The Summer That Never Was (15 page)

Tired, Banks put the diary aside, rubbed his eyes, and turned out the light. It felt odd to be back in the same bed he had slept in during his teenage years, the same bed where he had had his first sexual experience, with Kay Summerville, while his parents were out visiting his grandparents one Saturday. It hadn’t been very good for either Banks or Kay, but they had persevered and got a lot better with practice.

Kay Summerville
. He wondered where she was, what she was doing now. Probably married with kids, the same way he had been until recently. She’d been a beauty, though, had Kay: long blond hair, slender waist, long legs, a mouth like Marianne Faithfull’s, firm tits with hard little nipples and hair like spun gold between her legs. Christ, Banks, he told himself, enough with the adolescent fantasies.

He put on his headphones and turned on his portable CD player, listening to Vaughan Williams’s second string quartet, and settled back to more pleasant thoughts of Kay Summerville. But as he approached the edge of sleep, his thoughts jumbled, mixing memory with dream. It was cold and dark, and Banks and Graham were walking across a rugby field, goalposts silhouetted by the moon, cracking spider-web patterns in the ice as they walked, their breath misting the air. Banks must have said something about the Krays being arrested–was he interested in criminals, even then?–and Graham just laughed, saying the law could never touch people like them. Banks asked him how he knew, and Graham said he used to live near them. “They were kings,” he said.

Puzzled by the memory, or dream, Banks turned the bedside light on again and picked up the diary. If what he had just imagined had any basis in reality, then it had happened in winter. He glanced through his entries for January and February, 1965: Samantha Eggar, Yvonne Romain, Elke Sommer…But no mention of the Krays until 9th March, when he had written, “Krays went to trial today. Graham laughed and said they’d get off easy.” So Graham
had
mentioned them. It was flimsy, but a start.

He turned off the light again, and this time he drifted off to sleep without further thoughts of either Graham or Kay Summerville.

8

W
hen Banks arrived at Thorpe Wood the following morning and asked to see Detective Inspector Hart, he was surprised when a man came down to greet him. The telephone call that his mother had told him about when he got back from the pub had been from Michelle.

“Mr. Banks, or should I say DCI Banks? Come with me please, if you would.” He stood aside and gestured for Banks to enter.

“And you are?”

“Detective Superintendent Shaw. We’ll talk in my office.”

Shaw looked familiar, but Banks couldn’t place him. It was possible they had met on a course, or even on a case, years ago, and he had forgotten, but he usually had a good memory for faces.

They didn’t speak on their way to Shaw’s office, and as soon as they got there, Shaw disappeared, saying he’d be back in a couple of minutes. Old copper’s trick, Banks knew. And Shaw knew he knew.

There wasn’t likely to be anything of interest in the office if Shaw was willing to leave Banks there alone, but he had a poke around nonetheless. Second nature. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but just looking for the sake of it. The filing cabinets were locked, as were the desk drawers, and the computer required a password. It began to seem very much as if Shaw
expected
Banks to nose about.

There was an interesting framed photograph in the wall, quite a few years old, by the look of it, showing a younger Shaw and Jet Harris standing by an unmarked Rover looking for all the world like John Thaw and Dennis Waterman in
The Sweeney
. Or was it Morse and Lewis? Is that how Shaw saw himself, as Sergeant Lewis to Harris’s Chief Inspector Morse?

The bookcase held mostly binders and back issues of the
Police Review
. Mixed in were a few legal texts and an American textbook called
Practical Homicide Investigation
. Banks was browsing through this and trying not to look at the gruesome colour illustrations when, after half an hour, Shaw came back, followed by a rather embarrassed-looking DI Michelle Hart.

“Sorry about that,” said Shaw, sitting down opposite Banks. “Something came up. You know how it is.” Michelle sat to one side looking uncomfortable.

“I know.” Banks put the book aside and reached for a cigarette.

“There’s no smoking in here,” said Shaw. “Not anywhere in the building, not for any of us, these days. Maybe you’re a little behind the times up in Yorkshire?”

Banks had known that he probably couldn’t smoke, though Shaw had the nicotine-stained fingers of a heavy smoker, and he thought it at least worth a try. Obviously, though, this was going to be played the hard way, even though they had done him the courtesy of conducting the interview in the superintendent’s office rather than in a dingy interview room. He didn’t feel nervous, just puzzled and pissed-off. What was going on?

“So, what can I do for you, Superintendent Shaw?”

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Shaw stared at Banks, and Banks searched through his store of faces for a match. The ginger hair was thin on top, one long side strand combed over to hide the bald patch, but not fooling anyone; hardly any eyebrows; freckles; pale blue eyes; the face filled out and jowly; the
fleshy, red-veined nose of a seasoned drinker. He was familiar, but there was something different about him. Then Banks knew.

“You’ve had your ears fixed,” he said. “The wonders of modern medicine.”

Shaw reddened. “So you
do
remember me.”

“You were the baby DC who came to our house after Graham disappeared.” It was hard to believe, but Shaw would have been about twenty-one at the time, only seven years older than Banks, yet he had seemed an adult, someone from another world.

“Tell me,” said Shaw, leaning forward across the table so Banks could smell the minty breath of a man who drinks his breakfast. “I’ve always wondered. Did you ever get your budgie back?”

Banks leaned back in his chair. “Well, now we’ve got all the pleasantries out of the way, why don’t we get on with it?”

Shaw jerked his head at Michelle, who slid a photograph across the desk to Banks. She looked serious with her reading-glasses on. Sexy, too, Banks thought. “Is this the man?” she asked.

Banks stared at the black and white photo and felt a rush of blood to his brain, ears buzzing and vision clouding. It all flooded back, those few moments of claustrophobia and terror in the stranger’s grip, the moments he thought were his last.

“Are you all right?”

It was Michelle who spoke, a concerned look her face.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You look pale. Would you like a drink of water?”

“No, thank you,” said Banks. “It’s him.”

“Are you certain?”

“After all this time I can’t be a hundred per cent positive, but I’m as certain as I’ll ever be.”

Shaw nodded, and Michelle took the picture back.

“Why?” Banks asked, looking from one to the other. “What is it?”

“James Francis McCallum,” Michelle said. “He went missing from a mental institution near Wisbech on Thursday, 17th June, 1965.”

“That would be about right,” said Banks.

“McCallum hadn’t been involved in any violent activity, but the doctors told us that the possibility always existed, and that he might be dangerous.”

“When was he caught?” Banks asked.

Michelle glanced at Shaw before answering. He gave her a curt nod. “That’s just it,” she went on. “He wasn’t. McCallum’s body was fished out of the River Nene near Oundle on the 1st of July.”

Banks felt his mouth open and shut without any sound coming out. “Dead?” he managed.

“Dead,” echoed Shaw. He tapped his pen on the desk. “Nearly two months before your friend disappeared. So you see, DCI Banks, you’ve been labouring under an illusion for all these years. Now, what I’m really interested in is why you lied to me and DI Proctor in the first place.”

Banks felt numb from the shock he had just received.
Dead
. All these years. The guilt. And all for nothing. The man who assaulted him on the riverbank
couldn’t
have abducted and killed Graham. He should have felt relieved, but he only felt confused. “I didn’t lie,” he muttered.

“Call it a sin of omission, then. You didn’t tell us about McCallum.”

“Doesn’t seem as if it would have mattered, does it?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Look, I was just a kid. I hadn’t told my parents because I was scared how they’d react. I was upset and ashamed by what happened. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but that’s how I felt. Dirty and ashamed, as if it was somehow
my
fault for inviting it.”

“You should have told us. It could have been a lead.”

Banks knew that Shaw was right; he had told reluctant witnesses the same thing himself, time after time. “Well, I didn’t, and it wasn’t,” he snapped. “I’m sorry. Okay?”

But Shaw wasn’t going to be so easily put off, Banks could tell. He was enjoying himself, throwing his weight around. It was the bully mentality. To him, Banks was still the fourteen-year-old kid whose budgie had just flown out the door. “What really happened to your friend?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

Shaw scratched his chin. “I remember thinking at the time that you knew something, that you were holding something back. I’d like to have taken you to the station, had you down in the cells for an hour or so, but you were a minor, and Reg Proctor was a bit of a softie, when it came right down to it. What really happened?”

“I don’t know. Graham just disappeared.”

“Are you sure you and your mates didn’t set on him? Maybe it was an accident, things just went too far?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m suggesting that maybe the three of you ganged up on Graham Marshall for some reason and killed him. These things happen. Then you had to get rid of the body.”

Banks folded his arms. “And tell me how we did that.”

“I don’t know,” Shaw admitted. “But I don’t have to. Maybe you stole a car.”

“None of us could drive.”

“So you say.”

“It wasn’t the way it is today, with ten-year-olds behind the wheel.”

“Is that how it happened? A fight broke out and Graham got killed? Maybe fell and smashed his skull, or broke his neck? I’m not saying you
intended
to kill him, but it happened, didn’t it? Why don’t you come clean with me, Banks? It’ll do you good to get it off your chest after all these years.”

“Sir?”

“Shut up, DI Hart. Well, Banks? I’m waiting.”

Banks stood up. “You’ll have a bloody long wait, then. Goodbye.” He walked towards the door. Shaw didn’t try to stop him. Just as Banks had turned the handle, he heard
the superintendent speak again and turned to face him. Shaw was grinning. “Only teasing, Banks,” he said. Then his expression became serious. “My, but you’re sensitive. The point I want to make is that you’re on
my
turf, and it turns out you can’t help us any more now than you could all those years ago. So my advice to you, laddie, is to bugger off back up to Yorkshire, go shag a sheep or two, and forget about Graham Marshall. Leave it to the pros.”

“Bloody good job the pros did last time,” said Banks, leaving and slamming the door behind him, annoyed at himself for losing his temper, but unable to prevent it. Outside the station, he kicked a tire, lit a cigarette, and got in his car. Maybe Shaw was right and he should just head back up north. He still had over a week’s holiday left and plenty to do around the cottage, whereas there was nothing more he could do down here. Before driving off, he sat for a moment trying to digest what Michelle and Shaw had told him. His guilt over the years had been misplaced, then; McCallum was in no way responsible for Graham’s abduction, and, by extension, neither was Banks. On the other hand, if he
had
reported the incident, there was a chance that McCallum might have been apprehended and hospitalized instead of drowning.
More guilt, then
?

Banks cast his mind back to that hot June afternoon by the river and asked himself if McCallum would have killed him. The answer, he decided, was yes. So sod the bastard, and sod guilt. McCallum was a dangerous loony and it wasn’t Banks’s fault he’d fallen in the fucking river and drowned. Good riddance.

Turning up the volume on Cream’s “Crossroads,” he sped out of the police car park, daring one of the patrol cars to chase him. Nobody did.

They all looked tired, Annie thought, as the Armitage team gathered in the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters late that morning. The boardroom was so called because of its long polished table, high-backed chairs and paintings
of nineteenth-century cotton magnates on the walls, red-faced, eyes popping, probably because of the tight collars they were wearing, Annie thought. As works of art, the paintings were negligible, if not execrable, but they lent authority to the room.

Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe sat at the head of the table and poured himself a glass of water. Also present were DCs Templeton, Rickerd and Jackman, and Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley, still clearly uneasy with Annie’s promotion over him. But as Banks had told Annie more than once, Jim Hatchley was born to be a sergeant, and a damn good one, too. There wasn’t much Hatchley didn’t know about the shady side of Eastvale. He had a network of informers second only to his network of pub managers and landlords, who all kept an eye on criminal comings and goings for him, and his tiredness was probably due to the fact that his wife had just given birth to their second child a couple of weeks ago. It was the three DCs who had borne the brunt of the previous night’s surveillance.

“So we’re not much further ahead,” Gristhorpe opened.

“No, sir,” said Annie, who at least had managed her quick pint in Relton, then gone home for a bath and a few hours’ sleep before arriving back at the station shortly after dawn. “Except we’ve checked with the phone company and got Luke’s records. We’ll be tracking down all the people he phoned over the last month, though there aren’t many. The ransom call to Martin Armitage was the only call made after Luke’s disappearance, the only call made that day, and it was local. Wherever Luke is, he’s not far away, or he wasn’t on Tuesday evening.”

“Anything else?”

“We’ve got a fair idea of Luke’s movements until five-thirty the day he disappeared.”

“Go ahead.”

Annie walked over to the whiteboard and listed the times and places as she mentioned them. She knew the
details by heart and didn’t need to consult her notebook. “He arrived at the bus-station by the Swainsdale Centre at a quarter to three. The bus driver and several of the passengers remember him. We’ve been looking at some of the CCTV footage, and he walked around the centre for a while, went into W. H. Smith, then into HMV, but he didn’t appear to buy anything. That takes us up until half past three. He appeared in that small computer shop on North Market Street at a quarter to four, which is about right, as he was on foot. He stayed there half an hour, trying out some games, then he visited the music shop at the corner of York Road and Barton Place.”

“Did anyone notice anything unusual about his state of mind?” Gristhorpe asked.

“No. Everyone said he just seemed normal. Which, I guess, was pretty weird to start with. I mean, he wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.”

“And next?”

“The used-book shop on the market square.” Annie walked over to the window and pointed. “That one down there. Norman’s.”

“I know it,” said Gristhorpe. “What did he buy?”

“
Crime and Punishment
and
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
.” Right up Gristhorpe’s alley, Annie thought.

Gristhorpe whistled. “Pretty heavy going for a fifteen-year-old. What next?”

“That was it. He walked out of the market-square CCTV range at half past five, and we haven’t found anyone who admits to seeing him since. Oh, and he was also seen talking to a group of lads in the square after coming out of the bookshop. It looked as if they were ragging him. One of them took the parcel of books from his hand and they tossed it around to one another while he flailed around trying to get it back.”