Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

by Peter Robinson

  “Is that what killed him?” Martin Armitage asked.

  “No,” said Annie. “It’s just another complication I’d like to get out of the way, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry we can’t help you,” said Robin.

  Annie struggled to phrase her next question, too. Talking to these two was like walking on eggs, but it had to be done. “Mrs. Armitage – Robin – you know Luke was confused about his biological father, don’t you?”

  “Neil? Well, yes, I suppose… But, I mean, Luke never knew him.”

  “Surely you knew he must have wondered what happened, why his father didn’t want him?”

  “It wasn’t like that. Neil just couldn’t cope. He was a child himself in so many ways.”

  “And a drug addict.”

  “Neil wasn’t an addict. He used drugs, but they were just a sort of tool for him, a means to an end.”

  Annie didn’t bother arguing that that was what they were for most people; it would be easier if she took Neil Byrd’s exalted artistic status in her stride, especially when talking to Robin. “But you knew Luke couldn’t listen to his music, didn’t you?”

  “I never asked him to. I don’t listen to it myself anymore.”

  “Well, he couldn’t,” Annie said. “Any reference to Neil Byrd or his music upset him. Did he ever talk to either of you about any friends of his called Liz and Ryan?”

  “Not to me, no,” said Robin. “Martin?”

  Martin Armitage shook his head.

  “He was in a band with them. Didn’t you know?”

  “No,” said Robin. “He didn’t tell us.”

  “Why would he keep it from you?”

  Robin paused and looked at her husband, who shifted in his seat and spoke, “Probably because we’d already had arguments about that sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “I thought Luke was devoting far too much of his time to poetry and music, and that he ought to get more involved in team sports, get more exercise. He was starting to look pasty-faced from spending all his time indoors.”

  “How did he react to this?”

  Martin looked at Robin, then back at Annie. “Not well. We had a bit of an argument about it. He insisted he was the best judge of how to spend his time.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this earlier?”

  “Because it didn’t seem relevant. It still doesn’t.” Martin sat forward and stared at her with that intense, disconcerting look of his. “Someone kidnapped Luke and murdered him, and all you can do is ask questions about Neil Byrd and my relationship with Luke.”

  “I think I’m the best judge of what questions I should be asking, Mr. Armitage,” said Annie, aware of her heart pounding again. Surely they could all hear it. “Did you agree with your husband?” she asked Robin.

  “Sort of. But I didn’t want to stand in the way of Luke’s creative development. If I’d known about the band, I would have been concerned. I wouldn’t have wanted him getting into that kind of life. Believe me, I’ve seen it at first hand. I’ve been there.”

  “So you wouldn’t have been thrilled, either, if you’d known that Luke was playing in a group?”

  “No.”

  “Was drug use a concern?”

  “We warned him about drugs, of course, and he swore he didn’t take them.”

  “He didn’t,” Annie said. “At least not until the day he disappeared.”

  Robin’s eyes widened. “What are you saying? You know how he died?”

  “No. No, we don’t know that yet. All we know is that he was with two friends, that he took some drugs and they played him his father’s music. Luke got upset and left. We still don’t know where he went after that.”

  Robin put her coffee cup down in the saucer. Some of the coffee spilled. She didn’t notice. “I can’t believe it,” she said.

  “Who are these people?” Martin butted in.

  “And what will you do if I tell you, Mr. Armitage?” Annie said. “Go and beat them up?”

  Armitage’s chin jutted out as he spoke. “It’s no less than they deserve if what you say is true. Giving my son drugs.”

  “Mr. Armitage,” Annie said. “What did you do when you went out for two hours the night Luke disappeared?”

  “I told you. I just drove around looking for him.”

  “Drove where?”

  “Eastvale.”

  “Any particular areas or streets?”

  “I don’t remember. I just drove around. Why is it important?”

  Annie’s chest felt tight, but she forged ahead. “Did you find him?”

  “Of course I didn’t. What are you talking about? If I’d found him, he’d be here safe and sound right now, wouldn’t he?”

  “I’ve seen a demonstration of your temper, Mr. Armitage.” There, it was out. “I also know from talking to several people that you and your stepson didn’t get along very well.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Armitage’s tone chilled Annie, but it was too late to stop now. “That if anything happened that evening… Some sort of… accident… then it’s better to tell me now than have me find out by some other means.”

  “Accident? Let me get this straight. Are you asking me if I found Luke, picked him up in my car, then lost my temper and killed him?”

  “I’m asking you if you did see him that night, yes, and if anything happened between you that I should know about.”

  Armitage shook his head. “You really are a piece of work, DI Cabbot. First you act rashly and probably cause my son’s death, then you accuse me of killing him. For your information, I did exactly what I told you. I drove around Eastvale looking for Luke. It was probably pointless, I know, but I had to do something. I needed to act. I couldn’t just sit around and wait. I didn’t find him. All right?”

  “Fine,” said Annie.

  “And I resent your accusation.”

  “I haven’t accused you of anything.”

  Martin Armitage stood up. “It shows how little progress you’ve made, scraping the bottom of the barrel like this. Will that be all? I’m going back to my study now.”

  Annie felt relieved when Armitage had left the room.

  “That was cruel,” said Robin. “Martin loved Luke like his own son, did his best for the boy, even if they didn’t always agree. Luke was no angel, you know. He could be difficult.”

  “I’m sure he could,” said Annie. “All teenagers can. And I’m sorry I had to ask those questions. Police work can be uncomfortable at times, but the solution often lies close to home, and we’d be derelict in our duty if we didn’t pursue such lines of inquiry. Did you know that Luke had a girlfriend?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “He never said anything to you?”

  “I don’t even believe he had a girlfriend.”

  “Everyone says he was mature for his age, and he was a good-looking boy, too. Why shouldn’t he?”

  “He just never…”

  “It might have been someone he didn’t feel he could bring home to meet his parents. Maybe even Liz Palmer, the girl in the group.”

  “You think that’s why he was killed? Because of this girl?”

  “We don’t know. It’s just one possibility we’ve been looking at. What about Lauren Anderson?”

  “Miss Anderson? But she was his English teacher. You can’t think…”

  “I don’t know. It’s not as if these things don’t happen. Rose Barlow?”

  “Rose? The head teacher’s daughter? Well, she came round to the house once, but it was all perfectly innocent.”

  “Rose Barlow came to your house? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “But it was ages ago.”

  “February? March?”

  “Around that time. Yes. How do you know?”

  “Because somebody else noticed Luke and Rose were spending time together then, thought maybe they were going out together.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Robin. “
It was something to do with a school project.”

  “Did she visit often?”

  “Only the once.”

  “And she never came back?”

  “No.”

  “Did Luke ever talk about her?”

  “Except to say that he’d ended up doing most of the project himself, no. Look, I don’t understand all this, all your questions. Don’t you think he just wandered off and someone kidnapped him?”

  “No,” said Annie. “I don’t think that’s what happened at all.”

  “Then what?”

  Annie stood up to leave. “Give me a little more time,” she said. “I’m getting there.”

  Michelle had made three important discoveries before lunch that day, and it seemed a nice goal to set oneself. Who was it, she tried to remember, who had made it a point to believe six impossible things before breakfast? Was it Alice in Through the Looking Glass?

  Well, the things Michelle had discovered were far from impossible. First, she had gone back to the log book for the summer of 1965 and found the reference to the Mandeville house. On the first of August that year, an anonymous informant had telephoned the station with allegations of underage sex and homosexuality. The possibility of drug-taking was also mentioned. A young DC called Geoff Talbot had gone out to make inquiries and had arrested two men he said he found naked together in a bedroom there. After that, nothing more appeared on the case except a note that all charges were dropped and an official apology issued to Mr. Rupert Mandeville, who, she discovered from an Internet search, had served as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1979 to 1990 and was granted a life peerage in 1994.

  It took Michelle a bit longer to track Geoff Talbot down, as he had left the police force in 1970 to work as a consultant with a television company. Eventually, through a patient personnel officer, she managed to find his address in Barnet, a north London suburb. She had rung him and he had agreed to talk to her.

  After that, Michelle had enlisted DC Collins’s aid and discovered through local land registry records that Donald Bradford’s shop had been owned by a company linked to Carlo Fiorino, the late but unlamented local crime kingpin. The company had also owned Le Phonographe discotheque and several other newsagents’ shops in the Peterborough area. Ownership of Bradford’s shop went to the Walkers when he sold, but many of the other shops remained under Fiorino’s control well through the new town expansion into the seventies.

  What it all meant Michelle wasn’t too sure, but it looked very much as if Carlo Fiorino had set up the perfect retail distribution chain for his wholesale porn business, and who knew what else besides? Drugs, perhaps? And maybe even some of those advertising cards in the newsagents’ windows weren’t quite so innocent after all.

  All this she told to Banks as she drove through a steady drizzle down the A1 to Barnet. As they talked, she kept a keen eye on her rearview mirror. A gray Passat seemed to stay on their tail a bit too long and too close for comfort, but it finally turned off at Welwyn Garden City.

  “Bradford must have got Graham involved somehow, through the magazines,” said Banks. “But it didn’t stop there. He must have come to the attention of Fiorino and Mandeville, too. It helps to explain where all that extra money came from.”

  “Look, I know he was your friend, Alan, but you have to admit that it looks as if he was up to some unsavory stuff, as if he got greedy.”

  “I admit it,” said Banks. “The photo must have been Graham’s insurance. Evidence. He could use it to blackmail Bradford into paying him more money, only he didn’t know what he’d got himself into. Word got back to Fiorino, and he signed Graham’s death warrant.”

  “And who carried it out?”

  “Bradford, most likely. He didn’t have an alibi. Or Harris. I mean, we can’t rule him out completely. Despite what his ex-wife told you, he could have kept the commando knife, and if he was being threatened with exposure as a homosexual, he might have been driven to kill. Remember, it wouldn’t only have meant his career back then, but jail, and you know how long coppers survive behind bars.”

  “Jet Harris searched Graham Marshall’s house personally just after the boy disappeared,” said Michelle.

  “Harris did that? Searched the house? How do you know?”

  “Mrs. Marshall mentioned it the first time I went to talk to her. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now… a superintendent conducting a routine search?”

  “He must have been after the photo.”

  “Then why didn’t he find it?”

  “He obviously didn’t look hard enough, did he?” said Banks. “Adolescents are naturally very secretive. Sometimes, by necessity, they have an uncanny knack for hiding things. And at the time, if that photo had been securely Sellotaped to the inside of Graham’s guitar, nobody could know it was there without taking the guitar apart. It was only because the adhesive had dried out and the Sellotape had stiffened over the years that the photo broke free and I found it.”

  “I suppose so,” Michelle said. “But does that make Harris a murderer?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not proof. But he was in it. Deep.”

  “I also rang Ray Scholes this morning,” Michelle said. “Remember, the detective who investigated Donald Bradford’s murder?”

  “I remember.”

  “It turns out there was a Fairbairn-Sykes knife among Bradford’s possessions.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Forget it. It’s long gone. Sold to a dealer. Who knows how many times it’s changed hands since then?”

  “Pity. But at least we know it was in his possession when he died.”

  “You said the photo was evidence,” Michelle said, “but what of? How?”

  “Well, there might have been fingerprints on it, but I think it was more dangerous because people would have known where it was taken. I doubt there are that many Adam fireplaces around, and probably none quite as distinctive as that one. The rug, too.”

  “You’re thinking of the Mandeville house?”

  “Sounds a likely place to me. I’m certain it was all connected: Fiorino’s porn business, his escort agency, the Mandeville parties, Graham’s murder. I think this is where we turn off.”

  Michelle kept going.

  “The junction’s coming up,” Banks said. “Here. Move over or you’ll miss it. Now!”

  Michelle waited and made a last-minute lane change. Horns blared as she sped across two lanes of traffic to the off-ramp.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Banks. “You could have got us killed.”

  Michelle flashed him a quick grin. “Oh, don’t be such a pussycat. I knew what I was doing. This way we can be certain no one’s following us. Where now?”

  When his heart rate slowed, Banks picked up the street guide and directed Michelle to the pleasant suburban semi where Ex-DC Geoff Talbot enjoyed his retirement.

  Talbot answered the door and asked them in. Michelle introduced herself and Banks.

  “Miserable day, isn’t it?” Talbot said. “One wonders if summer will ever arrive.”

  “Too true,” said Banks.

  “Coffee? Tea?”

  “A cup of tea would be nice,” Michelle said. Banks agreed.

  Michelle and Banks followed Talbot into the kitchen, which turned out to be a bright, high-ceilinged room with a central island surrounded by tall stools.

  “We can talk here, if it’s all right with you,” Talbot said. “My wife keeps pestering me for a conservatory, but I don’t see the need. On a nice day we can always sit outside.”

  Michelle looked out of the window and saw the well-manicured lawn and neat flower beds. Someone in the family was obviously a keen gardener. A copper beech provided some shade. It would indeed have been nice to sit outside, but not in the rain.

  “You didn’t give me much of an idea what you wanted to talk about over the telephone,” Talbot said, looking over his shoulder as he dropped a couple of tea bags into the pot.

  “That’s becau
se it’s still a bit vague,” Michelle said. “How’s your memory?” She and Banks had agreed that, as it was her case and he had no official capacity, she would do most of the questioning.

  “Not so bad for an old man.”

  Talbot didn’t look that old, Michelle thought. He was carrying a few pounds too many, and his hair was almost white, but other than that his face was remarkably unlined and his movements smooth and fluid. “Remember when you served on the Cambridge Constabulary?” she asked.

  “Of course. Mid-sixties, that’d be. Peterborough. It was called the Mid-Anglia Constabulary back then. Why?”

  “Do you remember a case involving Rupert Mandeville?”

  “Do I? How could I forget. That’s the reason I left Cambridgeshire. If it comes right down to it, it’s the reason I left the force not long after, too.”

  “Could you tell us what happened?”

  The kettle boiled and Talbot filled the pot with boiling water, then carried it on a tray along with three cups and saucers to the island. “Nothing happened,” he said. “That was the problem. I was told to lay off.”

  “By whom?”

  “The super.”

  “Detective Superintendent Harris?”

  “Jet Harris. That’s the one. Oh, it was all aboveboard. Not enough evidence, my word against theirs, anonymous informant, that sort of thing. You couldn’t fault his arguments.”

  “Then what?”

  Talbot paused. “It just didn’t feel right, that’s all. I can’t put it any other way than that. There’d been rumors for some time about things going on at the Mandeville house. Procurement, underage boys, that sort of thing. It was the start of what they called the permissive society, after all. Ever heard of Carlo Fiorino?”

  “We have,” said Michelle.

  Talbot poured the tea. “Rumor has it he was the supplier. Anyway, the problem was, Rupert Mandeville was too well-connected, and some of the people who attended his parties were in the government, or in other high-level positions. Real Profumo stuff. Of course, I was the naive young copper fresh from probation, proud to be in CID, thinking he could take on the world. Not a care had I for rank or sway. We were all equal in the eyes of God as far as I was concerned, though I wasn’t a religious man. Well, I soon learned the error of my ways. Had my eyes opened for me. When the super found out I’d been out there and caused a fuss, he had me in his office and told me in no uncertain terms that Mandeville was off-limits.”