“In Harkside? You must be joking.” Annie led him through to the living room. It was small but cozy, and she had decorated much of it in whites, lemons and creams because of the lack of outside light. As a result, the room seemed airy and cheerful. There was just enough space for a small white three-piece suite, the settee of which would probably seat two very thin people, a TV, mini-stereo and a small bookcase under the window. Several miniature watercolors hung on the walls. Local scenes, mostly. Banks recognized Semerwater, Aysgarth Falls and Richmond Castle. There was also one oil portrait of a young woman with flowing pre-Raphaelite hair and laughing eyes.

“Who painted these?” he asked.

“I did. Most of them.”

“They’re very good.”

Annie seemed embarrassed. “I don’t think so. Not really. I mean, they’re competent, but…” She put her hand to her head and swept back her hair. “Anyway, look, I feel really grubby after being down in that basement. I’m going up for a quick shower first, then I’ll start dinner. It won’t take long. Make yourself at home. Open the window if you’re too warm. There’s plenty of beer in the fridge. Help yourself.” Then she turned and left the room. Banks heard stairs creak as she walked up.

This woman was an enigma, he thought. She had a DCI, her boss, as a guest in her house, yet nothing in her behavior toward him indicated a deferential relationship. She was the same always, with everyone, not adapting herself to the various roles people play in life. He imagined she would even be the same with Jimmy Riddle. Not that she’d invite that bastard into her home, Banks hoped. He heard the shower start. Though it was small, the cottage wasn’t particularly old – not like his own – and it had an upstairs bathroom and toilet. Even so, he guessed Annie must have had the shower installed herself, because it certainly wouldn’t have come with the original building.

First, he did what he always did when left alone in a new room; he nosed around. He couldn’t help it. Curiosity was part of his nature. He didn’t open drawers or read private mail, not unless he thought he was dealing with a criminal, but he liked to look at books, choice of music and the general lie of the land.

Annie’s living room was fairly Spartan. It wasn’t that she didn’t own books or CDs, but that she didn’t have many of either. He got the impression that she may have had to pare down her existence at one time and everything that remained was important to her. There seemed to be no chaff. Unlike his own collection, where the mistakes piled up alongside the hidden gems. Discs he never listened to shared shelf space with some that were almost worn out.

First, he crouched down and checked the CD titles in the cabinet under the stereo. It was an odd collection: Gregorian chants, Don Cherry’s Eternal Now and several “ambient” pieces by Brian Eno. There was also an extensive blues collection, from Mississippi John Hurt to John Mayall. Next to these stood a few pop and folk titles: Emmylou Harris’s The Wrecking Ball, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, some k.d. lang.

The books mainly centered around Eastern philosophy; it was a real sixties treasure trove, considering that Annie was a nineties woman. Banks remembered some of the titles. He had come across them first in Jem’s room, in the Notting Hill days, and he had even borrowed and read some of them: Baba Ram Dass’s Be Here Now; Gurd-jieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men; Ouspensky, Carlos Castaneda, Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, and old blue-covered Pelican paperbacks about yoga, Zen and meditation.

Seeing them again took him right back to the dim, candlelit room with the melting-butter walls and the jasmine joss sticks, to the first time he smoked hash, with Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” on the stereo; earnest, all-night arguments about Marx and Marcuse, changing the system, love and revolution, with Banks, more often than not, playing the straight man, the devil’s advocate. Gentle, sweet-natured Jem, his gaunt face always in shadows, dark hair spilling over his narrow shoulders, his soft, husky voice and his unwillingness to kill even the mice that sometimes walked across the room right in front of them as they talked. His record collection: Rainbow Bridge, Bitches Brew, Live Dead, Joy of a Toy.

Strange days. Old days.

Back then, Banks had spent half his time studying industrial psychology and cost accounting and the other half listening to Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Roland Kirk and The Soft Machine. One way led to security and what his parents wanted; the other led to uncertainty and God only knew what else. Poverty and drug addiction, as like as not. Hard to believe now that there had been a time when it was all balanced on a razor’s edge, when he could have gone either way.

Then Jem died and Banks joined the police, a third option he hadn’t considered before, even in his wildest dreams.

The shower stopped, and a few seconds later Banks heard the roar of a hair dryer. Shaking off the memories that seemed to cling to his mind like cobwebs, he wandered into the kitchen. Like the living room, it was decorated in light colors, white tiles for the most part, with chocolate brown around the work area, just for contrast. In addition to the small oven, fridge, sink and countertops, there was a dining table. It could probably seat about four comfortably, he guessed.

Banks opened the fridge and took out a bottle of Black Sheep. He found an opener in one of the drawers and a pint glass in one of the cupboards. Carefully, he poured out the beer so it had just enough head on it, then he took a sip and went back into the living room. The hair dryer stopped, and he could hear Annie walking around upstairs. He took Eternal Now from its jewel case and put it in the CD player. He had heard of Don Cherry, a jazz trumpeter who used to play with Ornette Coleman, but didn’t actually know his work.

The music started with strummed chords on oddly tuned stringed instruments, then a deep, echoey flutelike instrument entered. Banks turned down the volume, picked up the CD liner notes and sat down to read while he waited for Annie, abandoning himself to the weird combinations of wooden saxophones, Indian harmoniums and Polynesian gamelans.

Before the first track had finished, Annie breezed into the room exuding freshly scrubbed warmth.

“I never took you for a Don Cherry fan,” she said, a wicked grin on her face.

“Life is full of surprises. I like it.”

“I thought you were an opera buff?”

“Been asking around?”

“Just station gossip. I’ll start dinner now, if you want.”

Banks smiled. “Fine with me.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. “You can keep me company,” she called out over her shoulder.

Banks put the CD case back on the shelf and carried his beer through. He sat down at the kitchen table. Annie was bending over pulling vegetables out of the fridge. The jeans looked good on her.

“Pasta okay?” she asked, half turning her head.

“Great. It’s a long time since I’ve had any home cooking. Mostly these days it’s been either pub grub or something quick and easy from Marks and Sparks.”

“Ah, the lonely eater’s friends.”

Banks laughed. It was funny, and rather sad, he had often noticed, how you saw so many young, single men and women wandering around the Marks food section just after five on a weeknight, reaching for the prawn vindaloo, then changing their minds, going instead for the single portion of chicken Kiev and the carton of mixed vegetables. He supposed it might be a good place to pick up a girl.

Annie filled a large pan with water, added a little salt and oil, then set it on the gas ring. She didn’t waste a gesture as she washed and chopped mushrooms, shallots, garlic and courgettes. There was a certain economic grace to her movements that Banks found quite hypnotic; she seemed to possess a natural, centered quality that put him at ease.