All the Colors of Darkness ib-18

by Peter Robinson

  “And what?” She pointed at her chest and blinked. “You think I . . . I mean, you think he hired me to kill someone?”

  “No doubt he picked you on the basis of your name in the telephone directory. It sounds tough, like the sort of person who’d be capable of anything.”

  “But if he’d known I was Tomasina?”

  “Exactly,” said Banks. “Anyway, I’m not accusing you of murder.”

  “Well, thank the Lord for that.”

  “I just want to know if you accepted an assignment from a man called Derek Wyman, and if you did, what exactly it consisted of.”

  She picked up a pencil and started doodling. “You know,” she said, looking down as she spoke, “that there are issues of confidentiality involved here. When people come to me, they come to a private inves-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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  tigator, not someone who’ll shout out their business to the world, or the police.”

  “I understand that, and I have no intention of shouting out your business to the world.”

  “Even so,” she said, “I can’t tell you who my clients are or what they want me to do. None of it is illegal. I can assure you of that.”

  “I’m sure it’s not.” Banks paused. “Look, you can really help me here. I’m going out on a limb on this and I need to know if I’m right.

  If I’m not, then . . . well . . . I don’t know. But if I am . . .”

  “It could lead to a court case in which you’d expect me to testify for the Crown?”

  “It won’t come to that.”

  “Yeah, and you’ll still respect me in the morning.”

  “You’re very cynical for one so young.”

  “I’m only trying to protect my interests.” She gave him a direct look. “As you can see, the place isn’t exactly crawling with clients—

  despite the tough, sexy name. In fact, I’m hard pushed to make ends meet from one week to the next, if truth be told. Now you expect me to throw away my reputation because of some limb you’re out on.”

  “Why not try another career? A more lucrative one?”

  “Because I like what I do. And I’m good at it. I started out with a big agency, and I did my ABI training and got my advanced diploma.

  Then I decided I wanted to go out on my own. I’ve done all the courses. And passed them with f lying colors. I’m twenty-seven years old, I’ve got degrees in law and criminology, and I’ve had five years’

  on-the-job experience with the big boys before I set up my own firm.

  Why should I search for another career?”

  “Because you don’t have any clients and you can barely pay the rent?”

  She glanced away, her cheeks f lushed. “They’ll come. It just takes time, that’s all. I’m just starting out.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Banks. “I’m not trying to browbeat you or anything. I’m really just asking for your help. To be honest, I’m rather in the same boat as you on this one.”

  “You mean this isn’t an official investigation?”

  “Not exactly.”

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  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  “You’re acting on your own? Oh, that’s prize, that is.” She dropped her pencil. “Not only do you come in here pushing me to give you confidential information, but it’s not even part of a sanctioned police investigation. Why don’t you stop wasting my time?”

  “Because it seems to me you’ve got plenty to waste. Or would you rather get back to your filing?” Banks could swear he saw her eyes begin to shine with tears, and he felt awful. She was the kind of person you wanted to make happy, wanted good things for. If you could hurt someone like Tomasina, he thought, you really were a shit. Then he told himself not to be such a soft bastard; she had to be tough to be in the business she was in, and if she wasn’t tough enough, it was better she found out sooner rather than later. But she didn’t cry. She was tougher than she looked, and he was glad of that.

  “Why?” she said. “So you can have a good ogle at my arse again?

  Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  “It’s a very nice arse.”

  She glared at him, and for a moment he thought she was going to throw something, the heavy glass paperweight that held down what looked like a heap of bills on her desk, for example, but instead she leaned back in her chair, linked her hands behind her head and started to laugh. “Oh, you’re a prize specimen, you are,” she said.

  “Does that mean you’ll help me?”

  “I know the rules,” she said. “I know I’m supposed to cooperate with the police if the situation merits it. But I don’t know anything about this situation.”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Banks said.

  “Try. I’m bright and I’m a good listener.”

  “Have you read or seen anything about the two deaths in Eastvale recently?”

  “The two gay guys? Sure. Murder-suicide, wasn’t it?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “But you don’t believe it?”

  “Oh, I believe that Mark Hardcastle beat Laurence Silbert to death with a cricket bat and then hanged himself. I just don’t believe he did it without help. A rather unusual form of help.”

  “I’m listening.”

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  Banks tried to explain his Othello theory, aware of how absurd it sounded every time he did so. By the end he was having a hard time believing it himself. Instead of laughing at him or scoffing, though, Tomasina sat with her brow furrowed and her hands meeting in a steeple on the desk for a full minute or so after he’d finished. And that’s a long time.

  “Well?” Banks said, when he could wait no longer.

  “You really believe that? That that’s how it happened?”

  “I think it’s likely, yes.”

  “But what evidence do you have?”

  “None.” Banks wasn’t going to bring the Secret Intelligence Service into his discussion with her. He had already decided on that.

  “Motive?”

  “None that I’m aware of right now, other than professional jealousy.”

  “So the only thing even approaching evidence you have is that this Wyman character was directing Othello, that he met up with Hardcastle in London the day before the killing, that they had some professional differences and that they had been seen drinking and talking together in a pub a couple of miles out of town?”

  “And that he had a memory stick with pictures of Silbert with another man. Neither Hardcastle nor Silbert had a digital camera that took such a card.”

  “What about Wyman?”

  “He didn’t have one, either. His is a Fuji.”

  “And that’s all you’ve got?”

  “Yes. I suppose if you put it like that . . .”

  “What other way is there to put it?”

  “That when you add it all up together it’s damn suspicious, that’s what. Why go two miles to a grotty teens’ pub when there are plenty of good pubs in Eastvale? A group of his bloody fifteen-year-old pupils was in there, for crying out loud. And how did he get Hardcastle upset and then calm him down? Why?”

  “There’s no way anyone could have known what effect playing Iago would have on two people.”

  “That’s what Annie said.”

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  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  “Annie?”

  “DI Cabbot. We were working on it together.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, officially, we’re off it. Orders from above.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We were just told to drop it. Anyway, aren’t I the one supposed to be asking the questions here?”

  She smiled that radiant smile again, the one that made you feel you had to maintain her happiness at all costs. “I told you, I’m good at my job. That was one of my best marks, interviewing techniques. Along with surveillance and research. She’s right, though,
your partner.”

  “I know that. Maybe it went wrong?”

  “Then it wasn’t murder. A very bad practical joke, perhaps. Some sort of malicious trick backfiring. But not murder. I suppose you know that, don’t you? At the most, you’d be able to charge him with harassment or incitement, that’s if you can prove that he did indeed incite anyone to a criminal act.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Banks said. “The result’s the same. Two men are dead. And very nastily, brutally dead, I might add. One beaten to a pulp and the other hanging from a tree near a beauty spot where children were playing.”

  “You can’t intimidate me with the graphic horror of it all. I’ve seen dead bodies. I’ve even seen Saw IV and Hostel Part II.”

  “Well, what will work with you?”

  Tomasina studied him again for what felt like another long time, then she said, “I took those photos.”

  “What?”

  “The photos you’re talking about. On the memory stick. I took them.”

  Banks’s jaw must have dropped. “Just like that?”

  “Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. I had to stay out of sight.”

  “No, I mean, you’re admitting it just like that. I appreciate what you’re doing, really I do.”

  Tomasina shrugged. “When a cute man—and the father of my rock hero, no less—says nice things about my arse, I can’t very well hold out on him, can I?”

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  “I’m sorry about that. It just sort of slipped out.”

  She laughed again. “It’s all right. I’m only teasing. But you’d better be careful. Some women might not appreciate it as much as I do.”

  “I know. You’re one in a million, Tomasina.” Sophia certainly wouldn’t appreciate it, though she might say, “I know” or “So I’ve been told,” Banks thought. Or Annie. In fact, just about every woman he knew would have given him shit for a comment like that. What the hell had he been thinking of ? Sometimes he would just slip from the politically correct world everyone inhabited these days back to the primeval slime without warning. Perhaps age was lowering his guard?

  But he wasn’t that old, he told himself. And he was cute. “Will you tell me about it?” he asked.

  “There’s not much to tell, really.”

  “But Derek Wyman did come to you?”

  “Yes. And he was surprised, as most people are. But not because I wasn’t some sort of tough guy. He didn’t want me to do any strong-arm work or anything like that. Anyway, I managed to convince him I could do the job.”

  “What was this job?”

  “Simple surveillance. Well, as simple as surveillance can be if you don’t want to be spotted. I’m sure you’ve been there.”

  Over the years, Banks had spent many hours in cold cars with only a water bottle to pee in. But not for a long time. Surveillance was a young man’s job. He wouldn’t have the patience now. And the bottle would fill up a lot faster. “Do you remember when Wyman first came to you?”

  “I could find out. Hang on.”

  Tomasina got up and walked back out to her filing cabinets. In a moment she was back carrying a buff folder, which she consulted. “It was the beginning of May.”

  “That long ago,” Banks mused. “What did he ask for?”

  “He gave me an address in Bloomsbury, described a man and asked me if, on certain occasions—he would phone me first—I would watch it, follow the man who left, find out where he went and take photos of him with anyone he met.”

  “Did he tell you why he wanted to do this?”

  “No.”

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  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  “And you just assumed it was all aboveboard?”

  “He seemed all right. I thought, you know, maybe he was gay and he thought his lover was having an affair. It’s happened before. All he wanted was photos. It wasn’t as if he was asking me to hurt anyone or anything.”

  Images of Silbert and Hardcastle in the mortuary f lashed through Banks’s mind. “There’s more than one way of hurting someone.”

  Tomasina f lushed. “You can’t blame me for what happened. You can’t do that.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying that in the wrong hands, photos can be as deadly as a gun. Maybe they were intended for blackmail? Didn’t you think of that?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t. It was just my job to take them. Like I said, he seemed nice enough.”

  “You’re right,” said Banks. “It wasn’t your fault. You were simply doing your job.”

  She was studying his face, he felt, looking for signs so that she could be certain he was telling the truth and not winding her up. In the end, she reached her decision and relaxed visibly. “It was easy enough,”

  she said. “In the early evening, seven o’clock, the man in question would walk up to Euston Road, then across Regent’s Park. Always he would stop and sit on a bench by the Boating Lake and another man would join him.”

  “How many times did you follow him?”

  “Three.”

  “He met the same man every time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “They didn’t talk, but they’d get up and walk together to Saint John’s Wood. You know, the High Street where the cemetery is.”

  “I know it,” said Banks. “And from there they would walk to Charles Lane and enter a house together.”

  “Yes. You know all about it?”

  “We identified the house and street from one of your photos.”

  “Of course,” said Tomasina. “My, my, you do have all the resources, don’t you?”

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  “Taxpayers’ money at work. How long did they stay?”

  “Almost two hours every time.”

  “And then?”

  “When they came out they parted ways. My man usually walked to the tube on Finchley Road.”

  “Usually?”

  “Yes. Once he walked all the way back to Bloomsbury the same way he came.”

  “And the other man?”

  “I never followed him. It wasn’t required.”

  “But which direction did he head in?”

  “North. Toward Hampstead.”

  “On foot?”

  “Yes.”

  “When they got to the house on Charles Lane, who had the key?”

  “Nobody,” said Tomasina.

  “Do you mean they just walked straight in? The door was open?”

  “No. They knocked and someone answered.”

  “Did you actually see this person?”

  “Not really. She was always in the shadows, back from the open door, and she didn’t really show on the photos.”

  “She?”

  “Oh, yes, it was definitely a woman. An elderly woman, I’d say.

  Gray-haired, maybe in her sixties. I could see that much. I just couldn’t describe her features. I had to stand around the corner and use the zoom to avoid being seen. But she was quite small, smartly dressed.”

  “Edith Townsend,” said Banks.

  “Do you know her?”

  “In a way. Did you ever see a man?”

  “No. Just the woman.”

  Lester was probably sitting in the living room reading his Daily Telegraph, Banks thought. So they had been lying to him, as he suspected, which meant they were something to do with Mr. Browne and the spooks. Or the other side. What had Silbert been up to? It wasn’t an affair, Banks was almost certain of that, but were the photos enough to convince Hardcastle that it was? The friendly hand on the 2 1 6

  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  shoulder? With the added Iago-style innuendos and rhetoric, perhaps they were, as Hardcastle was insecure and jealous to begin with. Perhaps Silbert was working part-time, involved in some special project run, or fronted, by the Townsends? “Did your client ask you to investigat
e further when you gave him the memory stick?”

  “No. All he seemed interested in was the photos of the two men together. I mean, I didn’t get the impression that he really cared what they were doing, why they were meeting.”

  “When did you give him the memory stick?”

  “Wednesday afternoon. The end of May. Two weeks ago.”

  “Did you give him prints, too?”

  “Yes. Do you know what it’s all about?”

  “Not really,” Banks said. “I have a few vague ideas, but that’s all they are.”

  “Will you tell me, or is this a one-way street?”

  Banks smiled at her. “It’s a one-way street for the moment, a cul-de-sac, too, as far as I can see.”

  “So that’s it? You come here and use me up and then simply discard me?”

  “ ’Fraid so. Don’t take it so hard, Tomasina. It’s a tough business you’re in. Look on the bright side. You’ve done the right thing. Talked to the police.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ve talked to one policeman who’s already been warned off. Okay, forget it. Is this it, then? You walk out of here and I never see you again?”

  “This is it.” Banks stood up. “But if you need to get in touch, you can call this number.” He scribbled down his new mobile number on the back of his card, handed it to her and walked over to the door.

  “Wait,” she called out behind him. “Will you do just one teeny little thing for me?”

  Banks paused at the door. “It depends on what it is.”

  “The Blue Lamps. Can you get me a ticket for their next show?

  And will you introduce me to Brian?”

  Banks looked back at her. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  12

  BY LATE THURSDAY AFTERNOON, ANNIE HAD HAD

  quite enough of Eastvale Comprehensive and the East Side Estate’s problems. She didn’t want a drink, but she did want a bit of peace and quiet, so she bought a Britvic Orange and hid herself away in the back room of the Horse and Hounds. As usual, there was no one else around but she. It was dim and cool, the perfect place to collect her thoughts and perhaps have another quiet chat with Banks on her mobile.

  Though she still wasn’t convinced by Banks’s wild theories, she was beginning to believe that there was something odd about Derek Wyman and his whole relationship with Mark Hardcastle. What had he got out of it? Was it really just a matter of two film and theater buffs having a drink and a chat every now and then? A couple of anoraks together? Or was there something more ominous behind it? If Wyman really was concerned about Hardcastle’s plan for a professional acting group, then why did he act as if they were the best of friends?