The Summer That Never Was Read Free Page B

ago at the age of forty. Now, he made a living from tooling leather belts, which he sold to tourists on the quayside. Alex was an extremely cultured man, Banks had soon discovered, with a passion for Greek art and architecture, and his English was almost perfect. He also possessed what seemed to Banks a very deep-rooted sense of himself and a contentment with the simple life Banks wished he could attain. Of course, he hadn’t told Alex what he did for a living, merely that he was a civil servant. He had found that telling strangers you meet on holiday you’re a policeman tends to put them off. Either that or they have a mystery for you to solve, the way people always seem to have strange ailments to ask about when they are introduced to doctors.
    “Perhaps it’s not a good idea tonight,” Alex said, and Banks noticed he was putting the chess set away. It had always been a mere backdrop to conversation, anyway, as neither was a skilled player.
    “I’m sorry,” said Banks. “I just don’t seem to be in the mood. I’d only lose.”
    “You usually do. But it’s all right, my friend. Clearly there is something troubling you.” Alex stood to leave, but Banks reached out and touched his arm. Oddly enough, he wanted to tell someone. “No, stay,” he said, pouring them both a generous glass of ouzo. Alex looked at him for a moment with those serious brown eyes and sat down again.
    “When I was fourteen,” said Banks, looking out at the lights in the harbour and listening to the stays of the fishing boats rattle, “a close schoolfriend of mine disappeared. He was never seen again. Nobody ever found out what happened to him. Not a trace.” He smiled and turned to look at Alex. “It’s funny because this music seemed to be playing constantly back then: ‘Zorba’s Dance.’ It was a big hit in England at the time. Marcello Minerbi. Funny the little things you remember, isn’t it?”
    Alex nodded. “Memory is indeed a mysterious process.”
    “And often not to be trusted.”
    “True, it seems that as things lie there, they are…strangely metamorphosed.”
    “A lovely Greek word, metamorphosed .”
    “It is. One thinks of Ovid, of course.”
    “But it happens to the past, doesn’t it? To our memories.”
    “Yes.”
    “Anyway,” Banks went on, “there was a general assumption at the time that my friend, Graham was his name, had been abducted by a pedophile–another Greek word, but not so lovely–and done away with.”
    “It seems a reasonable assumption, given life in the cities. But might he not have simply run away from home?”
    “That was another theory, but he had no reason to, as far as anyone knew. He was happy enough, and he nevertalked about running off. Anyway,” Banks went on, “all attempts to find him failed and he never turned up again. The thing is, about two months earlier, I was playing down by the river when a man came and grabbed me and tried to push me in.”
    “What happened?”
    “I was wiry and slippery enough to wriggle my way free and run off.”
    “But you never told the authorities?”
    “I never even told my parents.”
    “Why not?”
    “You know what kids are like, Alex. I wasn’t meant to be playing down there, for a start. It was quite a long way from home. I was also playing truant. I was supposed to be at school. And I suppose I blamed myself. I just didn’t want to get into trouble.”
    Alex poured more ouzo. “So when your friend disappeared, you assumed it was the same man?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you’ve been carrying the guilt all these years?”
    “I suppose so. I never really thought about it that way, but every once in a while, when I think about it I feel…it’s like an old wound that never quite heals. I don’t know. I think it was partly why I…”
    “Why you what?”
    “Never mind.”
    “Why you became a policeman?”
    Banks looked at him in astonishment. “How did you know?”
    Alex was smiling. “I’ve met a few in my time. You get to