Banks said nothing. He sensed Annie glance at him.
Wells leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. “You can’t choose the object of your desire. You know you can’t. It may be a cliché to say that love is blind, but like many clichés, it’s not without a grain of truth. I didn’t choose to love Steven. I simply couldn’t help myself.”
Banks had heard this argument before from pedophiles – that they weren’t responsible for their desires, that they didn’t choose to love little boys – and he had at least a modicum of sympathy for their predicament. After all, it wasn’t only pedophiles who fell in love with the wrong people. But he didn’t feel enough sympathy to condone their actions. “I’m sure you are aware,” he said, “that it’s illegal for a thirty-eight-year-old man to initiate a sexual relationship with a thirteen-year-old boy, and that it’s inappropriate for a teacher to be involved in any way with a pupil, even if that pupil did happen to be over the age of consent, which Steven wasn’t.”
“There was no sexual relationship. Steven lied. They made him do it. I never touched him.”
“That’s as may be,” said Banks. “You might not have been able to help your feelings, but you could have controlled your actions. I think you know right from wrong.”
“It’s all so hypocritical,” Wells said.
“What do you mean?”
“Who says there can be no real love between youth and age? The Greeks didn’t think so.”
“Society,” said Banks. “The law. And it’s not the love we legislate against. The law’s there to protect the innocent and the vulnerable from those predators who should know better.”
“Ha! It shows how little you know. Who do you think was the vulnerable one here, the innocent one? Steven Farrow? Do you think just because a boy is of a certain tender age that he is incapable of manipulating his elders, incapable of blackmail? That’s very naive of you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Luke Armitage,” Annie cut in.
Wells leaned back and licked his lips. He was sweating profusely, Banks noticed, and starting to smell sour and rank. “I wondered when we’d be getting around to him.”
“That’s why you’re here, Norman. Did you think it was about Steven Farrow?”
“I’d no idea what it would be about. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“The Farrow affair’s all water under the bridge. Hushed up. No charges, no serious damage done.”
“Except to me.”
“You were among the last people to see Luke Armitage on the day he disappeared, Norman,” Annie went on. “When we found out about your past, isn’t it only natural that we should want to talk to you about him?”
“I know nothing about what happened to him.”
“But you were friends with him, weren’t you?”
“Acquaintances. He was a customer. We talked about books sometimes. That’s all.”
“He was an attractive boy, wasn’t he, Norman? Like Steven Farrow. Did he remind you of Steven?”
Wells sighed. “The boy left my shop. I never saw him again.”
“Are you certain?” Banks asked. “Are you sure he didn’t come back, or you didn’t meet him somewhere else? Your house, perhaps?”
“I never saw him again. Why would he come to my house?”
“I don’t know,” said Banks. “You tell me.”
“He didn’t.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Did he come back to the shop? Did something happen there? Something bad. Did you kill him and then move him after dark? Maybe it was a terrible accident. I can’t believe you meant to kill him. Not if you loved him.”
“I didn’t love him. Society has seen to it that I’m quite incapable of loving anyone ever again. No matter what you think of me, I am not a fool. I do know wrong from right, Chief Inspector, whether I agree with the definition or not. I am capable of self-control. I am an emotional eunuch. I know that society regards my urges as evil and sinful, and I have no desire to spend the rest of my days in jail. Believe me, the prison of my own making is bad enough.”
“I suppose the money was an afterthought, was it?” Banks went on. “But why not? Why not make a little money out of what you’d done? I mean, you could do with it, couldn’t you? Look at the dump you spend your days in. A crappy used-book business in a dank, cold dungeon can’t be making much money, can it? An extra ten thousand quid would have set you up nicely. Not too greedy. Just enough.”
Wells had tears in his eyes again, and he was shaking his head slowly from side to side. “It’s all I’ve got,” he said, his voice catching in his throat, his whole body starting to shake now. “My books. My cat. They’re all I’ve got. Can’t you see that, man?” He pushed his florid, bulbous face toward Banks and banged his fist to his heart. “There’s nothing else left here for me. Have you no humanity?”
“But it’s still not very much, is it?” Banks pressed on.
Wells looked him in the eye and regained some of his composure. “Who are you to say that? Who are you to pronounce judgment on a man’s life? Do you think I don’t know I’m ugly? Do you think I don’t notice the way people look at me? Do you think I don’t know I’m the object of laughter and derision? Do you think I have no feelings? Every day I sit down there in my dank, cold dungeon, as you so cruelly refer to it, like some sort of pariah, some deformed monster in his lair, some… some Quasimodo, and I contemplate my sins, my desires, my dreams of love and beauty and purity deemed ugly and evil by a hypocritical world. All I have is my books, and the unconditional love of one of God’s creatures. How dare you judge me?”
“No matter what you feel,” said Banks, “society has to protect its children, and for that we need laws. They may seem arbitrary to you. Sometimes they seem arbitrary to me. I mean, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen? Fourteen? Where do you draw the line? Who knows, Norman, maybe one day we’ll be as enlightened as you’d like us to be and lower the age of consent to thirteen, but until then we have to have those lines, or all becomes chaos.” He was thinking of Graham Marshall as well as Luke Armitage as he spoke. Society hadn’t done a very good job of protecting either of them.
“I have done nothing wrong,” said Wells, crossing his arms again.
The problem was, as Banks and Annie had already discussed, that the closed-circuit television cameras corroborated Wells’s story. Luke Armitage had entered Norman’s Used Books at two minutes to five and left – alone – at five twenty-four.
“What time did you close that day?” Banks asked.
“Half past five, as usual.”
“And what did you do?”
“I went home.”
“Number fifty-seven Arden Terrace?”
“Yes.”
“That’s off Market Street, isn’t it?”
“Close, yes.”
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes.”
“Do you own a car?”
“A second-hand Renault.”
“Good enough to get you out to Hallam Tarn and back?”
Wells hung his head in his hands. “I’ve told you. I did nothing. I haven’t been near Hallam Tarn in months. Certainly not since the foot-and-mouth outbreak.”
Banks could smell his sweat even more strongly now, sharp and acrid, like an animal secretion. “What did you do after you went home?”
“Had my tea. Leftover chicken casserole, if you’re interested. Watched television. Read for a while, then went to sleep.”
“What time?”
“I’d say I was in bed by half past ten.”
“Alone?”
Wells just glared at Banks.
“You didn’t go out again that evening?”
“Where would I go?”
“Pub? Pictures?”
“I don’t drink, and I don’t socialize. I prefer my own company. And I happen to believe that there hasn’t been a decent picture made in the last forty years.”