set the alarm. Someone just walked in.”
Banks didn’t see the point in questioning her logic—on how anyone might have known if he
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she was clearly in no state for that sort of thing. “Did you check the back?” he asked.
Sophia shook her head.
Banks walked down the passage to where the back door opened off the kitchen. Nothing. No sign of forced entry, no sign of any kind of entry. For good measure, he went out into the garden and saw nothing had been disturbed there, either. The back gate was padlocked, as usual, though anyone could have climbed over it. They would still have had the alarm system to reckon with, though, as it covered the whole house.
He went back to the living room. Sophia hadn’t moved. “Have you called the police?” he asked.
“I don’t want the bloody police. What can the bloody police do?
Oh, just go away. Why don’t you just go away?”
“Sophia, I’m sorry, but this isn’t my fault. I set the alarm as usual this morning.”
“So how do you explain all this?”
“Was anything taken?”
“How should I know?”
“It could be important. You should make a list for the police.”
“I told you I don’t want the police here. What can they do?”
“Well, the insurance company—”
“Bugger the sodding insurance company! They can’t replace any of this.”
Banks stared at the heap of broken treasures and knew she was right.
Everything here was personal, none of it worth a great deal of money.
He knew that he
* * *
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
2 3 3
“ T H A N K YO U ,” said Gervaise when Annie came back with the drinks. “Where was I?”
“9/11 and the London bombings.”
“Ah, yes. My little digression. Anyway, I’m sure you get the picture. Work around these people long enough and you get to think like them. One of the lads on our team, let’s call him Aziz, was a Muslim.
His family came from Saudi Arabia, and he’d grown up here, spoke like an Eastender, but they still went to the local mosque, said their prayers, the whole thing. This was all in the wake of the July London bombings and the unfortunate shooting of that Brazilian on the tube.
Tempers were a little frazzled all round, as you can imagine. Anyway, Aziz made some criticism of the way our local Special Branch–MI5
liaison officer handled a situation at a mosque, said something to indicate that he thought we were all being a bit heavy-handed about it all, and the next thing you know he’s got a file as thick as your wrist.
They’d fitted him up with a legend. It was all in there, the training camps in Pakistan, the meetings with terrorist cell leaders, all documented, photographs, the lot. Personal friend of Osama bin Laden.
I’m sure you get the picture, anyway. And every word, every image of it, was a lie. Aziz had never left England in his life. Hardly even left London. But there it was, in glorious Technicolor, the life of a terrorist. We all knew it was crap. Even MI5 knew it was crap. But they had a point to make and they made it.”
Gervaise paused to drink some beer. “They talk about giving their field agents legends,” she went on. “Aliases, alternative life histories, complete with all the proof and documentary evidence anyone could ask for. Well, they gave Aziz this, without his even asking for it or need-ing it. Of course, they searched his f lat, interrogated him, told him they’d be back, pestered his friends and colleagues. This was something that could happen to any one of us who stepped out of line, they were saying. Aziz just happened to be dark-skinned, happened to be a Muslim, but we weren’t immune just because we were white police officers. You might think I was being paranoid, Annie, but you weren’t there.”
“What happened to Aziz?”
“His career was over. They took back all the files about training camps and stuff, of course—that was all for effect—but they’d made 2 3 4
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their point as to what they
“What are you saying?”
