Innocent Graves

by Peter Robinson

  “Do you have a recent photograph of your daughter, sir?” he asked.

  “Over there on the mantelpiece. It was taken last summer.”

  Banks walked over and looked at the photograph of the young girl posing on the deck of a yacht. It was probably her first year in a bikini, Banks guessed, and while she hardly had the figure to fill it out, it still looked good on her. But then anything would probably have looked good on such youth, such energy, such potential.

  Deborah was smiling and holding the mast with one hand; with the other she held back a long strand of blonde hair from her face, as if the wind were blowing it out of place. Even though the girl in the picture glowed with health and life, it was the same one who now lay in Eastvale mortuary.

  “I’m afraid it’s not a mistake,” he said, glancing at the photograph beside it. It showed two smiling young men in cricket whites, one of them unmistakably Sir Geoffrey, standing together in a quadrangle. The other man, who had his arm casually draped over Sir Geoffrey’s shoulder, could easily have been the other person in the room about twenty-five years ago. Even now, he was still slim and good-looking, though the sandy hair above his high forehead was receding fast and thinning on top. He was wearing what looked like very expensive casual clothes-black cords and a rust-colored cotton shirt-and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles hung around his neck on a chain. “Michael Clayton,” he said, getting up and shaking Bank’s hand.

  “Michael’s my business partner,” said Sir Geoffrey. “And my oldest friend. He’s also Deborah’s godfather.”

  “I live just around the corner,” said Clayton. “As soon as Geoff heard the news…well, they phoned me and I came over. Have there been any developments?”

  “It’s too early to say,” said Banks. Then he turned to Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison. “Did you know if Deborah was planning on going anywhere after school?”

  Sir Geoffrey took a second to refocus, then said, “Only the chess club.”

  “Chess club?”

  “Yes. At school. They meet every Monday.”

  “What time is she usually home?”

  Sir Geoffrey looked at his wife. “It’s usually over by six,” Lady Harrison said. “She gets home about quarter past. Sometimes twenty past, if she dawdles with her friends.”

  Banks frowned. “It must have been after eight o’clock when Detective Inspector Stott came to break the bad news,” he said. “But you hadn’t reported Deborah missing. Weren’t you worried? Where did you think she was?”

  Lady Harrison started to cry. Sir Geoffrey gripped her hand. “We’d only just got in ourselves,” he explained. “I was at a business reception at the Royal Hotel, in York, and the damn fog delayed me. Sylvie was at her health club. Deborah has a key. She is sixteen, after all.”

  “What time did you get back?”

  “About eight o’clock. Within minutes of each other. We thought Deborah might have been home and gone out again, but that wasn’t like her, not without letting us know, and certainly not on a night like this. There was no note, no sign she’d been here. Deborah’s not…well, she usually leaves her school blazer over the back of a chair, if you see what I mean.”

  “I do.” Banks’s daughter Tracy was just as untidy.

  “Anyway, we were worried she might have been kidnapped or something. We were just about to phone the police when Inspector Stott arrived.”

  “Have there ever been any kidnap threats?”

  “No, but one hears about such things.”

  “Could your daughter have been carrying anything of value? Cash, credit cards, anything?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Her satchel was open. I was just wondering why.”

  Sir Geoffrey shook his head.

  Banks turned to Michael Clayton. “Did you see Deborah at all this evening?”

  “No. I was at home until I got Geoff’s phone call.”

  Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison sat on the white sofa, shoulders slumped, holding hands like a couple of teenagers. Banks sat on the edge of the armchair and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees.

  “Inspector Stott says Deborah was found in St. Mary’s graveyard,” Sir Geoffrey said. “Is that true?”

  Banks nodded.

  Anger suffused Sir Geoffrey’s face. “Have you talked to that bloody vicar yet? That pervert?”

  “Daniel Charters?”

  “That’s him. You know what he’s been accused of, don’t you?”

  “Making a homosexual advance.”

  Sir Geoffrey nodded. “Exactly. If I were you, I’d-”

  “Please, Geoffrey,” Sylvie said, plucking at his sleeve. “Calm down. Let the chief inspector talk.”

  Sir Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair. “Yes, of course. I apologize.”

  Why such animosity towards Charters? Banks wondered. But that was best left for later. Sir Geoffrey was distraught; it wouldn’t be a good idea to press him any further just now.

  “May I have a look at Deborah’s room?” he asked.

  Sylvie nodded and stood up. “I’ll show you.”

  Banks followed her up a broad, white-carpeted staircase. What a hell of a job it would be to keep the place clean, he found himself thinking. Sandra would never put up with white carpets or upholstery. Still, he didn’t suppose the Harrisons did the cleaning themselves.

  Sylvie opened the door to Deborah’s room, then excused herself and went back downstairs. Banks turned on the light. It was bigger, but in much the same state of disarray as Tracy ’s. Clothes lay tossed all over the floor, the bed was unmade, a mound of rumpled sheets, and the closet door stood open on a long rail of dresses, blouses, jackets and jeans. Expensive stuff, too, Banks saw as he looked at some of the designer labels.

  Deborah’s computer, complete with CD-ROM, sat on the desk under the window. Beside that stood a bookcase filled mostly with science and computer textbooks and a few bodice-rippers. Banks searched through all the drawers but found nothing of interest. Of course, it would have helped if he had known what he was looking for.

  Arranged in custom shelving on a table by the foot of the bed were a mini-hi-fi system, a small color television and a video-all with remote controls. Banks glanced through some of the CDs. Unlike Tracy, Deborah seemed to favor the rough, grungy style of popular music: Hole, Pearl Jam, Nirvana. A large poster of Kurt Cobain was tacked to the wall next to a smaller poster of River Phoenix.

  Banks closed the door behind him and walked back down the stairs. He could hear Sylvie crying in the white room and Sir Geoffrey and Michael Clayton in muffled conversation. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, and when he moved close, they saw him through the open door and asked him back in.

  “I have just one more question, Sir Geoffrey, if I may?” he said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did your daughter keep a diary? I know mine does. They seem to be very popular among teenage girls.”

  Sir Geoffrey thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I think so. Michael bought her one last Christmas.”

  Clayton nodded. “Yes. One of the leather-bound kind, a page per day.”

  Banks turned back to Sir Geoffrey. “Do you know where she kept it?”

  He frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t. Sylvie?”

  Sylvie shook her head. “She told me she lost it.”

  “When was this?”

  “About the beginning of term. I hadn’t seen it for a while, so I asked her if she’d stopped writing it. Why? Is it important?”

  “Probably not,” said Banks. “It’s just that sometimes what we don’t find is as important as what we do. Trouble is, we never really know until later. Anyway, I won’t bother you any further tonight.”

  “Inspector Stott said I’d have to identify the body,” Sir Geoffrey said. “You’ll make the arrangements?”

  “Of course. Again, sir, my condolences.”

  Sir Geoffrey nodded, then he turned back to his wife. Like a butler, Banks was dismissed.

&
nbsp; VI

  What with one thing and another, it was after two in the morning when Banks parked the dark-blue Cavalier he had finally bought to replace his clapped-out Cortina in front of his house. After Hawthorn Close, it was good to be back in the normal world of semis with postage-stamp gardens, Fiestas and Astras parked in the street.

  The first thing he did was tiptoe upstairs to check on Tracy. It was foolish, he knew, but after seeing Deborah Harrison’s body, he felt the need to see his own daughter alive and breathing.

  The amber glow from the street-lamp outside her window lit the faint outline of Tracy ’s sleeping figure. Every so often, she would turn and give a little sigh, as if she were dreaming. Softly, Banks closed her door again and went back downstairs to the living-room, careful to bypass the creaky third stair from the top. Despite the late hour, he didn’t feel at all tired.

  He turned on the shaded table lamp and poured himself a stiff Laphroaig, hoping to put the image of Deborah Harrison spread-eagled in the graveyard out of his mind.

  After five minutes, Banks hadn’t succeeded in getting his mind off the subject. Music would help. “Music alone with sudden charms can bind/The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind,” as Congreve had said. Surely it wouldn’t wake Sandra or Tracy if he played a classical CD quietly?

  He flipped through his quickly growing collection-he was sure that they multiplied overnight-and settled finally on Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

  In the middle of the second song, “September,” when Gundula Janowitz’s crystaline soprano was soaring away with the melody, Banks topped up his Laphroaig and lit a cigarette.

  Before he had taken more than three or four drags, the door opened and Tracy popped her head around.

  “What are you doing up?” Banks whispered.

  Tracy rubbed her eyes and walked into the room. She was wearing a long, sloppy nightshirt with a picture of a giant panda on the front. Though she was seventeen, it made her look like a little girl.

  “I thought I heard someone in my room,” Tracy muttered. “I couldn’t get back to sleep so I came down for some milk. Oh, Dad! You’re smoking again.”

  Banks put his finger to his lips. “Shhh! Your mother.” He looked at the cigarette guiltily. “So I am.”

  “And you promised.”

  “I never did.” Banks hung his head in shame. There was nothing like a teenage daughter to make you feel guilty about your bad habits, especially with all the anti-smoking propaganda they were brainwashed with at school these days.

  “You did, too.” Tracy came closer. “Is something wrong? Is that why you’re up so late smoking and drinking?”

  She sat on the arm of the sofa and looked at him, sleep-filled eyes full of concern, long blonde hair straggling over her narrow shoulders. Banks’s son, Brian, who was away studying architecture in Portsmouth, took after his father, but Tracy took after her mother.

  They had come a long way since the bitter arguments over her first boyfriend, long since dumped, and too many late nights over the summer. Now Tracy had determined not to have a boyfriend at all this year, but to put all her efforts into getting good A-level results so she could go to university, where she wanted to study history. Banks couldn’t help but approve. As he looked at her perching so frail and vulnerable on the edge of the sofa his heart swelled with pride in her, and with fear for her.

  “No,” he said, getting up and patting her head. “There’s nothing wrong. I’m just an old fool set in his ways, that’s all. Shall I make us both some cocoa?”

  Tracy nodded, then yawned and stretched her arms high in the air.

  Banks smiled. Gundula Janowitz sang Hermann Hesse’s words. Banks had listened to the songs so many times, he knew the translation by heart:

  The day has tired me,

  and my spirits yearn

  for the starry night

  to gather them up

  like a tired child.

  You can say that again, thought Banks. He looked back at Tracy as he walked to the kitchen. She was examining the small-print CD liner notes with squinting eyes trying to make out the words.

  She would find out soon enough what had happened to Deborah Harrison, Banks thought. It would be all over town tomorrow. But not tonight. Tonight father and daughter would enjoy a quiet, innocent cup of cocoa in the middle of the night in their safe, warm house floating like an island in the fog.

  Chapter 2

  I

  Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle was already pacing the lino when Banks arrived at his office early the next morning. Bald head shining like a new cricket ball freshly rubbed on the bowler’s crotch, black eyes glowing like a Whitby jet, clean-shaven chin jutting out like the prow of a boat, uniform sharply creased, not a speck of fluff or cotton anywhere to be seen, and a poppy placed ostentatiously in his lapel, he looked alert, wide-awake and ready for anything.

  Which was more than Banks looked, or felt for that matter. All told, he had got no more than about three hours’ uneasy sleep, especially as an early telephone call from Ken Blackstone had woken him up. Though the fog was quickly turning to drizzle this morning, he had walked the mile to work simply to get the cobwebs out of his brain. He wasn’t sure whether he had succeeded. It didn’t help that his cold was getting worse, either, filling his head with damp cotton wool.

  “Ah, Banks, about bloody time,” said Riddle.

  Banks removed his headphones and switched off the Jimi Hendrix tape he had been listening to. The breakneck arpeggios of “Pali Gap” were still ringing in his stuffed-up ears.

  “And do you have to go around with those bloody things stuck in your ears?” Riddle went on. “Don’t you know how silly you look?”

  Banks knew a rhetorical question when he heard one.

  “I suppose you’re aware who the victim’s father is?”

  “Sir Geoffrey Harrison, sir. I talked to him last night.”

  “In that case you’ll realize how important this is. This…this…terrible tragedy.” Never at a loss for a cliché wasn’t Jimmy Riddle, Banks reflected. Riddle slid his hand over his head and went on. “I want a hundred per cent on this one, Banks. No. Two hundred per cent. Do you understand? No shirking. No dragging of feet.”

  Banks nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Now what about this Bosnian fellow? Jurassic, is it?”

  “Jelačić, sir. And he’s Croatian.”

  “Whatever. Think he’s our man?”

  “We’ll certainly be talking to him. Ken Blackstone has just reported that Jelačić’s known to the Leeds police. Drunk and disorderly, one charge of assault in a pub. And he didn’t get home until after two this morning. They’ve got his prints, so we should be able to compare them if Vic gets anything from the vodka bottle.”

  “Good.” Riddle grinned. “That’s the kind of thing I like to hear. I want a quick arrest on this one, Banks. Sir Geoffrey’s a personal friend of mine. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right. And take it easy on the family. I don’t want you pestering them in their time of grief. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Riddle straightened his uniform, which didn’t need it, and brushed imaginary dandruff from his shoulders. Wishful thinking, Banks guessed. “Now I’m off to give a press conference,” he said. “Anything I ought to know to stop me looking a prize berk?”

  Nothing could stop you from looking like a prize berk, Banks thought. “No, sir,” he said. “But you might like to drop by the murder room and see if there’s anything fresh come in.”

  “I’ve already done that. What do you think I am, a bloody moron?”

  Banks let the silence stretch.

  Riddle kept pacing, though he seemed to have run out of things to say for the present. At last he headed for the door. “Right, then. Remember what I said, Banks,” he said, pointing a finger. “Results. Fast.”

  Banks felt himself relax and breathe easier when Riddle had gone, like a Victorian lady when she
takes her corsets off. He had read about “Type A” personalities in a magazine article-all push and shove, ambition and self-importance, and bloody exhausting to be in the same room with.

  Banks lit a cigarette, read the reports on his desk and looked at the Dalesman calendar on his wall. November showed the village of Muker, in Swaledale, a cluster of gray limestone buildings cupped in a valley of muted autumn colors. He walked over to the window where the early morning light was leaking through the cloud cover like dirty dishwater.

  The market square, with its Norman church to his left, bank, shops and cafés opposite and Queen’s Arms to the right, was a study in slate-gray, except for one bright red Honda parked by the weathered market cross. Banks watched a bent old lady hobble across the cobbles under a black umbrella. He checked his watch with the church tower clock: five to eight, time to gather his papers and head for the morning meeting.

  DI Stott was already waiting and raring to go in the “Boardroom,” so called because of its well-polished oval table, ten matching stiff-backed chairs and dark-burgundy wallpaper above the wainscoting.

  Detective Constable Susan Gay arrived two minutes later. Her make-up almost hid the bags under her eyes, the gel made her short curly hair look as if it were still wet from the shower, and her subtle perfume brought a whiff of spring to the room.

  Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley, big and heavy, like a rugby prop-forward gone to seed, came in last. He hadn’t freshened up. His face looked like a lump of dough with tufts of stubble sticking out of it, his eyes were bloodshot and his strawy hair uncombed. His navy-blue suit was creased and shiny.

  “Okay,” said Banks, shuffling the papers in front of him, “we’ve got two new pieces of information to deal with. I’d hesitate to call them leads, but you never know. First off, for what it’s worth, one of our diuretically challenged constables found the missing underwear while nipping behind a handy yew to drain the dragon. They’re with the rest of her clothing at the mortuary. The second item might be even more significant,” he went on. “Some of you may already know that a Croatian refugee called Ive Jelačić was recently fired by Daniel Charters, vicar of St. Mary’s, and subsequently brought charges of sexual harassment against him. By the sound of it, this Jelačić’s an unsavory character. According to West Yorkshire CID, Mr. Jelačić didn’t get home until after two o’clock last night, plenty of time to get back from committing a murder in Eastvale, even in the fog. He said he’d been playing cards with some fellow countrymen at a friend’s house.”