He thought about his conversation with Annie that afternoon and decided that he had definitely been on the defensive. He remembered Lucy Payne best as she was the first time he had seen her in her hospital bed, when she hadn’t been quite as beautiful as some of the photographs the newspapers printed. Half her face had been covered in bandages, her long raven’s-wing hair had been spread out on the pillow under her head, and the one good eye that stared at him with unnerving directness was as black as her hair.
Naturally, she had denied any involvement in or knowledge of her husband’s crimes. When Banks had talked to her, he had sensed her striding always one step ahead, or aside, anticipating the questions, preparing her answers and the requisite emotions of regret and pain, but never of guilt. She had been, by turns, vulnerable or brazen, victim or willing sexual deviant. Her history, when it came out, recounted a childhood of unimaginable horrors in a remote coastal house, where the children of two families had been subjected to ritual sexual abuse by their parents until the social workers pounced one day amid rumors of Satanic rites.
Banks got up and poured another glass of wine. It was going down far too well. As he drank, he thought of the people he had encountered during the Chameleon investigation, from the parents of the victims to neighbors and schoolfriends of some of the girls. There was even a teacher who had come briefly under suspicion, a friend of Payne’s called Geoffrey Brighouse. It was a large cast, but at least it would give Annie and her team somewhere to start.
Thinking of the Paynes’ victims, Banks’s mind drifted to Hayley Daniels. He couldn’t let this new case of Annie’s interfere with the investigation. He owed Hayley that much. With any luck, by the time he got back from Leeds tomorrow, some of the lab results would have started to trickle in, and between them, Wilson and Templeton would have talked to most of the friends Hayley was with on Saturday night and interviewed the possible boyfriend, Malcolm Austin.
Banks knew he had made a mistake in putting Winsome and Templeton together on the Daniels-McCarthy interview. He could tell from the atmosphere when the two returned to the station that it hadn’t gone well. Neither would talk to him about it, he knew, though he sensed there was obviously more than Templeton’s overactive libido behind it.
The problem was that Banks knew he had been right in what he told Annie: Templeton could be a good copper, and sometimes what made him one was his brusqueness and his disregard of the rules of common decency. But he also knew that when he had had to rethink whether there was room for someone like Templeton on the team, especially with Winsome progressing so well, he had decided that there wasn’t. The transfer, then, was a good idea.
Banks tried to clear Lucy Payne and Hayley Daniels out of his mind. Maria Muldaur came to the end of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” so he went to put on a new CD. He decided on the Bill Evans Half Moon Bay concert, one he had always wished he had attended. After Evans introduced his bass player and drummer came the delightful “Waltz for Debby.” It was still early, and Banks decided to spend the rest of the evening at home listening to the jazz collection that he was slowly rebuilding and reading Postwar. He was deeply into the Cold War and “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” by the time he noticed that his glass was empty for the second time.
It seemed like ages since Annie had been to a restaurant in Eastvale, and she was glad that she had accepted Winsome’s invitation, even though she knew it wouldn’t be an entirely work-free evening. The Italian place they had picked above the shops built onto the back of the church in the market square was excellent: plenty of vegetarian choices and decent cheap plonk. She tucked into her pasta primavera and second glass of Chianti — feeling just a little guilty, but not too much, for not lasting longer on the wagon — while Winsome ate cannelloni and went full speed ahead in her verbal assault on Templeton.
“So you told him what you thought?” Annie said, the first opening she got.
“I told him.”
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing. Not a word. I think he was so shocked that I swore at him. I mean, I was so shocked I swore at him. I never swear.” She put her hand over her mouth and laughed. Annie laughed with her.
“Don’t worry,” Annie said. “Insults are like water off a duck’s back with Templeton. He’ll be back to normal tomorrow, or what passes for normal in his case.”
“I’m not sure I want that,” said Winsome. “Really. I mean it this time. One of us has to go. I can’t work with him again, watch the way he tramples all over people’s feelings. I don’t know if I can wait for his transfer to come through.”
“Look,” said Annie, “nobody ever said being a copper was easy. Sometimes you have to play dirty, tough it out. Be patient and hang in there.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Winsome said. “You’re defending him.”
“I’m not bloody defending him,” said Annie. “I’m just trying to tell you that if you want to survive in this job you have to toughen up, that’s all.”
“You don’t think I’m strong enough?”
“You need to develop a thicker skin.”
“You don’t think black skin is thicker than white?”
“What?” said Annie.
“You heard me. How do you think I deal with all the innuendos and outright insults? People either look down on you, or they go out of their way to pretend they don’t notice your color, that you’re really just like anybody else, but they end up talking to you like they talk to children. I don’t know which is worse. Do you know what it’s like to have someone stare at you or insult you like some sort of lesser being, an animal, just because of the color of your skin? Like Hayley Daniels’s father, or those old men on the bridge at Swainshead.”
“I don’t know about Hayley Daniels’s father,” said Annie, “but those old men don’t know any better. I know it’s not an excuse, but they don’t. And I might not know how it feels to have people look at me that way because of the color of my skin, but I do know how it feels when they treat me like a lesser species because I’m a woman.”
“Then double it!” said Winsome.
Annie looked at her, and they both started laughing so loudly an elderly couple sitting nearby frowned at them. “Oh, what the hell,” said Annie, raising her glass. “Here’s to kicking against the pricks.”
They clinked glasses. Annie’s mobile rang and she pulled it out of her handbag. “Yes?”
“Annie? It’s Eric.”
“Eric. What the hell do you want?”
“That’s not very nice.”
“I told you not to ring me on my mobile. I’m having dinner with a colleague.”
“Male or female?”
“That’s none of your bloody business.”
“Okay. Okay. Sorry. Just asking. Look, I was thinking about you, and I thought why wait till Thursday. You’re obviously busy tonight, but what about tomorrow? Wednesday. Lunch?”
“I have to go to Leeds tomorrow,” Annie said, wondering why she was even bothering to tell Eric this. “And I told you I’m not coming on Thursday.”
“Thursday it is, then,” said Eric. “Sorry to bother you.” And he ended the call.
Annie shoved her mobile back in her handbag.