“No,” said Banks. “It’s over. Derek Wyman admitted to watching Laurence Silbert and hiring a private investigator to take photographs of him with whoever he met. When we questioned him yesterday, he told us that Hardcastle asked him to do so. He’d become suspicious of Silbert’s frequent trips to London, thought he’d found a lover. It was jealousy, pure and simple. Wyman didn’t tell us earlier because he felt guilty about what happened and he didn’t want to get involved.”
“I see,” said Gervaise. “And do you believe him?”
“Not entirely,” said Banks. “Edwina Silbert assured me that Mark Hardcastle knew her son was still working on the occasions he visited London and Amsterdam, so why would he ask Wyman to follow him?”
“I suppose he could have become suspicious over something,” Gervaise said. “You know, found a monogrammed hankie, someone else’s underwear in the laundry basket, whatever. Then he might have begun to think that Silbert was using work as an excuse to cover up an affair. And maybe he was.”
Banks looked at her. “You’ve got quite an imagination, ma’am,” he said. “And it’s entirely possible. But it doesn’t matter what we believe. There’s nothing to charge him with.”
“So these half-baked theories of yours about Othello and Iago were exactly what they appeared to be? Half-baked?”
“So it would seem,” muttered Banks. “If his confession is to be believed.”
“And the involvement of the secret intelligence services was purely tangential?”
“Up to a point. Silbert was still engaged on intelligence work in some capacity—I’d hazard a guess that this man he was meeting in London was the mysterious Julian Fenner, Import-Export—but it now turns out that none of it has any relevance to the murder-suicide.”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Well, you can never be entirely certain with these people,” Banks said, echoing Edwina. “But yes, ma’am. As sure as we’ll ever be.”
“So I can tell the chief constable and whoever’s been on his back that it’s all over?”
“Yes,” said Banks. “Though I would imagine the chief constable is well aware of that already.”
Gervaise looked at him suspiciously but didn’t follow up on the remark. “Right. Well, I hope you’ve learned a lesson from the whole sorry affair.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Banks.
At this moment, Annie Cabbot rushed in and sat down, distracting Gervaise’s attention from Banks. “Ah, DI Cabbot,” she said. “So good of you to join us.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” said Annie. “I was out on a call.”
“What kind of call?”
“Missing person,” she said, glancing toward Banks. “Derek Wyman’s disappeared.”
“Why would he do that?” Gervaise asked. “I thought you said he was off the hook. You let him go.”
“He is,” said Banks. “And we did.” He turned to Annie. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday afternoon. He left the theater after the matinee and didn’t turn up for the evening performance. And there’s another thing.”
“Yes?” said Gervaise.
“You’re not going to like this, ma’am.”
“I don’t like anything I’ve heard so far. Better tell me, anyway.”
“Two people went over to Wyman’s house yesterday afternoon. A man and a woman. They scared the sh—... the living daylights out of his wife, took a few photographs and papers and went away. Said they were from the government.”
“Shit!” said Gervaise. “This was just yesterday?”
“Yes. I told you you weren’t going to like it, ma’am.”
“Reminding me of what you told me doesn’t help your cause in the least, DI Cabbot,” snarled Gervaise.
“Could he have got back from the matinee in time to see these people enter his house, or come out of it?” Banks asked Annie. “Do you think they picked him up and spirited him away?”
“It’s possible,” Annie said. “The timing’s close enough.”
“But DCI Banks just assured me this mess was over and done with,” said Gervaise.
“Well, it was,” said Annie. “It might still be. I mean, maybe he’s just... I don’t know... another woman? Or he’s done a runner? These things happen. Just because he’s missing, it doesn’t have to mean that MI6 carted him off to one of their secret interrogation camps.”
“There are no such places,” said Gervaise.
“Very well, then. One of their secret nonexistent interrogation camps.”
“Very clever. Don’t let your imagination run away with you, DI Cabbot,” snarled Gervaise.
“Have these government people had access to any of our case files?” Banks asked Gervaise.
“Not through me,” she answered. “Or through anybody else in this office, I shouldn’t imagine.”
“Has the chief constable been around much lately?”
Gervaise paused. “A bit more often than he usually is. What are you trying to suggest, DCI Banks? Is this connected with that innuendo you made earlier?”
“I think you know, ma’am. You might not like to admit it, but you know. They took an interest in this from the start, at least as soon as they realized I wasn’t going to stop investigating. They’ve been following me around. Annie, too, perhaps. They probably know what we know. Given that we didn’t tell them, I’m wondering how they found out. It’s my bet they went straight to the top. The chief constable’s ambitious, and he has political aspirations.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?” said Gervaise. “And you’re not also suggesting that the government is responsible for Wyman’s disappearance are you? I mean, this isn’t some little tin-pot South American dictatorship.”
“You don’t have to look that far south when it comes to citizens disappearing,” said Banks. “But I don’t know. I’m just calling the facts to your attention, that’s all.”
“But why on earth would they be interested in a bloody schoolteacher cum amateur theater director?”
Banks scratched his scar. “Because he hired a private detective to take photographs of Silbert meeting a man on a bench in Regent’s Park,” Banks said. “And because we’re interested in him. It seems logical to assume that this wasn’t anything to do with an affair of the heart, but that those activities were part of Silbert’s postretirement covert work. There’s also the brother.”
“Brother?”
“Wyman’s brother, Rick. He was SAS. He was killed on a secret mission in Afghanistan in 2002. The press covered it up. Called it an accident during maneuvers. Silbert has visited Afghanistan. There’s a chance that he might have been involved on the intelligence side, and Wyman might have found out about it through Hardcastle, blamed him for Rick’s death.”
“Oh, this just gets better and better.” Gervaise glared at Banks, breathed out heavily, ran her hand over her hair, then filled a glass with water from a pitcher on a tray beside her. The rain continued to hammer on the slates and windows. “What a bloody great start to the week this is turning out to be,” she said. “I think we’d better discuss this later, in my office, when we’ve got a bit more information in, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gervaise got to her feet. “I suppose we ought to count our blessings as well as lick our wounds,” she said. “Even if Derek Wyman has gone and thrown a spanner in the works, at least we’ve got Donny Moore’s assailant and maybe done a little bit toward keeping more heroin and methamphetamines off the East Side Estate. Maybe that saves the weekend from being a total disaster.”
“And don’t forget, ma’am,” Doug Wilson spoke up. “We’ve got the traffic cones back, too.”
Gervaise gave him a withering glance.