Not Dark Yet

by Peter Robinson

  Banks threaded his way through the crowds and took the escalator down to the Underground, where it got hotter and more humid the deeper he went. He found the right platform and took the Victoria Line to Vauxhall, standing all the way, and walked up behind the MI6 building, famous from the James Bond movies, to The Rose on the Albert Embankment, where Burgess had arranged to meet him. It was a Victorian pub, or gastro-pub, as it was called now, with a view of the Houses of Parliament, warm gold in the early afternoon sun, over the river beyond Lambeth Bridge.

  Burgess was already waiting in a booth, and Banks joined him, glancing around at the chandeliers and vintage furniture. “Very nice,” he said. “At least the decor beats Pret’s.”

  Burgess passed Banks a menu. “The food’s supposed to be good,” he said. “And not too expensive. Let’s order first. I’m having the homemade fish-finger sandwich.”

  Banks scanned the menu and settled on a roast beef burger with smoky chipotle mayo.

  “Drink?” Burgess asked.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Krombacher Pils.”

  Again, Banks glanced at the menu. “Brixton pale ale, please.” Hair of the dog.

  Burgess went up to the bar. The pub was crowded, obviously a popular lunch spot for both local office workers and tourists walking along the riverside. And what a day for it. Banks glanced out of the window at the throng of people walking up and down the Embankment in the heat of the midday sun. Most wore sunglasses, shorts, sandals, and T-shirts. Many carried cameras, pushed prams or held hands with small children. He found himself thinking how quickly things could change if a terrorist with a knife ran into the crowd and started stabbing people. Or a speeding van suddenly veered off the road on to the pavement. It was the police officer’s curse, he told himself, to be so often imagining the worst. But things like that did happen. Had happened not so long ago, not so far away, and would certainly happen again. Relish every moment, as his poet friend Linda Palmer had told him.

  Burgess returned quickly with the drinks. Banks remembered how good he was at bars; not for him any worries about who was first in line. It was all to do with who could push hardest and shout loudest. Banks sipped. It tasted good. They chatted briefly about Burgess’s morning of meetings up the road at NCA headquarters and Banks’s journey through the heartland. Now, though, he was back in the present in the thriving capital, just upriver from the centre of power. He tried not to think about what nefarious business might be going on in there. Backstabbing and prevarication, for the most part, he guessed. Perhaps politics had always been like that, but it seemed to him to have taken a turn for the worse over the last three or four years.

  “So what is it?” he asked. “You said you were working on something that might concern me.”

  Burgess leaned back. “Don’t get your hopes up too high. But, yes, I think it might.”

  “In what way?”

  “In two ways. That bloke you’ve been after for so long. The one who tried to kill you, set fire to your house.”

  “Phil Keane.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “And the other?”

  “That young woman you’ve got a thing for. Zelda.”

  “I’m intrigued,” said Banks. “Do go on.”

  “It’s a bit complicated. I’ve been trying to put it all in order while I was waiting for you.”

  “Give it a try. I’m sure I’ll be able to follow.”

  Burgess took a deep breath, then a few gulps of beer. “Right,” he said. “You know about Zelda’s boss?”

  “Trevor Hawkins, the one who burned to death in a chip-pan fire?”

  “That’s the one. Well, the two officers who’ve been investigating his death, Deborah Fletcher and Paul Danvers, haven’t found any evidence of foul play, but there are one or two anomalies, and Danvers isn’t quite convinced that it was an accident. It seems that your friend Zelda visited the street where Hawkins lived a couple of days after the fire.”

  “I know that,” said Banks. “You told me all about it the last time we talked.”

  “Hear me out. Allow me my preamble. It’s difficult enough as it is.”

  “OK.”

  Their food came, and they took a few bites in silence then carried on talking while they ate. “Paul Danvers was suspicious enough to widen his inquiry a bit, ask questions around the street and so on,” Burgess went on. “They talked to Zelda again, for example, but she was about as helpful as the first time. Mmm, this fish is good. How about your burger?”

  “It’s fine,” Banks said. “Zelda couldn’t be helpful because she didn’t know anything.”

  Burgess raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s not forget how important Hawkins was. He was an agent of the NCA, running a special bureau compiling a database and facial recognition data of known sex traffickers. Your friend Zelda worked for him as a civilian consultant, using her special skills as a super-recogniser and her experience of the trafficking world to put names to faces. That way, they could track the movements of major players, keep an eye on who was climbing up the ladder, who was in, who was out, and so on. The long and the short of it is that a young bartender down the road in Hawkins’s local pub, The George and Dragon, recalls a woman coming in one lunchtime shortly after the fire and asking questions about Hawkins.”

  “Like what?”

  “Whether he was a regular. Whether he had ever met anyone there.”

  “And what did he tell her?”

  “That Hawkins was a regular, but that he usually only dropped in for a quick half and the Times crossword after work.”

  “Usually?”

  Burgess took a bite of his sandwich before answering. “He said he did once, quite recently, see Hawkins meet and talk with another man in the pub. Said it appeared as if they knew one another and the meeting was prearranged. Apparently, the woman showed Chris—that’s the bartender—a photograph, and he recognised the man from it.”

  “Who was he?”

  “That we don’t know. And Chris wasn’t able to give us a clear description. You know—medium, medium, light brown hair, ordinary. He had a beard, too. One of those artsy type thingies. Van Dyke or goatee, whatever they call it. He didn’t know the man’s name, either.”

  “Pity.”

  “There was one tiny pinprick of light.”

  “Yes?”

  “He certainly remembered the woman, and he gave us a very detailed description of her. Sounded as if he was more than a little smitten, so Danvers told me. And I have to say, Banksy, that she sounds remarkably like your Zelda.”

  “What if it was her?” Banks asked, spearing a fat chip. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “I disagree. Where’s your copper’s instinct? Don’t you think it’s odd? I mean, I can just about swallow that she visited her dead boss’s burned-out house because she was curious. But asking questions in his local about who he’d been meeting is going a bit too far. Don’t you think so? Why? And who was it in the photograph she showed Chris the barman?”

  “So you think Zelda’s involved?”

  “We know that she didn’t kill Trevor Hawkins. She was out of the country at the time of the fire. And neither Danvers nor I can accept that she somehow paid for it or arranged to have it done.”

  “Which leaves?”

  “Danvers’s theory is that she was suspicious of Hawkins’s activities. For some reason, she suspected him of being in the pay of the enemy, the traffickers, or somehow in thrall to them. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Banks drank some beer and thought for a moment. “I suppose it does,” he agreed reluctantly. “But what of it?”

  “Surely it’s significant if she had some reason to suspect him of being bent? She may have been watching him, observing him at work, even following him. Maybe his trafficker paymasters found out, and he started to become a liability?”

  “Are you saying Ze
lda was responsible for Hawkins’s death?”

  “I’m saying that she was sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. The outcome was unpredictable. Though anyone with half a brain could probably have worked out it would end in tears.”

  “But we don’t know any of this. It’s mere speculation on your part.”

  “As is so much of our job. And you know that, too. Come on, Banksy. Are you so pussy-whipped you can’t see the wood for the trees?”

  Banks bristled, but he knew Burgess was right. Up to a point. There was nothing sexual between him and Zelda. She was Ray Cabbot’s partner, and he respected that. Even if he believed he was in with a chance, which he didn’t, he wouldn’t make a move on her. He didn’t do things like that to his friends. Not that she had given the slightest inclination of interest. But, yes, he liked her company, and yes, he lusted after her. What man wouldn’t?

  “I’m not pussy-whipped, as you so delicately put it.”

  “Sorry, mate,” said Burgess. “Maybe that was below the belt. But I need my Banksy back, not some mealy-mouthed apologist.”

  Banks tried to think rationally. He had to get beyond his bias and see things straight. At worst, Zelda could be involved in something dodgy, and at best she could be on the side of the good guys and in danger from the same people who had hurt Hawkins. And it would always be a good thing to keep in mind that Phil Keane was a killer, and that his preferred weapon was fire. But quite where Keane came into all this, Banks still had no idea, except that Zelda had said she had spotted him in a photo with Petar Tadić, a known sex trafficker. And that also connected with Blaydon’s murder. The police knew that Tadić had supplied Blaydon with girls for his parties. What did it all mean? Did Hawkins know that Zelda had seen the photo and recognised Keane? How was he connected with Keane? Was Keane the man he had met in The George and Dragon?

  “As far as I can see,” Banks said, “even if Zelda did do everything you say, she’s done nothing illegal.”

  Burgess sighed. “Hardly the point. Nobody’s saying she’s bent.”

  “Then what?”

  “She is involved, and you know it. She’s up to her neck in it. Whatever it is. If just for her sake, try and focus that laser-sharp mind of yours on all that. I’m trying to help you save her from herself, not getting you to convict her.” He finished his plate of food, pushed it aside, gulped down some lager, and burped. “Besides, that’s not all. It gets even more interesting.”

  THE DRIVE to Purcari was easier than Zelda had expected, and she was passing a winery on the outskirts of the village before noon. It was a journey of low hills, soft greens and yellows, opening occasionally on distant panoramas; a journey of small villages, mostly neat and tidy and colourful, and with no one about except roaming cats and the occasional barking dog. Here and there, geese and chickens wandered the roadsides, and in some places, old women in traditional garb paused and eyed her sternly as she drove slowly by. Sometimes she imagined they knew what she was going to do. It was more like travelling back in time than in distance. The sun shone all the way, and she kept the windows of the old Skoda rolled down. Off the main highway, the paved roads were of variable quality, and she saw signs on them now and then that said, “PAID FOR BY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.”

  At last, the chateau came into view, with its tower, white walls and orange roof against a backdrop of hillsides planted with rows of vines. Beyond the hills, Zelda knew, lay the River Dniester and Ukraine. She paused at a crossroads to breathe the sweet air, and a gentle breeze wafted through the open car windows. She could smell manure and fresh-mown grass.

  Lupescu’s house, at some distance from any neighbours, was a contemporary construction in the Art Deco style, all white cubes and curves, topped with a large dome, like an observatory, and shiny, as if it were made out of plastic. It was hard to find a point of entry, but Zelda thought she discerned a door somewhere in the whiteness. There was no doorbell, so she knocked. She had realised a while ago that there was no point in trying to sneak up on Lupescu as he wouldn’t know her from Eve. The last time he had seen her, she had been an excited seventeen-year-old girl on the verge of making her own way in the world.

  At first, she thought there was no one home. Everything was silent except for the birdsong and someone hammering far in the distance. Perhaps Lupescu was old and slow, like William Buckley. Then the door opened abruptly and she found herself looking at the man himself. He was probably about five years younger than Buckley, she guessed, and had been retired for around ten years, which made him roughly mid-seventies. His skin was sallow, and the flesh on his cheeks and throat sagged into wattles and jowls. His hooded eyes, buried deep above the bruise-coloured bags, were pale and glaucous. He had very little hair, and what he had he wore in an absurd comb-over across his liver-spotted skull. But it was Vasile Lupescu, no doubt about it.

  He spoke to her in Russian. “Yes? Can I help you? What is it you want?”

  “I was just speaking with William Buckley in Suruceni,” she said, also in Russian, hoping the speech she had rehearsed on her way came out right. “He said if I was heading down south I should say hello. So here I am.”

  “And you are?”

  “You knew me as Nelia Melnic. One of the beneficiaries of Claude Bremner’s largesse. And your hard work, of course.”

  Lupescu frowned.

  “The books,” Zelda explained. “At St. George’s Orphanage.”

  Lupescu’s thin lips twitched in a smile. “Ah, yes. The books. Please, do come in. Forgive my bad manners. I’m an old man and not much used to visitors.”

  “Not at all.” Zelda stepped inside. In contrast to its bright exterior, she found the interior dark and dull, lightened only by abstract paintings sharing the walls with knock-off old masters and surrealist sculptures in nooks adjacent to ancient religious icons. Other than that, with its sepia and grey tones, it felt more like a tomb. She also got the impression that Lupescu’s cleaning lady didn’t come nearly as often as William Buckley’s. How could anyone live here? she found herself wondering. Then she realised that it was probably more an indication of status than aesthetic pleasure, and that made sense. This was a man who wanted to show the world that he had made money.

  Lupescu himself was wearing red carpet slippers, baggy grey trousers and a button-up maroon cardigan over his white shirt, despite the temperature, and he looked like nothing more than an old man near the end of his time who had no idea what to do or how to go about it. The cardigan was open and Zelda noticed a reddish stain down the front. Pasta sauce, she guessed.

  “Would you care to sit down?” he asked, gesturing to a leather-upholstered armchair. Zelda sat and felt immediately as if she were falling backwards down a bottomless pit. The seat sagged under her, and she was sure she felt the prick of a spring where she least wanted it. She shuffled around a bit, rested her arms on the scuffed leather and managed to acquire a modicum of comfort. Lupescu sat opposite her in a similar chair. He didn’t offer refreshments.

  Zelda glanced around at the paintings. Most of the abstracts were probably original works. Some of them were quite good, she thought, though she would have been the first to admit she wasn’t exactly the best judge of abstract art. For the most part they looked as if someone had stood near the canvas and flicked brushes dipped in various coloured paints in random patterns, which is probably exactly what had happened.

  Zelda found herself wondering whether Lupescu liked this stuff or whether it was merely another instance of fortune-signalling. They made quite a contrast to the madonnas and classical scenes hung adjacent to many of them. The sculptures were better, she thought. Smooth, round, curving objects with surprising holes and twists in them, mostly made of wood, crying out to be stroked, though a couple seemed to be cast from brass. She ran her hand over a small wooden infinity figure within reach that seemed to languish over its base like Dali’s watches melted over their surfaces.

  “So you’re a St. George’s girl?” Lupescu said.

 
“I was,” Zelda replied. “A long time ago.”

  “Yes,” Lupescu said. “The old place has been closed for ten years or more now. A great loss. I was sorry to see it go. I was there right from the beginning, you know.”

  “So I heard. Tell me, were you selling girls to sex traffickers right from the start, or did that come later?” She hadn’t planned for it to come out that way, or so soon, but it did.

  Lupescu seemed to freeze. He might have turned pale, but Zelda couldn’t tell, as he was so ashen to start with. “What do you mean by that?” he said, a quiver in his voice.

  “Well, when I left St. George’s, two men were waiting for me at the street corner. They hit me and bundled me into a car and drove me across Romania, raping me all the way, until they dropped me off at a breaking house in Serbia. Do you know what a breaking house is?”

  “But that’s got nothing to do with me,” Lupescu spluttered. “How can you assume I had anything to do with that?”

  “It’s a house where they break in the new girls. That means rape, day and night, beatings, humiliation, starvation, until you toe the line.”

  “No!” said Lupescu, shaking his head so that his jowls wobbled, and half rising from his chair. “I won’t listen to this. That wasn’t me. You can’t blame that on me.”

  “I’m not saying you’re the one who did it, just that you’re the one responsible. You’re the one who made all the arrangements, who knew all the details, the one who spotted the pretty girls. I met others over the years, you know. In Pristina. In Zagreb. In Ljubljana. In Sarajevo. Girls who suffered the same fate in the same way as I did. Girls from the orphanage who were marked, chosen. One of them even saw you out on the street, watching as it happened. But you didn’t call the police. You did nothing. That was Iuliana. Do you remember her? She killed herself. Slit her wrists. Nobody ever came looking for any of us.”

  Lupescu shrank back into his chair. “What could I do?” he said. “These men were powerful gangsters. They had guns. You have no idea. You had a good life at the orphanage, didn’t you? You were well taken care of. Taught. Fed. Coddled.”