Children of the Revolution

by Peter Robinson

  ‘I think I would have known about it if they had,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘I’m not always out of the country and, contrary to what you think, my wife is not a duplicitous woman. Besides, from what Tony tells me, he was a college lecturer who got dismissed for sexual misconduct and let himself go to seed. He was desperate for money, and I think he tried to play on old times to trick my wife out of some.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Banks agreed.

  ‘You mean there’s another?’

  ‘Gavin Miller was unjustly accused by two female students and dismissed for something he didn’t do, in revenge for something he had done to a friend of one of the girls. Something that actually benefitted the community.’ He knew that this was going too far, giving out such information to Sir Jeremy, but he felt that a certain level of frankness was called for.

  ‘You’re saying he was some kind of saint? You know this for a fact?’

  ‘We think we know what happened and why, yes. But I’m not saying he was a saint. Yes, he had let himself go to seed, and yes, he was desperate for money. His personal hygiene sucked, too. He may even have tried to con your wife out of some money. But he was still a human being, and he was badly abused.’

  Sir Jeremy took it all in and said, ‘He still doesn’t sound like the kind of person Ronnie would hang about with.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Banks. ‘So you’d say that she’s had nothing to do with him since her university days?’

  ‘I would. I can’t prove it beyond any shadow of a doubt – I haven’t been with her every minute of every day – but that’s what I believe. I can certainly swear to you that, if she did, I had no knowledge of it. We all have people from our pasts we leave by the wayside. Sometimes they come back to haunt us. That’s what happened with this man. He thought an old girlfriend might be a soft touch. That he got murdered around the same time he tried to con my wife out of a few quid is mere coincidence. Do you really think Ronnie would murder someone for such a paltry amount? Or that I would? She’s not a violent person, I assure you. Her nature is actually very kindly, and about the only thing that really surprises me is that she didn’t give him what he asked for. She’s a sucker for street people and the like, always handing out money.’

  ‘Maybe if he’d asked her nicely?’ Banks said.

  Sir Jeremy trod out his cigarette. ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  ‘Well maybe he did. Maybe she gave him some money, then someone who knew he had it on him murdered him. But he couldn’t get it. He heard someone coming, so he ran off. But the problem with that theory is that nobody could have walked along that railway track and not seen Gavin Miller’s body, yet it wasn’t discovered or reported until the following morning. Someone else who didn’t want to get involved, perhaps? Someone up to no good who couldn’t afford to be associated with a recently deceased loser?’

  ‘Hm,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘I can see you have a few more problems that need solving, but I honestly don’t think any of them are to do with Ronnie. She specifically says that she didn’t give Miller any money, and I believe her, just as I believe the three women spent the evening at Brierley as they say they did. The memories his telephone call triggered were probably not good ones for Ronnie, or they may have left her completely unmoved. He might have taken a hectoring tone, something I can tell you would be guaranteed to put her off, or maybe he said something she doesn’t want to tell me, or you, about. But I believe her.’

  Banks was starting to get cold, wishing they could just get in the car again and drive away, but Sir Jeremy seemed especially communicative out here on the moors and he didn’t want to break the spell. ‘Did you ever meet Gavin Miller?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Me? No. I thought I’d already made that clear. I’d never even heard of him until Ronnie told me you’d been around asking about him, then I read about his death in the papers.’

  ‘So she didn’t tell you about his phone call at the time he made it?’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose she thought it was important.’ Sir Jeremy hesitated.

  ‘What is it?’ Banks asked.

  Sir Jeremy pulled out another cigarette and lit it. After inhaling deeply and letting the plume of smoke disperse on the wind, he said, ‘It’s been a horrendously busy time for me. As you know, I’ve been over in New York trying to put this damn show together, then I had some difficult meetings in London about the UK production. Quite honestly, it’s all been a bit of a nightmare, and I’ve probably neglected Ronnie to some extent. Too much on my plate. I haven’t been there for her. She’s used to that, of course, but I might have missed a few signals this time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Well, now I think about it, she seemed generally worried and distracted when I got back from New York. She never said why, and as she hadn’t told me about the phone call, I couldn’t make any sense of her behaviour. But I also had too much going on in my life to take the time and really talk to her, as I should have done, to try to find out what was happening. We do talk, you know. Ronnie isn’t secretive with me, and she does like to get things out in the open, problems and stuff. But I never asked her what was bothering her, and then I wasn’t around. The phone’s not the same, especially when you’re calling from thousands of miles away. To be honest, it was easier to blame you for all Ronnie’s distress, but when I think about it, I have to admit that it started before you first talked to her.’

  Oriana had told Banks much the same thing, but he wasn’t going to rat her out to Sir Jeremy. ‘And since the murder?’

  ‘Well, obviously, she’s been even more upset. But again, I put that down to you and your persistent questions and insinuations. Perhaps she thought more of this Miller than I realised, or than she realised. The whole thing must have brought back some powerful memories. Perhaps she felt guilty. You know, maybe if she had given him money, he wouldn’t have died. That sort of thing. This was one time I really had no idea what was bothering her. Who knows how the human mind works, what torturous and labyrinthine paths we lead ourselves down?’

  ‘How was she before the phone call?’

  ‘Fine. As far as I know. Happy, healthy, productive. She’s always had problems with her nerves now and then. Just episodes. Nothing serious. It’s just her nature. Highly strung. She’s an idealist and a perfectionist, and that’s tough to keep up in this world. Easier perhaps when you’re young, but a damn sight harder as you get older. But she was fine. Since the phone call, it’s like the nerves have come back.’

  He was being very open and forthright, Banks thought, wondering if there was a reason behind it. ‘And since the murder?’

  Sir Jeremy gave Banks a direct look. ‘Again, I thought it was your fault. But I’ve found her crying for no reason, jumping at shadows. She’s been taking Valium again. I’m only grateful that Angelina and Oriana have been around to help keep her together. The strain is showing.’

  ‘What do you think it’s all about?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea, but what bothers me most is that I think she’s scared of something. I’m worried that she might be in danger. I think we need your help, Mr Banks, and you can rely on me not to interfere at higher levels, if you take my meaning. But I don’t know what it is you’re supposed to do.’ Sir Jeremy checked his watch and pulled his jacket collar tight to keep out the chill. ‘Come on,’ he said, with a forced grin. ‘I’ve got a meeting in Edinburgh this evening. Let’s get back to that lovely Porsche of yours.’

  The rain had started up again with a vengeance, a broad band of it all the way from the Midlands to the Scottish borders. A brisk wind lashed it against the conservatory windows and it swirled in dark, glistening patterns over the glass roof.

  Banks sat listening to Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Does Your House Have Lions. When you got beyond the showmanship, playing three saxes at once, for example, the man could really play. After polishing off the remains of some takeaway pad Thai noodles that were fast approaching their chuck-out date, Banks had spent much of th
e early evening on the telephone and computer. It was partly work, partly family, including a long chat with Tracy in Newcastle and an email to his parents, who were still on the South-east Asia cruise. Brian was in Lyon, and most likely on stage, so Banks just left a brief message on his mobile.

  Now he had just finished reading through the thick file on Joe Jarvis that Annie and Gerry had quickly put together for him after their visit to Dr Mandy Parsons. Banks already knew a fair bit about Jarvis – one of his father’s heroes – as did most people who followed the news with any level of interest, but there were always surprises. He hadn’t known that Jarvis was a devoted Shostakovich fan, for example, or that his favourite reading included Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov and Émile Zola, none of whom Banks had ever read, though he had seen various versions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma on TV and had watched a few episodes of The Paradise. He had always wanted to read Germinal and Chekhov’s short stories, and perhaps now was a good time. The second-hand copies he had bought years ago were still on his bookshelf.

  There were plenty of photographs of Jarvis at various stages in his career in the file, and he had certainly been a ruggedly handsome young man in the early seventies when Ronnie had known him. As time went on, and his career path took him further and further from the pit, he had come to look more distinguished. He was certainly a familiar figure, at any rate, which was hardly surprising given the number of times he’d been splashed over the media.

  As the rain poured down and Roland Kirk played on, Banks closed the folder on his knee. The basic facts were simple enough. Joe Jarvis was born in 1947 in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, into a mining family that went back three generations. He had started working down the pit at the age of sixteen, and at the time of the 1972 miners’ strike, he was a twenty-five-year-old coalface worker, just a few years older than Ronnie Bellamy, and from another universe entirely.

  It was after the ’72 strike that things had started to get interesting, and complicated, in Jarvis’s career. He joined the Communist Party in 1973, quickly became a pit delegate, and after that it seemed there was no stopping him. A keen supporter of education through the Workers’ Education Association, he took a part-time course in Economics and International Politics at Sheffield University in the late seventies. He had also become more active in the National Union of Miners, and over the years he rose steadily through the ranks, or climbed higher up the greasy pole, depending on your point of view: shop steward, member of the branch committee, branch delegate, and from there he moved on to paid, full-time union positions, leaving the coalface behind for ever in 1982, though he never became president of the NUM. That position went to Arthur Scargill.

  A vehement opponent of Margaret Thatcher, Jarvis often appeared on TV during the 1984 miners’ strike, and he was also pictured holding banners and linking arms at pickets. He had been one of the loudest protestors of the practice of bringing in extra police from the Met to bolster containment of the picketers. These were the men who were ‘up for it’, Banks remembered, ready to crack a few northern heads, the ones his father always brought up when the matter of Banks’s career arose, the ones who had waved their rolls of five-pound notes overtime pay at the starving miners, and used it to woo the local girls, some of whom were only too willing to be wooed. At least they didn’t rape and pillage, as the Russians had in Berlin after the war.

  In turn vilified and lauded, Jarvis proved an able leader of men and a tricky opponent of the National Coal Board negotiators. Loyalty and solidarity were his keywords. He would have given his life for his fellow miners. Some said he was the man behind Scargill, others that he always played second fiddle. Whatever the truth was – and he never commented on his position himself – he was always right there, up at the front line when the going got tough, as it had over the last two or three years.

  Some official papers found in a Moscow basement and finally released showed that Arthur Scargill had begged the Russians for money to support the 1984 strike and asked that its source be kept secret. Of course, Scargill bore the brunt of this publicly, and did so very well, but the shadowy figure of Jarvis, though retired by then, had plenty of his own explaining to do. He had been a key figure in the negotiations and had made frequent trips to Moscow during the time he was employed by the NUM. There were also accusations of financial ties with Colonel Gadaffi’s government in Libya.

  During the Cold War, of course, the Russians were interested in doing all they could to wreck the capitalist system and foment uprising all over the world, and the Libyans had no great love for England, either. Jarvis was eloquent in his own defence, but a lot of mud was slung in the media, and some of it stuck. Jarvis had always been proud to tell people he was a member of the Communist Party, even when it was unfashionable, and when leaving it and joining the Labour Party, as Scargill had done, would have furthered his career. There were rumours of MI5 investigations and hints of espionage accusations, yet even his greatest detractors would have had to admit that Jarvis didn’t have access to any information the Russians would have been interested in. What he could do, though, was stir up unrest, help to bring about the ideal conditions for a workers’ revolution – work as an agent provocateur – and the climate in the miners’ strikes had been ideal for that. But no slush fund was found, and there was no secret Moscow money stashed away in numbered Swiss bank accounts. At least, not that HMG’s best could find.

  Though it was well known that Jarvis strongly disagreed with Scargill’s policy of calling the 1984 strike without taking a ballot of members, he never publicly denounced his friend and mentor, even when the latter went so far as to defend Stalin and attack the Polish Solidarity movement, or when he later sued the NUM for kicking him out and claimed expenses from the union for his expensive Barbican flat.

  No charges were ever brought against Jarvis, and when the hue and cry died down, he returned to his retirement and his silence, apparently spending most of his time on his allotment in Mexborough, reading his beloved Chekhov and growing vegetables. He didn’t have an expensive flat in London, but a modest terrace in Mexborough, not too far from where he had grown up.

  His address had been easy enough to find; it was in the telephone directory.

  The music had come to an end, and Banks had to go through to the entertainment room to change the disc. He could have made life easier by buying an automatic CD changer that held five or ten discs, but he found that the more complicated a piece of equipment was, the more likely it was to go wrong. Besides, he never knew what he wanted to listen to next, let alone three or four discs ahead. In the end he went for something a little more relaxing than Roland Kirk as it was getting close to bedtime – See You on the Ice by Carice van Houten – and poured himself a small nightcap of Laphroaig.

  The rain was still hammering down. It was like living under a waterfall. Banks supposed it would end one day soon, then they would have snow and ice to look forward to. He remembered the Arizona desert and the balmy heat and unique light of Los Angeles – Santa Monica, the Hollywood Hills, Laurel Canyon, Mulholland Drive – the breathtaking beauty of the California coast all the way up to San Francisco. He also remembered Sophia, whose ghost he had been trying to lay to rest through his travels. The sun had shone all the time he was there, though one evening, while he was enjoying dinner in Tiburon on the other side of the bay with a charming divorcee he had met at the hotel, the cityscape across the water suddenly disappeared so completely that everyone in the restaurant gasped and thought the power had gone off. It was fog, though, rolled in so quickly under the Golden Gate Bridge that nobody had noticed it was coming, and most of it had dispersed when it was time to go back to the hotel. Perhaps it was time for another big trip, he thought, if he could afford it. India, perhaps. Or China, Vietnam, Brazil? There was no shortage of possibilities. There was no one he needed to forget this time, but why should one even need an excuse to go on a long journey? He glanced at a few tour itineraries on his tablet, then decided it was about time for bed. />
  The whisky in his glass was just about finished when his phone rang. He checked his watch. After midnight. Thinking it might be Brian returning his call after the concert, he picked up his mobile. He didn’t recognise the number, but he answered it anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry to be calling you so late,’ the familiar voice said, ‘but you did give me your card and said to call any time if I had something to tell you. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ said Banks, almost adding that it was nice to hear Oriana’s voice again, perhaps because Carice van Houten was singing ‘You. Me. Bed. Now.’ at the time. But something in her tone warned him this was not a social call, as if it ever could be. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oriana. ‘Something is very wrong. It’s Ronnie. There’s been an accident.’

  12

  The little coffee shop on Market Street wasn’t part of a chain, and Banks had always enjoyed the care and dedication the owners put into the brews and blends they made. He arrived a little early on Wednesday morning, and as he had been at the office already for an hour and a half reviewing the paperwork on the Miller case, drinking coffee from the machine, he decided on green tea instead.

  He had gathered from Oriana the previous evening that Lady Chalmers had been driving home from Anthony Litton’s house near Buxton. It was Oliver’s birthday. Ronnie knew he was spending it with his father on his way back to London from some meetings in Manchester, and she had decided to go and pay him a surprise visit. Everyone told her she shouldn’t have been driving. The weather was terrible. Apparently, Anthony Litton had told her she should stop over, but she wanted to come home. She was driving back through the Peaks when her car went through a fence and off the road beside a swollen, fast-flowing river. She would have been washed away if the car wheels hadn’t got stuck in the deep mud on the riverbank.