Peter Robinson - In A Dry Season

Not that Vivian needed any help to find the hotel; the Metropole wasn’t more than a couple of hundred yards from City Square, and she knew exactly where it was. She had stayed there with Charlie the time they went to Michael Stanhope’s exhibition in 1944. What an evening they had made of it. After the show, they went to a classical concert and then to the 21 Club, where they had danced until late. That was why she had asked to stay there again this trip. For memory’s sake.

She was nervous. It wasn’t anything to do with this evening’s reading at Armley Library, or the Radio Leeds interview tomorrow afternoon, but with meeting Chief Inspector Banks and his female sidekick again. She knew they would want to interview her after studying the manuscript; there was no doubt she was guilty of something. But what could she do? She was too old and too tired to run. She was also too old to go to jail. The only way now was to face up to whatever charges might be brought and hope her lawyer would do a good job.

No one, she supposed, could stop the press finding out the details eventually, and there was no doubt that they would go to town on the scandal. She wasn’t sure she could face public humiliation. Perhaps, if they didn’t arrest her, she would leave the country again, the way she had done so many times with Ronald. Why not? She could work anywhere, and she had enough money to buy a little place somewhere warm: Bermuda, perhaps, or the British Virgin Islands.

Once again Vivian cast her mind back to the events of fifty years ago. Was there something she had missed? Had she got it all wrong? Had she been so ready to suspect Matthew that she had overlooked the possibility of anyone else being guilty? Banks’s questions about Michael Stanhope and about PX, Billy Joe, Charlie and Brad had shocked and surprised her at first. Now she was beginning to wonder. Could one of them have done it? Not Charlie, certainly – he was dead by then – but what about Brad? He and Gloria had been arguing a lot toward the end; she had even seen them arguing through the flames at the VE-Day party. Perhaps the night she died he had gone to put his case forward one last time, and when she turned him down he went berserk? Vivian tried to remember whether Brad had been the kind to go berserk or not, but all she could conclude was that we all are, given the right circumstances.

Then there was PX. He had certainly lavished a lot of gifts on Gloria in that shy way of his. Perhaps he had hoped for something in return? Something she hadn’t wanted to give? And while Billy Joe seemed to have moved on to other women quite happily, Vivian remembered his bitterness at being ditched for a pilot, the smoldering class resentment that came out as gibes and taunts.

People said they didn’t have a class system in America, but Billy Joe had definitely been working-class, like the farm laborers in Yorkshire; Charlie was from a well-established Ivy League background; and Brad had come from new West Coast oil money. Vivian didn’t think the Americans lacked class distinction so much as they lacked the tradition of inherited aristocratic titles and wealth – which was probably why they all went gaga over British royalty.

The train was nearing Leeds City Station now, wheels squealing as it negotiated the increasingly complicated system of signals and points. It had been a much faster and easier journey than the one Vivian had made to London and back with Gloria. She remembered the pinprick of blue light, the soldiers snoring, her first look at the desolation of war in the pale dawn light. She had slept most of the way back to Leeds, a six- or seven-hour journey then, and after she got back to Hobb’s End, London had grown more and more distant and magical in her imagination until it might easily have been Mars or ancient Rome.

Looking back, she began to wonder if perhaps it was all just a story. As the years race inexorably on, and as all the people we know and love die, does the past turn into fiction, an act of the imagination populated by ghosts, scenes and images suspended forever in water glass?

Wearily, Vivian stood up and reached for her overnight bag. There was something else she had steeled herself to do while she was in Leeds, and she had set aside Friday afternoon, after the interview, for it. Before that, though, she would make time to call at the art gallery and see Michael Stanhope’s painting.

When the phone rang on Thursday morning, Banks snatched the receiver from its cradle so hard he fumbled it and dropped it on the desk before getting a good grip.

“Alan, what’s going on? You almost deafened me.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“It’s Jenny.”

“I know. I recognized your voice. How are you?”

“Well, don’t sound so excited to hear from me.”

“I’m sorry, Jenny, really. It’s just that I’m expecting an important call.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“The case I’m working on.”

“That one you told me about? The war thing?”

“It’s the only one I’ve got. Jimmy Riddle’s made sure my cases have been thin on the ground lately.”

“Well, I won’t take up much of your time. It just struck me that I was rather… well, emotional… on our last meeting. I want to apologize for dumping all over you, as they say in California.”

“What are friends for?”

“Anyway,” Jenny went on, “by way of an apology, I’d like to invite you to dinner. If you think you can tolerate my cooking, that is?”

“It’s bound to be better than mine.”

She laughed a little too quickly and a little too nervously. “Don’t count on it. I thought we could, you know, just talk about things over a meal and a bottle of wine. A lot’s happened to both of us this past year.”

“When?”

“How about tomorrow, sevenish?”

“Sounds fine.”

“Are you sure it won’t cause any problems?”

“Why should it?”

“I don’t know… I just…” Then her voice brightened. “That’s great. I’ll see you tomorrow about seven, then?”

“You’re on. I’ll pick up some wine.”

After he hung up, Banks sat back and thought about the invitation. Dinner with Jenny. At her place. That would be interesting. Then he thought about Annie, and that cast a shadow over him. She had basically cut him dead on the phone yesterday. After such quick and surprising intimacy, her coldness came as a shock. It was a long time since he had been given the cold shoulder by a girlfriend he had known for only a few days, and the whole thing brought back shades of adolescent gloom. Time to break out the sad songs again. Cry along with Leonard Cohen and learn how to get the best out of your suffering.

But he was anxious to hear from Annie about the East Anglia connection. She had said today at the latest, after all. He toyed with the idea of phoning her, but in the end decided against it. Whatever their personal problems, he knew she was a good enough copper to let him know the minute she got the information he’d asked for. Shortly before eleven, she did.

“I’m sorry for the delay,” she said. “What with time differences and faulty fax machines, well, I’m sure you know…”

“That’s all right. Just tell me what you’ve discovered.” Banks had already come to one or two conclusions of his own since his last talk with Annie, and he felt the tingling tremor of excitement that usually came as the pieces started to fall together; it was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in quite a while.

“First off,” Annie said, “there definitely was an American air base near Hadleigh in 1952.”

“What were they doing there?”

“Well, the US armed forces cleared out of England after the war, but a lot of them stayed on in Europe, especially Berlin and Vienna. The war hadn’t solved the Russian problem. Anyway, the Americans came back to operate from British air bases in 1948, during the Berlin blockade and airlift. The first thing they did was deploy long-range B-29 bombers from four air bases in East Anglia. All this is from my contact in Ramstein. Apparently, there were so many bases by 1951 that they had to change their organizational structure to deal with them.”