foot through the Bloomsbury backstreets to King’s Cross Station. Even from Euston Road, he could still see wisps of smoke drifting in the air and hear the occasional siren. He wasn’t sure exactly what time the bombing had occurred, but he reckoned it must have been about two-thirty, the heart of a Friday afternoon in summer, when people like to leave work early. It was after five o’clock when he got to the train station, and service was still suspended, though the building had been cleared of threats and had reopened an hour earlier.
Crowds of people milled around the announcement boards, ready for the dash when their gate was announced. It cost him a small fortune to buy a single ticket to Darlington, with no guarantee of when the train would actually leave. The sandwich stalls had all run out of food and bottled water. While he waited, Banks phoned Brian and Tomasina, who were both f ine, though shaken at having been so close 2 7 6 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
to disaster. He also phoned Sophia at home and got no answer, as expected. He left a message asking her to pick up his car and said he hoped she was all right. He wasn’t going to tell anyone about his afternoon; certainly not now, probably never.
As luck would have it, the first train north left the station at six thirty-five, and Banks was on it, sitting next to an earnest young Ban-gladeshi student who wanted to talk about what had just happened.
Banks didn’t want to talk about it, and he made himself clear from the start. For the rest of the trip the student obviously felt uncomfortable, no doubt thinking that Banks didn’t want anything to do with him because he was Asian.
At that point, Banks didn’t care what the kid thought. He didn’t care what anybody thought. He stared out of the window, without a book or even his iPod to take his mind off the journey and the memories. He wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on words or music, anyway. His mind was numb, and a couple of miniature scotches from the food and beverages cart helped numb it even more.
He had taken a taxi home from Darlington, which was marginally closer to Gratly than York, and that had cost him a fortune, too. The driver’s constant chatter about Boro’s chances next season had been simply a free bonus. At least he hadn’t talked about the bombing; sometimes the north felt far enough away to be another country, with wholly other concerns. All in all, Banks thought, as he paid the taxi driver, it was turning into an expensive day, what with the hotel bill, lunch, new clothes, the train ticket and now this. Thank God everyone took plastic.
The train journey had been slow, with unexpected and unexplained delays at Grantham and Doncaster, and Banks hadn’t got home until half past ten. He had to admit that he was relieved to be there and to shut the door behind him, though he had no idea what he wanted to do to distract himself. He knew he didn’t want to watch any news reports, didn’t want to see the images of death and suffering repeated ad nauseam and keep up with the mounting death toll. When he had poured himself a generous glass of red wine and sat down in front of an old Marx Brothers movie in the entertainment room, he didn’t really know what he felt about it all.
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
2 7 7
When he probed himself, he realized that he didn’t feel sad or angry or depressed. Perhaps that would come later. What had happened had taken him to a new place inside himself, a place he didn’t know, had never explored before, and he didn’t have a map. His world had changed, its axis shifted. It was the difference between knowing these things happened, watching them happen to other people on television, and being there, in the thick of it, seeing the suffering and knowing there’s nothing, or very little, that you can do. But he had helped the injured. He had to cling to that, at least. He remembered the blind Asian woman, whose grip he imagined he could still feel on his arm; the young blonde in the bloodstained yellow dress, her stupid little lapdog and the bag she just wouldn’t give up; the frightened child; the dead taxi driver; all of them. They were in him now, part of him, and they would be forever.
Yet for all the fear and sorrow, he also felt a deep calm, a sense of inevitability and of letting go that surprised him. It was like the walk he was on now. There was something simple and soothing about putting one foot in front of the other and making slow progress up the hill.
He was climbing Tetchley Fell, following a footpath that crossed several fields, scanning the drystone walls for the stile that led over to the next one. The sun shone in a bright blue sky, but there was a light breeze to take the edge off the heat. Every once in a while he glanced behind him to see if he was being followed, and he saw two figures, one with a red jacket tied around her waist by the sleeves, and another in a T-shirt with a backpack on his back. Banks was panting and sweating when he reached the Roman road that cut diagonally down the daleside to the village of Fortford in the distance, so he thought he would pause there for a few moments and let them catch up with him.
As they passed him, they said hello, the way ramblers do, then turned left and walked down the Roman road. They could turn off at Mortsett, Banks thought, or go all the way to Relton or Fortford, but they weren’t going in his direction. They were just kids, anyway, a couple of students out for a bit of country air. Even MI6 had to have an age limit, surely?
2 7 8 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
Banks climbed the stile on the other side of the narrow track and carried on through the fields up the hill. The grass grew thinner and browner, and soon he was walking around rocks and through clumps of heather and gorse. It would be in f lower soon, he thought, brightening the dull moorland with its purples and yellows. The sheep grew few and far between.
He kept thinking he’d got to the top long before he had. It was one false summit after another. But finally he was there and only had to totter down the other side of a steep bank to get to Hallam Tarn. It was nothing much, just a hollowed-out bowl of water right at the top of Tetchley Fell, about a hundred yards wide and two hundred long. It was walled in places because children had fallen in and drowned. The body of a young boy had even been dumped there once, Banks remembered. But there was a path around the tarn offering a scenic walk, and today five or six cars were parked in the space at the far end where the road up from Helmthorpe came to a full stop at the water’s edge.
Legend had it that Hallam Tarn used to be a village once, but that the villagers took to evil ways, worshipping Satan, making human sacrifices, so God smote them with his fist, and the dent he made on crushing the village created the tarn. On certain days, so they said, if the light was right, you could see the old houses and streets beneath the water, the squat, toadlike church with its upside-down cross, hear the blood-curdling cries of the villagers as they whipped themselves up into a frenzy during some ritual ceremony.
Some days you could believe it, Banks thought, as he headed toward the car park, but today it seemed as far away from evil and Satanic rites as you could get. A couple passed him on the path, hand in hand, and the girl smiled shyly at him, a blade of grass in her mouth. One middle-aged man was jogging in a tracksuit and trainers, red-faced and sweating with exertion, a heart attack waiting to happen.
Banks reached the end of the tarn where the cars were parked, and then he saw the familiar figure. Standing at
