Not Safe After Dark: And Other Stories

by Peter Robinson

  “Come in, my little pretty one,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable. Has my friend Pandarus told you what you must do?”

  I curtsied. “Yes, sir. He told me you might have a position for me, but that you only conduct interviews at night.”

  Angelo laughed. “He’s a fine dissembler, my Pandarus. But in that, he is not all wrong. I do, indeed, have a position for you.”

  With this he moved toward me, and I felt his lizard-like hand caress my cheek. I should have drawn back, I know, and at that moment told him who I was and why I was there, but something in me, some innate curiosity compelled me to continue my deception.

  Angelo led me slowly to the bed and bade me sit, then he sat beside me and began his caresses again, this time venturing into more private territory than before. I took hold of his hand and moved it away, but he was persistent, growing rougher. Before I knew it, he had me on my back on the bed and his hand was groping under my skirts, rough fingers probing me. I struggled and tried to tell him who I was, but he put his other hand over my mouth to silence me.

  All the time he manhandled me thus, he was calling out my name. “Isabella . . . Oh, my beautiful Isabella! Do it for me, Isabella. Please do it for me!” At first this confused me, for I was certain he hadn’t recognized me. Then I realized with a shock that he didn’t know who I was, but that this must be what he said to all his nighttime visitors. He called them all Isabella.

  And then I understood.

  The whole thing, the re-creation of the exact same conditions as the night I was to visit him in exchange for Claudio’s life—the hour, the insistence on absolute darkness. Though Mariana had gone to him in my stead, Angelo either refused to believe this, or thought that by duplicating the trappings he could enjoy the treasures of my body time after time in the darkness of his vile imagination.

  As we struggled there on the bed, disgust and outrage overcame any simple desire I harbored for justice, and I knew then what I had been planning to do all along. Angelo’s behavior just made it all that much easier.

  I slipped out my dagger and plunged it into his back with as much force as I could muster. He stiffened, as if stung by a wasp, and reared back, hand behind him trying to staunch the flow of blood.

  Then I plunged the dagger into his chest and said, “This is for Mariana!”

  He croaked my name: “Isabella . . . my Isabella . . .”

  “Yes, it’s me,” I said, “but I’m not yours.” And I plunged the dagger in again. “This is for me!” I said, and he rolled to the floor, pleading for his life. I knelt over him and plunged the dagger in one more time, into his black heart. “And this is for not being able to tell us apart in the dark!”

  After that he lay still. I didn’t move for several minutes, but knelt there over Angelo’s body catching my breath until I was sure that no one had heard. The house remained silent.

  Knowing that Pandarus was probably still lurking by the garden gate, I left by the front door and hurried home through the dark streets. Nobody accosted me; I saw not a soul. When I got home, in the light of a candle in my chamber, I saw that my clothing was bloodstained. No matter. I would burn it. As soon as that was done and I was washed clean of Angelo’s blood, all would be well. Mariana might shed a tear or two for her miserable, faithless husband, but she would get over him in time and he would never hurt her or anyone else again.

  And as for me, as I believe I have already told you, there are many advantages to be gained from being the duke’s wife, not the least of which is the unlikelihood of being suspected of murder.

  Going Back

  An Inspector Banks Novella

  1

  Banks pulled up outside his parents’ council house and parked his Renault by the side of the road. He wondered if it would be safe left out overnight. The estate had had a bad reputation even when he grew up there in the sixties, and it had only got worse over recent years. Not that there was any alternative, he realized as he made sure it was locked and the security system was working; his parents didn’t own a garage.

  He couldn’t very well remove the CD player for the weekend, but to be on the safe side he stuffed the CDs themselves into his overnight bag. He didn’t think any young joyriders would want to steal Thelonious Monk, Cecilia Bartoli, or the Grateful Dead, but you couldn’t be too careful. Besides, he had a portable disc player now, and he liked to listen to music in bed as he drifted off to sleep.

  Banks’s parents’ house stood near the western edge of the estate, close to the arterial road, across from an abandoned factory and a row of shops. Banks paused for a moment and took in the redbrick terrace houses—rows of five, each with a little garden, low wall, and privet hedge. His family had moved here from the tiny, grim back-to-back when he was twelve, when the houses were new.

  It was a Friday afternoon near the end of October, and Banks was home for the weekend of his parents’ golden wedding anniversary that Sunday, only his second overnight stay since he had left home at the age of eighteen to study business at London Polytechnic. When that didn’t work out, and when the sixties lost their allure in the early seventies, he joined the police. Since then, long hours, hard work, and his parents’ overt disapproval of his career choice had kept him away. Visiting home was always a bit of a trial, but they were his mother and father, Banks reminded himself; he owed them more than he could ever repay, he had certainly neglected them over the years, and he knew they loved him in their way. They weren’t getting any younger either.

  He took a deep breath, opened the gate, walked up the path, and knocked on the scratched red door, a little surprised by the loud music coming from the next house. He saw his mother approach through the frosted-glass pane. She opened the door, rubbed her hands together as if drying them, and said, “Alan, lovely to see you. Come on in, love, come in.”

  Banks dropped his overnight bag in the hall and followed his mother through to the living room. It stretched from the front of the house to the back, and the back area, next to the kitchen, was permanently laid out as a dining room. The wallpaper was a wispy brown autumn-leaves pattern, the three-piece suite a matching brown velveteen, and a sentimental autumn landscape hung over the electric fire.

  His father was sitting in his usual armchair, the one with the best straight-on view of the television. He didn’t get up, just grunted, “Son, nice of you to come.”

  “Hello, Dad. How are you doing?”

  “Mustn’t complain.” Arthur Banks had been suffering from mild angina for years, ever since he’d been made redundant from the sheet-metal factory, and it seemed to get neither better nor worse as time went on. He took pills for the pain and didn’t even need an inhaler. Other than that, and the damage booze and fags had wreaked on his liver and lungs over the years, he had always been as fit as a fiddle. Hollow-chested and skinny, he still sported a head of thick dark hair with hardly a trace of gray. He wore it slicked back with lashings of Brylcreem.

  Banks’s mother, Ida, plump and nervy, fussed a little more about how thin Banks was looking, then the kitchen door opened and a stranger walked into the room.

  “Kettle’s on, Mrs. B. Now, who have we got here? Let me guess.”

  “This is our son, Geoff. We told you he was coming. For the party, like.”

  “So this is the lad who’s done so well for himself, is it? The Porsche and the mews house in South Kensington?”

  “No, that’s Roy, the other one. He’s not coming till Sunday afternoon. He’s got important business. No, this is our eldest, Alan. I’m sure I told you about him. The one in that picture.”

  The photograph she pointed to, half hidden by a pile of women’s magazines on one of the cabinet shelves, showed Banks at the age of sixteen, when he captained the school rugby team for a season. There he stood in his purple-and-yellow strip, holding the ball, looking proud. It was the only photograph of him they had ever put on display.

  “This is Geoff Salisbury,” said Ida Banks. “Geoff lives up the street at number fifty-fiv
e.”

  Geoff moved forward, hand stretched out like a weapon. He was a small, compact man, with lively, slightly watery eyes and cropped gray hair, about Banks’s age. His smile revealed what looked to Banks like a set of perfect false teeth. His handshake was firm, and his hands calloused and ingrained with oil or grease from manual labor.

  “Pleased to meet you, Alan,” he said. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I can’t just now.” He turned to Banks’s mother. “Have you got that shopping list, Mrs. B? I’ll be off to Asda now.”

  “Only if you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

  “Nothing’s too much trouble for you, you know that. Besides, I have to go there myself.”

  Banks’s mother picked up her handbag, took out her purse, and gave Geoffrey a handwritten list and a twenty-pound note. “Will that cover it?”

  “Easily, Mrs. B. Easily. I’ll be back in a tick. Coach and Horses tonight, Arthur?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see how I feel,” said Banks’s father. On closer examination, he did look tired and drawn, Banks thought. More than when he had last seen him in the summer. His eyes had the look of milky marbles and his skin was the color of porridge. It could be the strain of preparing for the upcoming party—Arthur Banks, while gregarious enough in the pub, had never liked a houseful of relatives—but most of the organization, Banks guessed, would have fallen to his mother. Perhaps it was simple old age catching up fast.

  Geoff Salisbury left, and Banks saw him go up to the red Fiesta with the rusted chassis, parked behind Banks’s Renault. Geoff paused and looked Banks’s car over before getting into his own and driving off.

  “Who’s that?” Banks asked his mother.

  “I told you. Geoff Salisbury. He’s a neighbor.”

  “He seems at home here.”

  “I don’t know what we’d do without him,” said Mrs. Banks. “He’s just like a son to us. Anyway, sit yourself down. Have a cuppa.”

  Banks sat and his mother poured. “So Roy’s not coming till Sunday, then?” he said.

  “No. He rang us last night, didn’t he, Arthur?” She said it as if it were some momentous event. Arthur Banks nodded. “He’s got an important business meeting all day Saturday,” she went on. “Something to do with some Yanks flying in, and they have to be back in New York by evening . . . I don’t know. Anyway, he says he should be here by Sunday lunchtime.”

  “Good of him to bother,” Banks muttered.

  His mother cast him a long-suffering glance. Banks knew she had been used to the brothers’ bickering when they both lived at home, and it was no surprise whose side she usually took. “What time are you planning on starting the party?” Banks asked.

  “We told everyone to come about six o’clock. That’ll give us time to clean up and get things ready after lunch. By the way, I don’t suppose you’ve heard yet, but Mrs. Summerville passed away.” She announced it in the sort of soft and solemn tones generally reserved for those who had passed away.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” said Banks. Mrs. Summerville was the mother of the first girl he had ever slept with, though he had always believed that neither the late Mrs. Summerville nor his own mother knew that. “What did she die of?”

  “It wasn’t anything suspicious, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  His mother studied him, frowning. “Yes . . . well, it was a blessing really. She’d been very poorly. Died in her sleep, according to Alice Green.”

  “Still—” said Banks, uncertain what to say. He sipped some tea. As usual, it was milky and sweet, though he had stopped taking milk and sugar twenty years ago.

  “And how are the Marshalls?” he asked. The Marshalls were the parents of Banks’s school friend Graham, who had disappeared at the age of fourteen and whose body had been discovered the previous summer. Banks had come down to help the locals work on the case and the solution hadn’t pleased anyone. It was during that time he had met Detective Inspector Michelle Hart, whom he had been seeing on and off ever since. Pity she wasn’t around this weekend, he thought.

  “Same as ever, I suppose,” said Mrs. Banks. “We don’t see much of them, do we, Arthur?”

  Arthur Banks shook his head.

  “It’s as if they’ve shut themselves away since you were last down.” Banks’s mother cast him an accusing glance, as if their becoming recluses were his fault. And maybe it was, in a way. The truth is rarely as liberating as people would have us believe; it often binds more than it frees.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

  “You know,” his mother went on, “while you’re here, you ought to go and see Mrs. Green. She keeps asking about you, and she was very put out you didn’t drop by and see her in the summer. She still thinks very fondly of you, though I can’t see why, the noise you lot used to make at her house.”

  Banks smiled. He remembered Mrs. Green fondly, too. She was the mother of an old school friend, Tony Green, whom Banks hadn’t seen since he left home. Tony hadn’t been one of the real in-crowd, but he had been on the rugby team with Banks, and Banks had always liked Mrs. Green. Most of the kids did. She didn’t stop them from smoking in her house, and she didn’t mind them playing the sort of music—the Beatles and the Rolling Stones mostly—that most adults hated. Once or twice she had given Banks and Tony half a crown apiece and sent them off to the pictures out of her way. She had also been very pretty, with the kind of bosom young boys dream about, and she certainly had a mouth on her. Mrs. Green had a reputation for speaking her mind, nobody ruffled her feathers and got away with it. Tony had gone off to Canada, Banks remembered. And Mr. Green had died of emphysema about nine months ago. His mother had told him over the telephone, and he had sent a sympathy card. Yes, he would pay Mrs. Green a visit.

  2

  So Banks sipped tea with his mother and father, catching up on the local gossip. The usual stuff: another school friend had emigrated to Australia, an old neighbor, who had moved into a home a year ago, had died, and the Venables lad from number sixty-six had been sent to Borstal for mugging a pensioner. Banks didn’t bother telling his mother that it wasn’t called “Borstal” anymore but “detention center” or “youth custody center.” They weren’t much interested in what he’d been doing, outside of the divorce from Sandra. They were more interested in Brian and Tracy, and they expressed regret that neither could come to the party on Sunday: Brian’s band was playing an important series of gigs in Germany, and Tracy had the flu. Not entirely convinced this wasn’t some excuse, Banks had dropped by and offered to drive her from her university residence in Leeds, but when he saw her, he took pity and said he’d look in again on his way back. Fortunately, she had friends there who would feed her chicken noodle soup and Lemsip in the meantime.

  “Have you seen who’s moved in next door?” Mrs. Banks asked.

  “No,” said Banks, “but I heard them.”

  “Not that side. The other. A Paki family, that’s who. I must say, though,” she went on, “they seem really nice. Very quiet they are, even the kids, aren’t they, Arthur? And polite. Always say good morning and ask how you’re doing. Talk just like us, they do. Makes a change from that lot on the other side.”

  “Who are they?” Banks asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t even know their name. They moved in about two weeks ago. They’re not very friendly neighbors. Don’t know how many of them live there either. Shifty-looking lot. Comings and goings all hours of the day and night. Noise. And the place is a pigsty.”

  It sounded like a drug house. Banks made a mental note to keep his eyes open. If he noticed anything suspicious, he’d get onto the local police.

  Banks’s father picked up the remote control and turned the television on at half past five, as Banks remembered he did every weekday. “Is that the time?” said Ida Banks. “I’d better get the tea on. Pork chops, peas, and chips all right?”

  “Fine,” said Banks, his stomach sinking. As if there was a choice.
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br />   “And a nice bit of steamed pudding and custard for sweet.”

  “I’ll help.” Banks followed her into the kitchen.

  True to his word, Geoff Salisbury came back from Asda with a bag of groceries. He dumped it on the kitchen table and handed Ida Banks two pound coins in change, then they went through to the living room. Banks, peeling potatoes at the time, started to unload the groceries. As he did so, he came across the printed receipt stuck by condensation to the side of a bottle of chilled apple juice.

  The print was a little blurred, but even so he could see that the total came to £16.08, which left a discrepancy of £1.92 between that and the £2 Geoff had handed his mother. Holding the receipt, Banks went into the living room.

  “I think you’ve got the change wrong,” he said, holding out the receipt for Geoff to see.

  Banks’s mother frowned. “Alan! Must you?” Then she turned to Geoff. “I’m so sorry. Our Alan’s in the police and he can’t seem to let us forget it,” she said with a dismissive sniff.

  “One of the boys in blue, eh?”

  “CID, actually,” said Banks.

  “Ah. All that Sherlock Holmes stuff.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Let’s see, then.” Geoff took a pair of bifocals from his shirt pocket and squinted at the list. “Bloody hell, you’re right,” he admitted, blushing. He showed the receipt to Ida Banks. “It’s a fair cop. See there, Mrs. B? It looks like an eight to me but it’s really a six. That’s what comes of being too vain to wear my glasses in the supermarket.”

  Ida Banks laughed and slapped him on the arm playfully. “Oh, get away with you, Geoff. Anyone could make a mistake like that.”