Close to Home

by Peter Robinson

  Banks couldn’t help smiling. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been reported to the head teacher,” he said.

  Before Rose could respond, two things happened in quick succession. First, there came an urgent tap at his door and Annie Cabbot walked in, a handkerchief to her mouth covered with what looked like blood. But before Annie could speak, Kevin Templeton poked his head around the door behind her, his gaze resting on Rose for a few seconds too long for her comfort, and said to Banks, “Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but we think we’ve got a positive ID on you know who.”

  Banks knew who he meant. The mystery girl. So she did exist.

  “Better than that,” Templeton went on. “We’ve got an address.”

  Michelle discovered from DC Collins that Shaw had gone home after lunch, complaining of a stomach upset. Collins’s tone was such as to suggest it might be more a matter of the number of whiskeys Shaw had downed at lunch. He had been taking quite a lot of time off lately. At least that left the coast clear for Michelle. She didn’t want to see Shaw, especially after what had happened in her flat on Saturday. Sometimes, when she let her guard down, it was him she saw in her imagination, going through her bedside drawers, cutting Melissa’s dress in half. It wasn’t such a stretch to imagine him driving the beige van that bore down on her as she crossed the road earlier, either; he had been out of the station at the time. And the whiskeys? Dutch courage?

  It was time to stop idle speculation and follow up on what she had discovered from Mrs. Walker. Michelle picked up the telephone and an hour or so later, after a lot of false trails and time wasted on hold, she managed to reach one of the retired Carlisle police officers who had looked into Donald Bradford’s death: Ex-Detective Sergeant Raymond Scholes, now living out his retirement on the Cumbrian coast.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you after all this time,” Scholes said. “Donald Bradford was just unlucky.”

  “What happened?”

  “Surprised a burglar. Someone broke into his house, and before Bradford could do anything he got beaten so badly he died of his injuries.”

  Michelle felt a chill. The same thing might have happened to her on Saturday, if she’d been home earlier. “Ever catch the burglar?” she asked.

  “No. He must have taken Bradford by surprise, though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he was a pretty tough customer himself. I wouldn’t have fancied tackling him. Way it looks is the burglar must have heard him coming and hid behind the door, then bashed the back of Bradford’s head in with a cosh of some kind.”

  “You never found a weapon?”

  “No.”

  “No clues? No prints?”

  “Nothing usable.”

  “No witnesses?”

  “None that we could find.”

  “What was taken?”

  “Wallet, a few knickknacks, by the looks of it. Place was a bit of a mess.”

  “Did it appear as if someone had been looking for something?”

  “I never really thought about that. As I say, though, it was a mess. Turned upside down. Why the sudden interest?”

  Michelle told him a little bit about Graham Marshall.

  “Yes, I’ve read about that. Terrible business. I hadn’t realized there was a connection.”

  “Was Bradford married?”

  “No. He lived alone.”

  Michelle could sense him pause, as if he was going to add something. “What?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Bit of a laugh, really.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Well, afterward, you know, we had to have a look around the house and we found…well…at the time it seemed quite risqué, though by today’s standards…”

  Out with it, man, Michelle found herself thinking. What are you talking about?

  “What was it?” she asked.

  “Pornographic magazines. A bundle of them. And some blue films. I won’t go into detail, but they covered quite the range of perversions.”

  Michelle found herself gripping the receiver tighter. “Including pedophilia?”

  “Well, there were some pretty young-looking models involved, I can tell you that. Male and female. Not kiddie-porn, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Michelle supposed there was a distinction to be made. In some ways, once you had pubic hair, breasts and all the rest, you didn’t qualify as “kiddie-porn,” but you still might only be fourteen years old. Gray area.

  “What happened to all this stuff?”

  “Destroyed.”

  But not before you and your lads had a good look at it, I’ll bet, Michelle thought.

  “We didn’t let anything slip at the time,” he went on, “because it didn’t seem…well, the bloke had just been killed, after all. There seemed no point in blackening his name with that sort of thing.”

  “Understandable,” said Michelle. “Who claimed the body?”

  “Nobody. Mr. Bradford had no immediate family. The local authorities took care of everything.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Scholes,” she said. “You’ve been a great help.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  Michelle hung up and nibbled the end of her pencil as she thought about what she’d heard. She hadn’t come to any conclusions yet, but she had a lot to discuss with Banks when he arrived.

  PC Flaherty, who had tracked down the mystery girl’s address, had been asking around Eastvale College, thinking that a girl who looked like she did must be a student. As it turned out, she wasn’t, but her boyfriend was, and one of the people he spoke to remembered seeing her at a college dance. The boyfriend’s name was Ryan Milne and the girl was known as Elizabeth Palmer. They lived together in a flat above a hat shop on South Market Street, the direction in which Luke Armitage had been walking when he was last seen.

  Annie insisted that she felt well enough to make the call. She was damned, she told Banks, if she was going to be excluded after all the footwork she’d done just because some over-testosteroned lout had punched her in the mouth. It was her pride that hurt more than anything. After she’d cleaned up the wound, it didn’t look too bad anyway. Some women, she went on to say, paid a fortune for collagen shots to make themselves look like she did. Banks decided he would make the call with her before setting off for Peterborough. He phoned and arranged to meet Michelle in a city center pub at nine o’clock, just to be on the safe side.

  Martin Armitage was cooling off in the custody suite and Norman Wells was in Eastvale General Infirmary. No doubt there would be recriminations from Armitage’s pal the chief constable, but for the moment he could stay where he was. They could also charge him with assaulting a police officer. After they had visited the mystery girl.

  Within twenty minutes of getting the address, Banks and Annie climbed the lino-covered stairs and knocked on the door. The building seemed so silent that Banks couldn’t imagine anyone being at home, but only seconds later a young woman opened the door. The young woman.

  “DCI Banks and DI Cabbot,” Banks said, flashing his card. “We’d like a word.”

  “You’d better come in then.” She stood aside.

  One reason why it had taken so long to locate her was obvious to Banks: she didn’t look anywhere near as weird as the description Josie Batty had drawn of her, which was hardly surprising when you imagined that most young people probably looked weird to Josie Batty.

  The pixyish facial features were right enough, the heart-shaped face, large eyes and small mouth, but that was about all. She was far prettier than Josie Batty had indicated to the police artist, and she had a pale, flawless complexion. She also had the sort of breasts adolescent boys, and many grown men, dream about, and her smooth cleavage was shown to advantage by the laced-up leather waistcoat she wore. The small tattoo on her upper arm was a simple double helix, and there was no sign of body-piercing anywhere except the silver spiderweb earrings dangling from her ears. Her short black hair was dyed and gelled,
but there was nothing weird about that.

  The flat was clean and tidy, not a filthy crack house full of sprawled drug-addled kids. It was an old room with a fireplace complete with poker and tongs, which must only have been for show, as a gas fire filled the hearth. Sunlight shone through the half-open window and the sounds and smells of South Market Street drifted up: car exhaust and horns, warm tar, fresh-baked bread, take-away curry and pigeons on the rooftops. Banks and Annie walked around the small room, checking it out, while the girl arranged beanbag cushions for them.

  “Elizabeth, is it?” asked Banks.

  “I prefer Liz.”

  “Okay. Ryan not here?”

  “He’s got classes.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Not till after teatime.”

  “What do you do, Liz?”

  “I’m a musician.”

  “Make a living at it?”

  “You know what it’s like…”

  Banks did, having a son in the business. But Brian’s success was unusual, and even that hadn’t brought in heaps of money. Not even enough for a new car. He moved on. “You know why we’re here, don’t you?”

  Liz nodded. “About Luke.”

  “You could have come forward and saved us a lot of trouble.”

  Liz sat down. “But I don’t know anything.”

  “Let us be the judge of that,” said Banks, pausing in his examination of her CD collection. He had noticed a cassette labeled “Songs from a Black Room” mixed in with a lot of other tapes.

  “How was I to know you were looking for me?”

  “Don’t you read the papers or watch television?” Annie asked.

  “Not much. They’re boring. Life’s too short. Mostly I practice, listen to music or read.”

  “What instrument?” Banks asked.

  “Keyboards, some woodwinds. Flute, clarinet.”

  “Did you study music professionally?”

  “No. Just lessons at school.”

  “How old are you, Liz?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “And Ryan?”

  “The same. He’s in his last year at college.”

  “He a musician, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you live together?”

  “Yes.”

  Annie sat down on one of the beanbags, but Banks went to stand by the window, leaning the backs of his thighs against the sill. The room was small and hot and seemed too crowded with three people in it.

  “What was your relationship with Luke Armitage?” Annie asked.

  “He’s…he was in our band.”

  “Along with?”

  “Me and Ryan. We don’t have a drummer yet.”

  “How long have you been together?”

  She chewed on her lip and thought for a moment. “We’ve only been practicing together since earlier this year, after we met Luke. But Ryan and me had been talking about doing something like this for ages.”

  “How did you meet Luke?”

  “At a concert at the college.”

  “What concert?”

  “Just a couple of local bands. Back in March.”

  “How did Luke get into a college concert?” Banks asked. “He was only fifteen.”

  Liz smiled. “Not to look at. Or to talk to. Luke was far more mature than his years. You didn’t know him.”

  “Who was he with?”

  “No one. He was by himself, checking out the band.”

  “And you just started talking to him?”

  “Ryan did, first.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, we found out he was interested in music, too, looking to get a band together. He had some songs.”

  Banks pointed toward the tape. “Those? ‘Songs from a Black Room’?”

  “No. Those are more recent.”

  “How recent?”

  “Past month or so.”

  “Did you know he was only fifteen?”

  “We didn’t find out until later.”

  “How?”

  “He told us.”

  “He told you? Just like that?”

  “No, not just like that. He had to explain why he couldn’t just do what he wanted, you know. He was living with his parents and going to school. He said he was sixteen at first but then told us later he’d lied because he was worried we’d think he was too young to be in the band.”

  “And did you?”

  “No way. Not someone with his talent. We might have had a few problems down the line, if things had got that far. Playing licensed premises, you know, stuff like that, but we figured we’d just deal with all that when we got there.”

  “What about who his real father was? Did you know that?”

  Liz looked away. “He didn’t tell us that until later, either. He didn’t seem to want anything to do with Neil Byrd and his legacy.”

  “How did you find out?” Banks asked. “I mean, did Luke just come right out and tell you who his father was?”

  “No. No. He didn’t like to talk about him. It was something on the radio while he was over here, a review of that new compilation. He got upset about it and then it just sort of slipped out. It made a lot of sense.”

  “What do you mean?” Annie asked.

  “That voice. His talent. There was something about it all that rang a bell.”

  “What happened after you knew?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did it make a difference?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, come on, Liz,” said Banks. “You had Neil Byrd’s son in your band. You can’t expect us to believe that you weren’t aware that would make a big difference commercially.”

  “Okay,” said Liz. “Sure, we were all aware of that. But the point is that we weren’t anywhere commercially at that time. We’re still not. We haven’t even played in public yet, for crying out loud. And now, without Luke…I don’t know.”

  Banks moved away from the window and sat on a hard-backed chair against the wall. Annie shifted on her beanbag, as if trying to get comfortable. It was the first time he’d seen her look ill at ease in any sort of seat, then he realized she might have hurt herself falling over in the bookshop. She should be at the hospital getting checked out, especially the way on-the-job injury insurance worked these days, but there was no telling her. He didn’t blame her; he’d be doing the same himself.

  “Who did the singing?” Banks asked.

  “Mostly me and Luke.”

  “What kind of music do you play?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Let’s just say I’m interested. Humor me.”

  “It’s hard to describe,” Liz answered.

  “Try.”

  She looked at him, as if trying to size up his musical knowledge. “Well, it’s all about the songs, really. We’re not trendy and we don’t go in for long solos and stuff. It’s more…have you heard of David Gray?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beth Orton?”

  “Yes.”

  If Liz was surprised by Banks’s familiarity with contemporary music, she didn’t show it. “Well, we’re not like them, but that’s sort of what we’re interested in. Having something to say, and maybe a bit jazzy and bluesy. I play quite a bit of flute as well as organ.”

  “Did you know that Luke was taking violin lessons?”

  “Yes. That would have been wonderful. We were looking to expand, bring in more musicians, but we were being very careful about it.” She looked Banks in the eye. “We were serious about making a real go of this, you know,” she said. “But without selling out or being commercial. We’re absolutely gutted by what’s happened. Not just as a band, I mean, but personally, too.”

  “I understand, and I appreciate that,” said Banks. “Did you have any other sort of relationship with Luke? Other than musical?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “With Luke?”

  “Why not? He was
a good-looking kid.”

  “But that’s all he was. A kid.”

  “You said he was wise beyond his years.”

  “I know that, but I’m not a bloody cradle-snatcher. Besides, I’m perfectly happy with Ryan, thank you very much.” Liz’s face was red.

  “So you were never Luke’s girlfriend?”

  “No way. I told you. I was with Ryan when we met. It was all about the music.”

  “So there’s no chance that Ryan caught the two of you in bed together and ended up killing Luke, then deciding he might as well cash in on it?”

  “I don’t know how you can even suggest something as horrible as that.” Liz seemed close to tears and Banks was starting to feel like a shit. She seemed a good kid. But seemed wasn’t good enough. He remembered Rose Barlow’s visit, as well as her angry exit. Liz was younger than Lauren Anderson, and a far more likely candidate for Luke’s bedfellow, in Banks’s opinion. He didn’t know how strong Liz’s relationship with Ryan was, or how open.

  “It happens,” Banks said. “You’d be surprised. Maybe it was an accident, you just couldn’t see any other way out.”

  “I told you. Nothing like that happened. Luke was in the band, that’s all.”

  “Did Luke ever confide in you at all,” Annie asked, easing off the pressure a little. “You know, tell you what was on his mind, what was worrying him?”

  Liz paused, regaining her composure. She seemed to be looking at Annie’s swollen red lips but she didn’t ask about them. “He complained about school a lot,” she said finally.

  “Ever say anything about his stepfather?”

  “The rugby player?”

  “Ex-footballer.”

  “Whatever. No, not much. I don’t think Luke liked him very much.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Nothing in particular. Just the way he talked.”

  “Did you ever meet Luke’s parents?”

  “No. I don’t think he even told them about us, about the band.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just my impression.”

  It was probably true, Banks realized. According to Annie and to his own observations, the Armitages didn’t seem to have a clue what Luke was up to half the time. “Did he seem worried about anything?”