Past Reason Hated

ONE

The gears screeched as Susan Gay slowed to turn onto the Harrogate road. Luckily, the snow hadn’t been so heavy south of Eastvale. It lay piled up against the hedgerows, but the roads had been cleared and the temperature hadn’t dropped low enough to make the surface icy. She was out of the Dales now, in the gently rolling country south of Ripon. Nothing but the occasional stretch of stone wall, or a distant hamlet, showed through the thin white veil of snow.

She still felt angry at herself for being so damn jumpy Banks had only dropped by the community centre to break the news of Caroline Hartley’s death and to discover what time she had left the rehearsal the previous evening. But Susan hadn’t known anything about Caroline’s part in the play, so how could she help assuming that Banks was checking up on her? Anyway, she had kept quiet and matters had soon become clear to her.

When Banks had gone, she’d walked to Pristine Records in the shopping centre by the bus station. The girl with the white-face make-up and hair like pink champagne pointed out the small classical section and, when pushed, leafed idly through the stock cards. No, they hadn’t sold a copy of Lousy whatsit lately; they hadn’t even had a copy in. Ever. Using her own initiative, Susan also checked Boots and W. H. Smiths, both of which had small record departments, but she had no luck there either. The record was imported from Hungary, and whoever had bought it hadn’t done so in Eastvale.

Over lunch at the Queen’s Arms, information had been pooled and tasks assigned by Superintendent Gristhorpe. According to Banks, Caroline had left the Garden Café just after three o’clock, as usual, probably done a bit of shopping, then attended rehearsal at four. James Conran said they had finished at ten to six and everyone had left by five to. He himself had been the last to leave. He had gone out the back way, as usual, locked up and strolled over to the Crooked Billet on North York Road for a couple of drinks. In the caretaker’s absence, he and Marcia Cunningham were the only ones in the drama group to have keys to the centre, although an extra set had been lodged at the police station in case of emergencies. Members of the other societies housed in the centre also had keys, including Sandra Banks.

Presumably, Caroline had gone straight home, because a neighbour across the street told one of the constables that she had seen Miss Hartley enter the house. It had happened at the same time the neighbour had gone over to her window to close a chink in the curtains during the commercial break in Calendar, which would have been about six fifteen.

Richmond had not been able to find out much about Charles Cooper’s movements. The clerk who had been at the Barnard Castle shop on the evening in question had the day off today. He planned to visit Barnard Castle and ask around some more after he had talked to Veronica Shildon’s therapist and made a start on tracking down Ruth. Banks was off to visit Claude Ivers, Veronica’s estranged husband, and Susan herself had drawn the job of talking to Caroline’s family in Harrogate. In addition to keeping tabs on the break-in, she was still on the murder team. Thank God the Harrogate police had at least broken the news of Caroline’s death. That was one distasteful task she had been spared.

She drove up Ripon Road by the huge Victorian hotels – the Cairn, the Majestic, the St George – dark stone mansions set back behind vast walled lawns and croquet greens. As she kept an eye on the road, Susan found herself hoping that the Hartley case wouldn’t be solved by Christmas. That way she could legitimately beg off visiting her parents in Sheffield. Home visits were always tense. Susan found herself regaled with stories about her brother the stockbroker and her sister the lawyer. Of course, neither of them could ever make it home for Christmas; her brother lived in London and her sister in Vancouver But she had to hear all about them, nonetheless. And whatever Susan herself achieved was always belittled by her siblings’ success stories, pieced together from occasional letters and the odd newspaper clipping, and by her parents’ disapproval of the course she had chosen. She could make chief constable and they would still look down on her. With a bit of luck, Caroline Hartley’s murder would keep her busy well into the new year. Susan had a feeling they might be dealing with a nutter – the violence of the wounds and the music left playing seemed to point that way – and nutters, she remembered from her training, were always difficult to catch.

The town of Harrogate soon banished thoughts of psychopaths. All formal gardens and elegant Victorian buildings, it was a spa town, like Bath, a place people retired to or visited to attend business conventions. Ripon Road became Parliament as she drove past the Royal Baths and Betty’s Tea Room, then its name changed again to West Park. She turned left onto York Place, the road that ran by the Stray, a broad expanse of parkland in the town centre renowned for its vibrant flower displays in spring. Now it looked cool and serene under its layer of snow.

The Hartleys lived in a large house off Wetherby Road on the southern outskirts of the town. From the outside, it looked like something out of Edgar Allan Poe: the House of Usher, Susan thought, the way it appeared in that Roger Corman film that used to scare her when she was a little girl. The black stone was rough and pitted like coke, and the upper oriels seemed to stare out like bulging eyes. When Susan rang the doorbell she half expected an enormous manservant with a green complexion to answer and say ‘You rang?’ in a deep voice. But the boy who came to the door was far from enormous. He was in his late teens, judging by the pale, spotty face, the spiky hair and the look of dazed contempt for the world on his face, and he was as skinny as a rake.

‘What is it?’ he asked in an edgy, high-pitched voice. ‘We don’t want anything. There’s been a death in the family.’

‘I know,’ Susan said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’ She showed her card and he stepped back to let her in. She followed him down the gloomy hallway to a room that must once have been a study or library. The ceiling was high, with curlicues at the corners and an ornate fixture at the centre from which the chandelier had once hung. Dark wainscotting came waist high.

But the room was a mess. Much of the fine oak panelling was scratched with graffiti and pitted where darts had been thrown at it. The huge windows, framed by heavy, moth-eaten drapes, were filmed with cobwebs and grime. Magazines and newspapers lay scattered all over the threadbare carpet. Beer cans and cigarette ends littered the hearth and the old stone fireplace, and the stuffing was coming out of the huge green velvet-upholstered settee. The room was an elegant Victorian sanctuary reduced to a teenager’s private wasteland.

The boy didn’t ask Susan to sit down, but she found a chair that looked in reasonable condition. Before she sat, she began to undo her coat, but as she did so she realized that it was freezing in the room, as it had been in the hall. There was no heat at all. The boy didn’t seem to notice or care, even though he was only wearing jeans and a torn t-shirt. He lit a cigarette and slumped on the settee. More stuffing oozed out, like foam from a madman’s mouth.

‘So?’ he said.

‘I’d like to see your father.’

The boy laughed harshly. ‘You must be the first person to say that in five years. People don’t usually like to see my father. He’s a very depressing man. He makes them think of death. The grim reaper.’

The boy’s thin face, only a shade less white than the snow outside, certainly made Susan think of death. He looked in urgent need of a blood transfusion. Could he really be Caroline Hartley’s brother? It was hard to see a resemblance between the boy and his sister. Caroline, when she was alive, must have been a beautiful woman. Even in death she had looked more alive than her brother.

‘Can I see him?’

‘Be my guest.’ The boy pointed towards the ceiling and flicked his ash towards the littered fireplace.

Susan walked up the broad staircase. It must have been wonderful once, with thick pile carpeting and guests in evening dress standing around sipping cocktails. But now it was just bare, creaky wood, scuffed and splintered in places, and the banister looked like someone had been cutting notches in it. There were pale squares on the walls showing where paintings had been removed.

Without a guide or directions, it took Susan three tries before she opened the right door. Her first try had led her into a bathroom, which seemed clean and modern enough; the second revealed the boy’s room, where the curtains were still closed and faint light outlined messy bedsheets and last week’s underwear on the floor; and the third took her into a warm, stuffy room that smelled of cough lozenges, camphor and commodes. A one-element electric fire radiated its heat close to the bed, and there, in a genuine four-poster with the curtains open, a shadow of a man lay propped up on pillows. The bags under his eyes were so dark they looked like bruises, his complexion was like old paper, and the hands that grasped the bedclothes around his chest were more like talons. His skin looked as if it would crack like parchment if you touched it. As she approached, his watery eyes darted towards her.

‘Who are you?’ His voice was no more than a frightened whisper.

Susan introduced herself and he seemed to relax. About Caroline?’ he said. A faraway look came into his ruined eyes, pale yokes floating in glutinous albumen.

‘Yes,’ Susan said. ‘Can you tell me anything about her?’

‘What do you want to know?’

Susan wasn’t sure. She had taken statements as a uniformed constable and studied interview techniques at police college, but it had never seemed as haphazard as this. Superintendent Gristhorpe hadn’t been much help either. ‘Find out what you can,’ he had told her. ‘Follow your nose.’ Clearly it was a matter of sink or swim in the CID. She took a deep breath and wished she hadn’t; the warmed-up smell of terminal illness was overpowering.

‘Anything that might help us find her killer,’ she said ‘Did Caroline visit you recently?’

‘Sometimes,’ he muttered.

‘Were you close?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘She ran away, you know.’

‘When did she run away?’

‘She was only a child and she ran away.’

Susan repeated her question and the old man stared at her. ‘Pardon? When did she go? When she was sixteen Only a child.’

‘Why?’

A look of great sadness came into his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Her mother died, you know. I tried the best I could, but she was so hard to manage.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘London.’

‘What did she do there?’

He shook his head. ‘Then she came back. That’s when she came to see me.’

‘And again since?’

‘Yes.’

‘How often?’

‘When she could. When she could get away.’

‘Did she ever tell you anything about her life down in London?’

‘I was so happy to see her again.’

‘Do you know where she lived, who her friends were?’

‘She wasn’t a bad girl, not really a bad girl.’

‘Did she write from London?’

The old man shook his head slowly on the pillow.

‘But you still loved her?’

‘Yes.’ He was crying now, and the tears embarrassed him. ‘I’m sorry… could you please…?’ He pointed to a box of tissues on the bedside table and Susan passed it to him.

‘She wasn’t bad,’ he repeated when he’d settled down again. ‘Restless, angry. But not bad. I always knew she’d come back. I never stopped loving her.’

‘But she never talked about her life, either in London or in Eastvale?’

‘No. Perhaps to Gary… I’m tired. Not a bad girl,’ he repeated softly.

He seemed to be falling asleep. Susan had got nowhere and could think of no more questions to ask. Clearly, the old man had not jumped out of bed, hurried over to Eastvale and murdered his daughter. Maybe she would get more out of the son. At least he seemed angry and bitter enough to give something away if she pushed him hard enough. She said goodbye, though she doubted that the old man heard, and made her way back downstairs. The boy was still sprawled on the sofa, a can of lager open beside him on the floor. Despite the cold, she could still smell, underlying the smoke, a faint hint of decay, as if pieces of meat lay rotting under the floorboards.

‘When did you last see your sister?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. A week, two weeks ago? She came when she felt like it. Time doesn’t have much meaning around this place.’

‘But she had visited you recently?’

Gary nodded.

‘What did she talk about?’

He lit a cigarette and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Nothing. Just the usual.’

‘What’s the usual?’

‘You know… job, house… relationships… The usual crap.’

‘What’s wrong with your father?’

‘Cancer. He’s had a couple of operations, chemotherapy, but… you know.’

‘How long has he been like this?’

‘Five years.’

‘And you look after him?’

The boy tensed forward and points of fire appeared in his pale cheeks. ‘Yes. Me. All the fucking time. It’s bring me this, Gary, bring me that. Go get my prescription, Gary. Gary, I need a bath. I even sit him on the fucking toilet. Yes, I take care of him.’

‘Does he never leave his room?’

He sighed and settled back on the sofa. ‘I told you, only to go to the bathroom. He can’t manage the stairs. Besides, he doesn’t want to. He’s given up.’

That explained the state of the place. Susan wondered if the father knew, suspected, or even cared that his son had taken over the huge cold house to live whatever life of his own he could scrounge from the responsibilities of the sickroom. She wanted to ask him how he put up with it, but she already knew the scornful answer she would get. ‘Who else is there to do it?’

Instead she asked, ‘How old were you when your sister ran away?’

He seemed surprised by the change in direction and had to think for a moment. ‘Eight. There’s eight years between us. She’d been a bitch for years, had Caroline. The atmosphere was always tense. People were always rowing or on the verge of rows. It was a relief when she went.’

‘Why?’

He turned away so she couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Why? I don’t know. She was just like that. Full of poison. Especially towards me. Right from the start she tormented me, when I was a baby. They found her trying to drown me in my bath once. Of course they said she didn’t realize what she was doing, but she did.’

‘Why should she want to kill you?’

He shrugged. ‘She hated me.’

‘Your father says he loved her.’

He cast a scornful glance towards the ceiling and said slowly, ‘Oh yes, she always was the apple of his eye, even after she took off to London to become a tramp. Caroline could do no wrong. But who was the one left looking after him?’

‘Why did you say tramp? How do you know?’

‘What else would she do? She didn’t have any job skills, but she was sixteen. She had two tits and a cunt like any other bird her age.’

If Susan was expected to be shocked by his crudity, she was determined not to show it. ‘Did you ever see her during that period?’

‘Me? You must be joking. It was all right for a while till mum got sick and died. It didn’t take her longer than a month or two, not five years like that miserable old bastard upstairs. I was thirteen then, when he started. Took to his bed like a fish to water and it’s been the same ever since.’

‘What about school?’

‘I went sometimes. He sleeps most of the time, so I’m okay unless he has one of his awkward phases. I left last year. No jobs anyway.’

‘But what about the health service? Don’t they help?’

‘They send a nurse to look in every once in a while. And if you’re going to mention a home, don’t bother. I’d have him in one before you could say Jack Robinson if I could, but there’s no room available unless you can pay.’ He gestured around the crumbling house. ‘As you can see, we can’t. We’ve got his pension and a bit in the bank and that’s it. I’ve even sold the bloody paintings, not that they were worth much. Thank God the bloody house is paid for. It must be worth a fortune now. I’d sell it and move somewhere cheaper if I could but the old bastard won’t hear of it. Wants to die in his own bed. Sooner the better, I say.’

Susan realized that Gary was drunk. As he’d been talking he’d finished one can of lager and most of a second, and he had obviously drunk a few before she arrived.

‘Did you know anything at all about Caroline’s life?’ she asked.

His bright eyes narrowed. ‘I knew she was a fucking dyke, if that’s what you mean.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘She told me. One of her visits.’

‘But your father doesn’t know?’

‘No. It wouldn’t make a scrap of difference if he did, though. It wouldn’t change his opinion. As far as he’s concerned the sun shone out of her arse and that’s all there is to it.’ He tossed the empty can aside and picked up another from the low, cigarette-scarred table.

‘How do you feel about her death?’

Gary was silent for a moment, then he looked directly at Susan. ‘I can’t say I feel much at all. If you’d asked me a few years ago, I’d have said I felt glad. But now, nothing at all. I don’t really care. She made my life a misery, then she left and lumbered me with the old man. I never had a chance to get out like her. And before that, she made everyone’s life miserable at home. Especially mum’s. Drove her to an early grave.’

‘Did you talk to her much when she visited?’

‘Not by choice,’ he said, reaching for another cigarette. But sometimes she wanted to talk to me, explain things, like she was taking me into her confidence. As if I cared. It was funny, almost like she was apologizing for everything without ever quite getting round to it. Do you know what I mean? “I want you to know, Gary,” she says, “how much I appreciate what you’re doing for Dad. The sacrifices you’re making. I’d help if I could, you know I would…” and all that fucking rubbish.’ He imitated her voice again: ‘ “I want you to know, Gary, that I’m living with a woman in Eastvale and I’m happy for the first time in my life. I’ve really found myself at last. I know we’ve had problems in the past…” Always that “I want you to know, Gary…” as if I fucking cared what she did, the slut. So she’s dead. I can’t say I care one way or another.’

Susan didn’t know whether to believe him. There was more pent-up passion and rage in his tone than she could handle, and she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. All she knew was that she had to get out of this oppressive house, with its vast cold and crumbling spaces. She was beginning to feel dizzy and nauseated listening to Gary Hartley’s high-pitched vitriol, which, she suspected, had as much to do with self-pity at his own weakness as anything else. Quickly, she muttered her farewell and headed for the door. As she walked down the hallway she heard an empty lager can crash against the wainscotting, followed by the screech of the top being ripped off another.

Outside, she breathed in the cold damp air and leaned against the roof of her car. Her gaze fixed on the melting snow that dripped from the branches of a tall tree. Her hands were shaking, but not from the cold.

Before she had driven far, she realized that she needed a drink. She pulled into the car park of the first decent-looking pub she saw outside town. There, in a comfortable bar lit and warmed by a real coal fire, she sipped a small brandy and thought about the Hartleys. She felt that her visit had barely scraped the surface. There was so much bitterness, anger and pain festering underneath, so many conflicting passions, that it would take years of psychoanalysis to sort them out.

One thing was clear, though: whatever the reasons for the family’s strife, and whatever Caroline’s reasons for running away, Gary Hartley certainly had a very good motive for murder. His sister had ruined his life; he even seemed to blame her for his mother’s death. Had he been a different kind of person, he would have handled the burden some other way, but because he was weak and felt put upon, blood had turned to vinegar in his veins. As Susan had just seen, it didn’t take more than a few drinks to bring the acid to the surface.

It would be very interesting to know what Gary Hartley had been doing between seven and eight o’clock the previous evening. As he had told her, the old man slept most of the time, so it would have been easy for Gary to nip out for a while without being missed. She hadn’t asked him for an alibi, and that was an oversight. But, she thought, taking another sip of brandy and warming her hands by the fire, before we start to get all paranoid again, Susan, let’s just say this was only a preliminary interview It would be a good idea to approach Gary Hartley again with someone else along. Someone like Banks.

As she tilted her head back and finished the rest of her drink, she noticed the bright Christmas decorations hung across the ceiling and the string of cards on the wall above the stone fireplace. That was another thing she remembered about the Hartley house. In addition to the cold and the overwhelming sense of decay, there had been nothing at all in the entire huge place to mark the season: not a Christmas tree, not a card, not a sprig of holly, not a cutout Father Christmas. In that, she realized bitterly, the place resembled her own flat all too closely. She shivered and walked out to the car.

TWO

Banks drove carefully down the hill into Redburn as his tape of Bartok’s third string quartet neared its end. The gradient wasn’t quite as steep as at Staithes, where you had to leave your car at the top and walk, but it was bad enough. Luckily, the snow had petered out somewhere over the heathered reaches of the North York Moors and spared the coast.

The narrow hill meandered alongside the beck down to the sea, and it wasn’t until he turned the final corner that Banks saw the water, a heaving mass of grey sloshing against the sea wall and showering the narrow promenade with silver spray. Redburn was a small place: just the one main street leading down to the sea, with a few ginnels and snickets twisting off it where cottages were hidden away, half dug into the hillside itself, all sheltered in the crescent of the bay. In summer the jumble of pastel colours would make a picturesque scene, but in this weather they seemed out of place, as if a piece of the Riviera had been dug up and transported to a harsher climate.

Banks turned left at the front, drove to the end of the road and parked outside the Lobster Inn. Where the road ended, a narrow path led up the hillside, providing the only access to the two or three isolated cottages that faced the sea about halfway up: ideal places for artists.

The cold whipped the breath out of him and the air seemed full of sharp needles of moisture, but Banks finally reached his goal, the white cottage with the red pantile roof. Like the rest of the village, it would look pretty in summer with its garden full of flowers, he thought, but in the dull grey air, with the wind curling smoke from the red chimney, it took on a desolate aspect. Banks knocked at the door. Somewhere the wind was whistling and banging a loose shutter. He thought of Jim Hatchley and wondered how much he was enjoying the seaside not many miles away.

The woman who answered his knock had the kind of puzzled expression on her face that he’d expected. There couldn’t be many people dropping in on such a day in such an isolated place.

She raised her dark eyebrows. ‘Yes?’

Banks introduced himself and showed his card. She stood aside to let him in. The room was a haven from the elements. A wood fire crackled in the hearth and the smell of fresh-baked bread filled the air. The wooden furniture looked primitive and well-used, but homely. The woman herself was in her mid-twenties, and the long skirt and blouse she wore outlined her slender figure. She had a strong jaw and full, red lips. Beneath her fringe of dark hair, two large brown eyes watched him go over and rub his hands in front of the fire.

Banks grinned at her. ‘No gloves. Silly of me.’

She held out her hand. ‘I’m Patsy Janowski. Pleased to meet you.’ Her grip was firm and strong. Her accent was American.

‘I’m here to see Mr Ivers,’ he said. ‘Is he at home?’

‘Yes, but he’s working. You can’t see him now. He hates to be disturbed.’

‘And I would hate to disturb him,’ Banks said. ‘But it’s important.’

She gave him a thoughtful look, then smiled. It was a radiant smile, and she knew it. She looked at her watch. ‘Why don’t I make us some tea and you can try some of my bread. It’s fresh from the oven. Claude will be down in twenty minutes or so for a short break.’

Banks considered the options. Either way he would have surprise on his side, and if he let Ivers finish his session, the man would probably be better disposed towards him. Was that what he wanted? At this stage, he decided, it would be helpful. He also felt a great sense of respect for the music the man created and would have been loath to interrupt the creative process. In addition, he had to admit that the prospect of tea and fresh bread was one that appealed very strongly.

He smiled back at Patsy Janowski. ‘Sounds good to me. Mind if I smoke?’

‘Go ahead. I don’t myself, but Claude’s a pipe man. I’m used to it. I won’t be a minute.’

Banks sat in front of the fire and lit up. The chair was hard and creaked whenever he shifted position, but in an odd way it was comfortable. A few minutes later, Patsy came back in with a plate full of warm bread and a steaming teapot covered with a pink quilted cosy. She put them on the low table in front of the fire then fetched butter and strawberry jam. That done, she sat opposite Banks.

‘Nice place,’ he said, buttering the bread.

‘Yes. Claude bought it after he split up with his wife. They had this enormous mansion near Eastvale, and you know what prices are like these days. This was comparatively cheap. Needed a bit of work. And he always wanted to live by the sea. He says it inspires his work. You know, the sea’s rhythms, its music.’

As she spoke, Banks noticed, her lively eyes flitted from one thing to another: his wedding ring, the scar by his right eye, his left foot, the middle button on his shirt. It wasn’t as if she were avoiding eye contact, more as if she were conducting an inventory.

Banks nodded at what she said. He had noticed musical imitations of the ebb and flow of waves in Ivers’s previous work. Perhaps such effects would be even more prevalent in the future. Certainly between the hiss and crackle of the fire he could hear waves pounding the rough sea wall.

‘What about you?’ Banks asked.

‘What about me?’

‘What do you do? It’s a bit out of the way here, isn’t it?’

She shrugged. ‘Why should you assume I’d prefer the city? Do you think I like cruising the bars, going to discos, taking my credit cards shopping?’ She smiled before he could answer. ‘I love it here. I can amuse myself. I read, I draw a little. I like to cook and go for long walks. And I’m working on my PhD dissertation. That keeps me busy.’

‘Consider me suitably chastised,’ Banks said.

‘Thank you.’ She treated him to the radiant smile again, then frowned. ‘What is it you want with Claude?’

‘It’s a personal matter.’

‘We do live together, you know. It’s not as if I was just a neighbour dropping in for gossip.’

Banks smiled. She had at least answered a question before he’d had to ask it. ‘Do you know his ex-wife, Veronica Shildon?’

‘I’ve met her. Why, has anything-?’

Banks held up a hand. ‘Don’t worry, nothing’s happened to her,’ he said.

‘And she’s not really his ex-wife,’ Patsy said. ‘They’re still married.’ She sounded as if she didn’t like that state of affairs. ‘Wanted to avoid the scandal. More bread?’

‘Mmm, I think I will.’ Banks reached forward. ‘A drop more tea as well, if there is any.’

‘Sure.’

‘How did you meet Claude Ivers?’

Patsy looked at the pen in Banks’s top pocket. ‘I was studying at York when he was teaching a music appreciation course. I took it and kind of… well, he noticed me. We’ve been living together here for a year now.’

‘Happily?’

‘Yes.’

‘How often have you met Veronica?’

‘Three or four times. They were very civilized about things. At least they were by the time I came on to the scene.’

‘What about Caroline Hartley?’

Her jaw set. ‘You’ll have to ask Claude about her. I’ve met her once or twice, but I can’t say I know her. Look, if it’s-’

At that moment they heard a cracking on the stairs and both turned in unison to see Claude Ivers duck under the low lintel and walk into the room. He made an imposing figure – tall, gaunt, stooped – and there was no doubt about the power of his presence. He wore a jersey and baggy jeans, and his grey hair stuck up in places as if he had been running his hand through it. His skin was reddish and leathery, like that of a man who has spent a lot of time in the wind and sun, and a deep ‘V’ of concentration furrowed the bridge of his nose. He looked to be in his early fifties. An inquisitive glance passed between Ivers and Patsy before she introduced Banks. Ivers shook hands and sat down. Patsy went to see to his coffee.

‘What do you want to see me about?’ he asked.

Banks repressed a childish urge to tell him he liked his music. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Caroline Hartley, your wife’s companion. She’s dead.’

Ivers lurched forward and gripped the sides of his chair. ‘Good God! What? How?’

‘She was murdered.’

‘But that’s absurd. Things like that don’t happen in real life.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s true.’

He shook his head. ‘Is Veronica all right?’

‘She’s very upset, obviously, but apart from that she’s okay. I take it you still care?’

‘Of course I do.’

Banks heard something crash down heavily in the kitchen.

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr Ivers,’ he went on, ‘I find that very difficult to understand. If my wife-’

He waved Banks’s comparison aside. ‘Listen, I went through everything any normal man would go through. Everything. Not just anger and rage, but disbelief, disgust, loss of self-esteem, loss of self-confidence. I went through hell. Christ, it’s bad enough when your wife runs away with another man, but another woman…’

‘You forgave her?’

‘If that’s the right word. I could never entirely blame Veronica in the first place. Can you understand that? It was as if she’d been led astray, fallen under someone else’s influence.’

‘Caroline Hartley’s?’

He nodded.

‘Would you tell me what happened?’

For several moments there was silence but for the fire, the sea and muted sounds from the kitchen. Finally, Ivers stared at Banks, then cracked his fingers and stretched back in the chair.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re a stranger. Somehow that makes it easier. And we don’t get many people to talk to around here. Sometimes I get a bit stir-crazy, as Patsy puts it. There’s not a lot to it, really. One day everything was tine. She was happy, we were happy. At least I thought so. Maybe she got a bit bored from time to time, got depressed now and then, but we had a good solid marriage, or so I thought. Then she started seeing a therapist, didn’t tell me why. I don’t think she knew herself, but I suspect it was a bit of a trend among bored, middle-class housewives. It didn’t seem to be doing her much harm at first so I didn’t object, but then, out of the blue, there’s this new friend. It’s all “Caroline says this” and “Caroline says that”. My wife starts to change in front of my eyes. Can you believe that? She even started using this other girl’s language, saying things she would never say herself. She started calling things she liked “neat”. “Really neat”, she’d say! That wasn’t Veronica. And she started dressing differently. She’d always been a bit on the formal side, but now she’d wear jeans and a sweatshirt. And there was all that interminable talk about Jung and self-actualization. I think she once told me I was too much the thinking type, or some such rot. Said my music was too intellectual and not emotional enough. And she got interested in stuff she’d never cared about when I’d tried to interest her – theatre, cinema, literature. She was never in, always around at Caroline’s. Then she even started suggesting that I should go to therapy too.’

‘But you didn’t?’

He stared into the fire and paused, as if he realized he had already given too much away, then he said quietly, ‘I have my demons, Mr Banks, but they also fire me. I’m afraid that if I subjected them to therapy I’d have no more fuel, no more creativity. Whatever Veronica might say, my music’s born from conflict and feeling, not just technical skill.’ He tapped his head. ‘I really hear those things. And I was afraid if I opened my head to some shrink all the music would escape and I would be condemned to silence I couldn’t live like that. No, I didn’t go.’

Patsy returned with the coffee. Ivers took it, smiled at her, and she sat on the floor beside him with her legs curled under her and her hand resting on his thigh.

‘Did you know at the start of the friendship that Caroline was a lesbian?’ Banks asked.

‘Yes. Veronica told me Caroline was living with a woman called Nancy Wood. Fair enough, I thought. Live and let live. I’m a musician, not the bohemian type, perhaps, but I’ve been around enough oddballs in my time not to worry about them too much. And I’m fairly broad-minded. So Caroline was a lesbian. I never for a moment thought that my wife…’

‘So if you blamed anyone it was Caroline?’

‘Yes.’ He hesitated, realizing what he’d said. ‘But I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘What did you do yesterday evening?’

He sipped his coffee and spoke, half into the mug. Stayed in. With Patsy. We don’t go out all that much.’

Patsy looked at Banks and nodded in agreement. He saw shadows behind her eyes. He wasn’t sure he believed her. ‘Do you own a car?’ he asked.

‘We both do.’

‘Where do you park?’

‘We’ve got spots reserved in the village, behind the pub. Obviously there’s no parking up here.’

‘When did you last see your wife?’

He thought for a moment. ‘About a month ago. I was in Eastvale on business and I dropped in to see how Veronica was doing. I called at the shop first. I usually do that to avoid meeting Caroline, but sometimes if it’s evening I just have to face it out.’

‘How did Caroline react to these visits?’

‘She’d leave the room.’

‘So you never spoke to her?’

‘Not much, no. And Veronica would be tense. I’d never end up staying long if Caroline was around.’

‘Are you sure that was the last time you visited the house, a month ago?’

‘Yes, of course I am.’

‘You didn’t go there yesterday evening?’

‘I told you. We stayed in.’

‘You’re a musician,’ Banks said. ‘You must know Vivaldi’s work.’

‘I – of course I do.’

‘Do you know the Laudate pueri?’

Ivers turned aside and reached for some bread and butter. ‘Which one? He wrote four, you know.’

‘Four what?’

‘Four settings for the same liturgical piece. I think it’s Psalm 112, but I can’t be sure. Why do you ask?’

‘Have you heard of a singer called Magda Kalmar?’

‘Yes. But I-’

‘Did you usually buy your wife a Christmas present?’

‘I did last year.’

‘And this year?’

He buttered his bread as he spoke. ‘I was going to. Am. I just haven’t got round to it yet.’

‘Better hurry up, then,’ Banks said with a smile. ‘Only one more shopping day to Christmas.’ He put his cup down on the hearth and stood up to leave. ‘Thank you very much for the tea and bread,’ he said to Patsy, ‘and it was an honour to meet you Mr Ivers. I’ve enjoyed your music for a long time.’

Ivers raised an eyebrow. Banks was thankful he just nodded and didn’t say anything about being surprised that policemen listened to music.

Banks walked over to the door and Ivers followed him. ‘About Veronica,’ he said. ‘She must be in a terrible state Do you think she needs me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Banks said. He honestly didn’t. Did a wife who lost her female lover turn back to her husband for comfort? ‘Maybe you should ask her.’

Ivers nodded, and the last thing Banks noticed before the door closed was the darkening expression in Patsy Janowski’s eyes, fixed on the pipe in Ivers’s hand.

He made his way against the wind back to the car and drove up the hill again. The Ivers household had left him with a strange feeling. However rustic and cosy it was, he couldn’t help but suspect that all was not well, and that nobody had told him the complete truth. He had little doubt that Ivers had bought the record for Veronica and had more than likely delivered it, too. But he couldn’t prove it. As soon as he could, he would go back to visit Claude Ivers again.

THREE

The Queen’s Arms was never very busy at five o’clock on a winter’s afternoon. It was too late for the lunchtime drinkers and too early for the after-work crowd. The only other customers, apart from Banks, Richmond and Susan Gay, were three or four people with shopping bags full of Christmas presents.

The three of them sat in the deep armchairs around the fire. Banks and Richmond were drinking pints and Susan had accepted a brandy and soda. They had pooled their notes and still had nothing concrete to go on. Richmond had discovered that Nancy Wood had left Eastvale for an extended trip to Australia. A phone call to immigration had established that she was indeed there. Richmond followed with a call to the Sydney police, who got back to him a couple of hours later with positive confirmation. That was one serious suspect eliminated.

Richmond had so far got nowhere with the photograph of Ruth, the mysterious woman. The record, too, remained unexplained. They would have to start canvassing classical record shops all over England, and that would take time. Veronica Shildon’s therapist had confirmed that Veronica had left her office at about seven o’clock the previous evening, as usual, and that she had mentioned going shopping.

‘You said that Caroline ran off to London when she was sixteen?’ Banks said to Susan.

‘That’s what her brother told me.’

‘And she was down there for about six years before she came up to Eastvale. A lot can happen in that time. Any idea where she was?’

‘Sorry, sir, they didn’t seem to know anything. Either that or they weren’t saying.’

‘Was that the feeling you got?’

‘There was certainly something weird about them. Susan shuddered as she spoke.

‘Never mind. We’ll find out when we talk to them again. Maybe you can get a printout from the PNC, Phil? Caroline Hartley might have a record down there. Runaways often get in trouble with the law.’

Richmond nodded.

‘Any other leads?’ Banks asked.

They shook their heads. He smiled. ‘Don’t look so bloody despondent, Susan. At least it means you’ll get Christmas Day at home.’

‘Sir?’

‘If we don’t solve a murder in twenty-four hours, the odds are we’ll be at it a long time. A day here or there isn’t going to make a lot of difference unless we come up with a hot lead tomorrow. And it is Christmas. Things slow down. You know as well as I do it’s impossible to get anything done for a couple of days. Nobody’s around, for a start. All we can do is get the statements sorted out and see if we can build up a clear picture of the victim. You find often enough that the seeds of the death are in the life, so to speak, and given the life Caroline Hartley led that may have been more apt in her case. We’ll do what we can with the photo, the record and the London connection, and in a day or two we’ll visit her family again and push a bit harder. Maybe you and I could have a bit of a chat with the amateur dramatic society again, too, Susan. There might be some connections there – jealousy, rivalry, something like that.’

Susan nodded.

‘And I don’t think Veronica Shildon’s coming clean with us, either,’ Banks went on. ‘But then she’s not likely to. She’ll be protecting Caroline’s memory, especially if there’s any shady business in the girl’s past. Her alibi checks out, but there are ten minutes unaccounted for between her return home and going to Christine Cooper’s. She could have nipped back earlier, too, say between seven and half past, if she’d wanted to, and only pretended to arrive later. Then there’s Cooper himself, and his wife for that matter. If there was anything odd going on between those two households, who knows what kind of can of worms it might have opened. All I’m saying is that we should keep an open mind while we let them all stew for a while. Let them enjoy Christmas. Maybe we’ll do the rounds again on Boxing Day when they’re all full and comfy. An old sparring partner of mine from the Met, Dirty Dick Burgess, always used to prefer Sundays for surprise raids. Boxing Day’s probably even better.’

Richmond raised his eyebrows at the mention of Burgess. Banks and Dirty Dick had locked horns over a politically sensitive case in Eastvale last spring, and they had hardly parted on the best of terms. Apart from Banks and Burgess, only Richmond knew the full story.

Banks looked at his watch and finished his pint. ‘Right. I’d better be off now. I want to see if that post-mortem report’s turned up yet.’ It was already dark outside and the snow had just started falling again.

The report had indeed turned up. Banks skipped the technical details for the layman’s synopsis that Dr Glendenning always courteously provided.

There was nothing new at first. She had been hit, probably punched, on the cheek, and the blow could have rendered her unconscious. After that, she had been viciously and repeatedly stabbed with her own kitchen knife. The only blood found at the scene was hers. Her dressing gown had no bloodstains on it, so it had been removed – or Caroline herself had removed it – before the stabbing. Glendenning had found no signs at all of sexual interference. He had, however, found crumbs of chocolate cake in several of the wounds, which led him to believe that the knife had been lying by the cake on the table. If so, Banks thought, they were probably dealing with a spur of the moment attack, a weapon at hand, grabbed and used in anger. There were no signs of skin or blood under her fingernails, which meant she hadn’t had a chance to fight off her attacker.

And that was it, apart from the general information Banks read idly through – health basically sound, appendix scar, gave birth to a child… He stopped and read that part over again. According to Glendenning, who had been as thorough as usual, the cervix showed a multiparous os, which meant the deceased had, at some point, had a baby.

That cast an interesting new light on things. Not only did it mean she had had at least one heterosexual relationship, it might also explain why she went to London, or what might have happened to her down there. All the more imperative, therefore, to find out exactly where she’d been and what she’d done. Banks felt that the photograph was a clue. Given that it was the only memento she’d kept, apart from a pressed flower, Ruth was obviously someone important from Caroline’s past.

Banks walked over to the window and looked out on the market square. It looked like one of Brueghel’s winter scenes. The tree was lit up and shoppers crossed the whitened cobbles to and fro with their packages. Banks was glad he’d done his Christmas shopping a week ago. The only thing that remained was the booze. He’d buy that tomorrow: a bottle of port, a nice dry sherry, perhaps some Ciardhu single malt, if he could afford it. Then his thoughts drifted back to Caroline Hartley. A baby. What a bloody turn up! And if there was a baby, somewhere there had to be a father. Maybe a father with a grudge.

Eager to find out if there had been any progress on the record and the scrap of wrapping paper, he phoned the forensic lab and asked for Vic Manson.

Manson was slightly breathless when he came on the line. ‘What is it? I’d just this minute put my overcoat on. I was on my way out.’

Banks smiled to himself and lit a cigarette. Manson was always on his way somewhere. ‘Sorry, Vic. I won’t keep you long. Just wanted to know if you’ve got anything for us on the Hartley murder.’

Manson sighed. ‘Not a lot. No dabs we can’t account for. The knife was washed, but we found traces of blood and crumbs where the blade meets the handle.’

‘What about the record?’

‘Nothing. Besides, people usually hold records by the edge. No room for prints there. The cover and inside sleeve were clean, too.’

‘Anything else?’

‘It looked new, the record. As far as we can tell it was in mint condition, only been played a few times.’

‘How many?’

‘Can’t tell for sure – two or three at the most – but take our word, it was new.’

‘The paper?’

‘Common or garden Christmas wrapping paper. Could have come from anywhere. It does look like it had been wrapped around the record, though. It fits to a tee. But there’s no gift tag with the murderer’s name on, unfortunately.’

‘Well, at least we’ve got something. Thanks, Vic. Look, can you send the record over to me when you’ve done with it?’

‘Of course. Tomorrow okay?’

‘Fine. Don’t let me keep you any longer. And have a good Christmas.’

‘You too.’

Banks hung up, walked back to the window and lit a cigarette. What the hell was it about the music that bothered him? Why did it have to mean something? He would find out as much as he could about Vivaldi’s Laudate pueri, all four versions. Claude Ivers admitted he knew them, but that didn’t mean anything. He must have known that if he’d feigned ignorance, given his musical reputation, Banks would have immediately become even more suspicious. But Ivers knew more than he let on, that was for certain. And so did Patsy Janowski, she of the wandering eyes. Well, give them time, he thought, as he smoked and looked down on the Brueghel scene, they’re not going anywhere. Let them think they’re safe, then…