Now he was home, Banks felt too wired to go straight to bed, despite the lateness of the hour. He checked his landline phone messages and found only a brief call from Annie about a dead junkie two boys had found in a house on Hollyfield Lane. There was no reason for him to call her back, certainly not at this time of night. He could find out all about it at the meeting tomorrow morning. As there were no other messages, he assumed that the team had got no further with the case of the dead boy since he had briefed AC Gervaise before her lunchtime press conference.
The case had been all over the national news again that evening, mostly because knife crime loomed large in the media these days. Dr Karen Galway would be conducting the PM in the morning, Banks remembered with a sinking feeling, and he would have to attend. Hardly an occasion to look forward to, though he was interested in watching her work and knowing her findings.
He needed music, balm to soothe his soul, but nothing too busy or loud. With streaming services on Idagio and Apple Music, in addition to his own large collection of CDs, now ripped on to his computer, his choices were practically unlimited, which could be a nuisance from time to time. It was surprising how often he could find absolutely nothing he wanted to listen to at any particular moment.
Finally, he plumped for a collection of Takemitsu’s guitar music, spare and spacious, just what he needed. He hadn’t been drinking at all that evening and didn’t feel like opening a bottle of wine so late, so he poured himself a couple of fingers of the Macallan eighteen-year-old, a present from his old boss Superintendent Gristhorpe, which he usually reserved for special occasions. He settled down in his wicker chair in the dim orange-shaded light of the conservatory. He could hear the wind over the music, and several stars shone quite brightly in the clear sky above Tetchley Fell.
It was a sort of special occasion, he told himself, as his mind raced through the spaces between the notes to contemplate his forthcoming birthday with a mixture of awe and sheer terror. True, he was in good shape for a man of his age — especially a man of his tastes and habits. He had stopped smoking years ago, and though he didn’t go to a gym or jog, let alone have a personal trainer, he did enjoy long walks in the Dales as often as he could get out there. He would have been the first to admit that he probably drank too much and didn’t give a tinker’s toss about units and calories, but he also knew when to stop, most of the time. His only real ailments were slightly high blood pressure, which he took care of with pills from the doctor, and a nagging ache in his right hip after the longer walks. Statins had lowered his cholesterol to an acceptable level.
His mental health probably wasn’t so great. The ‘black dog’ of depression had been visiting more frequently and biting more viciously of late. Some days he just didn’t want to get out of bed. It wasn’t the old teenage laziness coming back, but rather that he didn’t want to face the world and felt no interest in the things he usually cared about, even music or work. Sometimes, too, he felt on the verge of tears for no reason at all and suffered from guilt-inducing bouts of self-pity. At work he often felt like Sisyphus pushing that bloody rock up the hill only to have it roll back down again.
He was also alone. There was no one special in his life, as they say, no significant other. He had family, of course — a distant ex-wife and two grown-up children very much preoccupied with their own lives and concerns: Brian with his band the Blue Lamps, and Tracy, his beloved daughter Tracy, about to get married at last, in her thirties. And he had friends. Not only work colleagues like Annie, Winsome, Gerry, Ken Blackstone and ‘Dirty Dick’ Burgess, but outsiders, like Linda Palmer, the poet; folk singer Penny Cartwright; Annie’s father, the artist Ray Cabbot; along with his partner Zelda, too, now, and psychologist Jenny Fuller. Even Joanna MacDonald. But he had no lover. No companion. No one with whom to share his highs and lows, his successes and failures.
The spaces between the notes seemed to grow longer. Banks sighed and refilled his glass. He wasn’t depressed — there was no black dog in sight — but if he went on thinking about his forthcoming birthday he might well end up that way.
He turned his mind to the case, the murdered boy. No money, no identification, nothing but a small wrap of cocaine in his pocket. Had someone emptied his pockets? Or was it the opposite? Had someone planted the coke there to misdirect the police? Was the killing nothing to do with drugs, after all? Both Annie and Gerry had suggested other possible reasons at the meeting this morning. The thing was, none of them really grabbed him. He could accept that there might have been another motive, but he could not, at the moment, imagine what it might be.
It had seemed apparent at first that the killer had wanted to delay the discovery of the victim’s identity for as long as possible. But perhaps that wasn’t the case at all. In Banks’s experience, most teenagers didn’t carry any identification; they didn’t usually have wallets on them. Why did it matter who the boy was? Maybe his killer had simply needed long enough to cover his tracks, escape, fix up an alibi, hide the evidence. Connor Clive Blaydon? Perhaps. But Banks very much doubted he would have carried out the task himself. As Joanna MacDonald had said, men like him used minions for jobs like that. Roberts, the butler? Frankie Wallace, the chauffeur? At least tomorrow he could check Blaydon’s alibi at Le Coq d’Or, and perhaps with a bit of luck find out what he was doing in Eastvale on the night the boy died.
Banks sipped his Macallan and let the music flow over him. All of a sudden, he knew what he wanted for his birthday: a guitar. Even if he had to buy one himself, having no one in his life likely to buy him an expensive present. It had been years since he’d played rhythm in a fledgling band called Jimson Weed, who hadn’t even managed to survive their first three gigs before splitting up. The lead singer had thought he was a cross between Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant, which also made him God’s gift to women.
Banks didn’t fool himself that he would ever be able to play the Takemitsu compositions he was listening to now, or any other classical works for guitar, but he could at least learn a few basic chords and belt out the occasional folk song, or strum an old Beatles tune or a bit of Dylan. His cottage was isolated enough that nobody would hear him. Besides, he had heard that learning a musical instrument was a healthy thing to do for the mind, that it helped keep dementia at bay, like learning a foreign language.
The phone started to ring.
Annoyed, Banks glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. Who would be calling at this hour? He didn’t recognise the number. Fearing some sort of emergency, he answered as quickly as he could.
‘Dad?’ came the disembodied voice on the other end.
‘Brian? Is that you? Something wrong?’
‘No. I’m fine. I’m sorry it’s so late, but I thought you’d still be up.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in Adelaide. It’s going on half eight in the morning here. I’m at the hotel.’
‘What day is it?’
‘Wednesday.’
‘Tomorrow, then.’
‘It’s today here.’
‘Smart arse. You know what I mean. Sure you’re OK?’
‘Never better.’
‘Then why the late-night phone call?’
‘I’ve got something to tell you and I didn’t want you to find out from the newspapers.’
‘You’re leaving the band?’
‘Something like that. Actually, the band’s packing it in. We had a meeting last night and decided. It’s been on the cards for a while.’