Even though Banks had “bettered” himself – he had a secure job with a steady source of income and good opportunities for advancement – his parents didn’t approve of his joining the police. His father never tired of pointing out the traditional opposition between the working classes and the police force. When the riot police on overtime taunted striking miners by waving rolls of five-pound notes at them in the ’84 strike, he accused Banks of being “the enemy” and tried to persuade him to resign. It didn’t matter that Banks was working the drugs squad on the Met at the time and had nothing to do with the troubles up north. As far as his father was concerned, the police were merely Maggie’s bullyboys, the enforcers of unpopular government policies, oppressors of the workingman.

Banks’s mother, for her part, took a more domestic view and relayed tales of police divorces she heard about over the grapevine. Being a policeman wasn’t a good career choice for a family man, she never ceased to tell him. Never mind that it was over twenty years later when he and Sandra split up – most of that time relatively successful as modern marriages go – his mother took great satisfaction that she had finally been vindicated.

And there lay the main problem, Banks thought as he watched the city disappear behind him. He had never been able to do anything right. When bad things happened to other kids, parents usually took their side, but when bad things happened to Banks, it was his own fault. It had always been that way, ever since he started getting cuts and bruises in schoolyard fights, always him who must have started it, whether he did or not. As far as his parents were concerned, Banks thought, if he got killed on the job, that would probably be his own fault too. When it came to blame, they offered no quarter for family.

Still, he thought, in a way that was what made him good at his job. When he had been junior in rank, he had never blamed his bosses when things went wrong, and now he was DCI, he took the responsibility for his team, whether it consisted of Hatchley and Susan Gay or just Annie Cabbot. If the team failed, it was his failure. A burden, yes, but also a strength.

King’s Cross was the usual madness. Banks and Annie negotiated their way through the crowds and the maze of tiled, echoing tunnels to the Northern Line and managed to cram into the first Edgeware-bound train that came along.

A few minutes later, they came out of Belsize Park tube station, walked up Rosslyn Hill and turned into the side street where Vivian Elmsley lived. Banks knew the area vaguely from his years in London, though after Notting Hill, he and Sandra had mostly lived south of the river, in Kennington. Keats used to live near here, Banks remembered; it was in one of these streets that the poor sod fell in love with his next-door neighbor, Fanny Brawne.

A woman’s voice answered the intercom.

There was a long pause after Banks had stated his rank and his business, then a more resigned voice said, “You’d better come up.” The lock buzzed and Banks pushed open the front door.

They walked up three flights of thickly carpeted stairs to the second-floor landing. That this was a well-maintained building was clear from the fresh lemon scent, the gleaming woodwork and freshly painted walls, decorated here and there with a still-life print or a seascape. Probably cost an arm and a leg, but then Vivian Elmsley could no doubt afford an arm and a leg.

The woman who opened the door was tall and slim, standing ramrod-straight, her gray hair fastened in a bun. She had high cheekbones, a straight, slightly hooked nose and a small, thin mouth. Crow’s-feet spread around her remarkable deep blue eyes, slanted at an almost Oriental angle. Banks could see what Elsie Patterson meant: If you were at all observant, there was no mistaking those eyes. She was dressed like a jogger, in baggy black exercise trousers and a white sweatshirt. Still, he supposed, it didn’t matter what you wore if all you had to do was sit around and write all day. Some people have all the luck.

She looked tired. Bags puffed under her eyes, and broken blood vessels crisscrossed the whites. She also looked strained and edgy, as if she were running on reserves.

The flat was Spartan and modern in its furnishings, chrome and glass giving the small living room a generous sense of space. A framed print of one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s huge yellow flowers hung on the wall over the mantelpiece.

“Please, sit down.” She gestured Banks and Annie toward two matching chrome-and-black-leather chairs, then sat down herself, clasping her hands on her lap. They looked older than her face, skeletal and liver-spotted. They were also unusually large for a woman’s hands.

“I must admit, I’m quite used to talking to the police,” she said, “but usually I’m the one questioning them. How can I help you?”

Banks remembered the police procedure in The Shadow of Death and bit his tongue. Maybe she hadn’t known any police officers when she wrote that book. “First of all,” he asked, “are you Gwynneth Shackleton?”

“I was, though most people called me Gwen. Vivian is my middle name. Elmsley is a pseudonym. Actually, it’s my mother’s maiden name. It’s all perfectly legal.”

“I’m sure it is. You grew up in Hobb’s End?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill Gloria Shackleton?”

Her hand went to her chest. “Kill Gloria? Me? What a suggestion. I most certainly did not.”

“Could Matthew, your brother, have killed her?”

“No. Matthew loved her. She looked after him. He needed her. I’m afraid this is all rather overwhelming, Chief Inspector.”

“No doubt.” Banks glanced at Annie, who remained expressionless, notebook on her lap. “May I ask why you haven’t come forward in response to our requests for information?” he asked.

Vivian Elmsley paused before answering, as if composing her thoughts carefully, the way she might revise a page of manuscript. “Chief Inspector,” she said, “I admit that I have been following developments both in the newspapers and on television, but I honestly don’t believe I can tell you anything of any value. I have also found it all very distressing. That’s why I haven’t come forward.”

“Oh, come off it,” said Banks. “Not only did you live in Hobb’s End throughout the war, and not only did you know the victim well, you were also her sister-in-law. You can’t expect me to believe that you know nothing at all about what happened to her.”

“Believe what you will.”

“Where the two of you close?”

“I wouldn’t say we were close, no.”

“Did you like her?”

“I can’t honestly say I knew her very well.”

“You were about the same age. You must have had things in common besides your brother.”

“She was older than I. It does make a difference when you’re young. I wouldn’t say we had much in common. I was always a bookish sort of girl, whereas Gloria was the more flamboyant type. As with many extroverts, she was also a secretive person, very difficult to get to know.”

“Did you see a lot of her?”

“Quite a bit. We were in and out of one another’s houses. Bridge Cottage wasn’t far from the shop.”

“Yet you claim you didn’t know her well?”

“I didn’t. You probably have cousins or in-laws you hardly know at all, Chief Inspector.”

“Didn’t you ever do things together?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Girl things.”

Annie shot him a glance that he felt even before he noticed it out of the corner of his eye. The hell with it, he thought, they were girls back then. He had been a boy once, too; he did boy things, and he didn’t object to anyone saying so.

Vivian pursed her lips, then shrugged. “Girl things? I suppose we did. The same sorts of things other people did during the war. We went to the pictures, to dances.”

“Dances with American airmen?”