Playing With Fire

painting just didn’t ring true. Had they suspected something and tried to ignore it? People did that often enough, Banks knew. Or were they really blissfully, willfully ignorant of Aspern’s sexual interest in Tina? And when did that start? When she was six, seven, eight, nine, ten? Or before? Had he been interested in Frances when she was a child, too? He wished he could find out, but he couldn’t think of a direct way of getting an answer to these questions. He would have to see if he could get there indirectly.

“Did the marriage have any effect on Christine?” he asked.

“Well, it gave her a father,” said Maurice. “I’d say that’s pretty important for a child, wouldn’t you? No matter what some of these special interest groups say.”

“Did she behave any differently after the marriage?”

“We weren’t with her so much, so we wouldn’t know. They had their own house by then, out Lawnswood way, not far from where they are now. I’m sure she had her problems adjusting to a new routine, though, as we all do.”

“When they brought Christine to visit, did she seem the same as usual?”

“Yes,” said Maurice. “Until…”

“Until when?”

“What I told you earlier. Until she became a teenager.”

“Then she became uncommunicative?”

“Somewhat, yes. Rather quiet and brooding. Sullen. She could be quite snappy, too, if you pushed her on anything. Hormones.”

Or Patrick Aspern, Banks thought. So he had his answer. It had started, in all likelihood, when she hit puberty. What’s a cut-off point for some pedophiles is the starting point for others.

“Did you see her after she left home?”

The Redferns looked at each other, and Julia nodded. “She came here once,” she said, close to tears. “Maurice was out. Oh, she looked terrible, Mr. Banks. My heart just…” She shook her head and grabbed a tissue from the box on the window ledge. “It just went out to her. I’m sorry,” she said. “It was just so upsetting.”

“In what way did she look terrible?”

“She was so thin and pale. Her nose was running constantly. Her face was spotty, her skin terrible. Dry and blotched. She used to be such a pretty young thing. And I hate to say it, but her clothes were filthy and… she smelled.”

“When was this?”

“Shortly after she’d left. About a year ago.”

When they were living in the Leeds squat, before the boat, perhaps even before Mark. “What did she come for?”

“She wanted money.”

“Did you give her any?”

She looked at her husband. “Fifty pounds. It was all I had in my purse.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Not much. I tried to persuade her to go back to Patrick and Frances. They were beside themselves with worry, of course.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She said she wasn’t going back. Not ever. She was quite emotional about it.”

“Did she say why?”

“Why what?”

“Why she wasn’t going back. Why she left.”

“No, she just got very upset when I mentioned the subject and refused to talk about it.”

“Why did you think she left?”

“I thought it must be something to do with a boy.”

“A boy? Why? Did Patrick Aspern say that?”

“No… I… I just assumed. She was the same age as her mother was when she… I don’t know. It’s a difficult age for young girls. They want to be all grown up, but they don’t have the experience. They lose their hearts to some no-good layabout, and the next thing you know, they’re pregnant.”

“Like Frances?”

“Yes.”

“So you saw history repeating itself?”

“I suppose so.”

“Did you ask your daughter or her husband why Christine left home at sixteen?” Banks persisted.

Julia put her hands to her ears. “Please stop! Make him stop, Maurice.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Redfern,” said Banks. “I’m not here to badger you. I’ll slow down. Let’s all just take a minute and relax. Take a deep breath.” He finished his tea. It was lukewarm.

“As you can see, Mr. Banks,” Maurice said, “this is all very upsetting, and I can’t see what any of it has to do with Christine’s unfortunate death. Perhaps you’d better leave.”

“Murder’s an upsetting business, Dr. Redfern, and I haven’t finished yet.”

“But my wife…”

“Your wife is emotional, I can see that. What I’d really like to know is why.”

“I’d have thought that was quite obvious.”

“Not to me it isn’t.”

“You coming here and-”

“I don’t believe that’s the reason, and I don’t think you do, either.”

“What are you getting at, man?”

Banks took a deep breath. Here goes, he thought. “There have been serious allegations that Patrick Aspern had been sexually abusing his stepdaughter, probably since puberty.”

Maurice Redfern shot to his feet. “Are you insane? Patrick? What allegations? Who made them?”

“Christine told her boyfriend, Mark Siddons, that that was partly why she started using drugs, drugs she got from her stepfather’s surgery, to escape the shame and the pain. He also suggested that Patrick Aspern later let her have the drugs in return for her silence, and perhaps for her sexual favors.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Maurice, sinking back into his chair, pale. “Not Patrick. I won’t believe it.”

“So that’s what she meant,” Julia Redfern said, in a voice hardly louder than a whisper.

“What?” said Banks. “What did she say?”

“Just that I was better off not knowing, that’s all. And that I wouldn’t believe her, never in a million years, she said, even if she told me. And that look on her face.” She turned to her husband, tears welling up in her eyes again. “Oh, my God, Maurice, what have we done?”

“Get a grip on yourself, Julia,” said Maurice. “It’s all lies. Lies made up by some drug-addled boy. We’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. Our daughter married a good man, and now someone’s trying to blacken his character. That’s all. We’ll deal with this through our solicitor.” He stood up. “I’d prefer it if you left now, Mr. Banks. Unless you’re going to arrest us or something, we don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

Banks had nothing more to ask, anyway. He already had his answers. He nodded, got up and left, the apple pie still untouched on its plate.

It was well after dark when Mark got off the number one bus outside the Lawnswood Arms, just past the Leeds Crematorium. His journey had taken so long because there weren’t that many buses from Eastvale to Leeds, and he had to change in Harrogate. Then he had to buy a street map at W.H. Smith’s to find out how to get to Adel. He had never visited Tina’s parents before – never had any reason to – but the address was on the inside cover of some of the books she had kept with her in the squat and on the boat, and he remembered it. He also knew the security code you had to punch in to stop the burglar alarm from going off. Tina had made him memorize it. A month or so ago, Danny Boy had suffered a brief disruption in distribution, and to keep Tina sane, Mark had pretended to go along with a half-baked scheme to break into her father’s surgery and steal some morphine. Luckily, Danny Boy had come through before things really got out of hand.

There was nothing but fields across the main road, and beyond them, down the hill, Mark could see the