‘It never happened?’
‘No. He was too damn slow. I didn’t know how much clearer I could make it without ripping off my clothes and jumping on him. But now it’s too late, even for that.’
‘How did he seem emotionally before he went to England?’
Marilyn frowned and bit her bottom lip as she thought. ‘He hadn’t quite got over his divorce,’ she said finally. ‘So I guess he might have been off women for a while.’
‘Did you know his ex-wife?’
‘No, not really.’
‘What about her lover?’
‘Yeah, I knew him. He used to work here. He’s a louse.’
‘In what way?’
‘Every way. Strutting macho peacock. And she fell for it. I don’t blame Bernie for feeling bad, but he’d have been well rid of her anyway. He’d have got over it.’
‘But he was still upset?’
‘Yeah. Withdrawn, sort of.’
‘How did he get on with his students?’
‘Well enough, considering.’
‘Considering what?’
‘He cared about literature, but most of the students don’t give a damn about James Joyce or George Orwell. They’re here to learn about business or computers or electrical engineering — you know, useful stuff — and then they think they’ll walk into top high-paying jobs. They don’t like it when they find they all have to do English, so it makes our job a bit tough. Some teachers find it harder than others to adjust and lower their expectations.’
‘And Bernie was one?’
‘Yeah. He complained a lot about how ignorant they were, how half of them didn’t even know when the Second World War was fought or who Hitler was. And, even worse, they didn’t care anyway. Bernie couldn’t understand that. He had one guy who thought Shakespeare was a small town in Saskatchewan. That really got to him.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Banks said. ‘How could someone like that get accepted into a college?’
‘We have an open-door policy,’ Marilyn said. ‘It’s a democratic education. None of that elitist bullshit you get in England. We don’t send our kids away to boarding schools to learn Latin and take a lot of cold showers. All that Jane Eyre stuff.’
Banks, who had not attended a public school himself, along with the majority of English children, was confused. ‘But don’t a lot of them fail?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t it waste time and money?’
‘We don’t like to fail people,’ Marilyn said. ‘It gives them a poor self-image.’
‘So they don’t need to know much to get in, and they aren’t expected to know much more when they leave, is that it?’
Marilyn smiled like a nurse with a particularly difficult patient.
‘What did Bernie think about that?’ Banks hurried on.
She laughed. ‘Bernie loved youth, young people, but he didn’t have much respect for their intelligence.’
‘It doesn’t sound like they had much.’
‘There, you see. That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d say. You’re so sarcastic, you Brits.’
‘But you liked him?’
‘Yeah, I liked him. We might have disagreed on a few things, but he was cute and I’m a sucker for an English accent. What can I say? He was a nice guy, at least as far as I could tell. I mean, he might not have thought much of his students, but he treated them well and did his damnedest to arouse some curiosity in them. He was a good teacher. What are you getting at, anyway? Do you think one of his students might have killed him over a poor grade?’
‘It sounds unlikely, doesn’t it?’
‘Not as much as you think,’ Marilyn said. ‘We once had a guy come after his English teacher here with a shotgun. Luckily, security stopped him before he got very far. Still,’ she went on, ‘I shouldn’t think an irate student would go to all the trouble of following him over to England and killing him there.’
‘What did Bernie do when he went home after work? Did he ever mention any particular place he went to?’
Marilyn shook her head and the curls danced. ‘No. He did once say he’d had a few pints too many in the pub the night before.’
‘The pub?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He didn’t say which pub?’
‘No. He just said he’d had six pints when five was his limit these days. Look, what is all this? What are you after? You’re not one of those private eyes, are you?’
Banks laughed. ‘No. I told you, I’m a friend of Bernie’s from England. Swainsdale, where he grew up. I want to piece together as much of his life as I can. A lot of people over there are hurt and puzzled by what happened.’
‘Yeah, well… me too. He wasn’t the kind of guy who gets himself killed. Know what I mean?’
Banks nodded.
‘Swainsdale, you said?’ she went on. ‘Bernie was always going on about that place. At least the couple of times we talked he was. Like it was some paradise on earth or something. Especially since the divorce, he started to get homesick. He was beginning to feel a bit lost and out of place here. It can happen, you know. So he took the thousand-dollar cure.’
‘The what?’
‘The thousand-dollar cure. I guess it’s gone up now with inflation, but it’s when Brits take a trip back home to renew their roots. Used to call it the thousand-dollar cure. For homesickness.’
‘Did he ever talk of going back to Swainsdale to stay?’
‘Yeah. He said he’d be off like a shot if he had a job, or a private income. He said there was nothing for him here after he split up with Barbara. Poor guy. Like I said, he got withdrawn, dwelled on things too much.’
Banks nodded. ‘There’s nothing else you can tell me? You’re sure he didn’t name any specific pub or place he used to hang out?’
‘Sorry.’ Marilyn grinned. ‘I’d remember if he had because I’d have probably dropped in there one evening. Just by chance, you know.’
Banks smiled. ‘Yes. I know. Thanks anyway. I won’t waste any more of your time.’
‘No problem.’ Marilyn tossed her empty can into the waste-paper basket. ‘Hey!’ she called, as Banks left the staff lounge. ‘I think your accent’s cute, too.’
But Banks didn’t have time to appreciate the compliment. Coming along the corridor towards him were two very large police officers.
‘Mr Banks?’ the taller one asked.
‘Yes.’
‘We’d like you to come with us, if you don’t mind.’
‘What for?’
‘Just a few questions. This way, please.’
There was hardly room for them to walk three abreast down the hallway, but they managed it somehow. Banks felt a bit like a sardine in a tin. As they turned the corner, he noticed from the corner of his eye Tom Jordan wringing his hands outside his office.
Banks tried to get more out of the officers in the lift, but they clammed up on him. He felt a wave of irrational fear at the situation. Here he was, in a foreign country, being taken into custody by two enormous uniformed policemen who refused to answer his questions. And the feeling of fear intensified as he was bundled into the back of the yellow car. The air smelled of hot vinyl upholstery; a strong wire mesh separated him from the men in the front; and the back doors had no inside handles.
‘What does tha write, then?’ Freddie Metcalfe asked, expertly refilling the empty pint glass with Marston’s Pedigree Bitter.
‘Science fiction,’ said Detective Constable Philip Richmond. In his checked Viyella shirt and light brown cords, he thought he looked the part. Posing as a writer would make him less suspicious, too. He would be expected to spend some time alone in his room writing and a lot of time in the pub, with perhaps the occasional constitutional just to keep the juices flowing.