Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

“I’m asking you if you noticed anything that might indicate he was receiving extra money, yes.”

“Well, if he was, I never saw any of it. I can tell you that much.”

“So where did it all go? Wine, women and song?”

Mrs. Gifford laughed again and stubbed out her cigarette. “My dear,” she said, “John was strictly an ale and whiskey man. He also had a tin ear, and you can forget the women. I’ve not told anyone except my present husband this, but I’ll tell you now: John Harris was queer as a three-pound note.”

“Another round?”

“My shout,” said Banks.

“I’ll come with you.” Dave Grenfell got up and accompanied Banks to the bar. For old times’ sake, they were in The Wheatsheaf, where the three of them had drunk their very first pints of beer at the age of sixteen. The place had been tarted up over the years, and now it seemed a lot more up-market than the shabby Victorian backstreet boozer it had been all those years ago. Probably got the lunchtime crowd from the new “business park” over the road, Banks guessed, though now, early in the evening, it was practically deserted.

Over the first pint, they had caught up with one another to the extent that Banks knew Dave, as his father had said, still worked as a mechanic in a garage in Dorchester and was still married to Ellie, whereas Paul was cheerfully unemployed and gay as the day is long. Coming hot on the heels of his hearing Mrs. Gifford’s revelations about Jet Harris over the phone from Michelle, this last discovery shocked Banks only because he had never spotted any signs of it back when they were kids. Not that he would have recognized them. Paul had seemed to leer over the porn just as much as the others, laugh at the jokes about poofs, and Banks was sure he remembered him having a steady girlfriend at one point.

Still, back in 1965, people denied, pretended, tried to “pass” for straight. Even after legalization, there was so much stigma attached to it, especially on the more macho working-class estates where they had all lived. And in the police force. Banks wondered how hard it had been for Paul to come to terms with himself and come out. Clearly Jet Harris had never been able to do so. And Banks was willing to bet a pound to a penny that someone had known about it, and that someone had used the knowledge to advantage. Jet Harris hadn’t been bent; he’d been blackmailed.

As Dave prattled on about how gobsmacked he was to find out Paul had turned into an “arse-bandit,” Banks’s thoughts returned to the photo he had found in Graham’s guitar. He hadn’t told Mr. or Mrs. Marshall, hadn’t told anyone except Michelle, over his mobile phone, when he took the photo up to his room before meeting the others in The Wheatsheaf. What did it mean, and why was it there? Graham must have put it there, Banks assumed, and he did so because he wanted to hide it. But why did he have it in his possession, why had he posed for it, who took it, and where was it taken? The fireplace looked distinctive enough. Adam, Banks guessed, and you didn’t find those just anywhere.

Banks could begin to formulate a few answers to his questions, but he didn’t have enough pieces yet to make a complete pattern. Two things he and Michelle had agreed on for certain during their phone conversation: the photo was in some way connected with Graham’s murder, and Donald Bradford and Jet Harris were involved in whatever nasty business had been going on. Maybe Carlo Fiorino and Bill Marshall, too. But there were still a few pieces missing.

They carried the drinks back to the table, where Paul sat glancing around the room. “Remember the old jukebox?” he said.

Banks nodded. The Wheatsheaf used to have a great jukebox for a provincial pub outside the city center, he remembered, and they spent almost as much money on that as they did on beer. The sixties of familiar, if sentimental, memory was in full bloom then, when they were sixteen: Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the Flowerpot Men singing “Let’s go to San Francisco,” The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.”

“What do you listen to now, Alan?” Dave asked Banks.

“Bit of everything, I suppose,” Banks said. “Jazz, classical, some of the old rock stuff. You?”

“Nothing much. I sort of lost interest in music in the seventies, when we had the kids. Never really got it back. Remember Steve, though, the kind of stuff he used to make us listen to on Sunday afternoons? Dylan and all that.”

Banks laughed. “He was ahead of his time, was Steve. Where the hell is he, anyway? Surely he must have heard, someone must have been in touch with him.”

“Hadn’t you heard?” Paul said.

Banks and Dave both stared at him. “What?”

“Shit. I thought you must know. I’m sorry. Steve’s dead.”

Banks felt a shiver up his spine. The Big Chill. It was one thing to get to an age when the generation ahead started dying off, but another thing entirely to face the mortality of your own generation. “What happened?” he asked.

“Lung cancer. About three years ago. I only know ’cos his mum and dad kept in touch with mine, like. Christmas cards, that sort of thing. I hadn’t actually seen him for years. Apparently he had a couple of kids, too.”

“Poor sod,” said Dave.

After a brief silence, they raised their glasses and drank a toast to the memory of Steve, early Dylan fan. Then they toasted Graham again. Two down, three to go.

Banks looked closely at each of his old friends and saw that Dave had lost most of his hair and Paul was gray and had put on a lot of weight. He started to feel gloomy, and even the memory of Michelle naked beside him failed to dispel the gloom. His lip burned and his left side ached from where his assailant had kicked him. He felt like getting pissed, but he knew when he felt that way that it never worked. No matter how much he drank he never reached the state of oblivion he aimed for. Even so, he didn’t have to watch what he drank. He wasn’t driving anywhere that night. He had thought he might try to get in touch with Michelle later, depending on how the evening went, but they hadn’t made any firm arrangements. Both needed time to absorb what had happened between them, Banks sensed. That was okay. He didn’t feel that she was backing off or anything, no more than he was. Besides, she had a lot to do. Things were moving fast.

Banks looked at his cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and thought of Steve. Lung cancer. Shit. He reached forward and stubbed it out even though it was only half smoked. Maybe it would be his last. That thought made him feel a bit better, yet even that feeling was fast followed by a wave of sheer panic at how unbearable his life would be without cigarettes. The coffee in the morning, a pint of beer in the Queen’s Arms, that late evening Laphroaig out by the beck. Impossible. Well, he told himself, let’s just take it a day at a time.

Banks’s mobile rang, startling him out of his gloomy reverie. “Sorry,” he said. “I’d better take it. Might be important.”

He walked out into the street and sheltered from the rain under a shop awning. It was getting dark and there wasn’t much traffic about. The road surface glistened in the lights of the occasional car, and puddles reflected the blue neon sign of a video rental shop across the street. “Alan, it’s Annie,” said the voice at the other end.

“Annie? What’s happening?”

Annie told Banks about the Liz Palmer interview, and he could sense anger and sadness in her account.

“You think she’s telling the truth?”

“Pretty certain,” said Annie. “The Big Man interviewed Ryan Milne at the same time and the details check out. They haven’t been allowed to get together and concoct a story since they’ve been in custody.”

“Okay,” said Banks. “So where does that leave us?”

“With a distraught and disoriented Luke Armitage wandering off into the night alone,” Annie said. “The thoughtless bastards.”

“So where did he go?”

“We don’t know. It’s back to the drawing board. There’s just one thing…”

“Yes.”

“The undigested diazepam that Dr. Glendenning found in Luke’s system.”

“What about it?”

“Well, he didn’t get it at Liz and Ryan’s flat. Neither of them has a prescription and we didn’t find any in our search.”

“They could have got it illegally, along with the cannabis and LSD, then got rid of it.”