“Are you now?”

“Of course I am.” She stood up again. Red patches glowed on her cheeks. “Tell Daddy to fuck off. Tell the old man to just fuck off. Let him wonder. Let him worry. I’m not going to set his mind at rest. Because… you know what?”

“What?”

“Because he was never fucking there anyway. He used to make all these rules and you know what… he was never even there to enforce them. Mummy had to do that. And she didn’t even care enough. He was never even there to enforce his own stupid rules. Isn’t that a laugh?” She went to lean against the fireplace again. Alanis Morissette was singing about seeing right through someone, and Banks knew what she meant. Still, he’d done his job, done as he’d been asked. He could give Jimmy Riddle Emily’s London address, tell him about Barry Clough. If Riddle wanted to send in the locals to check out Clough’s gun collection, set the forensic accountants on his business interests and put in a call to the drugs squad, that was his business. Banks’s job was over. It was up to Riddle to take it from there. He tore a page from his notebook and wrote on it. “If you change your mind, or if there’s anything else you want to tell me, any message you want me to deliver, this is where I’m staying. You can phone and leave a message if I’m not there.”

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to take it, but she did. Then she glanced at it once, crumpled it up and threw it in the fire. The door opened and Barry Clough strode in, smile on his face. He tapped his wristwatch. “Better get ready, love,” he said to Emily. “We’re due at Rod’s place in half an hour.” He looked at Banks, the smile gone. “And your time’s up, mate,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the front door. “On your bike.”

Banks was running about five minutes late for his dinner with Sandra when he got off the tube at Camden Town. The drizzle had turned into a steady downpour now, and puddles in the gutter were smeared with the gaudy reflections of shop signs and traffic lights. Luckily, the restaurant wasn’t far from the underground.

Banks turned up his jacket collar, but he was still soaked by the time he dashed into the restaurant. At first he didn’t recognize the woman who smiled and waved him over to her table by the window. Though he had seen Sandra briefly just a couple of months ago, she had changed her appearance completely since then. For a start, she had had her blond hair cut short and layered. If anything, the style emphasized her dark eyebrows more than ever, and Banks had always found Sandra’s eyebrows one of her sexiest features. She was also wearing a pair of round gold-rimmed glasses, not much bigger than the “granny glasses” that were so popular in the sixties. He had never seen her in glasses before, hadn’t known she needed them. From what he could make out, her clothes looked artsy, all different layers: a black shawl, a red silk scarf, a red-and-black-patterned jumper.

Banks edged into the chair opposite her. He was starving. It seemed ages since that dismal chicken pot pie in Kennington. “Sorry I’m a bit late,” he said, drying off his hair with a serviette. “I’d forgotten what a pain the bloody tube can be.”

Sandra smiled. “It’s all right. Remember, I’m used to your being late.”

Banks let that one go by. He looked around. The restaurant was busy, bustling with waiters and parties coming and going. It was one of those places that Banks thought trendy in its lack of trendiness, all scratched wood tables and partitions, pork chops, steaks and mashed potatoes. But the mashed potatoes had garlic and sun-dried tomatoes in them and cost about three quid a side order.

“I’ve already ordered some wine,” Sandra said. “A half-liter of the house claret. I know you prefer red. Okay with you?”

“Fine.” Banks had turned down a drink at Clough’s house because he hadn’t wanted to be beholden to the bastard in any way, but he wanted one now. “You’re looking good,” he said. “You’ve changed. I don’t mean that you didn’t always look good. You know what I mean.”

Sandra laughed, blushed a little and turned away. “Thank you,” she said.

“What’s with the glasses?”

“They come with age,” she said. “Anytime after you fortieth birthday.”

“Then I’m really living on borrowed time.”

A waiter brought the wine and left it for them to pour themselves. Pretentious in its unpretentiousness. Sandra paused as Banks filled their glasses, then lifted hers for a toast. “How are you, Alan?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Banks. “Just fine. Couldn’t be better.”

“Working?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“I thought Jimmy Riddle had shuffled you off to the hinterlands?”

“Even Riddle needs my particular skills every now and then.” Banks sipped some wine. Perfectly quaffable. He looked around and saw it was okay to light a cigarette. “May I cadge one?” Sandra asked.

“Of course. Still can’t give them up completely?”

“Not completely. Oh, Sean doesn’t like it. He keeps going on at me to stop. But I don’t think one or two a month is really bad for your health.”

Good sign, that, Banks thought: Sean the nag. “Probably not,” he said. “I keep waiting for them to announce they were wrong all along and cigarettes are really good for you, and it’s all the raw vegetables and fruit that do the damage.”

Sandra laughed. “You’ll have a long wait.” She clinked glasses. “Cheers.”

“Cheers. I was out where we used to live this lunchtime. Kennington.”

“Really? Why? A sentimental journey?”

“Work.”

“It was a pretty cramped flat, as I remember. Much too small with the kids. And that dentist I worked for was a groper.”

“You never told me that.”

“There’s lots of things I never told you. You usually seemed to have enough on your plate as it was.”

They studied the menu for a couple of minutes. Banks saw that he was right about the mashed potatoes. And the garlic and sun-dried tomatoes. And the price. He ordered venison sausage with braised red cabbage and garlic mashed potatoes. No sun-dried tomatoes. It seemed the perfect comfort meal for a night like this. Sandra went for steak and frites. Their orders given to the waiter, they smoked and drank in silence awhile longer. Now he was here with her, Banks didn’t know how to approach what he wanted to say. He felt curiously tongue-tied, like a teenager on his first date.

If Sandra would put this silliness with Sean aside and come back, he wanted to tell her, it was still possible that they could rebuild their relationship and move on. True, they had sold the Eastvale semi and Banks’s cottage would be a bit small for two, but they could manage there for a while at least. If Banks went through with his transfer to the National Crime Squad – if they offered him it – then who knew where they might end up living. And with Riddle owing him now, he would be all right for a glowing recommendation.

“I saw Brian last week,” Sandra said.

“He told me when I phoned him the other evening. I wanted to drop by and see him while I was here, but he said they were off to play some gigs in Scotland.”

Sandra nodded. “That’s right. Aberdeen. He’s really excited about their prospects, you know. They’ve already almost finished their first CD.”

“I know.” Their son Brian played in a rock band. They had just cut their first record with an indie label and were on the verge of getting a deal with a major record company. Banks had heard the band play the last time he was in London and had been knocked out by his son’s singing, playing and songwriting talent, had come to see him in a whole new light, a person unto himself, not just an extension of the family. He had almost written Brian off as an idler and a layabout after he nearly failed his degree, but Brian was his own person in Banks’s mind now. Independent, talented, free. The same feeling had happened with Tracy, when he had seen her with her new friends in a pub shortly after she started university. He knew he’d lost her, then – at least lost the daughter of his imagination – but in her place he had found a young woman he liked and admired, even if she was off in Paris with the monosyllabic Damon. Letting go can be painful, Banks had learned over the years, but sometimes it hurts more if you try to hold on.