All the Colors of Darkness ib-18

by Peter Robinson

  “I’ll have one, please,” Banks said. “Victor?”

  Victor picked up his empty glass. “Please, dear.”

  Sophia went up to the bar to get another round. Victor watched her go and turned his watery gray eyes back on Banks. He seemed on the verge of saying something about the relationship, but first Banks asked, “How long were you in contact with Silbert?”

  Victor gave Banks the kind of look that indicated he might have headed trouble off at the pass for the moment, but there’d be another pass and another opportunity later, and next time he might not be so lucky. “Oh, it wasn’t real contact,” he said. “As I told you earlier, I had nothing to do with that sort of thing. Then the Wall came down and things changed. We moved to Berlin, for a start. Ninety-one, I think that was. Of course that was never quite the real end of things, as some people think, more the symbolic one, which was the face presented to the world.”

  “But did you know anything about what Silbert did, what operations he was involved in?”

  “No, nothing like that. As I said, I only knew him by reputation, really.”

  Sophia came back with two of the drinks. Banks apologized for not going to help her with the rest, but she said she was fine and went back A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S

  1 3 9

  to the bar for the other two. They had all finished their meals by now, and Sophia and her mother were studying the list of sweets.

  “Now then, Helena, dear,” said Victor, “would you be so kind as to pass me the dessert list. I rather fancy something hot and sticky with lashings of custard.”

  Banks could read an “end of discussion” signal as well as the next man, and he turned to Sophia, asking her if had she enjoyed her meal and was she going to have a sweet. Then Helena joined in, and the conversation moved on to her and Victor’s travel plans for the winter, which included a three-month visit to Australia. Soon it was well into the afternoon and the lunchtime crowd was thinning out. Time to go.

  Sophia had to drive back to London that evening for a full day of work the next day, and Helena and Victor were staying in the Eastvale f lat.

  Banks had no plans other than to stay in and perhaps see about stain-ing the top edge of the bookcase.

  Victor said he would drop them off at their car in Reeth village green. As they picked up their bags and walking sticks, Banks couldn’t get Victor’s story out of his mind. It was a bygone age, or so it seemed to him, the world he knew about only from reading Le Carré and Deighton. But Laurence Silbert had lived it. James Bond. 007. He wished Victor had known more details. Banks remembered the mysterious Mr. Browne telling him that there were now as many Russian spies in the U.K. as there were during the height of the Cold War, and he wondered whom they were spying on, what they wanted to know.

  Of course, the Americans were still here; there were early warning systems and satellite spy stations at Fylingdales and Menwith Hill and countless other places. No doubt there were still places like Porton Down, conducting their scientific experiments into germ and chemical warfare. Could Laurence Silbert’s, and by extension Mark Hardcastle’s, death be in any way connected with that clandestine world?

  And if so, how on earth could Banks find out about it? It seemed he not only had the secret intelligence services against him in this, but also his own organization. He was convinced that Superintendent Gervaise had been got at.

  Before they left through the back door to cross the little beck over to the car park, Banks glanced at the man at the bar reading a Mail on 1 4 0

  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  Sunday and sipping a half-pint of ale. The man looked up as they passed and gave them a vague smile. Banks went to The Bridge fairly often and knew most of the regulars, but he hadn’t seen this man before.

  Still, that didn’t mean much. He didn’t know everyone, and lots of tourists dropped in on Sundays, but not usually alone, and not wearing a suit. There was just something about him. He certainly wasn’t dressed for walking, and he wasn’t one of the local farmers. Banks put it out of his mind as Victor drove them the half mile or so to Reeth, back to the car, and he and Sophia said good-bye to her parents.

  “Well,” said Sophia, as she settled into the Porsche. “Even a simple family lunch becomes quite an adventure with you.”

  “Anything to stop him getting on to the age difference and my job prospects.”

  “I was doing my A levels.”

  “What?”

  “The period Dad was talking about. I was at an English school in Bonn doing my A levels. Sometimes we used to go to Berlin and I’d hang out in underground bars dressed in black, with transvestites and coke dealers listening to David Bowie and New Order clones.”

  “What a checkered life you’ve led.”

  She gave him an enigmatic smile. “If only you knew the half of it.”

  They took the back roads home, winding south over the moors back to Gratly, Cherry Ghost singing “Thirst for Love” on the iPod.

  It was an unfenced road crossing high moorland of gorse and heather, beautiful and wild, where the sheep roamed freely. Only the occasional burned patch of ground and warning signs to watch out for red f lags and slow-moving tanks reminded Banks that the landscape they were driving across was part of a vast military training range.

  8

  ANNIE CABBOT WONDERED WHAT BANKS WANTED

  with her as she slipped out of the squad room at four o’clock on Monday afternoon and headed for The Horse and Hounds, which had become the secret getaway for anyone who wanted to avoid Superintendent Gervaise and enjoy a contemplative pint during the day. It was almost knocking-off time, anyway, barring any unusual occurrences in the next hour or so.

  She was in good spirits, as she had enjoyed a teetotal weekend, got all her washing done, meditated, worked out at the fitness center and spent a few pleasant hours in the open air painting a Langstrothdale landscape from a vantage point above Starbotton. The only bad moments had come on Saturday night, when she had had another nightmare about the end of her last case. Fragmented images and emotions of blood and fear made her heart beat fast, and f loods of pity and pain surged through her. She had awoken crying, drenched in sweat, at about half past two and been unable to get back to sleep. After making a cup of tea, finding some quiet music on the radio and reading her Christina Jones novel for an hour or so, she had felt better and finally drifted off just as the sun was coming up.

  Most of her working time had been taken up with the East Side Estate business, especially as it seemed that Superintendent Gervaise had kicked the Silbert-Hardcastle case into touch. Annie had spoken 1 4 2 P E T E R

  R O B I N S O N

  brief ly with Donny Moore at the hospital on Friday. His injuries weren’t life-threatening, but he claimed to remember nothing of what happened the night he was stabbed, except that he was just innocently walking along the street when a big bloke in a hoodie came at him.

  Benjamin Paxton, the man who had reported finding Moore, had also mentioned a largish bloke heading away, so it was definitely worth following up. Winsome and Doug Wilson had tracked down most of the gang members they suspected had been present and, as expected, discovered nothing. None of them was particularly large, being just kids, but Winsome had nonetheless noted that one or two of them merited a follow-up visit, and Annie intended to be in on that over the week.

  Annie had also gone for a radical haircut on Saturday, swapping her tumbling masses of auburn waves for the short layered style. She had been shocked to find a few traces of gray, but her hairdresser had applied the right chemicals and, voilà, all was well. She wasn’t sure whether she liked it yet, worried that it perhaps made her appear older, emphasized the crow’s-feet around her eyes, but she also thought it made her seem more professional and businesslike, which couldn’t be a bad thing for a detective inspector. She would have to get rid of the jeans and red boots, though, she decided, as they undermined her general air of competent authority. But she liked them. One thi
ng at a time, perhaps.

  Anyway, there was no way she was having a pint with Banks, she thought, walking into the dim interior. Whatever he drank, she would have a Britvic Orange. As expected, Banks was in the little window-less room, which had become a sort of home away from home, a copy of The Independent spread on the table in front of him and a full pint of Black Sheep Bitter in his hand.

  He folded up the newspaper when he saw her. “Are you alone?” he asked, glancing toward the doorway behind her.

  “Of course I am,” she said. “Why? Who else are you expecting?”

  “You weren’t followed?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Drink?”

  Annie sat down. “Britvic Orange please.”

  “Sure?”

  A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S

  1 4 3

  “Certain.”

  Banks went to the bar. She got the feeling he went to check out who was in there as much as to buy her a drink. While he was gone, Annie studied the hunting prints on the wall. They weren’t bad, if you liked that sort of thing, she thought. At least the horses were quite realistically portrayed, their legs in the right positions, which was a difficult thing to achieve. Usually horses in paintings looked as if they were f loating an inch or two above the ground and their legs were about to fall off. She was quite proud of her Langstrothdale landscape, even though there were no horses in it. It was the best thing she’d painted in ages.

  Banks came back with her drink and settled down opposite her.

  “What’s all this about, me being alone, not being followed?” Annie asked.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Banks replied. “Just that you can’t be too careful these days.”

  “The walls have ears and all that?”

  “I always preferred the poster I saw in a book once, the one with the sexy blond and the two servicemen leering over her.”

  “Oh?”

  “The caption reads, ‘Keep mum, she’s not so dumb.’ ”

  “Sexist pig.”

  “Not at all. I like blondes.”

  “So why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff ?”

  “Well, Laurence Silbert worked for the Secret Intelligence Service, which is more commonly known as MI6, so it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re getting in character? You’re playing a game? Alan, I hate to tell you this, but it’s over. Superintendent Gervaise said so the other day. You’re on leave, remember? Whatever Laurence Silbert did or didn’t do for a living, or for his country, it had nothing to do with his death. Mark Hardcastle killed him and then hanged himself. End of story.”

  “That may be the official version,” said Banks. “I don’t think it’s as simple as that.”

  Annie could hear the drone of voices from the bar. The barmaid 1 4 4

  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  laughed at one of her customer’s jokes. “All right,” she said. “Humor me. Tell me what you do think.”

  Banks sat back in his chair. “Have you ever read Othello?”

  “Years ago. At school. Why?”

  “Seen the play, the movie?”

  “I saw the Laurence Olivier version once, yes. Again, it was years ago. What are you—”

  Banks held his hand up. “Bear with me, Annie. Please.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  Banks sipped some beer. “What do you remember most about the play?”

  “Not much, really. Is this an exam or something?”

  “No. Try.”

  “Well, there was this . . . this Moor called Othello, and he was married to a woman called Desdemona, but he got jealous and killed her, strangled her, then he killed himself.”

  “What made him jealous?”

  “Someone told him she was playing away. Iago told him. That’s the one.”

  “Right,” said Banks. “Sophia and I went to see it at the Eastvale Theatre on Saturday night. The one Derek Wyman directed and Mark Hardcastle did the German Expressionist sets for.”

  “How was it?”

  “The sets were crap, a real distraction. It looked like it was taking place in an airplane hangar or somewhere. Anyway, the acting was pretty decent, and Derek Wyman has a fair grasp of things thespian, anorak or not. But that’s not the point. The thing is, Sophia and I were talking later—”

  “As you do,” said Annie.

  Banks glanced at her. “As you do. Anyway,” he went on, “she pointed out that the play was more about the power of words and images than it was about jealousy and ambition, and I think she’s right.”

  “That’s what an English lit degree will do for you. I can’t say we ever got much further than ambition and jealousy at my school. Oh, and the animal imagery. I’m sure there was animal imagery.”

  A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S

  1 4 5

  “There’s always animal imagery,” Banks agreed. “But if you think about it . . . well, it really makes sense.”

  “How? What?”

  “Let me just get another drink first. Remember, I’m on holiday.

  You?”

  “I’m fine with this.” Annie tapped her Britvic Orange.

  Banks went out to the bar and Annie thought about what he was saying, still not sure where he was going with it. She remembered bits of the Olivier movie, how strange he appeared in blackface, a big fuss about a handkerchief, a young Maggie Smith as Desdemona singing a sad song about a willow tree before Othello strangled her. Frank Fin-lay’s persuasive Iago. Just fragments. Banks came back with another pint and set it next to his paper. Brief ly, he tried to explain what Sophia had said about the use of language to create unbearable images in the mind.

  “Okay,” Annie said, “so Sophia says that Othello’s about the power of language. She may be right. And being such a manly man, he decides on the f limsiest of evidence that the only sensible thing to do is to strangle his wife?”

  “Now’s not the moment for feminist criticism of Shakespeare.”

  “I’m not criticizing. I’m only saying. Besides, I hardly think it’s especially feminist to point out that strangling your wife isn’t a good thing to do, whether she’s had an affair or not.”

  “Well, Desdemona hadn’t. That’s the point.”

  “Alan, this is all very stimulating and all, and I do love a literary discussion late on a Monday afternoon, but I’ve got ironing to do at home, and I still don’t see what this has to do with us.”

  “It got me to thinking about the case,” Banks went on. “About Hardcastle and Silbert. Everyone’s pretty much decided how it happened, that no one else came in and bumped off Silbert while Hardcastle went out for a while, right?”

  “That’s the general thinking.”

  “Even though you pointed out that the absence of anyone else’s blood other than Silbert’s didn’t really prove anything.”

  “Right,” Annie agreed.

  Banks leaned back against the wainscoting, pint in his hand. “I 1 4 6

  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  think you’re right,” he said. “I don’t think Hardcastle did go out, and I don’t think anyone else did break in. I think it happened exactly as Superintendent Gervaise and Stefan say it did. Mark Hardcastle beat Silbert to death with a cricket bat, then went out and hanged himself out of grief.”

  “So you agree with the official version?”

  “Yes. But I also don’t think that’s the point.”

  “What is, then?”

  “Listen.” Banks leaned forward, elbows on the table. Annie saw that gleam in his piercing blue eyes she always associated with his fan-ciful theories. Sometimes, though, she had to admit they were right, or at least close to the mark. “Hardcastle and Silbert hadn’t been together all that long. Six months. By all accounts, they were very much an item, practically living together and everything, but the relationship was probably still a bit fragile, vulnerable, and we know Mark Hardcastle was a bit insecure. Both kept other apartments, for one thing.
Also, as Stefan pointed out, Hardcastle’s got form for assaulting a previous lover, which may mean he has a short fuse. What if someone worked on him?”

  “Worked on him? On Hardcastle?”

  “Yes,” said Banks. “The way Iago worked on Othello. Plagued him with unbearable images of Silbert’s infidelity.”

  “So you’re saying that someone goaded him into this?”

  “I’m saying it’s a possibility. But it would be bloody difficult to prove.

  It’s a hands-off murder. Murder from a distance, murder by proxy.”

  “I very much doubt that you could call it murder, even if it did happen that way,” said Annie. “And I’m not saying it did.”

  “We’ll find a charge.”

  “But why do it?”

  “To get rid of Silbert.”

  “Any idea who would want to do that?”

  Banks sipped his beer. “Well,” he said, “I suppose there are plenty of possibilities. Means and opportunity are obvious and easy enough, so it would simply be a matter of looking for a motive. Anyone who was close to one or both of them could have done it, really. Vernon Ross or Derek Wyman, for example. Maybe even Maria Wolsey had a A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S

  1 4 7

  motive she’s not telling us about. Or Carol, Wyman’s wife. There’s no shortage of possibilities.” Banks paused. “On the other hand, it could have been someone acting for one of the secret intelligence services.

  It’s just the sort of labyrinthine plot they would come up with.”

  “Oh, come off it, Alan! That’s a bit far-fetched, even for you, don’t you think?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “But hold on a minute,” Annie argued. “You’re begging an awful lot of questions here.”

  “Like what?”

  “Who could have known that Silbert was seeing someone else, if he was?”

  “It doesn’t matter. If information like that hadn’t somehow fallen or been dropped into the killer’s lap, he could have made it up. After all, that’s what Iago did.”