Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

Annie told him all she knew, which wasn’t much.

“Should be able to track him down from that,” Banks said. “You’re sure about the date of the incident? Fifteenth October, 2002?”

“That’s what Carol Wyman told me.”

“Okay.”

“What if there isn’t a connection?”

“We’ll deal with that if and when we get there.”

“So what’s next? If they’re on to Wyman, as you say they must be after ransacking this Tom Savage’s files, isn’t he in danger now?”

“It depends how much of a threat he is to them. But, yes, I agree, we need to act fairly quickly, bring him in and get to the bottom of it.”

Annie had lost the thread of the music now, but it alternated between frantic and loud orchestra and solo tenor. Sometimes it disappeared completely. “We need to talk to the super first,” she said.

“Can you do that?” Banks asked.

“Me? Jesus Christ, Alan!”

“Please?” Banks glanced at his watch. “I have to meet Burgess soon, and I don’t think we should waste any more time. I might have a few more answers in a while, but if we can at least get Superintendent Gervaise’s permission to bring Wyman in for questioning over having commissioned the photographs, we’re in business.”

“But... I...”

“Come on, Annie. She knows you’ve been on the case, doesn’t she?”

“The nonexistent case? Yes. She knows.”

“Present her with the evidence. Just stress the theater business and play down the intelligence service angle. That’s the only thing that really worries her. She’ll go for it, otherwise.”

“All right, all right,” Annie said, standing up to leave. “I’ll have a go. And what about you?”

“I’ll be in later. I’ll phone for a driver when I’m ready. Bring Wyman in after you’ve talked to Gervaise and let him stew for a while.”

“On what charge?”

“You don’t have to charge him, just ask him to come along voluntarily.”

“What if he won’t?”

“Then bloody arrest him.”

“For what?”

“Try for being a lying bastard, for a start.”

“If only...”

“Just bring him in, Annie. It might get us a few answers.”

The orchestra was playing an eerie, haunting melody when Annie left, but the day didn’t seem quite so beautiful anymore.

When he was alone again, Banks poured himself the last cup of coffee. “Babi Yar” finished, and he couldn’t think of anything else he wanted to listen to. It was almost time to go out now, and tired as he was, this was an appointment he didn’t want to miss. Wondering why he bothered with security, he locked up the cottage and struck out up Tetchley Fell to Hallam Tarn.

He hadn’t slept a wink the previous night; his mind had still been full of the scenes he had witnessed at Oxford Circus, and he could still smell burning flesh and plastic. Certain images, he knew, would be lodged in his mind forever, and the things he had only thought he had seen fleetingly—a headless figure in his peripheral vision, glistening entrails glimpsed through a film of dust and smoke—would grow and metamorphose in his imagination, haunt his dreams for years.

But in some ways it was the feelings more than the images that affected him. He supposed he must have drifted off to sleep, at least for a few moments now and then, because he remembered those dreamlike sensations of not being able to run fast enough to escape something nightmarish; of being late for an important meeting and not remembering how to get there; being lost naked on dark, threatening streets, becoming more and more frantic as the hour drew near; of stairs turning sticky like treacle under his feet as he tried to climb them, dragging him down into the abyss, melting beneath him. And when he woke, his chest felt hollow, his heart forlorn, beating pointlessly, without an echo.

After he had left Joe Geldard’s pub, he had bought new clothes in a Marks and Spencer’s and made his way on foot through the Bloomsbury backstreets to King’s Cross Station. Even from Euston Road, he could still see wisps of smoke drifting in the air and hear the occasional siren. He wasn’t sure exactly what time the bombing had occurred, but he reckoned it must have been about two-thirty, the heart of a Friday afternoon in summer, when people like to leave work early. It was after five o’clock when he got to the train station, and service was still suspended, though the building had been cleared of threats and had reopened an hour earlier.

Crowds of people milled around the announcement boards, ready for the dash when their gate was announced. It cost him a small fortune to buy a single ticket to Darlington, with no guarantee of when the train would actually leave. The sandwich stalls had all run out of food and bottled water. While he waited, Banks phoned Brian and Tomasina, who were both fine, though shaken at having been so close to disaster. He also phoned Sophia at home and got no answer, as expected. He left a message asking her to pick up his car and said he hoped she was all right. He wasn’t going to tell anyone about his afternoon; certainly not now, probably never.

As luck would have it, the first train north left the station at six thirty-five, and Banks was on it, sitting next to an earnest young Bangladeshi student who wanted to talk about what had just happened. Banks didn’t want to talk about it, and he made himself clear from the start. For the rest of the trip the student obviously felt uncomfortable, no doubt thinking that Banks didn’t want anything to do with him because he was Asian.

At that point, Banks didn’t care what the kid thought. He didn’t care what anybody thought. He stared out of the window, without a book or even his iPod to take his mind off the journey and the memories. He wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on words or music, anyway. His mind was numb, and a couple of miniature scotches from the food and beverages cart helped numb it even more.

He had taken a taxi home from Darlington, which was marginally closer to Gratly than York, and that had cost him a fortune, too. The driver’s constant chatter about Boro’s chances next season had been simply a free bonus. At least he hadn’t talked about the bombing; sometimes the north felt far enough away to be another country, with wholly other concerns. All in all, Banks thought, as he paid the taxi driver, it was turning into an expensive day, what with the hotel bill, lunch, new clothes, the train ticket and now this. Thank God everyone took plastic.

The train journey had been slow, with unexpected and unexplained delays at Grantham and Doncaster, and Banks hadn’t got home until half past ten. He had to admit that he was relieved to be there and to shut the door behind him, though he had no idea what he wanted to do to distract himself. He knew he didn’t want to watch any news reports, didn’t want to see the images of death and suffering repeated ad nauseam and keep up with the mounting death toll. When he had poured himself a generous glass of red wine and sat down in front of an old Marx Brothers movie in the entertainment room, he didn’t really know what he felt about it all.

When he probed himself, he realized that he didn’t feel sad or angry or depressed. Perhaps that would come later. What had happened had taken him to a new place inside himself, a place he didn’t know, had never explored before, and he didn’t have a map. His world had changed, its axis shifted. It was the difference between knowing these things happened, watching them happen to other people on television, and being there, in the thick of it, seeing the suffering and knowing there’s nothing, or very little, that you can do. But he had helped the injured. He had to cling to that, at least. He remembered the blind Asian woman, whose grip he imagined he could still feel on his arm; the young blonde in the bloodstained yellow dress, her stupid little lapdog and the bag she just wouldn’t give up; the frightened child; the dead taxi driver; all of them. They were in him now, part of him, and they would be forever.