He took the drink out to the wall and sat with his legs dangling over the dried-up falls. It was a warm night, but a slight breeze rustled through the leaves and cooled the sweat on his forehead a little. A small animal rustled through the undergrowth, probably a squirrel or a rabbit. Banks looked into the dark woods and remembered Robert Frost’s words, which he had read recently in his anthology. “And miles to go before I sleep.” It was the repetition of that line that made it so memorable, he thought, that sent that tingle up your spine. He didn’t profess to understand it – at least he couldn’t have stood up in class and described what it was about – but he got something from it.
He remembered what he had said to Annie earlier about caring and how he couldn’t tell her it was partly because of Jem. Banks had found Jem’s body himself on the bare dusty floor of the bed-sit, the needle still in his arm, which was oddly discolored here and there where the mice had nibbled.
He was sick, the same way he had been when Phil Simpkins spiraled slowly and inevitably down onto the spiked railings. But people had cared about Phil’s accident; they even had a minute’s silence in assembly and a morning off school for the funeral. Nobody had cared about Jem, though, the way no one seemed to have cared about Gloria’s disappearance.
Over the years, Banks became inured to seeing corpses, like any other detective who investigates a fair number of murders. He developed a protective shell; he could crack jokes at the scene with someone’s entrails spilling over his feet or brain matter sticking to the soles of his shoes. But no matter how hard his carapace, Banks had always felt something, no matter how low on the food chain the victim was. He always felt some connection with what had once been a living person.
After Jem’s death, Banks had felt driven to find out more about him: who he was, where he came from, why no one seemed to care. He realized how little he knew, even though Jem had been his first and closest friend in a new and overpowering city. He was so innocent, he hadn’t even suspected that Jem was a heroin addict. They had smoked hash and grass together on occasion, but that was all.
The police themselves hadn’t been impressive, hardly an advertisement for recruitment. They interviewed Banks, who described the man he had seen entering Jem’s flat the previous evening, but they didn’t seem interested. One of them, DC Carter, Banks remembered, played the concerned-parent role, feigning sadness at Jem’s death, lecturing Banks on the drug subculture, while the other, DS Fallon, pockmarked face, a cynical smile on his thin, cruel lips, rifled through Banks’s drawers and cupboards, looking for drugs.
Later, Banks found out that three junkies had died in Nothing Hill that week because a shipment of unusually pure heroin hadn’t been adequately cut. No arrests were made.
Disenchanted with both business and sixties navel-gazing, Banks joined the police force to change the system from within, despite Jem’s advice, and when he found he couldn’t do that, he settled for the adrenaline buzz of the investigation, the chase, the revelation, the strange bond with the murder victim, who couldn’t speak for herself. And this bond was true no less in the case of Gloria Shackleton’s cracked and filthy bones than it was with a corpse so fresh you could still see the flush on its cheek.
Finally, tired with remembering, Banks put out his cigarette, finished the whisky and went back inside. His bed still smelled of Annie, and he was grateful for that much, at least, as he tossed and turned and tried to get to sleep.
Ever since she had seen Gloria’s image and heard her name on television, Vivian Elmsley had been expecting the police to come knocking at her door. It wasn’t as if she had taken any great steps to cover her tracks. She had never consciously sought to hide her past and her identity, although she had certainly glossed over it. Perhaps, also, the life she had lived hinted at a certain amount of conscious escape. At every stage, she had had to reinvent herself: the selfless carer; the diplomat’s wife; the ever-so-slightly “with-it” young widow with the red sports car; the struggling writer; the public figure with the splinter of ice in her heart. Would that be the last? Which was the real one? She didn’t know. She didn’t even know if there was a real one.
Though the worry and fear gnawed away at her since the TV broadcast, Vivian tried to live a normal life: wandering up to Hampstead in the morning; reading the newspaper; sitting down in her study for the day, whether she wrote anything worth keeping or not; talking to her agent and publisher; answering correspondence. All the while waiting for that knock on the door, wondering what she would say, how she could convince them she knew nothing; or thinking that perhaps she should just tell them what she knew and let the chips fall where they would. Would it really make a difference, after all this time?
Yes, she decided; it would.
When it came, though, the shock came in a form she hadn’t in the least expected.
That Tuesday night, the phone rang just as she was dropping off. When she picked up the receiver, all she heard was silence, or as much silence as you ever get on a telephone line.
“Who is it?” she asked, gripping the receiver more tightly. “Please speak up.”
More silence.
She was just about to hang up when she heard what she thought was a sharp intake of breath. Then a voice she didn’t recognize whispered, “Gwen? Gwen Shackleton?”
“My name’s Vivian Elmsley. There must be some mistake.”
“There’s no mistake. I know who you are. Do you know who I am?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You will. Soon.”
Then the caller hung up.
TEN
Christmas 1943. It was a gloomy, chill and moonless night when the 448th held their first dance at Rowan Woods. Gloria, Cynthia, Alice and I walked there together along the narrow lane through the woods, our breaths misting in the air. We wore court shoes and carried our dance shoes because they were far too precious and flimsy to walk in. Luckily, the ground wasn’t too muddy, because none of us would have been caught dead wearing wellies to a dance, even if we had to walk through Rowan Woods in a storm.
“How many of them do you think there are?” Cynthia asked.
“I don’t know,” said Gloria. “It’s a big aerodrome, though. Probably hundreds. Thousands, even.”
Alice did a little dance. “Ooh, just think of it, all those Yanks with money to throw away. They get paid much more than our boys, you know. Ellen Bairstow told me. She went out with a GI when she was working at that factory near Liverpool, and she’d never seen so much money.”
“Don’t you try to tell yourself they won’t want something in return, Alice Poole,” said Gloria. “And don’t you forget your poor Eric away fighting for his country.”
We were all a bit quiet after that. I don’t know about the others, but I couldn’t help thinking of Matthew. A fox or a badger suddenly flashed across the path and scared us, but the adrenaline at least broke the silence. We were still excited, and we giggled like silly schoolgirls the rest of the way.
Most villagers had already seen the newcomers around, and I had even served some of them in the shop, where they had looked puzzled at our meager offerings and confused by the unfamiliar brand names. Some people disapproved of their arrival – especially Betty Goodall – thinking it would lower moral standards, but most of us quickly accepted them as part of the general scenery. I even helped the local WVS set up a Welcome Club for them in Harkside. Thus far, in my limited experience, Americans had always been friendly and polite, though I can’t say I really warmed to the way they called me “ma’am.” It made me feel so old.