“Time away from me?”
She paused, then said, “Yes.”
“Sophia, I
“Then how did someone just manage to walk into my house and break my things without alerting the police?”
“The people who did it are very adept,” Banks said. “You have to believe me. They can get in anywhere.” He hadn’t told her that before, hadn’t wanted to frighten her, but as it turned out, he needn’t have worried.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Sophia said. “You not setting the alarm, or these paranoid delusions you’ve got about the secret service.
Do you seriously believe what you’re saying, or is it some kind of elaborate excuse you’ve just come up with, because if it is—”
“It isn’t an excuse. It’s true. I told you about them before. Laurence Silbert was a retired MI6 agent. Semi- retired.”
There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Anyway, it’s not even that. I don’t want to argue.”
“Me, neither. What is it, then?”
“I don’t know. It’s all been too fast, that’s all. I just need some time.
If you care at all about me, you’ll give me some time.”
“Fine,” he said in the end, exhausted. “Take your time. Take all the time you want.”
And that was that.
The rain continued to fall and Banks thought he could hear thunder in the distance. He thought about Sophia, how she would get emotional during thunderstorms. She would make love like a wild thing, and if she was ever going to tell him that she loved him, he would have bet it would be during a thunderstorm. But that wasn’t likely to happen 3 1 8
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
now. They had been living together in so many ways, yet they lived so much apart. No wonder it all seemed too fast for her.
“ I ’ M S O R R Y for disturbing you, honest I am,” said Carol Wyman, opening the door to Annie, “but I’m really beside myself.”
She looked it, too, Annie thought. Hair unkempt, no makeup, dark circles under her eyes. “It’s all right,” Annie said. “What’s the problem?”
“Come in,” Carol said, “and I’ll tell you.”
The living room was untidy, but Annie managed to find a place to sit on the sofa. Carol offered tea, and at first Annie declined. Only when Carol insisted and said she needed a cup herself did she agree. Annie had driven all the way in from Harkside to Eastvale and was stopping at the Wymans’ on her way to Western Area Headquarters, where Superintendent Gervaise wanted the whole team assembled at twelve o’clock for a meeting in the boardroom. As she waited for Carol to make the tea, Annie glanced around the room and noticed that the photograph of Derek Wyman with his brother was missing, as were several others.
“What is it?” Annie asked, when Carol brought the tea and sat next to her.
“It’s Derek,” she said. “I don’t know where he is. He’s disappeared.
Derek’s disappeared.”
She started crying, and Annie put an arm around her shoulders and passed her a tissue from the box on the coffee table. “When was this?”
she asked.
“He didn’t come home last night, after the evening performance. I haven’t seen him since he went out for the matinee at two o’clock. He usually comes home for his tea between performances on a Sunday, but yesterday he didn’t.” She gave a harsh laugh. “You haven’t locked him up or anything without telling me, have you?”
“We wouldn’t do that,” said Annie, moving her arm away.
“At first I just thought maybe he’d grabbed a sandwich or something instead of coming home for tea—he sometimes does—then he’d gone with his mates for a few drinks after the play, but . . .”
“Did he phone or anything?”
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
3 1 9
“No, nothing. That’s not like him. I mean, Derek’s not perfect—
who is?—but he wouldn’t do something like that. He knows my nerves aren’t good. He knows what it would do to me.” She held her hands out. “Look at me. I’m shaking.”
“Did you phone the police station?”
“Yes, this morning. But they wouldn’t do anything. They said he was a grown man and he had only been missing for one night. I told them about Saturday, when he was there talking to you, like, and that he’d been upset ever since, but they didn’t even know he’d been at the station. That’s why I phoned you. You gave me your number. You said I should ring.”
“It’s all right,” Annie said. There was no way the Monday-morning desk officer would know that Wyman had been in the station on Saturday afternoon; he hadn’t been arrested or charged, so his name wouldn’t appear on any of the weekend arrest or custody records.
