When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery

by Peter Robinson

  ‘Winsome? That’s a lovely name.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Winsome.

  Linda gazed down her gently sloping garden towards the river. ‘Everything came all right eventually, in my twenties. I think I managed to compartmentalise things, draw a veil over the experience. I knew it was there, and it infiltrated my dreams sometimes, but I could control it most of the time, if that makes any sense. As far as missing the sexual revolution was concerned, all I’d really missed was a dose of clap, crabs, premature ejaculations and probably an unwanted pregnancy. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to shock you. I shouldn’t say things like that, of course, but it seemed that was all so many of my girlfriends had to talk about when we were students. I suppose all I had to do was meet the right man. Charles. We married in my late twenties, had children. I started a career in teaching, always writing in whatever spare time I had. Poetry. Spent a few years teaching at a Canadian university in my forties. Creative writing.’ She looked around at the garden. ‘We came back and settled here, then Charles became ill. I have to say, though, on the whole, that it’s been a happy and productive life so far. Fulfilled in so many ways. I count myself lucky.’

  ‘Except for an encounter with Danny Caxton.’

  Her expression darkened for a moment. ‘Except for him, yes. And it makes me feel terrible that he did the same thing to others. That he got away with it for so long. But I never thought of it like that until I heard about Jimmy Savile. In an odd way, it was that day in Blackpool that brought me to poetry, though. I mean, I’d been interested at school, but about a year or so later, when I came out of the deep despair, I picked up this book of poems. I don’t remember where. I don’t even know what made me pick it up. It was by Sylvia Plath. Ariel. Do you know it?’

  ‘No,’ said Banks. ‘I mean, I’ve heard the name, even seen her grave at Heptonstall, but I haven’t read the poems.’

  ‘I won’t say I understood them, but they sent my head in a spin. Direct hit. Blew me away. Shivers up the spine, the whole deal. The violent imagery, the anger, the dark fire of her imagination, that fingers-on-the-blackboard feeling. It went right to my soul, if that’s not too melodramatic a way of putting it. I went right out and bought everything she’d written. As soon as I read her I knew I wanted to be a poet. Soon I was writing poems, myself. Imitating Sylvia Plath, of course. Then I branched out, read others, the Beats, the Liverpool poets, the Russians, Hughes, Heaney, Harrison, Larkin, Hill. And I’m sure I imitated them all. Except Hill. You can’t imitate him.’

  ‘You didn’t dismiss Ted Hughes as a misogynistic swine?’

  ‘Because of what happened with Sylvia? You do know a bit about poetry, don’t you? Or at least about poets. Quite the Adam Dalgliesh.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t write it.’ Banks didn’t tell her that he had also read some Tony Harrison after a dying coal miner had mentioned him in conversation a year or two back. Enjoyed the poems, too. Harrison seemed to put his finger on how certain things, especially education, can cut you off from your roots. Banks felt that, especially as his father had never approved of his becoming a policeman, and he was sure that Linda understood it also, coming from a working-class background and ending up being a famous poet. All her old friends would be nervous around her now, thinking she had somehow transformed herself into an exotic and remote creature. Weird, indeed.

  ‘Ah, well. Who needs the competition? No. I think Ted Hughes was a brilliant poet. As far as life skills went, they both sucked.’ She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry, is that on the recorder?’

  Winsome smiled. ‘Never mind. I don’t think anyone’s going to take issue with your opinion about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.’

  Linda clapped her hands. ‘Well thank heaven for that. More orange juice?’

  Banks and Winsome exchanged glances. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Banks said, standing up. He almost felt like telling her it had been a pleasure talking to her, but he remembered what they were there for. ‘I appreciate your cooperation,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we’ll want to talk to you again and ask some more questions, if that’s all right?’

  ‘You’ll come again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘And if you remember anything in the meantime, however unimportant it seems, call me. It might be a good idea to . . . never mind.’

  ‘No, go on. What? I’m intrigued.’

  ‘It’s a lot to ask,’ Banks said, ‘but sometimes with such old memories, it helps to work at them a bit, make an effort, perhaps write things down as they come, if they come. I mean, you’re a writer after all. But it could be painful.’

  ‘No,’ said Linda, giving him a curious, probing look. ‘A journal. A memoir. It’s a good idea. I’ll try. I promise.’

  She stood up and saw them out. As they walked back up the garden path, Winsome turned to Banks and said, ‘Well, she certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. What do you think? I believed her.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Banks. ‘I think we’re in with a chance on this one. I think we might just nail the bastard, especially if her memory gets jogged a bit by writing about it. We could do with finding out that other man’s identity, though. Let’s get back to the station and prep a few questions for Mr Caxton tomorrow, then I think we can head out early tonight. We’ve got a lot of homework to do before our trip to the seaside tomorrow.’

  3

  When the two detectives had gone, Linda Palmer breathed a deep sigh and refilled her glass with orange juice. It hadn’t been as terrible an ordeal as she had worried it would be, but she still felt shaken and wrung out. She had felt again while talking to them how terrified she had been all those years ago when she went to the police station in Leeds with her mother. It had taken a great deal of her inner reserves to appear as calm and relaxed about the whole thing as she had done today, shaking inside the whole time.

  She wondered if she had seemed too detached to the detectives, too unemotional. Perhaps they hadn’t believed her. Weren’t victims supposed to behave differently? Cry, perhaps, or tremble with fear at their recollections? She worried that she may have been too flippant, too devil-may-care, laughed too often. She had wanted them to know that what had happened hadn’t ruined her life – that was important to her – though it had caused her a great deal of pain and suffering. She hoped she hadn’t gone too far in the direction of nonchalance to make them suspicious of her story. She hadn’t told them everything, of course, not all the myriad details that were etched somewhere in her memory and would, she knew, remain there for ever, along with the buried feelings that accompanied them. Though they weren’t easily accessible, the memories and feelings were still there, locked in the box she had put them in to retain her sanity in the months after the events of that summer’s day in Blackpool.

  She drank some juice then felt in her jeans pocket for the packet of Marlboro Lights and disposable lighter. She didn’t smoke much, but she needed one now, despite the wonderful sweet-scented summer air. Go on, she told herself, pollute it. Make the birds cough on your second-hand smoke. Give the blue tits cancer.

  Well, it was done now, set in motion, and things would be what they would be. Her life would never be the same, whatever the outcome. She wondered about the other women – she couldn’t bring herself to think of them as victims, though no doubt they were – and what they had gone through, what they remembered, what they were like now, how their lives had turned out. Perhaps it would have to be enough simply to know that they existed out there somewhere. There would be no collusion, of course. There would be no girly sessions in the pub. So what did he do to you, then, love? Nasty. You know he did exactly the same thing to me, and it hurt like hell. Was it your first time, too? The media would keep identities strictly secret, though how they could do that in these days of phone-hacking and a self-righteously obtrusive press she had no idea.

  She didn’t even think she would mind all that much if people did know what she had been through, that she was one of t
he complainants against Danny Caxton. What if they did find out? What was the worst that could happen? The whole country would know that she, Linda Palmer, award-winning poet, was a victim of rape. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. At least she had a certain standing in the community, a respected voice, unlike those poor girls who were groomed in the inner-city areas and used as sex objects. Nobody listened to them; they were simply written off as drugged-up slags and sluts who deserved what they got.

  Linda closed her eyes, listened to the water and felt the shadows of the leaves dancing on her eyelids. The river was a constant presence in her life, it seemed. She drew in a lungful of smoke and leaned back in her chair, which wobbled as she did so, stretching out her legs and opening her eyes again. Persy lay where she had settled, sleeping in the sun. Soon she would have to move, as her patch would fall into shadow. The kingfisher had appeared on his branch, still and watchful. As usual, when she saw him fly in the late sun, she thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem: ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’.

  As Linda exhaled the smoke, she saw it in her mind as if it were the smoke coming from the funnel of a steam train. She could almost hear the rhythm, wheels clacking over the joins in the track, feel the gentle swaying of the carriage and creaking of old woodwork, the rattling of the doors. It was the summer of 1967, and they were going on their annual holiday. Two glorious weeks in Blackpool. Linda, her mum and dad, and for the first time her best friend Melanie, along with her mum and dad, too.

  But was it a steam train that year? Hadn’t they stopped running by then? When did the diesels take over? Memory. Memory. She was sure it was a steam train, and they had a compartment to themselves, all six of them. She could remember seeing the smoke drift by the partially open window, remember its acrid smell. She could see the dark engine ahead when it turned a long curve, chugging and puffing along, carrying them towards . . .

  Linda sat up and stubbed out her cigarette, startled by the power of her memory. She hadn’t let herself remember that holiday for many years, but talking about it to the detectives today, thinking about it after she had read the news item about the latest celebrity jailed for abusing girls years ago, then thinking about it again after her father’s death, had brought it back to the front of her mind from the dark box to which she had consigned it. Whether she wanted it to or not, the box was opening, and perhaps, just perhaps, she was strong enough now to face its contents. She thought about what Banks had said about writing things down. Writing was her business, after all. Perhaps it was time.

  She had kept a diary back then, she remembered. Every year her Aunt Barbara bought her a Letts Schoolgirl Diary for Christmas. It had a thin pencil that slipped down the spine, a page for each week and all sorts of information about world capitals, flags, holidays, time zones and units of currency. There wasn’t a lot of room for writing, though it more than sufficed for most days, and she had made her carefully concise entries scrupulously every day, no matter whether or not she did anything interesting. The diaries were all gone now, of course, dumped in one of the many clear-outs she had experienced over the years. What would she have written on the nineteenth of August, 1967? she wondered. ‘Got raped. Not very nice.’ Oh stop being such a wag, Linda, she told herself. Get on with it.

  Still she faltered, half unwilling to plunge herself into the darkness that surely awaited her inside the flimsy box she had constructed to hold her memories of those days, but she was already doing that, anyway, by talking to the police, wasn’t she? No doubt she would have to testify in court, too. When she thought of the burden of all that, of the jury’s eyes on her, the Sphinx-like judge with his hooded eyes – for it would surely be a man – the hawkish defence lawyer, cynical and aggressive in his attack, making it sound as if everything she said was a lie, like they were on television, she felt suffocated, and a sense of panic engulfed her. On the other hand, maybe all this was a way, not so much of exorcising the past, but of somehow domesticating it, transforming it, making it a part of herself rather than something separate, to be shut away in a box in the dark. She knew that despite all the analysis and self-probing she had subjected herself to over the years, she hadn’t succeeded in integrating herself with her experience. Whatever else a memoir might turn out to be, it would certainly be a leap into the unknown.

  Persy rolled over and found the sun again. Linda picked up her notebook and pen and began to write. Let it be a steam train, then, she thought. The kingfisher sat on its branch across the river and continued searching for fish.

  Annie experienced a sense of déjà vu as Gerry drove down the rough track to the farmhouse, though the weather was different from her last visit to a farm, when she was making inquiries about a stolen tractor. Back then, the freezing rain had lashed down on her, the ground had been a mass of churned-up mud and dung. Today the sky was blue, the sun beat down and a sleepy sort of torpor imbued the air. Even the farmyard smells were aromatic. Almost. From where she stood, Annie could see clearly the line of trees along the road from which she had just come.

  It was a youngish man who opened the door. Early thirties, Annie guessed, his hairline already receding but otherwise trim and fit, with that weathered skin and healthy sort of glow that came from working outdoors.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  Annie and Gerry flashed their warrant cards, and a frown darkened his forehead. ‘But what could you possibly . . .?’

  ‘Mind if we come in for a minute, sir?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Oh, no, of course not. Sorry, I’m just . . . er . . . yes, please, come in.’

  They followed him into a bright, airy living room. All the windows were open and a gentle cross-breeze helped cool the place. It also carried in the whiff of the farmyard smells. A woman sat on the sofa, and when she stood to greet them, Annie could see that she was very pregnant.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Annie said. ‘Sorry to bother you. We won’t disturb you for long.’

  ‘But what is it?’ the woman asked, slowly subsiding back on to the sofa. ‘I’m Mandy, by the way. Mandy Ketteridge. My husband Toby. Please sit down.’

  ‘I’m DI Annie Cabbot, and this is my colleague DC Gerry Masterson. There’s nothing to worry about. Just a few routine questions.’ They sat in the flower-patterned armchairs opposite the matching sofa.

  Toby sat beside his wife and took her hand in his. ‘Isn’t that what you always say when you mean business?’ he said. ‘That it’s just routine?’

  ‘You’ve been watching too much TV, sir.’

  ‘Probably.’ Toby looked lovingly at his wife. ‘As you can see, we don’t get out much these days.’

  ‘How long?’ Annie asked Mandy.

  ‘Eight and a half months.’

  ‘Is it your first?’

  Mandy nodded. ‘Have you . . .?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie. ‘Never met the right fella.’

  Toby squeezed his wife’s hand. ‘Mandy’s getting a little nervous, though the doctor assures her that everything is fine.’

  I don’t bloody blame her, Annie thought. If it were me, I’d be scared stiff. ‘I’m sure it is,’ she said. She glanced at Gerry, who already had her notebook and pen out, and guessed that motherhood was probably the furthest thing from her mind at this stage of her career. Toby and Mandy were watching them both apprehensively.

  ‘It’s nothing to be worried about. Honestly,’ said Annie. ‘Our visit, I mean.’

  ‘Well, it’s not every day we have the police here,’ said Toby.

  ‘I should imagine not. You own the field that stretches up to Bradham Lane, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘There’s a section of the wall topped with barbed wire. How long has it been like that?’

  ‘About two years.’

  ‘Any reason?’

  ‘To stop people getting in.’

  ‘You were having problems?’

  ‘No,’ said Toby. ‘Not us, specifically. But Glen on the other side said he’d caught some l
ads trying to make off with several of his sheep one night. Passing them over the wall where they had a van waiting. We heard so much about rural crime and being vigilant and all, we thought that was the best solution. Why? Is it illegal?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that,’ said Annie. ‘There were a few strands of barbed wire in the ditch. Know anything about that?’

  ‘If someone got hurt,’ said Mandy, ‘we’re really sorry. The workmen who put the fence up must have left it there. To be honest, neither of us has been out there for ages. And who’d want to go in the ditch?’

  Annie glanced at Gerry. ‘No one,’ she said. ‘Not willingly, at any rate.’

  Mandy put her hand to her mouth. ‘Has something terrible happened? Has someone drowned or something?’

  She certainly was jumpy, Annie thought, perhaps afraid she might have the baby right on the spot. Eight and a half months was a bit close for comfort, and she did look fit to burst. ‘It’s nothing like that,’ she said, thinking it was something far, far worse. And Mandy Ketteridge would hear about it soon enough. Perhaps better now she was primed rather than later. ‘Someone was found dead there. By the roadside. A girl. We think she was murdered.’

  Toby squeezed his wife’s hand again. ‘Oh, my God,’ said Mandy, sounding oddly calmer now that it was out. ‘But . . . I mean . . . what has it to do with us?’

  Annie gave her best smile. ‘Nothing, I hope.’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t tell you anything,’ Toby said.

  ‘I’m not really suggesting you had anything to do with what happened,’ Annie explained. ‘It’s just that this is the nearest farmhouse to the scene and we wondered if either of you might have seen or heard anything.’

  ‘A murder? Near our house?’ Mandy sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yes. Is there anything you can tell us?’

  ‘When did it happen?’ Mandy asked.

  ‘We don’t know for certain, but we think during last night, or early morning. Say between one and three. Were you at home then?’