“Did Luke have any close friends at school, any other pupils he might have confided in?”

“I really can’t say. He always seemed to be a bit of a loner. We encourage group activities, of course, but you can’t always… I mean, you can’t force people to be sociable, can you?”

Banks opened his briefcase and slipped out the artist’s impression of the girl Josie Batty had seen going to HMV with Luke. “Do you recognize this girl?” he asked, not sure of how close a likeness it was.

Barlow squinted at it, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t say as I do. I’m not saying we don’t have pupils who affect that general look, but not very many, and nobody quite like this.”

“So you’ve never seen her or anyone like her with Luke?”

“No.”

Banks returned the sketch to his briefcase. “What about his schoolwork? Did he show any promise?”

“Enormous promise. His work in math left a lot to be desired, but when it came to English and music, he was remarkably gifted.”

“What about the other subjects?”

“Good enough for university, if that’s what you mean. Especially languages and social studies. You could tell that even at his early age. Unless…”

“What?”

“Well, unless he went off the rails. I’ve seen it happen before with bright and sensitive pupils. They fall in with the wrong crowd, neglect their work… You can guess the rest.”

Banks, who had gone off the rails a bit himself after Graham’s disappearance, could. “Were there any teachers Luke was particularly close to?” he asked. “Anyone who might be able to tell me a bit more about him?”

“Yes. You might try Ms. Anderson. Lauren Anderson. She teaches English and art history. Luke was way ahead of his classmates in his appreciation of literature, and in its composition, and I believe Ms. Anderson gave him extra tutoring.”

Lauren Anderson’s name had come up in the company’s records of Luke’s cell phone calls, Banks remembered. “Is that something the school does often?”

“If the student seems likely to benefit from it, then yes, certainly. You have to understand that we get such a broad range of abilities and interests, and we have to pitch our teaching level just a little above the middle. Too high and you lose most of the class, too low and the brighter students become bored and distracted. But it’s not all as bad as they say it is in the newspapers. We’re lucky in that we have a lot of passionate and committed teachers at Eastvale Comprehensive. Ms. Anderson is one of them. Luke was also taking violin lessons after school.”

“Yes, he had a violin in his bedroom.”

“I told you, he’s not your common-or-garden pupil.” Barlow paused for a moment, staring out the window. “Wasn’t. We’ll miss him.”

“Even if you hardly knew he was there?”

“I was probably overstating the case,” Barlow said with a frown. “Luke had a certain presence. What I meant was that he just didn’t make a lot of noise or demand a lot of attention.”

“Who was giving him violin lessons?”

“Our music teacher, Alastair Ford. He’s quite a skilled player himself. Plays with a local string quartet. Strictly amateur, of course. You might have heard of them; they’re called the Aeolian Quartet. I understand they’re very good, though I must admit that my tastes edge more toward Miles than Mahler.”

The Aeolian. Banks had, indeed, heard of them. Not only that, but he had heard them. The last time was shortly after Christmas, at the community center with Annie Cabbot. They had played Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet and made a very good job of it, Banks remembered.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” he asked, standing to leave.

“I don’t think there is,” said Barlow. “All in all, Luke Armitage was a bit of a dark horse.”

As they walked through to the hall, Banks felt certain he caught a flurry of blond hair and long leg ducking through a doorway, but he could have been mistaken. Why would Rose Barlow want to listen in on their conversation, anyway?

The rain seemed to have settled in for the day after a short afternoon respite, a constant drizzle from a sky the color of dirty dishwater, when Annie did the rounds of Luke’s final ports of call. She found out nothing from the HMV staff, perhaps because they had such a high turnover and it was a large shop, hard to keep an eye on everyone. No one recognized the sketch. Besides, as one salesperson told her, many of the kids who shopped there looked pretty much the same. Black clothing wasn’t exactly unusual as far as HMV’s customers were concerned, nor was body-piercing or tattoos.

She fared little better at the computer shop on North Market Street. Gerald Kelly, the sole proprietor and staff member, remembered just about all his customers, but he had seen no one resembling the girl in black with Luke, who had always been alone on his visits to the shop.

Annie had just one last call. Norman’s Used Books was a dank, cramped space down a flight of stone steps under a bakery, one of several shops that seemed to be set right into the church walls in the market square. The books all smelled of mildew, but you could find the most obscure things sometimes. Annie herself had shopped there once or twice, looking for old art books, and had even found some decent prints among the boxes the owner kept at the back of the shop, though they were sometimes warped and discolored because of the damp.

The roof was so low and the small room so full of books – not only in cases against the walls, but piled up haphazardly on tables, ready to teeter over if you so much as breathed on them – that you had to stoop and make your way around the place very carefully. It must have been even harder for Luke, Annie thought, as he was taller and more gangly than her.

The owner himself, Norman Wells, was just a little over five feet, with thin brown hair, a bulbous sort of face and rheumy eyes. Because it was so cold and damp down there, no matter what the weather was like up above, he always wore a moth-eaten gray cardigan, woolly gloves with the fingers cut off and an old Leeds United scarf. He couldn’t make much of a living out of the little shop, Annie thought, though she doubted the overheads were very high. Even in the depths of winter a one-element electric fire was the only source of heat.

Norman Wells glanced up from the paperback he was reading and nodded in Annie’s direction. He seemed surprised when she showed her warrant card and spoke to him.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he said, taking off his reading glasses, which hung on a piece of string around his neck.

“I’ve been here once or twice.”

“Thought so. I never forget a face. Art, isn’t it?”

“Pardon?”

“Your interest. Art.”

“Oh, yes.” Annie showed him a photograph of Luke. “Remember him?”

Wells looked alarmed. “Course I do. He’s the lad who disappeared, isn’t he? One of your lot was around the other day asking about him. I told him all I know.”

“I’m sure you did, Mr. Wells,” said Annie, “but things have changed. It’s a murder investigation now and we have to go over the ground afresh.”

“Murder? That lad?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Bloody hell. I hadn’t heard. Who’d…? He wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Did you know him well, then?”

“Well? No, I wouldn’t say that. But we talked.”

“What about?”

“Books. He knew a lot more than most kids his age. His reading level was way beyond that of his contemporaries.”

“How do you know?”

“I… Never mind.”

“Mr. Wells?”

“Let’s just say I used to be a teacher, that’s all. I know about these things, and that lad was bordering on genius.”

“I understand he bought two books from you on his last visit.”

“Yes, like I told the other copper. Crime and Punishment and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”