All the Colors of Darkness

Mark.”

“Are you telling me this was all about the bloody theater, after all?

Your directing career?”

“You don’t understand. He was going to wipe out my job. With a professional acting troupe there, he was going to end up artistic director of the whole bloody show, and getting well paid for it in the bargain, and I was going to be stuck teaching the likes of Nicky Haskell and his mates for the rest of my bloody days. And he delighted in letting me know. He even used to bloody tease me about it. I put hours of work into those plays. They were my life. Do you think I was just going to stand around and have it all taken away from me by some Johnny-come-lately?”

“I don’t believe this,” said Banks, shaking his head. “For that you destroyed two lives?”

Wyman drank some whiskey. “I never intended for anyone to be destroyed. I just wanted to cause a rift, so maybe Hardcastle would bugger off back to Barnsley or wherever and leave us all alone. It started as a bit of a lark, really, thinking about Othello. Then I wondered if you really could do that, you know, drive someone around the bend through innuendo and images. Mark was a bit jealous about Laurence’s frequent trips to London or Amsterdam, whether they were supposed to be business trips or not. I thought I could use that.

Mark told me about the f lat in Bloomsbury, and one time I was in London at the same time Laurence was there on a business trip I went and watched the f lat. That was when I saw Laurence come out. I don’t know why, but I followed him, saw him meet a man on a park bench and go to a house in Saint John’s Wood. I didn’t have my camera with me. You know the rest.”

“And you hired Tom Savage because you couldn’t get down there as often as Laurence Silbert did?”

“That’s right. I told her I’d ring her and give her an address when I wanted her to follow someone and take photographs. She did a terrific job. Mark went spare when I showed him them at Zizzi’s. I didn’t expect him to tear them up, but he did. Naturally, the photos weren’t enough in themselves, I had to embellish a bit on the sort of things I 3 5 0 P E T E R

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thought they were going to do to one another when they got upstairs.

But the hand on the back was a lovely touch. If it hadn’t been for that, it might have looked innocent.”

A harmless gesture. Again, Banks wondered about Sophia. Was that all her friend’s gesture had been last night? And was he doing his own embellishment? He put her out of his mind. That was for later.

“I never expected what happened next. You have to believe me.

I’ve been a wreck ever since. Ask Carol. Poor Carol. Is she all right?”

“You should ring her,” Banks said. “She’s worried sick about you.”

“I can’t face that just now,” said Wyman. “Give me a bit of time to get myself together.”

Banks finished his wine. “Look,” he said, “as far as I can tell, technically, you’ve created a hell of a mess, caused two deaths and wasted a lot of police time, but you haven’t committed any crime. It’s down to the CPS to make the final decision on that, of course, but I honestly can’t see what the charge would be.”

“You’ve got to take me in,” said Wyman. “We’ve got to get it sorted before I can go home again. I don’t want them coming to my house again. Carol. The kids. I’m willing to accept whatever punish-ment you think I should have, but I want you to help me get them off my back. Will you do that?”

Banks thought for a moment. “If I can,” he said.

Wyman put his tumbler down and got to his feet. “Now?”

“We’ll ring your wife from the station,” Banks said.

A S T H E Y walked out front to the car, Banks thought he had probably had too much to drink to be driving —a can of beer with dinner and a couple glasses of wine in the fairly short time Wyman had been there.

He was also in a pretty shaky emotional state. But it was almost mid-night, and he didn’t feel at all impaired. What else was he going to do?

Send Wyman back to wander the moors in the rain? Give him a bed for the night? The last thing Banks wanted was Derek Wyman skulk-ing around the house in the morning. He could do that perfectly well himself. He knew he wasn’t destined for sleep tonight, anyway, so he might as well take the silly bugger to the station, get him off his hands 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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for good and go back to nursing his broken heart over another bottle of wine. It was unlikely that MI6 would turn out for a meeting in the middle of the night, but if Wyman was too nervous to go home, Banks would be more than happy to put him in a cell for a night, then arrange for a solicitor to attend in the morning to thrash it all out.

There were no streetlights on the road to Eastvale, and only Banks’s headlights cut through the darkness and the steady curtain of rain ahead, the windscreen wipers beating time.

Then he noticed the distorted glare of someone’s headlights in his rear-view mirror, too close and too bright for comfort. They started f lashing.

“Shit,” said Banks. He realized that they must have been watching his place, either hoping he would lead them to Wyman, or that Wyman would fetch up there looking for help after they’d put the wind up him. Parasites.

“What is it?” Wyman asked.

“I think it’s them,” Banks said. “I think they were staking out my house.”

“What are you going to do?”