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

by Peter Robinson

  ‘Not you, it doesn’t. You’re not the one who’ll be getting a lungful of archive dust.’

  ‘Surely you’ve got more hygienic storage facilities these days?’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

  Banks lowered his voice. ‘The complainant’s name is Linda Palmer. She was fourteen at the time.’

  ‘Tough one,’ said Blackstone.

  ‘She’s a survivor, though,’ Banks went on. ‘Become a successful poet, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Poetry?’ Blackstone pulled a face. ‘Not really up my street.’

  ‘Mine, neither,’ said Banks. At least it didn’t used to be, he thought. He had read that morning some excerpts in his anthology from Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the final lines, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, still reverberated in his mind: ‘They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way.’ There was something deeply tragic about it that was as much, if not more, in the solemn music of the syntax as in the meanings of the words themselves. One thing he was quickly coming to realise as he worked his way through the anthology was that even if you didn’t understand a poem, which was frequently, you could still enjoy its music. ‘She’s been very successful,’ he said. ‘She’s smart and articulate. She doesn’t seem broken at all.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re smitten, mate. Attractive, too?’

  ‘That, too. But mostly she’s just an interesting woman who went through a terrible ordeal a long time ago. But she’s dealt with it. She hasn’t let it ruin her life.’

  ‘Why didn’t she pursue it back then?’

  ‘She was ignored after that first interview. Her mother wanted to forget all about it. They never even told her dad. Years passed.’

  ‘And this business in the newspapers has brought it all back?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You believe her story?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good enough for me, then.’ He took out a small notebook, not the official one.

  ‘She said they went to Blackpool the last two weeks of August,’ Banks said. ‘The twelfth to the twenty-sixth. And the assault occurred after the Saturday matinee at the end of the first week. That’d be the nineteenth of August. I looked it up.’

  ‘And she reported it when?’

  ‘First week after they got back. She can’t remember exactly what day, but early in the week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday. That’d be the twenty-ninth or thirtieth of August 1967.’

  ‘Remember what you were doing then?’

  ‘Probably listening to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ said Banks. He had a sudden flash of memory. The summer Sunday afternoons sitting on Paul Major’s front steps listening to the Beatles’ new album on the old Dansette. Banks, Paul, Graham Marshall, Dave Grenfell and Steve Hill. Was that what he was doing while Linda Palmer was getting raped? Steve, Paul and Graham were all dead now, one from cancer, one from AIDS and one from murder.

  ‘Why didn’t she report it in Blackpool, after it happened?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Banks. ‘I imagine she was confused, upset, in shock. I think she wanted to pretend it never happened, hide it from her parents.’

  ‘I’m just thinking that if it went through us, someone would have probably passed it on to Lancashire.’

  ‘I’ll have Winsome get in touch with them, again. Ask them to try harder. But in the meantime—’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have a root around for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Ken. You’re a pal.’

  ‘Muggins, more like.’

  *

  Excerpt from Linda Palmer’s Memoir

  I have been praised for my ‘unflinching gaze,’ my ‘clarity of perception’ and my ‘fearless imagination’ as a poet, all of which is ironic, in some ways. Sometimes I feel very much the phoney, far more the blinkered coward unwilling to face up to the tragic events of my own life. But we don’t, really, do we? Not while they’re happening. We get through them somehow – the rape, my mother’s, father’s and husband’s deaths, the loss of an unborn child, the lingering aftermaths of all our sorrows. It’s only when they’re over that we have to face up to them, when they have become memories. And memories can hurt far more than the events themselves. They can also be untrue. Perhaps the reviewers are right in other ways, though, as I have no fear of expressing things the way I feel them. You probably think I’m tough. If only you had known me then.

  I’m not saying my account won’t be ‘true’ as far as I can possibly make it so, just that it has gone through the black hole of time and memory and you may have to indulge my occasional lapses. I will try not to twist the truth, or augment it, but I may comment on it. I may also drift into stream of consciousness from time to time. I hope that doesn’t put you off.

  I’m starting with this preamble because I imagine myself writing this for you, a policeman used to facts and forensics, reason and evidence. But I think imagination plays a far greater role in your work than many people realise. You even read poetry. That surprised me. Wordsworth. Who would have thought it? You said I should try to write down what happened, that writing might help me to remember, but I can hardly become the ‘me’ I was at fourteen. Memory doesn’t work like that; at least, mine doesn’t. I can only imagine me then from where I am now, if that doesn’t sound too T.S. Eliot. It doesn’t mean I don’t or can’t remember. It doesn’t mean that all this is a lie. It just means that I’m looking back from a great distance. It’s not that things are tiny, as if I were staring through the wrong end of a telescope. Not at all. When I close my eyes, the figures are as large as any on a TV screen. I can see details, even recall smells and textures. But they may not match the past exactly. If I were to draw an outline of what I see on a sheet of tracing paper and place it on top of the original scene, the lines wouldn’t quite coincide, some would meander or go off at tangents, the positions would be out of true, the proportions hopelessly mismatched and misshapen. Mad geometry.

  Remember, these things happened a long time ago, so the details melt and distort like a Dalí watch, but the feelings are still true. I wonder what use my feelings will be to you, but I will continue as best I can. I should also tell you right now that I can’t tell a story in a straightforward way. First this happened, then this. Just the facts, ma’am. It’s not me. If I could do that I’d probably be making a fortune writing popular fiction. I suppose that’s what you’re used to. But I get distracted, sidetracked. I digress. In a strange way, I feel I’m writing this as much for myself as for you. It’s the only way I can write. I do aim for honesty, however uncomfortable it may be. I shall try to tell the truth, and perhaps if we are both patient, some of it may emerge.

  In the first place, I want to be clear that I don’t think the incident blighted my life. I don’t think I’ve lived a blighted life. I’ve been lucky, on the whole. I’ve had periods of great happiness and joy, much success and acclaim. My marriage was a blessing and my children remain a joy. There have been years when I haven’t given a passing thought to what happened in Blackpool when I was fourteen, until all this recent fascination with historical abuse, which makes me I feel I have to stand up, put my hand up and say, ‘Yes, it happened to me, too.’ Solidarity with other victims? Perhaps. But true, nonetheless. So, to it.

  It was summer and we were going on our annual holidays. Two weeks in Blackpool. Every year the same. Same boarding house, breakfast and evening meal included. But this time, for the first time, my best friend Melanie and her parents were coming with us. They lived on the same estate in Leeds, just around the corner from us, and Melanie and I were in the same form at Silver Royd. We were hoping that, as there were two of us, we’d be allowed to roam a bit, let off the leash, while our parents got to do the things they wanted, like go to the pub and sit on the beach in deckchairs with their knotted hankies on their heads and magazines protecting their sleeping faces from the sunshine, should we be lucky enough to
have any.

  On the whole, my parents weren’t too controlling. Two years ago on holiday, my dad had even let me go and see the Beatles at the ABC as long as Mum went with me. He had even queued and got the tickets for us but wouldn’t have considered going, himself. It was ‘fab,’ as they used to say. Mostly it’s just a blur of adrenalin, but I still remember when Paul sang ‘Yesterday’ for the first time anywhere, ever. Tears just streamed down my cheeks as I listened to those sad words. What I could hear of them, at any rate. Mum never said much, but she was pale and shaky when we left, and I’m not sure she ever got over a theatre full of teenage girls screaming and crying and jumping on their seats and wetting themselves. I didn’t do that, of course, but I suppose what I’m saying is that I was a typical teenager, perhaps even more innocent than most. Paul was my Beatle then, but a few years later it was the bad-boy John.

  With Melanie, the holiday would be different. We would wander the Golden Mile, play the one-armed bandits, watch the mechanical hand drop the trinket it had grabbed just before it reached the chute. Perhaps we would be allowed to visit the Pleasure Beach after dark. We would flirt with boys, ride the Big Dipper, wear KISS ME QUICK hats, visit all the joke shops, buy itching powder and whoopee cushions, examine the racks of cheeky postcards outside the gift shops without being dragged away by our mothers or fathers. (Q. ‘Do you prefer long legs or short legs?’ A: ‘I like something in between.’) We could be just like pretend grown-ups. We hadn’t even brought our buckets and spades. We were too old for toys like that. We had put away childish things and were about to embrace the grown-up world. At least that was the idea. I wasn’t to know how the grown-up world was soon going to embrace me.

  And what did we look like? Typical sixties teenagers. In those days, I wore my blond hair down to my shoulders like Marianne Faithfull, with a parting in the middle and a fringe at the front, but I should imagine we were dressed conservatively and sensibly, and my mother certainly wouldn’t let me wear one of the miniskirts that were fast becoming all the rage. I remember the arguments. ‘You’d look no better than a common trollop, young lady.’ I was never sure which was meant to be the worst, a ‘trollop’ or ‘common’. We might have been wearing jeans some of the time, but most likely we were wearing the same sort of thing we wore at home, bright summer dresses, skirts halfway down our calves, cool cotton blouses, that sort of thing. But we looked nice. I’m sure we looked nice. And innocent. At least nobody could say I was asking for it because of the way I dressed.

  And so, after the usual chaos of packing and making sure everything was turned off, unplugged and locked up, we met Melanie and her parents at the bus stop and set off for the station.

  *

  At the meeting that Friday evening in the boardroom, the whiteboard was covered with photos of the Bradham Lane body taken from all angles, as well as the artist’s impression of the girl’s face and close-ups of her tattoos and birthmark. Alongside were pictures from the crime scene and a timeline, carefully drawn up by Gerry on the computer.

  Annie had brought Banks up to speed just before they started the meeting, and he took his seat with the others, including Gerry, Doug Wilson, Stefan Nowak, Vic Manson, Jazz Singh and assorted CSIs. Winsome had gone home, as this wasn’t her case, and she had plenty of homework to do on Danny Caxton. That beady-eyed bloke from the press office, Adrian Moss, who had visited her in the morning with AC Gervaise, was also present. He had been prowling the corridors a lot lately, as if he were up to something. He reminded Annie of a snake-oil salesman, not that she had ever met such a creature.

  Annie surveyed the expectant faces, knowing how hard they had all worked since the body had been found on Wednesday morning. Now it was almost the weekend, and most of them would have a couple of days rest and some time to spend with their families, a brief respite from the world of violent death. Not Annie, and probably not Banks, either, she thought. This was the kind of case that put its hooks into you. She didn’t know how Banks felt about his high-profile investigation yet, but she knew him well enough to hazard a guess that he wasn’t too thrilled. That was being kept as much under wraps as hers for the moment. There were no meetings and little squad-room gossip, though Danny Caxton was making a splash in the media.

  Gerry began by describing the CCTV searches for possible cars and vans. ‘We’ve made a start,’ she said. ‘DC Wilson is coordinating the team watching the CCTV and ANPR feeds. But it’ll be slow going. There’s a lot of it. We’re also checking Bradham village itself and all the farms and villages in the immediate area, as well as having a close look at events in Eastvale that night.’

  ‘Quite a job, then?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. There wasn’t a lot of traffic at that time of night, of course, but there was more than you might expect, especially over a two- or three-hour period. Seems that the route our vans took cuts a big corner off if you want to get to Harrogate and West Yorkshire, especially if you want to avoid the A1 with all the lorries and roadworks. It’s a bit slower, of course, but some drivers aren’t in that much of a hurry. The main problem isn’t the volume of traffic, though. It just takes time to narrow things down, find the drivers, check their stories. We have to follow up on every car and van. And the quality of the images isn’t always as good as one would hope. According to Mandy Ketteridge’s statement, we believe the murder took place between two-fifteen and two-thirty in the morning, so we’re starting by working on a time spread between one and three a.m. Naturally, we’ll extend that if we get more information.’

  ‘Anything stand out yet?’ Banks asked.

  ‘There’s a couple of builders’ vans,’ Gerry said. ‘One white, the other dark blue, or black. We think the girl was taken and raped in a van of some sort before she was dumped by the roadside. At least she was dumped from it, even if she was raped elsewhere. The problem is, the number plate on the white van is impossible to read.’

  ‘No name on the side, or logo?’

  ‘No, sir. Not on either.’

  ‘OK. Keep at it,’ Banks said.

  ‘And Gerry,’ Annie added. ‘As we think the second van might have turned back—’

  ‘We’ll be checking for that, too, though there are a few out-of-the-way routes over the moors that can get you back to Eastvale by a different, and CCTV-free, route.’

  ‘Bugger,’ said Annie. ‘But if he did take a different route, away from the cameras, it seems to indicate some degree of premeditation, or at least self-preservation after the fact.’

  ‘Lots of people know they’re on candid camera everywhere they go these days,’ said Banks. ‘If he’d just killed someone, he’d probably be extra cautious, so that’s a good call.’

  ‘I would have thought he’d also be panicking,’ said Annie. ‘Unless it was something he was used to. I don’t know about you, Gerry, but I think if I’d just gone too far and killed someone, I’d be crazy with fear. I wouldn’t be thinking clearly.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Gerry. ‘But we’ve no way of knowing. I suppose it affects different people differently. It doesn’t mean he was a cold-blooded killer, just that he maybe felt a sense of calm and clarity after he’d done it. Relief, maybe.’

  ‘Sexual?’

  ‘That’s possible, too. Lord knows there are enough men who get off on violence against women.’

  Annie summed up what little else they knew so far and invited Stefan and Jazz to provide an update. Stefan spoke about cars and tyres, using the photos on the whiteboard as a guide, and explained how there just wasn’t enough information from the skid marks to run against a database search for make and model. He also explained how the traces of blood and the girl’s muddy footprints led him to his theories about the sequence of events, though there were, unfortunately, no recoverable footprints from the killer, only signs of a scuffle by the roadside. They were working on identifying footwear marks made on the girl’s body, he said, but he stressed that they were partial and would be unlikely to lead to the actual footwear the killer had been wea
ring, should he still be foolish enough to have it in his possession. There were, however, one or two scuff marks and scratches unique to that footwear. The one thing he was reasonably certain of was that there had been no one with her on her ten- or fifteen-minute walk from where she had been dumped to where she had been killed, so it seemed that whoever had kicked her out of the van while ‘My Silver Lining’ was playing had gone on his way. It also appeared as if there had been only one killer.

  ‘Maybe they were working in concert,’ Annie suggested.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Maybe it was prearranged. Someone knew she was going to be tossed out of the van, and whoever it was in the other van following for the specific purpose of killing her.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ Banks admitted. ‘But it’s a bit elaborate, don’t you think? Why go to all that trouble when the people in the van could just as easily have killed her before they dumped her?’

  ‘Maybe they weren’t supposed to know she was going to be killed? It’s not any more unbelievable than some psycho just happening to pass by.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Banks.

  Then Jazz Singh took over.

  ‘I’ve been working with the DNA for a while now,’ she began, ‘and even though we’ve got no hits on the database, I’m sorry to say, I’ve come to a few conclusions. As you know, we found samples of semen from three males in the girl’s orifices. The men clearly didn’t use condoms, unless all three broke, so we can assume they’re confident or stupid. Or both. Either way, it’s to our advantage.’

  ‘They most likely don’t expect anyone to be searching for them,’ said Banks. ‘Especially if, as Annie suggests, they didn’t kill the girl. Either she was willing, or they raped her and gave her graphic warnings of what would happen to her if she talked.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Annie. ‘And I’d lean towards the latter, given the amount of trauma they inflicted on her. Which leads me to believe they had confidence of some control over her even when she was out of their immediate presence.’