They walked through to the kitchen, which was state-of-the-art—
all gleaming white tiles, brushed steel surfaces and every utensil a master chef would ever need. Everything was spotless. The cooking area itself was separated from the dining room by a long island.
Clearly, Hardcastle and Silbert liked to entertain at home, and one of them, at least, probably enjoyed cooking.
A broad carpeted staircase with gleaming banisters and wainscoting led from the hallway upstairs. As they walked up, every once in a while Annie called out Silbert’s name in case he was somewhere else in the house where he hadn’t been able to hear them earlier, but she 2 6 P E T E R
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was still met with that same chill and eerie silence. The dark-patterned carpet on the landing was thick, and their feet made no noise as they padded around, checking the rooms.
It was behind the third door that they found Laurence Silbert.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to do anything more than stand at the threshold to see the body that lay spread-eagled on the sheepskin rug in front of the hearth. Silbert—or at least Annie assumed it was Silbert—lay on his back on the rug, arms spread out, making the shape of a cross. His head had been beaten to a pulp, and a dark halo of blood had soaked into the sheepskin around it. He was wearing tan chinos and a shirt that had once been white but was now mostly dark red.
The area between his legs was also bloody, whether from cuts or over-spill from the head injuries, Annie couldn’t tell.
She managed to drag her eyes away from the body and look around the room. Like the rest of the house, the upstairs drawing room, complete with Adam fireplace, was a strange mix of the antique and the contemporary. A framed picture that reminded Annie very much of Jackson Pollock hung over the empty fireplace. Maybe it was a Jackson Pollock. Sunlight poured in through the high sash windows, lighting the Persian carpets, antique desk and a brown leather-upholstered settee.
Annie became vaguely aware of Wilson’s grunt and the sound of him being sick on the landing before he managed to get to the bathroom.
Pale and trembling, she shut the door and reached for her mobile.
First she rang Detective Superintendent Gervaise at home and explained the situation. It wasn’t that Annie didn’t know what to do, but something big like this, you let the boss know immediately, or things have a nasty habit of coming back at you. As expected, Gervaise said she would call in the SOCOs, photographer, police surgeon, then she said, “And, DI Cabbot?”
“Yes?”
“I think it’s time we called DCI Banks back. I know he’s supposed to be on holiday, but things could get very messy up here, and this is the Heights. We need to be seen to have a senior and experienced officer in charge. No criticism implied.”
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“None taken, ma’am,” said Annie, who felt she could handle the situation perfectly well with Winsome and Doug Wilson. “As you wish.”
As she leaned against the wall watching an ashen Wilson sitting on the stairs with his head in his hands and picked Banks’s mobile number from her BlackBerry’s address book, Annie thought this would certainly put the kibosh on Banks’s Saturday-morning shag. Then she chastised herself for having such evil thoughts and pressed the call button.
A L A N B A N K S stretched and almost purred as he reached for the lukewarm cup of tea on the bedside table. The sun was shining, the glorious morning warmth rolling in through the slightly open window, the net curtains f luttering. Tinariwen were singing “Cler Achel” on the alarm clock’s iPod Dock, electric guitar weaving in and out of the Bo Diddley–style riff, and all was well with the world. The little semi-circle of stained glass above the main window filtered the light red and green and gold. The first time Banks had woken up in that room he had had a bad hangover, and for a moment he had felt as if he had died and woken up in heaven.
Sophia had had to go to work, unfortunately, but just for the morning. Banks was due to meet her outside Western House and go for lunch at a little pub they liked, the Yorkshire Grey, off Great Portland Street. That evening, they were hosting a dinner party, and they would spend the afternoon shopping for ingredients at one of her favorite farmers’ markets, probably Notting Hill. Banks knew how it worked. He had been with Sophia on previous occasions, and he loved to watch her choosing strangely shaped and oddly colored fruits or vegetables, an expression of pure childlike wonder and concentration on her face as she weighed them in her hands and felt their firmness and the texture of their skin, tongue nipped gently between her teeth.
She would chat with the stall owners, ask them questions, and she always walked away with more than she intended to buy.
In the evening, he would offer to help make dinner, but he knew that Sophia would only shoo him out of the way. At best he might be 2 8 P E T E R
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allowed to chop a few vegetables, or prepare the salad, then he would be banished to the garden to read and sip his wine. The special al-chemy of cooking was reserved for Sophia alone. He had to admit that she did it with exquisite style and f lair. He hadn’t eaten so well in ages, ever, if truth be told. After the guests had gone, he would stack the dishwasher while Sophia leaned back against the kitchen counter, a glass of wine in her hand, and quizzed him about the various courses, seeking an honest opinion.
Banks put his cup down and lay back. He could smell the pillow where Sophia had lain beside him, her hair like the memory of apples he had picked in the orchard with his father one glorious autumn afternoon of his childhood. His fingers remembered the touch of her skin, and that brought back the one little wrinkle on the mantle of his happiness.
Last night, making love, he had told her that she had beautiful skin, and she had laughed and replied, “So I’ve been told.” It wasn’t the little vanity that bothered him, her awareness of her own beauty—he found that quite sexy—but the dark thought of the other men who had been close enough to tell her that before him. That way madness lies, he told himself, or at least misery. If he surrendered to images of Sophia naked and laughing with someone else, he didn’t know if he would be able to hang on to his sanity. No matter how many lovers she had had, whatever he and she had done together, they did for the first time. That was the only way to think of it. John and Yoko had it right: Two Virgins.
Enough lounging around and slipping into dark thoughts, Banks told himself. It was nine o’clock, time to get up.
After he had showered and dressed, he made his way downstairs.
He thought he would go to the local Italian café this morning, read the papers and watch the world go by, then he might just have time to drop in at the HMV on Oxford Street on his way to Fitzrovia and see if the new Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan was out.
Sophia’s terrace house was in a narrow street off the King’s Road.
She had got it as part of her divorce settlement, otherwise she would never have been able to afford such a location. It had to be worth a fortune today. It had a pastel-blue facade that reminded Banks a little A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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of the blue of Santorini, perhaps deliberate, as Sophia was half Greek, with white trim and white-painted wooden shutters. There was no front garden, but a low brick wall with a small gate stood about three feet or so from the front door, so it didn’t open directly onto the street.
Though it looked very narrow from the outside, the lot was deep and, TARDIS-like, the space opened up when you went inside: living room to the right, stairs to the left, dining room and kitchen at the end of the hall, and a little garden out back where you could sit in the shade, and where Sophia grew herbs and cultivated a couple of f lower beds.
On the second level were the two bedrooms, one with an en suite shower and toilet, and French windows leading to a tiny wrought-iron balcony with a couple of matching small chairs, round iron table and a few plants in large terra-cotta urns. They hadn�
��t sat out for a while, either because of the rain or the never-ending and noisy renovations next door. Above the bedrooms was a converted attic area, which Sophia used as her home office.
The house was full of things. Spindly legged tables inlaid with ivory or mother-of-pearl held artfully arranged displays of fossils, stone jars, amphorae, Victorian shell boxes, Limoges china, crystals, agates, seashells and smooth pebbles that Sophia had collected from all over the world. She knew where each one came from, what it was called. The walls were covered with original paintings, mostly abstract landscapes by artists she knew, and every nook and cranny was home to a piece of sculpture, contemporary in style and varying from soapstone to brass in material.
Sophia loved masks, too, and had collected quite a few. They hung between the paintings, dark wooden ones from Africa, tiny colored bead ones from South America, painted ceramic masks from the Far East. There were also peacock feathers, dried ferns and f lowers, a chunk of the Berlin Wall, tiny animal skulls from the Nevada desert, spondylus from Peru, and many-colored worry beads from Istanbul hung over the mantelpiece. Sophia said she loved all these things and felt responsible for them; she was merely taking care of them temporarily, and they would continue long after she was gone.
Quite a responsibility, Banks had said, which was why Sophia had 3 0 P E T E R
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installed a top-of-the-line security system. Sometimes he felt as if her house were a museum and she was its curator. Maybe he was an exhibit, too, he thought: her pet detective, to be brought out at artistic gatherings. But that was unfair. She had never done anything to make him feel that way. Sometimes he wished he had a clearer idea of what she was thinking, though, of what drove her and what really mattered to her. He realized that he didn’t really know her well at all; she was, at heart, a very private person who surrounded herself with people to remain hidden.
Banks remembered to set the security code before he left. Sophia would never forgive him if he forgot and someone broke in. Insurance was no good. None of the stuff was valuable, except perhaps some of the paintings and sculptures, but to her everything was priceless. It was also just the sort of stuff on which a burglar, irritated at finding nothing he could fence, might take out his frustrations.
Banks stopped at the newsagent’s and bought The Guardian, which he thought had the best Saturday review section, then headed to the Italian café for his espresso and a chocolate croissant. Not the healthi-est of breakfasts, perhaps, but delicious. And it wasn’t as if he had a weight problem. Cholesterol was another matter. His doctor had already put him on a low dose of statin, and he had decided that that took care of the problem and allowed him to eat pretty much what he wanted. After all, he only had to be careful what he ate if he wasn’t taking the pills, surely?
He had no sooner got his espresso and croissant and sat down to read the film and CD reviews at one of the window tables when his mobile buzzed. He pressed the answer button and put the phone to his ear. “Banks.”
“Alan. Sorry to bother you on your weekend off,” said Annie, “but we’ve got a bit of a crisis brewing up here. The super says we could use your help.”
“Why? What is it?”
He listened as Annie told him what she knew.
“It sounds like a murder-suicide to me,” said Banks. “For Christ’s sake, Annie, can’t you and Winsome handle it? Sophia’s organizing a dinner party tonight.”
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He could hear Annie’s intake of breath and the pregnant pause that followed. He knew she didn’t like Sophia and put it down to jealousy.
A woman scorned, and all that. Not that he had ever really scorned her, though he had sent her packing a while ago when she had come to his cottage drunk and amorous. If anything, she had scorned him.
Most people were pleased for him—his son Brian and girlfriend Emilia, his daughter Tracy, Winsome Jackman, ex–Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe, his closest friend. But not Annie.
“It’s not my idea,” she said finally. “I don’t even know why you’d think it would be. The last thing I’d want to do is spoil Sophia’s dinner party by stealing you away. But it’s orders from above. You know we’re short-staffed. Besides, it could turn into something big and nasty. There’s money involved—Castleview Heights—and the gay community. Yes, I agree, it looks like a murder-suicide so far, but we haven’t got the forensics back yet and we don’t know a great deal about the victims, either.”
“And you know you won’t get forensics until the middle of next week. Maybe you should have waited until then before calling me.”
“Oh, bollocks, Alan,” said Annie. “I don’t need this. I’m only the messenger. Just get up here and do your job. And if you’ve got a problem with that, talk to the super.”
And she left Banks listening to the silence, chocolate croissant halfway to his mouth.
A N N I E S T O O D behind the crime scene tape that zigzagged across the door of the drawing room and watched Peter Darby, their photographer, go to work for the second time in two days. She was still in-wardly fuming at Banks, but on the outside she was all business. She had been shaken by what she had seen and had overreacted, simple as that, but Banks could really get up her nose without trying very hard these days. Who the hell did he think he was, telling her what to do and what not to do?
Stefan Nowak was running the show for the moment. He stood beside Annie with a clipboard in his hand, checking off actions, his SOCO team kitted up and ready to go as and when required. A couple of them were working the landing, where there were bloodstains on 3 2 P E T E R
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the carpet and smears on the wall, as if the killer had brushed against it as he ran off.
The room wasn’t very large, and the fewer people who were in it at one time, the better, Nowak had said, so he was restricting admission and working according to a strict hierarchy of access. Everyone going in, of course, had to wear full protective clothing, and their names were entered in the log. Even Annie and Doug Wilson were properly kitted out. Dr. Burns, the police surgeon, the on-scene forensic medical examiner, had already pronounced death and now he went back to work to glean what information he could from the body.
The whole house and gardens had been cordoned off as a crime scene, but this room was the center of it all, and it was even more scru-pulously protected. Nobody but those given the okay by Nowak would get past the door, and they’d do it in the order he decided.
Luckily, Annie and Wilson had discovered the body, and neither had entered the room, so for once Nowak was pleased to find that he had as close to a pristine crime scene as he could hope for.
Annie went over to Wilson, who was still sitting on the stairs in his white oversuit recovering, and put her arm over his shoulder. “All right, Douggie?”
Wilson nodded, glasses dangling from his hand. “Sorry, guv, you must think I’m a right girl’s blouse.”
“Not at all,” said Annie. “Can I get you some water or something?”
Wilson pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. “I’ll get it myself, if that’s okay,” he said. “Back in the saddle and all that.” And he wobbled off downstairs. There were SOCOs working down there, too, Annie knew, and they would make sure Wilson didn’t touch anything he shouldn’t.
When Annie went back to the drawing room door, Dr. Burns was just finishing his external examination. As soon as Burns came out, Nowak sent in the trace experts to take blood, hair and whatever other samples they could find, along with a blood-spatter analyst. To the untrained eye, the place was a shambles, but an expert like Ralph Tonks could read it like a map of who had been where, done what to whom, and with what.
Annie went in with them. She needed a closer look at the body. She A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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didn’t blame Wilson for being sick. She had seen quite a few crime scenes in her time, but this one had shaken her, too: t
he sheer frenzied violence of it, the blood and brains splattered everywhere, the sense of pointless overkill. Lacquered antique tables had been knocked over and broken, vases smashed, mirrors and crystalware shattered, along with a bottle of single-malt whiskey and a decanter of port; the f loor was strewn with bright f lowers, dark stains and shards of glass. Amid it all, now that she was closer, Annie could make out a framed photograph on the f loor, its glass spiderwebbed with cracks, showing Mark Hardcastle with his arm around the shoulders of the dead man. Both were smiling into the camera.
She could also see that one of Silbert’s eyeballs was hanging from its socket and his front teeth ran in a jagged line, the lips torn and shrunken back. He was recognizable, but barely, and Annie wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for asking a family member to identify him. DNA would be the best route to go for that.
When she peered more closely again at the framed picture on the wall that she had taken for a Jackson Pollock, she saw that it was a woodland scene sprayed with blood. In fact, it wasn’t a painting at all, but a blown-up photograph, digital, probably, and if Annie wasn’t mistaken, it was taken in Hindswell Woods, and it showed, on the far left, the very oak tree on which Mark Hardcastle had hanged himself.
She felt a shiver run up her spine.
She ducked under the tape and went back out to join Dr. Burns on the landing. He was busy making notes in a black-bound book, and she waited in silence until he had finished.
“Jesus Christ,” Burns whispered, putting the notebook away and looking at her. “I’ve rarely seen such a vicious attack.”
“Anything you can tell me?” Annie asked.
Burns was almost as pale as Wilson. “According to body tempera-ture and the progress of rigor,” he said, “I’d estimate that he’s been dead about twenty to twenty-four hours.”
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