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Like a Virgin: A Story from The Price of Love and Other Stories
Like a Virgin: A Story from The Price of Love and Other Stories
Like a Virgin: A Story from The Price of Love and Other Stories
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Like a Virgin: A Story from The Price of Love and Other Stories

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From the New York Times bestselling author comes a riveting collection of short fiction, marked by the piercing psychological insight and brilliant characterization that are hallmarks of his acclaimed novels.

Ever since the publication of his first mystery featuring Detective Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson has been steadily building a reputation for compulsively readable and perceptive novels that probe the dark side of human nature. Plumbing the territory that he has so successfully staked, The Price of Love and Other Stories includes two novellas and several stories featuring the Yorkshire policeman at his finest.

In the novella “Going Back,” never before published in the United States, Banks returns home for a family reunion, only to find it taking a decidedly sinister turn. In “Like a Virgin,” written especially for this volume, Banks revisits the period in his life and the terrible crime that led him to leave London for Eastvale. And in between, the disparate motives that move us to harm one another, from love and jealousy to greed and despair, are all explored with fascinating depth.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateSep 29, 2009
ISBN9780061969546
Like a Virgin: A Story from The Price of Love and Other Stories
Author

Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson's DCI Banks became a major ITV1 drama starring Stephen Tompkinson as Inspector Banks and Andrea Lowe as DI Annie Cabbot. Peter's standalone novel Before the Poison won the IMBA's 2013 Dilys Award as well as the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel by the Crime Writers of Canada. This was Peter's sixth Arthur Ellis award. His critically acclaimed DCI Banks novels have won numerous awards in Britain, the United States, Canada and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world. In 2020 Peter was made a Grand Master by the Crime Writers of Canada. Peter grew up in Yorkshire, and divided his time between Richmond, UK, and Canada until his death in 2022.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Like a Virgin" is a novella included in a book of short stories.It relates to an case early in Bank's career when he was still in London, I find the interviews with both victims and aggressors, shorter and smoother, compared with the last books. As usual he seems to spend half of his time on the job and the other half in a pub. The story gives insight into his way of life at that time and reasons for the move north. Like a lot of books and movies, there is a broad hint of who an upcoming victim will be. Although there are a lot of bodies being tossed about, in the end, justice is served. And to top it of, the book was a good collection of stories.

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Like a Virgin - Peter Robinson

Like a Virgin

Short Story

Peter Robinson

For Sheila

Contents

Introduction

Begin Reading

Afternote

About the Author

Other Books by Peter Robinson

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

For someone who considers himself primarily a novelist, I seem to have written rather a lot of short stories. I have also been very fortunate in that my publishers want to publish them in collection form, which induces a retrospective frame of mind in me as I gather these tales together and prepare them for publication.

Most of the stories in this collection were written at the request of one editor or another. I know that sounds rather mercenary, and that, in the Romantic view of art, the writer is supposed to work from pure inspiration. But I think of the stories as challenges, and sometimes a challenge can bring out the best in a person, or at least it can bring to the surface something he didn’t know he had, something he hadn’t explored before. And that is very much the case in this collection.

I’m not going to go into details here about the content or origins of any of these stories. I’m saving that for the afternotes because I don’t want to spoil anything for those readers who, like me, want to know as little as possible about a story or novel they are about to read. I will say, though, that some of these requests for stories opened up new directions for me, took me places I would not normally have gone, and forced me to dig deep into areas where I might never have ventured left to my own devices.

In some cases, I simply set off into the dark without even a light to guide my way, moving from one word to the next and letting the story find itself. In others, I thought and fretted about the story for months, shaped it in my mind, despaired over it, scrapped it, started again, and when I was finally driven by the demands of a deadline to put fingers to keyboard, it came out as something different, often something better than I could ever have hoped for.

I have said before that I find short stories difficult to write, and that is still the case. The discipline is exacting and the amount of space in which I sometimes feel I have to maneuver feels quite claustrophobic. The bits I have to leave out would probably make a novel. But the satisfaction level is high. I remember when I used to write mostly poetry, I would sometimes work for weeks trying to get a poem right, especially when I began to value form and structure as much as, if not more than, Romantic self-expression or postmodernist confessional. Everyone who has ever written a poem knows that to make it work you sometimes have to sacrifice your best line or image, and working on a short story is far more akin to that process than is writing a novel, which in some ways is a constant search for more things to put in.

So here are the stories. I hope you enjoy them. People often ask me whether they should start with the first Inspector Banks novel or with one of the later ones, and I usually answer that it doesn’t matter unless you are the kind of person who has to start at the beginning. The stories are not presented chronologically, and nor did I agonize over their order according to some secret code or system of symbolism known only to me. Please feel free to jump in wherever you wish.

PETER ROBINSON Toronto, January 2009

Like a Virgin

An Inspector Banks Novella

Banks held the letter between his thumb and forefinger and tapped its edge against the palm of his hand. He knew who had sent it and what it was about, but not exactly what it would reveal, what it might change. A phone call would have been quicker and easier, perhaps, but there was something more solid and satisfying about the formal sheets of paper Banks knew were neatly folded inside the white envelope. And the post only took a day. After this long, there was no hurry, no hurry at all.

As he gazed out over Eastvale’s cobbled market square—the ancient cross, the squat church, the castle on its hill in the background, children dashing to school, socks around their ankles, delivery vans making their rounds, shops opening—he realized that he had been there for over twenty years and that when he had first arrived his life had been in every bit as much of a mess as it was now.

That was a sobering thought for a man in his midfifties. In those twenty plus years, he had lost his wife to another man, his children had grown up and moved away, lovers had come and gone, and he had lost much of his faith in his fellow man. He had suffered betrayal more than once, by those closest to him and by strangers in secret, shady offices in Westminster. He had failed many and perhaps given some slight solace to others. But all in all, he felt that the tally sheet was woefully weighted down on the side of his failures and shortcomings, and it was hard to believe in the job anymore.

Now here he stood contemplating a temporary flight, as if he might perhaps leave himself behind and start again. He knew that couldn’t happen. It hadn’t happened the last time he had tried it, but some things had changed after his move up north, and many of them for the better. It was years since he had thought about those final days in London, and when he did, they had the quality of a dream, or a nightmare. His conversation with an old colleague the previous week had brought it all back with a vengeance.

Banks leaned his forehead against the cool glass. His hair had been a bit longer then, touching his collar, without the streaks of gray, and he had believed he could make a difference. He had been full of romantic idealism and knightly vigor, ready to tilt at windmills and take on the world without even noticing at first that he was breaking apart under the weight of it. If he closed his eyes, he could see it all as it had been: Soho nights, the late summer of 1985…

In the soft light of the red-shaded bulb that hung over the center of the room, the girl’s body looked serene. She could easily have been sleeping, Banks thought, as he moved forward to get a better view of her. She lay on her back on the pink candlewick bedspread, covered from neck to toe by a white sheet, hands clasped together above the swell of her breasts in an attitude of prayer or supplication, her long dark hair spread out on the pillow. Her pale features were delicate and finely etched, and Banks imagined she had been quite a beauty in life. He wondered what she had looked like when she smiled or frowned. Her hazel eyes were devoid of life now, her face free of makeup, and at first glance there wasn’t a mark on her. But when Banks peered closer he could see the petechial hemorrhages, the tiny telltale dots of blood in her conjunctiva, a sign of death by asphyxia. There was no bruising on her neck, so he guessed suffocation rather than strangulation, but Dr. O’Grady, the Home Office pathologist who knelt beside her at his silent ministrations would be able to tell him more after his in situ examination.

The room was small and stuffy, but the Persian-style carpet and striped wallpaper gave it a homely touch. It seemed well maintained, despite its location on the fringes of Soho. No sleazy backstreet hovel for this girl. The window hadn’t been open when Banks arrived, and he knew better than to tamper with the scene in any way, so he left it closed. There wasn’t much space for furniture—a small dressing table with mirror, washstand in the corner, next to the cubicle WC, and a bedside table, on which stood a chipped enamel bowl where a facecloth floated in discolored water. In the drawer were condoms, tissues and an assortment of sex aids. Did she live here? Banks doubted it. There were no clothes and no cooking facilities.

The victim could have been anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five, Banks thought, and her youth certainly added to the aura of innocence that surrounded her in death. Whether she had appeared that way in life, he didn’t know, but he didn’t think so.

Someone had clearly gone to great pains to make her look innocent. Her legs were stretched out straight together, and even under the sheet she was fully dressed. Her clothes—a short skirt, patent-leather high heels, dark tights and a green scallop-neck top—were provocative, but not too tarty. Much more tasteful than that. So what was it all about?

Her handbag contained the usual: cigarettes, a yellow disposable lighter, keys on a fluffy rabbit’s foot ring, makeup, tampons, a cheap ballpoint pen and a purse with a few pounds and some loose change. There was no address book or diary and no credit cards or identification of any kind. The only item Banks found of any interest was a creased photograph of a proud, handsome young man in what looked like his best suit, bouncing a little girl on his knee. There was a resemblance, and Banks guessed it was the victim and her father. According to the girlfriend who had found her, Jackie Simmons, the victim’s name was Pamela Morrison.

Banks went back to stand in the doorway. He had soon learned that the fewer people who had entered the room before the SOCOs got to work, the better. He was on detachment from Soho Division to the West Central Murder Squad. Everything was squads and specialists these days, and if you didn’t find your niche somewhere pretty quickly, you soon became a general dogsbody. Nobody wanted that, especially Banks. He seemed to have a knack for ferreting out murderers, and luckily for him the powers that be in the Metropolitan Police Force agreed.

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