Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

Two people were walking down the slope toward him, a young man and a young woman carrying torches, the slanting rain caught in their beams of light.

“Bit of a mess, isn’t it?” the young man said when they got to the Porsche. “Nice car, too. Not quite what we had in mind at all. We only wanted to talk to him again. Find out what he was doing putting a tail on one of our men. You should have stopped when we flashed you.”

“He couldn’t tell you anything,” said Banks. “He was just a bloody schoolteacher.”

The man shone his torch on the bonnet of the Porsche. “Dead, is he? We’ll never know what he was up to now, will we?”

Banks could think of nothing to say to that. He just shook his head. He felt dizzy and weak at the knees.

“You all right?” the young woman asked. “You’ve got blood on your forehead.”

“I’m fine,” said Banks.

“We’ll take it from here,” she went on. “This is what we’ll do. My friend is going to phone some people. They’re used to cleaning up situations like this. We’ll have your car back outside your cottage again by tomorrow morning, as good as new.” She paused and looked at the Porsche. “Make that the day after tomorrow,” she said. “It can sometimes be hard to get replacement parts for foreign cars. We’ll make sure they fix the air bags, too.”

Banks gestured toward Wyman. “What about him?”

“Well, there’s nothing anybody can do for him now, is there? Best let us take care of it. He was distraught over what he’d done. He went walkabout and either he jumped or he fell off a cliff. We don’t want any fuss, do we? I’d just go home if I were you. Walk away.”

Banks stared at her. She was pretty in a slightly hard-faced sort of way, but her eyes didn’t flinch; there was no milk of human kindness in them. “But he didn’t do anything,” said Banks.

“Maybe not,” the woman said. “Mistakes get made sometimes. It doesn’t matter. Let us deal with it now.”

“But you killed him.”

“Now, wait a minute,” said the young man, squaring up to Banks. “That rather depends on your point of view, doesn’t it? From what I could see, you were driving way too fast. You’ve obviously been drinking. And he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. You should have had your air bags checked, too. They malfunctioned.”

“And you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If we wanted you both dead, you’d be dead in much easier circumstances to clean up than this. It was an accident. Besides, don’t forget he was responsible for the death of one of our best men, and if you’d had your way he’d have simply walked away. Hard-castle never asked him to put a tail on Silbert. The whole thing was his own twisted, crazy plan.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“I can understand you probably got the transcripts of the interview. The chief constable would have given you those. But how did you know that was all a lie, that Wyman...?” Banks paused as the truth dawned on him. “You bugged my cottage, didn’t you? You bastards.”

The man shrugged. “You’re away a lot. Access isn’t a problem.”

Banks looked toward Wyman’s body again. “So this is your idea of justice?”

“I’ll admit it’s sloppy,” the man said, “but it’s justice of a kind. Look, Silbert helped us bring down some pretty big players—sex traffickers, drug dealers, killers for hire. He even helped us put some terrorists behind bars. And this piece of scum you’re defending so eloquently basically killed him.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m still not convinced,” Banks said. “Oh, Wyman stirred Hard-castle up all right, but you lot could still have killed Silbert. Wyman just makes a good scapegoat because he was so full of guilt.”

“Why would we do that? I’ve already told you Silbert was one of our best men.”

“Maybe he was a double agent. What about those Swiss bank accounts? People led me to believe that agents feather their nests when they’re in the field, but who knows? Maybe he was playing for both sides.”

“Then maybe the other side killed him. Whatever happened, you’ll never know, will you? Anyway, this is ridiculous, and it’s getting us nowhere. We need to move fast.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Believe it. The best thing you can do is—”

But he never got to end the sentence. Banks felt the urge begin in his solar plexus, and the next thing he knew his fist was connecting with the man’s jaw. It happened so quickly the man never had a chance, no matter what fancy martial arts he had been trained in. Banks heard a satisfying crunch and felt the jolt run all the way up to his shoulder. He could also sense that he’d probably broken a knuckle, maybe two, but the pain was worth it to vent some of his anger—anger about Wyman, about Sophia, the bombing, Hardcastle, Silbert, the Secret Intelligence Service. The man crumpled and fell like a sandbag to the earth. Banks cradled his right hand in his left and bent double with pain.

“Carson,” the woman said, bending over him. “Carson? Are you all right?”

Carson groaned and rolled over in the mud. Banks kicked him hard in the ribs. He groaned again and spat out a tooth.

Banks was just about to kick him in the stomach when he realized that the woman was pointing a gun at him. “Stop it,” she said. “I don’t want to use this, but I will if I have to.”

Banks glared at her, realized that she meant what she said, then took a few deep breaths. He looked at Carson again and felt no desire to inflict any more pain. He leaned back on the car and caught his breath, still cradling his right hand.

“The truth is that none of this happened,” the woman went on. “We weren’t even here. You’ll get your car back as good as new. His body will be found at the bottom of a cliff, and nothing changes. You can tell all the stories you want, but I guarantee you that nobody will believe a word you say. If necessary, we’ll give you a legend that will land you in jail for the rest of your days. When we’ve finished with you, even your family and your closest friends will never want to talk to you again. Do I make myself clear?”

Banks said nothing. What was there to say? Any insults and threats of retribution he might want to make would just be empty bluster in the face of the power these people had. He knew he’d had all the satisfaction he was going to get from the punch he’d landed. Carson was still groaning through his broken jaw. Banks’s knuckles were throbbing in synchronization with his head.

The woman held her gun in one hand and her mobile in the other. Both hands were perfectly steady. “Walk away,” she said. “Do it. Now.”

Banks’s legs were still a bit wobbly, but they worked. He didn’t say anything, just made his way up the slope to the road. The night was a dark wet cloak around him. There was only one place he wanted to be now, only one place left for him to go. A little unsteady at first, but gaining strength and momentum as he went, Banks started the long walk home. He wasn’t sure whether the wetness he felt on his face was rain, blood or tears.

I would like to thank everyone who read the manuscript and offered suggestions for improvements—in particular, Sheila Halladay, Dinah Forbes, Carolyn Marino and Carolyn Mays. There are so many others to thank for their hard work and support—my agents Dominick Abel and David Grossman; Jamie Hodder Williams, Lucy Hale, Kerry Hood, Auriol Bishop, Katie Davidson and Kate Howard at Hodder; Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Sharyn Rosenblum, Wendy Lee and Nicole Chismar at Morrow; and Doug Pepper, Ellen Seligman, Ashley Dunn and Adria Iwasutiak at McClelland & Stewart. Also thanks to the sales reps and booksellers who work so hard to get the books out there, and to you for reading them.