Peter Robinson: Not Safe After Dark

Finally, the Inspector Banks novella ‘Going Back’ is a special case and has never been published before. I wrote it early in 1999, so it came between In a Dry Season and Cold Is the Grave . At that point I didn’t know that I was going to send Banks home to deal with his old school friend’s disappearance in The Summer that Never Was (2003) and I wanted to show him interacting with his family and responding to the place where he grew up. In manuscript, it reached 106 pages, too long for any of the magazines or anthologies that regularly published my stories, and too short for separate book publication. And so it sat there gathering dust until I came to write The Summer that Never Was, when I incorporated parts of the novella into the novel – mostly details about the street Banks grew up on, his relationship with his parents, the music he listened to and the books he read as an adolescent.

When I came to revise ‘Going Back’ for this collection, I had to shift it chronologically, so that it now falls between The Summer that Never Was and Playing with Fire . I also had to try to avoid too much repetition of details I had cannibalized for the novel without spoiling the original conception. It was a difficult balancing act, but I hope you enjoy the final result, along with the rest of the stories in this collection.

PETER ROBINSON

FEBRUARY 2004

‘And exactly how many times have you died, Mr Singer?’

‘Fourteen. That’s fourteen I’ve managed to uncover. They say that each human being has lived about twenty incarnations. But it’s the last one I’m telling you about. See, I died by violence. I was murdered.’

Detective Constable Susan Gay made a note on the yellow pad in front of her. When she looked down, she noticed that she had doodled an intricate pattern of curves and loops, a bit like Spaghetti Junction, during the few minutes she had been talking to Jerry Singer.

She tried to keep the scepticism out of her voice. ‘Ah-hah. And when was this, sir?’

‘Nineteen sixty-six. July. That makes it exactly thirty-two years ago this week.’

‘I see.’

Jerry Singer had given his age as thirty-one, which meant that he had been murdered a year before he was born.

‘How do you know it was nineteen sixty-six?’ Susan asked.

Singer leaned forward. He was a remarkably intense young man, Susan noticed, thin to the point of emaciation, with glittering green eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He looked as if the lightest breeze would blow him away. His fine red hair had a gossamer quality that reminded Susan of spiders’ webs. He wore jeans, a red T-shirt and a grey anorak, its shoulders darkened by the rain. Though he said he came from San Diego, California, Susan could detect no trace of suntan.

‘It’s like this,’ he began. ‘There’s no fixed period between incarnations, but my channeller told me-’

‘Channeller?’ Susan interrupted.

‘She’s a kind of spokesperson for the spirit world.’

‘A medium?’

‘Not quite.’ Singer managed a brief smile. ‘But close enough. More of a mediator, really.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Susan, who didn’t. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, she told me there would be a period of about a year between my previous incarnation and my present one.’

‘How did she know?’

‘She just knows . It varies from one soul to another. Some need a lot of time to digest what they’ve learned and make plans for the next incarnation. Some souls just can’t wait to return to another body.’ He shrugged. ‘After some lifetimes, you might simply just get tired and need a long rest.’

After some mornings, too, Susan thought. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘let’s move on. Is this your first visit to Yorkshire?’

‘It’s my first trip to England, period. I’ve just qualified in dentistry, and I thought I’d give myself a treat before I settled down to the daily grind.’

Susan winced. Was that a pun? Singer wasn’t smiling. A New Age dentist, now there was an interesting combination, she thought. Can I read your tarot cards for you while I drill? Perhaps you might like to take a little astral journey to Neptune while I’m doing your root canal? She forced herself to concentrate on what Singer was saying.

‘So, you see,’ he went on, ‘as I’ve never been here before, it must be real, mustn’t it?’

Susan realized she had missed something. ‘What?’

‘Well, it was all so familiar, the landscape, everything. And it’s not only the déjà vu I had. There was the dream, too. We haven’t even approached this in hypnotic regression yet, so-’

Susan held up her hand. ‘Hang on a minute. You’re losing me. What was so familiar?’

‘Oh, I thought I’d made that clear.’

‘Not to me.’

‘The place. Where I was murdered. It was near here. In Swainsdale.’

Banks was sitting in his office with his feet on the desk and a buff folder open on his lap when Susan Gay popped her head around the door. The top button of his white shirt was undone and his tie hung askew.

That morning, he was supposed to be working on the monthly crime figures, but instead, through the half-open window, he listened to the summer rain as it harmonized with Michael Nyman’s soundtrack from The Piano , playing quietly on his portable cassette. His eyes were closed and he was daydreaming of waves washing in and out on a beach of pure white sand. The ocean and sky were the brightest blue he could imagine, and tall palm trees dotted the landscape. The pastel village that straddled the steep hillside looked like a cubist collage.

‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ Susan said, ‘but it looks like we’ve got a right one here.’

Banks opened his eyes and rubbed them. He felt as if he were coming back from a very long way. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I was getting a bit bored with the crime statistics, anyway.’ He tossed the folder onto his desk and linked his hands behind his head. ‘Well, what is it?’

Susan entered the office. ‘It’s sort of hard to explain, sir.’

‘Try.’

Susan told him about Jerry Singer. As he listened, Banks’s blue eyes sparkled with amusement and interest. When Susan had finished, he thought for a moment, then sat up and turned off the music. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘It’s been a slow week. Let’s live dangerously. Bring him in.’ He fastened his top button and straightened his tie.

A few moments later, Susan returned with Jerry Singer in tow. Singer looked nervously around the office and took the seat opposite Banks. The two exchanged introductions, then Banks leaned back and lit a cigarette. He loved the mingled smells of smoke and summer rain.

‘Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning,’ he said.

‘Well,’ said Singer, turning his nose up at the smoke, ‘I’ve been involved in regressing to past lives for a few years now, partly through hypnosis. It’s been a fascinating journey, and I’ve discovered a great deal about myself.’ He sat forward and rested his hands on the desk. His fingers were short and tapered. ‘For example, I was a merchant’s wife in Venice in the fifteenth century. I had seven children and died giving birth to the eighth. I was only twenty-nine. In my next incarnation, I was an actor in a troupe of Elizabethan players, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. I remember playing Bardolph in Henry V in 1599. After that, I-’

‘I get the picture,’ said Banks. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, Mr Singer, but maybe we can skip to the twentieth century?’