Phil Keane made people feel special so that he could manipulate them. Chameleonlike, he metamorphosed from one identity to another, leaving chaos in his wake. And he did it for profit and self-protection. Annie shook her head in disbelief at her own blindness. How little we know even those closest to us, she thought. Phil Keane kept his true self locked in a dark, secret place nobody could ever penetrate. You saw what he wanted you to see, believed what he wanted you to believe.
And he made you feel special.
Annie tossed back the cognac and poured herself another large one. What the hell. She felt as if she had been raped all over again, and right now she didn’t know if she hated Phil more for killing McMahon and Gardiner, and for almost killing Banks, or for deceiving her so completely. He had used her all along, of that she was certain. While he hadn’t known he was going to kill McMahon and Gardiner, he had been in a criminal partnership with them by August, when he had pursued Annie, and he had no doubt thought it would be useful to get close to someone with inside knowledge of what the local police were thinking and doing.
And to cap it all, the bastard had got away.
There was a huge manhunt going on, even now, but Annie doubted they’d find him. After all, he was a chameleon. If it had been a television drama, of course, they would have hushed up Banks’s survival, let the world believe he was dead, and Annie would have waited for Phil to get in touch, to come and offer his sympathy and condolences on the loss of her friend.
But the reporters were on the scene almost as quickly as the fire brigade. This was big news. Banks was a well-known local detective with a number of successful cases under his belt. In no time flat, the local news on TV and radio was informing the good citizens of Eastvale and, no doubt, the rest of England, that DCI Alan Banks had been pulled from his blazing cottage by his heroic DI Annie Cabbot and DC Winsome Jackman, and that he was now in Eastvale General Infirmary. There was no way Phil wouldn’t hear that, and when he did, he would know the game was up. He would disappear and reemerge as yet someone else.
Annie smelled of smoke, and she wanted to go up and have a shower and get clean. She took her cognac to the bathroom with her. They would go over Keane’s cottage with a fine-tooth comb, she thought. Meticulous and fastidious as Phil was – and she had no doubt that he would have cleaned up behind him – the odds were that they would find something. A hair. A fingerprint. Something.
She stripped her clothes off and dropped them in the laundry basket. Already, she noticed, her foot was turning yellow, black and blue. At least it wasn’t broken. The doctor had told her that much.
Annie paused at the sink, gripping its edge, again looking at her black face. Like a soldier going into battle. She couldn’t understand the expression in her eyes now, didn’t know what she was feeling. Just before she turned to get in the hot shower, she noticed the toothbrush lying on the sink. It wasn’t hers. She remembered when Phil had stayed a few nights ago she had given him it to use, and it looked as if he had. She knew she hadn’t cleaned up the bathroom since.
Taking a plastic bag from the cupboard under the sink, she dropped the toothbrush in it. You never knew. It could contain Phil Keane’s DNA. Because one day they’d catch the bastard, and then they would need all the evidence they could get.
It was two days before Banks was allowed visitors at Eastvale General Infirmary, and Annie was the first to go in. Beyond the window, occasional shafts of sunlight shot through the cloud cover. Cut flowers brightened up the drab-olive room.
Banks lay propped up on his pillows, one side of his face bandaged and smeared with antibiotic salve, looking at the rain through his window. He looked spent, Annie thought, but there was still life in his eyes, life and something that had not been there before. She didn’t know what it was.
He had lost everything. Banks’s cottage didn’t exist anymore. She had seen it with her own eyes reduced by fire to nothing more than a roofless shell. Everything he owned had gone up in flames: his CDs, clothes, furniture, stereo, all his memorabilia, family photographs, papers, letters, the lot. He had nothing left except his car and whatever personal effects he kept in his office. Did he know this? Surely someone must have told him.
“How are you doing?” she asked, laying her hand on his bare forearm, near the spot where the needle rested.
“Can’t complain,” Banks said. “If I did, no one would listen.”
“Are they treating you well?”
“Fair to middling. Mostly I’m bored. Did you-”
Annie passed him the hip flask. “It’s not Laphroaig,” she said.
“Good,” said Banks, slipping it in the drawer. “I’m not sure I could stomach that stuff again.”
“What has the doctor said?”
“I should heal up okay,” Banks said. “But there might be some scarring. We’ll have to wait and see. At least the headache’s gone. Worst I ever had.”
“Pain?”
“Pretty bad, but they keep me dosed up. Ever burned your finger?”
Annie nodded.
“Well, multiply the pain by a few thousand and you’ll have some idea. Thing is, with second-degree burns the nerve endings stay intact. That’s why it hurts. I didn’t know that. The hair follicles and sweat glands, too. It’s only the upper layers of skin that are burned. You know what the worst thing is, though?”
“What?”
“The memory loss. I can’t remember a bloody thing, from the moment I answered the door to the moment I woke up here. Except for the taste of the whiskey. The doctor says it might come back or it might not. Which is a pretty bloody useless thing to say, if you ask me.”
“Tracy’s been by a couple of times,” Annie said, “and she’ll be back. Brian rang. He’s in Amsterdam with the band. Wants to know if you need him.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Banks. “I’ll be home in a day or so.”
Christ, thought Annie, the poor sod. He didn’t know. “Alan,” she said. “Look, I wouldn’t… you know… the cottage, I mean. The fire caused quite a lot of damage.”
Banks looked at her as if she was confirming what he already suspected, and nodded. “Well, I’ll be out of here, at any rate,” he said.
Annie handed him a gift-wrapped package. “Everyone in the squad room put together for this.”
Banks opened it and inside found a new personal CD player and a copy of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
“We didn’t know what you’d want,” Annie said. “It was Kev’s idea. I think it’s the only opera he’s ever heard of. There’s batteries already in it.”
“It’s fine,” said Banks. “Thank everyone for me.”
“You can do it yourself soon.”
Banks turned the CD player over in his hands for a few moments and looked away, as if the emotion were too much. “Have you caught him yet?” he asked.
“No,” said Annie. “Not yet. But we will. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Tell me what you’ve found out.”
Annie sat back in her chair. “Quite a bit, actually,” she said. “Greater Manchester Police found his BMW parked at the airport, which means he could have gone anywhere. We’re pursuing inquiries with the major airlines and at the railway stations, but nothing yet. And the cottage hadn’t been in his family for generations. It was leased from a couple who live in south London. We’ve got fingerprints and DNA, but there are no matches with anything on record yet.”
“So he’s clean?”
“Not quite,” said Annie. “Spectral analysis matched the petrol in the BMW’s fuel tank with that used at the Gardiner scene and…”
“And?”
“And at your cottage.”
“So he used his own car to visit Gardiner, too?”
“Had to,” Annie said, looking away. “He was having dinner with me at The Angel when the fire started.”