CLUTCHING HIS BOTTLE OF WINE IN ONE HAND, BANKS
took…
242
13
IT WAS WITH A TERRIBLE SENSE OF DEJA VU THAT…
258
14
WHEN HER TELEPHONE RANG AT HALF PAST SEVEN ON
Sunday…
281
15
ANNIE WAS IN THE STATION BRIGHT AND EARLY
ON
MONDAY…
306
16
YOU’VE GOT A SPRING IN YOUR STEP, DCI BANKS,” SAID…
324
17
BANKS, WINSOME AND JAMIE MURDOCH SAT IN THE BLEAK
interview…
338
18
BANKS ENJOYED THE DRIVE TO LEEDS. THE WEATHER WAS
fine…
354
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Peter Robinson
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
SHE MIGHT HAVE BEEN STARING OUT TO SEA, AT THE
blurred line where the gray water meets the gray sky. The same salt wind that rushed the waves to shore lifted a lock of her dry hair and let it fall against her cheek. But she felt nothing; she just sat there, her expressionless face pale and puffy, clouded black eyes wide open.
A f lock of seagulls quarreled over a shoal of fish they had spotted close to shore. One of them swooped low and hovered over the still shape at the cliff edge, then squawked and headed back to join the fray. Far out to sea, a freighter bound for Norway formed a red smudge on the horizon. Another seagull f lew closer to the woman, perhaps attracted by the movement of her hair in the wind. A few moments later, the rest of the f lock, tired of the squabble over fish, started to circle her. Finally, one settled on her shoulder in a grotesque parody of Long John Silver’s parrot. Still, she didn’t move. Cocking its head, it looked around in all directions like a guilty schoolboy in case someone was watching, then it plunged its beak into her ear.
S U N D AY M O R N I N G S were hardly sacrosanct to Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. After all, he didn’t go to church, and he rarely awoke with such a bad hangover that it was painful to move or speak.
In fact, the previous eve ning he had watched
2 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
and had drunk two glasses of Tesco’s finest Chilean cabernet with his reheated pizza funghi. But he did appreciate a lie-in and an hour or two’s peace with the newspapers as much as the next man. For the afternoon, he planned to phone his mother and wish her a happy Mother’s Day, then listen to some of the Shostakovich string quartets he had recently purchased from iTunes and carry on reading Tony Judt’s
He found that he read far less fiction these days; he felt a new hunger to understand, from a different perspective, the world in which he had grown up. Novels were all well and good for giving you a f lavor of the times, but he needed facts and interpretations, the big picture.
