Close to Home

by Peter Robinson

  As a result of her weekend experience, Michelle felt drained and edgy on Monday morning and found herself looking at everyone in Divisional Headquarters differently, as if they knew something she didn’t, as if they were pointing at her and talking about her. It was a frightening feeling, and every time she caught someone’s eye she looked away. Creeping paranoia, she told herself and tried to shake it off.

  First, she had a brief meeting with DC Collins, who told her he was getting nowhere checking the old perv reports. Most of the people the police had interviewed at the time were either dead or in jail, and those who weren’t had nothing new to add. She phoned Dr. Cooper, who still hadn’t located her knife expert, Hilary Wendell, yet, then she went down to the archives to check out the old notebooks and action allocations.

  These days, since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, there were very strict rules regarding police notebooks. You couldn’t leave blank pages, for example. Each page was numbered, and if you missed one by mistake you had to draw a line through it and write “Omitted in error.” Entries had to be preceded by date and time, underlined, and at the end of each day the officer had to draw a continuous line below the final entry. Most of this was to prevent officers from “verballing” suspects—attributing to them words they hadn’t used, confessions they hadn’t made—and to avoid any sort of revisions after the fact. Notes were made on the spot, often quickly, and accuracy was important because the notebooks might need to be used in court.

  An officer’s notebooks could be invaluable when trying to reconstruct the pattern of an investigation, as could the action allocations, records made of all the instructions issued to investigating officers by the senior investigating officer. For example, if DC Higginbottom was asked to go and interview Joe Smith’s neighbor, that order, or “action,” would be recorded in the actions allocation book, and his record of the interview would be in his notebook. By looking at the actions, you could determine which areas of inquiry had been pursued and which had not, and by reading the notebooks you could unearth impressions that might not have made it into final statements and formal reports.

  Completed notebooks were first handed to a detective inspector, who would look them over and, if everything was acceptable, send them to the records clerk for filing. That meant they piled up over the years. Whoever said we were heading for a paperless world, Michelle thought, as she walked along the rows of shelving stacked to the ceiling with boxes, obviously wasn’t a copper.

  Mrs. Metcalfe showed her where the notebooks were filed, and Michelle went first, by instinct, to Ben Shaw’s. But no matter how many times she flipped through the boxes, checked and rechecked the dates, in the end she had to admit that if there had been notebooks covering the period of major activity in the Graham Marshall case, on the day of his disappearance, August 22, 1965, over the next month or two, then they had vanished.

  Michelle found it difficult to decipher Shaw’s handwriting in the notebooks she did find, but she could just about make out that his last entry was on August 15, 1965, when he had been questioning a witness to a post office robbery, and the next one was a new notebook started on the sixth of October of the same year.

  Michelle asked for Mrs. Metcalfe’s help, but after half an hour even the poor records clerk had to admit defeat. “I can’t imagine where they’ve got to, love,” she said. “Except they might have got misfiled by my predecessor, or lost in one of the moves.”

  “Could someone have taken them?” Michelle asked.

  “I don’t see who. Or why. I mean, it’s only people like you who come down here. Other police.”

  Exactly what Michelle had been thinking. She could have taken out anything she wanted during her visits, and Mrs. Metcalfe would have been none the wiser. Which meant that anyone else could, too. Someone had gained entry to her flat and tried to scare her off the case, and now she found that nearly two months’ worth, a crucial two months’ worth, of notebooks had somehow disappeared. Coincidence? Michelle didn’t think so.

  Half an hour later, when they had run into the same problem with the action allocation book for the Graham Marshall case, Michelle knew in her bones that the actions and the notebooks were gone forever, destroyed, most likely. But why? And by whom? The discovery didn’t help her paranoia one bit. She was beginning to feel way out of her depth. What the hell should she do now?

  After the interview, Banks felt the urge to get out of the station, away from the acrid stink of Norman Wells’s sweat, so he decided to head out Lyndgarth way and talk to Luke Armitage’s music teacher, Alastair Ford, while Annie continued to supervise the search for Luke’s mystery woman.

  In Banks’s experience, music teachers were an odd lot indeed, partly, no doubt, because of the frustration of trying to instill the beauties of Beethoven and Bach into minds addled with Radiohead and Mercury Rev. Not that Banks had anything against pop music. In his day, the class had kept pestering their music teacher, Mr. Watson, to play The Beatles. He relented once, but looked glum the whole time. His feet didn’t tap, and his heart wasn’t in it. When he played Dvoák’s New World Symphony or Tchaikovsky’s Simphonie Pathétique, however, it was another matter. He closed his eyes, swayed and conducted, hummed along as the main themes swelled. All the time the kids in the class were laughing at him and reading comics under their desks, but he was oblivious, in a world of his own. One day Mr. Watson failed to turn up for class. Rumor had it that he’d suffered a nervous breakdown and was “resting” in a sanatorium. He never returned to teaching as far as Banks knew.

  Yesterday’s rain had rinsed the landscape clean and brought out the bright greens of the lower daleside, dotted with purple clover, yellow buttercups and celandines. The limestone scar of Fremlington Edge glowed in the sunlight, and below it the village of Lyndgarth, with its small church and lopsided village green, like a handkerchief flapping in the wind, seemed asleep. Banks consulted his map, found the minor road he was looking for and turned right.

  Ford’s cottage was about as isolated as Banks’s own, and when he parked behind the dark blue Honda, he understood why. It wasn’t the New World Symphony but the beautiful Recordare for soprano and mezzo-soprano from Verdi’s Requiem blasting out of the open windows at full volume. If Banks hadn’t been playing the Stones’s Aftermath CD in the car, he would have heard it a mile away.

  It took a bit of hammering at the door, but eventually the music quietened down and it was answered by the man Banks recognized from the Aeolian String Quartet concert. Alastair Ford had five o’clock shadow, a long, hooked nose and a bright gleam in his eyes. If he had any, his hair would probably have been sticking out in all directions, but he was quite bald. What was it about Luke Armitage? Banks wondered. This was the second person he’d met that day who had spent time with the boy and looked as mad as a hatter. Maybe Luke attracted weirdos. Maybe it was because he was more than a little weird himself. However, Banks determined to keep an open mind. Whether Alastair Ford’s eccentricity had a dangerous edge remained to be seen.

  “I’m as fond of Verdi as the next man,” said Banks, showing his warrant card, “but don’t you think it’s a bit too loud?”

  “Oh, don’t tell me old farmer Jones has complained about the music again. He says it curdles his cows’ milk. Philistine!”

  “I’m not here about the noise, Mr. Ford. Might I come in and have a word?”

  “Now I’m curious,” said Ford, leading the way inside. His house was clean but looked lived-in, with little piles of sheet music here and there, a violin resting on a low table, and the massive stereo system dominating the living room. “A policeman who knows his Verdi.”

  “I’m no expert,” Banks said, “but I’ve recently bought a new recording, so I’ve listened to it a few times lately.”

  “Ah, yes. Renée Fleming and the Kirov. Very nice, but I must admit I’m still rather attached to the von Otter and Gardiner. Anyway, I can’t imagine you’ve come here to discuss old Joe Green with me. What can I do for you?” For
d was birdlike in many ways, especially in his sudden, jerky movements, but when he sat down in the overstuffed armchair he fell still, fingers linked in his lap. He wasn’t relaxed, though. Banks could sense the man’s tension and unease, and he wondered what its cause was. Maybe he just didn’t like being questioned by the police.

  “It’s about Luke Armitage,” said Banks. “I understand you knew him?”

  “Ah, poor Luke. A remarkably talented boy. Such a great loss.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Around the end of term.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen him since?”

  “I’ve barely left the cottage since then, except to drive into Lyndgarth for groceries. Alone with my music after a term of teaching those philistines. What bliss!”

  “I gather Luke Armitage wasn’t a philistine, though?”

  “Far from it.”

  “You were giving him violin lessons, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here or at school?”

  “At school. Tuesday evenings. We have a reasonably well-equipped music room there. Mind you, we ought to be grateful for anything these days. They’ll spend a fortune on sports equipment, but when it comes to music…”

  “Did Luke ever talk to you about anything that was on his mind?”

  “He didn’t talk a lot. Mostly he concentrated on his playing. He had remarkable powers of concentration, unlike so many of today’s youth. He wasn’t much of a one for small talk. We did chat about music, argued once or twice about pop music, which I gathered he was rather fond of.”

  “Never about anything else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything that might have been bothering him, worrying him, anyone he might have been afraid of. That sort of thing.”

  “I’m afraid not. Luke was a very private person, and I’m not the prying kind. Truth be told, I’m not very good at helping people with their emotional problems.” He ran his hand over his smooth head and smiled. “That’s why I prefer to live alone.”

  “Not married?”

  “Was. Many moons ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Search me. What usually happens?”

  Banks thought of Sandra. What usually happens? “So you just taught him the violin, that’s all?”

  “Mainly, yes. I mean, he was in my class, too, at school. But I wouldn’t say I knew him or that we were friends or anything like that. I respected his talent, even if he did dabble in pop music, but that’s as far as it went.”

  “Did he ever mention his parents?”

  “Not to me.”

  “What about his biological father? Neil Byrd?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Banks looked around the room. “It’s a very isolated cottage you have here, Mr. Ford.”

  “Is it? Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “Isolation suits you?”

  “It must do, mustn’t it?” Ford’s foot started tapping on the floor, his knee jerking, and not to the rhythm of the now barely audible Requiem.

  “Do you ever have company?”

  “Rarely. I play in a string quartet, and sometimes the other members come out here to rehearse. Other than that, I’m rather given to solitary pursuits. Look, I—”

  “No girlfriends?”

  “I told you, I’m not good at relationships.”

  “Boyfriends?”

  Ford raised an eyebrow. “I’m not good at relationships.”

  “Yet you manage the teacher-student relationship.”

  “I have a talent for teaching.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “In a way. Sometimes.”

  Banks got up and walked over to the window. There was a fine view of the dale, looking back toward Eastvale in the distance. Banks thought he could just make out the castle on its hill.

  “Did Luke Armitage ever come here?” he asked, turning to face Ford.

  “No.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Very few people come here. I would remember. Look, if you want to know about Luke, ask Lauren.”

  “Lauren Anderson?”

  “Yes. She knew him far better than I did. She’s a…well, you know, she’s the sort of person people talk to, about their problems and stuff.”

  “Emotions.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know if Luke was close to anyone else?”

  “You could try our head teacher’s daughter.”

  Banks had a quick flash of that sudden flurry of blond hair and long leg he had noticed after his conversation with Gavin Barlow. “Rose Barlow?”

  “That’s the one. Little minx.”

  “Were she and Luke friends?”

  “Thick as thieves.”

  “When was this?”

  “Earlier this year. February or March.”

  “Where did you see them together?”

  “At school.”

  “Nowhere else?”

  “I don’t go anywhere else. Except here. All I can say is I saw them talking sometimes in the corridors and playground, and they seemed close.”

  Banks made a mental note to follow up on Rose Barlow. “Do you have a mobile phone?” he asked.

  “Good Lord, what an odd question!”

  “Do you?”

  “No. I see no use for one, personally. I barely use the telephone I do have.”

  “Where were you last Monday?”

  “Here.”

  “Were you in Eastvale at all last week?”

  “I’ve already told you. I’ve hardly left the cottage.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here. In the cottage. Alone. All this time.”

  Ford got to his feet and the birdlike motions started up again. “Playing music. Listening. Reading. Dabbling in a little composition. Look, really it’s none of your business, you know, even if you are a policeman. The last time I noticed, we were still living in a free country.”

  “It was just a simple question, Mr. Ford. No need to get upset.”

  Ford’s voice took on a piercing edge. “I’m not getting upset. But you’re prying. I hate people prying. I can’t tell you anything. Go talk to Lauren. Leave me alone.”

  Banks stared at him for a moment. Ford wouldn’t meet his gaze. “If I find out you’ve been lying to me, Mr. Ford, I’ll be back. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not lying. I haven’t done anything. Leave me alone.”

  Before leaving, Banks showed him the artist’s impression of the girl Josie Batty had seen with Luke. Ford hardly glanced at the sketch and said he didn’t recognize her. He was weird, without a doubt, Banks thought as he started his car, but you couldn’t arrest people just for being weird. The volume went way up again, and Banks could hear Verdi’s Lacrimosa chasing him all the way to Lyndgarth.

  “Thank you for seeing to the release, love,” Mrs. Marshall said. “We’ll be holding the funeral service at Saint Peter’s the day after tomorrow. Joan’s coming back up for it, of course. I must say the vicar’s been very good, considering none of us were what you’d call regular churchgoers. You’ll be there?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Michelle. “There’s just one thing.”

  “What’s that, love?”

  Michelle told her about the rib they needed for evidence.

  Mrs. Marshall frowned and thought for a moment. “I don’t think we need worry about a little thing like a missing rib, need we? Especially if it might help you.”

  “Thank you,” said Michelle.

  “You look tired, love. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Fine.” Michelle managed to dredge up a weak smile.

  “Is there any more news?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Only more questions.”

  “I can’t understand what else I have to tell you, but please go ahead.”

  Michelle leaned back in her chair. This was going to be difficult, she knew. To find
out about any mischief Graham might have been up to without suggesting that he got up to mischief—which his mother would never accept—was almost to do the impossible. Still, she could but try. “Was Graham ever away from home for any periods of time?”

  “What do you mean? Did we send him away?”

  “No. But you know what kids are like. Sometimes they just like to take off and not tell you where they’ve been. They worry you sick but they don’t seem to realize it at the time.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean. I’m not saying our Graham was any different from the other kids that way. He missed his tea from time to time, and once or twice he missed his nine-o’clock curfew. And many’s the occasion we didn’t see hide nor hair of him from dawn till dusk. Not during term time, mind you. Just weekends and school holidays he could be a bit unreliable.”

  “Did you have any idea where he’d been when he turned up late?”

  “Playing with his pals. Sometimes he’d have his guitar with him, too. They were practicing, see. The group.”

  “Where did they do that?”

  “David Grenfell’s house.”

  “Other than group practice, did he ever stay out late on other occasions?”

  “Once in a while. He was just a normal boy.”

  “How much pocket money did you give him?”

  “Five shillings a week. It was all we could afford. But he had his paper round and that made him a bit extra.”

  “And you bought all his clothes?”

  “Sometimes he’d save up if there was something he really wanted. Like a Beatles jumper. You know, like the one he’s wearing in the photo there.”

  “So he didn’t go short of anything?”

  “No. Not so’s you’d notice. Why? What are you trying to get at?”

  “I’m just trying to get a picture of his activities, Mrs. Marshall. It’ll help me try to work out what might have happened to him, who might have stopped and picked him up.”