Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

“Well, it was,” said Annie. “It might still be. I mean, maybe he’s just... I don’t know... another woman? Or he’s done a runner? These things happen. Just because he’s missing, it doesn’t have to mean that MI6 carted him off to one of their secret interrogation camps.”

“There are no such places,” said Gervaise.

“Very well, then. One of their secret nonexistent interrogation camps.”

“Very clever. Don’t let your imagination run away with you, DI Cabbot,” snarled Gervaise.

“Have these government people had access to any of our case files?” Banks asked Gervaise.

“Not through me,” she answered. “Or through anybody else in this office, I shouldn’t imagine.”

“Has the chief constable been around much lately?”

Gervaise paused. “A bit more often than he usually is. What are you trying to suggest, DCI Banks? Is this connected with that innuendo you made earlier?”

“I think you know, ma’am. You might not like to admit it, but you know. They took an interest in this from the start, at least as soon as they realized I wasn’t going to stop investigating. They’ve been following me around. Annie, too, perhaps. They probably know what we know. Given that we didn’t tell them, I’m wondering how they found out. It’s my bet they went straight to the top. The chief constable’s ambitious, and he has political aspirations.”

“Do you know what you’re saying?” said Gervaise. “And you’re not also suggesting that the government is responsible for Wyman’s disappearance are you? I mean, this isn’t some little tin-pot South American dictatorship.”

“You don’t have to look that far south when it comes to citizens disappearing,” said Banks. “But I don’t know. I’m just calling the facts to your attention, that’s all.”

“But why on earth would they be interested in a bloody schoolteacher cum amateur theater director?”

Banks scratched his scar. “Because he hired a private detective to take photographs of Silbert meeting a man on a bench in Regent’s Park,” Banks said. “And because we’re interested in him. It seems logical to assume that this wasn’t anything to do with an affair of the heart, but that those activities were part of Silbert’s postretirement covert work. There’s also the brother.”

“Brother?”

“Wyman’s brother, Rick. He was SAS. He was killed on a secret mission in Afghanistan in 2002. The press covered it up. Called it an accident during maneuvers. Silbert has visited Afghanistan. There’s a chance that he might have been involved on the intelligence side, and Wyman might have found out about it through Hardcastle, blamed him for Rick’s death.”

“Oh, this just gets better and better.” Gervaise glared at Banks, breathed out heavily, ran her hand over her hair, then filled a glass with water from a pitcher on a tray beside her. The rain continued to hammer on the slates and windows. “What a bloody great start to the week this is turning out to be,” she said. “I think we’d better discuss this later, in my office, when we’ve got a bit more information in, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Gervaise got to her feet. “I suppose we ought to count our blessings as well as lick our wounds,” she said. “Even if Derek Wyman has gone and thrown a spanner in the works, at least we’ve got Donny Moore’s assailant and maybe done a little bit toward keeping more heroin and methamphetamines off the East Side Estate. Maybe that saves the weekend from being a total disaster.”

“And don’t forget, ma’am,” Doug Wilson spoke up. “We’ve got the traffic cones back, too.”

Gervaise gave him a withering glance.

Banks had dug out his old portable CD player, in the absence of his iPod, and he listened to Laura Marling’s Alas, I Cannot Swim on the train down to London that Monday evening. He needed his car back, and despite what had been said on the phone, he thought that if he could just see Sophia for a few minutes, he could convince her to stay with him. Beyond that, he hadn’t thought. Annie was heading the search for Derek Wyman, though they were hardly combing the moors just yet, mostly running through the list of old friends and relatives dotted about the place. So far, nobody had seen any trace of him.

It was after five o’clock when the train he had caught in Darlington earlier pulled out of York. On his right, the Yorkshire Wheel, a mini version of the London Eye, was turning forlornly, deserted in the rain that had been falling steadily since the heavens first opened on Sunday morning. Already there was talk of flooding in Wales and Gloucestershire.

A group of four teenagers had the table just down the aisle from Banks, and they were already well into the ale. They sounded as if they had been on the train since Newcastle. Banks fancied a drink himself, but he decided to lay off. After all, there was always the chance that he might have to drive straight back to Eastvale.

The landscape and the stations drifted by as he gazed out of the window: Doncaster, Grantham, Newark. Peterborough, where he had grown up. He thought about his parents, away on a Mediterranean cruise. Since they had inherited his brother’s money, they hadn’t changed a great deal about their lives, Banks thought, but they had taken to cruising with a vengeance, much against his expectations.

He also thought of Michelle Hart, a detective inspector in the local force, and an ex-girlfriend of his. She had moved to Hampshire, he’d heard, Portsmouth, and as the train passed the flats down by the river where she used to live, it brought back memories. He could also never pass by Peterborough without thinking of his old boyhood friends Steve Hill, Paul Major and Dave Grenfell. Graham Marshall, too, of course, who had disappeared and then turned up buried in a field years later, and Kay Summerville, the first girl he had ever slept with. He had bumped into her just a few years ago, when he was back home for his parents’ wedding anniversary, and she was clearing out the house after her mother’s death. They had repeated the experience. Later, they had promised to get in touch, but both knew they never would. Their moment had passed, and they were luckier than most in that it had passed twice, and passed well. Moments are often all you get. You can watch them walking away. The rest is crap. Let go with both hands. No regrets.

But Sophia was a different matter. He didn’t want to let go of her.

His pay-as-you-go vibrated discreetly in his pocket. He didn’t like mobile conversations on trains, his own or other people’s, but he wasn’t in a quiet coach, so it wasn’t against the rules. He took his earphones out and answered it.

“Banksy?”

“Ah, Mr. Burgess.”

“Right. I’ll keep this brief. Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“Laurence Silbert operated strictly in Cold War territory, primarily Berlin, Prague and Moscow. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“His only visit to Afghanistan was in 1985, when the Russians were there. It was a joint operation with the CIA. I think we can say almost certainly that it was probably to do with supplying backing to the anti-Russian Taliban forces. This particular bit of knowledge isn’t classified, by the way—though the details are—but I’d prefer if you’d keep it under your hat.”

“Of course.”

“Basically, Laurence Silbert was a Cold War warrior. He never had anything to do with the situation in the Middle East, except insofar as it impinged on the Cold War. He spoke Russian, German and Czech, and those countries were the primary areas of his operations.”

“What about after his retirement?”

“I said I wasn’t going to tell you about that, but I’d say it was pretty obvious, wouldn’t you? If I can put two and two together, I’m sure you can, too. We all know the old KGB and Stasi agents have turned up in one form of organized crime or another, or have become ‘businessmen,’ as many of them like to call themselves. They’re operating quite openly in the West now. Silbert was part of that world for a long time, in the old days. He knew all the players, their strengths, weaknesses, trade routes, hiding places—the lot.”