Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t…’

She smiled at him. ‘It’s OK. Most people don’t. Even the ones who do it. What about you? I seem to remember Mum saying you had something to do with the police.’

‘True. Detective Chief Inspector, CID, Major Crimes.’

‘Well, well, well. I am impressed. Just like Morse.’

It was Banks’s turn to laugh. ‘Except I’m not on telly. I’m real. And I’m still alive. Like your job, it’s usually a conversation stopper. You must be the first person who hasn’t jumped a mile when I told them what I do for a living. No skeletons in your closet?’

She wiggled her eyebrows. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’

They reached Banks’s parents’ house and stopped on the pavement, both a little awkward, embarrassed. It was one of those moments, Banks felt, like the one thirty years ago when he had asked her out for the first time. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘seeing as we’re both up here this weekend, would you like to go out tonight, maybe find a country pub, have a bite to eat or a drink, do a bit of catching up? I mean, bring your husband, by all means, you know-’

Kay smiled at his discomfort. ‘Sorry, there’s only me,’ she said. ‘And yes, I’d love to. Pick me up at half past seven?’

‘Good. Great, I mean.’ Banks grinned. ‘OK, then, see you this evening.’

Banks watched Kay walk away, and he could have sworn she had a bit of a spring in her step. He definitely had one in his, which couldn’t be dampened even by the sight of Geoff Salisbury talking to his mother in the hall when he opened the front door.

‘Morning, Alan,’ Geoff said. ‘Have a good time last night?’

‘Fine,’ said Banks.

‘That the Summerville girl you were talking to?’

‘Yes,’ said Banks. ‘We’re old friends.’

Geoff frowned. ‘I was sorry to hear about her poor mother. Anyway, must dash. Just a passing visit.’ He turned back to Ida Banks. ‘Right, then, Mrs B, don’t you fret. I’ll pick up everything we need for tomorrow, and I’ll pop around in the morning and do a bit of tidying and vacuuming for you. How’s that?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Banks. ‘I can do that.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ his mother chided him. ‘You don’t know one end of a vacuum cleaner from the other.’ Which might have been true at one time but certainly wasn’t any more. ‘That’ll be just dandy, Geoff,’ she said, handing him a plastic card, which he put quickly in his pocket. ‘I know we can always rely on you.’

It was too late to argue. With a smile and a wave, Geoff Salisbury was halfway down the path, whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’ as he went.

‘I mean it,’ said Banks. ‘Anything needs doing, just ask me.’

His mother patted his arm. ‘I know, son,’ she said. ‘You mean well. But Geoff’s… well we’re used to having him around. He knows where everything is.’

Does he, indeed? thought Banks. ‘By the way,’ he asked, ‘what was that you just gave him?’

‘What?’

‘You know. The card.’

‘Oh, yes. That’s the Abbeylink card. He’ll need some cash, won’t he, if he’s going to get the food and drink in for tomorrow?’

Banks almost choked. ‘You mean he knows your PIN number?’

‘Well, of course he does, silly. A fat lot of use the card would be to him without it.’ Shaking her head, she edged past Banks towards the living room. ‘And what’s this about you and Kay Summerville?’ she asked, turning. ‘Didn’t you two used to go out together?’

‘That was a long time ago. Actually, we’re going to have dinner together tonight.’

His mother’s face dropped. ‘But I was going to make us toad-in-the-hole. Your favourite.’

True, Banks had once expressed an enthusiasm for toad-in-the-hole when he was about fourteen. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s the only chance we’ll get to catch up.’

‘Well,’ his mother said, that familiar, hurt, hard-done-by tone in her voice. ‘I suppose if that’s really what you want to do. I must say, she always seemed like a nice lass. Her mother and me weren’t close at all, just to say hello to in passing, like, but you tell her she’s welcome to drop by tomorrow, for the party. I’d like to offer her my condolences.’

‘I’ll ask her,’ said Banks, then he hurried upstairs.

With his bedroom window open, Banks could hear the polythene from the building site flapping in the breeze and the cars whooshing by on the main road. He could also hear a dull, bass rumbling from next door along with the occasional shout and bang. Their back garden, he noticed, was full of rubbish like a tip: broken furniture, rocks, a dismantled bicycle. Maybe there was even a body or two buried there.

His knees cracked as he squatted to read the spines of the books in the old glass-fronted bookcase. There they were, a cross-section of his early years’ reading, starting with the large, illustrated Black Beauty , which his mother had read to him when he was small, old Beano , Dandy and Rupert annuals, and Noddy books – the originals, where Noddy and Big Ears slept together, hung out with Golliwog, and ‘gay’ meant ‘cheerful’. He must have kept Enid Blyton in luxury almost single-handed, he thought, as he had moved on to the Famous Five and the Secret Seven.

Then came his high school reading: Billy Bunter, Jennings and William, followed by war stories such as Biggles, The Wooden Horse, The Guns of Navarone and Camp on Blood Island . Next to these were several editions of the Pan Book of Horror Stories , from a phase he went through in his teens, along with some H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James. There wasn’t much crime fiction, but he did still have a few dog-eared old Saint paperbacks, the Father Brown stories and a complete Sherlock Holmes. The James Bond books were all there, too, of course, and a few Sexton Blakes.

There were also history books, the kind with lots of illustrations, some Oxford and Penguin anthologies of poetry and those children’s illustrated encyclopaedias that came out with a letter a week, none of which he’d got beyond C or D.

In addition, on the bottom shelf, there were books about his many hobbies, including photography, coins, birds, stamps and astronomy, and several Observer books of cars, aircraft, geology, trees, music and pond life. He’d seen these old editions in second-hand book shops and some of them were worth a bit now. Maybe he should take them back up to Yorkshire with him, he thought. Would that upset his parents? Were his books and his room some sort of virtual umbilical cord that was all that tied him to them now? It was a depressing thought.

One book stood out. Sitting between Enid Blyton’s The River of Adventure and The Mountain of Adventure was a used, orange-spined Penguin edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover , a 1966 reprint with Richard Hoggart’s introduction. Curious, Banks picked it out. He didn’t remember buying it and was surprised when he opened it up and saw written on the flyleaf: ‘Kay Summerville, London, June 7th, 1969’. Banks remembered that day well. Smiling, he put it aside. He would give it back to her tonight.

The more he thought about his ‘date’ with Kay the more he looked forward to it. Not only was she an extremely attractive woman, she was also intelligent and she shared some of his past with him. He didn’t imagine the date would lead to anything of a sexual nature – he certainly wasn’t out to seduce her – but you never knew. He wondered how he would feel about that. Michelle Hart was on holiday in Tuscany. Besides, they had made no commitments, and Michelle always seemed to be holding back, on the verge of ending the tenuous relationship they did have. Banks didn’t know why, but he sensed she had deep and painful secrets she didn’t want to share. It seemed that all the women he had met since parting with Sandra – including Annie Cabbot back up in Yorkshire – shied away from intimacy.