Before things got any worse, she phoned the station for backup, and slowly the four of them made their way down the stairs to see what, if anything, they could do for Toros “the Bull” Kemal.
17
The rain started to come down hard on Sunday morning and it was still pouring on Monday, when Banks took the newspapers and his second cup of coffee into the conservatory. It had started as it usually did, with a light pattering on the glass roof, then soon it was running down the windows in thick slithering torrents, distorting the view of the dale outside like a funfair mirror. That was the way Banks had been seeing the world lately, too, he thought, as through a glass darkly: Hardcastle and Silbert, Wyman, Sophia, the bombing—dear God, most of all the bombing—all of it nothing but a distortion of the darkness he was beginning to believe lay at the center of everything.
The weather suited Banks’s mood well enough. The music, too. Underneath the noise the rain made, Billie Holiday was singing “When Your Lover Has Gone” from one of her last performances, in 1959. She sounded as if she were on her last legs.
He had slept hardly at all the past three nights. The images seared in his mind’s eye wouldn’t go away; they only became more distorted. He had seen death before in all its gruesome forms. As a young patrol officer he had been called to road accidents, six-car pile-ups on the M1, with body parts strewn over a radius of almost a quarter of a mile. He had even been in his own house when it had been set on fire, though he didn’t remember much about that as he had been drugged at the time.
But none of that was quite the same as what had happened on Friday. This had been different, and most of all, like the fire at his house, it hadn’t been an accident. Someone had done it deliberately to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible on innocent people. He had met criminals who had done that before, too, of course, but not on this scale, in this random way. And none of the murderers he had ever met before had been more than happy to blow themselves to smithereens along with everyone else, women and children included. More than once, he had wondered how the people he had led out were doing: the Asian woman, the young boy and the pretty blonde in the yellow dress. Perhaps he could make some inquiries and find out.
The music had finished and he needed more coffee, so he went first to the entertainment room and put on something a bit brighter and instrumental, a lively, jazzy string quartet called Zapp, then he refilled his mug in the kitchen. Just when he had settled down to see if he could concentrate on the crossword, his telephone rang.
He was tempted not to answer, but it might be Sophia. One day soon, he thought, he should invest in a telephone that displayed the caller’s number. Of course, that only helped if they didn’t withhold the number and if you recognized it. Most of Sunday he had contemplated phoning Sophia, and every time his telephone rang he had hoped it was her. But it never was. Brian rang once. Annie phoned with more details about Winsome’s latest death-defying escapade. Tracy, his daughter, made her weekly report. And Victor Morton had rung, of course. But that was all.
This time it was her.
“Alan, I moved your car. You’re lucky the police didn’t impound it. Things are still crazy around there. Anyway, it’s just down the street. It’s safe now. I put my key in the glove box. Do you know you left your iPod in there, too?”
“Yes,” said Banks. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sound a bit...”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’d like to come and see you. I’ve still got some free time and things have quietened down up here.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but I don’t know. I’m really busy this week.”
“We’ve always worked around that before.”
“I know, but... it’s just... I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I think I just need some time, that’s all.”
“Time away from me?”
She paused, then said, “Yes.”
“Sophia, I did remember to set that alarm.”
“Then how did someone just manage to walk into my house and break my things without alerting the police?”
“The people who did it are very adept,” Banks said. “You have to believe me. They can get in anywhere.” He hadn’t told her that before, hadn’t wanted to frighten her, but as it turned out, he needn’t have worried.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Sophia said. “You not setting the alarm, or these paranoid delusions you’ve got about the secret service. Do you seriously believe what you’re saying, or is it some kind of elaborate excuse you’ve just come up with, because if it is—”
“It isn’t an excuse. It’s true. I told you about them before. Laurence Silbert was a retired MI6 agent. Semi-retired.”
There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Anyway, it’s not even that. I don’t want to argue.”
“Me, neither. What is it, then?”
“I don’t know. It’s all been too fast, that’s all. I just need some time. If you care at all about me, you’ll give me some time.”
“Fine,” he said in the end, exhausted. “Take your time. Take all the time you want.”
And that was that.
The rain continued to fall and Banks thought he could hear thunder in the distance. He thought about Sophia, how she would get emotional during thunderstorms. She would make love like a wild thing, and if she was ever going to tell him that she loved him, he would have bet it would be during a thunderstorm. But that wasn’t likely to happen now. They had been living together in so many ways, yet they lived so much apart. No wonder it all seemed too fast for her.
"I’m sorry for disturbing you, honest I am,” said Carol Wyman, opening the door to Annie, “but I’m really beside myself.”
She looked it, too, Annie thought. Hair unkempt, no makeup, dark circles under her eyes. “It’s all right,” Annie said. “What’s the problem?”
“Come in,” Carol said, “and I’ll tell you.”
The living room was untidy, but Annie managed to find a place to sit on the sofa. Carol offered tea, and at first Annie declined. Only when Carol insisted and said she needed a cup herself did she agree. Annie had driven all the way in from Harkside to Eastvale and was stopping at the Wymans’ on her way to Western Area Headquarters, where Superintendent Gervaise wanted the whole team assembled at twelve o’clock for a meeting in the boardroom. As she waited for Carol to make the tea, Annie glanced around the room and noticed that the photograph of Derek Wyman with his brother was missing, as were several others.
“What is it?” Annie asked, when Carol brought the tea and sat next to her.
“It’s Derek,” she said. “I don’t know where he is. He’s disappeared. Derek’s disappeared.”
She started crying, and Annie put an arm around her shoulders and passed her a tissue from the box on the coffee table. “When was this?” she asked.
“He didn’t come home last night, after the evening performance. I haven’t seen him since he went out for the matinee at two o’clock. He usually comes home for his tea between performances on a Sunday, but yesterday he didn’t.” She gave a harsh laugh. “You haven’t locked him up or anything without telling me, have you?”
“We wouldn’t do that,” said Annie, moving her arm away.
“At first I just thought maybe he’d grabbed a sandwich or something instead of coming home for tea—he sometimes does—then he’d gone with his mates for a few drinks after the play, but...”