Not Safe After Dark (47 page)

‘
Elland Road
,’ his father said. ‘You’d not be able to bloody afford it on what a copper earns, son.’ They all laughed.

Banks laughed with them. ‘Too true.’

As the conversations went on in that vein, people started to pair off: Dick and Mavis talking to Jock McFall about the latest supermarket price wars; Harry and Arthur Banks discussing
Peterborough United’s miserable performance that season. Banks edged his chair closer to Geoff Salisbury’s.

‘Sorry about that business with the change,’ said Geoff. ‘My eyesight’s not what it used to be. Honest mistake.’

Banks nodded. ‘Honest mistake. No offence,’ he said, though he still wasn’t convinced. It was the closest he was willing to get to an apology, so it would just have to do.
There was certainly no point in antagonizing Geoff and upsetting his mother even more. After all, he was only down for the weekend; these people had to live close to one another day in day out. And
if Banks couldn’t be around to help his parents with their shopping and house-cleaning, then it was a good thing Geoff Salisbury was.

‘How long have you lived on the estate, Geoff?’ Banks asked.

‘About a year.’

‘Where did you live before?’

‘Oh, here and there. Bit of a wanderer, really.’

‘What made you settle down?’

Geoff laughed and shrugged. ‘My age, I suppose. I don’t know. Wandering lost its appeal.’

‘Well, there’s something to be said for knowing you’ve always got a roof over your head.’

‘There is that.’ Geoff took a stick of chewing gum from his pocket. When he had unwrapped it and put it in his mouth, he folded the silver paper time and time again until it was just
a tiny square, which he set down in the ashtray. He noticed Banks watching him and laughed. ‘Habit,’ he said. ‘Stopped smoking five years ago and got addicted to this bloody
stuff. Wish I’d stuck with cigarettes sometimes.’

‘You’re probably better off as you are,’ Banks said. ‘What line of work are you in?’

‘Odd jobs, mostly.’

‘What? Fixing things? Carpentry?’

‘Cars, mostly. Tinkering with engines. I used to be a mechanic.’

‘Not any more?’

‘Got made redundant from the last garage I worked at, and I just couldn’t seem to get taken on anywhere else. My age, I suppose. Again. They can get young kids still wet behind the
ears and pay them bugger all to do the same job.’

‘I suppose so,’ Banks said. ‘So you work for yourself now?’

‘I don’t need much, just enough to keep the wolf from the door.’

‘And you help out Mum and Dad?’

‘Grand folk, Arthur and Ida,’ Geoff said. ‘Been like a mother and father to me, they have.’

If there was any irony intended in the remark, Geoff didn’t seem aware of it.

‘How long have you known them?’ Banks asked.

‘Since not long after you’d left this summer. They told me about that business with the missing lad. Terrible. Anyway, they always said hello right from the start, you know, like,
when they saw me in the street. Invited me in for a cup of tea. That sort of thing. And with them not being . . . well, you know what I mean, not as able to get around as well as they used to do, I
started doing them little favours. Just washing, cleaning, shopping and the like, helping them out with their finances. I like to help people.’

‘Finances?’

‘Paying bills on time, that sort of thing. They do get a bit forgetful sometimes, just between you and me. And taking the rent down to the council office. It’s an awful bother for
them.’

‘I’m sure they appreciate it, Geoff.’

‘I think they do.’ He nodded. ‘Another?’

Banks looked at his empty glass. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Go on, then. One more.’ He looked over at his father. ‘All right, Dad?’

Arthur Banks nodded and went back to his conversation with Harry Finnegan. The pub had filled up in the last half hour or so, and Banks thought he recognized some of the faces. One or two people
looked at him as if they knew him, then decided perhaps they didn’t, or didn’t want to. Banks watched Geoff Salisbury at the bar. He seemed to know everyone; he was shaking more hands
and patting more backs than a politician on election day. Popular fellow.

Geoff came back with the drinks and excused himself to talk to someone else. Banks chatted with Dick and Mavis for a while – they wanted to know if he’d helped catch the Yorkshire
Ripper – then, after his second drink, his father said he was tired and would like to go home. ‘You can stay if you like,’ he said to Banks.

‘No, I’ll walk back with you. I’m feeling a bit tired myself.’

‘Suit yourself.’

They said their goodbyes and walked out into the cool autumn night. It was mild for the time of year, Banks thought: light jacket weather rather than overcoats, but the leaves were changing
colour, winter was in the air and the weather forecast said they had a shower or two in store. Neither Banks nor his father had anything to say on the way home, but then Arthur Banks needed all his
breath for walking.

5

Banks’s bedroom,
he had been amazed to discover that summer, was almost exactly as it had been when he first left home. Only the wallpaper, curtains and
bedding had been changed. The bed itself was also the same one he had had since he was about twelve.

As he squeezed himself between the tightly tucked sheets on his narrow bed, he remembered how he used to hold the old transistor radio to his ear under the sheets, listening to Radio Luxembourg
amidst the whistles and crackles. First, Jimmy Saville playing the latest top-ten hit from ‘member number 11321’, Elvis Presley. Then, a few years later, came the pirate stations, with
even more static and interference: John Peel playing the Mothers of Invention, Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe and the Fish, names from another world, music so startling and raw it transcended
even the poor radio reception.

Banks’s eyes were too tired and scratchy from the smoky pub to read his Graham Greene, so he put on the Cecilia Bartoli CD of Gluck arias and listened as he drifted towards sleep.

As he lay there, he couldn’t help but think about Geoff Salisbury. Something about the man put Banks on his guard. It wasn’t just the wrong change – that
could
have been
an honest mistake – but the manner in which he seemed to have insinuated himself into the lives of Banks’s parents, the ease with which he breezed in and out of the house. Banks
wouldn’t be surprised if Geoff had a key. He switched off the CD and turned on his side, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling, telling himself he was being too mistrusting, and that he
probably only felt this way because he felt guilty he wasn’t taking care of his ageing parents himself. He knew he ought to be glad that
someone
was doing the job; he only wished that
someone wasn’t Geoff Salisbury.

6

Banks awoke with
a start the following morning and experienced a moment of absolute panic when he had no idea who or where he was. It was as if he had woken from a
coma after many years, all memory gone and the world around him totally changed, or as if he had been abducted and had woken up in an alien spaceship.

But it only lasted a second or two, thank God, and after that he managed to orient himself and his heartbeat slowed to normal. He was in his old bedroom, of course, the room he had slept in
between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It was at the back of the house and looked over back yards, an alleyway and a stretch of waste ground to the north, where he and his friends used to play.
When Banks looked out of his window, he noticed that the builders had moved in since his last visit and laid the foundations for yet more houses. As if Peterborough needed to grow any more. Since
the mid-sixties, when the developers decided to make it a catchment area for London’s overcrowded suburbs, it had done nothing but grow, swamping outlying villages with housing estates and
business parks. The planners and promoters said it blended old and new in unique and interesting ways. Even so, Banks thought, King Paeda, who had founded the city, would turn in his grave.

On a Saturday morning, the building site was deserted; concrete mixers sat idle and quiet, and the thick sheets of polythene covering pallets of bricks or boards flapped in the wind. It was
another grand autumn morning: sunshine, bright blue sky and a cool wind to make everything look and feel fresh. Banks checked his watch. It was after nine o’clock, and he was surprised he had
slept so long and so deeply; he couldn’t remember having any dreams at all. He listened for sounds of life from downstairs and thought he could hear talking on the radio and dishes rattling
in the sink. They were up.

Desperate for tea or coffee, Banks dressed quickly and made his way downstairs. In the living room, his father looked up from his paper and grunted, ‘Morning, son.’

‘Morning, Dad,’ Banks replied, glancing out of the window to make sure his car was still there. It was. His father’s newspaper rustled back into position, and the local radio
station, according to the DJ, was about to play a request for ‘Memories Are Made of This’ by Val Doonican, for Mrs Patricia Gaitskell, of 43 Wisteria Drive, Stamford. Jesus, thought
Banks, he could have been caught in a time warp while he slept, back to the B-side of 1967. Perhaps that was why he had felt so disorientated the minute he awoke.

He walked through to the kitchen, where his mother, washing the breakfast dishes, gave him a cursory glance and said, ‘Well, you’ve decided to get up at last, have you?’ It was
exactly what she used to say when he was a teenager and liked to lie in bed most of the morning. The only thing that saved him from seriously doubting his sanity was the little television on the
kitchen table showing a breakfast programme. That hadn’t been there all those years ago; nor had breakfast television.

Banks made some comment about having had a long drive and put on the kettle. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ he asked his mother.

‘No, thanks. We had ours ages ago.’

‘Well, you could have another.’

She gave him a withering look, and he busied himself looking for the tea bags, telling himself that his parents really weren’t being especially nasty to him. They had their routine; it
just took a little getting used to.

‘They’re where they’ve always been,’ his mother told him.

That didn’t help much, as he couldn’t remember where they’d always been. A terracotta jar in the cupboard with TEA engraved on the front looked promising, but it turned out to
be empty. Beside it, however, Banks found a jar of instant coffee. Might as well, he thought. As long as you convince yourself it’s a different drink, not really coffee at all, then it
doesn’t taste too bad. The kettle boiled and Banks made himself a cup of instant coffee. Specks of undissolved powder floated on the surface no matter how much he stirred it.

‘Don’t you want any breakfast?’ his mother asked, drying her hands on her pinafore. ‘We got some Sugar Puffs in for you specially. You always used to like Sugar
Puffs.’

When I was about twelve, thought Banks. ‘I’ll give them a miss this morning,’ he said. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

He wandered into the living room again, his mother not far behind. Val Doonican had given way to the Searchers singing ‘Some Day We’re Gonna Love Again’. An improvement, Banks
thought. Funny how the Searchers were exactly the kind of ‘pop rubbish’ his parents dismissed thirty-five years ago, but now they were as acceptable as Val Doonican.

Banks needed a newspaper to complete his morning ritual. His father was still buried deep in the
Daily Mail
, which, being a Labour man, he only read so he could find things to complain
about. The
Mail
wasn’t Banks’s kind of paper anyway. No real meat on its bones. Especially at the weekend. He needed something with a bit more writing and fewer pictures, like
the
Independent
or the
Guardian
.

‘I’m off to the newsagent’s for a paper,’ he announced. ‘Anything I can get for you?’

‘You’ll be lucky if they’ve got any left at this time,’ his mother said. His father just grunted.

Banks took their responses as a ‘no’ and set off. In the house next door the upstairs windows were all open and music thudded out. It definitely wasn’t Val Doonican or the
Searchers; more like Nine Inch Nails or Metallica. Banks studied the house. There were no curtains on the windows, and the front door was wide open. As he was looking, a scruffy couple walked out
onto the overgrown path. They looked like Fred and Rosemary West on acid. The man’s eyes, in particular, reminded Banks of the opening of
Vertigo
.

‘Morning,’ said Banks. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’

They looked at him as if he were from Mars – or as if they were
on
it – so he shrugged and walked down to the newsagent’s across the main road. The short strip of shops
there, set back from the road by a stretch of tarmac, had gone through dozens of changes over the years. When he first moved to the estate, Banks remembered, there had been a fish and chip shop, a
ladies’ hairdresser, a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s and a launderette; now there was a video-rental shop, a takeaway pizza and tandoori place called Caesar’s Taj Mahal, a
minimart and a unisex hair salon. The only constants were the fish and chip shop, which now sold takeaway Chinese food, too, Banks noticed, and Walker’s, the newsagent’s.

Banks waited to cross the busy road. On the other side, lower down from the shops, stood the remains of the old ball-bearing factory. The gates were chained and padlocked shut and it was
surrounded by high wire-mesh fencing with barbed wire on top, the windows beyond covered by rusty grilles. Despite these security precautions, most of them were broken anyway, and the front of the
blackened brick building was covered in colourful graffiti.

Banks remembered when the place was in production, lorries coming and going, factory whistle blowing and crowds of workers waiting at the bus stop. A lot of them were young women, or girls
scarcely out of school, and he had a crush on one of them. Called Mandy by her friends, she used to stand at the bus stop smoking, a faraway look in her eyes, scarf done up like a turban on her
head. She had pale smooth skin and lips like Julie Christie, whom Banks had gone to see in
Darling
with a couple of school friends because she did a nude scene in it. They had only been
fourteen or fifteen at the time, but the bored woman in the ticket office at the local fleapit hardly even looked at them before issuing their one and threepennies. The nude scene was terrific, but
he didn’t understand much of the rest of the film; it didn’t make the same sense as
Billy Liar
did for him when he saw it only a few months later. Escaping a boring environment
was something he could easily relate to.