“I lied for you,” said Banks. “I also sullied Gloria’s loyalty to Matthew.”
She paled and whispered, “I know. I appreciate what you did. I’m sorry.”
“There was a chance, you know. Maybe just a small chance, but a chance. If you’d come forward after you found Gloria dead, if you hadn’t destroyed all the evidence, if you’d gone to the police…” Banks held his anger in check; this was neither the time nor the place for it. “Ah, to hell with it. Too late now.”
Vivian bowed her head. “Believe me, I know what I’ve done.”
Banks turned and slogged on alone through the mud. It was difficult, but he made it up the edge without falling down. At the top, he was aware of Annie standing beside him. Before he could say anything, Jimmy Riddle came running over and grabbed his arm. “I’m glad you’ve salvaged at least something out of this situation, Banks,” he hissed, “but you’re bloody incompetent. I don’t want incompetent officers under my command. I’ll be talking to you first thing Monday morning.” Then he turned to Annie. “As for you, DS Cabbot, you disobeyed a direct order. I don’t like insubordinate officers, either. I’ll be talking to you, too.”
Banks shook his arm free, turned on his heel and walked back toward his car. All he wanted was a long hot bath, a large Laphroaig and a change of clothes.
And Annie.
She was already leaning against her car, arms folded.
“Are you all right?” Banks asked.
“I’m fine. Fine as anyone can be who’s spent the last half hour standing in the rain wondering if someone was going to get her head blown off.”
“Frank Stringer wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”
“Easy for you to say. I respect what you did out there, by the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“You lied to protect Frank Stringer’s feelings. I told you, my mother died when I was six. I like to remember her as a beautiful, dazzling creature moving in a haze of light, the same way he remembers Gloria. And I wouldn’t want anyone to spoil that illusion for me, no matter what the truth.”
“I lied to get us all out of there alive.”
Annie smiled. “Whatever. It worked both ways.”
“What next?”
Annie stretched, arching her back and reaching her arms toward the sky. “Onward to Saint Ives. After I’ve stopped at home for some dry clothes. I was already on my way when I heard. I couldn’t just leave it.”
“Of course not. Thanks for being here.”
“You?”
“Home, I suppose.” Banks remembered dinner with Jenny. Too late now, especially the state his clothes were in, but he could at least borrow a mobile from someone and phone her, apologize.
Annie nodded. “Look, I’ll be gone for two weeks. Right now I’m still a bit mixed up about my feelings. Why don’t you phone me when I get back? Maybe we can have that talk?”
“Okay.”
She grinned at him crookedly. “If there weren’t so many policemen about I’d kiss you good-bye.”
“Not a good idea.”
“No. See you, then.”
And with that she opened the car door and got in. Banks ignored his cutting-down program and lit another cigarette, aware that his hands were shaking. Without looking back, Annie started her car. Banks watched the red taillights disappear down the muddy track.
EPILOGUE
After a long, rainy winter and overdue repairs by Yorkshire Water, Thornfield Reservoir filled up again and Hobb’s End once more disappeared. On July 27 of the year after the Gloria Shackleton murder had entered and left the public’s imagination, Vivian Elmsley lay on a king-size bed in her Florida hotel room, propped up with pillows, and watched the local news channel.
Vivian was in the midst of a national book tour, seventeen cities, and while Gainesville wasn’t on the itinerary, she had enough clout with her publishers for this brief diversion. She would have come anyway, tour or no tour. Yesterday she had been in Baltimore, Bethesda and Washington, D.C., tomorrow she was going to Dallas, but tonight she was in Gainesville.
For tonight was the night that Edgar Konig had his appointment with Old Sparky, and after everything she had been through, Vivian desperately needed some sense of an ending.
It was a sultry, mosquito-ridden night, but that didn’t seem to deter the crowds that gathered outside the gates of Starke Prison, about twenty-five miles away. One or two were quietly carrying placards that asked for an end to capital punishment, but by far the majority were chanting, “Fry Konig! Fry Konig!” Bumper stickers echoed the same sentiments, and the crowd had created what the commentator called a tailgate-party atmosphere. It wasn’t big enough to attract any of the national networks – after all, executions in Florida were as common as muggings – but the Konig case had caught a lot of local interest.
Frank Stringer would have come, too – and Vivian would have willingly paid his way – but he was in jail. English gun laws are far stricter than they are in Florida. Besides, no matter how good his reasons for taking Vivian hostage at Thornfield the past September, he had committed a serious crime and occasioned a hugely expensive and highly publicized police operation. Vivian had visited him several times in jail and told him she would help him get back on his feet when he came out. It was the least she could do for Gloria’s memory.
In his turn, Frank had told her how his father’s sister Ivy and her husband John had taken good care of him during the war and how he had thought of them as his parents. When his real father came home on leave, they would spend time together. That was when they had made the first journey north, in 1943, and he had seen his mother.
After the war, his father married and took him away from Ivy and John. Frank’s stepmother turned out to be a drunk and a shrew who had no time for her husband’s bastard son. Increasingly isolated and neglected, he got involved with crooks and gangs, and one thing led to another. The only constant was that he had always worshiped his true mother’s memory.
Frank also told Vivian how the death of his father that spring and the reemergence of Hobb’s End from Thornfield Reservoir had caused his obsession with the past to escalate. His father had been the first to recognize Gwen Shackleton as Vivian Elmsley on television, but Frank had confirmed it; he had memorized her eyes and her voice all those years ago, when he was eight, the same way he had also memorized his mother’s face.
He couldn’t explain why he had taken the trouble to find out where Vivian lived and why he had followed her and approached her at the bookshop; it was just that she was the only one left, the only one who had known Gloria. He said that he meant no harm at first, that he might even have found the courage to approach her eventually.
Then the skeleton was discovered, and he knew she must have lied all those years ago. He hated her after that; he telephoned to scare her, to make her suffer. He could have taken her anytime, but he enjoyed the anticipation. After all, once he had confronted her, it would be all over. So he followed her, watched her. When she got the taxi outside her hotel, he knew where she was going, and he felt it was fitting that things should end there, where they began.
But tonight, Vivian was alone in Gainesville with her memories, the television, a bottle of gin, ice and tonic water. And an execution.
They had already shown a fairly recent photograph of Edgar Konig. Vivian hadn’t been able to recognize the gangly, baby-faced young airman with the shy eyes and the blond brush cut. His hair was gone, his cheeks had sagged and wrinkled, his brow was creased, and his eyes were deep, dark pits in which slimy monsters squirmed.
As she watched the coverage, Vivian imagined the officials carrying out the preliminary steps of state-sanctioned murder with swift and impersonal efficiency, much like dentists or doctors.
First they would settle the patient in the heavy oak chair and buckle thick leather straps around his arms and legs. Then they would place the bit between his teeth and attach electrodes to his body as if they were carrying out an EKG.