“But don’t even think of trying a trick like that again. We don’t want to lose you. How is our wild man?”
“Well,” said Winsome, “I did call by the hospital yesterday, and he’s out of danger. As a matter of fact, he was awake, and when he saw me, he . . . well, ma’am, he said some rather rude words. Words I’d not care to repeat.”
Gervaise laughed. “I’m not surprised.”
Winsome shifted in her chair. “Anyway, he’s got a broken collar-bone, broken arm, broken leg and a minor skull fracture, along with untold cuts and bruises.”
“Not least to his ego,” said Banks.
“Well, maybe that was why he swore at me,” Winsome said.
Gervaise turned to Banks. “Now, DCI Banks, make my day and tell me I have no reason to fear any more fallout from this Hardcastle-Silbert business you’ve been probing against my orders.”
“No,” said Banks. “It’s over. Derek Wyman admitted to watching Laurence Silbert and hiring a private investigator to take photographs of him with whoever he met. When we questioned him yesterday, he told us that Hardcastle asked him to do so. He’d become suspicious of Silbert’s frequent trips to London, thought he’d found a lover. It was jealousy, pure and simple. Wyman didn’t tell us earlier because he felt 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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guilty about what happened and he didn’t want to get involved.”
“I see,” said Gervaise. “And do you believe him?”
“Not entirely,” said Banks. “Edwina Silbert assured me that Mark Hardcastle knew her son was still working on the occasions he visited London and Amsterdam, so why would he ask Wyman to follow him?”
“I suppose he could have become suspicious over something,” Gervaise said. “You know, found a monogrammed hankie, someone else’s underwear in the laundry basket, whatever. Then he might have begun to think that Silbert was using work as an excuse to cover up an affair. And maybe he was.”
Banks looked at her. “You’ve got quite an imagination, ma’am,” he said. “And it’s entirely possible. But it doesn’t matter what we believe.
There’s nothing to charge him with.”
“So these half-baked theories of yours about Othello and Iago were exactly what they appeared to be? Half-baked?”
“So it would seem,” muttered Banks. “If his confession is to be believed.”
“And the involvement of the secret intelligence services was purely tangential?”
“Up to a point. Silbert was still engaged on intelligence work in some capacity—I’d hazard a guess that this man he was meeting in London was the mysterious Julian Fenner, Import-Export—but it now turns out that none of it has any relevance to the murder-suicide.”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Well, you can never be entirely certain with these people,” Banks said, echoing Edwina. “But yes, ma’am. As sure as we’ll ever be.”
“So I can tell the chief constable and whoever’s been on his back that it’s all over?”
“Yes,” said Banks. “Though I would imagine the chief constable is well aware of that already.”
Gervaise looked at him suspiciously but didn’t follow up on the remark. “Right. Well, I hope you’ve learned a lesson from the whole sorry affair.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Banks.
At this moment, Annie Cabbot rushed in and sat down, distracting 3 2 4 P E T E R
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Gervaise’s attention from Banks. “Ah, DI Cabbot,” she said. “So good of you to join us.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” said Annie. “I was out on a call.”
“What kind of call?”
“Missing person,” she said, glancing toward Banks. “Derek Wyman’s disappeared.”
“Why would he do that?” Gervaise asked. “I thought you said he was off the hook. You let him go.”
“He is,” said Banks. “And we did.” He turned to Annie. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday afternoon. He left the theater after the matinee and didn’t turn up for the evening performance. And there’s another thing.”
“Yes?” said Gervaise.
“You’re not going to like this, ma’am.”
“I don’t like anything I’ve heard so far. Better tell me, anyway.”
“Two people went over to Wyman’s house yesterday afternoon. A man and a woman. They scared the sh— the living daylights out of his wife, took a few photographs and papers and went away. Said they were from the government.”
“Shit!” said Gervaise. “This was just yesterday?”
“Yes. I told you you weren’t going to like it, ma’am.”
“Reminding me of what you told me doesn’t help your cause in the least, DI Cabbot,” snarled Gervaise.
“Could he have got back from the matinee in time to see these people enter his house, or come out of it?” Banks asked Annie. “Do you think they picked him up and spirited him away?”
“It’s possible,” Annie said. “The timing’s close enough.”
“But DCI Banks just assured me this mess was over and done with,”
said Gervaise.
“Well, it was,” said Annie. “It might still be. I mean, maybe he’s just . . . I don’t know . . . another woman? Or he’s done a runner?
These things happen. Just because he’s missing, it doesn’t have to mean that MI6 carted him off to one of their secret interrogation camps.”
“There are no such places,” said Gervaise.
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“Very well, then. One of their secret nonexistent interrogation camps.”
“Very clever. Don’t let your imagination run away with you, DI Cabbot,” snarled Gervaise.
“Have these government people had access to any of our case files?”
Banks asked Gervaise.
“Not through me,” she answered. “Or through anybody else in this office, I shouldn’t imagine.”
“Has the chief constable been around much lately?”
Gervaise paused. “A bit more often than he usually is. What are you trying to suggest, DCI Banks? Is this connected with that innuendo you made earlier?”
“I think you know, ma’am. You might not like to admit it, but you know. They took an interest in this from the start, at least as soon as they realized I wasn’t going to stop investigating. They’ve been following me around. Annie, too, perhaps. They probably know what we know. Given that we didn’t tell them, I’m wondering how they found out. It’s my bet they went straight to the top. The chief constable’s ambitious, and he has political aspirations.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?” said Gervaise. “And you’re not also suggesting that the government is responsible for Wyman’s disappearance are you? I mean, this isn’t some little tin-pot South American dictatorship.”
“You don’t have to look that far south when it comes to citizens disappearing,” said Banks. “But I don’t know. I’m just calling the facts to your attention, that’s all.”
“But why on earth would they be interested in a bloody schoolteacher cum amateur theater director?”
Banks scratched his scar. “Because he hired a private detective to take photographs of Silbert meeting a man on a bench in Regent’s Park,” Banks said. “And because we’re interested in him. It seems logical to assume that this wasn’t anything to do with an affair of the heart, but that those activities were part of Silbert’s postretirement covert work. There’s also the brother.”
“Brother?”
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“Wyman’s brother, Rick. He was SAS. He was killed on a secret mission in Afghanistan in 2002. The press covered it up. Called it an accident during maneuvers. Silbert has visited Afghanistan. There’s a chance that he might have been involved on the intelligence side, and Wyman might have found out about it through Hardcastle, blamed him for Rick’s death.”
/> “Oh, this just gets better and better.” Gervaise glared at Banks, breathed out heavily, ran her hand over her hair, then filled a glass with water from a pitcher on a tray beside her. The rain continued to hammer on the slates and windows. “What a bloody great start to the week this is turning out to be,” she said. “I think we’d better discuss this later, in my office, when we’ve got a bit more information in, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gervaise got to her feet. “I suppose we ought to count our blessings as well as lick our wounds,” she said. “Even if Derek Wyman has gone and thrown a spanner in the works, at least we’ve got Donny Moore’s assailant and maybe done a little bit toward keeping more heroin and methamphetamines off the East Side Estate. Maybe that saves the weekend from being a total disaster.”
“And don’t forget, ma’am,” Doug Wilson spoke up. “We’ve got the traffic cones back, too.”
Gervaise gave him a withering glance.
B A N K S H A D dug out his old portable CD player, in the absence of his iPod, and he listened to Laura Marling’s Alas, I Cannot Swim on the train down to London that Monday evening. He needed his car back, and despite what had been said on the phone, he thought that if he could just see Sophia for a few minutes, he could convince her to stay with him. Beyond that, he hadn’t thought. Annie was heading the search for Derek Wyman, though they were hardly combing the moors just yet, mostly running through the list of old friends and relatives dotted about the place. So far, nobody had seen any trace of him.
It was after five o’clock when the train he had caught in Darlington earlier pulled out of York. On his right, the Yorkshire Wheel, a mini 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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version of the London Eye, was turning forlornly, deserted in the rain that had been falling steadily since the heavens first opened on Sunday morning. Already there was talk of f looding in Wales and Gloucestershire.
A group of four teenagers had the table just down the aisle from Banks, and they were already well into the ale. They sounded as if they had been on the train since Newcastle. Banks fancied a drink himself, but he decided to lay off. After all, there was always the chance that he might have to drive straight back to Eastvale.
The landscape and the stations drifted by as he gazed out of the window: Doncaster, Grantham, Newark. Peterborough, where he had grown up. He thought about his parents, away on a Mediterranean cruise. Since they had inherited his brother’s money, they hadn’t changed a great deal about their lives, Banks thought, but they had taken to cruising with a vengeance, much against his expectations.
He also thought of Michelle Hart, a detective inspector in the local force, and an ex-girlfriend of his. She had moved to Hampshire, he’d heard, Portsmouth, and as the train passed the f lats down by the river where she used to live, it brought back memories. He could also never pass by Peterborough without thinking of his old boyhood friends Steve Hill, Paul Major and Dave Grenfell. Graham Marshall, too, of course, who had disappeared and then turned up buried in a field years later, and Kay Summerville, the first girl he had ever slept with.
He had bumped into her just a few years ago, when he was back home for his parents’ wedding anniversary, and she was clearing out the house after her mother’s death. They had repeated the experience.
Later, they had promised to get in touch, but both knew they never would. Their moment had passed, and they were luckier than most in that it had passed twice, and passed well. Moments are often all you get. You can watch them walking away. The rest is crap. Let go with both hands. No regrets.
But Sophia was a different matter. He didn’t want to let go of her.
His pay-as-you-go vibrated discreetly in his pocket. He didn’t like mobile conversations on trains, his own or other people’s, but he wasn’t in a quiet coach, so it wasn’t against the rules. He took his ear-phones out and answered it.
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P E T E R R O B I N S O N
“Banksy?”
“Ah, Mr. Burgess.”
“Right. I’ll keep this brief. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“Laurence Silbert operated strictly in Cold War territory, primarily Berlin, Prague and Moscow. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“His only visit to Afghanistan was in 1985, when the Russians were there. It was a joint operation with the CIA. I think we can say almost certainly that it was probably to do with supplying backing to the anti-Russian Taliban forces. This particular bit of knowledge isn’t classified, by the way—though the details are—but I’d prefer if you’d keep it under your hat.”
“Of course.”
“Basically, Laurence Silbert was a Cold War warrior. He never had anything to do with the situation in the Middle East, except insofar as it impinged on the Cold War. He spoke Russian, German and Czech, and those countries were the primary areas of his operations.”
“What about after his retirement?”
“I said I wasn’t going to tell you about that, but I’d say it was pretty obvious, wouldn’t you? If I can put two and two together, I’m sure you can, too. We all know the old KGB and Stasi agents have turned up in one form of organized crime or another, or have become ‘busi-nessmen,’ as many of them like to call themselves. They’re operating quite openly in the West now. Silbert was part of that world for a long time, in the old days. He knew all the players, their strengths, weaknesses, trade routes, hiding places—the lot.”
“So they’re using his old knowledge?”
“Yes. I’d say so. Just a guess, mind you.”
Banks made sure to keep his voice low. “Why all the secrecy about it? The Regent’s Park meetings. The house. Fenner’s phone number.
The Townsends. I mean, we’re all fighting the Russian Mafia. Why didn’t he just go to Thames House or wherever and have a chat with them when they wanted to pick his brains?”
Banks heard Burgess chuckle down the line. “That’s not the way they do things, Banksy. They like games and codes and passwords and 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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things like that. Basically, they’re like little kids at heart. When he was ready for a meeting, Silbert would ring a phone number they gave him, an untraceable number, as I’m sure you discovered, and all he’d get would be a line-disconnected message, but they’d know he was ready. They’d also know if anyone else phoned the number, too, which I assume is one of the things that tipped them off to your med-dlesome presence in the first place.”
“Maybe,” said Banks. “Julian Fenner, Import-Export. I certainly wasn’t trying to hide anything.”
“It may have been better if you had. Anyway,” Burgess went on,
“they clearly didn’t want anyone to know that they were using him because the other side, of course, also knew exactly what and who Silbert knew, and they would be able to change any plans or routines or personnel accordingly.”
“Is that all?”
“I can’t think of anything else. Can you? And don’t forget what I said about the phone. Dump it. You owe me, Banksy. I must get back to bugging Muslim MPs now. Bye-bye.”
The phone went dead. Banks switched it off and put it in his pocket.
He’d dispose of it later, in the Thames, perhaps, with all the other secrets that had been dumped there over the years.
18
IT WAS A MUGGY EVENING ON THE LONDON STREETS.
The rain had stopped by the time Banks was walking down King’s Road at about half past eight, but a kind of heavy mist hung in the air, enveloping everything in its warm humid haze. The street still maintained its usual aura of busy-ness, of constant motion and activity. It was one of the things Banks loved so much about London, and one of the things he loved to escape from by going back to Gratly.
The street lamps made blurred halos in the mist, and even the sounds of the main street were muff led. Banks had sensed an odd mood as he made his way on the tube and by foo
t. London was still in shock from Friday’s bombing, but at the same time people were determined to get on with life as usual, to show that they weren’t going to be intimidated. There were probably even more people out and about than you would normally find on a humid Monday night. They needed to stand up and be counted. Banks felt a part of that, too. But most of all he wanted to find Sophia.
He turned into her street, which was considerably quieter, and felt his chest tighten as he rang her doorbell. No answer. He had a key, but there was no way he was going to use it. Besides, he had no reason to go in if she was out. He had deliberately not phoned her to say he was coming, too, in case she reacted badly and tried to avoid him.
She was probably working. Often her job demanded that she attend 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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evening events—readings, openings, premieres—so he decided to pass the time in their local wine bar, just around the corner. Like other cafés and bars he had passed on his way, it was crowded. Not many establishments had tables out on the pavement along King’s Road—
there simply wasn’t that much room—so the inside tables were all taken, and knots of people stood around where they could find a bit of space, leaned on pillars, held their glasses and talked.
Banks went to the closest section of the bar, where he was able to wedge himself between a couple of noisy, animated groups who had probably come for a drink after work and stayed too long. Nobody paid him any attention, including the bar staff. Angie, the blond Australian barmaid, was engaging in her favorite pastime—f lirting with the customers.
Then, through the crowd, Banks saw a profile he recognized sitting at one of the tables. Sophia. She was unmistakable, her smooth cheek, the graceful curve of her neck, her dark hair tied up and held in place by that familiar tortoiseshell comb, one or two loose strands curling like tendrils over her shoulders. She was in half-profile and would only be able to see him if she turned around. But she wasn’t going to do that.
Opposite her sat a young man with lank longish fair hair and the kind of scruffy beard you get after not shaving for four or five days.
He was wearing a light green corduroy jacket over a black T-shirt.
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