A NECESSARY END, An Inspector Banks Mystery Peter Robinson
Charles Scribner’s Sons New York
Maxwell Macmillan International New York Oxford Singapore Sydney i This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First United States Edition
Copyright S 1989 by Peter Robinson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Charles Scribner’s Sons Macmillan Publishing Company 866 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022
Macmillan Publishing Company is part of the Maxwell Communication Group of Companies.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Robinson, Peter, 1950
A necessary end
ISBN 0-684-19385-X.
Title. PR6068.O1964N43 199291-24521CIP
823’.914-dc20
10 987654321 Printed in the United States of America ii For Martin, Chris, Steve and Paul-old friends who all contributed.
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iv Photo on page.
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1
I
The demonstrators huddled in the March drizzle outside Eastvale Community Centre. Some of them held homemade placards aloft, but the antinuclear slogans had run in the rain like the red lettering at the beginning of horror movies. It was hard to make out exactly what they said any more. By eight-thirty, everyone was thoroughly soaked and fed up. No television cameras recorded the scene, and not one reporter mingled with the crowd. Protests were passe, and the media were only interested in what was going on inside. Besides, it was cold, wet and dark out there.
Despite all the frustration, the demonstrators had been patient so far. Their wet hair lay plastered to their skulls and water dribbled down their necks, but still they had held up their illegible placards and shifted from foot to foot for over an hour. Now, however, many of them were beginning to feel claustrophobic. North Market Street was narrow and only dimly lit by old-fashioned gaslamps. The protestors were hemmed in on all sides by police, who had edged so close that there was nowhere left to spread out. An extra line of police stood guard at the top of the steps by the heavy oak doors, and opposite the hall more officers blocked the snickets that led to the winding back streets and the open fields beyond Cardigan Drive.
Finally, just to get breathing space, some people at the 2
edges began pushing. The police shoved back hard. The agitation rippled its way to the solidly packed heart of the crowd, and suppressed tempers rose. When someone brought a placard down on a copper’s head, the other demonstrators cheered. Someone else threw a bottle. It smashed harmlessly, high against the wall. Then a few people began to wave their fists in the air and the crowd started chanting, “WE WANT IN! LET US IN!” Isolated scuffles broke out. They were still struggling for more ground, and the police pushed back to contain them. It was like sitting on the lid of a boiling pot; something had to give.
Later, nobody could say exactly how it happened, or who started it, but most of the protestors questioned claimed that a policeman yelled, “Let’s clobber the buggers!” and that the line advanced down the steps, truncheons out. Then all hell broke loose.
II
It was too hot inside the Community Centre. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks fidgeted with his tie. He hated ties, and when he had to wear one he usually kept the top button of his shirt undone to alleviate the choking feeling. But this time he toyed with the loose knot out of boredom, as well as discomfort. He wished he was at home with his arm around Sandra and a tumbler of good single-malt Scotch in his hand.
But home had been a cold and lonely, place these past two days because Sandra and the children were away. Her father had suffered a mild stroke, and she had taken off down to Croyden to help her mother cope. Banks wished she were back.
They had married young, and he found that the single life, after almost twenty years of (mostly) happy marriage, had little to recommend it.
But the main cause of Banks’s ill humour droned on and on, bringing to the crowded Eastvale Community Centre a particularly nasal brand of Home Counties monetarism. It was the Honourable Honoria Winstanley, MP, come to pour 3
oil on the troubled waters of North-South relations. Eastvale had been blessed with her presence because, though not large, it was the biggest and most important town in that part of the country between York and Darlington. It was also enjoying a period of unprecedented and inexplicable growth, thus marking itself out as a shining example of popular capitalism at work. Banks was present as a gesture of courtesy, sandwiched between two taciturn Special Branch agents.
Superintendent Gristhorpe had no doubt assigned him, Banks thought, because he had no desire to listen to the Hon Honoria himself. If pushed, Banks described himself as a moderate socialist, but politics bored him and
