“Mr. Banks?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

Banks stood up. “Yes.”

“I’m Detective Inspector Hart. Please follow me.” She led him to an interview room. It felt very strange being on the receiving end, Banks thought, and he got an inkling of the discomfort some of his interviewees must have felt. He looked around. Though it was a different county, the basics were still the same as every interview room he had ever seen: table and chairs bolted to the floor, high window covered by a grille, institutional green paint on the walls, and that unforgettable smell of fear.

There was nothing to worry about, of course, but Banks couldn’t help feeling just a little nervous as DI Hart put on her silver-rimmed oval reading glasses and shuffled the papers around in front of her, as he had done many times himself, to draw out the tension and cause anxiety in the person sitting opposite. It touched the raw nerve of his childhood fear of authority, even though he knew he was authority himself, now. Banks had always been aware of that irony, but a situation like this one really brought it home.

He also felt that DI Hart didn’t need to act this way with him, that she was putting on too much of a show. His fault, perhaps, for not saying who he was, but even so, it was a bit heavy-handed to talk to him in an official interview room. He had come in voluntarily, and he was neither a witness nor a suspect. She could have found an empty office and sent for coffee. But what would he have done? The same, probably; it was the “us and them” mentality, and in her mind he was a civilian. Them.

DI Hart stopped playing with her papers and broke the silence. “So you say you can help with the Graham Marshall investigation?”

“Perhaps,” said Banks. “I knew him.”

“Have you any idea at all what might have happened to him?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Banks. He had intended to tell her everything but found it wasn’t as easy as that. Not yet. “We just hung around together.”

“What was he like?”

“Graham? It’s hard to say,” said Banks. “I mean, you don’t think about things like that when you’re kids, do you?”

“Try now.”

“He was deep, I think. Quiet, at any rate. Most kids joked around, did stupid stuff, but Graham was always more serious, more reserved.” Banks remembered the small, almost secret smile as Graham had watched others act out comic routines – as if he didn’t find them funny but knew he had to smile. “You never felt you were fully privy to what was going on in his mind,” he added.

“You mean he kept secrets?”

“Don’t we all?”

“What were his?”

“They wouldn’t have been secrets if I knew them, would they? I’m just trying to give you some sense of what he was like. There was a secretive side to his nature.”

“Go on.”

She was becoming edgy, Banks thought. Rough day, probably, and not enough help. “We did all the usual stuff together: played football and cricket, listened to music, talked about our favorite TV shows.”

“What about girlfriends?”

“Graham was a good-looking kid. The girls liked him, and he liked them, but I don’t think he had anyone steady.”

“What kind of mischief did he get up to?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to incriminate myself, but we broke a window or two, did a bit of shoplifting, played truant, and we smoked cigarettes behind the cycle sheds at school. Pretty much normal stuff for teenagers back then. We didn’t break into anyone’s home, steal cars or mug old ladies.”

“Drugs?”

“This was 1965, for crying out loud.”

“Drugs were around back then.”

“How would you know? You probably weren’t even born.”

Michelle reddened. “I know King Harold got an arrow in his eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and I wasn’t born then.”

“Okay. Point taken. But drugs…? Not us, at any rate. Cigarettes were about the worst we did back then. Drugs may have been increasingly popular with the younger generation in London, but not with fourteen-year-old kids in a provincial backwater. Look, I should probably have done this before, but…” He reached into his inside pocket and took out his warrant card, laying it on the desk in front of her.

Michelle looked at it a minute, picked it up and looked more closely, then slid it back across the desk to Banks. She took off her reading glasses and set them on the table. “Prick,” she whispered.

“Come again?”

“You heard me. Why didn’t you tell me from the start you were a DCI instead of playing games and stringing me along, making me feel like a complete fool?”

“Because I didn’t want to give the impression I was trying to interfere. I’m simply here as someone who knew Graham. Besides, why did you have to come on so heavy-handed? I came here to volunteer information. There was no need to put me in an interview room and use the same tactics you use on a suspect. I’m surprised you didn’t leave me here alone to stew for an hour.”

“You’re making me wish I had.”

They glared at each other in silence for a few moments, then Banks said, “Look, I’m sorry. I had no intention of making you feel foolish. And you don’t need to. Why should you? It’s true that I knew Graham. We were close friends at school. We lived on the same street. But this isn’t my case, and I don’t want you to think I’m pushing my nose in or anything. That’s why I didn’t announce myself at first. I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have told you I was on the Job right from the start. Okay?”

Michelle gazed at him through narrowed eyes for a while, then twitched the corners of her lips in a brief smile and nodded. “Your name came up when I was talking to his parents. I would have got in touch eventually.”

“The powers that be not exactly overwhelming you with assistance on this one, then?”

Michelle snorted. “You could say that. One DC. It’s not a high priority case, and I’m the new kid on the block. New girl.”

“I know what you mean,” Banks said. He remembered first meeting Annie Cabbot when she was put out to pasture at Harkside and he was in Outer Siberia back in Eastvale. That hadn’t been a high priority case to start with, either, but it had turned into one. He could sympathize with DI Hart.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I didn’t know you were a copper. I suppose I should call you ‘sir’? Rank and all?”

“Not necessary. I’m not one to stand on ceremony. Besides, I’m on your patch here. You’re the boss. I do have a suggestion, though.”

“Oh?”

Banks looked at his watch. “It’s one o’clock. I drove down from Eastvale this morning without stopping and I haven’t had a thing to eat. Why don’t we get out of this depressing room and talk about Graham over lunch? I’ll pay.”

Michelle raised on eyebrow. “You asking me out to lunch?”

“To discuss the case. Over lunch. Yes. Dammit, I’m hungry. Know any decent pubs around here?”

She gazed at him again, apparently appraising him for any imminent risk he might pose to her. When she couldn’t seem to think of anything, she said, “Okay. I know a place. Come on. But I’m paying my own way.”

What a stupid bloody decision it had been to take to the high ground, Annie Cabbot thought as she trudged illegally up the footpath, trying to avoid the little clusters of sheep droppings that seemed to be everywhere, and failing as often as not. Her legs ached and she was panting with effort, even though she thought of herself as pretty fit.

She wasn’t dressed for a walk in the country, either. Knowing she was visiting the Armitages again that morning, she had dressed in a skirt and blouse. She was even wearing tights. Not to mention the navy pumps that were crippling her. It was a hot day, and she could feel the sweat trickling along every available channel. Stray tresses of hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead.

As she climbed, she kept glancing behind at the shepherd’s shelter, but nobody approached it. She could only hope that she hadn’t been spotted, that the kidnapper, if that was what this was all about, wasn’t watching her through binoculars from a comfortable distance.