Playing with Fire (32 page)

“Well, it gave her a father,” said Maurice. “I'd say that's pretty important for a child, wouldn't you? No matter what some of these special interest groups say.”

“Did she behave any differently after the marriage?”

“We weren't with her so much, so we wouldn't know. They had their own house by then, out Lawnswood way, not far from where they are now. I'm sure she had her problems adjusting to a new routine, though, as we all do.”

“When they brought Christine to visit, did she seem the same as usual?”

“Yes,” said Maurice. “Until…”

“Until when?”

“What I told you earlier. Until she became a teenager.”

“Then she became uncommunicative?”

“Somewhat, yes. Rather quiet and brooding. Sullen. She could be quite snappy, too, if you pushed her on anything. Hormones.”

Or Patrick Aspern, Banks thought. So he had his answer. It had started, in all likelihood, when she hit puberty. What's a cut-off point for some pedophiles is the starting point for others.

“Did you see her after she left home?”

The Redferns looked at each other, and Julia nodded. “She came here once,” she said, close to tears. “Maurice was out. Oh, she looked terrible, Mr. Banks. My heart just…” She shook her head and grabbed a tissue from the box on the window ledge. “It just went out to her. I'm sorry,” she said. “It was just so upsetting.”

“In what way did she look terrible?”

“She was so thin and pale. Her nose was running constantly. Her face was spotty, her skin terrible. Dry and blotched. She used to be such a pretty young thing. And I hate to say it, but her clothes were filthy and…she
smelled
.”

“When was this?”

“Shortly after she'd left. About a year ago.”

When they were living in the Leeds squat, before the boat, perhaps even before Mark. “What did she come for?”

“She wanted money.”

“Did you give her any?”

She looked at her husband. “Fifty pounds. It was all I had in my purse.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Not much. I tried to persuade her to go back to Patrick and Frances. They were beside themselves with worry, of course.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She said she wasn't going back. Not ever. She was quite emotional about it.”

“Did she say why?”

“Why what?”

“Why she wasn't going back. Why she left.”

“No, she just got very upset when I mentioned the subject and refused to talk about it.”

“Why did you
think
she left?”

“I thought it must be something to do with a boy.”

“A boy? Why? Did Patrick Aspern say that?”

“No…I…I just assumed. She was the same age as her mother was when she…I don't know. It's a difficult age for young girls. They want to be all grown up, but they don't have the experience. They lose their hearts to some no-good layabout, and the next thing you know, they're pregnant.”

“Like Frances?”

“Yes.”

“So you saw history repeating itself?”

“I suppose so.”

“Did you ask your daughter or her husband why Christine left home at sixteen?” Banks persisted.

Julia put her hands to her ears. “Please stop! Make him stop, Maurice.”

“It's all right, Mrs. Redfern,” said Banks. “I'm not here to badger you. I'll slow down. Let's all just take a minute and relax. Take a deep breath.” He finished his tea. It was lukewarm.

“As you can see, Mr. Banks,” Maurice said, “this is all very
upsetting, and I can't see what any of it has to do with Christine's unfortunate death. Perhaps you'd better leave.”

“Murder's an upsetting business, Dr. Redfern, and I haven't finished yet.”

“But my wife…”

“Your wife is emotional, I can see that. What I'd really like to know is why.”

“I'd have thought that was quite obvious.”

“Not to me it isn't.”

“You coming here and—”

“I don't believe that's the reason, and I don't think you do, either.”

“What are you getting at, man?”

Banks took a deep breath. Here goes, he thought. “There have been serious allegations that Patrick Aspern had been sexually abusing his stepdaughter, probably since puberty.”

Maurice Redfern shot to his feet. “Are you insane? Patrick? What allegations? Who made them?”

“Christine told her boyfriend, Mark Siddons, that that was partly why she started using drugs, drugs she got from her stepfather's surgery, to escape the shame and the pain. He also suggested that Patrick Aspern later let her have the drugs in return for her silence, and perhaps for her sexual favors.”

“I don't believe it,” said Maurice, sinking back into his chair, pale. “Not Patrick. I
won't
believe it.”

“So that's what she meant,” Julia Redfern said, in a voice hardly louder than a whisper.

“What?” said Banks. “What did she say?”

“Just that I was better off not knowing, that's all. And that I wouldn't believe her, never in a million years, she said, even if she told me. And that
look
on her face.” She turned to her husband, tears welling up in her eyes again. “Oh, my God, Maurice, what have we done?”

“Get a grip on yourself, Julia,” said Maurice. “It's all lies. Lies made up by some drug-addled boy. We've done nothing
to be ashamed of. Our daughter married a good man, and now someone's trying to blacken his character. That's all. We'll deal with this through our solicitor.” He stood up. “I'd prefer it if you left now, Mr. Banks. Unless you're going to arrest us or something, we don't want to talk to you anymore.”

Banks had nothing more to ask, anyway. He already had his answers. He nodded, got up and left, the apple pie still untouched on its plate.

 

It was well after dark when Mark got off the number one bus outside the Lawnswood Arms, just past the Leeds Crematorium. His journey had taken so long because there weren't that many buses from Eastvale to Leeds, and he had to change in Harrogate. Then he had to buy a street map at W.H. Smith's to find out how to get to Adel. He had never visited Tina's parents before—never had any reason to—but the address was on the inside cover of some of the books she had kept with her in the squat and on the boat, and he remembered it. He also knew the security code you had to punch in to stop the burglar alarm from going off. Tina had made him memorize it. A month or so ago, Danny Boy had suffered a brief disruption in distribution, and to keep Tina sane, Mark had pretended to go along with a half-baked scheme to break into her father's surgery and steal some morphine. Luckily, Danny Boy had come through before things really got out of hand.

There was nothing but fields across the main road, and beyond them, down the hill, Mark could see the clustered lights of Adel village. Still unsure of exactly what he was going to say or do, Mark was drawn by the lights of the Lawnswood Arms and went inside. He hadn't eaten any lunch, so he was hungry, for one thing, and maybe a few drinks would give him some Dutch courage.

The Lawnswood Arms seemed more of a family pub than a
local watering hole, though at eight o'clock that evening there were hardly any families in evidence. Mark went to the bar and ordered a pint of Tetley's cask and looked at the menu. Steak and chips would do just fine, he decided. The first pint went down so fast the barman gave him a dirty look when he ordered a second. He'd seen that look before: “I've got my eye on you, mate. I know trouble when I see it.” Well, maybe he
was
going to be trouble, but not for the bartender.

He got two pints down before his food was ready and ordered a third to wash down the steak. He wasn't showing any signs of drunkenness, so they had no reason to refuse to serve him, and they didn't. He just sat quietly in his corner, smoking and thinking. If they knew his thoughts, then maybe they'd call the police, but they didn't. The more he drank, the darker his thoughts became. Surges of emotion, sometimes anger, shot with red, black and gray.

He'd been wandering aimlessly, he realized now, with nowhere to go and nobody to talk to, nobody to share his grief with, nobody to hold him when he cried. But he never had had anyone. He had always been alone. Just him and his imagination, and his wits. The only difference was that he was even more adrift than ever now that Tina, his anchor, his burden, his reason for being, was gone.

He thought about Crazy Nick lying bleeding on the floor; he thought about his mother, how she'd never wanted him because he got in the way of her good times, though when he heard she was dead he had felt oddly alone in the world. But most of all he thought about Tina. He had never seen her body, he realized, so her parents must have identified her. The thought of Aspern gloating over her, touching her, made his flesh crawl. His last memory of her, the one he would carry forever, was the frail figure huddled in the sleeping bag, needle barely out of her arm, giving a little sigh of pleasure, and Beth Orton playing quietly on the CD. Not “Stolen Car” but a more recent one, a song about being on a train in Paris,
as he snuffed out the candle and left her to sneak off to the welcoming arms of Mandy. If only he'd stayed with her, the way he'd promised, the way he had always done before…

“You all right?”

The voice sounded far away, and when he looked up, Mark noticed it was one of the bar staff collecting glasses, a young girl, perhaps not much older than Tina, though he knew she had to be over eighteen to work in a pub. She had a short spiky haircut and a gold stud through her lower lip, just like Tina, and in a way she reminded him of her, the way she could be when she held the darkness at bay.

“Yeah,” he said. “Fine. Just thinking.”

She stared at him, an assessing look in her eye. “Not good thoughts, by the looks of you.”

“You could say that.”

She lowered her voice. “Only, old misery-guts over there has been giving you the evil eye all night. One wrong move and you're cut off. You weren't thinking of making any wrong moves, were you?”

“No,” said Mark. “Not here, at any rate.”

“Well, that's all right, then.” She smiled. “I've not seen you here before.”

“That's because I've never been here before.”

“Not from around these parts?”

“No.”

“Cathy!”

The new voice came from the bar. “Oops,” she said, grimacing. “Got to go. Old misery's calling. Remember, tread carefully.”

“I will,” said Mark.

The brief conversation had brought him back to a world of normality, at least for a few moments, and he wondered if his life could ever be good again. The girl might not have been trying to pick him up, but she was definitely flirting with him,
and he could tell she fancied him. If his world were normal he'd have pursued the matter and maybe gone home with her, if she had her own flat. She probably did, he thought. Looked like a student, and the university wasn't far down the road. The bus had passed it on the way out of town. But after what happened to Tina, and him being with Mandy at the time, somehow made it so he just couldn't contemplate anything like that, even though this girl Cathy reminded him of Tina.

The barman gave him the evil eye again when he ordered his next pint, his fifth, he thought, though he was still steady on his feet, and his speech wasn't slurred. The look told him, “This is your last one, mate. After that you're on your bike.” Fine, he didn't want any more. It was nearly closing time anyway.

Mark lit another cigarette, the last in his packet, and tried to work out exactly what he wanted to do or say when he got to Aspern's house. The way he felt whenever he thought about Patrick Aspern, he thought he'd probably do what he did to Crazy Nick, or worse. He didn't know about Tina's mother. He'd nothing against her and didn't want to hurt her, but she hadn't been there for her daughter any more than his mother had been there for him. True, he'd never been sexually molested by any of her men friends, but more than one of them had beaten him up, and more often than not they just used him to fetch and carry for them and clean up their messes. Mothers ought to be there for their kids—they were supposed to love them and nurture them—and Tina's had failed in that as much as his own mother had, no matter how far apart they were in social status. When it came right down to it, a doctor's wife could be just as useless a mother as a whore, because that was what his mother had been; he had no illusions about that.

A bell rang and someone called out time. Mark had about half a pint left in his glass. He'd had five, and he still didn't feel in the least bit pissed. He fiddled for change in his pocket
and bought another packet of cigarettes from the machine. When he'd finished his drink, he stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit it and headed for the door.

“Good night,” a voice called out behind him.

It was the girl, Cathy. She was closer than he thought, a cloth in her hand, wiping down the tables.

“Good night,” he said.

“Maybe I'll see you again?”

Was that a note of hope in her voice? he wondered. He managed a smile for her. “Maybe,” he said. “You never know.”

Then he walked out into the chilly night air.

 

“Have you thought any more about New York?” Phil asked Annie as they lingered over café noir and crème brûlée in Le Select, Eastvale's prestigious French bistro. Already well sated with several glasses of fine claret, Annie was feeling warm and relaxed, and the idea of a weekend away with Phil held immense appeal. Especially New York.

“I can't go, Phil, really I can't,” she said. “I'd love to, honestly. Maybe some other time?”

“If it's a matter of money…”

“It's only
partly
a matter of money,” Annie chipped in. “I mean, you might be able to go swanning off to America on a whim, but I
do
have to think about the expense.”