Past Reason Hated

by Peter Robinson

  Teresa laughed, showing a set of straight white teeth rarely seen outside America. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Was she close to anyone?’

  ‘No. I thought she always seemed aloof. You know, friendly but distant. Casual.’

  ‘So you didn’t like her very much.’

  ‘I can’t say I cared one way or the other. Not that I’m glad she’s . . . you know. This is only the second play the company’s done since James took over, but it was Caroline’s first. None of us knew her that well.’

  ‘How did she get the part?’

  Teresa raised her dark, arched eyebrows. ‘Auditioned, I should think. Like everybody else.’

  ‘You didn’t notice her form any close attachments to other women in the play?’

  ‘There are only three of us. What are you trying to say, that I’m a lesbian too?’

  Banks shifted in his seat. ‘No. No, I’d say that was very unlikely, wouldn’t you?’

  Slowly, she relaxed. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘What about Faith?’

  Teresa gave her cigarette a short, sharp flick with her thumbnail. ‘What did she tell you? I saw you talking to her.’

  ‘She told me nothing. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  ‘There was nothing between them, I can assure you of that. Faith’s as straight as I am.’ She took a breath, sipped some milky Pernod and water, then smiled. ‘As far as the others go, I don’t think you’ve got much chance of finding a murderer among them, quite frankly. Malvolio’s such a puritan prig he probably even whips himself for taking part in such a sinful hobby as acting. Sir Andrew’s thick as pigshit – excuse my French – and Orsino’s so wrapped up in himself he wouldn’t notice if Samantha Fox waggled her boobs in front of his face.’

  Banks looked over at Orsino. He had muscular shoulders – clearly the fruits of regular weight-training – dark, wavy hair, hollow cheeks, bright eyes and an expression set in a permanent sneer, as if all he saw outside a mirror was unworthy of his regard.

  ‘None of them three had much to do with Caroline anyway, as far as I noticed. They had some scenes together, but I never saw them communicate much offstage. And you can forget the others, too. I know for a fact that Antonio’s queer as a three-pound note, Sebastian’s very happily married with a mortgage, a dog and two-point-five kids, and the Clown, well . . . he’s very quiet actually, and he never seems to socialize with us.’

  ‘Have you ever noticed him talking to Caroline off-stage or between scenes?’

  ‘I’ve never noticed him talking to anyone. Period. One of the strangest transformations you can imagine. A wonderful Clown, but such a dull, depressing-looking man.’

  Banks asked her a few more general questions but found out nothing else. Before long, Teresa was asking him about his most exciting cases and it was time to move on. He chatted briefly with some of the others but got no further. Finally, he went back to James Conran, excused himself from the company and walked out into the cold evening, but not before Faith Green managed to catch him at the door and slip him her telephone number.

  Outside, Banks caught his breath at the cold. Bright stars stabbed pinpoints of light in the clear sky. Who, Banks wondered, had believed that the sky was just a kind of black-velvet curtain and the light of heaven beyond showed through the holes in it? The Greeks? Anyway, on nights like this it felt exactly that way.

  There had been something wrong about his conversations in the Crooked Billet. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but everything had seemed too easy, too chummy. Everyone he spoke to had been nervous, worried about something. He hadn’t missed the way Faith excused herself before answering one of his questions, nor the way Teresa played with her cigarette when he asked her questions she didn’t like. Those two would merit further talking to, definitely. Surely there must have been minor tiffs or conflicts among the cast of a play? According to the people he had talked to, it had all been happy families – much too squeaky clean for his liking. What were they covering up, and when had they decided to do so?

  He put his headphones on. In winter they acted as earmuffs, too. The tape he had in was a collection of jazz pieces by the likes of Milhaud, Gershwin and Stravinsky performed by Simon Rattle and the London Sinfonietta Tracy had bought it him for Christmas, clearly under instructions from Sandra. When Banks switched on the Walkman the erotic clarinet glissando at the opening of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue almost bowled him over. He turned down the volume and walked on.

  The tree was still lit up outside the church in the market square, but there were no carol singers in evidence this evening. The cobblestones were icy and he had to step carefully. The blue lamp glowed coldly outside the police station. It was seven o’clock. Just time to drop in and see if any new information had turned up before going home for dinner.

  He walked into the bustle of the police station and went straight upstairs to his office. Before he could even shut the door, Susan Gay called after him and entered.

  Banks sat down and took his headphones off. ‘Anything new?’

  ‘I followed up on the record shops,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Most of them are open now because they’re having post Christmas sales. Anyway, I’ve tracked down two copies of that Luddite poori thing sold in the past three weeks.’

  ‘Good work. Where from?’

  ‘One from a small speciality shop in Skipton and another from the Classical Record Shop in Leeds. But there’s more, sir,’ she went on. ‘It seemed a long shot, but I asked for a description of the purchaser in both instances.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The Leeds shop, sir. Before I’d even started he told me who’d bought it. The salesman recognized him.’

  ‘Claude Ivers?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Banks said. ‘So he was lying after all. Why aren’t I surprised? You’ve done a great job, Susan. In fact I think you deserve a day at the seaside tomorrow.’

  Susan smiled. ‘Yes, sir. Oh, and DS Richmond phoned from Barnard Castle with a message about Charles Cooper’s alibi. It seems things are getting a bit complicated, doesn’t it?’

  7

  ONE

  A sea mist clung to the coastline when Banks and Susan arrived in Redburn at eleven o’clock the next morning. Icy roads over the vale and freezing rain on the moors had made driving difficult all the way, and now, as they came down from the land to the sea, the clash of the two elements had produced a fog that reduced visibility to no more than a few yards.

  Susan, Banks could tell, was surprised at being chauffeured by a senior officer. But she would soon learn. He preferred his own car because of the stereo and the generous mileage allowance, and he actually enjoyed driving in Yorkshire, even in poor conditions such as these. On the way, he had been listening to Metamorphosen, Richard Strauss’s haunting string elegy for the bombing of the Munich Hoftheater, and he hadn’t spoken much. He didn’t know whether Susan liked the music. She had been as silent as he and had spent most of the journey looking out the window, lost in thought.

  He parked the car outside the Lobster Inn again, and they made their way up the path to Ivers’s cottage. The mist seemed to permeate everything, and by the time they got to the cottage they were glad of the fire blazing in the hearth.

  Again it was Pasty Janowski who answered the door. This time, when Banks introduced Detective Constable Gay, her big brown eyes clouded with worry and fixed on the door handle. She was wearing tight jeans and a dark-green turtle-neck sweater. Her dark hair, which still fell almost to her eyes in a ragged fringe, was tied back in a ponytail. Her smooth complexion was tinged with the kind of flush that a brisk walk in fresh weather brings.

  ‘He’ll be down in a few minutes,’ she said. ‘Sit down and warm yourselves. I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we go up, sir?’ Susan asked when Patsy had left the room. ‘It’ll give us an edge.’

  Banks shook his head. ‘He’ll be no trouble. Besides, I want
to talk to her alone first.’ They sat in the creaky wooden chairs near the fire, and Banks rubbed his hands in front of the flames. Although he had been wearing gloves on this trip, the chill seemed to have penetrated right through both leather and flesh. When he felt warm enough, he took off his overcoat and lit a cigarette. Warm air from the fire hooked the smoke and sucked it up the chimney.

  Patsy returned with the tea tray and set it down beside them. There was no fresh-made bread this time.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, joining them by the fire. ‘Have you found the killer?’

  Banks ignored her question and picked up his mug of tea. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘where did you drive to when you left your parking spot behind the Lobster Inn the evening Caroline Hartley was killed?’

  Patsy stared at his breast pocket, her eyes wide open and afraid, like a hunted doe’s. ‘I . . . I . . . You can’t expect me to remember a particular night just like that. Days are much the same out here.’

  ‘I can imagine that, but it was the evening before my last visit. I asked you then, very specifically, where you’d been the night before, and you both told me you’d stayed in. Now I’m asking you again.’

  Patsy shrugged. ‘If I said I stayed in, I guess that’s what I did.’

  ‘But you were seen leaving the car park.’

  ‘It must have been someone else.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Unless you’re in the habit of lending out your car. Where did you go?’

  She stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea and gazed into the steaming mug as she spoke. ‘I don’t remember going anywhere, but I might have gone for a drive early on. I sometimes do that. But I wouldn’t have been gone long. There are some beautiful vantage points along the coast, but you have to drive out there, then walk a fair distance to find them.’

  ‘Even in this weather?’

  ‘Sure. I’d hardly live here if I minded a bit of rough weather, would I? I like it when the sea gets all churned up.’

  She seemed to be regaining her composure, but Banks still didn’t believe her story. ‘Why didn’t you mention this little drive?’ he asked.

  She smiled at the fireplace. ‘It didn’t seem important, I guess. I mean, it was nothing to do with what you were asking about.’

  ‘Did you go alone?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where was Mr Ivers?’

  ‘Back here, working.’

  ‘Then who was using his car?’

  Her hand went to her mouth. ‘I . . . I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s simple, really, Ms Janowski. His car was missing from its usual spot. If he was here working, who was using it?’

  Patsy was saved from having to answer by the creak of the stairs as Ivers came down. He was dressed in much the same kind of baggy jeans and loose jersey as he had been on Banks’s first visit, but this time he had combed back his longish grey hair. He ducked underneath the low lintel beam and walked into the room, where his height and gaunt features commanded attention. The room had seemed crowded enough with three people in it, but with four it felt cluttered and claustrophobic.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, looking over at Patsy, who was squeezing her plump lower lip between her fingers and staring out of the window.

  Banks stood up. ‘Ah, Mr Ivers. Please join us. Sit down.’

  ‘I hardly need to be invited to sit down in my own house,’ Ivers said, but he sat.

  Banks lit another cigarette and leaned against the stone mantelpiece. Not a tall man himself, he wanted the advantage of height. Susan remained where she was, her notebook in her lap. Ivers glanced nervously at her, but Banks didn’t introduce them.

  ‘We were just talking about memory,’ he said. ‘How deceptive it can be.’

  Ivers frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Seems to be a lot of that about,’ Banks said.

  ‘Mr Ivers,’ Susan asked, ‘where did you drive to on the evening of December twenty-second?’

  He stared at her but didn’t appear to see her, then he turned towards Banks and gripped the arms of his chair. He thrust himself forward in as menacing a manner as possible. ‘What is this? What are you insinuating?’

  Banks flicked a column of ash into the fire. ‘We’re just asking you a simple question,’ he said. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘I told you I didn’t go anywhere.’

  ‘I know. But you were lying.’

  Ivers half rose. ‘Now look—’

  Banks stepped forward and gently pushed him back. ‘No. You look. Let me save us all a lot of time and effort and tell you what happened.’

  Ivers settled back and fumbled for his pipe and tobacco in his trouser pocket. Patsy poured him some tea and passed it over. Her hand was shaking. The corner of his thin mouth twitched for her in what was meant to be a reassuring smile.

  ‘That evening,’ Banks began, ‘you decided to take Veronica her Christmas present. It was a record you bought for her at the Classical Record Shop in the Merrion Centre in Leeds, Vivaldi’s Laudate pueri, sung by Magda Kalmar, a singer you knew had impressed her. But when you got to the house, just after seven, say, she was out. Caroline Hartley answered the door and let you in. You were simply going to drop off the present, but something happened, something made you angry. Perhaps she said something about your virility, I don’t know, or maybe the rage you felt about her stealing Veronica from you finally boiled over. You fought, hit her, then stabbed her with the kitchen knife you found on the table.’

  ‘Ingenious,’ Ivers said. ‘But not a word of it is true.’

  Banks knew full well that his theory was full of holes – the two female visitors Caroline Hartley had received after Ivers had apparently left, for example – but he went on regardless. He wanted to shake Ivers up a bit, at the very least.

  ‘I don’t know why you put the record on, but you did. Perhaps you wanted to make it look like the work of a psychopath. That could also have been why you removed her robe after you hit her. Anyway, when it was done, you washed the knife in the sink. I imagine you must have got blood on your gloves and sleeves, but it would have been easy enough to destroy that evidence when you got home.’ Banks flicked his cigarette end into the fire. ‘Right there.’

  Ivers shook his head and clamped his teeth down on his pipe.

  ‘Well?’ Banks said.

  ‘No,’ he whispered between clenched teeth. ‘It didn’t happen like that at all. I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Did you know that Caroline Hartley had once had a baby?’ Banks asked.

  Ivers took his pipe out of his mouth in surprise. ‘What? No. All I know is that she was the bitch who corrupted my wife and induced her to leave me.’

  ‘Which gives you a very good motive for wanting to be rid of her,’ Susan said, looking up from her notebook.

  Again Ivers looked at her but hardly appeared to see her.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ he said. ‘But I’m not a killer. I create, I don’t destroy.’

  Patsy leaned forward and took his hand in hers. With his other hand, he held on to his pipe.

  ‘What happened?’ Banks asked.

  Ivers sighed and stood up. He stroked Patsy’s cheek and went to the fireplace where he knocked out his pipe. He seemed more stooped and frail now, somehow, and his cultured voice no longer held its authoritative tone.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I did go over to Eastvale that evening. I shouldn’t have lied. I should have told you the truth. But when you told me what had happened, I was certain I’d be a suspect, and I was right, wasn’t I? I couldn’t bear the thought of any serious interruption to my work. But I swear, Chief Inspector, that when I left Caroline Hartley, the little slut was as alive as you and I. Yes, I went to the house. Yes, Veronica was out shopping. Caroline let me in grudgingly, but she let me in because it was cold and snowing and she didn’t want to leave the door open. I wasn’t in there more than a few minutes. Out of politeness, I asked how she was and asked about Veronica,
then I just handed over the present and left. And that’s the truth, whether you believe it or not.’

  ‘I’d find it easier to believe if you’d told me the first time I called,’ Banks said. ‘You’ve wasted a lot of our time.’

  ‘I’ve already explained why I couldn’t tell you. Good Lord, man, what would you have done in my position?’

  Banks always hated it when people asked him that. In ninety-nine per cent of cases he would have done exactly as they had: the wrong thing.

  ‘How could you even imagine that we wouldn’t trace the buyer of the record?’

  Ivers shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea what you can or can’t do. I don’t read mystery novels or watch police shows on television. We don’t even have a television. Never have had. I knew I hadn’t put a gift tag on the record – I remembered I’d forgotten to do that shortly after I left Veronica’s – so when you mentioned Vivaldi last time you called I had a good idea you were only guessing it was me. You never asked me outright whether I took her the record or not.’

  ‘When you left,’ Banks said, ‘was the record still wrapped or had it been opened?’

  ‘Still wrapped, of course. Why should it have been opened?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it was. Could Caroline have opened it?’

  ‘She may have done, just to have a laugh at me and my tastes, I suppose. She always said I was an old bore. She once told Veronica she thought my music sounded like the kind of sounds you’d get from a constipated camel.’

  If Ivers was telling the truth, Banks wondered, then how had the record come to be unwrapped? Unless either Caroline had opened it out of malicious curiosity – ‘Hello darling, look what the boring old fart’s bought you for Christmas!’ – or Veronica Shildon herself had returned to the house and opened it. But why should she do that with a Christmas present? Surely she would have put it under the tree with the rest and waited until the morning of the twenty-fifth? And she certainly wouldn’t have done anything so mundane if she had walked into the room and found Caroline’s body.

  ‘Did you tell her what it was?’ Banks asked.