Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

“Want me to clear it with your superior?” Annie asked.

“No,” the officer mumbled. “Don’t bother. Come on, Ken,” he said to his partner. “Let’s start with Brierley.”

If truth be told, Banks probably hadn’t been fit to drive, he thought as he pulled up outside his Gratly cottage at some ungodly hour in the morning. But all he knew was that he couldn’t stay in London. After he had tossed his pay-as-you-go mobile into the Thames, he felt that he had to get away.

The drive home hadn’t gone too badly. He had wanted loud, raucous sixties rock and roll, not mournful torch ballads, so he set his Led Zeppelin collection on random. The first track that came on was “Dazed and Confused,” which just about said it all. The rest of the drive had passed in a sort of aural slide show of guitar solos, memories and surges of anger alternating with resignation. He was probably lucky to be alive, though, he thought. He didn’t really remember the M1 at all now, just the loud music and a swirling haze of red brake lights ahead and the glaring headlights coming toward him on the other side.

As he drove, he second-guessed himself, told himself he should have gone over to Sophia and her friend in the wine bar, should have confronted them on the doorstep, punched the bloke on the nose. Too late for all of that. He had done nothing, and this was where it had led him.

He had also tried to convince himself that it was all innocent, just a drink with an old friend, but there had been something about the body language, the ease between them, the chemistry, that he just didn’t believe it, and he couldn’t shake the images of Sophia in bed with the young man, the bed where they slept, with the semicircular stained-glass panel above the window and the net curtains fluttering in the breeze.

When he finally shut the door behind him, he felt exhausted, wrung out, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep. Instead of trying, he poured himself a large glass of wine and, without turning any lights or music on, went to sit in the conservatory.

So this was how it felt to have your heart broken, he thought. And, damn it, it really did feel like something was broken. He could feel the pieces inside him grating against one another. It had been so long that he had forgotten the sensation. Annie hadn’t broken it when they split up, only bruised it a bit. He and Michelle had simply drifted apart. No, the last time he had felt anywhere near like this was when Sandra had left him. He put his feet up and took a deep breath, reached for the bottle on the table at his side and refilled his glass. He hadn’t eaten since lunchtime, and his stomach growled, but he couldn’t be bothered to go and see if there was anything in the fridge. He didn’t think there was, anyway. It didn’t matter. Rain pattered on the glass. The wine would soon take the edge off his appetite, and if he drank enough he would find sleep. Or oblivion.

“So just what the bloody hell is going on?” Superintendent Gervaise asked Banks in her office on Tuesday morning at an “informal” meeting over coffee. The rain was still pouring down, Derek Wyman was still missing, and Banks’s head was pounding. Oblivion had finally come to him in the wee hours of the morning, but not before he had downed enough red wine to give him a headache even extra-strength paracetamol couldn’t touch.

“We think Wyman might have made it to a town,” said Banks. “Harrogate, Ripon. York, even. Maybe hitched a lift or caught a bus. From one of those places he could have gone anywhere. Could even be abroad. Anyway, Annie and Winsome are concentrating on checking the bus and train stations. We’ve also got his picture in the paper and it’s coming up on the local TV news this evening. We’ve got uniforms canvassing supermarkets and men’s outfitters within a thirty-mile radius in case he needed a change of clothes. His credit and debit cards are covered, too. If he uses them, we’ll know where.”

“It’s the best we can do, I suppose,” said Gervaise.

Banks finished his coffee and poured himself another cup from the carafe.

“Rough night?” Gervaise asked.

“Just tired.”

“Okay. What are your thoughts?”

“Something obviously put the wind up him,” said Banks. “Maybe Mr. Browne got the thumbscrews out.”

“There’s no call for flippancy. It was expressly to avoid something like this happening that I told you to lay off over a week ago.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” said Banks, “that wasn’t the reason. You told me to lay off because MI6 told the chief constable, and he passed the message on to you. Your hands were tied. But I’d hazard a guess that you knew damn well that the best way to get me asking questions on my own time was to tell me to lay off. Just like MI6 did eventually, you let me do the dirty work for you while keeping me at arm’s length. The only thing you didn’t expect was for Wyman to do a runner.”

Gervaise said nothing for a moment, then she allowed a brief smile to flicker across her features. “Think you’re clever, don’t you?” she said.

“Well, isn’t it true?”

“You may think that, but I can’t possibly comment.” She waved her hand. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. For better or worse, we’re here. The point is what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to find Derek Wyman first,” said Banks, “and then we’ll work on calming everyone down. I know it sounds impossible, but I think we should just sit down and thrash it out with MI6, or whoever we can get to talk to us and settle the matter one way or another. It doesn’t matter whether Wyman upset the applecart because of his brother or because he was angry with Hardcastle. He still hasn’t broken any laws, and it’s about time everyone knew that.”

“You think it’s that easy?”

“I don’t know why it shouldn’t be. Get the chief constable to invite his pals to the table. He’s in with them, isn’t he?”

Gervaise ignored his barb. “I don’t think they’re concerned right now about why Wyman stirred up Hardcastle and Silbert,” she said, “but about how much and what he knows about matters of a top-secret nature.”

“I don’t think he knows anything,” said Banks.

“You’ve changed your tune.”

“Not particularly. I wondered before, speculated, perhaps, but I’ve had a chance to think it through. I’ve got a contact who does know about these things, and he told me that Silbert had nothing to do with Afghanistan except for some joint mission with the CIA in 1985, and that his recent work involved the activities of the Russian Mafia.”

“You believe him?”

“About as much as I believe anyone in this business. I’ve known him for years. He’s got no reason to lie. He would have simply told me he didn’t know or couldn’t find out.” Or, knowing Burgess, to fuck off, Banks thought.

“Unless someone fed him misinformation.”

“Who’s paranoid now?”

Gervaise smiled. “Touché.”

“What I’m saying,” Banks went on, “is that we might never know for certain, just the way Edwina Silbert doesn’t know for certain that MI6 killed her husband. But she thinks they might have. They might also have had a hand in Laurence Silbert’s murder. Maybe he was a double agent and that’s why they wanted rid of him? We’ll probably never know. Despite all the scientific evidence, I still don’t think it’s beyond the realm of reason that someone in their dirty-tricks brigade got in the house and killed him. You saw as well as I did how useless those local CCTV cameras were when it came to covering the area we were interested in. But if that is the case, there’s no evidence and there never will be. I’m sick of the whole damn business. The point now is to stop all this before it gets worse. If Wyman hasn’t found shelter, a change of clothes, food and water, do you realize that the poor bastard could die of exposure out there? It’s got cold as well as wet. And for what? Because a couple of jumped-up Boy Scouts in suits have ransacked his home and scared the shit out of him the way they did with Tomasina Savage?”