The third box he opened was full of old school reports, magazines, letters and exercise books. He had sometimes wondered over the years what had happened to all this stuff and assumed, if anything, that his parents had chucked it out when they figured he wouldn’t need it anymore. Not so. It had been hiding away in the wardrobe all this time. There they were: Beatles Monthly, Fabulous, Record Song Book and The Radio Luxembourg Book of Record Stars.
Banks pulled out a handful of the small notebooks and found they were his old diaries. Some were plain Letts’ diaries, with a little slot for a pencil down the spine, and some were special-themed, illustrated ones, such as pop star, television or sports diaries. The one that was of most immediate interest to him, though, was a Photoplay diary with a stiff, laminated cover and a color photo of Sean Connery and Honor Blackman from 1964’s Bond film, Goldfinger, on the front. Inside, a photo of a different film star faced each page of dates. The first was Brigitte Bardot, for the week starting Sunday, December 27, 1964, the first full week of his diary for 1965, the year Graham disappeared.
Michelle took off her reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose, where she sensed a headache beginning to form between her eyes. She suffered from headaches frequently these days, and while her doctor assured her there was nothing seriously wrong – no brain tumor or neurological disease – and her psychiatrist told her that it was probably just stress and “coping,” she couldn’t help but worry.
The air quality in the archives office didn’t help either. Instead of signing the heavier boxes out and carrying them up to her office, Michelle had decided she might as well look through the material down there. The reading room was just a glassed-in alcove with a desk and chair. It stood at the entrance to several parallel aisles of old papers, some of which went back to the late-nineteenth century. If the environment had been a little more comfortable, she might have considered having a browse around the archives. There was bound to be some fascinating stuff.
For the moment, 1965 would have to do. Michelle wanted to get a general idea of the crimes occurring around the time of Graham’s disappearance, to see if she could come up with any links to Banks’s mysterious stranger, and Mrs. Metcalfe had directed her to the logbooks that indexed and recorded all complaints and actions taken, day by day. It made for interesting reading, most of it not relevant to what she was looking for. Many of the calls listed went no further – missing pets, some domestic complaints – but the lists gave her a good impression of what daily life must have been like for a copper back then.
In May, for example, a man had been arrested in connection with an assault on a fourteen-year-old girl, who had accepted a lift with him near the A1, but he bore no resemblance whatsoever to Banks’s description of the man by the river. Also in May there had been a major jewelry robbery at a city center shop, netting the thieves eighteen thousand pounds. In June, a number of youths had gone on the rampage and slashed tires on about thirty cars in the city center; in the same month, a twenty-one-year-old man had been stabbed outside The Rose and Crown, on Bridge Street, after an argument over a girl. In August, two alleged homosexuals had been questioned in connection with lewd goings-on at the country mansion of a local bigwig, Rupert Mandeville, but the anonymous informant couldn’t be located, and all charges had later been dismissed for lack of evidence. Hard to believe that it was a crime to be gay, Michelle thought, but 1965 was back in the Dark Ages, before homosexuality had been legalized in 1967.
There were certainly plenty of incidents before and after Graham Marshall’s disappearance, Michelle was fast discovering, but none of them seemed to have anything remotely to do with Banks’s riverbank adventure. She read on. In July, police had investigated complaints about a local protection racket modeled on the East London Kray gang operation, allegedly led by a man called Carlo Fiorino, but no charges were brought.
The more she read, the more Michelle realized what a vast chasm yawned between 1965 and today. She had, in fact, been born in 1961, but she was damned if she was going to admit that to Banks. Her own teenage years had been spent in what Banks would no doubt call a musical wasteland made up of The Bay City Rollers, Elton John and Hot Chocolate, not to mention Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Punk came along when she was about fifteen, but Michelle was far too conservative to join in with that crowd. If truth be told, the punks scared her with their torn clothes, spiky hair and safety pins in their ears. And the music just sounded like noise to her.
Not that Michelle had had a great deal of time for pop music; she had been a studious child, lamenting that it always seemed to take her so long to finish her homework when others were done and out on the town. Her mother said she was too much of a perfectionist to let something be and have done with it, and perhaps that was true. Painstaking. Perfectionist. These were labels she had come to know and hate from friends, family and the teachers at school. Why not just say pedestrian and plodding and have done with it, if that was what they meant? she sometimes wondered.
She hadn’t done brilliantly at school, despite all her hard work, but she had managed to pass enough O- and A-Levels to get into a poly – again cramming through all the concerts and parties her fellow students went to – where she had studied business and management techniques before deciding on the police as a career. On those rare occasions when she did have time to go out, late in the seventies, she liked to dance. For that, reggae or two-tone was her music of choice: Bob Marley, The Specials, Madness, UB40.
Michelle had always hated nostalgia snobs, as she called them, and in her experience, the sixties ones were the worst of the lot. She suspected that Banks was one. To hear them talk, you’d think paradise had been lost or the seventh seal broken now that so many of the great rock icons were dead, geriatric, or gaga, and nobody wore beads and caftans anymore, and you’d also think that drug-taking was an innocent way to spend a few hours relaxing, or a means of reaching some exalted spiritual state, instead of a waste of lives and a source of money for evil, unscrupulous dealers.
The archives office was quiet except for the buzzing of the fluorescent light. Silence is a rare thing in a police station, where everyone is pushed together in open-plan offices, but down here Michelle could even hear her watch ticking. After five. Time for a break soon, some fresh air perhaps, and then back down to it.
Reading the crime reports for August, she sensed rather than heard someone approaching the office, and when she looked up, she saw it was Detective Superintendent Benjamin Shaw.
Shaw’s bulk filled the doorway and blocked some of the light from coming in. “What you up to, DI Hart?” he asked.
“Just checking the old logs, sir.”
“I can see that. What for? You won’t find anything there, you know. Not after all this time.”
“I was just having a general look around, trying to get some context for the Marshall case. Actually, I was wondering if-”
“Context? Is that one of those fancy words they taught you at polytechnic? Bloody time-wasting sounds more like it.”
“Sir-”
“Don’t bother to argue, Inspector. You’re wasting your time. What do you expect to find in the dusty old files, apart from context?”
“I was talking to one of Graham Marshall’s friends earlier,” she said. “He told me he was approached by a strange man on the riverbank about two months before the Marshall boy disappeared. I was just trying to see if any similar incidents were on file.”
Shaw sat on the edge of the desk. It creaked and tilted a little. Michelle worried that the damn thing would break under his weight. “And?” he asked. “I’m curious.”
“Nothing so far, sir. Do you remember anything odd like that?”
Shaw frowned. “No. But who is this ‘friend’?”
“He’s called Banks, sir. Alan Banks. Actually, it’s Detective Chief Inspector Banks.”
“Is it, indeed? Banks? The name sounds vaguely familiar. I take it he didn’t report the incident at the time?”
�
�No, sir. Too scared of what his parents might say.”
“I can imagine. Look, about this Banks chap,” he went on. “I think I’d like a little word with him. Can you arrange it?”
“I’ve got his phone number, sir. But…” Michelle was about to tell Shaw that it was her case and that she didn’t appreciate his poaching her interviews, but she decided it wouldn’t be diplomatic to alienate one of her senior officers at such an early stage of her career in Peterborough. Besides, he might be helpful, having been involved in the original investigation.
“But what?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Good.” Shaw stood up. “We’ll have him in, then. Soon as possible.”
“I know it must seem odd after all these years,” Banks said, “but I’m Alan Banks, and I’ve come to offer my condolences.”
“Alan Banks. Well, I never!” The look of suspicion on Mrs. Marshall’s face was immediately transformed into one of pleasure. She opened the door wide. “Do come in and make yourself at home.”
It was over thirty-six years since Banks had set foot in the Marshall house, and he had a vague memory that the furniture had been made of much darker wood then, heavier and sturdier. Now the sideboard and television stand looked as if they were made of pine. The three-piece suite seemed much bigger, and a huge television dominated one corner of the room.
Even all those years ago, he remembered, he hadn’t been inside Graham’s house often. Some parents kept an open house for their children’s friends, the way his own did, and Dave’s and Paul’s, but the Marshalls were always a bit distant, stand-offish. Graham never spoke about his mum and dad much, either, Banks remembered, but that hadn’t struck him as at all unusual at the time. Kids don’t, except to complain if they’re not allowed to do something or discovered in some deception and have their pocket money stopped. As far as Banks knew, Graham Marshall’s home life was every bit as normal as his own.
His mother had told him that Mr. Marshall had been disabled by a stroke, so he was prepared for the frail, drooling figure staring up at him from the armchair. Mrs. Marshall looked tired and careworn herself, which was hardly surprising, and he wondered how she kept the place so spick-and-span. Maybe the social helped out, as he doubted she could afford a daily.
“Look, Bill, it’s Alan Banks,” said Mrs. Marshall. “You know, one of our Graham’s old friends.”
It was hard to read Mr. Marshall’s expression through the distortions of his face, but his gaze seemed to relax a little when he found out who the visitor was. Banks said hello and sat down. He spotted the old photo of Graham, the one his own father had taken with his Brownie on Blackpool promenade. He had taken one of Banks, too, also wearing a black polo-neck “Beatle” jumper, but without the matching hairstyle.
Mr. Marshall was sitting in the same spot he had always sat in, like Banks’s own father. Back then, he had always seemed to be smoking, but now he looked as if he could hardly lift a cigarette to his lips.
“I understand you’re an important policeman now,” Mrs. Marshall said.
“I don’t know about important, but I’m a policeman, yes.”
“You don’t have to be so modest. I bump into your mum at the shops from time to time and she’s very proud of you.”
That’s more than she lets on to me, Banks thought. “Well,” he said, “you know what mothers are like.”
“Have you come to help with the investigation?”
“I don’t know that I can,” said Banks. “But if they want any help from me, I’d be happy to give it.”
“She seems very nice. The girl they sent round.”
“I’m sure she’ll be just fine.”
“I told her I can’t imagine what she can do that Jet Harris and his boys didn’t do back then. They were very thorough.”
“I know they were.”
“But he just seemed to have… vanished. All these years.”
“I’ve often thought about him,” Banks said. “I realize I didn’t actually know him for very long, but he was a good friend. I missed him. We all missed him.”
Mrs. Marshall sniffed. “Thank you. I know he appreciated the way you all accepted him when we were new here. You know how difficult it can be to make friends sometimes. It’s just so hard to believe that he’s turned up after all this time.”
“It happens,” said Banks. “And don’t give up on the investigation. There’s a lot more science and technology in police work these days. Look how quickly they identified the remains. They couldn’t have done that twenty years ago.”
“I just wish I could be of some use,” said Mrs. Marshall, “but I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary at all. It just came like a lightning bolt. Out of the blue.”
Banks stood up. “I know,” he said. “But if there’s anything to be discovered, I’m sure DI Hart will discover it.”
“Are you going already?”
“It’s nearly teatime,” Banks said, smiling. “And my mother would never forgive me if I didn’t turn up for tea. She thinks I need fattening up.”
Mrs. Marshall smiled. “Better go then. Mustn’t cross your mother. By the way, they can’t release the body yet, but Miss Hart said she’d let me know when we can have the funeral. You will come, won’t you?”
“Of course,” said Banks. When he looked over to say good-bye to Mr. Marshall, he had a sudden flash of the big, muscular man he used to be, the sense of physical menace he had somehow conveyed. Back then, Banks remembered with a shock, he had been afraid of Graham’s dad. He never had any real reason to feel that way, but he had.
She should have packed it in long ago, Michelle realized, but she was loath to give up without finding at least some trace of Banks’s mystery man, if any existed. Besides, the material itself gave her an interesting picture of the times, and she found herself becoming quite fascinated by it all.
It hadn’t been a bumper crime year for Peterborough in 1965, but the fast-growing city had its share of some of the more newsworthy national problems, Michelle was fast discovering. Mods and rockers clashed at some city center pubs, cannabis was beginning to insinuate its way into the lifestyles of the young and rebellious – despite what Banks had said – and the pornography trade was blossoming in the shape of tons of German, Danish and Swedish magazines covering every perversion you could imagine, and some you couldn’t. Why not Norwegian or Finnish, too? Michelle wondered. Weren’t they into porn? Burglary and armed robbery were as common as ever, and the only thing that seemed new today was the increase in car theft.
Far fewer people owned cars in 1965, Michelle realized, and that made her think again about Banks’s statement. Banks said he had been assaulted by a dirty, scruffy “Rasputin-like” stranger on the riverside near the city center. But Graham Marshall had been abducted, along with a heavy canvas bag full of newspapers, two months later, from a council estate several miles away. The MOs were different. It didn’t look as if Graham had put up a struggle, for example, which he certainly would have done, as Banks had, if he’d been attacked by this frightening stranger and felt that he had been fighting for his life. Besides, the man who assaulted Banks had been on foot, and Graham hadn’t walked all the way to his burial site. It was possible that the mysterious stranger had a car somewhere, but not very likely. Given Banks’s description, Michelle would have guessed the man was homeless and poor, perhaps a tramp. The passing tramp. Cliché of so many detective stories.
The problem was that she still couldn’t see any logical connection between the event Banks had described and the disappearance of Graham Marshall. She thought that Banks’s sense of guilt might, over the years, have warped his judgment in the matter. It happened; she’d seen it before. But could it have happened that way? Who was this man?
There was a good chance, Michelle realized, that she might not find out anything about him in the police files. Not everyone had a file, despite what the antipolice groups seemed to think. She might have to dig in the newspaper morgue or perhaps th
e local mental hospital archives. The man sounded disturbed, and there was a chance he had sought treatment at some time. Of course, there was also every possibility that he wasn’t a local. Michelle had no idea exactly where the River Nene started, but she thought it was somewhere down Northampton way, and she knew that it flowed all the way to The Wash. Maybe he was walking the riverbank from town to town.
She flipped through file after file and tossed them aside in frustration. Finally, as her eyes were starting to tire, she struck gold.
Chapter 7
The Coach and Horses, about a hundred yards along the main road, had changed over the years, Banks noticed, but not as much as some pubs. The large public bar had always housed a diverse group, mixed generations drinking there together, and today it was no different, though the racial mix had changed. Now, among the white faces, there were Pakistanis and Sikhs, and, according to Arthur Banks, a group of Kosovan asylum-seekers, who lived on the estate, also drank there.
Noisy machines with flashing lights had replaced the old bar-billiards area, the scarred wooden benches had been replaced with padded ones, perhaps the wallpaper had been redone and the light fixtures modernized, but that was about all. The brewery had forked out for this minor face-lift sometime in the eighties, Banks’s father had told him, hoping to pull in a younger, freer-spending crowd. But it didn’t take. The people who drank at The Coach and Horses had, for the most part, been drinking there most of their lives. And their fathers before them. Banks had drunk his first legal pint there, with his father on his eighteenth birthday, though he had been knocking them back with his mates at The Wheatsheaf, about a mile away, since he was sixteen. The last time he had been in The Coach and Horses, he had played one of the earliest pub video games, that silly machine where you bounced the tennis ball back and forth across a green phosphorous screen.
Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was) Page 11