In a Dry Season (38 page)

The pub was crowded and we were lucky to get a table. Brad went to the bar for drinks while we took our coats off. A meagre fire burned in the hearth, but with all the warm bodies in there, it was enough. Also, in the Black Swan, Brad and Charlie weren't the only Americans; it seemed to be a popular place among the Rowan Woods crowd, and there were even some
GI
s from the army base near Otley. They were loud and they used hand gestures a lot; they also seemed to push and shove one another a lot, in a friendly way, as children do.

Brad came back bearing a tray of six drinks. We wondered who was going to join us. Gloria and I were both drinking gin, and when Brad and Charlie picked up their beer glasses, then poured the small measures of whisky into them, our unspoken question was answered. Nobody. Just another American peculiarity.

We toasted one another and drank, then Brad did the thing with the cigarettes again, and Charlie did it for me.

“What do you do?” Gloria asked.

“I'm a pilot,” said Brad, “and Charlie here's my navigator.”

“A pilot! How exciting. Where are you from?”

“California.”

Gloria clapped her hands together. “Hollywood!”

“Well, not exactly. A little place called Pasadena. You probably haven't heard of it.”

“But you must
know
Hollywood?”

Brad smiled, revealing straight white teeth. They must have wonderful dentists over in America, I thought, and people must have enough money to be able to afford them. “As a matter of fact, yeah, I do,” he said. “I did a little stunt flying there in the movies before I came over here.”

“You mean you've actually been in pictures?”

“Well, you can't really see it's me, but, I mean, yeah, I guess so.” He named a couple of titles; we hadn't heard of either of them. “That's what I want to do when all this is over,” he went on. “Get back there and get in the movie business. My father's in oil and he wants me to join him. I know there's plenty of money there, but that's not what I want. I want a shot at being a stunt man.”

If Gloria was disappointed that Brad didn't want to be an oil millionaire or a movie star, she didn't show it. As they chatted away excitedly about films and Hollywood, Charlie and I started our own hesitant conversation.

The beer and whisky must have melted a little of his reserve, because he opened by asking me what I did. He regarded me seriously as I told him, his expression unchanging, nodding his head every now and then. Then he told me his father was a professor at Harvard, that he had completed his university degree in English just before the war, and when he went back he wanted to go to Harvard, too, to study law. He liked flying, he said, but he didn't see it as a career.

The more we talked, the more we found we had in common— Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, for example, and the poetry of T.S. Eliot. And Robert Frost and Edward Thomas. He hadn't heard of many of our younger poets, so I offered to lend him some issues of
Penguin New Writing
, with poems by MacNeice, Auden and Day Lewis, and he said he would lend me Tate and Bishop's
American Harvest
anthology, if I took special care with it. I told him that I would no more damage a book than I would a living human being and that made him smile for the first time.

“Have you got a husband?” I overheard Brad ask Gloria. “I mean, I don't mean to . . . you know . . . ”

“It's all right. I did have. But he's dead. Killed in Burma. At least I hope to God he was.”

I turned from Charlie. It was true that we had tried to convince ourselves of Matthew's death, but there was still a lingering hope, at least in my mind, and I thought that was a terrible thing to say. I told her so.

She turned on me, eyes flashing. “Well, you should know better than anyone that I'm right, Gwen. You're the one who reads the newspapers and listens to the news, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“Look, I'm really sorry,” Brad cut in, but Gloria ignored him, kept staring at me.

“So you must know what they're saying about the Japanese, about the way they treat their prisoners?” she went on.

I had to admit that I had read one or two rather grim stories alleging that the Japanese beat and starved prisoners to death, and according to Anthony Eden torture and decapitation were favourite pastimes in their
POW
camps. The
Daily Mail
called them “monkey men,” claimed that they were “sub-human” and should be outlawed after they had been beaten back to their “savage land.” I didn't know what to believe. If the stories were true, then I should probably agree with Gloria and hope to God Matthew was dead.

“I've got friends fighting in the Pacific,” said Charlie. “I hear it's pretty rough out there. A lot of those stories are true.”

“Well, he's dead, anyway,” said Gloria. “So nothing can hurt him now. Look, this is too depressing. Can we have another round of drinkies please?”

Brad and Charlie drove us home in their Jeep. Charlie seemed a little embarrassed when Brad and Gloria started kissing passionately by the fairy bridge, but he managed to pluck up the courage to put his arm around me. We kissed dutifully and arranged to meet again soon to swap books. Brad told Charlie to drive on, that he'd walk back to the base alone later, and he followed Gloria into Bridge Cottage.

The Indian restaurant Ken Blackstone chose was a hole-in-the-wall on Burley Road with red tablecloths and a bead curtain in front of the kitchen. Every time the waiter walked through, the beads rattled. Sitar music droned from speakers high on the walls, and the aroma of cumin and coriander filled the air.

“Did you find what you were looking for in those incident reports?” Blackstone asked as they shared popadams, samosas and pakoras.

“I wasn't after anything in particular,” Banks said. “Elsie Patterson was unsure as to whether she saw Gwen Shackleton enter the house with her shopping before or after she heard the shot. She even thought the shot might have been a car backfiring. And she was the only witness. Nobody else saw Gwen or Matthew that day. The other neighbours were at work, the local kids at school.”

“What did Gwen Shackleton say in her statement?” Banks swallowed a mouthful of samosa. So far, the food was excellent, as Ken had promised; it was neither too
greasy nor too needlessly hot, the way many Indian restaurants made it, mistaking chilli peppers and cayenne for creative spicing. Banks thought he might like to try his hand at Indian cooking, have Annie over for a vegetarian curry. “She just said she found Matthew dead in the armchair when she got home from shopping.”

“Was there any real doubt? Was she ever a suspect?”

“I didn't get that impression. Matthew Shackleton had a history of mental illness since the war. He was also an alcoholic. Functioning, more or less, but an alcoholic. According to the report, he had tried to kill himself once before, head in the gas oven that time. A neighbour smelled gas and saved him. The hospital suggested a period of psychiatric observation, which they carried out, then they sent him home again.”

“Why didn't he use the gun that time?”

“No idea.”

“But it was just a matter of time?”

“Seems that way.”

“You disagree?”

“No. Though I suppose there's always the possibility that he was helped on his way, that he had become an intolerable burden to his sister. Remember, Gwen had been taking care of both her mother
and
her brother. It's not much of a life for a young woman, is it? Anyway, if Elsie Patterson really did see Gwen Shackleton go into the house before the shot was fired, it's possible Gwen might have stood by and let him get on with it.”

“Still a crime.”

“Yes, but it happened more than forty years ago, Ken.

And we'd never prove it.”

“Not unless Gwen Shackleton confessed.”

“Why should she do that?”

“Years of accumulated guilt? The need to get it off her chest before her final confrontation with the Almighty? I don't know. Who knows why people confess? They do, though.”

Their main courses arrived: aloo gobi, rogan josh and king prawn, with pilao rice, lime chutney and chapatis. They ordered more lager.

Banks looked at Blackstone.
Cute
, Annie had said. Cute was the last thing that came to Banks's mind. Elegant, yes; donnish, even. But cute? No matter where Blackstone was—student hang-out, backstreet pub, five-star restaurant, cop-shop—he was always immaculately dressed in his Burtons' best pinstripe or herringbone, monogrammed silk handkerchief poised over the edge of his top pocket, folds so aesthetic and delicate they might have been set by a Japanese flower-arranger. Crisp white shirt, neat Windsor knot in his subdued tie. Thinning sandy hair curled around his ears and his wire-rimmed glasses balanced on the bridge of his straight nose.

“What about forensics?” Blackstone asked.

“Single shot in the mouth. Splattered his brains over the wall like blancmange. No evidence of a struggle. Empty whisky bottle by the chair. The angle of the wound was also consistent with the suicide theory.”

“Note?”

“Yes. The genuine article, according to forensics.”

“So what's bothering you?”

Banks ate some curry and washed it down before answering. Already a pleasant glow was spreading from his mouth and stomach throughout the rest of his body. The curry was just hot enough to produce a mild sweat, but not
to burn his taste buds off. “Nothing, really. Outside of normal curiosity, I'm not really interested in whether Gwen Shackleton helped her brother commit suicide or not. But I would like to know if he murdered Gloria Shackleton.”

“Perhaps he couldn't live with the guilt?”

“My first thought.”

“But now?”

“Oh, it's still the most likely explanation. The only person who can tell us is Gwen Shackleton.”

“What happened to her? Is she still alive?”

“That's another interesting thing. Elsie Patterson swears she's Vivian Elmsley.”

Blackstone whistled and raised his thin, arched eyebrows. “The writer?”

“That's the one.”

“What do you think?”

“I don't know. It's possible, I suppose. The Pattersons said they could tell Gwen was well-read, and everyone who remembers her said she always had her head stuck in a book. Annie's going to ask around, but there's only one way to find out for certain, isn't there? We'll have to talk to her. Like Gloria's son, if he's still alive, she certainly hasn't been in touch with us, and we've had calls out all over the country for information. It's hard to imagine that many people don't know the story.”

“Which may mean that, if it is her, she has a reason for not wanting to be found?”

“Exactly. A guilty secret.”

“Wasn't that the title of one of her books?”

Banks laughed. “Was it? I can't say as I've read any.”

“I have,” said Blackstone. “Seen them on telly, too.

She's actually a very talented writer. Hasn't a clue about
how we really operate, of course, but then none of them do.”

“It'd make for some pretty boring books if they did.”

“True enough.”

Blackstone ordered a couple more pints of lager. He looked at his watch. “How about heading into town after this one?” he asked.

“Okay.”

“How are the kids?”

“Fine, I suppose. Well, at least Tracy is.”

“Brian?”

“Silly bugger's just cocked up his finals and come out with a third.”

Blackstone, who had a degree in art history, frowned. “Any particular reason? You don't blame yourself, do you? The break-up? Stress?”

Banks shook his head. “No, not really. I think he just sort of lost interest in the subject and found something he felt more passionate about.”

“The music?”

“Uh-huh. He's in a band. They're trying to make a go of it.”

“Good for him,” said Blackstone. “I thought you'd approve.”

“That's the bloody problem, Ken, I do. Only when he first told me, I said some things I regret. Now I can't get in touch with him to explain. They're out on the road somewhere.”

“Keep trying. That's about all you can do.”

“I sounded just like my own parents. It brought back a lot of stuff, things I hadn't really thought much about in years, like why I made some of the choices I did.”

“Any answers?”

Banks smiled. “On a postcard, please.”

“Any great change in your circumstances tends to make you introspective. It's one of the stages you go through.”

“Been reading those self-help books again, Ken?” Blackstone smiled. “Fruits of experience, mate. This
DS
you were asking me about on the phone, the one who was with you at Millgarth. What's her name again?”