Cold Is The Grave

3

Saturday morning dawned cool and overcast, but the wind was quickly tearing a few holes in the ragged clouds. “Enough blue sky to make baby a new bonnet,” as Banks’s mother would say. Banks lingered over coffee and a toasted tea cake in a café on Tottenham Court Road, not far from his hotel, reading the morning papers and watching people checking out the electronics shops across the road.

He had slept well. Surprisingly so, since the hotel was the same one that he and Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot had stayed in during his last case. Not the same room, thank God, but the same floor. Memories of her skin warm and moist against his kept him awake longer than he would have liked and made him feel vaguely guilty, but in the end he drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep, from which he awoke feeling unusually refreshed.

According to his A to Z, Ruth Walker lived quite close to the cramped flat off Clapham Road that Banks and Sandra had lived in for a few years in the early eighties, when the kids were little. Not exactly the “good old days,” but happy for the most part, before the Job started taking too much of a toll on him. Simpler, maybe. Sandra worked part-time as a dental receptionist on Kennington Park Road, he remembered, and Banks was usually too busy out playing cops and robbers to take his wife to the theater or help the kids with their homework.

It wasn’t much more than a couple of miles from the West End, as the crow flies, and he decided the walk would do him good. He had always loved walking in cities, and London was a great place for it. He had been cheated out of Paris, so he would have to make the best of where he was. If he set off now, he realized, he would probably arrive around lunchtime. If he got Louisa’s address from Ruth, he would go there in the early evening, between six or seven, which he had always found was a good time to catch people in. That should also leave him plenty of time to meet Sandra at eight in Camden Town.

A cool wind skipped off the murky river and whistled around his ears as he crossed Lambeth Bridge. He glanced back. Shafts of light lanced through the clouds and lit on the Houses of Parliament. It was odd, Banks thought, but when you visit a place you used to live in for a long time, you see it differently; you become more like a tourist in your own land. He would probably never have even noticed Big Ben or the Houses of Parliament in the days when he had lived there. Even now, his copper’s eye was more tuned to the two shifty-looking skinheads across the road, who seemed to be following a couple of Japanese tourists, than it was to the beauty of the London architecture.

It was pushing twelve-thirty when Banks got to Ruth’s street just off Kennington Road. The brick terrace houses were four stories high and so narrow they seemed pressed together like a mouthful of bad teeth. Here and there someone had added a lick of bright paint to a window frame, or put out a few potted plants in the bay window.

The name “R. A. Walker” appeared by the third-floor bell, a dead giveaway that the occupant was a woman. Banks pressed and heard it ring way up in the distance. He waited, but nobody came. Then he tried again. Still nothing. After standing on the doorstep for a few minutes, he gave up. He hadn’t wanted to phone ahead and tip her off that he was coming – finding that surprise often worked best in situations like this – so he had been prepared to wait.

Banks decided to have his lunch and call back in an hour or so. If she wasn’t in then, he’d think of a new plan. He found a serviceable pub on the Main Street and enjoyed a pint as he finished reading the newspaper. A few regulars stood at the bar, and a younger crowd was gathered around the video machines. One man, wearing a tartan cap, kept nipping around the corner to the betting shop and coming back to tell everyone in a loud voice how much he’d lost and how the horse he’d backed belonged in the glue factory. Everyone laughed indulgently. Nobody paid Banks any mind, which was just the way he liked it. He glanced over the menu and settled finally on a chicken pot pie. It would have suited Annie Cabbot just fine, Banks thought as he searched in vain among peas and carrots for the meat; Annie was a vegetarian.

A short while later, he stood on Ruth Walker’s doorstep again and gave her bell a long push. This time, he was rewarded by a wary voice over the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“I’ve come about Louisa,” Banks said. “Louisa Gamine.”

“Louisa? What about her? She’s not here.”

“I need to talk to you.”

There was a long pause – so long that Banks thought Ruth had hung up the intercom on him – then the voice said, “Come up. Top floor.” A buzzer went off and Banks pushed the front door open.

The stairs were carpeted, though the fabric had worn thin in places and the pattern was hard to make out. A variety of cooking smells assailed Banks as he climbed the narrow staircase: a hint of curry, garlic, tomato sauce. When he got to the top, there was only one door. It opened almost immediately when he knocked, and a young woman looked at him through narrowed eyes. After she had studied him for a while, she opened the door and let him in.

The best Banks could say of Ruth Walker was that she was plain. It was a cruel and unfair description, he knew, but it was true. Ruth was the kind of girl who, in his adolescence, always went around with an attractive friend, the one you really wanted. The Ruths of this world you usually tried to palm off on your friend. There was nothing distinguishing about her except, perhaps, the intelligence perceptible in her disconcerting and restless gray eyes. Already she seemed to have a permanent frown etched in her forehead.

She was dressed simply in baggy jeans and a T-shirt commemorating an old Oasis tour. Her hair, dyed black, gelled and cut spiky, didn’t suit her round face at all. Nor did the collection of rings and studs through the crescent edges of her ears. Her complexion looked dry as parchment, and she still suffered the ravages of acne.

The flat was spacious, with a high ceiling and one of those Chinese-style globe lampshades over the bulb. Bookshelves stood propped on bricks against one wall, not much on them, apart from tattered paperbacks and a few software manuals, and a computer stood on the desk under the window. A sheepskin rug covered part of the hardwood floor, and various quilts and patterned coverlets hung over the secondhand three-piece suite. It was a comfortable room; Ruth Walker, Banks had to admit, had made a nice home for herself.

“I don’t usually let strangers in,” she said.

“A good policy.”

“But you mentioned Louisa. You’re not one of her new friends, are you?”

“No, I’m not. You don’t like them?”

“I can take them or leave them.” Ruth sniffed and reached for a packet of Embassy Regal resting on the coffee table. “Bad habit I picked up in university. Want a cup of tea?”

“Please.” It would set them at ease, Banks thought, create the right atmosphere for the sort of informal chat he wanted. Ruth put the cigarettes down without lighting one and walked into the kitchen. She had a slight limp. Not enough to slow her down, but noticeable if you looked closely enough. Banks looked at the book titles: Maeve Binchy, Rosamunde Pilcher, Catherine Cookson. A few CDs lay scattered beside the stereo, but Banks hadn’t heard of most of the groups, except for the Manic Street Preachers, Sheryl Crow, Beth Orton, Radiohead and P.J. Harvey. Still, Ruth probably hadn’t heard of Arnold Bax or Gerald Finzi, either.

When Ruth came back with the tea and sat opposite him, she still seemed to be checking him out, probing him with those suspicious gray eyes of hers. “Louisa,” she said, when she had finally lit her cigarette. “What about her?”

“I’m looking for her. Do you know where she is?”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might. You could be out to do her harm.”

“I’m not.”

“What do you want with her, then?”

Banks paused. Might as well do it again; after all, he’d got this far on a lie, and it was beginning to fit so well he almost believed it himself, even though he had never met Emily Riddle. “I’m her father,” he said. “I just want to talk to her.”

Ruth just stared at him a moment, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t think so.” She shook her head.

“You don’t think what?”

“That you’re Louisa’s father.”

“Why not?”

“He wouldn’t come looking for her, for a start.”

“I love my daughter,” Banks said, which at least was true.

“No. You don’t understand. I saw a photo. A family photo she had with the rest of her things. There’s no point lying. I know it wasn’t you.”

Banks paused, stunned as much by Emily’s taking a family photo as by Ruth’s immediate uncovering of his little deception. Time for a change of tack. “Okay,” he said. “I’m not her father. But he asked me to look for her, to try to find her and ask her if she’d talk to him.”

“Why didn’t he come himself?”

“He’s afraid that if she knows he’s looking for her she’ll make herself even more scarce.”

“He’s got that one right,” said Ruth. “Look, why should I tell you anything? Louisa left home of her own free will, and she was of legal age. She came down here to live her own life away from her parents. Why should I mess things up for her?”

“I’m not here to force her to do anything she doesn’t want,” said Banks. “She can stay down here if she likes. All her father wants is to know what she’s doing, where she lives, if she’s all right. And if she’ll talk to him, great, if not-”

“Why should I trust you? You’ve already lied to me.”

“Is she in any trouble, Ruth?” Banks asked. “Does she need help?”

“Help? Louisa? You must be joking. She’s the kind who always lands on her feet, no matter what. After she’s landed on her back first, that is.”

“I thought she was a friend of yours?”

“She was. Is.” Ruth made an impatient gesture. “She just annoys me sometimes, that’s all. Most people do. Don’t your friends piss you off from time to time?”

“But is there any real reason for concern?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

Banks sipped some tea; it tasted bitter. “Where did you meet her?”

“Down near King’s Cross. She came up to me in the street and asked me the way to the nearest youth hostel. We got talking. I could tell she’d just arrived and she wasn’t quite sure what to do or where to go.” Ruth shrugged. “I know how lonely and friendless London can be, especially when you’re new to it all.”

“So you took her in?”

“I felt sorry for her.”

“And she lived with you here?”

Ruth’s cheeks reddened. “Look, I’m not a lezzy, if that’s what you’re thinking. I offered her my spare room till she got on her feet. That’s all. Can’t a person do someone a good turn anymore without it being turned into some sort of sex thing?”

“I didn’t mean to suggest that,” said Banks. “I’m sorry if it upset you.”

“Yeah… well. Just be careful what you go around saying to people, that’s all.”

“You and Louisa are friends, though, you said?”

“Yeah. She stayed here for a while. I helped get her a job, but it didn’t take. Then she met Craig, a bloke I knew from college, and she went off to live with him.”

Ruth spoke in a curiously dispassionate way, but Banks got the impression there was a lot beneath the surface she wasn’t saying. He also got the sense that she was constantly assessing, evaluating, calculating, and that being found out in his little lie had put him somehow in thrall to her. “I’ve talked to Craig Newton,” he said, “and he told me she left him for a new boyfriend. Sounds like a nasty piece of work. Know who he is?”

“Just some bloke she met at a party.”

“Were you there? Did you meet him?”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen them since?”

“They came round here once. I think Louisa was showing him off. He certainly didn’t seem impressed by what he saw.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Barry Clough.”

“Do you know the address?”

Ruth fumbled for another cigarette, and when she had lit it and breathed out her first lungful of smoke, she nodded. “Yeah. They live in one of those fancy villa-style places out Little Venice way. Louisa had me over to a dinner party there once – catered, of course. I think she was trying to impress me that time.”

“Did it work?”

“It takes more than a big house and a couple of has-been rock stars. And maybe a back-bencher and a bent copper or two.”

Banks smiled. “What does he do for a living?”

“Some sort of businessman. He’s got connections with the music business. If you ask me, he’s a drug dealer.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Fancy house. Always lots of coke around. Rock stars. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

“Does Louisa take drugs?”

“Is the Pope Polish?”

“How long ago did they meet?”

“Bit over two months.”

“Have you seen much of her since that time?”

“Not much. You’re beginning to sound like a copper, you know.”

Banks didn’t like the way she was looking at him, as if she knew. “I’m just worried, that’s all,” he said.

“Why? She’s not your daughter.”

Banks didn’t want to explain about his own daughter, at this moment no doubt walking around Paris hand in hand with Damon, or perhaps not even bothering with the sights, deciding instead to spend the weekend in bed. “Her father’s a good mate of mine,” he said instead, the words almost sticking in his throat as he uttered them. “I’d hate to see any harm come to her.”

“Bit late for that, isn’t it? I mean, it was nearly six months ago when she first came down here. He should have put a bit more effort into finding her back then, if you ask me.” She paused, narrowed her eyes again, then said, “I’m not sure about you. There’s something you’re not telling me. You weren’t screwing her, were you? I wouldn’t put it past her. She was no innocent from the provinces, even when she first came here. She knew what was what.”

“She’s a bit young for me,” Banks said.

Ruth gave a harsh laugh. “At your age I should think it’s often a matter of the younger the better. Why do you think they have prostitutes as young as thirteen, fourteen? ’Cos the girls like it?”

Banks felt the sting of her remark, but he couldn’t think of an appropriate response. “We’re getting off track here.”

“Not if you want me to give you Louisa’s address, we’re not. I’ve got to satisfy myself you’re not a pervert, not some creep, haven’t I? And don’t come the age bit. She could coax a ninety-year-old bishop out of his cassock, could Louisa.”

“All I can do is repeat what I’ve already told you. There was nothing like that. I’ve got a daughter her age, myself.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

Surprised, Banks answered, “Tracy.”

Ruth evaluated him some more. “You don’t look old enough.”

“Want to see my birth certificate?”

“No, that’s not necessary. Besides, I don’t suppose you actually carry it around with you, do you?”

“It was a… never mind,” said Banks, feeling he had had just about as much of Ruth Walker and her sharp edges as he could take. No wonder Emily had run off with Craig Newton at the first opportunity.

Ruth got up and walked to the window. “Would you believe that sad pillock over there?” she said a few moments later, almost muttering to herself. “He works security, on the night shift. Hasn’t a clue the bloke from number fifty-three is shagging the arse off his wife every night. Dirty bastard. Maybe I should tell him?”

Before Banks could make any comment, Ruth turned sharply, arms folded, a smug smile on her face. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you where they live. But you’re wasting your time. She’s had it with the lot of you. She won’t listen to a word you’ve got to say.”

“It’s worth a try. At least I’ll find out whether she’s all right, what she’s up to.”

Ruth gave him a pitying look. “Maybe you will,” she said. “And maybe you won’t.”

Shortly after six o’clock that evening, Banks got off the tube at Warwick Avenue and walked toward the address Ruth had given him. Had it been a lovely summer evening, he might have walked down the steps to the canal and admired the brightly colored houseboats, but it had turned dark by late afternoon, as usual, and it was a chilly evening, with the smell of rain in the wind.

The address turned out to be a villa-style building, square and detached within a high enclosing wall. In the wall stood an iron gate. A locked gate.

Banks could have kicked himself for not expecting something like this. If Louisa’s boyfriend was the type to go around with minders, he was also the type to live in a bloody fortress. Getting to see Emily Riddle wouldn’t be quite so easy as knocking on the door or ringing the bell.

At the front, two of the downstairs windows and one upstairs were lit behind dark curtains, and a light shone over the front door. Banks tried to think of the best approach. He could simply call through on the intercom and announce himself, see if that gained him admission. Alternatively, he could climb the gate and go knock on the door. Then what? Rescue the damsel in distress? Climb to the upstairs window on her hair? Flee with her over his shoulder? As far as he knew, though, Emily Riddle wasn’t in distress, nor was she held captive in a tower. In fact, she might well be having the time of her life.

He stood in front of the gate and stared through the bars, cheeks so close he could feel the cold from the iron. There was nothing else for it, really; he would have to use the intercom and just hope he could gain admittance. He obviously couldn’t pass himself off as Emily’s father this time, but if he said he came with an important message from her family, that ought to get him inside. It might just work.

Before he could press the buzzer, he felt a strong hand grasp the back of his neck and push his face toward the bars, so the cold iron chafed against his cheeks. “What the fuck are you doing here?” the voice asked him.

Banks’s first impulse was to kick back hard at the man’s shins with his heel, or tread down sharply on his instep, then slip free, swivel around and lash out. But he had to hold himself in check, remember why he was here, who he was supposed to be. If he beat up his assailant, where would that get him? Nowhere, most likely. On the other hand, maybe this was his best way in.

“I’m looking for Louisa,” he said.

The grip loosened. Banks turned and found himself facing a man in a tight-fitting suit who looked as if he might have been one of Mike Tyson’s sparring partners. Probably just as well he hadn’t tried to fight back, he thought.

“Louisa? What do you want with Louisa?” the man said.

“I want to talk to her, that’s all,” he said. “Her father sent me.”

“Fuck a duck,” said the minder.

“I was going to ring the bell,” Banks went on. “I was just looking to see if there were any lights on, if there was anyone home.”

“You were?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’d better come with me, mate,” the minder said, which was exactly what Banks had hoped for. “We’ll see what Mr. Clough has to say about that.”

The minder slipped a credit-card style key into the mechanism at the side of the intercom, punched in a seven-digit number which Banks was amazed he had the brains to remember, and the gate slid open on oiled hinges. The minder was holding Banks by the arm now, but only hard enough to break a few small bones, as he led him down the short path to the front door, which he opened with a simple Yale key. Sometimes security, like beauty, is only skin-deep.

They stood in a bright corridor, which ran all the way through to a gleaming modern kitchen at the back of the house. Several doors led off the corridor, all closed, and immediately to their right, a thickly carpeted staircase led to the upper levels. It was a hell of a lot fancier than Ruth’s flat, Banks thought, and grander than anything Craig Newton could afford, too. Always landed on her feet. The Riddles said they had given Emily all the advantages that money could afford – the horse, piano lessons, holidays, expensive schooling – and they had certainly raised a high-maintenance daughter by the looks of this place.

Muffled music came from one of the rooms. A pop song Banks didn’t recognize. As soon as the front door shut behind them, the minder called out, “Boss?”

One of the doors opened and a tall man walked out. He wasn’t fat, or even overly muscular like the minder, but he certainly looked as if he lifted a few weights at the gym once or twice a week. As Craig Newton had pointed out, his face was all angles, as if it had been carved from stone, and he was handsome, if you liked that sort of thing, rather like a younger Nick Nolte.

He was wearing a cream Armani suit over a red T-shirt, had a deep suntan and a gray ponytail about six inches long hanging over his back collar. Around his neck he wore a thick gold chain, which matched the one on his wrist and the chunky signet ring over the hairy knuckle on his right hand. Banks pegged him at early to mid-forties, which wasn’t much younger than Jimmy Riddle. Or Banks himself, for that matter.

The hard glint in his eyes and the cocky confidence with which he moved showed that he was someone to watch out for. Banks had seen that look before in the eyes of hardened criminals, people to whom the world and its contents are there for the taking, and for whom any impediments are simply to be brushed aside as easily as dandruff off the collar.

“What’s this?” he asked, eyes on Banks.

“Found him lurking by the gate, boss. Just standing there. Says he wants to see Louisa.”

Barry Clough raised an eyebrow, but the hardness in his eyes didn’t ease a jot. “Did he now? What might you be wanting with Louisa, little man?”

“Her father asked me to look for her,” Banks said. “He wants me to deliver a message.”

“Private investigator?”

“Just a friend of the family.”

Clough studied Banks closely for what seemed like minutes, then a glint of humor flashed into his eyes the way a shark flashes through the water. “No problem,” he said, ushering Banks into the room. “A girl should stay in touch with her family, I always say, though I can’t say as she’s ever offered to take me home to meet Mummy and Daddy yet. I don’t even know where they live.”

Banks said nothing. The minder shifted from foot to foot.

“You’re lucky to find us in,” said Clough. “Louisa and I just got back from Florida a couple of days ago. Can’t stand the bloody weather here in winter. We take off as often as we can. I’ll call her down for you. In the meantime, take a load off. Drink?”

“No, thanks. I won’t take long.”

Clough looked at his watch. An expensive one. “You’ve got twenty minutes,” he said. “Then we’ve got a Bonfire Night party to go to. Sure you won’t have that drink?”

“No, thanks.”

Banks sat down as Clough left the room. He heard muffled footsteps on the staircase. The minder had disappeared into the kitchen. The room Banks found himself in had that old-fashioned wainscoted look he wouldn’t have expected judging by what he had seen of the bright hall and the modern kitchen at the back. Paintings hung on the walls, mostly English landscapes. A couple of them looked old and genuine. Not Constables or anything, but they probably cost a bob or two. On one wall stood a locked, barred glass case full of guns. Deactivated collector’s models, Banks guessed. Nobody would be stupid enough to put real guns on display like that.

Logs crackled and spit out sparks from the large stone hearth. The music was coming from an expensive stereo set up at the far end of the room. Now he was closer to the source, Banks realized he did recognize it; it was an old Joy Division album. “Heart and Soul” was playing.

He heard voices upstairs, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. At one point, a woman’s voice raised almost to the point where he could hear the defiance in her tone, then, at a barked order from the man, it stopped. A few seconds later, the door opened and in she walked. He hadn’t heard her come down the stairs, and nor did he hear her float across the Turkish carpet.

Craig Newton was right. Talk about a mix of innocence and experience. She could have been sixteen, which she was, but she could have been twenty-six just as easily, and in some ways she reminded Banks even more of her mother in the flesh than in the photographs he had seen: blue eyes, cherry lips. What he hadn’t been able to tell from those photos, though, was that she had a smattering of freckles across her small nose and high cheekbones, and that her eyes were a much paler blue than Rosalind’s. The Florida sun didn’t seem to have done much for her skin, which was as pale as her mother’s. Perhaps she had stayed indoors or walked around under a parasol like a Southern belle.

Rosalind was a little shorter and fuller-figured than her daughter, and of course her hairstyle was different. Emily had a ragged fringe, and her fine, natural-blond hair fell straight to her shoulders and brushed against them as she moved. Tall and long-legged, she also had that anorexic, thoroughbred look of a professional model. Heroin-chic. She was wearing denim capris that came halfway up her calves, and a loose cable-knit sweater. She walked barefoot, he noticed, showing off her shapely ankles and slim feet, the toenails painted crimson. For some reason, Coleridge’s line from “Christabel” flashed through Banks’s mind: “…her blue-veined feet unsandalled were.” It had always seemed an improbably erotic image to him, ever since he first came across the poem at school, and now he knew why.

Though Emily walked with style and self-possession, there was a list to her progress, and when he looked closely, Banks noticed a few tiny grains of white powder in the soft indentation between her nose and her upper lip. Even as he looked, her pointed pink tongue slipped out of her mouth and swept it away. She smiled at him. Her eyes were slightly unfocused and the pupils dilated, little random chips of light dancing in them like feldspar catching the sun.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” she said, stretching out her hand to him. It came at the end of an impossibly long arm. Banks stood up and shook. Her cool, soft fingers grasped his loosely for a second, then disengaged. He introduced himself. Emily sat in an armchair by the fire, legs curled under her, and toyed with a loose thread at the end of one sleeve.

“So you’re Banks?” she said. “I’ve heard of you. Detective Chief Inspector Banks. Am I right?”

“You’re right. All good, I hope?”

She smiled. “Intriguing, at least.” Then her expression turned to one of boredom. “What does Daddy want after all this time? Oh, Christ, what is this dreadfully dull music? Sometimes Barry plays the most depressing things.”

“Joy Division,” said Banks. “He committed suicide. The lead singer.”

“I’m not bloody surprised. I’d commit suicide if I sounded like him.” She got up, shut off the CD and replaced it with Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Alanis sang about all she really wanted. She didn’t sound a lot more cheerful than Joy Division, Banks thought, but the music was more upbeat, more modern. “He’s still an old punk at heart, is Barry. Did you know he used to be a roadie for a punk band?”

“What does he do now?” Banks asked casually.

“He’s a businessman. Bit of this, bit of that. You know the sort of thing.” She laughed. It sounded like a crystal glass shattering. “Come to think of it, I don’t really know what he does. He’s away a lot. He doesn’t talk about it much.” She put a finger to her lips. “It’s all terribly hush-hush.”

I’ll bet it is, thought Banks. As she had been speaking, he found himself trying to place her accent. He couldn’t. Riddle had probably moved counties more times than he’d had hot dinners to make chief constable by his mid-forties, so Emily had ended up with a kind of characterless, nowhere accent, not especially posh, but certainly without any of the rough edges a regional bias gives. Banks knew that his own accent was hard to place, too, as he had grown up in Peterborough, lived in London for over twenty years and in North Yorkshire for about seven.

As Emily talked now, she walked around the room touching objects, occasionally picking up an ornament, such as a heavy glass paperweight with a rose design trapped inside, and putting it back, or moving it somewhere else. She ended up standing by the fireplace, elbow leaning on the mantelpiece, fist to her cheek, one hip cocked. “Did you tell me what you’d come for?” she asked. “I don’t remember.”

“You haven’t given me a chance yet.”

She put her hand to her mouth and stifled a giggle. “Ooh, I’m sorry. That’s me, that is. Talk, talk, talk.”

Banks saw an ashtray on the table with a couple of butts crushed out in it. He reached for his cigarettes, offered Emily one, which she took, and lit one for himself. Then he leaned forward a little in his armchair and said, “I was talking to your father a couple of days ago, Emily. He’s worried about you. He wants you to get in touch with him.”

“My name’s Louisa. And I’m not going home.”

“Nobody said you were. But it wouldn’t do you any harm to get in touch with him and let him know how you’re doing, where you are, would it?”

“He’d only get angry.” She pouted, then moved away from the fireplace. “How did you find me? I didn’t tell anyone where I’m from. I didn’t even use my real name.”

“I know,” said Banks. “But, really: Louisa Gamine. You’re a clever girl, you’ve had an expensive education. It took me a little while to work it out, but I got there in the end. Gamine means a girl with mischievous charm, but ‘gamine’ is an anagram of ‘enigma,’ which means puzzle, or, in this case, Riddle. Your father said you were very good with language.”

She clapped her hands together. “Clever man. You got it. What a brilliant detective. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”

“Your little brother saw your photo on the Internet.”

Emily’s jaw dropped and she fell back onto the chair. It was hard to tell, but Banks thought her reaction was genuine. “Ben? Ben saw that?”

Banks nodded.

“Oh, shit.” She flicked her half-smoked cigarette into the fire. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I don’t imagine it was.”

“And he told Mum?”

“That’s right.”

“She’d never have told Dad. Not in a million years. She knows what he’s like as well as I do.”

“I don’t know how he found out,” said Banks, “but he did.”

Emily laughed. “I’d love to have seen his face.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“And he sent you to look for me?”

“That’s about it.”

“Why?”

“Why did he send me?”

“Well, I’m damn sure he wouldn’t bother coming himself, but why you? He doesn’t even like you.”

“But he knows I’m good at my job.”

“Let me guess. He’s promised you he’ll leave you alone if you do as he asks? Don’t trust him.”

“I can’t honestly say as I do, but I’ve got…”

“What?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me what you were going to say.”

“No.” Banks didn’t want to tell her about Tracy, that in an odd sort of way he was doing this for her, making up for his own absences and shortcomings as a father.

Emily sulked for a few moments, then she stood up again and paced in front of him, counting off imaginary points on her fingers. “Let me see… the pictures took you to GlamourPuss… right? That took you to Craig…? But he doesn’t know where I am. I told… Ah, Ruth! Ruth told you?”

Banks said nothing.

“Well, she would. She’s a jealous cow. She’d just love to cause trouble for me, the ugly bitch, just because I’ve met someone like Barry and she’s still stuck in her poky little flat in Kennington. Do you know…”

“What?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“What were you going to say?”

Emily smiled. “No. Now it’s my turn to tease. I’m not telling you.” Before Banks could frame a response, she stopped pacing and knelt in front of him, looking up into his face with her sparkling blue eyes. “So you saw them, too, did you? The photos.”

Banks swallowed. “Yes.”

“Did you like them? Did they excite you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Liar.” She jumped up again, a smile of triumph on her face. “Besides, they were just a joke. A laugh. Daddy’s got nothing to worry about from them. It’s not as if I’ve taken up a career in the porno business or anything.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Banks.

“He’s just worried about me ruining his spotless reputation, isn’t he?”

“That’s part of it.” Banks didn’t feel he necessarily had to paint an idealized picture of Riddle, especially to his run away daughter. She probably knew him better than anyone. “But he did also seem genuinely concerned about you.”

“I’m sure he did.” Emily had sat down again now and seemed thoughtful. “Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle, champion of family values, quality time, the caring, concerned copper. ‘My daughter the slut’ wouldn’t fit at all with that image, would it?”

“It wouldn’t do any harm if you just gave him a call and reassured him everything’s okay, would it?” Banks said. “And what about your mother? She’s worried sick, too.”

Her eyes flashed. “You don’t know anything. What do you know about it?” She fingered the collar of her sweater and seemed to draw in on herself. “It was like being in prison up there. You can’t go here. You can’t do that. You can’t see him. You can’t talk to her. Don’t forget your piano lessons. Have you done your homework? Be in before eight o’clock. I’d no room to breathe. It was stifling me. I couldn’t be free, couldn’t be myself.”

“Are you now?”

“Of course I am.” She stood up again. Red patches glowed on her cheeks. “Tell Daddy to fuck off. Tell the old man to just fuck off. Let him wonder. Let him worry. I’m not going to set his mind at rest. Because… you know what?”

“What?”

“Because he was never fucking there anyway. He used to make all these rules and you know what… he was never even there to enforce them. Mummy had to do that. And she didn’t even care enough. He was never even there to enforce his own stupid rules. Isn’t that a laugh?” She went to lean against the fireplace again. Alanis Morissette was singing about seeing right through someone, and Banks knew what she meant. Still, he’d done his job, done as he’d been asked. He could give Jimmy Riddle Emily’s London address, tell him about Barry Clough. If Riddle wanted to send in the locals to check out Clough’s gun collection, set the forensic accountants on his business interests and put in a call to the drugs squad, that was his business. Banks’s job was over. It was up to Riddle to take it from there. He tore a page from his notebook and wrote on it. “If you change your mind, or if there’s anything else you want to tell me, any message you want me to deliver, this is where I’m staying. You can phone and leave a message if I’m not there.”

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to take it, but she did. Then she glanced at it once, crumpled it up and threw it in the fire. The door opened and Barry Clough strode in, smile on his face. He tapped his wristwatch. “Better get ready, love,” he said to Emily. “We’re due at Rod’s place in half an hour.” He looked at Banks, the smile gone. “And your time’s up, mate,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the front door. “On your bike.”