Reginald Hill - Fell of Dark

‘Isn’t there a back way?’

‘Oh yes. But that’s reserved for people we’ve finished with.’

He smiled.

Always be a bad loser, my father had taught me, but let your badness be concealed.

I smiled back.

‘All right. You win. But if your canteen cooks like it makes coffee, I can do without it.’

He sat down, content it seemed to go on with the interrogation right away. But I had other plans.

‘I’ve got a packed lunch from the Boot Inn. It looked rather nice. I’ll settle for that, I think. It is in my knapsack.’

We had removed our knapsacks on entry into Armstrong’s car, and I had noticed Lazonby had carried them into the station with him.

‘I’ll have it sent up,’ said Melton, reaching for the phone.

‘Don’t bother. I feel like stretching my legs. I’ll go down.’

I got up and left the room before he could reply. I clattered down the stairs and turned into the narrow corridor. A few steps brought me opposite the door through which Peter had gone. I gave a perfunctory knock and shoved it open.

Inspector Copley was sitting on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling, looking down expressionlessly at Peter, who sat on a very uncomfortable-looking chair, his head thrown back and a handkerchief clutched to his face. It was covered in blood.

My first thought was of third-degree methods, police brutality, and all the other horrors which grow up in parallel with the myth of the helpful fatherly copper. But Copley did not seem at all put out by my entrance. He obviously read the accusation in my eyes, however.

‘It’s his nose,’ he said laconically.

Peter rolled his eyes round to the door, and saw me.

‘Harry,’ he said, ‘it’s my nose again. It just started.’

Nose-bleeds had been one of the physical manifestations of Peter’s nervous disturbance while he was in hospital, indeed to such an extent that he had been in need of blood transfusions at one point.

I rushed over to him. He was pale and drawn.

‘For God’s sake, man,’ I snapped at Copley, ‘can’t you see he’s ill?’

‘It’s just a bleeding nose,’ said Copley evenly. ‘I put a key down his back.’

‘Yes, Harry,’ said Peter. ‘It’s just my nose. Really it is, I’m all right.’

He looked up at me pleadingly.

‘Inspector Copley says we won’t be long now. Then we can go.’

I interpreted his glance easily. He felt the end was in sight and could hold up till then. I felt he would be better off seeing a doctor, perhaps spending a night in hospital, but I also knew that he would regard this as a defeat and instantly cease the desperate struggle he was making to remain on the surface of reality.

‘All right, Peter,’ I said. ‘See you soon.’

As I went out of the door I bumped into Melton. He carried my knapsack.

‘I got there before you after all. Here we are. I’ve had some tea sent up to the room we are using so you’ll have something to wet your throat. I’ll let you chew in peace and join you later, shall I? Do you hear that, Inspector Copley? Mr Bentink’s having his lunch here; sandwiches. He doesn’t trust our cooking. Perhaps Mr Thorne would like to do the same. See that he’s comfortable, won’t you? Come along now, Mr Bentink.’

I let myself be ushered back upstairs. Melton poured me a cup of tea and left. I unfastened my knapsack and pulled out the grease-proof paper packet of sandwiches. Then stopped with it half way out.

Below it lay my hat, neatly spread out with the crown acting as a kind of sack or support for the sandwiches.

The thing was, however, that my hat, made out of some phenomenally efficient crush- and crease-proof material, had been rolled up into a cylinder and thrust down the side when I had packed that morning.

My belongings had been unpacked and replaced since I arrived at the station.

I went through things carefully then. Nothing was missing, but now my suspicions had been aroused, I noticed many small items which were out of place. The knapsack had undoubtedly been searched.

I sat for a long time wondering why. I suddenly began to feel that matters were leaving my control. But once again, the certainty of my innocence made me laugh mockingly at myself and my overdramatization of events. Then I ripped open the sandwich packet and began eating in case Melton should return and find me sitting there, just staring into space.

I need not have hurried, however, for it was after 2 p.m. when Melton reappeared, full of apologies.

‘There’s so much to do. So much. So many little things. I’m sure you find this in business too. Now, where were we?’

‘I haven’t known where we were for the past four hours, Superintendent.’

‘Haven’t you? Perhaps that explains why you have been lying to me.’

My face settled instantly into the unemotional mask I reserve for crises, but my stomach began to bubble and pop like a panful of curry. I said nothing. I wanted to know what particular lie I was being accused of before I started defending myself.

‘Mr Thorne spent the three months up to a week last Tuesday in the Sister Moss Nursing Home near Epping in Essex. This holiday you are on is intended as a kind of buffer state between the world of the Home and the world of reality. Am I right?’

‘I’ll have that doctor struck off.’

‘I doubt it. Mrs Bentink is unobtainable at the moment, it seems. But we have it on reasonable authority that you and she parted on the worst of terms, that your friendship with Mr Thorne had long been a source of friction between you, that in fact your marriage was near breaking-point.’

I thought of a dozen worthies of both sexes and all levels who would have delighted in offering these tid-bits. It was little consolation to know that the eleven who did not get in first would be equally willing to let me know the identity of the one who did.

‘It also seems that Mr Thorne is sexually abnormal.’

I smiled.

‘You find it amusing, Mr Bentink?’

‘I find your way of expressing things amusing. Yes, Mr Thorne is a homosexual. But so are so many people that one wonders what is normal and what is abnormal.’

‘You are not homosexual yourself?’

‘No.’

‘But you do not regard Mr Thorne’s activities as in any way deplorable?’

‘No.’

‘That’s very liberal of you, Mr Bentink.’

‘I am a very liberal person.’

‘So I see. You must know, of course, that Mr Thorne made certain advances to a young waiter at the Derwent Hotel. The boy was eighteen years old. He was a first-year university student. Clever, yes, but not necessarily very mature. How liberal are you about that, Mr Bentink?’

I shrugged.

‘It came to nothing.’

‘No. The boy was mature. There was another student earlier on, wasn’t there? How liberal were you about that?’

I did not reply.

‘Then last night. Another youth. Twenty years old. Italian. Again a waiter. Did you notice anything there, Mr Bentink?’

I nodded.

‘But perhaps you were not privy to the fact that last night they slept together, they indulged in what passes for sexual intercourse between such people. Your mature, intellectual friend, convalescing from a mental breakdown, and a twenty-year-old foreigner stuck in the strangest part of a strange country. How liberal are you about that, Mr Bentink? How liberal can you get!’

He cracked his hand sharply on the desk.

I viewed him warily. I felt it was important to discover exactly how much this was a genuine display of indignation, how much a carefully controlled performance to lead me – where? My main feeling in any case was one of relief. This particular lie was not too difficult to account for. In fact, its discovery seemed to offer a new line of defence, though I did not take kindly to having to recognize I was now on the defensive.