Bad Boy

18

BANKS COULD HEAR THE STRAINS OF THE ADAGIO from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as Françoise, the au pair, led him across The Farmer’s cavernous entrance hall toward the living room. Whoever was playing hit a wrong note, then hesitated and stumbled before picking up the melody again.

“The family is watching television,” Françoise explained in precise, unaccented English. “And Miss Eloise is practicing for the piano examinations in the next week.” She opened the door and announced Banks and Winsome formally. The uniformed officers were awaiting instructions in their cars outside.

Banks had never seen Fanthorpe’s wife before. She was a beautiful woman a good few years younger than her husband, with a figure sculpted by daily workouts, long silky brown hair and a complexion that can only be achieved either through the blessings of nature or the right combination of chemical emollients. She gave her husband a puzzled look. The little girl with the long ponytail sitting next to her didn’t take her eyes from Strictly Come Dancing on the forty-two-inch TV screen.

“I see I’ve interrupted a family tradition,” said Banks.

Fanthorpe got to his feet. “What do you want this time, Banks? I’ve had just about enough of this. This is too much. I’m going to ring my solicitor.”

“Maybe you can ask him to meet you at Western Area Headquarters,” Banks said. “We’ve got a custody suite waiting for you there.”

The woman was on her feet too, now, swiftly uncurled like a cat. “What is this, George?” she asked, with a slight Eastern European accent. “Who are these people? What are they doing in my house? What’s going on?”

The Farmer put the phone down and went to rest his hands on his wife’s shoulders. “It’s all right, Zenovia. Just calm down, love. I’ll handle this.” He strode toward the door and turned to Banks. “Come on. We’ll go into the den.”

“If you like,” said Banks, following him across the hall into the room where they had talked the previous week.

“This is an outrage,” said Fanthorpe, pouring himself a large whiskey and not even bothering to offer Banks one this time. He might actually have taken it. “It’s police harassment. It’s persecution. It’s-”

“All right, all right, Farmer. I get the message,” said Banks. “Let’s just all sit down and have a nice quiet little chat before I bring the lads in.”

“Lads?”

“The search team.” Banks took some papers from his pocket. “I have here a search warrant signed by a local magistrate empowering us to conduct a full and thorough search of your premises.”

“Search my house?” Fanthorpe spluttered. “You can’t do that! You can’t just-”

“We can and we will. But first things first. I’d like to let you know just how deep the shit is that you’re in.”

“What are you talking about?” Fanthorpe flopped into his leather armchair. He slopped a little whiskey on the front of his cable-knit jumper as he did so, and dabbed at it with a handkerchief he took from the pocket of his brown cords.

Winsome sat opposite him and took out her notebook and pen. “If you think I’m going to say anything incriminating,” said Fanthorpe, pointing his finger at her, “then you’ve got another think coming.”

“It always pays to be prepared, sir,” said Winsome. “Don’t you find?”

“What do you know about the shooting of Marlon Kincaid on the fifth November, 2004?” Banks asked.

“Marlon Kincaid? Do I look like someone who’d know a person called Marlon Kincaid?”

“Why not? He was a student at Leeds Polytechnic University. Well, technically, he’d just finished his studies but he was still hanging around the student pubs in the area, the way some people do, selling drugs. Couldn’t seem to let go of the old college life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Marlon Kincaid. Art student. His dad was a big fan of Marlon Brando, apparently, which is how he got his name. Marlon was building quite the little business for himself, selling coke and various other illegal substances to the Leeds student population at parties and in the pubs and clubs.”

“So?”

“He had his own suppliers, and you weren’t one of them.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You couldn’t allow that, could you? You were well on your way to being the local drug kingpin, and along comes some skinny, long-haired upstart and cuts right into your market. Not only that, but he makes fun of you and it gets back to you. What did you do first? Warn him? Send Ciaran and Darren to administer a beating, perhaps?”

“This is rubbish.”

“But you had another weapon waiting in the wings, didn’t you? A young lad called Jaffar McCready who was fast proving himself indispensable. And dangerous. He needed to prove himself, and you needed him to do it. That one final act of outrageous loyalty that binds forever. You gave him a gun. You loaded it for him. Perhaps you even showed him how to fire it. And Jaffar McCready shot Marlon Kincaid. What he didn’t know was that he’d been seen. A most unreliable witness, for sure, especially at the time, but he’s scrubbed up quite nicely since then, soon to be a member of the ministry, actually, and his memory seems a lot clearer now, especially given everything we’ve found out since.”

“What does any of this have to do with me?”

“What you didn’t know was that, for reasons of his own, McCready kept the gun. A trophy. A souvenir. Call it what you will. You no doubt told him to get rid of it at the time, and you probably thought he had. After all, why would he want to keep an incriminating gun around? Maybe he was just sentimental. His first kill. Or perhaps he liked the idea of having something on you? Whatever the reason, he kept the gun. Then one night he had a row with his girlfriend. To spite him, to piss him off, she took the gun and ran off, went to stay with her parents in Eastvale. Her mother found it. Maybe she just was cleaning up her daughter’s room, the way mothers do, or maybe she was curious, wanted to see if she could find anything that would explain her daughter’s unusual silences, her odd behavior, her strange cast of mind since she’d come home. Either way, she found the gun. And that’s when things started to go wrong. But that doesn’t really matter here and now. What matters is that we found a clear set of fingerprints on the magazine inside the gun. Those fingerprints are yours. Can you explain how they got there?”

Fanthorpe frowned and sipped his whiskey. “I don’t have to. You can talk to my solicitor about it.”

“I will. But there’s really only one way they could have got there, isn’t there? You handled the magazine at some time.”

“So what? You didn’t find any of my prints on the outside of the gun, did you? On the trigger guard?”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, very clever, Banks. Is this where I say, ‘Because I wiped them off,’ then put my hand to my mouth and admonish myself for making such a gaffe? It’s not going to happen. The fact that you found my fingerprints on the magazine inside a gun proves nothing except that at one time I touched that magazine. It certainly doesn’t prove that I ever fired the gun. I don’t need a solicitor to prove that. You’re fishing.”

“Do you often go around handling magazines for prohibited weapons?”

“I can’t say as I ever remember doing such a thing. There are any number of ways it could have happened. Perhaps a vet used it to put down a sick animal.”

“A nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson automatic?”

“Maybe a copper passed it over to me once and asked me what I thought?”

“Pull the other one,” said Banks.

“And just how did you get my fingerprints for comparison in the first place? I’ve never been fingerprinted in my life. There’s no way I’m in your system.”

“That’s a terrible oversight, and I promise we’ll put the record straight as soon as possible. You did, however, handle a photograph of Jaff McCready that DS Jackman passed you the last time we were here. That glossy photographic paper has a wonderful sticky surface for fingerprints.”

“That’s entrapment! You’ve fitted me up.”

“Don’t be silly. It might conceivably be entrapment if they were forged documents, or a murder weapon. But it was only a photograph. It means nothing in itself.”

“I guarantee they’ll laugh you out of court.”

“Do you, really? Because I don’t think so. And I’m very glad to hear that you agree with me that it will get to court. These days the Crown Prosecution Service is very picky about the cases it allows to go to trial. They don’t like losing. They tend to choose dead certs.”

“Well, on the evidence you’ve got, there’s always a first time.”

“Then there’s the little matter of Darren Brody.”

“Darren Brody?”

“Yes. Come on. You know Darren. Your farm-hand-cum-enforcer. For some reason neither Darren nor Ciaran was involved with the Marlon Kincaid killing. Perhaps they were on another job, mucking out the stables or something. Or perhaps you just needed McCready to get his hands dirty, a blooding, like the kid’s first foxhunt. But Ciaran and Darren have been doing quite a lot of overtime for you lately, haven’t they?”

“What do you mean?”

Banks shook his head. “Ciaran’s seriously deranged. You should know what a liability it is to have someone like him on your payroll.”

“Ciaran would never say a thing against me.”

“You’re right about that. Ciaran’s a vicious psychopath who enjoys hurting people. But he’s loyal. He probably thanks you for the opportunity. He hurt Justin Peverell’s girlfriend, Martina Varakova. Killed her, in fact, very slowly and very painfully, while Justin was tied up and made to watch. Justin is catatonic now. The doctors aren’t holding out a lot of hope of his making a full recovery. Well, you wouldn’t after something like that, would you? Imagine someone doing that to your lovely wife.”

“Why are you telling me all this? What’s it all got to do with me?”

“Jaffar McCready had something of yours-two kilos of cocaine, fifty thousand pounds and a hot gun, to be exact. We have it all now, locked up safely in our evidence room.”

Fanthorpe sneered. “Safely? I’ll bet.”

“You wanted it all back. Naturally. You even told me you wanted it back. DS Jackman here is a witness to that.”

Winsome looked up from her notebook and smiled at Fanthorpe.

“You just never told me what it was,” Banks said.

“But you think you’ve worked it out for yourself?”

“It wasn’t that difficult.”

“I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong conclusion. If that’s what you found, then I was obviously mistaken, and Jaffar didn’t have what I thought he had. None of that belonged to me.”

“Darren Brody has been working with Ciaran French for a few years now. He knows what Ciaran’s like, has seen him getting progressively more violent and cruel. It’s all right with him when it’s worked as a threat and people talk, then usually go away with only a few cuts and bruises. But this time it got out of hand. Way out of hand. My guess is that Ciaran had built up such a lust for bloodletting that he couldn’t hold it back any longer. Victor Mallory. Rose Preston. Teasers. However it happened, Darren was with him, and Darren couldn’t stop him, but he didn’t like what he saw.”

“Darren’s just trying to save his own skin. They’re both psychos.”

“We’ll leave the question of why you would employ a couple of psychos aside for the moment. Jaffar McCready certainly wasn’t one. He was a greedy, cocksure, ambitious, intelligent young man with a tendency to violence when necessary. He wanted to be a player. He didn’t especially like killing. He wasn’t even particularly good at it. He had so many chips on his shoulder he could have given Harry Ramsden a run for his money. Anyway, the point is that Darren has had enough. He had to watch Justin’s face while Ciaran sliced up Martina Varakova in front of his eyes. I doubt it was a pretty sight. Darren’s a bit tougher than Justin, and he still has his faculties, but a strange thing happened to him that night. They’d found out what they wanted to know, that Justin was meeting Jaffar and Tracy on Hampstead Heath, near the Highgate Ponds, but Ciaran had already gone too far to stop. He couldn’t. Because of that, while Darren was watching him, he was suddenly struck, like Saul on the road to Damascus, with a revelation. He asked himself, Why? Why was he watching this? Why was he participating in this? True, the people Ciaran was hurting were a couple of toerags who didn’t give a damn about people’s lives themselves. But this was too much. How on earth could Darren ever extricate himself from his complicity in Ciaran’s actions, though those actions horrified and disgusted him? And do you know what? He found a way. It’s called cooperating with the police fully in their inquiries. Darren talked, Farmer. In fact he sang like the three tenors all rolled into one. The complete performances. Box set.”

The Farmer had turned pale now and seemed to shrink in his armchair, the whiskey left untouched for several minutes beside him.

“You’ve still got no proof,” he said, rallying. “It’s his word against mine, and who do you think the court will believe? An uneducated thug, or an upstanding pillar of the community?”

“Darren is no more an uneducated thug than you are a pillar of the community,” Banks said. “I reckon he’ll make a very good impression on a jury. Reformed sinner and all that. Atonement. Juries love a good redemption story. He knows where all the bodies are buried, Farmer. He also told us a few places we should be looking if we’re after evidence of some of your shadier dealings and contacts, so we’re executing these warrants simultaneously for this house and your business premises, including the mailboxes on Grand Cayman and Jersey. Winsome?”

Winsome excused herself and went to the front door, where she put her fingers to her lips and whistled loudly. Banks had always wished he could do that. Within a few moments six uniformed officers entered the house and spread out. DS Stefan Novak and DS Jim Hatchley were in charge of the search operation, and Banks said hello to both of them as he and Winsome escorted Fanthorpe, now in handcuffs, out to the car. Eloise was still practicing the adagio to the Moon-light Sonata in the piano room, and Zenovia was screaming and waving her arms at the search team. The other young girl frowned and turned up the volume with the remote as she tried to concentrate on Strictly Come Dancing amid the chaos all around her.

As they walked to the car, Banks looked down the cinder path with the topiary hedges toward the pond and fountain. “A young boy pissing,” he said to The Farmer, shaking his head. “That just about says it all, doesn’t it, Farmer? A young boy pissing.”

BANKS WALKED along the now familiar corridors of Cook Hospital early in the following week, saying hello to a couple of the nurses and general staff he had come to recognize. He had driven straight from Newhope Cottage, and while he was certainly glad to be home in some ways, he couldn’t help dwelling on what had happened there. Superintendent Gervaise had arranged for a cleaning crew after the SOCOs had finished, so he hadn’t had to face any blood, or the mess Tracy had told him about-except for a few damaged CDs and broken jewel cases-but he knew where Annie had been shot, and he couldn’t sit comfortably in the conservatory anymore. Maybe he would get over it. If not, he would have to move. He couldn’t go on living there feeling the way he did. Newhope used to be a joyous place, but since the fire, and now this, Banks was beginning to wonder.

He found Annie propped up on her pillows, fewer tubes than on his last visit, he was certain, and looking a lot better. She was flipping through the pages of one the Sunday newspaper supplements.

“A bit dated, isn’t it?” said Banks, pecking her on the cheek and sitting in the chair beside the bed.

“It’s about all I could scrounge since I’ve been alert enough to read,” Annie said.

“Well, this is your lucky day.” Banks opened the large hold-all he had brought with him and passed over a WH Smith’s bag full of women’s magazines he had seen her reading in the past, along with the latest Kate Mosse and Santa Montefiore paperbacks. “These should keep you busy for a while.”

“Thank you,” Annie said, searching through the bag. “That’s great. I thought I was going to end up being bored to death. It’s still a bit hard, reading with only one hand, though.”

“For when your arm gets tired,” Banks added, reaching into his pocket, “there’s this.”

“But it’s your iPod.”

“I got a new one in San Francisco. This one’s nearly full. I’m sure you’ll find some music you like, there’s quite a bit of classical, and there’s a few books on it, too, mostly classics-Jane Austen, Chekhov’s short stories, Trollope, Tolstoy, the Brontës-and some nonfiction, history and biography. It’ll help pass the time.” He glanced around furtively, then stuck his hand inside the hold-all again and brought out a bottle of Australian red wine. “I know you prefer white,” he said, “and the review of the Santa Montefiore book suggested it would go well with chilled Prosecco, but I don’t think they’d exactly put it on ice for you here. I’ve seen you drink red. And the screw top seemed important. It’s no longer a mark of poor quality, you know. This is good stuff.”

“I know,” said Annie. “I’ve had it before. And it’s perfect. Put it down in the cupboard while no one’s around, would you. I can already imagine midnight drinking sessions with one eye on the door.”

“The way I used to read books with a penlight and listen to Radio Luxemburg through an earpiece when I was a kid,” Banks said. “One more thing.” He brought out a small bag of treats from Lewis & Cooper, the Northallerton gourmet food shop. “There’s a few different cheeses, vegetable pâté, potted shrimp, just in case you feel like being really naughty, and water crackers, figs, olives. Only the best.”

Annie laughed and put her hand to her face. Banks could see she was crying, too. “Oh, thanks Alan. Come here.”

He bent over her, and she held him with her good arm. He felt the warm damp skin of her cheek against his and thought he should have shaved that morning, then he smelled her hair, smelled her. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Of course I should.” Banks moved away but held on to her hand. “I’m afraid that’s it,” he said. “How is the food here?”

“As you’d expect. Not that bad,” said Annie. “Though being a vegetarian is a definite liability. I must say, Ray’s been wonderful, though.”

“Where is he?”

“He had to go to London. There’s a gallery putting on a show of his work down there. He didn’t want to, said he thought he should stay with me, but I made him go. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Say hi from me,” said Banks. “So how are you feeling?”

“Good days and bad. I’m on the mend.”

“Your breathing sounds a lot better. Have you talked to the doctor?”

Annie turned her head. “Yes. Mr. Sandhar and I had a good long heart-to-heart late last week. He told me about the operation, explained all the details, the ins and outs, the risks.”

“And?”

“I’m scared.”

Banks tightened his grip on her hand. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

“I know that. It’s just…you know, it’s always been one of my greatest fears, being unable to walk, unable to move, confined to a wheelchair. Remember Lucy Payne? What a monster she was? I even felt sorry for her. I thought it might have been easier if she’d just died.”

“It’s not going to happen to you. You’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“He certainly didn’t downplay the dangers.”

“He wouldn’t. He’s a realist.”

“Maybe a little kindly lying wouldn’t have gone amiss.” Annie winced.

“What is it?”

She put her hand to her chest. “Sometimes when I breathe in I still get a sharp pain in my chest. The doctor says it’s my lung healing. My bloody shoulder still hurts like the dickens, too. Keeps me awake at nights.”

“It’s a nasty wound.”

Annie paused. “Tell me, Alan, is he really dead? Jaff McCready?”

“Yes.”

“Poor kid. I can’t say I’d have wished that on him.”

“After what he did to you?”

“I’m not saying he didn’t deserve punishment. Severe punishment. But…”

“It was quick,” said Banks. “He didn’t even see it coming.”

“I suppose not.”

“Don’t feel too sorry for him, Annie. McCready was no innocent.”

“I know. You were there, weren’t you?”

“Yes. I didn’t see it coming, either.” Banks had brought a Starbucks grande latte with him, and he took a sip, then set it down on top of Annie’s side cupboard. As he did so, he realized that he had forgotten the flowers. He mentally kicked himself. Idiot. Next time. No, he’d have some delivered, with a note, as soon as he left. “We recovered his gun, by the way. McCready’s. A Baikal, as we thought. It had a silencer, and I think that’s what saved your life. Apparently, with a silencer, it loses a third of its power and is far less accurate.”

“Well, I never,” said Annie. “What’s happening over the McCready shooting business?”

“About what you’d expect. They’re all back-pedaling like crazy. In the end it all comes down to spin, of course. The media don’t have many facts, but there’s been plenty of speculation about my presence there, and Tracy’s, not to mention a ‘rogue’ AFO. Mostly the brass has being trying to quash those rumors, or at least deflect the worst of them. We’ve had a few more meetings, without PC Powell’s presence this time. Even the chief constable himself was at one of them. Everyone has ended up bending over backward so the media reports it as all going according to procedure. An unfortunate necessity, but an officer’s life at risk, a proven police shooter, dangerous criminal on the run, unstable behavior, hostages involved, official operation, judgment call, no choice in the matter. Blah, blah, blah. Take your pick.”

“You disagree?”

“Not at all. It’s just-barely-possible to argue it that way. We even had civilian witnesses to bear out the evidence that my life and Tracy’s were at immediate risk, and that the police sharpshooter acted appropriately, with all reasonable regard for any members of the public in the vicinity. All of which is true. The fact that she was there unofficially, under her own steam, and with an unofficial weapon…well, we just tried to sweep all that under the carpet. There are still bits sticking out, of course, but…ACC McLaughlin told the press that we hadn’t been able to authorize any sort of large or visible Firearms Support Unit operation because of time constraints, the delicacy of the situation and the danger involved to the hostages, not to mention the public at large. He wasn’t lying. We’ll take a lot of flack, and Chambers is still on the warpath, but what’s new? Cooler heads might prevail this time.”

“And Nerys?”

Banks sipped a little more of his latte and said, “I’d say her career’s effectively over, wouldn’t you? I mean, not because of the Taser business with Warburton. That’s dead in the water. Even Chambers realizes that. Ironically enough, it was partly your shooting that knocked it off the front page. Cop shootings do get us a lot of public sympathy.”

“Glad to be of help.”

Banks smiled. “There may be a few slapped wrists for a less than full assessment of the situation at the Doyle house. Chambers and his lads from Greater Manchester will continue to conduct their inquiry, and they’ll want their pound of flesh, or at least a couple of ounces in compensation, but I’d guess the result’s a foregone conclusion.”

“Cover-ups all round, then?”

“Not really. Certainly not the Taser incident. The whole thing was an unfortunate accident, and luckily the media’s quite happy to view it that way-until the next time. But Nerys? The McCready shooting? That’s a little different. Nobody wants wild headlines in the papers about rogue cops shooting people down in motorway service station car parks, so we’ll put a slightly more heroic spin on her actions. Even so, it won’t be easy for her. There’s the rifle, for a start. She shouldn’t have been carrying it around. She’s damn lucky not to be going to prison after what she pulled. They’ll make her see a shrink, too, of course. I must say, you do pick them, Annie.”

“Speak for yourself. Besides, I didn’t pick her. She picked me. And how can you say that? Why are you so ambivalent about her? She saved your life.”

“I know she did. And I’m grateful for that. But she’s still bloody lucky to get off without serious criminal charges, in my opinion. Lucky no one needs a sacrificial lamb right now. And I’m ambivalent because I’m not convinced of her motives.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she did it as much for herself as for me.”

“Where do you get that from?”

“I can’t prove it, but I’ll bet you a pound to a penny that it was you she was thinking of, and what Jaff had done to you, when she pulled that trigger. She was shooting him for what he did to you.”

Annie reddened. “Well, we’ll probably never know, will we?” She let go of Banks’s hand for a moment and reached for her water. Banks saw her grimace in pain as she turned, so he passed it to her. “Thanks,” she said.

“We won’t know unless she tells us, which I doubt she ever will,” said Banks. “Why should she? I’d be the first to admit that it probably doesn’t even matter to anybody but me, and to people like Chambers and Trethowan, who seem to want to make her lesbianism an issue here.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t care whether she did it for a man or a woman. What matters is that she didn’t do it for the reasons she said she did. She did it for revenge. It was personal.” Then Banks rubbed his hand over his eyes. “But it was personal for a lot of us, so I’m not saying she should be crucified for it.”

“And she saved your life.”

“Yes.”

“And there was no other way?”

“No. Look, I know I’m not making a lot of sense. I’ll get it all sorted out in time.”

“So what happens to Nerys?”

“If she has any sense she’ll get out of North Yorkshire as fast as she can, lie low for a while, then she might well make some clandestine counterterrorism squad or other. They’re not always so fussy about who they take on, depending on the level of threat, and she is a good shot. She won’t go to waste. Who knows, maybe even the Americans will take her? She suits their style.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh?”

“On whom? Nerys, or the Americans?”

Annie laughed. “Touché. What about The Farmer?”

“Who knows?” said Banks. “We’re building a case. The CPS is enthusiastic. But he’s got good lawyers. Still, there’s some interesting stuff in his Jersey and Cayman Island files. We got Victor Mallory, too, by the way. Found his lockup with the lab and cache of Baikals. The clever bastards were using one of McCready’s father’s old shell companies. That’s why it took so long to track down.”

“What’s going to happen to Erin?”

“I’ve recommended a good solicitor. She’ll plead guilty, with extenuating circumstances. I think that, given her previous good character and the circumstances surround the whole affair, she’ll probably get away with a suspended sentence. At least, that’s what the solicitor says.”

“And Tracy? How’s she doing after her ordeal?”

Banks sipped his latte. “She’s young, resilient. She’ll recover in time.”

“You sound uncertain. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” said Banks. “She was raped, you know. McCready raped her.”

Annie said nothing at first. Banks wondered if she was remembering her own experience of rape several years ago, before she came to North Yorkshire. “Good God,” she said finally. “I’m so sorry, Alan. If I can help in any way…If you want me to talk to her, just let me know. I do wish I could remember more about what happened before the shooting, how she was, what she said. I just can’t. All I have is the impression that she was scared and she was trying to get rid of me quickly.”

“Well, that would make sense if McCready was waiting in the wings, wouldn’t it? She wanted you out before he hurt you. She knew how unstable he was by then.”

“Not before?”

“Annie, I don’t really know how to say this, but I think Tracy was lying to me when she told the story from her point of view. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of experience listening to people lie. There are just too many inconsistencies.”

“Did you challenge her on them?”

“Of course not. It’s nothing, really, but she just seemed to shade everything so she came out sounding like the victim all the time.”

“She was the victim.”

“I know. But I don’t think McCready forced her to go with him. I think she fancied him and she went willingly, and suggested my cottage as a place to hide out. I think it was an adventure to her at first, maybe a form of rebellion, of payback…I don’t know…We haven’t been very close lately. She may blame me. She felt that I favored Brian and that I was disappointed by her exam results and her lack of a promising career. I don’t like to be suspicious of my own daughter, Annie, but…”

“Alan, if Tracy was playing down her role, she was doing it because she was feeling guilty and ashamed of what a fool she was, and the last thing she’d want is for you to think even more badly of her. Don’t you see? She’s afraid of your judgment. You’re not just her father, you know. You’re a policeman, too. You have no doubt that she became a victim and hostage later on, do you?”

“No. I think there came a point when the relationship changed. Maybe when you got shot, or even before.”

“Well, then. She might have gone along with McCready in the first place for some sort of misguided romantic reasons. She’s young. But she didn’t pull the trigger. She didn’t steal the coke and the money. McCready did all that. Just give her time to heal. Build some bridges. Try to understand what she must be feeling. She’ll tell the truth when she’s ready.”

“You think so?”

“I do. Where is she now?”

“She’s staying in London with her mother for a while. I’m so deep in the doghouse with Sandra now that even my feet aren’t sticking out.”

Annie laughed at the image. “For not telling everyone what was going on?”

“What do you think?”

“What a mess.” Annie shook her head slowly and took his hand again. “I was so scared when I realized what was happening. There on the floor, in your conservatory, before it all went dark and I could hardly catch my breath. I was convinced I was going to die. I missed you so much at that moment, Alan.”

Banks swallowed and squeezed her hand. “I missed you, too. You’d have loved it over there. The desert nights. The Grand Canyon. The Pacific Coast Highway. Fisherman’s Wharf. The Golden Gate Bridge. Magic.”

“I wish I’d been with you, but it sounded like the kind of trip you had to take alone.”

“It was,” said Banks. “This time. But who knows? One day…”

“If I can still walk.”

“You’ll walk.”

“You know,” Annie said. “You’ve told me plenty about Nerys and Tracy and what happened and all that, but what about you?”

“Me?” Banks shrugged. “What about me? I’ve had plenty of practice being in the doghouse where Sandra’s concerned. And it matters a lot less when she’s a couple of hundred miles away.”

“No. I didn’t mean so much about your family. I meant the other stuff. Job. Career. Future.”

Banks finished his latte and dropped the cup in the wastebasket. “Well, Chambers is out for blood and I’m right in his sights. He’d love to throw me to the wolves. I broke every rule in the book, probably more even than poor Nerys, and he knows I’d do it again in the twinkling of an eye.”

“But?”

“I still have a few friends in high places. They’re pushing for a spell of gardening leave until I sort out my ‘personal problems.’ Emotionally distraught father, understandably overtired, daughter abducted, that sort of thing. The saving grace is that if the powers above did throw me to the wolves, most of them would have to fall on their own swords for allowing the situation to arise in the first place. Cold comfort, I suppose, but there you go. In the end, they’ll either sack me, put me in the nuthouse or promote me to Area Commander.”

Annie laughed. “But what will you do? Aren’t you worried? Seriously. You don’t sound too concerned.”

“I’m not.” Banks looked at the beeping machines with their wavy lines and numbers, then back to Annie. “Maybe the trip put a few things in perspective for me. What will I do? Seriously? I don’t know. Come back and fight another day, like I always do, I suppose. But sometimes I think I’ve had enough. I’m getting a bit tired of it all, to be honest. You?”

“I don’t know, either. I suppose I’m on hold till after the operation. Then I’ll reevaluate my situation, as they say.” She laughed. “We’re a right pair, aren’t we?”

Banks glanced toward the door, reached for the wine and a couple of plastic cups from Annie’s cupboard, and smiled. “We are indeed. Shall we drink to that?”