Ida Banks turned. “Alan! What have you done to your face?”
“It’s nothing,” said Banks.
“But it’s all bruised. And your lip’s cut. What have you been up to?”
Banks turned away. “I told you, it’s nothing.”
“Were you fighting? Was it some criminal you were arresting? Is that why you were so late? You could have rung.” She gave him a look that spoke volumes about what she thought of his chosen career.
“Something like that,” Banks said. “I had a bit of business to take care of. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t ring, but it was so late. I didn’t want to wake you.”
His mother gave him the reproving look she was so good at. “Son,” she said, “you ought to know by now that I can’t get to sleep until you’re home safe and sound.”
“Well, you can’t have slept much these past thirty years or so,” Banks said, and immediately regretted it when he saw the other look she was so good at, the suffering martyr, lower lip trembling. He went over and gave her a hug. “Sorry, Mum,” he said, “but I’m all right. Really I am.”
His mother sniffed and nodded. “Well,” she said, “I suppose you’ll be hungry. Bacon and eggs?”
Banks knew from experience that feeding him would help his mother get over her bad night. He wasn’t all that hungry, but he couldn’t deal with the protests he knew he’d get if all he asked for was cereal. He was also in a hurry. Michelle had suggested he come down to headquarters to search through the mug shots for his attacker. He wasn’t certain he could identify the man, though the piggy eyes and pug nose were distinctive enough. Still, Mother comes first; bacon and eggs it had to be. “If it’s no trouble,” he said.
His mother walked over to the fridge. “It’s no trouble.”
“Where’s Dad?” he asked, as his mother turned on the cooker.
“Down at the allotment.”
“I didn’t know he still went there.”
“It’s more of a social thing. He doesn’t do much digging or anything these days. Mostly he sits and passes the time of day with his mates. And he has a cigarette or two. He thinks I don’t know but I can smell it on him when he comes home.”
“Well, don’t be too hard on him, Mum.”
“I’m not. But it’s not only his health, is it? What am I supposed to do if he goes and drops dead?”
“He’s not going to drop dead.”
“Doctor says he’s not supposed to smoke. And you should stop, too, while you’re still young.”
Young? It was a long time since Banks had been called young. Or felt young, for that matter. Except perhaps last night, with Michelle. Once she had made her decision, dropped her defenses a little, she was a different person, Banks marveled. It had clearly been a long time since she had been with anyone, so their lovemaking was slow and tentative at first, but none the worse for that. And once she threw aside her inhibitions she proved to be a warm and generous lover. Michelle had also been gentle because of Banks’s cut lip and bruised ribs. He cursed his bad luck, that he had to be injured in combat the first night he got to sleep with her. He also thought it was ironic that such physical injuries were so rare in his line of work, yet both he and Annie had been hurt within hours of each other. Some malevolent force working against them, no doubt.
Banks remembered Michelle’s sleepy late-night kiss at the door as he left, her warm body pressed against him. He sipped some tea. “Is the paper around?” he asked his mother.
“Your dad took it with him.”
“I’ll just nip over the road, then.” His father took the Daily Mail, anyway, and Banks preferred The Independent or The Guardian.
“Your bacon and eggs will be ready.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back before they’re done.”
Banks’s mother sighed, and he headed out. It was warm but cloudy outside, and looking like rain again. That close, sticky muggy weather he hated. As he entered the newsagent’s shop, he remembered the way it used to be laid out, the counter in a different place, racks arranged differently. Different magazines and covers back then, too: Film Show, Fabulous, Jackie, Honey, Tit-Bits, Annabelle.
Banks remembered his conversation with Michelle in the pub about Donald Bradford and his collection of porn, and wondered if he really had acted as a distributor. While Banks couldn’t imagine Graham slipping a magazine of French fellatio between the pages of The People and putting it through number 42’s letter box, he could imagine Bradford keeping his stock under the counter, or hidden in the back. And maybe Graham had stumbled upon it.
He could remember quite clearly the first time he had ever seen a pornographic magazine. Not just the ones with naked women in them, like Playboy, Swank and Mayfair, but true porn, magazines that showed people doing things.
It was in their den inside the tree, and, interestingly enough, the magazines were Graham’s. At least, he brought them. Had Banks never wondered at the time where Graham got them from? He didn’t know. And if Graham had mentioned it, Banks didn’t remember.
It was a warm day, and there were only three of them there, but he wasn’t sure whether the third was Dave, Paul or Steve. The branches and leaves came right down to the ground, hard, shiny green leaves with thorns on them, Banks remembered now, and he could feel himself slipping through the concealed entrance, where the foliage wasn’t too dense, the thorns pricking his skin. Once you got inside, the space seemed bigger than it could possibly be, just the way the inside of Dr. Who’s TARDIS was bigger than the outside. They had plenty of space to sit around and smoke, and enough light got through for them to look at dirty magazines. The smell of the place came back, too, so real he could smell it as he stood waiting to cross the road. Pine needles. Or something similar. And there was a soft beige carpet of them on the ground.
That day, Graham had the two magazines stuffed down the front of his shirt and he brought them out with a flourish. He probably said, “Feast your eyes on this, lads,” but Banks couldn’t remember the actual words, and he didn’t have time to settle down and try to reconstruct the memory in full. It wasn’t important anyway.
What was important was that for the next hour or so the three teenagers looked in awe on some of the most amazing, exciting, unbelievable images they had ever seen in their lives, people doing things they had never even dreamed could or should be done.
By today’s standards, Banks realized, it was pretty mild, but for a fourteen-year-old provincial kid in the summer of 1965 to see color photos of a woman sucking a man’s penis or a man sticking his penis up a woman’s arse was shocking in the extreme. There were no animals, Banks remembered, and certainly no children. Mostly he remembered images of impossibly large-breasted women, some of them with semen spurting all over their breasts and faces, and well-endowed men usually on top of them or being ridden by them. Graham wouldn’t lend the magazines out, Banks remembered, so the only time they had to look at them was then and there, inside the tree. The titles and text, or what he remembered of them, were in a foreign language. He knew it wasn’t German or French because he took those languages at school.
While this didn’t become a regular occurrence, Banks did remember a couple of other occasions that summer when Graham brought magazines to the tree. Different ones each time. And then, of course, Graham disappeared and Banks didn’t see that kind of porn again until he became a policeman.
So was it a clue or not? As Michelle had said last night, it hardly seemed something worth murdering over, even back then, but if it was a part of something bigger – the Kray empire, for example – and if Graham had got involved in it way beyond his depth, beyond borrowing a few magazines, then there might be a link to his murder. It was worth looking into, at any rate, if Banks could figure out where to start.