The Summer That Never Was (14 page)

“You’ve got imagination, I’ll certainly give you that.”

“They said no police, which is why my arrival scared the living daylights out of you.”

“I’ve told you–”

“Martin.” Robin Armitage spoke for the first time, and though her voice was soft and kindly, it was authoritative enough to command her husband’s attention. “Can’t you see?” She went on. “She knows. I must admit that I, for one, feel rather relieved.”

“But he said–”

“They don’t know who I am,” said Annie. “And I’m pretty certain they didn’t see me around Mortsett this morning.”

“Pretty certain?”

Annie looked him in the eye. “I’d be a liar if I said I was a hundred per cent certain.” Birds in the trees filled in the silence that followed, and a light breeze ruffled Annie’s hair. She held Martin Armitage’s gaze until she saw it waver and finally wane into defeat. His shoulders slumped. Robin leaned over and put her arm around him. “It’s all right, darling,” she said. “The police will know what to do. They’ll be discreet.” Robin looked at Annie as she spoke, as if daring her to disagree. Annie didn’t. Martin ran the backs of his hands across his eyes and nodded.

“I’m sorry about what’s happened,” Annie said, “but Mrs. Armitage is right.”

“Robin. Please. As we’re involved in such an intimate matter, at least you can call me by my first name. My husband, too.”

“Okay. Robin. Look, I have to tell you that I’m not a negotiator. This isn’t my area of expertise. We have people specially trained to deal with kidnappers and their demands.”

“But he said no police,” Martin repeated. “He said if we brought in the police he’d kill Luke.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I’d already reported Luke missing.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He was quiet for a moment, as if he was thinking, like.”

“Or consulting with someone else?”

“He could have been, but I didn’t hear anyone. Anyway, when he came back on he said that was fine, but to make sure I told you Luke had rung and said that he was coming home. Which I did.”

“It was a man who made the call, then?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“About half past nine. Just before Robin rang you.”

“How much did he ask for?”

“Ten thousand.”

“Accent?”

“None, really.”

“He didn’t sound local?”

“He could’ve been, but he didn’t have a strong accent. Sort of bland.”

“And his voice?”

“What do you mean?”

“High or low? Husky, reedy, whatever?”

“Just ordinary. I’m sorry, I’m not good at this sort of thing, especially recognizing voices on the telephone.”

Annie favoured him with a smile. “Not many people are. Think about it, though. It could be important. If there’s anything at all you remember about the voice.”

“Yes. I’ll think about it.”

“Did he let you speak to Luke?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“Yes, but he said Luke was being kept somewhere else.”

“And he called you on your mobile?”

“Yes.”

“Who knows the number?”

“Family. Close friends. Business colleagues. I suppose it would be easy enough to find out. Luke, of course. He has it programmed into the electronic phone book of his own mobile. At first, I thought it was him because his name was displayed when the call came.”

“So the kidnapper used Luke’s mobile to call you?”

“I suppose so. Why does it matter?”

“At least it tells us he’s in an area where there’s a signal. Or he was when he made the call. Also, if he’s used it at other times, we’ll be able to get information from the phone company. It might help us pinpoint him. Of course, it would be better if he left it switched on, but he’s not going to make things that easy for us.”

“Tell me,” said Robin. “In your experience, in how many cases do they…how many times do the victims…”

“I don’t have any statistics offhand,” Annie admitted. “But if it makes you feel any better, kidnappers are essentially businesspeople. They’re in it for the money, not to hurt anyone. There’s every chance that this will be resolved and that you’ll see Luke back here safe and sound.” Annie could feel her nose growing as she talked. Too much time had passed, she suspected, for a happy ending, though she hoped she was wrong. “In the meantime, while appearing to go along with his demands and not alarming him in any way, we want to make sure that in addition to getting Luke home safely we take every opportunity to discover the kidnapper’s identity and bring him to justice.”

“How can we help?’ asked Robin.

“You don’t have to do anything,” said Annie. “You’ve already played your part. Just leave the rest to us.”

“Maybe you’ve scared him off,” Martin said. “Luke should be back by now. It’s been hours.”

“Sometimes they wait a long time just to make sure nobody’s watching. He’s probably waiting till dark.”

“But you can’t be certain, can you?” Robin said.

“Nothing’s certain in this world, Mrs. Armitage.”

“Robin. I told you. Oh, how rude of me!” She got to her feet. “All this time and I haven’t offered you anything to drink.” She was wearing denim shorts, Annie noticed, cut high on her long, smooth legs. There weren’t many women who could get away with the bare midriff look at her age, either, Annie thought. She wouldn’t even think of it herself, though she was only thirty-four, but what she could see of Robin’s stomach looked flat and taut, with a ring of some sort glinting in her navel.

“No,” she said. “Really. I’m not stopping long.” There wasn’t much else Annie could do for Luke except wait, and she had promised herself a nice pint of bitter at the Black Sheep in Relton, where she could sit in peace and mull things over before calling it a day. “I just want to make certain that you’ll report any future communications, if there are any, straight to me. You’ve got the numbers where I can be reached?”

Both Martin and Robin nodded.

“And, of course, you’ll let me know the second Luke turns up.”

“We will,” said Robin. “I just hope and pray that he does come home soon.”

“Me too,” said Annie, getting up. “There’s one more thing that puzzles me.”

“What?” asked Robin.

“Last night, when you rang to tell me you’d heard from Luke, you said he would be back tonight.”

“That’s what he told Martin. The kidnapper. He said that if we left the money this morning, then Luke would be home unharmed by tonight.”

“And you knew that I wanted to see Luke as soon as he got back, to talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“So how were you going to explain everything?” asked Annie. “I’m curious.”

Robin looked over at her husband, who answered, “We were going to persuade Luke to tell you what we said happened in the first place, that he’d run away and phoned us the night before to say he was coming back.”

“Who thought of this?”

“The kidnapper suggested it.”

“Sounds like the perfect crime,” said Annie. “Only you two, Luke, and the kidnapper would ever know that it had been committed, and none of you would be likely to talk.”

Martin looked down at his drink.

“He would have done that?” Annie went on. “Luke would have lied to the police?”

“He would have done it for me,” said Robin.

Annie looked at her, nodded and left.

The Krays
, Banks thought as he lay in his narrow bed that night. Reggie and Ronnie. He didn’t remember the exact dates, of course, but he had an idea that they were flying high in the mid-sixties, part of the swinging London scene, mixing with celebrities, pop stars and politicians.

It had always intrigued him the way gangsters became celebrities: Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, John Dillinger, Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Malone. Figures of legend. He had known a few of the lesser ones in his time, and they almost always rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous, as if celebrity recognized only itself and was blind to all else–morality, decency, honour–and they never lacked for beautiful women to run around with, the kind who were attracted by danger and the aura of violence. There seemed to be a glamour and mystique attached to making one’s money out of running prostitutes, supplying drugs and threatening to destroy people’s livelihoods if they didn’t pay protection, and it was more than likely that most film stars, sports personalities
and pop stars were addle-brained enough to fall for it, the glamour of violence. Or was it the violence of glamour?

The Krays were no exception. They knew how to manipulate the media, and being photographed with a famous actress, an MP, or a peer of the realm made it less likely that the truth about their real activities would come out. There was a trial in 1965, Banks remembered, and they came out of that more fireproof than they went in.

It was hard to believe that Graham Marshall’s dad had anything to do with them, though, and Banks had to admit that his father was probably right; it had just been the beer talking.

Why, though? Why even hint at something like that if there wasn’t a scrap of truth in it? Maybe Bill Marshall was a pathological liar. But over his years as a copper, Banks had learned that the old cliché “there’s no smoke without fire” had a great deal to recommend it. And there were two other things: the Marshalls came from the East End of London, Kray territory in the mid-sixties, and Banks now remembered feeling afraid around Mr. Marshall.

He already knew a bit about the Krays, most of it picked up when he was on the Met years ago, but he could dig deeper. There were plenty of books about them, though he doubted that any mentioned Bill Marshall. If he had done anything for them, it had obviously been low-level, going round the customers and exuding physical menace, maybe clobbering the occasional informer or double-dealer in a dark alley.

He would have to tell DI Hart. Michelle. She had left a message with Banks’s mother while he was out asking him to drop by Thorpe Wood at 9:00 a.m. the following morning. It was her case, after all. If there was a connection, though, he was surprised that it hadn’t come out in the investigation. Usually the parents come under very close scrutiny in missing-child cases, no matter how grief-stricken they appear. Banks had once come across a young couple he had believed to be genuinely grieving the loss of
their child, only to find the poor kid strangled for crying too loud and stuffed in the downstairs freezer. No, you couldn’t trust surfaces in police work; you had to dig, if only to make certain you weren’t having the wool pulled over your eyes.

Banks picked up his old transistor radio. He had bought a battery earlier and wondered if it would still work after all these years. Probably not, but it was worth the price of a battery to find out. He unclipped the back, connected the battery and put the earpiece in his ear. It was just a single unit, like an old hearing-aid. No stereo radio back then. When he turned it on, he was thrilled to find that the old trannie actually worked. Banks could hardly believe it. As he tuned the dial, though, he soon began to feel disappointed. The sound quality was poor, but it wasn’t only that. The radio received all the local stations, Classic FM, and Radios 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, just like any modern radio, but Banks realized he had been half-expecting to go back in time. The idea that this was a magic radio that still received the Light Programme, Radio Luxembourg and the pirates, Radio Caroline and Radio London, was lodged somewhere in his mind. He had expected to be listening to John Peel’s
The Perfumed Garden
, to relive those magical few months in the spring of 1967, when he should have been studying for his O levels but spent half the night with the radio plugged in his ear, hearing Captain Beefheart, the Incredible String Band and Tyrannosaurus Rex for the first time.

Banks switched off the radio and turned to his
Photoplay
diary. At least he had a bedside light in his room now and didn’t have to hide under the sheets with a torch. Beside each week was a full-page photograph of an actor or actress popular at the time, usually an actress, or star-let, chosen because of pulchritude rather than acting ability, and more often than not appearing in a risqué pose, bra and panties, the carefully placed bed sheet, the off-the-shoulder strap. He flipped through the pages and
there they all were: Natalie Wood, Catherine Deneuve, Martine Beswick, Ursula Andress. Cleavage abounded. The 15th to the 21st August was accompanied by a photo of Shirley Eaton in a low-cut dress.

As he flipped through the diary, Banks discovered that he had hardly been voluminous or in the least bit analytical; he had simply noted events, adventures and excursions, often in a very cryptic manner. In a way, it was a perfect model for the policeman’s notebook he was to keep later. Still, the pages were small, divided into seven sections, with room for a little fact or piece of cinema history at the bottom. If any of the dates happened to be a star’s birthday, as many did, a portion of the available space was taken up with that, too. Given the restrictions, he had done a decent enough job, he thought, deciphering the miniature scrawl. He had certainly been to see a lot of films, listing all of them in his diary, along with his terse opinions, which varied from “Crap” and “Boring” through “Okay” to “Fantastic!” A typical entry might read, “Went to the Odeon with Dave and Graham to see
Doctor Who and the Daleks
. Okay,” “Played cricket on the rec. Scored 32 not out,” or, “Rained. Stopped in and read
Casino Royale
. Fantastic!”

He flipped to the Saturday before Graham disappeared, the 21st. “Went into town with Graham. Bought
Help!
with Uncle Ken’s record token.” It was the same LP they had listened to at Paul’s the next day. That was all he had written, nothing unusual about Graham’s state or mind. On Friday he had watched the Animals, one of his favourite groups, on
Ready, Steady, Go!

On Sunday, he had written, probably while in bed that night, “Played records at Paul’s place. New Bob Dylan LP. Saw police car go to Graham’s house.” On Monday, “Graham’s run away from home. Police came. Joey flew away.”

Interesting he should assume that Graham had run away from home. But of course he would, at that age.
What else? The alternatives would have been too horrific for a fourteen-year-old boy to contemplate. He flipped back to late June, around the time he thought the event on the riverbank had occurred. It was a Tuesday, he noticed. He hadn’t written much about it, simply, “Skived off school and played by river this afternoon. A strange man tried to push me in.”