Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was) Read online

  “Go on.”

  “It was nothing, really,” Banks said, embarrassed at how slight the events that had haunted him for years now seemed on this bright afternoon sitting under a beech tree with an attractive woman. But there was no backing out now. “We were throwing stones in the water, skimming, that sort of thing. Then we moved down the riverbank a bit and found some bigger stones and bricks. We started chucking those in to make a big splash. At least I did. Steve and Paul were a bit farther down. Anyway, I was holding this big rock to my chest with both hands – it took all my strength – when I noticed this tall, scruffy sort of bloke walking along the riverbank toward me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Held on to it,” said Banks. “So I didn’t splash him. Always the polite little bugger, I was. I remember smiling as he got nearer, you know, showing him I was holding off dropping the rock until he was out of range.” Banks paused and drew on his cigarette. “Next thing I knew,” he went on, “he’d grabbed hold of me from behind and I’d dropped the rock and splashed us both.”

  “What happened? What did he do?”

  “We struggled. I thought he was trying to push me in, but I managed to dig in my heels. I might not have been very big, but I was wiry and strong. I think my resistance surprised him. I remember smelling his sweat and I think he’d been drinking. Beer. I remembered smelling it on my father’s breath when he came back from the pub sometimes.”

  Michelle took her notebook out. “Can you give me a description?”

  “He had a ragged dark beard. His hair was greasy and long, longer than usual back then. It was black. Like Rasputin. And he wore one of those army greatcoats. I remember thinking when I saw him coming that he must be hot in such a heavy overcoat.”

  “When was this?”

  “Late June. It was a nice day, sort of like today.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He tried to drag me away, toward the bushes, but I managed to squirm out of his grasp, one arm at any rate, and he swung me around, swore at me and punched me in the face. The momentum broke me loose, so I ran.”

  “Where were your friends?”

  “Back up by the road by then. A good hundred yards away. Watching.”

  “Didn’t they help you?”

  “They were scared.”

  “They didn’t call the police?”

  “It all happened so fast. When I got free, I ran off and joined them and we never looked back. We decided not to say anything to our parents because we weren’t supposed to be playing down by the river in the first place, and we were supposed to be at school. We thought we’d get into trouble.”

  “I can imagine you did. What did your parents say about your face?”

  “They weren’t too pleased. I told them I’d got into a bit of a scrap at school. All in all, I suppose it was a lucky escape. I tried to put it out of my mind, but…”

  “You couldn’t?”

  “Off and on. There’s been lengthy periods of my life when I haven’t thought of it at all.”

  “Why do you see a connection with what happened to Graham?”

  “It seemed too much of a coincidence, that’s all,” said Banks. “First this pervert trying to push me in the river, dragging me into the bushes, then Graham disappearing like that.”

  “Well,” said Michelle, finishing her drink and closing her notebook, “I’d better go and see if I can find any trace of your mystery man, hadn’t I?”

  Chapter 6

  Showered and dressed in crisp, clean clothes, Annie presented herself at Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s office that afternoon, as requested. There was something austere and headmasterly about the room that always intimidated her. Partly, it had to do with the tall bookcases, mostly filled with legal and forensics texts, but dotted here and there with classics such as Bleak House and Anna Karenina, books Annie had never read, books that mocked her with their oft-mentioned titles and their thickness. And partly it was Gristhorpe’s appearance: big, bulky, red-faced, unruly-haired, hook-nosed, pockmarked. Today he wore gray flannel trousers and a tweed jacket with elbow patches. He looked as if he ought to be smoking a pipe, but Annie knew he didn’t smoke.

  “Right,” said Gristhorpe after he had asked her to sit down. “Now, tell me what the hell’s going on out Mortsett way.”

  Annie felt herself flush. “It was a judgment call, sir.”

  Gristhorpe waved his large hairy hand. “I’m not questioning your judgment. I want to know what you think is happening.”

  Annie relaxed a little and crossed her legs. “I think Luke Armitage has been kidnapped, sir. Someone communicated a ransom demand to the family last night, and Martin Armitage rang me to cancel the search for Luke.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No, sir. Something wasn’t right. In my opinion, Luke Armitage wasn’t to be considered ‘found’ until I’d seen him with my own eyes and talked to him.”

  “Fair enough. What happened next?”

  “As you know, sir, I went out to see the family again this morning. I got the distinct impression they didn’t want me there, that something was going on.” Annie explained about following Martin Armitage to the drop and being stuck up the hillside watching the shelter by herself for hours, until she went back down to the village and finally found someone at home with a telephone.

  “Do you think he saw you? The kidnapper.”

  “It’s possible,” Annie admitted. “If he was hiding somewhere nearby and watching through binoculars. It’s open country up there. But it’s my impression that he’ll either wait until nightfall-”

  “And risk leaving the money out there all day?”

  “It’s off the beaten track. And most people follow the government regulations.”

  “What else?”

  “Pardon, sir.”

  “You said ‘either.’ To me, that implies an ‘or.’ I interrupted you. Go on. What else do you think might have happened?”

  “Maybe something has gone wrong, something we don’t know about.”

  “Like?”

  Annie swallowed and looked away. “Like Luke’s dead, sir. It happens sometimes with kidnappings. He tried to escape, struggled too hard…”

  “But the kidnapper can still collect. Remember, the Armitages can’t possibly know their son’s dead, if he is, and the money’s just sitting there for the taking. If you weren’t seen, then only Martin Armitage and the kidnapper know it’s there.”

  “That’s what puzzles me, sir. The money. Obviously a kidnapper who makes a ransom demand is in it for the money, whether the victim lives or dies. Maybe he’s just being unduly cautious, waiting for dark, as I suggested earlier.”

  “Possibly.” Gristhorpe looked at his watch. “Who’s up there now?”

  “DC Templeton, sir.”

  “Organize a surveillance rota. I’ll ask for permission to plant an electronic tracking device in the briefcase. Someone can put it there under cover of darkness, if the damn thing hasn’t been picked up before then.” Gristhorpe grunted. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. ACC McLaughlin will have my guts for garters.”

  “You could always blame me, sir.”

  “Aye, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Annie, a chance to get bolshie with the bigwigs?”

  “Sir-”

  “It’s all right, lass. I’m only teasing you. Haven’t you learned Yorkshire ways yet?”

  “Sometimes I despair that I ever will.”

  “Give it a few more years. Anyway, that’s my job. I can handle the brass.”

  “What about the Armitages, sir?”

  “I think you’d better pay them another visit, don’t you?”

  “But what if their place is being watched?”

  “The kidnapper doesn’t know you.” Gristhorpe smiled. “And it’s not as if you look like a plainclothes copper, Annie.”

  “And I thought I’d put on my conservative best.”

  “All you have to do is wear those red
boots again. Are their telephone calls still being intercepted?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then how the devil…?”

  “The same thing puzzled me. Martin Armitage said the call from Luke came through on his mobile, so I’m assuming it was the kidnapper’s call he was talking about.”

  “But why wouldn’t he just use the regular land line?”

  “Armitage said he and Robin were supposed to go out to dinner that night, so Luke didn’t think they’d be home.”

  “He believed they would still go out to dinner, even after he’d disappeared? And he told his kidnapper this?”

  “I know it sounds odd, sir. And in my judgment, Martin Armitage is the last person Luke would call.”

  “Ah, I see. Signs of family tension?”

  “All under the surface, but definitely there, I’d say. Luke’s very much his mother’s son, and his biological father’s, perhaps. He’s creative, artistic, a loner, a dreamer. Martin Armitage is a man of action, a sportsman, bit of a macho tough guy.”

  “Go carefully, then, Annie. You don’t want to disturb a nest of vipers.”

  “There might be no choice if I want honest answers to my questions.”

  “Then tread softly and carry a big stick.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And don’t give up on the kid. It’s early days yet.”

  “Yes, sir,” Annie said, though she wasn’t at all certain about that.

  The old street looked much the same as it had when Banks lived there with his parents between 1962 and 1969 – from “Love Me Do” to Woodstock – except that everything – the brickwork, the doors, the slate roofs – was just that little bit shabbier, and small satellite dishes had replaced the forest of old television aerials on just about all the houses, including his parents’. That made sense. He couldn’t imagine his father living without Sky Sports.

  Back in the early sixties, the estate was new, and Banks’s mother had been thrilled to move from their little back-to-back terrace house with the outside toilet to the new house with “all mod cons,” as they used to say. As far as Banks was concerned, the best “mod cons” were the indoor WC, a real bathroom to replace the tin tub they had had to fill from a kettle every Friday, and a room of his own. In the old house, he had shared with his brother Roy, five years younger, and like all siblings, they fought more than anything else.

  The house stood near the western edge of the estate, close to the arterial road, across from an abandoned factory and a row of shops, including the newsagent’s. Banks paused for a moment and took in the weathered terraced houses – rows of five, each with a little garden, wooden gate, low wall and privet hedge. Some people had made small improvements, he noticed, and one house had an enclosed porch. The owners must have bought the place when the Conservatives sold off council houses for peanuts in the eighties. Maybe there was even a conservatory around the back, Banks thought, though it would be folly to add an extension made almost entirely of glass on an estate like this.

  A knot of kids stood smoking and shoving one another in the middle of the street, some Asian, some white, clocking Banks out of the corners of their eyes. Locals were always suspicious of newcomers, and the kids had no idea who he was, that he had grown up here, too. Some of them were wearing low-slung baggy jeans and hoodies. Mangy dogs wandered up and down the street, barking at everything and nothing, shitting on the pavements, and loud rock music blasted out of an open window several houses east.

  Banks opened the gate. He noticed that his mother had planted some colorful flowers and kept the small patch of lawn neatly trimmed. This was the only garden she had ever had, and she always had been proud of her little patch of earth. He walked up the flagstone path and knocked at the door. He saw his mother approach through the frosted glass pane. She opened the door, rubbed her hands together as if drying them, and gave him a hug. “Alan,” she said. “Lovely to see you. Come on in.”

  Banks dropped his overnight bag in the hall and followed his mother through to the living room. The wallpaper was a sort of wispy autumn-leaves pattern, the three-piece suite a matching brown velveteen, and there was a sentimental autumnal landscape hanging over the electric fire. He didn’t remember this theme from his previous visit, about a year ago, but he couldn’t be certain that it hadn’t been there, either. So much for the observant detective and the dutiful son.

  His father was sitting in his usual armchair, the one with the best straight-on view of the television. He didn’t get up, only grunted, “Son. How you doing?”

  “Not bad, Dad. You?”

  “Mustn’t complain.” Arthur Banks had been suffering from mild angina and an assortment of less specified chronic illnesses for years, ever since he’d been made redundant from the sheet-metal factory, and they seemed to get neither better nor worse as the years went on. He took pills occasionally for the chest pains. Other than that, and the damage booze and fags had wreaked on his liver and lungs over the years, he had always been fit as a fiddle. Short, skinny and hollow-chested, he still had a head of thick dark hair with hardly a trace of gray. He wore it slicked back with lashings of Brylcreem.

  Banks’s mother, plump and nervy, with pouchy chipmunk cheeks and a haze of blue-gray hair hovering around her skull, fussed about how thin Banks was looking. “I don’t suppose you’ve been eating properly since Sandra left, have you?” she said.

  “You know how it is,” said Banks. “I manage to gulp down the occasional Big Mac and fries now and then, if I’ve got time to spare.”

  “Don’t be cheeky. Besides, you need proper food. In for tea?”

  “I suppose so,” Banks said. He hadn’t thought about what he was going to do once he actually got home. If truth be told, he had imagined that the local police – in the lovely form of DI Michelle Hart – would find his offer of help invaluable and give him an office at Thorpe Wood. But that clearly was not to be. Fair enough, he thought; it’s her case, after all. “I’ll just take my bag up,” he said, heading for the stairs.

  Though Banks hadn’t stayed overnight since he had first left for London, somehow he knew that his room would be just as it always had been. And he was right. Almost. It was the same wardrobe, the same small bookcase, the same narrow bed he had slept in as a teenager, sneaking his transistor radio under the covers to listen to Radio Luxembourg, or reading a book by the light of a flashlight. The only thing different was the wallpaper. Gone were the sports-car images of his adolescence, replaced by pink and green stripes. He stood on the threshold for a few moments allowing it all to flow back, allowing the emotion that he felt nudging at the boundaries of his consciousness. It wasn’t quite nostalgia, nor was it loss, but something in between.

  The view hadn’t changed. Banks’s bedroom was the only one at the back of the house, next to the WC and bathroom, and it looked out over backyards and an alleyway, beyond which an empty field stretched a hundred yards or so to the next estate. People walked their dogs there, and sometimes the local kids gathered at night.

  Banks used to do that, he remembered, with Dave, Paul, Steve and Graham, sharing Woodbines and Park Drives or, if Graham was flush, those long American tipped cigarettes, Peter Stuyvesants or Pall Malls. Later, after Graham had disappeared, Banks had sometimes been there with girlfriends. The field wasn’t square and there was a little dogleg on the other side where, if you were careful, you couldn’t be seen from the houses. He remembered well enough those long, raw-lipped snogging sessions, pushed up against the rusty corrugated iron fencing, the fervid struggles with bra hooks, safety pins or whatever other contrivances the local girls so inconsiderately used to keep themselves fastened up.

  Banks dropped his bag at the bottom of the bed and stretched. It had been a long drive, and the time spent in the pub garden, the pint he had drunk with DI Hart, all conspired to make him feel tired. He thought of taking a brief nap before tea but decided it would be rude; he could at least go down and talk to his parents, as he hadn’t been in touch for so lo
ng.

  First, he unpacked his shirt to hang up in the wardrobe before the creases became too permanent. The other clothes in the wardrobe were unfamiliar, but Banks noticed several cardboard boxes on the floor. He pulled one out and was stunned when he saw it contained his old records: singles, as those were all he could afford back then, when they cost 6/4 and an LP cost 32/6. Of course, he got LPs for Christmas and birthdays, often with record tokens, but they were mostly Beatles and Rolling Stones, and he had taken those to London with him.

  The records here represented the beginnings of his musical interests. When he left, he had soon gone on to Cream, Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane, then later discovered jazz and, later still, classical, but these… Banks dipped his hand in and lifted out a stack, flipping through them. Here they were in all their glory: Dusty Springfield’s “Goin’ Back,” The Shadows’ “The Rise amp; Fall of Flingel Bunt,” Cilla Black’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “Alfie,” “Nut Rocker” by B. Bumble and the Stingers, Sandie Shaw’s “Always Something There to Remind Me,” “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals and “As Tears Go By” by Marianne Faithfull. There were many more, some he had forgotten, and a few really obscure artists, such as Ral Donner and Kenny Lynch, and cover versions of Del Shannon and Roy Orbison hits made by unnamed performers for Woolworth’s cheap Embassy label. What a treasure trove of nostalgia, all the stuff he listened to between the ages of about eleven and sixteen. His old record player was long gone, but his parents had a stereo downstairs, so perhaps he would play a few of the old songs while he was home.

  For the moment, he put back the box and pulled out another one, this one full mostly of old toys. There were model airplanes – Spitfires, Wellingtons, Junkers and a Messerschmitt with a broken wing – a couple of Dinky Toys, a Dan Dare Rocket Gun, and a small clockwork Dalek that said “Ex-ter-min-ate! Ex-ter-min-ate!” as it rolled along like an upturned dustbin. There were a few old annuals, too – The Saint, Danger Man and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. – along with what had once been his pride and joy, a pocket-size Philips transistor radio. Maybe if he put in some new batteries, he could even get it working.