Past Reason Hated

by Peter Robinson

  ‘And you wouldn’t?’

  ‘I’d try not to.’

  ‘Another drink?’ Conran asked.

  ‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘On two conditions.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘One, I’m buying. Two, no more shop talk. From either of us.’

  Conran laughed. ‘It’s a deal.’

  Susan picked up her handbag and went to the bar.

  FOUR

  I’ve told you,’ Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley said to his new wife. ‘It’s not exactly work. You ought to know me better than that, lass. Look at it as a night out.’

  ‘But what if I didn’t want a night out?’ Carol argued.

  ‘I’m buying,’ Hatchley announced, as if that was the end of it.

  Carol sighed and opened the door. They were in the carpark at the back of the Lobster Inn, Redburn, about fifteen miles up the coast from their new home in Saltby Bay. The wind from the sea felt as icy as if it had come straight from the Arctic. The night was clear, the stars like bright chips of ice, and beyond the welcoming lights of the pub they could hear the wild crashing and rumbling of the sea. Carol shivered and pulled her scarf tight around her throat as they ran towards the back door.

  Inside, the place was as cosy as could be. Christmas decorations hung from beams that looked like pieces of driftwood, smoothed and worn by years of exposure to the sea. The murmur of conversations and the hissing of pumps as pints were pulled were music to Hatchley’s ears. Even Carol, he noticed, seemed to mellow a bit once they’d got a drink and a nice corner table.

  She unfastened her coat and he couldn’t help but look once again at the fine curve of her bosom, which stood out as she took off the coat. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was wavy now, after a perm, and Hatchley relished the memory of seeing it spread out on the pillow beside him that very morning. He couldn’t get enough of the voluptuous woman he now called his wife, and she seemed to feel the same way. His misbehaviour at the reception had soon been forgiven.

  Carol spotted the way he was looking at her. She blushed, smiled and slapped him on the thigh. ‘Stop it, Jim.’

  ‘I weren’t doing anything.’ His eyes twinkled.

  ‘It’s what you were thinking. Anyway, tell me, what did Chief Inspector Banks say?’

  Hatchley reached for a cigarette. ‘There’s this bloke called Claude Ivers lives just up the road from here, some sort of highbrow musician, and he parks his car at the back of the pub. Banks wants to know if he took it out at all on the evening of December twenty-second.’

  ‘Why can’t he find out for himself?’

  Hatchley drank some more beer before answering. ‘He’s got other things to do. And it’d be a long way for him to come, especially in nasty weather like this. Besides, he’s the boss, he delegates.’

  ‘But still, he needn’t have asked you. He knows we’re supposed to be on our honeymoon.’

  ‘It’s more in the way of a favour, love. I suppose I could’ve said no.’

  ‘But you didn’t. You never do say no to a night out in a pub. He knows that.’

  Hatchley put a hand as big as a ham on her knee. ‘I thought you’d be used to going with a copper by now, love.’

  Carol pouted. ‘I am. It’s just . . . oh, drink your pint, you great lummox.’ She slapped him on the thigh.

  Hatchley obliged and they forgot work for the next hour, chatting instead about their plans for the cottage and its small garden. Finally, at about five to eleven, their glasses only half full, Carol said, ‘There’s not a lot of time left, Jim, if you’ve got that little job to do.’

  Hatchley looked at his watch. ‘Plenty of time. Relax, love.’

  ‘But it’s nearly eleven. You’ve not even gone up for a refill. That’s not like you.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘Well, you might not want another, though that’s a new one on me, but I do.’

  ‘Fine.’ Hatchley muttered something about nagging wives and went to the bar. He came back with a pint for himself and a gin and tonic for Carol.

  ‘I hope it’s not all going to be like this,’ she said when he sat down again.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Work. Our honeymoon.’

  ‘It’s one-off job, I’ve told you,’ Hatchley replied. He drained about half his pint in one go. ‘Hard work, but someone has to do it.’ He belched and reached for another cigarette.

  At about twenty past eleven Carol suggested that if he wasn’t going to do anything they should go home. Hatchley told her to look around.

  ‘What do you see?’ he asked when she’d looked.

  ‘A pub. What else?’

  ‘Nay, lass, tha’ll never make a detective. Look again.’

  Carol looked again. There were still about a dozen people in the pub, most of them drinking and nobody showing any signs of hurrying.

  ‘What time is it?’ Hatchley asked her.

  ‘Nearly half past eleven.’

  ‘Any towels over the pumps?’

  ‘What? Oh . . .’ She looked. ‘No. I see what you mean.’

  ‘I had a word with young Barraclough, the local lad at Saltby Bay. He’s heard about this place and he’s told me all about the landlord. Trust me.’ Hatchley put a sausage finger to the side of his nose and ambled over to the bar.

  ‘Pint of bitter and a gin and tonic, please,’ he said to the landlord, who refilled the glass without looking up and took Carol’s tumbler over to the optic.

  ‘Open late, I see,’ Hatchley said.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I do so enjoy a pub with flexible opening hours. Village bobby here?’

  The landlord scowled and twitched his head towards the table by the fire.

  ‘That’s him?’ said Hatchley. ‘Just the fellow I want to see.’ He paid the landlord, then went and put the drinks down at their table. ‘Won’t be a minute, love,’ he said to Carol, and walked over to the table by the fire.

  Three men sat there playing cards, all of them in their late forties in varying degrees of obesity, baldness or greying hair.

  ‘Police?’ Hatchley asked.

  One of the men, sturdy, with a broad, flat nose and glassy, fish-like eyes, looked up. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘What if I am?’

  ‘A minute of your time?’ Hatchley gestured to the table where Carol sat nursing her gin and tonic.

  The man sighed and shook his head at his mates. ‘A policeman’s lot . . .’ he said. They laughed.

  ‘What is it?’ he grunted when they’d sat down at Hatchley’s table.

  ‘I didn’t want to talk in front of your mates,’ Hatchley began. ‘Might be a bit embarrassing. Anyways, I take it you’re the local bobby?’

  ‘That I am. Constable Kendal, at your service. If you get to the bloody point, that is.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hatchley, tapping a cigarette on the side of his package. ‘Well, that’s just it. Ciggie?’

  ‘Hmph. Don’t mind if I do.’

  Hatchley gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. ‘Yon landlord seems a bit of a miserable bugger. I’ve heard he’s a tight-lipped one, too.’

  ‘Ollie?’ Kendal laughed. ‘Tight as a Scotsman’s sphincter. Why? What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’d like to make a little bet with you.’

  ‘A bet? I don’t get it.’

  ‘Let me explain. I’d like to bet you a round of drinks that you can get some information out of him.’

  Kendal’s brow furrowed and his watery eyes seemed to turn into mirrors. He chewed his rubbery lower lip. ‘Information? What information? What the bloody hell are you talking about?’

  Hatchley told him about Ivers and the car. Kendal listened, his expression becoming more and more puzzled. When Hatchley had finished, the constable simply stared at him open-mouthed.

  ‘And by the way,’ Hatchley added, reaching into his inside pocket for his card. ‘My name’s Hatchley, Detective Sergeant James Hatchley, CID. I’ve just been posted to your neck of the woods so we’ll probably be seei
ng quite a bit of one another. You might mention to yon Ollie about his licence. Not that I have to remind you, I don’t suppose, when it’s an offence you’ve been abetting.’

  Pale and resigned, Constable Kendal stood up and walked over to the bar. Hatchley sat back, sipped some more beer and grinned.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Carol asked.

  ‘Just trying to find out how good the help is around here. Why do a job yourself if you can get someone else to do it for you? There’s some blokes, and I’ve a good idea that landlord is one of them, who’ll tell you it’s pissing down when the sun’s out, just to be contrary.’

  ‘And you think he’ll talk now?’

  ‘Aye, he’ll talk all right. No percentage in not doing, is there?’ He ran a hand through his fine, straw-coloured hair. ‘I’ve lived in Yorkshire all my life,’ he said, ‘and I’ve still never been able to figure it out. There’s some places, some communities, as wide open as a nympho’s legs. Friendly. Helpful. And there’s others zipped up as tight as a virgin’s – sorry, love – and I reckon this is one of them God help us if anything nasty happens in Redburn.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just have asked the landlord yourself?’

  Hatchley shook his head. ‘It’ll come better from the local bobby, believe me, love. He’s got very powerful motivation for doing this. His job. And the landlord’s got his licence to think about. Much easier this way. The more highly motivated the seeker, the better the outcome of the search. I read that in a textbook somewhere.’

  About five minutes later, Kendal plodded back to the table and sat down.

  ‘Well?’ said Hatchley.

  ‘He came in to open up at six – they don’t go in for that all-day opening here except in season – and he says Ivers’s car was gone.’

  ‘At six?’

  ‘Thereabouts, aye.’

  ‘But he didn’t see him go?’

  ‘No. He did see that bird of his drive off, though.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’

  ‘Aye. American, she is. Young enough to be his daughter. Has her own car too. Flashy red sportscar. Well, you know these rich folk . . .’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘Ollie says she was getting in her car and driving off just as he came in.’

  ‘Which way did she go?’

  Kendal looked scornfully at Hatchley and pointed with a callused thumb. ‘There’s only one way out of here, up the bloody hill.’

  Hatchley scratched his cheek. ‘Aye, well . . . they haven’t issued me my regulation ordnance survey map yet. So let’s get this straight. At six o’clock, Ivers’s car was already gone and his girlfriend was just getting into hers and driving off. Am I right?’

  Kendal nodded.

  ‘Owt else?’

  ‘No.’ Kendal stood up to leave.

  ‘Just a minute, Constable,’ Hatchley said. ‘I won the bet. While you’re on your feet I’ll have a pint of bitter for myself and a gin and tonic for the missis, if it’s no trouble.’

  6

  ONE

  ‘What’s Susan up to?’ Richmond asked Banks on the way to Harrogate on the afternoon of December 27.

  Driving conditions had improved considerably. Most of the main roads had been salted, and for the first time in weeks the sky glowed clear blue and the sun glinted on distant swaths and rolls of snow.

  ‘I’ve got her chasing down the record,’ Banks answered. ‘Some shops might not even bother to reply unless we push them.’

  ‘Do you think it’ll lead anywhere?’

  ‘It could, but I don’t know where. It can’t just have been on by accident. It was like some kind of macabre soundtrack. Call it a strong hunch if you like, but there was something bloody about it.’

  ‘Claude Ivers?’

  ‘Could be. At least we know now he lied to us about being out. We’ll talk to him again later. What I want today is a fresh perspective on Caroline Hartley’s family background. We’ve already got Susan’s perceptions, now it’s time for yours and mine. The old man couldn’t have done it, so we’ll concentrate on the brother. It sounds like he had plenty of motive, and nobody keeps tabs on his movements. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to leave his father to sleep for a couple of hours and slip out. From what Susan said, the old man probably wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘What about transport?’

  ‘Bus. Or train. The services are frequent enough.’

  They pulled up outside the huge, dark house.

  ‘Bloody hell, it does look spooky, doesn’t it?’ Richmond said. ‘He’s even got the curtains closed.’

  They walked up the path through the overgrown garden and knocked at the door. Nobody answered. Banks hammered again, harder. A few seconds later, the door opened slowly and a thin, pale-faced teenager with spiky black hair squinted out at the sharp, cold day. Banks showed his card.

  ‘You can’t see Father today,’ Gary said. ‘He’s ill. The doctor was here.’

  ‘It’s you we want to talk to,’ Banks said. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  Gary Hartley turned his back on them and walked down the hall. He hadn’t shut the door, so they exchanged puzzled glances and followed him, closing the door behind them. Not that it made much difference; the place was still freezing.

  In the front room, Banks recognized the high ceiling, curlicued corners and old chandelier fixture that Susan had described. He could also see the evidence of what Gary Hartley had done to the place, its ruined grandeur: wainscotting pitted with dart holes, scratched with obscene graffiti.

  Richmond looked stunned. He stood by the door with one hand in his overcoat pocket and the other touching the right side of his moustache, just staring around him. The room was dim, lit only by a standard lamp near the battered green-velvet sofa on which Gary Hartley lay smoking and studiously not looking at his visitors. A small colour television on a table in front of the curtained window was showing the news with the sound turned down. Empty lager cans and wine bottles stood along the front of the stone hearth like rows of soldiers. In places, the carpet had worn through so much that only the crossed threads remained to cover the bare floorboards. The room smelled of stale smoke, beer and unwashed socks.

  It must have been beautiful once, Banks thought, but a beauty few could afford. Back in the last century, for every family enjoying the easy life in an elegant Yorkshire mansion like this, there were thousands paying for it, condemned to the misery of starving in cramped hovels packed close to the mills that accounted for their every waking hour.

  Banks picked a scuffed, hard-backed chair to sit on and swept a pair of torn jeans to the floor. He managed to light a cigarette with his gloves on. ‘What did your father do for a living?’ he asked Gary.

  ‘He owned a printing business.’

  ‘So you’re not short of a bob or two?’

  Gary laughed and waved his arm in an all-encompassing arc. ‘As you can see, the fortune dwindles, riches decay.’

  Where did he get such language? Banks wondered. He had already taken in the remains of an old library in ceiling-high bookcases beside the empty fireplace: beautiful, tooled-leather bindings. Cervantes, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens. Now he saw a book lying open, face down, beside Gary’s sofa. The gold embossed letters on the spine told him it was Vanity Fair, something he had always meant to read himself. What looked like a red-wine stain in the shape of South America had ruined the cover. So Gary Hartley drank, smoked, watched television and read the classics. Not much else for him to do, was there? Was he knowledgeable about music, too? Banks saw no signs of a stereo. It was eerie talking to this teenager. He couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than Brian, but any other similarity between them ended with the spiky haircut.

  ‘Surely there must be some money left?’ Banks said.

  ‘Oh, yes. It’ll see him to his grave.’

  ‘And you?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. When he’s gone. Will you have some money left to help you l
eave here, find a place of your own?’

  Gary dropped his cigarette in a lager can. It sizzled. ‘Never thought about it,’ he said.

  ‘Is there a will?’

  ‘Not that he’s shown me.’

  ‘What’ll happen to the house?’

  ‘It was for Caroline.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Dad was going to leave it for Caroline.’

  Banks leaned forward. ‘But she deserted him, she left you all. You’ve been taking care of him by yourself for all these years.’ At least that was what Susan Gay had told him.

  ‘So what?’ Gary got up with curiously jerky movements and took a fresh pack of cigarettes from the mantelpiece. ‘She was always his favourite, no matter what.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘With her gone, I suppose I’ll get it.’ He looked around the cavernous room, as though the thought horrified him more than anything else, and flopped back down on the sofa.

  ‘Where were you on the evening of December twenty-second?’ Richmond asked. He had recovered enough to find himself a chair and take out his notebook.

  Gary glanced over at him, a look of scorn on his face. ‘Just like telly, eh? The old alibi.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I was here. I’m always here. Or almost always. Sometimes I used to go to school so they didn’t get too ratty with me, but it was a waste of time. Since I left, I’ve got a better education reading those old books. I go to the shops sometimes, just for food and clothes. Then there’s haircuts and the bank. That’s about it. You’d be surprised how little you have to go out if you don’t want to. I can do the whole lot in one morning a week if I’m organized right Booze is the most important. Get that right and the rest just seems to fall into place.’

  ‘What about your friends?’ Banks asked. ‘Don’t you ever go out with them?’

  ‘Friends? Those wallies from school? They used to come over sometimes.’ He pointed to the wainscotting. ‘As you can see. But they thought I was mad. They just wanted to drink and do damage and when they got bored they didn’t come back. Nothing changes much here.’

  ‘December twenty-second?’ Richmond repeated.

  ‘I told you,’ Gary said, ‘I was here.’