Banks stepped back to survey his handiwork, whistling along with the habanera from Carmen, which was playing loudly on the stereo: Maria Callas past her best but still sounding fine.

Not bad for an amateur, he thought, dropping the paintbrush in a bowl of turpentine, and a definite improvement over the mildewed wallpaper he had stripped from the walls of his new home yesterday.

He particularly liked the color. The man at the do-it-yourself center in Eastvale said it was calming, and after the year Banks had just suffered through, he needed all the calming he could get. The shade of blue he had chosen was supposed to resemble that of oriental tapestries, but once it was on the wall it reminded Banks more of the Greek island of Santorini, which he and his estranged wife Sandra had visited during their last holiday together. He hadn’t bargained for that memory, but he thought he could live with it.

Pleased with himself, Banks pulled a packet of Silk Cut from his top pocket. First, he counted the contents. Only three gone since morning. Good. He was trying to restrict himself to ten a day or less, and he was doing well so far. He walked into the kitchen and put on the kettle for a cup of tea.

The telephone rang. Banks turned off the stereo and picked up the receiver.

“Dad?”

“Brian, is that you? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

“Yeah, well… we’ve been on the road. I didn’t think you’d be in. Why aren’t you at work?”

“If you didn’t expect me to be in, why did you call?”

Silence.

“Brian? Where are you? Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m staying at Andrew’s flat.”

“Where?”

“Wimbledon. Look, Dad…”

“Isn’t it about time your exam results were out?”

More silence. Christ, Banks thought, getting more than a few words in a row out of Brian was as tough as getting the truth out of a politician.

“Brian?”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I was calling you. You know… I thought I’d just leave a message.”

“I see.” Banks knew what was going on now. He looked around in vain for an ashtray and ended up using the hearth. “Go on,” he prompted.

“About the exams, like…”

“How bad is it? What did you get?”

“Well, that’s it… I mean… you won’t like it.”

“You did pass, didn’t you?”

“Course I did.”

“Well?”

“It’s just that I didn’t do as well as I expected. It was really hard, Dad. Everyone says so.”

“What did you get?”

Brian almost whispered. “A third.”

“A third? That’s a bit of a disappointment, isn’t it? I’d have thought you could have done better than that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s more than you ever got.”

Banks took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter a damn what I did or didn’t get. It’s you we’re talking about. Your future. You’ll never get a decent job with a third-class degree.”

“What if I don’t want a decent job?”

“What do you want to be then? Another statistic? Another cliché? Another unemployed yobbo?”

“Thanks a lot, Dad. Nice to know you believe in me. Anyway, as a matter of fact, I’m not on the dole. We’re going to try and make a go of it. Me and the band.”

“You’re what?”

“We’re going to make a go of it. Andrew knows this bloke who runs an indie label, and he’s got a studio, like, and he’s said we can go down and make a demo of some of my songs. You might not believe it, but people actually like us. We’ve got gigs coming out of our ears.”

“Have you any idea how tough it is to succeed in the music business?”

“The Spice Girls did it, and look how much talent they’ve got.”

“So did Tiny Tim, but that’s not the point. Talent’s got nothing to do with it. For every one that makes it, there’s thousands who get trampled on the way.”

“We’re making plenty of money.”

“Money’s not everything. What about the future? What are you going to do when you’ve peaked at twenty-five and you don’t have a penny in the bank?”

“What makes you an expert on the music business all of a sudden?”

“Is that why you got such a poor degree? Because you were too busy wasting your time rehearsing and going out on the road?”

“I was getting pretty bored with architecture anyway.”

Banks flicked his cigarette butt in the hearth. It scattered sparks against the dark stone. “Have you talked to your mother about this?”

“Well, I sort of thought, maybe… you know… you could do that.”

That’s a laugh, Banks thought. Him talk to Sandra? They couldn’t even discuss the weather these days without it turning into an argument.

“I think you’d better ring her yourself,” he said. “Better still, why don’t you pay her a visit? She’s only in Camden Town.”

“But she’ll go spare!”

“Serves you right. You should have thought of that before.”

The kettle started whistling.

“Thanks a lot, Dad,” Brian said, his voice hard-edged with bitterness. “I thought you’d understand. I thought I could depend on you. I thought you liked music. But you’re just like the rest. Go see to your fucking kettle!”

“Brian-”

But Brian hung up. Hard.

The blue of the living room did nothing to soothe Banks’s mood. Pretty sad, he thought, when you turn to DIY as therapy, house-decoration to keep the darkness at bay. He sat for a moment staring at a brush hair stuck to the paint above the mantelpiece, then he stormed into the kitchen and turned off the kettle. He didn’t even feel like a cup of tea anymore.

“Money isn’t everything. What about your future?” Banks couldn’t believe he had said those things. Not because he thought that money was everything, but because that was exactly what his parents had said to him when he told them he wanted a weekend job in the supermarket to earn some extra money. It frightened him how deeply instinctive his whole response to Brian’s news was, as if someone else – his own parents – had spoken the words and he was only the ventriloquist’s dummy. Some people say that the older we get, the more we come to resemble our parents, and Banks was beginning to wonder if they were right. If so, it was a frightening idea.

Money isn’t everything, his father had said, though in a way it was everything to him because he had never had any. What about your future? his mother had said, her way of telling him that he would be far better off staying home studying for his exams than wasting his weekends making money he would only use to go hanging around billiard halls or bowling alleys. They wanted him to go into a nice, respectable, secure white-collar job like banking or insurance, just like his older brother Roy. With a good degree behind him, they said, he could better himself, which meant he could do better than they had done. He was bright, and that was what bright working-class kids were supposed to do back in the sixties.

Before Banks had a chance to think any further, the phone rang again. Hoping it was Brian ringing back to apologize, he dashed into the living room and picked up the receiver.

This time it was Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle. Must be my lucky day, Banks thought. Not only was it not Brian, the new call also meant that Banks couldn’t even dial 1471 to get Brian’s Wimbledon phone number, which he had neglected to ask for. 1471 only worked for the last one call you received. He cursed and reached for his cigarettes again. At this rate he’d never stop. Bugger it. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures. He lit up.

“Skiving off again, are you, Banks?”

“Holiday,” said Banks. “It’s official. You can check.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a job for you to do.”

“I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Now.”

Banks wondered what kind of job Jimmy Riddle would call him off his holidays for. Ever since Riddle had had to reinstate him reluctantly after dishing out a hasty suspension the previous year, Banks had been in career Siberia, his life a treadmill of reports, statistics and more reports. Everything short of going around to the schools giving road-safety talks. Not one active investigation in nine months. He was so far out of the loop he might as well have been on Pluto; even the few informers he had cultivated since arriving in Eastvale had deserted him. Surely the situation wasn’t going to change this easily? There had to be more to it; Riddle never made a move without a hidden agenda.