Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

Finally, Annie answered the door, stood aside and let him enter. He was carrying a bottle of wine in a gift bag. Peace offering? Why would he need that? If anyone needed to offer the olive branch, it was Annie. Ever the bloody tactician, Banks, disarming the enemy before a word was spoken. Or perhaps that was unfair of her.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“Lucky guess, I suppose,” said Banks. “Phil Hartnell said you’d been in Leeds talking to Claire Toth today, and I thought you might decide to come home rather than go all the way back to Whitby.”

“I suppose that’s why you’re a DCI and I’m a mere DI.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson.”

“You could have rung.”

“You would only have told me not to bother coming.”

Annie fidgeted with a strand of hair. He was right. “Well, you might as well sit down, seeing as you’re here.”

Banks handed her the bottle and sat on the sofa. “I assume you want to drink some of this?” she asked.

“I’ll have a glass, please, sure.”

Annie went into the kitchen for the corkscrew. The wine was a Vacqueyros she had drunk with Banks before and enjoyed. Nothing special, but nice. An understated gesture, then. She poured him a glass, filled her own with the cheap Soave and went back and sat in the armchair. Her living room suddenly seemed too small for the two of them. “Music?” she asked, more for a distraction than that she really wanted to listen to anything in particular.

“If you like.”

“You choose.”

Banks got on his knees by her small CD collection and picked Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda . Annie had to applaud his choice. It suited her mood and the swirling harp figures over the slow melodic bass line always soothed her when she was troubled. She remembered that John Coltrane had been playing when she visited Banks the other night, but she found him a lot harder to listen to than his wife, except on the one CD she owned, The Gentle Side .

“How was your interview with Claire Toth?” Banks asked when he had sat down again.

“Bloody awful and not very useful,” said Annie. “I mean, I didn’t think she had anything to do with it, but she… well, she’s angry, but I’m not even sure she’s got left enough in her to go after revenge. What happened to her friend had an appalling effect on her too.”

“She still blames herself?”

“To the point of deliberately making herself unattractive and underselling her brains and ability. The father did a bunk. That probably didn’t help. Mum seems in a bit of a Prozac haze.”

“What about the victims’ families?”

“Nothing yet. The general consensus seems to be that the justice system let them down but God didn’t, and they’re glad she’s dead. It gives them ‘closure.’”

“Covers a multitude of sins, that word,” said Banks, “the way it’s bandied about by everyone these days.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you can blame them,” said Annie.

“So you’re no closer?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I had a quick chat with Charles Everett before I came back here, too. He says he doesn’t know what happened to Maggie Forrest, but if she’s in the country, I’d say we’ll certainly be viewing her as a prime suspect. Lucy Payne befriended her and used her, then betrayed her, and Maggie might have come to see revenge as a way of putting her life back together, of redeeming the past.”

“Maybe,” said Banks. “Any idea where she is?”

“Not yet. Ginger’s going to check with the publishers tomorrow. There’s something else come up, too.” Annie explained briefly about Les Ferris’s theory, and Banks seemed to allow it far more credence than she would have expected. Still, Banks had solved his share of crimes spanning different eras, so he was less cynical about these connections than most. “And Ginger tracked down Keith McLaren, the Australian,” Annie added. “He’s back in Sydney working for a firm of solicitors. Seems he made a full recovery, so maybe he’s even got bits of his memory back. He’s not a suspect, of course, but he might be able to help fill in a few blanks.”

“Going over there?”

“You must be joking! He’s supposed to ring sometime this weekend.”

“What about the girl, Kirsten Farrow?”

“Ginger’s been trying to trace her, too. Nothing so far. It’s odd, but she seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. We’ve checked just about every source we can think of, and beyond about 1992 there’s no Kirsten Farrow. Her father’s been dead for ten years, and her mother’s in a home — Alzheimer’s — so she’s not a lot of use. We’re trying to find the old university friend she was staying with in Leeds when she disappeared: Sarah Bingham. Ginger’s discovered that she went on to study law, so we do have a line to follow, but it’s just all so bloody slow and painstaking.”

“The toughest part of the job,” Banks agreed. “Waiting, digging, checking, rechecking. Have you thought that Kirsten may be living abroad?”

“Well, if she is, she’s not the one we want, is she? Les Ferris also says he can come up with the hair samples in the 1988 murders, so we can compare Kirsten’s with the hairs found on Lucy Payne. That should tell us one way or another whether this outlandish theory has any basis in reality at all.”

“Hair matches are often far from perfect,” said Banks, “but in this case I’d say it’s good enough for rock and roll. So what’s your plan?”

“Just keep on searching. For Kirsten and for Maggie. And Sarah Bingham. For a while longer, at any rate, until we can either count them in or rule them out. It’s not as if we’ve got a lot of other lines of inquiry screaming us in the face. Still,” Annie said, after a sip of wine and a harp arpeggio that sent a shiver up her spine, “that’s not what you came all this way to talk about, is it?”

“Not exactly,” said Banks.

“Before you say anything,” Annie began, glancing away, “I’d like to apologize for the other night. I don’t know what… I’d had a couple of drinks with Winsome and then some more at your place, and it just all went to my head for some reason. Maybe because I was tired. I shouldn’t even have been driving. I’d had way too much. It was unforgivable of me to put you in a position like that. I’m sorry.”

For a while, Banks said nothing, and Annie could sense her heart pounding under the music. “That’s not really why I came, either,” he said eventually, “though I daresay it has something to do with it.”

“I don’t understand. What, then?”

“You and I have been finished for a long time,” Banks said, “so I won’t deny it came as a shock when you… anyway… that’s always difficult, that side of whatever we have. I never stopped wanting you, you know, and when you act like that… well… you were right, I mean, there’s not a lot going on in my life that I can afford to turn down an offer as good as that. But it didn’t feel right. It wouldn’t have been right. At least I thought we were friends, however difficult it seems sometimes. That you’d tell me if anything was bothering you.”

“Like what?”

“Well, it’s not every night you come around drunk and practically jump on me. There must be something wrong.”

“Why must there be something wrong?” Annie said. “I’ve told you I was drunk and overtired. Pressure of work. I’m sorry. There’s no point making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“You said some very odd things.”

“What things?” Annie pushed her hair back. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.” She remembered perfectly well what she had said to Banks — she hadn’t been as drunk as on that woeful night with Eric — but she was damned if she was going to let him know that.