her shoulders.
‘Was it a sexual relationship?’
‘None of your bloody business.’
‘Did he ditch you?’
‘We just drifted apart.’
‘Is that all?’
‘It’s all you’re getting.’ Penny stood up to leave, but Banks reached out and grabbed her arm. She stared at him angrily, and he let go as if he had received an electric shock. She rubbed the muscle.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please sit down again. I haven’t finished yet. Look, you might think I’m just prying into your personal life for the fun of it, but I’m not. I don’t give a damn who you’ve slept with and who you haven’t slept with, what drugs you’ve taken and what you haven’t taken, unless it relates to Harold Steadman’s murder. Is that clear? I don’t even care how much hash you smoke now.’
Penny eyed Banks shrewdly. Finally she nodded.
‘So why did you split up?’ Banks asked.
‘Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you.’
‘Same again?’ Banks got up to go to the bar.
Penny nodded. ‘I can’t promise it’ll be interesting, though,’ she called after him.
‘There was nothing mature about our relationship,’ she said as Banks sat down with a pint and a double Scotch. ‘Neither of us really knew anything different until something else came along.’
‘Another man?’
‘No. Not until later. Much later.’
‘You mean university for Michael and a singing career for you?’
‘Yes, partly. But it wasn’t as simple as that.’
‘What do you mean?’
Penny frowned as if she had just thought of something, or tried to grasp the shadow of a memory. ‘I don’t know. We just drifted apart, that’s all there is to it. It was summer, ten years ago. Every bit as hot as this one. I told you it wasn’t exciting.’
‘But there must have been a reason.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because I think the answer to Steadman’s death lies in the past, and I want to know as much about it as possible.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I’m asking the questions. Did he dump you because you wouldn’t have sex with him?’
Penny blew out a stream of smoke. ‘All right, so I wouldn’t let him fuck me. Is that what you want to hear?’ The word was clearly meant to shock Banks.
‘You tell me.’
‘Oh, this is bloody insufferable. Here.’ She tossed him another cigarette. ‘Maybe sex was part of it. He was certainly getting persistent. Perhaps I should have let him. I don’t know… I’m sure I was ready. But then he seemed different. He got more withdrawn and distant. Things just felt strange. I was changing, too. I was singing in the village pubs and Michael was studying to go to university. Harry and Emma were up for quite a while and it was hot, very hot. Emma would hardly go outside because her skin burned so easily. Harry and I spent quite a bit of time at the Roman site near Fortford. It was just being excavated then. We went for walks as well, long walks in the sun.’
‘Did Michael go with you?’
‘Sometimes. But he wasn’t very interested in that kind of thing then. He’d just discovered the joys of English Literature. It was all Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and D. H. Lawrence for him. He spent most of the time with his nose stuck in a book of poems, whether he was with us or not. That’s when he wasn’t trying to stick his hands up my skirt.’
‘Must have been Lawrence’s influence.’
Penny’s lips twitched in a brief smile. She put her hand to her forehead and swept back her hair. ‘Maybe.’
‘And Mrs Steadman?’
‘As I said, she didn’t like the sun. Sometimes she’d come if we went in the car and sit under a makeshift parasol by the side of the road while we had a picnic like characters from a Jane Austen novel. But she wasn’t really interested in the Romans or folk traditions, either. Maybe it wasn’t the best of marriages, I don’t know. Lord knows, they didn’t have much in common. But they put up with it, and I don’t think they treated each other unkindly. Harry shouldn’t have married, really. He was far too dedicated to his work. Mostly I just remember him and me tramping over the moors and naming wild flowers.’
Steadman must have been in his early thirties then, Banks calculated, and Penny was sixteen. That wasn’t such an age difference to make attraction impossible. Quite the contrary: he was exactly the age a girl of sixteen might be attracted to, and Steadman had certainly been handsome, in a scholarly kind of way, right up to the end.
‘Didn’t you have a crush on Harry?’ he asked. ‘Surely it would have been perfectly natural?’
‘Perhaps. But the main thing – the thing you don’t seem able to understand – is that Harry really wasn’t like that. He wasn’t sexy, I suppose. More like an uncle. I know it must be hard for you to believe, but it’s true.’
If I don’t believe it, Banks thought, it’s not for want of people trying to convince me. ‘Don’t you think Michael might have seen the relationship differently?’ he suggested. ‘A threat, perhaps. An older, more experienced man. Might that not have been why he seemed strange?’
‘I can’t say I ever thought of it that way,’ Penny answered.
Banks wasn’t sure whether he believed her or not; she lied and evaded issues so often he was becoming more and more convinced that she was an actress as well as a singer.
‘It’s possible though, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘I guess so. But he never said anything to me. You’d think he would have, wouldn’t you?’
‘You didn’t argue? Michael never said anything about you going off with Harry? He didn’t always insist on accompanying you?’
Penny shook her head at each question.
‘He was very shy and awkward,’ she said. ‘It was very difficult for him to express himself emotionally. If he did think anything, he kept it to himself and suffered in silence.’
Banks sipped his pint of Theakston’s, brooding on how best to put his next question. Penny offered him another Silk Cut.
‘If I read you right, Inspector,’ she said, ‘you seem to be implying that Michael Ramsden might have killed Harry.’
‘Am I?’
‘Come on! Why all the questions about him being jealous?’
Banks said nothing.
‘They became great friends, you know,’ Penny went on. ‘When Michael graduated and got interested in local history, he helped Harry a lot. He even persuaded his firm to publish Harry’s books. It was more than just a publisher-author relationship.’
‘That’s what I was wondering,’ Banks cut in, seizing his opportunity. ‘Is there any possibility of a homosexual relationship between them? I know it sounds odd, but think about it.’
Unlike Barker, Penny took the question seriously before concluding that she doubted it very much. ‘This had better not be a trick,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not trying to trap me into admitting intimate knowledge of Harry’s sexual preferences.’
Banks laughed. ‘I’m not half as devious as you make out.’
Her eyes narrowed sharply. ‘I’ll bet. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I really can’t help you. You’d think you’d know all about a friend you’ve known for years, but it’s just not so. Harry could have been gay, for all I know. Michael, on the other hand, seemed very much like a normal adolescent, but there’s no reason why he couldn’t have been bi. Who can tell these days?’
And she was right. Banks had known a sergeant on the Metropolitan force for six years – a married man
