“Just a few routine questions,” said Annie as they crossed Market Street and headed for the Whistling Monk. The place was fairly quiet, as it was too late for the prework crowd and too early for the tourist coaches. They found a small table by the window. The blue-and-white-checked tablecloth was impeccably clean and ironed, and a menu printed on faux parchment in blue italics stood wedged between the salt and pepper shakers.
A young waitress scribbled their orders after apologizing that the espresso machine wasn’t working. Annie settled for café American and Carol went for a cup of herbal tea. Both also ordered toasted tea cakes.
“Remember the days when all you could get was Nescafé?” said Annie.
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“Just the powdered stuff, before all those fancy granules and gold blends,” said Carol.
“If you were lucky you might get Kona.”
“But it was expensive.”
“Listen to us,” said Annie. “We sound like a couple of old women.
Next we’ll be complaining about rationing.”
“Now I definitely don’t remember that,” said Carol. They laughed.
The coffee and tea came, along with their tea cakes. “You’ve changed your hair since you were over at the house,” Carol went on. “It looks nice. It really suits you. Have you ever thought of going blond?”
“I don’t know if I could handle more fun,” said Annie. “Still, it’s a thought.” She blew on her coffee, then added a generous helping of cream. “Actually, it’s your husband I wanted to talk to you about.”
Carol Wyman frowned. “Derek? Why, what’s he done?”
“We don’t think he’s done anything,” Annie lied. “We just need to know a little more about his relationship with Mark Hardcastle and Laurence Silbert.”
“I thought that was all over. Your superintendent said so on the news.”
“Just tidying up a few loose ends,” said Annie, smiling. “Sometimes the job’s nothing but paperwork.”
“I know what you mean,” said Carol, pouring her pale green tea from the rose-colored pot. It smelled of mint and chamomile. “Mine’s just the same. And some of the doctors are real sticklers.”
“I don’t suppose you can read their writing, though, can you?” said Annie.
Carol laughed. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “it is a problem.”
“How long has your husband been directing plays for the theater?”
“Ages now,” said Carol. “I mean, not so much for the theater, but the Amateur Dramatic Society. They used to put on performances at the community center, even the church hall sometimes.”
“He seems very passionate about his work.”
“Oh, he is,” Carol said. “Sometimes I think he’s more passionate about his work than he is about me. No, that’s not fair. He’s a good husband. And a good father. It’s just that I think he sometimes takes too much on his plate. The teaching certainly wears him down and—”
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“I thought he liked it.”
“Well, he does. I mean, something like that, it gives you a chance to make a difference, doesn’t it? To inspire future generations.” She glanced around the room and leaned forward, lowering her voice.
“But a lot of them just don’t care. A lot of them don’t even bother turning up for school. It’s hard when you really care about something, to be constantly surrounded by people who mock it.”
“That’s what Derek feels?”
“Sometimes.”
“It must have made him a bit cynical about it all.”
“Well, he gets depressed sometimes, I can tell you that.” She took a sip of the steaming tea. “Mmm, that’s nice,” she said. “Just the ticket.”
“Why doesn’t he consider another line of work?”
“You try that at forty-two, when you’ve been a teacher for more than twenty years.”
“I see.”
“If he didn’t have his theater, I don’t know what he’d do. I think it’s the only thing that keeps him sane. He loves the new arrangement.
You know, it makes him feel just that bit more important to be working in a real theater rather than a village hall or something.”
“I know what you mean,” said Annie. “He must feel like a real professional.”
“Yes. And he works so hard. Anyway, what is it you want to know?”
“Has your husband ever mentioned going to the Red Rooster pub?”
“The Red Rooster? In Medburn? But that’s a chain pub. Derek is strictly a real ale man. Used to be a member of CAMRA and all. He wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like that. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Annie, even more curious now. “As I said, I’m just tidying up loose ends. You get swamped with information in a case like this, and you have to sort out the wheat from the chaff.”
“I suppose so,” said Carol slowly.
Annie could see that she was starting to lose her. Any more questions that implied Carol’s husband was up to something, or behaving 2 4 6 P E T E R
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out of character, and that would be the end of their pleasant little chat.
The door opened and an elderly couple stuck their heads around the door and decided the place would do. They said hello and settled down two tables away. “It must have been terrible for Derek when his brother died,” Annie said, making an abrupt turn, remembering the photograph in the Wymans’ living room.
“Oh, God, yes,” said Carol. “Derek simply adored Rick. Hero-worshipped him. He was just devastated, gutted. We all were.”
“When exactly did it happen?”
“Fifteenth October, 2002. I won’t forget that date in a hurry.”
“I’ll bet you won’t. Did you know him well?”
“Rick? Of course. He was a lovely fella. You know, you think these SAS chaps are all macho like someone out of an Andy McNabb book, and probably a lot of them are, but Rick was great with the kids, as gentle as could be. And he was considerate. Always remembered your birthday and anniversary.”
“Your husband’s brother was in the SAS?”
“Yes. I thought he said.”
“No.” Even Annie knew that the SAS carried out covert operations, and if Laurence Silbert had worked for MI6, he would probably have had some contact with them, might even have ordered missions or at least overseen the supply of intelligence to guide them. This was back in Banks territory again, but at least she was keeping an open mind. She did believe that someone, most likely Derek Wyman, had goaded Hardcastle into killing Silbert and then himself—more likely by accident than design—but she didn’t know why. It could have just been annoyance over the theater, but, on the other hand, it could have had more sinister roots, given Silbert’s past.
“Was Rick married?” she asked.
“Not technically, no. Common-law. He lived with Charlotte. Been together for years. He once told me he didn’t want to say the vows, you know, ‘Till death us do part,’ and all that, because of his job. He thought it might bring him bad luck or something. A bit superstitious, was Rick. But they loved each other so much. You only had to see them together.”
“Kids?”
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“No.” Carol frowned. “Rick once told me that Charlotte wanted children but that he just couldn’t do it, given his job, like, the risks, and the kind of world they’d be born into. I think in the end Charlotte just accepted the situation. Well, you have to, don’t you, if you really love somebody?”
Annie didn’t know; she had never loved anybody that much. “Do you know the address?” she asked.
“No. It was called ‘Wyedene,’ though. I remember that from when we visited them.”
“What was Charlotte’s last name?”
“Foster.”
“So Rick was away a lot, was he?”
“I wouldn’t say a lot. They had a lovely house in the country. Ross-on-Wye. Charlotte still lives there. He did a lot of training, but he did go on missions, yes. That was what did for him, of course.”
“What?” said Annie. “I thought it was a helicopter accident.”
Carol lowered her voice again. “Well, that’s what they have to say, isn’t it? The official line. They don’t want people to know what it’s really like out there. What’s really going on. Like in the war, they didn’t want to give people the really bad news, did they? They made all those propaganda films.”
“True,” said Annie. “What happened?”
“I don’t know the full story.”
Annie could feel Carol pulling away again, but she didn’t want to let go of this line of questioning. Not just yet. “We never do, do we?”
she said. “Even in my job, the bosses hold their cards close to their chests. Half the time we don’t know why we’re asking the questions we are, following the lines of inquiry we’re told to. It’s not like it is on television, I can tell you that.”
“Well, in this case I really don’t know. All I do know is that it was a secret mission, not an accident. Something went wrong.”
“How do you know that?”
“Derek told me. He’d talked to a couple of Rick’s mates after the funeral, when they’d all had a few, like. The funeral was back here, in Pontefract, where they grew up. Anyway, they didn’t give much away, either, they’re trained not to, but Derek said he got the impression that 2 4 8 P E T E R
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Rick’s mates wanted him to know that his brother hadn’t died in some stupid accident, but that he’d died in action, a hero.”
Annie didn’t know if this had any relevance at all, but it was something that Derek Wyman had skirted when they first talked to him.
Perhaps Rick’s partner, Charlotte, knew? Annie would never get the SAS to talk to her, especially as she had no official backing on this case, or even a case, come to think of it. They were far more likely to come smashing through her window one night and cart her off to Guantánamo Bay or whatever their equivalent was. But Charlotte Foster of Wyedene might not be averse to a sympathetic ear, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to track her down.
“I realize this is a bit of a cheeky question, “ Annie said, “and please don’t take it the wrong way, but didn’t it ever worry you, your husband being close to a gay man?”
“Why should it?”
“Well, some people . . . you know . . .”
“Perhaps if I didn’t feel secure with Derek it might have done,” she admitted.
“But . . . ?”
Carol reddened and turned away. “Well,” she said, “let’s just say I have no worries on that score.”
“I’m sorry for asking,” said Annie. “How is Derek doing now?”
“Oh, he’s all right. I mean, he’s still a bit upset about Mark, a bit quiet and moody. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? It’s not every day a good friend and colleague goes and hangs himself like that. I mean, someone you’ve had over to dinner and all.”
“How did they go? The dinners?”
“Fine. Except, when we had them over to our house, I overcooked the roast beef the way my mother always used to do.”
“Mine, too,” said Annie, with a smile, though she couldn’t really dredge up a memory of her mother roasting beef. “I meant the conversation. What did you talk about? What did Mark and Laurence talk about?”
“Oh, you know, after a couple of bottles of wine, the ice gets broken, it starts to f low. And Mr. . . . Laurence told all sorts of stories.”
“About what, if you don’t mind my asking?”
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“I don’t mind. I just don’t see why it matters. About faraway places.
I haven’t traveled much—oh, we’ve been to the usual places—Majorca, Benidorm, Lanzarote, even Tunisia once, but he’d been everywhere. Russia. Iran. Iraq. Chile. Australia. New Zealand. South Africa. It must have been so exciting.”
“Yes,” said Annie. “I heard he was a well-traveled man. Did he mention Afghanistan at all?”
“As a matter of fact, he did. It came up when we were talking about . . . you know, Rick.”
“Of course. What did he say about it?”
“Just that he’d been there.”
“Did he say when?”
“No. I got the impression that he didn’t like it very much.”
“Dangerous place, I suppose,” said Annie. “Is everything else okay with your husband?”
“Yes, of course. Except I think this gang business is getting him down, too.”
“It must be,” said Annie. “I talked to him yesterday about a couple of his lads involved in that East Side Estate stabbing.”
“Did you? He didn’t say.”
Well, he wouldn’t, thought Annie. “It wasn’t important.”
“Anyway, like I said, you do it because you think you can make a difference, but sometimes . . .” She ran her finger around the rim of her cup. The nail was chipped and bitten, Annie noticed. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think maybe Rick was right. What a world to bring children into.”
“But yours are doing all right, aren’t they?”
Carol’s face brightened. “Oh, yes. They’re a handful, I can tell you that. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She glanced at her watch.
“Ooh, is that the time? I really must be getting back now or Sue will be going ballistic.”
“I’ll walk with you,” said Annie.
T O M A S I N A WA S sitting behind her desk when Banks arrived. She had clearly been crying, as he had heard over the telephone, but she 2 5 0
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had stopped now. A box of tissues lay on the desk by her hand next to a large mug of milky tea. The mug was white and had little red hearts all over it.
On a cursory glance, the office looked the same as it had on his last visit, as did the reception area. Either Tomasina had already done a good job of tidying up, or her visitors had been very neat.
“I’m sorry for being such a blubberer on the phone,” she said. “I could have kicked myself when I hung up.”
“That’s all right,” said Banks. He sat opposite her.
“No, it isn’t. But you wouldn’t understand.”
She was full of contradictions, this one, Banks thought. A young beauty, tough as nails, vulnerable, but with another hard center inside the soft one. And he hadn’t spent more than half an hour with her, all told. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” he said.
She drank some tea, holding the mug with both hands. Her hands were shaking. “They came just after I got here, about nine.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Four. Two of them searched through everything while the other two . . . well, they called it an interview.”
“Did they treat you roughly at all?”
“Not physically, no.”
“Did they say who they were?”
“They just said they were from the government.”
“Did they show any identification?”
“I didn’t get a good look. It was all too fast.”
“Names?”
She shook her head. “Maybe Carson or Carstairs, one of them. And the woman was Harmon or Harlan. I’m sorry. It was all so fast, like they didn’t want it to register. I should have been paying closer attention, but I was too stunned. They took me by surprise.”
“Don’t blame yourself. They’re well trained in that sort of thing.
One of them was a woman?”
“Yes, one of the interrogators. It was interesting, really, because she played the bad cop.”
“What were they like, the two who questioned you?”
“Oh, very proper. Nicely dressed. Trendy. He was wearing a dark 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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sil
k suit and a fifty-quid haircut. Handsome in a Hugh Grantish sort of way. She wasn’t exactly dressed by Primark, either. Early thirties, I’d guess. The sort of woman Agatha Christie would describe as healthy and blond. Both a bit posh-sounding.”
“What did they want to know?”
“Why you came to see me yesterday.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.”
“You must have said something.”
She blushed. “Well, I said you were my boyfriend’s father, and you were in town on business, so you just dropped by to say hello. It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment.”
“Did they ask if you knew I was a policeman?”
“Yes. And I said that I did, but I didn’t hold it against you.”
“What did they say to that?”
“They didn’t believe me, so they asked all their questions again.
Then they asked me my life story—where I was born, what schools I went to, university, boyfriends, girlfriends, where I used to work, how I got into the business and all that sort of stuff. Quite chatty, really.
Then they got back to the nitty-gritty, and when I stuck to my story, blondie started threatening me with prosecution, and when I asked what for she said it didn’t matter and they could shut down my business as easy as swatting a f ly. Is that true, by the way?”
“Yes. They can do anything they want. But they won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ve no reason to, and those things usually cause more trouble than they’re worth. Publicity. They’re like bats. They don’t like the daylight. They probably thought you’d make a fuss about it.”
“Damn right I would! What about my rights?”
“You don’t have any. Didn’t you know, the baddies have won?”
“And just who are they?”
“Well, there’s a question. These people are ruthless and powerful, make no mistake about it, but their real weakness is their need for secrecy. You’re no threat to them. They won’t harm you. They just want to know what you were up to, why I visited you.”
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