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

by Peter Robinson

  Banks took the book and thanked her. ‘Bribe? With a book of poetry? To do what?’ Then he realised he’d implied an insult or a slight. ‘I don’t mean it’s not worth anything or not a good bribe or—’

  ‘Please,’ Linda said, laughing. ‘No more, or your foot will be so far down your throat you’ll choke. I know what you mean. It was a joke.’

  ‘Anyway, I know about the new book. I bought it in Leeds the other day. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t buy this one, then.’

  ‘Mnemosyne,’ said Banks. ‘Isn’t that memory?’

  ‘Indeed. Consort of Zeus, mother of the Muses.’

  Banks opened the book and saw that it had been signed on the title page: ‘To Alan Banks, the copper who quoted Wordsworth.’ He’d never had a book inscribed to him before. ‘Thank you,’ he said, feeling a little embarrassed. Then he hesitated, not sure whether to share his current enthusiasm, then decided what the hell. ‘Actually, I’ve been working my way through an anthology of English poetry. I read Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” this morning.’

  ‘More titles than you can shake a stick at,’ said Linda. ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘Interesting. I liked it, the tone, the sentiment, I suppose. I must confess, though, I sometimes have trouble understanding what’s being said. Maybe it’s the language, or maybe I’m just thick.’

  She smiled. ‘ “A poem should not mean but be.” Someone said that once. I can’t remember who. But I always find it useful to fall back on when I fail to understand something. Wait till you get to the Romantics. Or you could skip forward to them.’

  ‘That would be cheating.’

  ‘Then cheat. So what? Be a devil. I don’t think reading in chronological order contributes a great deal to the love or understanding of poetry. You could even chuck a few translations in the mix. Rilke, Baudelaire, Akhmatova.’

  Banks tapped her book. ‘Well, maybe I’ll cheat and jump forward to this,’ he said.

  She toyed with the stem of her wine glass.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you again about the other man,’ Banks hurried on. ‘It could be important. You say you think you saw a photo of him some time after you’d reported what happened?’

  ‘Yes. I just can’t remember where.’

  ‘Did you read many newspapers in those days?’

  ‘At that age? No, I read Jackie and Melody Maker and Photoplay.’

  ‘You liked going to the pictures?’

  ‘Twice a week. We had a lot to choose from then. Lyric, Crown, Clifton, Western, Palace – and they were all within walking distance. There were the Odeon, the Gaumont, the Tower, the Majestic and the ABC in town if you had to see something as soon as it came out. And lots of other local fleapits if you were willing to get a bus to Hyde Park, Headingley or Harehills. The local cinemas all showed double bills, too, so you could easily see four films in each a week. More if you wanted to go to a different cinema every night. Melanie and I looked old enough to get into X films at some of them when we were fourteen. We loved horror – Hammer, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, Edgar Allan Poe, all that stuff.’

  ‘I remember doing the same,’ said Banks, then he paused. ‘It doesn’t really matter, but you just told me you looked old enough to get into X-certificate films when you were fourteen. Were you often mistaken for someone older?’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Linda said. ‘Might Caxton have thought I was older? Yes, maybe. Though I told him my age. I suppose he might have assumed I was lying. Though why, I don’t know. Girls of fourteen usually add something when they lie about their age, rather than subtract a year or two, the way I do now. I don’t think he cared. He wanted me, so he forced me. It was rape whichever way you look at it, my age or my lack of consent.’

  ‘As I said, it doesn’t really matter if he says he thought you were twenty-five. It’s just the kind of thing the media might seize on.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to keep my childhood secrets from them.’

  ‘So you didn’t read the newspapers. Did you watch the news on TV?’

  ‘It was on sometimes, if my dad was watching, but I can’t say I paid much attention. I saw the papers at news-stands, and we had the Yorkshire Evening Post delivered at home every day, so it was lying around the house. I’d see the front pages, I suppose. Sometimes read the sports page, if Leeds United were playing.’

  ‘You were a fan?’

  ‘They were golden back then.’

  ‘Do you have any recollection whether it might have been a minor celebrity you saw, someone on the fringes of Caxton’s world, maybe in another show in Blackpool at the same time? Or could it have been a sports personality, someone like that?’

  ‘Either is possible, I suppose,’ said Linda. ‘But I honestly can’t remember. As I said, I think I might recognise the same photo if I saw it again. My mind works with patterns like that. But can I remember where I saw it? Or the context? No. Maybe a newspaper. I’m sure I didn’t see it on TV. And it was about a month after Caxton and the other man raped me. I’d say late September at the earliest. Most likely sometime in early October.’

  Banks leaned forward. ‘OK, so here’s what I’ve got in mind. We’re going to start by going through microfiche editions of the Yorkshire Evening Post from September 1967. You’d be surprised how little time it’ll take if you don’t have to do a lot of reading. Will you have a good look at the pictures and tell me if you recognise anyone?’

  ‘I’ll try. Where are these microfilms?

  ‘Leeds Central Library. I’ll pick you up tomorrow after lunch, say about one. OK?’

  ‘Fine with me.’

  ‘And if that doesn’t work out, we can always move on to other sources. I suppose it’s possible he was in Melody Maker or Photoplay. Then there’s the nationals. You must have seen them sometimes, too?’

  ‘I suppose so. Maybe when I passed a news vendor or something, but we didn’t get any at home except the People and the News of the World on Sundays.’

  ‘A right collection of villains you’d find in those,’ said Banks. ‘And that might take a bit longer to set up.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any hurry, do you?’ She seemed to hesitate.

  ‘What is it?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Something I’ve been wanting to ask you. Just tell me if I’m being impertinent or if it’s classified or anything.’

  ‘OK. Fire away.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that poor girl found dead on Bradham Lane.’

  ‘Do you know the place?’

  ‘I use it often if I’m heading south from Eastvale. It’s a lovely detour, far nicer than the A1. But it seems such a lonely, forlorn place to die. I saw the artist’s impression in the paper. She was very young, wasn’t she?’

  ‘About fifteen, we think.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea who she is, how she got there, or why?’

  ‘I—’

  Linda held her hand up. ‘I understand. You can’t talk about it. That’s OK. I’m sorry.’

  ‘All I can tell you,’ said Banks, ‘is that she was naked and we believe she was raped repeatedly, beaten to death and left by the side of the road. That much has all been in, or more or less implied by, the press.’

  Linda put her hand to her mouth. ‘My God, the poor child.’

  ‘And we do know who she was. We just found out.’

  ‘How terrible for her parents.’

  ‘Because of her age, she won’t be identified by name in the media, but that artist’s impression has already been in all the papers and on TV, as you know, so plenty of people have seen an image of her. Obviously some of them will know who she was, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a leak before long.’

  ‘It hardly matters to her, does it, but her family . . . What you said about the media.’

  ‘We’ll do our best to protect them.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Linda. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry
.’ Clearly upset, she gathered up her things. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘Are you coming?’

  Banks still had half a pint left in his glass. He could easily have left it, but he was strangely comfortable in the cool, stone pub, and he never minded being alone with his thoughts. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll hang on and finish my drink. Maybe read a poem or two. You head off. Thanks for coming.’

  ‘Until tomorrow afternoon, then.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Banks hunched over the rest of his beer, Linda’s book on the table in front of him, and thought for a moment. Linda Palmer was obviously feeling a lot of empathy for the dead girl, Mimsy. However different their backgrounds and the circumstances of their suffering, he also felt that the two girls would have understood each other. Linda was hardly groomed over time, as it appeared Mimsy Moffat may have been, but she was given cigarettes and champagne and promised a spot on Do Your Own Thing! by someone loved and trusted by the whole country. Mimsy was most likely abused by people she thought were her friends. Perhaps Mimsy was far more knowing and sophisticated at fifteen than Linda had been at fourteen, but when it came right down to it, that didn’t matter. Their fates had been similar: both had been betrayed and violated at a very early age, but only one had lived.

  He opened the book Linda had given him and turned to a poem called ‘Memory’:

  It can cut breath

  into corpses,

  image the womb

  and frame things

  which are not;

  yet it cannot transfer

  to the minute the exact angle

  of that branch’s bending,

  nor measure its dance.

  Itself but for a moment,

  outside falls in:

  drawn away

  from the natural breeze

  into space thick as blood,

  the vivid, fleshy

  shadow sways

  inaccurate and

  permanent, against

  a changing sky.

  It seemed to relate to what they had talked about, Wordsworth’s idea of perception and imagination somehow being involved in the creation of memory, and perhaps Linda’s own thoughts about how memory transforms rather than presents an accurate snapshot of experience. He sensed a certain distance and detachment in the poem – she wasn’t confronting the thought or experience head on, viscerally – but he liked how the sound and imagery of her language seemed to fill out the idea behind the words. It wasn’t something he could paraphrase, but perhaps, he thought, that was what a good poem should do: express something that could be expressed no other way. That was why so much of it was so damn difficult to understand. Like most people, he probably tried too hard to translate it into rational meanings instead of letting it perform its magic. Not mean, but be.

  Well, perhaps the book had given him some insight into poetry, but he wasn’t sure whether it had given him any into Linda Palmer. She remained an enigma to him. He had no doubt that all the feelings were still there, or the memory of them, even after all this time – rage, humiliation, shame, guilt, fear – but they were preserved under an obsidian veneer. It remained to be seen how thick that veneer was.

  Banks closed the book, glanced at his watch and finished his pint. Time to go. He took one last look around the cosy bar. He’d like to have another, linger a little longer over Linda’s poetry, but he was driving, and he knew it would be a long day tomorrow.

  Annie and Gerry stepped over the outstretched legs of the two youths and walked through the open door of the takeaway. They had already smelled the tomato sauce, peppers, onions and grilled meat and spices from a distance, but the aroma was even stronger inside, with hot cooking oil added to the mix. The small space was brightly lit. There were only two small wobbly Formica-topped tables as the business was clearly predominantly takeaway and customers weren’t encouraged to hang about.

  One man stood behind the counter talking to another in a cook’s white uniform. The grills and ovens were off to one side, mostly hidden, and the wall behind the counter housed displays of crisps and chocolate bars. A glass-fronted fridge stood to one side filled with a selection of fizzy drinks.

  The man behind the counter smiled and asked, ‘What can I do for you two lovely ladies?’

  ‘See, at least someone around these parts has some manners,’ Annie said to Gerry. She smiled sweetly back at the man. ‘I’ll have a slice of margherita please, and my friend here will have a doner kebab.’

  ‘Coming right up, my lovelies.’

  He was good-looking, Annie thought. Late thirties or early forties, she guessed, tall, with earthy brown eyes and an athletic frame. He wore his hair cropped, like Banks, and had a neatly trimmed beard turning a little grey around the edges. The other man in the cook’s garb went over to his station and prepared to heat up some pizza and kebab. He was more well padded than his workmate, and probably a year or two younger, with a smoother, lighter complexion and slightly longer, greasy hair.

  Gerry was making a face and mouthing, ‘Calories.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Annie whispered. ‘You don’t have to eat the bloody thing.’

  ‘Not from round these parts, are you?’ the man asked. ‘I’m Sunny, by the way. This is my caff. Sunny’s Kebab and Pizza.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ said Annie. ‘No, we’re not from around here.’

  ‘Thought I hadn’t seen you before.’

  ‘Do you live nearby, Sunny?’

  Now he started to appear suspicious. ‘Who’s asking?’

  Annie showed him her warrant card.

  ‘Fuzz,’ he said. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘Fuzz?’ echoed Annie with a wide-eyed glance at Gerry. ‘Fuzz? Nobody calls us fuzz any more.’

  Sunny shrugged. ‘It’s the nicest word I know.’

  ‘I’m confused,’ said Annie. ‘What have we ever done to you that fuzz is the nicest word you know for us? Just a few moments ago you were calling us “my lovelies”. Now some women might find that offensive, but my friend and I don’t mind, do we Gerry?’

  ‘Always nice to be called lovely,’ mumbled Gerry. ‘Better than fuzz.’

  ‘We get harassed all the time. Insulted. Threatened. One of my friend’s sons got beat up just walking home from the mosque the other night. My friend down the Strip had a brick thrown through his window not so long ago. Did you lot do anything to help? No. You should have seen the trouble he had getting anything out of the insurance company.’

  That was hardly a problem of racism, Annie thought. Nobody can get money out of an insurance company. But there was no point arguing. She had worked in racially sensitive areas, and she knew the score. Eastvale wasn’t one of them, but Wytherton clearly was. It was a delicate exercise in political correctness and positive discrimination. You really had to know your catchphrase of the day and jargon of the moment. Annie took the drawing out of her bag. ‘What my partner and I would really like to know is whether you’ve seen this girl around here.’ She held up the image.

  Annie could have sworn that an expression of shock and fear flashed across Sunny’s face before he said, rather too quickly, ‘No. I’ve never seen her before.’

  Annie gestured to the cook. ‘What about your friend?’

  Sunny called him over. His name was Faisal, and he was more surly than Sunny. He glanced at the drawing and shook his head.

  ‘He doesn’t know her, either.’

  ‘We hear she came here for takeaways.’

  ‘Lots of people come here. I can’t remember every customer I’ve ever served.’

  ‘No, but she’s an attractive girl, don’t you think? What about last Tuesday?’

  ‘No. I told you. We don’t know her. If she came here, she wasn’t a regular. Maybe she came once and didn’t like our food. It happens, believe it or not.’

  ‘Funny that,’ said Annie, leaning on the counter.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Well, we know she lived around here. In fact, we’ve just come from her
mother’s place up the road. And one of the local coppers tells us your food is popular with the young people from the estate.’

  ‘Lots of people live around here. They don’t all eat here.’ He pointed across the street. ‘Maybe she preferred fish and chips?’

  ‘Maybe so. But this girl was murdered last Tuesday night, Sunny, and do you know what the pathologist found in her stomach contents when he did the post-mortem?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pizza and kebab. Now, what do you think of that?’

  Faisal placed their orders on the counter without looking their way, and Sunny put the boxes in a paper bag. ‘That’s sick, that is,’ he mumbled. ‘Here. Take it. On the house. Just go away.’ He handed Annie the bag.

  But Gerry placed some money on the counter. ‘We’ll pay,’ she said. ‘Keep the change.’

  ‘And, do you know?’ Annie held up the bag as they were leaving. ‘Our CSI people are very clever these days, just like on telly. They can match anything with anything if they’ve got a sample.’

  8

  One of the responsibilities Banks had yet to face in his new job was administering a bollocking to officers under him. He’d done it often enough over the years as a DCI, mostly on an informal basis, but as detective superintendent and head of Homicide and Major Crimes, it was his job both to stand up for and to discipline his team. So his heart sank when Superintendent Carver from Wytherton strutted into his office early on Tuesday morning with a complaint. He had known last night that it would be a long day but he had never imagined it would start like this.

  Though Banks was a detective and Carver wore a uniform, that didn’t count for anything; in rank, they were equal. But Banks could tell by Carver’s arrogant manner that he clearly felt coming from a tough urban patch made him somehow superior to these lowly sheep-shaggers on the edge of the largely rural Yorkshire Dales. Carver was all brass, bulk and Brylcreem, slathered with an aftershave that smelled like a tart’s window box. He wedged himself into a chair by the conference table and began his litany of woes. Before he could get too far, Banks sent for Annie and Gerry, who had just got back from taking Sinead Moffat to identify her dead daughter at the mortuary. They turned up a few minutes later, coffees in hand.