‘It’s not tax evasion,’ said Banks.
‘Sit down. Tea? Something stronger? Gin?’
‘Tea would be really nice.’
Carol Canning headed for the kitchen. Winsome looked at Banks and widened her eyes. Banks smiled at her. Carol seemed to him the sort of drunk who could hold her liquor; at least, she didn’t wobble when she walked, and her speech wasn’t slurred. A steady drip throughout the day, Banks guessed, causing and maintaining a gentle buzz. She returned several minutes later with a tray bearing a rose-patterned china teapot with gilded edges and two matching cups and saucers. There were also similar bowls of sugar and milk. Banks, who preferred his tea in a mug, accepted milk and sugar and took the proffered saucer. Not a trace of a tremor in Carol Canning’s hand. Banks could hardly get his finger through the handle of the cup. He noticed that the level of gin in Carol’s glass was considerably higher than it had been before she went into the kitchen.
When everyone had been served, she sat on the sofa, lit a cigarette, which she attached to a long ivory holder, put her legs up and stretched her smoking arm along the back, holding the gin close to her breast. It might have been the nineteenth century, and she might have been reposing on a chaise longue. ‘Now do tell,’ she said. ‘Don’t tease. You haven’t come all this way just for the view.’
‘No,’ said Banks, trying to hold his teacup delicately, without snapping off the fragile handle. ‘It is about your ex-husband. The first one.’
‘So what has Danny boy been up to now?’
‘Now?’
‘A figure of speech.’ She wagged her finger and spilled a little gin. ‘You policemen! I can see I’m going to have to watch what I say.’
‘Sorry. Just habit. Well, you’ll hear about it soon enough, so I might as well tell you that your ex-husband has been accused of a rape in 1967, and that other similar incidents are being investigated.’
‘1967?’
‘Yes.’
‘We were divorced in 1965.’
‘Yes. But were you ever aware of anything like that while you were married to him?’
‘I wouldn’t have put it past him. Danny was always rather forceful, shall we say. I mean, his idea of foreplay was, “You awake?” ’ She laughed. ‘He liked it rough – but that’s not to say he ever hit me or anything – and he liked it often and anywhere. I always assumed he had other women, but I’d never have imagined that he had to rape them. He was very attractive, was Danny. Lots of women fancied him and I’m sure plenty of them were only too willing to spread their legs.’
‘These were young girls.’
She chewed her lip. ‘How young?’
‘Underage. Fourteen. The one we talked to.’
She put her cigarette hand to her mouth. A half inch of ash dropped on to the front of her T-shirt. She ignored it. ‘Oh my God.’
‘That surprises you?’
‘No, no. Not particularly. But it does shock me.’ She took a hefty slug of gin. ‘As much as I’m capable of being shocked these days.’
‘But it doesn’t surprise you?’
Carol Canning thought for a moment, a little pale, took a gulp of gin, then whispered, ‘Nothing about Danny surprises me. He was a law unto himself, that man. What he wanted, he took.’
‘He wanted young girls?’
‘Christ, I was only sixteen when he took me. And there was no hesitation on his part. I didn’t even have time to say no.’
‘He raped you?’
‘He took me. I wasn’t unwilling and I wasn’t a virgin. I was a little bit tipsy. I don’t think I wanted to say no. It was flattering, getting attention from a star like Danny Caxton. See how naive I was? There was a time when I was flattered by the attention of celebrities. It took me long enough to learn better. You wouldn’t find a bigger pack of deviants outside an institution.’
‘Well, this fourteen-year-old girl wasn’t flattered, and she says he raped her.’
‘Is this for certain? Are you sure she’s telling the truth, and not just out for what she can get?’
‘Sure as we can be. At least, we’re investigating the allegation. Why should she lie?’
Carol snorted. ‘Men. Why wouldn’t she lie? If she was ashamed of what she did, or regretted it too late? Got a bit pissed, and things went too far. Women do that all the time.’
‘Do what?’
‘Cry rape.’
‘We don’t think that’s what happened,’ Winsome said.
‘But you’re not sure, are you, love? And you have no evidence. Besides, they’re all coming out of the woodwork now, after Jimmy and Rolf. They can smell the money in it, you ask me.’ She turned back to Banks.
‘Did you know any of Mr Caxton’s friends?’ he asked.
‘Danny didn’t have any friends. Just hangers-on. They came and went.’
‘Do you know any who hung around longer than others? Or any from 1967?’
‘I told you, we were divorced by then. I have no idea who his cronies were.’
‘You must have been very young.’
She smiled flirtatiously. ‘Flattery will get you anywhere. We were all young once.’ She looked at Winsome. ‘Some of us still are. I was nineteen. We’d been married two years. I suppose it was ’62 when we first met. My fifteen minutes.’
‘You must have heard things about him, though?’
‘I can’t say I paid a lot of attention. I had an exciting enough life to live. You know about his background, don’t you?’
‘Some things,’ Banks said cautiously. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it wasn’t all public knowledge. He had a hard time of it when he was young, did Danny.’
‘You mean being taken away from his parents?’
‘Partly that,’ said Carol Canning. ‘But it wasn’t until much later that he found out what really happened, around the time we were married, in fact.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What happened to his parents.’
‘It says in his official biography that they both died in the war,’ said Winsome.
‘That’s true enough, love. At least, his mother died in a concentration camp.’
‘And his father?’
‘He was a member of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz.’
‘What was that?’ Banks asked.
‘It was a paramilitary group made up of ethnic German Poles. Danny’s father was half-German. They basically did all they could to help the German war effort, including massacring fellow Poles. For years Danny thought his father had died in the camp with his mother, when it’s not entirely impossible that he had helped put her there. One day an old family friend called by, a camp survivor. He knew Danny’s family. You can imagine how upsetting the news was for him. Of course, he was famous then. He felt he needed to keep it quiet. He was ashamed. It seemed unsavoury. I suppose it helped that he couldn’t really remember his parents – after all, he hadn’t seen them since he was three – but even so, it’s a devastating thing to happen to someone, and no matter what he’s done, Danny isn’t without sensitivity.’
Banks could imagine how much it must have hurt and confused the young man. Perhaps if anyone were looking for a trigger to Caxton’s later behaviour, that might have been it, though from what Carol Canning had said, he was already a man used to getting his way sexually, even if it meant being a bit rough. Still, something like that could rip your soul in two.
‘What happened to him? The father?’
‘Nobody knows. He might have died in the war or ended up living to a ripe old age in Germany – east or west – after it was all over. One thing’s for certain, he’ll be dead by now. Danny never talked about him again in my presence. I remember his expression when he was told the news. Face set like stone. Pale as a ghost. And he didn’t argue, didn’t contest it. He just left the room. When he came back, hours later, he acted as normal, as if nothing had happened. Cracked a joke or two. That was Danny.’
Banks reconsidered his direction. ‘Let’s
go back a bit,’ he said. ‘You didn’t sound surprised at the accusation when I first mentioned it.’
‘Am I surprised Danny shagged a fourteen-year-old? Not at all. He always liked them young. Am I surprised he was a bit rough with her? No. He never was a patient or considerate lover. Am I surprised you’re making such a fuss about it after all this time? Yes. Those were different times.’
‘And stars like Danny Caxton were subject to different laws?’
‘In a way. Yes. They were gods. And you know what the gods got up to.’ She drank some more gin. ‘Have you asked her why she took so long to report this . . . incident . . . or whatever it was?’
‘She didn’t. She reported it at the time and nothing was done.’
A triumphant and unpleasant grin split her features. ‘Seems like it’s down to you lot, then, doesn’t it, ducky?’
‘I’m not saying the police weren’t at fault. We’ll be checking out that aspect of the case, too.’
‘I’ll bet you will. You could probably save yourself the trouble, you know.’
‘Oh, yes? How?’
‘Well, think about it. Danny was a big star. People liked to be around him. Bask in his glory. He had charisma, you know. Tons of it. People came under his spell. Important people, like senior coppers, judges, politicians, royalty, for all I know. Or people who relied on him for their jobs, to keep raking in the money. You don’t kill the cash cow just for a quick slice of beef, do you? And the others, the coppers and their like, they liked to be seen with him, liked to be able to impress their mates by saying they’d been down to Danny’s for the weekend, rubbed shoulders with Mick and Keith, and, by heck, you should have seen the crumpet. He played golf with the chief constables. Gave generously to the Police Widows and Orphans Fund and a few others. Someone always owed him a favour, belonged to the same club, was a mate, depended on him for their livelihood or status. He was clever with people like that.’
‘Manipulative? A user?’
‘Of course. But without seeming so obvious. He was a charmer, was Danny, when he wanted to be. When he wanted something. If he committed the occasional indiscretion, odds were there’d be people to cover it up, people who didn’t want any grief to fall on him.’
‘You’re saying he bribed his way out of an investigation?’
‘I’m saying he didn’t have to. He was golden, was Danny. Untouchable.’
‘Rape isn’t a simple indiscretion, Mrs . . . Canning . . . and Danny wasn’t particularly charming when he wanted to have sex with the girl we’ve just talked to.’
Carol made a dismissive gesture. ‘He always got what he wanted, one way or another. There’s no doubt he was screwed up. But he’s not stupid. He might not have had much formal education, but he taught himself.’
‘The point remains,’ Banks went on, ‘that the girl did report the assault, the rape, to the local police at the time, which makes me inclined to believe that it did happen.’
‘And they did nothing. What I said before still stands. She got pissed and went too far. Regretted it in the morning.’
‘Then why would she bother going to the police and raking it all up? Surely that must have been painful for her. Nobody knew. Why not just get on with her life and chalk it up to inexperience?’
‘I don’t know. Guilt? Shame? Maybe she wasn’t too bright. Maybe she got pregnant.’
‘She didn’t.’
‘Don’t tell me Danny used a rubber Johnny. That’d be a first. He wouldn’t know how to put one on.’
‘She didn’t get pregnant.’
Carol Canning drank some more gin, and her eyes seemed to blur out of focus, then, very slowly, under a puzzled frown, they sharpened again and she took off on a different tack. ‘On the other hand,’ she said. ‘Neither did I.’
‘What?’
‘Get pregnant. I thought it was me, but maybe he was shooting blanks. I mean, I had three with Kenny. Kenny might have been no great shakes in the bedroom department, but he had the right stuff, apparently. Danny just had to touch me and I came like the dickens, but Kenny just had to look at me and I’d get pregnant.’
‘Didn’t you go to a doctor?’
‘With Danny? No. We didn’t care that much, really. We were having too much of a good time to want kids. Even when we were married we didn’t see that much of each other. I was still touring then, first with the girls, then solo. And if Danny was playing the rear end of a horse in Christmas panto in Leeds, I was Widow Twanky down in Brighton. It was a crazy life.’
‘And if you had got pregnant?’
‘There were ways of dealing with it, even then.’
‘Why did you split up?’ Winsome asked.
‘I don’t really see as it has anything to do with your investigation, but we just drifted apart. We really did. It was easy, so easy we never even noticed it happening.’ She waved her cigarette arm theatrically in the direction of both of them. ‘I mean, he went one way – variety shows, lousy pop songs, quiz programmes, bad movies – and I went another – Granny Takes a Trip, psychedelia, dope, acid, country weekends with the Maharishi, the whole shebang. Even us pop girls had a bit of fun, you know. I made a solo album, a folky sort of thing, like Vashti Bunyan, but it went nowhere. I had a nice voice. They all said so. New Musical Express, Melody Maker, Record Mirror. Even Danny said I had a nice voice.’
Where had Banks heard that before? Linda Palmer. Perhaps it was a line Caxton used with all the girls. Suddenly, Banks remembered what he had been racking his brains over since they had arrived. The Tri-Lites. Carol Canning had been one of the original Tri-Lites, so named before the term had been hijacked for lights of three different wattages. They were a girl group popular in the early sixties. He wouldn’t have known that to look at her now, of course, and he had been a bit too young back then to appreciate their obvious charms, but her mention had jogged his memory. They had enjoyed a period of chart success from about 1961 until 1965 when their sort of music started falling out of fashion. They wore knee-length dresses and had bouffant hairdos, all trying to copy Helen Shapiro, Kathy Kirby or Susan Maughan. Banks remembered seeing them once or twice on Top of the Pops. In the mid-sixties they tried to imitate the American sound popular at the time, but they were no match for Tamla Motown. Banks remembered that Carol had tried to go solo in the late sixties, jump on the hippie bandwagon, but her career had quickly foundered.
‘The Tri-Lites,’ he said.
‘Oh, don’t. Please. For my sins. They were wigs, you know. The big hair.’
‘Fooled me.’
‘And awfully hot onstage, or under the studio lights. I don’t think people ever noticed how much we sweated doing a show. We were all pretty ripe when we got off. Stripped right down and jumped in a lukewarm bath as soon as possible. As often as not with some randy young lad from one of the bands.’ She winked. ‘You know what they say. When the music’s over, it’s time to have fun.’
‘Never heard that one,’ said Banks. ‘I thought it was “turn out the lights”.’
‘Don’t you turn out the lights when you want to have fun, Superintendent?’
‘And after the solo album?’ Banks asked. ‘What then?’
Carol Canning stared into space again for a while. At first Banks thought she was miffed at his lack of response to her flirting, but he realised that she was mired in difficult memories. ‘Oh, those were the lost years, ducky. Next thing I knew I was married to Kenny, and it was 1975. All Hot Chocolate and Bay City Rollers. Our day was over. Though I still think we could have given Abba a run for their money.’ She got to her feet, still remarkably steady, Banks thought, sang a few bars of ‘Dancing Queen’ and lit another cigarette. ‘God, this is so depressing. Let’s all have a big drink, and I’ll put some real music on, shall I? Aretha or Dionne or something. Definitely not the fucking Tri-Lites.’
Winsome gave Banks an anxious look, and he glanced at his watch. ‘I’m afraid we’d better be off now,’ he said.
‘You’re no fun. You’re
going to leave an old lady alone with her memories and her gin?’
‘Needs must.’
She waved her glass at them and some of the gin slopped over the side, dribbled down her hand and splashed on the front of her T-shirt to join the cigarette ash. ‘Now see what you’ve made me do.’ She pouted. ‘Go on, then. Off you go. They all do in the end.’
Banks and Winsome took their leave. As Winsome got behind the wheel, she turned to Banks and said, ‘I know it’s only the second day, guv, but already I have to confess I’m getting sick to death of this case and these people.’
Banks had expected something like that. He wondered if Annie would have been able to keep quiet as long as Winsome had in Carol Canning’s company. He doubted it. She wasn’t quite as sensitive as Winsome, and not as well behaved. She usually gave as good as she got, or thought she was getting. ‘My sentiments exactly,’ he said. ‘Give me a down-to-earth honest criminal any time. The more godawful these people are, the more we owe it to Linda Palmer to make a good case against Danny Caxton.’
‘Yeah,’ Winsome said. ‘I suppose so. I suppose you’re right.’
‘And cheer up. You know what the woman in the movie said: “Tomorrow’s another day.” ’
5
After a glass of grapefruit juice, a mug of green tea and a bowl of muesli, Annie was ready to set off for work. She was hoping there would be something from forensics that morning, and an identification of the victim would also be welcome. When the news came on her car radio, it was no surprise to hear that one of the main stories was about the unidentified young girl found murdered on a leafy lane in Yorkshire, and the other was about Danny Caxton being interviewed on a matter of historic sexual abuse. As yet, the media had only scant details about both cases. One of the things they didn’t know, and were at all costs not to find out about, was that there had been a second car in the ‘leafy lane’ on the night of the girl’s murder. For the time being, it suited Annie for the rapists to think they were suspected of murder and the murderer to think he was home free. That way the rapists might panic and perhaps make a mistake, and the killer would carry on blithely unaware while the police closed in on him. At least, that was the theory.
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 12