Cold is the Grave

by Peter Robinson

  ‘How did you feel towards your parents?’

  ‘I told you, they weren’t my parents. They were my adoptive parents. Believe me, it does make a difference. Do you know, they never even told me I was adopted?’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘The papers.’

  ‘But surely they must have been destroyed by the fire?’

  ‘They were kept in a safe deposit box at the bank. I only found out after they died and I had to open it. That’s where they kept me. In a box.’

  ‘But they were the parents who brought you up.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Everyone says they were decent, honest, God-fearing folk. Salt of the earth.’

  ‘What do you say?’

  ‘They were stupid imbeciles, too brainwashed to make their own decisions about anything. They were scared of everything except the chapel. Their bodies. The world beyond the street. Their lives. They inflicted all that on me. And more. They made my life miserable, made me a laughing stock at school. I had no friends. I had no one to talk to. They didn’t like me hanging around with the other kids. They said God ought to be enough of a friend for anyone. What do you expect me to say about them?’

  ‘Were you glad they died?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ruth’s left hand shot out of the end of her sleeve and scratched the side of her nose. Her grubby fingernails were bitten to the quick.

  ‘What about your birth mother?’

  ‘Ros? I call her that, you know. It’s a bit late to be calling her “Mother”, don’t you think? And Mrs Riddle seems just a wee bit too formal.’

  ‘How did you find her?’

  The edges of Ruth’s lips curled in an ugly smirk. ‘You ought to know that, if you’ve done so much digging. My degree’s in information technology. You can find out anything these days if you know where to look. The telephone directory is usually pretty reliable, you know. A good place to start. But there’s the Internet, too. Lots of information out on that superhighway.’

  ‘Where did you begin?’

  ‘With the Registrar General’s office. They’ll let you see your original birth certificate if you ask them nicely. From there it’s pretty easy.’

  ‘What did the birth certificate tell you?’

  ‘That I was born at 73 Launceston Terrace, Tiverton, on the twenty-third of February, 1977.’

  ‘What else?’

  Ruth stared at the walls again, looking bored. ‘That my mother was Rosalind Gorwyn and that there was a blank space where my father’s name was supposed to be.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I went to 73 Launceston Terrace, Tiverton, and found an elderly couple by the name of Gorwyn living there. It’s not a very common name, even in Devon. I knew they couldn’t be my real parents – they were too old – so I pushed them a bit and found out they were her aunt and uncle and that she had stayed with them while she had the baby. Me. Hid away from the world while she gave birth to me.’

  ‘What else did they tell you?’

  ‘That my mother had married a man called Jeremiah Archibald Riddle, an important policeman, that she was a solicitor now, and they lived in North Yorkshire. By then they’d have told me anything to get rid of me. After that it was really easy. A child could have found them.’

  ‘Did you speak to Rosalind’s parents at all?’

  ‘Not right at first. But I found out that they’d retired to Barnstaple. He was a vicar. Which probably explains why my mother let me live.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Annie asked.

  Ruth looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. She didn’t seem to mind what she saw. ‘Well, either way I didn’t have much of a chance, did I?’ she said. ‘She could’ve just got rid of me, had an abortion. That’s what I’d have done in her place. Then I would never have existed at all and none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘She could have kept me. Then I’d have been an unwanted baby with a single mother and your chief constable would never have married her. I’d probably have been brought up in some sort of punk commune or something, with people shooting heroin all around my cot, getting high and forgetting me, so I’d have crawled to the edge of the stairs and fallen over and died anyway. So I imagine she thought putting me up for adoption was a better choice for her. Pity it didn’t turn out that way for me. I’ve been told the adoption people are pretty good, very strict in their standards, but some of us slip through the cracks. Like I said, everyone thought the Walkers were the salt of the earth, that they would make wonderful parents, but the Lord hadn’t seen fit to bless them with issue. You’d think they’d take that as a sign, wouldn’t you?’

  Banks and Annie paused to take in what she had said, then Banks picked up the questioning again. ‘You went to Rosalind’s law office?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it would be best that way. Turned out I was right.’ Ruth gave a mean little giggle. ‘She was scared shitless I’d say something to her husband. Thought he’d turf her out on her arse if he found out.’

  ‘So you blackmailed her.’

  Ruth slammed her fist onto the desk. ‘It was only my due! I only asked for my due. I’d had nothing from her in all those years. Nothing. And I’d had little but misery from the bloody Walkers. Do you know they once made me wear an old pair of shoes that were so small and tight that my toenails came off and my shoes were full of blood when I got home from school? That was what your bloody salt-of-the-earth Walkers were like. I had a right to something from Ros. She owed me. Why should she get it all just because she was born a few years later than me, on the right side of the blanket? Answer me that one. It should all have been mine, but she tossed me away. It was only my due.’

  The interview room was starting to feel very claustrophobic. Banks couldn’t quite sort out the she’s; half the time it seemed as if Ruth was referring to Rosalind, the rest to Emily. ‘Were you abused by your adoptive parents, Ruth?’

  Ruth gave a harsh laugh. ‘Abused? That’s a good one. You at least have to care about someone to abuse them. No, I wasn’t abused, not in the way you mean it. I suppose there’s more than one kind of abuse, though. I mean, I’d call being made to wear those shoes until my toes bled abuse. Wouldn’t you? Mostly, they were just cold. Ironic they should die by fire, isn’t it?’

  Again, Banks felt that shiver creep up his spine. He saw Annie frowning. Ruth paid them no attention. ‘Did you see Rosalind often?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Not that often.’

  ‘When you needed something?’

  ‘I only wanted my due.’

  ‘What about Emily? How did you feel towards her?’

  ‘I’d be a liar if I said I liked her.’

  ‘But you befriended her, took her in. At least I assume that’s how it happened and you didn’t just meet her by accident near the station. Is that right?’

  Ruth nodded. ‘When I met her the once in Ros’s office, I made a point of finding out where she went to school. She was a boarder, so I phoned her there, and visited her. When she started to trust me, when we began to be friends, she used to call me a lot from school, too. She’d complain about her parents, how strict they were. I had to laugh. I mean, she’d complain to me about that. I told her that after she was sixteen she could do what she wanted. It was near the end of the school year and she’d had her birthday, so I said why didn’t she come and stay with me in London for a while if she wanted.’

  ‘You mean you lured her to London? You encouraged her to leave home?’

  ‘I think lured is too strong a word. I had no trouble getting her there. She was only too pleased to come.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell her parents where she was?’

  ‘Why should I? It was her business, and she didn’t want them to know.’

  ‘Do you think Rosalind knew?’

  ‘I doubt it. She didn’t know how close me and Emily had become. I don’t think she even knew where I lived. Didn’t bother to ask. That’s how interested in me she was after all those
years.’

  ‘Did you introduce Emily to Craig Newton?’ Banks asked.

  Ruth’s face clouded. ‘I thought he was my friend. I thought he loved me. But he was just like all the rest.’

  ‘Did it hurt you when she took up with Craig?’

  Ruth shot him a tortured glance. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Is that why you killed her?’

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Come on, Ruth. We’ve got the evidence. We know. You might as well tell us how it happened. I’m sure there were extenuating circumstances. What about Barry Clough? What part did he play in all this, for example?’

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed. ‘I wondered when you’d get around to him.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Ruth paused a minute and rubbed her fist over the top of her thigh as if she had an itch. ‘I bet it’s something you don’t know, clever clogs.’

  ‘Maybe it is. Why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘They didn’t name my father on the birth certificate, as I told you. But I found out who it was. Barry Clough. My father.’ Ruth flopped back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘I’m tired and I want something to eat. You have to give me something to eat, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know about you, Annie,’ Banks said when Ruth was back in her cell eating her canteen burger and chips, ‘but I could do with a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘My feelings exactly.’

  They left the station and walked across the market square, then they took the narrow, cobbled Castle Wynde past the bare formal gardens down to the riverside. It was a crisp, cold winter day, and their breaths plumed as they walked, crunching over puddles. The hill went steeply down to the river, with small limestone cottages lining both sides, and the cobbles were slippery. Banks could feel the icy wind blowing up from the river. It was just what he needed to get the smell of the interview room out of his system.

  ‘What do you make of all that, then?’ Annie asked when they were halfway down.

  Banks didn’t know what to make of Ruth’s bombshell. He didn’t even know if it was true; after all, she had told plenty of lies already. But why lie about something like that? ‘It raises more questions than it answers,’ he said.

  ‘Such as: did anyone else know, and did it have anything to do with Emily’s murder?’

  ‘For a start. If Rosalind Riddle knew, she kept it well hidden. I hadn’t thought her that good an actress.’

  ‘Do you think Ruth killed Emily?’

  ‘If she didn’t, she knows what happened, she knows who did. She’s a part of it; I’m certain of that.’

  They arrived at the river and paused for a while by the waist-high stone wall that ran along its bank. The falls rushed and foamed along the shallows, huge moss-covered slabs of ancient rock jutting out here and there, the result of a geological fault millions of years ago. Banks could feel the icy spray on his cheeks and in his hair. If the cold spell continued for much longer, even the falls would freeze. Above them, the dark mass of the ruined castle keep and towers lay heavy against a pewter sky; it was a black-and-white world, or like the world of a black-and-white photograph with all its subtle variations of grey. Annie slipped her arm in his. It was a good feeling, the only good feeling he’d had that morning.

  They walked along the riverside path, past the terraced gardens – no more than a small park dotted with trees – to their left. There weren’t many people around, just a young couple walking their Airedale and an old-age pensioner in a flat cap taking his daily constitutional. Banks had often considered buying a flat cap himself. All these years in Yorkshire and he still didn’t have one. But he didn’t like wearing hats, even in winter.

  Across the river, to the right, bare trees lined the opposite bank. Banks could make out the shapes of the large houses facing the Green, beyond which lay the notorious East Side Estate, which pretty much kept the Eastvale police in business year round.

  In one of those big houses lived Jenny Fuller, a psychologist Banks had worked with on a number of cases. A friend, too, and a one-time potential lover. Jenny had been polite but cool towards him ever since he stood her up on that date three months ago. It was more than just that, though; it was as if Jenny had put too much of herself on the line, exposed her feelings for him, and the seeming rejection had touched a raw nerve, made her curl in on herself. She was on the rebound from a sour relationship with an American professor at the time, Banks already knew, so she was hurting to start with. He wished he could do something to bridge the distance, rekindle the friendship. It had been important to him over the years.

  But there was Annie, too. Banks was no expert, but he knew enough of women to realize that Annie wouldn’t appreciate his spending time with someone else other than her, now that he felt free from his marriage.

  ‘Sandra wants a divorce,’ he suddenly said to Annie. He felt her arm stiffen in his, but she didn’t remove it. First good sign. This was one thing he hadn’t told her the other night, one thing he had found too difficult to put into words. It still was, but he knew he would have to try if he and Annie were to go any further. It might put her more at ease or it might scare her off; that was the risk he would have to take.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, without looking at him.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I’m glad.’

  Annie slowed down and turned to face him. ‘You’re what?’

  They started walking again, and he tried to explain to her what he had felt in London, after he first heard the news. He wasn’t sure whether he did a good job or not, but Annie nodded here and there and seemed to ponder what he’d said after he finished. Finally, she said, ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Time to let go.’

  Second good sign. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Not any more. Oh, there are memories, always will be, and some residual feelings – anger, disappointment, whatever. But no, it doesn’t hurt. In fact, I feel better than I have in years.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Look, do you fancy coming to the cottage for Christmas dinner? Tracy will be there. Just the three of us.’

  ‘I can’t. Really, I’m sorry, Alan, but I always go home for Christmas. Ray would never forgive me if I missed it.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Annie gave his arm a little squeeze. ‘I mean it, Alan. It’s not an excuse. I’d love to meet Tracy. Maybe some other time?’

  Banks knew she was telling the truth. Annie wasn’t a very good liar, as he had discovered. Lying made her all grumpy and withdrawn. ‘We’ll have a drink together sometime, then,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think she’ll hate me?’

  ‘Why should she?’

  Annie smiled. ‘Sometimes you can be pretty damn thick when it comes to women, Alan Banks.’

  ‘I’m not being thick,’ Banks said. ‘Mothers, daughters, fathers; it can all get pretty complicated. I know that. But Tracy’s not a hater. I know my daughter. I wouldn’t expect her to rush up to you and hug you – no doubt she’ll be a little hesitant, checking you out, as they say – but she’s not a hater, and she doesn’t see me as the villain in all this. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.’

  ‘Unlike Ruth Walker.’

  ‘Indeed. Did you feel the atmosphere in that room?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘I felt something like it before, the times I talked to her in London,’ Banks said, ‘but it wasn’t as powerful. I think it’s because she senses she’s near the end. She’s given up. She’s unravelling.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes. I think she wants us to know it all now, so we can see her point of view. So we can understand her. Forgive her.’

  Annie shook her head. ‘I don’t think she wants forgiveness, Alan. At least, not the way I’m reading her. I don’t think she sees there’s anything to forgive.
’

  ‘Perhaps not. I should have known.’

  ‘Should have known what?’

  ‘That something was wrong there.’

  ‘But you’ve only just found out Ruth was Emily’s half-sister. How could you have known that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I should have dug deeper sooner.’

  ‘Why do you have to take the burden on yourself like this? Why is everything your fault? Why do you think if you only acted differently you could prevent people being killed?’

  Banks stopped and looked out over the swirling river; it was the colour of a pint of bitter, an intruder in the black-and-white world. ‘Do I?’

  ‘You know you do.’

  Banks lit a cigarette. ‘It must be something to do with Graham Marshall.’

  ‘Graham Marshall? Who’s he?’

  ‘A boy at school. I won’t say a friend because I didn’t know him very well. He was a quiet kid, bright, shy.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘One day he simply disappeared.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nobody knows. He was never found. Dead or alive.’

  ‘What did the police think?’

  ‘The consensus was that he’d been abducted by a child molester who’d murdered him after he’d had his way. This would probably have been around the time of the Moors Murders, though in a different part of the country, so people were especially sensitive to the disappearance of children.’

  ‘That’s sad.’ Annie rested her elbows on the wall beside Banks. ‘But I still don’t see what it’s got to do with you.’

  ‘About three or four months before Graham Marshall’s disappearance I was playing with some friends down by the river. We were throwing stones in, just having a bit of harmless fun, the way kids do . . .’

  As he spoke, Banks remembered the day vividly. It was spitting and the raindrops pitted the murky water. A man approached along the riverbank. All Banks could remember now was that he was tall – but then every adult was tall to him then – and thin, with greasy dark hair and a rough, pockmarked complexion. Banks smiled and politely paused before dropping in a large stone, one he had to hold in both hands, to let the stranger pass by without splashing him.