“Well, he’d just come back in, oh, not more than ten or fifteen minutes earlier, about quarter past nine. I saw his car, watched him park it in the garage. I must say, he seemed in a bit of a hurry.”

The phone call to Banks had been timed at 9:29 P.M., which meant that Roy had rung him a short while after he had arrived home. Where had he been? What was it he couldn’t talk about over the telephone? While he was on the phone, someone had come to his door, and a few minutes later Roy had gone out again, most likely with the man who had rung his doorbell. Where had they gone?

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Farrow,” said Banks. “I won’t trouble you any longer.”

“No trouble. You will let me know, won’t you, if you hear anything?”

“Of course,” said Banks.

“And why shouldn’t I be all right with it? Annie thought as she parked at the top of the hill and walked toward the old Steadman house. Any romantic involvement she’d had with Banks was ancient history, so what did it matter whether he was seeing this Jennifer Clewes? Except that she was dead and Banks had disappeared.

Annie paused a moment on the bridge. It was one of those early-summer days when the world seemed dipped in sunshine and life should be simple. Yet, for Annie, it was not without a tinge of melancholy, like the first sight of brown on the edges of the leaves, and she found her thoughts turning to the unresolved problems that haunted her.

There was a time, she remembered, when Banks had just come out of the hospital, that there was so much she wanted to say to him, to explain, to apologize for being such a fool, but he wouldn’t let her get close, so she gave up. In the end, they simply carried on working together as if nothing of any consequence had happened between them.

But something had happened. Phil Keane, Annie’s boyfriend, had tried to kill Banks, had drugged him and set fire to his cottage. Annie and Winsome had dragged him out in time to save his life, and Phil had disappeared.

Officially, it wasn’t Annie’s fault. No blame. How could she have known? But she should have known, she kept telling herself. She should have recognized the signs. Banks had even hinted, but she had put it down to jealousy. She had never been so wrong about anything or anyone before. She’d screwed up relationships, of course, but that sort of thing happened to everyone. Nothing like this. Complete and utter humiliation. And it made her angry. She was a detective, for Christ’s sake; she was supposed to have an instinct for people like Phil Keane; she should have sussed him out herself.

In some ways what had happened to her was worse than the rape she had endured over three years ago. This was total emotional rape, and it stained her soul. Because she had loved Phil Keane, though she loathed to admit it to herself. Now the very thought of him running his hands over her body, pleasuring her, penetrating her made her feel sick. How could she have seen no deeper than the charm, the good looks, the keen intelligence, that all-embracing energy and enthusiasm for life that made her – and everyone else in his presence – feel special, singled out for grace?

Well, she knew now that beneath the charm was an immeasurable and impenetrable darkness – the lack of conscience of a psychopath fused with the motivating greed of a common thief. And a love of the game, an enjoyment of deceit and causing humiliation for their own sakes. But was his charm merely on the surface? The more Annie thought about it, the more she came to believe that Phil’s charm was not simply a matter of surface veneer, that it was deeply rooted in the rest of his being, a tumor inseparable from the evil at his core. You couldn’t just scratch the surface and see the terrible truth beneath; the surface was as true as anything else about him.

Such speculations shouldn’t be allowed on a fine day like this, Annie told herself, battening down the anger that rose like bile in her throat whenever she thought about Phil and what had happened last winter. But ever since then, she had been searching for a hint as to where he might have gone. She read all the boring police circulars and memos she used to ignore, pored over newspapers and watched TV news, looking for a clue – an unexplained fire somewhere, a businessman conned out of his fortune, a woman used and cast aside – anything that fit the profile she had compiled in her mind. But after nearly six months, all she had was one false lead, a fire in Devizes that turned out to have been caused by careless smoking. She knew he was around somewhere, though, and when he made his move, as he surely would, then she would have him.

A young boy in short trousers, shirt hanging out, sat on the bank of Gratly Beck fishing. He’d be lucky to catch anything in such fast-flowing water, Annie thought. He waved when he saw her watching him. Annie waved back and hurried on to the Steadman house.

After checking out both Bank’s flat and his cottage, she would have to hurry to Darlington to catch a train to London. The three twenty-five would get her into King’s Cross just after six, all being well. It would be quicker than driving, and she didn’t fancy negotiating her way through the central London traffic all the way south of the river to Kennington. She would leave her car at Darlington station.

Annie passed the tiny Sandemanian chapel and overgrown graveyard and walked down the path to the holiday flats. Two houses had been knocked into one, the insides refinished, to make four spacious, self-contained flats, two up, two down. She knew Banks had one window that looked out on the graveyard, because he had mentioned how apt that seemed, but she hadn’t been inside. He hadn’t invited her.

Though she knew it was futile, Annie rang Banks’s doorbell. A tired-looking young woman holding a baby to her breast opened the door to the downstairs flat, having no doubt noticed Annie walking up the garden path.

“It’s no use,” she said. “He’s out.”

“When did he leave?” Annie asked.

“Who wants to know?”

Annie pulled her warrant card from her handbag. “I’m a colleague of his,” she explained. “There’s something important I need to talk to him about.”

The woman looked at her card, but she obviously wasn’t impressed. “Well, he’s out,” she said again.

“When did he leave?” Annie repeated.

“About eight o’clock this morning. Just drove off.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Not to me. And I wouldn’t expect him to.”

“Do you own these flats?”

“Me and my husband. We live in this one and rent out the others. Why?”

“I was wondering if I might have a look around. I assume you have a spare key?”

“You can’t do that. It’s private.” The baby stirred, made a few tentative burps. She rubbed its back and it fell silent again.

“Look,” said Annie, “this really is important. I don’t want to keep you here. I can see you have the baby to deal with, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me have a quick look in DCI Banks’s flat. It would be so much less trouble than if I had to go and get a search warrant.”

“Search warrant? Can you do that?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Oh, all right, I suppose,” she said. “It’s no skin off my nose, is it? Just a minute.”

She went inside and returned with two keys, which she handed to Annie. “I’ll be wanting them back, mind,” she said.

“Of course,” said Annie. “I won’t be long.”

She felt the woman’s eyes boring into her back as she opened the door to the upper level and walked up the staircase to the upper flat. At the top, she opened Banks’s door and found herself in a small hallway with pegs for jackets and raincoats and a small cupboard for shoes and heavier clothing. A pile of junk mail sat on a table under a gilt-edged mirror.

The first door she opened led to the bedroom. Annie felt strange poking around Banks’s flat with him not there, especially his bedroom, but she told herself it couldn’t be helped. Somehow or other, he had become connected to a murder investigation, and he was nowhere to be found. There was nothing in the bedroom anyway except a double bed, hastily made, a few clothes in the dresser drawers and wardrobe, and a cushioned window seat that looked out over the graveyard. Must be quite a pickup line, Annie thought, if you fancied sharing your bed with someone. “Come sleep with me beside the graveyard.” It had a sort of ring to it. Then she took her mind off images of shared beds and went into the living room.