Peter Robinson: Strange Affair

Her accent matched her sultry Mediterranean looks and Banks could indeed believe that she had been a Spanish actress and pinup girl. She still had a fine figure, shown to advantage in the shorts and sleeveless green top she was wearing. Her olive skin stretched taut over an exquisite bone structure and her long chestnut hair fell in waves over her shoulders.

When they got inside she led Banks to a large living room, big enough to hold a grand piano along with a damask three-piece suite. Every inch the English country lady, she called the maid and asked her to bring tea. Banks should have known she wouldn’t be taking care of a place as big as this by herself. He wondered if she was bored being stuck out in the country and whether she often stayed at the Chelsea flat with her husband. She looked a good few years younger than Lambert, but not as young as Corinne or Jennifer. Banks pegged her at mid-to-late thirties.

“I understand you were an actress in Spain?” he said, sitting in a chair with carved wooden arms.

She blushed. “Not very good. I was in… what do you call them, films where monsters come after me and I scream a lot?”

“Horror films?”

“Yes. Horror films.” She shrugged. “I do not miss it.”

I’ll bet you don’t, thought Banks, glancing around the room. French windows opened on a patio beyond the piano, and Banks could see sunlight shimmering on the blue surface of a swimming pool like a Hockney painting. “Did you know Roy well?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I met him only once, last week, when he came here. But Gareth told me what happened. It is terrible.”

She pronounced the name “Garrett,” too.

“When did you meet him?” Banks asked.

“I think it was last Friday.” She smiled. “But sometimes the days all seem the same here.”

“What did he want?”

At that moment, the maid came in with the tea and set the tray down on the table between Banks and Mercedes Lambert. After she had added milk and poured, she left as soundlessly as she had entered. Banks didn’t usually take milk, but it didn’t bother him.

Mercedes frowned. “I don’t really know why he came,” she said. “He wanted to talk to me about a girl called Carmen and her baby, but I said I didn’t know her. Carmen sounds very Spanish, I know, but you also find it in other countries.”

“What did he say next?”

“He told me this Carmen was pregnant and he understood that she was selling her baby to me for adoption.” Mercedes frowned. “He said Gareth told him this was so.”

“Are you adopting Carmen’s baby, Mrs. Lambert?”

“No, of course not. That’s what your brother asked me. I didn’t understand why he would think such a thing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, as I told your brother. Then a very strange thing happened.”

“What?”

“Little Nina cried, and I showed her to him and told him all about her, and Mr. Banks said he was sorry he’d made a mistake, and he left very quickly.”

“I’m sorry,” said Banks. “I don’t understand. Who’s little Nina?”

And then he heard it himself. A baby crying upstairs. Mercedes Lambert smiled. A few moments later, a nanny brought the baby down – it couldn’t have been more than three months old – and Mercedes held the tiny bundle, tears in her eyes.

“She is sick,” she explained to Banks. “This is what I told your brother. There is a problem with her heart. It is, what do you say? Con… con…”

“Congenital?”

“Yes. Congenital. And if she does not get a new one very soon, she will die.” Then her expression brightened. “But Gareth says we are high on the list. He has arranged with a clinic in Switzerland – the best in the world, he says – to be ready at a moment’s notice. So maybe my Nina will be lucky, yes?”

“Are you sure you have no intention of adopting another baby?” Banks asked, feeling his blood start to turn cold.

Mercedes smiled. “No. Of course not. Nina will have her new heart and she will become strong. I know it. Do you think so?”

Banks looked at Mercedes Lambert, saw the desperate hope in her face, and he looked at the pale face buried in the blankets. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, maybe she will.”

The train ride did Annie good, and when she got back to Eastvale around lunchtime she didn’t feel quite so depressed as she had after the raids. Before leaving for the station, she had tried to console Brooke over what he perceived to be a lack of backbone in giving in to “orders from above,” but in the long run she knew it was something he would have to live with and get over by himself. For reasons of their own, the powers that be, maybe through Burgess, had hampered the official police investigation and encouraged Banks to go stirring things up by himself, no doubt in the hope of luring more players out into the open rather than causing them to disappear. And no one had given a damn whether Banks got killed in the process.

When Annie got to the station, Gristhorpe, Stefan, Winsome and Rickerd were all in the squad room and there was an air of celebration around the place. It seemed appropriate. After all, Jennifer Clewes’s killer was dead, along with his boss, and the accomplices were in custody. Case solved.

“I hear you’ve been in the wars,” Gristhorpe said, looking up as she entered.

Annie sat at her desk and automatically turned on the computer. “More like doing battlefield triage,” she said. “Anyway, DI Brooke and the SO19 guys have got it all under control now. My job’s done down there.”

“Congratulations,” said Gristhorpe.

“Anything new, Stefan?” Annie asked.

“I was just telling the superintendent here that we got a quick match on the fingerprints found on DCI Banks’s door: Artyom Charkov. He doesn’t have a record but the prints match the body in the mortuary in London, the one who was shot this morning in the second raid. And they also match the partial we found on the door of Jennifer Clewes’s car. London say they found a gun on Charkov, too, a twenty-two. It’s being checked out.”

“That’s what got him shot,” said Annie. “Opening fire on an armed police officer.”

“Well, I’d have used something with a bit more stopping power than a twenty-two.”

“It’s just as well for the officer concerned that he didn’t. Anyway, it’s all a bit academic now he’s dead, isn’t it?” said Annie.

Stefan looked disappointed.

“Oh, Stefan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle your efforts. There’s always the other one, Boris, the driver.”

“Essex technical support got his print from the crashed Mondeo,” said Stefan, suppressing a smile. “From inside the glove box.”

“Excellent. Things have been happening, then.”

“How’s Alan?” asked Gristhorpe.

“He’s doing okay, as far as I know, sir,” said Annie. “I think he’ll be heading back to Peterborough later today to spend a bit more time with his parents and help organize the funeral. At least he’ll be able to tell them some sort of justice has been done.”

The door opened behind Annie and she saw Gristhorpe get to his feet, a big grin on his face. “Well, if it isn’t Susan Gay,” he said, advancing toward the slightly stocky woman with the tight blond curls who stood in the doorway, Kev Templeton beaming beside her. “Come on in, lass. Join the party.”

“We’ve got him,” Susan said. “Cropley. He’s down in the custody suite under arrest for the murder of Claire Potter. All by the book. We’ve taken a DNA swab and it’s on its way to Derby. We’re also getting three DCs to do the motorway service stations with his photo. But the DNA itself will be enough.”

Templeton was beaming, too, Annie noticed. “Congratulations, Kev,” she said. “Good one.”