A Necessary End

by Peter Robinson

  “When you were going through the statements,” Banks asked, “did you come across anything on a chap called Dennis Osmond?”

  “The name rings a bell. Let me have a look.” Gristhorpe leafed through the pile. “Yes, I thought so. Interviewed him myself. One of the last. Why?”

  Banks explained about Jenny’s visit.

  “I took his statement and sent him home.” Gristhorpe read through the sheet. “That’s him. Belligerent young devil. Threatened to bring charges against the police, start an enquiry of his own. Hadn’t seen anything, though. Or at least he didn’t admit to it. According to records he’s a CND member, active in the local anti-nuclear group. Amnesty International, too—and you know what Mrs Thatcher thinks of them these days. He’s got connections with various other groups as well, including the International Socialists. I should imagine Superintendent Burgess will certainly want to talk to him.”

  “Hmmm.” Banks wondered how Jenny would take that. Knowing both her and Burgess as he did, he could guarantee sparks would fly. “Did anything turn up in the statements?”

  “Nobody witnessed the stabbing. Three people said they thought they glimpsed a knife on the road during the scuffles. It must have got kicked about quite a bit. Nothing I’ve heard so far brings order out of chaos. The poor lighting didn’t help, either. You know how badly that street is lit. Dorothy Wycombe’s been pestering us about it for weeks. I keep putting her onto the council, but to no avail. She says it’s an invitation to rape, especially with all those unlit side alleys, but the council says the gaslamps are good for the tourist business. Anyway, PC Gill was found just at the bottom of the Community Centre steps, for what that’s worth. Maybe if we can find out the names of the people on the front line we’ll get somewhere.”

  Banks went on to tell Gristhorpe what he’d discovered from Jenny about the other organizers.

  “The Church for Peace group was involved, too,” Gristhorpe added. “Did I hear you mention Maggie’s Farm, that place near Relton?”

  Banks nodded.

  “Didn’t we have some trouble with them a year or so ago?”

  “Yes,” Banks said. “But it was a storm in a teacup. They seemed a harmless enough bunch to me.”

  “What was it? A drug raid?”

  “That’s right. Nothing turned up, though. They must have had the foresight to hide it, if they had anything. We were acting on a tip from some hospital social workers. I think they were over-reacting.”

  “Anyway,” Gristhorpe said, “that’s about it. The rest of the people we picked up were just private citizens who were there because they feel strongly about nuclear power, or about government policy in general.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “You’d better look over these statements,” Gristhorpe said, shoving the tower of paper towards Banks, “and wait for the great man. Sergeant Hatchley’s still questioning those people in the flats overlooking the Street. Not that there’s much chance of anything there. They can’t have seen more than a sea of heads. If only the bloody TV cameras had been there we’d have had it on video. Those buggers in the media are never around when you need them.”

  “Like policemen,” Banks said with a grin.

  The phone rang. Gristhorpe picked it up, listened to the message and turned back to Banks. “Sergeant Rowe says Dr Glendenning’s on his way up. He’s finished his preliminary examination. I think you’d better stay for this.”

  Banks smiled. “It’s a rare honour indeed, the good doctor setting foot in here. I didn’t know he paid house-calls.”

  “I heard that,” said a gruff voice with a distinct Edinburgh accent behind him. “I hope it wasn’t meant to be sarcastic.”

  The tall, white-haired doctor looked down sternly at Banks, blue eyes twinkling. His moustache was stained yellow with nicotine, and a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. He was wheezing after climbing the stairs.

  “There’s no smoking in here,” Gristhorpe said. “You ought to know better; you’re a doctor.”

  Glendenning grunted. “Then I’ll go elsewhere.”

  “Come to my office,” Banks said. “I could do with a fag myself.”

  “Fine, laddie. Lead the way.”

  “Bloody traitor.” Gristhorpe sighed and followed them.

  After they’d got coffee and an extra chair, the doctor began. “To put it in layman’s terms,” he said, “PC Gill was stabbed. The knife entered under the rib-cage and did enough damage to cause death from internal bleeding. The blade was at least five inches long, and it looks like it went in to the hilt. It was a single-edged blade with a very sharp point. Judging by the wound, I’d say it was some kind of flick-knife.”

  “Flick-knife?” echoed Banks.

  “Aye, laddie. You know what a flick-knife is, don’t you? They come in all shapes and sizes. Illegal here, of course, but easy enough to pick up on the continent. The cutting edge was extremely sharp, as was the point.”

  “What about blood?” Gristhorpe asked. “Nobody conveniently covered in Gill’s type, I suppose?”

  Dr Glendenning lit another Senior Service and shook his head. “No. I’ve checked the tests. And I’d have been very surprised if there had been,” he said. “What most people don’t realize is that unless you open a major vein or artery—the carotid or the jugular, for example—there’s often very little external bleeding with knife wounds. I’d say in this case that there was hardly any, and what there was would’ve been mostly absorbed by the man’s clothing. The slit closes behind the blade, you see—especially a thin one—and most of the bleeding is internal.”

  “Can you tell if it was a professional job?” Gristhorpe asked.

  “I wouldn’t care to speculate. It could have been, but it could just as easily have been a lucky strike. It was a right-handed up-thrust wound. With a blow like that on a dark night, I doubt that anybody would have noticed, unless they saw the blade flash, and there’s not enough light for that on North Market Street. It would have looked more like a punch to the solar plexus than anything else, and from what I hear, there was plenty of that going on. Now if he’d raised his hand above his head and thrust downwards . . .”

  “People aren’t usually so obliging,” Banks said.

  “If we take into account the kind of knife used,” Gristhorpe speculated, “it could easily have been a spontaneous act. Pros don’t usually use flick-knives—they’re street weapons.”

  “Aye, well,” said Glendenning, standing to leave, “that’s for you fellows to work out. I’ll let you know if I find anything more at the post-mortem.”

  “Who identified the body?” Banks asked him.

  “Sister. Pretty upset about it, too. A couple of your lads did the paperwork. Luckily, Gill didn’t have a wife and kids.” A quarter inch of ash fell onto the linoleum. Glendenning shook his head slowly. “Nasty business all round. Be seeing you.”

  When the doctor had left, Gristhorpe stood up and flapped his hand theatrically in front of his face. “Filthy bloody habit. I’m off back to my office where the air’s clean. Does this Burgess fellow smoke, too?”

  Banks smiled. “Cigars, if I remember right.”

  Gristhorpe swore.

  II

  Over the valley from Maggie’s Farm, mist clung to the hillsides and limestone scars, draining them of all colour. Soon after breakfast, Seth disappeared into his workshop to finish restoring Jack Lippett’s Welsh dresser; Rick did some shopping in Helmthorpe, then went to his studio in the converted barn to daub away at his latest painting; Zoe busied herself in her flat with Elsie Goodbody’s natal chart and Paul went for a long walk on the moors.

  In the living-room, Mara kept an eye on Luna and Julian while she mended the tears in Seth’s jacket. The children were playing with Lego bricks and she often glanced over, awed by the look of pure concentration on their faces as they built. Occasionally, an argument would break out, and Julian would complain that the slightly younger Luna wasn’t doing things right. Then Luna
would accuse him of being bossy. Mara would step in and give them her advice, healing the rift temporarily.

  There was nothing to worry about really, Mara told herself as she sewed, but after what Seth and Rick had said about the dead policeman, she knew they could expect to come under close scrutiny. After all, they were different. While not political in the sense of belonging to any party, they certainly believed in protection of the environment. They had even allowed their house to be used as a base for planning the demo. It would only be a matter of time before the knock at the door. There was something else bothering Mara, too, hovering at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

  Seth and Rick had been tired and hungry when they got back just after two in the morning. Seth had been charged with threatening behaviour and Rick with obstructing a police officer. They hadn’t much to add to what Mara had heard earlier except for the news of PC Gill’s murder, which had soon spread around the police station.

  In bed, Mara had tried to cheer Seth up, but he had been difficult to reach. Finally, he said he was tired and went to sleep. Mara had stayed awake listening to the rain for a long time and thinking just how often Seth seemed remote. She’d been living with him for two years now, but she hardly felt she knew him. She didn’t even know if he really was asleep now or just pretending. He was a man of deep silences, as if he were carrying a great weight of sadness within him. Mara knew that his wife, Alison, had died tragically just before he bought the farm, but really she knew nothing else of his past.

  How different from Rick he was, she thought. Rick had tragedy in his life, too—he was involved in a nasty custody suit with his ex-wife over Julian—but he was open and he let his feelings show, whereas Seth never said much. But Seth was strong, Mara thought—the kind of person everyone else looked up to as being really in command. And he loved her. She knew she had been foolish to feel such jealousy when Liz Dale had run away from the psychiatric hospital and come to stay. But Liz had been a close friend of Alison’s and had known Seth for years; she was a part of his life that was shut off from Mara, and that hurt. Night after night Mara had lain awake listening to their muffled voices downstairs until the small hours, gripping the pillow tightly. It had been a difficult time, what with Liz, the plague of social workers and the police raid, but she could look back and laugh at the memory of her jealousy now.

  As she sat and sewed, watching the children, Mara felt lucky to be alive. Most of the time these days she was happy; she wouldn’t change things for the world. It had been a good life so far, though a confusing one at times. After her student days, she had thrown herself into life—travel, communal living, love affairs, drugs—all without a care in the world.

  Then she had spent four years with the Resplendent Light Organization, culminating in nine long months in one of their ashrams, where all earnings were turned over to the group and freedom was severely limited. There were no movies, no evenings in the pub, no frivolous, chatty gatherings around the fire; there was very little laughter. Mara had soon come to feel trapped, and the whole episode had left her with a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt she had been cheated into wasting her time. There had been no love there, no special person to share life with. But that was all over now. She had Seth—a solid dependable man, however distant he could be—Paul, Zoe, Rick and, most important of all, the children. After wandering and searching for so long, she seemed at last to have found the stability she needed. She had come home.

  Sometimes, though, she wondered what things would be like if her life had been more normal. She’d heard of business executives dropping out in the sixties: they took off their suits and ties, dropped LSD and headed for Woodstock. But sometimes Mara dreamed of dropping in. She had a good brain; she had got a first in English Literature at the University of Essex. At moments, she could see herself all crisp and efficient in a business suit, perhaps working in advertising, or standing in front of a blackboard reading Keats or Coleridge to a class of spellbound children.

  But the fantasies never lasted long. She was thirty-eight years old, and jobs were hard to come by even for the qualified and experienced. All those opportunities had passed her by. She knew also that she would no more be able to work in the everyday world, with its furious pace, its petty demands and its money-grubbing mentality, than she would be able to join the armed forces. Her years on the fringes of society had distanced her from life inside the system. She didn’t even know what people talked about at work these days. The new BMW? Holidays in the Caribbean? All she knew was what she read in the papers, where it seemed that people no longer lived their lives but had “life-styles” instead.

  The closest she came to a normal middle-class existence was working in Elspeth’s craft shop in Relton three days a week in exchange for the use of the pottery wheel and kiln in the back. But Elspeth was hardly an ordinary person; she was a kindly old silver-haired lesbian who had been living in Relton with her companion, Dottie, for over thirty years. She affected the tweedy look of a country matron, but the twinkle in her eyes told a different story. Mara loved both of them very much, but Dottie was rarely to be seen these days. She was ill—dying of cancer, Mara suspected—and Elspeth bore the burden with her typical gruff stoicism.

  At twelve o’clock, Rick knocked and came in through the back door, interrupting Mara’s wandering thoughts. He looked every inch the artist: beard, paint-stained smock and jeans, beer belly. His whole appearance cried out that he believed in himself and didn’t give a damn what other people thought about him.

  “All quiet on the western front?” he asked.

  Mara nodded. She’d been half listening for the sound of a police car above the wind chimes. “They’ll be here, though.”

  “It’ll probably take them a while,” Rick said. “There were a lot of others involved. We might not be as important as we think we are.”

  He picked up Julian and whirled him around in the air. The child squealed with delight and wriggled as Rick rubbed his beard against his face. Zoe tapped at the door and came in from the barn to join them.

  “Stop it, Daddy!” Julian screamed. “It tickles. Stop it!”

  Rick put him down and mussed his hair. “What are you two building?” he asked.

  “A space station,” answered Luna seriously.

  Mara looked at the jumble of Lego and smiled to herself. It didn’t look like much of anything to her, but it was remarkable what children could do with their imaginations.

  Rick laughed and turned to Zoe. “All right, kiddo?” he asked, slipping his arm around her thin shoulder. “What do the stars have to say today?”

  Zoe smiled. She obviously adored Rick, Mara thought; otherwise she would never put up with being teased and treated like a youngster at the age of thirty-two. Could there be any chance of them getting together? she wondered. It would be good for the children.

  “Elsie Goodbody’s wasted as a housewife,” said Zoe. “By the looks of her chart she should be in politics.”

  “She’s in domestic politics,” Rick said, “and that’s even worse. Anyone for the pub?”

  They usually all walked down to the Black Sheep on Saturday and Sunday lunch-times. The landlord was good about the children as long as they kept quiet, and Zoe took along colouring books to occupy them. Mara fetched Seth from his workshop, Julian got up on his father’s shoulders, and Luna held Zoe’s hand as they walked out to the track.

  “Just a minute, I’ll catch you up,” Mara said, dashing back into the house. She wanted to leave a note for Paul to tell him where they were: a formality, really, an affectionate gesture. But as she wrote and her mind turned back to him, she suddenly realized what had been nagging her all morning.

  Last night, Paul’s hand had been bleeding and he had put an Elastoplast on it. This morning, when he came down, the plaster had slipped off, probably when he was washing, and the base of his thumb was as smooth as ever. There was no sign of a cut at all.

  Mara’s heart beat fast as she
hurried to catch up with the others.

  III

  “Detective Superintendent Burgess, sir,” PC Craig said, then left.

  The man who stood before them in Gristhorpe’s office looked little different from the Burgess that Banks remembered. He wore a scuffed black leather sports jacket over an open-necked white shirt, and close-fitting navy-blue cords. The handsome face with its square determined jaw hadn’t changed much, even if his slightly crooked teeth were a little more tobacco-stained. The pouches under his cynical grey eyes still suited him. His dark hair, short and combed back, was touched with grey at the temples, and by the look of it he still used Brylcreem. He was about six feet tall, well-built but filling out a bit, and looked as if he still played squash twice a week. The most striking thing about his appearance was his deep tan.

  “Barbados,” he said, catching their surprise. “I’d recommend it highly, especially at this time of year. Just got back when this business came up.”

  Gristhorpe introduced himself, then Burgess looked over at Banks and narrowed his eyes. “Banks, isn’t it? I heard you’d been transferred. Looking a bit pasty-faced, aren’t you? Not feeding you well up here?”

  Banks forced a smile. It was typical of Burgess to make the transfer sound like a punishment and a demotion. “We don’t get much sun,” he said.

  Burgess looked towards the window. “So I see. If it’s any consolation, it was pissing down in London when I left.” He clapped his hands together sharply. “Where’s the boozer, then? I’m starving. Didn’t dare risk British Rail food. I could do with a pint, as well.”

  Gristhorpe excused himself, claiming a meeting with the Assistant Chief Commissioner, and Banks led Burgess over to the Queen’s Arms.

  “Not a bad-looking place,” Burgess said, glancing around and taking in the spacious lounge with its dimpled copper-topped tables with black wrought-iron legs, and deep armchairs by the blazing fire. Then his eyes rested on the barmaid. “Yes. Not bad at all. Let’s sit at the bar.”

  Some of the locals paused in their conversations to stare at them. They knew Banks already, and Burgess’s accent still bore traces of his East End background. As right-wing as he was, he didn’t come from the privileged school of Tories, Banks remembered. His father had been a barrow-boy, and Burgess had fought his way up from the bottom. Banks also knew that he felt little solidarity with those of his class who hadn’t managed to do likewise. To the locals, he was obviously the London big-wig they’d been expecting after the previous night’s events.