Past Reason Hated Page 22

  He couldn’t put his finger on when it had all started to go wrong for him in London. It had been a series of events, most likely, over a long period. But somehow it all merged into one big mess when he looked back: Brian getting into fights at school; his own marriage on the rocks; anxiety attacks that had convinced him he was dying.

  But the worst thing of all had been the job. Slowly, subtly, it had changed. And Banks had found himself changing with it. He was becoming more like the vicious criminals he dealt with day in, day out, less able to see good in people and hope for the world. He ran on pure anger and cynicism, occasionally thumped suspects in interrogation and trampled over everyone’s rights. And the damnedest thing was, it was all getting him good results, gaining him a reputation as a good copper. He sacrificed his humanity for his job, and he grew to hate himself, what he had become. He had been no better than Dirty Dick Burgess, a superintendent from the Met with whom he had recently done battle in Eastvale.

  Life had dragged on without joy, without love. He was losing Sandra and he couldn’t even talk to her about it. He was living in a sewer crowded with rats fighting for food and space: no air, no light, no escape. The move up north, if he admitted it, had been his way of escape. Put simply, he had run away before it got too late.

  And just in time. Whilst everything in Eastvale hadn’t been roses, it had been a damn sight better than those last months in London, during which he seemed to do nothing but stand over corpses in stinking, run-down slums: a woman ripped open from pubes to breast bone, intestines spilling on the carpet; the decaying body of a man with his head hacked off and placed between his legs. He had seen those things, dreamed about them, and he knew he could never forget. Even in Eastvale, he sometimes awoke in a cold sweat as the head tried to speak to him.

  He finished his pint quickly and walked outside, pulling up his overcoat collar against the chill. So, he was back, but not to stay. Never to stay. So enjoy it. The city seemed noisier, busier and dirtier than ever, but a fresh breeze brought the smell of roast chestnuts from a street vendor on Oxford Street. Banks thought of the good days, the good years: searching for old, leather-bound editions of Dickens on autumn afternoons along Charing Cross Road; Portobello Road market on a crisp, windy spring morning; playing darts with Barney Merritt and his other mates in the Magpie and Stump after a hard day in the witness box; family outings to Epping Forest on Sunday afternoons; drinks in the street on warm summer nights at the back of Leicester Square after going to the pictures with Sandra, the kids safe with a sister. No, it hadn’t all been bad. Not even Soho. Even that had its comic moments, its heart. At least it had seemed so before everything went wrong. Still, he felt human again. He was out of the sewer, and a brief visit like this one wasn’t going to suck him back into it.

  First he made a phone call to Barney Merritt, an old friend from the Yard, to confirm his bed for the night. That done, he caught the Tube to the Oval. As he sat in the small compartment and read the ads above the windows, he remembered the countless other Underground journeys he had made because he always tried to avoid driving in London. He remembered standing in the smoking car, crushed together with a hundred or more other commuters, all hanging on their straps, trying to read the paper and puffing away. It had been awful, but part of the ritual How he’d managed to breathe, he had no idea. Now you couldn’t even smoke on the platforms and escalators, let alone on the trains.

  He walked down Kennington Road and found the turn-off, a narrow street of three-storey terrace houses divided into flats, each floor with its own bay window. At number twenty-three, a huge cactus stood in the window of the middle flat, and in the top oriel he could see what looked a stuffed toy animal of some kind. Her name was printed above the top bell: R. Dunne. No first name, to discourage weirdos, but all the weirdos knew that only women left out their first names. There was no intercom. Banks pushed the bell and waited. Would she be in? What did poets do all day? Stare at the sky with their eyes in a ‘fine frenzy rolling’?

  Just when he was beginning to think she wasn’t home, he heard footsteps inside the hall and the door opened on a chain. A face – the face – peered round at him.

  ‘Yes?’

  Banks showed his identification card and told her the purpose of his visit. She shut the door, slid off the chain and let him in.

  Banks followed the slender, boyish figure in turquoise slacks and baggy orange sweatshirt all the way up the carpeted stairs to the top. The place was clean and brightly decorated, with none of the smells and graffiti he had encountered in such places so often in the past. In fact, he told himself, flats like this must cost a fortune these days. How much did poets make? Surely not that much. It would be rude to ask.

  The flat itself was small. The door opened on a narrow corridor, and Banks followed Ruth Dunne to the right into the living room. He hadn’t known what to expect, had no preconceived idea of what a poet’s dwelling should look like, but whatever he might have imagined, it wasn’t this. There was a divan in front of the gas fire covered with a gaudy, crocheted quilt and flanked on both sides by sagging armchairs, similarly draped. He was surprised to find no bookshelves in evidence and assumed her study was elsewhere in the flat, but what was there surprised him as much as what wasn’t: several stuffed toys – a green elephant, a pink frog, a magenta giraffe – lay around in alcoves and on the edge by the bay window, and on three of the four walls elaborate cuckoo clocks ticked, all set at different times.

  ‘It must be noisy,’ Banks said, nodding at the clocks.

  Ruth Dunne smiled. ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘Why the different times?’

  ‘I’m not interested in time, just clocks. In fact my friends tell me I’m a chronically late person.’

  On the low table between the divan and the fire lay a coffee-table book on watch making, a couple of bills, an ashtray and a pack of unfiltered Gauloises.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ve never been interrogated by the police before. At least not by a detective chief inspector. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘It’s instant, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’ll do fine. Black.’

  Ruth nodded and left the room. If Banks had expected a hostile welcome, for whatever reason, he was certainly disarmed by Ruth Dunne’s charm and hospitality. And by her appearance. Her shiny brown hair, medium length, was combed casually back, parted at one side, and the forelock almost covered her left eye. Her face was unlined and without make-up. Strong-featured, handsome rather than pretty, but with a great deal of character in the eyes. They’d seen a lot, Banks reckoned, those hazel eyes. Felt a lot, too. In life, she looked far more natural and approachable than the arrogant, knowing woman in the photograph, yet there was certainly something regal in her bearing.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asked, bringing back two mugs of steaming black coffee and sitting with her legs curled under her on the divan. She held her mug with both hands and sniffed the aroma. The gas fire hissed quietly in the background. Banks sat in one of the armchairs, the kind that seem to embrace you like an old friend, and lit a cigarette. Then he showed her the photograph, which she laughed at, and told her.

  ‘So easy,’ she said when he’d finished.

  ‘A lot of police work is. Easy and boring. Time-consuming, too.’

  ‘I hope that’s not a subtle way of hinting I should have come forward earlier?’

  ‘No reason to, had you? Did you know about Caroline’s death?’

  Ruth reached for the blue paper packet of Gauloises, tapped one out and nodded. ‘Read about it in the paper. Not much of a report, really. Can you tell me what happened?’

  Banks wished he could, but knew he couldn’t. If he told her, then he’d have no way of checking what she already knew.

  She noticed his hesitation and waved her hand. ‘All right. I suppose I should think myself lucky to be spared the gory details. Look, I imagine I’m a suspect, if you’ve come al
l this way. Can we get that out of the way first? I might have an alibi, you never know, and it’ll make for a hell of a more pleasant afternoon if you don’t keep thinking of me as a crazed, butch dyke killer.’ She finally lit the cigarette she’d been toying with, and the acrid tang of French tobacco infused the air.

  Banks asked her where she had been and what she had been doing on 22 December. Ruth sucked on her Gauloise, thought for a moment, then got up and disappeared down the corridor. When she reappeared, she held an open appointment calendar and carried it over to him.

  ‘I was giving a poetry reading in Leamington Spa, of all places,’ she said. ‘Very supportive of the arts they are up there.’

  ‘What time did it start?’

  ‘About eight.’

  ‘How did you get there?’

  ‘I drove. I’ve got a Fiesta. It’s life in the fast lane all the way for us poets, you know. I was a bit early, too, for a change, so the organizers should remember me.’

  ‘Good audience?’

  ‘Pretty good. Adrian Henri and Wendy Cope were reading there, too, if you want to check with them.’

  Banks noted down the details. If Ruth Dunne had indeed been in Leamington Spa at eight o’clock that evening, there was no conceivable way she could have been in Eastvale at seven twenty or later. If she was telling the truth about the reading, which could be easily checked, then she was in the clear.

  ‘One thing puzzles me,’ Banks said. ‘Caroline had your picture but we couldn’t find a copy of your book among her things. Can you think why that might be?’

  ‘Plenty of reasons. She wasn’t much of a one for material possessions, wasn’t Caroline. She never did seem to hang on to things like the rest of us acquire possessions I always envied her that. I did give her a copy of the first book, but I’ve no idea what happened to it. I sent the second one, too, the one I dedicated to her, but I wasn’t sure what her address was then. The odds are it went to an old address and got lost in the system.’

  Either that or Nancy Wood had run off with both of them, Banks thought, nodding.

  ‘But she hung on to the photograph.’

  ‘Maybe she liked my looks better than my poetry.’

  ‘What kind of poetry do you write, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I don’t mind, but it’s a hard one to answer.’ She tapped the fingers holding the cigarette against her cheek. The short blonde hairs on the back of her hand caught the light. ‘Let me see, I don’t write confessional lesbian poetry, nor do I go in for feminist diatribes. A little wit, I like to think, a good sense of structure, landscape, emotion, myth . . . Will that do to be going on with?’

  ‘Do you like Larkin?’

  Ruth laughed. ‘I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s hard not to. I never much admired his conservative, middle-class little Englandism, but the bugger certainly had a way with a stanza.’ She cocked her head. ‘Do we have a literary copper here? Another Adam Dalgliesh?’

  Banks smiled. He didn’t know who Adam Dalgliesh was. Some television detective, no doubt, who went around quoting Shakespeare.

  ‘Just curious, that’s all,’ he answered. ‘Who’s your favourite?’

  ‘H. D. A woman called Hilda Doolittle, friend of Ezra Pound’s.’

  Banks shook his head. ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘Ah. Clearly not a literary copper then. Give her a try.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’ Banks took another sip of his coffee and fiddled for a cigarette. ‘Back to Caroline. When did you last see her?’

  ‘Let me see . . . It was years ago, five or six at least. I think she was about twenty or twenty-one at the time. Twenty going on sixty.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Banks remembered Caroline as beautiful and youthful even in death.

  ‘The kind of life she was leading ages a woman fast – especially on the inside.’

  ‘What life?’

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Ruth shifted into the cross-legged position. ‘Oh, I get it. You ask the questions, I answer them. Right?’

  Banks allowed himself a smile. ‘I’m not meaning to be rude,’ he said, ‘but that’s basically how it goes. I need all the information I can get on Caroline. So far I don’t have a hell of a lot, especially about the time she spent in London. If it’ll make talking easier for you, I can tell you that we already know she had a conviction for soliciting and gave birth to a child. That’s all.’

  Ruth looked down into her coffee and Banks was surprised to see tears rolling over her cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting the mug down and wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘It just sounds so sad, so pathetic. You mustn’t think I’m being flippant, the way I talk. I don’t get many visitors so I try to enjoy everyone I meet. I was very upset when I read about Caroline, but I hadn’t seen her for a long time. I’ll tell you anything I can. A marmalade cat slipped into the room, looked once at Banks, then jumped on the divan next to Ruth and purred. ‘Meet T.S. Eliot,’ Ruth said. ‘He named so many cats, so I thought at least one should be named after him. I call him T.S. for short.’

  Banks said hello to T.S., who seemed more interested in nestling into the hollow formed by Ruth’s crossed legs. She picked up her coffee again with both hands and blew gently on the surface before drinking.

  ‘Caroline started as a dancer,’ she said. ‘An exotic dancer, I believe they’re called. Well, it’s not too much of a leap from that to pleasing the odd, and I do mean odd, punter or two for extra pocket money. I’m sure you know much more about vice here than I do, but before long she was doing the lot: dancing, peep shows, turning tricks She was a beautiful child, and she looked even younger than she was. A lot of men around that scene have a taste for fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds, or even younger, and Caroline could fulfil that fantasy when she was eighteen.’

  ‘Was she on drugs?’

  Ruth frowned and shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know. Not like some of them. She might have had the odd joint, maybe an upper or a downer now and then – who doesn’t? – but nothing really heavy or habitual. She wasn’t hooked on anything.’

  ‘What about her pimp?’

  ‘Bloke called Reggie. Charming character. One of his women did for him with a Woolworth’s sheath knife shortly before Caroline broke away. You can check your records, I’m sure they’ll have all the details. Caroline wasn’t involved, but it was a godsend for her in a way.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Surely it’s obvious. She was scared stiff of Reggie. He used to bash her about regularly. With him out of the way, she had a chance to slip between the cracks before the next snake came along.’

  ‘When did she break away?’

  Ruth leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘About a year before she went back up north.’

  ‘And you knew her during that period?’

  ‘We lived together. Here. I got this place before the prices rocketed. You wouldn’t believe how cheap it was. I knew her before for a little while, too. I’d like to think I played a small part in getting her out of the life.’

  ‘Who played the biggest part?’

  ‘She did that herself. She was a bright kid and she saw where she was heading. Not many you can say that about. She’d been wanting out for a while, but Reggie wouldn’t let go and she didn’t know where to run.’

  ‘How did you come to meet her?’

  ‘After a poetry reading. Funny, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Out in Camden Town. All we had in the audience was a prostitute and a drunk who wanted to grab the mike and sing ‘Your Cheating Heart’. He did, too, right in the middle of my best poem. Afterwards we drove down to Soho – not the drunk, just me and my fellow readers – to the Pillars of Hercules. Know it?’

  Banks nodded. He’d enjoyed many a pint of draught Beck’s there.

  ‘We just happened to be jammed in a corner next to Caroline and another girl. We got talking, and one thing led to another. Righ
t from the start Caroline struck me as intelligent and wise, wasted on that scummy life. She knew it too, but she didn’t know what else she could do. We soon became close friends. We went to the theatre a lot and she loved it. Cinema, art exhibitions.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Anything but classical music or opera. She didn’t mind ballet, though. It was all a world she’d never known.’

  ‘Was that all there was to your relationship?’

  Ruth paused to light another Gauloise before answering. ‘Of course not. We were lovers. But don’t look at me as if I was some kind of corrupter of youth. Caroline knew exactly what she was doing.’

  ‘Were you the first woman she’d had such a relationship with?’

  ‘Yes. That was obvious right from the start. She was shy about things at first, but she soon learned.’ Ruth inhaled the smoke deeply and blew it out. ‘God, did she learn.’

  One of the cuckoo clocks went through its motions. They waited until it stopped.

  ‘What do you think turned her into a lesbian?’ Banks asked.

  Ruth shifted on the sofa and T.S. scampered off. ‘It doesn’t happen like that. Women don’t suddenly, quote, turn into lesbians, unquote. They discover that’s what they are, what they always were but were afraid to admit because there was too much working against them – social morality, male domination, you name it.’

  ‘Do you think there are a lot of women in that situation?’

  ‘More than you imagine.’

  ‘What about the men in her life?’

  ‘Work it out for yourself. What do you think it does to a woman to have gross old men sticking their willies in her and meek suburban husbands asking if they can pee in her mouth? You’ve got the pimp at one end and the perverts at the other. No quarter.’

  ‘So Caroline discovered her lesbianism under your guidance?’

  Ruth flicked a column of ash into the tray. ‘You could put it like that, yes. I seduced her. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she loathed and feared sex with men. The only difficult thing was overcoming the taboos and learning how to respond to a woman’s body, a woman’s way of making love. And I’m not talking about dildos and vibrators.’