Past Reason Hated

‘Even in this weather?’

‘Sure. I’d hardly live here if I minded a bit of rough weather, would I? I like it when the sea gets all churned up.’

She seemed to be regaining her composure, but Banks still didn’t believe her story. ‘Why didn’t you mention this little drive?’ he asked.

She smiled at the fireplace. ‘It didn’t seem important, I guess. I mean, it was nothing to do with what you were asking about.’

‘Did you go alone?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘Yes.’

‘Where was Mr Ivers?’

‘Back here, working.’

‘Then who was using his car?’

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘I… I don’t understand.’

‘It’s simple, really, Ms Janowski. His car was missing from its usual spot. If he was here working, who was using it?’

Patsy was saved from having to answer by the creak of the stairs as Ivers came down. He was dressed in much the same kind of baggy jeans and loose jersey as he had been on Banks’s first visit, but this time he had combed back his longish grey hair. He ducked underneath the low lintel beam and walked into the room, where his height and gaunt features commanded attention. The room had seemed crowded enough with three people in it, but with four it felt cluttered and claustrophobic.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, looking over at Patsy, who was squeezing her plump lower lip between her fingers and staring out of the window.

Banks stood up. ‘Ah, Mr Ivers. Please join us. Sit down.’

‘I hardly need to be invited to sit down in my own house,’ Ivers said, but he sat.

Banks lit another cigarette and leaned against the stone mantelpiece. Not a tall man himself, he wanted the advantage of height. Susan remained where she was, her notebook in her lap. Ivers glanced nervously at her, but Banks didn’t introduce them.

‘We were just talking about memory,’ he said. ‘How deceptive it can be.’

Ivers frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Seems to be a lot of that about,’ Banks said.

‘Mr Ivers,’ Susan asked, ‘where did you drive to on the evening of December twenty-second?’

He stared at her but didn’t appear to see her, then he turned towards Banks and gripped the arms of his chair. He thrust himself forward in as menacing a ma

Banks flicked a column of ash into the fire. ‘We’re just asking you a simple question,’ he said. ‘Where did you go?’

‘I told you I didn’t go anywhere.’

‘I know. But you were lying.’

Ivers half rose. ‘Now look-’

Banks stepped forward and gently pushed him back. ‘No. You look. Let me save us all a lot of time and effort and tell you what happened.’

Ivers settled back and fumbled for his pipe and tobacco in his trouser pocket. Patsy poured him some tea and passed it over. Her hand was shaking. The corner of his thin mouth twitched for her in what was meant to be a reassuring smile.

‘That evening,’ Banks began, ‘you decided to take Veronica her Christmas present. It was a record you bought for her at the Classical Record Shop in the Merrion Centre in Leeds, Vivaldi’s Laudate pueri, sung by Magda Kalmar, a singer you knew had impressed her. But when you got to the house, just after seven, say, she was out. Caroline Hartley answered the door and let you in. You were simply going to drop off the present, but something happened, something made you angry. Perhaps she said something about your virility, I don’t know, or maybe the rage you felt about her stealing Veronica from you finally boiled over. You fought, hit her, then stabbed her with the kitchen knife you found on the table.’

‘Ingenious,’ Ivers said. ‘But not a word of it is true.’

Banks knew full well that his theory was full of holes – the two female visitors Caroline Hartley had received after Ivers had apparently left, for example – but he went on regardless. He wanted to shake Ivers up a bit, at the very least.

‘I don’t know why you put the record on, but you did. Perhaps you wanted to make it look like the work of a psychopath. That could also have been why you removed her robe after you hit her. Anyway, when it was done, you washed the knife in the sink. I imagine you must have got blood on your gloves and sleeves, but it would have been easy enough to destroy that evidence when you got home.’ Banks flicked his cigarette end into the fire. ‘Right there.’

Ivers shook his head and clamped his teeth down on his pipe.

‘Well?’ Banks said.

‘No,’ he whispered between clenched teeth. ‘It didn’t happen like that at all. I didn’t kill her.’

‘Did you know that Caroline Hartley had once had a baby?’ Banks asked.

Ivers took his pipe out of his mouth in surprise. ‘What? No. All I know is that she was the bitch who corrupted my wife and induced her to leave me.’

‘Which gives you a very good motive for wanting to be rid of her,’ Susan said, looking up from her notebook.

Again Ivers looked at her but hardly appeared to see her.

‘Perhaps so,’ he said. ‘But I’m not a killer. I create, I don’t destroy.’

Patsy leaned forward and took his hand in hers. With his other hand, he held on to his pipe.

‘What happened?’ Banks asked.

Ivers sighed and stood up. He stroked Patsy’s cheek and went to the fireplace where he knocked out his pipe. He seemed more stooped and frail now, somehow, and his cultured voice no longer held its authoritative tone.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I did go over to Eastvale that evening. I shouldn’t have lied. I should have told you the truth. But when you told me what had happened, I was certain I’d be a suspect, and I was right, wasn’t I? I couldn’t bear the thought of any serious interruption to my work. But I swear, Chief Inspector, that when I left Caroline Hartley, the little slut was as alive as you and I. Yes, I went to the house. Yes, Veronica was out shopping. Caroline let me in grudgingly, but she let me in because it was cold and snowing and she didn’t want to leave the door open. I wasn’t in there more than a few minutes. Out of politeness, I asked how she was and asked about Veronica, then I just handed over the present and left. And that’s the truth, whether you believe it or not.’

‘I’d find it easier to believe if you’d told me the first time I called,’ Banks said. ‘You’ve wasted a lot of our time.’

‘I’ve already explained why I couldn’t tell you. Good Lord, man, what would you have done in my position?’

Banks always hated it when people asked him that. In ninety-nine per cent of cases he would have done exactly as they had: the wrong thing.

‘How could you even imagine that we wouldn’t trace the buyer of the record?’

Ivers shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea what you can or can’t do. I don’t read mystery novels or watch police shows on television. We don’t even have a television. Never have had. I knew I hadn’t put a gift tag on the record – I remembered I’d forgotten to do that shortly after I left Veronica’s – so when you mentioned Vivaldi last time you called I had a good idea you were only guessing it was me. You never asked me outright whether I took her the record or not.’

‘When you left,’ Banks said, ‘was the record still wrapped or had it been opened?’

‘Still wrapped, of course. Why should it have been opened?’

‘I don’t know. But it was. Could Caroline have opened it?’

‘She may have done, just to have a laugh at me and my tastes, I suppose. She always said I was an old bore. She once told Veronica she thought my music sounded like the kind of sounds you’d get from a constipated camel.’

If Ivers was telling the truth, Banks wondered, then how had the record come to be unwrapped? Unless either Caroline had opened it out of malicious curiosity – ‘Hello darling, look what the boring old fart’s bought you for Christmas!’ – or Veronica Shildon herself had returned to the house and opened it. But why should she do that with a Christmas present? Surely she would have put it under the tree with the rest and waited until the morning of the twenty-fifth? And she certainly wouldn’t have done anything so mundane if she had walked into the room and found Caroline’s body.