Not Dark Yet

16

Banks had hardly been in his office ten minutes before a sharp rap at the door was followed by AC Gervaise and Superintendent Newry.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Newry demanded.

Banks turned down the Thea Gilmore CD he had been listening to. ‘My job,’ he said.

‘I thought I made it clear to you that you were off the case until further notice.’

‘You did nothing of the kind.’

‘Don’t play clever buggers with me, Banks. I already know you’ve visited the treatment plant, and talked to Dr. Galway at the mortuary.’

‘I dropped by both. True.’

‘And asked her about the fire victims’ post-mortems?’

‘Also true.’

‘I’m within a hair’s breadth of suspending you from—’

‘Superintendent Newry!’ said AC Gervaise. ‘A little restraint, please. There have been no complaints against Superintendent Banks. He hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.’

‘Not yet. But what if I accuse him? I’ve got two victims whose deaths are unaccounted for. There’s a chain secured to a radiator in the upstairs staffroom, and it looks as if someone was restrained there. Ropes on the lower floor were most likely used for the same purpose. Your man here was found unconscious outside the building in question without any reasonable explanation.’

‘You think I chained someone to the radiator, then tied myself up, stabbed someone, and set the place on fire?’ Banks said. ‘When did I do all that?’

Newry turned to AC Gervaise. ‘Detective Superintendent Banks can’t account for his whereabouts or his actions during the time the events unfolded in the water treatment plant, and he was found on the premises by the firefighters, with forensic evidence to prove he was at some point inside the plant. He claims to have lost his memory—’

‘Claims?’ said Banks. ‘You don’t believe me?’

‘Let’s just say I have my doubts,’ Newry snarled. ‘I’ve told you what I think of these memory-loss cases. It’s just a bit too bloody convenient, isn’t it?’

‘Not for me. And don’t you think you should leave your prejudices at the door?’

Newry looked at Gervaise. ‘Do you permit this kind of insubordination under your command, Chief Superintendent?’

Gervaise glanced between the two of them. ‘Superintendent Newry,’ she said. ‘With all due respect, I expect any officer under my command to push back when unnecessarily provoked, and when it comes to the truth, I am still inclined to believe someone is innocent until proven guilty. All in all, I prefer to take the word of one of my most trusted detectives over that of a... a...’

‘How about a jumped-up little Hitler?’ Banks suggested.

Gervaise shot him a stern glance. ‘That’s enough from you, Superintendent Banks. That’s not helpful. Let’s just all calm down and have a rational look at this situation.’

Newry sneered. ‘Well, fortunately, with respect, ma’am, what happens next doesn’t depend on what you think,’ he said.

‘Then go talk to the chief constable.’

‘Believe me, I intend to. I’m not letting go of this.’ With a hard, angry look at both Banks and Gervaise, Newry pushed his chair back roughly and stalked out. ‘We’ll be talking again. Soon.’

‘There goes a man in search of a heart attack,’ said Banks. ‘I hate to think what his blood pressure must be like.’

‘Don’t be so bloody flippant, Alan. Don’t you understand what a predicament you’re in? For Christ’s sake, Newry wants you suspended. ACC McLaughlin and I are fighting in your corner, but we’re running out of steam, and you’re not helping by giving ammunition to the opposition, if you’ll forgive me a mixed metaphor. I want you to take sick leave. As of now. Lord knows, you’re due enough.’

‘Gardening leave?’

‘It’s sick leave, Alan. Not suspension. Because you sustained an injury on the job. We’ll leave the insurance claims and whatnot for later. This is the best compromise we can come up with right now. Even the chief constable is on side with this. You know as well as I do that an officer can be suspended for months, even years, without resolution, for no reason at all. Newry hardly needs a solid case to scupper what’s left of your career. But sick leave... Your doctor also agrees it would be advantageous in combatting stress and shock.’

‘But what about Zelda? She’s still out there. I’ve got a responsibility to her. And to Ray. And what about the Blaydon—’

‘You’re not the only detective in the station. Don’t you trust your team?’

‘Of course I do, it’s just—’

‘You want to be in the know. You want to be in control. All right, I understand. We’ll keep you in the loop.’ She paused. ‘Is that good enough?’

Banks sighed and gathered his things together. ‘It’ll have to be, won’t it?’

Banks’s headache and dizziness returned with a vengeance before he had even managed to pull the Porsche into his driveway. He hurried upstairs to his medicine cabinet, took three extra-strength paracetamol and went to lie down on his bed. The dizziness soon passed, but the headache persisted until the drugs wrapped it in cotton wool and pushed it away to a far, quiet corner of his brain.

It was too early to go to sleep, and he wasn’t tired, so he got up and went back downstairs into the small study-cum-sitting room at the front, sat down at his desktop computer, answered a few long-overdue emails and browsed Apple Music for anything new. There wasn’t anything he desperately wanted, so he went through to the kitchen, made himself a toasted cheese sandwich and went into the conservatory to eat. Outside his windows, the shadows were lengthening, and clouds blanketed the peak of Tetchley Fell. He could hear sheep bleating high on the hillside.

As he ate, he considered his position. He had to accept the sick leave. Chief Superintendent Gervaise, his area commander, and ACC Ron McLaughlin were going out on a limb for him, and it would be ungrateful to do otherwise, not to mention hammering another nail in the coffin of his career. Whether you were guilty or not, suspensions and IOPC investigations had a nasty way of sticking to your record like shit to a shoe. They guaranteed entry into a Kafkaesque world from which you were bound to emerge — if you emerged at all — a changed and probably broken man. The brass bullied and lied, cliques closed ranks, punishments were decided upon and meted out before judgement was passed, hopefuls queued up at the bottom of the greasy pole leading to your job, federation or superintendents’ association reps objected and waved their hands in the air, and things marched irrevocably on towards that fateful gate where all who enter must abandon hope. The streets and shelters were littered with discarded detectives. You would have more hope of success as a refugee begging asylum from Priti Patel than you would as an honest copper dragged deep into the maw of an internal investigation.

So, sick leave. What was he going to do with himself? He wasn’t going to sit at home and be sick, that was for certain. How did things stand right now? That was the place to start. Banks finished his sandwich and poured a glass of wine. Then he put on a Jerry Garcia Band concert from Lunt-Fontanne, New York, October 1987, and settled back to relax. The nice balance of versions of old Motown numbers, Hunter/Garcia originals, and Dylan classics was just right, laid-back yet uplifting. And Jerry was in great form.

He was almost certain that he had his full memory of the lost night back now. Just to be clear, he ran through the series of events in chronological order several times in his mind until they felt right. He supposed he wouldn’t know if anything was missing unless he sensed an absence, but as he didn’t, he accepted this version as the truth.

What it meant was that Zelda was out in the wind somewhere. He had deliberately not told anyone yet about the return of his memory in order to give her as much time as possible to get as far away as she could. He knew he shouldn’t approve of her vigilantism, that people taking personal revenge for ills done to them was the beginning of a very slippery slope, but he couldn’t help himself. He also realised that in giving her time to get far away he was aiding and abetting a murderer escape, but he decided he didn’t care.

If Zelda had killed Goran and Petar Tadić, she had had good reason, and she had killed Keane in order to save Banks’s life. She didn’t have to do that. She could have crept out of some other exit, the way she had obviously done after she had cut him free and the fire started. But she had risked her own life to save Banks from Keane, just the way Annie and Winsome had done that first time, back in Newhope Cottage. Many more instances like that, he realised, and he’d be getting worried about his masculinity. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one doing the saving?

The upshot was that he couldn’t throw Zelda to the dogs, no matter what. And if he were honest with himself, he liked her too much to do that. And worried what it would do to Ray.

So should he spend his sick leave trying to find her? He thought perhaps not. Zelda was resourceful, and if she wanted to disappear, she would. No doubt, when he admitted to getting his memory back and told Newry as much of the truth as he could get away with, there would be a police search for her, perhaps involving Europol. How intense and long-lasting it would be, he had no idea. It wasn’t only the police. The Tadićs hadn’t worked alone; they weren’t even the heads of their organisation. There might be other criminal gang members on Zelda’s trail, too, and no doubt they would put a price on her head. The last thing Banks wanted to do was lead them to her. Zelda had her contacts; she knew how to disappear. And if she wanted to get in touch with Ray after some time had passed, then she would find a way.

When it came to the Tadićs, Banks realised there was one thing he could do. He remembered Burgess telling him about the arm they’d found with the Croatian gang tattoos, and the faint possibility that it might belong to the missing Goran Tadić. If Jazz Singh could get a DNA sample from the burned body in the upstairs room of the treatment plant, then it might be worth checking it against the arm.

He phoned the lab and found she was still there.

‘Jazz, if you compare two DNA samples, can you tell whether the people were brothers?’

‘Without going into a lot of complicated detail, yes, probably,’ said Jazz. ‘Full siblings share around fifty per cent of their DNA. Why?’

‘Would you do me a favour and compare a sample from the body in the treatment plant, the upstairs one, with a sample I’ll get Detective Superintendent Burgess from the NCA to send you?’

‘I can do that, yes.’

‘Thanks, Jazz.’

‘Is this on the abduction case budget?’

‘Yes.’ Banks didn’t tell her that he was on sick leave and wasn’t supposed to be ordering DNA tests.

Next, he phoned Burgess, who agreed to get a sample sent up for comparison. At least that would tell them whether the bodies were brothers, which meant in all likelihood that they were Goran and Petar Tadić.

Banks let his mind drift back to the treatment plant to see if he could remember how Zelda had seemed. He hadn’t been able to tell if she was hurt because he hadn’t got a good look at her. She had crept up behind Keane from the shadows and stabbed him. After that, with the flames and smoke, it was soon chaos. She had come close enough to him to cut through the ropes that were binding him, close enough for him to smell her breath, and he hadn’t noticed anything to indicate that she had been hurt, then she had shouted for him to run. And she had taken off by herself. But she had found time to phone emergency services about the fire, perhaps because she was worried about him. She could be anywhere now. Mostly, Banks hoped she’d had time to get out of the country. She would have a far better chance of disappearing in mainland Europe.

And what about Ray? Maybe there was a way he could let Ray know she was OK without giving too much away about what happened, but he didn’t know how. However he did it, it would mean lying to his friend. If Ray knew the truth, he would fret that she would never come back to him, or that she would be caught and put in jail if she did. On the other hand, if he told Ray nothing, he would assume all was lost and sink deeper into depression.

But so much depended, Banks realised, on him keeping his cool. He would have to stop putting Newry off, simply tell him he’d got his memory back, submit to an official interview, and give him a version that worked for everyone.

Especially Zelda.

Late that evening, Banks was listening to Jessye Norman singing French songs when he heard a loud knocking at his door. Edgy since the attack, he picked up a knife from the kitchen as he went to answer it, only to find Ray Cabbot standing there, not too steady on his feet. Ray lurched forward and almost fell into Banks’s arms — not to mention the blade of the knife — when the door opened. As he helped Ray in, Banks glanced out front and saw his car parked at an awkward angle. The bloody fool had driven over, despite the state he was in. Or probably because of it, Banks speculated.

Once Ray was inside, he seemed to steady himself and followed Banks down the hall and through the kitchen to the conservatory where Banks had been sitting. He walked with the exaggerated gait of a drunk pretending to be sober.

‘Got a drink?’ he asked.

Banks certainly didn’t think he needed one, but he was the last person to be moralistic or judgemental about drinking. Instead, he poured Ray a decent measure of Highland Park and himself a generous glass of Gigondas, his first of the day.

‘Whass this music?’ Ray asked.

‘Debussy songs. Why, don’t you like it?’

‘’S’all right, I suppose. Bit artsy-fartsy.’

Banks used his phone to change the stream. Instead of Duparc’s “L’invitation au voyage” there came Tim Buckley’s Blue Afternoon. ‘That do you?’ he said.

‘I suppose it’ll have to.’

‘What is it, Ray?’ Banks asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

Ray took a hefty wallop of scotch. ‘You know what it is. It’s Zelda. I miss her.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘Oh, God, Alan, I miss her like I can’t say.’

‘I’m sorry, Ray. I’m sure she’ll be back.’ As he tried to reassure Ray, Banks went over his strategy in his mind. He could tell him only so much of the truth if he hoped to do him any good at all.

‘You know what happened, don’t you?’ Ray said. ‘You didn’t tell me anything on the phone yesterday. You said you felt ill, and I gave you time to recover. But you know now, don’t you? And I’m here, begging you. You remember, don’t you? Tell me. Is she all right? Where is she?’

‘I remember most of it now,’ said Banks, ‘and I’ll tell you what I can.’

Ray handed over his empty glass and Banks went into the kitchen to refill it. His own glass was still over half-full. Back in the conservatory, they sat at right angles to one another by the round glass table. The twilit sky outside was indigo and a dim orange-shade table lamp provided the only other light in the room.

‘Well? Is she all right?’ Ray prompted him.

‘Depends what you mean by “all right,” ’ Banks said. ‘I only saw her very briefly, and things were... a little hectic.’

‘Was she hurt?’

‘Not that I could see.’

‘How did she look?’

‘Fine, Ray. She hadn’t been harmed in any way. Just kept there against her will for a few days. She’d had a terrifying experience. No doubt she’d have liked to be able to brush her teeth, change her clothes, and have a nice long shower, but other than that... whoever it was hadn’t hurt her.’

‘Thank God for that. Did you talk to her? What did she say?’

‘There was hardly time for conversation. The bloody building was on fire. We had to get out of there. But she said to tell you not to worry, that she’d get in touch, and she would be back when she could.’

‘She’s coming back?’

‘I’m sure she’ll come when she can. But don’t tell anyone.’

‘Why can’t she come now?’

‘I don’t know. There are things she has to deal with.’

‘What things?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘When will she be back? Did she say that?’

‘She didn’t. But her situation here, the people who took her—’

‘Where are they? Are they still after her?’

‘They’re dead,’ said Banks. ‘In the fire.’

‘Thank God for that. So why can’t she come home?’

‘She will. It’s just a matter of time.’ Ray reached for his tobacco, looked at Banks and halted. Banks just nodded. ‘Go on.’ Ray emptied his glass again and Banks went and poured him another refill, a smaller one this time. If he had anything to do with it, Ray wasn’t driving anywhere tonight. Tim Buckley was singing ‘I Must Have Been Blind.’

Ray lit up. ‘I’ll go anywhere she wants. You know that. Just tell her that.’

‘I’m not in communication with her, Ray,’ Banks said. ‘I don’t know where she is.’

‘But she got away? You’re sure of it?’

‘Yes. She got away.’

‘Where might she have gone?’

‘I don’t know. She might have gone overseas. It was getting a bit too hot for her over here.’

‘Those two bastards from the NCA. And she was worried about immigration. But she’s got friends there. All over the place. She’ll be all right there. How long do you think? I’ll go to her wherever she wants. France. Italy. Spain. Greece. Even fucking Moldova, if I have to.’

Banks couldn’t help but smile. ‘I have no idea. As long as it takes. I’m sure she’ll be in touch when she can.’

Ray took a drag on his cigarette and drank some more whisky. ‘Then I’ll try to carry on as normal,’ he said, nodding his head as if in agreement with some inner decision. ‘Get on with my work. Right? Just wait for her to come back. It’s what she would want.’ He tapped his glass. ‘And cut back on the drinking a bit.’

‘That’s the best plan. You’ve got to stop stressing yourself out. It’ll make you ill.’

‘What about these people who are after her?’

‘They’re dead, Ray. I told you. Don’t worry about them.’

‘Who killed them? Not... no?’

‘No,’ said Banks. ‘Not Zelda. We think they went for each other. A falling-out among thieves.’

‘You’re sure she got away, got out of there?’

‘Yes, Ray. Zelda saved my life. I was tied up. She cut me free. That’s when she told me to tell you she’d be back. After that, the fire was starting to spread fast, so she pushed me towards the exit. She went out by another door and drove off. Their car must have been parked there. I heard her go. Simple as that. The CSIs found two burned bodies in the place, both male. They can tell by the bones.’

‘Are they chasing her?’

‘Who?’

‘Anyone. The police. The other bad guys. There must have been more than two. She’ll be terrified if she’s on the run.’

‘She’s had plenty of time to get far enough away,’ said Banks. ‘Sure, the police would like to talk to her in connection with the fire, as they’ve been talking to me. But she didn’t start it. Phil Keane did that. And I’ll make it clear to anyone who questions me that Zelda and I were victims, that she didn’t kill anyone. They’ll come to their senses. And I told you, the bad guys are dead. Maybe there are more, but without their leaders, they’ll scatter to the four winds. Zelda’s safe, Ray. I’m sure of it.’

If Zelda had half the brains Banks credited her with, she would have dumped the car in a long-term airport car park, then taken a train or shuttle to another nearby airport and flown out. She might even have risked the Eurostar. If he were to guess, Paris would be her first choice of destination. It was the last place she had lived for any length of time before coming to England and meeting Ray, and she probably still had friends and contacts there. She would need money, transportation, an escape plan.

Ray stood up and attempted a sloppy embrace, then said, ‘I’d better be off now. Thanks, mate.’ He held up his tumbler. ‘And for the whisky.’

‘Off where?’

‘Home, of course.’

‘You’re not driving anywhere, the shape you’re in. You can either sleep it off in my spare room or I’ll drive you home myself.’ Banks still hadn’t finished his first glass of wine. ‘Or I’ll call you a taxi.’

‘Whatever,’ said Ray. ‘Though I think I should be at home, shouldn’t I, just in case she comes back? I mean, as you said, she might come home any time. I wouldn’t want her to get back to an empty house. But a taxi will take for ever.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Banks said, getting up. ‘I’ll drive you. You can leave your car here. Get a taxi here and pick it up tomorrow.’

As he drove back home after dropping Ray off, Banks thought he would try to find out something about Zelda’s life in Paris; maybe knowing more about her time there would help him find her. He didn’t want to find her for the police, but for himself, and for Ray. He wanted what he had told his friend this evening to be true. He locked and bolted the front door and went back to his chair in the conservatory, put the Tim Buckley back on where he had paused it, at ‘Blue Melody.’

As he sat and thought, he realised that already in his mind he was separating himself from the police, almost as if he were no longer one of them. Planning escape routes for fugitives was hardly something the old Banks would have done. What was happening to him? After all these years, had it come to this? In some ways it was as if a great weight had been lifted off him, but in another it was like dipping a toe into uncharted waters, not knowing where they would lead or what lay beneath their murky depths.