The Price of Love and Other Stories (16 page)

“Have you heard anything?” David Mercer asked.

“Nothing yet,” Banks answered. “But, if I may, I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

“We’ve already told everything to her,” he said, gesturing in Winsome’s direction.

“I know,” said Banks. “And DC Jackman has discussed it with me. But I still have a few questions.”

“Don’t you think you should be out there on the streets searching for her?” said the whippet-thin man, who was also turning prematurely bald.

Banks turned slowly to face him. “And you are?”

He puffed out what little chest he had. “Claude Mainwaring, solicitor.” He pronounced it “Mannering,” like the Arthur Lowe character on
Dad’s Army
. “I’m David’s son-in-law.”

“Well, Mr. Mainwaring,” said Banks, “it’s not normally my job, as a detective chief inspector, to get out on the streets looking for people. In fact, it’s not even my job to pay house calls asking questions. But as it’s nearly Christmas, and as Mr. Mercer here is worried about his wife, I thought I might bend the rules just a little. And believe me, there are already more than enough people out there trying to find Mrs. Mercer.”

Mainwaring grunted as if he was unsatisfied with the answer, then he sat down next to his wife. Banks turned to David Mercer, who finally bade him and Winsome sit too.

“Mr. Mercer,” Banks asked, thinking of the doubts that Winsome had voiced on their way over, “can you think of anywhere your wife might have gone?”

“Nowhere,” said Mercer. “That’s why I called you lot.”

“Was there any reason why your wife might have gone away?”

“None at all,” said Mercer, just a beat too quickly for Banks’s liking.

“She wasn’t unhappy about anything?”

“Not that I know of, no.”

“Everything was fine between the two of you?”

“Now, look here!” Mainwaring got to his feet.

“Sit down and be quiet, Mr. Mainwaring,” Banks said as gently as he could. “You’re not in court now, and you’re not helping. I’ll get to you later.” He turned back to Mercer and ignored the slighted solicitor. “Had you noticed any difference in her behaviour before she left – any changes of mood or anything?”

“No,” said Mercer. “Like I said, everything was quite normal. May I ask what you’re getting at?”

“I’m not getting at anything. These are all questions that have to be asked in cases such as these.”

“‘Cases such as these’?”

“Missing persons.”

“Oh God,” cried the daughter. “I can’t believe it. Mother a missing person.”

She used the same tone she might have used to say “homeless person,” Banks thought, as if she were somehow embarrassed by her mother’s going missing. He quickly chided himself for being so uncharitable. It was Christmas, after all, and no matter how self-important and self-obsessed these people seemed to be, they
were
worried about Brenda Mercer. He could only do his best to help them. He just wished they would stop getting in his way.

“Has she ever done anything like this before?” Banks asked.

“Never,” said David Mercer. “Brenda is one of the most stable and reliable people you could ever wish to meet.”

“Does she have any close friends?”

“The family means everything to her.”

“Might she have met someone? Someone she could confide in?”

Mercer seemed puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean. Met? Confide? What would Brenda have to confide? And if she did, why would she confide it to someone else rather than to me? No. It doesn’t make sense.”

“People do, you know, sometimes. A girlfriend, perhaps?”

“Not Brenda.”

This was going nowhere fast, Banks thought, seeing what Winsome had meant. “Do you have any theories about where she might have gone?”

“Something’s happened to her. Someone’s abducted her, obviously. I can’t see any other explanation.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it? She’d never do anything so irresponsible and selfish as to mess up all our Christmas plans and cause us so much fuss and worry.”

“But these things, abductions and the like, are much rarer than you imagine,” said Banks. “In most cases, missing persons are found healthy and safe.”

Mainwaring snorted in the background. “And the longer you take to find her, the less likely she is to be healthy and safe.”

Banks ignored him and carried on talking to David Mercer. “Did you and your wife have any arguments recently?”

“Arguments? No, not really.”

“Not really?”

“I mean nothing significant, nothing that would cause her to do something like this. We had our minor disagreements from time to time, of course, just like any married couple.”

“But nothing that might upset her, make her want to disappear.”

“No, of course not.”

“Do you know if she has any male friends?” Banks knew he was treading on dangerous ground now, but he had to ask.

“If you’re insinuating that she’s run off with someone,” Mercer said, “then you’re barking up the wrong tree. Brenda would never do that to me. Or to Janet,” he added, glancing over at the daughter. “Besides, she’s … ”

“She’s what?”

“I was simply going to say that Brenda’s not exactly a
Playboy
centrefold, if you catch my drift. Not the sort of woman men would chase after or fantasize about.”

Nice one, Banks thought. He had never expected his wife Sandra to run off with another man either – and not because he didn’t think she was attractive to men – but she had done. No sense in labouring the point, though. If anything like that had happened, the Mercers would be the last people to admit it, assuming that they even knew themselves. But if Brenda had no close friends or relatives, then there was no one else he could question who might be able to tell him more about her. All in all, it was beginning to seem like a tougher job than he had imagined.

“We’ll keep you posted,” he said, then he and Winsome headed back to the station.

Unfortunately, most people were far too absorbed in their Christmas plans – meals, family visits, last-minute shopping, church events and what have you – to pay as much attention to local news stories as they did the rest of the year, and even that wasn’t much. As Banks and Winsome whiled away the afternoon at Western Area Headquarters, uniformed police officers went from house to house asking questions, and searched the wintry Dales landscape in an ever-widening circle, but nothing came to light.

Banks remembered, just before the shops closed, that he had things to buy, so he dashed over to the Swainsdale Centre. Of course, by closing time on Christmas Eve, it was bedlam, and everyone was
impatient and bad-tempered. He queued fifteen minutes to pay for his turkey dinner, because he would have had nothing to eat otherwise, but just one glance at the crowds in HMV made him decide to forgo the Christmas music for this year, relying on what he had already and what he could catch on the radio.

By six o’clock, he was back at home, and the men and women on duty at the police station had strict instructions to ring him if anything concerning Brenda Mercer came up.

But nothing did.

Banks warmed his leftover lamb curry and washed it down with a bottle of Black Sheep. After he’d finished the dishes, he made a start on
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
, then he opened a bottle of decent claret and took it with him into the TV room. There, he slid the shiny DVD of
Scrooge
into the player, poured himself a healthy glass, and settled back. He always enjoyed spotting the bit where you could see the cameraman reflected in the mirror when Scrooge examines himself on Christmas morning, and he found Alastair Sims’s over-the-top excitement at seeing the world anew as infectious and uplifting as ever. Even so, as he took himself up to bed around midnight, he still had a thought to spare for Brenda Mercer, and it kept him awake far longer than he would have liked.

The first possible lead came early on Christmas morning, when Banks was eating a soft-boiled egg for breakfast and listening to a King’s College Choir concert on the radio. Winsome rang to tell him that someone had seen a woman resembling Mrs. Mercer in a rather dazed state wandering through the village of Swainshead shortly after dawn. The description matched, down to the coat and shoulder bag, so Banks finished his breakfast and headed out.

The sky was still like iron, but the temperature had dropped overnight, and Banks thought he sniffed a hint of snow in the air. As he drove down the dale, he glanced at the hillsides, all in shades of
grey, their peaks obscured by low-lying cloud. Here and there, a silver stream meandered down the slope, glittering in the weak light. Whatever was wrong with Brenda Mercer, Banks thought, she must be freezing if she had been sleeping rough for two nights now.

Before he got to Swainshead, he received another call on his mobile, again from Winsome. This time, she told him that a local train driver had seen a woman walking aimlessly along the tracks over the Swainshead Viaduct. When Banks arrived there, Winsome was already waiting on the western side, along with a couple of uniformed officers in their patrol cars, engines running so they could stay warm. The huge viaduct stretched for about a quarter of a mile across the broad valley, carrying the main line up to Carlisle and beyond, into Scotland, and its twenty or more great arches framed picture-postcard views of the hills beyond.

“She’s up there, sir,” said Winsome, pointing, as Banks got out of the car. Way above him, more than a hundred feet up, a tiny figure in brown perched on the edge of the viaduct wall.

“Jesus Christ,” said Banks. “Has anyone called to stop the trains? Anything roaring by her right now could give her the fright of her life, and it’s a long way down.”

“It’s been done,” said Winsome.

“Right. At the risk of stating the obvious, I think we’d better get someone who knows about these things to go up there and talk to her.”

“It’ll be difficult to get a professional, sir, on Christmas Day.”

“Well, what do you –? No. I can read your expression, Winsome.

Don’t look at me like that. The answer’s no. I’m not a trained psychologist or a counsellor. We need someone like Jenny Fuller.”

“But she’s away, and you know you’re the best person for the job, sir. You’re good with people. You listen to them. They trust you.”

“But I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“I don’t think there are any set rules.”

“I’m hardly the sort to convince someone that life is full of the joys of spring.”

“I don’t really think that’s what’s called for.”

“But what if she jumps?”

Winsome shrugged. “She’ll either jump or fall if someone doesn’t go up there soon and find out what’s going on.”

Banks glanced up again, and swallowed. He thought he felt the soft, chill touch of a snowflake melt on his eyeball. Winsome was right. He couldn’t send up one of the uniformed lads – they were far too inexperienced for this sort of thing – and time was of the essence.

“Look,” he said, turning to Winsome, “see if you can raise some sort of counsellor or negotiator, will you? In the meantime, I’ll go up and see what I can do. Just temporary, you understand?”

“Right you are, sir.” Winsome smiled.

Banks got back in his car. The quickest way to reach the woman was to drive up to Swainshead station, just before the viaduct, and walk along the tracks. At least, that way, he wouldn’t have to climb any hills. The thought didn’t comfort him much, though, when he looked up again and saw the woman’s legs dangling over the side of the wall.

“Stop right there,” she said. “Who are you?”

Banks stopped. He was about four or five yards away from her. The wind was howling more than he had expected, whistling around his ears, making it difficult to hear properly, and it seemed much colder up here, too. He wished he were wearing something warmer than his leather jacket. The hills stretched away to the west, some still streaked with November’s snow. In the distance, Banks thought he could make out the huge rounded mountains of the Lake District.

“My name’s Banks,” he said. “I’m a policeman.”

“I thought you’d find me eventually. It’s too late, though.”

From where Banks was standing, he could only see her in profile. The ground was a long way below. Banks had no particular fear of heights, but even so, her precarious position on the wall unnerved
him. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back from the edge and talk?” he said.

“I’m sure. Do you think it was easy getting here in the first place?”

“It’s a long walk from Eastvale.”

She cast him a sidelong glance. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Sorry. It just looks a bit dangerous there. You could slip and fall off.”

“What makes you think that wouldn’t be a blessing?”

“Whatever it is,” said Banks, “it can’t be worth this. Come on, Brenda, you’ve got a husband who loves you, a daughter who needs –”

“My husband doesn’t love me, and my daughter doesn’t need me. Do you think I don’t know? David’s been shagging his secretary for two years. Can you imagine such a cliché? He thinks I don’t know. And as for my daughter, I’m just an embarrassment to her and that awful husband of hers. I’m the shopgirl who married up, and now I’m just a skivvy for the lot of them. That’s all I’ve been for years.”

“But things can change.”

She stared at him with pity and shook her head. “No, they can’t,” she said, and gazed off into the distance. “Do you know why I’m here? I mean, do you know what set me off? I’ve put up with it all for years – the coldness, the infidelity – just for the sake of order, not rocking the boat, not causing a scene. But do you know what it was, the straw that finally broke the camel’s back?”

“No,” said Banks, anxious to keep her talking. “I don’t know. Tell me.” He edged a little closer so he could hear her voice above the wind. She didn’t tell him to stop. Snowflakes started to swirl around them.

“People say it’s smell that sparks memory the most, but it wasn’t, not this time. It was a Christmas ornament. I was putting a few last-minute decorations on the tree before Janet and Claude arrived, and I found myself holding these tiny, perfect ice skates I hadn’t seen for years. They sent me right back to a particular day, when I was a child. It’s funny, because it didn’t seem like just a memory – I felt as if I was
really
there. My father took me skating on a pond somewhere in the country. I don’t remember where. But it was just getting dark, and there were red and green and white Christmas lights and music playing – carols like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Away in a Manger’ – and someone was roasting chestnuts on a brazier. The air was full of the smell. I’ll never forget that smell. I was … My father died last year.” She paused and brushed tears and melted snowflakes from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I kept falling down. It must have been my first time on ice. But my father would just pick me up, tell me I was doing fine, and set me going again. I don’t know what it was about that day, but I was so happy, the happiest I can ever remember. Everything seemed perfect, and I felt I could do anything. I wished it would never end. I didn’t even feel the cold. I was just all warm inside and full of love. Did you ever feel like that?”