The next thing he knew, the man had grabbed him by the arms and was pushing him toward the river, the stone forgotten at their feet. He could smell beer on the man’s breath, the same smell he remembered from his father, and something else – sweat, a wet-dog smell, body odor, like the smell of his socks after a long rugby game, as he struggled for his life. He called out and looked around for his friends, but they were running down to the gap in the fence where they had got in.
The struggle seemed to go on forever. Banks managed to wedge his heels at the edge of the riverbank and push back with all his might, but the grass was wet, and the soil under it was fast turning to mud. He didn’t think he could keep his grip much longer.
His smallness and wiriness were his only advantages, he knew, and he wriggled as hard as an eel to slip out of the man’s strong grasp. He knew that if he didn’t escape he would drown. He tried to bite the man’s arm, but all he got was a mouthful of vile-tasting cloth, so he gave up.
The man was breathing hard now, as if the effort was becoming too much for him. Banks drew on his last reserves of energy and wriggled as hard and fast as he could. He managed to get one arm free. The man held him by the other arm and punched him at the side of his right eye. He felt something sharp, like a ring, cut his skin. He flinched with pain and pulled away, succeeding in freeing his other arm. He didn’t wait to see if he was being pursued, but ran like the clappers to the hole in the fence.
Only when he caught up with his friends at the edge of the park did he dare risk looking back. Nobody in sight. His friends seemed sheepish as they asked him how he was, but he toughed it out. No problem. Inside, though, he was terribly shaken. They made a pact not to say anything. None of them was supposed to be playing down by the river in the first place. Their parents said it was dangerous. Banks didn’t dare tell his parents what had happened, explaining the cut by his eye by saying he had fallen and cut it on a piece of glass, and he had never relied on anyone to help him out of trouble again in his life.
“I was wrong. I should have told my parents, Annie. They would have made me report it to the police, and they might have caught him before he did any more harm. There was a dangerous man out there, and my fear and shame left him free to do as he pleased.”
“You blamed yourself for what happened to Graham Marshall? For the acts of a child molester?”
Banks turned away from the beer-colored water to face Annie. “When he went missing, all I could think of was the tall man with the greasy dark hair and the body odor.” Banks shivered. Sometimes he still woke in the night gagging on the taste of the dirty cloth of the man’s sleeve, and in the dream, when he looked at the river, it was full of dead boys all floating in the same direction, in perfectly matched rows, and Graham Marshall was the only one he recognized. So much guilt.
“But you don’t know that it was the same man.”
“Doesn’t matter. I still took the guilt on myself. I’d been attacked by an older man, possibly a pervert, and I didn’t report it. Then a boy was abducted, possibly by a pervert. Of course I blamed myself. And I certainly couldn’t say anything about it later.”
Annie put her hand on his arm. “So you made a mistake. So you should have reported it. You can’t spend your life sulking over all the mistakes you’ve made. You’d never bother getting out of bed in the morning.”
Banks smiled. “You’re right. I try not to let it get me down too much. It’s only when something like this happens, something I think I could have prevented.”
Annie started walking again. “You’re not God,” she said over her shoulder. “You can’t change the way things are.”
Banks flicked his cigarette in the river and followed her. Annie was right, he knew; he only wished he could feel better about it.
They turned left at the main road by the pre-Roman site, a sort of barrow where ancient graves had been discovered, and then left again, back toward the station, toward whatever other horrors Ruth Walker had in store for them.
Banks started the tape recorders again. “All right, Ruth,” he said, “you’ve had some food and rest. Ready to talk to us again?”
Ruth nodded and retracted her hands deep into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
“For the record,” Banks said, “Ms. Walker nodded to indicate that she is ready to resume the interview.”
Ruth stared down at her lap.
“Before the break, Ruth, you told us that Barry Clough is your father. I’m sure you know that gives rise to a lot more questions.”
“Go ahead.”
“First of all, is it true?”
“Of course it is. Why should I lie about it?”
“You’ve lied before. Remember, right at the beginning you told me your life has been a lie?”
“This is true. He’s my father. You can check.”
“How did you find out about this if it wasn’t on the birth certificate?”
“I talked to Ros’s parents.”
“And they told you, just like that?”
“It wasn’t as easy as that.”
“How easy was it, then?”
“It was a matter of finding out what name he was using now.”
“What do you mean?”
“All they could tell me was that Ros got herself made pregnant by some punk. He hung around with bands, worked as a roadie, played bass a bit, something like that. Ros had told them his name, but he was long gone by the time she even found out she was pregnant. He was in America, they told me. And she didn’t want anything to do with him anyway. Neither did her parents. Everybody just did their best to forget him, and it seems as if that was pretty easy.”
“What was his name?”
Ruth laughed. “You know what they were like back then, all using silly names, thinking they sounded tough? Rat Scabies. Sid Vicious. Johnny Rotten.”
“I remember,” said Banks.
“Well, this bloke was going by the name of Mal Licious. I ask you. Mal Licious.”
What an apt name for Barry Clough, Banks thought. “So nobody knew his real name?”
“Ros’s parents and uncle and aunt didn’t.”
“Did you ask Rosalind herself?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She didn’t know, either. Mal Licious was all he went by. She just called him Mal. Seems she hadn’t known him that well. I think it was a one-night stand. She didn’t really want to talk about it.”
“How did you find out, then?”
Ruth shifted in her chair. “Easy. Information technology. I know a bit about the music scene, I’ve been to a lot of clubs and raves and stuff, and Craig had a few contacts, he’d taken band photos, that sort of thing. I asked around. It seemed a logical way to start. There was always a chance that this Mal Licious was still on the scene somewhere. A lot of these people never grow up. Look at Rod Stewart, for Christ’s sake. Clough was a pretty well-known name on the scene, partly because of his trendy bar and partly because of the bands he promoted. There were still people around who’d known him way back, and someone told me he used to be called Mal Licious. Thought it was a bit of a laugh. Well, there can’t have been two of them, can there? Stands to reason.”
Indeed it did, thought Banks. Bright girl. Or woman. A lot of things were starting to make sense now. “So none of what happened since Emily went to London was coincidence, then?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Emily shacking up with Barry Clough, Clough finding out about Riddle, the article in the newspaper linking them together.”