All the Colors of Darkness

6

The East Side Estate had been built in the sixties and steadily declining ever since. Now it could give some of the Leeds or Newcastle estates a run for their money. Certain areas were a wasteland of burned-out cars and abandoned supermarket trolleys, uncontrolled dogs running rife and a population suspicious of all strangers, especially the police. Annie Cabbot had come across plenty of people there who were simply decent folk trying to make an honest living, but she had also met more than her fair share of others—dead-beat, drug-addicted or absentee parents, kids who had had little schooling and no chance of a worthwhile job, who had given up on the future by the age of thirteen or fourteen, searching only for the quick thrill of crystal meth, Ecstasy or whatever new concoction or cocktail the amateur chemists had come up with that week. And, increasingly, the oblivion of heroin.

A row of uniformed police officers held the crowds back at about half past ten on Wednesday evening, just after dark. Nobody was pushing or struggling; they were just curious and perhaps a little frightened. One or two troublemakers were trying to whip up a frenzy by shouting insults at the police, and someone even threw a half-brick at the ambulance crew, but the others mostly just ignored them. They were used to this sort of behavior. The streetlights created rainbow halos in the haze, and the ambulance lights spun blue in the humid night air near the mouth of what the locals called “glue-sniffers’ ginnel.” It was more like “meth poppers’ alley” or “skunk smokers’ snicket,” these days, Annie thought. Solvents were way out of style as the underprivileged had become more affluent and the drug prices had dropped as cheap stuff flooded the market.

One of the kingpins in the north estate dealing operation, a fifteen-year-old boy called Donny Moore, lay bleeding on a gurney from stab wounds as the paramedics hovered over him. Annie and Winsome had been called to assess the situation for Major Crimes.

“What’s the damage?” Annie asked the first paramedic, as they maneuvered the gurney into the back of the ambulance.

“Hard to tell at this point,” he said. “Three stab wounds. Chest, shoulder and abdomen.”

“Serious?”

“Stab wounds are always serious. Look,” he said, moving closer and lowering his voice. “Don’t quote me on this, but I think he’ll live. Unless we find extensive internal bleeding or damage, it doesn’t appear as if the weapon severed any major arteries or sliced up any essential organs.”

“Thanks,” said Annie. “When will we be able to talk to him?”

“Not until tomorrow at the earliest, depending how soon they manage to stabilize him. Check with the hospital. I have to go now.” He climbed in the back of the ambulance, shut the doors and they sped away.

The man who had reported the incident, Benjamin Paxton, paced beside his modest gray Honda, clearly anxious to get away. His wife was still sitting in the car with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the crowd and the police activity around her, perhaps in the hope that they would just disappear.

“I did my duty as a citizen,” said Paxton, eyeing the crowd anxiously as Annie asked him to tell her what happened while Winsome took notes. “I reported the incident and waited here till the police arrived, as I was asked to do. Isn’t that enough? My wife is really upset. Her nerves are bad. Can’t we just go home?”

“Where’s home?”

“We’re renting a cottage near Lyndgarth.”

“So you don’t live in the area?”

“God, no! We live in South Shields. This is supposed to be a walking holiday.”

Annie glanced around at the dilapidated redbrick terrace houses and the rusted cars on blocks out front. “Not a very good place for that sort of thing, I shouldn’t have thought,” she said. “Unless you’re into urban blight.”

“Not here. Around Lyndgarth.”

“What brought you down here, then?”

“We got lost, that’s all. We had dinner at a pub we read about in the guidebook and took the wrong road. We’re on our way back to Lyndgarth. We didn’t expect to run into this sort of thing in the Yorkshire Dales.”

“Which pub?”

“The Angel Inn, Kilnwick.”

Annie knew the place. They poured a decent pint of Sam Smith’s there. The story made sense. It would have been easy to get lost on the way back through Eastvale from the village of Kilnwick and end up on the East Side Estate. After all, it wasn’t as if there were a wall or a barbed-wire barricade around the place, though sometimes Annie felt there should be, given the number of tourists who complained about getting mugged there.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened, sir?” she asked.

“We were driving down the street and Olivia thought she saw something moving on the waste ground at the end of that passage under the railway lines there. I... well, I wasn’t going to stop, quite frankly, because I didn’t like the look of the place, but it was unmistakable. A person. The white T-shirt. There was somebody on the ground there, rolling, you know, as if he was in pain. At first, of course, we thought it might have been a woman who’d been attacked and raped. There’s such a lot of it around these days.”

“So you stopped to help?”

“Yes. I got out and... well, as soon as I saw the blood I got straight back in the car and phoned the ambulance and police on my mobile.”

“Did you see anyone else around?”

Paxton paused. “I’m not really sure. I mean, it was quite dark, even then.”

“But?”

“Well, I thought I saw a dark hooded figure running up the passage.”

“Dark as in...?” asked Winsome.

“Oh, no,” Paxton said. “No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply... No. Just that it was in shadow.”

“Male or female?” Annie asked.

“Male, I think.”

“Could you give a description?”

“I’m afraid not. It looked like a largish figure, but I think that might perhaps have been exaggerated by the shadows and the tunnel. But, really, it was too dark to make anything out clearly.”

“I understand,” said Annie. “Did you see anyone else?”

“There were a couple of people walking up that cross street, about a hundred yards away. A man walking his dog. And I got the most fleeting impression... I don’t know, just before we got there and saw the figure on the ground, that there was a group of people sort of scattering.”

“Scattering?”

“Yes. All going in different directions, disappearing around corners and down passageways.”

“Could you describe any of them?”

“No. They were either in the shadows or wearing those hoods like they do these days so you can’t make out their faces.”

“Hoodies?”

“Is that what you call them?”

There were two gangs, if you could call them that, operating on the East Side Estate, Annie had learned: one to the north, centered around the two tower blocks, and the other here, to the south, hanging out around “glue-sniffers’ ginnel.” Though ASBOs abounded on both sides, they had never caused any serious problems outside the odd scrap, graffiti, shoplifting in the Swainsdale Centre and threatening behavior. But the mood had been changing lately; knives had arrived, baseball bats, and there were rumors of heavier drugs coming in from down south and from Manchester.

Paxton’s description of the people he had seen “scattering” from the scene fitted with the kind of uniform the gang members wore, and Donny Moore, the victim, was right up there with them. Most of their names were on file, so they shouldn’t be hard to track down. Whether the police would get anything out of them was another matter. People on the East Side Estate were notoriously closemouthed when it came to talking to the police.

“Did you see anything else?” she asked.

“No,” said Paxton. “I went back to the car and waited. The ambulance was quick. The boy was very still. I thought he was dead.”

“And you saw no one else?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” said Annie. “You can go home now. Leave an address with DS Jackman here and we’ll be in touch about a formal statement. It’s just a formality.” She turned to go and talk to the officers on crowd control. The citizens were getting restless for information.

“Thank you,” said Paxton.

As Annie walked away, she heard him ask Winsome, “Er... do you think you could possibly tell me the way to Lyndgarth?”

Annie had to smile. If you want to know the way, ask a policeman. She turned and winked at Winsome, who took the address and gave Paxton directions.

Since his talk with Edwina Silbert, Banks had found himself thinking a lot about the fact that Laurence Silbert had been a spy. He didn’t know very much about the intelligence services, which was probably the way they liked to keep it, but he knew enough to be aware that Silbert might have got up some pretty nasty business and made himself some serious and lasting enemies. And that was just on his own side.

The whole espionage business had changed a lot since the Cold War, Banks knew, and these days you were more likely to get the head of MI5 sending secret memos to CEOs of banks and oil companies about Chinese Internet espionage than anything else. But it wasn’t that long ago since people had been risking their lives to climb over the Berlin Wall. If Laurence Silbert hadn’t traveled much for the past ten or fifteen years, as his mother had indicated, then he had probably done most of his overseas operations before all the major changes in Germany and the former USSR.

Banks decided he might as well read up on it and find out as much as he could, so on Tuesday he had gone to Waterstone’s and bought Stephen Dorril’s MI6 and Peter Hennessy’s The Secret State. He had read Hennessy’s Having It So Good a few months ago and liked his style.

On Wednesday evening, Banks was in the kitchen in his jeans and an old T-shirt putting together an Ikea storage unit, now that his collection of CDs and DVDs was getting close to pre-fire proportions again, cursing because he had got the top on the wrong way around and wasn’t sure he could get the back off to fix it without ruining the whole thing.

Stanford’s Symphony No. 2 was playing in the background, and the agitated movement he was listening to at the moment echoed his frustration with IKEA. When he heard the knock at the door and got up off his knees to go and answer it, he realized that he hadn’t heard a car. That was odd. His cottage was isolated, even from the village it belonged to, at the end of a long driveway that ended with the beckside woods beyond, and nobody walked there except the postman. The music hadn’t been playing so loudly that he wouldn’t have heard.

Banks answered the door and found a slightly stooped man of around sixty, with thinning gray hair and a neat gray mustache, standing there. Though it was a warm evening, and the sun hadn’t gone down yet, the man was wearing a light camel overcoat on top of his suit. His shirt was immaculately white, and his tie looked like old school, or old regiment, the emblem of a castle keep dotted between its maroon and yellow stripes.

“Mr. Banks?” he said. “Detective Chief Inspector Banks?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to bother you at home. My name is Browne, with an e. Er... may I come in?”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Banks, “but I’m busy. What’s it about?”

“Laurence Silbert.”

Banks paused for a moment, then stood aside and gestured for Mr. Browne to enter. He did so, glanced around the front room and said, “Cozy.”

“I was working in the kitchen.”

“Ah,” said Browne, and followed him through.

The media storage unit lay on the floor, the untreated edge of wood that formed its top plain to see. “You’ve got the top the wrong way around,” said Browne.

“I know,” Banks grunted.

Browne grimaced. “Quite a job to put it right. I know. I’ve done it myself. It’s the back that’s the problem, you see. Flimsy stuff. I suppose you’ve already nailed it on?”

“Look, Mr. Browne,” said Banks, “much I as appreciate your advice on constructing IKEA products, I do know the problem I’m facing. Please, sit down.” He gestured to the bench at the breakfast nook. “Would you like a drink?”

“Thank you,” said Browne, wedging himself into the corner. He hadn’t taken off his overcoat. “A small whiskey and soda wouldn’t go amiss.”

Banks found a bottle of Bell’s in the booze cupboard and added a touch of soda. He poured himself a small Macallan 18-year-old with the merest threat of water. He used to be a confirmed Laphroaig drinker, but a bad experience had put him off, and he was only recently starting to enjoy whiskey again. He found that he couldn’t take the peat, seaweed and iodine taste of the Islay malts anymore, but he could handle the richer, more caramel tones of the old Highland malts in small quantities. Mostly, he still stuck to wine or beer, but this seemed an occasion for whiskey.

Browne raised his glass as Banks sat down opposite him. “Slainte,” he said.

“Slainte.”

“Stanford, I hear,” Browne said. “I knew you were a big classical music aficionado, but I would have thought Stanford was very much out of fashion these days.”

“If you know that much about me,” Banks said, “then you must also know that I’ve never been very concerned about what’s in or out of fashion. It’s good music to build storage units to, that’s all.” As he took a sip of whiskey the desire for a cigarette flooded his being. He gritted his teeth and fought it off.

Browne studied the rough edge of the top. “So I see,” he said.

“I’m happy to banter about storage units and Charles Villiers Stanford for a while,” Banks said, “but you told me you came about Laurence Silbert. Whose interests do you represent?” Banks had a damn good idea of exactly who Browne was, or at least whom he worked for, but he wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Browne played with his glass, swirling the amber fluid. “I suppose you could say that I represent Her Majesty’s government,” he said finally, then nodded. “Yes, that would be the best way of looking at it.”

“Is there another?”

Browne laughed. “Well, there’s always another point of view, isn’t there?”

“You’re one of Laurence Silbert’s old bosses?”

“Please, Mr. Banks. Surely even you must know that MI6 doesn’t operate on British soil. Haven’t you seen Spooks?”

“MI5, then,” Banks said. “I stand corrected. I suppose seeing some identification is out of the question?”

“Not at all, dear chap.”

Browne took a laminated card out of his wallet. It identified him as Claude F. Browne, Home Office Security. The photo could have been of anyone of Browne’s general age and appearance. Banks handed it back. “So what is it you want to tell me?” he asked.

“Tell you?” Browne sipped some more whiskey and frowned. “I don’t believe I mentioned wanting to tell you anything.”

“Then why are you here? If you don’t have anything to say relevant to the case under investigation, you’re wasting my time.”

“Don’t be so hasty, Mr. Banks. There’s no need to jump to conclusions. We can work together on this.”

“Then stop beating about the bush and get on with it.”

“I was simply wondering what point your... er... investigation has reached.”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Banks. “It’s not our policy to discuss active investigations with members of the public.”

“Oh, come on. Technically speaking, I’m hardly a member of the public. We’re on the same side.”

“Are we?”

“You know we are. All I’m interested in is whether we are likely to encounter any potentially embarrassing situations, any unpleasantness.”

“And how would you define that?”

“Anything that might embarrass the government.”

“A trial, for example?”

“Well, I must admit, that wouldn’t exactly be a welcome outcome at this juncture. But there’s very little likelihood of that happening. No, I was asking if there might be any, shall we say, fallout we should be worried about?”

“What did Silbert do?” Banks asked. “Put Strontium ninety in someone’s tea?”

“Very funny. I’m afraid I can’t tell you what he did,” said Browne. “You know I can’t. That information is classified, protected by the Official Secrets Act.”

Banks leaned back and sipped some Macallan. “Then we’re at a bit of an impasse, aren’t we? You can’t tell me anything and I can’t tell you anything.”

“Oh dear,” said Browne. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be like this. Some people get so very agitated at the mere idea of a secret intelligence service. We are on the same side, you know. We have the same interests at heart, the protection of the realm. Our methods may differ somewhat, but our ends are the same.”

“The difference is,” said Banks, “that you work for an organization that believes the ends justify the means. The police try to operate independently of that, of what various governments need to get done on the quiet so they can stay in power.”

“That’s a very cynical assessment, if I might say so,” said Browne. “And I’m more than willing to bet that you’ve taken a shortcut or two in your time to make sure someone you knew to be guilty got convicted. But that’s by the by. Like you, we’re mere civil servants. We also serve a succession of masters.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve seen Yes, Minister.”

Browne laughed. “Surprisingly accurate. Did you see the one about the hospital without patients?”

“I remember it,” said Banks. “My favorite.”

“Wouldn’t that be the perfect world? Schools without pupils, universities without students, doctors without patients, police without criminals? Then we could all get on with the real work.”

“A secret service without spies?”

“Ah, yes, that would be a good one.” Browne leaned forward. “We’re not so different, you and I, Mr. Banks.” He gestured vaguely toward the source of the music, which still played quietly in the background. “We both like Stanford. Elgar, too, perhaps? Vaughan Williams. Britten—though he did have a few dodgy habits and left these shores for the United States at a rather inconvenient time. The Beatles, even, given today’s perspective? Oasis? The Arctic Monkeys? I can’t say that I have ever listened to any of these, but I know your tastes in music are somewhat eclectic, and they are British. Whatever you think of The Beatles, even they represented traditional British values in their heyday. The four lovable moptops. And sometimes one has to stand up and fight for those values, you know. Sometimes one even has to do things that go counter to what one would deem right.”

“Why? That’s what I said about the ends and the means, isn’t it? Is that what Silbert did? Was he a government assassin? Did he betray people?”

Browne finished his drink and edged out of his corner to stand by the kitchen door. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. It’s not at all what the fiction writers say it is, you know.”

“Isn’t it? I always thought Ian Fleming aimed for realism.”

Browne’s lip curled. “I don’t think this is a very productive discussion, do you?” he said. “I’m not sure what it is that’s got you up on your moral high horse, but we still have a very real world to deal with out there. Take the Litvinenko business. That set us back years with the Russians. Do you know that there are as many Russian spies operating in Britain today as there were at the height of the Cold War? I came here seeking some sort of reassurance that, for the good of the country, your investigation into the death of Laurence Silbert wasn’t likely to cause any... any further ripples that might embarrass the service or the government. That it could be swiftly and neatly concluded, and you could head off back to Chelsea to see your lovely young girlfriend.”

“As far as I remember,” said Banks, feeling a chill crawl up his spine, “Lugovoi denied that he had anything to do with murdering Litvinenko. Didn’t the Russians claim that MI6 did it?”

Browne chuckled. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a fan of conspiracy theories.”

“I’m not,” said Banks. “One just hears these rumors.”

“Well, I hope you realize that’s as ridiculous as the claim that MI6 had something to do with the death of Princess Diana,” he said. “Not to mention naive. As Sir Richard Dearlove said under oath, MI6 does not sanction or involve itself in assassination. Of course the Russians denied it. Of course they made a counteraccusation. That’s what they always do. Andrei Lugovoi left a trail of Polonium 210 that practically glowed in the dark and led the police to his front door.”

“The police? Or you?”

“As I said before. We’re on the same side.”

“Are you telling me that Silbert was somehow connected with Russia? With the Litvinenko affair, even? Do you think there’s something about his murder that could stir things up internationally? Is there a terrorist connection? A Russian Mafia connection? Or maybe he was involved in the conspiracy over Princess Di’s death? Was he a double agent? Is that where the Swiss bank accounts come in?”

Browne stared at Banks and his eyes narrowed, turned hard and cold. “If you can’t give me the assurances I seek, then I’ll have to seek elsewhere,” he said, and turned to leave.

Banks followed him through the living room to the front door. “As far as I know,” he said, “it looks like a simple murder-suicide. Happens more often than you think. Silbert’s lover, Mark Hardcastle, killed your man, then he killed himself out of grief.”

Browne turned. “Then there’s no need for a messy investigation, is there, no chance of an awkward trial, of anything uncomfortable slipping out into public view?”

“Well, there probably wasn’t,” said Banks. “Not until you turned up, that is. I only said that’s what it looks like.”

“Good night, Mr. Banks, and grow up,” said Browne. He shut the door firmly behind him. Banks didn’t hear a car engine start until a few minutes later, far away, at the end of the lane. He went back to the kitchen and stared at the mess he had made of the storage center. Suddenly he didn’t feel like dealing with it anymore. Instead, he topped up his whiskey, noticing that his hands were shaking a little, and carried it through to the TV room, where he replaced Stanford with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, cranked up the volume on “Rich Woman” and thought about Sophia. Now, how on earth did Browne know about her?

On Thursday morning, Detective Superintendent Gervaise called a meeting in the boardroom, at which Banks, Winsome, Annie and Stefan Nowak were in attendance. Banks had told her about Mr. Browne’s visit beforehand, but she didn’t seem either particularly surprised or interested.

After tea and coffee had been sorted, everyone turned to Stefan Nowak for his forensic summary. “I suppose I should note first of all,” Nowak said, “that I just got the DNA results this morning, and on the evidence of the birthmark on the victim’s arm and the DNA comparison with the mother, we can definitely state that the identity of the deceased found at 15 Castleview Heights is Laurence Silbert. According to Dr. Glendenning’s postmortems, Hardcastle died of ligature strangulation—the yellow clothesline he hanged himself with— and Silbert was killed by a series of blows to the head and throat from a hard flat object—which we’ve matched to the cricket bat found at the scene. The first blow was to the back of the head, the left side, so he was moving away from his killer at the time.”

“That would make sense,” Banks said. “Silbert was supposed to be pretty fit, and he might have been able to put up more of a fight if he’d seen it coming.”

“But does it fit with the idea of a lover’s tiff?” Gervaise asked.

“I don’t see why not,” said Banks. “People turn away from one another in rows sometimes. Silbert must have misjudged the depth of Hardcastle’s rage. And the cricket bat was in its stand right by his side. But it could also fit other possible scenarios.”

“We’ll leave those for the moment,” said Gervaise. She turned to Nowak. “Go on, Stefan.”

“At that point we think Mr. Silbert turned as he fell to his knees, and his assailant hit him on the right temple and in the throat, breaking the hyoid bone, crushing the larynx and knocking him backward into the position we found him in. It was one, or a combination, of those blows that killed him. After that... well, there was a series of other blows. Postmortem.”

“And Mark Hardcastle was left-handed,” said Annie.

“Yes,” said Nowak, glancing at her. “Given that the only fingerprints we found on the cricket bat belonged to him, I’d hazard a guess that he’s your man. As I told you after blood-typing earlier this week, the odds were very good that the only blood at the Silbert crime scene belonged to Silbert himself. DNA analysis has now verified that beyond a doubt. The same with the blood we found on Hardcastle’s clothes and person. All Silbert’s, according to the DNA, with a small amount of Hardcastle’s own, most likely caused by scratches as he climbed the tree.”

“Well,” said Superintendent Gervaise, glancing from one to the other, “I’d say we’ve got our answer, haven’t we? You can’t argue with DNA. What about toxicology?”

“Nothing but alcohol in Hardcastle’s blood,” said Nowak. “Neither Hardcastle nor Silbert was drugged.”

“Was there evidence of anyone else at the scene?” Banks asked Nowak.

“Not at the scene specifically, no. Just the usual traces. You know as well as I do that there’s always evidence of whoever’s been in the room—friends, cleaners, dinner guests, relatives, what have you—and strangers a victim may have been in contact with, brushed up against. Trace evidence is all over the place—and don’t forget both victims had recently been in big cities—London and Amsterdam. Silbert had also been at Durham Tees Valley and Schiphol airports, too.”

“I think it’s time you put your curiosity to bed,” said Gervaise to Banks. “Other people had obviously been in the room at one time or another, like they’ve been in my room and yours. Silbert and Hard-castle had brushed against people in the street or in a pub or at an airport. That makes sense. You’ve heard DS Nowak. There was no evidence of any blood at the scene other than Silbert’s.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Annie said, “but that really doesn’t prove anything, does it? I mean, we know that Silbert was beaten to death with a cricket bat, so we’d expect to find his blood at the scene, but the fact that we haven’t found Hardcastle’s simply means that he didn’t shed any at the house. And if he didn’t shed any—”

“—then another killer might not have shed any. Yes, I can see where you’re going with this, DI Cabbot,” said Gervaise. “But it won’t wash. While we do have a lot of evidence to suggest that Mark Hard-castle killed Laurence Silbert and then hanged himself, we have none whatsoever to suggest that someone else did it. No one was seen entering or leaving the house, and no other suspects have suggested themselves. I’m sorry, but it sounds very much like case closed to me.”

“But someone from the theater might have had a motive,” Annie said. “I’ve already reported on the conversation I had with Maria Wolsey. She reckons—”

“Yes, we know all about that,” said Gervaise. “Vernon Ross or Derek Wyman might have had a motive if Hardcastle and Silbert got their new players’ group together. I read your report.”

“And?” said Annie.

“I just don’t believe that either Ross or Wyman would have had the ability to kill Silbert and make it look as if Hardcastle had done it.”

“Why not?” Annie protested. “They’re both theatrical types. They’re used to manufacturing illusions.”

“Very clever, but I’m sorry, I don’t believe it. Surely someone would have seen them coming or going? And then they’d have had to get rid of their bloody clothing. I just don’t see it, that’s all. What about the CCTV cameras?” Gervaise looked toward Nowak.

“We’ve checked all the footage, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “Too many blind spots, for a start, and number fifteen wasn’t covered directly.”

“It’s a very insular neighborhood,” said Banks, “so it doesn’t necessarily mean anything that no one was seen entering or leaving. I’ll bet you the secret intelligence services are very good at moving about unnoticed, even under surveillance cameras. Maybe the locals would notice a yob or a tramp, or some kid in a hoodie, but not someone who fit in with the neighborhood, drove the right car, blended in. I agree with DI Cabbot. Hardcastle could have gone out, and while he was gone, someone else—Ross, Wyman, some spook—could have entered and killed Silbert. When Hardcastle returned and found the body he became distraught and committed suicide. He could have picked up the cricket bat then, after the murder, after the real killer had wiped it clean. Hardcastle would have been in shock. Given that we have a photograph from an unknown source of Laurence Silbert in London with an unknown man, that Silbert was known to be an MI6 agent and that they’re pretty good in the dirty tricks department—”

“That’s neither here nor there,” snapped Gervaise. “I don’t suppose you’ve identified this mystery man in the photograph, have you?”

Banks glanced toward Annie. “We’ve shown it around to a few people,” she said, “but nobody admits to recognizing the unknown man.”

“And there were no fingerprints on the memory stick itself,” added Nowak.

Gervaise turned to Banks. “Have you learned anything yet about the location in the photographs?”

“No, ma’am,” said Banks. “I’m pretty certain the first two were taken in Regent’s Park, but I haven’t heard back from technical support on the others. Or on Julian Fenner’s dodgy phone number, either.”

“It seems as if you’re getting nowhere fast, doesn’t it?” Gervaise commented.

“Look,” said Banks, “I don’t think it’s irrelevant that Silbert was a spook or that Mr. Browne, if that’s his real name, came to see me last night and basically told me to lay off. You know as well as I do that we’ve run into a brick wall every time we’ve tried to find out anything about Silbert this week. The local police said they’d handle the Bloomsbury pied-a-terre business, and the next day they phoned us back, said they’d checked it out, and all they told us was that there was nothing out of the ordinary. What does that mean, for crying out loud? And can we trust them? Perhaps if there was something out of the ordinary they made it disappear? We all know how Special Branch and MI5 have been pecking away at us from the top lately, picking off tasks and turf for themselves. Terrorism and organized crime have given the government their excuse to do what they’ve been wanting to do for years anyway, to centralize and consolidate control and power and use us as an enforcement agency for unpopular policies. You’ve all seen the results when that’s happened in other countries. How do we know that the police who checked out Silbert’s flat weren’t influenced by them in any way? How do we know they weren’t Special Branch?”

“Now you’re being paranoid,” said Gervaise. “Why can’t you just accept that it’s over?”

“Because I’d like some answers.”

Nowak cleared his throat. “There is one more thing,” he said. He wouldn’t meet Banks’s gaze, so Banks knew it was bad news.

“Yes?” said Gervaise.

“Well, perhaps we should have done this earlier, but... things being the way they were... anyway, we ran Hardcastle’s and Silbert’s fingerprints through NAFIS and we got a result.”

“Go on,” said Gervaise.”

Nowak still didn’t look at Banks. “Well, ma’am, Hardcastle’s got form. Eight years ago.”

“For what?”

“Er... domestic assault. The man he was living with. Apparently Hardcastle flew into a jealous rage and beat him up.”

“Serious?”

“Not as bad as it could have been. Apparently he stopped before he did too much damage. Still put the bloke in hospital for a couple of days, though. And got himself a six-month suspended sentence.”

Gervaise said nothing for a few moments, then she regarded Banks sternly. “What do you have to say about that, DCI Banks?” she asked.

“You said you ran Silbert’s prints through NAFIS, too,” Banks said to Nowak. “Find anything there?”

“Nothing,” said Nowak. “In fact, as you pointed out, most inquiries connected with Laurence Silbert have run up against a dead end.”

“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” said Banks. “He was a spook. He probably didn’t even officially exist.”

“Well, he certainly doesn’t now,” said Gervaise. “That’s it. I’ve had enough of this. I’ll be talking to the coroner. Case closed.” She stood up and slammed her Silbert-Hardcastle folder shut on the table. “DCI Banks, could you stay behind a moment, please?”

When the others had left, Gervaise sat down again and smoothed her skirt. She smiled and gestured for Banks to sit, too. He did.

“I’m sorry we dragged you back from your holiday for this business,” she said. “I don’t suppose we can always tell when something’s going to be a waste of time, can we?”

“It would make our lives easier if we could,” said Banks. “But with all due respect, ma’am, I—”

Gervaise put her finger to her lips. “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no. This isn’t a continuation of the meeting. This isn’t about your theories or mine. As I said, that’s over. Case closed.” She laced her fingers together on the table. “What plans do you have for the next week or so?”

“Nothing in particular,” Banks said, surprised at the question. “Sophia’s coming up tomorrow. We’re going to see Othello on Saturday. Lunch with her parents on Sunday. Nothing special.”

“Only, I was feeling guilty,” Gervaise went on. “About dragging you back up here for nothing on the evening of your big dinner party.”

Christ, Banks thought, she wasn’t going to invite them for dinner, was she? “It wasn’t for nothing,” he said. “But that’s all right. Water under the bridge.”

“Only, I know how much trouble this job can cause a couple sometimes, and it must be really hard when you’re just starting out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Just where on earth was she going with this? Banks had learned that it was sometimes best not to ask too many questions, just to let Gervaise talk her own way around to her point. If you tried to nail her down too soon, she tended to get slippery.

“I hope we didn’t put too much strain on your relationship.”

“Not at all.”

“And how is the lovely Sophia?”

“Thriving, ma’am.”

“Good. Good. Excellent. Well, I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here?”

“I’ll admit to a touch of mild curiosity.”

“Aha,” said Gervaise. “Ever the wit. Well, seriously... er... Alan... I’d like to make it up to you. How does that sound?”

Banks swallowed. “Make what up, ma’am?”

“Make up for calling you back, of course. What did you think I was talking about?”

“Thank you,” said Banks, “but that’s not really necessary. Everything’s fine.”

“It could always be better, though, couldn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Right. Well, I’d like you to pick up your holidays where you left off. As of this weekend. A week, shall we say?”

“Next week off?”

“Yes. DI Cabbot and DS Jackman can handle the East Side Estate business. They’ve got young Harry Potter to help them. He’s coming along quite nicely, I think, don’t you?”

“He’ll be fine,” said Banks. “But—”

Gervaise held up her hand. “But me no buts. Please. I insist. No reason you shouldn’t enjoy the rest of your leave. You’re owed it, after all.”

“I know, ma’am, but—”

Gervaise stood up. “I told you. No buts. Now bugger off and enjoy yourself. That’s an order.”

And with that she walked out of the boardroom and left Banks sitting alone at the long polished table wondering just what the hell was going on.