There were certainly plenty of incidents before and after Graham Marshall’s disappearance, Michelle was fast discovering, but none of them seemed to have anything remotely to do with Banks’s riverbank adventure. She read on. In July, police had investigated complaints about a local protection racket modeled on the East London Kray gang operation, allegedly led by a man called Carlo Fiorino, but no charges were brought.

The more she read, the more Michelle realized what a vast chasm yawned between 1965 and today. She had, in fact, been born in 1961, but she was damned if she was going to admit that to Banks. Her own teenage years had been spent in what Banks would no doubt call a musical wasteland made up of The Bay City Rollers, Elton John and Hot Chocolate, not to mention Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Punk came along when she was about fifteen, but Michelle was far too conservative to join in with that crowd. If truth be told, the punks scared her with their torn clothes, spiky hair and safety pins in their ears. And the music just sounded like noise to her.

Not that Michelle had had a great deal of time for pop music; she had been a studious child, lamenting that it always seemed to take her so long to finish her homework when others were done and out on the town. Her mother said she was too much of a perfectionist to let something be and have done with it, and perhaps that was true. Painstaking. Perfectionist. These were labels she had come to know and hate from friends, family and the teachers at school. Why not just say pedestrian and plodding and have done with it, if that was what they meant? she sometimes wondered.

She hadn’t done brilliantly at school, despite all her hard work, but she had managed to pass enough O- and A-Levels to get into a poly – again cramming through all the concerts and parties her fellow students went to – where she had studied business and management techniques before deciding on the police as a career. On those rare occasions when she did have time to go out, late in the seventies, she liked to dance. For that, reggae or two-tone was her music of choice: Bob Marley, The Specials, Madness, UB40.

Michelle had always hated nostalgia snobs, as she called them, and in her experience, the sixties ones were the worst of the lot. She suspected that Banks was one. To hear them talk, you’d think paradise had been lost or the seventh seal broken now that so many of the great rock icons were dead, geriatric, or gaga, and nobody wore beads and caftans anymore, and you’d also think that drug-taking was an innocent way to spend a few hours relaxing, or a means of reaching some exalted spiritual state, instead of a waste of lives and a source of money for evil, unscrupulous dealers.

The archives office was quiet except for the buzzing of the fluorescent light. Silence is a rare thing in a police station, where everyone is pushed together in open-plan offices, but down here Michelle could even hear her watch ticking. After five. Time for a break soon, some fresh air perhaps, and then back down to it.

Reading the crime reports for August, she sensed rather than heard someone approaching the office, and when she looked up, she saw it was Detective Superintendent Benjamin Shaw.

Shaw’s bulk filled the doorway and blocked some of the light from coming in. “What you up to, DI Hart?” he asked.

“Just checking the old logs, sir.”

“I can see that. What for? You won’t find anything there, you know. Not after all this time.”

“I was just having a general look around, trying to get some context for the Marshall case. Actually, I was wondering if-”

“Context? Is that one of those fancy words they taught you at polytechnic? Bloody time-wasting sounds more like it.”

“Sir-”

“Don’t bother to argue, Inspector. You’re wasting your time. What do you expect to find in the dusty old files, apart from context?”

“I was talking to one of Graham Marshall’s friends earlier,” she said. “He told me he was approached by a strange man on the riverbank about two months before the Marshall boy disappeared. I was just trying to see if any similar incidents were on file.”

Shaw sat on the edge of the desk. It creaked and tilted a little. Michelle worried that the damn thing would break under his weight. “And?” he asked. “I’m curious.”

“Nothing so far, sir. Do you remember anything odd like that?”

Shaw frowned. “No. But who is this ‘friend’?”

“He’s called Banks, sir. Alan Banks. Actually, it’s Detective Chief Inspector Banks.”

“Is it, indeed? Banks? The name sounds vaguely familiar. I take it he didn’t report the incident at the time?”

“No, sir. Too scared of what his parents might say.”

“I can imagine. Look, about this Banks chap,” he went on. “I think I’d like a little word with him. Can you arrange it?”

“I’ve got his phone number, sir. But…” Michelle was about to tell Shaw that it was her case and that she didn’t appreciate his poaching her interviews, but she decided it wouldn’t be diplomatic to alienate one of her senior officers at such an early stage of her career in Peterborough. Besides, he might be helpful, having been involved in the original investigation.

“But what?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Good.” Shaw stood up. “We’ll have him in, then. Soon as possible.”

“I know it must seem odd after all these years,” Banks said, “but I’m Alan Banks, and I’ve come to offer my condolences.”

“Alan Banks. Well, I never!” The look of suspicion on Mrs. Marshall’s face was immediately transformed into one of pleasure. She opened the door wide. “Do come in and make yourself at home.”

It was over thirty-six years since Banks had set foot in the Marshall house, and he had a vague memory that the furniture had been made of much darker wood then, heavier and sturdier. Now the sideboard and television stand looked as if they were made of pine. The three-piece suite seemed much bigger, and a huge television dominated one corner of the room.

Even all those years ago, he remembered, he hadn’t been inside Graham’s house often. Some parents kept an open house for their children’s friends, the way his own did, and Dave’s and Paul’s, but the Marshalls were always a bit distant, stand-offish. Graham never spoke about his mum and dad much, either, Banks remembered, but that hadn’t struck him as at all unusual at the time. Kids don’t, except to complain if they’re not allowed to do something or discovered in some deception and have their pocket money stopped. As far as Banks knew, Graham Marshall’s home life was every bit as normal as his own.

His mother had told him that Mr. Marshall had been disabled by a stroke, so he was prepared for the frail, drooling figure staring up at him from the armchair. Mrs. Marshall looked tired and careworn herself, which was hardly surprising, and he wondered how she kept the place so spick-and-span. Maybe the social helped out, as he doubted she could afford a daily.

“Look, Bill, it’s Alan Banks,” said Mrs. Marshall. “You know, one of our Graham’s old friends.”

It was hard to read Mr. Marshall’s expression through the distortions of his face, but his gaze seemed to relax a little when he found out who the visitor was. Banks said hello and sat down. He spotted the old photo of Graham, the one his own father had taken with his Brownie on Blackpool promenade. He had taken one of Banks, too, also wearing a black polo-neck “Beatle” jumper, but without the matching hairstyle.

Mr. Marshall was sitting in the same spot he had always sat in, like Banks’s own father. Back then, he had always seemed to be smoking, but now he looked as if he could hardly lift a cigarette to his lips.

“I understand you’re an important policeman now,” Mrs. Marshall said.

“I don’t know about important, but I’m a policeman, yes.”