Wednesday's Child ib-6

by Peter Robinson

  They glanced quickly at one another, then Gristhorpe nodded and swung himself into the doorway first, gun sweeping the hall and stairwell. Nothing. Banks followed, adopting the stance he had learned in training: gun extended in one hand, other hand gripping the wrist. They got to the front room and found no one. But there, beyond the french windows, one of which had been smashed by a careless elbow as he dashed by, they saw Chivers running down the lawn towards the riverbank.

  “Get on the radio, Alan,” said Gristhorpe. “Tell them to close in. And tell them to be bloody careful. Get an ambulance here, too.”

  Banks dashed to the car and gave the message to the plain-clothes watchers, all of whom carried police radios in their fishing boxes or picnic hampers. After he had radioed headquarters for an ambulance, he hurried through the house after Gristhorpe and Chivers.

  Chivers was in the garden, heading for the river. As he ran, he turned around and fired several times. A window shattered, slate chips showered from the roof, then Gristhorpe went down. Banks took cover behind the copper beech and looked back at the superintendent’s body sprawled on the lawn. He wanted to go to him, but he couldn’t break cover. Carefully, he edged around the tree trunk and looked for Chivers.

  There weren’t many places Chivers could go. Fences and thick hedges blocked off the riverbank to the east and west, enclosing Harkness’s property, and ahead lay

  the water. With a quick glance right and left and a wild shot, Chivers charged into the water. Soon it was up to his hips, then his waist. He aimed towards the tree and fired again. The bullet thudded into the bark. When Banks looked around the trunk again, he saw the other police in a line across the river, all with guns, closing fast. Gristhorpe must have commandeered the whole bloody dale, he thought. Glancing back towards the house, he saw Susan Gay and Phil Richmond framed by the french window staring at Gristhorpe. He waved to them to take cover.

  Chivers stopped when the water came up to his armpits and fired again, but the hammer fell with an empty click. He tried a few more times, but it was empty. Banks shouted for Richmond and Susan to see to the superintendent, then he walked down the slope.

  “Come on,” he said. “Look around you. It’s over.” Chivers looked and saw the men lining the opposite bank. They were in range now. He looked again at Banks. Then he shrugged, tossed the gun in the water, and smiled.

  II

  Everything had been done by the book; Banks saw to

  that. Thus, when they finally got to talk to Chivers, the

  custody record had been opened; he had been offered the

  right to legal advice, which he had repeatedly refused;

  offered the chance to inform a friend or relative of his arrest,

  at which he had laughed; and even offered a cup of

  tea, which he had accepted. The desk sergeant had managed

  to rustle up a disposable white boiler suit to replace

  his wet clothes, as according to the Police and Criminal

  Evidence Act, “a person may not be interviewed unless

  adequate clothing has been offered to him.” And the interview room they sat in, while not especially large, was at least “adequately heated, lit and ventilated” according to the letter of the law. If questioning went on for a long time, Chivers would be brought meals and allowed periods of rest.

  In addition, Jenny Fuller had turned up at the station and asked if she could be present during the questioning. It was an unusual request, and at first Banks refused. Jenny persisted, claiming her presence might even help, as Chivers seemed to like to show off to women. Finally, Banks asked Chivers’s permission, which galled him, and Chivers said, “The more the merrier.”

  Back at Harkness’s house, Banks knew, the SOCO team would be collecting evidence, Glendenning poring over Harkness’s body, a group of constables digging up the garden that Carl Johnson had so lovingly tended, and police frogmen searching the river.

  Sometimes, thought Banks, the creaking machinery of the law was a welcome prophylactic on his desire to reach out and throttle someone. Hampered as he had often felt by the Act, today, ironically enough, he was glad of it as he sat across the table looking at the man who had murdered at least three people, wounded Superintendent Gristhorpe and abducted Gemma Scupham.

  As he looked, he certainly felt the impulse to kill Chivers, simply to swat him as one would a troublesome wasp. But it wasn’t an impulse he was proud of. All his life, both in spite of and because of his job, Banks had tried to cultivate his own version of compassion. If crime really was part of what made us human, he thought, then it merited deep study. If we simply kill off the pests that bother us, we make no progress at all. He knew that he could, in some strange way, learn from Chivers. It was a knowledge he might deeply wish to reject, but spiritual

  and intellectual cowardice had never been among his failings.

  Banks sat opposite Chivers, Richmond stood behind him, by the door, and Jenny sat by the window, diagonally across from him.

  Close up, the monster didn’t look like much at all, Banks noted. About Banks’s height, and with the same kind of lean, wiry strength, he sat erect, hands placed palms down on the table in front of him, their backs covered with ginger down. His skin was pale, his hair an undistinguished shade of sandy brown, and his general look could only be described as boyish—the kind of boy who pulled pranks and was amused to see their effects on the victims.

  If there was anything outstanding about him at all, it was his eyes. They were the kind of green the sea looks sometimes, and when he wasn’t smiling they looked just as cold, as deep and as unpredictable as the ocean itself. When he did smile, though, they lit up with such a bright, honest light you felt you could trust him with anything. At least, it was almost like that, Banks thought, if it weren’t for that glint of madness in them; not quite insanity, but close enough to the edge. Not everyone would notice, but then not everyone was looking at him as a murderer.

  Banks turned on the tape-recorder, repeated the caution and reminded Chivers of his rights. “Before we get onto the other charges against you,” he said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Gemma Scupham.”

  “Why not?” said Chivers. “It was just a lark really.” His voice, a little more whiny and high-pitched than Banks had expected, bore no trace of regional accent; it was as bland and characterless as a BBC 2 announcer’s.

  “Whose idea was it?”

  “Mr Harkness wanted a companion.”

  “How did he get in touch with you?”

  “Through Carl Johnson. We’d known each other for a while. Carl was … well, between you and me he wasn’t too bright. Like that other chap, what’s his name?”

  “Poole?”

  “That’s right. Small-time, the two of them. Lowlifes.”

  “How did you first meet Harkness?”

  “Look, does any of this really matter? It’s very dull stuff for me, you know.” He shifted in his chair, and Banks noticed him look over at Jenny.

  “Humour us.”

  Chivers sighed. “Oh, very well. Harkness knew Carl was a gutless oaf, of course, but he had contacts. Harkness needed someone taken care of a couple of months ago.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Someone had been stealing from him in the London office, apparently, and Harkness wanted him taught a lesson. Carl got in touch with me.”

  “What happened?”

  “I did the job, of course. Harkness paid well. I got an inkling from our little chats that this was a man with unusual tastes and plenty of money. I thought a nice little holiday in Yorkshire might turn out fruitful.” He smiled.

  “And did it?”

  “Of course.”

  “How much?”

  “Please. A gentleman never discusses money.”

  “How much?”

  Chivers shrugged. “I asked for twenty thousand pounds. We compromised on seventeen-fifty.”

  “So you abducted Gemma Scupham just for money?”

  “No, no. Of course
not. Not just for the money.” Chivers leaned forward. “You don’t understand, do you? It sounded like fun, too. It had to be interesting.”

  “So you’d heard about Gemma through Les Poole and

  thought she would be the perfect candidate?”

  “Oh, the fool was always moaning about her. Her mother sounded as thick as two short planks, and she clearly didn’t care much about the child anyway. They didn’t want her. Harkness did. It’s a buyer’s market. It was almost too easy. We picked her up, drove around for a while just to be on the safe side, then dropped her off at Harkness’s after dark and returned the car.” He smiled. “You should have seen his face light up. It was love at first sight.”

  “Did either Johnson or Poole know about this?”

  “I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t have trusted either of them.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Nothing. It was the perfect crime,” Chivers mused. “But Carl got foolish and greedy. Otherwise you’d never have gone anywhere near Harkness.”

  “But we did.”

  “Yes. Carl suspected something. Maybe he actually saw the child, I don’t know. Or perhaps he caught Harkness drooling over his kiddie porn and put two and two together. That surprised me, that did. I never thought him capable of that. Putting two and two together and coming up with the right answer. I must admit I underestimated him.”

  “What happened?”

  Chivers made a steeple with his hands and his eyes glazed over. He seemed lost in his own world. Banks repeated the question. Chivers seemed to come back from a great distance.

  “What? Oh.” He gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “He tried to put the touch on Harkness. Harkness got worried and called me again. I said I’d take care of it.”

  “For a fee?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t say I’m in it for the money, but

  I need a fair bit to keep me in the style to which I’m accustomed. Harkness arranged to meet him at the old lead mine to pay him off and Chelsea and I gave him a lift there. Poor bastard, he never suspected a thing.”

  “Chelsea?”

  He stared at a spot above Banks’s left shoulder. “Yes. Silly name, isn’t it? Fancy naming someone after a flower show, or a bun. Poor Chelsea. She just couldn’t quite understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “The beauty of it all.” Chivers’s eyes turned suddenly back on Jenny. They looked like a dark green whirlpool, Banks thought, with blackness at its centre, evil with a sense of humour. “She liked it at the time, you know, the thrill. And she never liked poor Carl anyway. She said he was always undressing her with his eyes. You should have seen the look in her eyes when I killed him. She was standing right next to me and I could smell her sex. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun later that night. But she got jittery, read the newspapers, began to wonder, asked too many questions …. As I said, she didn’t fully comprehend the beauty of it all.”

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  He turned his eyes slowly back to Banks. “Yes. That was the last straw. It turned her all weepy, the sentimental fool. I had to kill her then.”

  “Why?”

  “Wouldn’t want another one like me in this universe, would we?” He winked. “Besides, it was what she wanted. I have a knack of knowing what people really want.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Death, of course. She enjoyed it. I know. I was there. It was glorious, the way she thrust and struggled.” He looked over at Jenny again. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “And Harkness?” Banks said.

  “Oh, it was very easy to see into his dirty soul. Little children. Little kiddies. He’d had it easy before. South Africa, Amsterdam. He found it a bit difficult here. He was getting desperate, that’s all. It’s simply a matter of knowing the right people.”

  Banks noticed that Chivers had dampened a part of his cuff and was rubbing at an old coffee ring on the desk. “What happened to Gemma?” he asked.

  He shrugged. “No idea. I completed my side of the bargain. I suppose when the old pervert had finished with her he probably killed her and buried the body under the petunia patch or something. Isn’t that what they do? Or maybe he sold her, tried to recoup what he’d spent. There’s plenty in the market for that kind of thing, you know.”

  “What about the clothing we found?”

  “You want me to do your job for you? I don’t know. I suppose as soon as things got too hot for him he wanted to put you off the scent. Does that sound about right?”

  “Why did you come back to Eastvale? You could probably have got away, you know.”

  Chivers’s eyes dulled. “Fatal flaw, I suppose. I can’t bear to miss anything. Besides, you only caught me because I wanted you to, you know. I’ve never been on trial, never been in jail. It might be interesting. And, remember, I’m not there yet.” He shot Jenny a quick smile and began to rub harder at the coffee stain, still making no impression. He was clearly uncomfortable in the boiler suit they had found for him, too, scratching now and then where the rough material made his skin itch.

  Banks walked over to the door and opened it to the two uniformed officers who stood outside and nodded for them to take Chivers down to the holding cells for the time being.

  Chivers sat at the desk staring down at the stain he was rubbing and rubbing. Finally, he gave up and banged the table once, hard, with his fist.

  Ill

  Banks stood by his office window with the light off and

  looked down on the darkening market square again, a

  cigarette between his fingers. Like Phil and Jenny, he

  had felt as if he needed a long, hot bath after watching

  and listening to Chivers. It was odd how they had drifted

  away to try to scrub themselves free of the dirt: Jenny,

  pale and quiet, had gone home; Richmond had gone to

  the computer room. They all recognized one another’s

  need for a little solitude, despite the work that remained.

  Little people like Les Poole and others Banks had met in Eastvale sometimes made him despair of human intelligence; someone like Chivers made him wonder seriously about the human soul. Not that Banks was a religious man, but as he looked at the Norman church with its low square tower and the arched door with its carvings of the saints, he burned with unanswered questions.

  They could wait, though. The hospital had called to tell him that Gristhorpe had a flesh wound in his thigh and was already proving to be a difficult patient. The SOCOs had called several times from The Leas area; no luck so far in finding Gemma’s body, and it was getting dark. The frogmen had packed up and gone home. They had found Chivers’s gun easily enough, but no trace of Gemma. They would be back tomorrow, though they didn’t hold out much hope. The garden was in ruins, but so far the men had uncovered nothing but stones and roots.

  Harkness’s body lay in the mortuary now, and if anyone had to make him look presentable for the funeral, good luck to them. Banks shuddered at the memory. He had washed and washed his face, but he could still smell the blood, or so he thought. And he had tossed away his jacket and shirt, knowing he could never wear them again, and changed into the spares he always kept at the station.

  And he thought of Chelsea. So that was her name, the poor twisted shape on the hotel bed in Weymouth. Why had she been so drawn to a monster like Chivers? Can’t people see evil when it’s staring them right in the face? Maybe not until it’s too late, he thought. And the baby. Chivers knew his own evil, revelled in it. Chelsea. Who was she? Where did she come from? Who were her parents and what were they like? Bit by bit, he would find out.

  He had been alone with his thoughts for about an hour, watching dusk fall slowly on the cobbled square and the people dribble into the church for the evening service. The glow from the coloured-glass windows of the Queen’s Arms looked welcoming on the opposite corner. God, he could do with a drink to take the taste of blood out of his mouth, out of h
is soul.

  The harsh ring of the telephone broke the silence. He picked it up and heard Gristhorpe say, “The buggers wouldn’t let me out to question Chivers. Have you done it? Did it go all right?”

  Banks smiled to himself and assured Gristhorpe that all was well.

  “Come and see me, Alan. There’s a couple of things I want to talk about.”

  Banks put on his coat and drove over to Eastvale General. He hated hospitals, the smell of disinfectant, the starched uniforms, the pale shadows with clear fluid

  dripping into them from plastic bags being pushed on trolleys down gloomy hallways. But Gristhorpe had a pleasant enough private room. Already, someone had sent flowers and Banks felt suddenly guilty that he had come empty-handed.

  Gristhorpe looked a little pale and weak, mostly from shock and blood loss, but apart from that he seemed in fine enough fettle.

  “Harkness never expected any trouble from the police over Gemma’s abduction, did he?” he asked.

  “No,” said Banks. “As Chivers told us, why should he? It was almost the perfect crime. He’d managed to keep a very low profile in the area. Nobody knew how sick his tastes really were.”

  “Aye, but everything changed, didn’t it, after Johnson’s murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were a bit hard on Harkness, given that chip on your shoulder, weren’t you?”

  “I suppose so. What are you getting at?”

  Gristhorpe tried to sit up in bed and grimaced. “So much so that he might think we’d get onto him?” he said.

  “Probably.” Banks rearranged the pillows. “I think he felt quite certain I’d be back.” The superintendent was wearing striped pyjamas, he noticed.

  “And he claimed harassment and threatened to call the Commissioner and probably the Prime Minister for all I know.”

  “Yes.” Banks looked puzzled. What was Gristhorpe getting at? It wasn’t like him to beat about the bush. Had delirium set in?