‘We’ll check it out, then,’ Banks had said. ‘Ask around about Ramsden, and I’ll ask some more questions in Helmthorpe. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope though. It doesn’t feel right to me.’
How did you ask someone if a friend was homosexual, he wondered. Just come right out with it? How would they know? Penny would certainly assume Ramsden was straight if he had been ten years ago, and there was still a chance that she knew more about Steadman’s sexual habits than she let on.
So now he sat in Barker’s study waiting for him to get over the shock and attempt an answer. When it came, it was disappointing. Barker simply denied the possibility and would only admit, when pushed, that anything however outlandish was possible, but that didn’t mean it was true.
‘Look,’ Barker said, leaning forward. ‘I realize that I must be a suspect in this business. I’ve no alibi and I seem unable to convince you that I really had nothing against Harry – I’m not gay either, just for the record – but I assure you that I did not kill him, and I’m perfectly willing to help in any way I can. I just don’t know how I can help, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, some of the directions you’re pursuing seem to me to be quite silly.’
‘I can understand that,’ Banks said, ‘but it’s for me to decide what’s relevant and what isn’t.’
‘You pick up bits and pieces from everyone and put them together. Yes, I suppose that’s true. None of us gets to touch any more than a small area of the elephant, do we? But you get to see the whole beast.’
Banks smiled at the analogy. ‘Eventually, yes,’ he said. ‘I hope so. What are you working on, or don’t you like to discuss work in progress?’
‘I don’t mind. As a matter of fact, you’ve just given me an idea. All that about putting the pieces together. I think I can use it. It’s another in the Kenny Gibson series. Have you read any?’
Banks shook his head.
‘Of course not,’ Barker said. ‘I ought to know by now that few real policemen read detective novels. Anyway, Kenny Gibson is a private eye in the Los Angeles area. Period stuff, the thirties. I get most of my background information from Raymond Chandler and the old Black Mask magazines, but don’t tell anyone! This time he’s working for a rich society woman whose husband has disappeared. The plot’s taken care of; it’s the characters and atmosphere that are really hard to do.’
‘Sex and violence?’
‘Enough to sell a few thousand copies.’
‘Just out of interest,’ Banks asked as he got up to leave, ‘do you have it all planned out in advance – the plot, the solution?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ Barker answered, following him down the stairs. ‘The plot takes care of itself as I go along. At least I hope it does. If it’s going well, there are fewer and fewer options at each turn until it’s perfectly clear who the criminal is. I’m never really sure where I’m going from one day to the next. It’d be boring any other way, don’t you think?’
‘Perhaps,’ Banks answered, putting on his shoes and mac. ‘In writing, yes. In fiction. But in real life, I’m not so sure. It’d be a damn sight easier if I knew who the criminal was without having to write the whole book and make all the mistakes along the way. Anyway, goodbye, and thanks for your time.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Barker.
And Banks ducked quickly through the rain to his car.
TWO
On High Street, Banks glimpsed Penny Cartwright nipping into the Bridge. Consulting his watch and his stomach, he decided it was well past lunch time, and he could do with a pie and a pint if the landlord had any food left.
Penny was at the bar shaking her umbrella when she glanced over her shoulder and saw Banks enter.
‘Can’t a lady indulge her alcoholic cravings without the police turning up?’ she asked sharply.
‘Of course,’ Banks replied. ‘As a matter of fact, I’d be honoured if you’d join me for a late lunch.’
Penny looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Business or pleasure, Inspector?’
‘Just a chat.’
‘For “chat” read “interrogation”, I’ll bet. Go on then. I must be a fool. You’re buying.’
They were lucky enough to get two steak and mushroom pies and Penny asked for a double Scotch. Carrying the drinks, Banks followed her into the lounge.
‘Why don’t they do something with this place?’ he asked, looking around and turning his nose up.
‘Why should they? I wouldn’t have taken you for one of these horse-brass and bedpan types.’ Penny stood her umbrella by the fireplace and sat down, shaking her hair.
Banks laughed. ‘I always thought they were bed-warmers. And no, I’m not, not at all. Give me spittoons and sawdust any day. I was simply thinking that the owner might see renovations as a way to do more business in the long run.’
‘Oh, Inspector Banks! I can see you’re not a true Yorkshireman yet. We don’t care about a speck or two of dirt in these parts. It’s the company and the ale that count, and this is one place the locals can count on for both.’
Banks grinned and accepted the criticism with a humble sigh.
‘So what is it you want to know this time?’ Penny asked, lighting a cigarette and leaning back in her chair.
‘I enjoyed your performance last night. I liked the songs, and you’ve got a beautiful voice.’
Did she blush just a little? Banks couldn’t be sure, the lighting in the room was so dim. But she faltered over accepting the compliment and was clearly embarrassed.
The pies arrived and they each took a few bites in silence before Banks opened the conversation again.
‘I’m stuck. I’m not getting anywhere. And now there’s a girl gone missing.’
Penny frowned. ‘Yes. I’ve heard.’
‘Do you know her? What do you think might have happened?’
‘I know Sally a little, yes. She always wanted to know about the big wide world out there. I think she was secretly a bit disappointed with me for leaving it behind and coming home. But she struck me as a sensible girl. I can’t really picture her running off like that. And she was born and raised in these parts, like me. She knows the countryside around here like the back of her hand, so she wasn’t likely to get lost either.’
‘Which leaves?’
‘I don’t like to think about it. You hear of young girls going missing so often in the cities. But here . . .’ Penny shuddered. ‘I suppose it could mean we’ve got a maniac in our midst. What are the police doing, apart from buying me lunch?’
It was the second time Banks had been asked that, and he found it just as depressing to have so little to say in reply again. But Penny understood about the weather; she knew how dangerous it made Swainsdale, and she showed a surprising amount of sympathy for Banks’s obvious frustration.
They sat in silence again and returned to their food. When they had finished, Banks put his knife and fork down and faced Penny.
‘Tell me about your father,’ he said.
‘You sound like a bloody psychiatrist. What about him?’
‘You must know better than anyone else what a hothead he is?’
‘I probably gave him reason enough.’
‘You mean the city, the wild life?’
She nodded. ‘But honestly, you make it sound much worse than it was. What would you do in that position? Everything was new. I had money, people I thought were my friends. It was exciting then, people were trying new things just for the hell of it. My father didn’t speak to me for a long time after I left. I couldn’t explain; it was just too claustrophobic at home. But when I came back he was kind to me and helped me to get set up in the cottage. He takes it upon himself to act as my protector, I know. And yes, he has a temper. But he’s harmless. You can’t seriously suspect him of harming Harry, can you?’
Banks shook his head. ‘Not any more, no. I think it was too well planned to be his kind of crime. I just wanted to know how you saw things. Tell me more about Michael Ramsden.’
Flus
tered, Penny reached for another cigarette. ‘What about him?’
‘You used to go out with him, didn’t you? Can I have one of those?’
‘Sure.’ Penny gave him a Silk Cut. ‘You know I used to go out with him. So what? It was years ago. Another lifetime.’
‘Were you in love?’
‘In love? Inspector, it’s easy to be in love when you’re sixteen, especially when everybody wants you to be. Michael was the bright boy of the village, and I was the talented lass. It was one match my father didn’t oppose, and he’s always held it against me that we didn’t marry.’
‘Did you think of marrying?’
‘We were talking about getting engaged, like kids do. That’s as far as it went. Look, I was young and innocent. Michael was just a boy. That’s all there is to it.’ Penny shifted in her seat and pushed her hair back over her shoulders.
‘Was it a sexual relationship?’
‘None of your bloody business.’
‘Did he ditch you?’
‘We just drifted apart.’
‘Is that all?’
‘It’s all you’re getting.’ Penny stood up to leave, but Banks reached out and grabbed her arm. She stared at him angrily, and he let go as if he had received an electric shock. She rubbed the muscle.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please sit down again. I haven’t finished yet. Look, you might think I’m just prying into your personal life for the fun of it, but I’m not. I don’t give a damn who you’ve slept with and who you haven’t slept with, what drugs you’ve taken and what you haven’t taken, unless it relates to Harold Steadman’s murder. Is that clear? I don’t even care how much hash you smoke now.’
Penny eyed Banks shrewdly. Finally she nodded.
‘So why did you split up?’ Banks asked.
‘Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you.’
‘Same again?’ Banks got up to go to the bar.
Penny nodded. ‘I can’t promise it’ll be interesting, though,’ she called after him.
‘There was nothing mature about our relationship,’ she said as Banks sat down with a pint and a double Scotch. ‘Neither of us really knew anything different until something else came along.’
‘Another man?’
‘No. Not until later. Much later.’
‘You mean university for Michael and a singing career for you?’
‘Yes, partly. But it wasn’t as simple as that.’
‘What do you mean?’
Penny frowned as if she had just thought of something, or tried to grasp the shadow of a memory. ‘I don’t know. We just drifted apart, that’s all there is to it. It was summer, ten years ago. Every bit as hot as this one. I told you it wasn’t exciting.’
‘But there must have been a reason.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because I think the answer to Steadman’s death lies in the past, and I want to know as much about it as possible.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I’m asking the questions. Did he dump you because you wouldn’t have sex with him?’
Penny blew out a stream of smoke. ‘All right, so I wouldn’t let him fuck me. Is that what you want to hear?’ The word was clearly meant to shock Banks.
‘You tell me.’
‘Oh, this is bloody insufferable. Here.’ She tossed him another cigarette. ‘Maybe sex was part of it. He was certainly getting persistent. Perhaps I should have let him. I don’t know . . . I’m sure I was ready. But then he seemed different. He got more withdrawn and distant. Things just felt strange. I was changing, too. I was singing in the village pubs and Michael was studying to go to university. Harry and Emma were up for quite a while and it was hot, very hot. Emma would hardly go outside because her skin burned so easily. Harry and I spent quite a bit of time at the Roman site near Fortford. It was just being excavated then. We went for walks as well, long walks in the sun.’
‘Did Michael go with you?’
‘Sometimes. But he wasn’t very interested in that kind of thing then. He’d just discovered the joys of English Literature. It was all Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and D. H. Lawrence for him. He spent most of the time with his nose stuck in a book of poems, whether he was with us or not. That’s when he wasn’t trying to stick his hands up my skirt.’
‘Must have been Lawrence’s influence.’
Penny’s lips twitched in a brief smile. She put her hand to her forehead and swept back her hair. ‘Maybe.’
‘And Mrs Steadman?’
‘As I said, she didn’t like the sun. Sometimes she’d come if we went in the car and sit under a makeshift parasol by the side of the road while we had a picnic like characters from a Jane Austen novel. But she wasn’t really interested in the Romans or folk traditions, either. Maybe it wasn’t the best of marriages, I don’t know. Lord knows, they didn’t have much in common. But they put up with it, and I don’t think they treated each other unkindly. Harry shouldn’t have married, really. He was far too dedicated to his work. Mostly I just remember him and me tramping over the moors and naming wild flowers.’
Steadman must have been in his early thirties then, Banks calculated, and Penny was sixteen. That wasn’t such an age difference to make attraction impossible. Quite the contrary: he was exactly the age a girl of sixteen might be attracted to, and Steadman had certainly been handsome, in a scholarly kind of way, right up to the end.
‘Didn’t you have a crush on Harry?’ he asked. ‘Surely it would have been perfectly natural?’
‘Perhaps. But the main thing – the thing you don’t seem able to understand – is that Harry really wasn’t like that. He wasn’t sexy, I suppose. More like an uncle. I know it must be hard for you to believe, but it’s true.’
If I don’t believe it, Banks thought, it’s not for want of people trying to convince me. ‘Don’t you think Michael might have seen the relationship differently?’ he suggested. ‘A threat, perhaps. An older, more experienced man. Might that not have been why he seemed strange?’
‘I can’t say I ever thought of it that way,’ Penny answered.
Banks wasn’t sure whether he believed her or not; she lied and evaded issues so often he was becoming more and more convinced that she was an actress as well as a singer.
‘It’s possible though, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘I guess so. But he never said anything to me. You’d think he would have, wouldn’t you?’
‘You didn’t argue? Michael never said anything about you going off with Harry? He didn’t always insist on accompanying you?’
Penny shook her head at each question.
‘He was very shy and awkward,’ she said. ‘It was very difficult for him to express himself emotionally. If he did think anything, he kept it to himself and suffered in silence.’
Banks sipped his pint of Theakston’s, brooding on how best to put his next question. Penny offered him another Silk Cut.
‘If I read you right, Inspector,’ she said, ‘you seem to be implying that Michael Ramsden might have killed Harry.’
‘Am I?’
‘Come on! Why all the questions about him being jealous?’
Banks said nothing.
‘They became great friends, you know,’ Penny went on. ‘When Michael graduated and got interested in local history, he helped Harry a lot. He even persuaded his firm to publish Harry’s books. It was more than just a publisher-author relationship.’
‘That’s what I was wondering,’ Banks cut in, seizing his opportunity. ‘Is there any possibility of a homosexual relationship between them? I know it sounds odd, but think about it.’
Unlike Barker, Penny took the question seriously before concluding that she doubted it very much. ‘This had better not be a trick,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not trying to trap me into admitting intimate knowledge of Harry’s sexual preferences.’
Banks laughed. ‘I’m not half as devious as you make out.’
Her eyes narrowed sharply. ‘I’ll bet. An
yway,’ she went on, ‘I really can’t help you. You’d think you’d know all about a friend you’ve known for years, but it’s just not so. Harry could have been gay, for all I know. Michael, on the other hand, seemed very much like a normal adolescent, but there’s no reason why he couldn’t have been bi. Who can tell these days?’
And she was right. Banks had known a sergeant on the Metropolitan force for six years – a married man with two children – before finding out at the inquest into his suicide that he had been homosexual.
‘You still seem to be saying Michael did it,’ she said. ‘In fact, you’re hounding all of us – his friends. Why? Why pick on us? What about his enemies? Couldn’t it have been somebody just passing through who killed Harry?’
Banks shook his head. ‘Contrary to popular belief,’ he said, ‘very few murders happen that way. I think the myth of the wandering vagrant killer was invented by the aristocracy to keep suspicion away from their own doorsteps. Most often people are killed by family or friends, and motives are usually money, sex, revenge or the need to cover up damaging facts. In Harold Steadman’s case, we found no evidence of robbery and we’ve had no luck so far in digging up an enemy from his past. Believe me, Ms Cartwright, we dig deep. We’ve been checking the alibis of anyone outside his immediate circle who might have had even the remotest reason for killing him. Really, not many people walk around the country bashing others on the head for no reason. So far, statistics and evidence point to someone closer to home. According to his friends, though, he was too damn perfect to have an enemy, so where am I supposed to look? Obviously Mr Steadman was a far more complicated man than most people have admitted, and his network of relationships wasn’t a simple one either. His murder wasn’t a spur of the moment job, or at least the killer was frightened or coldblooded enough to throw us off the scent by moving the body.’
‘And you’re not going to stop pestering us until you know who it is?’
‘No.’
‘Are you close?’
‘I can’t see it if I am, but detection doesn’t work like that, anyway. It’s not a matter of getting closer like a zoom lens, but of getting enough bits and pieces to transform chaos into a recognizable pattern.’
A Dedicated Man Page 20