Free Playing with Fire by Peter Robinson Page B

Banks continued. “Other narcotics, if she couldn’t get that, but mostly heroin.”
    â€œOh, dear God,” said Mrs. Aspern. “What have we done?”
    Banks turned to her. “What do you mean?”
    â€œFran,” her husband said. “We can’t blame ourselves for this. We gave her every opportunity. Every advantage.”
    Banks had heard this before on so many occasions that it slipped in one ear and out the other. Nobody had a clue what their kids really needed—and how could they, for teenagers are hardly the most communicative species on earth—but so many parents assumed that the advantages of wealth or status were enough in themselves. Even Banks’s own parents, working-class as they were, thought he had let them down by joining the police force instead of pursuing a career in business. But wealth and status rarely were enough, in Banks’s experience, though he knew that most kids from wealthy families went on to do quite well for themselves. Others, like Tina, and like Emily Riddle and Luke Armitage, cases he had dealt with in the recent past, fell by the wayside.
    â€œApparently,” Banks went on, cutting through the husband-wife tension he was sensing, “Christine used to steal morphine from your surgery.”
    Aspern reddened. “That’s a lie! Did Siddons tell you that? Any narcotics in my surgery are safely under lock and key, in absolute compliance with the law. If you don’t believe it, come and have a look for yourself right now. I’ll show you. Come on.”
    â€œThat won’t be necessary,” said Banks. “This isn’t about Christine’s drug supplies. We know she got her last score from a dealer in Eastvale.”
    â€œIt’s just a damn shame you can’t put these people away before they do the damage,” said Aspern.
    â€œThat would assume we know who the criminals are going to be before they commit their crimes,” said Banks, thinking of the film Minority Report, which he had seen with Michelle a few weeks ago.
    â€œIf you ask me, it’s pretty bloody obvious in most cases,” said Aspern. “Even if this Siddons didn’t start the fire, you can be damn sure he did something . He’s got criminal written all over him, that one.”
    More than once Banks, like his colleagues, had acted on the premise that if the person they had in custody hadn’t committed the particular crime he was charged with, it didn’t matter, because the police knew he had committed other crimes, and had no evidence to charge him with them. In police logic, the crime they were convicted for, the one they didn’t commit, made up for all the crimes they had committed and got away with. It was easier in the old days, of course, before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act gave the criminals more rights than the police, and the Crown Prosecution Service wouldn’t touch anything with less than a hundred-percent possibility of conviction, but it still happened, if you could get away with it. “We’d have to overhaul the legal system,” he said, “if we wanted to put people who haven’t done anything away without a trial. But let’s get back to the matter in hand. Did you know of anyone who’d want to hurt Christine, Mrs. Aspern?”
    â€œWe didn’t know her…the friends she made after she left,” she answered. “But I can’t imagine anyone would want to harm her, no.”
    â€œDr. Aspern?”
    â€œMe, neither.”
    â€œThere was an artist on the adjacent boat. All we know is that his name was Tom. Do you know anything about him?”
    â€œNever heard of him,” said Patrick Aspern.
    â€œWhat about Andrew Hurst? He lives nearby.”
    â€œI never saw anyone.”
    â€œWhen did you last visit the boat?” Banks asked him.
    â€œLast week. Thursday, I believe.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhat do you mean,