Children of the Revolution

by Peter Robinson

Paramedics had attended her at the scene, and then she had been examined briefly at the nearest hospital. Her injuries weren’t serious, Oriana had said, just a few cuts and bruises, but mostly shock. She had insisted on going home. The doctors had no objection, and the local police all loved Oliver Litton, so it wasn’t hard to find a volunteer to drive her. The car would be towed back later.

  Banks was sipping the slightly bitter but aromatic tea when the bell over the door pinged and Oriana walked in. She looked frazzled and drawn, which was only to be expected, given that she had probably had little or no sleep. The owner’s wife, Sandy, came over to ask if she wanted anything, and she ordered a latte. The place wasn’t too busy, and they had Classic FM playing quietly in the background.

  Once Oriana had sat down and removed her tan jacket, she seemed to be a little shy and uncomfortable to find herself alone with Banks in a café, even though they had already had lunch together. She was casually but stylishly dressed in jeans and russet-coloured top, with a dark green silk scarf around her neck. Banks could hear Sandy making the latte, the violent grinding of the espresso machine and the hissing of steam heating milk. It all sounded rather like someone sucking the dregs of a soft drink through a straw. ‘How is Lady Chalmers?’ he asked.

  Oriana kept her eyes down and stared at the tablecloth the whole time she talked. ‘She’s fine. Well, you know, still a bit dazed, but that’s mostly from the sedative. The doctor’s been, and she says she’ll have a few nasty bruises but no permanent disfigurement or anything like that. He says she had a lucky escape. It was also fortunate that she wasn’t driving too fast, she was wearing a seatbelt, and that the fence slowed her down even more. A little more momentum, and that would have been it.’

  ‘It’s not that often you can call crashing through a fence and getting stuck in the mud lucky.’

  Oriana glanced up at him and smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about phoning you so late last night. It’s just so … embarrassing. I panicked. I didn’t know where to turn. What can I say?’

  ‘You don’t have to apologise,’ Banks told her. ‘I’m just glad to hear that she’s on the mend. Sir Jeremy got back all right?’

  ‘About half-past one, yes. He’s exhausted, too.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Sandy delivered Oriana’s latte. ‘You were clearly worried about more than just Lady Chalmers’ immediate injuries last night. You said she was frightened?’

  Oriana nodded. ‘That’s what worried me the most.’

  ‘You’ve said this before, that since Gavin Miller’s murder she’s been edgy and nervous.’

  ‘Yes. It’s true.’

  ‘But she hasn’t told you why?’

  ‘No. I’ve asked her once or twice. Indirectly, I suppose, you know, if anything was bothering her, but she always said no. One time she just smiled and said it was nothing I should worry about. That was as far as I could get with her.’

  It was about as far as Sir Jeremy had got, too, Banks remembered. ‘Does she usually confide in you? I mean, are you close friends?’

  ‘I like to think so, yes. I know there’s an age difference, but I think of her more as a big sister than a mother figure. Believe me, if you met my mother, you’d soon realise how little I need a mother figure.’

  ‘And your father?’

  Oriana blushed. ‘My father’s a sweet man. I adore him.’

  ‘Tell me about what happened last night.’

  ‘I already told you. It was just as I said on the telephone. Ronnie rang me from the hospital, told me she’d had an accident, but assured me she was all right and the police were bringing her home.’

  ‘What time was this?

  ‘About half-past nine.’

  ‘So she wasn’t stopping at her brother-in-law’s for very long?’

  ‘No. She drove down about four o’clock. They were to have an early dinner, just Ronnie, Tony and Oliver. Oliver’s wife and children were in London, and Fran, Tony’s wife, died a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Banks.

  Oriana raised an eyebrow, then went on. ‘After dinner, Oliver had to leave for London immediately. His driver was waiting. It was dark, of course, and raining very hard. I don’t know if you know that part of the country, but there are a lot of minor roads, many unlit. It’s also quite hilly. It can be very treacherous.’

  ‘I know a little about the Peak District,’ Banks said. ‘I’ve been there once or twice for days out, many years ago.’

  ‘With your wife and children? Brian and …?’

  ‘Tracy. Yes. Have you ever been there, to Anthony Litton’s house?’

  ‘Once or twice. Yes.’

  ‘But not last night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Boyfriend? Hot date, instead, perhaps?’

  Oriana smiled. ‘I should say that’s an impertinent question and refuse to answer it, but I did ask you about your wife. It’s simple, really. I just stayed in, read for a while, then Angelina and I watched a movie. If you want to know—’

  ‘I don’t need to know what movie you watched. I’m not treating you as a suspect in anything. I don’t need an alibi.’

  Oriana made a mock pout. ‘Oh. How disappointing.’

  Banks laughed. ‘It’s not often I get that response. Besides, it’s not as if you really have one, is it? An alibi, I mean.’ He drank some more green tea, and went on. ‘And the thing I didn’t tell you when you asked about my wife was that we’ve been divorced for more than ten years now.’ Banks paused. ‘You seemed to indicate last night that Lady Chalmers thought she was in some kind of danger? Can you tell me any more about that?’

  ‘I think perhaps I overreacted. She was in shock, as you said. Perhaps a little of her panic spread to me.’

  ‘Was she driving the MG?’

  ‘Yes. She loves it, even in bad weather, when it would be much more sensible to drive the Rav 4.’

  ‘ “Who Drove the Red Sports Car?” ’ Banks said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just a song. Van Morrison. Lady Chalmers would know it. Where’s the car now? Was it badly damaged?’

  ‘Apparently not. They’re supposed to be towing it back up today or tomorrow.’

  ‘Oriana,’ said Banks quietly, ‘can you please keep what we’ve talked about, even that we met, to yourself for the time being? Give me a couple of days. I’ll see what I can dig up. Keep a close eye on Lady Chalmers. If possible, don’t let her go out alone.’

  ‘Is she really in danger?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘That,’ said Banks, ‘is what I would like to try and find out.’

  ‘Why did you want to have lunch with me?’ Winsome asked Lisa as they took their seats in the Maharaja, an old pub recently converted into an Indian restaurant. The smells of cumin and coriander permeated the air. The decor was pure upmarket-Indian-restaurant-in-a-box, with dark wood panelling, brass or carved wooden statues of elephants and many-armed gods, paintings of women in saris with red dots on their foreheads, lots of gilt edging and deep velvety red curtains, wall-hangings and banquettes. Even the waiter had an Indian accent. He probably was Indian.

  ‘Do I have to have a reason?’ Lisa was certainly dressed for the occasion, though the Maharaja was casual as far as dress code went. She wore a navy skirt, and a matching tailored jacket over her cream blouse. She was even wearing tights and seemed to have applied a little make-up. Winsome thought she looked as if she were going to a job interview. They didn’t attract anywhere near as many glances as they had in the coffee shop a few days earlier.

  ‘Not at all,’ Winsome said. ‘I’m just surprised, you know. I mean what you’ve just been through, reliving your past, it can’t have been easy. Often in things like that, most people, well, they tend to blame the one who pushed them a bit.’

  ‘I’m not most people.’

  ‘I can see that. You scrub up nicely, by the way.’

  Lisa blushe
d, and they ordered rogan josh, chicken tikka, aloo gobi, and raita and naans to accompany the meal. Winsome liked to eat Indian food using her bread as a scoop for pieces of meat drenched in sauce. Lisa ordered a bottle of Stella, but Winsome was sticking to Diet Coke. And plenty of water. ‘I don’t suppose you can tell me anything about how the case is going, can you?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘I can’t. Not even if I knew anything. But as far as I know, there are no new developments.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever find out who did it?’

  ‘We’ll do our best, Lisa. That’s all I can say. Now, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, I suppose.’

  ‘Was there any particular reason you wanted to see me?’

  ‘It must have been quite difficult for you, too, the other night, when I unburdened myself on you. I don’t usually do that. It was like opening a floodgate. I don’t know how you did it.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Winsome said. ‘The time was right for you. It must have been a terrible experience, the period you described, and this business brought it all back. If it’s worth anything, I think you’ve done a remarkable job of coming through it.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Lisa. ‘But thank you for saying so. I’m still half-paralysed with fear and self-loathing most of the time.’

  ‘What are you dressed up for, anyway? Are you after a job or something?’

  ‘Would you employ me?’

  ‘Not up to me, but I can’t see why anybody wouldn’t. You’re bright and enthusiastic, even presentable at the moment.’

  ‘Hey!’

  Winsome smiled. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I’m trying for a job in that pub over the road from your police station.’

  ‘The Queen’s Arms?’

  ‘That’s the one. A “proper job”, as you called it. I haven’t had a lot of experience, but they’re advertising, and I know someone who used to work there. She’ll put in a good word for me. It’s a start. I’ll continue with my writing, of course. That’s my real passion. Do you think they’ll … you know …’ She touched her piercings.

  ‘It might be a good idea to remove some of them, if you can. Temporarily, of course.’

  Lisa nodded. ‘I thought so. OK.’

  ‘It’s not that they’re prejudiced or anything, I’ve seen girls working there with piercings, but people who deal with the public on a daily basis tend to be just a little bit on the conservative side when it comes to body art.’

  ‘I understand. It’s all right. I’m getting a bit bored with them, anyway, to tell you the truth.’ She fingered her eyebrow ring. ‘And that one even hurts a bit.’

  Winsome laughed. ‘Then it would be a good place to start.’ She paused. ‘I can put in a good word for you, too, if you’d like me to?’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not saying my word would count for a lot there, but they know me. There is one thing, though.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The drugs.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t toke up on the job.’

  ‘That’s not what I …’ Winsome laughed. ‘Oh, never mind.’

  Their food arrived, delivered by the small Indian waiter in the white suit, who smiled and bowed before them and said, ‘Happy eating.’ Winsome tore a naan in half and scooped out a mouthful of rogan josh. Delicious.

  They both ate in silence for a while, nothing but the quiet hum of conversations and the distant sound of sitar and tablas. ‘Is there something you wanted to tell me?’ Winsome asked after a while.

  Lisa looked her in the eye. ‘I think you know there is. That’s what I like about you. You don’t push it, do you? But you know things. You make people want to tell you things of their own free will. It’s different.’

  ‘I’m still a policewoman at heart, Lisa, so be careful.’

  ‘You mean, don’t tell you anything that might incriminate me?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ve had plenty of chances to arrest me, and you haven’t done it yet.’ Lisa paused, and they both carried on eating for a while. ‘I didn’t tell you everything,’ she said finally.

  ‘I don’t imagine you did.’

  ‘Do you know what I’m going to say?’

  ‘I have a good idea, but I’d still rather hear it from you.’

  ‘Then you can say you knew it all along?’

  Winsome regarded her in all seriousness, then she spooned up some chicken tikka in the ragged remains of her naan. ‘I wouldn’t do that unless it was true.’

  Lisa contemplated her for a moment. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t. As you might have guessed, it’s something else that doesn’t reflect too well on me.’

  ‘You’re too hard on yourself.’

  ‘Hear me out first.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I lied to you when I told you I didn’t find the boy who did it. Is that what you suspected?’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ said Winsome. ‘You did seem to brush over that part of the story rather too quickly. I’d like to know the full story. Unless you murdered him and dumped his body in the River Aire, of course. Then you might be better off keeping your own counsel.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything like that. Mick, one of the blokes who was with us at the concert that night, knew him. His name was Rob, and he was up from Bradford, as I said. I made out to Mick that I was interested in Rob, you know, said a few flattering things, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. Mick told me. This would have been about a week after it happened, before I knew I was pregnant. Not that it would have made any difference.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I went to Bradford and located him. It wasn’t hard. He was a student at the uni there, and he lived in a bedsit on one of those streets off Great Horton Road, opposite the main campus.’

  ‘What happened when you found him?’

  ‘I watched him. I got a bed and breakfast nearby, and I watched him. I must have spent hours waiting for him to set off to classes. I followed him, watched where he went, who he talked to, what he did. The student pub at night, pictures with a girl, all that sort of thing. And do you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The thing that surprised me most, even in the fragile and angry state that I was in, was just how fucking ordinary he was, how he’d done something momentous and horribly destructive to me, yet he just went about his life chatting, laughing, watching movies, going to classes, as if nothing had ever happened. I mean, I expected a monster, right? Remember, all I really knew was what had been done to me, and I wasn’t even certain about that. But the more I watched him, the more ordinary I saw he was.’

  ‘What had you been planning to do?’

  ‘Planning? I don’t know. I assumed something would occur to me, when the time came.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘I suppose so, but hardly what I expected. I thought I might even kill him at one time, or at least chop his balls off and shove them down his throat. You know, stick a dildo up his arse and tattoo I AM A RAPIST PIG or something on his chest. But I’m not Lisbeth Salander. Sorry if I’m shocking you. Do you know that book?’

  ‘I’ve seen the film,’ said Winsome. ‘The one with Daniel Craig.’ She remembered how much it had made her squirm. She certainly wouldn’t go and see any of the others in the trilogy, or read them.

  ‘It was mostly him being so ordinary that got to me. I had a knife with me. Is that illegal?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘But I never used it. I was just going to knock on his door one night, force him at knifepoint to take me up to his flat, then do all that stuff to him.’

  Winsome wiped her hands on a crisp linen serviette. ‘Few people could really do that, Lisa. You do realise that, don’t you? Most of us aren’t violent by nature; we shy away from it. I gather you changed your mind?’

  ‘It didn’t seem like that. I mean, I was improvising. Not even sure my mind w
as made up. I can only say that with hindsight, you know, that I wanted to hurt him the same way he’d hurt me. An eye for an eye. Maybe I watched him for too long. Maybe it was like that Stockholm syndrome thing, and I became too fond of him. I don’t think so, but you know what I mean. I spent so long watching him that he became human and ordinary, no longer a rapist monster.’

  ‘Lisa, you should have gone to the police.’

  She showed a flash of anger. ‘Yes? And what would he have said? He’d have denied it, that’s what, then he might have beaten me up or something, and got away with that, too. And what proof did I have? His word against mine. What do you think you would have done if I’d walked into your office and told you what I’m telling you now?’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Winsome. ‘I’m sorry. I know we seem … ineffective.… sometimes, but our hands are tied. All I’m saying is we would have tried. I would have tried.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, anyway. I don’t think I could have stood up in court and gone through it all, with the prosecution making out I was a slut and that I asked for it and all that.’

  ‘It might not have been that way.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  They sat silently for a while. Winsome had lost her appetite, and she left the remains of the lunch. Lisa didn’t seem interested in eating any more, either. The waiter asked their permission and cleared away the mess. Lisa ordered another Stella. Winsome could see how hard this was for her, and felt for her. She determined to make no more judgements, no more comments about what she thought Lisa ought to have done. ‘I’m sorry, Lisa. I just have a copper’s nature, that’s all. I know where you’re coming from, believe me. I know why you didn’t report it. Most victims don’t, and that just makes our job a million times harder. But I don’t blame you. I do want to know what you actually did.’

  Lisa studied her and nodded. ‘After about a week in Bradford, watching him and following him, plotting in my imagination in bed at night what I was going to do to him, I finally approached him. It was in a square, by the university. He was by himself, but there were plenty of people around. I went up to him and called him by his name. At first, I could tell he didn’t recognise me, then it dawned on him. I could sense it, that he was getting ready to scarper. “Before you run away,” I said, “I just want you to know that I know you drugged me and raped me, and it was a cowardly, cruel and vicious thing to do, and I hope you rot in hell for it.” It wasn’t as effective as it might have been because I was scared and angry and I had a hell of a job holding back the tears.’