Damn it, thought Banks, seeing his weekend in Paris with Tracy start to slip beyond his grasp. Daughters. Who’d have them? Nothing but trouble. But Riddle had touched a nerve all right. Now there was no getting away from it, no declining; Banks knew he had to head off to London to find Emily Louise Riddle.

“Oh, Dad! You can’t mean it! You woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me we can’t go to Paris after all?”

“I’m sorry, love. We’ll just have to postpone it for a while.”

“I don’t believe this. I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for ages.”

“Me, too, sweetheart. What can I say?”

“And you won’t even tell me why?”

“I can’t. I promised.”

“You promised me a weekend in Paris. It was easy enough to break that one.”

Touché. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you trust me to keep my mouth shut?”

“Of course I do. It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“I just can’t tell you yet. That’s all. Maybe next week, if things work out.”

“Oh, don’t bother.” Tracy fell into one of her sulky silences for a while, the way her mother did, then said, “It’s not dangerous, is it?”

“Of course not. It’s a private matter. I’m helping out a-” Banks almost said “friend” but managed to stop himself in time. “I’m helping someone out. Someone in trouble. Believe me, love, if you knew the details, you’d see it’s the right thing to do. Look, when it’s over, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“Heard that before. Been there. Got the T-shirt.”

“Give me a little leeway here, Tracy. This isn’t easy for me, you know. It’s not just you who’s upset. I was looking forward to Paris, too.”

“Okay, I know. I’m sorry. But what about the tickets. The hotel?”

“The hotel’s easily canceled. I’ll see if I can get the tickets changed.”

“You’ll be lucky.” She paused again. “Wait a minute! I’ve just had an idea.”

“What?”

“Well, I know you can’t go, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t go, is there?”

“Not that I know of. Except, would you really want to be in Paris all by yourself? And it’s not safe, especially for a young woman alone.”

Tracy laughed. “I can take care of myself, Dad. I’m a big girl now.”

Yes, Banks thought, all of nineteen. “I’m sure you can,” he said. “But I’d be worried.”

“You’re always worried. It’s what fathers do best for their daughters: worry about them. Besides, I wasn’t necessarily thinking of going by myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll bet Damon would like to go. He doesn’t have any lectures tomorrow, either. I could ask him.”

“Wait a minute,” said Banks. “Damon? Who on earth is Damon?”

“My boyfriend. I bet he’d jump at the chance of a weekend in Paris with me.”

I’ll bet he would, Banks thought, with that sinking feeling. This wasn’t going at all the way he had expected it to. He had expected recriminations, yes; anger, yes; but this…? “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” he said weakly.

“Of course it is. You know it is. We’d save money, too.”

“How?”

“Well, you’ll only have to cancel one of the hotel rooms, for a start.”

“Tracy!”

She laughed. “Oh, Dad. Parents are so silly, you know. If kids want to sleep together, it doesn’t have to be in a foreign city at night. They can do it in the student residence in the daytime, you know.”

Banks swallowed. Now he had an answer to a question he had avoided asking. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Are you and Damon… I mean…?”

“Don’t worry. I’m a very careful girl. Now, the only problem is getting the tickets to us before tomorrow morning. I don’t suppose you’d like to drive over tonight, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Banks. Then he weakened. After all, she was right; there was no reason to spoil her weekend just because his own was spoiled, Damon notwithstanding.

“But as a matter of fact, I have to go down to London tomorrow anyway, so I can go that far on the train with you.” And check Damon out, too, while I’m at it, he thought. “I’ll give you the tickets then.”

“That’s great!”

Banks felt depressed; Tracy sounded far more thrilled at going off with Damon than with him. But she would; she was young. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “At the station. Same time as we arranged.”

“Cool, Dad. Thanks a lot.”

When he hung up the telephone, Banks fell back into his armchair and reached for his cigarettes. He had to go to London, of that there was no doubt. In the first place, he had promised, and in the second, there was something Riddle didn’t know. Tracy herself had almost run away from home once, around her thirteenth birthday, and the thought of what might have happened if she had gone through with it haunted him.

It had happened just before they left London for Eastvale. Tracy had been upset for days about leaving her friends behind, and one night, when Banks actually happened to be home, he heard a noise downstairs. Going to investigate, he found Tracy at the door with a suitcase in her hand. In the end, he managed to persuade her to stay without forcing her, but it had been touch and go. One part of their bargain was that he had agreed not to tell her mother, and he never had. Sandra had slept through the whole thing. Remembering that night, he could imagine something of how the Riddles must feel.

Even so, was this what he got for doing his enemy a favor? He got to go hunting for a runaway teen while his own daughter got a dirty weekend in Paris with her boyfriend. Where was the justice in that? he asked. All the answer he got was the howling of the wind and the relentless music of the water flowing over Gratly Falls.

On Friday afternoon, Banks was walking along Old Compton Street in the chilly November sunshine, having traveled down to London with Tracy and Damon that morning. After a grunted “Hi,” Damon had hardly spoken a word. The train was almost full, and the three of them couldn’t sit together, which seemed a relief to Tracy and Damon. Banks had to sit half the carriage away next to a fresh-faced young businessman wearing too much aftershave and playing FreeCell on his laptop computer.

Most of the journey he spent listening to Lucinda Williams’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and reading The Big Sleep, which he had substituted for Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets when he realized he wasn’t going to Paris. He had seen the Bogart film version a few weeks ago and enjoyed it so much it had made him want to read the book. Besides, Raymond Chandler seemed more suitable reading for the kind of job he was doing: Banks, PI.

Shortly before King’s Cross, his thoughts had returned to Tracy’s boyfriend.

Banks wasn’t at all certain what to think of Damon. The grunt was no more than he would have expected from any of his daughter’s friends, and he didn’t read anything into it, except perhaps that the lad was a bit embarrassed at coming face-to-face with the father of the girl he was sleeping with. Even the thought of that made Banks’s chest tighten, though he told himself not to get upset, not to interfere. The last thing he wanted to do was alienate his daughter, especially as he was hoping to get back together with her mother. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. Tracy had her own life to lead now, and she was no fool. He hoped.

He had left the young lovers at King’s Cross and first gone to check in at the small Bloomsbury hotel he had telephoned the previous evening. Called simply Hotel Fifty-Five, after the street number, it was the place he favored whenever he visited London: quiet, discreet, well-located and relatively inexpensive. Riddle might have said he would pay any expenses, but Banks wouldn’t want to see the CC’s face if he got a bill from the Dorchester.