In A Dry Season

FOURTEEN

Annie was waiting on the platform at York Station looking very businesslike in a navy mid-length skirt and silver-buttoned blazer over a white blouse. She had tied her hair back so tightly it made a V on her forehead and arched her dark eyebrows. For once, though, Banks didn’t feel underdressed. He wore a lightweight cotton summer suit and, with it, a red-and-gray tie, top shirt button undone.

“Good Lord,” she said, smiling, “I feel like we’re sneaking away for a dirty weekend.”

Banks laughed. “If you play your cards right…”

The station smelled of diesel oil and ancient soot from the days of steam. Gouts of compressed air rushed out from under the trains with a deafening hiss, and pigeons flapped around the high ceiling. Announcements about late arrivals and departures echoed from the public address system.

The London train pulled out of the station only eleven minutes after the advertised departure time. Banks and Annie chatted for a while, lulled by the rattling and rocking rhythm, and Banks ascertained that whatever had been bothering Annie on the phone yesterday was no longer a problem. He had been forgiven.

Annie started reading the Guardian she had bought at the station newsstand and Banks went back to Guilty Secrets. In bed the previous evening, he had given up on The Shadow of Death when the erstwhile DI Niven arrested his first suspect, saying, “You have the right to remain silent. If you don’t have a lawyer, one will be provided for you.” So much for the realistic depiction of police procedures. Allowing that it was one of her early DI Niven books and feeling that she deserved a second chance, he started Guilty Secrets, her most recent non-series book, and had trouble putting it down to get to sleep.

The basic plot device was the kind of thing everyone has seen a dozen times on television. A man on holiday in a foreign country becomes involved in an altercation with another man in a crowded bar. He tries to calm the situation and eventually leaves, but the man pursues him outside and attacks him. Someone else, a stranger, comes to his aid, and together they get carried away and beat the attacker to death. They hide the body, then go their separate ways, and nothing more is heard of the incident.

Back in England, the first man becomes very successful in business and is poised at the edge of what promises to be an equally successful career in politics. Until the inevitable blackmailer turns up. What does he do? Pay up or kill again?

Despite the thinness of the plot, Guilty Secrets turned out to be a fascinating exploration of conscience and character. Because of the situation he finds himself in, the central character is forced to reexamine his entire life in relation to the crime he got away with, while at the same time agonizing over what to do to secure his future.

To complicate matters, killing does not come easy to this man; he is human, with a firm, if understated, belief in Christianity. At one point he considers letting it all come out so that he can pay the consequences he feels he should have paid years ago. But he also likes his life the way it is. Not without a streak of self-interest, he is ambitious, enjoys power and feels he can do the country some genuine good if he gets in the right position. He also has others to consider: family and employees who rely or depend on him for their livelihoods.

Chapter after chapter, with merciless compassion, Vivian Elmsley strips the man to his soul, lays bare his moral and spiritual dilemmas and tightens the net around him. In his time, Banks had arrested a number of men who had killed to protect their ill-gotten fame or fortune, or both, but rarely had he come across a character as complex as the one Vivian Elmsley had created here. Perhaps he just hadn’t looked deeply enough into them. A police interview room was not the best place to get to know someone, and Banks had been far more concerned with obtaining a confession than with striking up a relationship. That was where real life and fiction parted ways, he thought; one is messy and incomplete, the other ordered and finished.

Banks finished the book just before Peterborough. Annie had closed her eyes by then and was either napping or meditating. He gazed out of the window at the uninspiring landscape of his childhood: a brick factory, a red brick school, stretches of waste ground littered with weeds and rubbish. Even the spire of the beautiful Norman cathedral behind the shopping center failed to inspire him. The train squealed to a halt.

Of course, it hadn’t been so uninspiring back then; his imagination had imbued every miserable inch of the place with magical significance. The waste grounds were battlefields where the local lads reenacted the great battles of two world wars, using tree branches or sticks of wood for rifles, bayoneting opponents with great relish. Even when Banks was playing alone or fishing in the River Nene, it was easy enough for him to believe he was an Arthurian knight on a quest. Adam Kelly had been doing the same thing in Hobb’s End when the world of his imagination had suddenly become real.

As the train left Peterborough Station, Banks thought of his parents, not more than a mile away. He looked at his watch. About now, he guessed, his mother would be drinking milky instant coffee and reading her latest women’s magazine, and his father would be having his morning nap, snoring gently, feet up on the green velour pouffe, newspaper spread over his lap. Unchanging routine. It had been the same since his father was made redundant from his job as a steelworker in 1982, and his mother grew too old and tired to clean other people’s houses anymore. Banks thought of the disappointment and bitterness that had twisted their lives, problems that he had certainly contributed to, as well as Margaret Thatcher. But their disappointments had been visited on him, too, in turn. No matter how well he did, it was never good enough.

Even though Banks had “bettered” himself – he had a secure job with a steady source of income and good opportunities for advancement – his parents didn’t approve of his joining the police. His father never tired of pointing out the traditional opposition between the working classes and the police force. When the riot police on overtime taunted striking miners by waving rolls of five-pound notes at them in the ’84 strike, he accused Banks of being “the enemy” and tried to persuade him to resign. It didn’t matter that Banks was working the drugs squad on the Met at the time and had nothing to do with the troubles up north. As far as his father was concerned, the police were merely Maggie’s bullyboys, the enforcers of unpopular government policies, oppressors of the workingman.

Banks’s mother, for her part, took a more domestic view and relayed tales of police divorces she heard about over the grapevine. Being a policeman wasn’t a good career choice for a family man, she never ceased to tell him. Never mind that it was over twenty years later when he and Sandra split up – most of that time relatively successful as modern marriages go – his mother took great satisfaction that she had finally been vindicated.

And there lay the main problem, Banks thought as he watched the city disappear behind him. He had never been able to do anything right. When bad things happened to other kids, parents usually took their side, but when bad things happened to Banks, it was his own fault. It had always been that way, ever since he started getting cuts and bruises in schoolyard fights, always him who must have started it, whether he did or not. As far as his parents were concerned, Banks thought, if he got killed on the job, that would probably be his own fault too. When it came to blame, they offered no quarter for family.

Still, he thought, in a way that was what made him good at his job. When he had been junior in rank, he had never blamed his bosses when things went wrong, and now he was DCI, he took the responsibility for his team, whether it consisted of Hatchley and Susan Gay or just Annie Cabbot. If the team failed, it was his failure. A burden, yes, but also a strength.

King’s Cross was the usual madness. Banks and Annie negotiated their way through the crowds and the maze of tiled, echoing tunnels to the Northern Line and managed to cram into the first Edgeware-bound train that came along.

A few minutes later, they came out of Belsize Park tube station, walked up Rosslyn Hill and turned into the side street where Vivian Elmsley lived. Banks knew the area vaguely from his years in London, though after Notting Hill, he and Sandra had mostly lived south of the river, in Kennington. Keats used to live near here, Banks remembered; it was in one of these streets that the poor sod fell in love with his next-door neighbor, Fanny Brawne.

A woman’s voice answered the intercom.

There was a long pause after Banks had stated his rank and his business, then a more resigned voice said, “You’d better come up.” The lock buzzed and Banks pushed open the front door.

They walked up three flights of thickly carpeted stairs to the second-floor landing. That this was a well-maintained building was clear from the fresh lemon scent, the gleaming woodwork and freshly painted walls, decorated here and there with a still-life print or a seascape. Probably cost an arm and a leg, but then Vivian Elmsley could no doubt afford an arm and a leg.

The woman who opened the door was tall and slim, standing ramrod-straight, her gray hair fastened in a bun. She had high cheekbones, a straight, slightly hooked nose and a small, thin mouth. Crow’s-feet spread around her remarkable deep blue eyes, slanted at an almost Oriental angle. Banks could see what Elsie Patterson meant: If you were at all observant, there was no mistaking those eyes. She was dressed like a jogger, in baggy black exercise trousers and a white sweatshirt. Still, he supposed, it didn’t matter what you wore if all you had to do was sit around and write all day. Some people have all the luck.

She looked tired. Bags puffed under her eyes, and broken blood vessels crisscrossed the whites. She also looked strained and edgy, as if she were running on reserves.

The flat was Spartan and modern in its furnishings, chrome and glass giving the small living room a generous sense of space. A framed print of one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s huge yellow flowers hung on the wall over the mantelpiece.

“Please, sit down.” She gestured Banks and Annie toward two matching chrome-and-black-leather chairs, then sat down herself, clasping her hands on her lap. They looked older than her face, skeletal and liver-spotted. They were also unusually large for a woman’s hands.

“I must admit, I’m quite used to talking to the police,” she said, “but usually I’m the one questioning them. How can I help you?”

Banks remembered the police procedure in The Shadow of Death and bit his tongue. Maybe she hadn’t known any police officers when she wrote that book. “First of all,” he asked, “are you Gwynneth Shackleton?”

“I was, though most people called me Gwen. Vivian is my middle name. Elmsley is a pseudonym. Actually, it’s my mother’s maiden name. It’s all perfectly legal.”

“I’m sure it is. You grew up in Hobb’s End?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill Gloria Shackleton?”

Her hand went to her chest. “Kill Gloria? Me? What a suggestion. I most certainly did not.”

“Could Matthew, your brother, have killed her?”

“No. Matthew loved her. She looked after him. He needed her. I’m afraid this is all rather overwhelming, Chief Inspector.”

“No doubt.” Banks glanced at Annie, who remained expressionless, notebook on her lap. “May I ask why you haven’t come forward in response to our requests for information?” he asked.

Vivian Elmsley paused before answering, as if composing her thoughts carefully, the way she might revise a page of manuscript. “Chief Inspector,” she said, “I admit that I have been following developments both in the newspapers and on television, but I honestly don’t believe I can tell you anything of any value. I have also found it all very distressing. That’s why I haven’t come forward.”

“Oh, come off it,” said Banks. “Not only did you live in Hobb’s End throughout the war, and not only did you know the victim well, you were also her sister-in-law. You can’t expect me to believe that you know nothing at all about what happened to her.”

“Believe what you will.”

“Where the two of you close?”

“I wouldn’t say we were close, no.”

“Did you like her?”

“I can’t honestly say I knew her very well.”

“You were about the same age. You must have had things in common besides your brother.”

“She was older than I. It does make a difference when you’re young. I wouldn’t say we had much in common. I was always a bookish sort of girl, whereas Gloria was the more flamboyant type. As with many extroverts, she was also a secretive person, very difficult to get to know.”

“Did you see a lot of her?”

“Quite a bit. We were in and out of one another’s houses. Bridge Cottage wasn’t far from the shop.”

“Yet you claim you didn’t know her well?”

“I didn’t. You probably have cousins or in-laws you hardly know at all, Chief Inspector.”

“Didn’t you ever do things together?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Girl things.”

Annie shot him a glance that he felt even before he noticed it out of the corner of his eye. The hell with it, he thought, they were girls back then. He had been a boy once, too; he did boy things, and he didn’t object to anyone saying so.

Vivian pursed her lips, then shrugged. “Girl things? I suppose we did. The same sorts of things other people did during the war. We went to the pictures, to dances.”

“Dances with American airmen?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Was there anyone in particular?”

“I suppose we were quite friendly with several of them over the last year of the war.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“I think so. Why?”

“What about Brad? Ring a bell?”

“Brad? Yes, I think he was one of them.”

“What was his second name?”

“Szikorski. Brad Szikorski.”

Banks checked the list of Rowan Woods personnel he had brought with him. Bradford J. Szikorski, Jr. That had to be the one.

“And PX? Billy Joe?”

“Edgar Konig and Billy Joe Farrell.”

They were on the list, too.

“What about Charlie?”

Vivian Elmsley turned pale; a muscle by the side of her jaw began to twitch. “Markleson,” she whispered. “Charlie Markleson.”

Banks checked the sheet. “Charles Christopher Markleson? That the one?”

“Charlie. He was always called Charlie.”

“Whatever.”

“How did you find out their names? I haven’t heard them in so long.”

“It doesn’t matter how we found out. We also discovered that Gloria was having an affair with Brad Szikorski. Was she still seeing him when Matthew came back? Is that what happened?”

“Not that I knew of. I don’t know what you’re getting at. You’ve been misinformed, Chief Inspector. Gloria was married to Matthew, whether he was there or not. Yes, we went to the pictures with those boys on occasion, perhaps to dances, but that’s all there was to it. There was no question of romantic involvement.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am.”

“How did Gloria behave during her husband’s absence?”

“What do you mean?”

“When she thought he was dead. Obviously things would be different then, wouldn’t they? It wasn’t as if she were waiting for him anymore. As far as she was concerned, she would never see him again. After a reasonable period of mourning, she could enter back into the spirit of the times, couldn’t she? Surely an attractive woman like her must have had boyfriends?”

Vivian paused again. “Gloria had a very gregarious side to her nature. She liked parties, group excursions, that sort of thing. She liked to keep things superficial. At a distance. Besides, we never gave Matthew up for dead completely. You must understand that, Chief Inspector; we never gave up hope. There was always hope, hope that he would return. And it proved well-founded.”

“You haven’t answered my question. Did Gloria have a romantic affair with Brad Szikorski, or with anyone else?”

She looked away. “Not that I knew about.”

“So she lived like a nun, even though she believed her husband was dead?”

“I didn’t say that. I didn’t spy on her. Whatever she got up to behind locked doors was none of my business.”

“So she did get up to something?”

“I told you: I didn’t spy on her. You’re twisting my words.”

“How did Brad take it when Matthew came back alive?”

“How should I know? Why would it matter to him?”

“It might have. If he fell in love with Gloria, and if she rejected him in favor of her husband. He might have been angry.”

“Are you suggesting that Brad killed Gloria?” Vivian sniffed. “You’re really clutching at straws now.”

Banks leaned forward. “Somebody did, Ms. Elmsley, and the most immediate suspects that come to mind are Matthew, one of the Americans, Michael Stanhope, or you.”

“Ridiculous. It must have been a stranger. We got plenty of them in the village, you know.”

“What about Michael Stanhope?”

“It’s been years since I’ve heard his name. They were friends. That’s all.”

“Would it surprise you to hear that Gloria posed nude for a painting by Stanhope in 1944?”

“Yes, it would. Very much. I know that Gloria wasn’t as fastidious about her body as some would have wished her to be, but I never saw any evidence of anything like that.”

“Next time you’re in Leeds,” Banks said, “drop by the art gallery and have a look. You’re sure she never told you?”

“I would have remembered.”

“Was Gloria having an affair with Michael Stanhope?”

“I shouldn’t think so. He was too old for her.”

“And homosexual?”

“I wouldn’t know about that. As I said, I was very young. It certainly wasn’t something people went around boasting about back then.”

“Did she ever tell you about her family in London? About her son Francis?”

“She did mention him to me once, yes. But she said she’d cut off all relations with him and his father.”

“Even so, they could have come to drag her back. Maybe they fought and he killed her?”

Vivian shook her head. “I’m sure I would have known.”

“Was Matthew ever violent toward her?”

“Never. Matthew had always been a gentle person, and even his war experiences didn’t change that.” Her voice had taken on a strained, wavering quality.

Banks paused and softened his tone. “There is one thing that really puzzles me,” he said, “and that’s what you did think had happened to Gloria? Surely you can’t have thought she had simply disappeared from the face of the earth?”

“It wasn’t a mystery at the time. Not really. She left. That’s what I had always thought until you found the remains. You are certain it’s Gloria, aren’t you?”

Banks felt a twinge of doubt, but he tried not to let it show. They still had no definite proof of the skeleton’s identity. For that, they would need Francis Henderson so they could run DNA checks. “We’re sure,” he said. “Why would she leave?”

“Because she couldn’t stand it anymore, taking care of Matthew, the way he was. After all, it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d done that. She had clearly broken off all contact with whatever life she had had in London before coming to Hobb’s End. I don’t think Gloria was particularly strong when it came to emotional fortitude.”

True enough, Banks thought. If a person has bid one life good-bye, then it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to do it again. But Gloria Shackleton hadn’t bid Hobb’s End good-bye, he reminded himself; she had been killed and buried there.

“When did she disappear?” he asked.

“Shortly after VE day. A week or so.”

“You must see how the discovery casts suspicion on your brother, most of all. Gloria was buried in an outbuilding adjoining Bridge Cottage. Matthew was living with her there at the time.”

“But he was never violent. I had never known him be violent. Never.”

“War can change a man.”

“Even so.”

“Did he go out much?”

“What do you mean?”

“After his return. Did he go out much? Was Gloria often alone in the house?”

“He went to the pub on an evening. The Shoulder of Mutton. Yes, she was alone there sometimes.”

“Did Gloria ever say anything to you about leaving?”

“She hinted at it once or twice, but I didn’t take her seriously.”

“Why not?”

“Her manner. It was as if she was joking. You know, ‘Some day my prince will come. I’m going to leave all this behind and run off to untold wealth and riches.’ Gloria was a dreamer, Chief Inspector. I, on the other hand, have always been a realist.”

“I suppose that’s debatable,” Banks said. “Given what you do for a living.”

“Perhaps my dreams are very realistic.”

“Perhaps. Even though she hinted, you didn’t believe Gloria would actually go?”

“No.”

“What were the circumstances surrounding her departure?” Banks asked. “Did you see her go?”

“No. It happened on one of the days when I accompanied Matthew to his doctor in Leeds. When we got back that evening, she was gone.”

“You accompanied him? Why not Gloria? She was still his wife.”

“And he was still my brother. Anyway, she asked me to, on occasion. It was the only respite she got. She looked after him the rest of the time. I thought it only fair she get some time to herself once in a while.”

“Did she take anything with her when she left?”

“A few clothes, personal items. She didn’t have much.”

“But she took her clothes?”

“Yes. A few.”

“That’s interesting. What did she carry them in?”

“An old cardboard suitcase. The same one she arrived with.”

“Did she leave a note?”

“Not that I saw. If Matthew found one, he never indicated it to me.”

“Would he have?”

“Possibly not. He wasn’t very communicative. In his condition, it’s impossible to predict what he would have done.”

“Murder?”

“No. Not Matthew. I’ve already told you, he had a gentle nature. Even his dreadful war experiences and his illness didn’t change that about him, though they changed everything else.”

“But Gloria’s belongings were definitely missing?”

“Yes.”

“And you and Matthew were in Leeds during the time she made her exit?”

“Yes.”

“So she never even said good-bye?”

“Sometimes it’s easier that way.”

“So it is.” Banks remembered that Sandra, once she had made her mind up, had given him little time for protracted good-byes. He paused for a moment. “Ms. Elmsley,” he asked, “knowing what you know now, why do you think her clothes and suitcase were missing? Where do you think they got to?”

“I have no idea. I’m only telling you what I witnessed at the time, what I thought must have happened. Perhaps someone stole them? Perhaps she interrupted a burglar and he killed her?”

“Were they particularly fine clothes? Minks, a few diamond necklaces perhaps? A tiara or two?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“It’s not me who’s being absurd. You see, it’s not often people get murdered for their clothes, especially if they’re ordinary clothes.”

“Perhaps they were taken for some other reason.”

“Like what?”

“To make it look as if she had gone away.”

“Ah. Now that would be clever, wouldn’t it? Who do you think would feel the need to risk taking time burying her body under the outbuilding floor?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not a casual burglar, I don’t think.”

“As I suggested, perhaps someone wanted to make it appear as if she had gone away.”

“But who would want to do that? And, perhaps more important: Why?”

“To avoid suspicion.”

“Exactly. Which brings us back very close to home, doesn’t it? Why try to avoid suspicion unless you have some reason to believe suspicion will fall on you?”

“Your rhetoric is too much for me, Chief Inspector.”

“But you write detective novels. I’ve read one of them. Don’t play the fool with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“I’m very flattered that you have read my books, Chief Inspector, but I’m afraid you attribute to me a far more logical mind than I actually possess.”

Banks sighed. “If someone took great pains to make it look as if Gloria had run away, I’d say that someone wasn’t likely to be a stranger just passing through, or a burglar. It had to be someone who felt suspicion was likely to fall on him or her: Matthew, Brad Szikorski or you.”

“Well, it wasn’t me. And I told you, Matthew never raised a finger to her.”

“Which leaves Brad Szikorski.”

“Perhaps. Though I doubt it. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Why not?”

She allowed him a thin smile. “Because Brad Szikorski was killed in a flying stunt in the desert outside Los Angeles in 1952. Ironic, isn’t it? During the war, Brad flew on bombing raids over Europe and survived, only to be killed in a stunt for a war film seven or eight years later.”

“What about Charles Markleson?”

“Charlie. He would have had no reason at all to harm Gloria. Besides, he was killed in the war.”

“Edgar Konig? Billy Joe Farrell?”

“I don’t know what happened to them, Chief Inspector. It’s all so long ago. I only know about Brad because it was in the newspapers at the time. I suppose you’ll have to ask them yourself, won’t you? That is, if you can find them.”

“Oh, I’ll find them, if they’re still alive. Had either of them reason to kill Gloria?”

“Not that I know of. They were simply part of a group we went around with. Though Billy Joe, I remember, did have a violent temper, and PX was rather smitten with Gloria.”

“Did she go out with him?”

“Not to my knowledge. You couldn’t… he wasn’t… I mean, he just seemed so young and so shy.”

“Did you notice any blood in Bridge Cottage after Gloria’s disappearance?”

“No. Obviously, if I had done, I would have been suspicious and called the police. But then I can’t say I was actually looking for blood.”

“Not one little spot? Nothing that might, in retrospect, have been blood?”

“Nothing. Anyway, what makes you think she was killed in Bridge Cottage?”

“It’s a logical assumption.”

“She could have been killed outside, in the backyard, or even in the outbuilding where you found her remains.”

“Possibly,” Banks allowed. “Even so, whoever did it was very thorough. What happened next?”

“Nothing. We just carried on. Actually, we only stayed on in the village a few weeks longer, then we got a council house in Leeds.”

“I know. I’ve seen it.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d want to do that.”

“So you’re saying you have absolutely no idea what happened to Gloria?”

“None at all. As I said, I simply thought she couldn’t face life with Matthew anymore – in his condition – so she ran off and started up elsewhere.”

“Did you think she might have run off with Brad Szikorski, arranged to meet him over in America or something? After all, the Four Hundred Forty-Eighth Bomber Group moved out around the same time, didn’t they?”

“I suppose it crossed my mind. It was always possible that she had ended up in America.”

“Did it not surprise you that she never got in touch?”

“It did. But there was nothing I could do about it if she wanted to disappear, sever all ties. As I said, she’d done it before.”

“Did you ever try to find her?”

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What about Matthew?”

“What about him?”

“Did you kill him?”

“I did not. He committed suicide.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t related to Gloria’s disappearance. He was ill, confused, depressed, in pain. I did my best for him, but it was ultimately no use.”

“He shot himself, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“With a Colt forty-five automatic.”

“Was it? I’m afraid I know nothing about guns.”

“Where did he get the gun?”

“The gun? I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“Simple question, Ms. Elmsley. Where did Matthew get the gun he shot himself with?”

“He always had it.”

“Always? Since when?”

“I don’t know. Since he came back from the war, I suppose. I can’t remember when I first saw it.”

“From the Japanese POW camp?”

“Yes.”

Banks got to his feet, shaking his head.

“What’s wrong, Chief Inspector?” Vivian asked, hand plucking at the turkey flap at the base of her throat.

“Everything,” said Banks. “None of it makes any sense. Think over what you’ve just told us, will you? You’re telling us you believed that Gloria simply upped sticks and left without leaving a note, taking her clothes and a few personal belongings with her in a cardboard suitcase. If you’re telling the truth, then whoever killed Gloria must have packed the suitcase and either taken it away with him or buried it somewhere to make it look as if she had run off. Then, five years later, your brother Matthew shot himself with an American service revolver he just happened to bring back from a Japanese POW camp. You write detective novels. Ask yourself if your Inspector Niven would believe it. Ask yourself if your readers would believe it.” He reached in his pocket. “Here’s my card. I want you to think seriously about our little talk. We’ll be back. Soon. Don’t bother yourself, we’ll see ourselves out.”

Once they were out in the hot street again, Annie turned to Banks, whistled and said, “What was all that about?”

“All what?”

“She was lying. Couldn’t you tell?”

“Of course she was.” Banks looked at his watch. “Want to grab a bite to eat?”

“Yes. I’m starving.”

They found a small café and sat outside. Annie had a Greek salad, and Banks went for the prosciutto, Provolone and sliced red-onion sandwich.

“But why was she lying?” Annie asked when they had sat down with their food. “I don’t get it.”

Banks swatted a fly away from his sandwich. “She’s protecting herself. Or someone else.”

“After seeing her,” Annie said, “I’d say she was probably big and strong enough to kill and bury Gloria. Fifty years ago, anyway. Did you notice her hands?”

“Yes. And Gloria Shackleton was petite.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Nothing,” said Banks. “We’ll leave her to stew overnight and then have another go at her tomorrow. I get the impression she has a lot on her conscience. There was a definite struggle going on inside her. If I’m right, she’s near the end of her tether on this. It’s amazing how guilt has a way of gnawing away at you through the small hours. She wants to tell the truth, but she still has a few things to weigh up, to settle with herself; she doesn’t quite know how to go about it yet. It’s like that character in her book.”

“The one you were reading on the train?”

“Guilty Secrets, yes.”

“And what did he do?”

Banks smiled and put his finger to his lips. “That would be telling. I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending for you.”

Annie thumped his arm. “Bastard. And in the meantime?”

“Vivian Elmsley’s not going to do a runner. She’s too old and too tired to run. She also has nowhere to go. First, we’ll go see if we can find Francis Henderson.”

“And then?”

“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to head out to Bethnal Green and see my son. His band’s playing there. We’ve got a few things to talk over.”

“Of course. I understand. Maybe I’ll go to the pictures. What about later?”

“Remember that naughty weekend you mentioned?”

Annie nodded.

“I don’t know if you’re still interested, but there’s this discreet little hotel out Bloomsbury way. And it is Friday. Even CID get to work regular hours sometimes. We’ll let Vivian Elmsley sleep on it. If she can.”

Annie blushed. “But I didn’t bring my toothbrush.”

Banks laughed. “I’ll buy you one.”

“Last of the big spenders.” She turned to him, the corner of her mouth twitching in a smile. “I didn’t bring my nightie, either.”

“Don’t worry,” said Banks. “You won’t need your nightie.”