Not Safe After Dark: And Other Stories

by Peter Robinson

  Hardly thinking, he got dressed quickly and picked up his car keys. At the last moment, just before the door shut behind him, he went back and picked up the ice pick from the dish by the television.

  * * *

  This time it was a Caucasian girl: blond hair, clean-cut looks, but the same style, tight short skirt and halter top. And she wanted to make a quick phone call before she got into his car and directed him to a different hotel. It was a step up from the last one, he noticed, for Wally was noticing things clearly now, like the old-fashioned bell on the wooden desk, the discreet damask armchairs in the lobby, the wood-paneling look, the hovering scent of sandalwood. In fact, Walter felt strangely calm and in control now he knew what he was going to do. The steel band had loosened.

  He smiled to himself as she went through her undressing routine, a bit more elaborate and drawn out than the last one, with slow gestures and teasing glances. He felt no desire now; it was all gone. He let her continue.

  Outside, the hot wind huffed and puffed at the windows. The halter revealed white, droopy breasts, the kind that fold over like envelope flaps. Her eyes were unfocused and dull, as if she were on drugs. She had a large bruise on the outside of her right thigh and a little scar just under her navel. Appendicitis? he wondered. But the appendix was farther to the right, wasn’t it? No matter. She stood naked before him finally, and he still felt no desire, only disgust and hatred. It wasn’t the same one who had ruined him, corrupted him, but they were all the same underneath. Whores. They all shared the same tainted, rotten soul. She would do. He let her unbutton his shirt, then he moved her gently away and asked her to lie face down on the bed.

  “Wanna come in from behind, hey, honey?” she said, and grinned lasciviously, lying down and hugging the pillow.

  “No, that’s not it.” Walter’s voice felt strange—dry and stuck deep in his chest. “That’s not it at all.”

  “S’OK by me.”

  Walter slipped the ice pick from his jacket pocket and felt its point cool in his dry hand. He was just about to raise it above his head and plunge it into the back of her neck when he heard a sound behind him.

  Everything happened so fast. First, the door opened, and Walter saw a huge man blocking the exit, a giant with blond hair hanging over his massive shoulders, a tanned face carved of rock, and veins thick as cables snaking down his thick arms. The man, he also noticed, was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt and baggy, flowered pants held up by elastic.

  Shit, Walter thought, glancing back at the girl for a second, then at his jacket over the back of a chair, they’re going to rip me off, rob me. That’s what the phone call was about. Just my fucking luck.

  But what Walter didn’t really register until it was much too late was that when he turned toward the doorway, he had an ice pick still raised above his head, and the other man had a gun.

  Walter never did get a chance to explain. The giant raised his gun and, without a word, fired two shots right into Walter Dimchuk’s angry, corrupt, and unlucky heart.

  Anna Said

  An Inspector Banks Story

  1

  “I’m not happy with it, laddie,” said Dr. Glendenning, shaking his head. “Not happy at all.”

  “So the super told me,” said Banks. “What’s the problem?”

  They sat at a dimpled, copper-topped table in the Queen’s Arms, Glendenning over a glass of Glenmorangie and Banks over a pint of Theakston’s. It was a bitterly cold evening in February. Banks was anxious to get home and take Sandra out to dinner as he had promised, but Dr. Glendenning had asked for help, and a Home Office pathologist was too important to brush off.

  “One of these?” Glendenning offered Banks a Senior Service.

  Banks grimaced. “No. No thanks. I’ll stick with tipped. I’m trying to give up.”

  “Aye,” said Glendenning, lighting up. “Me, too.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “She should never have died,” the doctor said, “but that’s by the way. These things happen.”

  “Who shouldn’t have died?”

  “Oh, sorry. Forgot you didn’t know. Anna, Anna Childers is—was—her name. Admitted to the hospital this morning.”

  “Any reason to suspect a crime?”

  “No-o, not on the surface. That’s why I wanted an informal chat first.” Rain lashed at the window; the buzz of conversation rose and fell around them.

  “What happened?” Banks asked.

  “Her boyfriend brought her in at about ten o’clock this morning. He said she’d been up half the night vomiting. They thought it was gastric flu. Dr. Gibson treated the symptoms as best he could, but . . .” Glendenning shrugged.

  “Cause of death?”

  “Respiratory failure. If she hadn’t suffered from asthma, she might have had a chance. Dr. Gibson managed at least to get the convulsions under control. But as for the cause of it all, don’t ask me. I’ve no idea yet. It could have been food poisoning. Or she could have taken something, a suicide attempt. You know how I hate guesswork.” He looked at his watch and finished his drink. “Anyway, I’m off to do the postmortem now. Should know a bit more after that.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You’re the copper, laddie. I’ll not tell you your job. All I’ll say is the circumstances are suspicious enough to worry me. Maybe you could talk to the boyfriend?”

  Banks took out his notebook. “What’s his name and address?”

  Glendenning told him and left. Banks sighed and went to the telephone. Sandra wouldn’t like this at all.

  2

  Banks pulled up outside Anna Childers’s large semi in south Eastvale, near the big roundabout, and turned off the tape of Furtwängler conducting Beethoven’s Ninth. It was the 1951 live Bayreuth recording, mono but magnificent. The rain was still falling hard, and Banks fancied he could feel the sting of hail against his cheek as he dashed to the door, raincoat collar turned up.

  The man who answered his ring, John Billings, looked awful. Normally, Banks guessed, he was a clean-cut, athletic type, at his best on a tennis court, perhaps, or a ski slope, but grief and lack of sleep had turned his skin pale and his features puffy. His shoulders slumped as Banks followed him into the living room, which looked like one of the package designs advertised in the Sunday color supplements. Banks sat down in a damask-upholstered armchair and shivered.

  “I’m sorry,” muttered Billings, turning on the gas fire. “I didn’t . . .”

  “It’s understandable,” Banks said, leaning forward and rubbing his hands.

  “There’s nothing wrong, is there?” Billings asked. “I mean, the police . . . ?”

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” Banks said. “Just some questions.”

  “Yes.” Billings flopped onto the sofa and crossed his legs. “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Banks began. “I just want to get some idea of how. It all seems a bit of a mystery to the doctors.”

  Billings sniffed. “You can say that again.”

  “When did Anna start feeling ill?”

  “About four in the morning. She complained of a headache, said she was feeling dizzy. Then she was up and down to the toilet the rest of the night. I thought it was a virus or something. I mean, you don’t go running off to the doctor’s over the least little thing, do you?”

  “But it got worse?”

  “Yes. It just wouldn’t stop.” He held his face in his hands. Banks heard the hissing of the fire and the pellets of hail against the curtained window. Billings took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. At the end she was bringing up blood, shivering, and she had problems breathing. Then . . . well, you know what happened.”

  “How long had you known her?”

  “Pardon?”

  Banks repeated the question.

  “A couple of years in all, I suppose. But only as a business acquaintance at first. Anna’s a chartered accountant and I run a small consultancy firm. She did some auditing wor
k for us.”

  “That’s how you met her?”

  “Yes.”

  Banks looked around at the entertainment center, the framed van Gogh print. “Who owns the house?”

  If Billings was surprised at the question, he didn’t show it. “Anna. It was only a temporary arrangement, my living here. I had a flat. I moved out. We were going to get married, buy a house together somewhere in the dale. Helmthorpe, perhaps.”

  “How long had you been going out together?”

  “Six months.”

  “Living together?”

  “Three.”

  “Getting on all right?”

  “I told you. We were going to get married.”

  “You say you’d known her two years, but you’ve only been seeing each other six months. What took you so long? Was there someone else?”

  Billings nodded.

  “For you or her?”

  “For Anna. Owen was still living with her until about seven months ago. Owen Doughton.”

  “And they split up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any bitterness?”

  Billings shook his head. “No. It was all very civilized. They weren’t married. Anna said they just started going their different ways. They’d been together about five years and they felt they weren’t really going anywhere together, so they decided to separate.”

  “What did the two of you do last night?”

  “We went out for dinner at that Chinese place on Kendal Road. You don’t think it could have been that?”

  “I really can’t say. What did you eat?”

  “The usual. Egg rolls, chicken chow mein, a Szechuan prawn dish. We shared everything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. We usually do. Anna doesn’t really like spicy food, but she’ll have a little, just to keep me happy. I’m a curry nut, myself. The hotter the better. I thought at first maybe that was what made her sick, you know, if it wasn’t the flu, the chilies they use.”

  “Then you came straight home?”

  “No. We stopped for a drink at the Red Lion. Got home just after eleven.”

  “And Anna was feeling fine?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  “What did you do when you got home?”

  “Nothing much, really. Pottered around a bit, then we went to bed.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Yes. I must admit, I felt a little unwell myself during the night. I had a headache and an upset stomach, but Alka-Seltzer soon put it right. I just can’t believe it. I keep thinking she’ll walk in the door at any moment and say it was all a mistake.”

  “Did Anna have a nightcap or anything?” Banks asked after a pause. “A cup of Horlicks, something like that?”

  He shook his head. “She couldn’t stand Horlicks. No, neither of us had anything after the pub.”

  Banks stood up. The room was warm now and his blotched raincoat had started to dry out. “Thanks very much,” he said, offering his hand. “And again, I’m sorry for intruding on your grief.”

  Billings shrugged. “What do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know yet. There is one more thing I have to ask. Please don’t take offense.”

  Billings stared at him. “Go on.”

  “Was Anna upset about anything? Depressed?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “No, no. Quite the opposite. She was happier than she’d ever been. She told me. I know what you’re getting at, Inspector—the doctor suggested the same thing—but you can forget it. Anna would never have tried to take her own life. She just wasn’t that kind of person. She was too full of life and energy.”

  Banks nodded. If he’d had a pound for every time he’d heard that about a suicide he would be a rich man. “Fair enough,” he said. “Just for the record, this Owen, where does he live?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. He works at that big garden center just off North Market Street, over from the Town Hall.”

  “I know it. Thanks very much, Mr. Billings.”

  Banks pulled up his collar again and dashed for the car. The hail had turned to rain again. As he drove, windscreen wipers slapping, he pondered his talk with John Billings. The man seemed genuine in his grief, and he had no apparent motive for harming Anna Childers; but, again, all Banks had to go on was what he had been told. Then there was Owen Doughton, the ex-live-in lover. Things might not have been as civilized as Anna Childers had made out.

  The marvelous fourth movement of the symphony began just as Banks turned into his street. He sat in the parked car with the rain streaming down the windows and listened until Otto Edelmann came in with “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne . . .” then turned off the tape and headed indoors. If he stayed out any longer he’d be there until the end of the symphony, and Sandra certainly wouldn’t appreciate that.

  3

  Banks found Owen Doughton hefting bags of fertilizer around in the garden center early the next morning. Doughton was a short, rather hangdog-looking man in his early thirties with shaggy dark hair and a droopy mustache. The rain had stopped overnight, but a brisk, chill wind was fast bringing in more cloud, so Banks asked if they could talk inside. Doughton led him to a small, cluttered office that smelled faintly of paraffin. Doughton sat on the desk and Banks took the swivel chair.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Mr. Doughton,” Banks started.

  Doughton studied his cracked, dirty fingernails. “I read about Anna in the paper this morning, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “It’s terrible, a tragedy.” He brushed back a thick lock of hair from his right eye.

  “Did you see much of her lately?”

  “Not a lot, no. Not since we split up. We’d have lunch occasionally if neither of us was too busy.”

  “So there were no hard feelings?”

  “No. Anna said it was just time to move on, that we’d outgrown each other. We both needed more space to grow.”

  “Was she right?”

  He shrugged. “Seems so. But I still cared for her. I don’t want you to think I didn’t. I just can’t take this in.” He looked Banks in the eye for the first time. “What’s wrong, anyway? Why are the police interested?”

  “It’s just routine,” Banks said. “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about her state of mind recently?”

  “Not really.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. She seemed fine, really.”

  “Did you know her new boyfriend?”

  Doughton returned to study his fingernails. “No. She told me about him, of course, but we never met. Sounded like a nice bloke. Probably better for her than me. I wished her every happiness. Surely you can’t think she did this herself? Anna just wasn’t the type. She had too much to live for.”

  “Most likely food poisoning,” Banks said, closing his notebook, “but we have to cover the possibilities. Nice talking to you, anyway. I don’t suppose I’ll be troubling you again.”

  “No problem,” Doughton said, standing up.

  Banks nodded and left.

  4

  “If we split up,” Banks mused aloud to Sandra over an early lunch in the new McDonald’s that day, “do you think you’d be upset?”

  Sandra narrowed her eyes, clear blue under the dark brows and blond hair. “Are you trying to tell me something, Alan? Is there something I should know?”

  Banks paused, Big Mac halfway to his mouth, and laughed. “No. No, nothing like that. It’s purely hypothetical.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that.” Sandra took a bite of her McChicken sandwich and pulled a face. “Yuck. Have you really developed a taste for this stuff?”

  Banks nodded. “It’s all right, really. Full of nutrition.” And he took a big bite as if to prove it.

  “Well,” she said, “you certainly know how to show a woman a good time, I’ll say that for you. And what on earth are you talking about?”

  “Splitting up. It’s just something that puzzl
es me, that’s all.”

  “I’ve been married to you half my life,” Sandra said. “Twenty years. Of course I’d be bloody upset if we split up.”

  “You can’t see us just going our separate ways, growing apart, needing more space?”

  “Alan, what’s got into you? Have you been reading those self-help books?” She looked around the place again, taking in the plastic decor. “I’m getting worried about you.”

  “Well, don’t. It’s simple really. I know twenty years hardly compares with five, but do you believe people can just disentangle their lives from one another and carry on with someone new as if nothing had happened?”

  “Maybe they could’ve done in 1967,” Sandra answered. “And maybe some people still can, but I think it cuts a lot deeper than that, no matter what anyone says.”

  “Anna said it was fine,” Banks muttered, almost to himself. “But Anna’s dead.”

  “Is this that investigation you’re doing for Dr. Glendenning, the reason you stood me up last night?”

  “I didn’t stand you up. I phoned to apologize. But, yes. I’ve got a nagging feeling about it. Something’s not quite right.”

  “What do you mean? You think she was poisoned or something?”

  “It’s possible, but I can’t prove it. I can’t even figure out how.”

  “Then maybe you’re wrong.”

  “Huh.” Banks chomped on his Big Mac again. “Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” He explained about his talks with John Billings and Owen Doughton. Sandra thought for a moment, sipping her Coke through a straw and picking at her chips, sandwich abandoned on her tray. “Sounds like a determined woman, this Anna. I suppose it’s possible she just made a seamless transition from one to the other, but I’d bet there’s a lot more to it than that. I’d have a word with both of them again, if I were you.”

  “Mmm,” said Banks. “Thought you’d say that. Fancy a sweet?”