Banks gripped the back of the chair so hard his knuckles turned white. “Spare me your erotic memoirs, John,” he said. “They might make me do something I’ll regret. You might not realize it, but I’m exercising great restraint as it is.”

Spinks laughed. A little more drool dripped down his chin. Banks felt so much like clocking him one that he had to look away. “Who was in the house that day?”

“What?”

“You heard. Who else was there as well as you?”

“Oh. Didn’t I already tell you that? I seem to remember-”

“Humor me. Tell me again.”

“Right. There was Debbie’s mother, the blonde bitch. And that stuck-up prick Clayton. Fucking snobs.”

“And Deborah wasn’t there?”

“I already told you. No.” Spinks’s head started to roll from side to side. The drugs, whatever they were, wearing off. Either that or he had sustained more than superficial damage in the car crash. Just as well they had sent for Dr. Burns.

“When you went to the house and found Michael Clayton there,” Banks asked, “did you get the feeling that there was anything going on?”

Spinks closed his eyes. His head stopped lolling. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“Did you interrupt anything?”

“Interrupt?”

“Stop behaving like a parrot. Did you get the feeling there was anything going on between them?”

Spinks frowned and wiped the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes opened again and seemed to keep shifting in and out of focus. “Going on?” he repeated. “You mean was he fucking her? You mean do I think Clayton was fucking the wicked witch?” He laughed out loud.

Banks waited patiently until he had stopped. “Well,” he said. “Do you?”

“You’ve got a dirty mind. Do you know that?”

“Do you?”

Spinks shrugged. “Could’ve been, for all I know.”

“But you didn’t notice anything special about them, the way they behaved towards one another?”

“No.”

“Were they both fully dressed?”

“Course they were.”

“Did they look disheveled at all?”

“Come again. Dish what?”

“See what I mean about the need for compulsory education? It means messed up, ruffled, untidy.”

“Oh. No. I don’t think so. Can’t really remember, though.”

“Did Deborah ever say anything about them?”

He shook his head, stopped abruptly and opened his mouth as if to say something, then carried on shaking it. “No.”

Banks leaned forward on the chair back. The two front legs raised off the floor. “What were you going to tell me, John?”

“Nothing. She never said nothing.” He coughed and a mouthful of yellow vomit dribbled down his chin onto his T-shirt. The smell was terrible: booze, cheese-and-onion crisps and tacos. Banks stood up and stepped back.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door and Susan Gay came in, followed by Dr. Burns, the police surgeon, whose surgery was just across the market square.

“Sorry, sir,” Susan said, “but the doctor’s here.”

“Right,” said Banks, shaking hands with Burns. “He’s all yours. I’ve had enough. Take good care of him, Nick. I might want to talk to him again.”

And as he walked back to his own office, he had the strange feeling that not only had Spinks been holding back, hiding something, but that he, himself, hadn’t even been asking the right questions. Something was eluding him, and he knew from experience that it would drive him around the bend until he thought of it.

Banks took a deep breath outside Michael Clayton’s house on Saturday morning, then he got out of his car and walked up the garden path. If Chief Constable Riddle found out about this, Banks’s life probably wouldn’t be worth living.

Clayton’s house wasn’t quite as large as the Harrisons ’, but it was an impressive enough construction, solidly built of redbrick and sandstone, detached and surrounded by an unkempt garden. The lawn looked as if it hadn’t been trimmed yet this year, and weeds choked the flower-beds.

After he rang the doorbell the first time, Banks heard nothing but silence and began to suspect that Clayton was out. He tried again. About thirty seconds later, just as he was about to head off down the path, the door opened and Clayton stuck his head out.

“Yes, what is it?” he asked crossly. “Oh, it’s you, Chief Inspector.” He moved aside and opened the door fully. “You’d better come in. Sorry about the mess.”

Banks followed him through a door from the hallway into a room full of computer equipment. At least three computers, state-of-the-art, by the look of them, sat on their desks, two of them displaying similar graphic images. These were incomprehensible to Banks, and looked like a cross between circuit diagrams and the molecular structures he remembered from school chemistry. They were all multi-colored, and some of the nodes and pathways between them flashed, different on each screen. The third VDU showed a deck of cards set out in what Banks recognized as the solitaire “pyramid” fashion.

“I always have a game going when I’m working,” Clayton said, smiling. “It helps me concentrate. Don’t ask me why.”

The floor was a mass of snaking cables and Banks trod carefully not to trip over any of them.

He could almost feel the room vibrating with the electrical hum running through them.

Clayton cleared a stack of computer magazines from a hard-backed chair. Banks almost asked him what the diagrams on the screens were, but he knew that either Clayton wouldn’t tell him or he wouldn’t understand anyway. Best not start off looking like an ignoramus.

Sheets of paper hissed as they slid out of a laser printer. One of the computers started to emit a loud, pulsating beep. Clayton excused himself while he went over and hit a few keys.

“Diagnostic programs,” he said when he got back.

Well, that was clear enough, Banks thought. Even he knew what diagnostic programs were. Though what they were supposed to diagnose was another matter entirely.

“Computers,” Clayton went on. “They’ve changed the world, Chief Inspector. Nothing is the same as when you and I were children. And they’re still changing it. Believe me, in the not-too-distant future, nothing will be the same as it is now. But I don’t suppose you came here to talk technology with me, did you? Are you coming to apologize?”

“What for?”

“For letting the bastard who killed Deborah slip through the cracks. I was there, you know, in court with Geoff and Sylvie. They’re devastated. And I’ve hardly been able to concentrate on my work since then. How could you let it happen?”

Banks shrugged. “I’ve seen it happen more often than you have. We’re not living in a perfect world.”

“You can say that again. I don’t know what the procedure is now, but if I can help in any way…” Clayton scratched his smooth chin. “Look, I’ve heard one or two disturbing rumors about this Pierce fellow beating up young girls and raping them. Is that true?”

“I can’t comment on that,” said Banks.

“But there is some evidence that wasn’t admissible, isn’t there? Something that might have got him convicted if it had been heard in the trial?”

“The judge rules on matters of law,” Banks said. “So there might be a strong basis for the appeal. That’s really all I can tell you at the moment.”

Clayton paused and glanced quickly around at the computer screens. “Well, Chief Inspector, thank you for bringing me up to date. Can I help in any way?”

Banks leaned forward. “As a matter of fact, there is something. One of the results of the court’s decision is that we have decided to reopen the case and examine some of the other angles again.”

Clayton frowned. “I don’t understand. Did you get the right man or didn’t you?”

“The jury thinks we didn’t.”

“But what about you. You know more about him than you’re ever allowed to tell the jury. What do you think?”