Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

by Peter Robinson

  “You don’t understand anything. I didn’t kill him. You’ve got no proof. I’ve got an alibi. Talk to Vernon.”

  “I’ve already talked to Vernon,” said Annie, “and I’d trust him about as far as I could throw him. Your brother lied for you, Lauren. Only natural. But I’m willing to bet that he’s the one who helped you get rid of the body. You couldn’t have done it all by yourself. And he’s the one who hatched the kidnapping scheme. That had all the hallmarks of an afterthought. It wasn’t the reason for Luke’s disappearance and death. Your brother thought he’d try and cash in on it and he’s small-time enough to ask for only ten thousand. Besides, you’d probably talked about Luke and told him the family wasn’t quite as wealthy as people assumed. He’s a gambler, Lauren. And a loser. He needs the money. I talked to his bookie. Your brother’s in debt up to his eyeballs. Did you even know what he’d done after he’d helped you?”

  Lauren looked down into her lap. Her fingers were twined together, grasping so tightly, all the knuckles were white. She shook her head. “I don’t believe Vernon would do anything like that.”

  “But you must have suspected, after you heard about the kidnap demand?”

  “It confused me. I didn’t know what was going on. Maybe I had my suspicions, I don’t know. I was too upset to think about it.”

  “The thing is,” Annie went on, “that our scene-of-crime officers found minute traces of blood on the wall where Luke was shoved over into Hallam Tarn. Minute, but enough to provide a DNA profile. I think that profile would match you or your brother. I’m also certain that when our men come in here and go over your place, they’ll find traces of Luke’s blood. Now, that might not be conclusive in itself, as we know Luke was punched in the nose before he came here, but it’s all starting to add up, Lauren.”

  Lauren looked at Annie, her eyes red-rimmed and almost unbearably sad. “I didn’t kill him,” she said, in a small, distant voice. “I would never have harmed Luke. I loved him.”

  “What happened, Lauren?”

  Lauren reached for her cigarettes and lit one. Then she eyed Annie sadly and began her story.

  “Do you think I might have a word alone with your husband?” Banks asked Mrs. Marshall at her house that evening.

  “Bill? I don’t know what he can tell you,” she said. “You know he can’t talk.”

  “There might be one or two little things.” Banks looked at the invalid who, judging by the hard expression in his eyes, certainly knew he was being talked about. “Can he write?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Marshall. “But he can’t hold a pencil properly. He can only grasp it in his fist and scribble a few letters.”

  “That’ll do,” said Banks. “Can you get me a pad and pencil, if it’s no trouble?”

  Mrs. Marshall brought Banks a lined pad and a pencil from the sideboard drawer.

  “Come on,” said Michelle, taking her arm and leading her toward the kitchen. “Let’s go make some tea. I’ve got a few things to tell you.” Banks and Michelle had agreed on a sanitized version of events to tell Mrs. Marshall. If the media dug too deeply and the story hit the news, then she might find out more than she wanted about her son’s life and death, but that was for the future. Now, maybe it was enough for Michelle to tell her that Donald Bradford killed Graham because he found out something about Bradford’s illegal activities.

  When they had gone into the kitchen and closed the door, Banks put the pad and pencil on Bill Marshall’s knee and settled in front of him, gazing into the expressionless eyes. “I think you know why I want to talk to you,” he said.

  Bill Marshall made no sign that he understood.

  “You used to spar with Reggie and Ronnie Kray in your younger days,” he said. “Then, when you came up here, you fell in with Carlo Fiorino and did a few strong-arm jobs for him. Am I right? Can you nod or write something down?”

  Bill Marshall did nothing.

  “Okay, so that’s how you want to play it,” Banks said. “Fine. I’m not saying you had anything to do with Graham’s death. You didn’t. You’d never have done anything like that. But you knew who did it, didn’t you?”

  Bill Marshall just stared at Banks.

  “See, the trouble with people like you, Bill, is they insist on working outside the law. You’ve no use for coppers, have you? Never have had, I shouldn’t think. Just like my own dad. Want to know what I think happened? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I think Donald Bradford just wasn’t cut out to be a killer of young boys. I don’t think he had much choice in the matter, though. Fiorino pushed him into it. After all, Graham was his responsibility, and Graham was in a position to do a lot of serious damage. There was just too much at stake. Not just the empire as it existed then, but the future. The city was expanding, becoming a new town. Soon it would double in population. What an opportunity for a man like Fiorino. He supplied what people always seemed to want, for a good price. Are you with me so far?”

  Marshall just glared at Banks. A little drool slid down his stubbly chin.

  “Fiorino had no use for the law, either, unless it was in his pay, so he used other people to do his dirty work. Shortly after the killing, Bradford sold up and moved out. Fiorino didn’t like that. Didn’t like people escaping his control, being out of his line of sight. Especially if they knew as much as Bradford did and were fast becoming unstable and unreliable. Bradford was guilt-ridden by what he had done. Also, I think he took some of Fiorino’s goods with him, though that’s just a minor matter. What really counted was that Bradford was out of sight and untrustworthy. And he knew too much.”

  Marshall still showed no reaction. Banks could hear muffled voices from the kitchen. “So what does he do when he has a problem with Bradford? Well, he could pay for a hit, I suppose, and that’s one option. But he knows you. That’s an easier one. He knows that whatever you do, you’ll do it yourself, you won’t go running to the police. So he tells you that Bradford killed your son, though not on his orders. He convinces you that Bradford was a pervert. He also gives you Bradford’s address. Easy. All he had to do next was leave the rest up to you. Am I right so far, Bill?”

  Banks could tell by the anger and hatred in Bill Marshall’s eyes that he was right. “You went up to Carlisle, didn’t you? Probably told everyone you were looking for work. Then you broke into Donald Bradford’s flat and waited for him to come home. You knew Bradford was a tough customer, so you attacked him from behind with a cosh. I don’t blame you, Bill. The man murdered your son. I’d want to do the same to anyone who harmed either of my children. But you let your wife suffer all those years. You knew Graham was dead and you knew who killed him. Maybe you didn’t know where the body was, but I’ll bet you could have found out. Instead, you went up there and murdered Bradford and said nothing to your wife or your daughter. All these years they’ve lived not knowing what happened to Graham. That’s unforgivable, Bill.” Banks nodded toward the pad. “What do you have to say about that? Come on, tell me something.”

  Marshall held his gaze for a while, then grasped the pencil, moved his hand with difficulty and scrawled on the pad. When he had done, he handed it to Banks. There were three words in capital letters: FUCK OFF COPPER.

  “He came to me, like you said,” Lauren Anderson began. “He was in a terrible state. He was upset because… well, you know why. I tried to calm him down and we went to… We just lay down on the bed together and I held him. I’d already realized I had to end it. I just hadn’t been able to find the courage. But I knew that it couldn’t go on. Someone would find out eventually, and that would be it. My career, reputation… everything. A fifteen-year-old boy and a twenty-nine-year-old woman. Taboo. I thought I’d got him calm enough, so I started talking about it, you know, how we should probably cool things for a while.”

  “Did he tell you he’d been smoking cannabis earlier?”

  “Cannabis? No. He never told me that. But that must be why he seemed so disoriented and excitable. I’d never seen him like that before. He sc
ared me.”

  “How did he react when you told him you wanted to finish the affair?” Annie asked, remembering that it hadn’t been too long ago when she had told Banks the same thing.

  “He didn’t want to accept it. He said he couldn’t bear to lose me.” Lauren started crying. “He said he’d kill himself.”

  “What happened next?”

  She dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “He stormed off to the bathroom. I gave him a couple of minutes, then I heard all the things falling out of the cupboard into the sink, glass breaking, so I went after him.”

  “Was the bathroom door locked?”

  “No.”

  “He was after the Valium?”

  “You know?”

  “We know he took some Valium shortly before he died, yes.”

  “I have a prescription. But I suppose you know that, too?”

  Annie nodded. “I checked.”

  “He had the bottle open, and he poured some tablets into his hand and swallowed them. I went to him and struggled with him over the bottle. We fought, pulling and pushing each other, and then he went down. Just like that. He was in his socks, and the floor tiles can be slippery. His feet just went from under him and he hit his head on the side of the bath. I did what I could. I tried to revive him, mouth to mouth. I checked for a pulse and listened for his heartbeat, and then I even tried holding a mirror to his mouth. But it was no use. He was dead. So much blood.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I knew if any of it came out I’d be finished. I didn’t know where to turn, so I called Vernon. He said he’d come right away and not to do anything until he got here. The rest you know.”

  “What happened to Luke’s mobile?”

  “It fell out of his pocket in the car. Vernon took it.”

  That explained the call to Armitage’s mobile. Vernon had looked up Martin Armitage’s number on Luke’s phone. He wasn’t to know that Luke would be unlikely to call his stepfather for anything. He could easily have driven to Eastvale to make the call and avoid suspicion. It wasn’t far.

  “Did you know about the ransom demand?”

  Lauren shook her head. “No. I’d never agree to anything like that. And as I said, I was too upset to think about it. If anything, I thought it must be some sort of cruel practical joke. I’m so sorry for what happened.” She reached out and grasped Annie’s wrist. “You’ve got to believe me. I’d never have harmed Luke. I loved him. Maybe if I hadn’t been so insensitive, so selfish, and not tried to end it when he was so upset, or just held him the way he wanted, it might not have happened. I’ve relived that moment over and over again. I can’t sleep. I don’t know how I’m going to go back to work. Nothing seems to matter anymore.”

  Annie stood up.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to call in my partner from the car outside, and we’re going to make sure you know your rights before we take you to the police station to make a formal statement. We’ll also be sending a message to the Harrogate police to pick up your brother.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I don’t know, Lauren,” Annie said. Again, she was feeling shitty about doing her job. Harden up, she told herself. Maybe Lauren Anderson didn’t deliberately kill Luke, but she was at least partly responsible for his death, along with Liz Palmer and Ryan Milne. All adults who should have known better than to tamper with the feelings of a confused and disturbed fifteen-year-old. All of whom were selfish and used Luke for their own ends. Even if that end, at least in Lauren’s case, was love. A romantic imagination and adolescent lust could be a dangerous combination.

  But maybe, Annie thought, if she didn’t feel pity for a woman in Lauren’s position, then she would lose some of her humanity. One of the things working with Banks had taught her was how to do the job without becoming callous and cynical, the way she had been going before she met him. Lauren would probably get off quite lightly, Annie told herself. If Luke had died during a struggle, the object of which was to stop him from taking an overdose of Valium, and if Lauren had not known of her brother’s botched ransom demand, then she wouldn’t get a very stiff sentence.

  Lauren would lose her job, though, and, like Norman Wells, she would become a pariah for some – the seductress and corrupter of youth. And the family would suffer – Robin and Martin – as it was all dragged into the open. Because this would be a high-profile trial, no doubt about it. Neil Byrd’s son, a famous model and a sports star. Not a chance of escaping the media circus. It was a damn shame they couldn’t prosecute Liz and Ryan, Annie thought as she walked Lauren, head hung low, out to the car. They were at least as much to blame for what happened as Lauren was, if not more so. But it wasn’t her judgment to make.

  “Jet Harris bent? I can’t believe it,” said Arthur Banks in The Coach and Horses early that evening. Banks had dragged him out there to tell him the full story, and they sat over their pints in the dreary, half-empty pub. Banks felt a craving for nicotine rush through his cells like a desperate need for air, but he pushed it aside. One day at a time. One craving at a time. It passed. People said the cravings got less and less powerful as time went on. But others said you were never rid of the habit. He knew people who had started again after they’d been off for ten years. One day at a time.

  Arthur Banks stared at his son in disbelief. “Is this going to come out?” he asked.

  “Probably,” said Banks. “We don’t actually hand our reports to the press, but they have their ways. Depends on the media interest.”

  “Oh, there’ll be media interest around here, all right. Jet Harris, homo and bent copper.” He eyed Banks warily. “You sure you’re not going to hush it up, then?”

  “Dad,” said Banks. “We don’t go in for cover-ups. At least I don’t, and nor does DI Hart. This investigation has cost her a lot. She’s only been at the division a couple of months and here she is, debunking the legend. Imagine how popular that’s going to make her around the place.” It had nearly cost Michelle her life, too, Banks thought. She would be safe from now on, he was certain, and not because of his melodramatic threat. Now Mandeville knew there were more people involved, he could hardly scare or kill off everyone. He would just have to take his chances that time had hidden his secrets.

  “Why are you telling me?” Arthur Banks asked.

  Banks sipped some beer. “Dad, you and mum have never really given me a chance, you know, ever since I joined the force. You’ve always pointed out the negative side of the job. I just wanted you to know that some of us aren’t crooked, that some of us take our work seriously. Even if it never comes out in public, at least you’ll know the truth, and you’ll know I told you.”

  Arthur Banks paused for a moment, looking his son in the eye, then he said, “And did you also find out what happened to your friend Graham after all these years?”

  “Yes. Well, DI Hart did most of the work. I just filled in the blanks.” Banks leaned forward. “But yes, Dad, I found out. It’s what I do. I don’t go around waving rolls of fivers at striking miners, I don’t beat up suspects in the cells, I don’t botch investigations into murdered black youths, and I don’t steal confiscated drugs and sell them back on the street. Mostly, I push paper. Sometimes I catch murderers. Sometimes I fail, but I always do my damnedest.”

  “So who did it?”

  Banks told him.

  “Donald Bradford! You’d have thought that would’ve been the first place they’d look.”

  “That’s what made us suspect some sort of misdirection.”

  “And Rupert Mandeville. That’ll make a nice headline.”

  “If we can pin anything on him. Remember, it was a long time ago, and he’s hardly likely to confess.”

  “Even so… Your pal Graham was up to no good, wasn’t he?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. He always seemed a bit shifty to me, that’s all. Like his father.”<
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  “Well, Graham wasn’t exactly walking the straight and narrow, but that’s no excuse for killing him.”

  “Course not.” Banks senior fell silent for a moment, contemplating his son through narrowed eyes. Then he let slip a thin smile. “You’ve stopped smoking, haven’t you?”

  “I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

  “There’s not much you can slip past your own father.”

  “Dad, have you been listening to me? All I’ve been trying to demonstrate to you all these years,” Banks went on, “is that I’ve been doing a decent, honest day’s work, just like you did.”

  “And Jet Harris, local legend, was a bent copper?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re going to expose him.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well,” said Arthur Banks, rubbing his hands together. “That’s all right, then. You’ll be having another pint, I suppose? On me, this time.”

  Banks looked at his watch. “Better make it a half,” he said. “I’ve got a date.”

  Was it the age of my innocence,

  Or was it the lost Land of Oz?

  Was it only a foolish illusion,

  The summer that never was?

  Did I walk through the fields with the child in my arms

  And the golden wheat over my head?

  Did I feel my heart breaking under the weight?

  Was my sweet sleeping boy child a burden, like lead?

  I remember him crying the day he was born

  And his hand like a spider that wouldn’t let go

  And he wouldn’t let go and he wouldn’t let go

  And the pain tore my heart out and filled me with woe.