Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

“Serious, then?”

“Could be.”

“Damn and blast your job!”

“I know how you feel. There’s nothing I can do about it, though. These things happen sometimes. I’m sure I warned you.”

“Couldn’t you have said no?”

“I tried.”

“Not very hard, obviously. Who called you?”

“Annie.”

There was another pause. “Surely there are other people who can deal with it? What about her? I mean, as brilliant as you are, you’re not Yorkshire’s only competent detective, are you? Isn’t she any good?”

“Of course she is, but it doesn’t work like that. We’re supposed to be a team. And we’re short-staffed. Annie’s doing the best she can.”

“You don’t need to defend her to me.”

“I’m just explaining the situation.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“No idea. You can still come up next weekend as planned, though, right?”

“And risk spending it by myself? I don’t know about that.”

“You know plenty of people up here. There’s Harriet, for a start. Won’t your parents be up, too? Aren’t we supposed to be having Sunday lunch with them? Besides, we’ve got a date for the theater.”

“A weekend with my parents and Aunt Harriet isn’t quite what I had in mind. Nor is a visit to the theater by myself.”

“I’m sure I’ll be around. Sophia, this isn’t my fault. Do you think I wouldn’t rather be with you right now than on my way to work?”

She paused again, then replied rather sulkily, “I suppose so.”

“You’ll go ahead with the dinner?”

“I don’t have a lot of choice, do I? But I’ll miss you. It won’t be the same.”

“I’ll miss you, too. Call me later?”

“If I’ve got time. I’d better get moving. I’ve got a lot to do, especially now I have to do it all by myself.”

“Soph—”

But she had already ended the call. Banks cursed. No matter what she had said, she did blame him. A terrible sense of familiarity swept over him, all the rows with his ex-wife Sandra before she gave up on him. He knew he had warned Sophia that things like this might happen, that his job might disrupt other plans, but how seriously do people take warnings like that when everything is going blissfully well? Perhaps it was for the best that Sophia had found out about the demands of his job sooner rather than later.

He turned Bowie up again. He was singing “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?” Banks hoped it wasn’t prophetic.

There were tea and custard creams in the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters just after five o’clock that Saturday afternoon, and the biscuits only served to remind Banks that he had missed lunch, a meal he should by all rights have enjoyed with Sophia at the Yorkshire Grey in London. Well, he supposed, tea and biscuits were better than nothing.

Four of them sat around the end of the long oval table nearest the whiteboard, pens and pads in front of them: Banks, Annie, Stefan Nowak and Superintendent Gervaise. The others had already brought Banks up to speed on the major events that had occurred in Hindswell Woods and on Castleview Heights. Annie and her team had been busy all day while Banks had been on the road, and the whiteboard was scrawled with names, circles and connecting lines.

“It seems to me,” said Banks, “that the first thing we need to do now is get the forensic results on the blood.”

“What would that prove?” asked Annie.

“If the blood on Mark Hardcastle’s body is Laurence Silbert’s, and no one else’s, then it would go a long way toward proving the murder-suicide theory.”

“A long way, but not the whole way,” Annie argued. “If Hardcastle found Silbert dead, his natural instinct would be to touch him, hold him, try to revive him, something like that. Maybe that’s how he got Silbert’s blood on him. But someone else could still have killed Silbert first. Then we’d have a murder and a suicide, but we’d also have a murderer still loose.”

“A good point, DI Cabbot,” said Gervaise. “DCI Banks?”

“I still think forensics should be able to tell us a great deal more about what happened. Stefan?”

“True,” said Nowak. “And we’re working on it. We’ll try to get the blood work done as soon as possible, but you know what the labs are like on weekends.”

“What about fingerprints?” Banks asked.

“The only fingerprints Vic Manson’s lifted from the cricket bat so far are Mark Hardcastle’s. And the bat belonged in the room, by the way. There was a special stand for it by the sideboard, brass plaque and all. We also have unidentified prints from the sitting room and other parts of the house, of course, but they could take forever to eliminate. We’ll be running them all through NAFIS.” Nowak paused. “I hesitate to express an unsupported opinion here,” he went on, “but this crime scene doesn’t look like a murder committed by an interrupted burglar. In fact, it doesn’t appear that the house was burgled at all. There’s a great deal of valuable stuff there, original paintings and antiques in particular, even some rather expensive bottles of wine, Château d’Yquem and the like, but none of it seems to have been removed. Of course, without a list of everything, we can’t be completely sure, but... Anyway, the attack on that body was emotional and deeply personal, and the only room that seems to have been damaged or disturbed in any way was the drawing room, and that’s entirely consistent with a frenzied attack occurring there, which is what we have.”

“Any signs of forced entry?” Banks asked Annie.

“No,” she said. “Only by us. Doug and I had to break a window in the back door to get in.”

“What about the neighbors? Anybody see or hear anything?”

“Uniform branch talked to most of the people on the Heights this afternoon,” Annie said, “and so far nobody admits to seeing or hearing anything. But that’s hardly surprising,” she went on. “The houses are detached, many are walled, and the people are insular, cautious. It’s hardly the kind of community where people live in one another’s pockets. Money buys you all the solitude you want.”

“Yes, but they like to be vigilant, don’t they?” Banks said. “Neighborhood watch and all that.”

“Not in this case,” said Annie. “Though we can be pretty certain that someone would have noticed if anyone had wandered over from the East Side Estate.”

“So if it was murder,” Banks theorized, “it could well have been someone who looked as if he fitted into the community.”

“I suppose so,” Annie said.

“I don’t suppose anyone saw a bloody figure in an orange T-shirt getting in a dark green Toyota and driving away from 15 Castleview Heights on Friday morning?” asked Superintendent Gervaise.

“No,” said Annie. “Nobody saw anything. They don’t want to get involved.”

“Do you think someone’s lying?”

“It’s possible,” Annie said. “We’ll be talking to them all again, and there are still a couple we have yet to track down, people who’ve gone away for the weekend. I wouldn’t hold out much hope, though. Perhaps the one bright spot is that some of the houses have surveillance cameras, so if we can get hold of the tapes... Anyway, one or two reporters were sniffing around this afternoon, too, so word is spreading fast. We’ve tried to delay them by telling them we can’t release the victim’s name until next of kin has been informed—which should have been done by now—but they’ll be able to work out whose house it is easily enough. We’ve left a couple of PCs guarding the gate and another inside.”

“Good,” said Gervaise. “I’ll handle the press. Do we know anything about the mother?”