The Hanging Valley (33 page)

While Dr Barber poured, Banks stood by the window and looked over the neat, clipped quadrangle at the light stone façades of the college.

Barber passed them their drinks and lit his pipe. Its smoke sweetened the air. In deference to his guests, he opened the window a little, and a draught of fresh air sucked the smoke out. In appearance, Barber had the air of an aged cleric, and he smelled of Pears soap. He reminded Banks of the actor Wilfrid Hyde-White.

“It was a long time ago,” Barber said, when Banks had asked him about Collier. “Let me check my files. I’ve got records going back over twenty years, you know. It pays to know whom one has had pass through these hallowed halls. As a historian myself, I place great value on documentation. Now, let me see . . . Stephen Collier, yes. Braughtmore School, Yorkshire. Is that the one? Yes? I remember him. Not terribly distinguished academically, but a pleasant enough fellow. What’s he been up to?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Banks said. “He died a few days ago and we want to know why.”

Barber sat down and picked up his sherry. “Good Lord! He wasn’t murdered, was he?”

“Why would you think that?”

 
Barber shrugged. “One doesn’t usually get a visit from the Yorkshire police over nothing. One doesn’t usually get visits from the police at all.”

“We don’t know,” Banks said. “It could have been accidental, or it could have been suicide.”

“Suicide? Oh dear. Collier was a rather serious young man—a bit too much so, if I remember him clearly. But suicide?”

“Possibly.”

“A lot can change in a few years,” Barber said. He frowned and relit his pipe. Banks remembered his own struggles with the infernal engines, and the broken pipe that now hung on his wall in Eastvale CID Headquarters. “As I said,” Barber went on, “Collier seemed a sober, sensible kind of fellow. Still, who can fathom the mysteries of the human heart?
Fronti nulla fides
.”

“There’s no real type for suicide,” Banks said. “Anyone, pushed far enough—”

“I suppose you’re the kind of policeman who thinks anyone can become a murderer, too, given the circumstances?”

Banks nodded.

“I’m afraid I can’t go along with that,” Barber said. “I’m no psychologist, but I’d say it takes a special type. Take me, for example, I could never conceive of doing such a thing. The thought of jail, for a start, would deter me. And I should think that everyone would notice my guilt. As a child, I once stole a lemon tart from the school tuck-shop while Mrs Wiggins was in the back, and I felt myself turn red from head to toe. No, Chief Inspector, I’d never make a murderer.”

“I’m thankful for that,” Banks said. “I don’t need to ask you for an alibi now, I suppose.”

Barber looked at him for a moment, unsure what to do, then laughed.

“Stephen Collier,” Banks said.

“Yes, yes. Forgive me. I’m getting old; I tend to ramble. But it’s coming back. He was the kind who really did have to work hard to do well. So many others have a natural ability—they can dash off a good essay the night before. But you’d always find Collier in the library all week before a major piece of work was due. Conscientious.”

“How did he get on with the other students?”

“Well enough, as far as I know. Collier was a bit of a loner, though. Kept himself to himself. I hardly need to tell you, Chief Inspector, that quite a number of young lads around these parts go in for high jinks. It’s always been like that, ever since students started coming here in the thirteenth century. And there’s always been a bit of a running battle between university authorities and the people of the city: town and gown, as we say. The students aren’t vindictive, you realize, just high spirited. Sometimes they cause more damage than they intend.”

“And Collier?”

“I’m sure he didn’t go in for that kind of thing. If there had been any incidents of an unsavoury nature, they would have appeared in my assessment file.”

“Did he drink much?”

“Never had any trouble with him.”

“Drugs?”

“Chief Inspector Banks,” Barber said slowly. “I do realize that the university has been getting a bad reputation lately for drugs and the like, and no doubt such things do happen. But if you take the word of the media, you’d be seriously misled. I don’t think Stephen Collier was involved in drugs at all. I remember that we did have some trouble with one student selling cannabis around that time— most distressing—but there was a full investigation, and at no point was Stephen Collier implicated.”

“So as far as you can say, Collier was a model student, if not quite as brilliant as some of his fellows?”

“I know it sounds hard to believe, but yes, he was. Most of the time you’d hardly have known he was here. I’m having great difficulty trying to guess what you’re after. You say that Stephen Collier’s death might have been suicide or it might have been an accident, but, if you don’t mind my saying so, the questions you’re asking seem preoccupied with unearthing evidence that Collier himself was some kind of hellraiser.”

Banks frowned and looked out of the window again. The shadow of a cloud passed over the quadrangle. He drained his sherry and lit a cigarette. Sergeant Hatchley, quietly smoking in a
chair in the corner, had emptied his glass a while ago and sat fidgeting with it as if he hoped Barber would notice and offer a refill. He did, and both policemen accepted. Banks liked the way the dry liquid puckered his taste buds.

“He’s a suspect,” Banks said. “And I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. We have no proof that Collier was guilty of anything, but there’s a strong possibility.”

“Does it matter,” Barber asked, “now that he’s dead?”

“Yes, it does. If he was guilty, then the case is closed. If not, we still have a criminal to catch.”

“Yes. I see. Well I’m afraid I can’t offer you any evidence at all. Seemed a thoroughly pleasant, hard-working, nondescript fellow to me as far as I can remember.”

“What about six years ago? It would have been his third year, his last. Did anything unusual happen then, around early November?”

Barber frowned and pursed his lips. “I can’t recall anything. . . . Wait a minute . . .” He walked back over to his ancient filing cabinet and riffled through the papers. “Yes, yes, I thought so,” he announced finally. “Stephen Collier didn’t finish his degree.”

“What?”

“He didn’t finish. Decided history wasn’t for him and left after two years. Went to run a business, as far as I know. I can confirm with the registrar’s office, of course, but my own records are quite thorough.”

“Are you saying that Stephen Collier wasn’t here, that he wasn’t in Oxford in November six years ago?”

“That’s right. Could it be you’ve got him mixed up with his brother, Nicholas? He would have just been starting his second year then, you know, and I certainly remember him, now I cast my mind back. Nicholas Collier was a different kettle of fish, a different kettle of fish entirely.”

FOURTEEN

I

Katie stared at her reflection in the dark kitchen window as she washed the crystal glasses she couldn’t put in the machine. The transistor radio on the table played soothing classical music, quiet enough that she could even hear the beck at the bottom of the back garden rippling over its stones.

Now that Stephen was dead and she had unburdened herself to Banks, she felt empty. None of her grandmother’s maxims floated around her mind, as they had been doing lately, and that tightness in her chest that had seemed to squeeze at her very heart itself had relaxed. She even noticed a half-smile on her face, a very odd one she’d not seen before. Nothing hurt now; she felt numb, just like her mouth always did after an injection at the dentist’s.

Chief Inspector Banks had told her that if she remembered anything else, she should get in touch with him. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t remember a thing. Looking back over the years in Swainshead, she had noticed hints that all wasn’t well, that some things were going on about which she knew nothing. But there was no coherent narrative, just a series of unlinked events. She thought of Sam’s behaviour when Raymond Addison first appeared. She hadn’t heard their conversation, but Sam had immediately left everything to her and gone running off across the street to the Collier house. Later, Addison had gone for a walk and never returned. When they found out the man had been murdered, Sam had been unusually pale and quiet for some days.

She remembered watching Bernie pause and glance towards the Collier house before going on his way the morning he left. She had
also seen him call there one evening shortly after he’d arrived and thought it odd because of the way he usually went on about them being so rich and privileged.

None of it had meant very much at the time. Katie wasn’t the kind of woman to look for bad in anyone but herself. She had had far more pressing matters to deal with and soon forgot the suspicious little things she’d noticed. Even now, she couldn’t put it all together. When she told Banks that she had killed Bernie and Stephen, she meant it. She hadn’t physically murdered them, but she knew she was responsible.

The things she remembered often seemed as if they had happened to someone else. She could view again, dispassionately, Bernard Allen sating himself on her impassive body, as if she were watching a silent film from the ceiling. And Stephen’s chaste kiss left no trace of ice or fire on her lips. Sam had taken her roughly the previous evening, but instead of fear and loathing, she had felt a kind of power in her subservience. It wasn’t pleasure; it was something new, and she felt that if she could only be patient enough it would make itself known to her eventually. It was as if he had possessed her body, but not her soul. She had kept her soul pure and untainted, and now it was revealing itself to her. Somehow, these new feelings were all connected with her sense of responsibility for the deaths of Bernie and Stephen. She had blood on her hands; she had grown up.

The future still felt very uncertain. Life would go on, she supposed, much as it had done. She would clean the rooms, cook the meals, submit to Sam in bed, do what she was told, and try to avoid making him angry. Everything would continue just as it had done, except for the new feelings that were growing in her. If she stayed patient, change would come in its own time. She wouldn’t have to do anything until she knew exactly
what
to do.

For the moment, nothing touched her; nothing ruffled the calm and glassy surface of her mind. Caught up in her dark reflection, she dropped one of a set of six expensive crystal glasses. It shattered on the linoleum. But even that didn’t matter. Katie looked down at the shards with an indulgent, pitying expression on her face and went to fetch the brush and dustpan.

As she moved, she heard a sound out back. Hurrying to the window, she peered through her own reflection and glimpsed a shadow slipping past her gate. A moment later—before she could get to the unlocked door—she heard a cursory tap. The door opened and Nicholas Collier popped his head around and smiled: “Hello, Katie. I’ve come to visit.”

II

The sun was a swollen red ball low on the western horizon. It oozed its eerie light over the South Yorkshire landscape, silhouetted motionless pit-wheels and made the slag-heaps glow. On the cassette, Nick Drake was singing the haunting “Northern Sky.”

Much of the way, the two had sat in silence, thinking things out and deciding what to do. Finally, Hatchley could stand it no longer: “How can we nail the bastard?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Banks answered. “We don’t have much of a case.”

Hatchley grunted. “We might if we hauled him in and you and me had a go at him.”

“He’s clever, Jim,” Banks said. The sergeant’s first name didn’t feel so strange to his lips after the first few times. “Look how he’s kept out of it so long. He’s not going to break down just because you and me play good cop-bad cop with him. That’ll be a sign of our weakness to him. He’ll know we need a confession to make anything stick, so it only strengthens his position. No, Nicholas Collier’s a cool one. And don’t forget, he’s got pull around Swainsdale. We’d no sooner get started than some fancy lawyer would waltz in and gum up the works.”

“What I’d give for a bloody good try, though!” Hatchley thumped the dashboard. “Sorry. No damage done. It just makes me angry, a stuck-up bastard like Nicholas Collier getting away with it. How many people has he killed?”

“Three, maybe four if we count Stephen. And he hasn’t got away with it yet. The trouble is, we don’t know if he killed anyone apart from the girl, Cheryl Duggan. We can’t even prove that he killed her. Just because Dr Barber told us he had a reputation for
pestering the town’s working girls doesn’t make him guilty. It certainly doesn’t give us grounds for a conviction.”

“But it was Cheryl Duggan’s death that sent Addison up to Swainshead.”

“Yes. But even that’s circumstantial.”

“Who do you think killed Addison and Allen?”

“At a guess, I’d say Stephen. He’d do it to protect his little brother and his family’s reputation. But we don’t know, and we never will if Nicholas doesn’t talk. I’ll bet, for all his cleverness, Nicholas is weak. I doubt he has the stomach for cold-blooded murder. They might both have been at the scene—certainly neither had a good alibi—but I’d say Stephen did the killing.”

“What do you think happened with the Duggan girl?”

Banks shifted lanes to overtake a lorry. “I think he picked her up in a pub and took her down by the river. She was just a prostitute, a working-class kid, and he was from a prominent family, so what the hell did it matter to him what he did? I think he got over-excited, hurt her perhaps, and she started to protest, threatened to scream or tell the police. So he panicked and drowned her. Either that or he did it because he enjoyed it.”

The tape finished. Banks lit a cigarette and felt around in the dark for another cassette. Without looking at the title, he slipped in the first one he got hold of. It was the sixties anthology tape he’d taken to Toronto with him. Traffic came on singing “No Face, No Name and No Number.”

“I think Addison was a conscientious investigator,” Banks went on. “He more than earned his money, poor sod. He did all the legwork the police didn’t do and found a connection between Cheryl Duggan and Nicholas Collier. Maybe they’d been seen leaving a pub together, or perhaps her friends told him Collier had been with her before. Anyway, Addison prised the name out of someone, or bought the information, and instead of reporting in he set off for Swainshead. That was his first mistake.