On the low table in front of the sofa sat a mobile phone and a portable CD player with headphones. So wherever Banks had gone, he had left these behind, Annie thought, and wondered why. Banks loved his music, and he liked to keep in touch. At least, he used to. Looking around the room, she noticed there were no books and no CDs except the copy of Don Giovanni, a gift from the lads that she had brought him in the hospital. The cellophane wrapper was still on it. There wasn’t even a stereo, only a small TV set, which probably came with the flat. Annie began to feel inexplicably depressed. She tried Banks’s answering service, but there were no messages.

The kitchen was tiny and narrow, the fridge full of the usual items: milk, eggs, beer, cheese, a selection of vegetables, bacon, tomatoes, a bottle of sauvignon blanc and some sliced ham – all of it looking fairly fresh. Well, at least he was still eating. A couple of cardboard boxes under the small dining table were filled with empty wine bottles ready for the bottle bank.

Annie glanced briefly in the toilet and bathroom, a quick look through the cabinets revealing only what she would have expected: razor, shaving cream, toothpaste and toothbrush were missing, so he must have taken them with him. Amid the usual over-the-counter medication there was one small bottle of strong prescription painkillers dated three months ago. Wherever Banks had gone, he clearly hadn’t thought he needed them.

She stood in the center of the hall wondering if she could possibly have missed something, then realized there was nothing to miss. This was the flat of a faceless man, a man with no interests, no passions, no friends, no life. There weren’t even any family photos. It wasn’t Banks’s flat, couldn’t be. Not the Banks she knew.

Annie remembered Newhope Cottage and its living room with the blue walls and ceiling the color of melting Brie, remembered the warm shaded orange light and the evenings she had spent there with Banks. In winter, a peat fire had usually burned in the hearth, its tang harmonizing with the Islay malt she sometimes sipped with him. In summer they would often go outside after dark to sit on the parapet above Gratly Beck, looking at the stars and listening to the water. And there would always be music: Bill Evans, Lucinda Williams, Van Morrison, and string quartets she didn’t recognize.

Annie felt tears in her eyes and she brushed them away roughly and headed downstairs. She handed back the keys without a word and hurried down the path.

Banks sat in a pub on Old Brompton Road playing with Roy’s mobile, learning what the functions were and how to use them. He found a call list which gave him the last thirty incoming, outgoing and missed calls. Some were just first names, some numbers, and quite a few of the incoming calls were “unknown.” The last call had been made at 3:57 on Friday afternoon to “James.” Banks pressed the “call” button and listened to a phone ring. Finally someone picked it up and uttered a frazzled “Yeah?” Banks could hear David Bowie in the background singing “Moonage Daydream.”

“Can I speak to James?” he said.

“Speaking.”

“My brother, Roy Banks, rang you yesterday. I was wondering what it was about.”

“That’s right,” said James. “He was ringing to make an appointment for next Wednesday, I believe. Yeah, here it is, Wednesday at half past two.”

“Appointment for what?”

“A haircut. I’m Roy’s hairdresser. Why? Is everything okay?”

Banks rang off without answering. At least Roy had been certain enough at 3:57 on Friday afternoon of being around next Wednesday to make an appointment with his hairdresser. Banks had never done such a thing in his life. He went to a barber’s and waited his turn like everyone else, reading old magazines.

Banks washed down the last of his curry of the day with a pint of Pride, lit a cigarette and looked around. It was odd being in London again. He had visited many times since he had left, mostly in connection with cases he was working on, but with each visit he came to feel increasingly like a stranger, a tourist, though he had once lived there for over fifteen years.

Still, that had been quite a while ago, and things changed. Down-at-heel neighborhoods became desirable residences and once-chic areas went downhill. Villains’ pubs became locals for the trendy young crowd and up-market pubs started to go to seed. He had no idea what was “in” these days. London was a vast sprawling metropolis, and Banks had never, even when he was living there, been familiar with it beyond Notting Hill and Kennington, places where he had lived, and the West End, where he had worked. South Kensington might have been another city as far as he was concerned.

He turned his mind to Roy’s disappearance, oblivious to the ebb and flow of conversation around him. He would run through the rest of the call list later, back at the house. He also wanted to check out the data CD. There were plenty of Internet cafés around, and some of them would even allow him to read a CD and print out material, but they were far too public, and anything he did would leave traces. He had violated his brother’s privacy, but he felt he had good reason, whereas there was no reason at all to risk making any of Roy’s secrets known to strangers.

He realized he didn’t know anyone in London who owned a computer. Most of the people he had known there, criminals and coppers alike, had either moved, retired or died. Except Sandra, his ex-wife, who had moved from Eastvale to Camden Town when she left him. Sandra would probably have a computer. But his last meeting with her had been disastrous, and she had hardly been a constant visitor in his days of need. In fact, she hadn’t visited at all, merely sent her condolences through Tracy. Then there was the husband, Sean, and the new baby, Sinéad. No, he didn’t think he would be paying any visits to Sandra in the foreseeable future.

He also couldn’t go official with what he’d got for the same reason he couldn’t use an Internet café: in case the disk held something incriminating against Roy. If Roy had been up to something dodgy, Banks wasn’t going to shop him, not his own brother. He might give him a damned good bollocking and read him the riot act when he found him, but he wasn’t going to help put him in jail.

There was one avenue he could explore first, someone who would probably be as interested in protecting Roy’s reputation as he was. Banks stubbed out his cigarette and reached into his pocket for the mobile. He scrolled through the list of names and numbers in the phone book until he found Corinne. That was Roy’s fiancée’s name, he remembered now, copying the number down into his notebook. Then he put the mobile back in his pocket, finished his drink and walked out to the street.

London was hot and sticky. Of all the places to be during a heat wave, this was not one he would have chosen. People were wilting on the pavements, and the air was redolent with the smell of exhaust fumes and worse, like rotting meat or cabbage.

Banks didn’t want to tie up the mobile again in case Roy got his message back at the house and phoned, so he sought out a public phone box and dug out an old phone card from his wallet. He felt as if he were walking into the tin hut where the Japanese locked Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Sweat trickled down his sides, tickling as it ran, sticking his shirt to his skin. Someone had crushed a bluebottle against the glass, making a long smear of dark blood. He could even smell the warm paper of the telephone directory.

Banks took out his notebook and dialed the number he had copied from Roy’s mobile. Just as he was about to hang up, a breathless voice came on the line.

“Hello?”

“Corinne?”

“Yes. Who is it?”

“My name’s Alan Banks. Roy’s brother. You might remember me. We met at my parents’ wedding anniversary party in Peterborough last October.”