Banks looked at his watch. Luckily, it was just after nine o’clock, and he still had time to nip into the off-licence at the corner of Hawthorn Road and buy twenty Silk Cut.
After he had walked about two hundred yards down Hawthorn Road, he took Hawthorn Close to the right, a winding street of big, stone houses that traditionally housed Eastvale’s gentry.
He found number 28, stubbed out his cigarette and walked up the gravel drive, noting the “O” registration Jaguar parked outside the front door. On impulse, he put his hand on the bonnet. Still a little warm.
Barry Stott answered the door, looking grim. Banks thanked him for doing the dirty work and told him he could return to the station and get things organized; then he walked down the hall alone into a spacious white room, complete with a white grand piano. The only contrasting elements were the Turkish carpets and what looked like a genuine Chagall on the wall over the Adam fireplace, where a thick log burned and crackled. A white bookcase held Folio Society editions of the classics, and French windows with white trim led out to the dark garden.
There were three people in the room, all sitting down, and all, by the looks of it, in a state of shock. The woman wore a grey skirt and a blue silk blouse, both of a quality you’d be hard-pushed to find in Eastvale. Her shaggy blonde hair was the expensive kind of shaggy, and it framed an oval face with a pale, flawless complexion, pale blue eyes and beautifully proportioned nose and mouth. All in all, an elegant and attractive woman.
She got up and floated towards him as if in a trance. “Has there been a mistake?” she asked. “Please tell me there’s been a mistake.” She had a hint of a French accent.
Before Banks could say anything, one of the men took her by the elbow and said, “Come on, Sylvie. Sit down.” Then he turned to Banks. “I’m Geoffrey Harrison,” he said. “Deborah’s father. I suppose it’s too much to hope there
has
been a mistake?”
Banks shook his head.
Geoffrey was about six foot two, with the long arms and broad shoulders of a fast bowler. In fact he looked a bit like a famous test cricketer, but Banks couldn’t put a name to him. He was wearing grey trousers with sharp creases and a knitted green V-neck sweater over a white shirt. No tie. He had curly fair hair, with some grey visible around the ears, and a strong, cleft chin, a bit like Kirk Douglas. Everything about his movements and features spoke of power, of someone used to getting his own way. Banks put his age at about forty-five, probably a good ten years older than his wife.
All of a sudden, the realization hit Banks like a bucket of cold water. Christ, he should have known. Should have been able to add it all up. This damn cold must be addling his brain. The man in front of him was Sir Geoffrey Harrison.
Sir
. He had been knighted for services to industry—something to do with leading-edge computers, electronics, microchips and the like—about three years ago. And Deborah Harrison was his daughter.
“Do you have a recent photograph of your daughter, sir?” he asked.
“Over there on the mantelpiece. It was taken last summer.”
Banks walked over and looked at the photograph of the young girl posing on the deck of a yacht. It was probably her
first year in a bikini, Banks guessed, and while she hardly had the figure to fill it out, it still looked good on her. But then anything would probably have looked good on such youth, such energy, such potential.
Deborah was smiling and holding the mast with one hand; with the other she held back a long strand of blonde hair from her face, as if the wind were blowing it out of place. Even though the girl in the picture glowed with health and life, it was the same one who now lay in Eastvale mortuary.
“I’m afraid it’s not a mistake,” he said, glancing at the photograph beside it. It showed two smiling young men in cricket whites, one of them unmistakably Sir Geoffrey, standing together in a quadrangle. The other man, who had his arm casually draped over Sir Geoffrey’s shoulder, could easily have been the other person in the room about twenty-five years ago. Even now, he was still slim and good-looking, though the sandy hair above his high forehead was receding fast and thinning on top. He was wearing what looked like very expensive casual clothes—black cords and a rust-coloured cotton shirt—and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles hung around his neck on a chain. “Michael Clayton,” he said, getting up and shaking Banks’s hand.
“Michael’s my business partner,” said Sir Geoffrey. “And my oldest friend. He’s also Deborah’s godfather.”
“I live just around the corner,” said Clayton. “As soon as Geoff heard the news … well, they phoned me and I came over. Have there been any developments?”
“It’s too early to say,” said Banks. Then he turned to Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison. “Did you know if Deborah was planning on going anywhere after school?”
Sir Geoffrey took a second to refocus, then said, “Only the chess club.”
“Chess club?”
“Yes. At school. They meet every Monday.”
“What time is she usually home?”
Sir Geoffrey looked at his wife. “It’s usually over by six,” Lady Harrison said. “She gets home about quarter past. Sometimes twenty past, if she dawdles with her friends.”
Banks frowned. “It must have been after eight o’clock when Detective Inspector Stott came to break the bad news,” he said. “But you hadn’t reported Deborah missing. Weren’t you worried? Where did you think she was?”
Lady Harrison started to cry. Sir Geoffrey gripped her hand. “We’d only just got in ourselves,” he explained. “I was at a business reception at the Royal Hotel, in York, and the damn fog delayed me. Sylvie was at her health club. Deborah has a key. She
is
sixteen, after all.”
“What time did you get back?”
“About eight o’clock. Within minutes of each other. We thought Deborah might have been home and gone out again, but that wasn’t like her, not without letting us know, and certainly not on a night like this. There was no note, no sign she’d been here. Deborah’s not … well, she usually leaves her school blazer over the back of a chair, if you see what I mean.”
“I do.” Banks’s daughter Tracy was just as untidy.
“Anyway, we were worried she might have been kidnapped or something. We were just about to phone the police when Inspector Stott arrived.”
“Have there ever been any kidnap threats?”
“No, but one hears about such things.”
“Could your daughter have been carrying anything of value? Cash, credit cards, anything?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Her satchel was open. I was just wondering why.”
Sir Geoffrey shook his head.
Banks turned to Michael Clayton. “Did you see Deborah at all this evening?”
“No. I was at home until I got Geoff’s phone call.”
Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison sat on the white sofa, shoulders slumped, holding hands like a couple of teenagers. Banks sat on the edge of the armchair and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees.
“Inspector Stott says Deborah was found in St Mary’s graveyard,” Sir Geoffrey said. “Is that true?”
Banks nodded.
Anger suffused Sir Geoffrey’s face. “Have you talked to that bloody vicar yet? That pervert?”
“Daniel Charters?”
“That’s him. You know what he’s been accused of, don’t you?”
“Making a homosexual advance.”
Sir Geoffrey nodded. “Exactly. If I were you, I’d—”
“Please, Geoffrey,” Sylvie said, plucking at his sleeve. “Calm down. Let the chief inspector talk.”
Sir Geoffrey ran his hand through his hair. “Yes, of course. I apologize.”
Why such animosity towards Charters? Banks wondered. But that was best left for later. Sir Geoffrey was distraught; it wouldn’t be a good idea to press him any further just now.
“May I have a look at Deborah’s room?” he asked.
Sylvie nodded and stood up. “I’ll show you.”
Banks followed her up a broad, white-carpeted staircase. What a hell of a job it would be to keep the place clean, he found himself thinking. Sandra would never put up with white carpets or upholstery. Still, he didn’t suppose the Harrisons did the cleaning themselves.
Sylvie opened the door to Deborah’s room, then excused herself and went back downstairs. Banks turned on the light. It was bigger, but in much the same state of disarray as Tracy’s. Clothes lay tossed all over the floor, the bed was unmade, a mound of rumpled sheets, and the closet door stood open on a long rail of dresses, blouses, jackets and jeans. Expensive stuff, too, Banks saw as he looked at some of the designer labels.
Deborah’s computer, complete with CD-ROM, sat on the desk under the window. Beside that stood a bookcase filled mostly with science and computer textbooks and a few bodice-rippers. Banks searched through all the drawers but found nothing of interest. Of course, it would have helped if he had known what he was looking for.
Arranged in custom shelving on a table by the foot of the bed were a mini-hi-fi system, a small colour television and a video— all with remote controls. Banks glanced through some of the CDs. Unlike Tracy, Deborah seemed to favour the rough, grungy
style of popular music: Hole, Pearl Jam, Nirvana. A large poster of Kurt Cobain was tacked to the wall next to a smaller poster of River Phoenix.
Banks closed the door behind him and walked back down the stairs. He could hear Sylvie crying in the white room and Sir Geoffrey and Michael Clayton in muffled conversation. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, and when he moved close, they saw him through the open door and asked him back in.
“I have just one more question, Sir Geoffrey, if I may?” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“Did your daughter keep a diary? I know mine does. They seem to be very popular among teenage girls.”
Sir Geoffrey thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I think so. Michael bought her one last Christmas.”
Clayton nodded. “Yes. One of the leather-bound kind, a page per day.”
Banks turned back to Sir Geoffrey. “Do you know where she kept it?”
He frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t. Sylvie?”
Sylvie shook her head. “She told me she lost it.”
“When was this?”
“About the beginning of term. I hadn’t seen it for a while, so I asked her if she’d stopped writing it. Why? Is it important?”
“Probably not,” said Banks. “It’s just that sometimes what we don’t find is as important as what we do. Trouble is, we never really know until later. Anyway, I won’t bother you any further tonight.”
“Inspector Stott said I’d have to identify the body,” Sir Geoffrey said. “You’ll make the arrangements?”
“Of course. Again, sir, my condolences.”
Sir Geoffrey nodded, then he turned back to his wife. Like a butler, Banks was dismissed.
VI
What with one thing and another, it was after two in the morning when Banks parked the dark-blue Cavalier he had finally bought to
replace his clapped-out Cortina in front of his house. After Hawthorn Close, it was good to be back in the normal world of semis with postage-stamp gardens, Fiestas and Astras parked in the street.
The first thing he did was tiptoe upstairs to check on Tracy. It was foolish, he knew, but after seeing Deborah Harrison’s body, he felt the need to see his own daughter alive and breathing.
The amber glow from the street-lamp outside her window lit the faint outline of Tracy’s sleeping figure. Every so often, she would turn and give a little sigh, as if she were dreaming. Softly, Banks closed her door again and went back downstairs to the living-room, careful to bypass the creaky third stair from the top. Despite the late hour, he didn’t feel at all tired.
He turned on the shaded table lamp and poured himself a stiff Laphroaig, hoping to put the image of Deborah Harrison spread-eagled in the graveyard out of his mind.
After five minutes, Banks hadn’t succeeded in getting his mind off the subject. Music would help. “Music alone with sudden charms can bind / The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind,” as Congreve had said. Surely it wouldn’t wake Sandra or Tracy if he played a classical CD quietly?
He flipped through his quickly growing collection—he was sure that they multiplied overnight—and settled finally on Richard Strauss’s
Four Last Songs
.
In the middle of the second song, “September,” when Gundula Janowitz’s crystalline soprano was soaring away with the melody, Banks topped up his Laphroaig and lit a cigarette.
Before he had taken more than three or four drags, the door opened and Tracy popped her head around.
“What are you doing up?” Banks whispered.
Tracy rubbed her eyes and walked into the room. She was wearing a long, sloppy nightshirt with a picture of a giant panda on the front. Though she was seventeen, it made her look like a little girl.
“I thought I heard someone in my room,” Tracy muttered. “I couldn’t get back to sleep so I came down for some milk. Oh, Dad! You’re smoking again.”
Banks put his finger to his lips. “Shhh! Your mother.” He looked at the cigarette guiltily. “So I am.”
“And you promised.”
“I never did.” Banks hung his head in shame. There was nothing like a teenage daughter to make you feel guilty about your bad habits, especially with all the anti-smoking propaganda they were brainwashed with at school these days.
“You did, too.” Tracy came closer. “Is something wrong? Is that why are you’re up so late smoking and drinking?”
She sat on the arm of the sofa and looked at him, sleep-filled eyes full of concern, long blonde hair straggling over her narrow shoulders. Banks’s son, Brian, who was away studying architecture in Portsmouth, took after his father, but Tracy took after her mother.
They had come a long way since the bitter arguments over her first boyfriend, long since dumped, and too many late nights over the summer. Now Tracy had determined not to have a boyfriend at all this year, but to put all her efforts into getting good A-level results so she could go to university, where she wanted to study history. Banks couldn’t help but approve. As he looked at her perching so frail and vulnerable on the edge of the sofa his heart swelled with pride in her, and with fear for her.