Wednesday's Child ib-6

by Peter Robinson

  “I’ll tell you one thing for free,” he said as they got in the car.

  “What’s that?” said Richmond.

  “He had a gun, Chivers did. I saw it once when he was showing off with it in front of his girlfriend.”

  “What kind of gun?”

  “How would I know? I don’t know nothing about them.”

  “Big, small, medium?”

  “It wasn’t that big. Like those toy guns you play with when you’re a kid. But it weren’t no toy.”

  “A revolver?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Isn’t it enough just to know the bastard’s got a gun?”

  “Yes,” sighed Richmond, looking over at Susan. “Yes, it is.”

  Ill

  Banks and Gristhorpe leaned on the railings above the

  beach and ate fish and chips out of cardboard cartons.

  The hotel didn’t do evening meals, and, as in most seaside

  towns, all the cafés seemed to close at five or six.

  “Not bad,” said Gristhorpe, “but they do them better up north.”

  “If you like them greasy.”

  “Traitor. I keep forgetting you’re still just a southerner underneath it all.”

  Banks tossed his empty carton into a rubbish-bin and looked out to sea. Close to shore, bright stars shone through gaps in the clouds and reflected in the dark water. Farther out, the cloud-covering thickened and dimmed the quarter moon. The breeze that was slowly driving the clouds inland carried a chill, and Banks was glad he had put on a pullover under his sports jacket. He sniffed the bracing air, sharp with ozone. A few cars droned along The Esplanade, and the sound of people talking or laughing in the night drifted on the air occasionally, but mostly it was quiet. Banks lit a cigarette and drew deep. Silly, he thought, but it tasted better out here in the sea air pervaded with the smells of saltwater and

  seaweed.

  “Do you know,” said Banks finally, “I think I’m developing a feel for Chivers. I know he’s been here. I know he killed the girl.”

  Gristhorpe gave him a steady, appraising look. “Not turning psychic on me, are you, Alan?”

  Banks laughed. “Not me. Look, there’s the white Fiesta, the smile, the blonde, the neatness of the hotel room. You’ll agree the incidents have those things in common?”

  “Aye. And tomorrow morning we’ll have a word with the hotel staff and look over Loder’s reports, see if we can’t amass enough evidence to be sure. Maybe then we’ll know what the next move is. If that bastard’s slipped away abroad …” Gristhorpe crumpled up his cardboard box and tossed it in the bin.

  “We’ll get him.”

  Gristhorpe raised an eyebrow. “More intuition?”

  “No. Just sheer dogged determination.”

  Gristhorpe clapped Banks lightly on the shoulder. “That I can understand. I think I’ll turn in now. Coming?”

  Banks sniffed the night air. He felt too restless to go to bed so soon. “Think I’ll take a walk on the prom,” he said. “Just to clear out the cobwebs.”

  “Right. See you at breakfast.”

  Banks watched Gristhorpe, a tall, powerful man in a chunky Swaledale sweater, cross the road, then he started walking along the promenade. A few couples, arms around one another, strolled by, but Weymouth at ten-thirty that Friday evening in late September was as dead as any out-of-season seaside resort. Over the road stood the tall Georgian terrace houses, most of them converted into hotels. Lights shone behind some curtains, but most of the rooms were dark.

  When he got to the Jubilee Clock, an ornate structure built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, Banks took the steps down to the beach. The tide hadn’t been out long and the glistening sand was wet like a hardening gel under his feet. The footprints he made disappeared as soon as he moved on.

  As he walked, it was of John Cowper Powys he thought, not Thomas Hardy. Somebody had mentioned Weymouth Sands to him around Christmas time and, intrigued, he had bought a copy. Now, as he actually trod Weymouth sands himself for the first time since he was a child, he thought of the opening scene where Magnus Muir stood meditating on the relationship between the all-consuming unity of the sea and the peculiar and individual character of each wave. The Esplanade lights reflected in the wet sand, which sucked in the remaining moisture with a hissing sound every time a wave retreated.

  Heady thoughts for a lowly chief inspector. He stood for a moment and let the waves lick at his shoes. Farther south, the lights of the car ferry terminal seemed to hang suspended over the water. Loder was right, he thought: Chivers would have been a fool to take his car. Much easier to mingle with the foot-passengers and rent one wherever he went. Or, even more anonymous, travel by train if he got to France.

  Seeing the dead woman in the hotel had shaken Banks more than he realized. Wondering why, as he doubled back along the ribbed sand at the edge of the beach, he felt it was perhaps because of Sandra. There was only a superficial resemblance, of course, but it was enough to remind him of Sandra in her twenties. Though Sandra had ridiculed the idea, the photo of Gemma Scupham had also reminded him of a younger Tracy, albeit a less doleful-looking one. Tracy took after Sandra, whereas

  Brian, with his small, lean, dark-haired Celtic appearance, took after Banks. There were altogether too many resemblances for comfort in this case.

  Banks thought about what he had said earlier, the feel he was developing for the way Chivers operated. Then he thought about what he hadn’t told Gristhorpe. Standing in that room and looking down at the dead woman, Banks had known, as surely as he knew what happened at Johnson’s murder, that Chivers had been making love to her, smiling down, and that as he was reaching his climax—that brief pause for a sigh that Les Poole had mentioned—he had taken the pillow and held it over her face. She had struggled, scratching and gouging his skin, but he had pushed it down and ejaculated as she died.

  Was he really beginning to understand something of Chivers’s psychopathic thought processes? It was a frightening notion, and for a moment he felt himself almost pull in his antennae and reject the insight. But he couldn’t.

  The blonde woman—he wished he knew her name— must somehow have started to become a liability. Perhaps she was having second thoughts about what they’d done to Gemma; maybe she was overcome by guilt and had threatened to go to the police. Perhaps Chivers had conned her into thinking they were taking the child for some other reason, and she had found out what really happened. She could have panicked when she saw the newspaper likenesses, and Chivers didn’t feel he could trust her any longer. Or maybe he just grew tired of her. Whatever the reason, she ceased to be of use to him, and someone like Chivers would then start to think of an interesting way to get rid of her.

  He must be easily bored, Banks thought, remembering what he and Jenny had talked about in the Queen’s

  Arms. A creative intelligence, though clearly a warped one, he showed imagination and daring. For some years, he had been able to channel his urges into legitimate criminal activity—a contradiction in terms, Banks realized, but nonetheless true. Chivers had sought work from people who had logical, financial reasons for what they employed him to do, and however evil they were, whatever harm they did, there was no denying that at bottom they were essentially businessmen gone wrong, the other side of the coin, not much different from insider traders and the rest of the corporate crooks.

  Now, though, perhaps because he was deteriorating, losing control, as Jenny had said, Chivers was starting to create his own opportunities for pleasure, financed by simple heists like the Fletcher’s warehouse job. The money he got from such ventures would allow him the freedom to roam the country and follow his fancy wherever it led him. And by paying cash, he would leave no tell-tale credit-card traces.

  Now, it seemed, Chivers was escalating, craving more dangerous thrills to satiate his needs. He was like a drug addict; he always needed more to keep him at the same level. Ge
mma Scupham, Carl Johnson, the blonde. How quickly was he losing control? Was he starting to get careless?

  A wave soaked one foot and the bottom of his pant leg. He stepped back and did a little dance to shake the water off. Then he reached for a cigarette and, for some reason, thought of Brian, not more than seventy miles east of him, in Portsmouth. College had only just started, and he might be feeling lonely and alien in a strange city. It was so close, yet Banks wouldn’t be able to visit.

  He missed his son. Much as Tracy had always seemed the favourite, with her interests in history and literature, her curiosity and intelligence, and Brian always the out

  sider, the rebel, with his loud rock music and his lack of interest in school, Banks missed him. Certainly he felt the odd one out now that Tracy was only interested in boys and clothes.

  Brian was eighteen, and Banks had turned forty in May. With a smile, he remembered the compact disc of Nigel Kennedy playing the Brahms violin concerto that Brian had bought him for his birthday. Well, at least the thought was there. And he also remembered his recent row with Tracy. In a way, she had been right: Brian had got away with a lot, especially that summer, before he had left for the polytechnic: late-night band practices; a week-long camping trip to Cornwall with his mates; coming in once or twice a little worse for drink. But of one thing Banks was certain: Brian wasn’t taking drugs. As an experienced detective, he knew the signs, physical and psychological, and had never observed them in his son.

  He turned from the beach and found a phonebox on The Esplanade. It was eleven o’clock. Would he be in? He put his phonecard in and punched in the number Brian shared with the other students in the house. It started to ring.

  “Hello?”

  A strange voice. He asked for Brian, said it was his father.

  “Just a minute,” the voice mumbled.

  He waited, tapping his fingers against the glass, and after a few moments Brian came on the line.

  “Dad! What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just down the coast from you and I wanted to say hello. How are you doing?” Banks felt choked, hearing Brian’s voice. He wasn’t sure his words came out right.

  “I’m fine,” Brian answered.

  “How’s college?”

  “Oh, you know. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Look, are you sure there’s nothing wrong? Mum’s okay, isn’t she?”

  “I told you, everything’s all right. It’s just that I won’t be able to make the time to drop by and I thought, well, being so close, I’d just give you a ring.”

  “Is it a case?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence.

  “Are you still there, Dad?”

  “Of course I am. When are you coming up to visit us again?”

  “I’ll be up at Christmas. Hey, I’ve met some really great people down here. They play music and all. There’s this one guy, we’re going to form a band, and he’s been playing some great blues for me. You ever heard of Robert Johnson? Muddy Waters?”

  Banks smiled to himself and sighed. If Brian had ever taken the trouble to examine his collection—and of course, no teenager would be seen dead sharing his father’s taste in music—he would have found not only the aforementioned, but Little Walter, Bessie Smith and Big Bill Broonzy, among several dozen others.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of them,” he said. “I’m glad you’re having a good time. Look, keep in touch. Your mother says you don’t write often enough.”

  “Sorry. There’s really a lot of work to do. But I’ll try to do better, promise.”

  “You do. Look—”

  His time ran out and he didn’t have another card. Just a few more seconds to say hurried goodbyes, then the electronic insect sound of a dead line. When he put the phone down and started walking back to the hotel, Banks felt empty. Why was it always like that? he wondered. You call someone you love on the phone, and when

  you’ve finished talking, all you feel is the bloody distance between you. Time to try sleep, perhaps, after a little music. Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care. Some hope.

  13

  I

  Hotel or bed and breakfast, it didn’t seem to make much

  difference with regard to the traditional English breakfast,

  thought Gristhorpe the following morning. Of

  course, there was more choice at the Mellstock Hotel

  than there would be in a typical B and B, but no one in

  his right mind would want to start the day with a “continental”

  breakfast—a stale croissant and a gob of

  strawberry jam in a plastic container. As it was, Banks

  sat struggling over a particularly bony kipper while

  Gristhorpe stuck to bacon and eggs and wished he

  hadn’t. Between them, they shared a rack of cold toast

  and a pot of weak instant coffee.

  Gristhorpe felt grumpy. He hadn’t slept well; the mattress had been too soft, and his back was bothering him. The breakfast didn’t help either, he realized, feeling the onset of heartburn.

  “I dropped in at the hotel bar for a nightcap yesterday,” he said, pushing the plate aside and pouring more coffee. “Thought I might be able to get something out of the regulars.”

  “And?” asked Banks, pulling a bone from the corner of his mouth.

  292

  “Nothing much. There’s a couple from Wolver hampton staying the week, and they said the Barlows, as they called themselves, were in once or twice. Always pleasant. You know, nodded and said hello, but never got into any conversations. The missis thought they were a honeymoon couple.”

  “You know,” said Banks, “he’s really starting to get on my nerves, Chivers. He turns up somewhere, goes around smiling like Mr Clean, and people die.”

  “What do you expect?”

  “It’s just his bloody nerve. It’s as if he’s challenging us, playing catch-meifyou-can.”

  “Aye, I know what you mean,” said Gristhorpe, with a scowl. “And we won’t catch him sitting here picking at this fine English cuisine. Come on.” He pushed his plate away and stood up abruptly, leaving Banks to follow suit.

  The hotel manager had provided a small room on the ground floor for them to conduct interviews. First, they read over the statements that DI Loder and his men had taken from the hotel staff, then asked to see Meg Wayne, the chambermaid.

  She looked no older than fourteen or fifteen, a frightened schoolgirl with her uniform and starched cap that couldn’t quite contain her abundant golden hair. She had a pale, clear complexion, and with a couple of red spots on her cheeks, Gristhorpe thought, she could probably pass herself off as one of Tess’s milkmaid friends in Hardy’s book. Her Dorset burr was even more pronounced than Loder’s, her voice soft and surprisingly low.

  “Mr Ballard, the manager, said I could take the day off,” she said, “but I don’t see the point, do you? I mean, the rooms need doing every day no matter what happens, and I could certainly do with the money.”

  “Still,” said Gristhorpe, “it must have been a shock?”

  “Oh yes. I’ve never seen a dead body before. Only on telly, like.”

  “Tell us what you saw yesterday, Meg.”

  “We-ell, I opens the door as usual, and as soon as I does I knows something’s wrong.”

  “Were the curtains open?”

  “Part way. Enough to see by.”

  “And the window?”

  “Open a bit. It was chilly.” She fiddled with a set of room keys on her lap as she spoke.

  “Did you go into the room?”

  “Not right in. I just stood in the doorway, like, and I could see her there on the bed, with her head all covered up.”

  “Tell me exactly what you saw,” said Gristhorpe. He knew that people tend to embellish on what they have observed. He also wanted to be certain that Loder and his SOCO team had restored the room to the way it had been when Meg opened the door. He grimaced and rubbed his stomach
; the heartburn was getting worse.

  “It looked like just twisted sheets at first,” she said, “but then, when my eyes grew more accustomed, I could tell it was someone under there. A shape.” She blushed and looked down at her lap. “A woman’s shape. And the pillow was over her head, so I knew she was … dead.”

  “It’s all right, Meg,” said Gristhorpe. “I know it’s upsetting. We won’t be much longer.”

  Meg nodded and took a deep breath.

  “Did you see the woman’s face?”

  “No. No, I just knew it was a woman by the outline of the sheets.”

  “Did you disturb anything in the room?”

  “Nothing. Like I told Mr Loder, I ran straight off to Mr Ballard and he sent for the police. That’s God’s honest truth, sir.”

  “I believe you,” said Gristhorpe. “We just have to make certain. You must have been upset. Maybe there’s something you forgot?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right. Did you ever see the people who were staying in that room?”

  “Not as far as I know. I don’t see many guests, sir. I have to do my job when they’re out.”

  “Of course. Now think, Meg, try to remember, was there anything else about the scene that struck you at the time?”

  Meg squeezed her eyes shut and fiddled with the keys. Finally, she looked at Gristhorpe again. “Just how tidy it was, sir. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the mess some guests leave you to clean up. Not that I mind, like. I know they pay for the service and it’s my job, but…”

  “So this room was unusually tidy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see anything at all on the table or the dresser?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. They were empty.”

  “All right, Meg, we’re just about finished now. Can you remember anything else at all?”

  “Well, it’s funny,” she said, “but just now when I had my eyes closed I did remember something. I never really paid it any mind at the time, though I must have noticed, but it stuck.”