“They must have had a few reservations about taking him on, though,” Banks said. “Given your . . . well, your lifestyle at the time.”
Edwina laughed. “It was still early days for me, remember, but yes, I was starting to make a name for myself, and I was mixing with a rather heady crowd. Most people think the sixties didn’t start until the Summer of Love in 1967, but for those of us who were there at the beginning, in London, at any rate, it was all over by then. 1963, 1964, 1965. Those were the years. All the people I knew wanted to change the world—some from the inside, some through art or Eastern religion, some by violent revolution. But wasn’t that a wonderful bonus?”
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“You mean Laurence spied on you and your friends?”
“I’m quite sure nothing slipped by him. But Dicky and his pals weren’t really interested in all that. They didn’t take that scene in the least bit seriously. Not here, at any rate. I mean, everyone sang and talked about revolution, but nobody actually did anything. Dicky’s lads knew who the real dangers were. And where. It was overseas they were interested in. Mainland Europe was the hotbed of terrorism back then, or starting to be. Germany. France. Italy. Cohn-Bendit, Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction. We had our moments in little old Britain, mostly courtesy of the IRA or the Angry Brigade, but in comparison with the rest of the world we were still something of a sleepy backwater.”
“So you told this Dicky Hawkins that it was all right to recruit Laurence?”
“The question was a mere courtesy. It clearly didn’t matter what my answer was. Anyway, I can’t say I was happy about the idea, but I told him he was welcome to give it a try, that I wasn’t Laurence’s keeper and wouldn’t stand in his way. I wasn’t quite sure whether he would succeed or not, but he did. The next thing I knew Laurence was off on training courses for a couple of years, learning how to drive fast in city centers and God knows what else, and I didn’t see much of him. After that, he changed.”
“In what way?”
“It was as if he’d taken a part of himself, cut it off and hidden it away where no one could ever see it. It’s hard to describe, because on the surface he was as charming and funny and witty as ever, but I knew that he couldn’t tell me most of what he’d been doing since I saw him last. And I probably suspected that I didn’t want to know, either.”
“So what did you do?”
“What could I do? I accepted it and life went on. I’d lost part of my son, but not all of him. Whatever they did to him, they didn’t kill his love for his mother.”
“Do you know which branch of the intelligence services he worked for?”
“MI6. His facility for languages sealed it. That’s why he spent a good part of his time undercover overseas. East Germany, Russia.
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Czechoslovakia. I remember his first real assignment was in Prague in 1968. I don’t know what he was supposed to do there, but I assume he had to mingle with the students and help make things difficult for the Russians, or report on developments there. After that . . . who knows.
I do gather that some of the assignments he handled were not without danger.”
“He never told you any details?”
“One thing Laurence could do better than anybody I have ever known was keep a secret.” She noticed that her glass was almost empty and swirled the dregs around the bottom.
“Want another?” Banks asked, spotting the waiter hovering on the fringes.
“I’ve had enough.”
Banks gestured to the waiter that they didn’t require any more drinks. He went away. “Where was Laurence living during this period?”
“Oh, it varied. We’re talking about quite a long time, you know.
1967 to 2004. Though after the Wall came down, he spent less and less time abroad. He had a beautiful house in Kensington. He lived there for over twenty years, when he was in the country.”
“What happened to it?”
“He sold it when the market was good. That was what enabled him to buy the large house in Yorkshire and the little pied-à-terre in Bloomsbury.”
“I thought you said he had no business acumen?”
“Well,” she said with a hint of a smile, “he did get a lot of help.”
“You?”
“He’s my only son. Money soon came to mean nothing to me. I don’t mean that quite the callous way it sounds, but it just kept on rolling in, and it didn’t seem to matter whether I worked hard or not.
What was I going to do with it all? It was one thing I could do for him.”
“What about the Swiss bank accounts?”
“I wouldn’t read too much into all that. I doubt it was a huge amount. Naturally, I don’t know the reality of it, but Dicky once let slip that when you do the sort of job Laurence did, there’s often loose 1 0 6
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money around—payoffs, bribes, hush money, blackmail, God knows what. Most of it is not recorded in any books or bank accounts, and sometimes it’s just, well, just there at the end of a job, and nobody else knows anything about it. When all one has to look forward to is a government pension, there’s naturally a tendency to feather one’s nest rather than the alternative.”
“Which is?”
“Hand it over to the government, of course.”
Banks smiled. “I can certainly understand why he wouldn’t want to do that. Anyway, we very much doubt that your son was killed for his money. We’re just curious to know as to how he came to acquire such wealth.”
“Well, that’s how. Me and his job.”
“Did Mark know about his past?”
“I would imagine so. They would have had to have him vetted.”
“Others?”
“I very much doubt it. As I said, Laurence could keep a secret. As far as everyone else was concerned, he simply worked for the Foreign Office. A boring old civil servant.”
Banks finished his lemon tea. It was cold and bitter. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“Hang around here for a couple of days, try to sort out Laurence’s affairs, then head back to Longborough. Have you any idea when I might be able to make plans for the funeral?”
“Not yet,” said Banks. “It depends on the coroner. There can sometimes be delays if there’s likely to be a trial and the defense requests a second postmortem.”
“In this case?”
“I honestly don’t know,” said Banks. “But I promise I’ll keep you informed.”
Edwina looked at him, a ghost of a smile playing across her lips.
“Just give me back twenty years,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Laurence before?” Banks asked.
Edwina looked away. “I don’t know. Habit of secrecy? It didn’t seem relevant?”
“You know that’s not true. You know a hell of a lot more than A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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you’re saying. It was the first thing you thought of when we told you what had happened.”
“Are you a mind reader, too? Maybe your colleague’s better off without you. I’d hate to be living with a man who can read minds.”
“Cut the crap, Edwina.”
Edwina laughed and swallowed the dregs of her drink. “My, my, you are a direct young man, aren’t you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She lowered her head and whispered, “Why are you asking me this when you know what the answer is already?”
“Because I want to hear it from you.”
Edwina paused for a moment, then she looked around the courtyard before she leaned forward and grasped the edge of the table with a talonlike hand. Her voice was dry and sibilant. “Because I’m not convinced that Laurence had completely retired, and because I’m not sure I trust the people he was working for. There, how’s that for you?”
“Thank you,” said B
anks, standing up to leave.
“There’s something else,” Edwina said, relaxing in the chair as if she had exhausted all her energy. “If you’re going to proceed with this business, then I’d advise you to be very careful indeed and to watch your back. These are not nice men you’re dealing with, and they don’t play by your rules. Believe me. I know.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Banks. “And I’ll remember that.” He shook her limp hand, said good-bye and left her to stare out at the hills, lost in memories.
6
THE EAST SIDE ESTATE HAD BEEN BUILT IN THE SIXTIES
and steadily declining ever since. Now it could give some of the Leeds or Newcastle estates a run for their money. Certain areas were a wasteland of burned-out cars and abandoned supermarket trolleys, uncontrolled dogs running rife and a population suspicious of all strangers, especially the police. Annie Cabbot had come across plenty of people there who were simply decent folk trying to make an honest living, but she had also met more than her fair share of others—dead-beat, drug-addicted or absentee parents, kids who had had little schooling and no chance of a worthwhile job, who had given up on the future by the age of thirteen or fourteen, searching only for the quick thrill of crystal meth, Ecstasy or whatever new concoction or cocktail the amateur chemists had come up with that week. And, in-creasingly, the oblivion of heroin.
A row of uniformed police officers held the crowds back at about half past ten on Wednesday evening, just after dark. Nobody was pushing or struggling; they were just curious and perhaps a little frightened. One or two troublemakers were trying to whip up a frenzy by shouting insults at the police, and someone even threw a half-brick at the ambulance crew, but the others mostly just ignored them. They were used to this sort of behavior. The streetlights created rainbow halos in the haze, and the ambulance lights spun blue in the A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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humid night air near the mouth of what the locals called “glue-sniffers’ ginnel.” It was more like “meth poppers’ alley” or “skunk smokers’ snicket,” these days, Annie thought. Solvents were way out of style as the underprivileged had become more aff luent and the drug prices had dropped as cheap stuff f looded the market.
One of the kingpins in the north estate dealing operation, a fifteen-year-old boy called Donny Moore, lay bleeding on a gurney from stab wounds as the paramedics hovered over him. Annie and Winsome had been called to assess the situation for Major Crimes.
“What’s the damage?” Annie asked the first paramedic, as they maneuvered the gurney into the back of the ambulance.
“Hard to tell at this point,” he said. “Three stab wounds. Chest, shoulder and abdomen.”
“Serious?”
“Stab wounds are always serious. Look,” he said, moving closer and lowering his voice. “Don’t quote me on this, but I think he’ll live.
Unless we find extensive internal bleeding or damage, it doesn’t appear as if the weapon severed any major arteries or sliced up any essential organs.”
“Thanks,” said Annie. “When will we be able to talk to him?”
“Not until tomorrow at the earliest, depending how soon they manage to stabilize him. Check with the hospital. I have to go now.”
He climbed in the back of the ambulance, shut the doors and they sped away.
The man who had reported the incident, Benjamin Paxton, paced beside his modest gray Honda, clearly anxious to get away. His wife was still sitting in the car with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the crowd and the police activity around her, perhaps in the hope that they would just disappear.
“I did my duty as a citizen,” said Paxton, eyeing the crowd anxiously as Annie asked him to tell her what happened while Winsome took notes. “I reported the incident and waited here till the police arrived, as I was asked to do. Isn’t that enough? My wife is really upset.
Her nerves are bad. Can’t we just go home?”
“Where’s home?”
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“We’re renting a cottage near Lyndgarth.”
“So you don’t live in the area?”
“God, no! We live in South Shields. This is supposed to be a walking holiday.”
Annie glanced around at the dilapidated redbrick terrace houses and the rusted cars on blocks out front. “Not a very good place for that sort of thing, I shouldn’t have thought,” she said. “Unless you’re into urban blight.”
“Not here. Around Lyndgarth.”
“What brought you down here, then?”
“We got lost, that’s all. We had dinner at a pub we read about in the guidebook and took the wrong road. We’re on our way back to Lyndgarth. We didn’t expect to run into this sort of thing in the Yorkshire Dales.”
“Which pub?”
“The Angel Inn, Kilnwick.”
Annie knew the place. They poured a decent pint of Sam Smith’s there. The story made sense. It would have been easy to get lost on the way back through Eastvale from the village of Kilnwick and end up on the East Side Estate. After all, it wasn’t as if there were a wall or a barbed-wire barricade around the place, though sometimes Annie felt there should be, given the number of tourists who complained about getting mugged there.
“Can you tell me exactly what happened, sir?” she asked.
“We were driving down the street and Olivia thought she saw something moving on the waste ground at the end of that passage under the railway lines there. I . . . well, I wasn’t going to stop, quite frankly, because I didn’t like the look of the place, but it was unmistakable. A person. The white T-shirt. There was somebody on the ground there, rolling, you know, as if he was in pain. At first, of course, we thought it might have been a woman who’d been attacked and raped. There’s such a lot of it around these days.”
“So you stopped to help?”
“Yes. I got out and . . . well, as soon as I saw the blood I got straight back in the car and phoned the ambulance and police on my mobile.”
“Did you see anyone else around?”
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Paxton paused. “I’m not really sure. I mean, it was quite dark, even then.”
“But?”
“Well, I thought I saw a dark hooded figure running up the passage.”
“Dark as in . . . ?” asked Winsome.
“Oh, no,” Paxton said. “No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply . . .
No. Just that it was in shadow.”
“Male or female?” Annie asked.
“Male, I think.”
“Could you give a description?”
“I’m afraid not. It looked like a largish figure, but I think that might perhaps have been exaggerated by the shadows and the tunnel. But, really, it was too dark to make anything out clearly.”
“I understand,” said Annie. “Did you see anyone else?”
“There were a couple of people walking up that cross street, about a hundred yards away. A man walking his dog. And I got the most f leeting impression . . . I don’t know, just before we got there and saw the figure on the ground, that there was a group of people sort of scattering.”
“Scattering?”
“Yes. All going in different directions, disappearing around corners and down passageways.”
“Could you describe any of them?”
“No. They were either in the shadows or wearing those hoods like they do these days so you can’t make out their faces.”
“Hoodies?”
“Is that what you call them?”
There were two gangs, if you could call them that, operating on the East Side Estate, Annie had learned: one to the north, centered around the two tower blocks, and the other here, to the south, hanging out around “glue-sniffers’ ginnel.” Though ASBOs abounded on both sides, they had never caused any serious problems outside the odd scrap, graffiti, shoplifting in the Swainsda
le Centre and threatening behavior. But the mood had been changing lately; knives had arrived, baseball bats, and there were rumors of heavier drugs coming in from down south and from Manchester.
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Paxton’s description of the people he had seen “scattering” from the scene fitted with the kind of uniform the gang members wore, and Donny Moore, the victim, was right up there with them. Most of their names were on file, so they shouldn’t be hard to track down.
Whether the police would get anything out of them was another matter. People on the East Side Estate were notoriously closemouthed when it came to talking to the police.
“Did you see anything else?” she asked.
“No,” said Paxton. “I went back to the car and waited. The ambulance was quick. The boy was very still. I thought he was dead.”
“And you saw no one else?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay,” said Annie. “You can go home now. Leave an address with DS Jackman here and we’ll be in touch about a formal statement. It’s just a formality.” She turned to go and talk to the officers on crowd control. The citizens were getting restless for information.
“Thank you,” said Paxton.
As Annie walked away, she heard him ask Winsome, “Er . . . do you think you could possibly tell me the way to Lyndgarth?”
Annie had to smile. If you want to know the way, ask a policeman.
She turned and winked at Winsome, who took the address and gave Paxton directions.
S I N C E H I S talk with Edwina Silbert, Banks had found himself thinking a lot about the fact that Laurence Silbert had been a spy. He didn’t know very much about the intelligence services, which was probably the way they liked to keep it, but he knew enough to be aware that Silbert might have got up some pretty nasty business and made himself some serious and lasting enemies. And that was just on his own side.
The whole espionage business had changed a lot since the Cold War, Banks knew, and these days you were more likely to get the head of MI5 sending secret memos to CEOs of banks and oil companies about Chinese Internet espionage than anything else. But it wasn’t that long ago since people had been risking their lives to climb over the Berlin Wall. If Laurence Silbert hadn’t traveled much for the past A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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