Peter Robinson - Wednesday's Child

Back at Harkness’s house, Banks knew, the SOCO team would be collecting evidence, Glendenning poring over Harkness’s body, a group of constables digging up the garden that Carl Johnson had so lovingly tended, and police frogmen searching the river.

Sometimes, thought Banks, the creaking machinery of the law was a welcome prophylactic on his desire to reach out and throttle someone. Hampered as he had often felt by the Act, today, ironically enough, he was glad of it as he sat across the table looking at the man who had murdered at least three people, wounded Superintendent Gristhorpe and abducted Gemma Scupham.

As he looked, he certainly felt the impulse to kill Chivers, simply to swat him as one would a troublesome wasp. But it wasn’t an impulse he was proud of. All his life, both in spite of and because of his job, Banks had tried to cultivate his own version of compassion. If crime really was part of what made us human, he thought, then it merited deep study. If we simply kill off the pests that bother us, we make no progress at all. He knew that he could, in some strange way, learn from Chivers. It was a knowledge he might deeply wish to reject, but spiritual and intellectual cowardice had never been among his failings.

Banks sat opposite Chivers, Richmond stood behind him, by the door, and Jenny sat by the window, diagonally across from him.

Close up, the monster didn’t look like much at all, Banks noted. About Banks’s height, and with the same kind of lean, wiry strength, he sat erect, hands placed palms down on the table in front of him, their backs covered with ginger down. His skin was pale, his hair an undistinguished shade of sandy brown, and his general look could only be described as boyish — the kind of boy who pulled pranks and was amused to see their effects on the victims.

If there was anything outstanding about him at all, it was his eyes. They were the kind of green the sea looks sometimes, and when he wasn’t smiling they looked just as cold, as deep and as unpredictable as the ocean itself. When he did smile, though, they lit up with such a bright, honest light you felt you could trust him with anything. At least, it was almost like that, Banks thought, if it weren’t for that glint of madness in them; not quite insanity, but close enough to the edge. Not everyone would notice, but then not everyone was looking at him as a murderer.

Banks turned on the tape-recorder, repeated the caution and reminded Chivers of his rights. “Before we get onto the other charges against you,” he said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Gemma Scupham.”

“Why not?” said Chivers. “It was just a lark really.” His voice, a little more whiny and high-pitched than Banks had expected, bore no trace of regional accent; it was as bland and characterless as a BBC 2 announcer’s.

“Whose idea was it?”

“Mr Harkness wanted a companion.”

“How did he get in touch with you?”

“Through Carl Johnson. We’d known each other for a while. Carl was… well, between you and me he wasn’t too bright. Like that other chap, what’s his name?”

“Poole?”

“That’s right. Small-time, the two of them. Low-lifes.”

“How did you first meet Harkness?”

“Look, does any of this really matter? It’s very dull stuff for me, you know.” He shifted in his chair, and Banks noticed him look over at Jenny.

“Humour us.”

Chivers sighed. “Oh, very well. Harkness knew Carl was a gutless oaf, of course, but he had contacts. Harkness needed someone taken care of a couple of months ago.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Someone had been stealing from him in the London office, apparently, and Harkness wanted him taught a lesson. Carl got in touch with me.”

“What happened?”

“I did the job, of course. Harkness paid well. I got an inkling from our little chats that this was a man with unusual tastes and plenty of money. I thought a nice little holiday in Yorkshire might turn out fruitful.” He smiled.

“And did it?”

“Of course.”

“How much?”

“Please. A gentleman never discusses money.”

“How much?”

Chivers shrugged. “I asked for twenty thousand pounds. We compromised on seventeen-fifty.”

“So you abducted Gemma Scupham just for money?”

“No, no. Of course not. Not just for the money.” Chivers leaned forward. “You don’t understand, do you? It sounded like fun, too. It had to be interesting.”

“So you’d heard about Gemma through Les Poole and thought she would be the perfect candidate?”

“Oh, the fool was always moaning about her. Her mother sounded as thick as two short planks, and she clearly didn’t care much about the child anyway. They didn’t want her. Harkness did. It’s a buyer’s market. It was almost too easy. We picked her up, drove around for a while just to be on the safe side, then dropped her off at Harkness’s after dark and returned the car.” He smiled. “You should have seen his face light up. It was love at first sight.”

“Did either Johnson or Poole know about this?”

“I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t have trusted either of them.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Nothing. It was the perfect crime,” Chivers mused. “But Carl got foolish and greedy. Otherwise you’d never have gone anywhere near Harkness.”

“But we did.”

“Yes. Carl suspected something. Maybe he actually saw the child, I don’t know. Or perhaps he caught Harkness drooling over his kiddie porn and put two and two together. That surprised me, that did. I never thought him capable of that. Putting two and two together and coming up with the right answer. I must admit I underestimated him.”

“What happened?”

Chivers made a steeple with his hands and his eyes glazed over. He seemed lost in his own world. Banks repeated the question. Chivers seemed to come back from a great distance.

“What? Oh.” He gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “He tried to put the touch on Harkness. Harkness got worried and called me again. I said I’d take care of it.”

“For a fee?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t say I’m in it for the money, but I need a fair bit to keep me in the style to which I’m accustomed. Harkness arranged to meet him at the old lead mine to pay him off and Chelsea and I gave him a lift there. Poor bastard, he never suspected a thing.”

“Chelsea?”

He stared at a spot above Banks’s left shoulder. “Yes. Silly name, isn’t it? Fancy naming someone after a flower show, or a bun. Poor Chelsea. She just couldn’t quite understand.”

“Understand what?”

“The beauty of it all.” Chivers’s eyes turned suddenly back on Jenny. They looked like a dark green whirlpool, Banks thought, with blackness at its centre, evil with a sense of humour. “She liked it at the time, you know, the thrill. And she never liked poor Carl anyway. She said he was always undressing her with his eyes. You should have seen the look in her eyes when I killed him. She was standing right next to me and I could smell her sex. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun later that night. But she got jittery, read the newspapers, began to wonder, asked too many questions… As I said, she didn’t fully comprehend the beauty of it all.”

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

He turned his eyes slowly back to Banks. “Yes. That was the last straw. It turned her all weepy, the sentimental fool. I had to kill her then.”

“Why?”

“Wouldn’t want another one like me in this universe, would we?” He winked. “Besides, it was what she wanted. I have a knack of knowing what people really want .”

“What did she want?”

“Death, of course. She enjoyed it. I know. I was there. It was glorious, the way she thrust and struggled.” He looked over at Jenny again. “ You understand, don’t you?”