Fell of Dark. Reginald Hill

doubt it. Mrs Bentink is unobtainable at the moment, it seems. But we have it on reasonable authority that you and she parted on the worst of terms, that your friendship with Mr Thorne had long been a source of friction between you, that in fact your marriage was near breaking-point.’

      I thought of a dozen worthies of both sexes and all levels who would have delighted in offering these tid-bits. It was little consolation to know that the eleven who did not get in first would be equally willing to let me know the identity of the one who did.

      ‘It also seems that Mr Thorne is sexually abnormal.’

      I smiled.

      ‘You find it amusing, Mr Bentink?’

      ‘I find your way of expressing things amusing. Yes, Mr Thorne is a homosexual. But so are so many people that one wonders what is normal and what is abnormal.’

      ‘You are not homosexual yourself?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘But you do not regard Mr Thorne’s activities as in any way deplorable?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘That’s very liberal of you, Mr Bentink.’

      ‘I am a very liberal person.’

      ‘So I see. You must know, of course, that Mr Thorne made certain advances to a young waiter at the Derwent Hotel. The boy was eighteen years old. He was a first-year university student. Clever, yes, but not necessarily very mature. How liberal are you about that, Mr Bentink?’

      I shrugged.

      ‘It came to nothing.’

      ‘No. The boy was mature. There was another student earlier on, wasn’t there? How liberal were you about that?’

      I did not reply.

      ‘Then last night. Another youth. Twenty years old. Italian. Again a waiter. Did you notice anything there, Mr Bentink?’

      I nodded.

      ‘But perhaps you were not privy to the fact that last night they slept together, they indulged in what passes for sexual intercourse between such people. Your mature, intellectual friend, convalescing from a mental breakdown, and a twenty-year-old foreigner stuck in the strangest part of a strange country. How liberal are you about that, Mr Bentink? How liberal can you get!’

      He cracked his hand sharply on the desk.

      I viewed him warily. I felt it was important to discover exactly how much this was a genuine display of indignation, how much a carefully controlled performance to lead me – where? My main feeling in any case was one of relief. This particular lie was not too difficult to account for. In fact, its discovery seemed to offer a new line of defence, though I did not take kindly to having to recognize I was now on the defensive.

      ‘Look, Superintendent, as far as I could see – in fact, can see – Mr Thorne’s illness has got no possible bearing on the case. I wished to save him embarrassment, that’s all. As it is, now you have found out, I take it that you have instructed Copley to stop badgering him?’

      ‘Badgering? No one is badgering. Inspector Copley is questioning a member of the public who has come voluntarily to the station to assist us. That is all.’

      His recent emotion had gone and he was once again the rather dry, nervous, bird-like figure I had first acknowledged. But I knew him better now. I’m not very good on first impressions and people often exist in my mind as their own caricatures long after I first meet them. But I was quickly beginning to recognise the quality of this man.

      ‘Fair enough, Superintendent. As for Mr Thorne’s sex life, I did not know things had gone as far as you say with Marco. But if anything, surely this indicates the impossibility of his being connected in any way with a rape? You can’t have it both ways.’

      Melton smiled at my phrase. Encouraged, I pressed on.

      ‘There’s nothing illegal about Mr Thorne fancying a young man. Nor anything morally reprehensible, no more so than if you or I should cast a lecherous glance at a couple of …’

      I let the sentence fade away, but Melton finished it for me ‘… Teenage girls. No, you’re right. As long as it ends there. But your theory of sexual exclusiveness interests me. Your friend had the misfortune to fall out with young Marco. He was still very angry when we got him here and he was very ready to talk. Among other interesting things, he reported to us a rather curious remark passed by Mr Thorne as they talked, or rather as Mr Thorne indulged in a kind of meditative monologue which Marco only half heard and half understood. Mr Thorne commented that he found it a terrible physical strain to have a relationship with a woman. To make it at all viable, he needed some extraordinary or dangerous circumstance. What do you make of that?’

      Frankly, I had not got the faintest idea what I should make of it. It referred to no part of Peter’s experience with which I was at all concerned. I smiled in as superior a fashion as I could assume.