The Price of Love and Other Stories

by Peter Robinson

  Banks sat by him on the arm. “Does this happen a lot?” he asked.

  His father nodded. “Too often for me. Oh, I’ve tried having a word, but he’s an ignorant bugger. If I were twenty or thirty years younger…”

  Banks heard his mother’s footsteps on the landing. “At it again, I hear,” she called down.

  “It’s bad for her nerves,” Arthur Banks said.

  “Have you talked to the council?”

  “We’ve tried, but they say apart from issuing a warning, they can’t do anything.”

  “What about Geoff Salisbury?”

  “Geoff’s got his strengths, but he’s not got a lot of bottle. Proper tough guy, him next door.”

  “Right,” said Banks, standing up. “Give me a few minutes.”

  “Where are you going, Alan?” his mother asked, coming down the stairs as he got to the front door.

  “Just off to have a quiet word with next door, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you go causing any trouble. Do you hear? You just be careful. And remember we have to live here after you’ve gone, you know.”

  Banks patted his mother’s arm. “Don’t worry, Mum,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll make sure I don’t cause you any trouble.”

  It was still raining outside. Banks knocked on the door but got no answer. Hardly surprising, as he supposed nobody could hear him over the music. The windows were all open and the angry heavy metal-rap spilled out into the street, someone bragging about raping a bitch and offing a pig.

  Banks tried the front door. It was open. He found himself in a small hallway, where the stairs led up to the bedrooms. The wallpaper was peeling and something that looked like a sleeping bag lay on the staircase. Banks nudged it with his foot. It was empty.

  He didn’t like just walking in unannounced, but it seemed the only option. He called out a few times while he still stood in the hallway, but he could hardly even hear his own shouts.

  Finally, he went through into the living room. Now he knew why they kept the windows open; the smell was overwhelming. It was a mixture of things—human smells definitely, such as sweat and urine, but also rotten vegetables, burned plastic and marijuana. There were also piles of old newspapers and other rubbish on the floor. It looked as though a dog had chewed up the furniture, though there wasn’t one in evidence. Thankful for small mercies, Banks thought; they probably had a pit bull. Three people slumped on sofas and armchairs, and one of them stood up when Banks walked in.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he shouted.

  “I’m not a lip-reader,” Banks said, stepping over to the mound of stereo equipment and turning the volume down. “That’s better.”

  It was the man of the house—Fred West to a tee, eyebrows and all—and the woman Banks assumed was his wife watched from one of the chairs. A girl Banks guessed to be about thirteen or fourteen sat in the other chair staring blankly at him.

  The man squared up to Banks and gestured to the door with his thumb. “Right, mate,” he said. “I’m done being polite. On your bike.”

  “I came to ask you to turn down the music,” Banks said. “We can hardly hear ourselves think next door.”

  “What’s it to you? You’re not from around here.”

  “I was here a long time before you came on the scene. I grew up here. It’s my parents’ house and today’s their wedding anniversary.”

  “Well, bully for you. Sorry we forgot to buy them a present. Now just fuck off before I do you some real damage.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Banks, slipping his warrant card out. “I’m a police officer, and I’m asking you nicely to keep the noise down.”

  The man actually leaned forward and scrutinized the card. “North Yorkshire!” he said. “You’ve got no powers down here. You’re out of your jurisdiction, mate.”

  “Big word, that. I’m surprised you didn’t choke on it.”

  “I’m not scared of you. Now, fuck off!”

  “You should be,” said Banks.

  The man walked over to the stereo and cranked up the volume again. The girl and the woman hadn’t moved. They were just watching. Banks guessed they were stoned on something or other. He thought he could see a crack pipe half hidden under a newspaper on the floor, but it wasn’t crack they were on. These two weren’t jerky or manic; they were practically comatose. Downers or smack, most likely.

  With a sigh, Banks walked over to the stereo, picked up the CD player, ripped out the wires and dropped it on the floor. The music stopped. The women still didn’t move, but Fred came right at him. He was a couple of inches taller than Banks, and thickset, muscular in the upper body. But Banks had his wiry and deceptive strength and speed going for him. He grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it so that he soon had him on his knees, arm up his back, foot placed solidly on his left kidney. By exerting just a little more pressure on the arm, Banks could make the pain excruciating. Even more pressure and the arm would snap or the shoulder joint would pop. The women just looked on, goggle-eyed. They’d never seen anything like this before.

  “I’ll do you for this!” the man yelled. “I’ll see you bloody locked up, copper or no. You’ve got no right going around destroying a man’s private property.”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Fred,” said Banks. “It was probably nicked, anyway.”

  “My name’s Lenny. You’ve got the wrong bloke.”

  “My mistake. Sorry, Lenny. Are you listening?”

  “I’m still not scared of—”

  Banks gave a little twist and Lenny screamed. Banks let him relax a moment and then repeated his question.

  “All right,” said Lenny. “All right, I’m listening. Let go.”

  Banks didn’t. “I’m sorry about your CD player,” he said. “I’m a music lover, myself, so it hurt me almost as much as it hurt you. I’m sure it’ll be okay; it’s just had rather a nasty shock, that’s all. If it’s not, then I’m sure you’ll have no problem lifting another. But first I’d like a promise out of you.”

  “What promise?”

  Banks gave another little twist. Lenny screamed, his face red with pain. The woman Banks assumed was his wife lit a cigarette and contemplated the scene before her with great interest, as if she were watching a television program. The girl started buffing her nails. Banks listened in the silence after the CD player’s sudden demise but could hear no other sounds coming from anywhere in the house. A good sign. No ambush imminent.

  “I’d like you to promise me that you won’t ever, ever play your music so loud again that it disturbs my mum and dad next door. Do you think you can do that, Lenny?”

  “It’s my house. I’ll do what I like in my own fucking house.”

  Twist. Scream.

  “Lenny, you’re not listening. If you really mean what you just said, you ought to consider moving to a detached house, you know, miles away from your nearest neighbors. Besides, it’s not your house. It’s the council’s house. You just rent it.”

  “You’re a bastard, you are,” Lenny said, gasping. “You’re worse than the fucking criminals you put away. Filth!” He spat on the floor.

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s all been said before. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about your promise.”

  “What promise. I haven’t made any fucking promise.”

  “But you’re going to, aren’t you?”

  Lenny said nothing. The woman frowned as she looked at him. Banks could tell the suspense was killing her. Will he or won’t he? The young girl got up and made to leave the room.

  “Where are you going?” Banks asked her.

  “Bog,” she said, making a squatting gesture.

  Banks was a little concerned that she might reappear with a weapon. “Hold on a minute, love,” he said. “Wait till I’m finished here.”

  “I’ll piss myself.”

  “I said hold on. You’ll live with it.”

  “These are me new jeans.”

  Banks turned back to Len
ny. The girl slumped against the doorpost, legs crossed. Banks kept a close eye on her. She chewed on her lower lip and looked sulky.

  “Right, Lenny, the quicker you give me your promise, the quicker your lass here will get to go to the toilet.”

  “She’s not my lass. Let her piss herself. I don’t care. Won’t be the first time.”

  Banks gave a harder twist and Lenny cursed. “What I want you to promise,” Banks said slowly, “is that you won’t play your music so loud that it upsets my mum and dad, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “And if you do,” Banks said, “I’ll have the local drugs squad over here before you can flush a tab of E down the toilet. Is that clear?”

  “It’s clear.”

  “Is it a promise?”

  “I…”

  Banks twisted again. “Is it a promise?”

  “All right, all right! Jesus Christ, yes, it’s a fucking promise!”

  “And if you do anything—anything at all—to harm or intimidate them in any way, I’ll consider that a promise broken. And I deal with broken promises myself. North Yorkshire’s not that far away. Got it?”

  “Got it. Let me go.”

  Banks let go and Lenny squirmed on the floor for a while, rubbing his arm and his shoulder before subsiding into his armchair and lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.

  “You’re a nutter, you are,” he said. “You ought to be locked up.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “Is it over?” the girl by the door asked. “Are you done? Are you? ’Cause I’m bleeding bursting here.”

  “It’s over, love,” said Banks. “Off you go.”

  “About fucking time.” She dashed upstairs. The woman on the sofa looked at Lenny with contempt, but still said nothing.

  “You in charge here, Lenny?” Banks asked, catching her look. “Because there’s no point my talking to the monkey, if you catch my drift.”

  “I’m in fucking charge,” he said, glaring at the woman. “They know that.”

  She sniffed, but Banks could see fear in her eyes, the first emotion he had noticed in her. Lenny was in charge all right, and he probably used the same tactics Banks had just used to rule his roost. That didn’t make Banks feel particularly good, but needs must. He wondered what other sorts of abuse went on in this house, in addition to drugs. The young girl, for example, or the other kids, wherever they were. Nothing would have surprised him. Maybe he’d call in the drugs squad anyway, and the social. Someone ought to keep a close eye on this lot, that was for certain.

  He heard the toilet flush as he left.

  XVIII

  Roy’s arrival at about four o’clock broke the tension for Banks. Until then, he had been helping Geoff set up the bar and buffet on tables in the kitchen, keeping a tight rein on his temper for the sake of his parents, even though Geoff treated him like an employee. “Now, Alan, if you wouldn’t mind just moving that over there…. That’s a good lad…. If you could nip over to the shops and pick up….” And so on. He had also been wanting to get Geoff alone and have another go at him in the light of Winsome’s information, but his mother was always around issuing instructions, too. Wisely, his father had gone upstairs to “rest.”

  When the doorbell rang, Ida Banks practically ran to the front hall, and Banks heard her shouts of joy at greeting Roy. After divesting himself of his raincoat, the man himself came through to the living room, clutching a bottle-shaped bag, with a young woman in tow. She looked about twenty, Banks thought, with short, shaggy hair, black streaked with blond, a pale, pretty face, with beautiful eyes the color and gleam of chestnuts in September. She also had a silver stud just below her lower lip. She was wearing jeans and a short woolly jumper, exposing a couple of inches of bare, flat midriff and a navel with a ring in it.

  “This is Corinne,” said Roy. “Say hello to my brother, Alan, Corinne.”

  Corinne shook Banks’s hand and said hello. She gave him a shy smile and averted her eyes.

  Roy looked at Geoff, free hand stretched out, smiling like a salesman. “And you are…?”

  “Geoff. Geoff Salisbury.”

  “Geoff. Of course! Pleased to meet you, Geoff. I’ve heard a lot about you. Mum and Dad say they’d be lost without you.”

  Geoff beamed and shifted from foot to foot. “Well…that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration.”

  Very ’umble, Banks thought.

  “Not at all,” said Roy. “Not at all.” He gave Geoff a firm handshake and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good to meet you at last.”

  Geoff basked in the glow of Roy’s charm like a child in his mother’s embrace.

  All this time, Ida Banks had stood by smiling on. Roy turned to her again and gave her a hug. Then he handed over the package he’d been carrying. Ida Banks opened it. It was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Vintage.

  She turned to her husband. “Ooh, look at this, Arthur! Champagne.”

  “It’s the real stuff, too,” Roy said, with a wink at Banks. “None of your Spanish cava or New World sparklers.”

  Arthur Banks grunted. Banks happened to know that his father hated champagne, as much as a symbol of the upper classes as for its taste.

  “I’d better put it away for a special occasion,” said his mother, taking it through to the kitchen and placing it into the dark depths of the larder, where it would probably remain. Banks thought to mention that today was as special an occasion as they were likely to have in a while, but he knew it was best to keep quiet when Roy was in full benevolent swing. He’d bought a few cans of beer and lager himself, and he knew that they would be emptied that very evening, without a doubt.

  “Now, then,” said Ida Banks, rubbing her hands together and reaching out to touch Corinne’s shoulder. “What about a drink for everyone? Corinne, love, what’ll you have?”

  “Lager and lime?”

  “Right you are, love. And you, Roy?”

  “Just a Perrier for me, Mum,” said Roy. “Driving.”

  “Of course.” Ida Banks frowned. “What did you say? Perrier? I don’t think we have any of that, do we, Alan?”

  Banks shook his head. “Only tap water.”

  “Well, that won’t do, will it?” his mother said scornfully.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. B,” chimed in Geoff. “I’ll just nip over the road. Old Ali’s bound to have some. He sells everything.” And before anyone could stop him, he was off.

  Ida Banks turned to Roy again. “You won’t be driving for ages yet, I hope, son. Won’t you have a glass of something a bit stronger first?”

  “Oh, go on, then,” said Roy. “You’ve twisted my arm. I’ll have a glass of white wine.”

  Banks’s mother gave him a questioning glance. “We’ve got that, Mum,” he said, then looked at his brother. “Screw top okay, Roy?”

  “Whatever,” said Roy, his lip curling.

  Banks and his father both opted for beer.

  “Come on, then, Corinne, love,” said Ida Banks, taking Corinne by the arm. “You can keep me company and help me pour.”

  Banks couldn’t believe it. His mother was fawning all over Roy’s twentysomething bit of fluff, the sort of girl who’d have been granted no more than a sniff of distaste if Banks had brought her home. Still, he should have expected it. Roy was Banks’s younger brother by five years. He had grown up watching Banks do everything wrong and getting caught for it—staying out too late as a teenager, listening to the radio under the bedsheets when he should have been asleep, smoking, leaving home to go to college in London, joining the police—and Roy had keenly observed his parents’ reactions. Roy had learned well from his brother’s mistakes, and he had done everything right. Now, in his mother’s eyes, Roy could do no wrong, and even Arthur Banks, not given to expressions of any kind, didn’t seem to disapprove of Roy as much as he did of Banks. Which was odd, indeed, Banks thought, as Roy was the consummate capitalist.

  Roy sat down, first pulling at the razor-sharp crease o
f his black suit trousers. “So how’s life at the cop shop?” he asked, looking away even before he’d got the words out, indicating to Banks that he didn’t have the slightest iota of interest.

  “Fine,” said Banks.

  “Is that your Renault out there?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Not bad. Only it looks new. Been on the take?”

  “Oh, you know me, Roy. A few thousand here, a few thousand there.”

  Roy laughed. Corinne and Ida Banks, best friends now, came through with the drinks on a tray at the same time Geoff came back from the shop. “Sorry, they didn’t have any Perrier,” he said. “I got this other stuff Ali recommended. St…. something or other…I can’t pronounce it. Okay?”

  “It’ll do,” said Roy. “Be a good bloke and pop it in the fridge, would you, Geoff?”

  Geoff seemed only too pleased to oblige.

  “Isn’t this lovely?” said Ida Banks, handing out the drinks. “We can have our own little family party before the rest of our guests arrive. Corinne tells me she’s an accountant, Roy.”

  “That’s right, Mum. Saved me a fortune in taxes.”

  Corinne sat on the floor near his feet and rested her head against his thigh. He stroked her hair the way one would a faithful dog. “She’s very good with figures, aren’t you, Corinne?”

  Corinne blushed. “If you say so, Roy.”

  She really did seem like a “nice” girl to Banks, and that made him wonder all the more what she was doing with Roy. Not that Roy wasn’t handsome or charming. In fact he possessed both of those attributes in spades. Under his suit, he wore a pale blue silk polo-neck. His hair, not quite so black as Banks’s, was long, over his ears and collar, expensively cut, and he had a small shaving nick near the cleft of his chin. His energetic blue eyes resembled Banks’s, except that they were predatory and calculating, whereas Banks’s were curious and intense.

  Banks had thought more than once that his brother Roy fit the classic definition of the psychopath; he was glib and superficial, egocentric, manipulative, shallow, and completely lacking in any feelings of remorse, empathy or guilt. Certainly all his behavior and his emotional responses were learned, assumed through close observation of others as the best way to get on in the world. Underneath it all, Banks guessed, the only thing that mattered to him were his needs and how he could meet them, his success, measured of course in money and power. Perhaps that was why he had already gone through three wives.