“That’s a very cynical assessment, if I might say so,” said Browne. “And I’m more than willing to bet that you’ve taken a shortcut or two in your time to make sure someone you knew to be guilty got convicted. But that’s by the by. Like you, we’re mere civil servants. We also serve a succession of masters.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve seen Yes, Minister.”
Browne laughed. “Surprisingly accurate. Did you see the one about the hospital without patients?”
“I remember it,” said Banks. “My favorite.”
“Wouldn’t that be the perfect world? Schools without pupils, universities without students, doctors without patients, police without criminals? Then we could all get on with the real work.”
“A secret service without spies?”
“Ah, yes, that would be a good one.” Browne leaned forward. “We’re not so different, you and I, Mr. Banks.” He gestured vaguely toward the source of the music, which still played quietly in the background. “We both like Stanford. Elgar, too, perhaps? Vaughan Williams. Britten—though he did have a few dodgy habits and left these shores for the United States at a rather inconvenient time. The Beatles, even, given today’s perspective? Oasis? The Arctic Monkeys? I can’t say that I have ever listened to any of these, but I know your tastes in music are somewhat eclectic, and they are British. Whatever you think of The Beatles, even they represented traditional British values in their heyday. The four lovable moptops. And sometimes one has to stand up and fight for those values, you know. Sometimes one even has to do things that go counter to what one would deem right.”
“Why? That’s what I said about the ends and the means, isn’t it? Is that what Silbert did? Was he a government assassin? Did he betray people?”
Browne finished his drink and edged out of his corner to stand by the kitchen door. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. It’s not at all what the fiction writers say it is, you know.”
“Isn’t it? I always thought Ian Fleming aimed for realism.”
Browne’s lip curled. “I don’t think this is a very productive discussion, do you?” he said. “I’m not sure what it is that’s got you up on your moral high horse, but we still have a very real world to deal with out there. Take the Litvinenko business. That set us back years with the Russians. Do you know that there are as many Russian spies operating in Britain today as there were at the height of the Cold War? I came here seeking some sort of reassurance that, for the good of the country, your investigation into the death of Laurence Silbert wasn’t likely to cause any... any further ripples that might embarrass the service or the government. That it could be swiftly and neatly concluded, and you could head off back to Chelsea to see your lovely young girlfriend.”
“As far as I remember,” said Banks, feeling a chill crawl up his spine, “Lugovoi denied that he had anything to do with murdering Litvinenko. Didn’t the Russians claim that MI6 did it?”
Browne chuckled. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a fan of conspiracy theories.”
“I’m not,” said Banks. “One just hears these rumors.”
“Well, I hope you realize that’s as ridiculous as the claim that MI6 had something to do with the death of Princess Diana,” he said. “Not to mention naive. As Sir Richard Dearlove said under oath, MI6 does not sanction or involve itself in assassination. Of course the Russians denied it. Of course they made a counteraccusation. That’s what they always do. Andrei Lugovoi left a trail of Polonium 210 that practically glowed in the dark and led the police to his front door.”
“The police? Or you?”
“As I said before. We’re on the same side.”
“Are you telling me that Silbert was somehow connected with Russia? With the Litvinenko affair, even? Do you think there’s something about his murder that could stir things up internationally? Is there a terrorist connection? A Russian Mafia connection? Or maybe he was involved in the conspiracy over Princess Di’s death? Was he a double agent? Is that where the Swiss bank accounts come in?”
Browne stared at Banks and his eyes narrowed, turned hard and cold. “If you can’t give me the assurances I seek, then I’ll have to seek elsewhere,” he said, and turned to leave.
Banks followed him through the living room to the front door. “As far as I know,” he said, “it looks like a simple murder-suicide. Happens more often than you think. Silbert’s lover, Mark Hardcastle, killed your man, then he killed himself out of grief.”
Browne turned. “Then there’s no need for a messy investigation, is there, no chance of an awkward trial, of anything uncomfortable slipping out into public view?”
“Well, there probably wasn’t,” said Banks. “Not until you turned up, that is. I only said that’s what it looks like.”
“Good night, Mr. Banks, and grow up,” said Browne. He shut the door firmly behind him. Banks didn’t hear a car engine start until a few minutes later, far away, at the end of the lane. He went back to the kitchen and stared at the mess he had made of the storage center. Suddenly he didn’t feel like dealing with it anymore. Instead, he topped up his whiskey, noticing that his hands were shaking a little, and carried it through to the TV room, where he replaced Stanford with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, cranked up the volume on “Rich Woman” and thought about Sophia. Now, how on earth did Browne know about her?
On Thursday morning, Detective Superintendent Gervaise called a meeting in the boardroom, at which Banks, Winsome, Annie and Stefan Nowak were in attendance. Banks had told her about Mr. Browne’s visit beforehand, but she didn’t seem either particularly surprised or interested.
After tea and coffee had been sorted, everyone turned to Stefan Nowak for his forensic summary. “I suppose I should note first of all,” Nowak said, “that I just got the DNA results this morning, and on the evidence of the birthmark on the victim’s arm and the DNA comparison with the mother, we can definitely state that the identity of the deceased found at 15 Castleview Heights is Laurence Silbert. According to Dr. Glendenning’s postmortems, Hardcastle died of ligature strangulation—the yellow clothesline he hanged himself with— and Silbert was killed by a series of blows to the head and throat from a hard flat object—which we’ve matched to the cricket bat found at the scene. The first blow was to the back of the head, the left side, so he was moving away from his killer at the time.”
“That would make sense,” Banks said. “Silbert was supposed to be pretty fit, and he might have been able to put up more of a fight if he’d seen it coming.”
“But does it fit with the idea of a lover’s tiff?” Gervaise asked.
“I don’t see why not,” said Banks. “People turn away from one another in rows sometimes. Silbert must have misjudged the depth of Hardcastle’s rage. And the cricket bat was in its stand right by his side. But it could also fit other possible scenarios.”
“We’ll leave those for the moment,” said Gervaise. She turned to Nowak. “Go on, Stefan.”
“At that point we think Mr. Silbert turned as he fell to his knees, and his assailant hit him on the right temple and in the throat, breaking the hyoid bone, crushing the larynx and knocking him backward into the position we found him in. It was one, or a combination, of those blows that killed him. After that... well, there was a series of other blows. Postmortem.”
“And Mark Hardcastle was left-handed,” said Annie.
“Yes,” said Nowak, glancing at her. “Given that the only fingerprints we found on the cricket bat belonged to him, I’d hazard a guess that he’s your man. As I told you after blood-typing earlier this week, the odds were very good that the only blood at the Silbert crime scene belonged to Silbert himself. DNA analysis has now verified that beyond a doubt. The same with the blood we found on Hardcastle’s clothes and person. All Silbert’s, according to the DNA, with a small amount of Hardcastle’s own, most likely caused by scratches as he climbed the tree.”