“Aye. They converted the barn for bed-and-breakfast a couple of years ago. It’s half a mile back toward Kinsbeck. You can’t miss it. Big sign outside.”
“Anything else?”
“Not nearby. Not that you’d leave your car here and walk to.”
“He’d run out of petrol,” Annie said.
“Bert’s garage closes at five o’clock on a Sunday,” said the barman,
“so he’d have no joy there.”
At that moment the door opened and everyone looked around again.
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
3 3 7
“Oh, how jolly,” muttered Annie to Winsome. “It’s Dreary and Hackneyed again.”
“That’s Drury and Hackett to you, ma’am,” said one of them, with a weighty pause before the “ma’am.”
“Any luck?” she asked.
“No. He wasn’t there. They were closed, anyway.”
“Right,” said Annie, finishing her Coke. “I think it’s a bit late to start sending out the search parties on the moors tonight, but we can make a start by doing a house-to-house of the area—the youth hostel and Brierley Farm being first on our list. All right, lads?”
“But we’ve got our patrol route to cover,” one of the officers protested.
“Want me to clear it with your superior?” Annie asked.
“No,” the officer mumbled. “Don’t bother. Come on, Ken,” he said to his partner. “Let’s start with Brierley.”
I F T R U T H be told, Banks probably hadn’t been fit to drive, he thought as he pulled up outside his Gratly cottage at some ungodly hour in the morning. But all he knew was that he couldn’t stay in London. After he had tossed his pay-as-you-go mobile into the Thames, he felt that he had to get away.
The drive home hadn’t gone too badly. He had wanted loud, raucous sixties rock and roll, not mournful torch ballads, so he set his Led Zep-pelin collection on random. The first track that came on was “Dazed and Confused,” which just about said it all. The rest of the drive had passed in a sort of aural slide show of guitar solos, memories and surges of anger alternating with resignation. He was probably lucky to be alive, though, he thought. He didn’t really remember the M1 at all now, just the loud music and a swirling haze of red brake lights ahead and the glaring headlights coming toward him on the other side.
As he drove, he second-guessed himself, told himself he should have gone over to Sophia and her friend in the wine bar, should have confronted them on the doorstep, punched the bloke on the nose.
Too late for all of that. He had done nothing, and this was where it had led him.
3 3 8 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
He had also tried to convince himself that it was all innocent, just a drink with an old friend, but there had been something about the body language, the ease between them, the chemistry, that he just didn’t believe it, and he couldn’t shake the images of Sophia in bed with the young man, the bed where
When he finally shut the door behind him, he felt exhausted, wrung out, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep. Instead of trying, he poured himself a large glass of wine and, without turning any lights or music on, went to sit in the conservatory.
So this was how it felt to have your heart broken, he thought. And, damn it, it really
No, the last time he had felt anywhere near like this was when Sandra had left him. He put his feet up and took a deep breath, reached for the bottle on the table at his side and refilled his glass. He hadn’t eaten since lunchtime, and his stomach growled, but he couldn’t be bothered to go and see if there was anything in the fridge. He didn’t think there was, anyway. It didn’t matter. Rain pattered on the glass. The wine would soon take the edge off his appetite, and if he drank enough he would find sleep. Or oblivion.
19
SO JUST WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS GOING ON?”
Superintendent Gervaise asked Banks in her office on Tuesday morning at an “informal” meeting over coffee. The rain was still pouring down, Derek Wyman was still missing, and Banks’s head was pounding. Oblivion had finally come to him in the wee hours of the morning, but not before he had downed enough red wine to give him a headache even extra-strength paracetamol couldn’t touch.
“We think Wyman might have made it to a town,” said Banks.
“Harrogate, Ripon. York, even. Maybe hitched a lift or caught a bus.
From one of those places he could have gone anywhere. Could even be abroad. Anyway, Annie and Winsome are concentrating on checking the bus and train stations. We’ve also got his picture in the paper and it’s coming up on the local TV news this evening. We’ve got uniforms canvassing supermarkets and men’s outfitters within a thirty-mile radius in case he needed a change of clothes. His credit and debit cards are covered, too. If he uses them, we’ll know where.”
“It’s the best we can do, I suppose,” said Gervaise.
Banks finished his coffee and poured himself another cup from the carafe.
“Rough night?” Gervaise asked.
