Cold Is The Grave

16

Banks spent the evening at home trying to make sense of the day’s events. He still felt weak and nauseated, but apart from that, there seemed no serious damage. The ambulance crew had insisted on giving him oxygen and taking him to Eastvale General for a checkup, but the doctor pronounced him fit to go home, with a warning to lay off the ciggies for a while.

From what he had been able to piece together so far, it appeared almost certain that Riddle had committed suicide. They wouldn’t know for sure until Dr. Glendenning performed the postmortem, probably tomorrow, but there were no signs of external violence on Riddle’s body, the note appeared to be in his handwriting, and the rags and towels used to keep the petrol fumes in the garage had been placed on the inside of the doors, after they had been closed. There were no windows or other means of exit.

Banks would never have pegged Riddle as the suicidal type, but he would be the first to admit that he had no idea if such a type existed. Certainly the murder of his daughter, the destruction of all his political and professional hopes, and the smear campaign started against him in the tabloid would be enough to drive anyone over the edge.

So suicide it may be, Banks thought, but Barry Clough still had a lot to answer for. Clough was enjoying the hospitality of the Eastvale cells that night, while the detectives and forensic experts mobilized by Burgess down south were working overtime following up all the leads they had on the Charlie Courage and Andy Pandy shootings. With any luck, by tomorrow Banks would have something more substantial to confront Clough with in the interview room.

It was nine o’clock when a car pulled up and someone knocked at the door. Puzzled, Banks went to see who it was.

Rosalind Riddle stood there in the cold night air, wearing only a long skirt and sweater. “Can I come in?” she said. “It’s been a hell of a day.”

Banks could think of no reply to that. He stood aside to let her in and shut the door behind her. She smoothed down her skirt and sat in the armchair by the fire, rubbing her hands together. “There’s a chill in the air,” she said. “We might get frost tonight.”

“What are you doing here?” Banks asked.

“I’ve been going insane just sitting around the house. charlotte came to stay with me for a while but I sent her away. She’s nice, but you know, we’re not that close. It’s so empty, and there’s nothing to do there. My mind has been running around in circles. I want to talk to you. It seemed… I don’t know… I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.” She moved to stand up.

“No. Sit down. You might as well stop. You’re here now. Drink?”

Rosalind paused. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” She sat down again. “Thank you. I wouldn’t mind a glass of white wine, if you have any.”

“I’m afraid I’ve only got red.”

“Okay.”

“It’s nothing fancy.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry. I might be a snob about some things, but not about wine.”

“Good.” Banks headed into the kitchen to open the Marks and Sparks Bulgarian Merlot. He poured himself a glass, too. He had a feeling he would need it. After he had handed Rosalind her drink, Banks sat opposite her. She had clearly made an effort to look her best, wearing an expensive gray skirt and Fair Isle jumper, applying a little makeup to give some color to her pallid features, but there was no disguising the bruiselike circles under her eyes, or the rims pink from crying. This was a woman hanging on the edge by her fingernails.

“How are you?” he asked. It sounded like a stupid question after what had happened to her, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I’m… I… I don’t really know. I thought I was coping, but inside…” She tapped her chest. “It all feels so tight and hot inside here. I keep thinking I’m going to explode.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s quite a thing, you know, losing both your daughter and your husband within a week of one another.” She gave a harsh laugh, then thumped the armrest of her chair. “How dare he do this? How dare he?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s run away from it all, hasn’t he? And where does that leave me? A cold, heartless bitch because I’m still alive? Because I didn’t care about my daughter’s murder enough to kill myself over it?”

“Don’t do this, Rosalind,” said Banks, getting up and putting his hands on her shoulders. He could feel the little convulsions as grief and anger surged through her.

After a while, she reached up and gently disengaged his hands. “I’m all right,” she said, wiping the tears out of her eyes. “I’m sorry for inflicting myself on you, but it’s been on my mind all day. Going over and over it again. I can’t understand my feelings. I should feel sorrow, loss… but all I feel is anger. I hate him. I hate him for doing this! And I hate myself for feeling like that.”

Banks could do nothing but sit down helplessly and let her cry again. He remembered his own reaction to finding Riddle’s body; there had been a lot of anger in that too, before it gave way to guilt. The selfish bastard.

When Rosalind had finished, he said, “Look, I can’t pretend to know how you feel, but I feel terrible myself. If I’d gone out there sooner I might have saved him.” It sounded even more pathetic than his opening gambit, but he felt he had to get it off his chest.

Rosalind gave him a sharp look. “You? Don’t be silly. Jerry was a very determined man. If he wanted to kill himself, he’d damn well do it, one way or another. There was nothing you could have done except perhaps postpone the inevitable.”

“Even so… I keep thinking if only I hadn’t put off the visit. If only I hadn’t… I don’t know.”

“Disliked him so much?”

Banks looked away. “I suppose that’s a part of it.”

“Don’t worry. Jerry wasn’t a very likable man. Even death won’t change that. There’s no sense in your feeling guilty.”

“I’ve been thinking about what might have caused him to do it,” Banks said after a short pause. “I know you said he was depressed over Emily’s death and all the fallout that engendered, but somehow, even all that just didn’t seem enough in itself.”

“He was upset about those lies in the newspaper.”

Banks paused. He knew he shouldn’t be telling Rosalind about her husband’s problems with Barry Clough, but he felt she deserved something from him; he also thought it might put Riddle’s death in perspective for her a little more clearly. Call it guilt talking. He took a deep breath, then said, “I was out at a place called Scarlea House yesterday afternoon. Ever heard of it?”

“I’ve heard of it, yes. It’s an upmarket shooting lodge, isn’t it?”

“Yes. According to the bartender, your husband had dinner with Barry Clough there the Sunday before last.”

Rosalind paled. “Barry Clough?”

“Yes. The man Emily lived with for a while in London.”

“I remember the name. And you’re telling me that Jerry had dinner with him?”

“Yes. Are you sure you didn’t know?”

“No. Jerry never said anything to me about it. I knew he was out for dinner that night, yes, but I thought it was just one of his political things. I’d stopped asking him where he went a long time ago. How would a newspaper find out about that anyway, even if it is true?”

“They didn’t have to know about that specific meeting,” said Banks. “Remember, the article never made any direct assertions; it was all innuendo. It’s even possible that someone on the staff at Scarlea House – one of the waiters, perhaps – talked to a reporter but refused to be quoted as a source. I don’t know. These journalists have their tricks of the trade. The point is that it happened. Did you have any idea at all that your husband had talked to or met with Clough?”

“No. Absolutely none.”

Banks believed her. For one thing, Riddle wasn’t stupid enough to tell his wife he was having dinner with the man suspected of murdering their daughter. “Your husband told me that Clough was trying to blackmail him. Using Emily.”

“But Jerry would never agree to anything like that.”

“I think that was his dilemma. That was what tore him apart. Certainly Emily’s murder hurt him deeply, but this was what finally pushed him over the edge. There he was, a man of honor, who has to decide whether he wants to fall into the hands of a gangster or have his daughter and, by extension, his entire family, vilified in public.”

“Are you saying that he didn’t know whether he would have done what Clough asked or not, and he couldn’t face making the decision?”

“Possibly. But going by the tabloid article, it looks as if he had already turned Clough down, or that Clough had lost patience waiting.”

“If Clough was behind it.”

“Who else?”

“I don’t know.” Rosalind leaned forward. “But, if all you’re saying is true, it doesn’t make sense…”

“For Clough to kill Emily?”

“No.”

“That’s true. That’s what your husband said, too, when I asked him about it. Clough had nothing to gain. I still think he’s a strong candidate, but I must admit the whole thing’s been puzzling me a lot.”

“Who, then?”

“I don’t know. I feel as far away from a solution as I ever have.”

“What will you do about Clough?”

“Keep at him. There are other things we want to talk to him about, too. I’ve got to tell you, though, that I’m not at all hopeful about convicting Clough of anything, no matter what he’s done.”

“Why not?”

“A man like him? If he can blackmail a chief constable, imagine what else he’s got going, who he might have in his pocket. Besides, he never does anything himself. He delegates, keeps his hands clean. Even if, for some reason we haven’t considered, he was responsible for Emily’s murder, he’d have got one of his minions like Andrew Handley or Jamie Gilbert to do the dirty work. And he’s rich. That means he’ll be able to afford the best defense.”

“Sometimes I wish I was in criminal law,” Rosalind said, her eyes burning. “I’d love to take on his prosecution.”

Banks smiled. “First we’d have to persuade the CPS it was worth pursuing, and that’s a Herculean effort in itself. In the meantime, we’ve still got a murderer to catch.”

Rosalind sipped some wine. At least she didn’t pull a face and spit it out. “You’ve probably deduced this already,” she said, “but our marriage was very much a matter of convenience. He gave me the things I wanted and I didn’t embarrass him in public. I like to think I might even have helped him advance. Other than that, we went our separate ways.”

“Affairs?”

“Jerry? I don’t think so. For one thing, he didn’t have the time. He was married to his work and his political ambitions.” She looked Banks straight in the eye. “Me? A few. Nothing important. All discreet. None recently.”

They sat quietly for a few seconds. A gust of wind rattled the loose window upstairs. “You said you wanted to talk to me?” Banks said.

“Oh, it’s nothing to do with the murder. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you in any way. It’s just that, well, you give the impression you think I’ve been holding something back, not telling you everything.”

Banks nodded. “Yes. I do think that. I have done from the start.”

“You’re right.”

“And now you’re going to tell me?”

“No reason not to, now. But first, do you think I might have another glass of wine?”

That evening at home, Annie reheated some vegetable curry in a bowl and sat in front of the television, hoping the flickering images would take her mind off her problem. No such luck. There seemed to be nothing on but nature programs, current events or sports, and nothing she watched had the power to absorb or distract her at all. She flipped through her meager collection and briefly entertained the idea of watching a comfort video, Doctor Zhivago or The Wizard of Oz, but she even felt too agitated to concentrate on a movie.

Damn Banks, she thought as she washed out her dish. How could he do this to her? Maybe she had let things cool between them romantically, but that gave him no right to treat her like some probationary DC who couldn’t be trusted with the full story. She knew that his action hadn’t been technically wrong in any way, but it had been dishonest and cowardly. As SIO, Banks was quite entitled to follow up a lead and decide whether it required action or not. Obviously, in the case of his night with Emily Riddle, he knew exactly what had occurred, so he knew that no further action was needed.

He must also have known that he was hiding the truth from Annie, though, or he would have told her about that night before, when he came clean about going to London to find Emily and having lunch with her the day she died. Annie remembered asking him then if that was all he had to tell, and he had said yes. That made him a liar.

So what to do about it? That was the question she agonized over. The way she saw it, she had two choices. She could, of course, simply do nothing, just put in for a transfer and leave the whole mess behind. That had its appeal, certainly, but it left too much up in the air. She had hidden from unpleasant things and turned her back for far too long. Now that her career had actually come to mean something to her again after the years of apathetic exile in Harkside, where she had conned herself into thinking everything was well with the world, Annie wanted to set things on the right track. And just how would an abrupt transfer look, with her inspector’s boards coming up so soon?

On the other hand, she could confront Banks and find out what he had to say for himself. Maybe she should give him the benefit of the doubt, innocent until proven guilty and all that. After all, it wasn’t as if she didn’t still have feelings for the bastard.

But she already knew he wasn’t innocent, that it was simply a matter of what he was guilty of. How much might a run-in with Banks upset her chances of making inspector? She didn’t think he was vindictive, didn’t think he would deliberately stand in her way, but everything has fallout, especially given the history Banks and Annie had between them.

Giving up on the television, Annie did what she usually did when she felt agitated and unable to find her calm center; she flung on her fleece-lined jacket and went for a drive. It didn’t matter where.

It had turned into a cold night, and she got the heater going full-blast. Even so, the car took a while to warm up. The mist was crystallizing on the bare trees, sparkling as her headlights flicked across branches and twigs on her way out of Harkside. Ice-crusted puddles crackled under her wheels.

She crossed the narrow bridge over the River Rowan between the Harksmere and Linwood reservoirs. Harksmere stretched, cold and dark, to the west, and beyond it lay Thornfield Reservoir, where the remains of Hobb’s End had once more been covered with water. That was where she had first met Banks, she remembered, toward the end of the hottest, driest summer in years. He had come scrambling down the steep rim looking like a sightseer, and she had stopped him at the bridge. She had been wearing her red wellies and must have looked a sight.

He still didn’t know this, but Annie had known who he was the minute she saw him – she had been expecting him – but she wanted a little fun first, so she had challenged him on the packhorse bridge. She had liked his manner. He hadn’t been stuffy or officious with her; he had simply made some reference to Robin Hood and Little John. After that, Annie had to admit that she hadn’t resisted him very hard.

And now he was her senior officer, and he had been keeping things from her.

Past the old air base, Annie took the left fork and headed for the open moorland that stretched for miles on the tops between there and Swainsdale. Up on the unfenced road, the full moon came out from behind the thinning cloud cover, and she could see that the ground all around her was white with rime-frost. It had an eerie beauty that suited her mood well. She could drive for hours through this lunar landscape and her mind would empty of all her problems. She would become nothing but the driver floating through space – the wheel, the car merely extensions of her being, as if she were traveling the astral plane.

Except that Annie knew now where she was going, knew that the road she was on was the one that led over the moors and down through the village of Gratly, where Banks lived.

And she knew that when she got to his drive she would turn into it.

Banks refilled the wineglasses and sat down again. “Go on,” he said.

Rosalind smiled. “You might find this hard to believe,” she began, “but I haven’t always been the dull, decent wife of the dull, decent chief constable.”

Banks was startled by her smile. It had so much of Emily in it, that hint of mischief, of Just watch me. “That sounds like the beginning of a story,” he said.

“It is.”

“I’m all ears.”

“First, we have to go back a while. Believe it or not, my father was a vicar. He’s retired now, of course. I grew up in the vicarage in a small village in Kent, an only child, and my childhood was relatively uneventful. I don’t mean that it was bad in any way. I did all the normal things kids do. I was happy. It was just unexceptional. Dull, even. Like the way Philip Larkin described his in that poem. Then, in the mid-seventies, when I was sixteen, we moved to a parish out Ealing way. Oh, it was a very nice area – none of that inner-city stuff – and the parishioners were for the most part law-abiding, reasonably affluent citizens.”

“But?”

“But it was near the tube. You can’t imagine what wonderful new worlds that opened up to an impressionable sixteen-year-old.”

Banks thought he could. When he moved from Peterborough to Notting Hill at the age of eighteen, his life had changed in many ways. He had met Jem across the hall from his bed-sit, for a start, and had lurked at the fringes of the sixties scene – which stretched well into the early seventies – enjoying the music more than the drugs. There was an excitement and vibrancy about the capital that was missing from Peterborough, and would certainly have been missing from a vicarage in Kent.

“Let me guess: The vicar’s daughter went a little wild?”

“I was born in 1959. It was November 1975, when we moved to Ealing. While everyone else was listening to Queen, Abba and Hot Chocolate, me and my friends were taking the tube into town to listen to The Sex Pistols. This was right at the start, before anyone really knew anything about them. They’d just played their first gig the day after Bonfire Night at Saint Martin’s College of Art, and one of the girls at my new school was there. She couldn’t talk about anything else for weeks. Next time they played, she took me with her. It was fantastic.”

Punk. Banks remembered those days. He was older than Rosalind, though, and identified more closely with sixties music than that of the seventies. When he had lived in London his favorites had been Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the various local blues bands that seemed to form and split up with amazing regularity. Still, he had responded to the angry energy of some of the punk music – especially The Clash, by far the best of the bunch in his opinion – but not enough to buy any of their records. Also, as he had been a probationary police constable back then, he had experienced the violence of punk first-hand, from the other side, and that, too, had put him off.

“Pretty soon,” Rosalind went on, becoming more animated as she relived her memories, “it was in full swing. The look. The music. The attitude. Everything. My parents didn’t know me anymore. We saw The Clash, The Damned, The Stranglers, The Jam. You name them. Mostly in small clubs. We Pogoed, we hurled ourselves into one another, and we spat at each other. We dyed out hair weird colors. We wore torn clothes, safety pins in our ears and…” She paused and pulled up the sleeve of her jumper. Banks could see a number of more or less round white marks, like old scars. “We stubbed cigarettes out on ourselves.”

Banks raised an eyebrow. “How on earth did you explain all that to your husband?”

“He was never that curious. I just told him it was an old burn scar.”

“Go on.”

“You can’t imagine how exhilarating it was after the stuffy and boring childhood in a village in Kent. We went wild. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was just seventeen, and I got pregnant. It doesn’t matter who the father was; his name was Mal, and he was long gone before I even knew myself. It happened in someone’s poky bed-sit after The Pistols did one of their gigs at the 100 Club, the summer of 1976. This is what I could never tell Jerry. He was a terrible prude, as if you didn’t know. I don’t know if he actually believed I was a virgin when we married, but I’m certain he was. If he’d ever found out, well… who can say? I kept it from him.”

Banks remembered the 100 Club well. On Oxford Street, it had been part of his patch, and he had been inside the cavernous cellar more than once trying to stop fights and help get rid of unruly customers. It turned into a jazz club some years later, he remembered. “I can understand why you might not have wanted him to know,” he said. “Even in this day and age, some people are funny about that sort of thing, and it doesn’t surprise me that Jimmy – I mean the chief constable, was. But why is that important now?”

“He knew you all called him Jimmy Riddle, you know.”

“He did? He never said anything.”

“He didn’t care. Something like that, it didn’t bother him, wasn’t even of passing interest to him. He was strangely impervious to criticism or having the piss taken. He really didn’t have much of a sense of humor, you know. Anyway, I haven’t told you the full story yet. You’ll see why it’s important.” She moved forward in her chair and clasped her hands on her knees. When she spoke, she almost whispered, as if she thought someone were eavesdropping on them. “My first thought was to have an abortion, but… I don’t know… I didn’t really know how to go about it, if you can believe that. A fully fledged punk, pregnant, but I was still a naive country girl in a lot of ways. Then there was my religious background. When it came down to it, I hadn’t the nerve to face it all by myself, and the boy, well, as I said, he was long gone. My father’s a good man. He had been preaching about grace, mercy and Christian charity all his life.”

“So you went to your parents?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“They took it well, considering. They were upset, naturally, but they were good to me. They persuaded me to have the baby, of course, as I knew they would. Father doesn’t believe in abortion. It’s not only Catholics who don’t, you know. Anyway, we did it the way they used to do it years ago. A spell with Aunt So-and-So in Tiverton for the last few months, when it started to show, a quick adoption, and it was as if nothing had ever happened. In the meantime, if I happened to get cured of punk, so much the better.”

“Did you?”

“Get cured of punk?”

“Yes.”

“By the time I’d had my baby I was about to sit my A-Levels. It was 1977. I don’t know if you remember, but punk had become very popular and the big bands were all being signed up by major labels. The whole scene had got very commercial. Now it seemed that everybody was talking about it, adopting the look. Somehow, it just wasn’t the same. They weren’t ours any more. Besides, I was older and wiser. I was a mother, even if I wasn’t a practicing one. Yes, I was cured. I spent the summer at home, and in October I went to the University of Bath to study English Literature, became an intellectual snob and switched to new wave, which I’d always secretly preferred, anyway. Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Roxy Music, Television, Patti Smith. Art school music. I did one year of English, then changed to law.”

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“The child?”

“As you know, it’s perfectly legal now for children to track down their birth parents. I can understand it, but I have to say that in many cases it’s the cause of nothing but grief.”

“In your case?”

“She found me easily enough. Last January, it was. The Children’s Act came into effect in 1975, before she was born, as you probably know. That meant she didn’t even have to go for counseling before the Registrar General gave her the information that led her to me. It was always on the cards. She just walked into my office one day. It didn’t take her long to work out that I was terrified of her telling my husband. I don’t know what would have happened. It was bad enough that he was so prudish and possessive, and that I’d kept it from him all those years, but this also happened just as his political ambitions were getting all stirred up, and I wanted to be on that ride, too. I wanted Westminster. Jerry was always big on family values, and any hint of a family scandal – ex-punk wife of chief constable, love child tells all – well, it would have ruined everything. At least, I believed it would.”

“What did she do?”

“Asked for money.”

“Your own daughter blackmailed you?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. She just asked for help now and then.”

“Financial help?”

“Yes. I mean, I did owe her, didn’t I? Apparently, she hadn’t had such a good life with her adoptive parents. They turned out to be unsuitable, she said, though she didn’t explain why, and they didn’t have much money. Then they died in a fire just after her second year of university, and she was left all alone. She was in her last year of university at the time she found me, so every little bit helped. I didn’t really mind.”

“Did she ever threaten to tell your husband the truth if you didn’t pay up?”

“She… she hinted that she might.”

“And you paid for her continuing silence?”

Rosalind averted her eyes. “Yes.”

“Even after she left university?”

“Yes.”

“That’s blackmail,” said Banks. “Are you going to tell me who she is?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

Rosalind drank some wine, then she said, “It’s Ruth. Ruth Walker.”

Banks almost choked on his drink. “Ruth Walker is your daughter? Emily’s half-sister?”

Rosalind nodded.

“My God, why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I can’t see how it could be relevant.”

“That’s for me to judge. Did Emily know this?”

“I didn’t think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“As far as I knew at the time, they met only once. Ruth used to come to my office in Eastvale. That’s where we did all… all our business. Believe it or not, I didn’t even know her address, where she lived, except she told me she’d grown up in Salford. Once – last Easter, I think it was – Emily was there. She’d come to borrow some money from me to go shopping. Ruth walked in. I introduced my daughter and told her Ruth was there about the new computer system we were thinking of installing. They chatted a bit, about music, what school Emily was at, that sort of thing. Just polite chitchat. That was all. Or so I thought.”

“So Emily didn’t know who Ruth really was?”

“That’s what I believed at the time.”

“What changed your mind?”

“After Emily came… after you brought Emily back home, the phone rang one day. It was Ruth. I thought she was calling for me. I was angry because I’d specifically told her never to phone the house, but she asked to speak to Emily.”

“And?”

“Afterward, I asked Emily about it. Then she told me about how Ruth had phoned her a lot at school, how she’d even been down to London once for a weekend and stayed with her. How they were friends.”

“So Emily knew that Ruth was her half-sister?”

“Yes.”

“What was her reaction?”

“You knew Emily. She thought it was all rather cool, her mother having a secret past. She promised me not to say anything. She was well aware of how her father would react.”

“Did you trust her?”

“For the most part. Emily wasn’t malicious, though she could be unpredictable. You know, at her age, I wasn’t much different. If we’d been contemporaries, who knows, we might have been friends.”

“I can only imagine the havoc the two of you might have wreaked.”

Rosalind smiled her Emily smile again. “Yes.”

“Did she know about the blackmail?”

“Good Lord, no. At least, she never said anything about it. And I doubt that’s something Ruth would have admitted to her half-sister. Emily was very headstrong and irresponsible, but she was honest at the bottom of it all. I can’t see her condoning what Ruth was doing if she knew about it.”

That made sense. But what if Emily had found out on her own? “Why tell me all this now?” he asked.

Rosalind shrugged. “A lot of reasons. Jerry’s death. Your finding him. Your bringing Emily back. You know, for better or for worse, you’ve become part of our lives this last while. I had to tell someone and I couldn’t think of anyone else. Isn’t that pathetic? Ever since Emily came home, I’ve been going crazy keeping it to myself, but I couldn’t risk telling you then. Not while Jerry was alive. I know you didn’t like him, but I know that you policemen stick together. And anything you discover often makes its way into the papers. I’m not saying you would have said anything, but…”

“The walls have ears?”

“Something like that.”

“And now?”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it? Nothing matters now. Apart from my anger, I just feel empty.” She put her glass aside and stood up. “Now I really must go. I’ve said what I came to say. Thank you for listening.”

As Annie was about to turn left into Banks’s drive just before Gratly Bridge, a car shot out backward and swung toward her so fast she had to floor the brake pedal to avoid a collision. The other car then set off down the hill toward Helmthorpe.

Heart beating fast, Annie turned left and drove slowly up to Banks’s cottage. She could see him silhouetted in the open door, wearing only a shirt and jeans despite the cold.

Annie pulled up in front and got out.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Banks said.

“That’s a nice welcome. Can I come in?”

He stood aside. “You might as well. Everyone else does.”

Annie had come prepared to launch right into him, having pumped herself up on the drive, but the adrenaline surge of her near accident and Banks’s offhand manner took some of the wind out of her sails. Inside the cottage, she sat down in the armchair. It was still warm from whoever had just left it.

“And what can I do for you?” Banks said, shutting the door and going over to put more peat on the fire.

“First you can get me a drink.” Annie nodded toward the low table. “That wine will do just fine.”

Banks went into the kitchen, got another glass and poured her some wine.

“Who was that?” she asked, taking the glass.

“Who?”

“The person who just left like a bat out of hell. The person who damn near backed right into me.”

“Oh, that person. Rosalind Riddle.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Work.”

“Work? Oh, well, I can see why you wouldn’t want to tell me anything about it, then. After all, I’m only your DIO, aren’t I?”

“Knock off the sarcasm, Annie. It doesn’t suit you. Of course I was going to tell you.”

“Like you tell me everything?”

“Come again?”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“Humor me.”

“Rosalind Riddle is work like her daughter was work, right?”

“I don’t get it. What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything.” Annie told him about leafing through the green sheets and finding the reference to the Hotel Fifty-Five. “No further action, or so Winsome told me. So I wondered why I hadn’t heard anything about it. I phoned the hotel and, lo and behold, who spent most of a night there together a month ago?”

Banks said nothing; he just gazed sheepishly into the fire.

“What’s the matter?” Annie went on. “Cat got your tongue?”

“I don’t see why I should have to explain myself to you.”

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you? I’ll tell you why. Murder. That’s why. Emily Riddle was murdered last week, or have you forgotten that?” As she spoke, Annie felt the embers of her anger start to rekindle again. “Now, after the things I’ve discovered, I don’t think you’re fit to be working the case, but I’m your DIO and you owe me at least the fucking courtesy of telling me the truth about your relationship with the victim.”

“There was no relationship.”

“Liar.”

“Annie, there-”

“Liar.”

“Will you let me talk?”

“If you tell the truth.”

“I am telling the truth.”

“Liar.”

“All right. So I liked Emily. So what? I don’t know why. She was a pain in the arse. But I liked her. That’s all. More like a daughter than anything. That’s as far as it went. It was my job to find her in London. She got herself into a bit of bother at a party and the only place she knew to come was to the hotel. I’d given her a card with the name written on, so she could contact me if she decided to come home. She was scared and alone and she came there. It’s as simple as that.”

“What bother?”

Banks told her about the incident with Andy Pandy at the party.

“And you didn’t see fit to share this tidbit of information with me, your DIO?” Annie shook her head. “I can’t believe it. What else have you been keeping me in the dark about?”

“Nothing, Annie. Look, I know it was wrong of me, but surely you can see why I was worried how it might appear?”

“How it might appear? Emily Riddle turns up at your room at three o’clock in the morning and stays there the rest of the night, and you’re worried about how it might appear. Oh, yes, I think I can see why.”

“Surely you can’t think…?”

“What else am I supposed to think? You tell me. You spend the night in a hotel room with a randy sixteen-year-old slut, and you want me to believe nothing happened? Do you think I was born yesterday?”

“Emily Riddle wasn’t a slut.”

“Oh, pardon me! Isn’t that grand? Coming to the defense of your poor damsel in distress.”

“Annie, the girl’s dead. At least you could show-”

“Show what? Respect?”

“Yes.”

“Were you showing her respect when you slept with her in that hotel room?”

“Annie, I’ve told you. I didn’t sleep with her.”

“And I don’t believe you. Oh, maybe you only intended to comfort her, give her a little cuddle, tell her everything was all right now, but from what I’ve heard of her, and from what I know about men, I very much doubt it ended there.”

“I never touched her.”

“You should have got her a room of her own.”

“I was going to, but she fell asleep on the bed.”

“Oh, come on.”

“She did. She was stoned. That’s exactly what happened.”

“And you? Where were you? I remember those rooms. They’re not very big.”

“In the armchair by the window. I sat up for a while listening to some music on the Walkman, then I spent the rest of the night listening to her snoring while I was trying to get to sleep, if you must know.”

Annie said nothing. She was trying to work out whether he was telling the truth or not. She suspected that he probably was, but she was determined not to let him off the hook that easily. However much it hurt or upset Annie, whether Banks had slept with Emily Riddle or not wasn’t the real issue, she told herself. He could sleep with whomever he damn well pleased, even if it happened to be a sixteen-year-old girl. Annie had no hold over him. What really mattered was that he had kept important information from her, as he had done before in this investigation, and she was beginning to find it harder and harder to trust him.

“Anyway,” Banks went on, “you’ve got some bloody nerve accusing me of screwing up on the job.”

Annie stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“What about you? Do you really think you’ve been pulling your weight lately?”

Annie flinched from the accusation. “I’ve had a few problems. That’s all. I told you. Personal problems.”

“A few problems? Is that what you call sneaking off to sleep with DI Dalton every minute my back was turned? Don’t think I didn’t notice. I’m not stupid.”

Annie shot forward and slapped him hard across the face. She could tell it hurt him, and he drew back, his cheek reddening. Hot tears brimmed in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it to sound so harsh. But you’ve got to admit you were pretty obvious. How do you think I felt?”

Annie could feel the blood roaring through her veins and her heart knocking against her ribs, even louder and faster than when the car almost hit her earlier. She paused for what felt like hours, taking slow, deliberate breaths, trying to calm herself, get rid of the panic and rage that seemed to possess her. When she finally spoke, it was in a voice barely above a whisper. “You bloody idiot. For your information, DI Dalton was one of the men who raped me. But don’t let that bother you. I’ll go now.” She started to get up.

“Jesus Christ, Annie! No, don’t go. Please don’t go.” Banks grasped her wrist. She looked at his hand for a moment, then she sat down again, all the fight gone out of her. Banks refilled her wineglass and his own. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I feel like a fool. Why didn’t you say something?”

“Like what? Come crying to my boss the first week on the job?”

“Like ‘This is the man who raped me.’ Is he the one who actually-”

“One of the others. But it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have done it, too, if I’d given him half a chance. As far as I’m concerned they’re all three of them equally guilty.”

“But you could have told me. You knew that I’d understand.”

“And what would you have done? Gone flexing your macho muscles? Beat him up? Something like that? Had a pissing competition? No, thanks. It was my problem. I preferred to handle it myself.”

“Looks like you did a good job.”

“He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

Banks smiled. “Annie, you don’t have to handle everything in life by yourself.”

“Shows what you know about it. Wasn’t anyone around to help when it happened, was there?”

“That doesn’t mean there’s no one now.”

Annie looked at him and felt herself soften. “I can’t handle this,” she said, shaking her head.

“Annie, I’m sorry. What can I say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. I saw the way you and Dalton tensed up when you met and I read it wrongly. I thought there was something between you.”

“There was. Just not what you thought it was.”

“I know that now. And I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.”

Annie made a sound halfway between a sniff and a laugh. “Like I trusted you?”

“I was jealous. Besides, I didn’t give you much reason to trust me, did I? I’ve handled this all wrong.”

“You can say that again.”

“Annie, I swear on my honor that nothing happened between me and Emily Riddle except she passed out in my room. What was I to do? The next day I bought her some new clothes on Oxford Street and we went home on the train.”

“And you really sat in one of those horrible hotel armchairs listening to your Walkman?”

“Yes. And smoking.”

“And smoking. Of course.”

“Yes.”

“Then you tried to sleep but her snoring kept you awake?”

“Yes. And the wind and rain.”

“And the wind and rain.” He looked so earnest that Annie couldn’t help herself; she burst into laughter. The thing was, she could just picture him there doing exactly what he said. He looked hurt. “I’m sorry, Alan. Really, I am. Nobody could make up a story as silly as that if it didn’t really happen.”

Banks frowned. “So you believe me now?”

“I believe you. I just wish you’d told me earlier. All this deception…”

“On both sides.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t deceive you. You read the situation wrongly.”

“But you kept something from me.”

“That was private business. It wasn’t to do with the case, not like your relationship with Emily Riddle. You really liked her?”

“I don’t think I could have stood being around her for very long. She could be quite exhausting. Never stopped talking. And a hell of an attitude. But, yes, I did.”

Annie tilted her head and gave him a crooked grin. “You’re a funny one. You’re so straight in some ways, but there’s a definite bohemian edge to you.”

“Is that good?”

“It’ll do. But I want you to know that I’m still seriously pissed off at you for not treating me as a professional. You’ve got a lot of making up to do.”

“Annie, I’m sorry. Really, I am. It’s been difficult, given what we had, then me thinking you and Dalton… you know. I mean, it’s not as if I don’t still…”

Annie felt her heart give a little somersault. “Don’t still what?”

“Fancy you.” The fire was waning and the air becoming chilly. Banks looked at Annie and she felt the stirrings of her feelings for him that she’d been trying to ignore since they split up. He picked up a lump of peat. “Are you staying?” he asked. “Shall I put some more on? It’s getting cold.”

Annie gave him a serious look, then bit her lip, stretched out her hand, the same hand she had slapped him with, and said, “Okay, but we’ve got a lot of talking to do.”