tipped over on a couple of occasions before she got to the pub, opened the door, and saw them all there. Shane grinned at her through the smoke and she smiled back. It was going to be all right, then. Saturday night had started, and it was going to be all right.
T O S AY that Sophia’s arrival changed the tenor of dinner-table conversation would be an understatement. The men almost visibly puffed themselves up and set about impressing her. Geoff started comment-ing on the wine, finding hints of chocolate, vanilla and tobacco that he had clearly memorized from a book, and Graham Kirk began a lecture on the future of computing, ostensibly to Max, but with the occasional sideways, approval-seeking glance at Sophia, who wasn’t listening. Sophia appeared, to Banks, quite oblivious to it all. She couldn’t help it that men fell all over her, her self- possessed demeanor seemed to say. And if she found the phenomenon amusing, she didn’t give that away, either.
Banks found himself enjoying the show tremendously. He felt invisible, lighter than air, a f ly on the wall, noting facial expressions, body language of all kinds, as if no one were aware of his presence.
Disappearing was a skill he had possessed since childhood, and it often 2 4 8 P E T E R
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came in useful in his job. It used to drive Sandra crazy, he remembered. She thought it was rude, not joining in. But then Sandra was very social and was very much always there all the time.
Since Sophia’s arrival, even Daphne had stopped hanging on to his arm and talking to him, and had taken instead to sulking and sipping her wine rather faster than she had before. Someone at the far end spilled a glass of red all over the white tablecloth and everyone oohed and fussed over that for a while with cloths and sponges while Harriet tried to calm them down and told them to ignore it, it would all come out in the wash.
In the confusion, Banks stole a glance at Sophia. That she was beautiful had been obvious enough even before he had clapped eyes on her. The mere effect of her entry into the room had been enough to tell him that. But the more he looked, the more he understood. Her dark hair was tied loosely behind, at the nape of her long neck, her olive skin smooth and f lawless. She wore a jade top, scooped just low enough to show the promise of cleavage without showing anything, and an antique locket on a thin silver chain around her neck, which she touched with her thumb and forefinger every now and then. Her lips were full, and her eyes were the darkest and most beguiling that Banks had ever seen. A man could drown himself in those eyes. She caught him staring at her and smiled again. He felt himself blush. He was no longer invisible.
Conversation moved around, as it inevitably did, to the crime statistics, to binge drinking, gangs, robbery, the unsafe streets, general murder and mayhem, and the apparent inability of the plods to solve even the simplest and most obvious of crimes, or keep the taxpaying citizens safe from muggers and burglars and rapists. Though none of this was specifically directed at Banks, there were nonetheless certain pointed challenges and expectations, and when he didn’t rise to the bait, Quentin, Daphne’s husband and one of the supercilious prats, started to zoom in on specifics, like the Hayley Daniels case.
“Look at that poor girl who got herself murdered right here in town just last week,” he said, lips a little too wet and red from the wine, a shine in his eyes and a sheen of sweat on his upper lip and brow.
Daphne sat stiff ly next to Banks, arms crossed, looking as if she’d just F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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sucked on a lemon. “According to all the papers,” Quentin went on, “it was someone close to her, an ex- boyfriend or something. It always is, isn’t it? But has there been an arrest? No. I mean, what’s stopping them?
Are they dim or something? You’d think they’d know by now.”
Someone started laying the blame on the lenient judges, the Crown Prosecution Service and the slick defense barristers, and still Banks didn’t say anything. One or two people laughed nervously and Max said, “Oh, they probably just misplaced the evidence. They’re always doing that, aren’t they? Or faking it.” He glanced at Banks.
Then Sophia’s voice cut through the rest. “For crying out loud, you should hear yourselves talk. Are you all such sheep that you believe everything you read in the papers or see on the news? If you ask me, you’ve all been watching too many police programs. Too much Frost and Morse and Rebus. How do you think it happens? Do you really believe the policeman wakes up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea, and he says to himself, ‘Aha, eureka, I’ve got it! I have the solution!?’ Grow up. It’s a hard slog.”
That silenced them. After a short pause, Banks glanced over at Sophia and said, “Well, I do occasionally wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea, but most of the time it turns out to be indi-gestion.”
There was another pause, and then everyone laughed. Sophia held Banks’s gaze and seemed to be searching him with those dark eyes of hers. Then she smiled again, and this time there was something different about it, something more intimate about their contact.
The conversation split into smaller groups and moved on. Banks found himself talking to Sophia about how much she enjoyed walking around London at night, and he told her about some of his favorite Dales walks, then Harriet joined in with a few funny stories about when she used to drive a mobile library. Dessert came, an apple- and-rhubarb crumble with custard, then it was back to the living room for coffee and after-dinner drinks, which Banks declined.
The evening was winding down. The drunks had subsided into silence, punctuated only by the occasional snore from Trevor and twitch from Gemma. Those left talked quietly as the steam rose from their coffee cups, everyone feeling full and sleepy from all the food and 2 5 0
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wine. Even the lamplight in the living room seemed dimmer and warmer. Bach had been replaced by Paul Simon’s
“ T I M E , L A D I E S and gentlemen, please,” the landlord of The Horse and Hounds called out close to half past eleven. “Come on, let’s be having you. Haven’t you got no homes to go to?”
Chelsea still had half a Bacardi Breeze in front of her. Her fifth, or was it her sixth, of the eve ning? She couldn’t remember. Most of the others had varying degrees of alcohol left, too, mostly lager for the blokes and white wine for the girls. The band had stopped half an hour ago, but the place was still full and noisy. They hadn’t been too bad tonight, she thought, but if she had to hear one more cover version of
