He stood in front of the gate and stared through the bars, cheeks so close he could feel the cold from the iron. There was nothing else for it, really; he would have to use the intercom and just hope he could gain admittance. He obviously couldn’t pass himself off as Emily’s father this time, but if he said he came with an important message from her family, that ought to get him inside. It might just work.

Before he could press the buzzer, he felt a strong hand grasp the back of his neck and push his face toward the bars, so the cold iron chafed against his cheeks. “What the fuck are you doing here?” the voice asked him.

Banks’s first impulse was to kick back hard at the man’s shins with his heel, or tread down sharply on his instep, then slip free, swivel around and lash out. But he had to hold himself in check, remember why he was here, who he was supposed to be. If he beat up his assailant, where would that get him? Nowhere, most likely. On the other hand, maybe this was his best way in.

“I’m looking for Louisa,” he said.

The grip loosened. Banks turned and found himself facing a man in a tight-fitting suit who looked as if he might have been one of Mike Tyson’s sparring partners. Probably just as well he hadn’t tried to fight back, he thought.

“Louisa? What do you want with Louisa?” the man said.

“I want to talk to her, that’s all,” he said. “Her father sent me.”

“Fuck a duck,” said the minder.

“I was going to ring the bell,” Banks went on. “I was just looking to see if there were any lights on, if there was anyone home.”

“You were?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’d better come with me, mate,” the minder said, which was exactly what Banks had hoped for. “We’ll see what Mr. Clough has to say about that.”

The minder slipped a credit-card style key into the mechanism at the side of the intercom, punched in a seven-digit number which Banks was amazed he had the brains to remember, and the gate slid open on oiled hinges. The minder was holding Banks by the arm now, but only hard enough to break a few small bones, as he led him down the short path to the front door, which he opened with a simple Yale key. Sometimes security, like beauty, is only skin-deep.

They stood in a bright corridor, which ran all the way through to a gleaming modern kitchen at the back of the house. Several doors led off the corridor, all closed, and immediately to their right, a thickly carpeted staircase led to the upper levels. It was a hell of a lot fancier than Ruth’s flat, Banks thought, and grander than anything Craig Newton could afford, too. Always landed on her feet. The Riddles said they had given Emily all the advantages that money could afford – the horse, piano lessons, holidays, expensive schooling – and they had certainly raised a high-maintenance daughter by the looks of this place.

Muffled music came from one of the rooms. A pop song Banks didn’t recognize. As soon as the front door shut behind them, the minder called out, “Boss?”

One of the doors opened and a tall man walked out. He wasn’t fat, or even overly muscular like the minder, but he certainly looked as if he lifted a few weights at the gym once or twice a week. As Craig Newton had pointed out, his face was all angles, as if it had been carved from stone, and he was handsome, if you liked that sort of thing, rather like a younger Nick Nolte.

He was wearing a cream Armani suit over a red T-shirt, had a deep suntan and a gray ponytail about six inches long hanging over his back collar. Around his neck he wore a thick gold chain, which matched the one on his wrist and the chunky signet ring over the hairy knuckle on his right hand. Banks pegged him at early to mid-forties, which wasn’t much younger than Jimmy Riddle. Or Banks himself, for that matter.

The hard glint in his eyes and the cocky confidence with which he moved showed that he was someone to watch out for. Banks had seen that look before in the eyes of hardened criminals, people to whom the world and its contents are there for the taking, and for whom any impediments are simply to be brushed aside as easily as dandruff off the collar.

“What’s this?” he asked, eyes on Banks.

“Found him lurking by the gate, boss. Just standing there. Says he wants to see Louisa.”

Barry Clough raised an eyebrow, but the hardness in his eyes didn’t ease a jot. “Did he now? What might you be wanting with Louisa, little man?”

“Her father asked me to look for her,” Banks said. “He wants me to deliver a message.”

“Private investigator?”

“Just a friend of the family.”

Clough studied Banks closely for what seemed like minutes, then a glint of humor flashed into his eyes the way a shark flashes through the water. “No problem,” he said, ushering Banks into the room. “A girl should stay in touch with her family, I always say, though I can’t say as she’s ever offered to take me home to meet Mummy and Daddy yet. I don’t even know where they live.”

Banks said nothing. The minder shifted from foot to foot.

“You’re lucky to find us in,” said Clough. “Louisa and I just got back from Florida a couple of days ago. Can’t stand the bloody weather here in winter. We take off as often as we can. I’ll call her down for you. In the meantime, take a load off. Drink?”

“No, thanks. I won’t take long.”

Clough looked at his watch. An expensive one. “You’ve got twenty minutes,” he said. “Then we’ve got a Bonfire Night party to go to. Sure you won’t have that drink?”

“No, thanks.”

Banks sat down as Clough left the room. He heard muffled footsteps on the staircase. The minder had disappeared into the kitchen. The room Banks found himself in had that old-fashioned wainscoted look he wouldn’t have expected judging by what he had seen of the bright hall and the modern kitchen at the back. Paintings hung on the walls, mostly English landscapes. A couple of them looked old and genuine. Not Constables or anything, but they probably cost a bob or two. On one wall stood a locked, barred glass case full of guns. Deactivated collector’s models, Banks guessed. Nobody would be stupid enough to put real guns on display like that.

Logs crackled and spit out sparks from the large stone hearth. The music was coming from an expensive stereo set up at the far end of the room. Now he was closer to the source, Banks realized he did recognize it; it was an old Joy Division album. “Heart and Soul” was playing.

He heard voices upstairs, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. At one point, a woman’s voice raised almost to the point where he could hear the defiance in her tone, then, at a barked order from the man, it stopped. A few seconds later, the door opened and in she walked. He hadn’t heard her come down the stairs, and nor did he hear her float across the Turkish carpet.

Craig Newton was right. Talk about a mix of innocence and experience. She could have been sixteen, which she was, but she could have been twenty-six just as easily, and in some ways she reminded Banks even more of her mother in the flesh than in the photographs he had seen: blue eyes, cherry lips. What he hadn’t been able to tell from those photos, though, was that she had a smattering of freckles across her small nose and high cheekbones, and that her eyes were a much paler blue than Rosalind’s. The Florida sun didn’t seem to have done much for her skin, which was as pale as her mother’s. Perhaps she had stayed indoors or walked around under a parasol like a Southern belle.

Rosalind was a little shorter and fuller-figured than her daughter, and of course her hairstyle was different. Emily had a ragged fringe, and her fine, natural-blond hair fell straight to her shoulders and brushed against them as she moved. Tall and long-legged, she also had that anorexic, thoroughbred look of a professional model. Heroin-chic. She was wearing denim capris that came halfway up her calves, and a loose cable-knit sweater. She walked barefoot, he noticed, showing off her shapely ankles and slim feet, the toenails painted crimson. For some reason, Coleridge’s line from “Christabel” flashed through Banks’s mind: “…her blue-veined feet unsandalled were.” It had always seemed an improbably erotic image to him, ever since he first came across the poem at school, and now he knew why.