Careless Love

10

The morning meetings had gone as expected, with grumblings all around from the brass about the expense, but in the end both Area Commander Gervaise and ACC Ron McLaughlin, along with Ken Blackstone’s supervisor in West Yorkshire, had bowed to the evidence that there was a link between the Adrienne Munro and Sarah Chen cases.

Banks was named SIO, and Blackstone his deputy. Budgets were allocated, manpower assigned and the complexities of a major inquiry team began to take shape. They decided to keep the Eastvale boardroom as their incident room. There didn’t seem much point in positioning a mobile unit halfway down the A1. The travel distances were not so great, anyway. Terminals and phones were installed, office manager, document reader, researcher and the other key roles filled, and HOLMES was set in motion. Gerry worked with one of Ken Blackstone’s men getting the programme up and running.

About noon, when Banks was finally free to relax for a moment, enjoying a coffee in his office and listening to Murray Perahia’s recording of Bach’s French Suites, a clearly spellbound young PC brought Zelda up to his office. Banks could hardly blame the boy. Zelda was wearing jeans and a black polo-neck jumper under a long navy woollen coat with a fur collar. She was wheeling a suitcase with one hand and carrying a Russian-style fur hat that could have come straight out of a Tolstoy novel, or Doctor Zhivago, in the other.

‘Ah. Bach,’ said Zelda. ‘Such a civilised policeman.’

Banks stood up and reached out to shake her hand. She turned it to be kissed, so he kissed it. He noticed how long and tapered her fingers were. A pianist’s hands. ‘What on earth are you doing with that philistine Ray,’ he said.

Zelda laughed and squeezed his hand. ‘I can put up with a bit of Led Zeppelin once in a while,’ she said, then made a face. ‘It’s that Captain Beefheart that drives me mad. And that Nico woman. She sounds as if she is singing from beyond the grave.’

Banks laughed. The way she pronounced Beefheart indicated the exact amount of scorn she felt. ‘The Captain always was one of Ray’s favourites,’ he said. ‘I think he even saw The Magic Band perform live once, back in the day. Never got over it. And as for Nico... well, what can I say? Sit down, please. Did Ray talk to you? Have you had second thoughts?’

Zelda smiled. ‘No second thoughts, despite Raymond’s efforts. I’m going to London this afternoon. More surveillance photographs for me. I wanted to see you first so that you can brief me, tell me what you want me to do.’

‘Is it always at such short notice?’

‘Mostly, yes.’

‘Is there anything you want to tell me now that you didn’t want to say the other night?’

‘No. Why should there be?’

Banks shrugged. ‘I just got the impression there’s much more to your job than you say, that’s all.’ And your life, he almost added, but managed to restrain himself.

‘There is always more. You must understand that. But there are certain expectations of silence and secrecy, as I know there is in your job, too.’

‘I do understand that. I was talking about the element of risk.’

‘Oh, that.’ She waved a hand dismissively. ‘I told you. Mostly I sit in an office and look at photographs or CCTV footage. It is boring, but necessary. I’m no Modesty Blaise, Alan. I cannot run around tracking down the scum who profit from these crimes. But this I can do. And I know it gets results.’

‘Nobody’s denying that,’ said Banks who had hardly got over his surprise that Zelda had heard of Modesty Blaise. ‘But a man like Keane—’

‘I have met many men like Keane.’

‘You don’t—’

‘You’d be surprised how many men there are like Keane. Men for whom human life or happiness means nothing. Men who will take what you love from you in the blink of an eye just because they can. Men of power and money who will steal your dignity and leave you with nothing.’

Banks gave a slight nod. There was something that struck a chord in what she said, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on. ‘You sound as if you know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Did you lose someone, Zelda?’

She glanced away sharply. ‘How could I lose someone? I am an orphan. I had no one to lose. Friends, yes. I lost many friends, and I soon realised it was best not to make friends because they came and went.’

‘Then it was you, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, Zelda.’

‘No. I do not want your pity, Alan. But I also do not think I need to tell a man like you all this, tell you what I have suffered, what many others like me have suffered. I think you know a great deal about these things. But even with all you know, you could not even begin to imagine the horror of my life.’

But he could. Imagine it, that is. The beatings, the rapes, the constant fear, the squalor, the sweaty pigs grunting as they came in her, one after the other. But that was all he could do. Imagine it. The only action he could take was to try to stop as many others as he could from doing it. It might be like cleaning the Augean stables, but nobody should have to go through what Zelda had been through. Or Linda. Ever. End of story.

‘In all your work since then,’ Banks asked, ‘have you ever come across the men who hurt you?’

Zelda looked towards the window. ‘Some of them, yes,’ she said. ‘It was long ago. Perhaps many have moved on? Or they are dead. That would be better. Perhaps too much to hope for.’ She turned back to face Banks and smiled. ‘It’s a beautiful day. Cold, but beautiful. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. Do we have to sit in this dreary office to make a plan? Would you like to hear my story, or do you have more important work to do?’

Banks smiled. ‘No, not at the moment.’ He grabbed his overcoat. ‘Come on. Let’s go. You can leave the suitcase here.’

Banks and Zelda went out of the station into the market square. Zelda was a couple of inches taller than Banks, and she certainly drew admiring glances as they walked. She fastened her coat loosely and put on the fur hat. ‘Like a true Russian,’ she said, laughing.

‘You’re not Russian, are you?’

‘My mother’s family came from St Petersburg — or Leningrad as it was then — to Odessa after the war. The world war. That was where my mother was born, in nineteen sixty-five. They had survived the siege. Odessa is also where my father met my mother, and later they moved to Moldova for my father’s work. He was an engineer. That’s where I was born. So yes and no. My father also came from Russia, but he believed his parents migrated from the east. So mine was a very mixed family. It is hard to sort everything out. And I never really got a chance to ask them for their life stories.’

Despite the chill, they bought ice creams at the corner shop and walked along Castle Walk, a tree-lined cinder path that circled Eastvale Castle high above the river valley. Zelda smiled as they passed groups of unruly children in bright orange shell suits and young lovers hand in hand. Banks watched her from the corner of his eye as she occasionally put the cone to her mouth and licked at the scoop of ice cream. It was a gesture both sensual and child-like in its innocence. Which seemed all the more odd coming from a woman who was far from innocent. Or perhaps innocence was more a matter of the heart, or soul, than of things that happened to the body.

The path emerged into the open high above the silver river. It was a good site to choose for a castle, Banks had always thought. High and compact, with a view for miles around. The wooded slope down to the water was steep. It would have been easy to pick off any marauders from the top of the ramparts, pour boiling oil on them or whatever.

They sat on a bench with their backs to the castle walls and enjoyed the view across the river to the opposite bank. The trees were bare, which gave a better view of the fields and rising daleside beyond, but the fields themselves were still bright green with the recent rains and rose in the distance to steep hills with outcrops of grey limestone catching the winter light. Sheep grazed everywhere, and the landscape was crisscrossed with drystone walls. In one of the lower, riverside fields, two sleek and beautiful chestnut mares, backs covered with blankets, nibbled at the grass. Directly below them, the river ran down a series of weirs and rocks, giving the effect of mini rapids, and children stood on the banks and threw stones into the water.

‘I cannot believe how much I love it here,’ said Zelda. ‘It makes me feel like I have come home.’

‘To Moldova?’ Banks asked, quickly trying to prevent a blob of vanilla ice cream from dropping onto his trousers.

Zelda laughed. ‘Moldova? No. I mean home in my heart. But we lived in Dubãsari in Moldova, stuck right between Ukraine and Romania. It is next to Transylvania, where your Dracula comes from.’

‘He’s supposed to have landed in Whitby,’ said Banks.

‘Maybe that is why I feel so much at home here. I love Whitby, too. The Magpie. Fish and chips and vampires and goths. Wonderful.’ She smiled.

Banks laughed. ‘Go on. You were going to tell me your story.’

‘I cannot remember much of my childhood because my parents were killed during an uprising in Bendery in nineteen ninety-two, when I was five, and everything was topsy-turvy for a while. I remember my parents spoke Russian as well as Moldavian. Language was always a very political issue in that part of the world. I also speak Russian, some French and German, too. The war came after the break-up of the Soviet Union. But it was not a big war in Moldova, not famous like Serbia and Bosnia. My parents were not political, just ordinary people caught in the crossfire. What do you call it? Collateral damage?’

‘Some cynics would call it that.’

‘Yes. Collateral damage.’

‘And after that?’

‘An orphanage. That was my life for next twelve years. But it was a good life. You hear so many stories about what terrible places orphanages are, what cruelties are inflicted on the children there, but not this one. People find it difficult to believe, but the nuns were not cruel. They did not beat us with Bibles and thorns. And they were good teachers. Not only arithmetic and history, but art, music, literature. We had food — not always enough, but food — and we stayed warm. It was a simple life, and they were very strict, but it was also a good life. You understand?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Banks.

‘But one day it ended. I had to leave. Everyone has to leave eventually. I had nobody on the outside, and I had hardly got to the end of the street when I was picked up by some men, some very, very bad men. For the next few years things were very difficult for me. How much I cannot say. But I survived. And I escaped in the end. It doesn’t matter how. The story has a happy ending. That is what matters. My life is very different now. But I am still involved with the people who hunt these monsters down, the people who saved my life and gave me a new identity. So that is why it is very important for me to do what I can to fight the evil things these gangs do. I owe it to the thousands of other girls caught in their nets.’

‘Who do you work for?’

‘All I can tell you that it is an international organisation. Naturally, it has to be. The sex traffic is an international problem. Europol is involved, and many other agencies, including your own National Crime Agency. Of course, I am a mere pawn. I am not a police officer. I have no powers of arrest. Mostly I work in London, in an office, as I told you before, but sometimes they send me to airports or train stations, even to ferry docks, if they think girls and their traffickers are coming in. But I am always hidden away in a special room nobody can see into. And it is rare that I do anything more than look at photographs and videos. My job is intelligence gathering, as I said, helping expand the database. These people move around, pop up all over the place, as you say. They are smart and usually manage to stay at least one step ahead. They are constantly adapting to new and better ways of doing what they do. I just try to put names to faces, perhaps remember when and where I saw them first, then the files are passed on to someone else. There are squads that go out and arrest suspects and try to help the girls, but I never meet them. Sometimes there are meetings or conferences in the Hague, Brussels or Lyon, if something new or big is happening. But not often. It is not a glamorous job.’

‘But somebody has to do it, right?’

Zelda finished her ice cream cone. ‘Yes. At least for the moment. Nobody knows what will happen after this Brexit. We may be able to continue, but perhaps not. There is talk of losing funding.’

‘There’s always talk of losing funding. That’s pretty much par for the course with Brexit.’

‘Par for the course?’

‘The normal thing. Nobody knows.’

Zelda smiled. ‘Ah, yes. I see what you mean.’ She paused. ‘Do you know, I feel guilty because I cannot talk to Raymond about things like this. He is like a child... too quick to react, too emotional. If I tell him about my work and the bad things in my life, he treats me like I am made of plastic for days.’

‘Porcelain?’ suggested Banks.

‘Yes. Porcelain.’

‘And me? I’m cold?’

‘No.’ She touched his arm. ‘But you are a cop, Alan. You understand. I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want... what do you calling it? Cuddling?’

‘Cuddling would be nice,’ said Banks. ‘But I think you mean coddling.’

‘Yes. Coddling. Like an egg. I don’t need that.’

They admired the view in silence for a while, watching a mother walk by pushing a pram, and an elderly man in a scarf and flat cap walking his Jack Russell. It was quite warm in the sunshine, but a cold wind blew up from the water and rattled the bare branches now and again.

‘So, your man Keane?’ said Zelda.

Banks turned to face her. ‘I wanted to talk to you so that I could try to persuade you to forget about him,’ he said.

‘But?’

Banks smiled. ‘You’re very perceptive. Now I’m not so sure. Ray said you’re not the type to back down.’

‘I did try to tell you the other night, Alan. Besides, I assure you it is not dangerous for me.’

‘Danger is always relative, and with someone like Keane you always have to be aware that it’s there, or you’ll make a mistake and... well, like I did.’

‘This Keane. He was Annie’s boyfriend, am I right?’

‘Yes. He used her to keep track of our investigation. He made her feel betrayed, humiliated, a fool. He’s very charming on the surface, but if he feels cornered he’ll kill or run. Or both.’

‘I can imagine how betrayed and used she felt. But were you not... not with her at the time?’

‘No. We’d split up by then.’

‘But she still cares for you.’

‘Does she?’

Zelda nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, Keane drugged me and set fire to my cottage with me inside it. If it wasn’t for Annie and Winsome, I’d be dead.’

‘Why did he do that?’

‘Because he suspected we were on to him. He was covering his tracks.’

‘And he escaped?’

‘Yes, he drove over the hills and far away.’

‘And now he turns up again in a photograph I have seen?’

‘The man he was with—’

‘Is a very bad man. Croatian. He was part of the gang that took me.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘He’s a pig.’

‘And he hasn’t been stopped yet?’

Zelda shrugged. ‘He is clever. And lucky. Just as he was in the war. And he knows who to pay. Why should he stop?’

‘So what would he be doing with Keane?’

‘As I said before, the only thing I can think of is that he would want false documents of some kind. Shipping, bills of lading, passports, even. I don’t know.’

‘For himself?’

‘Or someone else he was trying to smuggle somewhere, or place in a position of influence. They forge work backgrounds, resumés, references and so on, for customs officers, lorry drivers, that sort of thing. And they do not only snatch girls from the street. They are skilled at creating official-sounding fronts to persuade them to leave their homes — marriage and employment agencies, fake modelling agencies, fake film production studios, and fake opportunities for work and study abroad. All these things exist legitimately, so it is often impossible for the girls looking for jobs abroad to separate the fake advertisements from the real ones until it is too late. Nobody checks the authenticity of these advertisements.’

‘And the photograph you saw was definitely taken in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to see it.’

Zelda turned away, staring towards the hills again. A blackbird started singing in a nearby tree. ‘I’m afraid that might not be possible.’

‘The secrecy?’

‘Yes. I think my team is very much concerned with making a case against the other man in the photograph. If Keane can lead them to him, all is well and good. But to them I think Keane is just a pawn.’

‘Look,’ said Banks. ‘I want Keane. Not just for personal reasons, not just for what he did to me and to Annie, but because he’s a cold-blooded murderer.’

‘These men are all cold-blooded murderers.’

‘Well, Zelda, you’re in Yorkshire now, and you’re not entirely surrounded by cold-blooded murderers and rapists all the time any more.’

Zelda laughed. ‘There must be some, or you would not have a job.’

‘There are some. More than enough. But what I’m saying is that while Keane may not be unique in your world, he is in this one, or at least to some extent.’

Zelda frowned so Banks went on quickly.

‘All I need is a lead. An idea of where I might find him. A town, an address, a phone number, whatever. That’s all. I don’t want to interfere with your work. If you’ve got an operation going on, I’ll even wait until you’ve done what you need to do before moving in. I don’t want to interfere. But I do want to find him.’

Zelda paused before answering. ‘I will help you if I can,’ she said. ‘But you have to understand that the other night when we were all talking about how dangerous it was, you might have been worried about danger to me, but that’s not what I was thinking of.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. I was thinking about the danger to you and Annie. And to Raymond.’ She paused ‘When you — how do you say it — disturb a sleeping bear. It is not only this Keane you have to worry about. He has some very nasty new friends now. Men like the Croatian. If he is valuable to them, they will kill to keep him alive and free.’

‘I wouldn’t expect anything less of them,’ said Banks.

‘Believe me, I know what they are capable of.’

‘Let’s be especially careful, then. Be patient. Wait for the right time. Don’t take unnecessary risks.’

Zelda glanced at her watch. ‘I must go. My train.’

Banks stood up and held out his hand to take her arm. ‘Come on, then. We’ll go back and pick up your suitcase and I’ll give you a lift to the station.’

‘Bugger me, it really is him,’ said Ronald Hadfield, staggering slightly as the mortuary assistant gently pulled back the sheet. Noticing that Ronald had turned ashen, Annie grabbed his elbow and led him out of the morgue. He eased himself out of her grip, firmly, but politely. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing. I think I had expected it all to be a big mistake. I can’t believe the miserable old bastard’s dead at last.’

Ronald Hadfield had behaved like a total arse so far, complaining about being dragged all the way back from Tokyo and missing important business meetings, then he had demanded to see the real body instead of a closed-circuit TV image or a photograph, insisting he could handle it. Annie had hoped for a moment that actually seeing his father’s corpse for real might suddenly make him more human, but apparently, it was not to be.

‘If you need a few minutes to recover,’ she said, ‘or require counselling—’

‘I could do with a fucking drink,’ Ronald said

They were certainly a foul-mouthed pair, the Hadfield siblings. Annie wondered if they had got it from their late father Laurence. Still, if Ronald Hadfield wanted to go around effing and blinding, who was she to complain? She’d done it often enough herself when things went tits up. ‘We’ll go over to The Unicorn,’ she said. ‘It’s never likely to make it into the tourist brochures, but they serve a decent measure.’

The Unicorn was quiet on a Tuesday afternoon, and they found a table far enough away from the bar to give them some privacy. Hadfield seemed uncomfortable in the grimy corner pub, being more at home perhaps in the clubs and bars of Hampstead or the City. He asked for a double brandy, which Annie bought for him, wondering how come she was always the one buying drinks for the filthy rich Hadfields these days, and sticking to Diet Coke herself.

‘I suppose you’re going to give me the third degree now?’ said Hadfield, after a bracing slurp of brandy.

‘Just a few questions, if that’s OK?’

‘You realise what a bloody big mess this will cause, don’t you?

‘What?’

‘Father’s death. He was a very important person, you know. The economies of several small countries depended on him. Not to mention that he was one of the main players in the Brexit think tank.’

That sounded like an oxymoron to Annie. ‘No doubt he left a detailed will,’ she said.

‘Hah! The will, yes. Are we going to have some sort of Agatha Christie reading, the family gathered together around a big table, the solicitor reading out the bequests?’

‘We don’t do that sort of thing any more.’ They never had, as far as Annie knew.

‘Just as well. He didn’t like me, Father. Do you know that? I could never do anything right in his eyes, never be as good as him. And he doted on my fucked-up junkie slut of a sister. Knowing him, he’s left everything to her to fritter away on toy-boys and cocaine. But you can bet it’ll be left to me to tidy up his business affairs.’

‘No doubt all this will be a big threat to future world order,’ Annie said, ‘but it’s really got nothing to do with what I wanted to talk to you about.’

Hadfield ignored the sarcasm. ‘I suppose you think I did it, don’t you?’

‘Did what?’

‘Killed him.’

‘As far as we know, your father’s death was an accident. There are just a few oddities that require explanation.’

‘Like why his body was found on a bloody moor miles from anywhere with no sign of a car to be seen?’

‘Something like that,’ said Annie.

Hadfield ran his hand through his hair. He was a large, jowly man, though not quite as overweight as his father had been. ‘When did it happen?’ he asked.

‘We don’t know for certain, but we think it was sometime last weekend. When did you last speak to him?’

‘I can’t remember exactly. We speak as little as possible, and then only when we have to. It must have been about a month ago. Young Roderick’s birthday. I’ll say that for him, he always remembered his grandchildren’s birthdays. Can’t fault him on that.’

‘You’re not in business together?’

‘Lord, no. It’s not a family business, not by any stretch of the imagination. I’m CFO of an international corporation. We just rape the environment. Father was basically a moneylender, though he’d have called himself an investment banker, financier and venture capitalist. As I said, there are small countries that depend on him for their economic stability. Not that he was averse to the occasional arms deal or hiring the odd band of mercenaries if some tinpot dictator got a bit bolshie.’

‘Where were you the weekend before last?

Hadfield smiled a rather nasty smile. ‘I was wondering when you’d get around to asking that,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I was in Geneva. There’s an important merger going on, and I had to oversee a number of important meetings. I flew on from there to Tokyo.’

‘I suppose there are plenty of people who can verify this?’

‘Naturally. Though they wouldn’t appreciate being pestered by the police.’

‘We’ll be gentle with them, if we have to check your alibi.’

‘I thought you said Father’s death was an accident?’

‘It looks like an accident. In my experience, though, it’s not that difficult to make murder look like an accident. That’s why we need to go over the inconsistencies very carefully. Someone could easily have transported the body up to the moor and dumped it down the gully. But killers usually make a mistake somewhere along the line. It may seem like just a little one, but it’s often enough.’

‘A proper little fucking Miss Marple, aren’t you?’

‘And here’s me thinking the sight of your father’s body would stop you behaving like a complete arse.’

He smiled the nasty smile again. ‘Are you supposed to talk like that to the bereaved son? Shouldn’t I report you?’

‘Do what you fucking well like,’ said Annie. ‘Just answer my questions first.’

Hadfield smirked and inclined his head ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And don’t call me ma’am.’

‘You’ve made your point.’

‘Did your father have any enemies?’

‘Hundreds, probably. Maybe thousands. He was a very unpleasant human being.’

‘Anyone recent? Anything personal? Someone who might want to do away with him?’

‘Again, probably hundreds. But if you asked me for their names, I couldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t put it past an ousted government official or two to put what’s left of their life savings together and hire an assassin. Then there’s the hundreds of suckers who invested in his crackpot ventures over the years.’

‘This is not very helpful,’ Annie said.

Hadfield leaned forward and rapped on the table. ‘I can’t help that. What I’m saying is that my father made enemies quite easily. It’s unavoidable when you’re in the business he’s in. Whether any of them would actually go so far as to kill him, I can’t say. Even his enemies usually have some vested interest in his staying alive and thriving. Greed breeds greed, inspector. There’s always the hope of more. That’s what keeps even the most desperate losers going, and more than willing to throw good money after bad.’

‘What about on a more personal level? Did he have any business partners?’

‘He had employees, not partners. They depended on him for their livelihoods.’

‘Friends, girlfriends?’

‘He had a certain circle of people he mixed with. I’m sure you’ll find them all listed in his contacts. Mostly politicians, high-ranking police officers, celebrities and so on, though I’m sure you’ll also find a sprinkling of locals — perhaps a wealthy farmer or two, if there is such a thing, a few professionals, lawyers, doctors, that sort of thing. People he played golf with. Father could be very charming when he wanted to. He liked to collect people. Mix with the crème de la crème. Especially if he thought they might prove useful down the line. As for his love life, I assume he had one. Father always had his little peccadillos, even when mother was still alive. It’s not something I care to contemplate.’

‘Poppy said he didn’t have anyone, not since your mother died.’

‘Maybe she’s right.’

Annie had photographed the Pandora treble clef before lodging it with exhibits, and she placed the picture in front of Ronald Hadfield. ‘Do you recognise that?’ she asked.

Hadfield frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘A charm from a bracelet.’

He shook his head. ‘Afraid not.’

She placed a copy of the photograph Adrienne Munro’s parents had given Banks in front of him. ‘Ever seen her?’

‘No. Is this father’s squeeze? If so, I’d say he’s done rather well for himself, though she looks a bit young.’

‘Her name was Adrienne Munro. She was nineteen. Has your father ever mentioned her?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Was?’

‘She was found dead around the same time as your father.’

‘A suicide pact? Is that what you’re suggesting?’

‘No. But this charm was found in your father’s bathroom at Rivendell.’

‘Well, I’ve never seen it, or her.’

Annie put the photographs away. ‘How about your father’s relationship with Poppy?’

‘You don’t mean—’

‘I’m not suggesting anything untoward, but if you do have information we’re not aware of...’

‘No, there was nothing like that. I’m certain of it. Father may have been a bastard, but he wasn’t into incest. Poppy was the apple of his eye, that’s all.’

‘And she felt the same way?’

‘As far as I know. Definitely a daddy’s girl. As far as she’s capable of having feelings with that fucked-up brain of hers. The number of times he’s forked out to cover up scandals, blackmail, or to put her in rehab. Makes me wish I had shares in The Priory.’

‘You mention blackmail.’

‘Poppy’s indiscretions know no bounds. But in those kinds of situations you’d be looking at Father as the perpetrator of the murder, not the victim. It was always easier to pay them off.’

‘You never know where blackmail might lead.’

Hadfield shrugged. ‘Well, you’re the expert.’ He slugged back the rest of his brandy. ‘Thanks for the drink. I hope you can claim it on expenses. If that’s all, I’d like to get going.’

‘Are you sure you should be driving?’

‘Certainly not. That’s why I have Mark waiting outside. My driver.’

‘Are you thinking of going back to Rivendell?’

‘No fucking way. I’m going back to Hampstead.’

‘Good. The house is a possible crime scene. It’s out of bounds. But your father has just died. There must be things to do, things to organise, even though it might be some time before the body is released? You said yourself his death would cause problems.’

‘Let Poppy deal with it. Like I said, she’ll probably be the one to benefit most.’

‘I’m not sure Poppy could organise a piss-up in a brewery.’

Hadfield laughed. ‘You’re probably quite right about that. But she can certainly afford to hire someone to do it for her. Isn’t that what expensive lawyers are for? By the way, where is the little charmer?’

‘Been and gone.’

‘That’s our Poppy. Hope it was a pleasant visit.’

‘We may need to talk to you again,’ Annie said.

‘I’m not that hard to get hold of.’ Hadfield reached into his pocket. ‘I’ll tell you what, just because it’s you, here’s my mobile number. And don’t you dare fucking give it to anyone else.’

Leaving a final nasty smile that faded slowly in the air, like the Cheshire Cat’s, Ronald Hadfield left The Unicorn and Annie put the card in her briefcase. Then she went to the bar and asked for a pint of Black Sheep. She had had it up to her back teeth with the bloody Hadfields.

That afternoon, DS Winsome Jackman went to talk to Sarah Chen’s housemates in Leeds. They rented a big old house on Clarendon Road, around the back of the university. Set back from the street, it was a grand red-brick building, darkened by years of industrial pollution, complete with gables and bay windows. Trees grew high in the garden, winter sunlight filtering through their bare branches.

Winsome rang the doorbell and a young fair-haired woman, probably about Sarah’s age, answered. She didn’t seem unduly surprised or distressed when Winsome showed her warrant card, but simply asked her to come in and walked ahead of her to the living room. Winsome could see immediately that the interior of the old house had been refurbished and given a more modern appearance. The students had added their own bits of colour here and there — a reprinted The Third Man film poster, a Monet reproduction, a large stereo system and plenty of second-hand or makeshift furniture, from mismatched armchairs to bookcases built of planks and bricks, probably stolen from the nearby building site.

The young woman introduced herself as Fiona, then introduced Winsome to the other two, Fatima and Erik. They were all clearly grieving, but Fiona had the grace to offer Winsome a cup of tea, which she accepted gladly. There was some left in the large pot on the glass table, and Winsome said she’d be quite happy with that. She didn’t need milk or sugar.

‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ she began. ‘I don’t know if you know, but there was also a student in Eastvale who died recently, and we think the two incidents might be connected. Her name was Adrienne Munro. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Died or murdered?’ said Erik.

‘We’re not sure,’ Winsome answered. ‘It looks like suicide, but someone else was definitely involved.’

‘Because Sarah was murdered, no doubt about it.’

‘I know,’ said Winsome. ‘I didn’t mean to imply any different. But the local police found a slip of paper in Sarah’s room with Adrienne’s name on it, along with a phone number we can’t trace. Do any of you know anything about it?’

They all shook their heads. Fatima had clearly been crying, and she brought out a tissue from the folds of her clothing to pat her eyes.

‘The officers compared it with some of Sarah’s lecture notes, and the handwriting wasn’t hers,’ Winsome went on. ‘Did any of you write it down. Was it a phone message for her or something?’

‘We don’t know anything about it,’ Fiona said. She was wearing the student uniform of jeans and a chunky sweater with the sleeves pulled down to cover most of her hands. ‘We’ve never heard of Adrienne Munro.’

‘I understand that,’ said Winsome. ‘It was just a possibility. I had to ask. Little things like that can drive you crazy in my job, and when someone comes along later, after you’ve been banging your head against a brick wall for days, and says, “Oh, I did that. Sorry. Didn’t I mention it earlier?” it can make you kind of mad.’

Fiona managed a grim smile and nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry we can’t help you.’

‘Did Sarah have any visitors shortly before she disappeared? Anyone who might perhaps have left the note for her?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Fatima. ‘We don’t keep an eye on one another, and we’re not always home at the same time, but I don’t remember seeing anyone. Fee?’

Fiona shook her head, and Erik did likewise.

‘While she was out, perhaps?’

‘One of us would have noticed,’ Erik said. ‘If we’re all out, the place is locked up. But our rooms have their own locks, too, so if Sarah went out, she’d make sure she locked her bedroom door. We all would.’ He smiled. ‘Not that we don’t trust one another, of course.’

The others nodded.

‘OK,’ said Winsome. ‘Someone must have given it to her somewhere else. A pub, perhaps, or a coffee shop?’

‘That’s more likely,’ said Fiona.

‘Let’s move on. Do you know of anyone who might want to harm Sarah?’

‘The other policeman asked us that,’ said Fatima.

‘I’m sure he did, but it always helps to take a fresh look.’

‘No,’ said Erik. ‘Sarah was hardly a saint. She never did her fair share of the dishes or cooking, and the washing machine and dryer were always full of her clothes, but you would forgive her, you know. You couldn’t... She was so, such...’ He just hung his head and stopped talking.

‘I’m sorry, Erik. Were you and Sarah—’

His head shot up. ‘No. We weren’t a couple. Why would you assume that? That would be crazy, something like that, with someone you have to share a house with. I liked her. That’s all. She was my friend. And now she’s gone.’

Winsome held her hand up at the vehemence of his reply. ‘OK. I get it.’

‘What Erik means,’ said Fiona, ‘is that Sarah was a special person. She was a bit chaotic, a bit of a free spirit, but you couldn’t help but love her.’

‘Do any of you know if Sarah had a boyfriend?’

‘She didn’t,’ said Fiona. ‘Not for any particular reason. I mean, she could go through boyfriends pretty quickly when she wanted to, but she was between right now.’

‘Could there be anyone in her past disturbed enough to want to take revenge on her for being dumped or humiliated?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fiona. ‘But I doubt it. Sarah wasn’t the kind of person to humiliate anybody. She was always sensitive to other people’s feelings, even if she was splitting up with them. As far as I know, she never had anyone obsessed with her or anything like that. No stalkers or voyeurs or anything. She liked a good time, and she was fun to be around, but she wasn’t promiscuous or a tease.’

‘Was she exclusively heterosexual?’

‘What a strange question?’ Fiona said, frowning. ‘But yes. I’d say she was.’

‘I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.’

‘This other girl who died, was she gay?’

‘Not as far as we know. Who was with Sarah on the Saturday you last saw her?’

‘I was,’ said Fiona. ‘We went in town shopping.’

‘And Sarah bought a red dress?’

‘Yes. It was lovely. Pricey, too. I asked her where she was going in something like that, but she just widened her eyes in that way she had and said, “Never you mind.” ’

‘And that was the last time you saw her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you travel back here together?’

‘No. I was heading off to visit my folks in Manchester. I went to the station and took a train. I left Sarah in the Trinity Centre. I suppose she must have gone home to change and get ready later.’

Winsome looked towards Fatima and Erik.

‘We were both away that weekend,’ Erik said. ‘I was staying with some old mates in Newcastle and Fatima went to her cousin’s wedding in Hull.’

‘How did Sarah manage financially?’ Winsome glanced around the room. ‘I mean, this is a nice place, great location. It can’t have come cheap.’

‘It’s two thousand two hundred and twenty quid a month,’ said Erik. ‘Four bedrooms and five bathrooms. We each pay our share. And no, it’s not easy, not with the money they demand for an education. But we manage. There are loans.’

‘So you all have student loans?’

The three of them nodded.

‘And Sarah?’

‘Not this year,’ said Fiona. ‘She finally got some insurance money for her father’s death, and he left her a bit of money in his will, too.’

Winsome made a note to follow up on that. It was interesting that both dead girls had come unexpectedly into money at the start of their second year. She knew that it could take a long time to settle insurance claims and probate estates, so maybe two years after the death wasn’t so bad. ‘But she had her mother to take care of, didn’t she?’

‘Her mother’s in a home,’ said Fatima. ‘I think it’s NHS.’

‘No. She did a deal with the house,’ Fiona said. ‘Sarah told me. You basically have to sell your house to pay for your care when you’re old and sick. But it’s a nice home. They don’t starve or beat the patients.’

It was a fine recommendation, Winsome thought. Something to bear in mind when the time came. Avoid places where they starve and beat you. ‘I get the impression that the four of you were pretty close,’ she went on. ‘Did you hang out together? Go to gigs, dances, pubs, that sort of thing?’

‘Sometimes,’ Fiona said.

‘I don’t drink,’ Fatima answered.

‘But she loves to dance,’ Erik said.

Fatima blushed. ‘Well, maybe.’

‘So you did hang out together?’

‘Sure,’ said Fiona. ‘The student pub, that sort of thing.’

‘Clubs?’

‘Sometimes. In town.’

‘I know what you’re going to ask next,’ Erik said. ‘The other police, they asked the same thing. Do we do drugs? That answer is yes, sometimes we smoke a little marijuana and sometimes take ecstasy, like just about everyone else on campus, but that’s all.’

‘Not me,’ said Fatima.

‘OK,’ said Erik. ‘Fatima’s a good girl. So are you going to arrest us?’

Winsome smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Our problem is, we don’t know why the girls were killed, or died. Drugs is one possibility. We know that Adrienne Munro died from sleeping tablets, which her student health centre and her GP say they certainly did not prescribe. But she must have got them from somewhere.’

‘Well, not from us,’ said Fiona. ‘We didn’t even know her.’

‘I’m not saying she got them from you, merely pointing out that there is already a drug element in this investigation. If either — or both — Adrienne and Sarah were involved with drugs, they could have become exposed to some pretty nasty people.’

‘I think we would have known,’ said Fiona.

‘There was nothing odd or different about Sarah’s behaviour lately?’

‘No. She was the same as normal. We didn’t see quite so much of her, but that’s all.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. We just didn’t.’

‘But if she didn’t have a boyfriend, wouldn’t she be around more, hanging out with her friends?’

‘I think she went to visit her mother pretty often,’ said Fatima. ‘It was very upsetting for her.’

‘I’m sure it was.’ So painful, Winsome thought, that a young woman like Sarah would perhaps do her duty but would hardly wish to spend more of her spare time with a woman she loved who didn’t even recognise her. Besides, the staff at the care home didn’t appear to have seen that much of her. ‘Was there anyone else especially close to her? Any other friends around the place?’

‘A couple,’ said Fiona.

‘And there was Mia,’ Fatima added. ‘Don’t forget Mia.’

Winsome’s ears pricked up at the name. ‘What about Mia?’ she asked.

‘They met near the beginning of term,’ Fatima said. ‘Sarah and Mia. They hung out together for a while. Don’t go reading anything into this. It wasn’t a lesbian thing or anything. They just... you know, found they liked the same music and books and stuff. Just hit it off.’

‘And the rest of you?’

‘I don’t know about the others,’ said Fiona, ‘but I always found Mia a bit stand-offish.’

‘She was weird,’ said Erik. ‘She didn’t really seem to want anything to do with us. Just Sarah.’

Winsome remembered Colin Fairfax, Adrienne Munro’s ex-boyfriend, saying that he got a ‘bad vibe’ from Mia. Surely this had to be the same person? ‘But you say Sarah wasn’t gay. How do you know?’

‘I suggested it one night,’ Erik said. ‘Just making a joke, like, and Sarah got really pissed off with me.’

‘She wasn’t gay,’ Fiona said. ‘Take it from me. But Mia was a bit weird.’

‘So they were just friends?’ Winsome said. ‘What happened?’

‘Mia just disappeared.’

Exactly the way Adrienne’s Mia did, Winsome thought.

‘When?’

‘Around the middle of October. Poof. She was gone.’

‘Did she drop out?’

‘I don’t think she was ever in,’ said Erik. ‘She told us she was studying English, had transferred after doing her first year in Sussex because she wasn’t happy down south. But I never saw her with a book in her hand.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything, idiot,’ said Fiona. ‘You’re studying engineering but I don’t see you running around with a spanner in your hand.’

‘It’s electrical engineering.’

‘All right, a spark plug, then.’

Erik laughed and broke the tension. ‘A spark plug. The woman’s crazy.’

‘Back to Mia,’ said Winsome ‘Can you describe her for me?’

They thought for a moment, then Fiona said, ‘She’s about my height — that’s five foot six — wavy reddish brown hair, medium length, oval face. Brown eyes, I think.’

‘How did she dress?’

Fiona shrugged. ‘Just like any student, really. Jeans, denim jacket. I didn’t really notice. She didn’t dress to show off her body, though. Most of her clothes were fairly loose.’

‘She had a great body though,’ said. Erik. ‘You could tell. She certainly had a decent pair of tits.’

‘Oh, you. Typical male. Always the breasts.’

Winsome thought she had enough without going further into the ins and outs of Mia’s breasts. What she had heard so far matched almost exactly the description given by Colin Fairfax of the Mia who had befriended Adrienne Munro, and under much the same sort of circumstances. As far as Winsome was concerned, they were one and the same. What she needed to do next, she realised, was to get Ray Cabbot, if he was available, to work on a sketch with Colin Fairfax, then perhaps show it to Fiona, Fatima and Erik to check for accuracy, and to get their input.

‘Did Mia ever come here, to the house?’ she asked.

‘Not that I know of,’ said Fiona, still scowling at Erik.

‘No,’ said Fatima. ‘None of us hang out here, anyway. It’s mostly just for working and sleeping and eating. We go out when we want to see people.’

‘OK,’ said Winsome, putting away her notebook. She slipped a card from her purse and dropped it on the table. ‘If any one of you thinks of anything else, especially anything that might help us find this Mia, then please call me.’

They all nodded.

‘And again,’ said Winsome as she got up to leave. ‘I’m really sorry about your friend. She sounds like a truly special person.’

Winsome saw Fatima’s eyes mist up before she turned and headed for the door.

The businessman across the aisle was staring at Zelda. It didn’t bother her; it happened a lot. Over time, she had learned to differentiate a lascivious stare from a suspicious one. This man wanted to fuck her. That was all. She gave him a look that told him she knew exactly what he was thinking. He immediately blushed and turned guiltily away, perhaps plagued by a mental image of the wife he had been dreaming of deceiving. Zelda smiled to herself and glanced out of the window. It worked every time. Well, almost.

Zelda enjoyed the train journey to London from Northallerton, just as she had from Penzance. She had always travelled first class and tried to book a single seat so that she wouldn’t be bothered by any nuisance neighbours who wanted to talk. Men like the one across the aisle undressed her with their eyes, certainly, and perhaps wished they were sitting next to her, or more, but she found it easy to deal with them. She enjoyed a sandwich and a glass of wine as she travelled, looking out at cooling towers shaped like huge stiff corsets across dark muddy fields. Horses wandered here and there, sheep grazed and cows lay in close groups or munched what little grass there was. Occasionally the sun would reflect on a stretch of water or a car windscreen; a town would flash by, terraced housing, children playing in a schoolyard, church towers or spires, the station with a nameplate they were always travelling too fast to read. She liked to watch the people getting on and off at the different stops, wondered where they were going, what they were going to do, who they were going to meet. She made up stories about them in her mind.

Sometimes, if it was a dull day, or if she simply felt like it, she would read through most of the journey. This time, though, as soon as the train left the north, the weather was good, the sky blue and filled with white fluffy clouds casting swift-moving shadows as they scudded on the wind over the fields, and her attention moved in and out of Kawabata’s Beauty and Sadness, which she had read several times before. Mostly she didn’t think about the tasks that lay ahead of her — the time for that would come soon enough — but luxuriated in being suspended in an eternal now.

Sometimes, though, she couldn’t help but think about the past. She hadn’t told Ray the half of it, or Banks. She thought perhaps Banks could guess, but even his imagination might fall somewhat short of the full horror. She remembered the street in a suburb of Chisinau, with Soviet-era tenements, the tobacconist’s shop, the little bar on the corner where the menfolk gathered to watch football. Until that day her life had been good. It was true that she had no parents, no family — they had all been wiped out in the war — but that was a long time ago, and the orphanage had given her a sense of belonging, had been a good place to grow up, even when the government money ceased to come and they had to make do with what little charity they could get.

Zelda had been very lucky. She had been a good student; she had loved learning. Before most of the children could stumble through a sentence of English, if she could get to them before the nuns caught her, she was reading books by Charles Dickens and Beatrix Potter and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and whatever strange English language titles turned up in the boxes people donated. She loved reading in English, and now, so many years later, it was the language she dreamed in, too, though even in her dreams she couldn’t always find the right word. Even more than in languages, though, she shone in art. But she was not well versed in the ways of the world and was a very naive, inexperienced girl for someone of her age.

In that one day, when she was eighteen and it was time to leave the orphanage, her whole life changed in a split second. Nobody was throwing her out; they didn’t do things like that. Zelda had done very well in all her exams; her teacher had sent out samples of her best work, and she had been accepted into a prestigious art college in Bucharest in neighbouring Romania. She was walking to the train station with her small suitcase of worldly possessions, a few leu in her pocket, an introduction to the head of the college and her ticket to Bucharest, feeling a little sad because she had to leave her friends behind, but happy and excited about the future because... well, because she was young and fearless, and she had the whole world ahead of her.

Just around the corner, two scruffy, unshaven men lounged against the wall smoking. Zelda had never seen them before, though she had walked the area often with her friends. The nuns had always warned the girls to be careful, especially of the men who frequented the bar. Zelda moved towards the edge of the pavement, stepping down into the road to give the men a wide berth. There was a black car parked just in front of her, and before she could react, the men had taken her by her arms and pushed her into the back. One of them got in beside her, and the other got in the front to drive. The car smelled of tobacco and sweat and Zelda was scared. She tried to scream but the man beside her put his hand over her mouth while the other drove the car away. The hand tasted nasty and she bit it as hard as she could. The man snatched his hand away with a grunt and then punched her hard in the face. Her head swam. She slumped back in her seat. Blood flowed from her nose. The car bumped over cobbles and she was tossed around while the man she had bitten held her down with one hand and sucked his damaged hand, cursing under his breath.

And that was how it all began.

The last thing she saw in the neighbourhood of her childhood was that her small suitcase had fallen to the ground and broken open, spilling her few meagre possessions and articles of clothing over the road surface, along with the scrapbook she had kept so diligently for so long, the well-thumbed copy of Bleak House that she had been reading, and the small music box that held all that was left of her mother, a few cheap rings and necklaces. She wore the golden heart with her mother’s photo inside, and as she sat there bleeding and crying, she fingered it, as if it was a talisman and would give her strength to endure whatever was to come. But nothing could have given her the strength to endure all that, nothing but the ability she developed to absent herself from her experiences, to be elsewhere, in the world of the imagination, her own fantasy, looking down on her misused and abused body while what happened, happened.

Zelda felt her chest tighten as if her very breath was turning to stone.

‘Are you all right, miss?’

She looked up, startled by the voice, and saw the ticket inspector standing over her.

‘Are you all right?’ he repeated.

Zelda tried to smile. She patted her chest. ‘Yes. Yes, thank you. I must have dozed off for a moment. A bad dream.’

‘As long as you’re all right.’

‘Yes. No problem. It’s very kind of you.’

The inspector nodded and walked away, glancing back anxiously. The man across the aisle sneaked a quick glance to see what all the fuss was about. Zelda sipped the last of her wine and breathed slowly, melting the stone back to air again. It was talking to Alan that had brought the past so clearly into focus again. She looked out of the window. They were on the edge of a town. The railway lines ran beside a canal, where brightly painted houseboats lay moored along the towpath. On the opposite bank was a pub where some people were sitting outside in their overcoats on wooden benches. Beyond them were a school, a small housing estate, and high on the hill far in the background, over the fields, a stately home. This was England, then. Not Moldova. Not Croatia. Not Romania. Not Belarus. She was safe. She picked up her book and carried on reading.

It was almost the end of another day, and Banks felt no closer to finding out what had happened to Adrienne Munro than he had the moment he first saw her body. Despite his walk with Zelda at lunchtime, he felt restless and cooped up in his office. He decided to go out and check the second-hand bookshops for a copy of Doctor Zhivago, then return and see about having a quick meeting with his team about where to go next.

When he stepped into the market square it was dark, though it wasn’t yet five o’clock. It started to get dark shortly after three at this time of year. Shopkeepers took it as a sign to close up early and go home, and that was what had happened at the first second-hand bookshop, built into the side of the church. The market square, usually thriving in late afternoon, was almost deserted. The charity shop was still open, though, and Banks walked through to the back where the books were. They had a pretty good stock of literary classics, including lots of Dickens, Jane Austen and Henry James. They also had an old Penguin classics edition of War and Peace in one hefty volume, but there was no sign of the Pasternak novel. Banks bought War and Peace. He had never read it, though every year he had sworn to himself that this would be the year. He didn’t know why he had put it off so long, as he had really enjoyed Anna Karenina.

Luckily, the other second-hand bookshop, down the narrow street beside the police station, was still open, and even better still, on its shelves was a paperback copy of the book he was after in relatively fine condition. It even had a still from the movie on the cover — showing Julie Christie and Omar Sharif, of course. He bought it, chatted briefly with the bookseller, who extolled its merits over a more recent translation, and headed back to the station, pleased with his success.

He checked his pigeonhole and found nothing but a printed copy of the budget approved by the ACC that morning. Still no tox results. If they didn’t turn up by tomorrow morning he would drop by the lab and see if Jazz could hurry things up a bit.

Gerry was the only one in the squad room. Banks knew that she had been working on HOLMES most of the day. Annie was out on the Laurence Hadfield case, and Winsome was in Leeds liaising with Blackstone’s team on the Munro — Chen cases and trying to track down the mysterious phone number. She had had so little success with it so far that Banks was beginning to wonder whether it was a phone number after all. At least she had heard from the bank and told him that Adrienne’s recent hefty deposits were all cash, which meant they couldn’t be traced.

‘Finished with HOLMES?’ Banks asked Gerry, leaning back against Winsome’s desk.

‘For today, sir.’

‘It went well?’

Gerry smiled. ‘Well enough. Ken’s man, Jared, is pretty good. I think we’ve got everything covered. I’ve also been doing a bit of digging into Laurence Hadfield’s business practices.’

Banks remember his conversation with Linda on Saturday about Hadfield’s business. ‘And?’

Gerry swivelled to face him and put the end of her pencil to her lips. ‘It’s all a bit confusing, sir,’ she said. ‘Earlier this afternoon, Ronald, the son, gave DI Cabbot to believe that his father was the next worst thing to that character Hugh Laurie played in The Night Manager.’

‘The worst man in the world?’

‘That’s right. Gave the impression he brought down governments for profit, sold weapons to the bad guys, had corrupt leaders in his pockets, and so on.’

‘But?’

‘From what I can gather — mostly from newspaper and magazine and Internet articles, and talking to a few of his close colleagues on the phone, that wasn’t the case at all. Hadfield was tough, drove a hard bargain, but he was also a pretty straight businessman. At least for the business he was in, which was high finance, venture capital, emerging markets, that sort of thing.’

‘I can’t say I understand any of it, myself,’ said Banks.

‘Me, neither,’ said Gerry. ‘That’s why I had a chat with Cath from the fraud squad. I still don’t understand it, but it comes down to the fact that Hadfield was pretty honest and well liked in his world. He didn’t have a lot of enemies screaming for him to be hanged, drawn and quartered.’

‘So the son exaggerated?’

‘Yes.’

‘Think he had anything to do with it? Ronald? Was he laying a false trail for us?’

‘Possibly.’ Gerry chewed the end of her pencil.

‘But?’

‘I think it was more a matter of bad blood. At least that’s the impression I got from DI Cabbot. But somebody I spoke to mentioned that if I wanted to know who was the real crook in the Hadfield family, I should look more closely at Ronald.’

‘And you did?’

‘Yes. There’s nothing proven, no charges brought, but there’s a strong suspicion going about that he’s been involved in money-laundering.’

‘I see,’ said Banks. ‘So he won’t like the attention his father’s suspicious death has brought?’

‘Not at all.’

‘And it would make sense for him to have us think we were searching for some Somalian hit man, or some such mythical killer.’

Gerry smiled. ‘Exactly.’

Banks folded his arms. ‘Excellent. Good work.’

‘Thank you, sir. Shall I keep plugging away?’

Banks glanced at his watch. ‘No, not tonight. You deserve a drink. My treat. Besides, Ronald Hadfield’s business practices aren’t our concern unless they have some connection to his father’s death. And after what you’ve just told me, they probably don’t. We’ll let the fraud squad deal with him. I think we need to look a bit closer to home. Where’s Annie?’

‘Gone to see her dad, sir, about working on that sketch of Mia. DS Jackman said Sarah Chen and her housemates knew Mia, too.’

‘The sooner we find her, the better. Just you and me, then.’

Gerry got up and reached for her coat from the rack, and as Banks helped her on with it he noticed a photograph on Annie’s desk and went over to see what it was.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, holding it up for Gerry.

‘Oh, that. It’s a photo of a treble clef the CSIs found in Laurence Hadfield’s bathroom. Annie had it photographed before she took it down to exhibits. It’s in her report, but I haven’t had time to enter it into HOLMES yet.’

Banks hadn’t read the most recent statements and exhibits reports on the Laurence Hadfield case yet, mostly because he had been distracted by the Sarah Chen case, or by Zelda. ‘It’s not Poppy’s?’

Gerry laughed. ‘According to DI Cabbot, sir, she almost had apoplexy at the mere suggestion.’

Banks stared at the photograph.

‘It’s a charm from a bracelet, sir,’ said Gerry. ‘Pandora, apparently. Very popular.’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ said Banks. But already he felt the thrill of connection, the cogs and wheels in his mind shifting, engaging, grinding out images. Adrienne Munro sitting in the Ford Focus, a charm bracelet loose on her right wrist. Whether it was from Pandora or there had been a missing charm, he couldn’t be certain, but it would be easy enough to find out. It was a treble clef, a musical symbol, and that seemed to suit Adrienne, he thought, with her violin and love of classical music.

Then there was the conversation with Colin Fairfax, who had said at one point that he had bought Adrienne a charm for her bracelet. Again, he hadn’t said what kind of charm, but that could also be easily checked. If it happened to be the same one, then it linked Hadfield with Adrienne, who was already linked with Sarah Chen through the note in her room and, now also through the mysterious Mia. Perhaps this wasn’t about drugs, after all.

‘Let’s postpone that drink for a short while, Gerry,’ Banks said. ‘Come with me. We’ve got work to do.’

Zelda loved walking around London in the evening, especially the West End. She loved the lights and the crowds heading for theatres and restaurants, the narrow streets, the noise from the cafés spilling out into the street.

She left her boutique hotel near Seven Dials at seven o’clock to find somewhere to eat in Covent Garden. Though she never worried about it in Yorkshire, she usually dressed down in London to avoid drawing attention to herself, and tonight was no exception. Her clothes were plain and loose-fitting, though not the kind of loose that simmered like a waterfall over her arse as she walked. She wore a padded jacket and a woolly hat to keep warm. No matter what the temperature, though, the streets were always full of people, some of the young girls very scantily dressed. When she had first come here, she had thought they were prostitutes, but Raymond put her right on that score. Though it was a chilly evening, people sat outdoors at café tables smoking, talking and drinking espresso, or stood outside pubs with pints in their hands, laughing at jokes. Sometimes as she walked around the city, Zelda had the eerie feeling that she had seen every face before, that each one was stored in her memory, and she recognised all of them.

Over the past few years, Zelda had become adept at making herself invisible. She hadn’t followed many people in her life, but it had been necessary on occasion, and her skill of invisibility had come in very useful. It was more a state of mind than anything physical. She didn’t need a disguise, but simple, ordinary clothes in dull colours helped: a brown winter coat, woolly hat, a straightforward gait of someone who knows where she’s going but is in no hurry, no signs of a strut or a wiggle.

She loved the anonymity, how she could walk around by herself without being pestered. Every time she went to London, she stayed in a different hotel, a different part of the city — Chelsea, Kensington, Soho, Piccadilly, even Earls Court, Notting Hill or Swiss Cottage. And it seemed there was nothing odd about a woman eating alone in London. At least not in the kinds of restaurants she sought out. She always managed to find some hidden-away treasure, a little backstreet bistro or trattoria of some kind.

Tonight she spotted a tiny French restaurant off Mercer Street which had a few empty tables, and she went inside. A maître d’ seated her without even asking whether she had a reservation, and she ordered a carafe of claret and studied the menu. When she had decided on the steak frites, she took out her e-reader and propped it up on the table. She had bought the kind with the origami cover, as it folded over and made a stand for itself, which was perfect for reading while eating alone. She had found that people were even less inclined to disturb her when she was reading.

Zelda always liked to get to London the night before she started working; it was a kind of buffer between the beautiful but remote and isolated world of Beckerby and the depressing reality of her job. It was useful and necessary work, but she couldn’t deny that it was often dispiriting, recognising those dreaded faces from her past, from some of the worst times of her life. In this state, tonight, she felt that she floated free of it all, was able to empty her mind of her concerns and concentrate on the words on the screen: Kawabata and the otherworldly Japan.

The waiter brought her meal and poured some more wine for her. She hadn’t thought it was the kind of restaurant where the waiters did that, so she guessed he was a gentleman of the old school. That was the thing about these hidden French restaurants, the waiters were almost always elderly men, much the same as at many of the best restaurants in Paris.

As she ate her steak, sipped her wine and looked up at an antique travel poster showing the Eiffel Tower on the wall, she thought of Paris, where she had spent her last year in servitude. Almost anyone she had known the previous few years would have killed for the life of luxury she had led there. But it was still slavery. She was wined and dined by the rich and powerful. Politicians. Bankers. Oligarchs. Gangsters. But she was still expected to lie on her back and please them. And her enforcers were never far away. They made it clear that she was not free to leave the luxury of the high-price call girl’s life. Slob and Vitch, she called them. They delivered her to the fancy restaurants and five-star hotels and waited while she did her duty, then they drove her to her flat afterwards. Sometimes they insisted on a piece of the action, too, one after the other, just to put her in her place, before they left her alone for the night. And even then, she knew, they were never far away, always watching.

And Paris was as good as it was ever likely to get.

The only reason she had risen so high in the first place was that someone had seen enough potential in her to know that she was being wasted where she was in the cheap brothels of the Balkans, so he had made an offer for her, which was accepted. She was sold. No more backstreet brothels in Sarajevo or Zagreb, cramped cars off the autobahn or kerbside promenading in Prague. Suddenly, it was all expensive perfumes, fine clothes and top-drawer clientele. But Zelda soon learned that the only difference between these men and the ones she had encountered in backstreet brothels was the quality of their suits. The man who bought her, Darius, once made Zelda watch while his minders kicked a rival pimp to death in an alley in the rain. The message was clear and simple: cross us and this will happen to you. She didn’t feel a thing.

No more than she did when she slit Darius’s throat less than a year later.