Peter Robinson - When the Music's Over

‘But doesn’t having every little thing thrown at you clutter up your investigations?’

Banks smiled. ‘We’ve got a special unclutter gadget that separates the wheat from the chaff.’ He paused. ‘No, seriously, please tell me everything that comes to you. Don’t self-censor.’

‘OK. But I don’t think I can remember anything more right now. I’m exhausted.’

Banks handed her his card. ‘Ring me anytime if you do. And I mean anytime.’

She took the card and read it, then shifted her eyes back to Banks. They seemed filled with a kind of dreamy wistfulness, or it could have been tears. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Would you be willing to repeat all you’ve told me in court, if it came to that?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘You’d better be certain. The defence counsel won’t make things easy for you.’

‘They’d do their job, I suppose. I’d be more comfortable doing it if I wasn’t alone. If there were others.’

‘I think you can count on that.’

‘You know, sometimes I feel a bit like a phoney in all this.’

‘Why?’

She gestured around her. ‘My life wasn’t ruined. I’ve made a successful life for myself. Oh, I get jumpy sometimes, I have panic attacks, and I still have bad dreams — long winding corridors, something nasty behind the door, rooms beyond rooms, but they’re just typical nightmares.’

‘Drugs? Drink?’

Her eyes narrowed, with a glint of humour. ‘Are you asking me if I’m a junkie or an alcoholic?’

‘Not at all.’ Banks felt himself blush. ‘It’s just that sometimes people who’ve experienced... you know, they reach for...’

‘Oblivion?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I had my moments. I was seventeen, eighteen in the late sixties, early seventies. People were experimenting. I was deep into that scene, the poetry, the music, the Eastern philosophy, the clothes, and, yes, the drugs. It took a while for the psychedelic drug culture to work its way up to Leeds, but my friends and I tried pot and acid, mescaline, speed, Mandies. Never the hard stuff, though. No coke or heroin.’

‘What happened?’

‘I got bored with it all, like watching the same cartoon show over and over again at the News Theatre. So I went to university to study English literature.’

‘And drink?’

‘At university? Who didn’t?’

‘In general. Now.’

‘The occasional glass of wine. Hell, the occasional bottle of wine. So what?’

Banks smiled. ‘So nothing.’ Thinking he wouldn’t mind sharing a bottle with her as they talked right now, in the summer garden by the riverside with Beethoven’s calm after the storm playing. But he pushed such thoughts out of his mind. The garden had cast its own special spell made of bee drone, blackbird song, the scent of roses and the music of the fast-running river. The warm and hazy air could do things to your mind, too, distract you, slow thought down, alter its direction. He was here to help this woman get justice for a terrible thing that had happened to her years ago, not to entertain fantasies about chatting with her about poetry and music and life in general over a glass of wine. He needed to break the spell.

She cocked her head. ‘Do you ask all your victims questions like this?’

‘Everyone’s different. I don’t have a set list. I do have a few things I want to know, then I let the conversation flow from the answers. That’s often when I find out the most interesting stuff. Besides, it’s not often that both suspect and victim are celebrities.’

‘I wasn’t a celebrity. I was a fourteen-year-old girl with a head full of dreams of a glamorous life, like being a rock star or an actress. And if you think being a poet is a celebrity leading a glamorous life, then you know something I don’t. And I don’t want to be thought of as a victim, either. If you’re wondering if what happened inhibited me, blighted my life, then the answer’s no, it didn’t. That’s why I feel like a phoney. In small ways maybe it did. For a few months, maybe even a year, certainly, I was a mess, like I said, no doubt about that. But it was a long time ago. Sex, for a while, you know, that was out of the question. It was difficult to relax. I was afraid of the dark. I’d flash on his face, on top of me, his smell. Their faces. I didn’t...’ She broke the mood with laughter and turned to Winsome. ‘I always thought the sexual revolution was invented by men to get their own way.’

‘You might not be far wrong about that,’ Banks said. ‘Winsome here wasn’t even born then.’

‘Winsome? That’s a lovely name.’

‘Thank you,’ said Winsome.

Linda gazed down her gently sloping garden towards the river. ‘Everything came all right eventually, in my twenties. I think I managed to compartmentalise things, draw a veil over the experience. I knew it was there, and it infiltrated my dreams sometimes, but I could control it most of the time, if that makes any sense. As far as missing the sexual revolution was concerned, all I’d really missed was a dose of clap, crabs, premature ejaculations and probably an unwanted pregnancy. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to shock you. I shouldn’t say things like that, of course, but it seemed that was all so many of my girlfriends had to talk about when we were students. I suppose all I had to do was meet the right man. Charles. We married in my late twenties, had children. I started a career in teaching, always writing in whatever spare time I had. Poetry. Spent a few years teaching at a Canadian university in my forties. Creative writing.’ She looked around at the garden. ‘We came back and settled here, then Charles became ill. I have to say, though, on the whole, that it’s been a happy and productive life so far. Fulfilled in so many ways. I count myself lucky.’

‘Except for an encounter with Danny Caxton.’

Her expression darkened for a moment. ‘Except for him, yes. And it makes me feel terrible that he did the same thing to others. That he got away with it for so long. But I never thought of it like that until I heard about Jimmy Savile. In an odd way, it was that day in Blackpool that brought me to poetry, though. I mean, I’d been interested at school, but about a year or so later, when I came out of the deep despair, I picked up this book of poems. I don’t remember where. I don’t even know what made me pick it up. It was by Sylvia Plath. Ariel . Do you know it?’

‘No,’ said Banks. ‘I mean, I’ve heard the name, even seen her grave at Heptonstall, but I haven’t read the poems.’

‘I won’t say I understood them, but they sent my head in a spin. Direct hit. Blew me away. Shivers up the spine, the whole deal. The violent imagery, the anger, the dark fire of her imagination, that fingers-on-the-blackboard feeling. It went right to my soul, if that’s not too melodramatic a way of putting it. I went right out and bought everything she’d written. As soon as I read her I knew I wanted to be a poet. Soon I was writing poems, myself. Imitating Sylvia Plath, of course. Then I branched out, read others, the Beats, the Liverpool poets, the Russians, Hughes, Heaney, Harrison, Larkin, Hill. And I’m sure I imitated them all. Except Hill. You can’t imitate him.’

‘You didn’t dismiss Ted Hughes as a misogynistic swine?’

‘Because of what happened with Sylvia? You do know a bit about poetry, don’t you? Or at least about poets. Quite the Adam Dalgliesh.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t write it.’ Banks didn’t tell her that he had also read some Tony Harrison after a dying coal miner had mentioned him in conversation a year or two back. Enjoyed the poems, too. Harrison seemed to put his finger on how certain things, especially education, can cut you off from your roots. Banks felt that, especially as his father had never approved of his becoming a policeman, and he was sure that Linda understood it also, coming from a working-class background and ending up being a famous poet. All her old friends would be nervous around her now, thinking she had somehow transformed herself into an exotic and remote creature. Weird, indeed.