Not Safe After Dark: And Other Stories Page 2

  He poured Banks a cup of tea so strong you could stand a spoon up in it, offered some scones, and they sat in Gristhorpe’s study. A paperback copy of Trollope’s The Vicar of Bullhampton lay on a small table beside a worn and scuffed brown leather armchair.

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?” Banks asked.

  Gristhorpe considered the question a moment. “No. Why?”

  Banks told him about Jerry Singer, then said, “I wanted your opinion. Besides, you were here then, weren’t you?”

  Gristhorpe’s bushy eyebrows knit in a frown. “Nineteen sixty-six?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was here, but that’s over thirty years ago, Alan. My memory’s not what it used to be. Besides, what makes you think there’s anything in this other than some New Age fantasy?”

  “I don’t know that there is,” Banks answered, at a loss how to explain his interest, even to the broad-minded Gristhorpe. Boredom, partly, and the oddness of Singer’s claim, the certainty the man seemed to feel about it. But how could he tell his superintendent that he had so little to do he was opening investigations into the supernatural? “There was a sort of innocence about him,” he said. “And he seemed so sincere about it, so intense.”

  “‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.’ W. B. Yeats,” Gristhorpe replied.

  “Perhaps. Anyway, I’ve arranged to talk to Jenny Fuller about it later today.” Jenny was a psychologist who had worked with the Eastvale police before.

  “Good idea,” said Gristhorpe. “All right, then, just for argument’s sake, let’s examine his claim objectively. He’s convinced he was a hippie murdered in Swainsdale in summer, 1966, right?”

  Banks nodded.

  “And he thinks this because he believes in reincarnation, he had a déjà vu, and he’s had a recurring dream?”

  “True.”

  “Now,” Gristhorpe went on, “leaving aside the question of whether you or I believe in reincarnation, or, indeed, whether there is such a thing—a philosophical speculation we could hardly settle over tea and scones, anyway—he doesn’t give us a hell of a lot to go on, does he?”

  “That’s the problem. I thought you might remember something.”

  Gristhorpe sighed and shifted in his chair. The scuffed leather creaked. “In 1966, I was a thirty-year-old detective sergeant in a backwoods division. In fact, we were nothing but a subdivision then, and I was the senior detective. Most of the time I investigated burglaries, the occasional outbreak of sheep stealing, market-stall owners fencing stolen goods.” He sipped some tea. “We had one or two murders—really interesting ones I’ll tell you about someday—but not a lot. What I’m saying, Alan, is that no matter how poor my memory is, I’d remember a murdered hippie.”

  “And nothing fits the bill?”

  “Nothing. I’m not saying we didn’t have a few hippies around, but none of them got murdered. I think your Mr. Singer must be mistaken.”

  Banks put his mug down on the table and stood up to leave. “Better get back to the crime statistics, then,” he said.

  Gristhorpe smiled. “So that’s why you’re so interested in this cock-and-bull story? Can’t say I blame you. Sorry I can’t help. Wait a minute, though,” he added as they walked to the door. “There was old Bert Atherton’s lad. I suppose that was around the time you’re talking about, give or take a year or two.”

  Banks paused at the door. “Atherton?”

  “Aye. Owns a farm between Lyndgarth and Helmthorpe. Or did. He’s dead now. I only mention it because Atherton’s son, Joseph, was something of a hippie.”

  “What happened?”

  “Fell down the stairs and broke his neck. Family never got over it. As I said, old man Atherton died a couple of years back, but his missis is still around.”

  “You’d no reason to suspect anything?”

  Gristhorpe shook his head. “None at all. The Athertons were a decent, hardworking family. Apparently the lad was visiting them on his way to Scotland to join some commune or other. He fell down the stairs. It’s a pretty isolated spot, and it was too late when the ambulance arrived, especially as they had to drive a mile down country lanes to the nearest telephone box. They were really devastated. He was their only child.”

  “What made him fall?”

  “He wasn’t pushed, if that’s what you’re thinking. There was no stair carpet and the steps were a bit slippery. According to his dad, Joseph was walking around without his slippers on and he slipped in his stockinged feet.”

  “And you’ve no reason to doubt him?”

  “No. I did have one small suspicion at the time, though.”

  “What?”

  “According to the postmortem, Joseph Atherton was a heroin addict, though he didn’t have any traces of the drug in his system at the time of his death. I thought he might have been smoking marijuana or something up in his room. That might have made him a bit unsteady on his feet.”

  “Did you search the place?”

  Gristhorpe snorted. “Nay, Alan. There was no sense bringing more grief on his parents. What would we do if we found something, charge them with possession?”

  “I see your point.” Banks opened the door and put up his collar against the rain. “I might dig up the file anyway,” he called, running over to the car. “Enjoy the rest of your week off.”

  Gristhorpe’s curse was lost in the sound of the engine starting up and the finale of Mussorgsky’s “Great Gate of Kiev” on Classic FM, blasting out from the radio, which Banks had forgotten to switch off.

  4

  In addition to the cells and the charge room, the lower floor of Eastvale Divisional Headquarters housed old files and records. The dank room was lit by a single bare light bulb and packed with dusty files. So far, Banks had checked 1965 and ’66 but found nothing on the Atherton business.

  Give or take a couple of years, Gristhorpe had said. Without much hope, Banks reached for 1964. That was a bit too early for hippies, he thought, especially in the far reaches of rural North Yorkshire.

  In 1964, he remembered, the Beatles were still recording ballads like “I’ll Follow the Sun” and old rockers like “Long Tall Sally.” John hadn’t met Yoko, and there wasn’t a sitar within earshot. The Rolling Stones were doing “Not Fade Away” and “It’s All Over Now,” the Kinks had a huge hit with “You Really Got Me,” and the charts were full of Dusty Springfield, Peter and Gordon, the Dave Clark Five, and Herman’s Hermits.

  So 1964 was a write-off as far as dead hippies were concerned. Banks looked anyway. Maybe Joseph Atherton had been way ahead of his time. Or perhaps Jerry Singer’s channeler had been wrong about the time between incarnations. Why was this whole charade taking on such an aura of unreality?

  Banks’s stomach rumbled. Apart from that scone at Gristhorpe’s, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, he realized. He put the file aside. Though there hardly seemed any point looking further ahead than 1966, he did so out of curiosity. Just as he was feeling success slip away, he came across it: Joseph Atherton. Coroner’s verdict: accidental death. There was only one problem: it had happened in 1969.

  According to the Athertons’ statement, their son wrote to say he was coming to see them en route to Scotland. He said he was on his way to join some sort of commune and arrived at Eastvale Station on the London train at three forty-five in the afternoon, July 11, 1969. By ten o’clock that night he was dead. He didn’t have transport of his own, so his father had met him at the station in the Land Rover and driven him back to the farm.

  Banks picked up a sheet of lined writing paper, yellowed around the edges. A separate sheet described it as an anonymous note received at the Eastvale police station about a week after the coroner’s verdict. All it said, in block capitals, was, “Ask Atherton about the red Volkswagen.”

  Next came a brief interview report, in which a PC Wythers said he had questioned the Athertons about the car and they said they didn’t know what he was talking about. That
was that.

  Banks supposed it was remotely possible that whoever was in the red Volkswagen had killed Joseph Atherton. But why would his parents lie? According to the statement, they spent the evening together at the farm eating dinner, catching up on family news, then Joseph went up to his room to unpack and came down in his stockinged feet. Maybe he’d been smoking marijuana, as Gristhorpe suggested. Anyway, he slipped at the top of the stairs and broke his neck. It was tragic, but hardly what Banks was looking for.

  He heard a sound at the door and looked up to see Susan Gay.

  “Found anything, sir?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” said Banks. “One or two loose ends. But I haven’t a clue what it all means, if anything. I’m beginning to wish I’d never seen Mr. Jerry Singer.”

  Susan smiled. “Do you know, sir,” she said, “he almost had me believing him.”

  Banks put the file aside. “Did he? I suppose it always pays to keep an open mind,” he said. “That’s why we’re going to visit Mrs. Atherton.”

  5

  The Atherton farm was every bit as isolated as Gristhorpe had said, and the relentless rain had muddied the lane. At one point Banks thought they would have to get out and push, but on the third try the wheels caught and the car lurched forward.

  The farmyard looked neglected: bedraggled weeds poked through the mud; part of the barn roof had collapsed; and the wheels and tines of the old hayrake had rusted.

  Mrs. Atherton answered their knock almost immediately. Banks had phoned ahead so their arrival wouldn’t frighten her. After all, a woman living alone in such a wild place couldn’t be too careful.

  She led them into the large kitchen and put the kettle on the Aga. The stone-walled room looked clean and tidy enough, but Banks noted an underlying smell, like old greens and meat rotting under the sink.

  Mrs. Atherton carried the aura of the sickroom about with her. Her complexion was as gray as her sparse hair; her eyes were dull yellow with milky-blue irises; and the skin below them looked dark as a bruise. As she made the tea, she moved slowly, as if measuring the energy required for each step. How on earth, Banks wondered, did she manage up here all by herself? Yorkshire grit was legendary, and often as close to foolhardiness as anything else, he thought.

  She put the teapot on the table. “We’ll just let it mash a minute,” she said. “Now, what is it you want to talk to me about?”

  Banks didn’t know how to begin. He had no intention of telling Mrs. Atherton about Jerry Singer’s “previous lifetime,” or of interrogating her about her son’s death. Which didn’t leave him many options.

  “How are you managing?” he asked first.

  “Mustn’t grumble.”

  “It must be hard, taking care of this place all by yourself?”

  “Nay, there’s not much to do these days. Jack Crocker keeps an eye on the sheep. I’ve nobbut got a few cows to milk.”

  “No poultry?”

  “Nay, it’s not worth it anymore, not with these battery farms. Anyway, seeing as you’re a copper, I don’t suppose you came to talk to me about the farming life, did you? Come on, spit it out, lad.”

  Banks noticed Susan look down and smile. “Well,” he said, “I hate to bring up a painful subject, but it’s your son’s death we want to talk to you about.”

  Mrs. Atherton looked at Susan as if noticing her for the first time. A shadow crossed her face. Then she turned back to Banks. “Our Joseph?” she said. “But he’s been dead nigh on thirty years.”

  “I know that,” said Banks. “We won’t trouble you for long.”

  “There’s nowt else to add.” She poured the tea, fussed with milk and sugar, and sat down again.

  “You said your son wrote and said he was coming?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did you keep the letter?”

  “What?”

  “The letter. I’ve not seen any mention of it anywhere. It’s not in the file.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? We don’t leave scraps of paper cluttering up the place.”

  “So you threw it out?”

  “Aye. Bert or me.” She looked at Susan again. “That was my husband, God rest his soul. Besides,” she said, “how else would we know he was coming? We couldn’t afford a telephone back then.”

  “I know,” said Banks. But nobody had asked at the railway station whether Bert Atherton actually had met his son there, and now it was too late. He sipped some tea; it tasted as if the tea bag had been used before. “I don’t suppose you remember seeing a red Volkswagen in the area around that time, do you?”

  “No. They asked us that when it first happened. I didn’t know owt about it then, and I don’t know owt now.”

  “Was there anyone else in the house when the accident occurred?”

  “No, of course there weren’t. Do you think I wouldn’t have said if there were? Look, young man, what are you getting at? Do you have summat to tell me, summat I should know?”

  Banks sighed and took another sip of weak tea. It didn’t wash away the taste of decay that permeated the kitchen. He signaled to Susan and stood up. “No,” he said. “No, I’ve nothing new to tell you, Mrs. Atherton. Just chasing will-o’-the-wisps, that’s all.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go chase ’em somewhere else, lad. I’ve got work to do.”

  6

  The Queen’s Arms was quiet late that afternoon. Rain had kept the tourists away, and at four o’clock most of the locals were still at work in the offices and shops around the market square. Banks ordered a pork pie, then he and Jenny Fuller took their drinks to an isolated corner table and settled down. The first long draft of Theakston’s bitter washed the archive dust and the taste of decay from Banks’s throat.

  “Well,” said Jenny, raising her glass of lager in a toast. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  She looked radiant, Banks thought: thick red hair tumbling over her shoulders, emerald-green eyes full of humor and vitality, a fresh scent that cut through the atmosphere of stale smoke and made him think of childhood apple orchards. Though Banks was married, he and Jenny had once come very close to getting involved, and every now and then he felt a pang of regret for the road not taken.

  “Reincarnation,” said Banks, clinking glasses.

  Jenny raised her eyebrows. “You know I’ll drink to most things,” she said, “but really, Alan, isn’t this going a bit far?”

  Banks explained what had happened so far that day. By the time he had finished, the barman delivered his pork pie, along with a large pickled onion. As Jenny mulled over what he had said, he sliced the pie into quarters and shook a dollop of HP Sauce onto his plate to dip them in.

  “Fantasy,” she said finally.

  “Would you care to elaborate?”

  “If you don’t believe in reincarnation, then there are an awful lot of strange phenomena you have to explain in more rational ways. Now, I’m no expert on parapsychology, but most people who claim to have lived past lifetimes generally become convinced through hypnosis, dreams, and déjà vu experiences, like the ones you mentioned, or by spontaneous recall.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like. Remembering past lifetimes out of the blue. Children playing the piano without lessons, people suddenly speaking foreign languages, that kind of thing. Or any memory you have but can’t explain, something that seems to have come from beyond your experience.”

  “You mean if I’m walking down the street and I suddenly think of a Roman soldier and remember some sort of Latin phrase, then I’m recalling a previous lifetime?”

  Jenny gave him a withering look. “Don’t be so silly, Alan. Of course I don’t think that. Some people might, though. People are limitlessly gullible, it seems to me, especially when it comes to life after death. No, what I mean is that this is the kind of thing believers try to put forward as proof of reincarnation.”

  “And how would a rational psychologist explain it?”

  “She m
ight argue that what a person recalls under hypnosis, in dreams, or wherever, is simply a web of fantasy woven from things that person has already seen or heard and maybe forgotten.”

  “But he says he’s never been here before.”

  “There’s television, books, films.”

  Banks finished his pork pie, took a swig of Theakston’s, and lit a Silk Cut. “So you’re saying that maybe our Mr. Singer has watched one too many episodes of All Creatures Great and Small?”

  Jenny tossed back her hair and laughed. “It wouldn’t surprise me.” She looked at her watch, then drained her glass. “Look, I’m sorry, but I must dash.” And with that, she jumped up, pecked him on the cheek, and left. Jenny was always dashing, it seemed. Sometimes he wondered where.

  Banks thought over what she had said. It made sense. More sense than Singer’s reincarnation theory and more sense than suspecting Joseph Atherton’s parents of covering up their son’s murder.

  But there remained the unsubstantiated story of the letter and the anonymous note about the red Volkswagen. If somebody else had driven Joseph Atherton to the farm, then his parents had been lying about the letter. Why? And who could it have been?

  7

  Two days later, sorting through his post, Banks found a letter addressed to him in longhand. It stood out like a sore thumb among the usual bundle of circulars and official communications. He spread it open on his desk in front of him and read.

  Dear Mr. Banks,

  I’m not much of a one for letter writing so you must forgive me any mistakes. I didn’t get much schooling due to me being a sickly child but my father always told us it was important to read and write. Your visit last week upset me by raking up the past I’d rather forget. I don’t know what made you come and ask those questions but they made me think it is time to make my peace with God and tell the truth after all these years.