“Yes. She asked if I had mentioned him, or her, to the police.”
“And had you?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I’ve got nothing to hide.”
But maybe Jaff and Tracy had, Annie thought. “Is Jaff Erin’s boyfriend’s real name?” she asked.
“It’s short for Jaffar. I don’t know his last name.”
“Is he Asian?”
“Half Indian, or something.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Granary Wharf. But I don’t know the address. It’s an old converted warehouse with a restaurant on the ground floor. The three of us were walking past once, just when I’d decided to take the room. We’d been out celebrating with a drink somewhere nearby. Anyway, Erin pointed it out, like she was really proud, you know. Showing off that her boyfriend had money.”
“And does he?”
“Seems to have.”
Granary Wharf was certainly a posh address. Even Annie had heard of it. Now was the time she should ring the station, she realized, and report her findings to Superintendent Gervaise. But if she did that, it would be out of her hands, beyond her control. If Banks’s daughter was in trouble, Annie wanted to see what she could do to nip it in the bud, if it wasn’t already too late, and she couldn’t do that with Gervaise holding her back. “Do you mind if I have a quick look at Francesca’s room while I’m here?” she asked.
“No skin off my nose. It’s the second door on the left at the top of the landing.”
Annie climbed the stairs and opened the door. It was a spacious enough room, painted mauve and furnished like the usual student bedsit, with a desk and chair, bookcases, chest of drawers full of underwear and T-shirts, and a closet built into the wall, where Tracy hung her dresses, skirts, tops and jeans…
There were a compact CD player and a small stack of CDs-Florence and the Machine, Adele, Emmy the Great, Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys, the Killers. Beside them stood a few books, mostly history, which had been Tracy’s subject at university, and a few modern novels: The Kite Runner, The Time Traveller’s Wife, The Thirteenth Tale. There was no sign of a computer or a mobile. If Tracy had a phone, as Annie was certain she must have, then she had taken it with her.
Annie opened the drawer on the bedside table and found some personal items: tampons, condoms, an old prescription for a yeast infection and some cheap jewelry. When she went back downstairs Rose was on the living room couch, and the TV was on again. EastEnders. “Do you happen to know Francesca’s mobile number?” Annie asked.
“Sure.” Rose picked up her own mobile from the low coffee table and read out a number. Annie called. No response. She thanked Rose, then said good night and set off home for Harkside.
6
BANKS SAT IN VESUVIO’S TAVERN, AT THE TABLE BESIDE the door, with his back to the window sipping his pint of Anchor Steam and examining the copy of The Maltese Falcon that he had just bought at City Lights next door. It was one of his favorite films, but he had never read the book. Hammett had written about San Francisco in the thirties, and apparently there were still places associated with him. Maybe Banks would offer to take Teresa to John’s Bar & Grill, where Sam Spade had enjoyed his chops. Banks had read about it in the guidebook and knew the restaurant was still in business, and not too far from their hotel.
For now, though, he was visiting an old beatnik haunt on Columbus, and the man at the bar in the beret, talking to the frizzy-haired barmaid, looked as if he might have been there since Jack Kerouac’s time. The bar had a high ceiling and an upper balcony, empty at that time of day. A screen behind the bar flashed random surreal images, and the walls were covered with old framed newspaper articles about San Francisco’s history. Banks had walked all the way from Fisherman’s Wharf, through North Beach, with its Italian cafés and wedding-cake houses, and the cold beer was going down nicely.
Los Angeles and his two-day drive up the Pacific Coast Highway were just memories now that he was in San Francisco, near the end of his trip. His thoughts drifted from the book he was reading to that night in the desert, as they often had, to that strange fleeting kiss of happiness. At first it had surprised him that he was a stranger to it, that it was something he barely remembered feeling before, except perhaps once or twice as a child. He had always possessed too restless a nature, and restlessness precludes lasting happiness. He had never stopped to smell the flowers or listen to the ocean. And if he wasn’t restless, he usually felt a kind of vague, mellow sadness punctuated by the occasional eruption of anger or irritation. There had been moments of bliss, of course, but they were infrequent and ephemeral, and he often wondered if such moments could ever be sustainable. Was that the nature of happiness? That it came and went like a breath of desert air? That it was something we might only define by its absence? Or was it just his nature? He would probably never know. And what did it really matter, anyway?
Everything changes. Nothing changes. His revelation was that there was no revelation. To change his life in any significant way he would have to make a leap of faith and accept such new tenets, new versions of the truth, cultivate new patterns of behavior, bow to some authority, even. He would have to believe, and he didn’t think he could do that. He didn’t even think he wanted to.
So he would go on uncomfortably inhabiting his own skin, taking happiness (like that all-so-brief desert breeze) where he could find it, beauty where it revealed itself to him, and try not to dwell too much on his failures and losses. The count was way too high-Kay, Linda, Sandra, Annie, Michelle, Sophia. And if he did get a little maudlin and sentimental once in a while, so be it. He could revel in the lovelorn wisdom of Dylan, Billie Holiday, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen with the best of them, and drink fine wine or whiskey till he fell asleep on the sofa with finely wrought phrases about life’s sadness and irony, love lost or unrequited ringing in his ears. The rest of the time there were Beethoven, Schubert, Bill Evans, Miles and Trane. And that was about as much revelation and enlightenment as he was likely to get in this lifetime, he decided.
Banks stretched like a cat in the sunlight through the window and drank some Anchor Steam. A cigarette would have gone down nicely, too, but they were a thing of the past now, not just for him, but even for pubs like this. Kerouac and Ginsberg would be turning in their graves. Eastvale seemed light-years away, though Banks realized that he was actually starting to look forward to going home. He didn’t miss the job, but he missed Annie, Winsome, Gristhorpe, Hatchley, even Gervaise and Harry Potter. They were the closest he had to friends outside his parents and Brian and Tracy, whom he also missed. He missed his cottage by the beck and woods, his CDs and DVDs. To hell with Sophia, la belle dame sans merci. Let her grapple with her own demons. He had had enough. Everything comes around.
But before he left for home tomorrow, he had a date with a beautiful, interesting woman called Teresa. He finished his pint and headed out on to Columbus, noticing the sign on the corner: Jack Kerouac Alley. He plugged in his iPod, which played a jaunty live version of The Grateful Dead’s “Scarlet Begonias” from Winterland, 1976, perfect for a beautiful day in San Francisco, then he walked down the hill and bore right, through the lower end of Chinatown, across Union Square toward his hotel.