Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

“Step back a bit, ma’am,” said one of the uniformed officers. “We’ll take care of this part.”

“Be our guest,” said Winsome. She and Doug Wilson stepped back toward the stairwell, about twenty feet away.

The officer rapped on the door and bellowed, “Toros Kemal. Open up. Police.”

Nothing happened.

He knocked again, his colleague beside him with the battering ram at the ready, itching to use it. People were starting to appear in their doorways and at their windows.

Finally the door opened and a tall man stood framed in the doorway, stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of tracksuit bottoms and trainers. He rubbed his head as if he had just woken up. “Yeah, what is it?”

“Mr. Kemal,” said the uniformed officer. “We’d like you to accompany us to the station for questioning in the matter of the stabbing of Donny Moore.”

“Moore. Don’t know him,” said Kemal. “Just let me get my shirt.”

“I’ll accompany you, sir,” one of the officers said. They went inside. The other officer lowered his battering ram, clearly disappointed, relaxed and shrugged at Winsome. Sometimes things were easier than you thought they’d be. Winsome was standing by the stairwell, Wilson behind her, when Kemal came out with the uniformed officer. Kemal was wearing a red T-shirt.

“I’ve gotta tie my laces, man,” he said in the doorway, and knelt. The officers stepped back, behind him. In less than a second, he had a knife in his hand, pulled from a sheath strapped to his lower leg. The officers took out their extendable batons, but they were too slow. The Bull wasn’t hanging around. Winsome and Wilson were the only ones blocking his way to the stairs, and Wilson was hidden behind her. The Bull came charging straight for her as if he’d just come into the ring, building up a head of steam, letting out an almighty yell, with his arm stretched out, mouth open, pointing the blade directly at her as he ran.

Winsome felt a chill run through her, then her self-defense training took over, pure instinct. There was no time for anything else. She stood her ground, readied herself, let him come to her. She grabbed his outstretched knife arm with both hands, let herself fall on her back, and using the impetus he’d built up, she wedged her feet in his solar plexus and pushed with all her might.

Kemal was traveling fast enough that it all happened in one seamless, choreographed movement. There was a gasp from the crowd below as he flipped heels over head in the air, then his back bounced against the flimsy balcony, and he disappeared over the edge with a scream. Winsome lay on her back on the concrete now, gasping for breath. She had long legs, she had pushed hard, and his momentum had been considerable.

In just seconds, Doug Wilson and the two uniformed officers were standing over her, muttering apologies and praise. She waved them aside and stood up gasping for breath. She felt lucky. One minor mis-judgment and she would probably have had a knife through her chest. They should have handcuffed and searched Kemal before bringing him out. Well, it would all go down in the reports, and bollockings would be freely handed out. For the moment, Winsome was just happy to be alive. She turned and looked over the balcony, down at the courtyard. The Bull wasn’t so lucky. He was lying on his back in a very twisted way, a darkening stain spreading slowly around his head.

Wilson was already on his mobile for an ambulance, so the best thing they could do now was get down there. In the melee, the woman Kemal lived with, Ginny Campbell, had come out of her flat and she was hanging over the balcony, a baby clutched to her breast, looking down at her lover’s body, crying and screaming, “You’ve killed him! You’ve killed him! You filthy murdering bastards!” The crowd was picking up on her outrage, too, calling out insults. Winsome didn’t like the way she could sense the mood quickly changing.

Before things got any worse, she phoned the station for backup, and slowly the four of them made their way down the stairs to see what, if anything, they could do for Toros “the Bull” Kemal.

The rain started to come down hard on Sunday morning and it was still pouring on Monday, when Banks took the newspapers and his second cup of coffee into the conservatory. It had started as it usually did, with a light pattering on the glass roof, then soon it was running down the windows in thick slithering torrents, distorting the view of the dale outside like a funfair mirror. That was the way Banks had been seeing the world lately, too, he thought, as through a glass darkly: Hardcastle and Silbert, Wyman, Sophia, the bombing—dear God, most of all the bombing—all of it nothing but a distortion of the darkness he was beginning to believe lay at the center of everything.

The weather suited Banks’s mood well enough. The music, too. Underneath the noise the rain made, Billie Holiday was singing “When Your Lover Has Gone” from one of her last performances, in 1959. She sounded as if she were on her last legs.

He had slept hardly at all the past three nights. The images seared in his mind’s eye wouldn’t go away; they only became more distorted. He had seen death before in all its gruesome forms. As a young patrol officer he had been called to road accidents, six-car pile-ups on the M1, with body parts strewn over a radius of almost a quarter of a mile. He had even been in his own house when it had been set on fire, though he didn’t remember much about that as he had been drugged at the time.

But none of that was quite the same as what had happened on Friday. This had been different, and most of all, like the fire at his house, it hadn’t been an accident. Someone had done it deliberately to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible on innocent people. He had met criminals who had done that before, too, of course, but not on this scale, in this random way. And none of the murderers he had ever met before had been more than happy to blow themselves to smithereens along with everyone else, women and children included. More than once, he had wondered how the people he had led out were doing: the Asian woman, the young boy and the pretty blonde in the yellow dress. Perhaps he could make some inquiries and find out.

The music had finished and he needed more coffee, so he went first to the entertainment room and put on something a bit brighter and instrumental, a lively, jazzy string quartet called Zapp, then he refilled his mug in the kitchen. Just when he had settled down to see if he could concentrate on the crossword, his telephone rang.

He was tempted not to answer, but it might be Sophia. One day soon, he thought, he should invest in a telephone that displayed the caller’s number. Of course, that only helped if they didn’t withhold the number and if you recognized it. Most of Sunday he had contemplated phoning Sophia, and every time his telephone rang he had hoped it was her. But it never was. Brian rang once. Annie phoned with more details about Winsome’s latest death-defying escapade. Tracy, his daughter, made her weekly report. And Victor Morton had rung, of course. But that was all.

This time it was her.

“Alan, I moved your car. You’re lucky the police didn’t impound it. Things are still crazy around there. Anyway, it’s just down the street. It’s safe now. I put my key in the glove box. Do you know you left your iPod in there, too?”

“Yes,” said Banks. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sound a bit...”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’d like to come and see you. I’ve still got some free time and things have quietened down up here.”

“I’m glad to hear that, but I don’t know. I’m really busy this week.”