Past Reason Hated

hospital under close observation. Something to do with her blood pressure and the possibility of toxaemia. Caroline was left alone in the big house with her father, and he started coming to her bedroom at nights, asking her to be a good girl and play with him. Before long he was having intercrural sex with her. It’s not very clear how far he went. She remembered pain, but not extreme agony or bleeding. Obviously, he was careful. He didn’t want anyone to find out.’

‘What does “intercrural” mean?’ Banks asked. ‘I’ve never heard the word before.’

Veronica blushed. ‘I suppose it is a bit technical. It was Ursula who used it first. It means between the thighs, rather than true penetration.’

Banks nodded. ‘What happened when the mother came home?’

‘It continued, but with even more caution. It didn’t stop until she was twelve and had her first period.’

‘He wasn’t interested after that?’

‘No. She’d become a woman. That terrified him, or so Ursula reckoned.’

Banks drew on his cigarette and looked out at the peep show. Two swaying teenagers in studded leather jackets stood in the foyer now, arguing with the cashier. A girl slipped out past them. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen from what Banks could see of her pale drawn face in the street light. She clutched a short, black, shiny plastic coat tightly around her skinny frame and held her handbag close to her side. She looked hungry, cold and tired. As far as he could make out, she wasn’t wearing stockings or tights – in fact she looked naked but for the coat – which probably meant she was on her way to do the same job in another club nearby, after she’d stopped off somewhere for her fix.

‘Gary Hartley told DC Gay that his sister had always hated him,’ Banks said, almost to himself. ‘He said she even tried to drown him in his bath once when he was a baby. Apparently, she made his life a misery. Her mother’s, too. Gary blamed her for sending his mother to an early grave. I’ve met him myself, and he’s a very disturbed young man.’

Veronica said nothing. She had finished her drink and had only the dregs of her coffee left to distract her. The waiter sidled up with the bill.

‘What I’d like to know,’ Banks said, picking it up, ‘is did Gary know why she’d treated him that way right from the start? Just imagine the psychological effect. There he was, someone new and strange, the root and cause of all her suffering at her father’s hands. Her mother had deserted her, and now when she came back she was more interested in this whining, crying little brat than in Caroline herself. My sister was born when I was six and I clearly remember feeling jealous. It must have been countless times worse for Caroline, after what had happened with her father. Of course, Gary couldn’t have known at the time, not for years perhaps, but did she ever tell him that her father had abused her sexually?’

Veronica started to speak, then stopped herself. She glanced at Banks’s cigarette as if she wanted one. Finally, when she could find nowhere to hide, she breathed, ‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘As soon as she felt certain it was true.’

‘Which was?’

‘A couple of weeks before she died.’

TWO

Banks walked Veronica to Charing Cross Road and got her a taxi to Holland Park, where she was staying with her friend. After she’d gone, he paused to breathe the night air and feel the cool needles of rain on his face, then went back down Old Compton Street to clubland. It was Friday night, about ten thirty, and the punters were already deserting the Leicester Square boozers for the lure of more drink and a whiff of sex.

In a seedy alley off Greek Street, notable mostly for the rubbish on its pavements, Banks found the Hole-in-the-Wall. Remarkable. It had been there in his days on the vice squad, and it was still there, looking just the same. Not many places had such staying power – except the old landmarks, almost traditions by now, like the Raymond Revue Bar.

He kicked off a sheet of wet newspaper that had stuck to his sole and walked down the steps. The narrow entrance on the street was ringed with low-watt bulbs, and photos in a glass display case showed healthy, smiling, busty young women, some in leather, some in lacy underwear. The sign promised a topless bar and LIVE GIRLS TOTALLY NUDE.

The place was dim and smoky inside, noisy with customers trying to talk above the blaring music. It took Banks a minute or so to get his bearings. During that time, a greasy-haired lad with a sloth-like manner had relieved him of his admittance fee and indicated in slow-motion that there were any number of seats available. Banks chose to sit at the bar.

He ordered a half of lager and tried not to have a heart attack when he heard the price. The woman who served him had a nice smile and tired blue eyes. Her curly blonde hair framed a pale, moon-shaped face with too much red lipstick and blue eyeshadow. Her breasts stood firmly and proudly to attention, evidence, Banks was sure, of a recent silicone job.

Other waitresses out on the dim floor weaving among the smoky spotlights didn’t boast the barmaid’s dimensions. Still, they came, like fruit, in all shapes and sizes – melons, apples, pears, mangoes – and, as is the way of all flesh, some were slack and some were firm. The girls themselves looked blank and only seemed to react if some over-eager punter tweaked a nipple, strictly against house rules. Then they would either scold him and walk off in a huff, call one of the bouncers or make arrangements for tweaking the other nipple in private later.

On the stage, gyrating and chewing gum at the same time to a song that seemed to be called ‘I Want Your Sex’, was a young black woman dressed only in a white G-string. She looked in good shape: strong thighs, flat, taut stomach and firm breasts. Perhaps she really wanted to be a dancer. Some girls on the circuit did. When she wasn’t dancing like this to earn a living, Banks thought, she was probably working out on a Nautilus machine or doing ballet exercises in a pink tutu in a studio in Bloomsbury.

Watching the action and thinking his thoughts in the hot and smoky club, Banks felt a surge of the old excitement, the adrenaline. It was good to be back, to be here, where anything could happen. Most of the time his job was routine, but he had to admit to himself that part of its appeal lay in those rare moments out on the edge, never far from trouble or danger, where you could smell evil getting closer and closer.

The lager tasted like piss. Cat’s piss, at that. Banks shoved it aside and lit a cigarette. That helped.

‘Can I get you anything more, sir?’ the barmaid asked. He was sitting and she was standing, which somehow put her exquisitely manufactured breasts at Banks’s eye level. He shifted his gaze from the goosebumps around her chocolate-coloured nipples to her eyes. He felt his cheek burn and, if he cared to admit it, more than just that.

‘No,’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘I haven’t finished this one yet.’

She smiled. Her teeth were good. ‘I know. But people often don’t. They tell me it tastes like cat’s piss and ask for a real drink.’

‘How much does a real drink cost?’

She told him.

‘Forget it. I’m here on business. Tuffy in?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you? You ain’t law, are you?’

Banks shook his head. ‘Not down here, no. Just tell him Mr Banks wants to see him, will you, love?’

Banks watched her pick up a phone at the back of the bar. It took no more than a few seconds.

‘He said to go through.’ She seemed surprised by the instruction and looked at Banks in a new light. Clearly, anyone who got in to see the boss that easily had to be a somebody. ‘It’s down past the-’

‘I know where it is, love.’ Banks slid off the bar stool and threaded his way past tables of drooling punters to the fire door at the back of the club. Beyond the door was a brightly lit corridor, and at the end was an office door. In front stood two giants. Banks didn’t recognize either of them. Turnover in hired muscle was about as fast as that in young female flesh. Both looked in their late twenties, and both had clearly boxed. Judging by the state of their noses, neither had won many bouts; still, they could make mincemeat of Banks with their hands tied behind their backs, unless his speed and slipperiness gave him an edge. He felt a tremor of fear as he neared them, but nothing happened. They stood back like hotel doormen and opened the door for him. One smiled and showed the empty spaces of his failed vocation.

In the office, with its scratched desk, threadbare carpet, telephone, pin-ups on the wall and institutional green filing cabinets, sat Tuffy Telfer himself. About sixty now, he was fat, bald and rubicund, with a birthmark the shape of a teardrop at one side of his fleshy red nose. His eyes were hooded and wary, lizard-like, and they were the one feature that didn’t seem to fit the rest of him. They looked more as if they belonged to some sexy Hollywood star of the forties or fifties – Victor Mature, perhaps, or Leslie Howard – rather than an ugly, ageing gangster.

Tuffy was one of the few remaining old-fashioned British gangsters. He had worked his way up from vandalism and burglary as a juvenile, through fencing, refitting stolen cars and pimping to get to the dizzy heights he occupied today. The only good things Banks knew about him were that he loved his wife, a peroxide ex-stripper called Mirabelle, and that he never had anything to do with drugs. As a pimp, he had been one of the few not to get his girls hooked. Still, it was no reason to get sentimental over the bastard. He’d had one of his girls splashed with acid for trying to turn him in, though nobody could prove it, and there were plenty of women old before their time thanks to Tuffy Telfer. Banks had been the bane of his existence for about three months many years ago. The evil old sod hadn’t been able to make a move without Banks getting there first. The police had never got enough evidence to arrest Tuffy himself, though Banks had managed to put one or two of his minions away for long stretches.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Tuffy in the East-End accent he usually put on for the punters. He had actually been raised by a meek middle-class family in Wood Green, but few people other than the police knew that. ‘If it ain’t Inspector Banks.’

‘Chief Inspector now, Tuffy.’

‘I always thought you’d go far, son. Sit down, sit down. A drink?’ The only classy piece of furniture in the entire room was a well-stocked cocktail cabinet.

‘A real drink?’

‘Wha’? Oh, I get it.’ Telfer laughed. ‘Been sampling the lager downstairs, eh? Yeah, a real drink.’

‘I’ll have a Scotch then. Mind if I smoke?’

Telfer laughed again. ‘Go ahead. Can’t indulge no more myself.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Quack says it’s bad for the ticker. But I’ll get enough second-hand smoke