WEDNESDAY’S CHILD
PENGUIN BOOKS
Peter Robinson grew up in Leeds, Yorkshire. He emigrated to Canada in 1974 and attended York University and the University of Windsor, where he was later Writer in Residence. He received the Arthur Ellis Award in 1992 for Past Reason Hated and in 1997 for Innocent Graves, and was shortlisted for the John Creasey Award in Britain for his first Inspector Banks mystery, Gallows View. Past Reason Hated also won the 1994 TORGI Talking Book of the Year Award, and Wednesday’s Child was nominated for an Edgar Award. Six additional Inspector Banks novels have all been published to critical acclaim. Peter Robinson is also the author of the psychological thriller Caedmon’s Song and the LAPD procedural No Cure for Love. He lives in Toronto.
Other Inspector Banks mysteries published by Penguin:
Gallows View
A Dedicated Man
A Necessary End
The Hanging Valley
Past Reason Hated
Final Account
Innocent Graves
Dead Right
In a Dry Season
Also by Peter Robinson:
Caedmon’s Song
No Cure for Love
WEDNESDAY’S CHILD
An Inspector Banks Mystery
Peter Robinson
Penguin Books
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England FOf SilClla
First published in Viking by Penguin Books Canada Limited, 1992 Published in Penguin Books, 1993
Copyright S Peter Robinson, 1992
ISBN 0-14-017474-5
WEDNESDAY’S CHILD
“Lost in the desart wild Is your little child. How can Lyca sleep If her mother weep?”
Sleeping Lyca lay
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
View’d the maid asleep.
William Blake
“The Little Girl Lost”
1
The room was a tip, the woman a slattern. On the floor, near the door to the kitchen, a child’s doll with one eye missing lay naked on its back, right arm raised above its head. The carpet around it was so stained with groundin mud and food, it was hard to tell what shade of brown it had been originally. High in one corner, by the front window, pale flowered wallpaper had peeled away from a damp patch. The windows were streaked with grime, and the flimsy orange curtains needed washing.
When Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks perched at the edge of the scuffed olive-green armchair, he felt a spring dig into the back of his left thigh. He noticed Detective Constable Susan Gay turn up her nose as she looked at a garish oil-painting of Elvis Presley above the mantelpiece. “The King” was wearing a jewelled white cape with a high collar and held a microphone in his ringed hand.
In contrast to the shabby decor, a compact music centre in mint condition stood against one wall, a green-and- yellow budgie in a cage nonchalantly sharpened its bill on a cuttlefish, and an enormous matte black colour television blared out from one corner. “Blockbusters” was
on, and Banks heard Bob Holness ask, “What ‘B’ is the
name of an African country bordering on South Africa?”
“Could you turn the sound down, please, Mrs Scupham?” Banks asked the woman.
She looked at him blankly at first, as if she didn’t understand his request, then she walked over and turned off the TV altogether. “You can call me Brenda,” she said when she sat down again.
Banks took a closer look at her. In her late twenties, with long dirty-blonde hair showing dark roots, she possessed a kind of blowzy sexuality that hinted at concupiscent pleasure in bed. It was evident in the languor of her movements, the way she walked as if she were in a hot and humid climate.
She was a few pounds overweight, and her pink polo-neck sweater and black mini-skirt looked a size too small. Her full, pouty lips were liberally coated in scarlet lipstick, which matched her long, painted fingernails, and her vacuous, pale blue eyes, surrounded by matching eye-shadow, made Banks feel he had to repeat every question he asked.
Seeing the ashtray on the scratched coffee-table in front of him, Banks took out his cigarettes and offered the woman one. She accepted, leaning forward and holding back her hair with one hand as he lit it for her. She blew the smoke out through her nose, emulating some star she had seen in a film. He lit a cigarette himself, mostly to mask the peculiar smell, redolent of boiled cabbage and nail-polish remover, that permeated the room.
“When did you first get the feeling something was wrong?” he asked her.
