A Dedicated Man

by Peter Robinson

  ‘You couldn’t have done it, could you? You were watching television with your neighbour at the time. We don’t rely entirely on imagination, Mrs Steadman. I know it’s a difficult period for you right now, and I apologize if I seem to be pestering you, but I’m simply trying to build up as complete a picture as I can of your husband and his circle. This is a difficult and vital time for us, too. Memories fade and stories change with every hour that goes by. As yet, I don’t know what’s important and what isn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry for mocking you,’ Mrs Steadman apologized. ‘I know you have your job to do, but it is upsetting, you coming around talking about Harold having affairs and suggesting our marriage was in trouble. You must try and see it from my point of view. It’s almost as if you’re accusing me.’ She paused and smiled weakly. ‘He just wasn’t that kind of man, and if you’d known him you’d see what I mean. If there’s anything Harry was having an affair with, it was his work. In fact, sometimes I thought he was married to his work and having an affair with me.’

  She said this with good humour, not in bitterness, and Banks laughed politely. ‘I’m sure my wife thinks the same,’ he said, then called to Hatchley, who had turned to browse through the decimated bookshelves.

  ‘I won’t trouble you any further,’ Banks said at the door, ‘but there is one small piece of information you might be able to help me with.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your husband taught at Leeds in the history department, am I right?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. That was his field.’

  ‘Who were his colleagues? Who did he spend most time with during your years there?’

  She thought for a moment before replying. ‘We didn’t socialize a great deal. Harry was too intent on his career. But let me see . . . there was Tom Darnley, he was a fairly close friend, and Godfrey Talbot. I think he knew Harry at Cambridge, too. That’s about all, except for Geoffrey Baynes, but he went off to teach in Winnipeg, in Canada, before Harry left. That’s all I can think of.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Steadman,’ Banks said as the door closed slowly. ‘That’ll do fine for a start. See you tomorrow.’

  They walked back the same way to the car, which was hot from standing in the sun most of the day, and drove back to Eastvale. Banks regretted not having the Cortina; the landscape inspired him to listen to music. Instead, Hatchley drove too fast and droned on about never having seen so many bloody books outside Gristhorpe’s office. ‘Funny woman, that Mrs Steadman, don’t you think?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Yes,’ Banks answered, staring at a pattern of six trees on a distant drumlin, all bent in the same direction. ‘She makes me uncomfortable, I’ve got to admit. I can’t quite make her out.’

  7

  ONE

  Had an adventurous fell-walker found himself on top of Crow Scar at eleven o’clock that Thursday morning, he would have seen, to the south, what looked like two shiny black beetles followed by green and red aphids make their way slowly down Gratly Hill and turn right at the bottom into Helmthorpe village.

  Pedestrians on High Street – locals and tourists alike – stopped as the funeral cortège crawled by. Some averted their gaze; others doffed their caps; and one or two, clearly visitors from afar, even crossed themselves.

  Harold Steadman had been a believer because belief was, for him, inextricable from the men and the actions that had helped shape and mould the area he loved; therefore, the funeral was a traditional, if nowadays rare, graveside ceremony conducted by a visiting minister from Lyndgarth.

  On the hottest day of the year thus far, the motley group stood uneasily around the grave as the Reverend Sidney Caxton recited the traditional words: ‘In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek succour but Thee, O Lord . . . Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy.’ He followed this, at Mrs Steadman’s request, with the twenty-third Psalm: ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside still waters . . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me . . . Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ It was a sombre and eerily appropriate farewell for a man like Harold Steadman.

  To Sally Lumb, representing Eastvale Comprehensive School along with Hazel, Kathy, Anne and Mr Buxton, the headmaster, it was a gloomy and uncomfortable affair indeed. For one thing, in the tasteful navy-blue outfit her mother had made her wear, she was far too hot; her blouse was absolutely stuck to her back, and the beads of sweat that occasionally ran down her spine tickled like spiders.

  Reverend Caxton took a handful of earth and cast it down on the coffin. ‘For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to receive unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed; we therefore commit his body to the ground . . .’

  To pass the time, Sally studied the others covertly. Penny Cartwright was the most striking. Dressed in black from head to foot, her pale face in stark contrast, she wore just enough make-up to hide the bags under her eyes from all but the most discerning of onlookers, and to highlight her tragic, romantic cheekbones. She really did look extraordinarily beautiful, Sally thought, but in an intense, frightening and overwhelming way. On the other hand, Emma Steadman, in a conservative, unfashionable, charcoal-grey suit, didn’t look much. She could have done herself up a bit, at least for the funeral, Sally thought, mentally adding a touch of blusher, eyeliner and a slash of lipstick. Immediately, though, she felt ashamed of herself for thinking such worldly thoughts at a time like this; after all, Mrs Steadman had always been nice to her.

  ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our mortal body . . .’

  Between the two grieving women stood Michael Ramsden, who looked, to Sally, rather like one of those doomed tubercular young men in the black and white gothic films her mother liked to watch on Channel Four. At Penny’s other side was Jack Barker in a dark suit with a black armband. He really did look dashing and dangerous – that Errol Flynn moustache, the glint in his eyes – and Sally lost herself for a few moments in a swashbuckling fantasy.

  The policeman, Banks, didn’t detain her for long. True, he was handsome in a lean and bony kind of way and the scar was mysterious, but she had seen his true colours and found them lacking. He was soft; he had lived in London, had adventure all around him, countless opportunities for heroism, and he had given it all up to retire to this godforsaken part of the country. Old before his time, obviously. Dr Barnes looked as grey and insignificant as ever, and Teddy Hackett wore an ostentatious gold medallion which glinted in the sun against the background of his black shirt whenever he shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘. . . that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.’

  When Sally turned her attention back to the ceremony, it was all over. Slowly, as if reluctant to leave the deceased once and for all, the mourners edged away. Penny and Emma had their handkerchiefs out, and each hung on to the arm of the nearest man. In Penny’s case that was Jack Barker, and Sally noticed what an attractive couple they made. The others left in groups of two or three, and the policeman sidled away alone. Harold Steadman, lowered to rest, had become a part, in death, of the dale he had loved so much in life.

  TWO

  At one o’clock, after having spent an hour discussing their lack of progress with Constable Weaver in the Helmthorpe station, Banks sat alone at a white table in the back garden of the Dog and Gun sipping a pint of shandy. The tables around him were all full. Tourists chatted about their holidays, the weather, their jobs (or lack of them), and children buzzed around unhindered like the wasps that flitted from glass rims to the remains of gateaux an
d sticky buns left on paper plates.

  Banks didn’t mind the squealing and the chatter; he was always able to shut out distracting background noise when he wanted to. He sat in his shirtsleeves and fiddled with his pipe, dark suit jacket slung over the back of a chair. The pipe was a blasted nuisance. It kept going out or getting clogged up, and the bitter juices trickled down the stem on to his tongue. It suited him, though; it was a gesture towards establishing the kind of identity and image he wanted to develop and project.

  A wasp droned on to his sleeve. He brushed it away. Across the dazzling river with its overgrown banks the local club was playing cricket on a field of freshly mown grass. The slow pace of the game made it look like a Renaissance pavane. The harmony of white against green, the sharp crack of willow against leather, and the occasional smatterings of applause seemed to blend with the scent of the grass and enhance the sensation of peace. He rarely went to matches these days – and if he did, got bored after a few overs – but he remembered the famous England cricketers of his school days: Ted Dexter, ‘Fiery’ Fred Trueman, Ken Barrington, Colin Cowdrey; and the classroom games he had played with dice and paper, running his own county championship and Test Match series. The clichés about cricket were true, he reflected; there was something about the game that was essentially English – it made one feel that God was in his heaven and all was well with the Empire.

  Far from it, though, he realized with a jolt. Beyond the pitch, the valley side sloped up gently at first, veined with drystone walls, then steepened and peaked into the long sheer curve of limestone, Crow Scar, above which Banks actually fancied he could see crows wheeling. And about halfway between the pitch and the scar, as far as the eye’s imperfect perspective could make out, was the spot where Steadman’s body had been found.

  Banks didn’t like funerals, and in a way it seemed a pointless convention to attend the funerals of people he had never known. Not once had he caught a murderer that way: no graveside confessions, no mysterious stranger lurking behind the yew trees. Still, he did it, and when he probed his motives he found that it was because of a strange and unique bond he felt with the dead man, perhaps more intimate even than if he had known him. In a sense, Banks saw himself as the victim’s appointed avenger, and, in an odd way, he worked together with the dead man to redress the balance of nature; they were coworkers of light against darkness. In this case, Steadman was his guide from the spirit-world: a silent and shapeless guide perhaps, but present nonetheless.

  Banks looked back at the game just in time to see the batsman swipe a badly paced off-spinner towards the boundary. The bowler found his length in the next two deliveries though, and play slowed down as the batsman was forced to switch to defensive tactics. Banks, aided by the warm air, drifted back into a reverie about his first year and a half in Yorkshire.

  The landscape, it went without saying, he found beautiful. It was wild and rough, unlike the southern downs, but its scale inspired awe. And the people. Whatever he had heard about the stubborn intractability of the Yorkshire character, the gruffness, the slowness in taking to strangers, was all true to some extent, but like all generalizations didn’t do justice to the full reality. He had grown to appreciate the stoic humour, the quick wit and instinctive good sense, the friendliness beneath the crusty surface.

  Banks also liked the feeling of being an outsider. Not a stranger, as he had been among the anonymous international crowds of London, but an outsider. He knew he always would be, no matter how deep he put his roots.

  Knocking out his pipe, he tried to bring his mind to bear on the case again. It had the same sordid elements as any murder, but in such an environment it seemed even more of a blasphemy. The whole way of life in the small dale – the people, their priorities, beliefs and concerns – was different from that in London, or even in Eastvale. Gristhorpe had said that being an outsider would give him an advantage, a fresh perspective, but Banks wasn’t too sure; he seemed to be getting nowhere fast.

  He turned as a long shadow brushed across the white table and saw Michael Ramsden disappearing into the pub.

  ‘Mr Ramsden!’ he called after him. ‘A word, if you’ve got a moment to spare.’

  Ramsden turned. ‘Chief Inspector Banks. I didn’t see you there.’

  Banks thought he was lying, but it meant nothing. As a policeman, he was used to being avoided. Ramsden perched on the very edge of a chair, indicating through his body language that he had no intention of staying for more than a minute or two.

  ‘I thought you’d be at the funeral lunch,’ Banks said.

  ‘I was. You know what those things are like: all that false humour and bonhomie to cover up what’s really happened. And someone inevitably drinks too much and get silly.’ He shrugged. ‘I left. Was there something you wanted to ask me?’

  ‘Yes. Are you certain you didn’t go out on Saturday night?’

  ‘Of course I’m certain. I’ve already told you.’

  ‘I know, but I want to make absolutely sure. Not even for half an hour or so?’

  ‘You’ve seen where I live. Where would I go?’

  Banks smiled. ‘A walk? A run? I’ve heard that writers get blocked sometimes.’

  Ramsden laughed. ‘That’s true enough. But no, not me, not on Saturday anyway. I was in all evening. Besides, Harry had a key; he would have let himself in and waited.’

  ‘Had he done that before?’

  ‘Once, yes, when I had to work late at the office.’

  ‘He wouldn’t, say, visit another friend in the area and come back later?’

  ‘I don’t think Harry really knew anyone else in the York area. Not well enough to drop in on, at least. Why do you want to know all this, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘We need to know where Mr Steadman was between ten fifteen and the time of death. But there’s something else,’ Banks went on quickly, sensing Ramsden’s restlessness. ‘I’d like to talk to you a bit more about the past – your relationship with Penny Cartwright.’

  Ramsden sighed and made himself more comfortable. A white-coated waiter passed by. ‘Drink?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Might as well, if you intend to keep me here a while. But it’s all so long ago – I don’t see how you expect me to remember. And I can’t imagine what any of it has to do with Harry’s death.’

  Banks ordered two pints of lager. ‘Just bear with me, that’s all. Ten years ago,’ he went on, ‘was a very important time in your life. It was summer, and you were eighteen, all set for university, courting the prettiest girl in Swainsdale. Harold and Emma Steadman came to stay at your parents’ guest house for a month, as usual. By all accounts that was a memorable summer – long walks, expeditions to local sites of interest. Surely you remember?’

  Ramsden smiled. ‘Yes, of course I do, now you put it like that. I just hadn’t realized it was so long ago,’ he said wistfully.

  ‘Time does seem to pass quickly,’ Banks agreed. ‘Especially when you lose your sense of continuity, then look back. Anyway, it came to an end. Things changed. What happened between you and Penny?’

  Ramsden sipped his lager and brushed away a troublesome wasp. ‘I’ve told you before. Like most teenage lovers, we just drifted apart.’

  ‘Did you ever regret it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The turn of events. Perhaps you could have been happily married to Penny now, and none of this would ever have happened.’

  ‘None of what? I fail to see the connection.’

  ‘Everything: Penny’s adventures in the music business, your bachelorhood.’

  Ramsden laughed. ‘You make it sound like a disease, Chief Inspector. I may be a bachelor, but that doesn’t mean I live a celibate life. I have lovers, a social life. I enjoy myself. As for Penny . . . well, it’s her life. Who’s to say things haven’t turned out for the best for her, too?’

  Banks tried to coax his pipe alight. A baby in a high chair two tables away started to cry. Its cheeks were smeared with strawberry jam. ‘Perhap
s if Steadman hadn’t come along, though, and spirited her away . . . ?’

  ‘What are you suggesting? That Harry and Penny were involved?’

  ‘Well, he was older, more mature. You have to admit it’s a possibility. She certainly spent a lot of time with him. Isn’t that why you split up? Didn’t you argue about Steadman?’

  Ramsden was on the edge of his seat again. ‘No, we didn’t,’ he said angrily. ‘Look, I don’t know who’s been telling you all this, but it’s lies.’

  ‘Did you split up because Penny wouldn’t give you what you wanted? Maybe she was giving it to Steadman?’

  This time Ramsden seemed on the point of getting up and hitting Banks, but he took a deep breath, scratched the back of his ear and smiled. ‘You know, you really are irritating,’ he said. ‘I should imagine people tell you things just to make you go away.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Banks admitted. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Maybe there’s some truth in the first part of your question. A man can only wait so long, as you probably know yourself. I was definitely ready, and Penny was a very beautiful girl. It’s only natural, isn’t it? We were both a bit naïve, scared of sex, but it didn’t help that she kept saying no.’

  Banks laughed. ‘It certainly wouldn’t,’ he said knowingly. ‘I dare say I’d have been climbing the walls myself. But why do you think she kept saying no? Was it something to do with Steadman? Or did she have another boyfriend?’

  Ramsden thought, frowning, before he answered. ‘No, there wasn’t another boyfriend, I’m sure of that. I think it was just a matter of morality. Penny was brought up to be a nice girl, and nice girls don’t. As for Harry, I don’t think he did what you’re suggesting. I’m sure I’d have known, somehow. I suppose at times I was a bit peeved about how close they were. Not that I thought there was anything going on, mind, but they did spend a lot of time together, time she could have spent with me. Harry was so much more sure of himself than I was. I was shy and clumsy. So yes, I might have been a bit envious, but I didn’t feel the kind of jealousy you have in mind.’