Peter Robinson: Children of the Revolution

The summons, when it came, arrived at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock on Friday morning — ungodly most of all because Banks hadn’t crawled into bed until almost three. He seemed to remember his mother saying years ago that you’re not supposed to go to sleep with a suspected concussion, but he had been able to stay awake no longer. When he woke to the gentle blues riff of his mobile and heard the clipped voice of AC Gervaise telling him, ‘Now. My office’ he struggled to sit up, then rolled out of bed towards the shower. He noticed there was blood on his pillow, but not much. And he had awoken from his sleep, so all was well. Almost. He had a moment of panic when he worried, too late, that Anthony Litton might have faked the car accident and gone after Lady Chalmers. He should have phoned her last night when he got home, he thought. But if Litton killed Lady Chalmers, that would be the end for him, and he didn’t seem to Banks like the kind of man who would throw away what he wanted so much. He would also have had a difficult time getting to Eastvale without a car.

Taking a few minutes extra to make himself a cup of instant coffee and swallow more painkillers and a slice of buttered toast, Banks skipped the shave and hurried out to the Porsche. It was a damp, chilly morning, the tops of the hills obscured by clouds, and a mist settled low in the valley, so the tower of Helmthorpe church resembled a ship’s mast in the ocean.

Banks had had neither the time nor the inclination to think very much since his hazy journey back from the Litton house. On his way to the station, he decided on the approach that he thought would cause him the least grief. The coffee worked a little magic during the drive, and when he pulled up at the back of Eastvale Police HQ, he was feeling at least eighty per cent human again. His head still spun and throbbed, though, despite the painkillers he had taken.

AC Gervaise was waiting behind her desk and, as expected, ACC McLaughlin was in his usual comfortable chair. The CC himself wouldn’t come out of his hole even for something of this obvious magnitude. What did rather knock the wind out of Banks, though, was the presence of a grey, nondescript man sitting beside the window.

‘I understand you have already met Mr Browne, DCI Banks?’ said Gervaise.

‘Mr Browne,’ said Banks. ‘With an “e”. Yes, indeed.’

Browne inclined his head briefly in greeting, his expression inscrutable as ever. They had met once before during a particularly politically sensitive case, and all Banks really knew about him was that he was someone big in MI5. He had had a serious run-in with them during that case, and now it appeared that he was due for another. How many run-ins with MI5 could the average police career survive? he wondered.

‘You look awful,’ Gervaise said.

Banks rubbed the back of his head gently. Even that hurt. He winced. ‘I’ve had better days.’

‘And nights, so we’ve heard,’ said McLaughlin. ‘According to the Derbyshire police, that is.’

So the patrol constable had spotted something odd, seen blood or smelled whisky, and made inquiries, Banks thought. Well, good for him; he’d go far. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Tell us what you think you were doing going off half-cocked, alone, to interview Anthony Litton,’ said Gervaise.

‘I had nothing definite to go on,’ said Banks. ‘Suspicions, a confirmation of sorts from Lady Chalmers that, should she change her mind, wouldn’t be worth the breath it was spoken with. I was also aware of the sensitive nature of the case. The last thing I wanted to do was rush in there with the heavy brigade “half-cocked”, as you put it, and slap the cuffs on Anthony Litton. I wanted to know what was going on before I decided what to do about it.’

‘And you think that’s your place, to make decisions like that?’

‘I was the only one who knew all the details. But I was planning on laying out what I knew in front of you, ma’am.’

‘But first you went and broke all the rules in the book?’ said McLaughlin.

‘One or two, perhaps. Just little ones.’

McLaughlin glowered. ‘The most important of which was interviewing a potential murder suspect alone.’

‘I talk to people a lot by myself,’ said Banks. ‘I find I get more out of them that way.’

‘It’s not a matter of getting more out of them, Alan,’ said Gervaise. ‘It’s a matter of following the correct procedure, of obtaining evidence that can be used in court. Your recent exploits have got us nothing of the kind.’

‘Well, that should suit everyone well enough, shouldn’t it?’

Banks noticed Browne’s mouth curl at one edge in a little smile.

‘What on earth made you dash off to Derbyshire?’ Gervaise asked.

‘Someone had run Lady Chalmers off the road,’ Banks answered. ‘She’d just left her brother-in-law’s house. I thought he might know something. When I arrived, I noticed scratches and dents on the passenger side of his car. I wanted to know how he got them, so I asked him.’

‘And did he tell you?’

‘He said they must have happened when she drove away from his house in a hurry. But he was lying.’

‘You know this for a fact?’

‘It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Besides, unless he’d moved it for some reason after Veronica’s crash, Litton’s car was parked to the right of the house, in front of the garage doors.’

‘So?’

‘Well, I’m assuming that Lady Chalmers pulled up in front of the house, as I did. That’s where the drive leads, naturally, at any rate, and there’s no room on the other side of the car.’

‘I still don’t get it,’ said Gervaise.

‘No matter how Lady Chalmers left the house, by backing out, doing a three-point turn, whatever, if she’d hit Litton’s car, she would have hit it on the driver’s side, and the damage was on the passenger side, consistent with his overtaking and forcing another car off the road.’

‘It’s hardly evidence, is it, though?’ said Gervaise. ‘More like sheer speculation.’

‘It makes sense of the facts.’

‘Why on earth would Anthony Litton want to harm his own sister-in-law?’ Gervaise asked.

‘Because she knew he killed Gavin Miller, though he had convinced her it was an accident, and he felt she was becoming unstable. He knew she’d been talking to me, for example, and he was starting to feel it would only be a matter of time before she snapped.’ Banks looked at Gervaise and McLaughlin. ‘He first complained to you about me, remember, hoping to nip it in the bud. I think he realised he couldn’t, that she’d blurt it all out sooner or later, and that more drastic action was required.’

‘How do you know he killed Gavin Miller?’

‘He admitted to it. He said it was an accident, too, that they struggled, and Miller fell off the bridge.’

‘And you think he’s lying again?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘You’ll have to explain a bit better than that, Alan.’

‘It’s simple, really,’ said Banks. ‘Gavin Miller and Veronica Bellamy, as she then was, were at the University of Essex together. From what I could gather, they had gone out together for a few months in their first year. Miller must have thought there was money in it, so he contacted Lady Chalmers and asked her for money to keep quiet.’

‘About what?’ asked McLaughlin.

‘Their relationship? Some other indiscretion? Some crime they had committed? Drugs use, most likely? I don’t know exactly what. But it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have taken much.’

‘But why so long after?’ asked Gervaise. ‘That must have been forty years ago.’

‘Because Miller was in desperate straits. Apparently, he had some woolly-headed notion about opening a record shop, and he wanted funding. He was also unravelling mentally, I think. A mix of drink and drugs and a deepening depression. And because Oliver Litton was all over the news. That was the trigger. Miller thought that if he caused the family trouble at a time like this, something that was bound to be splashed over all the tabloid front pages, given that Sir Jeremy and Lady Chalmers are celebrities of a kind, it might be worth a few thousand quid to them just to shut him up. And you all know what reporters are like. They’ll make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse in no time. It was potentially a very vulnerable time for Oliver Litton, especially with the opposition, and even contenders from his own party, searching for anything they could smear him with, however remote or spurious.’