Banks was looking over her shoulder, hand resting on the back of the chair, when the images started coming up on the screen. The first showed a naked woman with a man’s erect penis in her mouth, sperm dribbling down her chin, a stoned look in her eyes; the next showed the same man entering the woman from behind, an obviously feigned look of ecstasy on her face. After that came several photos of an extremely attractive blond teenager in various stages of undress and revealing positions.

That was enough.

Corinne abruptly ended the slide show and ejected the disk. “I suppose that just goes to show that Roy isn’t much different from most men, when you get right down to it,” she said, moving away from the computer. Banks could see that her face was red. She handed the disk back to him. “Maybe you’d like to keep this?”

“Is that all that’s on it?” he asked.

“Short of looking at all 1,232 files to make sure, I’d say that’s a pretty good guess. Of course, you’re welcome to check them all out, but not here, if you don’t mind. I find that sort of thing a bit demeaning. Not to mention insulting.”

Well, Banks thought, it had been worth a try. Though he had nothing at all against images of naked women, either alone or with partners, Banks had seen enough of the sordid side of the porn business to know how bad it could get, especially if children were involved. From what he had seen, though, Roy’s collection looked ordinary, the girls of age, if a little on the young side. In a way, it made him feel a bit closer to Roy to find out that he was human after all, the dirty devil. If only their mother knew. But then his policeman’s mind kicked in. If Roy had taken these images himself, on a digital camera, say, rather than simply downloaded them from the Internet, then he could be involved in a sleazy business.

“Did Roy have anything to do with Internet porn?” he asked Corinne, forgetting that she might not be the best person to ask.

“Always ready to think the worst of him, aren’t you?” she said.

“I can’t see why you’re always so quick to leap to his defense after what he’s done to you.”

Corinne flushed with anger.

“Believe it or not, I’m trying to help,” said Banks.

“Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.” She looked toward the CD and made a face. “Anyway, there’s your evidence, for what it’s worth.”

Banks took the CD. At some point he would examine it more closely, study each of the 1232 images, just to make sure. Hotel rooms and outdoor locations had been identified from background features in Internet porn. One victim of child pornography in America had been identified from a blurred-out school logo on her T-shirt. If Roy had taken any of these pictures, there was a chance of finding out where he had taken them, and who the models were, should it come to that. But not here, not now.

He had just about run out of questions to ask Corinne, and he could see that she had become edgy, anxious for him to leave. Whether it was the effect of the images on the CD or something else, he definitely felt that he had outstayed his welcome. But he remembered the penlike object he had found in Roy’s office drawer. Maybe Corinne knew what it was. He took it out of his shirt pocket and held it out to her. “Any idea what this is?”

Corinne took the object from Banks, eyed it closely and removed the cap. “It’s a portable mini-USB drive. For storing information.”

“Like that CD?”

“Same idea, but not quite as much space. This one’s only got 256 megs, not 700. Handy, though. You can clip it in your inside pocket just like a pen.”

“Can we see what’s on it?”

Corinne clearly wasn’t comfortable delving into Roy’s private affairs, especially after what she had just seen on the CD. Banks had been at his job for so long that he had got used to digging deep into a person’s private life. As far as the police were concerned, there are no secrets, especially in a murder investigation. He often didn’t like what he found, but he’d developed a tolerance for people’s little quirks over the years.

Most people, when you get past their facade of normality, have some sort of guilty secret, something they’ve tried to keep from the rest of the world, and Banks had come across most of them in his time, from the harmless hoarders of newspapers and magazines, whose homes were like labyrinths of tottering columns of print, to the secret cross-dressers and lonely fetishists. Of course, they were all grief- and horror-stricken, humiliated that someone had found out their little secrets, but to Banks it was nothing special.

Corinne’s reaction made him realize for the first time in a while that what he did was unnatural and invasive. In the short time he had been with her, he had as good as implied that her ex-fiancé, his brother, was involved in drugs, illicit sex and fraud. All in a day’s work for him, perhaps, but not for a basically nice person like Corinne. Had the job made him insensitive? Banks thought of Penny Cartwright again, and her violent reaction to his suggestion of dinner last night. Was it something to do with what he did for a living, the way he looked at the world, at people? She was a free spirit, after all, so did that make him the enemy?

Corinne plugged the USB drive into her computer. “Here we go,” she said, and Banks looked over her shoulder at the monitor.

Shortly after half past six that Saturday evening, Annie walked out of the Oval tube station, where she’d been crammed in an overheated carriage with about five million people on their way home from shopping or visiting friends and relatives, and headed down Camberwell New Road, past the park on the corner. Young lads with shaved heads and bare upper bodies lounged on the grass drinking cans of lager and flexing their tattoos, leering at every attractive woman who passed by. A group of younger kids had set up makeshift goals with their discarded T-shirts and were playing football. Just watching them made Annie sweat.

Then she saw Phil.

He was on the other side of the street, walking a dog, some sort of little terrier on a lead. But it was Phil, she was sure of it.

The same lazy grace in his step, the casual but expensive clothes, chin up, slightly receding hairline. Hardly looking, she dashed into the road, aware of horns blaring around her, and she had almost made it across when his attention was attracted by the noise.

He paused and looked toward her, a puzzled expression on his face. Annie got to the pavement and stopped, oblivious to the cursing of the last driver who had barely missed her. It wasn’t

Phil after all, she realized. There was a superficial similarity, but that was all. The man bent to pat his dog, then, with a curious backward glance, he carried on walking toward the traffic lights. Annie leaned against a lamppost until her heartbeat returned to normal and cursed. This wasn’t the first time she’d thought she had seen him; she would have to be more careful in future, less jumpy. If she was to be realistic about it, she had to realize that bumping into him in a street in London was the last thing that was likely to happen.

She was still wired from the train journey. She would have to calm down. She had made the 3:25 and had even managed to find a seat in the quiet car, but no matter how many windows had been open, it had still been too hot. And she had been thinking about Phil, which was probably why her mind had fooled her into thinking she had actually seen him across the street. Throughout most of the journey, she had read the tabloids, scouring the pages for any whiff of Phil, but had found nothing, as usual. She had to get a grip on herself.

Despite the rule of quiet, more than one mobile rang during the journey, and Annie could also hear the overspill from someone’s personal headphones. It had made her think of Banks, and again she started wondering where the hell he was and what he had to do with Jennifer Clewes’s murder. According to the woman with the baby, Banks had left under his own steam that morning, but none of this explained what the hell was going on.