Banks noticed Susan look down and smile. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hate to bring up a painful subject, but it’s your son’s death we want to talk to you about.’
Mrs Atherton looked at Susan as if noticing her for the first time. A shadow crossed her face. Then she turned back to Banks. ‘Our Joseph?’ she said. ‘But he’s been dead nigh on thirty years.’
‘I know that,’ said Banks. ‘We won’t trouble you for long.’
‘There’s nowt else to add.’ She poured the tea, fussed with milk and sugar, and sat down again.
‘You said your son wrote and said he was coming?’
‘Aye.’
‘Did you keep the letter?’
‘What?’
‘The letter. I’ve not seen any mention of it anywhere. It’s not in the file.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? We don’t leave scraps of paper cluttering up the place.’
‘So you threw it out?’
‘Aye. Bert or me.’ She looked at Susan again. ‘That was my husband, God rest his soul. Besides,’ she said, ‘how else would we know he was coming? We couldn’t afford a telephone back then.’
‘I know,’ said Banks. But nobody had asked at the railway station whether Bert Atherton actually had met his son there, and now it was too late. He sipped some tea; it tasted as if the teabag had been used before. ‘I don’t suppose you remember seeing a red Volkswagen in the area around that time, do you?’
‘No. They asked us that when it first happened. I didn’t know owt about it then, and I don’t know owt now.’
‘Was there anyone else in the house when the accident occurred?’
‘No, of course there weren’t. Do you think I wouldn’t have said if there were? Look, young man, what are you getting at? Do you have summat to tell me, summat I should know?’
Banks sighed and took another sip of weak tea. It didn’t wash away the taste of decay that permeated the kitchen. He signalled to Susan and stood up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’ve nothing new to tell you, Mrs Atherton. Just chasing will o’ the wisps, that’s all.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go chase ’em somewhere else, lad. I’ve got work to do.’
6
The Queen’s Arms was quiet late that afternoon. Rain had kept the tourists away, and at four o’clock most of the locals were still at work in the offices and shops around the market square. Banks ordered a pork pie, then he and Jenny Fuller took their drinks to an isolated corner table and settled down. The first long draught of Theakston’s bitter washed the archive dust and the taste of decay from Banks’s throat.
‘Well,’ said Jenny, raising her glass of lager in a toast. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’
She looked radiant, Banks thought: thick red hair tumbling over her shoulders, emerald green eyes full of humour and vitality, a fresh scent that cut through the atmosphere of stale smoke and made him think of childhood apple orchards. Though Banks was married, he and Jenny had once come very close to getting involved, and every now and then he felt a pang of regret for the road not taken.
‘Reincarnation,’ said Banks, clinking glasses.
Jenny raised her eyebrows. ‘You know I’ll drink to most things,’ she said, ‘but really, Alan, isn’t this going a bit far?’
Banks explained what had happened so far that day. By the time he had finished, the barman delivered his pork pie, along with a large pickled onion. As Jenny mulled over what he had said, he sliced the pie into quarters and shook a dollop of HP Sauce onto his plate to dip them in.
‘Fantasy,’ she said finally.
‘Would you care to elaborate?’
‘If you don’t believe in reincarnation, then there are an awful lot of strange phenomena you have to explain in more rational ways. Now, I’m no expert on parapsychology, but most people who claim to have lived past lifetimes generally become convinced through hypnosis, dreams and déjà vu experiences, like the ones you mentioned, or by spontaneous recall.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Exactly what it sounds like. Remembering past lifetimes out of the blue. Children playing the piano without lessons, people suddenly speaking foreign languages, that kind of thing. Or any memory you have but can’t explain, something that seems to have come from beyond your experience.’
‘You mean if I’m walking down the street and I suddenly think of a Roman soldier and remember some sort of Latin phrase, then I’m recalling a previous lifetime?’
Jenny gave him a withering look. ‘Don’t be so silly, Alan. Of course I don’t think that. Some people might, though. People are limitlessly gullible, it seems to me, especially when it comes to life after death. No, what I mean is that this is the kind of thing believers try to put forward as proof of reincarnation.’
‘And how would a rational psychologist explain it?’
‘She might argue that what a person recalls under hypnosis, in dreams, or wherever, is simply a web of fantasy woven from things that person has already seen or heard and maybe forgotten.’
‘But he says he’s never been here before.’
‘There’s television, books, films.’
Banks finished his pork pie, took a swig of Theakston’s and lit a Silk Cut. ‘So you’re saying that maybe our Mr Singer has watched one too many episodes of All Creatures Great and Small?’
Jenny tossed back her hair and laughed, ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’ She looked at her watch, then drained her glass. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I must dash.’ And with that, she jumped up, pecked him on the cheek and left. Jenny was always dashing, it seemed. Sometimes he wondered where.
Banks thought over what she had said. It made sense. More sense than Singer’s reincarnation theory and more sense than suspecting Joseph Atherton’s parents of covering up their son’s murder.
But there remained the unsubstantiated story of the letter and the anonymous note about the red Volkswagen. If somebody else had driven Joseph Atherton to the farm, then his parents had been lying about the letter. Why? And who could it have been?
7
Two days later, sorting through his post, Banks found a letter addressed to him in longhand. It stood out like a sore thumb among the usual bundle of circulars and official communications. He spread it open on his desk in front of him and read.
Dear Mr Banks,
I’m not much of a one for letter writing so you must forgive me any mistakes. I didn’t get much schooling due to me being a sickly child but my father always told us it was important to read and write. Your visit last week upset me by raking up the past I’d rather forget. I don’t know what made you come and ask those questions but they made me think it is time to make my peace with God and tell the truth after all these years.
What we told the police was not true. Our Joseph didn’t write to say he was coming and Bert didn’t pick him up at the station. Joseph just turned up out of the blue one afternoon in that red car. I don’t know who told the police about the car but I think it might have been Len Grimond in the farm down the road because he had fallen out with Bert over paying for repairs to a wall.
Anyway, it wasn’t our Joseph’s car. There was an American lass with him called Annie and she was driving. They had a baby with them that they said was theirs. I suppose that made him our grandson but it was the first time we ever heard about him. Our Joseph hadn’t written or visited us for four years and we didn’t know if he was alive or dead. He was a bonny little lad about two or three with the most solemn look on his face.
Well it was plain from the start that something was wrong. We tried to behave like good loving parents and welcome them into our home but the girl was moody and she didn’t want to stay. The baby cried a lot and I don’t think he had been looked after properly, though it’s not my place to say. And Joseph was behaving very peculiar. His eyes looked all glassy with tiny pupils. We didn’t know what was the matter. I think from what he said that he just wanted money.