Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

by Peter Robinson

  Certain that no one would mind, Banks sat down on a hard-backed chair and took the guitar out of its case. Graham had been so proud of it, he remembered. Of course, he had wanted an electric one, a Rickenbacker like the one John Lennon played, but he had been chuffed to death with the secondhand acoustic his parents had bought him for Christmas 1964.

  Banks remembered the fingering, even after so long, and strummed a C chord. Way out of tune. He grimaced. Tuning it would be too much of a job for the moment. He wondered if Mrs. Marshall wanted to keep it as a memento, or if she would consider selling it. If she would, he’d be glad to buy it from her. He strummed an out-of-tune G seventh, then moved to put the guitar back in its case. As he did so, he thought he heard something slip around inside it. Gently, he shook the guitar, and there it was again: something scraping inside.

  Curious, Banks loosened the strings so that he could slip his hand inside. With a bit of juggling and shaking he managed to grab hold of what felt like a piece of stiff, rolled-up paper. Carefully he pulled it out, noticing the dried Sellotape Graham had used to stick it to the inside of the guitar. That made it something he had tried to hide.

  And when Banks unrolled it, he saw why.

  It was a photograph: Graham sprawled on a sheepskin rug in front of a large, ornate fireplace, arms behind him, hands propping him up, legs stretched out in front. He was smiling at the camera in a flirtatious and knowing manner.

  And he was absolutely stark naked.

  Michelle was lucky to find a parking spot about a hundred yards from the former Mrs. Harris’s pretentious pile of mock Tudor on Long Road, Cambridge, opposite the grounds of Long Road Sixth Form College. It was still drizzling outside, so she took the umbrella from the back of her car.

  It hadn’t been too hard to track down Jet Harris’s ex-wife. The biographical pamphlet told Michelle that her maiden name was Edith Dalton and that she had been married to Harris for twenty-three years, from 1950 to 1973, and that she was ten years his junior. A few discreet inquiries around the office yielded the information that a retired civilian employee, Margery Jenkins, visited her occasionally, and she was happy to give Michelle the address. She also told her that the former Mrs. Harris had remarried and was now called Mrs. Gifford. Michelle hoped that the nature of her inquiries didn’t get back to Shaw before she got the information she needed, whatever that was. She wasn’t even sure what Mrs. Gifford could, or would, tell her.

  A slim, elegantly dressed gray-haired woman answered the door, and Michelle introduced herself. With a puzzled but interested expression Mrs. Gifford led Michelle to her large living room. There was no clutter, just a white three-piece suite, various antique cabinets stuffed with crystal, and a large sideboard against the wall. Mrs. Gifford offered nothing in the way of refreshments but sat, legs crossed, and lit a cigarette from a gold lighter. She had a calculating look about her, Michelle noticed – around the eyes, in the eyes themselves, in the strict set of her jaw and sharp angles of her cheeks. She was also very well-preserved for her seventy-plus years and had a deep tan, the sort she couldn’t have got in England so far this summer.

  “The Algarve,” she said, as if she had noticed Michelle looking. “Got back last week. My husband and I have a nice little villa there. He was a doctor, a plastic surgeon, but he’s retired now, of course. Anyway, what can I do for you? It’s been a long time since the coppers came to call.”

  So Edith Dalton had landed on her feet after twenty-three years of marriage to Jet Harris. “Just information,” said Michelle. You’ve heard about the Graham Marshall case?”

  “Yes. Poor lad.” Mrs. Gifford tapped her cigarette against the side of a glass ashtray. “What about him?”

  “Your husband was in charge of that investigation.”

  “I remember.”

  “Did he ever talk about it, tell you any of his theories?”

  “John never talked about his work to me.”

  “But something like that? A local boy. Surely you must have been curious?”

  “Naturally. But he made a point of not discussing his cases at home.”

  “So he didn’t have any theories?”

  “Not that he shared with me.”

  “Do you remember Ben Shaw?”

  “Ben? Of course. He worked closely with John.” She smiled. “Regan and Carter, they used to think of themselves. The Sweeney. Quite the lads. How is Ben? I haven’t seen him for years.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “As a man or as a copper?”

  “Both. Either.”

  Mrs. Gifford flicked some ash. “Not much, if truth be told. Ben Shaw rode on John’s coattails, but he wasn’t half the man. Or a quarter the copper.”

  “His notebooks covering the Graham Marshall case are missing.”

  Mrs. Gifford raised a finely penciled eyebrow. “Well, things do have a habit of disappearing over time.”

  “It just seems a bit of a coincidence.”

  “Coincidences do happen.”

  “I was just wondering if you knew anything about Shaw, that’s all.”

  “Like what? Are you asking me if Ben Shaw is bent?”

  “Is he?”

  “I don’t know. John certainly never said anything about it.”

  “And he would have known?”

  “Oh, yes.” She nodded. “John would have known. Not much got by him.”

  “So you never heard any rumors?”

  “No.”

  “I understand your husband was a commando during the war.”

  “Yes. A real war hero, John was.”

  “Do you know if he owned a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “He didn’t have any mementos?”

  “He gave everything up when he was demobbed. He never talked about those days much. He just wanted to forget. Look, where is all this leading?”

  Michelle didn’t know how to come straight out with it and ask her if her ex-husband was bent, but she got the impression that Mrs. Gifford was a hard one to deceive. “You lived with Mr. Harris for twenty-three years,” she said. “Why leave after so long?”

  Mrs. Gifford raised her eyebrows. “What an odd question. And a rather rude one, if I may say so.”

  “I’m sorry, but-”

  Mrs. Gifford waved her cigarette in the air. “Yes, yes, you’ve got your job to do. I know. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. I waited until the children left home. It’s amazing how much one will put up with for the sake of the children, and for appearances.”

  “Put up with?”

  “Marriage to John wasn’t a bed of roses.”

  “But there must have been some compensations.”

  Mrs. Gifford frowned. “Compensations?”

  “The high life.”

  Mrs. Gifford laughed. “The high life? My dear, we lived in that poky little semi in Peterborough almost all our married life. I’d hardly call that the high life.”

  “I don’t know how to say this diplomatically,” Michelle went on.

  “Then bugger diplomacy. I’ve always been one to face things head-on. Come on, out with it.”

  “But there seem to be some anomalies in the original investigation into the Graham Marshall disappearance. Things seem to have been steered in one direction, away from other possibilities, and-”

  “And my John was the one doing the steering?”

  “Well, he was the senior investigating officer.”

  “And you want to know if he was being paid off?”

  “It looks that way. Do you remember Carlo Fiorino?”

  “I’ve heard the name. A long time ago. Wasn’t he shot in some drug war?”

  “Yes, but before that he pretty much ran crime in the area.”

  Mrs. Gifford laughed. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said, “but the image of some sort of Mafia don running crime in sleepy old Peterborough is… well, to say the least, it’s ridiculous.”

  “He wasn’t Mafi
a. Wasn’t even Italian. He was the son of a POW and a local girl.”

  “Even so, it still sounds absurd.”

  “Where there are people, there’s crime, Mrs. Gifford. And Peterborough was growing fast. The new town expansion. There’s nothing anyone likes better than a quickly expanding market. People want to gamble, they want sex, they want to feel safe. If someone supplies them with all these needs, there’s quite a tidy profit to be made. And the job’s made all the easier if you have a senior policeman in your pocket.” She didn’t mean it to come out so bluntly, but she wanted to get Mrs. Gifford to take her seriously.

  “So you’re saying John was on the take?”

  “I’m asking you if you noticed anything that might indicate he was receiving extra money, yes.”

  “Well, if he was, I never saw any of it. I can tell you that much.”

  “So where did it all go? Wine, women and song?”

  Mrs. Gifford laughed again and stubbed out her cigarette. “My dear,” she said, “John was strictly an ale and whiskey man. He also had a tin ear, and you can forget the women. I’ve not told anyone except my present husband this, but I’ll tell you now: John Harris was queer as a three-pound note.”

  “Another round?”

  “My shout,” said Banks.

  “I’ll come with you.” Dave Grenfell got up and accompanied Banks to the bar. For old times’ sake, they were in The Wheatsheaf, where the three of them had drunk their very first pints of beer at the age of sixteen. The place had been tarted up over the years, and now it seemed a lot more up-market than the shabby Victorian backstreet boozer it had been all those years ago. Probably got the lunchtime crowd from the new “business park” over the road, Banks guessed, though now, early in the evening, it was practically deserted.

  Over the first pint, they had caught up with one another to the extent that Banks knew Dave, as his father had said, still worked as a mechanic in a garage in Dorchester and was still married to Ellie, whereas Paul was cheerfully unemployed and gay as the day is long. Coming hot on the heels of his hearing Mrs. Gifford’s revelations about Jet Harris over the phone from Michelle, this last discovery shocked Banks only because he had never spotted any signs of it back when they were kids. Not that he would have recognized them. Paul had seemed to leer over the porn just as much as the others, laugh at the jokes about poofs, and Banks was sure he remembered him having a steady girlfriend at one point.

  Still, back in 1965, people denied, pretended, tried to “pass” for straight. Even after legalization, there was so much stigma attached to it, especially on the more macho working-class estates where they had all lived. And in the police force. Banks wondered how hard it had been for Paul to come to terms with himself and come out. Clearly Jet Harris had never been able to do so. And Banks was willing to bet a pound to a penny that someone had known about it, and that someone had used the knowledge to advantage. Jet Harris hadn’t been bent; he’d been blackmailed.

  As Dave prattled on about how gobsmacked he was to find out Paul had turned into an “arse-bandit,” Banks’s thoughts returned to the photo he had found in Graham’s guitar. He hadn’t told Mr. or Mrs. Marshall, hadn’t told anyone except Michelle, over his mobile phone, when he took the photo up to his room before meeting the others in The Wheatsheaf. What did it mean, and why was it there? Graham must have put it there, Banks assumed, and he did so because he wanted to hide it. But why did he have it in his possession, why had he posed for it, who took it, and where was it taken? The fireplace looked distinctive enough. Adam, Banks guessed, and you didn’t find those just anywhere.

  Banks could begin to formulate a few answers to his questions, but he didn’t have enough pieces yet to make a complete pattern. Two things he and Michelle had agreed on for certain during their phone conversation: the photo was in some way connected with Graham’s murder, and Donald Bradford and Jet Harris were involved in whatever nasty business had been going on. Maybe Carlo Fiorino and Bill Marshall, too. But there were still a few pieces missing.

  They carried the drinks back to the table, where Paul sat glancing around the room. “Remember the old jukebox?” he said.

  Banks nodded. The Wheatsheaf used to have a great jukebox for a provincial pub outside the city center, he remembered, and they spent almost as much money on that as they did on beer. The sixties of familiar, if sentimental, memory was in full bloom then, when they were sixteen: Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the Flowerpot Men singing “Let’s go to San Francisco,” The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.”

  “What do you listen to now, Alan?” Dave asked Banks.

  “Bit of everything, I suppose,” Banks said. “Jazz, classical, some of the old rock stuff. You?”

  “Nothing much. I sort of lost interest in music in the seventies, when we had the kids. Never really got it back. Remember Steve, though, the kind of stuff he used to make us listen to on Sunday afternoons? Dylan and all that.”

  Banks laughed. “He was ahead of his time, was Steve. Where the hell is he, anyway? Surely he must have heard, someone must have been in touch with him.”

  “Hadn’t you heard?” Paul said.

  Banks and Dave both stared at him. “What?”

  “Shit. I thought you must know. I’m sorry. Steve’s dead.”

  Banks felt a shiver up his spine. The Big Chill. It was one thing to get to an age when the generation ahead started dying off, but another thing entirely to face the mortality of your own generation. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Lung cancer. About three years ago. I only know ’cos his mum and dad kept in touch with mine, like. Christmas cards, that sort of thing. I hadn’t actually seen him for years. Apparently he had a couple of kids, too.”

  “Poor sod,” said Dave.

  After a brief silence, they raised their glasses and drank a toast to the memory of Steve, early Dylan fan. Then they toasted Graham again. Two down, three to go.

  Banks looked closely at each of his old friends and saw that Dave had lost most of his hair and Paul was gray and had put on a lot of weight. He started to feel gloomy, and even the memory of Michelle naked beside him failed to dispel the gloom. His lip burned and his left side ached from where his assailant had kicked him. He felt like getting pissed, but he knew when he felt that way that it never worked. No matter how much he drank he never reached the state of oblivion he aimed for. Even so, he didn’t have to watch what he drank. He wasn’t driving anywhere that night. He had thought he might try to get in touch with Michelle later, depending on how the evening went, but they hadn’t made any firm arrangements. Both needed time to absorb what had happened between them, Banks sensed. That was okay. He didn’t feel that she was backing off or anything, no more than he was. Besides, she had a lot to do. Things were moving fast.

  Banks looked at his cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and thought of Steve. Lung cancer. Shit. He reached forward and stubbed it out even though it was only half smoked. Maybe it would be his last. That thought made him feel a bit better, yet even that feeling was fast followed by a wave of sheer panic at how unbearable his life would be without cigarettes. The coffee in the morning, a pint of beer in the Queen’s Arms, that late evening Laphroaig out by the beck. Impossible. Well, he told himself, let’s just take it a day at a time.

  Banks’s mobile rang, startling him out of his gloomy reverie. “Sorry,” he said. “I’d better take it. Might be important.”

  He walked out into the street and sheltered from the rain under a shop awning. It was getting dark and there wasn’t much traffic about. The road surface glistened in the lights of the occasional car, and puddles reflected the blue neon sign of a video rental shop across the street. “Alan, it’s Annie,” said the voice at the other end.

  “Annie? What’s happening?”

  Annie told Banks about the Liz Palmer interview, and he could sense anger and sadness in her account.

  “You think she’s telling the truth?”

  “Pretty certain,” s
aid Annie. “The Big Man interviewed Ryan Milne at the same time and the details check out. They haven’t been allowed to get together and concoct a story since they’ve been in custody.”

  “Okay,” said Banks. “So where does that leave us?”

  “With a distraught and disoriented Luke Armitage wandering off into the night alone,” Annie said. “The thoughtless bastards.”

  “So where did he go?”

  “We don’t know. It’s back to the drawing board. There’s just one thing…”

  “Yes.”

  “The undigested diazepam that Dr. Glendenning found in Luke’s system.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, he didn’t get it at Liz and Ryan’s flat. Neither of them has a prescription and we didn’t find any in our search.”

  “They could have got it illegally, along with the cannabis and LSD, then got rid of it.”

  “They could have,” said Annie. “But why lie about it?”

  “That I can’t answer. What’s your theory?”

  “Well, if Luke was freaking out the way it seems he was, then someone might have thought it was a good idea to give him some Valium to calm him down.”

  “Or to keep him quiet.”

  “Possibly.”

  “What next?”

  “We need to find out where he went. I’m going to talk to Luke’s parents again tomorrow. They might be able to help now that we know a bit more about his movements. I’ll be talking to Lauren Anderson, too, and perhaps Gavin Barlow.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe there was still something going on between Luke and Rose, and maybe her father didn’t approve.”

  “Enough to kill him?”

  “Enough to make it physical. We still can’t say for certain that anyone murdered Luke. Anyway, I’d like to know where they both were the night Luke disappeared. Maybe it was Rose he went to see.”

  “Fair enough,” said Banks. “And don’t forget that Martin Armitage was out and about that night, too.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  “What’s happened with him, by the way?”

  “He appeared before the magistrates this afternoon. He’s out on bail till the preliminary hearing.”