Past Reason Hated (28 page)

Either that or Nancy Wood had run off with both of them, Banks thought, nodding.

‘But she hung on to the photograph.’

‘Maybe she liked my looks better than my poetry.’

‘What kind of poetry do you write, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I don’t mind, but it’s a hard one to answer.’ She tapped the fingers holding the cigarette against her cheek. The short blonde hairs on the back of her hand caught the light. ‘Let me see, I don’t write confessional lesbian poetry, nor do I go in for feminist diatribes. A little wit, I like to think, a good sense of structure, landscape, emotion, myth . . . Will that do to be going on with?’

‘Do you like Larkin?’

Ruth laughed. ‘I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s hard not to. I never much admired his conservative, middle-class little Englandism, but the bugger certainly had a way with a stanza.’ She cocked her head. ‘Do we have a literary copper here? Another Adam Dalgliesh?’

Banks smiled. He didn’t know who Adam Dalgliesh was. Some television detective, no doubt, who went around quoting Shakespeare.

‘Just curious, that’s all,’ he answered. ‘Who’s your favourite?’

‘H. D. A woman called Hilda Doolittle, friend of Ezra Pound’s.’

Banks shook his head. ‘Never heard of her.’

‘Ah. Clearly
not
a literary copper then. Give her a try.’

‘Maybe I will.’ Banks took another sip of his coffee and fiddled for a cigarette. ‘Back to Caroline. When did you last see her?’

‘Let me see . . . It was years ago, five or six at least. I think she was about twenty or twenty-one at the time. Twenty going on sixty.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Banks remembered Caroline as beautiful and youthful even in death.

‘The kind of life she was leading ages a woman fast – especially on the inside.’

‘What life?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘Tell me.’

Ruth shifted into the cross-legged position. ‘Oh, I get it. You ask the questions, I answer them. Right?’

Banks allowed himself a smile. ‘I’m not meaning to be rude,’ he said, ‘but that’s basically how it goes. I need all the information I can get on Caroline. So far I don’t have a hell of a lot, especially about the time she spent in London. If it’ll make talking easier for you, I can tell you that we already know she had a conviction for soliciting and gave birth to a child. That’s all.’

Ruth looked down into her coffee and Banks was surprised to see tears rolling over her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting the mug down and wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘It just sounds so sad, so pathetic. You mustn’t think I’m being flippant, the way I talk. I don’t get many visitors so I try to enjoy everyone I meet. I was very upset when I read about Caroline, but I hadn’t seen her for a long time. I’ll tell you anything I can. A marmalade cat slipped into the room, looked once at Banks, then jumped on the divan next to Ruth and purred. ‘Meet T.S. Eliot,’ Ruth said. ‘He named so many cats, so I thought at least one should be named after him. I call him T.S. for short.’

Banks said hello to T.S., who seemed more interested in nestling into the hollow formed by Ruth’s crossed legs. She picked up her coffee again with both hands and blew gently on the surface before drinking.

‘Caroline started as a dancer,’ she said. ‘An exotic dancer, I believe they’re called. Well, it’s not too much of a leap from that to pleasing the odd, and I do mean
odd,
punter or two for extra pocket money. I’m sure you know much more about vice here than I do, but before long she was doing the lot: dancing, peep shows, turning tricks She was a beautiful child, and she looked even younger than she was. A lot of men around that scene have a taste for fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds, or even younger, and Caroline could fulfil that fantasy when she was eighteen.’

‘Was she on drugs?’

Ruth frowned and shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know. Not like some of them. She might have had the odd joint, maybe an upper or a downer now and then – who doesn’t? – but nothing really heavy or habitual. She wasn’t hooked on anything.’

‘What about her pimp?’

‘Bloke called Reggie. Charming character. One of his women did for him with a Woolworth’s sheath knife shortly before Caroline broke away. You can check your records, I’m sure they’ll have all the details. Caroline wasn’t involved, but it was a godsend for her in a way.’

‘How?’

‘Surely it’s obvious. She was scared stiff of Reggie. He used to bash her about regularly. With him out of the way, she had a chance to slip between the cracks before the next snake came along.’

‘When did she break away?’

Ruth leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘About a year before she went back up north.’

‘And you knew her during that period?’

‘We lived together. Here. I got this place before the prices rocketed. You wouldn’t believe how cheap it was. I knew her before for a little while, too. I’d like to think I played a small part in getting her out of the life.’

‘Who played the biggest part?’

‘She did that herself. She was a bright kid and she saw where she was heading. Not many you can say that about. She’d been wanting out for a while, but Reggie wouldn’t let go and she didn’t know where to run.’

‘How did you come to meet her?’

‘After a poetry reading. Funny, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Out in Camden Town. All we had in the audience was a prostitute and a drunk who wanted to grab the mike and sing ‘Your Cheating Heart’. He did, too, right in the middle of my best poem. Afterwards we drove down to Soho – not the drunk, just me and my fellow readers – to the Pillars of Hercules. Know it?’

Banks nodded. He’d enjoyed many a pint of draught Beck’s there.

‘We just happened to be jammed in a corner next to Caroline and another girl. We got talking, and one thing led to another. Right from the start Caroline struck me as intelligent and wise, wasted on that scummy life. She knew it too, but she didn’t know what else she could do. We soon became close friends. We went to the theatre a lot and she loved it. Cinema, art exhibitions.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Anything but classical music or opera. She didn’t mind ballet, though. It was all a world she’d never known.’

‘Was that all there was to your relationship?’

Ruth paused to light another Gauloise before answering. ‘Of course not. We were lovers. But don’t look at me as if I was some kind of corrupter of youth. Caroline knew exactly what she was doing.’

‘Were you the first woman she’d had such a relationship with?’

‘Yes. That was obvious right from the start. She was shy about things at first, but she soon learned.’ Ruth inhaled the smoke deeply and blew it out. ‘God, did she learn.’

One of the cuckoo clocks went through its motions. They waited until it stopped.

‘What do you think turned her into a lesbian?’ Banks asked.

Ruth shifted on the sofa and T.S. scampered off. ‘It doesn’t happen like that. Women don’t suddenly, quote, turn into lesbians, unquote. They discover that’s what they are, what they always were but were afraid to admit because there was too much working against them – social morality, male domination, you name it.’

‘Do you think there are a lot of women in that situation?’

‘More than you imagine.’

‘What about the men in her life?’

‘Work it out for yourself. What do you think it does to a woman to have gross old men sticking their willies in her and meek suburban husbands asking if they can pee in her mouth? You’ve got the pimp at one end and the perverts at the other. No quarter.’

‘So Caroline discovered her lesbianism under your guidance?’

Ruth flicked a column of ash into the tray. ‘You could put it like that, yes. I seduced her. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she loathed and feared sex with men. The only difficult thing was overcoming the taboos and learning how to respond to a woman’s body, a woman’s way of making love. And I’m not talking about dildos and vibrators.’

‘Why did you split up?’

‘Why does anybody split up? I think we’d done what we could for each other. Caroline was restless. She wanted to go back up north. There were no great rows or anything, just a mutual agreement, and off she went.’

‘Did you know she had a baby?’

‘Yes. Colm’s. But that was before I met her. She told me she’d just arrived in London and was lucky enough to meet Colm in a pub. Apparently he was a decent enough bloke, just broke all the time. Some of his mates weren’t so decent and that’s partly what got Caroline involved in the game to start with. You know, just a temporary dancing job at this club, no harm in it, is there? Bit of extra cash, no questions asked. Creeps. In all fairness, I don’t think Colm knew. At least not for a while. Then she had his baby and they put it up for adoption.’

‘Do you remember the name of the club?’

‘Yes. It was the Hole-in-the-Wall, just off Greek Street Dingy looking place.’

‘This Colm,’ Banks asked. ‘Do you know his second name?’

‘No. It’s funny, but come to think of it, Caroline never used last names when she spoke about people.’

‘Seen him lately?’

‘Me? I’ve never seen him.’

‘How come you know so much about him?’

‘Because Caroline told me about him when we were first getting to know each other.’

‘Where did he live?’

‘Notting Hill somewhere. Or it could have been Muswell Hill. I’m not sure. Honestly, I can’t help you on that one. She never was much of a one for details, just the broad gesture.’

‘Are you sure Caroline wasn’t already pregnant when she arrived in London?’

Ruth frowned and paused, as if she had suddenly remembered something. She turned her eyes away, and when she spoke there was an odd, distant tone to her voice. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘As far as I know she wasn’t. Unless she was lying to me. I suppose Colm will be able to confirm it if you can find him.’

‘Why did that question upset you so much?’

She put her hand to her chest. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re more defensive than you were earlier.’

Ruth shrugged. ‘It just reminded me of something, that’s all.’

‘Reminded you of what?’

Ruth reached for her coffee cup, but it was empty. Banks waited. He noticed her hand was shaking a little.

‘Something that was bothering Caroline. It’s not important,’ Ruth said. ‘Probably not even true.’

‘Let me decide.’

‘Well, it was those dreams she’d been having, and the things she’d been remembering. At least she thought she had. She didn’t really know if they were memories or fantasies.’

‘What about?’

Ruth looked him in the eye, her cheeks flushed. ‘Oh hell,’ she said. ‘Caroline was beginning to think she’d been molested as a child. She felt she’d repressed the incident, but it was making its way back up from her subconscious, perhaps because of all the weird johns she was servicing.’

‘Molested? When? Where? Who by?’

‘I’ve told you, she wasn’t sure she believed it herself.’

‘Do you know?’

‘Shit, yes. When she was a kid. At home. By her father.’

‘You knew, didn’t you?’
Banks challenged Veronica Shildon later that evening. They were eating in an Indonesian restaurant in Soho. The view out of the window was hardly romantic – a peep show offering ‘NAKED GIRLS IN BED’ for 50p – but the food was excellent and the bar served Tiger beer.

Veronica played with her
nasi goreng,
mixing the shrimp in with the rice. ‘Knew what?’

‘About Caroline’s past.’

‘No. Not the way you think.’

‘You could have saved me a lot of time and effort.’

Veronica shook her head. Her eyes looked watery, on the verge of tears. Banks couldn’t be sure whether it was emotion or the hot chili peppers. His own scalp was prickling with the heat and his nose was starting to run. He took another swig of cold Tiger.

‘Some things I knew,’ she said finally. ‘I knew Caroline had been on the streets, but I didn’t know any of the names or places involved. When she talked about Ruth she always spoke with affection, but she never mentioned her second name or where they’d lived.’

‘You knew they were lovers, though?’

‘Yes.’

‘But weren’t you jealous? Didn’t you question Caroline about it?’

Veronica snorted. ‘I had little right to be jealous, did I? Remember where I was coming from. Caroline told me there’d been others. She was even living with Nancy Wood when I first met her. And I was with Claude. You must be very naive, Mr Banks, if you think we walked into our relationship like a couple of virgins with no emotional baggage. And, somehow, I don’t honestly believe you are naive.’

‘No matter what the rules are,’ Banks said, ‘no matter what people try to convince themselves about what they accept and understand, about how open-minded they are, they still can’t stop feeling things like jealousy, hatred and fear. Those are powerful, primitive emotions – instincts, if you like – and you can’t convince me that you were both so bloody civilized you calmly decided not to feel anything about one another’s pasts.’

Veronica put down her fork and poured some more beer into her half empty glass. ‘Quite a speech. And not so long ago you were telling me I was too civilized to feel the need to revenge Caroline’s murder.’

‘Perhaps you are. But that’s another matter. Can you answer my question?’

‘Yes. I didn’t feel jealous about Ruth Dunne. For one thing, it was years ago, and for another, from what I could gather she’d done Caroline a big favour, perhaps the same kind of favour Caroline later did for me. As I said, I didn’t know all the details, but I know the gist. And when I talked to Ruth this afternoon after you’d been to see her, I liked her. I was
glad
to think Caroline had met and loved someone like her. That’s my answer. Believe it or not, as you choose. Or do you think people like us are just so perverted that all we do is rip each other’s clothes off and jump into bed together?’

Banks said nothing. He ate a mouthful of pork
satay
and washed it down with beer. Attracting the waiter’s attention, he then ordered two more Tigers. He did believe Veronica. After all, she had felt secure in her relationship with Caroline, and Ruth Dunne had certainly posed no threat.