“I’d like some information,” said Banks.
“About what?”
“Look, can we come in?”
“You must be fucking joking, mate. One step over this threshold and Gazza here’ll have you singing soprano in the church choir before you know it.”
Banks looked at Gazza. He could believe it. He considered his options. Call Animal Control? The RSPCA? “Fine,” he said. “Then maybe you can tell us what we want to know out here?”
“Depends.”
“It’s the house I’m interested in.”
The kid looked Annie up and down, then looked back at Banks. “House-hunting are you, then? I’d’ve thought you two would be after something a bit more up-market than this fucking slum.”
“Not exactly house-hunting, no.”
“Who is it, Kev?” came a woman’s voice from inside.
Kev turned around and yelled back. “Mind yer own fucking business, yer stupid cunt! Or you’ll be sucking yer meals through a straw for a week.”
Banks sensed Annie stiffen beside him. He touched her gently on the forearm. The trio next door howled with laughter. The kid stuck his head farther round the door, so they could see him, and grinned at them, pleased with himself. He gave them the thumbs-up sign.
“How long have you lived here?” Banks asked.
“Two years. What’s it to you?”
“I’m interested in something that happened here fifty years ago. A suicide.”
“Suicide? Fifty years ago? What, fucking haunted, is it?” He stuck his head around the door again to talk to the people next door. “Hear that, lads? This is a fucking haunted house, this is. Maybe we could start charging an entry fee like those fucking stately homes.”
They all laughed. Including Banks.
The kid seemed so thrilled with his audience response that he repeated the comment. He then let go of the dog, which glanced uninterestedly at Banks and Annie and slunk off deeper into the house, no doubt toward a bowl of food. Maybe it wasn’t a rottweiler after all. Banks was about as good on dogs as he was on wildflowers, constellations and trees. Most of nature, come to think of it. But he would get better now he had the cottage by the edge of the woods. He had already learned to identify some of the birds – nuthatches, dunnocks and blue tits – and he had often heard a woodpecker knocking away at an ash trunk.
“Do you know who lived here before you?” he asked.
“Haven’t a clue, mate. But you can ask the wrinklies over the road. They’ve been here since the fucking ice age.” He pointed to the middle terrace house directly opposite. Mirror image. Banks could already see a figure peeking from behind moth-eaten curtains.
“Thanks,” he said. Annie followed him across the street.
“I smell pork,” said one of the doorstep trio as they went. The others laughed. Someone made a hawking sound and spat loudly.
After Banks and Annie had held their warrant cards up to the letter box for inspection, the dead bolt and the chain came off and a hunched man, probably somewhere in his early seventies, opened the door. He had a hollow chest, deep-set eyes, a thin, lined face and sparse black-and-gray hair larded back with lashings of Brylcreem. That glint of self-pitying malice peculiar to those who have been knocked on their arses too many times by life had not been entirely extinguished from his rheumy eyes; a few watts of indignant outrage, at least, remained.
Making sure he’d locked up behind him, he led them into the house. The windows were all shut tight and most of the curtains were closed. The living room had the atmosphere of a hot and stuffy funeral parlor; it smelled of cigarette smoke and dirty socks.
“What’s it all about, then?” The old man flopped down on a sagging brown corduroy settee.
“The past,” said Banks.
A woman walked through from the kitchen. About the same age as the man, she seemed a little better preserved. She certainly had a bit more flesh on her bones.
The old man reached for his cigarettes and lighter balanced on the threadbare arm of the settee, and he coughed when he lit up. What the future holds in store for us smokers if we don’t stop, Banks thought glumly, deciding against joining him just at the moment.
“Police, Elsie,” the man said.
“Come to do something about those hooligans?” she asked.
“No,” said the man, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. “They say it’s about the past.”
“Aye, well, there’s plenty of that about for everyone,” she said. “Like a cuppa?”
“Please,” said Banks. Annie nodded.
“Sit yerselves down then. I’m Mrs. Patterson, by the way. You can call me Elsie. And this is my Stanley.”
Stanley leaned forward and offered his hand. “Call me Stan,” he said, with a wink. Elsie went to make the tea. “I see you met that lot over the street?” Stan said with a jerk of his head.
“We did,” said Banks.
“He threatened to beat his wife,” Annie said. “Have you ever seen any evidence of that, Mr. Patterson? Any cuts or bruises?”
“Nay, lass,” said Stan. “He’s all wind and piss, is you Kev. Colleen’d kill him like as not if he ever laid a finger on her. And she’s not his wife, neither. Not that it seems to matter these days. It’s not even his kid.” He took a drag on his cigarette, which Banks noticed was untipped, and launched into a coughing fit. When he recovered, his face was red and his chest was heaving. “Sorry,” he said, thumping his chest. “All them years grafting in that filthy factory. Ought to bloody sue, I did.”
“How long have you lived here?” Banks asked.
“Forever. Or so it seems,” Stan said. “It were always a rough estate, even back then, but it weren’t really such a bad place when we first moved in. Lucky to get it, we were.” He smoked and coughed again.
Elsie came back with the tea. A cold drink would probably have made more sense, Banks thought, but you take what you’re offered.
“Stan was just saying you’ve lived here a long time,” Banks said to her.
She poured the tea into heavy white mugs. “Since we got married,” she said. “Well, we lived with Stan’s mum and dad in Pontefract for a few months, didn’t we, love, but this was our first home together.” She sat beside her husband.
“And our last, way things turned out,” Stan said.
“Well, whose fault were that?”
“Weren’t mine, woman.”
“You knew I wanted to move to that new Raynville Estate when they built it, didn’t you?”
“Aye,” said Stan. “When were that? In 1963? And where is it now? They’ve had to knock the bloody place down now, things got so bad.”
“There were other places we could have moved. Poplars. Wythers.”
“Wythers! Wythers is worse than this.”
“What year was it?” Banks butted in. “When you first came to live here?”
The Pattersons glared at one another for a moment, then Elsie stirred her tea. She sat up straight, knees pressed together, hands around the mug on her lap. In the distance, Banks could hear the music from the skinhead’s house: tortured guitars, heavy bass, a testosterone-pumped voice snarling lust and hatred. Christ, he hoped Brian’s band was better than that.
“In 1949,” Elsie said. “October 1949. I remember because I were three months gone with Derek at the time. He was our first. Remember, Stan,” she said, “you’d just got that job at Blakey’s Castings?”
“Aye,” said Stan, turning to Banks. “I were just twenty years old, and Elsie here were eighteen.”
Banks hadn’t even been born then. The war had been over four years and the country was going through a lot of changes, setting up the Welfare State in the wake of the Beveridge Report, setting up the whole system that had given Banks far more opportunities and chances of self-improvement than previous generations had. And to his parents’ dismay, he had become a copper instead of a business executive or managing director, the sort of position his father had always looked up to. Now, though, having felt very much like a business executive this past year, he was pleased to discover that he still thought he had made the right choice.