A Necessary End ib-3

by Peter Robinson

  Moscow’s? Peking’s? Or is it Belfast?”

  Osmond laughed. “You’ve got your politics a bit mixed up, haven’t you? A socialist is hardly the same as a Maoist. Besides, the Chairman’s out of favour these days. And as for the IRA, you can’t seriously believe-“

  “I seriously believe a lot of things that might surprise you,” Burgess cut in.

  “And you can spare me the fucking lecture. Who gave you your orders?”

  “You’re wrong,” Osmond said. “It wasn’t like that at all. And even if there was somebody else involved, do you think I’m going to tell you who it was?”

  “Yes, I do,” Burgess said. “There’s nothing more certain. The only question is when you’re going to tell me, and where.”

  “Look,” Banks said, “we’ll find out anyway. There’s no need to take it on yourself to carry the burden and get done

  68

  for withholding information in a murder investigation. If you didn’t do it and you don’t think your mates did, either, then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you?” Banks found it easy to play the nice guy to Burgess’s heavy, even though he felt a strong, instinctive dislike for Osmond. When he questioned suspects with Sergeant Hatchley, the two of them switched roles. But Burgess only had one method of approach: head on.

  “Listen to him,” Burgess said. “He’s right.”

  “Why don’t you find out from someone else, then?” Osmond said to Banks. “I’m damned if I’m telling you anything.”

  “Do you own a flick-knife?” Burgess asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever owned one?”

  “No.”

  “Know anybody who does?”

  Osmond shook his head.

  “Did you know PC Gill?” Banks asked. “Had you any contact with him before last Friday?”

  Osmond looked puzzled by the question, and when he finally answered no, it didn’t ring true. Or maybe he was just thrown off balance. Burgess didn’t seem to notice anything, but Banks made a mental note to check into the possibility that Osmond and Gill had somehow come into contact.

  The bedroom door opened and Jenny walked out. She’d brushed her hair and put on a pair of jeans and an oversized plaid shirt. Banks bet it belonged to Osmond and tried not to think about what had been going on earlier in the bedroom.

  “Hello, love,” Burgess said, patting an empty chair beside him. “Come to join us? What’s your name?”

  “In the first place,” Jenny said stiffly, “I’m not ‘love,’ and in the second, I don’t see as my name’s any of your damn business. I wasn’t even there on Friday.”

  “As you like,” Burgess said. “Just trying to be friendly.”

  Jenny glanced at Banks as if to ask, “Who is this bastard?” and Burgess caught the exchange.

  “Do you two know each other?” he asked.

  69

  Banks cursed inwardly and felt himself turning red. There was no way out. “This is Dr Fuller,” he said. “She helped us on a case here a year or so back.”

  Burgess beamed at Jenny. “I see. Well, maybe you can help us again, Dr Fuller.

  Your boyfriend here doesn’t want to talk to us, but if you’ve helped the police before-“

  “Leave her alone,” Osmond said. “She had nothing to do with it.” Banks had felt the same thing-he didn’t want Burgess getting his claws into Jenny-and he resented Osmond for being able to defend her.

  “Very prickly today, aren’t we?” Burgess said. “All right, sonny, we’ll get back to you, if that’s the way you want it.” But he kept looking at Jenny, and Banks knew he was filing her away for future use. Banks now found it hard to look her in the eye himself. He was only a chief inspector and Burgess was a superintendent. When things were going his way, Burgess wouldn’t pull rank, but if Banks let any of his special feeling for Jenny show, or tried in any way to protect her, then Burgess would certainly want to humiliate him. Besides, she had her knight in shining armour in the form of Osmond. Let him take the flack.

  “What were you charged with on Friday?” Burgess asked.

  “You know damn well what I was charged with. It was a trumped-up charge.”

  “But what was it? Tell me. Say it. Just to humour me.” Burgess reached into his pocket and took out his tin of Tom Thumbs. Holding Osmond’s eyes with his own all the time, he slowly took out a cigar and lit it.

  “I said I don’t want you smoking in here,” Osmond protested on cue. “It’s my home and-“

  “Shut up,” Burgess said, just loudly enough to stop him in his tracks. “What was the charge?”

  “Breach of the peace,” Osmond mumbled. “But I told you, it was trumped up. If anyone broke the peace, it was the police.”

  “Ever heard of a lad by the name of Paul Boyd?” Banks asked.

  “No.” It was a foolish lie. Osmond had answered before 70

  he’d had time to register the question. Banks would have known he was lying even if he hadn’t already learned, via Jenny, that Osmond was acquainted with the people at Maggie’s Farm.

  “Look,” Osmond went on, “I’m starting an inquiry of my own into what happened on Friday. I’ll be taking statements, and believe me, I’ll make sure your behaviour here today goes into the final report.”

  “Bully for you,” said Burgess. Then he shook his head slowly. “You don’t get it, do you, sonny? You might be able to pull those outraged-citizen tactics with the locals, but they won’t wash with me. Do you know why not?”

  Osmond scowled and kept silent.

  “I said, do you know why not?”

  “All right, no, I don’t bloody well know why not!”

  “Because I don’t give a flying fuck for you or for others like you,” Burgess said, stabbing the air with his cigar. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re shit, and we’d all be a hell of a lot better off without you. And the people I work with, they feel the same way. It doesn’t matter if Chief Inspector Banks here has the hots for your Dr Fuller and wants to go easy on her. It doesn’t matter that he’s got a social conscience and respects people’s rights, either. I don’t, and my bosses don’t. We don’t piss around, we get things done, and you’d do well to remember that, both of you.”

  Jenny was flushed and speechless with rage; Banks himself felt pale and impotent. He should have known that nothing would slip by Burgess.

  “I can’t tell you anything,” Osmond repeated wearily. “Why can’t you believe me?

  I don’t know who killed that policeman. I didn’t see it, I didn’t do it, and I don’t know who did.”

  A long silence followed. At least it seemed long to Banks, who was aware only of the pounding of his heart. Finally Burgess stood up and walked over to the window, where he stubbed out his cigar on the white sill. Then he turned and smiled. Osmond gripped the tubular arms of his chair tightly.

  71

  “Okay,” Burgess said, turning to Banks. “We’ll be off, then, for the moment.

  Sorry to spoil your afternoon in bed. You can get back to it now, if you like.”

  He looked at Jenny and licked his lips. “That’s a fetching shirt you’ve got on, love,” he said to her. “But you didn’t need to leave it half-unbuttoned just for me. I’ve got plenty of imagination.”

  Back in the car, Banks was fuming. “You were way out of line in there,” he said.

  “There was no reason to insult Jenny, and there was especially no need to bring me into it the way you did. What the hell were you trying to achieve?”

  “Just trying to stir them up a bit, that’s all.”

  “So how does making me out to be a bloody lecher stir them up?”

  “You’re not thinking clearly, Banks. We make Osmond jealous, maybe he lets his guard down.” Burgess grinned. “Anyway, there’s nothing in it, is there, you and her?”

  “Of course there isn’t.”

  “Methinks this fellow doth protest too much.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Oh, come o
n,” Burgess said calmly. “Don’t take it so seriously. You use what you need to get results. Christ, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t mind tumbling her, myself. Lovely pair of tits under that shirt. Did you see?”

  Banks took a deep breath and reached for a cigarette. There was no point, he realized, in going on. Burgess was an unstoppable force. However angry and disoriented Banks felt, it would do no good to let more of it show. Instead, he put his emotions in check, something he knew he should have done right from the start. But the feelings still rankled as they knotted up below the surface. He was mad at Burgess, he was mad at Osmond, he was mad at Jenny, and he was mad, most of all, at himself.

  Starting the car with a lurch, he shoved the cassette back in and turned up the volume. Billie Holiday sang “God Bless the Child,” and Burgess whistled blithely along as they sped through the bright, blustery March day back to the market square.

  72

  III

  They were all a bit drunk, and that was unusual at Maggie’s Farm. Mara certainly hadn’t been so tipsy for a long time. Rick was sketching them as they sat around the living-room. Paul drank lager from the can, and even Zoe had turned giggly on white wine. But Seth was the worst. His speech was slurred, his eyes were watery, and his co-ordination was askew. He was also getting maudlin about the sixties, something he never did when he was sober. Mara had seen him drunk only once before, the time he had let slip about the death of his wife. Mostly, he was well-guarded and got on with life without moaning.

  Things had begun well enough. After the police visit, they had all walked down to the Black Sheep for a drink. Perhaps the feeling of relief, of celebration, had encouraged them to drink more than usual, and they had splurged on a few cans of Carlsberg Special Brew, some white wine and a bottle of Scotch to take home. Most of the afternoon Seth and Mara had lounged about over the papers or dozed by the fire, while Paul messed about in the shed, Rick painted in his studio, and Zoe amused the children. Early in the evening they all got together, and the whisky and wine started making the rounds.

  Seth stumbled over to the stereo and sought out a scratchy old Grateful Dead record from his collection. “Those were the days,” he said. “All gone now. All people care about today is money. Bloody yuppies.”

  Rick looked up from his sketch-pad and laughed. “When was it ever any different?”

  “Isle of Wight, Knebworth…” Seth went on, listing the rock festivals he’d been to. “People really shared back then….”

  Mara listened to him ramble. They had been under a lot of stress since the demo, she thought, and this was clearly Seth’s way of getting it out of his system. It was easy to fall under the spell of nostalgia. She remembered the sixties, too-or more accurately the late sixties, when the hippie era had 73

  really got going in England. Things had seemed better back then. Simpler. More clear-cut. There was us and them, and you knew them by the shortness of their hair.

  “… Santana, Janis, Hendrix, the Doors. Jesus, even the Hare Krishnas were fun back then. Now they all wear bloody business suits and wigs. I remember one time-“

  “It’s all crap!” Paul shouted, banging his empty can on the floor. “It was never like that. It’s just a load of cobblers you’re talking, Seth.”

  “How would you know?” Seth sat up and balanced unsteadily on his elbow. “You weren’t there, were you? You were nought but a twinkle in your old man’s eye.”

  “My mum and dad were hippies,” Paul said scornfully. “Fucking flower children.

  She OD’d, and he was too bloody stoned to take care of me, so he gave me away.”

  Mara was stunned. Paul had never spoken about his true ‘ parents before, only about the way he had been badly treated in his foster home. If it was true, she thought, did he really see Seth and her in the same light? They were about the right age. Did he hate them, too?

  But she couldn’t believe that. There was another side to the coin. Maybe Paul was looking for what he had lost, and he had found at least some of it at Maggie’s Farm. They didn’t take drugs and, while she and Seth might have grown up in the sixties and tried to cling on to some of its ideals, they neither looked nor acted like hippies any longer.

  “We’re not like that,” she protested, looking over at Zoe for support. “You know it, Paul. We care about you. We’d never desert you. It was fun back then for a lot of people. Seth’s only reminiscing about his youth.”

  “I know,” Paul said grudgingly. “I can’t say I had one worth reminiscing about, myself. Anyway, I’m only saying, Mara, that’s all. It wasn’t all peace and love like Seth tells it. He’s full of shit.”

  “You’re right about that, mate,” Rick agreed, putting down his sketch-pad and pouring another shot of Scotch. “I never did have much time for hippies myself.

  Nothing but a moaning, whining bunch of little kids, if you ask me. Seth’s 74

  just pissed, that’s all. Look at him now, anyway-he’s a bloody landowner, a landlord even. Pretty soon it’ll be baggy tweeds and out shooting pheasant every afternoon. Sir Seth Cotton, Squire of Maggie’s Farm.”

  But Seth had slumped back against a beanbag and seemed to have lost all interest in the conversation. His eyes were closed, and Mara guessed that he was either asleep or absorbed in the soaring Jerry Garcia guitar solo.

  “Where’s your father now?” Mara asked Paul.

  “I don’t fucking know. Don’t fucking care, either.” Paul ripped open another can of lager.

  “But didn’t he ever get in touch?”

  “Why should he? I told you, he was too zonked out to notice me even when I was there.”

  “It’s still no reason to say everyone was like that,” Mara said. “All Seth was saying was that the spirit of love was strong back then. All that talk about the Age of Aquarius meant something.”

  “Yeah, and what’s happened to it now? Two thousand years of this crap I can do without, thanks very much. Let’s just forget the fucking past and get on with life.” With that, Paul got up and left the room.

  Jerry Garcia played on. Seth stirred, opened one bloodshot eye, then closed it again.

  Mara poured herself and Zoe some more white wine, then her mind wandered back to Paul. As if she weren’t confused enough already, the hostility he’d shown tonight and the new information about his feelings for his parents muddied the waters even more. She was scared of approaching him about the blood on his hand, and she was beginning to feel frightened to go on living in the same house as someone she suspected of murder. But she hated herself for feeling that way about him, for not being able to trust him completely and believe in him.

  What she needed was somebody to talk to, somebody she could trust from outside the house. She felt like a woman with a breast lump who was afraid to go to the doctor and find out if it really was cancer.

  75

  And what made it worse was that she’d noticed the knife was missing: the flick-knife Seth said he had bought in France years ago. Everybody else must have noticed, too, but no one had mentioned it. The knife had been lying on the mantelpiece for anyone to use ever since she’d been at Maggie’s Farm, and now it was gone.

  IV

  Banks ate the fish and chips he had bought on the way home, then went into the living-room. Screw gourmet cooking, he thought. If that irritating neighbour, Selena Harcourt, didn’t turn up with some sticky dessert to feed him up “while the little woman’s away,” he’d have the evening to relax instead of mixing up sauces that never turned out anyway.

  He had calmed down soon after leaving Burgess at the station. The bastard had been right. What had happened at Osmond’s, he realized, had not been particularly serious, but his shock at finding Jenny there had made him exaggerate things. His reaction had been extreme, and for a few moments, he’d lost his detachment. That was all. It had happened before and it would happen again. Not the end of the world.

  He poured a drink, put his feet up and turned on the television. There was a special about the Peak
District on Yorkshire TV. Half-watching, he flipped through Tracy’s latest copy of History Today and read an interesting article on Sir Titus Salt, who had built a Utopian community called Saltaire, near Bradford, for the workers in his textile mills. It would be a good place to visit with Sandra and the kids, he thought. Sandra could take photographs; Tracy would be fascinated; and surely even Brian would find something of interest. The problem was that Sir Titus had been a firm teetotaller. There were no pubs in Saltaire. Obviously one man’s Utopia is another man’s Hell.

  The article made him think of Maggie’s Farm. He liked the place and respected Seth and Mara. They had shown

  76

  antagonism towards him, but that was only to be expected. In his job, he was used to much worse. He didn’t take it personally. Being a policeman was like being a vicar in some ways; people could never be really comfortable with you, even when you dropped into the local for a pint.

  The TV programme finished, and he decided there was no point putting off the inevitable. Picking up the phone, he dialled Jenny’s number. He was in luck; she answered on the third ring.

  “Jenny? It’s Alan.”

  There was a pause at the other end. “I’m not sure I want to talk to you,” she said finally.

  “Could you be persuaded to?”

  “Try.”

  “I just wanted to apologize for this afternoon. I hadn’t expected to see you there.”

  Only the slight crackle of the line filled the silence. “It surprised me, too,”

  Jenny said. “You keep some pretty bad company.”

  I could say the same for you, too, Banks thought. “Yes,” he said, “I know.”

  “I do think you should keep him on a leash in future. You could maybe try a muzzle on him as well.” She was obviously warming to him again, he could tell.

  “Love to. But he’s the boss. How did Osmond take it?” The name almost stuck in his throat.

  “He was pissed off, all right. But it didn’t last. Dennis is resilient. He’s used to police harassment.”