Strange Affair

by Peter Robinson

  Annie went back downstairs and out to the lane. As she walked away, she turned once more and looked back. Someone had broken into the cottage, and recently. She assumed the builders had locked up when they left on Friday, though she would have to check with them to be certain. It could have been thieves, of course, but that seemed too much of a coincidence. Annie realized that she would have to bring in Stefan Nowak and the SOCOs to see if they could establish any links between Jennifer Clewes’s car and Banks’s cottage.

  If it was the same person who had killed Jennifer Clewes, Annie reasoned, then he must have got hold of Banks’s address by some other means, because Jennifer Clewes had it in the back pocket of her jeans. Perhaps he already knew where Banks lived and, when he had guessed where she was going, and when they had got to a desolate, isolated stretch of road, he had shot Jennifer and then carried on to Banks’s cottage. To do what? Kill him, too? It would certainly make more sense to handle them one at a time.

  But Banks hadn’t been there; he’d been about a quarter of a mile away, in his temporary flat. Had Banks any idea of what was going on? Was that why he had taken off so early in the morning? That was the big question, Annie realized, heading back up the hill to her car. How much did Banks know and how safe was he now? And she knew that she probably wouldn’t find out the answer to either question until she found the man himself.

  Corinne lived in the first-floor flat of a four-story building overlooking the narrow street, not more than fifty yards away from Earl’s Court Road. She looked different from the young girl Banks had met at his parents’, he thought as she greeted him at the door and asked him in. Her hair was longer, for a start, almost down to her shoulders, and it was blond with dark roots. The little stud was gone from below her lip, leaving a small flaw in her clear skin, and she looked closer to thirty than to twenty. She also seemed more self-possessed, more mature than Banks remembered her.

  “Come into the back,” she said. “That’s where the office is.” An electric fan stood on the table by the open window, slowly turning through about ninety degrees every few seconds, sending out waves of lukewarm air. It was better than nothing.

  “Everyone seems to work at home these days,” Banks said, sitting in a winged armchair. Corinne sat at an angle to him, cross-legged, the way some women seem to prefer, and he guessed that this was the space she used to discuss business when clients called at the house. A jug of water thick with ice cubes sat on the table between them, along with two tumblers. Corinne managed to stretch her upper body forward and pour them both a glass while remaining cross-legged. Quite a feat, Banks thought, considering he couldn’t even sit in that position comfortably in the first place. But Corinne seemed to move with a dancer’s grace and economy that spoke of Pilates and yoga.

  “They say tea’s refreshing in hot weather,” she said, “but the thought of drinking anything hot doesn’t have much appeal at the moment.”

  “This is fine,” said Banks. “Thank you.”

  Corinne was wearing a plain orange T-shirt tucked into her jeans, and she wore a Celtic cross on a silver chain around her neck. She was barefoot, Banks noticed, and her toenails were unpainted. Occasionally, as she talked or listened, her heart-shaped face would tilt to one side, she would bite her lower lip and her fingers would stray to the cross. Sunlight gilded the leaves outside the window and their shadows danced pavanes over the pale blue walls, stirred by the lightest of breezes.

  “Well,” she said, “I must say you had me all intrigued on the telephone. I’m sorry if I—”

  “My fault entirely. I wasn’t being clear. I hope you don’t take me for the kind of man who goes chasing his brother’s fiancée?”

  She gave a brief, tight little smile that indicated to Banks that perhaps all was not as it should be in the fiancée department, but he let it go for the time being. She would get to it in her own time, if she wanted.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “it’s Roy I want to talk to you about.”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Banks explained about the phone call, Roy’s absence and that the door had been left unlocked.

  “That’s not like him,” she said, frowning. “None of it is. I can see why you’d be worried. Anyway, to answer your question, no, I don’t know where he is. Do you think you should go to the police? I mean, I know you are the police, but…”

  “I know what you mean,” said Banks. “No, I don’t think so. Not yet, at any rate. I don’t think they’d be very interested. Roy’s a grown-up. There could still be a simple explanation. Do you know any of his friends?”

  “Not really. There was another couple we used to go out with occasionally, Rupert and Natalie, but I don’t think Roy has a lot of close friends.”

  Banks didn’t miss the “used to,” but he let it go for the moment. There was a Rupert in Roy’s mobile phone book. Banks would ring him eventually, along with the rest of the names. “Do you know a burly man with curly gray or fair hair?” he asked. “He drives a big, light-colored car, an expensive model?”

  Corinne thought for a moment, then she said, “No. Sorry. Rupert drives a slate-gray Beemer and Natalie’s got a little Beetle runaround.” She turned up her nose. “A yellow one.”

  “When did you last see Roy?”

  “A week last Thursday.” She fingered the cross. “Look, I might as well tell you, things haven’t been going all that well for us lately.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Any particular reason?”

  “I think he’s been seeing someone else.” She gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t matter, really. I mean, it’s not as if it was serious. We’ve only been going out about a year. We’re not living together or anything.”

  “But I thought you were supposed to be engaged?”

  “I think that was part of the problem, really. I mean, I’d brought it up, and Roy’s impulsive. Neither of us is ready for marriage yet. We called it off, went back to the way we were. That was when the trouble started. I don’t suppose you can take a big step back like that and expect a relationship to continue the way it was, can you?”

  So the engagement had been postponed, or demoted to going steady, and the relationship had cooled, like Banks and Michelle’s. Little brother up to his usual tricks. At least Corinne was to be spared the indignity of being wife number four. “Even so,” Banks said, “it must still hurt. I’m sorry. Have you any idea who he’s seeing?”

  “No. I don’t even know if I’m right for sure. It’s just a feeling. You know, little things.”

  Well, Banks thought, there were a few possible names and numbers in Roy’s mobile phone book and call list. “How recently?” he asked.

  “Just these past few weeks.”

  “And before that?”

  “Things were fine. At least I thought they were.”

  “Was there anything bothering him when you saw him last?”

  “Nothing that I could see. He seemed much the same as ever. Except…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, as I said, little things, things a woman notices. Forgetfulness, distance, distraction. That wasn’t like him.”

  “But he wasn’t depressed or worried about anything?”

  “Not that you’d know. I just thought he had someone else on his mind and he’d rather be with her.”

  “What about drugs?” Banks asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Come off it. Don’t tell me you and Roy never snorted a line, smoked a spliff.”

  “So what if we did?”

  “Apart from its being illegal, which we’ll ignore for the moment, when you get into the drug world you get to meet some nasty people. Did Roy owe his dealer money, for example?”

  “Look, it wasn’t much. Just recreational. A gram on the weekends, that sort of thing. Nothing more than he can easily afford.”

  “All right,” said Banks. “How much do you know about h
is business dealings?”

  “A fair bit.”

  “You’re his accountant, right?”

  “Roy takes care of his own books.”

  “Oh. I thought that was how you met?”

  “Well, yes,” said Corinne. “He got audited and a friend recommended me to him.” She twirled her Celtic cross. “Most of my clients are in the entertainment business—writers, musicians, artists—nobody really big-league, but a few decent, steady earners. Roy was a bit different, to say the least, but I needed the money. And before you ask, everything was aboveboard.” She narrowed her eyes. “Roy once told me he was sure you thought he was a crook.”

  “I don’t think he’s a crook,” Banks said, not being entirely truthful. “I think maybe he stretches the law a bit, finds the odd loophole, that’s all. Plenty of businessmen do. What I’m wondering, though, is whether he had any reason to run off. Was his business in trouble? Had he lost a lot of money, made some errors in judgment?”

  “No. Roy’s books were good enough for me and the tax man.”

  “Look, I’ve seen his house,” said Banks. “The Porsche, the plasma TV, the gadgets. Roy obviously makes quite a lot of money somehow. You said he makes it legitimately. Have you any idea how?”

  “He’s a financier. He still plays the stock market to some extent, but mostly he finances business ventures.”

  “What kinds?”

  “All kinds. Lately he’s been specializing in technology and private health care.”

  “Here?”

  “All over the place. Sometimes he gets involved in French or German operations. He has connections in Brussels, the EU, and in Zurich and Geneva. He also spends a lot of time and energy in America. He loves New York. Roy’s no fool. He knows better than to put all his eggs in one basket. That’s one reason he’s been so successful.” She paused. “You don’t know your brother at all, do you?” Before Banks could answer, she went on, “He’s a remarkable man in many ways, a financier who can quote Kierkegaard or Schopenhauer at dinner. But he never forgets where he came from. The crushing poverty. He dragged himself out of it, made something of himself, and it’s what drives him. He never wants to end up like that again.”

  What kind of a line had Roy been spinning Corinne? Banks wondered. Their childhood hadn’t been that bad. Admittedly, she had only seen the relatively decent house his parents lived in now, and not the back-to-back terrace behind the brickworks where they had lived until Banks was eleven and Roy six. But even then, “crushing poverty” was pushing it a bit. They had always been fed and clothed and never lacked for love. Banks’s father had always been in work until the eighties. What did it matter that the toilet had been outside, down the street, and the whole family had had to share a tin bathtub that they filled with kettles of water boiled on the gas cooker? They were no different from thousands of other working-class families in the fifties and sixties.

  “It’s true we were never very close,” Banks admitted, slapping a fly from the knee of his trousers. “What can I say? It just happens that way sometimes. We haven’t got that much in common.”

  “Oh, I know all about that,” said Corinne. “I can’t stand my younger sister. She’s a snob and a misery-guts.”

  “I don’t hate Roy. I just don’t know him very well, and I’m worried he’s in some sort of trouble.” Banks remembered the CD he had found in Roy’s Blue Lamps jewel case and slipped it out of his pocket. “I found this at Roy’s,” he said. “I wonder if you could help me with it?”

  “Of course.”

  It didn’t take Corinne long to put the CD in her computer and bring up the list of contents. The icons were JPEGs: 1232 of them in all. Some were merely numbered, others had names like Natasha, Kiki and Kayla. Corinne opened her image viewer and set a slide show going.

  Banks was looking over her shoulder, hand resting on the back of the chair, when the images started coming up on the screen. The first showed a naked woman with a man’s erect penis in her mouth, sperm dribbling down her chin, a stoned look in her eyes; the next showed the same man entering the woman from behind, an obviously feigned look of ecstasy on her face. After that came several photos of an extremely attractive blond teenager in various stages of undress and revealing positions.

  That was enough.

  Corinne abruptly ended the slide show and ejected the disk. “I suppose that just goes to show that Roy isn’t much different from most men, when you get right down to it,” she said, moving away from the computer. Banks could see that her face was red. She handed the disk back to him. “Maybe you’d like to keep this?”

  “Is that all that’s on it?” he asked.

  “Short of looking at all 1,232 files to make sure, I’d say that’s a pretty good guess. Of course, you’re welcome to check them all out, but not here, if you don’t mind. I find that sort of thing a bit demeaning. Not to mention insulting.”

  Well, Banks thought, it had been worth a try. Though he had nothing at all against images of naked women, either alone or with partners, Banks had seen enough of the sordid side of the porn business to know how bad it could get, especially if children were involved. From what he had seen, though, Roy’s collection looked ordinary, the girls of age, if a little on the young side. In a way, it made him feel a bit closer to Roy to find out that he was human after all, the dirty devil. If only their mother knew. But then his policeman’s mind kicked in. If Roy had taken these images himself, on a digital camera, say, rather than simply downloaded them from the Internet, then he could be involved in a sleazy business.

  “Did Roy have anything to do with Internet porn?” he asked Corinne, forgetting that she might not be the best person to ask.

  “Always ready to think the worst of him, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I can’t see why you’re always so quick to leap to his defense after what he’s done to you.”

  Corinne flushed with anger.

  “Believe it or not, I’m trying to help,” said Banks.

  “Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.” She looked toward the CD and made a face. “Anyway, there’s your evidence, for what it’s worth.”

  Banks took the CD. At some point he would examine it more closely, study each of the 1232 images, just to make sure. Hotel rooms and outdoor locations had been identified from background features in Internet porn. One victim of child pornography in America had been identified from a blurred-out school logo on her T-shirt. If Roy had taken any of these pictures, there was a chance of finding out where he had taken them, and who the models were, should it come to that. But not here, not now.

  He had just about run out of questions to ask Corinne, and he could see that she had become edgy, anxious for him to leave. Whether it was the effect of the images on the CD or something else, he definitely felt that he had outstayed his welcome. But he remembered the penlike object he had found in Roy’s office drawer. Maybe Corinne knew what it was. He took it out of his shirt pocket and held it out to her. “Any idea what this is?”

  Corinne took the object from Banks, eyed it closely and removed the cap. “It’s a portable mini-USB drive. For storing information.”

  “Like that CD?”

  “Same idea, but not quite as much space. This one’s only got 256 megs, not 700. Handy, though. You can clip it in your inside pocket just like a pen.”

  “Can we see what’s on it?”

  Corinne clearly wasn’t comfortable delving into Roy’s private affairs, especially after what she had just seen on the CD. Banks had been at his job for so long that he had got used to digging deep into a person’s private life. As far as the police were concerned, there are no secrets, especially in a murder investigation. He often didn’t like what he found, but he’d developed a tolerance for people’s little quirks over the years.

  Most people, when you get past their facade of normality, have some sort of guilty secret, something they’ve tried to keep from the rest of the world, and Banks had come across most of them in his time, from t
he harmless hoarders of newspapers and magazines, whose homes were like labyrinths of tottering columns of print, to the secret cross-dressers and lonely fetishists. Of course, they were all grief- and horror-stricken, humiliated that someone had found out their little secrets, but to Banks it was nothing special.

  Corinne’s reaction made him realize for the first time in a while that what he did was unnatural and invasive. In the short time he had been with her, he had as good as implied that her ex-fiancé, his brother, was involved in drugs, illicit sex and fraud. All in a day’s work for him, perhaps, but not for a basically nice person like Corinne. Had the job made him insensitive? Banks thought of Penny Cartwright again, and her violent reaction to his suggestion of dinner last night. Was it something to do with what he did for a living, the way he looked at the world, at people? She was a free spirit, after all, so did that make him the enemy?

  Corinne plugged the USB drive into her computer. “Here we go,” she said, and Banks looked over her shoulder at the monitor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Shortly after half past six that Saturday evening, Annie walked out of the Oval tube station, where she’d been crammed in an overheated carriage with about five million people on their way home from shopping or visiting friends and relatives, and headed down Camberwell New Road, past the park on the corner. Young lads with shaved heads and bare upper bodies lounged on the grass drinking cans of lager and flexing their tattoos, leering at every attractive woman who passed by. A group of younger kids had set up makeshift goals with their discarded T-shirts and were playing football. Just watching them made Annie sweat.

  Then she saw Phil.

  He was on the other side of the street, walking a dog, some sort of little terrier on a lead. But it was Phil, she was sure of it.