Banks felt his eyes prickle as he put the letter aside. Schubert’s string quintet, the very same piece of music Mahler had asked to hear on his deathbed, or so Linda Palmer had told him. He wondered whether Emily had known that.
Reading Julie’s words transported him back over forty years. Romantic and sentimental, indeed. He remembered the last time he had seen Emily. They had met in Hyde Park on a glorious summer’s day in 1973. Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine. Lovers embraced on the grass, children kicked plastic footballs around, businessmen sat with their jackets off and shirtsleeves rolled up, reading newspapers, and shorthand typists adjusted their office clothing as tastefully as possible to get lunchtime tans.
Banks was propped up against a tree not far from the Serpentine reading a second-hand paperback edition of The Exorcist. When he saw Emily walking towards him, he felt an immediate sense of foreboding. She had been distant and moody of late, and there was something in her expression, in the way she smiled at him, that made him feel apprehensive. It wasn’t long before she was telling him that she didn’t think they should see each other any more, that things had run their course and they were going in different directions and neither of them would be truly happy if they carried on together. He didn’t understand any of what she was saying. They hadn’t had a fight — they rarely fought, in fact — and in his mind things had been going well, except for the moodiness. He guessed that perhaps there was someone else, but Emily swore blind there was no one. She just needed a break, some distance between them.
In the end, it didn’t matter what Banks said, whether he understood it or not. The result was the same. It was over. Back to drunken nights at someone’s party, half-hearted fumblings on a pile of lumpy coats in the spare bedroom. Hangovers and guilt in the morning. Then came the lonely nights of Leonard Cohen albums and cheap wine by candlelight. That went on pretty much until he decided to drop out of his business studies course and join the police. He wasn’t even sure why he did that to this day. Maybe it started as an act of rebellion and a cure for heartbreak, like joining the Foreign Legion. His father hated him for it, and his mother only managed a fair job of pretending to approve until the first time he got his name in the papers years later. But it had turned out to be a good life for him; he couldn’t imagine having taken any other course. He certainly wasn’t cut out for business, and he’d made a mess of most of his relationships. Emily had no doubt been better off without him. He was convinced he had an emotional blind spot somewhere. He remembered that he had even thought all was well years later between him and his wife Sandra, up to the point when she left him for another man. He didn’t know why that had happened, either. It wasn’t that he had failed to lead an unexamined life, just that his life had failed the examination.
He put the letter aside and guzzled some wine. Alice Coote was singing ‘Le spectre de la rose’, one of his favourite songs from Les nuits d’été to the sound of rain running down the window outside. Banks drank and listened, mulling over the letter as he did so. Did he really want to talk to Julie Drake? He decided that he did. He had to admit that he was curious as to what Emily might have said about him as she lay dying some forty years after they had been in love for a while.
When Alice Coote finished, he went back into the entertainment room to dig out his copy of the string quintet, one of the last pieces of music Schubert had written in his short life.
Chapter 9
The Edgeworth house was still a crime scene when Banks pulled up the following morning, although the investigation had been scaled down. An officer stood guard in the taped-off drive, and Banks had to show his warrant card to get past him. Banks wondered who the young PC had pissed off to be given such a boring task.
‘Anyone else been around?’ he asked.
‘Nobody, sir. The CSIs come and go, but that’s about it. And the pathologist was here. Dr Glendenning.’
‘Nobody trying to sneak in?’
‘A couple of curious neighbours, but I sent them packing, sir.’
‘Get their names and addresses?’
The young officer seemed horror-stricken. ‘Nobody said to do that, sir.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Just remember in future, right?’
The young man swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’
Banks ducked under the tape and walked into the back garden, which was separated from the hill beyond by a wooden fence and a low hedge. There were no trees to spoil the view, which was magnificent, even in the gloom of the day. At least the rain had stopped.
The hillside stretched up gently at first, then became steeper and steeper until its summit was lost in the clouds. Banks noticed a gate in the back fence, and beyond it a well-worn path meandered up the hillside, disappearing into the mist like the hill itself. The scene reminded Banks of an ancient Chinese painting he had seen in an art gallery: tiny human figures walking on a similar path halfway up a huge mountain whose peak was lost in mist. Perhaps this wasn’t on such a grand scale, but it was impressive enough.
So this was where Edgeworth went for his walks every Saturday and Sunday morning, according to Ollie Metcalfe. The whole village had been questioned, and nobody had seen Edgeworth since his visit to the White Rose on Friday night. Could he have gone for his walk on Saturday morning before the wedding and met someone up there, either by arrangement or by clever planning on the other’s part? If so, what had transpired? Had he invited this person into his home? If so, why? Edgeworth’s people-mover had been seen by a couple of villagers just after midday on Saturday, heading for the main Swainsdale road, which would have taken him eventually to Fortford and St Mary’s. Nobody had seen the driver’s face, as the windows were tinted, so he couldn’t definitely be identified as Martin Edgeworth. It could have been anyone.
The house was locked, but Banks had brought a key, and after leaving his overcoat in the vestibule, he entered the kitchen. It was as he had last seen it on the night they had discovered Martin Edgeworth’s body. Somebody had washed the cups they used for their tea, but other than that, nothing had changed: the granite-topped island, the big red Aga, the stainless-steel fridge and freezer units. As Banks remembered, it had been immaculate, all surfaces polished or sparkling. A faint hint of antibacterial cleaner in the air.
As he made his way quickly around the upstairs rooms, he noticed the CSIs had taken Edgeworth’s filing cabinets, computer, printer, his clothes, the drawers from his study desk and just about everything else they thought might provide some evidence. But all Banks thought about was the neatly folded pile of dark clothing that yielded neither a hair nor a drop of sweat. Both Terry Gilchrist and Gareth Bishop had seen a slim man of medium height wearing dark clothing and a black cap, albeit from a distance. Edgeworth had been slim and of medium height. Did that mean the killer had bought two identical sets of clothes? It made sense. One set for him to wear and dispose of later at his leisure, and the other to leave beside Edgeworth’s body to make him appear guilty. If he had been foolish enough to buy both sets of clothes in the same size at the same time, in the same branch, then there was a chance the sales clerk might remember him.