All the Colors of Darkness ib-18

by Peter Robinson

  “I don’t believe this,” said Banks, shaking his head. “For that you destroyed two lives?”

  Wyman drank some whiskey. “I never intended for anyone to be destroyed. I just wanted to cause a rift, so maybe Hardcastle would bugger off back to Barnsley or wherever and leave us all alone. It started as a bit of a lark, really, thinking about Othello. Then I wondered if you really could do that, you know, drive someone around the bend through innuendo and images. Mark was a bit jealous about Laurence’s frequent trips to London or Amsterdam, whether they were supposed to be business trips or not. I thought I could use that.

  Mark told me about the f lat in Bloomsbury, and one time I was in London at the same time Laurence was there on a business trip I went and watched the f lat. That was when I saw Laurence come out. I don’t know why, but I followed him, saw him meet a man on a park bench and go to a house in Saint John’s Wood. I didn’t have my camera with me. You know the rest.”

  “And you hired Tom Savage because you couldn’t get down there as often as Laurence Silbert did?”

  “That’s right. I told her I’d ring her and give her an address when I wanted her to follow someone and take photographs. She did a terrific job. Mark went spare when I showed him them at Zizzi’s. I didn’t expect him to tear them up, but he did. Naturally, the photos weren’t enough in themselves, I had to embellish a bit on the sort of things I 3 5 0 P E T E R

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  thought they were going to do to one another when they got upstairs.

  But the hand on the back was a lovely touch. If it hadn’t been for that, it might have looked innocent.”

  A harmless gesture. Again, Banks wondered about Sophia. Was that all her friend’s gesture had been last night? And was he doing his own embellishment? He put her out of his mind. That was for later.

  “I never expected what happened next. You have to believe me.

  I’ve been a wreck ever since. Ask Carol. Poor Carol. Is she all right?”

  “You should ring her,” Banks said. “She’s worried sick about you.”

  “I can’t face that just now,” said Wyman. “Give me a bit of time to get myself together.”

  Banks finished his wine. “Look,” he said, “as far as I can tell, technically, you’ve created a hell of a mess, caused two deaths and wasted a lot of police time, but you haven’t committed any crime. It’s down to the CPS to make the final decision on that, of course, but I honestly can’t see what the charge would be.”

  “You’ve got to take me in,” said Wyman. “We’ve got to get it sorted before I can go home again. I don’t want them coming to my house again. Carol. The kids. I’m willing to accept whatever punish-ment you think I should have, but I want you to help me get them off my back. Will you do that?”

  Banks thought for a moment. “If I can,” he said.

  Wyman put his tumbler down and got to his feet. “Now?”

  “We’ll ring your wife from the station,” Banks said.

  A S T H E Y walked out front to the car, Banks thought he had probably had too much to drink to be driving—a can of beer with dinner and a couple glasses of wine in the fairly short time Wyman had been there.

  He was also in a pretty shaky emotional state. But it was almost mid-night, and he didn’t feel at all impaired. What else was he going to do?

  Send Wyman back to wander the moors in the rain? Give him a bed for the night? The last thing Banks wanted was Derek Wyman skulk-ing around the house in the morning. He could do that perfectly well himself. He knew he wasn’t destined for sleep tonight, anyway, so he might as well take the silly bugger to the station, get him off his hands 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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  for good and go back to nursing his broken heart over another bottle of wine. It was unlikely that MI6 would turn out for a meeting in the middle of the night, but if Wyman was too nervous to go home, Banks would be more than happy to put him in a cell for a night, then arrange for a solicitor to attend in the morning to thrash it all out.

  There were no streetlights on the road to Eastvale, and only Banks’s headlights cut through the darkness and the steady curtain of rain ahead, the windscreen wipers beating time.

  Then he noticed the distorted glare of someone’s headlights in his rear-view mirror, too close and too bright for comfort. They started f lashing.

  “Shit,” said Banks. He realized that they must have been watching his place, either hoping he would lead them to Wyman, or that Wyman would fetch up there looking for help after they’d put the wind up him. Parasites.

  “What is it?” Wyman asked.

  “I think it’s them,” Banks said. “I think they were staking out my house.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “It seems as if they want us to stop.” Banks readied himself to pull over at the next lay-by, which he knew was a good half mile ahead.

  He was still driving quite fast, definitely over the speed limit, but the car behind was still gaining, still f lashing its headlights.

  “Don’t stop,” Wyman said. “Not till we get to town.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t trust them, that’s all. Like I said, I want a solicitor present the next time I talk to them.”

  Banks sensed Wyman’s anxiety and felt a little surge of paranoia himself. He remembered the callous brutality these people had shown at Sophia’s, a brutality that he was certain had led to what happened between him and her. He also remembered stories he had heard, things Burgess had said, how they had frightened Tomasina and Wyman, and that it was still possible they could have been responsible for Silbert’s murder. He remembered Mr. Browne’s veiled threats.

  And he didn’t like the way they had tried to warn him off one minute and then use him the next.

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  Call me paranoid, Banks thought, but I don’t want a confrontation with MI6 out here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, with no witnesses. If they wanted to have it out, they could bloody well follow him to Eastvale and have a nice cozy chat in the security of the police station, with a mug of cocoa and a solicitor present, just the way he and Wyman wanted it.

  But they had other ideas. As soon as Banks overshot the lay-by and put his foot down, they did the same, and this time they started to overtake him on the narrow road. The Porsche was powerful enough, but they were driving a BMW, Banks noticed, and weren’t lacking in power themselves. There was a corner coming up, but they obviously didn’t know about that when they started to edge to their left, about half a car length ahead. No doubt they intended to bring Banks to a smooth halt, but either because of the rain or not knowing the bends in the road, or both, they misjudged terribly, and Banks had to turn the wheel sharply to avoid a collision. He knew this part of the road well, so he braced himself as the Porsche broke through a section of drystone wall and f lew over the steep edge.

  Banks was strapped in the driver’s seat, and he felt the jolt of the seat belt as it absorbed the impact. Wyman, in his distracted state, had forgotten to fasten his belt, and he shot forward through the windscreen, so he lay half on the bonnet, his lower half still in the car. For some reason, the air bags hadn’t released. Banks unbuckled his seat belt and staggered out to see what had happened.

  Wyman’s neck was twisted at an awkward angle, and blood pumped all over the bonnet from where a large sliver of glass had embedded itself in his throat. Banks left it there and tried to hold the wound closed around it, but he was too late. Wyman shuddered a couple of times and gave up the ghost. Banks could feel him die right there in front of him, feel the life go out of him, his hand resting on the dead man’s neck.

  Banks fell back against the car’s warm bonnet, slick with blood, looked up to the heavens and let the rain fall on his face. His head throbbed. Disturbed by the noise, a few sheep baaed out in the field.

  Two people were walking down the slope toward him, a young man and a you
ng woman carrying torches, the slanting rain caught in their beams of light.

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  3 5 3

  “Bit of a mess, isn’t it?” the young man said when they got to the Porsche. “Nice car, too. Not quite what we had in mind at all. We only wanted to talk to him again. Find out what he was doing putting a tail on one of our men. You should have stopped when we f lashed you.”

  “He couldn’t tell you anything,” said Banks. “He was just a bloody schoolteacher.”

  The man shone his torch on the bonnet of the Porsche. “Dead, is he? We’ll never know what he was up to now, will we?”

  Banks could think of nothing to say to that. He just shook his head.

  He felt dizzy and weak at the knees.

  “You all right?” the young woman asked. “You’ve got blood on your forehead.”

  “I’m fine,” said Banks.

  “We’ll take it from here,” she went on. “This is what we’ll do. My friend is going to phone some people. They’re used to cleaning up situations like this. We’ll have your car back outside your cottage again by tomorrow morning, as good as new.” She paused and looked at the Porsche. “Make that the day after tomorrow,” she said. “It can sometimes be hard to get replacement parts for foreign cars. We’ll make sure they fix the air bags, too.”

  Banks gestured toward Wyman. “What about him?”

  “Well, there’s nothing anybody can do for him now, is there? Best let us take care of it. He was distraught over what he’d done. He went walkabout and either he jumped or he fell off a cliff. We don’t want any fuss, do we? I’d just go home if I were you. Walk away.”

  Banks stared at her. She was pretty in a slightly hard-faced sort of way, but her eyes didn’t f linch; there was no milk of human kindness in them. “But he didn’t do anything,” said Banks.

  “Maybe not,” the woman said. “Mistakes get made sometimes. It doesn’t matter. Let us deal with it now.”

  “But you killed him.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” said the young man, squaring up to Banks.

  “That rather depends on your point of view, doesn’t it? From what I could see, you were driving way too fast. You’ve obviously been drinking. And he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. You should have had your air bags checked, too. They malfunctioned.”

  3 5 4 P E T E R

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  “And you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. If we wanted you both dead, you’d be dead in much easier circumstances to clean up than this. It was an accident.

  Besides, don’t forget he was responsible for the death of one of our best men, and if you’d had your way he’d have simply walked away. Hardcastle never asked him to put a tail on Silbert. The whole thing was his own twisted, crazy plan.”

  “How do you know?”

  “What?”

  “I can understand you probably got the transcripts of the interview.

  The chief constable would have given you those. But how did you know that was all a lie, that Wyman . . . ?” Banks paused as the truth dawned on him. “You bugged my cottage, didn’t you? You bastards.”

  The man shrugged. “You’re away a lot. Access isn’t a problem.”

  Banks looked toward Wyman’s body again. “So this is your idea of justice?”

  “I’ll admit it’s sloppy,” the man said, “but it’s justice of a kind.

  Look, Silbert helped us bring down some pretty big players—sex traffickers, drug dealers, killers for hire. He even helped us put some terrorists behind bars. And this piece of scum you’re defending so eloquently basically killed him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m still not convinced,” Banks said. “Oh, Wyman stirred Hardcastle up all right, but you lot could still have killed Silbert. Wyman just makes a good scapegoat because he was so full of guilt.”

  “Why would we do that? I’ve already told you Silbert was one of our best men.”

  “Maybe he was a double agent. What about those Swiss bank accounts? People led me to believe that agents feather their nests when they’re in the field, but who knows? Maybe he was playing for both sides.”

  “Then maybe the other side killed him. Whatever happened, you’ll never know, will you? Anyway, this is ridiculous, and it’s getting us nowhere. We need to move fast.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

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  3 5 5

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Believe it. The best thing you can do is—”

  But he never got to end the sentence. Banks felt the urge begin in his solar plexus, and the next thing he knew his fist was connecting with the man’s jaw. It happened so quickly the man never had a chance, no matter what fancy martial arts he had been trained in.

  Banks heard a satisfying crunch and felt the jolt run all the way up to his shoulder. He could also sense that he’d probably broken a knuckle, maybe two, but the pain was worth it to vent some of his anger—anger about Wyman, about Sophia, the bombing, Hardcastle, Silbert, the Secret Intelligence Service. The man crumpled and fell like a sandbag to the earth. Banks cradled his right hand in his left and bent double with pain.

  “Carson,” the woman said, bending over him. “Carson? Are you all right?”

  Carson groaned and rolled over in the mud. Banks kicked him hard in the ribs. He groaned again and spat out a tooth.

  Banks was just about to kick him in the stomach when he realized that the woman was pointing a gun at him. “Stop it,” she said. “I don’t want to use this, but I will if I have to.”

  Banks glared at her, realized that she meant what she said, then took a few deep breaths. He looked at Carson again and felt no desire to inf lict any more pain. He leaned back on the car and caught his breath, still cradling his right hand.

  “The truth is that none of this happened,” the woman went on. “We weren’t even here. You’ll get your car back as good as new. His body will be found at the bottom of a cliff, and nothing changes. You can tell all the stories you want, but I guarantee you that nobody will believe a word you say. If necessary, we’ll give you a legend that will land you in jail for the rest of your days. When we’ve finished with you, even your family and your closest friends will never want to talk to you again. Do I make myself clear?”

  Banks said nothing. What was there to say? Any insults and threats of retribution he might want to make would just be empty bluster in the face of the power these people had. He knew he’d had all the sat-3 5 6 P E T E R

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  isfaction he was going to get from the punch he’d landed. Carson was still groaning through his broken jaw. Banks’s knuckles were throbbing in synchronization with his head.

  The woman held her gun in one hand and her mobile in the other.

  Both hands were perfectly steady. “Walk away,” she said. “Do it.

  Now.”

  Banks’s legs were still a bit wobbly, but they worked. He didn’t say anything, just made his way up the slope to the road. The night was a dark wet cloak around him. There was only one place he wanted to be now, only one place left for him to go. A little unsteady at first, but gaining strength and momentum as he went, Banks started the long walk home. He wasn’t sure whether the wetness he felt on his face was rain, blood or tears.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank everyone who read the manuscript and offered suggestions for improvements—in particular, Sheila Halladay, Dinah Forbes, Carolyn Marino and Carolyn Mays. There are so many others to thank for their hard work and support—my agents Dominick Abel and David Grossman; Jamie Hodder Williams, Lucy Hale, Kerry Hood, Auriol Bishop, Katie Davidson and Kate Howard at Hodder; Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Sharyn Rosenblum, Wendy Lee and Nicole Chismar at Morrow; and Doug Pepper, Ellen Seligma
n, Ashley Dunn and Adria Iwasutiak at McClelland & Stewart. Also thanks to the sales reps and booksellers who work so hard to get the books out there, and to you for reading them.

  I would also like to offer a special thanks to Julie Kempson for her help with the legal and technical matters. Any mistakes, it goes without saying, are entirely my own.

  About the Author

  PETER ROBINSON’S award-winning novels have been named a Best-Book-of-the-Year by Publishers Weekly, a Notable Book by the New York Times, and a Page-Turner-of-the-Week by People magazine.

  Robinson was born and raised in Yorkshire, but has lived in North America for nearly twenty-five years. He now divides his time between North America and the U.K.

  www.inspectorbanks.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  A L S O B Y P E T E R R O B I N S O N

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  A D E D I C A T E D M A N

  A N E C E S S A R Y E N D

  T H E H A N G I N G V A L L E Y

  P A S T R E A S O N H A T E D

  W E D N E S D A Y ’ S C H I L D

  F I N A L A C C O U N T

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  A F T E R M A T H

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  P I E C E O F M Y H E A R T

  F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L

  Credits

  Jacket design by Ervin Serrano

  Jacket photograph by Edward Jones, Trevillion Images

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALL THE COLORS OF DARKNESS. Copyright © 2009 by Eastvale Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.