Peter Robinson: Innocent Graves

“Have there ever been any kidnap threats?”

“No, but one hears about such things.”

“Could your daughter have been carrying anything of value? Cash, credit cards, anything?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Her satchel was open. I was just wondering why.”

Sir Geoffrey shook his head.

Banks turned to Michael Clayton. “Did you see Deborah at all this evening?”

“No. I was at home until I got Geoff’s phone call.”

Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison sat on the white sofa, shoulders slumped, holding hands like a couple of teenagers. Banks sat on the edge of the armchair and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees.

“Inspector Stott says Deborah was found in St. Mary’s graveyard,” Sir Geoffrey said. “Is that true?”

Banks nodded.

Anger suffused Sir Geoffrey’s face. “Have you talked to that bloody vicar yet? That pervert?”

“Daniel Charters?”

“That’s him. You know what he’s been accused of, don’t you?”

“Making a homosexual advance.”

Sir Geoffrey nodded. “Exactly. If I were you, I’d-”

“Please, Geoffrey,” Sylvie said, plucking at his sleeve. “Calm down. Let the chief inspector talk.”

Sir Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair. “Yes, of course. I apologize.”

Why such animosity towards Charters? Banks wondered. But that was best left for later. Sir Geoffrey was distraught; it wouldn’t be a good idea to press him any further just now.

“May I have a look at Deborah’s room?” he asked.

Sylvie nodded and stood up. “I’ll show you.”

Banks followed her up a broad, white-carpeted staircase. What a hell of a job it would be to keep the place clean, he found himself thinking. Sandra would never put up with white carpets or upholstery. Still, he didn’t suppose the Harrisons did the cleaning themselves.

Sylvie opened the door to Deborah’s room, then excused herself and went back downstairs. Banks turned on the light. It was bigger, but in much the same state of disarray as Tracy ’s. Clothes lay tossed all over the floor, the bed was unmade, a mound of rumpled sheets, and the closet door stood open on a long rail of dresses, blouses, jackets and jeans. Expensive stuff, too, Banks saw as he looked at some of the designer labels.

Deborah’s computer, complete with CD-ROM, sat on the desk under the window. Beside that stood a bookcase filled mostly with science and computer textbooks and a few bodice-rippers. Banks searched through all the drawers but found nothing of interest. Of course, it would have helped if he had known what he was looking for.

Arranged in custom shelving on a table by the foot of the bed were a mini-hi-fi system, a small color television and a video-all with remote controls. Banks glanced through some of the CDs. Unlike Tracy, Deborah seemed to favor the rough, grungy style of popular music: Hole, Pearl Jam, Nirvana. A large poster of Kurt Cobain was tacked to the wall next to a smaller poster of River Phoenix.

Banks closed the door behind him and walked back down the stairs. He could hear Sylvie crying in the white room and Sir Geoffrey and Michael Clayton in muffled conversation. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, and when he moved close, they saw him through the open door and asked him back in.

“I have just one more question, Sir Geoffrey, if I may?” he said.

“Go ahead.”

“Did your daughter keep a diary? I know mine does. They seem to be very popular among teenage girls.”

Sir Geoffrey thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I think so. Michael bought her one last Christmas.”

Clayton nodded. “Yes. One of the leather-bound kind, a page per day.”

Banks turned back to Sir Geoffrey. “Do you know where she kept it?”

He frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t. Sylvie?”

Sylvie shook her head. “She told me she lost it.”

“When was this?”

“About the beginning of term. I hadn’t seen it for a while, so I asked her if she’d stopped writing it. Why? Is it important?”

“Probably not,” said Banks. “It’s just that sometimes what we don’t find is as important as what we do. Trouble is, we never really know until later. Anyway, I won’t bother you any further tonight.”

“Inspector Stott said I’d have to identify the body,” Sir Geoffrey said. “You’ll make the arrangements?”

“Of course. Again, sir, my condolences.”

Sir Geoffrey nodded, then he turned back to his wife. Like a butler, Banks was dismissed.

What with one thing and another, it was after two in the morning when Banks parked the dark-blue Cavalier he had finally bought to replace his clapped-out Cortina in front of his house. After Hawthorn Close, it was good to be back in the normal world of semis with postage-stamp gardens, Fiestas and Astras parked in the street.

The first thing he did was tiptoe upstairs to check on Tracy. It was foolish, he knew, but after seeing Deborah Harrison’s body, he felt the need to see his own daughter alive and breathing.

The amber glow from the street-lamp outside her window lit the faint outline of Tracy ’s sleeping figure. Every so often, she would turn and give a little sigh, as if she were dreaming. Softly, Banks closed her door again and went back downstairs to the living-room, careful to bypass the creaky third stair from the top. Despite the late hour, he didn’t feel at all tired.

He turned on the shaded table lamp and poured himself a stiff Laphroaig, hoping to put the image of Deborah Harrison spread-eagled in the graveyard out of his mind.

After five minutes, Banks hadn’t succeeded in getting his mind off the subject. Music would help. “Music alone with sudden charms can bind/The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind,” as Congreve had said. Surely it wouldn’t wake Sandra or Tracy if he played a classical CD quietly?

He flipped through his quickly growing collection-he was sure that they multiplied overnight-and settled finally on Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

In the middle of the second song, “September,” when Gundula Janowitz’s crystaline soprano was soaring away with the melody, Banks topped up his Laphroaig and lit a cigarette.

Before he had taken more than three or four drags, the door opened and Tracy popped her head around.

“What are you doing up?” Banks whispered.

Tracy rubbed her eyes and walked into the room. She was wearing a long, sloppy nightshirt with a picture of a giant panda on the front. Though she was seventeen, it made her look like a little girl.

“I thought I heard someone in my room,” Tracy muttered. “I couldn’t get back to sleep so I came down for some milk. Oh, Dad! You’re smoking again.”

Banks put his finger to his lips. “Shhh! Your mother.” He looked at the cigarette guiltily. “So I am.”

“And you promised.”

“I never did.” Banks hung his head in shame. There was nothing like a teenage daughter to make you feel guilty about your bad habits, especially with all the anti-smoking propaganda they were brainwashed with at school these days.

“You did, too.” Tracy came closer. “Is something wrong? Is that why you’re up so late smoking and drinking?”

She sat on the arm of the sofa and looked at him, sleep-filled eyes full of concern, long blonde hair straggling over her narrow shoulders. Banks’s son, Brian, who was away studying architecture in Portsmouth, took after his father, but Tracy took after her mother.

They had come a long way since the bitter arguments over her first boyfriend, long since dumped, and too many late nights over the summer. Now Tracy had determined not to have a boyfriend at all this year, but to put all her efforts into getting good A-level results so she could go to university, where she wanted to study history. Banks couldn’t help but approve. As he looked at her perching so frail and vulnerable on the edge of the sofa his heart swelled with pride in her, and with fear for her.