A Necessary End

by Peter Robinson

  “Under duress.” Banks tossed him the cigars. Burgess caught the tin deftly, unwrapped it and offered Banks one. “Celebrate with me?”

  “I prefer these.” Banks lit a Silk Cut.

  “You can have a smoke now if you want, kid,” Burgess said to Paul. “Though with a breathing problem like yours, I’d watch it.”

  Paul lit up and coughed till he was red in the face. Burgess laughed.

  “So, what now?” Banks asked.

  “We lock him up and go home.” Burgess looked at Paul. “You’re going to have plenty of time for long chats with the prison shrink about that claustrophobia of yours,” he said. “In fact, you could say we’re doing you a favour. Don’t they say the best way to deal with a phobia is to confront it? And the treatment’s free. What more could you ask for? You’d have to wait years on National Health for that kind of service.”

  Paul’s jaw slackened. “But I didn’t do it. You said you believed me.”

  “It takes a lot more than that to convince me. Besides, there’s tampering with evidence, accessory after the fact of murder, wasting police time, resisting arrest. You’ve got a lot of charges to face.”

  Burgess called downstairs and two constables came to escort Paul to the cells. He didn’t struggle this time; he seemed to know there was no point.

  When they were alone in the office, Banks turned to Burgess. “If you pull a stunt like that on my patch again,” he said, “I’ll kick your balls into the middle of next week, superintendent or no fucking superintendent.”

  Burgess held his gaze, but Banks felt that he took the threat more seriously than he had Rick Trelawney’s.

  After the staring match, Burgess smiled and said, “Good, I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way. Come on, I could murder a pint.”

  And he put his arm around Banks’s shoulder and steered him towards the door.

  ELEVEN

  I

  The rattle of the letter-box and the sound of mail slapping against the hall mat woke Banks early on Saturday morning. His mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird cage, and his tongue felt dry and furry from too many cigarettes and too much ale. He and Burgess had murdered more than one pint after Boyd’s interrogation. It was getting to be a habit.

  Banks still wasn’t used to waking up alone in the big bed. He missed Sandra’s warm body stirring beside him, and he missed the grumbles and complaints of Brian and Tracy getting ready for school or for Saturday morning shopping expeditions. But they’d all be back in a few days. With a bit of luck, the Gill case would be over by then and he would be able to spend some time with them.

  Over coffee and burnt toast—why the toaster only burnt toast when he made it, Banks had no idea—he examined the mail: two bills, a letter and a new blues-anthology tape from Barney Merritt, an old friend on the Met, and, finally, just what he’d been waiting for—the package from Tony Grant.

  The information, which Grant had copied in longhand from PC Gill’s files, made interesting reading. Ever since picket-control duty at the Orgreave coking plant during the miners strike in 1984, Gill had volunteered for overtime at just about every demonstration that had come up in Yorkshire: protests outside U.S. missile bases, marches against South Africa, National Front meetings, anything that had seemed likely to turn into a free-for-all. Gill certainly wasn’t the only one, but he seemed to have been the kind of person who graduated from school bully to legalized goon. Banks wouldn’t have been surprised if he had carved notches in his truncheon.

  There were complaints against him, too, generally for excessive use of force in subduing demonstrators. However, there were surprisingly few of these, and no action had been taken on them, except perhaps a slap on the wrist now and then. The most interesting complaint came from Dennis Osmond, charging Gill with using unnecessary violence during a local demonstration in support of the Greenham Common women about two years ago. Another familiar name on the list was Elizabeth Dale, who had accused Gill of lashing out indiscriminately against her and her friends during a peaceful anti-nuclear march in Leeds. Banks couldn’t immediately place her, as she didn’t seem to belong to the pattern that included Paul Boyd and Dennis Osmond, but he knew the name. He made a note to check it in his files, then read carefully through the rest of the material. No other names stood out.

  But the most important piece of information Banks gleaned from the files had nothing to do with Gill’s behaviour; in fact, it was so damn simple he cursed himself out loud for not seeing it sooner. He always thought of his colleagues by name, even the uniformed men. Most policemen did—especially plain-clothes detectives. But it was a different matter for others. How could a member of the public name a particular police officer in a complaint, or even in a letter of commendation? He couldn’t. That’s why the numbers were so important. Called “collar-numbers” because they originally appeared on the small stand-up collars of the old police uniform, the metal numbers are now fixed to the officer’s epaulettes. And there was Gill’s number staring him right in the face: PC 1139.

  He remembered driving back from the Black Sheep after his lunch-time chat with Mara. He had been listening to Billie Holiday and wondering what it was he’d said that should have meant more than it did. Now he knew. He had mentioned Gill’s name and, in his next question, the number. They had almost leaped together to complete the circuit, but not quite.

  Banks put the papers away, grabbed his coat and hurried out to the car. It was a beautiful morning. The wind still blew cool, but the sun shone in a cloudless sky. After the miserable late-winter weather they’d been having recently, the smell of spring in the air—that strange mixture of wet grass and last autumn’s decay—was almost overwhelming. As the pipes on Keats’s Grecian urn appealed not to the “sensual ear” but played “spirit ditties of no tone”, so this smell didn’t so much titillate the sensual nose as it exhaled a scent of promise, a special feeling of anticipation, and a definite quickening of the life force. It made him want to slip the Deller Consort recording of Shakespeare’s songs into his Walkman and step lightly to work. But he would need the car for the visit he had to make later in the day. Still, he thought, no reason why he shouldn’t follow the musical impulse where it led him, especially on a day like this, so he made a special trip back inside and found the cassette to play in the car.

  It was after nine when he got to the office. Richmond was playing with the computer, and Sergeant Hatchley was struggling over the Daily Mirror crossword. There was no sign of Dirty Dick. He sent for coffee and went to peer out of the window. The good weather had certainly enticed people outdoors. Tourists drifted in and out of the church, and some, wearing anoraks over warm sweaters, actually sat on the worn plinth of the market cross already eating KitKats and drinking tea from Thermos flasks.

  Banks spent an hour or more staring out on the busy square trying to puzzle out why PC Gill’s number had turned up in Seth Cotton’s old notebook. Had it even been Cotton’s handwriting? He examined the book again. It was hard to tell, because only the faint imprint remained. The numbers were exaggeratedly large, too, unlike the smaller scrawl of most of the measurements. Carefully, he rubbed a soft pencil over the page again, but he couldn’t get a better impression.

  He remembered Mara Delacey telling him that Paul spent a lot of time working with Seth in the shed, so the number could just as likely have been written down by him. If so, that implied premeditation. Boyd’s name hadn’t appeared on Grant’s list of complainants, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t come into conflict before. A kid with a record, like Paul, would hardly walk into the nearest police station and lodge a complaint.

  The only thing of which Banks could be sure, after two cups of coffee and three cigarettes, was that somebody at Maggie’s Farm knew of PC Gill before the demonstration and expected him to be there. The number had been written down hard enough to press through, and that indicated some degree of passion or excitement. Who had a grudge against Gill? And who had access to Seth Cotton’s notebook? Anybody,
really, as he never locked the shed. Boyd was the best candidate, given the evidence against him, but Banks had a nagging suspicion that he’d been telling the truth, especially when he stuck to his story after Burgess had put the lights out on him. But if Boyd was telling the truth, who was he more likely to be protecting than Seth, Mara, Rick or Zoe?

  And where, Banks asked himself, did that leave Osmond, Tim and Abha?

  Tim and Abha had so far been the only ones to admit to knowing of PC Gill’s existence, which probably indicated that they had nothing to hide. Banks doubted, in fact, that they had anything to do with the murder. For a start, they had no real connection with the farm people other than a mutual interest in wanting to save the human race from total obliteration.

  Osmond, however, was a friend of Rick, Seth and the rest. He had been up to the farm often, and he knew Gill’s number all right, because he had used it on his complaint. Perhaps he had written it in the notebook himself, or had seen it there and recognized it. Paul Boyd may have been telling the truth about not killing PC Gill, but had he been an accomplice? Had there been two people involved?

  Like so many of Banks’s thinking sessions, this one was raising far more questions than it answered. Sometimes he thought he could solve cases only after formulating a surfeit of questions; he reached saturation point, and the overflow produced the answers.

  Before he did anything else, though, he needed something to stop the growling in his stomach. Burnt toast wasn’t sufficient fuel for a detective.

  On his way out to the Golden Grill for elevenses, he bumped into Mara Delacey entering the station.

  “I want to see Paul,” she said, brandishing the morning paper. “It says here you’ve caught him. Is it true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Of course he is. What do you think we are, the Spanish Inquisition?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past Burgess. Can I see Paul?”

  Banks thought for a moment. It would be unusual to grant such permission, and Burgess wouldn’t like it if he found out, but there was no reason Mara shouldn’t see Boyd. Besides, it would give Banks the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions in Mara’s presence. Through body language and facial expressions, people often gave more away than they intended when friends or enemies were nearby.

  “All right,” he said, leading the way down. “But I’ll have to be there.”

  “As you can see, I’ve not brought him a birthday cake with a file in it.”

  Banks smiled. “Wouldn’t do him much good anyway. There aren’t any bars on the window. He could only escape to the staircase and walk right up here.”

  “But his claustrophobia,” Mara said, alarmed. “It’ll be unbearable for him.”

  “We got a doctor.” Banks relished his small victory over Burgess’s callousness. “He’s been given tranquillizers, and they seemed to help.”

  The four cells were the most modern part of the building. Recently overcrowded with demonstrators, they were now empty except for Paul Boyd. Mara seemed surprised to find clean white tiles and bright light instead of dark, dank stone walls. The only window, high and deep-set in the wall, was about a foot square and almost as thick. The cells always made Banks think of hospitals, so much so that he fancied he could smell Dettol or carbolic every time he went down there.

  Boyd sat on his bunk and stared out through the bars at his visitors.

  “Hello,” Mara said. “I’m sorry, Paul.”

  Boyd nodded.

  Banks could sense tension between them. It was due in part to his being there, he knew, but it seemed to go deeper than that, as if they were unsure what to say to each other.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Will you be coming back?”

  Paul glared at Banks. “I don’t know. They’re determined to charge me with something.”

  Banks explained the procedure.

  “So he might still be arrested for murder?” Mara asked.

  “Yes.”

  There were tears in her eyes. Paul stared at her suspiciously, as if he wasn’t sure whether she was acting or not.

  Banks broke the tense silence. “Does the number 1139 mean anything to you?” he asked Boyd.

  Paul seemed to consider the question, and his answer was an unequivocal no. Banks thought he was telling the truth.

  “What do you know about that old notebook Seth kept in his workshop?”

  Paul shrugged. “Nothing. It was just for addresses, measurements and stuff.”

  “Did you ever use it?”

  “No. I was just an assistant, a dogsbody.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Paul,” Mara said. “And you know it.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it? Except maybe it’ll get me a job in the prison workshop.”

  “Did anybody else ever use it, other than Seth?” asked Banks.

  “Why should they?” Paul was obviously puzzled by the line of questioning. “It wasn’t important.”

  “Do you know who took the knife?”

  Paul looked at Mara as he answered. “I’ve already told you I don’t, haven’t I?”

  “I’m giving you another chance. If you really aren’t responsible for PC Gill’s death, any help you give us will count for you.”

  “Oh, sure!” Paul got to his feet and started pacing the narrow cell. “Why don’t you just bugger off and leave me alone? I’ve nothing more to tell you. And tell the quack to bring me another pill.”

  “Is there anything we can do, Paul?” Mara asked.

  “You can leave me alone, too. I curse the day I met you and the rest of them. You and your bloody protests and demonstrations. Look where you’ve got me.”

  Mara swallowed, then spoke softly. “We’re still on your side, you know. It wasn’t anything to do with me, with any of us, that you got caught. You can come back to the farm whenever you want.”

  Paul glared at her, and Banks could sense the questions each wanted to ask and the answers they hoped for. But they couldn’t talk because he was there. Mara would implicate herself if she assured Paul she hadn’t tipped the police off about the warning, the money and the clothes she’d given him. Paul would incriminate her if he thanked her or questioned her about these things.

  “Come on.” Banks took Mara’s arm gently. She shook his hand off but walked beside him back upstairs. “You’ve seen that he’s all right. No bruises.”

  “None that show, no.”

  “How did you get here?” Banks asked as they walked out of the station into the glorious day.

  “I walked over the moors.”

  “I’ll give you a lift back.”

  “No. I’m happy walking, thanks.”

  “No strings. I’m going up there anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a few questions for Seth.”

  “Questions, bloody questions.”

  “Come on.”

  Mara got into the Cortina beside him. She sat in silence with her hands on her lap as Banks pulled out of the car-park and set off up North Market Street for the Swainsdale road. They passed the Community Centre steps, where Gill had been stabbed. The spot looked as innocent as everywhere else that day; no signs of violence and bloodshed lingered in the grey stone. Banks pushed the tape in and the Deller Consort sang “It Was a Lover and His Lass.” Mara managed a weak smile at the hey-noni-nos, peering curiously at Banks as if she found it hard to connect him with the music he played.

  A couple of fishermen sat under the trees in the river-meadows, and there were more walkers on the road than Banks had seen since the previous October. Even the wind chimes up at Maggie’s Farm seemed to be playing a happier tune, despite the misfortune that had befallen the place. But nature is rarely in harmony with human affairs, Banks thought. It follows its predetermined natural cycles, while we fall victim to random, irrational forces, thoughts
and deeds. It’s natural to identify with the rain and clouds when we feel depressed, but if the sun shines brightly and we still feel depressed, we don’t bother bringing the weather into it at all.

  Banks found Seth in his workshop. Wearing his overalls, he was bent over the bench, planing a long piece of wood. Shavings curled and fell to the floor, releasing the clean scent of pine. Noticing his guest, he paused and put down his plane. Banks leaned against the wall near the dusty bookcase.

  “What is it now?” Seth asked. “I thought you’d got your man.”

  “It does look like it. But I’m the kind who likes to tie up loose ends.”

  “Unlike your friend.”

  “Superintendent Burgess doesn’t concern himself overmuch with little details,” Banks said. “But he doesn’t have to live up here.”

  “How is Paul?”

  Banks told him.

  “So, what are your loose ends?”

  “It’s that number in your book.” Banks frowned and scratched the scar by his right eye. “I’ve found out what it means.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was PC Gill’s number. PC 1139.”

  Seth picked up his plane and began to work slowly at the pine again.

  “Why was it written in your notebook?”

  “It’s quite a coincidence, I’ll admit that,” Seth said without looking up. “But I told you, I haven’t got the faintest idea what it meant.”

  “Did you write it down?”

  “I don’t remember doing so. But pick any page of the book and the odds are I’d hardly have it ingrained deeply in my memory.”

  “Did you know PC Gill?”

  “I never had the pleasure.”

  “Could anyone else have scribbled it down?”

  “Of course. I don’t lock the place up. But why should they?”

  Banks had no idea. “Why did you tear the page out?”

  “I don’t know that I did. I don’t recall doing so. Look, Chief Inspector—” Seth put his plane aside again and leaned against the bench, facing Banks—“you’re chasing phantoms. Anybody could have jotted that number down, and it could mean anything.”