A Dedicated Man ib-2

by Peter Robinson

  Most of the conversation was taken up by the children’s accounts of their day trip to York.

  ‘The Minster was smashing,’ enthused Tracy, the bright fourteen-year-old with a passion for history. ‘Do you know, Daddy, there’s more stained glass in there than in any other cathedral in Europe?’

  Banks expressed interest and surprise. Architecture had not, so far, been one of his interests, but it was becoming more and more appealing. At the moment he was still reading up on the geology of the dales.

  ‘And the Five Sisters are simply stunning,’ Tracy went on.

  ‘Five Sisters?’ Banks asked. ‘In a minster?’

  ‘Oh, Daddy,’ Tracy laughed, ‘you don’t know anything, do you? The Five Sisters are lancet windows in the north transept. They’re made of grisaille glass. Thirteenth century, I think. And the Rose Window-’

  ‘It was boring,’ cut in Brian, who all the while had been feeling left out. ‘Just a lot of old statues of dead kings and stuff. Junk, it was. Boring.’

  ‘You’re just a philistine,’ Tracy retorted, pronouncing the word with both difficulty and authority. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t even notice that monument to Archbishop Scrope.’

  ‘Scrope? Who’s he?’ Banks asked. While sympathizing with Brian, he didn’t feel justified in cheating Tracy out of her excitement. She was at an age now when one of her great thrills was to educate her parents, whom she thought dreadfully ignorant of the past that surrounded them. Very soon, Banks mused sadly, all that would be forgotten, at least for a few years, and life would be all clothes, pop music, make-up, hairstyles and boys.

  ‘He was a rebel,’ Tracy informed him. ‘Henry the Fourth had him executed in 1405.’

  ‘Oh shut up with all them dates, clever clogs,’ Brian burst out. ‘You think you know it all.’ And before Tracy could respond, he turned to his father and launched into his own account.

  ‘We went on a boat down the river, Dad, and she felt seasick.’ He cast a look of pitying contempt at his sister. ‘And we passed this big chocolate factory. Me and some of the boys wanted to go on a tour but the teacher wouldn’t let us. She just wanted to show us history and stuff and all those silly old narrow streets.’

  ‘The Shambles,’ Tracy interrupted. ‘And Stonegate and Petergate. Anyway, the chocolates would only have made you sick.’

  ‘It didn’t need chocolates to make you sick, did it?’ Brian taunted her.

  ‘That’s enough, Brian!’ Sandra cut in. ‘Stop it, both of you!’

  And so it went on; Brian sulked and Tracy scowled at him until they both went upstairs to watch television while Sandra cleared the table and Banks helped her with the dishes. Finally, still arguing, they were packed off to bed, and Banks suggested a nightcap.

  ‘I’ve got a new job,’ Sandra said, pouring the Scotch. ‘Well, not really new, just different.’

  Banks asked what it was. Sandra worked as a dentist’s receptionist three mornings a week in Eastvale.

  ‘Mr Maxwell’s going on holiday, shutting up shop for three weeks, and Peggy Matthews – that’s Mr Smedley’s receptionist – is off at the same time, too.’

  ‘Not together, I hope?’

  Sandra laughed. ‘No. Fine bedfellows they’d make, I’m sure. Maxwell’s going to the Greek Islands and Peggy’s off to Weymouth. Anyway, apparently Smedley asked if he could borrow me while the boss was away. Maxwell asked me and I said yes. It’s all right, isn’t it? I didn’t think we had any plans.’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine if you want to. I can’t really plan anything until this Steadman business is settled.’

  ‘Good. Smedley’s a real perfectionist, so I hear. Especially when it comes to fitting caps and crowns, matching the colours and all that. They say he’s one of the best in Yorkshire.’

  ‘You might get to meet the local gentry, then. Who knows?’

  Sandra laughed. ‘Well, Peggy did say that Mrs Steadman goes there. She’s having some root canal work done. She’s a bit of a local celebrity now.’

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ Banks said. ‘The husband gets murdered and people suddenly line up to look at the wife as if she were bloody royalty.’

  ‘It’s only natural, though. We all have some morbid curiosity.’

  ‘Not me. Look,’ Banks said, ‘we haven’t been out for a long time, and there’s supposed to be a good folk singer on in Helmthorpe tomorrow. Do you fancy going?’

  ‘Changing the subject, eh? Helmthorpe? Isn’t that where the Steadmans live?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This isn’t work, is it, Alan? It’s not connected to the case?’

  ‘Cross my heart. We’ll just go and listen to some good folk music like we’ve done plenty of times before. Ask Harriet and David along, too.’

  ‘If they can get a sitter. It’s such short notice. What about Jenny Fuller? Think she might like to come?’

  ‘She’s in France,’ Banks said. ‘Don’t you remember? That wine-tasting tour. Took off as soon as term ended.’

  ‘Lucky her. All right, then, I’ll call Harriet. As long as you promise it’s nothing to do with work! I don’t much fancy sitting there like a spare part while you grill some suspect.’

  ‘Scout’s honour. And I’m not sure I like what you’re implying. I don’t grill people.’

  Sandra smiled. Banks moved closer and put his arm around her. ‘You know-’ he began.

  ‘Ssshhh…’ Sandra put her finger to his lips. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the sofa?’ Banks asked, and pulled her gently towards him.

  FOUR

  Sally Lumb was finding it difficult to get to sleep. She had put aside Wuthering Heights because her eyes were getting tired, but sleep just would not come.

  First she thought of Kevin. She would have to give in soon or he’d be off after someone more experienced. He was right on the edge and she couldn’t tease him for much longer. She didn’t want to, anyway. The last time they’d been together, the day they saw Penny Cartwright, she had let him put himself close to her sex; she had felt his heat and hardness right at her very entrance and it made her tremble and go all wet, just like it said in the books. It had been cruel to stop him then, she knew, but they had no protection; she didn’t want to get pregnant. There were ways around that, though. Next time…

  Turning over and praying for sleep to come, she started thinking about the implications of what she had remembered that afternoon. Not the car on Saturday night – that was nothing – but something she hadn’t fully perceived at the time that now had more sinister far-reaching possibilities. It was her first real clue, and she had to decide what to do about it. She wouldn’t go to the police, that was for certain – a proper fool she’d make of herself if she was wrong! Besides, she was already determined to solve the affair herself. Perhaps she might even become a heroine.

  And the police were fools anyway; she could easily one-up them. That man from London had treated her like a silly child. And what had he done that was so wonderful? Given up an exciting metropolitan life for the boredom of Swainsdale, that’s what he’d done. Lord, the man could have been working for Scotland Yard!

  And so, as her mind tossed and turned towards sleep, the first step became clear. If she was right, then someone was in danger; a warning had to be given. She would arrange a secret meeting, and maybe after that, if her suspicions were proved correct, she could go about setting a trap. That thought worried her, as she really would be making herself vulnerable. But she could always rope Kevin in; he was a big strong lad, and he’d do anything for her.

  As Sally finally drifted into the dream world that usually puzzled and irritated her, she could see the lights of London strung out before her like a diamond necklace. Why stop there? the dream insisted. And the images progressed, built up from magazine photographs and television programmes: Vogue models sashayed down the Champs Elysees, famous actresses stepped out of limousines under the neons of Sunset Strip, and all the well-known television personalities
she had ever seen chatted over cocktails at a party in Manhattan… But soon it all faded, and what she remembered in the morning was a rather absurd image of being in Leeds, a place she had visited several times on shopping expeditions with her mother. In the dream it felt like a foreign city. There were uniformed policemen all over the place, and Sally had to push her bicycle because she didn’t have a licence – at least, not one that was valid in Leeds. She was there, she vaguely remembered, because she was searching for a bird, a white one that had flown from her garden, a vast dark expanse like a tilled field after rain. She didn’t know if the bird had been her pet, her responsibility, or just a wild creature she had taken a fancy to, but it was important, and she was there in an alien familiar city pushing her bicycle among the policemen looking for it…

  FIVE

  Banks slipped Finzi’s choral setting of ‘Intimations of Immortality’ into the car stereo as he turned off the A1 at the Wetherby roundabout and took the A58 to Leeds. It was eleven thirty on Friday morning, just five days after the discovery of Steadman’s body. Hatchley, under the weather on Thursday morning after his visit to Darlington, had checked Hackett’s alibi thoroughly and found that it held. Barnes, too, was out of the running; though he was unmarried and had no one to confirm that he went straight home after visiting Mrs Gaskell, his finances were in order and there had never been even the slightest hint of malpractice or wrongdoing of any kind during his twenty years as a doctor in Helmthorpe.

  In his office earlier that morning, Banks had completed the mass of paperwork he had started the day before: transcripts of interviews, maps and timetables of people’s movements, lists of unasked or unanswered questions. He had gone over the forensic evidence again, but found nothing new. Constable Weaver and his reinforcements were still asking questions around the village, the campsite and outlying farms, but the likelihood of their turning up new evidence after so long was fast diminishing.

  The hushed choir entered, repeating the opening theme, ‘There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream…’ over the baritone’s solo line, and Banks forgot his frequently distasteful job for a few moments. Finzi’s music made Wordsworth’s poem bearable.

  The drive, which he took slowly, turned out to be quite pleasant once he’d left the Great North Road and its never-ending stream of lorries. It was the quickest way, the same route as he had taken on his last trip to Leeds, to interview a pawnbroker in connection with a series of robberies. But that had been a grey, rainy day in late October. Now it was summer and he drove through the kind of peaceful green countryside one so often finds close to large English cities.

  Banks puffed at his pipe as Finzi played on, not bothering to relight it after the second time it went out, and soon found himself in the Seacroft area. He had to concentrate hard on directions; the tower blocks all looked much the same and there were few landmarks to go by. He came out finally through an underpass near the city centre and parked close to the Town Hall. From there, he could see the high white tower of the library building, something Gristhorpe had told him about that morning in his potted history of the city and its architecture.

  Banks had no fixed ideas about how to approach the academics; he intended to play it by ear. He had called earlier and arranged to have lunch with Darnley and Talbot in a pub near the university. Though term was officially over, they still travelled to their offices almost every day to carry on with their research or simply to get out from under their wives’ feet. Darnley, to whom Banks had spoken, seemed quite excited by the prospect of a chat with the police, or so he had said in a rather detached way, as if he were discussing the mating habits of lemurs.

  Banks still had an hour to kill, so he decided to take Gristhorpe’s advice and take a look at the Town Hall. It was an impressive Victorian edifice, complete with fluted columns, huge domed roof, clock and a pair of lions guarding the entrance by the broad flight of stone steps. The stone, sandstone by the look of it, seemed light and clean. Gristhorpe had told him it had been sandblasted a few years ago, as few such structures had withstood a hundred years or more of industry without turning black.

  Banks admired the bulk of the place and the bold classical lines of its design. He felt he could grasp, just by looking, some of the civic pride that had gone into its construction. Queen Victoria herself had attended the grand opening. She must have spent a lot of time opening buildings, Banks reflected.

  He ventured inside past the statues of Victoria and Albert in the foyer and into the main hall, which appeared to have been recently restored. Enormous pillars of what looked like marble streaked with pink, green and blue were spaced along the walls, and the ceiling was divided into brightly coloured square panels, gilded around their edges. Mottoes and proverbs beloved of the pious Victorians adorned the high places: EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE, THEY LABOUR IN VAIN THAT BUILT IT; EXCEPT THE LORD KEEP THE CITY, THE WATCHMAN WATCHETH BUT IN VAIN; WEAVE THE TRUTH WITH TRUST; and LABOUR OMNIA VINCIT. At the end stood a majestic pipe organ.

  Banks glanced at his watch and walked out slowly; his footsteps echoed in the silence. Yes, it was impressive, and he could begin to see what Steadman found so fascinating about northern history.

  But he also remembered Hackett’s outburst about false romanticized views of the past. The wealthy city officials and merchants had gone to great trouble to make sure that Queen Victoria’s route avoided the more squalid areas of the city: row upon row of overcrowded back-to-backs with leaky roofs and damp walls where the nameless masses lived. It was from their labours and in their name, the name of civic pride, that such glories as the Town Hall were built, yet they were condemned to live in squalor and then accused of becoming animals. There had even been one man, a chemist according to Gristhorpe, who had perfumed the air outside his shop as the royal progress passed. It all depended on what side you were on, Banks thought, as to what your perspective was.

  He consulted his pocket map and walked up between the Town Hall and the library, carried on along Caverley Street past the Civic Hall, a white building with twin pointed towers and colourful gardens, then past the General Infirmary and Leeds Polytechnic and into the outer reaches of the university campus. Finally, he came to a quadrangle surrounded by modern office-style buildings. It was a long way from the dreaming spires of Oxford and Cambridge, but Leeds was supposed to be a red-brick university, even if there were no red bricks in sight.

  He found Darnley’s office in the History Department with the help of an angular bespectacled secretary. After a quick firm handshake, Darnley was ready for a pub lunch.

  ‘Talbot’s going to meet us there,’ he explained. ‘He’s got a session with one of his doctoral students right now.’

  He led Banks across a dirt path behind the building and on to a narrow cobbled street. The pub was actually part of a hotel, and it stood back from the road at the end of a short driveway. As it was such a warm sunny day, they sat at one of the outside tables.

  Darnley was a tall man about forty, well built and fit. He had a trace of a northern accent and did not seem at all the absent-minded professor type that Banks had expected. His short brown hair was neatly combed and although his suit seemed half a size too big, it was of good quality. It had probably been a perfect fit when he bought it, Banks guessed, but like many men of his age, fearing heart attacks and other plagues of the sedentary life, he had begun to exercise.

  The two men sipped draught Guinness, squinting in the bright sun, and Banks laid his pipe, tobacco and lighter on the table.

  ‘Aha, a pipe-smoker, I see,’ Darnley noted. ‘Touch of the Maigret, eh? Thought of taking it up myself but it’s too much trouble. Wasted years trying to stop smoking, cutting down, switching to milder brands, and in the end I found the only way to bloody well stop was cold turkey.’

  ‘It can’t have been as easy as you make it sound,’ Banks said, stuffing his pipe with rubbed flake and tamping it gently.

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t.’ Darnley laughed. ‘I had a few relapses. But I
’ve been playing a lot of squash and tennis lately and running a few miles each day. You’d be surprised how that kind of thing puts you off smoking. You’d never believe it, but a year or so ago I was overweight, drinking too much – ugh!’

  ‘Doctor’s orders?’

  ‘Told me point-blank. “Go on like you are doing, and I’ll give you another ten years at most.” It was a toss-up which would go first – heart, liver or lungs. Anyway, he said if I shaped up the sky’s the limit. Well, not in so many words, but I got the point.’ He watched Banks light his pipe. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘I suppose you need props in your business. False sense of security and all that.’

  Banks smiled and admitted it helped. He liked the look of curiosity and intelligence in Darnley’s eyes.

  ‘I hope you don’t think you need it with me? I mean, I’m not a suspect, am I?’ He was smiling, but the tension showed in the tight set of his lips.

  ‘Not yet,’ Banks replied, returning his gaze.

  ‘Touche. You mean if I start to put myself forward as one, all offers are welcome?’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about it,’ Banks assured him. He was still trying to work out the best approach to this edgy intelligent man whose quick playful exterior no doubt masked a mind like a steel trap and covered up a complex, perhaps even devious, personality.

  He decided to play along a little longer, certain that the arrival of Talbot would alter the light-hearted mood. ‘You might as well tell me where you were last Saturday night, though,’ he asked.

  Darnley looked at him, bright eyes twinkling but hard. ‘Do you know, Chief Inspector, I have no alibi at all for last weekend. I had a lot of work to do so I stayed in all Saturday evening marking examination papers and reading a new account of the Peterloo massacre. Of course, my wife was at home too, but I don’t suppose she counts, does she?’

  Banks laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know till I asked her, would I?’