Gallows View

by Peter Robinson

  That final disclosure seemed too much for Hatchley’s tight-lipped nature, and he rushed off, Banks thought, before he went too far and his boss could accuse him of sentimentality.

  Smiling, Banks returned to the interview room. Graham Sharp was pale and Trevor wore his customary scowl. Though the father might never admit it, Banks knew that he now thought Trevor was guilty. The boy’s reactions had convinced him just as they had confirmed beyond any doubt two things Banks already believed: that they had definitely not killed Alice Matlock, and that they had done everything else.

  When Banks sat down and lit a cigarette, Trevor began to look apprehensive. Sipping tepid coffee, Banks let the silence stretch until both father and son were clearly as tense and anxious as he wanted them to be, then he turned to PC Craig and pointed at Trevor.

  “Hold him, Constable. Suspicion of burglary, assault and rape will do for a start. I’ve had quite enough of his company for the time being. Get him fingerprinted immediately.”

  Graham Sharp tried to block his way as he left the room, but Banks pushed him gently aside: “The constable here will explain your son’s rights,” he said.

  It was late, well after midnight, and the town outside was dark and quiet. Only the bell of the church clock broke the silence every fifteen minutes. Back in his office, Banks looked out through the slats of his venetian blinds. There wasn’t a soul in sight; all the lights were out except for the old-style gas lamps around the market square and a shop window to the right, across Market Street, in which elegant mannequins modelled the kind of long, expensive dresses that Grace Kelly wore in Rear Window.

  Banks lit another cigarette and drank some more hot coffee, then turned to the first buff folder on his desk. It was Sandra’s statement. Not much of her personality came through in Richmond’s precise, analytical prose, nor did any of her feelings. Banks could only imagine them, and he found himself doing so only too well. As he read of her being forced back towards the screen at knife-point and made to strip (“To what point?” an obviously embarrassed Richmond had asked) to her skin, tears burned his eyes and anger seethed in his veins. He closed the folder and slammed it with his fist.

  At least from what Sandra had remembered of Robin Allott’s words—and she had done well to remember so much—it sounded as if he was their man. It also sounded as if he had broken down at the end, that he couldn’t go through with it. Banks recalled Jenny once saying that the man might have to keep going further and further to satisfy himself, but that he might also reach breaking point before doing any serious damage. Whether he had done any serious damage or not was a moot point.

  It had been a long day. Banks yawned and felt his eyelids suddenly become heavy and scratchy. It was time to go home.

  He pulled up his coat collar and stepped out into Market Street. The chill October air was invigorating, but Banks felt tired beyond revival. All the way home, something nagged at his mind, something about the Sharp interview. Trevor’s reaction to the Alice Matlock business certainly confirmed his earlier suspicions, but that wasn’t it, there was something else. It was no good trying to think, though, he decided. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

  IV

  Jenny and Sandra were still talking when Banks walked in the front door. They were drinking cocoa laced with scotch, and Sandra had lent Jenny one of her old dressing-gowns to wear.

  “I thought you’d be in bed by now,” Banks said, hanging up his overcoat.

  “We didn’t feel like sleeping,” Sandra replied. “But now you mention it, I do feel tired.”

  “Me too,” Jenny echoed.

  “I’ve made up the bed,” Sandra told her. “I hope it’s comfortable enough for you.”

  “I could sleep on a slab of stone.” Jenny smiled and stood up. “Goodnight, you two, and thanks very much.”

  She went upstairs and Banks flopped down on the sofa beside Sandra. Again he had noticed a strange atmosphere between them, as if they were in a world that excluded him, but he was too tired to delve into it. About ten minutes later, they followed Jenny up and slipped between the sheets.

  “What were you talking about?” he asked as they snuggled close.

  “Oh, this and that.”

  “Me?”

  “A bit. Mostly what it felt like.”

  “What did it feel like?”

  “You’ll never know.”

  “You could try and describe it for me.”

  “I don’t want to go through it all again tonight, Alan. Some other time.”

  “Maybe it felt something like being held up at gunpoint.”

  “Maybe it did. I’ll tell you something, though. It’s very odd. I was terrified and I hated him, but afterwards I felt sorry for him. He was like a little child when I hit him, Alan. He was down on his knees. He’d dropped his knife, and he was like a child. I couldn’t handle the feelings at the time. I was scared, angry, hurt, and I hit him. I wanted to kill him, I really did. But it was pathetic. He was like a child crying out for his mother.”

  “You did the right thing,” Banks said, holding her and feeling her warm tears on his shoulder.

  “I know. But that’s what I mean when I said you’d never understand. You never could. There are some things men could never grasp in a million years.”

  Banks felt shut out again, and it irked him that Sandra was probably right. He wanted to understand everything, and he had sympathy, feelings and imagination enough to do so, or so he had thought. Now Sandra was telling him that no matter how hard he tried, he could never fathom the bond that united her and Jenny and excluded him, simply because he was a man. They had both been victims, and he was a member of the sex that had the power to humiliate them. In a way, it didn’t matter how gentle and understanding he was; he was guilty by association.

  But perhaps, he thought, as he drifted into sleep, it was neither as important nor as devastating as it seemed at that moment. After all, he was tired out, and the evening’s events had left their unassimilated residue in him, too. He was simply recognizing a chasm that had always existed, even before Sandra had been so abused. That unbridgeable gap had not interfered seriously with their happiness and closeness before, and it probably wouldn’t do so in the future. The human spirit was a great deal more resilient than one imagined in one’s darker moments. Still, the distance between them was more apparent now than ever, and it would have to be dealt with; he would have to make attempts to cross it.

  He held Sandra tighter and told her he loved her, but she was already asleep. Sighing, he turned over and fell into his own dreamless darkness.

  SEVENTEEN

  I

  When Banks met Robin Allott the next morning, he could see exactly what Sandra meant. He had expected to hate the man, but Robin, looking rather like a tonsured monk with the dressing fixed over the shaved centre of his skull, was pathetic. Banks found it easy to detach himself and deal with him as he would with any other criminal. Richmond sat in the corner taking notes.

  “What did the hospital say?” he asked.

  Allott shrugged and avoided looking Banks in the eye. “Not very much. They dressed the wound and sent me away with this.” He held up a card which explained how to handle patients with head wounds. “I spent the rest of the night in your cells.”

  “Want to talk?”

  Allott nodded. The first thing he did was apologize. Then he confessed to all the reported peeping incidents in addition to several more that had gone either unnoticed or unreported by the victims.

  There was, however, another important matter to discuss. The timing of Allott’s peeping on Carol Ellis coincided almost exactly with Alice Matlock’s late evening visitor, who, if he wasn’t her killer, was the last person to see her alive. Banks asked him if he had seen anyone as he ran along Cardigan Drive.

  “Yes,” Allott said eagerly. “I liked Alice. I’ve been wanting to tell you but I couldn’t find a way without . . . It’s been torturing me ever since. At first I thought he would have reported me. T
hen when he didn’t . . . I’m so glad it’s all over. I tried to suggest it might not have been kids, that it might have happened some other way, when you came to talk to me.”

  “I remember,” Banks said. “But you didn’t express the theory very forcefully.”

  “How could I? I was scared for myself.”

  “Who did you see?”

  “It wasn’t anyone I knew, but it was a man in his late thirties or early forties, I’d say. Medium height, slim. He had light brown hair combed back with a parting on the left.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A beige overcoat, I think. I remember it was a chilly night. And gloves. Fawn gloves.”

  “Did you see where he came from?”

  “No. He was by the end of Alice’s house when I ran by on the other side of the street. You know, the end of the block that runs at right angles to Cardigan Drive. Gallows View.”

  “So he was actually on Cardigan Drive, walking by the end house of Gallows View.”

  “Yes. Just across the street from me.”

  “And you got a good look at him?”

  “Good enough. There’s a street-lamp only yards from the junction.”

  “Would you recognize him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Definitely.”

  Jenny had asked if she could talk to Allott, and Banks had agreed, stipulating that he be present throughout the interview. When he had finished with his questions, he asked Richmond to call in at the interview room where she was waiting and send her along.

  There was still something nagging at his mind. Though it often worked wonders on half-formed ideas, sleep had failed to solve the problem this time. It was like having the right word on the tip of his tongue but being unable to utter it.

  Jenny seemed to be making a deliberate effort to hide her beauty by wearing some very unflattering horn-rimmed glasses and drab, baggy clothes that made her figure seem shapeless. She also wore her hair tied back in a severe bun.

  Robin Allott looked up when she walked in stiffly with a file folder under her arm and a pencil behind her ear. She sat down opposite him, opened the folder, and only then, Banks noticed, did she look him in the eye.

  “Would you like to tell me when you started watching women undress?” she asked first, in a business-like tone.

  Now, Banks thought, it’s my turn to watch the professional at work.

  Allott looked away at the autumn scene on the calendar. “It was after my wife left me. I couldn’t . . . she wasn’t happy . . . . She put up with me for a long time, but finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. We hadn’t had a proper life together, a real marriage. You know what I mean.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t like to touch her. I couldn’t be a man for her. I just wasn’t interested. It wasn’t her fault. She was a good woman, really. She put up with a great deal.”

  “What did she think?”

  “She once told me she thought I was a latent homosexual, but I knew that was wrong. I never had any feelings like that for men. The whole idea repelled me. I never had any real feelings at all.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t have any real feelings?”

  “You know, the things people are supposed to feel and do. Everything normal and carefree, like talking and kissing and loving. I felt like there was a big wall between me and the rest of the world, especially my wife.”

  “So she left you and then you started watching women get undressed. Why did you do that?”

  “It was what I wanted to do. All I wanted to do, really. There was nothing else that gave me such a thrill. I know it was wrong but I couldn’t . . . I tried to stop . . .”

  “Can you think of any reason why you chose to do that particular thing? Why only that could satisfy you?”

  Allott hesitated and bit his lip. “Yes,” he said, after a few moments. “I did it before—a long time ago when I was a boy—and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

  “What happened?”

  He took a deep breath and his gaze turned inwards.

  “We lived on a narrow street with a pub on the corner—The Barley Mow, it was called—and lots of times when I was supposed to be asleep in my room, I’d see this woman opposite walk back from the pub alone, go upstairs and undress for bed. She always left the curtains open, and I watched her.

  “She was a beautiful woman and nobody in the neighbourhood really knew her. She never spoke to anyone and people tended to keep away from her, as if she was cold or above them somehow. People said she was foreign, a refugee from Eastern Europe, but nobody really knew. She was always alone. She was a mystery, but I could watch her unveil herself. At first it didn’t feel like much, but I suppose it was just about that time of life when you change . . . and over a few weeks I had strange feelings watching her, feelings I’d never had before. They scared me, but they were exciting. I suppose I started to . . . to play with myself, unconsciously, and I remember thinking, ‘What if she sees me, what will she do? I’ll be in trouble then.’ But in a way I wanted her to see me, too. I wanted her to know about me.” He leaned forward on his chair and his liquid brown eyes began to shine as he talked.

  “Did she ever see you?”

  “No. One day she was just gone. Simple as that. I was devastated. I’d thought it would go on forever, that she was doing it just for me. When she left it felt as if my whole life had been smashed in pieces. Oh, I did all the usual things like the other boys, but it always felt like there was something missing—it was never as wonderful as the others made out it was, as I thought it should be. Even girls, real girls . . .”

  “Why did you marry?”

  “It was the normal thing to do. My mother helped me, arranged introductions, that kind of thing. It just didn’t work, though. I was always thinking of this woman, even . . . I could only do it if I thought of her. When my wife left, something snapped in me. It was like a sort of fog came over my mind, but at the same time I felt free. I felt like I could do what I wanted, I didn’t have to pretend any more. Oh, I could always be with other people easily enough—I had the Camera Club and all, but it was all inside, the mist. I felt I had to find her again, recapture what I’d lost.”

  “And did you?”

  “No.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Beautiful. Slender and beautiful. And she had black eyebrows and long, golden-blonde hair. That excited me, I don’t know why. Maybe it was the contrast. Long, straight, blonde hair down over her shoulders. She looked like Sandra. That’s why . . . I wouldn’t have hurt her, never. And when it had gone so far, I just couldn’t go through with it.” He glanced over at Banks, who lit a cigarette and looked out of the window on the bustle of the market square.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Nothing clear. I wanted to touch her. Make love to her, I suppose. But I couldn’t. Please believe me, I wouldn’t have hurt her, honestly.”

  “But you did hurt her.”

  He hung his head. “I know. I’d like to tell her, say I’m sorry . . .”

  “I don’t think she wants to see you. You frightened her a great deal.”

  “I didn’t mean to. It seemed like the only way.”

  “I’m not here to judge you,” Jenny said.

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “You need help. We’ll try to help you.”

  “You?”

  “Not me, but somebody qualified.”

  Robin gave a resigned nod. “I didn’t mean to scare her. I would never have harmed a hair on her head, you’ve got to believe me. I thought it was the only way. I had to find out what it felt like to touch her, to have her in my power. But I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t.”

  Jenny and Banks left him with a uniformed constable and walked out into the corridor. Jenny leaned against the institutional-green wall and took a deep breath, then she removed her glasses and loosened her hair.
/>   “Well?” Banks asked.

  “I think he’s harmless,” she said. “You heard him insist that he wouldn’t have hurt Sandra. I believe him.”

  “But he did hurt her.”

  “I told him that, and I think he understood. He meant physically. What more can I say, Alan? He’s suffering. Part of me hates him for what he did, but another part—the professional bit, I suppose—understands, in a way, that it’s not his fault, that he needs help not punishment.”

  Banks nodded. “Coffee?”

  “Oh, yes, please.”

  They walked across Market Street to the Golden Grill.

  “You still seem a bit preoccupied, Alan,” Jenny said, sipping her coffee. “Is there something else? I thought you’d caught enough criminals for one night.”

  “Lack of sleep, I suppose.”

  “That all?”

  “Probably not. There’s something bothering me, but I’m not quite sure what it is. You know we haven’t got Alice Matlock’s killer yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Allott gave us a description. It’s definitely not the kids.”

  “So?”

  “I feel that I ought to know who it is, and why. Like it’s staring me in the face and I just can’t bring it into focus.”

  “Is there some clue you can’t think of?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s a whole jumble of impressions. Not to worry, another night’s sleep might do it. Maybe I’ll even try an afternoon nap and hurry it along.”

  “So it’s not all over?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And our intrepid chief inspector won’t rest until it is?”

  Banks smiled. “Something like that. I’ll tell you one thing, though. When I moved up to Yorkshire, I sure as hell expected a softer time of it than this.”

  II

  Back at the station an excited Sergeant Hatchley came rushing to meet Banks.

  “We’ve got him!”