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Arthur Banks paused for a moment, looking his son in the eye, then he said, “And did you also find out what happened to your friend Graham after all these years?”
“Yes. Well, DI Hart did most of the work. I just filled in the blanks.” Banks leaned forward. “But yes, Dad, I found out. It’s what I do. I don’t go around waving rolls of fivers at striking miners, I don’t beat up suspects in the cells, I don’t botch investigations into murdered black youths, and I don’t steal confiscated drugs and sell them back on the street. Mostly, I push paper. Sometimes I catch murderers. Sometimes I fail, but I always do my damnedest.”
“So who did it?”
Banks told him.
“Donald Bradford! You’d have thought that would’ve been the first place they’d look.”
“That’s what made us suspect some sort of misdirection.”
“And Rupert Mandeville. That’ll make a nice headline.”
“If we can pin anything on him. Remember, it was a long time ago, and he’s hardly likely to confess.”
“Even so… Your pal Graham was up to no good, wasn’t he?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. He always seemed a bit shifty to me, that’s all. Like his father.”
“Well, Graham wasn’t exactly walking the straight and narrow, but that’s no excuse for killing him.”
“Course not.” Banks senior fell silent for a moment, contemplating his son through narrowed eyes. Then he let slip a thin smile. “You’ve stopped smoking, haven’t you?”
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”
“There’s not much you can slip past your own father.”
“Dad, have you been listening to me? All I’ve been trying to demonstrate to you all these years,” Banks went on, “is that I’ve been doing a decent, honest day’s work, just like you did.”
“And Jet Harris, local legend, was a bent copper?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to expose him.”
“Something like that.”
“Well,” said Arthur Banks, rubbing his hands together. “That’s all right, then. You’ll be having another pint, I suppose? On me, this time.”
Banks looked at his watch. “Better make it a half,” he said. “I’ve got a date.”
Banks lay in bed late that night listening to Neil Byrd’s CD on his Walkman after di
Here was a man at the end of his tether. And he was thinking of his child, or of his own childhood. Or both.
Banks couldn’t even begin to imagine what this had meant to Luke Armitage when, his mind disoriented with strong ca
Banks remembered the Rimbaud quote written in silver on Luke’s black wall: “Le Poëte se fait voyant par un long, immense et raiso
Well, had Luke become a seer? What had he seen? Was he trying to kill himself with the diazepam, or was he just trying to stop the pain?
In Banks’s mind, Luke Armitage and Graham Marshall became one. They might have died in different ways for different reasons – not to mention in different times – but they were just two kids lost in a grown-up world where needs and emotions were bigger than theirs, stronger and more complex than they could comprehend. Graham had tried to play the big leagues at their own game and lost, while Luke had tried to find love and acceptance in all the wrong places. He had lost, too. Accident though his death was, according to A
Banks put the CD player on the bedside table, turned over and tried to go to sleep. He didn’t think it would be easy. The song had left him with such a feeling of desolation and loneliness that he ached with need for someone to hold and found himself wishing he had stayed at Michelle’s after their lovemaking. He almost took out his mobile and rang her, but it was past two in the morning, way too late. Besides, how would she react if he showed such neediness so early in their relationship? She’d probably run a mile, like A
He could hear his father snoring in the next room. At least there had been a reconciliation of sorts between the two of them. Though Arthur Banks would never actually admit anything, his attitude had changed since their drink together that evening. Banks could tell that his father had been proud of him for his success in solving Graham’s murder – though he insisted Michelle had done most of the work – and for not trying to cover up Jet Harris’s role. Proud for perhaps the first time in his life.
How strange it was to be at home in his old bed. As he drifted toward sleep, he imagined his mother calling him for school in the morning: “Hurry up, Alan, or you’ll be late!” In his dream, he fastened his tie as he dashed downstairs for a quick bowl of cornflakes and a glass of milk before picking up his satchel and meeting the others out in the street. But when he walked out of the door, Dave and Paul and Steve and Graham all stood there waiting for him with the bat, the ball and the wickets. The sun shone in a bright blue sky and the air was warm and fragrant. There was no school. They were on holiday. They were going to play cricket on the rec. “It’s summer, you fool,” Graham said, and they all laughed at him. The summer that never was.