Peter Robinson: Children of the Revolution

‘Ronnie would never testify against me. We’re family.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that. You’ve made her life a misery lately. I think you pushed her beyond breaking point.’

Litton folded his arms. ‘No. She would never do that to Oliver.’

Banks paused to give his words added weight. ‘Because Oliver is her son?’

At first, Litton gaped, then he got to his feet, walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large whisky, neat, from a cut-glass decanter. When he sat down again, he sank back in the chair, no longer a man in a hurry. ‘So what makes you think that?’

‘Never mind. The point is that a simple DNA test would prove it. I assume you know who the father is, too? Joe Jarvis. She might not have opened up to you about what happened, but she would have opened up to her sister.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘That’s what everybody keeps asking me. Why don’t you tell me what happened first.’ Banks spread his hands. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not wired for sound.’

Litton narrowed his eyes and glared at Banks for a while, then he said, ‘It was an accident. Gavin Miller. All right, Ronnie phoned me in some distress and said he’d been in touch, and he wanted money to keep quiet. As you know, Oliver has a bright future ahead of him, and this Miller character had read about him. He remembered some things from the old student days with Veronica — how she “disappeared” for a while, how she was late back for her second year, how she looked when she did come back. Eventually he put it all together.’ Litton glanced at Banks. ‘And, like you, all he had to do was threaten her with the possibility of exposure, and we were sunk, Oliver’s career along with us. I know that nobody could force her to take a DNA test, but Ronnie thought that if the media kept on demanding it, not doing so would be tantamount to an admission of guilt. She didn’t know what to do.’

‘So you offered to take care of things for her, to meet Miller in her place?’

‘Yes. It was a paltry enough sum. Five thousand pounds. Showed very little imagination, I thought.’

‘You paid him.’

‘Yes. You know I did. And I made sure the bills wouldn’t be traced and that you wouldn’t find my fingerprints on them.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What would be the point of going to all that trouble over the bills if you were simply giving the money to Gavin Miller? I could understand it if you were planning on getting rid of him or something, making sure there was no forensic evidence to link you to the payment, but you said it was an accident, not premeditated murder.’

Litton narrowed his eyes. ‘You think you’re a real clever bastard, don’t you, Banks?’

‘So why did you kill him?’

Litton hammered his fist on his knee. ‘I told you. It was an accident.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘He just wouldn’t give up. I told you, the man was drunk, on drugs, whatever. He was practically incoherent. He kept going on about how he remembered Ronnie, saying intimate things about her, how she had betrayed him, but how he still thought they should be together again. It was disgusting, sick. I tried to just walk away, but he grabbed my lapels. I could tell then that he’d been drinking whisky along with whatever else he’d been taking. He breathed the fumes in my face. He said he realised he hadn’t asked for enough and he’d be back for more. We grappled, struggled. He was going for my wallet, wanted more right then and there. I struggled back, and the next thing I knew he was gone. I looked over the bridge and saw him lying there at an awkward angle. I didn’t know he was dead, but I knew I had to get away from there before anyone came.’

‘So you left the money?’

‘Yes. I panicked. It was too risky to go down there.’

‘The side of the bridge was quite high,’ Banks said. ‘A simple push wouldn’t have sent him over. He had to have been lifted off his feet.’

‘He was light as a feather, Banks. I had no idea. I shook him the way you do, tried to get him off me, lifted him and thrust him into the side of the bridge, or so I thought, just to knock the breath out of him, and he went over. Simple as that. OK, so I lost my temper. But I didn’t kill him deliberately. You have to believe that.’

Banks digested what he had just heard, still not certain whether to believe Litton. He was a bullish man, and strong, so his story would probably hold some credibility with a court, should the case ever get to one. But there was an alternative explanation. ‘When you asked him what evidence he had,’ Banks asked, ‘what did he tell you?’

‘He was just like you,’ Litton sneered. ‘A few wild suppositions that couldn’t be substantiated, and the threat of DNA. I knew we couldn’t survive that.’

‘But he hadn’t actually carried out any DNA tests?’

‘No. How could he? He’d have had to have something of Ronnie’s, Oliver’s and Jarvis’s. What was he going to do, sort through their rubbish? Break in and steal a toothbrush or a hairbrush?’

And pay for the test, too, Banks thought. ‘He might have managed it, eventually,’ he said. ‘But the point is that he hadn’t. All he had was a theory and the possibility of proof. DNA.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Gavin Miller wasn’t a particularly good blackmailer,’ Banks said, ‘Probably because he’d never done it before, and it was in many ways against his nature. He wasn’t a natural criminal, just a man who’d lost his moral compass because he’d been ill-treated and found himself in dire circumstances. From his point of view, his life had been nothing but a series of betrayals. Lady Chalmers betrayed him, his wife betrayed him, the college betrayed him, his most recent girlfriend betrayed him. Even Trevor Lomax, his close friend, betrayed him, though I don’t think he knew the full extent of Lomax’s treachery, thankfully. He was desperate and confused. Blackmail must have seemed his easiest option. Miller was an oddball, an eccentric, true, but apart from a bit of recreational drug use, not a habitual criminal. What blackmailer would admit to his victim that he actually had nothing substantial to bargain with? You didn’t have to talk to Gavin Miller for very long to realise that other than this foolish and greedy drunken man standing before you, there was nothing else to betray your secret and ruin Oliver’s career. Since your wife’s death, the only people who knew were you and Lady Chalmers, and she certainly wasn’t going to tell. Oliver is her son, and she is every bit as proud of him and protective of him as you are, if not more so. But you pushed her too hard, Tony. Everyone has their breaking point, and that moment on the road, when she realised who it was who had tried to send her to her death, was hers. What were you going to do, try again?’

‘This is absurd, Banks. Even if it did come out that Oliver was the son of my sister-in-law and a dyed-in-the-wool communist union agitator, it was hardly his doing, was it? It could hardly reflect badly on him.’

‘Don’t pretend to be so naive,’ said Banks. ‘You know damn well it would mean the end for Oliver Litton and all his political ambitions, and the sad thing is that you’re right — it would be through no fault of his own. In fact, he seems to have led an exemplary life and career so far. Even if the link between Oliver and Joe Jarvis wasn’t enough to sink his career, the subterfuge of his birth and the illegalities involved in passing off Lady Chalmers’ child as your own would be. In this day and age, a politician has to be spotless, and that sometimes involves being spotless in matters beyond his control.’

Litton got up to refill his glass. ‘I asked you before,’ Banks heard him say as the whisky gurgled into the glass. ‘What are you going to do about it? If you arrest me, I’ll deny it all, of course, but you’ll still destroy Oliver. Ronnie, too, and her family. Is that what you want? That’s just what Miller would have done. Do you want to complete the blackmailer’s work for him?’