“No idea.”
“Who took them?”
“How should I know?”
Banks leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. “I’ll tell you A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
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how you should know,” he said. “They were taken by a young female private detective called Tomasina Savage. On your instructions. What do you have to say about that?”
“That’s privileged! That was a private . . . It . . . You can’t . . .”
Wyman started to get to his feet but banged his leg on the underside of the bolted table and sat down again.
“Privileged? You’ve been watching too many American cop shows,”
Banks said. “Why did you employ Tomasina Savage to follow Laurence Silbert and take those photographs? We know you gave them to Mark at Zizzi’s and he tore them up as soon as he saw them, but he kept the memory stick. Did he really just go to the cinema with you after that? Or was it all a lie?”
“Can I have some water?”
Annie poured him a glass from the pitcher on the table.
“Why did you pay Tomasina Savage to take those photographs?”
Banks repeated.
Wyman sipped his water and leaned back in his chair. For a few long moments, he said nothing, seemed to be coming to a decision, then he looked at them and said, “Because Mark asked me to. That’s why. I did it. Because Mark asked me to. But as God is my witness, it was not my intention that anyone should die.”
W I N S O M E WA S getting sick and tired of traipsing around the East Side Estate with Harry Potter by six o’clock on Saturday evening. It was time to go home, she felt, have a long bath, put on a nice frock and go to the Potholing Club social at the Cat and Fiddle. Maybe have a quiet drink later with Steve Farrow, if he asked her. But they were getting close to finding the Bull.
So far, they had discovered that one of Jackie Binns’s recent recruits, Andy Pash, a fifteen-year-old wannabee trying to ingratiate himself with the rest of the gang, had told the Bull that Donny Moore had called him a big ugly Arab bastard and said he was going to get what was coming to him. Apparently, Moore had said nothing of the kind—he was neither stupid nor suicidal—but the Bull believed that he had and had gone after him. Nobody had actually witnessed the 2 9 8 P E T E R
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stabbing—or so everyone said—but they all knew who did it and, as expected, someone had eventually let the name slip.
Now they were going to talk to Andy Pash, and Winsome had the feeling that he might just be the weakest link.
Pash lived with his mother and two sisters on one of nicer streets on the estate. At least there weren’t any boarded-up windows or rusted cars parked in the garden. The woman who answered the door, a bleached blonde in a micro skirt with too much makeup, cigarette in one hand and handbag in the other, turned out to be his mother, Kath.
If she was surprised to find a six-foot-plus black woman and a detective constable who resembled Harry Potter at her door just after six on a Saturday evening asking to talk to her son, she didn’t show it.
“He’s up in his room,” she said. “Can’t you hear the bloody racket?
And I’m off out.”
“You should be present while we question him,” Winsome said.
“Why? He’s a big boy. Help yourselves. And good luck. Close the door behind you.”
She brushed past them. Winsome and Doug Wilson exchanged glances. “Did she just give us permission?” Wilson asked.
“I think so,” said Winsome. “Besides, we’re not arresting him. We just want him to tell us where the Bull lives.”
Wilson muttered something about “fruit of the poisoned tree,”
which Winsome was sure he must have got from an American cop program, and they went inside and shut the door. In the living room, a young girl of about thirteen lounged on the sofa watching
“Hey, you’re too young to be smoking,” said Winsome.
The girl jumped. The television was so loud that she hadn’t even noticed Winsome and Wilson enter the room. On the screen, Itchy was chopping Scratchy into little pieces again while Bart and Lisa chuckled away, “Who the fuck are you?” the girl said, reaching for her mobile. “Perverts? I’ll call the cops.”
“No need, love, we’re already here.” Winsome showed her warrant card. “And mind your language,” she said. “Now put that cigarette out.”
The girl glared at her.
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“Put it out,” Winsome repeated.
