She went into the bedroom cautiously, gripping the side-handled baton more tightly, expecting the worst. Nobody jumped out of the wardrobe at her, but what she saw there made her drop her baton and put her hands to her mouth.
There was no mess. Perhaps some of her drawers weren’t completely closed, the way she had left them, but there was no mess. It was much, much worse.
Spread out neatly at the center of the bed lay Melissa’s dress. When Michelle reached out to pick it up, she found it had been cut cleanly into two halves.
Michelle staggered back against the wall, half the dress clutched to her chest, hardly able to believe what was happening. As she did so, her eye caught the writing on the dressing-table mirror: FORGET GRAHAM MARSHALL, BITCH. REMEMBER MELISSA. YOU COULD JOIN HER.
Michelle cried out, covered her face with the dress and slid down the wall to the floor.
Chapter 12
Norman Wells sat in the interview room with his folded arms resting on the top of his paunch and his lips pressed tight together. If he was scared, he wasn’t showing it. But then, he didn’t know how much the police already knew about him.
Banks and Annie sat opposite him, files spread out in front of them. Banks felt well-rested after a day off. He had stayed up late Saturday night eating Chinese food and talking with Brian, but on Sunday, after Brian left, he had done nothing but read the papers, go for a walk from Helmthorpe to Rawley Force and back by himself, stopping for a pub lunch and fiddling with the Sunday Times crossword. In the evening, he had thought of ringing Michelle Hart in Peterborough but decided against it. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, so let her contact him first, if she wanted to. After a small Laphroaig and a cigarette outside, enjoying the mild evening air around sunset, he had listened to Ian Bostridge’s English Song Book CD, gone to bed before half past ten, and slept as soundly as he could remember in a long time.
“Norman,” said Banks. “You don’t mind if I call you Norman, do you?”
“It’s my name.”
“Detective Inspector Cabbot here has been doing a bit of digging around in your background, and it turns out you’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you?”
Wells said nothing. Annie pushed a file toward Banks, and he opened it. “You used to be a schoolteacher, am I right?”
“You know I did, or you wouldn’t have dragged me in here away from my business.”
Banks raised his eyebrows. “It’s my understanding that you came here of your own free will when asked to help us with our inquiries. Am I wrong?”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“I don’t follow.”
“And there’s no need to play the thickie with me. You know what I mean. If I hadn’t come willingly, you’d have found some way to bring me here, whether I wanted to come or not. So just get on with it. It might not seem much to you, but I have a business to run, customers who rely on me.”
“We’ll try to see that you get back to your shop as soon as possible, Norman, but first I’d like you to answer a few questions for me. You taught at a private school in Cheltenham, right?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“I left seven years ago.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I grew tired of teaching.”
Banks glanced at Annie, who frowned, leaned over and pointed at some lines on the typed sheet of paper in front of Banks. “Norman,” Banks went on, “I think I ought to inform you that Detective Inspector Cabbot spoke to your old headmaster, Mr. Fulwell, earlier this morning. He was reticent to discuss school business at first, but when she informed him that we were conducting a possible murder investigation, he was a little more forthcoming. We know all about you, Norman.”
The moment of truth. Wells seemed to deflate and shrink in his chair. His plump lower lip pushed up and all but obscured the upper, his chin disappeared into his neck and his arms seemed to wrap more tightly around his lower chest. “What do you want from me?” he whispered.
“The truth.”
“I had a nervous breakdown.”
“What caused it?”
“The pressures of the job. You’ve no idea what teaching’s like.”
“I don’t imagine I have,” Banks admitted, thinking that the last thing he’d want to do was stand up in front of thirty or forty scruffy, hormonally challenged teenagers and try to get them interested in Shakespeare or the War of Jenkins’s Ear. Anyone with that skill deserved his admiration. And a medal, too, for that matter. “What particular pressures led you to decide to leave?”
“It was nothing specific. Just a general sort of breakdown.”
“Stop beating about the bush, Norman,” Annie cut in. “Does the name Steven Farrow mean anything to you?”
Wells paled. “Nothing happened. I never touched him. False accusations.”
“According to the headmaster, Norman, you were infatuated with this thirteen-year-old boy. So much so that you neglected your duties, became an embarrassment to the school, and on one occasion—”
“Enough!” Wells slammed his fist down on the metal table. “You’re just like everyone else. You poison the truth with your lies. You can’t stare beauty in the eye, so you have to destroy it, poison it for everyone else.”
“Steven Farrow, Norman,” Annie repeated. “Thirteen years old.”
“It was pure. A pure love.” Wells rubbed his teary eyes with his forearm. “But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? To people like you, anything other than a man and a woman is dirty, abnormal, perverted.”
“Try us, Norman,” said Banks. “Give us a chance. You loved him?”
“Steven was beautiful. An angel. All I wanted was to be close to him, to be with him. What could be wrong with that?”
“But you touched him, Norman,” said Annie. “He told—”
“I never touched him! He was lying. He turned on me. He wanted money. Can you believe it? My little angel wanted money. I would have done anything for him, made any sacrifice. But something so vulgar as money… I blame them, of course, not Steven. They poisoned him against me. They made him turn on me.” Wells wiped his eyes again.
“Who did, Norman?”
“The others. The other boys.”
“What happened?” Banks asked.
“I refused, of course. Steven went to the headmaster and…I was asked to leave, no questions asked, no scandal. All for the good of the school, you see. But word got around. On the scrap heap at thirty-eight. One foolish mistake.” He shook his head. “That boy broke my heart.”
“Surely you couldn’t expect them to keep you on?” Banks said. “In fact, you’re bloody lucky they didn’t bring in the police. And you know how we feel about pedophiles.”
“I am not a child molester! I would have been content just…just to be with him. Have you ever been in love?”
Banks said nothing. He sensed Annie glance at him.
Wells leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. “You can’t choose the object of your desire. You know you can’t. It may be a cliché to say that love is blind, but like many clichés, it’s not without a grain of truth. I didn’t choose to love Steven. I simply couldn’t help myself.”
Banks had heard this argument before from pedophiles—that they weren’t responsible for their desires, that they didn’t choose to love little boys—and he had at least a modicum of sympathy for their predicament. After all, it wasn’t only pedophiles who fell in love with the wrong people. But he didn’t feel enough sympathy to condone their actions. “I’m sure you are aware,” he said, “that it’s illegal for a thirty-eight-year-old man to initiate a sexual relationship with a thirteen-year-old boy, and that it’s inappropriate for a teacher to be involved in any way with a pupil, even if that pupil did happen to be over the age of consent, which Steven wasn’t.”
“There was no sexual relationship. Steven lied. They made him do it. I never touched him.”
“That’s as may be,” said Banks.
“You might not have been able to help your feelings, but you could have controlled your actions. I think you know right from wrong.”
“It’s all so hypocritical,” Wells said.
“What do you mean?”
“Who says there can be no real love between youth and age? The Greeks didn’t think so.”
“Society,” said Banks. “The law. And it’s not the love we legislate against. The law’s there to protect the innocent and the vulnerable from those predators who should know better.”
“Ha! It shows how little you know. Who do you think was the vulnerable one here, the innocent one? Steven Farrow? Do you think just because a boy is of a certain tender age that he is incapable of manipulating his elders, incapable of blackmail? That’s very naive of you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Luke Armitage,” Annie cut in.
Wells leaned back and licked his lips. He was sweating profusely, Banks noticed, and starting to smell sour and rank. “I wondered when we’d be getting around to him.”
“That’s why you’re here, Norman. Did you think it was about Steven Farrow?”
“I’d no idea what it would be about. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“The Farrow affair’s all water under the bridge. Hushed up. No charges, no serious damage done.”
“Except to me.”
“You were among the last people to see Luke Armitage on the day he disappeared, Norman,” Annie went on. “When we found out about your past, isn’t it only natural that we should want to talk to you about him?”
“I know nothing about what happened to him.”
“But you were friends with him, weren’t you?”
“Acquaintances. He was a customer. We talked about books sometimes. That’s all.”
“He was an attractive boy, wasn’t he, Norman? Like Steven Farrow. Did he remind you of Steven?”
Wells sighed. “The boy left my shop. I never saw him again.”
“Are you certain?” Banks asked. “Are you sure he didn’t come back, or you didn’t meet him somewhere else? Your house, perhaps?”
“I never saw him again. Why would he come to my house?”
“I don’t know,” said Banks. “You tell me.”
“He didn’t.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Did he come back to the shop? Did something happen there? Something bad. Did you kill him and then move him after dark? Maybe it was a terrible accident. I can’t believe you meant to kill him. Not if you loved him.”
“I didn’t love him. Society has seen to it that I’m quite incapable of loving anyone ever again. No matter what you think of me, I am not a fool. I do know wrong from right, Chief Inspector, whether I agree with the definition or not. I am capable of self-control. I am an emotional eunuch. I know that society regards my urges as evil and sinful, and I have no desire to spend the rest of my days in jail. Believe me, the prison of my own making is bad enough.”
“I suppose the money was an afterthought, was it?” Banks went on. “But why not? Why not make a little money out of what you’d done? I mean, you could do with it, couldn’t you? Look at the dump you spend your days in. A crappy used-book business in a dank, cold dungeon can’t be making much money, can it? An extra ten thousand quid would have set you up nicely. Not too greedy. Just enough.”
Wells had tears in his eyes again, and he was shaking his head slowly from side to side. “It’s all I’ve got,” he said, his voice catching in his throat, his whole body starting to shake now. “My books. My cat. They’re all I’ve got. Can’t you see that, man?” He pushed his florid, bulbous face toward Banks and banged his fist to his heart. “There’s nothing else left here for me. Have you no humanity?”
“But it’s still not very much, is it?” Banks pressed on.
Wells looked him in the eye and regained some of his composure. “Who are you to say that? Who are you to pronounce judgment on a man’s life? Do you think I don’t know I’m ugly? Do you think I don’t notice the way people look at me? Do you think I don’t know I’m the object of laughter and derision? Do you think I have no feelings? Every day I sit down there in my dank, cold dungeon, as you so cruelly refer to it, like some sort of pariah, some deformed monster in his lair, some…some Quasimodo, and I contemplate my sins, my desires, my dreams of love and beauty and purity deemed ugly and evil by a hypocritical world. All I have is my books, and the unconditional love of one of God’s creatures. How dare you judge me?”
“No matter what you feel,” said Banks, “society has to protect its children, and for that we need laws. They may seem arbitrary to you. Sometimes they seem arbitrary to me. I mean, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen? Fourteen? Where do you draw the line? Who knows, Norman, maybe one day we’ll be as enlightened as you’d like us to be and lower the age of consent to thirteen, but until then we have to have those lines, or all becomes chaos.” He was thinking of Graham Marshall as well as Luke Armitage as he spoke. Society hadn’t done a very good job of protecting either of them.
“I have done nothing wrong,” said Wells, crossing his arms again.
The problem was, as Banks and Annie had already discussed, that the closed-circuit television cameras corroborated Wells’s story. Luke Armitage had entered Norman’s Used Books at two minutes to five and left—alone—at five twenty-four.
“What time did you close that day?” Banks asked.
“Half past five, as usual.”
“And what did you do?”
“I went home.”
“Number fifty-seven Arden Terrace?”
“Yes.”
“That’s off Market Street, isn’t it?”
“Close, yes.”
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes.”
“Do you own a car?”
“A second-hand Renault.”
“Good enough to get you out to Hallam Tarn and back?”
Wells hung his head in his hands. “I’ve told you. I did nothing. I haven’t been near Hallam Tarn in months. Certainly not since the foot-and-mouth outbreak.”
Banks could smell his sweat even more strongly now, sharp and acrid, like an animal secretion. “What did you do after you went home?”
“Had my tea. Leftover chicken casserole, if you’re interested. Watched television. Read for a while, then went to sleep.”
“What time?”
“I’d say I was in bed by half past ten.”
“Alone?”
Wells just glared at Banks.
“You didn’t go out again that evening?”
“Where would I go?”
“Pub? Pictures?”
“I don’t drink, and I don’t socialize. I prefer my own company. And I happen to believe that there hasn’t been a decent picture made in the last forty years.”
“Did Luke Armitage visit your house at any time that evening?”
“No.”
“Has Luke Armitage ever visited your house?”
“No.”
“He’s never even stepped inside your front door, not just for a moment?”
“I talk to him in the shop sometimes. That’s all. He doesn’t even know where I live.”
“Did you ever give him a lift anywhere?”
“No. How could I do that? I walk to and from the shop every day. It’s not far, and it’s good exercise. Besides, you know what parking’s like around the market square.”
“So Luke has never been in your car?”
“Never.”
“In that case,” said Banks, “I’m sure you won’t mind if our forensic experts have a close look at your house and your car. We’d also like to take a DNA sample, just for comparison.”
Wells stuck his chin out. “What if I do mind?”
“We’ll keep you here until we get a search warrant. Remember, Norman, I wouldn’t like to say judges are swayed by such things, but Luke Armitage came from a wealthy and well-respected family, while you’re a disgraced school-teacher eking
out a living in a dingy used-book shop. And that shop was the last place we know Luke visited before he disappeared.”
Wells hung his head. “Fine,” he said. “Go ahead. Do what you will. I don’t care anymore.”
After a sleepless night on Saturday, Michelle had spent Sunday getting over the shock of what had happened in her flat and trying to rein in her emotional response in favor of more analytical thought.
She hadn’t got very far.
That someone had gained entry and arranged things in order to frighten her was obvious enough. Why, was another matter entirely. That the interloper knew about Melissa surprised her, though she supposed people could find out anything about her if they really wanted to. But given that he knew, it would have been evident when he searched her bedside drawers that the little dress was Melissa’s, and that its desecration would cause her a great deal of anguish. In other words, it had been a cold, calculated assault.
The flats were supposed to be secure, but Michelle had been a copper long enough to know that a talented burglar could get around almost anything. Though it went against every grain of Michelle’s nature not to report the break-in to the police, in the end she decided against it. Mostly, this was because Graham Marshall’s name had been written in her own red lipstick on the dressing-table mirror. The intrusion was meant to frighten her off the case, and the only people who knew she was working on it, apart from the Marshalls themselves, were other police officers, or people connected with them, like Dr. Cooper. True, Michelle’s name had been in the papers once or twice when the bones had first been found, so technically everyone in the entire country could know she was on the case, but she felt the answers lay a lot closer to home.
The question was, “Was she going to be frightened off the case?” The answer was, “No.”
At least there hadn’t been much cleaning up to do. Michelle had, however, dumped the entire contents of her bathroom cabinet and would have to contact her doctor for new prescriptions. She had also dumped the contents of the fridge, which hadn’t been a big job at all. More important, she had found a locksmith in the Yellow Pages and arranged to have a chain and an extra dead-bolt lock put on her door.
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