Eventually, the council tarmacked the street and put an end to the celebrations. Afterwards, they had to have their bonfire on a large field half a mile away; strangers from other estates started muscling in, looking for trouble, and the older people began to stay home and lock their doors.
“How are we going to approach this?” Annie asked.
“We'll play it by ear. I just want to get a look at the lie of the land.”
It was another hot day; people sat out on their
doorsteps or dragged striped deck-chairs onto postage-stamp lawns, where the grass was parched pale brown for lack of rain. Banks couldn't help but be aware of the suspicious eyes following their progress. From one garden, a couple of semi-naked teenage boys whistled at Annie and flexed the tattoos on their arms. Banks looked at her and saw her stick her hand behind her back and give them two fingers. They laughed.
They passed two girls, neither of whom looked older than fifteen. Each was pushing a pram with one hand and holding a cigarette with the other. One of them had short pink-and-white-dyed hair, green nail varnish, black lipstick and a nose-stud; the other had jet-black hair, a large butterfly tattoo on her shoulder and a red dot in the centre of her forehead. Both wore high-heeled sandals, tight shorts and midriff-revealing tops; the one with the red dot also had a ring in her navel.
“Get
her
,” one of them sneered as Banks and Annie walked by. “Little Miss Hoity-Toity.”
“I'm beginning to think this wasn't such a good idea, after all,” Annie said, when the girls had passed.
“Why not? What's wrong?”
“Easy for you to ask. Nobody's insulted
you
yet.”
“They're only jealous.”
“What of? My good looks?”
“No. Your designer jeans. Ah, here it is.”
The address turned out to be on one of the narrower side-streets. Most of the doors had scratched and weathered paintwork, and the whole street looked run-down. All the windows of the old Shackleton house were open, and loud music blasted from inside.
Next door, two men with huge beer bellies sat smoking
and drinking Carlsberg Special Brew. An enormous woman sat on a tiny deck-chair at an angle to them, hips and thighs flowing over the edge. She looked as if she might be their mother. Both men were stripped to the waist, skin white as lard despite the sun; the woman wore a bikini top and garish pink shorts. All three of them followed Banks and Annie with their narrowed, piggy eyes, but nobody said anything.
Banks knocked on the door. A dog growled inside the house. The people next door laughed. Finally, the door jerked open and a young skinhead in a red T-shirt and torn jeans stuck his head out, holding the barking dog by its studded collar. It looked like a Rottweiler to Banks.
Banks swallowed and stepped back a couple of paces. He wasn't normally scared of dogs, but this one had wicked-looking teeth. Maybe Annie was right. What could they find out anyway, nearly fifty years after the fact?
“Who the fuck are you? What do you want?” the skinhead asked. The cords stood out on his neck. He couldn't have been older than eighteen or nineteen. Banks thought he could hear a baby crying somewhere beyond the music in the depths of the house.
“Your mum and dad in?” Banks asked.
He laughed. “I should think so,” he said. “They never go anywhere. Trouble is, you'll have a bloody long journey. They live in Nottingham.”
“So
you
live here?”
“Course I fucking do. Look, I haven't got all day.” The dog was still straining at its collar, drool dripping from its jowls, but it had turned quieter now and seemed to be settling down, just growling rather than barking and snapping.
“I'd like some information,” said Banks.
“About what?”
“Look, can we come in?”
“You must be fucking joking, mate. One step over this threshold and Gazza here'll have you singing soprano in the church choir before you know it.”
Banks looked at Gazza. He could believe it. He considered his options. Call Animal Control? The
RSPCA
? “Fine,” he said. “Then maybe you can tell us what we want to know out here?”
“Depends.”
“It's the house I'm interested in.”
The kid looked Annie up and down, then looked back at Banks. “House-hunting are you, then? I'd've thought you two would be after something a bit more up-market than this fucking slum.”
“Not exactly house-hunting, no.”
“Who is it, Kev?” came a woman's voice from inside. Kev turned around and yelled back. “Mind yer own fucking business yer stupid cunt! Or you'll be sucking yer meals through a straw for a week.”
Banks sensed Annie stiffen beside him. He touched her gently on the forearm. The trio next door howled with laughter. The kid stuck his head further round the door, so they could see him, and smiled at them, pleased with himself. He gave them the thumbs-up sign.
“How long have you lived here?” Banks asked.
“Two years. What's it to you?”
“I'm interested in something that happened here fifty years ago. A suicide.”
“Suicide? Fifty years ago? What, fucking haunted, is it?” He stuck his head around the door again to talk to the people next door. “Hear that lads? This is a fucking
haunted house, this is. Maybe we could start charging an entry fee like those fucking stately homes.”
They all laughed. Including Banks.
The kid seemed so thrilled with his audience response that he repeated the comment. He then let go of the dog, which glanced uninterestedly at Banks and Annie and slunk off deeper into the house, no doubt towards a bowl of food. Maybe it wasn't a Rottweiler after all. Banks was about as good on dogs as he was on wildflowers, constellations and trees. Most of nature, come to think of it. But he would get better, now he had the cottage by the edge of the woods. He had already learned to identify some of the birdsâ nuthatches, dunnocks and blue titsâand he had often heard a woodpecker knocking away at an ash trunk.
“Do you know who lived here before you?” he asked. “Haven't a clue, mate. But you can ask the wrinklies over the road. They've been here since the fucking ice age.” He pointedto the middle terrace house directly opposite. Mirror-image. Banks could already see a figure peeking from behind moth-eaten curtains.
“Thanks,” he said. Annie followed him across the street.
“I smell pork,” said one of the doorstep trio as they went. The others laughed. Someone made a hawking sound and spat loudly.
After Banks and Annie had held their warrant cards up to the letter-box for inspection, the deadbolt and the chain came off and a hunched man, probably somewhere in his early seventies, opened the door. He had a hollow chest, deep-set eyes, a thin, lined face and sparse black and grey hair larded back with lashings of Brylcreem. That glint of self-pitying malice peculiar to those who have been knocked on their arses too many times by life had not been
entirely extinguished from his rheumy eyes; a few watts of indignant outrage, at least, remained.
Making sure he locked up behind him, he led them into the house. The windows were all shut tight and most of the curtains were closed. The living-room had the atmosphere of a hot and stuffy funeral parlour; it smelled of cigarette smoke and dirty socks.
“What's it all about, then?” The old man flopped down on a sagging brown corduroy settee.
“The past,” said Banks.
A woman walked through from the kitchen. About the same age as the man, she seemed a little better preserved. She certainly had a bit more flesh on her bones.
The old man reached for his cigarettes and lighter balanced on the threadbare arm of the settee, and he coughed when he lit up. What the future holds in store for us smokers if we don't stop, Banks thought glumly, deciding against joining him just at the moment.
“Police, Elsie,” the man said.
“Come to do something about those hooligans?” she asked.
“No,” said the man, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. “They say it's about the past.”
“Aye, well, there's plenty of that about for everyone,” she said. “Like a cuppa?”
“Please,” said Banks. Annie nodded.
“Sit yerselves down then. I'm Mrs Patterson by the way. You can call me Elsie. And this is my Stanley.”
Stanley leaned forward and offered his hand. “Call me Stan,” he said, with a wink. Elsie went to make the tea. “I see you met that lot over the street?” Stan said with a jerk of his head.
“We did,” said Banks.
“He threatened to beat his wife,” Annie said. “Have you ever seen any evidence of that, Mr Patterson? Any cuts or bruises?”
“Nay, lass,” said Stan. “He's all wind and piss is yon Kev. Colleen'd kill him like as not if he ever laid a finger on her. And she's not his wife, neither. Not that it seems to matter these days. It's not even his kid.” He took a drag on his cigarette, which Banks noticed was untipped, and launched into a coughing fit. When he recovered, his face was red and his chest was heaving. “Sorry,” he said, thumping his chest. “All them years grafting in that filthy factory. Ought to bloody sue.”
“How long have you lived here?” Banks asked.
“Forever. Or so it seems,” Stan said. “It were always a rough estate, even back then, but it weren't really such a bad place when we first moved in. Lucky to get it, we were.” He smoked and coughed again.
Elsie came back with the tea. A cold drink would probably have made more sense, Banks thought, but you take what you're offered.
“Stan was just saying you've lived here a long time,” Banks said to her.
She poured the tea into heavy white mugs. “Since we got married,” she said. “Well, we lived with Stan's mum and dad in Pontefract for a few months, didn't we, love, but this was our first home together.” She sat beside her husband.
“And our last, way things turned out,” Stan said.
“Well, whose fault were that?”
“Weren't mine, woman.”
“You knew I wanted to move to that new Raynville estate when they built it, didn't you?”
“Aye,” said Stan. “When were that? Nineteen sixty-three? And where is it now? They've had to knock the bloody place down now, things got so bad.”
“There were other places we could have moved. Poplars. Wythers.”
“
Wythers
! Wythers is worse than this.”
“What year was it?” Banks butted in. “When you first came to live here?”
The Pattersons glared at one another for a moment, then Elsie stirred her tea. She sat up straight, knees pressed together, hands around the mug on her lap. In the distance, Banks could hear the music from the skinhead's house: tortured guitars, heavy bass, a testosterone-pumped voice snarling lust and hatred. Christ, he hoped Brian's band was better than that.
“Nineteen forty-nine,” Elsie said. “October
1949
. I remember because I were three months gone with Derek at the time. He was our first. Remember, Stan,” she said, “you'd just got that job at Blakey's Castings?”
“Aye,” said Stan, turning to Banks. “I were just twenty years old, and Elsie here were eighteen.”
Banks hadn't even been born then. The war had been over five years and the country was going through a lot of changes, setting up the Welfare State in the wake of the Beveridge Report, setting up the whole system that had given Banks far more opportunities and chances of self-improvement than previous generations. And to his parents' dismay, he had become a copper instead of a business executive or managing director, the sort of position his father had always looked up to. Now, though, having felt very much like a business executive this past year, he was pleased to discover that he still thought he had made the right choice.
Banks tried to imagine the Pattersons as a young couple with hope in their hearts and a promising future before them crossing the threshold of their first home together. The image came in black-and-white, with a factory chimney in the background.
“Do you remember anything about your neighbours across the street?” Annie asked. “Directly opposite, where Kev and his family live now.”
Elsie spoke first. “Weren't that those, you know, those . . . whatstheirnames . . . lived, Stanley? A bit stuck-up. There were some trouble.”
“A suicide,” Banks prompted her.
“Aye. That's right. Don't you remember, Stanley? Shot himself. That tall, skinny young fellow, used to walk with a stick, never said a word to anyone. What were his name?”
“Matthew Shackleton.”
“That's right. We had police all over the place. They even came over and talked to us. By gum, that takes me back a bit. Matthew Shackleton. Don't you remember, Stanley?”
“Aye,” said Stan hesitantly. “I think so.” He lit another cigarette and coughed. Then he glanced at his watch. Opening time.
“Did you know the Shackletons?” Banks asked.
“Not really,” Elsie said. “Acted like they'd gone down in the world, fallen on hard times, like. From the country somewhere, though I found out she were nowt better than a shopkeeper's daughter. Not that there's owt wrong with that, mind you. I'm no snob. I tried to be friendly, you know, like you do, seeing as we were the newcomers and all that. But nobody bothered with them. The time or two I did talk to her, she didn't say owt about where they came
from, except to mention that things had been different back in the village, like. Well, la-de-da, I thought.”
Well, Banks thought, from Hobb's End to this Leeds council estate would have been quite a frightening journey into purgatory for Gwen and Matthew, unless they were in a purgatory of their own making already.
“How many of them lived there?”
“Just the two,” Elsie said. “I remember her saying her mother used to live with them and all, but she died a year or so before we moved here.”