Past Reason Hated

by Peter Robinson

  ‘Why did you split up?’

  ‘Why does anybody split up? I think we’d done what we could for each other. Caroline was restless. She wanted to go back up north. There were no great rows or anything, just a mutual agreement, and off she went.’

  ‘Did you know she had a baby?’

  ‘Yes. Colm’s. But that was before I met her. She told me she’d just arrived in London and was lucky enough to meet Colm in a pub. Apparently he was a decent enough bloke, just broke all the time. Some of his mates weren’t so decent and that’s partly what got Caroline involved in the game to start with. You know, just a temporary dancing job at this club, no harm in it, is there? Bit of extra cash, no questions asked. Creeps. In all fairness, I don’t think Colm knew. At least not for a while. Then she had his baby and they put it up for adoption.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of the club?’

  ‘Yes. It was the Hole-in-the-Wall, just off Greek Street Dingy looking place.’

  ‘This Colm,’ Banks asked. ‘Do you know his second name?’

  ‘No. It’s funny, but come to think of it, Caroline never used last names when she spoke about people.’

  ‘Seen him lately?’

  ‘Me? I’ve never seen him.’

  ‘How come you know so much about him?’

  ‘Because Caroline told me about him when we were first getting to know each other.’

  ‘Where did he live?’

  ‘Notting Hill somewhere. Or it could have been Muswell Hill. I’m not sure. Honestly, I can’t help you on that one. She never was much of a one for details, just the broad gesture.’

  ‘Are you sure Caroline wasn’t already pregnant when she arrived in London?’

  Ruth frowned and paused, as if she had suddenly remembered something. She turned her eyes away, and when she spoke there was an odd, distant tone to her voice. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m just asking.’

  ‘As far as I know she wasn’t. Unless she was lying to me. I suppose Colm will be able to confirm it if you can find him.’

  ‘Why did that question upset you so much?’

  She put her hand to her chest. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You’re more defensive than you were earlier.’

  Ruth shrugged. ‘It just reminded me of something, that’s all.’

  ‘Reminded you of what?’

  Ruth reached for her coffee cup, but it was empty. Banks waited. He noticed her hand was shaking a little.

  ‘Something that was bothering Caroline. It’s not important,’ Ruth said. ‘Probably not even true.’

  ‘Let me decide.’

  ‘Well, it was those dreams she’d been having, and the things she’d been remembering. At least she thought she had. She didn’t really know if they were memories or fantasies.’

  ‘What about?’

  Ruth looked him in the eye, her cheeks flushed. ‘Oh hell,’ she said. ‘Caroline was beginning to think she’d been molested as a child. She felt she’d repressed the incident, but it was making its way back up from her subconscious, perhaps because of all the weird johns she was servicing.’

  ‘Molested? When? Where? Who by?’

  ‘I’ve told you, she wasn’t sure she believed it herself.’

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Shit, yes. When she was a kid. At home. By her father.’

  10

  ONE

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Banks challenged Veronica Shildon later that evening. They were eating in an Indonesian restaurant in Soho. The view out of the window was hardly romantic – a peep show offering ‘NAKED GIRLS IN BED’ for 50p – but the food was excellent and the bar served Tiger beer.

  Veronica played with her nasi goreng, mixing the shrimp in with the rice. ‘Knew what?’

  ‘About Caroline’s past.’

  ‘No. Not the way you think.’

  ‘You could have saved me a lot of time and effort.’

  Veronica shook her head. Her eyes looked watery, on the verge of tears. Banks couldn’t be sure whether it was emotion or the hot chili peppers. His own scalp was prickling with the heat and his nose was starting to run. He took another swig of cold Tiger.

  ‘Some things I knew,’ she said finally. ‘I knew Caroline had been on the streets, but I didn’t know any of the names or places involved. When she talked about Ruth she always spoke with affection, but she never mentioned her second name or where they’d lived.’

  ‘You knew they were lovers, though?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But weren’t you jealous? Didn’t you question Caroline about it?’

  Veronica snorted. ‘I had little right to be jealous, did I? Remember where I was coming from. Caroline told me there’d been others. She was even living with Nancy Wood when I first met her. And I was with Claude. You must be very naive, Mr Banks, if you think we walked into our relationship like a couple of virgins with no emotional baggage. And, somehow, I don’t honestly believe you are naive.’

  ‘No matter what the rules are,’ Banks said, ‘no matter what people try to convince themselves about what they accept and understand, about how open-minded they are, they still can’t stop feeling things like jealousy, hatred and fear. Those are powerful, primitive emotions – instincts, if you like – and you can’t convince me that you were both so bloody civilized you calmly decided not to feel anything about one another’s pasts.’

  Veronica put down her fork and poured some more beer into her half empty glass. ‘Quite a speech. And not so long ago you were telling me I was too civilized to feel the need to revenge Caroline’s murder.’

  ‘Perhaps you are. But that’s another matter. Can you answer my question?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t feel jealous about Ruth Dunne. For one thing, it was years ago, and for another, from what I could gather she’d done Caroline a big favour, perhaps the same kind of favour Caroline later did for me. As I said, I didn’t know all the details, but I know the gist. And when I talked to Ruth this afternoon after you’d been to see her, I liked her. I was glad to think Caroline had met and loved someone like her. That’s my answer. Believe it or not, as you choose. Or do you think people like us are just so perverted that all we do is rip each other’s clothes off and jump into bed together?’

  Banks said nothing. He ate a mouthful of pork satay and washed it down with beer. Attracting the waiter’s attention, he then ordered two more Tigers. He did believe Veronica. After all, she had felt secure in her relationship with Caroline, and Ruth Dunne had certainly posed no threat.

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me what you did know about Caroline’s past?’ he asked after the beers had arrived.

  ‘I’ve already told you. I hardly knew anything.’

  ‘Maybe not, but if you’d told us what you did know, it would have made it easier for us to find out the rest.’

  Veronica slammed her knife and fork down. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes narrowed to glaring slits. ‘All right, damn you! So I’m sorry. What more do you want me to say?’

  Some of the other diners looked around and frowned, whispering comments to one another. Veronica held Banks’s gaze for a few seconds, then picked up her fork again and speared a spicy shrimp far too violently. A few grains of rice skipped off the edge of her plate onto the napkin on her knee.

  ‘What I want to know,’ Banks said, ‘is why you didn’t tell me what you knew, and whether there’s anything else you’ve been keeping to yourself. See, it’s simple really.’

  Veronica sighed. ‘You’re an exasperating man,’ she said. ‘Do you know that?’

  Banks smiled.

  ‘All right. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to . . . to soil Caroline’s memory. She wasn’t that kind of person any more. I couldn’t see how it would do any good to drag all that up and let the newspapers get hold of it. Is that good enough?’

  ‘It’s a start. But I’ll bet there’s more to it than that.’

  Veronica said nothing. Her mou
th was pressed shut so tight the edges of her lips turned white.

  Banks went on. ‘You didn’t want me or anyone else to think you were the kind of woman to be living with someone with such a lurid past? Am I right?’

  ‘You’re a bastard, is what you are,’ said Veronica through gritted teeth. ‘What you don’t understand is that it takes more than a couple of years of therapy to undo a lifetime’s damage. Christ, all the time I keep hearing my mother’s voice in my mind, calling me dirty, calling me perverted. Maybe you’re right and I didn’t want that guilt by association. But I still don’t see what good knowing that does you.’

  ‘The reason for Caroline’s murder could lie in her past. She was running with a pretty rough crowd. I know some of them. I worked the vice squad in Soho for eighteen months, and it’s not as glamorous as Miami Vice, you can be sure of that. Drugs. Prostitution. Gambling. Big criminal business. Very profitable and very dangerous. If Caroline maintained any kind of involvement with these people it could explain a lot.’

  ‘But she didn’t,’ Veronica insisted, pressing her hands together and leaning across the table. ‘She didn’t. I lived with her for two years. In all that time we never went to London and she never mentioned much about her life there. Don’t you see? It was the future we wanted, not the past. Both of us had had enough of the past.’

  Banks pushed his empty plate aside, asked Veronica’s permission to smoke and reached for his cigarettes. When he’d lit one and inhaled, he took a sip of beer. Veronica folded her napkin in a perfect square and laid it on the coral tablecloth beside her plate. A small mound of rice dotted with chunks of garlic, onion and diced pork remained, but the shrimp were all gone.

  Banks glanced out the window and watched a punter in a cloth cap and donkey jacket hesitate outside the peep show. He was probably having a hard time making up his mind with so much to choose from: NUDE NAUGHTY AND NASTY down the street, LIVE EROTIC NUDE BED SHOW next door, and now NAKED GIRLS IN BED opposite. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he hunched his shoulders and carried on towards Leicester Square. Either lost his bottle or come to his senses, Banks thought.

  Veronica had been watching him, and when Banks turned back to face her she gave him a small smile. ‘What were you looking at?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But you were watching so intently.’

  Banks shrugged. ‘Coffee? Liqueur?’

  ‘I’d love a Cointreau, if they’ve got any.’

  ‘They’ll have it.’ Banks called the waiter. He ordered a Drambuie for himself.

  ‘What did you see out there?’ Veronica asked again.

  ‘I told you, it was nothing. Just a man, likely down from the provinces for a soccer match or something. He was checking out Soho. Probably surprised it was so cheap.’

  ‘What do you get for 50p?’

  ‘Brief glance at a naked tart, if you’re lucky. It’s a loss leader, really,’ Banks said. ‘Supposed to give you a taste for the real action. You sit in a booth, put your coin in the slot and a shutter slides so you can see the girl. As soon as your meter’s up, so to speak, the shutter closes. Of course, Soho’s been cleaned up a lot lately, but you can’t really keep its spirit down.’ Already, Banks noticed, his accent and his patterns of speech had reverted to those of his London days. He had never lost them in almost three years up north, but they had been modified quite a bit. Now here he was, to all intents and purposes a London copper again.

  ‘Do you approve?’ Veronica asked.

  ‘It’s not a matter of approval. I don’t visit the booths or the clubs myself, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘But would you like to see it all stamped out of existence?’

  ‘It’d just spring up somewhere else, wouldn’t it? That’s what I mean about the spirit. Every big city has its vice area: the Red Light district in Amsterdam, the Reeperbahn, Times Square, the Tenderloin, the Yonge Street strip in Toronto . . . They’re all much the same except for what local laws do and don’t allow. Prostitution is legal in Amsterdam, for example, and they even have licensed brothels in part of Nevada. Then there’s Las Vegas and Atlantic City for gambling. You can’t really stamp it out. For better or for worse, it seems to be part of the human condition. I admire its energy, its vitality, but I despise what it does to people. I recognize its humour, too. In my job, you get to see the funny side from time to time. Maybe it actually makes policing easier, so much vice concentrated in one small area. We can keep closer tabs on it. But we’ll never stamp it out.’

  ‘I feel so sheltered,’ Veronica said, looking out the window again. ‘I never knew any of this existed when I was growing up. Even later, it never seemed to have anything to do with my life. I couldn’t even imagine what people did together except for . . . you know.’ She shook her head.

  ‘And now you’re wordly wise?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. But after Caroline, after she brought me to life, at least I was able to see what all the fuss was about. If that’s what it felt like, then no wonder everyone went crazy over it. Do you know that Shakespeare sonnet, the one that starts ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’? I never understood it until a couple of years ago.’

  ‘It’s about lust, isn’t it?’ Banks said. ‘ “Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme.”’ Christ, he thought, I’m getting just like that Dalgliesh fellow Ruth Dunne mentioned. Better watch it. He nodded towards the window. ‘Suits that lot out there more than it suits you.’

  Veronica smiled. ‘No, you don’t know what I mean. At last I could understand. Even lust I could finally understand. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes.’ Banks lit another cigarette and Veronica held the glass of Cointreau in her hand. ‘About Caroline’s child,’ he said.

  ‘She never told me.’

  ‘Okay. But did she ever make any references to a person called Colm?’

  ‘No. And I’m sure I’d remember a name like that.’

  ‘She had no contact with anyone you didn’t know, no mysterious letters or phone calls?’

  ‘Not that I ever found out about. I’m not saying she couldn’t have had. She could be very secretive when she wanted. What are you getting at?’

  Banks sighed and swirled his Drambuie in its glass. ‘I don’t know. I thought she might have kept in touch with the foster parents, adopters, whatever.’

  ‘Surely that would have been too painful for her?’

  ‘Maybe so. Forgive me, I’m grasping at straws.’ And he was. The child must be about nine or ten now. Far too young to hunt out his mother and stab her with a kitchen knife for abandoning him, or her. Far too young to see the irony in leaving a requiem for himself on the stereo. ‘There is one thing you might be able to help me with, though,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ruth mentioned that Caroline had begun to suspect she’d been sexually abused as a child. Do you know anything about that?’

  Veronica blushed and turned her face to the window. Her profile looked stern against the gaudy neon outside, and the muscle at the corner of her jaw twitched.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I . . . I can’t see what it’s got to do with—’

  ‘We’ve already been through that. Let me be the judge.’

  ‘Poor Caroline.’ Veronica looked directly at Banks again and her expression seemed to relax into sadness. Melancholy was a better word, Banks decided, a good romantic word. Veronica looked melancholy as she fingered her glass and tilted her head before she spoke. ‘I suppose I didn’t tell you for the same reason I didn’t tell you anything else about her past. I didn’t think it mattered and it would only look bad. Now I feel foolish, but I’m not afraid.’

  ‘Did she talk to you about it?’

  ‘Yes. At first it was like Ruth said. She had dreams, terrible dreams. Do you know what sexual abuse does to a child, Mr Banks?’

  Banks nodded. Jenny Fuller, the psychologist who occasionally helped with cases, had explained it to him once.

  ‘Then you know they beg
in to hate themselves. They lose all self-respect, they get depressed, they feel suicidal, and they often seek reckless, self-destructive ways of life. All those things happened to Caroline. And more.’

  ‘Is that why she left home?’

  ‘Yes. But she’d had to wait a long time to get out. Till she was sixteen.’

  ‘What do you mean? When did this start happening?’

  ‘When she was eight.’

  ‘Eight? Jesus Christ! Go on. I take it this is fact, not fantasy?’

  ‘I can’t offer you irrefutable proof, especially now Caroline’s dead, but you can take my word for it if you’re willing. As I said, at first it was just dreams, fears, suspicions, then when she started working on it with Ursula, more memories began to surface. She’d buried the events, of course, which is perfectly natural under the circumstances. Just imagine a child’s confusion when the father she loves starts to do strange and frightening things with her body and tells her she must never tell anybody or terrible things will happen to her. It ties her in knots emotionally. It must be good, because Daddy is doing it Perhaps she even enjoys the attention. But it doesn’t feel good, it hurts. And why will she go to hell if she ever tells anyone?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘As far as she could piece it together, it occurred first when she was eight. Her mother was having a difficult pregnancy and spent the last two weeks of her term in hospital under close observation. Something to do with her blood pressure and the possibility of toxaemia. Caroline was left alone in the big house with her father, and he started coming to her bedroom at nights, asking her to be a good girl and play with him. Before long he was having intercrural sex with her. It’s not very clear how far he went. She remembered pain, but not extreme agony or bleeding. Obviously, he was careful. He didn’t want anyone to find out.’

  ‘What does “intercrural” mean?’ Banks asked. ‘I’ve never heard the word before.’

  Veronica blushed. ‘I suppose it is a bit technical. It was Ursula who used it first. It means between the thighs, rather than true penetration.’