Cold is the Grave

by Peter Robinson

‘Not if you want me to give you Louisa’s address, we’re not. I’ve got to satisfy myself you’re not a pervert, not some creep, haven’t I? And don’t come the age bit. She could coax a ninety-year-old bishop out of his cassock, could Louisa.’

  ‘All I can do is repeat what I’ve already told you. There was nothing like that. I’ve got a daughter her age, myself.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  Surprised, Banks answered, ‘Tracy.’

  Ruth evaluated him some more. ‘You don’t look old enough.’

  ‘Want to see my birth certificate?’

  ‘No, that’s not necessary. Besides, I don’t suppose you actually carry it around with you, do you?’

  ‘It was a . . . never mind,’ said Banks, feeling he had had just about as much of Ruth Walker and her sharp edges as he could take. No wonder Emily had run off with Craig Newton at the first opportunity.

  Ruth got up and walked to the window. ‘Would you believe that sad pillock over there?’ she said a few moments later, almost muttering to herself. ‘He works security, on the night shift. Hasn’t a clue the bloke from number fifty-three is shagging the arse off his wife every night. Dirty bastard. Maybe I should tell him?’

  Before Banks could make any comment, Ruth turned sharply, arms folded, a smug smile on her face. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you where they live. But you’re wasting your time. She’s had it with the lot of you. She won’t listen to a word you’ve got to say.’

  ‘It’s worth a try. At least I’ll find out whether she’s all right, what she’s up to.’

  Ruth gave him a pitying look. ‘Maybe you will,’ she said. ‘And maybe you won’t.’

  Shortly after six o’clock that evening, Banks got off the tube at Warwick Avenue and walked towards the address Ruth had given him. Had it been a lovely summer evening, he might have walked down the steps, lingered by the canal and admired the brightly coloured houseboats. But it had turned dark by late afternoon, as usual, and it was a chilly evening with the smell of rain in the wind.

  The address turned out to be a villa-style building, square and detached within a high enclosing wall. In the wall stood an iron gate. A locked gate.

  Banks could have kicked himself for not expecting something like this. If Louisa’s boyfriend was the type to go around with minders, he was also the type to live in a bloody fortress. Getting to see Emily Riddle wouldn’t be quite so easy as knocking on the door or ringing the bell.

  At the front, two of the downstairs windows and one upstairs were lit behind dark curtains, and a light shone over the front door. Banks tried to think of the best approach. He could simply call through on the intercom and announce himself, see if that gained him admission. Alternatively, he could climb the gate and go and knock on the door. Then what? Rescue the damsel in distress? Climb to the upstairs window on her hair? Flee with her over his shoulder? As far as he knew, though, Emily Riddle wasn’t in distress, nor was she held captive in a tower. In fact, she might well be having the time of her life.

  He stood in front of the gate and stared through the bars, cheeks so close he could feel the cold from the iron. There was nothing else for it, really; he would have to use the intercom and just hope he could gain admittance. He obviously couldn’t pass himself off as Emily’s father this time, but if he said he came with an important message from her family, that ought to get him inside. It might just work.

  Before he could press the buzzer, he felt a strong hand grasp the back of his neck and push his face towards the bars, so the cold iron chafed against his cheeks. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ the voice asked him.

  Banks’s first impulse was to kick back hard at the man’s shins with his heel, or tread down sharply on his instep, then slip free, swivel around and lash out. But he had to hold himself in check, remember why he was here, who he was supposed to be. If he beat up his assailant, where would that get him? Nowhere, most likely. On the other hand, maybe this was his best way in.

  ‘I’m looking for Louisa,’ he said.

  The grip loosened. Banks turned and found himself facing a man in a tight-fitting suit who looked as if he might have been one of Mike Tyson’s sparring partners. Probably just as well he hadn’t tried to fight back, he thought.

  ‘Louisa? What do you want with Louisa?’ the man said.

  ‘I want to talk to her, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Her father sent me.’

  ‘Fuck a duck,’ said the minder.

  ‘I was going to ring the bell,’ Banks went on. ‘I was just looking to see if there were any lights on, if there was anyone home.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you’d better come with me, mate,’ the minder said, which was exactly what Banks had hoped for. ‘We’ll see what Mr Clough has to say about that.’

  The minder slipped a credit-card-style key into the mechanism at the side of the intercom, punched in a seven-digit number which Banks was amazed he had the brains to remember, and the gate slid open on oiled hinges. The minder was holding Banks by the arm now, but only hard enough to break a few small bones, as he led him down the short path to the front door which he opened with a simple Yale key. Sometimes security, like beauty, is only skin deep.

  They stood in a bright corridor, which ran all the way through to a gleaming modern kitchen at the back of the house. Several doors led off the corridor, all closed, and immediately to their right, a thickly carpeted staircase led to the upper levels. It was a hell of a lot fancier than Ruth’s flat, Banks thought, and grander than anything Craig Newton could afford, too. Always landed on her feet. The Riddles said they had given Emily all the advantages that money could afford – the horse, piano lessons, holidays, expensive schooling – and they had certainly raised a high-maintenance daughter by the looks of this place.

  Muffled music came from one of the rooms. A pop song Banks didn’t recognize. As soon as the front door shut behind them, the minder called out, ‘Boss?’

  One of the doors opened and a tall man walked out. He wasn’t fat, or even overly muscular like the minder, but he certainly looked as if he lifted a few weights at the gym once or twice a week. As Craig Newton had pointed out, his face was all angles, as if it had been carved from stone, and he was handsome, if you liked that sort of thing, rather like a younger Nick Nolte.

  He was wearing a cream Armani suit over a red T-shirt, had a deep suntan and a grey ponytail about six inches long hanging over his back collar. Around his neck he wore a thick gold chain, which matched the one on his wrist and the chunky signet ring over the hairy knuckle on his right hand. Banks pegged him at early to mid-forties, which wasn’t much younger than Jimmy Riddle. Or Banks himself, for that matter.

  The hard glint in his eyes and the cocky confidence with which he moved showed that he was someone to watch out for. Banks had seen that look before in the eyes of hardened criminals, people to whom the world and its contents are there for the taking, and for whom any impediments are simply to be brushed aside as easily as dandruff off the collar.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, eyes on Banks.

  ‘Found him lurking by the gate, boss. Just standing there. Says he wants to see Louisa.’

  Barry Clough raised an eyebrow, but the hardness in his eyes didn’t ease a jot. ‘Does he now? What might you be wanting with Louisa, little man?’

  ‘Her father asked me to look for her,’ Banks said. ‘He wants me to deliver a message.’

  ‘Private investigator?’

  ‘Just a friend of the family.’

  Clough studied Banks closely for what seemed like minutes, then a glint of humour flashed into his eyes the way a shark flashes through the water. ‘No problem,’ he said, ushering Banks into the room. ‘A girl should stay in touch with her family, I always say, though I can’t say as she’s ever offered to take me home to meet Mummy and Daddy yet. I don’t even know where they live.’

  Banks sa
id nothing. The minder shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘You’re lucky to find us in,’ said Clough. ‘Louisa and I just got back from Florida a couple of days ago. Can’t stand the bloody weather here in winter. We take off as often as we can. I’ll call her down for you. In the meantime, take a load off. Drink?’

  ‘No, thanks. I won’t take long.’

  Clough looked at his watch. An expensive one. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Then we’ve got a Bonfire Night party to go to. Sure you won’t have that drink?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Banks sat down as Clough left the room. He heard muffled footsteps on the staircase. The minder had disappeared into the kitchen. The room Banks found himself in had that old-fashioned wainscoted look he wouldn’t have expected judging by what he had seen of the bright hall and the modern kitchen at the back. Paintings hung on the walls, mostly English landscapes. A couple of them looked old and genuine. Not Constables or anything, but they probably cost a bob or two. On one wall stood a locked, barred glass case full of guns. Deactivated collector’s models, Banks guessed. Nobody would be stupid enough to put real guns on display like that.

  Logs crackled and spat out sparks from the large stone hearth. The music was coming from an expensive stereo set up at the far end of the room. Now he was closer to the source, Banks realized he did recognize it; it was an old Joy Division album. ‘Heart and Soul’ was playing.

  He heard voices upstairs, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. At one point, a woman’s voice rose almost to the point where he could hear the defiance in her tone, then, at a barked order from the man, it stopped. A few seconds later, the door opened and in she walked. He hadn’t heard her come down the stairs, nor did he hear her walk across the Turkish carpet.

  Craig Newton was right. Talk about a mix of innocence and experience. She could have been sixteen, which she was, but she could have been twenty-six just as easily, and in some ways she reminded Banks even more of her mother in the flesh than in the photographs he had seen: blue eyes, cherry lips. What he hadn’t been able to tell from those photos, though, was that she had a smattering of freckles across her small nose and high cheekbones, and that her eyes were a much paler blue than Rosalind’s. The Florida sun didn’t seem to have done much for her skin, which was as pale as her mother’s. Perhaps she had stayed indoors or walked around under a parasol like a Southern belle.

  Rosalind was a little shorter and fuller figured than her daughter, and of course her hairstyle was different. Emily had a ragged fringe, and her fine natural-blonde hair fell straight to her shoulders and brushed against them as she moved. Tall and long-legged, she had the anorexic, thoroughbred look of a professional model. Heroin chic. She was wearing denim Capris that came halfway up her calves, and a loose cable-knit sweater. She walked barefoot, he noticed, showing off her shapely ankles and slim feet, the toenails painted crimson. For some reason, Coleridge’s line from ‘Christabel’ flashed through Banks’s mind: ‘ . . . her blue-veined feet unsandalled were’. It had always seemed an improbably erotic image to him, ever since he first came across the poem at school, and now he knew why.

  Though Emily walked with style and self-possession, there was a list to her progress, and when he looked closely, Banks noticed a few tiny grains of white powder in the soft indentation between her nose and her upper lip. Even as he looked, her pointed pink tongue slipped out of her mouth and swept it away. She smiled at him. Her eyes were slightly unfocused and the pupils dilated, little random chips of light dancing in them like feldspar catching the sun.

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ she said, stretching out her hand to him. It came at the end of an impossibly long arm. Banks stood up and shook. Her cool, soft fingers grasped his loosely for a second, then disengaged. He introduced himself. Emily sat in an armchair by the fire, legs curled under her, and toyed with a loose thread at the end of one sleeve.

  ‘So you’re Banks?’ she said. ‘I’ve heard of you. Detective Chief Inspector Banks. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re right. All good, I hope?’

  She smiled. ‘Intriguing, at least.’ Then her expression turned to one of boredom. ‘What does Daddy want after all this time? Oh, Christ, what is this dreadfully dull music? Sometimes Barry plays the most depressing things.’

  ‘Joy Division,’ said Banks. ‘He committed suicide. The lead singer.’

  ‘I’m not bloody surprised. I’d commit suicide if I sounded like him.’ She got up, shut off the CD and replaced it with Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Alanis sang about all she really wanted. She didn’t sound a lot more cheerful than Joy Division, Banks thought, but the music was more upbeat, more modern. ‘He’s still an old punk at heart, is Barry. Did you know he used to be a roadie for a punk band?’

  ‘What does he do now?’ Banks asked casually.

  ‘He’s a businessman. Bit of this, bit of that. You know the sort of thing.’ She laughed. It sounded like a crystal glass shattering. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t really know what he does. He’s away a lot. He doesn’t talk about it much.’ She put a finger to her lips. ‘It’s all terribly hush-hush.’

  I’ll bet it is, thought Banks. As she had been speaking, he found himself trying to place her accent. He couldn’t. Riddle had probably moved counties more times than he’d had hot dinners to make chief constable by his mid-forties, so Emily had ended up with a kind of characterless, nowhere accent, not especially posh, but certainly without any of the rough edges a regional bias gives. Banks knew that his own accent was hard to place too, as he had grown up in Peterborough, lived in London for more than twenty years and in North Yorkshire for about seven.

  As Emily talked now, she walked around the room touching objects, occasionally picking up an ornament, such as a heavy glass paperweight with a rose design trapped inside, and putting it back, or moving it somewhere else. She ended up standing by the fireplace, elbow leaning on the mantelpiece, fist to her cheek, one hip cocked. ‘Did you tell me what you’d come for?’ she asked. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You haven’t given me a chance yet.’

  She put her hand to her mouth and stifled a giggle. ‘Ooh, I’m sorry. That’s me, that is. Talk, talk, talk.’

  Banks saw an ashtray on the table with a couple of butts crushed out in it. He reached for his cigarettes, offered Emily one, which she took, and lit one for himself. Then he leaned forward a little in his armchair and said, ‘I was talking to your father a couple of days ago, Emily. He’s worried about you. He wants you to get in touch with him.’

  ‘My name’s Louisa. And I’m not going home.’

  ‘Nobody said you were. But it wouldn’t do you any harm to get in touch with him and let him know how you’re doing, where you are, would it?’

  ‘He’d only get angry.’ She pouted, then moved away from the fireplace. ‘How did you find me? I didn’t tell anyone where I’m from. I didn’t even use my real name.’

  ‘I know,’ said Banks. ‘But, really: Louisa Gamine. You’re a clever girl, you’ve had an expensive education. It took me a little while to work it out, but I got there in the end. Gamine means a girl with mischievous charm and is an anagram of enigma, which means puzzle, or, this case, Riddle. Your father said you were very good with language.’

  She clapped her hands together. ‘Clever man. You got it. What a brilliant detective. But that still doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Your little brother saw your photo on the Internet.’

  Emily’s jaw dropped and she fell back onto the chair. It was hard to tell, but Banks thought her reaction was genuine. ‘Ben? Ben saw that?’

  Banks nodded.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ She flicked her half-smoked cigarette into the fire. ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen.’

  ‘I don’t imagine it was.’

  ‘And he told Mum?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She’d never have told Dad. Not in a million years. She knows what he�
�s like as well as I do.’

  ‘I don’t know how he found out,’ said Banks, ‘but he did.’

  Emily laughed. ‘I’d love to have seen his face.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘And he sent you to look for me?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why did he send me?’

  ‘Well, I’m damn sure he wouldn’t bother coming himself, but why you? He doesn’t even like you.’

  ‘But he knows I’m good at my job.’

  ‘Let me guess. He’s promised you he’ll leave you alone if you do as he asks? Don’t trust him.’

  ‘I can’t honestly say as I do, but I’ve got . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Tell me what you were going to say.’

  ‘No.’ Banks didn’t want to tell her about Tracy, that in an odd sort of way he was doing this for her, making up for his own absences and shortcomings as a father.

  Emily sulked for a few moments, then she stood up again and paced in front of him, counting off imaginary points on her fingers. ‘Let me see . . . the pictures took you to GlamourPuss . . . right? That took you to Craig . . .? But he doesn’t know where I am. I told . . . Ah, Ruth! Ruth told you?’

  Banks said nothing.

  ‘Well, she would. She’s a jealous cow. She’d just love to cause trouble for me, the ugly bitch, just because I’ve met someone like Barry and she’s still stuck in her poky little flat in Kennington. Do you know . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Never mind.’

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  Emily smiled. ‘No. Now it’s my turn to tease. I’m not telling you.’ Before Banks could frame a response, she stopped pacing and knelt in front of him, looking up into his face with her sparkling blue eyes. ‘So you saw them, too, did you? The photos.’

  Banks swallowed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you like them? Did they excite you?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Liar.’ She jumped up again, a smile of triumph on her face. ‘Besides, they were just a joke. A laugh. Daddy’s got nothing to worry about from them. It’s not as if I’ve taken up a career in the porno business or anything.’