And that, Banks realized, was probably when he first started thinking of his brother as a possible criminal. Before that, he had merely been the annoying little brother, the paragon against whom Banks was matched and found wanting. Even now, when Banks looked back on their conversation that evening, he still thought he was right, that Roy had been up to something and wanted to run down the odds on his getting caught. Well, he hadn’t got caught, and now it seemed he had moved on to other things. But were they more honest?
Banks poured the last of the Château Musar into his glass. Maybe he should have ordered a whole bottle, he thought. But that was too much, and he wanted to keep a reasonably clear head for tomorrow. From what he could see through the clustered diners in the dim light, the street outside was even busier. The crowd was mostly young and they’d probably be drinking and clubbing until the early hours.
Over coffee and cognac, Banks remembered that he had nowhere to stay. He had forgotten to book a hotel room. Then he felt the pressure of the keys and the mobile in his pocket and he knew that he had decided where he was staying the minute he had pocketed them and left Roy’s house. It was useless trying to get a taxi at this hour in the maze of Soho streets, so he walked up to Charing Cross Road, where he picked one up in no time and asked the driver to take him to South Kensington.
Winsome had been patiently ringing Banks’s parents and children on and off for most of the afternoon and early evening without any luck. When it came to Banks’s friends, she was at a loss to know who they were. He had left an old address book in his drawer, but there weren’t many entries, and some were so old the numbers were no longer in service. It felt odd, searching for her boss, poring over the personal address book of someone she called “sir” and looked up to, but there was no doubt that he might be able to answer a few questions. Winsome also realized that he might be in danger. After all, a woman apparently on her way to see him had been shot, and his half-renovated cottage had been broken into. Coincidence? Winsome didn’t think so.
Consulting the list of family phone numbers, Winsome had first called the daughter, Tracy, in Leeds. When she had finally got through to her around teatime, Tracy said she had no idea where her father was. The son, Brian, wasn’t answering his mobile, so she left a message. When she phoned Banks’s parents for the third time, early in the evening, a woman answered.
“Mrs. Banks?” Winsome said.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name’s DC Jackman. I work with your son, DCI Banks. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all afternoon.”
“Sorry, love, we’ve been to visit my brother and his wife in Ely. Why? What’s wrong? Has something happened to Alan?”
“Nothing’s happened, Mrs. Banks. As far as we know everything’s just fine. He’s on holiday this week, but I’m sure you know how it is with this job. I’m afraid we need him for something, and it’s rather urgent. He seems to have forgotten to take his mobile. I was wondering if you knew where he was.”
“No, dear,” said Mrs. Banks. “He never tells us where he’s going these days.”
“I don’t suppose he does,” said Winsome, “but it was worth a try. Have you spoken with him recently?”
“As a matter of fact, he rang early this morning.”
“What about, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh, I don’t mind, dear. It was a little bit odd. See, he was asking about his brother, about Roy, and… well, they’ve never been very close.”
“So it was unusual for DCI Banks to be asking about him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want to know?”
“He wanted to know if I knew where Roy was, just like you want to know where Alan is. What’s going on? Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”
“Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Banks. We just need him to help us out with something, that’s all. Could you give me his brother’s address and phone number if you’ve got them?”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Banks. “I know his address by heart but I’m no good with numbers. You’ll have to wait a moment while I look it up.”
“That’s all right,” said Winsome. “I’ll hold.”
She heard the handset laid gently to rest on a hard surface, then the sound of muffled voices. A few seconds later, Mrs. Banks came back on the line and gave her the number. “He’s got one of those mobiles. Do you want that number, too?” she asked.
“Might as well.”
“Silly business, people having to stay in touch all the time,” said Mrs. Banks. “Makes you wonder how we managed without all these newfangled gadgets, but we did, didn’t we? Listen to me go on. You’re probably too young to remember.”
“I remember,” said Winsome, who had grown up in a shack high in Jamaica’s Cockpit Country, open to the elements, without telephone or electricity or any of the other myriad things that seemed so essential to life in twenty-first-century Britain.
Mrs. Banks gave her the number and Winsome said goodbye. For a moment she sat thinking, tapping her ballpoint on the pad, then she found DI Cabbot’s mobile number and picked up the phone again.
“Sorry about Blunt and Useless,” said DI Brooke. “They’re a right couple of prize plonkers, but it’s hard to get good help these days, and they just happened to be on duty.”
“Blunt and Useless?”
“Sharpe and Handy. Get it?”
Annie laughed. “It’s all right. We’ve got a few like that ourselves.”
They were sitting in a noisy pub on Brixton Road drinking pints of Director’s bitter. David Brooke was about Banks’s age, but he looked older and he was much more well-rounded, with a placid, moon-shaped red face that always made Annie think of a farmer, and only a few tufts of ginger hair still clinging to his freckled skull. His navy-blue suit had seen better days, as had his teeth, and he had taken off his tie because of the heat, which made him look even more like some yokel up from Somerset for a wedding or a football match.
Annie’s search of Jennifer Clewes’s room had yielded nothing of immediate interest – except that Jennifer collected porcelain figurines, mostly fairy-tale characters; liked Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald; and read hardly anything that wasn’t to do with business and commerce, apart from the occasional Mills and Boon novel. If her clothes were not for work, they were mostly casuaclass="underline" jeans, denim skirts and jackets, T-shirts, cotton tops. Nothing lacy or flouncy. She had one good frock and two pairs of black high-heeled shoes. The rest of her footwear consisted of trainers and sandals.
Her computer, at first glance, revealed nothing out of the ordinary. There was no diary and no personal papers, only a calendar, the days filled mostly with personal appointments. She had a dentist’s visit scheduled for the thirteenth. If there was anything else, it was for the computer experts to find. Annie did, however, acquire a much better photograph of Jennifer – alive and smiling against an ocean backdrop. Kate Nesbit told her it had been taken in Sicily the previous year, when Jennifer had gone there on holiday with Melanie Scott, her old schoolfriend from Shrewsbury.
When she had finished at the flat, Annie phoned and booked a room for two nights at a hotel by Lambeth Bridge, after first ringing Gristhorpe again and clearing it with him. Tomorrow was Sunday, so the Berger-Lennox Centre would most likely be closed. Annie would pay her visit first thing Monday morning before heading back up north. On Sunday, she would go and talk to Melanie Scott. The local police would inform Jennifer’s parents of their daughter’s death and drive them to Eastvale to make a formal identification of the body.
“So how are things going, Dave?” Annie said. “It’s been a while.”