She raised a neatly plucked eyebrow.
“Just so you know.”
Emily paused, then said, “All right.” She gestured for the woman delivering food at the next table to come over and started to give her order. The woman frowned, told her to go and order it herself at the bar, then stalked off.
“Get her,” said Emily, pulling a face. Kid again.
Banks scraped his chair against the stone floor. “I’ll go.” He didn’t want her to have to go through the agony of getting up and sitting down again; wearing those jeans, she might rupture her spleen or her bladder.
“No.” She jumped to her feet with surprising agility. “I told you I’d get it.”
Banks watched her walk to the bar, taller than ever in her platform heels, and noticed all the men’s eyes were on her body. There wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t do anything for her. Or to her. The women, however, turned up their noses in distaste and cast disapproving frowns in Banks’s direction. What the hell, Banks asked himself, was he doing sitting in a pub with the chief constable’s daughter, who was definitely breaking one law by drinking under age – even if you could hardly call Kahlua and Coke a real drink – and God knows how many other laws simply by the way she looked? It was fortunate that none of the men could be arrested for their fantasies. Not yet.
“Done.” Emily sat again and plucked her cigarette out of the ashtray. “At least they’ll bring it to the bloody table. You don’t have to get up and fetch it yourself. Honestly, the service industry in this country.”
Banks wondered how many other countries she had experienced and realized it was probably more than his own daughter had. Chief constables were always getting junkets to America, Belgium, South Africa or Peru. He wondered if the service in Peru was better than that in Yorkshire. Probably.
“What are you having?” he asked.
“Me? Nothing. I don’t eat lunch.”
“Nor dinner, either, by the looks of you.”
“Now, now. Remember, you didn’t disapprove of ‘the looks of me’ too much in that hotel room.”
So she did remember. Banks felt himself blush, and it got all the worse when he saw Emily was laughing at him. “Look-” he said, but she waved him down.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t told Daddy.” She pouted and wiggled her shoulders. “Besides, it’s the waiflike look. Most older men like it. Don’t you?”
“What about boys your own age?”
She snorted. “They’re so immature. Oh, they’re all right for dancing and buying you drinks and stuff, but that’s about all. All most of them can talk about is football and sex.” She licked her cherry lips. “I prefer older men.”
Banks swallowed. He could see where that came from: a father who was never there, someone she desperately wanted to love and be loved by. “Like Barry Clough?” he said.
A shadow crossed her fine porcelain features. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. Then her face brightened into a smile. “But first I really do want to thank you. I mean it. I know I wasn’t very nice at the time, but I appreciate what you did, taking care of me like that. I was really fucked up. Big-time.”
“Do you remember much about it?”
“In the hotel room? Yes. Until I fell asleep. You were the perfect gentleman. And the next morning you went and bought me a tracksuit. A pink one. It was ugly, but that was sweet of you. I’m sorry I wasn’t very friendly on the way home, but I was really down.”
“Thai curry?”
The woman held out a dish of steaming curry. Banks admitted to ownership, and she set it down, narrowly avoiding spilling it on the table, gave Emily a hard glare and walked off.
“What is her problem?” Emily said. “I mean, really! The stupid cow.”
“She doesn’t like you,” said Banks. “She doesn’t like the way you treated her, and I’d guess she doesn’t like your looks much, either.”
“What the fuck do I care if she likes my looks?”
“You asked. I’m simply telling you.”
“Anyway, what’s she supposed to be here for if not to serve people food? It’s not as if she’s not getting paid or anything.”
“Look,” said Banks. “I’m not going to argue. It’s not her job to take orders, and you’ve got a pretty snotty attitude, when it comes right down to it.” Banks dipped into his curry. It was good and hot.
Emily glared at him for a few seconds, sulking, then started fidgeting with the large ring on her right index finger. “Stupid old bitch,” she muttered.
Banks ignored her and tucked in, easing the heat with an occasional swig of beer. He finished the pint quicker than he had intended to and, before he could stop her, Emily had jumped to her feet and bought him another one. It was the barmaid who served her this time, not the landlord, and Banks noticed them talking, Emily taking something out of her handbag and showing it to her.
“What was all that about?” he asked when she came back.
“Nothing,” she said, putting her drink down. “Christ, this place is in the fucking dark ages.”
“What do you mean?”
“I only asked for a TVR, didn’t I, and do you think the sad bitch behind the bar had any idea what I was talking about?”
“I can’t say I have any idea what you’re talking about, either.”
Emily looked at him as if he came from another planet. “Well, I had to explain it to her, too. It’s tequila, vodka and Red Bull. Great stuff, gives you a real alcohol high without all that slurring and stumbling. Me and… well, you know who… we used to drink it in the Cicada Dust in Clerkenwell.”
“And?”
She pulled a face. “What do you think?”
“They didn’t have it?”
“Of course they didn’t.”
“So what did you settle for?”
“A Snowball.”
Banks had heard of that one: Advocaat and lemonade. He had thought it long out of fashion. He remembered that his mother sometimes used to drink a Snowball at Christmas when he was a kid. Just the one, usually, as she was never much of a drinker. “Mmm, it’s good.” Emily held out the glass. “Want a sip?”
“No, thanks. Have you been in touch with any of the crowd down there? Craig? Ruth?”
Emily shook her head. “Not much.”
“Craig said Barry’s minders beat him up outside a pub in Soho while you looked on laughing.”
“The lying bastard.”
“It didn’t happen?”
“Oh, it happened, but not the way he told it.”
“You tell me, then.”
“It was in Clerkenwell, outside Barry’s club. Craig found out about the place and he started hanging around there, pretending to be taking photographs. He was obsessed. He just wouldn’t let go. I told him to stay away, but he wouldn’t listen. He even started coming in, but Barry had him barred. When he came up to me, it was the last straw. I wouldn’t have let them hit him like that if I could have stopped them, but it all happened so quickly. It was his own fault, really.”
“He said he didn’t know where you lived.”
“He didn’t. I told Ruth to make sure she didn’t tell him. He knew about the club from before, though, from the party.”
“Which party?”
“The one where I met Barry. At some promoter’s house. Ruth took us. She knows people in the music scene and all that.”
“Craig was there, too?”
“Yes. That’s how he knew Barry owned a club in Clerkenwell. I started seeing Barry after that night and a week or so later I left Craig. He was just getting to be too much.”
“I see. And were you laughing when they beat him up?”
“I wasn’t laughing. I was crying. The fool.”
“Why would he lie to me?”
“The truth would hardly make him look good, would it? Craig might seem so nice and well-balanced on the surface, but he’s got a mean streak, too, you know.”