Summer Rain: An Inspector Banks Short Story Read Free Page B

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.”

 
    VI
     
    T HE Q UEEN’S A RMS 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 draft 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 honor?”
    She looked radiant, Banks thought: thick red hair tumbling over her shoulders, emerald green eyes full of humor 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. Suddenly 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