Peter Robinson - A Necessary End

Of course, she told herself, anything could have happened. He could have accidentally brushed against somebody who had been hurt in the demo, or even tried to help someone. But he had clearly run all the way home; when he had arrived he had been upset and out of breath. And if the explanation was an innocent one, why had he lied? Because that's what it came down to in the end. Instead of telling the simple truth, he had let her go on believing he was hurt, albeit not badly, and she couldn't come up with a convincing reason why he had done that.

"You're quiet today," Seth said, walking over with more drinks.

It's easy for you, she felt like saying. You can cover up your feelings and talk about hammers and planes and chisels and bevels and chamfering as if nothing has happened, but I don't have any small talk. Instead, she said, "It's nothing. I'm just a bit tired after last night, I suppose."

Seth took her hand. "Didn't you sleep well?"

No, Mara almost said, No I didn't bloody sleep well. I was waiting for you to are your feelings with me, but you never did. You never do. You can talk about work to any Tom, Dick and Harry, but not about anything else, not about anything important. But she didn't say any of that. She squeezed his hand, kissed him lightly and said she was all right. She knew she was just irritable, worried about Paul, and the mood would soon pass. No point starting a row.

Rick, his conversation with Zoe finished, turned to the others. Mara noticed streaks of orange and white paint in his beard. "They were all talking about the Eastvale demo," he said. "Plenty of tongues started clucking in the grocer's when I walked in."

"What did they think about it?" Mara asked.

Rick snorted. "They don't think. They're just like the sheep they raise. They're too frightened to come out with an opinion about anything for fear it'll be the wrong one. Oh, they worry about nuclear fall-out. Who doesn't? But that's about all they do, worry and whine. When push comes to shove they'll just put up with it like everything else and bury their heads in the ground. The wives are even worse. All they can do if anything upsets the nice, neat, comfortable little lives they've made for themselves is say tut-tut-tut, isn't it a shame."

The door creaked open and Paul walked in. Mara watched the emaciated figure, fists bunched in his pockets, walk over to them. With his hollow, bony face, tattooed fingers, and the scars, needle-tracks and self-inflicted cigarette burns that Mara knew stretched all the way up his arms, Paul seemed a frightening figure. The only thing that softened his appearance was his hair-style. His blond hair was short at the back and sides but long on top, and the fringe kept slipping down over his eyes. He'd brush it back impatiently and scowl but never mention having it cut.

Mara couldn't help thinking about his background. Right from childhood, Paul's life had been rough and hard. He never said much about his real parents, but he'd told Mara about the emotionally cold foster home where he had been expected to show undying gratitude for every little thing they did for him. Finally, he had run away and lived a punk life on the streets, done whatever he'd had to to survive. It had been a life of hard drugs and violence and, eventually, jail.

When they had met him, he had been lost and looking for some kind of anchor in life. She wondered just how much he really had changed since he'd been with them.

Remembering the blood on his hand, the way he had lied, and the murdered policeman, she began to feel frightened. What would he do if she were to question him? Was she living with a killer? And if she was, what should she do about it?

As the conversation went on around her, Mara began to feel herself drifting off on a chaotic spate of her own thoughts. She could hear the sounds the others were making, but not the words, the meaning. She thought of confiding in Seth, but what if he took some kind of action? He might be hard on Paul, even drive him away. He could be very stern and inflexible at times. She didn't want her new family to split apart, imperfect as she knew it was. It was all she had in the world.

No, she decided, she wouldn't tell anyone. Not yet. She wouldn't make Paul feel as if they were ganging up on him. The whole thing was probably ridiculous anyway. She was imagining things, filling her head with stupid fears. Paul would never hurt her, she told herself, never in a million years.

Sunday morning dawned clear and cold. A brisk March wind blew, restoring the sun and the delicate colours of early spring to the lower hillsides. Women hung on to their hats and men clutched the lapels of their best suits as they struggled to church along Mortsett Lane in Relton. The police car, a white Fiesta Popular, with the official red and blue stripes on its sides, turned and made its way up the bumpy Roman road to Maggie's Farm. PC McDonald drove, with Craig silent beside him and Banks cramped in the back.

The view across the dale was superb. Banks could see Fortford on the valley bottom and Devraulx Abbey below Lyndgarth on the opposite slope. Behind them all, the northern daleside rose, baring along its snowy heights scars of exposed limestone that looked like rows of teeth gleaming in the light. Banks felt refreshed after an evening at home reading Madame Bovary, followed by a good night's sleep. Luckily, Dirty Dick had phoned to cancel their pub crawl, claiming tiredness. Banks suspected he had decided to drop in at the Queen's Arms-just around the corner from his hotel — to work on Glenys, but Burgess looked relatively unscathed the next morning. He seemed tired, though, and his grey eyes were dull, like champagne that had lost its fizz. Banks wondered how he was getting on with Dorothy Wycombe.

As the car pulled onto the gravel outside the farmhouse, someone glanced through the window. When Banks got out, he could hear the wind chimes jingling like a piece of experimental music, harmonizing strangely with the wind that whistled around his ears. He had forgotten how high on the moorland Maggie's Farm was. His knock was answered by a tall, slender woman in her mid — to late-thirties wearing jeans and a rust-coloured jumper. Banks thought he remembered her from his previous visit. Her wavy chestnut hair tumbled over her shoulders, framing a pale, heart-shaped face, free of make-up. Perhaps her chin was a little too pointed and her nose a bit too long, but the whole effect was pleasing. Her clear brown eyes looked both innocent and knowing at once. Banks presented his warrant and the woman moved aside wearily. They knew we were coming sometime, he thought; they've just been waiting to get it over with.

"They'd better not damage anything," she said, nodding towards McDonald and Craig.

"Don't worry, they won't. You won't even know they've been here."

Mara sniffed. "I'll get the others."

The two uniformed men started their search, and Banks sat in the rocking chair by the window. Turning his head sideways, he scanned the titles in the pine bookcase beside him. They were mostly novels — Hardy, the Brontes, John Cowper Powys, Fay Weldon, Graham Greene — mixed in with a few more esoteric works, such as an introduction to Jung's psychology and a survey of the occult. On the lower shelves rested a number of older, well-thumbed paperbacks — The Teachings of Don Juan, Naked Lunch, The Lord of the Rings. In addition, there were the obligatory political texts: Marcuse, Fanon, Marx and Engels. On the floor beside Banks lay a copy of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. He picked it up. The bookmark stood at the second page; that was about as far as he'd ever got with George Eliot himself.

Mara came back from the barn with the others, three of them vaguely familiar to Banks from eighteen months ago: Zoe Hardacre, a slight, freckle-faced woman with frizzy ginger hair and dark roots; Rick Trelawney, a big bear of a man in a baggy paint-smeared T-shirt and torn jeans; and Seth Cotton, in from his workshop, wearing a sand-coloured lab coat, tall and thin with mournful brown eyes and neatly trimmed dark hair and beard framing a dark-complexioned face. Finally came a skinny, hostile-looking youth Banks hadn't seen before.