Not Dark Yet

by Peter Robinson

  “Was there anything of a romantic nature between them?”

  “Not that I ever noticed. But you never knew with Connor. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He played his cards close to his chest. Especially when it came to his private life. I couldn’t even tell you which side he played for, if you follow my drift.”

  “Is she married, this Charlotte Westlake?”

  “Dunno. Never saw a husband around, at any rate.”

  “Was she involved in any of the action?”

  “Charlie? You must be joking. A bit of posh was our Charlotte, don’t you know. Cheltenham Ladies College and so on. Didn’t even like you calling her Charlie to her face.”

  “What about Neville Roberts?”

  “What about him?”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “To tell the truth, I always found him a bit creepy. You know, sly, shifty.”

  Pot and kettle, thought Annie. “Go on.”

  “What’s to say? Connor swore by him.” Tommy scratched his nose. “I reckon he was a bit of a snob, Connor was. Liked the idea of having a butler, you know. Someone to keep the Aga burning. Though Roberts wasn’t really a butler, more of a factotum.”

  “Factotum,” Annie repeated. “Good one, that, Tommy. Your command of the English language is definitely improving.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Annie stood up. The halitosis was getting to her. “Turns out Mr. Roberts was quite the expert in audio and video surveillance. As I said, he had a nice little sideline in filming Blaydon’s married or respectable guests doing the naughty. Know anything about that?”

  “No. But I’ll tell you something for nothing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “One or two of these ‘respectable’ guests, if they found out they’d been secretly filmed, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t give tuppence for Roberts’s chances.”

  “Or Blaydon’s, if they thought he was behind it?”

  “Goes without saying.”

  “Thanks, Tommy,” Annie said. “You’ve been a great help. And if you remember anything at all about the girl in the photo . . .”

  Kerrigan’s eyes narrowed. “Why’s she so important?”

  “We’d just like to talk to her. That’s all.”

  “You think she was a witness? That she saw what happened to Connor?”

  “Like I said, we’d just like to talk to her.”

  “It’s those fucking Albanians I’d be after if I was you,” Kerrigan said as Annie turned to the door. “You ask me, that’s who did for Connor. Those fucking Albanians.”

  “MR. BANKS,” CALLED the landlady Sally Preece when Banks and Zelda entered the Relton Arms. “Nice to see you again.”

  “You, too, Sally,” said Banks. “Any tables outside?”

  “Take your pick. What would you like to drink? I’ll bring them out to you along with the lunch menus. We’ve got a lovely game pie on special today.”

  “Drink?” Banks glanced at Zelda.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

  “Right you are,” said Banks. “That’ll be two pints of Black Sheep bitter, then, Sally.”

  “Can I have some water, too, please?” Zelda asked.

  “Coming up.”

  “You seem to know her as well,” Zelda said. “What was that, a burglary?”

  “No. It’s just somewhere I come for a quiet drink sometimes on my walks.”

  Banks steered Zelda towards the door that led into the back garden, a broad and undulating stretch of grass. Fortunately, there was no bouncy castle; Sally Preece didn’t go in for family fun. They picked a table overlooking the valley, close to the low stone wall and a field full of sheep. The lawn was uneven, but they managed to get their chairs stable enough, and Banks didn’t think their glasses would slide off the wooden table.

  They didn’t. Sally Preece arrived soon after they had sat down with the beers, water, and menus on a tray and said to come back to the bar and put in the food order when they were ready.

  Banks had thought a great deal about what to say, how to approach questioning Zelda. He hadn’t come to any firm conclusions—a great deal of it had to be played by ear—but he had at least a general approach in mind, and he had already brought up the Hawkins investigation when they had sat on the wall.

  “Why do I feel so nervous?” Zelda said, fingering her menu.

  “You don’t need to,” said Banks.

  “Do you think I’m lying about something?”

  Banks paused. “Let me put it this way: I don’t think you’ve told me everything. There’s something you’re holding back. Or some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s what I want you to tell me.”

  Zelda lit a Marlboro Gold, and Banks took a long pull on his pint. It tasted especially good after the exertions of the walk. There’s nothing like a good pint when you feel you deserve it.

  Zelda tapped the menu. “What do you suggest?”

  “Depends,” said Banks. “I’m rather partial to the steak and frites, myself, but I think it’s going to be game pie today. You might want a salad or something.”

  “Don’t mistake me for Annie.” Zelda put the menu on the table. “I don’t like game, but steak and frites is fine with me.”

  Banks went and ordered. When he got back, Zelda was stubbing her half-smoked cigarette out in the green ashtray. Her beer was still untouched, but the glass of water was empty.

  “You might as well know,” Banks began, “that I already know you walked past Trevor Hawkins’s burned-out house and questioned the barman at The George and Dragon about him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Banks said. “The point is that you didn’t tell me.”

  Zelda turned sulky. “I don’t have to report to the police every move I make or conversation I have, do I? It’s not a police state yet.”

  Banks smiled. “Not yet. But I thought we were supposed to be working together. Like partners. Remember?”

  “I’m not your ‘partner,’ ” said Zelda. “That’s Annie.”

  “You know what I mean. You said you wanted to help us find Phil Keane.”

  “You told me to be careful.”

  “But you weren’t, were you?”

  “Well, I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “Is survival your only criterion of success?” Banks immediately noticed the pain in her expression. “I’m sorry. Maybe that was insensitive of me after all you’ve survived, but what I mean is, partners are supposed to share. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it was all so vague,” Zelda said. “I didn’t really find out anything that would help you. What I found only complicated the situation I was in to start with.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me about that now, and we’ll try to make sense of it all? Together.”

  Sally Preece walked across the lawn with their meals. They already had the condiments and cutlery on the table. Banks thanked her and she left. “Better eat before it goes cold,” he said.

  He immediately felt lucky that Zelda didn’t tell him he sounded just like her mother. Then he realised she probably didn’t remember her mother. Zelda sawed at her steak, head down. Banks took a few mouthfuls of pie and washed them down with beer. It was good, plenty of pheasant and rabbit, and a touch of venison.

  “Let’s go back a while,” Banks said. “Remember that dinner Annie and I had with you and Ray up at your cottage late last year? Remember when you told us you’d seen a photograph of Phil Keane with someone you recognised in connection with your work?”

  Zelda finished chewing a piece of steak. “I remember.”

  “You were going to keep an eye out for anything else of interest, but you never came up with anything.”

  “That’s right. What did you want me to do, make something up? There was nothing. Just that photograph.”
<
br />   “Of Keane with Petar Tadić?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you weren’t even going to tell me about that, were you? I heard it from Superintendent Burgess.”

  “Well, if he’s so all-knowing, why don’t you ask him?”

  “Zelda, stop being petulant. It doesn’t suit you. Talk to me.”

  Zelda pushed her half-full plate away and studied a spider spinning its web in the drystone wall beside her. “All right,” she said. “All right. I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be angry with me for pursuing it when you said I shouldn’t. OK?”

  “I’m not sure that’s the reason.”

  “What, then?”

  “I think there’s something else you’re not telling me, but I think it shocked you more than you said it did when you saw Keane and Tadić together in the photograph. It was two worlds coming together, or colliding, and one of them was yours. You didn’t want to let me in on that, did you?”

  Zelda fingered another cigarette out of her packet and lit up. “What if that’s so? What Petar Tadić and his brother did to me is not an experience I care to remember so often.”

  “But why the sudden interest in Hawkins? I didn’t ask you to spy on him. How was he connected with all this?”

  Zelda took a deep drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you. Something happened. I was going to tell you before, at Christmas, but I lost my nerve.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I thought I was on to something, and I thought you’d take it off me and go charging in like a bull in a china shop, scattering all the pieces.”

  “You don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?”

  Zelda smiled and touched his hand briefly. “I didn’t mean it that way. Just that, in my experience, when the police get fully engaged, as a force, as an institution, then they have their own rules to follow and justice isn’t always done. Remember, I grew up in the Soviet bloc.” She paused, then said, “I saw Hawkins and Keane together once and had reasons of my own for wanting to know what they were doing together.”

  “And did you find out?”

  “Not really. I’ll admit I went a lot further than you wanted me to. That’s another reason I didn’t tell you. I followed Mr. Hawkins after work on a couple of occasions. One time he went into a restaurant in Soho, and I waited in a pub across the street, where I could see the place. After a while he came out, and he was with two other people. One was this Keane, and the other was a woman I didn’t recognise. I took some photographs.”

  Banks thought he might like to see these photographs, but he didn’t want to interrupt the rhythm of their conversation by asking for them. “And then when you went to The George and Dragon, you found out that Hawkins had met Keane there, too? It was him, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Christ,” said Banks. “You found out that Hawkins was meeting with Keane, who you already knew was connected with Tadić and who had once tried to kill me. For crying out loud, why didn’t you tell me? Or someone. Hawkins could have been selling NCA information to Tadić’s gang. Or he could have been in trouble. You knew what Keane was. Annie and I told you. A killer. A pyromaniac. And you know Tadić, too, from painful experience.”

  “Yes. I was curious, that’s all. They parted company, and I followed Keane and the girl.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Just window-shopping on Oxford Street. Then they got a taxi on Regent Street and I never saw Keane again.”

  Banks just shook his head slowly. “Another drink?” he asked.

  Zelda gave him a thin smile. “Some more water, please.”

  Banks went to the bar and got himself another pint and Zelda a large glass of tap water. His head was spinning with information. What did all this mean? What might he have done if he’d known six months ago or more? But somehow, he didn’t think Zelda’s story was over.

  She was sitting as he had left her, gazing over the broad valley, smoking. The spider was still spinning its intricate web beside her. “I’ll miss this place,” she said softly.

  “You’re going somewhere?”

  “Oh, I think so, don’t you?” She sipped some ice water. Her beer was still untouched. “Thank you.”

  “With Ray?”

  As Zelda told him about her experiences with immigration and worries about the pre-settlement form, he sensed a deep sadness in her, almost a sense of defeat, as if she felt no matter what she did, what happiness she found, it was bound to be snatched away from her before long, either by sex traffickers or immigration officials. She went on to tell him about Danvers and Debs hinting that her French passport didn’t quite cut it, and that her past actions left a lot to be desired.

  “It hasn’t happened yet,” he said when she’d finished. “And if it’s of any comfort, I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere. Not if you don’t want to. Ray’s a wealthy man. He can take care of you. It’s not as if you’d be a burden on the state. You’re not poor.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden on Raymond, either.”

  Banks laughed. “I hardly think that’s possible,” he said. “Ray adores you.”

  Zelda flushed. “I’ve made money from my work, too,” she said, then paused. “I mean my art work. The jewellery and sculptures, maybe not original paintings, but some copies I have made for people. But I haven’t paid tax. I haven’t filled in the proper forms. Not ever. I just came here from Paris and started living in London, doing that pavement art thing and living in a squat with a group of other immigrants. I didn’t register or fill in any forms. Then Raymond came along and . . . You know the rest. They’ll get me if they want me. What is it they say? I’m undocumented.”

  “Is that another reason why you didn’t tell me anything? Because you’re afraid of immigration?”

  “You can’t understand this if you are not a stranger here. How it feels. It might have put me on their radar. As it happens, this Danvers and his woman have done that.”

  “No,” said Banks. “You did it yourself. They were only doing their jobs.”

  “Ah,” she said. “There you go. You’re all the same, covering each other’s bottoms.” She stubbed out her cigarette viciously. Sparks flew. “I did nothing to draw attention to myself. I just did my job, made sculptures and jewellery, and lived a quiet life with Raymond.”

  Banks couldn’t help but smile. “Calm down,” he said. “Believe it or not, I’m on your side. And it’s arses, not bottoms.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re on my side.” Zelda sulked for a moment then drank some water. “There’s more,” she said. “You might as well know it all. Do you want to hear?”

  “Of course. Go on.”

  “The girl who was with Keane.”

  “Faye Butler.”

  “My God, you know about her, too!”

  “I heard just the other day. Burgess again. She was Keane’s girlfriend back then.”

  “I’d like to meet this Burgess who knows everything.”

  “I don’t think so,” Banks said. “But he’s on your side, too, or we wouldn’t be here having this nice friendly little chat right now.”

  Zelda put her head in her hands and sighed, then took a deep breath and ran the backs of her hands over her eyes. Her fingers were long and tapered, like a musician’s.

  “Do you know what happened to her?” Banks asked.

  “She’s dead. Murdered. I read about it in the newspaper.”

  “Yes.”

  “The waitress in the restaurant knew where she worked. I went back there and asked about her. She was a regular customer. After that it was easy.”

  “You went and talked to Faye Butler at Foyles?”

  “Yes. I thought I might be able to get to Keane through her, but I hit a dead end. They had split up. She hadn’t seen him for months. She didn’t know where he lived. He was going by the name of Hugh Foley. I would have told you then, honest, if I had been able to find him for y
ou.”

  “And that was it?”

  “That was it. I know I was going against what you told me, but I thought that if I could locate Keane for you it would be good for us all. I would find the Tadićs and others like them and just maybe you would be able to arrest them. Maybe even Annie would start to like me, too.”

  “Annie doesn’t dislike you,” he said. “She’s jealous, that’s all, and protective of her father. Forgive the amateur psychology, but her mother died when she was very young, and she’s felt responsible for Ray ever since.”

  “Must have been quite a life,” Zelda said with a smile. “Feeling responsible for Raymond.”

  Banks laughed. “I should imagine it took a lot out of her. But things will improve. Believe me. She’ll accept you in time.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I do.”

  Banks finished his drink and they left with a passing goodbye to Sally Preece. They walked back to Gratly mostly in silence, with heavy steps, each lost in thought, and as he gazed on the rolling hills, drystone walls, grazing sheep, and flimsy white clouds snaking across a clear blue sky, Banks had the strangest fleeting feeling that they were leaving some sort of paradise behind and danger lay ahead. He shivered despite the heat of the sun.

  6

  IT WAS EARLY THAT MONDAY EVENING, AND BANKS WAS pottering about in his garden out back to a soundtrack of Schubert lieder sung by Anna Lucia Richter when he heard a car pull up in front. Curious, he walked through the house and opened the door to find Ray Cabbot standing there, hands on hips.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” were Ray’s first words.

  Banks gestured him inside and shut the door. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You know damn well what I mean,” said Ray, following him along the corridor to the back door. “You and Zelda. I might be an old hippie, but I can still knock you into the middle of next week.” He stood in the conservatory with his fists clenched.

  “Calm down, Ray. Come on outside and calm down. Tell me what’s up.”

  “Zelda is what’s up. As if you didn’t know. She’s upset. Ever since she came back from her talk with you this afternoon she’s been in a right state. What the fuck did you say to her?”