Strange Affair (8 page)

Banks didn’t want to tie up the mobile again in case Roy got his message back at the house and phoned, so he sought out a public phone box and dug out an old phone card from his wallet. He felt as if he were walking into the tin hut where the Japanese locked Alec Guinness in
The Bridge on the River Kwai
. Sweat trickled down his sides, tickling as it ran, sticking his shirt to his skin. Someone had crushed a bluebottle against the glass, making a long smear of dark blood. He could even smell the warm paper of the telephone directory.

Banks took out his notebook and dialled the number he had copied from Roy’s mobile. Just as he was about to hang up, a breathless voice came on the line.

“Hello?”

“Corinne?”

“Yes. Who is it?”

“My name’s Alan Banks. Roy’s brother. You might remember me. We met at my parents’ wedding anniversary party in Peterborough last October.”

“Of course. I remember.”

“Look, I’m down in London and I was wondering if we could get together somewhere and have a chat. Maybe over a drink or something?”

There was a pause, then she said, “Are you asking me out?”

“No. Sorry. I’m getting this all wrong. Please excuse me. Blame the heat. I mean, that’s why I thought a drink might be a good idea. Somewhere cool, if there is such a place.”

“Yes, it
is
hot, isn’t it. What do you mean, then? I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“I just need to pick your brains, that’s all.”

“I remember. You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but that’s not why…I mean, it’s nothing official.”

“Well, you’ve certainly got my attention. You could come over to the flat.” She paused. “I’ve got an electric fan in the office.”

“Have you got a computer?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Great,” said Banks. “When would be convenient?”

“Well, I’ve got a meeting with a client this afternoon – I’m afraid free weekends are never a given if you’re an accountant out on your own – but I should be done by early evening. Say five o’clock?”

Banks looked at his watch. It was half past three. “All right,” he said.

“Good. Have you got a pen and paper handy? I’ll give you my address.”

Banks wrote down the address and listened to Corinne’s directions. Just off Earl’s Court Road. Not far from Roy’s at all, then, though another world entirely. He thanked her again, escaped the sweatbox and headed back to the pub.

By the time Annie had walked over the bridge and along the lane to Banks’s cottage, she had just about succeeded in regaining her equilibrium. The builders had got as far as restoring the roof. From the outside, the place looked perfectly normal, and one might even think someone lived there if it weren’t for the lack of curtains and the overflowing skip. Because it was Saturday, there were no workmen around, though given how
slow they had been, Annie thought, the least they could do was put in a few extra hours to help get Banks back where he belonged. After all, they’d been on the job close to four months now.

It was the first time Annie had been back there since the night of the fire, and just seeing the place evoked painful memories: the feel of the wet blanket she wrapped around herself; the fire bursting out as she broke the door open; the smoke in her eyes and throat; Banks’s dead weight as she dragged him towards the door; Winsome’s strength as she helped them over the last few feet, a distance Annie thought she couldn’t make alone; lying there on the muddy ground sputtering, looking at Banks’s still figure and fearing him dead. And, almost worst of all, remembering Phil Keane’s silver BMW disappearing up the hill as Winsome had first turned into Banks’s drive.

She took a moment to bring herself back to the present. Jennifer Clewes had Banks’s address in her back pocket, but it was
this
address, Annie reminded herself. Why was that? She noticed tire tracks in the dust, but they could have been anyone’s. The builders, for example. And despite the sign that said Beckside Lane was a cul-de-sac
and
a private drive, cars often turned into it by mistake. Even so, she made certain not to disturb the tracks.

Annie walked up to the front door of the cottage. Though the building wasn’t finished inside, she guessed that the builders would keep it locked to discourage squatters, and because they might sometimes leave their expensive tools there overnight. Which was why the splintering around the lock immediately caught her attention. She leaned closer and saw that it looked fresh. The door was new and not yet painted, and the splintered wood was clean and sharp.

Annie’s protective gloves were back in the boot of her car, so she used her foot to nudge open the door gently and kept her hands in her pockets. Inside, the place was a mess, but a builder’s mess, not a burglar’s, by the looks of it. The rooms were divided and the ceiling beams in place, and most of the plasterboarding had been finished except the wall between the living room and the kitchen. It felt odd to be standing there smelling sawdust and sheared metal rather than peat smoke, Annie thought. The stairs looked finished, solid enough, and after a tentative step she ventured up. The once-familiar bedroom was a mere skeleton, with builders’ calculations and blueprints scrawled on the walls in pencil. The second bedroom was similarly bare.

Annie went back downstairs and out to the lane. As she walked away, she turned once more and looked back.
Someone
had broken into the cottage, and recently. She assumed the builders had locked up when they left on Friday, though she would have to check with them to be certain. It could have been thieves of course, but that seemed too much of a coincidence. Annie realized that she would have to bring in Stefan Nowak and the SOCOs to see if they could establish any links between Jennifer Clewes’s car and Banks’s cottage.

If it was the same person who had killed Jennifer Clewes, Annie reasoned, then he must have got hold of Banks’s address by some other means, because Jennifer Clewes had it in the back pocket of her jeans. Perhaps he already knew where Banks lived and, when he had guessed where she was going, and when he had got to a desolate, isolated stretch of road, he had shot Jennifer and then carried on to Banks’s cottage. To do what? Kill him, too? It would certainly make more sense to handle them one at a time.

But Banks hadn’t been there; he’d been about a quarter of a mile away, in his temporary flat. Had Banks any idea of what was going on? Was that why he had taken off so early in the morning? That was the big question, Annie realized, heading back up the hill to her car. How much did Banks know and how safe was he now? And she knew that she probably wouldn’t find out the answer to either question until she found the man himself.

Corinne lived in the first-floor flat of a four-storey building, overlooking the narrow street, not more than fifty yards away from Earl’s Court Road. She looked different from the young girl Banks met at his parents’, he thought, as she greeted him at the door and asked him in. Her hair was longer, for a start, almost down to her shoulders, and it was blond with dark roots. The little stud was gone from below her lip, leaving a small flaw in her clear skin, and she looked closer to thirty than to twenty. She also seemed more self-possessed, more mature than Banks remembered her.

“Come into the back,” she said. “That’s where the office is.” An electric fan stood on the table by the open window, slowly turning through about ninety degrees every few seconds, sending out waves of lukewarm air. It was better than nothing.

“Everyone seems to work at home these days,” Banks said, sitting in a winged armchair. Corinne sat at an angle to him, cross-legged, the way some women seem to prefer, and he guessed that this was the space she used to discuss business when clients called at the house. A jug of water thick with ice cubes sat on the table between them, along with two tumblers. Corinne managed to stretch her upper body forward and pour them both a glass while remaining cross-legged. Quite a
feat, Banks thought, considering he couldn’t even sit in that position comfortably in the first place. But Corinne seemed to move with a dancer’s grace and economy that spoke of Pilates and yoga.

“They say tea’s refreshing in hot weather,” she said, “but the thought of drinking anything hot doesn’t have much appeal at the moment.”

“This is fine,” said Banks. “Thank you.”

Corinne was wearing a plain orange T-shirt tucked into her jeans, and she wore a Celtic cross on a silver chain around her neck. She was barefoot, Banks noticed, and her toenails were unpainted. Occasionally, as she talked or listened, her heart-shaped face would tilt to one side, she would bite her lower lip and her fingers would stray to the cross. Sunlight gilded the leaves outside the window and their shadows danced pavanes over the pale blue walls, stirred by the lightest of breezes.

“Well,” she said, “I must say you had me all intrigued on the telephone. I’m sorry if I…”

“My fault entirely. I wasn’t being clear. I hope you don’t take me for the kind of man who goes chasing his brother’s fiancée?”

She gave a brief, tight little smile that indicated to Banks that perhaps all was not as it should be in the fiancée department, but he let it go for the time being. She would get to it in her own time, if she wanted.

“Anyway,” he went on, “it’s Roy I want to talk to you about.”

“What about him?”

“Do you have any idea where he is?”

“What do you mean?”

Banks explained about the phone call, Roy’s absence and that the door had been left unlocked.

“That’s not like him,” she said, frowning. “None of it is. I can see why you’d be worried. Anyway, to answer your question,
no, I don’t know where he is. Do you think you should go to the police? I mean, I know you
are
the police, but…”

“I know what you mean,” said Banks. “No, I don’t think so. Not yet, at any rate. I don’t think they’d be very interested. Roy’s a grown-up. There could still be a simple explanation. Do you know any of his friends?”

“Not really. There was another couple we used to go out with occasionally, Rupert and Natalie, but I don’t think Roy has a lot of close friends.”

Banks didn’t miss the “used to” but he let it go for the moment. There was a Rupert in Roy’s mobile phone book. Banks would ring him eventually, along with the rest of the names. “Do you know a burly man with curly grey or fair hair?” he asked. “He drives a big light-coloured car, an expensive model?”

Corinne thought for a moment, then she said, “No. Sorry. Rupert drives a slate grey Beemer and Natalie’s got a little Beetle runaround.” She turned up her nose. “A yellow one.”

“When did you last see Roy?”

“A week last Thursday.” She fingered the cross. “Look, I might as well tell you, things haven’t being going all that well for us lately.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Any particular reason?”

“I think he’s been seeing someone else.” She gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t matter, really. I mean, it’s not as if it was serious. We’ve only been going out about a year. We’re not living together or anything.”

“But I thought you were supposed to be engaged?”

“I think that was part of the problem, really. I mean, I’d brought it up, and Roy’s impulsive. Neither of us is ready for marriage yet. We called it off, went back to the way we were.

That was when the trouble started. I don’t suppose you can take a big step back like that and expect a relationship to continue the way it was, can you?”

So the engagement had been postponed, or demoted to going steady, and the relationship had cooled, like Banks and Michelle’s. Little brother up to his usual tricks. At least Corinne was to be spared the indignity of being wife number four. “Even so,” Banks said, “it must still hurt. I’m sorry. Have you any idea
who
he’s seeing?”

“No. I don’t even know if I’m right for sure. It’s just a feeling. You know, little things.”

Well, Banks thought, there were a few possible names and numbers in Roy’s mobile phone book and call list. “How recently?” he asked.

“Just this past few weeks.”

“And before that?”

“Things were fine. At least I thought they were.”

“Was there anything bothering him when you saw him last?”