Past Reason Hated

Ruth nodded and left the room. If Banks had expected a hostile welcome, for whatever reason, he was certainly disarmed by Ruth Dunne’s charm and hospitality. And by her appearance. Her shiny brown hair, medium length, was combed casually back, parted at one side, and the forelock almost covered her left eye. Her face was unlined and without make-up. Strong-featured, handsome rather than pretty, but with a great deal of character in the eyes. They’d seen a lot, Banks reckoned, those hazel eyes. Felt a lot, too. In life, she looked far more natural and approachable than the arrogant, knowing woman in the photograph, yet there was certainly something regal in her bearing.

‘How did you find me?’ she asked, bringing back two mugs of steaming black coffee and sitting with her legs curled under her on the divan. She held her mug with both hands and sniffed the aroma. The gas fire hissed quietly in the background. Banks sat in one of the armchairs, the kind that seem to embrace you like an old friend, and lit a cigarette. Then he showed her the photograph, which she laughed at, and told her.

‘So easy,’ she said when he’d finished.

‘A lot of police work is. Easy and boring. Time-consuming, too.’

‘I hope that’s not a subtle way of hinting I should have come forward earlier?’

‘No reason to, had you? Did you know about Caroline’s death?’

Ruth reached for the blue paper packet of Gauloises, tapped one out and nodded. ‘Read about it in the paper. Not much of a report, really. Can you tell me what happened?’

Banks wished he could, but knew he couldn’t. If he told her, then he’d have no way of checking what she already knew.

She noticed his hesitation and waved her hand. ‘All right. I suppose I should think myself lucky to be spared the gory details. Look, I imagine I’m a suspect, if you’ve come all this way. Can we get that out of the way first? I might have an alibi, you never know, and it’ll make for a hell of a more pleasant afternoon if you don’t keep thinking of me as a crazed, butch dyke killer.’ She finally lit the cigarette she’d been toying with, and the acrid tang of French tobacco infused the air.

Banks asked her where she had been and what she had been doing on 22 December. Ruth sucked on her Gauloise, thought for a moment, then got up and disappeared down the corridor. When she reappeared, she held an open appointment calendar and carried it over to him.

‘I was giving a poetry reading in Leamington Spa, of all places,’ she said. ‘Very supportive of the arts they are up there.’

‘What time did it start?’

‘About eight.’

‘How did you get there?’

‘I drove. I’ve got a Fiesta. It’s life in the fast lane all the way for us poets, you know. I was a bit early, too, for a change, so the organizers should remember me.’

‘Good audience?’

‘Pretty good. Adrian Henri and Wendy Cope were reading there, too, if you want to check with them.’

Banks noted down the details. If Ruth Dunne had indeed been in Leamington Spa at eight o’clock that evening, there was no conceivable way she could have been in Eastvale at seven twenty or later. If she was telling the truth about the reading, which could be easily checked, then she was in the clear.

‘One thing puzzles me,’ Banks said. ‘Caroline had your picture but we couldn’t find a copy of your book among her things. Can you think why that might be?’

‘Plenty of reasons. She wasn’t much of a one for material possessions, wasn’t Caroline. She never did seem to hang on to things like the rest of us acquire possessions I always envied her that. I did give her a copy of the first book, but I’ve no idea what happened to it. I sent the second one, too, the one I dedicated to her, but I wasn’t sure what her address was then. The odds are it went to an old address and got lost in the system.’

Either that or Nancy Wood had run off with both of them, Banks thought, nodding.

‘But she hung on to the photograph.’

‘Maybe she liked my looks better than my poetry.’

‘What kind of poetry do you write, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I don’t mind, but it’s a hard one to answer.’ She tapped the fingers holding the cigarette against her cheek. The short blonde hairs on the back of her hand caught the light. ‘Let me see, I don’t write confessional lesbian poetry, nor do I go in for feminist diatribes. A little wit, I like to think, a good sense of structure, landscape, emotion, myth… Will that do to be going on with?’

‘Do you like Larkin?’

Ruth laughed. ‘I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s hard not to. I never much admired his conservative, middle-class little Englandism, but the bugger certainly had a way with a stanza.’ She cocked her head. ‘Do we have a literary copper here? Another Adam Dalgliesh?’

Banks smiled. He didn’t know who Adam Dalgliesh was. Some television detective, no doubt, who went around quoting Shakespeare.

‘Just curious, that’s all,’ he answered. ‘Who’s your favourite?’

‘H. D. A woman called Hilda Doolittle, friend of Ezra Pound’s.’

Banks shook his head. ‘Never heard of her.’

‘Ah. Clearly not a literary copper then. Give her a try.’

‘Maybe I will.’ Banks took another sip of his coffee and fiddled for a cigarette. ‘Back to Caroline. When did you last see her?’

‘Let me see… It was years ago, five or six at least. I think she was about twenty or twenty-one at the time. Twenty going on sixty.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Banks remembered Caroline as beautiful and youthful even in death.

‘The kind of life she was leading ages a woman fast – especially on the inside.’

‘What life?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘Tell me.’

Ruth shifted into the cross-legged position. ‘Oh, I get it. You ask the questions, I answer them. Right?’

Banks allowed himself a smile. ‘I’m not meaning to be rude,’ he said, ‘but that’s basically how it goes. I need all the information I can get on Caroline. So far I don’t have a hell of a lot, especially about the time she spent in London. If it’ll make talking easier for you, I can tell you that we already know she had a conviction for soliciting and gave birth to a child. That’s all.’

Ruth looked down into her coffee and Banks was surprised to see tears rolling over her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting the mug down and wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘It just sounds so sad, so pathetic. You mustn’t think I’m being flippant, the way I talk. I don’t get many visitors so I try to enjoy everyone I meet. I was very upset when I read about Caroline, but I hadn’t seen her for a long time. I’ll tell you anything I can. A marmalade cat slipped into the room, looked once at Banks, then jumped on the divan next to Ruth and purred. ‘Meet T.S. Eliot,’ Ruth said. ‘He named so many cats, so I thought at least one should be named after him. I call him T.S. for short.’

Banks said hello to T.S., who seemed more interested in nestling into the hollow formed by Ruth’s crossed legs. She picked up her coffee again with both hands and blew gently on the surface before drinking.

‘Caroline started as a dancer,’ she said. ‘An exotic dancer, I believe they’re called. Well, it’s not too much of a leap from that to pleasing the odd, and I do mean odd, punter or two for extra pocket money. I’m sure you know much more about vice here than I do, but before long she was doing the lot: dancing, peep shows, turning tricks She was a beautiful child, and she looked even younger than she was. A lot of men around that scene have a taste for fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds, or even younger, and Caroline could fulfil that fantasy when she was eighteen.’

‘Was she on drugs?’

Ruth frowned and shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know. Not like some of them. She might have had the odd joint, maybe an upper or a downer now and then – who doesn’t? – but nothing really heavy or habitual. She wasn’t hooked on anything.’

‘What about her pimp?’

‘Bloke called Reggie. Charming character. One of his women did for him with a Woolworth’s sheath knife shortly before Caroline broke away. You can check your records, I’m sure they’ll have all the details. Caroline wasn’t involved, but it was a godsend for her in a way.’

‘How?’

‘Surely it’s obvious. She was scared stiff of Reggie. He used to bash her about regularly. With him out of the way, she had a chance to slip between the cracks before the next snake came along.’

‘When did she break away?’

Ruth leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘About a year before she went back up north.’

‘And you knew her during that period?’

‘We lived together. Here. I got this place before the prices rocketed. You wouldn’t believe how cheap it was. I knew her before for a little while, too. I’d like to think I played a small part in getting her out of the life.’

‘Who played the biggest part?’

‘She did that herself. She was a bright kid and she saw where she was heading. Not many you can say that about. She’d been wanting out for a while, but Reggie wouldn’t let go and she didn’t know where to run.’

‘How did you come to meet her?’

‘After a poetry reading. Funny, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Out in Camden Town. All we had in the audience was a prostitute and a drunk who wanted to grab the mike and sing ‘Your Cheating Heart’. He did, too, right in the middle of my best poem. Afterwards we drove down to Soho – not the drunk, just me and my fellow readers – to the Pillars of Hercules. Know it?’

Banks nodded. He’d enjoyed many a pint of draught Beck’s there.

‘We just happened to be jammed in a corner next to Caroline and another girl. We got talking, and one thing led to another. Right from the start Caroline struck me as intelligent and wise, wasted on that scummy life. She knew it too, but she didn’t know what else she could do. We soon became close friends. We went to the theatre a lot and she loved it. Cinema, art exhibitions.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Anything but classical music or opera. She didn’t mind ballet, though. It was all a world she’d never known.’

‘Was that all there was to your relationship?’

Ruth paused to light another Gauloise before answering. ‘Of course not. We were lovers. But don’t look at me as if I was some kind of corrupter of youth. Caroline