The boy didn’t ask Susan to sit down, but she found a chair that looked in reasonable condition. Before she sat, she began to undo her coat, but as she did so she realized that it was freezing in the room, as it had been in the hall. There was no heat at all. The boy didn’t seem to notice or care, even though he was only wearing jeans and a torn t-shirt. He lit a cigarette and slumped on the settee. More stuffing oozed out, like foam from a madman’s mouth.
‘So?’ he said.
‘I’d like to see your father.’
The boy laughed harshly. ‘You must be the first person to say that in five years. People don’t usually like to see my father. He’s a very depressing man. He makes them think of death. The grim reaper.’
The boy’s thin face, only a shade less white than the snow outside, certainly made Susan think of death. He looked in urgent need of a blood transfusion. Could he really be Caroline Hartley’s brother? It was hard to see a resemblance between the boy and his sister. Caroline, when she was alive, must have been a beautiful woman. Even in death she had looked more alive than her brother.
‘Can I see him?’
‘Be my guest.’ The boy pointed towards the ceiling and flicked his ash towards the littered fireplace.
Susan walked up the broad staircase. It must have been wonderful once, with thick pile carpeting and guests in evening dress standing around sipping cocktails. But now it was just bare, creaky wood, scuffed and splintered in places, and the banister looked like someone had been cutting notches in it. There were pale squares on the walls showing where paintings had been removed.
Without a guide or directions, it took Susan three tries before she opened the right door. Her first try had led her into a bathroom, which seemed clean and modern enough; the second revealed the boy’s room, where the curtains were still closed and faint light outlined messy bedsheets and last week’s underwear on the floor; and the third took her into a warm, stuffy room that smelled of cough lozenges, camphor and commodes. A one-element electric fire radiated its heat close to the bed, and there, in a genuine four-poster with the curtains open, a shadow of a man lay propped up on pillows. The bags under his eyes were so dark they looked like bruises, his complexion was like old paper, and the hands that grasped the bedclothes around his chest were more like talons. His skin looked as if it would crack like parchment if you touched it. As she approached, his watery eyes darted towards her.
‘Who are you?’ His voice was no more than a frightened whisper.
Susan introduced herself and he seemed to relax. About Caroline?’ he said. A faraway look came into his ruined eyes, pale yokes floating in glutinous albumen.
‘Yes,’ Susan said. ‘Can you tell me anything about her?’
‘What do you want to know?’
Susan wasn’t sure. She had taken statements as a uniformed constable and studied interview techniques at police college, but it had never seemed as haphazard as this. Superintendent Gristhorpe hadn’t been much help either. ‘Find out what you can,’ he had told her. ‘Follow your nose.’ Clearly it was a matter of sink or swim in the CID. She took a deep breath and wished she hadn’t; the warmed-up smell of terminal illness was overpowering.
‘Anything that might help us find her killer,’ she said ‘Did Caroline visit you recently?’
‘Sometimes,’ he muttered.
‘Were you close?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘She ran away, you know.’
‘When did she run away?’
‘She was only a child and she ran away.’
Susan repeated her question and the old man stared at her. ‘Pardon? When did she go? When she was sixteen Only a child.’
‘Why?’
A look of great sadness came into his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Her mother died, you know. I tried the best I could, but she was so hard to manage.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘London.’
‘What did she do there?’
He shook his head. ‘Then she came back. That’s when she came to see me.’
‘And again since?’
‘Yes.’
‘How often?’
‘When she could. When she could get away.’
‘Did she ever tell you anything about her life down in London?’
‘I was so happy to see her again.’
‘Do you know where she lived, who her friends were?’
‘She wasn’t a bad girl, not really a bad girl.’
‘Did she write from London?’
The old man shook his head slowly on the pillow.
‘But you still loved her?’
‘Yes.’ He was crying now, and the tears embarrassed him. ‘I’m sorry . . . could you please . . .?’ He pointed to a box of tissues on the bedside table and Susan passed it to him.
‘She wasn’t bad,’ he repeated when he’d settled down again. ‘Restless, angry. But not bad. I always knew she’d come back. I never stopped loving her.’
‘But she never talked about her life, either in London or in Eastvale?’
‘No. Perhaps to Gary. . . . I’m tired. Not a bad girl,’ he repeated softly.
He seemed to be falling asleep. Susan had got nowhere and could think of no more questions to ask. Clearly, the old man had not jumped out of bed, hurried over to Eastvale and murdered his daughter. Maybe she would get more out of the son. At least he seemed angry and bitter enough to give something away if she pushed him hard enough. She said goodbye, though she doubted that the old man heard, and made her way back downstairs. The boy was still sprawled on the sofa, a can of lager open beside him on the floor. Despite the cold, she could still smell, underlying the smoke, a faint hint of decay, as if pieces of meat lay rotting under the floorboards.
‘When did you last see your sister?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. A week, two weeks ago? She came when she felt like it. Time doesn’t have much meaning around this place.’
‘But she had visited you recently?’
Gary nodded.
‘What did she talk about?’
He lit a cigarette and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Nothing. Just the usual.’
‘What’s the usual?’
‘You know . . . job, house . . . relationships . . . The usual crap.’
‘What’s wrong with your father?’
‘Cancer. He’s had a couple of operations, chemotherapy, but . . . you know.’
‘How long has he been like this?’
‘Five years.’
‘And you look after him?’
The boy tensed forward and points of fire appeared in his pale cheeks. ‘Yes. Me. All the fucking time. It’s bring me this, Gary, bring me that. Go get my prescription, Gary. Gary, I need a bath. I even sit him on the fucking toilet. Yes, I take care of him.’
‘Does he never leave his room?’
He sighed and settled back on the sofa. ‘I told you, only to go to the bathroom. He can’t manage the stairs. Besides, he doesn’t want to. He’s given up.’
That explained the state of the place. Susan wondered if the father knew, suspected, or even cared that his son had taken over the huge cold house to live whatever life of his own he could scrounge from the responsibilities of the sickroom. She wanted to ask him how he put up with it, but she already knew the scornful answer she would get. ‘Who else is there to do it?’
Instead she asked, ‘How old were you when your sister ran away?’
He seemed surprised by the change in direction and had to think for a moment. ‘Eight. There’s eight years between us. She’d been a bitch for years, had Caroline. The atmosphere was always tense. People were always rowing or on the verge of rows. It was a relief when she went.’
‘Why?’
He turned away so she couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Why? I don’t know. She was just like that. Full of poison. Especially towards me. Right from the start she tormented me, when I was a baby. They found her trying to drown me in my bath once. Of course they said
she didn’t realize what she was doing, but she did.’
‘Why should she want to kill you?’
He shrugged. ‘She hated me.’
‘Your father says he loved her.’
He cast a scornful glance towards the ceiling and said slowly, ‘Oh yes, she always was the apple of his eye, even after she took off to London to become a tramp. Caroline could do no wrong. But who was the one left looking after him?’
‘Why did you say tramp? How do you know?’
‘What else would she do? She didn’t have any job skills, but she was sixteen. She had two tits and a cunt like any other bird her age.’
If Susan was expected to be shocked by his crudity, she was determined not to show it. ‘Did you ever see her during that period?’
‘Me? You must be joking. It was all right for a while till mum got sick and died. It didn’t take her longer than a month or two, not five years like that miserable old bastard upstairs. I was thirteen then, when he started. Took to his bed like a fish to water and it’s been the same ever since.’
‘What about school?’
‘I went sometimes. He sleeps most of the time, so I’m okay unless he has one of his awkward phases. I left last year. No jobs anyway.’
‘But what about the health service? Don’t they help?’
‘They send a nurse to look in every once in a while. And if you’re going to mention a home, don’t bother. I’d have him in one before you could say Jack Robinson if I could, but there’s no room available unless you can pay.’ He gestured around the crumbling house. ‘As you can see, we can’t. We’ve got his pension and a bit in the bank and that’s it. I’ve even sold the bloody paintings, not that they were worth much. Thank God the bloody house is paid for. It must be worth a fortune now. I’d sell it and move somewhere cheaper if I could but the old bastard won’t hear of it. Wants to die in his own bed. Sooner the better, I say.’
Susan realized that Gary was drunk. As he’d been talking he’d finished one can of lager and most of a second, and he had obviously drunk a few before she arrived.
‘Did you know anything at all about Caroline’s life?’ she asked.
His bright eyes narrowed. ‘I knew she was a fucking dyke, if that’s what you mean.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘She told me. One of her visits.’
‘But your father doesn’t know?’
‘No. It wouldn’t make a scrap of difference if he did, though. It wouldn’t change his opinion. As far as he’s concerned the sun shone out of her arse and that’s all there is to it.’ He tossed the empty can aside and picked up another from the low, cigarette-scarred table.
‘How do you feel about her death?’
Gary was silent for a moment, then he looked directly at Susan. ‘I can’t say I feel much at all. If you’d asked me a few years ago, I’d have said I felt glad. But now, nothing at all. I don’t really care. She made my life a misery, then she left and lumbered me with the old man. I never had a chance to get out like her. And before that, she made everyone’s life miserable at home. Especially mum’s. Drove her to an early grave.’
‘Did you talk to her much when she visited?’
‘Not by choice,’ he said, reaching for another cigarette. But sometimes she wanted to talk to me, explain things, like she was taking me into her confidence. As if I cared. It was funny, almost like she was apologizing for everything without ever quite getting round to it. Do you know what I mean? “I want you to know, Gary,” she says, “how much I appreciate what you’re doing for Dad. The sacrifices you’re making. I’d help if I could, you know I would . . .” and all that fucking rubbish.’ He imitated her voice again: ‘ “I want you to know, Gary, that I’m living with a woman in Eastvale and I’m happy for the first time in my life. I’ve really found myself at last. I know we’ve had problems in the past . . .” Always that “I want you to know, Gary . . .” as if I fucking cared what she did, the slut. So she’s dead. I can’t say I care one way or another.’
Susan didn’t know whether to believe him. There was more pent-up passion and rage in his tone than she could handle, and she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. All she knew was that she had to get out of this oppressive house, with its vast cold and crumbling spaces. She was beginning to feel dizzy and nauseated listening to Gary Hartley’s high-pitched vitriol, which, she suspected, had as much to do with self-pity at his own weakness as anything else. Quickly, she muttered her farewell and headed for the door. As she walked down the hallway she heard an empty lager can crash against the wainscotting, followed by the screech of the top being ripped off another.
Outside, she breathed in the cold damp air and leaned against the roof of her car. Her gaze fixed on the melting snow that dripped from the branches of a tall tree. Her hands were shaking, but not from the cold.
Before she had driven far, she realized that she needed a drink. She pulled into the car park of the first decent-looking pub she saw outside town. There, in a comfortable bar lit and warmed by a real coal fire, she sipped a small brandy and thought about the Hartleys. She felt that her visit had barely scraped the surface. There was so much bitterness, anger and pain festering underneath, so many conflicting passions, that it would take years of psychoanalysis to sort them out.
One thing was clear, though: whatever the reasons for the family’s strife, and whatever Caroline’s reasons for running away, Gary Hartley certainly had a very good motive for murder. His sister had ruined his life; he even seemed to blame her for his mother’s death. Had he been a different kind of person, he would have handled the burden some other way, but because he was weak and felt put upon, blood had turned to vinegar in his veins. As Susan had just seen, it didn’t take more than a few drinks to bring the acid to the surface.
It would be very interesting to know what Gary Hartley had been doing between seven and eight o’clock the previous evening. As he had told her, the old man slept most of the time, so it would have been easy for Gary to nip out for a while without being missed. She hadn’t asked him for an alibi, and that was an oversight. But, she thought, taking another sip of brandy and warming her hands by the fire, before we start to get all paranoid again, Susan, let’s just say this was only a preliminary interview It would be a good idea to approach Gary Hartley again with someone else along. Someone like Banks.
As she tilted her head back and finished the rest of her drink, she noticed the bright Christmas decorations hung across the ceiling and the string of cards on the wall above the stone fireplace. That was another thing she remembered about the Hartley house. In addition to the cold and the overwhelming sense of decay, there had been nothing at all in the entire huge place to mark the season: not a Christmas tree, not a card, not a sprig of holly, not a cutout Father Christmas. In that, she realized bitterly, the place resembled her own flat all too closely. She shivered and walked out to the car.
TWO
Banks drove carefully down the hill into Redburn as his tape of Bartok’s third string quartet neared its end. The gradient wasn’t quite as steep as at Staithes, where you had to leave your car at the top and walk, but it was bad enough. Luckily, the snow had petered out somewhere over the heathered reaches of the North York Moors and spared the coast.
The narrow hill meandered alongside the beck down to the sea, and it wasn’t until he turned the final corner that Banks saw the water, a heaving mass of grey sloshing against the sea wall and showering the narrow promenade with silver spray. Redburn was a small place: just the one main street leading down to the sea, with a few ginnels and snickets twisting off it where cottages were hidden away, half dug into the hillside itself, all sheltered in the crescent of the bay. In summer the jumble of pastel colours would make a picturesque scene, but in this weather they seemed out of place, as if a piece of the Riviera had been dug up and transported to a harsher climate.
Banks turned left at the front, drove to the end of the road and parked outside the Lobster Inn. Where the road end
ed, a narrow path led up the hillside, providing the only access to the two or three isolated cottages that faced the sea about halfway up: ideal places for artists.
The cold whipped the breath out of him and the air seemed full of sharp needles of moisture, but Banks finally reached his goal, the white cottage with the red pantile roof. Like the rest of the village, it would look pretty in summer with its garden full of flowers, he thought, but in the dull grey air, with the wind curling smoke from the red chimney, it took on a desolate aspect. Banks knocked at the door. Somewhere the wind was whistling and banging a loose shutter. He thought of Jim Hatchley and wondered how much he was enjoying the seaside not many miles away.
The woman who answered his knock had the kind of puzzled expression on her face that he’d expected. There couldn’t be many people dropping in on such a day in such an isolated place.
She raised her dark eyebrows. ‘Yes?’
Banks introduced himself and showed his card. She stood aside to let him in. The room was a haven from the elements. A wood fire crackled in the hearth and the smell of fresh-baked bread filled the air. The wooden furniture looked primitive and well-used, but homely. The woman herself was in her mid-twenties, and the long skirt and blouse she wore outlined her slender figure. She had a strong jaw and full, red lips. Beneath her fringe of dark hair, two large brown eyes watched him go over and rub his hands in front of the fire.
Banks grinned at her. ‘No gloves. Silly of me.’
She held out her hand. ‘I’m Patsy Janowski. Pleased to meet you.’ Her grip was firm and strong. Her accent was American.
‘I’m here to see Mr Ivers,’ he said. ‘Is he at home?’
‘Yes, but he’s working. You can’t see him now. He hates to be disturbed.’
‘And I would hate to disturb him,’ Banks said. ‘But it’s important.’
She gave him a thoughtful look, then smiled. It was a radiant smile, and she knew it. She looked at her watch. ‘Why don’t I make us some tea and you can try some of my bread. It’s fresh from the oven. Claude will be down in twenty minutes or so for a short break.’
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