Peter Robinson - Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

“Boy or girl?”

“Does it matter?”

“You know it does, Annie. Far more girls are abducted, raped and killed than boys.”

“A boy.”

“How old?”

“Fifteen.”

That was almost Graham’s age when he disappeared, Banks thought. “Then the odds are good he’ll turn up none the worse for wear,” he said, though Graham hadn’t.

“That’s what I told the parents.”

Banks sipped his beer. There were some compensations to being back in Yorkshire, he thought, looking around the quiet, cozy pub, hearing the rain patter on the windows, tasting the Black Sheep and watching Annie shift in her chair as she tried to phrase her concerns.

“He’s an odd kid,” she said. “Bit of a loner. Writes poetry. Doesn’t like sports. His room is painted black.”

“What were the circumstances?”

Annie told him. “And there’s another thing.”

“What?”

“He’s Luke Armitage.”

“Robin’s boy? Neil Byrd’s son?”

“Martin Armitage’s stepson. Do you know him?”

“Martin Armitage? Hardly. Saw him play once or twice, though. I must say I thought he was overrated. But I’ve got a couple of CDs by Neil Byrd. They did a compilation three or four years ago, and they’ve just brought out a collection of outtakes and live performances. He really was very good, you know. Did you meet the supermodel?”

“Robin? Yes.”

“Quite the looker, as I remember.”

“Still is,” said Annie, scowling. “If you like that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Oh, you know… skinny, flawless, beautiful.”

Banks grinned. “So what’s the problem?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just me. He’ll probably turn up safe and sound.”

“But you’re worried?”

“Just a teeny bit.”

“Kidnapping?”

“It crossed my mind, but there’s been no ransom demand yet. We searched the house, of course, just in case, but there was no sign he’d been back home.”

“We did talk to the Armitages about security when they first moved to Swainsdale Hall, you know,” Banks said. “They installed the usual burglar alarms and such, but beyond that they said they just wanted to live a normal life. Nothing much we could do.”

“I suppose not,” Annie agreed. She brought out her notebook and showed Banks the French words she had copied down from Luke’s wall. “Make any sense of this? It’s awfully familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Banks frowned as he peered at the text. It looked familiar to him, too, but he couldn’t place it, either. Le Poëte se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens. He tried to decipher it word by word, reaching far back into his memory for his grammar school French. Hard to believe now that he had been quite good at it at one time, even got a grade two in his O-Levels. Then he remembered. “It’s Rimbaud, I think. The French poet. Something about the total disordering of all the senses.”

“Of course!” said Annie. “I could kick myself. Robin Armitage told me Luke was into Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine and all that stuff. What about these?” She named the subjects of Luke’s posters. “I mean, I’ve heard of some of them, Nick Drake, for example, and I know Kurt Cobain was in Nirvana and killed himself, but what about the others?”

Banks frowned. “They’re all singers. Ian Curtis used to sing with Joy Division. Jeff Buckley was Tim Buckley’s son.”

“Used to? Was? There’s an ominous past tense to all this, isn’t there?”

“Oh, yes,” said Banks. “They all either committed suicide or died under mysterious circumstances.”

“Interesting.” Annie’s mobile buzzed. Excusing herself, she walked over to the front door before taking it out of her shoulder bag and stepping outside. When she came back two minutes later she looked puzzled.

“Not bad news, I hope?” said Banks.

“No, not at all. Quite the opposite.”

“Do tell.”

“That was Robin. Robin Armitage. Apparently, Luke just rang them.”

“And?”

“He says he just needed some space, that he’ll be back home tomorrow.”

“Did he say where he was?”

“Wouldn’t tell them.”

“What are you going to do?”

Annie finished her drink. “I think I’d better go down the station, scale down the manhunt. You know how expensive these things are. I don’t want Red Ron on my back for wasting our time and money.”

“Scale down?”

“Yes. Call me overly suspicious, if you like, but I’m not going to call off the search completely until I see Luke Armitage, safe and sound at home, with my own eyes.”

“I wouldn’t call that overly suspicious,” said Banks. “I’d call it very sensible.”

Annie leaned forward and pecked Banks on the cheek again. “It really is good to see you again, Alan. Stay in touch.”

“I will,” said Banks, and he watched her walk out the door, hint of Body Shop grapefruit soap wafting behind her, the soft pressure of her kiss lingering on his cheek.

On the surface, it had seemed a simple enough question to ask: Where were the Graham Marshall case files? In reality, it was like searching for the Holy Grail, and it had taken Michelle and her DC, Nat Collins, the best part of two days.

After first trying Bridge Street, in the city center, which served as Divisional Headquarters until Thorpe Wood opened in 1979, Michelle and DC Collins drove from station to station all across the Northern Division – Bretton, Orton, Werrington, Yaxley, Hampton – discovering that some of them were relatively new, and that the premises used in 1965 had long since been demolished and covered over by new housing estates or shopping centers. What complicated matters even more was that the original forces – Cambridge, Peterborough, Ely and Huntingdon – had amalgamated into the Mid-Anglia Constabulary in 1965, necessitating a major overhaul and restructuring, and had become the present-day Cambridgeshire Constabulary in 1974.

As one helpful duty constable after another suggested possibilities, Michelle had begun to despair of ever finding the old paperwork. About the only bright spot on the horizon was that the weather had improved that morning, and the sun was poking its lazy way through greasy rags of cloud. But that made the air humid, and Michelle was about to throw in the towel around lunchtime. She’d drunk a bit too much wine the previous evening, too – something that was happening rather too often these days – and the fact that she didn’t feel a hundred percent didn’t help much either.

When she finally did track the paperwork down, having sent DC Collins to Cambridge to make inquiries there, she could have kicked herself. It was deep in the bowels of Divisional Headquarters, not more than thirty feet or so below her office, and the civilian records clerk, Mrs. Metcalfe, proved to be a mine of information and let her sign out a couple of files. Why hadn’t Michelle thought to look there in the first place? Easy. She had only been at Thorpe Wood for a short time, and no one had given her the grand tour; she didn’t know that the basement was the repository for much of the county force’s old paperwork.

The noise level was high in the open-plan squad room, phones ringing, men laughing at dirty jokes, doors opening and closing, but Michelle was able to shut it all out as she put on her reading glasses and opened the first folder, which contained maps and photos of the Hazels estate, along with a summary of any relevant witness statements that helped pin down Graham’s progress on the morning of August 22, 1965.

One useful hand-drawn map showed Graham’s paper round in detail, listing all the houses he delivered to and, for good measure, what newspapers they took. The poor lad must have had a hell of a heavy load, as many of the Sunday papers were bulky with magazines and supplements.