chief Inspector now, Tuffy.’

‘I always thought you’d go far, son. Sit down, sit down. A drink?’ The only classy piece of furniture in the entire room was a well-stocked cocktail cabinet.

‘A real drink?’

‘Wha’? Oh, I get it.’ Telfer laughed. ‘Been sampling the lager downstairs, eh? Yeah, a real drink.’

‘I’ll have a Scotch then. Mind if I smoke?’

Telfer laughed again. ‘Go ahead. Can’t indulge no more myself.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Quack says it’s bad for the ticker. But I’ll get enough second-hand smoke running this place to see me to my grave. A bit more won’t do any harm.’

Tuffy was hamming it up, as usual. He didn’t have to be here to run the Hole-in-the-Wall; he had underlings who could do that for him. Nor was he so poor he had to sit in such a poky office night after night. The club was just a minor outpost of Tuffy’s empire, and nobody, not even vice, knew where all its colonies were. He had a house in Belgravia and owned property all over the city. He also mixed with the rich and famous. But every Friday and Saturday night he chose to come and sit here, just like in the old days, to run his club. It was part of his image, part of the sentimentality of organized crime.

‘Making ends meet?’ Banks asked.

‘Just. Times is hard, very hard.’ One of the musclemen put Banks’s drink – a generous helping – on the desk in front of him. ‘But what can I say?’ Tuffy went on. ‘I get by. What you been up to?’

‘Moved up north. Yorkshire.’

Tuffy raised his eyebrows. ‘Bit drastic, in’it?’

‘I like it fine.’

‘Whatever suits.’

‘Not having a glass yourself?’

Tuffy sniffed. ‘Doctor’s orders. I’m a sick man, Mr Banks. Old Tuffy’s not long for this world, and there’ll not be many to mourn his passing, I can tell you that. Except for the nearest and dearest, bless her heart.’

‘How is Mirabelle?’

‘She’s hale and hearty. Thank you for asking, Mr Banks. Remembers you fondly, does my Mirabelle. Wish I could say the same myself.’ There was humour in his voice, but hardness in his hooded eyes. Banks heard one of the bruisers shift from foot to foot behind him and a shiver went up his spine. ‘What can I do you for?’ Tuffy asked.

‘Information.’

Tuffy said nothing, just sat staring. Banks sipped some Scotch and cast around for an ashtray. Suddenly, one appeared from behind his shoulder, as if by magic. He set it in front of him.

‘A few years ago you had a dancer working the club, name of Caroline Hartley. Remember her?’

‘What if I do?’ Telfer’s expression betrayed no emotion.

‘She’s dead. Murdered.’

‘What’s it got to do with me?’

‘You tell me, Tuffy.’

Telfer stared at Banks for a moment, then laughed. ‘Know how many girls we get passing through here?’ he said.

‘A fair number, I’ll bet.’

‘A fair number indeed. These punters are constantly demanding fresh meat. See the same dancer twice they think they’ve been had. And you’re talking how many years ago?’

‘Six or seven.’

Telfer rested his pale, pudgy hands on the blotter. Well, you can see my point then, can’t you?’

‘What about your records?’

‘Records? What you talking about?’

Banks nodded towards the filing cabinets. ‘You must keep clear and accurate records, Tuffy – cash flow, wages, rent, bar take. For the taxman, remember?’

Telfer cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, well, what if I do?’

‘You could look her up. Come on, Tuffy, we’ve been through all this before, years ago. I know you keep a few notes on every girl who passes through here in case you might want to use her again, maybe for a video, a stag party, some special-’

Telfer held up a hand. ‘All right, all right, I get your drift. It’s all above-board. You know that. Cedric, see if you can find the file, will you?’

One of the bruisers opened a filing cabinet. ‘Cedric?’ Banks whispered, eyebrows raised.

Telfer shrugged. His chins wobbled. They sat silently, Telfer tapping his short fat fingers on the desk while Cedric rummaged through the files, muttering the alphabet to himself as he did so.

‘Ain’t here,’ Cedric announced finally.

‘You sure?’ Telfer asked. ‘It begins with a ‘aitch – Hartley. That comes after “gee” and before “eye”.’

Cedric grunted. ‘Ain’t here. Got a Carrie ‘Eart, but no Caroline ‘Artley.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ Banks said. ‘She might have used a stage name.’

Telfer nodded and Cedric handed over the file. Pinned to the top-left corner was a four by five black and white picture of a younger Caroline Hartley, topless and smiling, her small breasts pushed together by her arms. She could easily have passed for a fourteen-year-old, even a mature twelve-year-old. Below the photo, in Telfer’s surprisingly neat and elegant hand, were the meagre details that had interested him about Caroline Hartley. ‘Vital statistics 34-22-34. Colour of hair: jet-black. Eyes: blue. Skin: olive and satiny’ (Banks hadn’t suspected Tuffy had such a poetic streak). And so it went on. Telfer obviously gave his applicants quite an interview.

The one piece of information that Banks hoped he might find was at the end, an address under her real name: ‘Caroline Hartley, c/o Colm Grey.’ It was old now, of course, and might no longer be of any use. But if it was Colm Grey’s address, and he was poor, he might well have hung on to his flat, unless he’d left the city altogether. Also, now Banks had his last name, Colm Grey would be easier to track down. He recognized the street name. It was somewhere between Notting Hill and Westbourne Park. He had lived not far from there himself twenty years ago.

‘Got what you want?’ asked Telfer.

‘Maybe.’ Banks handed the file back to Cedric, who replaced it, then finished his Scotch.

‘Well, then,’ said Tuffy with a smile. ‘Nice of you to drop in. But you mustn’t let me keep you.’ He stood up and shook hands. His grip was firm but his palm was sweaty. ‘Not staying long, are you? Around here, I mean.’

Banks smiled. ‘No.’

‘Not thinking of coming back to stay?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Good. Just wanted to be sure. Well, do pop in again the next time you’re down, won’t you, and we’ll have another good old natter.’

‘Sure, Tuffy. And give my love to Mirabelle.’

‘I will. I will, Mr Banks.’

The bruisers stood aside and Banks walked out of the office and down the corridor unscathed. When he got back to the noisy smoky club, he breathed a sigh of relief. Tuffy obviously remembered what a pain in the arse he’d been, but working on the edge of the law, as he did, he had to play it careful. True, plenty of his operations were above-board. It was a game – give and take, live and let live – and both sides knew it. Banks had come close to breaking the rules once or twice, and Tuffy wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be around to do that again. Questions that sounded like friendly curiosity were often, in fact, thinly veiled threats.

‘Another drink, dear?’ the mammarially magnificent barmaid said as Banks passed by.

‘No, love. Sorry, have to be off now. Maybe another time.’

‘Story of my life,’ she said, and her breasts swung as she turned away.

Outside, Banks fastened his overcoat, shoved his hands deep in his pockets and walked along Greek Street towards Tottenham Court Road Tube station. He had thought of taking a taxi, but it was only midnight, and Barney lived a stone’s throw from the Central line. At Soho Square he saw a drunk in a tweed overcoat and trilby vomiting in the gutter. A tart, inadequately dressed for the cold, stood behind him and leaned against the wall, arms folded across her chest, looking disgusted.

How did that poem end? Banks wondered. The one Veronica had quoted earlier that evening. Then he remembered. After its haunting summary of the horrors of lust, it finished, ‘All this world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.’ Certainly knew his stuff, did old Willie. They didn’t call him ‘the Bard’ for nothing, Banks reflected, as he turned up Sutton Row towards the bright lights of Charing Cross Road.

THREE

The next morning, after a chat with Barney over bacon and eggs, Banks set out to find Colm Grey. He had arranged to have lunch with Veronica, and had asked Barney to check Ruth Dunne’s alibi and to see what he could find on the stabbing of Caroline’s pimp, Reggie, just to cover all the angles.

The rush-hour crowd had dwindled by the time he got a train, and he was even able to grab a seat and read the Guardian, the way he used to.

He got off at Westbourne Park and walked towards Notting Hill until he found the address on St Luke’s Road Five names matched the bells beside the front door, and he was in luck: C. Grey was one of them, flat four.

Banks pushed the bell and stood by the intercom. No response. He tried again and waited a couple of minutes. It looked like Grey was out. The way things stood at the moment, Grey was hardly a prime suspect, but he was a loose end that had to be tied up. He was the only one who knew the full story about Caroline Hartley’s child. Just as Banks started to walk away, he thought he heard a movement behind the door. Sure enough, it opened and a young man stood there, hair standing on end, eyes bleary, stuffing a white shirt in the waist of his jeans.

He frowned when he saw Banks. ‘Wharrisit? What time is it?’

‘Half past nine. Sorry to disturb you.’ Banks introduced himself and showed his identification. ‘It’s about Caroline Hartley.’

The name didn’t register at first, then Grey suddenly gaped and said, ‘Bloody hell! You’d better come in.’

Banks followed him upstairs to a two-room flat best described as cosy. The furniture needed re-upholstering and the place needed dusting and a damn good tidying up.

‘I was sleeping,’ Grey said as he bent to turn on the gas fire. ‘Excuse me a minute.’ When he came back he had washed his face and combed his hair and he carried a cup of instant coffee. ‘Want some?’ he asked Banks.

‘No. This shouldn’t take long. Mind if I smoke?’

‘Be my guest.’

Grey sat opposite him, leaning forward as if hunched over his steaming coffee cup. He was lanky with a long pale face pitted from ancient acne or chicken-pox. He needed a shave and a trim, and his slightly protruding eyes were watery blue.

‘Is it bad news?’ he asked, as if he were used to life being one long round of bad news.

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘Obviously, or I wouldn’t be asking. Well?’

Banks took a deep breath. He had assumed Grey would have read about the murder in the papers. ‘Caroline Hartley was murdered in Eastvale on December the twenty-second,’ he said finally.

At first, Grey didn’t seem to react. He couldn’t have been much paler, so losing colour would have been no indication, and his eyes were already watery enough to look like they were on the verge on tears. All he did was sit silent and still for about a minute, completely still, and so silent Banks wondered if he were even breathing. Banks tried to imagine Grey and Caroline Hartley as a couple, but he couldn’t.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Can I have one?’ Grey indicated the cigarettes. ‘Supposed to have chucked it in, but…’

Banks gave him a cigarette, which he lit and puffed on like a dying man on oxygen. ‘I don’t suppose this is a social call, either?’ he said.

Banks shook his head.

Grey sighed. ‘I haven’t seen Caroline for about eight years. Ever since she started running with the wrong crowd.’

‘Tuffy Telfer?’

‘That’s the bastard. Just like a father to her, he was, to hear her speak.’

Banks hoped not. ‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘No. I wouldn’t have trusted myself with him for ten seconds. I’d have swung for the bastard.’

Not a chance, Banks thought. Colm Grey couldn’t have got within a hundred yards of Tuffy Telfer without getting at least both arms and legs broken. ‘What caused you and Caroline to split up?’ he asked.

‘Just about everything.’ Grey flicked some ash onto the hearth by the fire and reached for his coffee again. ‘I suppose it really started going downhill when she got pregnant.’

‘What happened? Did you try to give her the push?’

Grey stared at Banks. ‘Couldn’t be further from it. We were in love. I was, anyway. When she got pregnant she just turned crazy. I wanted to have it, the kid, even though we were poor, and she didn’t want rid of it at first. At least I don’t think she did. Maybe I pushed her too hard, I don’t know. Maybe she was just doing it to please me. Anyway, she was miserable all the time she was carrying, but she wouldn’t have an abortion either. There was time, if she’d wanted, but she kept putting it off until it was too late. Then she was up and down like a yo-yo, one day wishing she could have a miscarriage, taking risks walking out in icy weather, maybe hoping she’d just slip and fall, the next day feeling guilty and hating herself for being so cruel. Then, as soon as the child was born, she couldn’t wait to get shot of the blighter.’

‘Where is the child now?’

‘No idea. Caroline never even wanted to see it. As soon as it was born it was whisked off to its new parents. She didn’t even want to know whether it was a girl or a boy. Then things started getting worse for us, fast. Caroline worked at getting her figure back, like nothing had ever happened. As soon as she got introduced to Telfer’s crowd, that was it. She seemed hell-bent on self-destruction, don’t ask me why.’

‘Who introduced her to Telfer?’

Colm bit his lower lip, then said, ‘I blamed myself, after I found out. You know what it’s like, a man doesn’t always choose his friends well. The crowd we went about with, Caroline and me, it was a pretty mixed bunch. Some of them liked to go up West on a weekend and do the clubs. We went along too a few times. Caroline seemed fascinated by it all. Or horrified, I never could make out which. She was well into the scene before I even found out, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. She was a good-looking kid, a real beauty, and she must have caught someone’s eye. I should think they’re always on the look out for new talent at those places.

‘One night she came home really late. I was beside myself with worry and it came out as anger – you know, like when your mother always yelled at you if you were late. We had a blazing row and I called her all the names under the sun. It was then she told me. In detail. And she rubbed my face in it, laughed at me for not catching on sooner. Where did I think her new clothes were coming from? How did I think we could afford to go out so often? I was humiliated. I should have walked out there and then, but I was a fool. Maybe it was just a wild phase, maybe it would go away. That’s what I tried to convince myself. But it didn’t go away. The trouble was, I still loved her.’ Colm rested his chin in his hand and stared at the floor. ‘A couple of months later we split up. She left. Just walked out one evening and never came back. Didn’t even take her belongings with her, what little she had.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Never much of a one for possessions, wasn’t Caroline. Said they only tied her down.’

‘Had you been fighting all that time?’

‘No. There was only the one big row, then everything was sort of cold. I was trying to accept what she was up to, but I couldn’t. It just wasn’t working with her coming in at all hours – or not at all – and me knowing what she’d been up to, imagining her in bed with fat, greasy punters and dancing naked in front of slobbering businessmen.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘Dunno. Never saw or heard from her again. She was a great kid and I loved her, but I couldn’t stand it. I was heading for a breakdown. She was living life in the fast lane, heading for self-destruct. I tried to stop her but she just laughed at me and told me not to be such a bore.’

‘Did she ever tell you anything about her past?’

‘Not a lot, no. Didn’t get on with her mum and dad so she ran off to the big city. Usual story.’

‘Ever mention her brother?’

‘No. Didn’t know she had one.’

‘Did she ever tell you about her dreams?’

‘Dreams?’ He frowned. ‘No, why?’

‘It doesn’t matter. What about you? What did you do after she’d gone?’

‘Me? Well, I didn’t exactly join the Foreign Legion, but I did run away and try to forget. I sublet the flat for a year and drifted around Europe. France mostly, grape picking and all that. Came back, got a job as a bicycle courier, and now I’m doing ‘the Knowledge’. Nearly there, too. With a bit of luck I’ll “Get Out” and have my “Bill and Badge” inside a year.’

‘Good luck.’ Banks had heard how difficult it was riding around on a moped day after day in the traffic fumes, memorizing over eighteen thousand street names and the numerous permutations of routes between them. But that was what one had to do to qualify as a London taxi driver. ‘Did you forget her?’ he asked.

‘You never do, do you, really? What did she do after she left me? Do you know?’

Banks gave him a potted history of Caroline’s life up to her death, and again Grey sat still after he’d finished.

‘She always was funny about sex,’ he said. ‘Not that I’d have guessed, like, that she was a lezzie. I’ve nothing against them – live and let live, I say – but sex always seemed like some kind of trial or test with her, you know, as if she was trying to find out whether she really liked it or not. I suppose not liking it made it easier for her to live on the game, in a way. It was just a job. She didn’t have to like it.’

Banks nodded. It was common knowledge that a lot of prostitutes were lesbians.

There was nothing more to say. He stood up and held out his hand. Grey leaned forward and shook it.

‘Were you working on the twenty-second?’ Banks asked.

Grey smiled. ‘My alibi? Yes, yes I was. You can check And I’ve got to get started today, too. When you’re doing “the Knowledge” you eat, breathe and sleep it.’

‘I know.’

‘Besides, I don’t even know where Eastvale is.’

On his way out, Banks offered Grey another cigarette, but he declined. ‘It didn’t taste all that good, and I couldn’t justify starting again. Thanks for telling me… you know… about her life. At least someone seemed to make her happy. She deserved that.’ He shook his head. ‘She was just one fucked-up kid when I knew her. We never had a chance.’

Outside, Banks turned up his collar and walked through the squares and side streets towards Notting Hill Gate. This area had been his first home in London when he had come as a student. Back then, the tall houses with their white facades had been in poor repair, and small flats were just about affordable. Banks had paid seven pounds a week for an L-shaped room, with free mice, in a house that included one out of work jazz trumpeter, an earnest social worker, a morose and anorexic-looking woman on the second floor who wore beads and a kaftan and never spoke to anyone, and Jimmy, the cheerful and charming bus driver who Banks suspected of selling marijuana on the side.

He passed the house, on Powis Terrace, and felt a twinge of nostalgia. That small room, now with lace curtains in the window, was where he and Sandra had first made love in those carefree days when he had been unhappy with his business studies courses but still hadn’t quite known what to do with his life.

Back then, the area had been very much a swinging sixties enclave with its requisite mixture of musicians, poets, artists, dopers, revolutionaries and general dropouts. It had suited Banks at the time. He enjoyed the music, the animated discussions and the aura of spontaneity, but he could never wholeheartedly turn on, tune in and drop out. He had wanted to get away from home, from the dull routine of Peterborough, and the Notting Hill flat had been both a cheap and exciting way of finding out what life was all about. Ah, to be eighteen again…

He walked up to the main intersection and took the Underground at Notting Hill Gate. He was on the Central line, and he still had some time to kill, so he got off at Tottenham Court Road, in the same general area he’d been in the previous evening. He was feeling vaguely depressed after his talk with Colm Grey, which had reduced a couple of his favourite theories to shreds, and thought a city walk in the bracing air might help blow away the blues.

Soho was another world in the daytime. The clubs and love shops and peep shows were still there, but somehow the glitz and sleaze only managed to look anaemic in daylight. The gaudy lights held no allure; they were washed out, paled by even the grey winter light. In the daytime, the siren-song of sex for hire was muted to a distant, nagging whine; there was no hiding the cheap, shabby reality of the product.

But another kind of vital street life took the ascendant – the world of markets, of business. Banks wandered among the stalls on Berwick Street, which seemed to sell everything from pineapples and melons to cotton panties, cups and saucers, watches, mixed nuts and egg cutters. Under one stall, a big brown dog lay sheltered watching the passers-by with mournful eyes.

Feeling better, he found a phone booth on Great Marlborough Street and called Barney Merritt at Scotland Yard. As Banks had expected, and hoped, Ruth Dunne’s alibi checked out.

The stabbing of Reggie Becker was also as clear cut as could be. The killer, a seventeen-year-old prostitute called Brenda Meers, had stabbed Becker five times in broad daylight on Greek Street. At least two of the wounds had nicked major arteries and he had bled to death before the ambulance got there. Eyewitnesses abounded, though fewer came forward later than were present at the time. When asked why she had done it, Brenda Meers said it was because Reggie was trying to make her go with a man who wanted her to drink his urine and eat his faeces. She had been with him before and didn’t think she could stand it again. She had begged Reggie all morning not to make her go, but he wouldn’t relent, so she walked into Woolworth’s, bought a cheap sheath knife and stabbed him. As far as the police were concerned, Reggie Becker was no great loss, and Brenda would at least get the benefit of psychiatric counselling.

So that was that: the London connection ruled out. But maybe he hadn’t wasted his time entirely. He now had a much fuller picture of Caroline Hartley, even if he did have to throw out that neat theory of a connection between the Vivaldi Laudate pueri and the child she had given birth to He still believed the music was important, but he could no longer tell how or where it fit.

He looked at his watch. Just time to buy Sandra and Tracy presents in Liberty’s, and maybe something for Brian from Virgin Records on Oxford Street. Then it would be time to meet Veronica for lunch and set off. He wondered what, if any, developments would be waiting for him back in Eastvale.