When the Music's Over (16 page)

“Well, he certainly got his immunity from somewhere. What were the rumors?”

“Mostly that he liked them young. I mean, he wasn't that old then himself.”

“Underage?”

“Never heard that mentioned specifically.”

“Unwilling?”

“I think everyone assumed the girls threw themselves at him.”

“That's what he told us. One of the accusers who's come forward lives near Eastvale. I've been assigned the investigation.”

“Lucky you. Any hope?”

“Maybe. A glimmer.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“She used to live here. In Leeds. She was on her holidays with her family in Blackpool when the assault took place.”

“What does she say?”

“That Caxton and another man raped her in a hotel room.”

“How did they get her there?”

Banks explained as best he could to Blackstone what Linda Palmer had told him. “She's not clear on everything,” he added. “It was a long time ago.”

“You're telling me.”

“She says she reported it when the family got back home. Here. Her mother went to the police station with her.”

“That would've been Brotherton House, back then. Top end of the Headrow.”

“I know,” said Banks. “There's got to be paperwork somewhere, Ken. That's the first thing we need to track down. Proof that she reported what happened, proof that nothing was followed up.”

“Might be tougher than you think. The paper trail might be somewhere, maybe. But the question is, where?”

Banks sipped some more beer. It tasted good but didn't do a lot to slake his thirst. Maybe he should have asked for a pint of chilled lager on a day like this. “Computers?”

“I'm not sure anything that far back has been entered. In fact, it most likely hasn't been. Let me look into it. I know a good archivist. It'll give me an excuse to ask her out for lunch or something.”

“Always happy to be of help in the romance department.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You know. The love life.”

“What love life?”

“Like that, is it? I thought you had a lovely young girlfriend. Italian, isn't she?”

“I did. Oriana. It just didn't work out, that's all. She was too young. Then either she was too busy or I was. You know the sort of thing. There was never any talk about . . . you know . . . any commitment or anything. We had fun, that's all.”

“So no pain?”

“I wouldn't quite say that. I listened to
Blood on the Tracks
and
The Boatman's Call
a few too many times after she left. Drank a bit too much Laphroaig. Felt sorry for myself. But did I slit my wrists? No.”

“With me it's always
In the Wee Small Hours
and Macallan eighteen-year-old.”

“Yeah, that's a good combination, too. I always said you had class.”

“So there's nothing new on the horizon?”

“Not so far as I can see.”

Blackstone gestured to Banks's almost empty glass. “Another?”

“No. Better not. I have to drive back. I'll do a bit of shopping while I'm here first. Walk it off.” One thing Banks wanted to do was go to Waterstones and buy Linda Palmer's latest book of poetry, along with
Dart
, the book she was reading when he talked to her. And maybe
Ariel
. They might give him a bit more insight into her character. Besides, he might also enjoy them. He would also make time to go to HMV and pick up the new Sviatoslav Richter box set, his deferred present to himself on his promotion and salary increase. If they had it in stock, of course. He still missed the old Classical Record Shop. He
had been listening to a lot of solo piano music in the long summer evenings—Angela Hewitt, Imogen Cooper, Mitsuko Uchida and other contemporary pianists playing Bach, Schubert, Chopin and Mozart, mostly—but Richter was a new discovery for him. He had enjoyed the 1958 Sofia recital and was looking forward to listening to some of the live New York recordings he had read about in
Gramophone
.

“If I'm going to attempt to find something in the archives,” Blackstone said, “I'm going to need to know what it is. Is that a problem?”

“Not at all. As far as I'm concerned you're an essential member of the investigative team as of now. You know as well as I do that victims' identities are always sacred in cases like this.”

“I've been there. You don't think anyone escaped the fallout from the Savile business around here, do you?”

“I suppose not. Leeds lad, wasn't he?”

“For our sins. And you also know that if you're dealing with something along those lines, there's a good chance any written records of what happened might have disappeared over the years.”

“I know that, too. But it doesn't hurt to look.”

“Not you, it doesn't. You're not the one who'll be getting a lungfull of archive dust.”

“Surely you've got more hygienic storage facilities these days?”

“I wouldn't count on it.”

Banks lowered his voice. “The complainant's name is Linda Palmer. She was fourteen at the time.”

“Tough one,” said Blackstone.

“She's a survivor, though,” Banks went on. “Become a successful poet, as a matter of fact.”

“Poetry?” Blackstone pulled a face. “Not really up my street.”

“Mine, neither,” said Banks.
At least, it didn't used to be
, he thought. He had read that morning some excerpts in his anthology from Milton's
Paradise Lost
, and the final lines, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, still reverberated in his mind: “They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way.” There was something deeply tragic about it that was as much, if not more, in the solemn music of the syntax as in the meanings
of the words themselves. One thing he was quickly coming to realize as he worked his way through the anthology was that even if you didn't understand a poem, which was frequently, you could still enjoy its music. “She's been very successful,” he said. “She's smart and articulate. She doesn't seem broken at all.”

“Sounds like you're smitten, mate. Attractive, too?”

“That, too. But mostly she's just an interesting woman who went through a terrible ordeal a long time ago. But she's dealt with it. She hasn't let it ruin her life.”

“Why didn't she pursue it back then?”

“She was ignored after that first interview. Her mother wanted to forget all about it. They never even told her dad. Years passed.”

“And this business in the newspapers has brought it all back?”

“That's right.”

“You believe her story?”

“Yes.”

“Good enough for me, then.” Blackstone took out a small notebook, not the official one.

“She said they went to Blackpool the last two weeks of August,” Banks said. “The twelfth to the twenty-sixth. And the assault occurred after the Saturday matinee at the end of the first week. That'd be the nineteenth of August. I looked it up.”

“And she reported it when?”

“First week after they got back. She can't remember exactly what day, but early in the week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday. That'd be the twenty-ninth or thirtieth of August 1967.”

“Remember what you were doing then?”

“Probably listening to
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
,” said Banks. He had a sudden flash of memory. The summer Sunday afternoons sitting on Paul Major's front steps listening to the Beatles' new album on the old Dansette. Banks, Paul, Graham Marshall, Dave Grenfell and Steve Hill. Was that what he was doing while Linda Palmer was getting raped? Steve, Paul and Graham were all dead now, one from cancer, one from AIDS and one from murder.

“Why didn't she report it in Blackpool, after it happened?” Blackstone asked.

“I don't know,” said Banks. “I imagine she was confused, upset, in shock. I think she wanted to pretend it never happened, hide it from her parents.”

“I'm just thinking that if it went through us, someone would have probably passed it on to Lancashire.”

“I'll have Winsome get in touch with them, again. Ask them to try harder. But in the meantime—”

“Don't worry. I'll have a root-around for you.”

“Thanks, Ken. You're a pal.”

“Muggins, more like.”

Excerpt from Linda Palmer's Memoir

I have been praised for my “unflinching gaze,” my “clarity of perception” and my “fearless imagination” as a poet, all of which is ironic, in some ways. Sometimes I feel very much the phony, far more the blinkered coward unwilling to face up to the tragic events of my own life. But we don't, really, do we? Not while they're happening. We get through them somehow—the rape, my mother's, father's and husband's deaths, the loss of an unborn child, the lingering aftermaths of all our sorrows. It's only when they're over that we have to face up to them, when they have become memories. And memories can hurt far more than the events themselves. They can also be untrue. Perhaps the reviewers are right in other ways, though, as I have no fear of expressing things the way I feel them. You probably think I'm tough. If only you had known me then.

I'm not saying my account won't be “true” as far as I can possibly make it so, just that it has gone through the black hole of time and memory and you may have to indulge my occasional lapses. I will try not to twist the truth, or augment it, but I may comment on it. I may also drift into stream of consciousness from time to time. I hope that doesn't put you off.

I'm starting with this preamble because I imagine myself writing this for you, a policeman used to facts and forensics, reason and evidence. But I think imagination plays a far greater
role in your work than many people realize. You even read poetry. That surprised me. Wordsworth. Who would have thought it? You said I should try to write down what happened, that writing might help me to remember, but I can hardly become the “me” I was at fourteen. Memory doesn't work like that; at least, mine doesn't. I can only imagine me then from where I am now, if that doesn't sound too T. S. Eliot. It doesn't mean I don't or can't remember. It doesn't mean that all this is a lie. It just means that I'm looking back from a great distance. It's not that things are tiny, as if I were staring through the wrong end of a telescope. Not at all. When I close my eyes, the figures are as large as any on a TV screen. I can see details, even recall smells and textures. But they may not match the past exactly. If I were to draw an outline of what I see on a sheet of tracing paper and place it on top of the original scene, the lines wouldn't quite coincide, some would meander or go off at tangents, the positions would be out of true, the proportions hopelessly mismatched and misshapen. Mad geometry.

Remember, these things happened a long time ago, so the details melt and distort like a Dalí watch, but the feelings are still true. I wonder what use my feelings will be to you, but I will continue as best I can. I should also tell you right now that I can't tell a story in a straightforward way. First this happened, then this. Just the facts, ma'am. It's not me. If I could do that I'd probably be making a fortune writing popular fiction. I suppose that's what you're used to. But I get distracted, sidetracked. I digress. In a strange way, I feel I'm writing this as much for myself as for you. It's the only way I can write. I do aim for honesty, however uncomfortable it may be. I shall try to tell the truth, and perhaps if we are both patient, some of it may emerge.

In the first place, I want to be clear that I don't think the incident blighted my life. I don't think I've lived a blighted life. I've been lucky, on the whole. I've had periods of great happiness and joy, much success and acclaim. My marriage was a blessing and my children remain a joy. There have been years when I haven't given a passing thought to what happened in Blackpool
when I was fourteen, until all this recent fascination with historical abuse, which makes me feel I have to stand up, put my hand up and say, “Yes, it happened to me, too.” Solidarity with other victims? Perhaps. But true, nonetheless. So, to it.

It was summer and we were going on our annual holidays. Two weeks in Blackpool. Every year the same. Same boardinghouse, breakfast and evening meal included. But this time, for the first time, my best friend, Melanie, and her parents were coming with us. They lived on the same estate in Leeds, just around the corner from us, and Melanie and I were in the same form at Silver Royd. We were hoping that, as there were two of us, we'd be allowed to roam a bit, let off the leash, while our parents got to do the things they wanted, like go to the pub and sit on the beach in deck chairs with their knotted hankies on their heads and magazines protecting their sleeping faces from the sunshine, should we be lucky enough to have any.

On the whole, my parents weren't too controlling. Two years before on holiday, my dad had let me go and see the Beatles at the ABC as long as Mum went with me. He had even queued and got the tickets for us but wouldn't have considered going himself. It was “fab,” as they used to say. Mostly it's just a blur of adrenaline, but I still remember when Paul sang “Yesterday” for the first time anywhere, ever. Tears just streamed down my cheeks as I listened to those sad words. What I could hear of them, at any rate. Mum never said much, but she was pale and shaky when we left, and I'm not sure she ever got over a theater full of teenage girls screaming and crying and jumping on their seats and wetting themselves. I didn't do that, of course, but I suppose what I'm saying is that I was a typical teenager, perhaps even more innocent than most. Paul was my Beatle then, but a few years later it was the bad boy John.

With Melanie, the holiday would be different. We would wander the Golden Mile, play the one-armed bandits, watch the mechanical hand drop the trinket it had grabbed just before it reached the chute. Perhaps we would be allowed to visit the Pleasure Beach after dark. We would flirt with boys, ride the Big
Dipper, wear kiss me quick hats, visit all the joke shops, buy itching powder and whoopee cushions, examine the racks of cheeky postcards outside the gift shops without being dragged away by our mothers or fathers. (Q: “Do you prefer long legs or short legs?” A: “I like something in between.”) We could be just like pretend grown-ups. We hadn't even brought our buckets and spades. We were too old for toys like that. We had put away childish things and were about to embrace the grown-up world. At least that was the idea. I wasn't to know how the grown-up world was soon going to embrace me.