from Durham Tees Valley Airport timed nine twenty-five a.m. Friday. The car had been parked there for three days.”
“So wherever he went, he went on Tuesday?” said Banks.
“So it seems.”
“Have you checked the f light arrival times?”
“Not yet,” said Annie. “Haven’t had a chance. But from some of the restaurant receipts we found in his wallet, it looks as if he was in Amsterdam.”
“Interesting,” said Banks. “It should be easy enough to check on the f light passenger lists. We’ll get Doug on it. So what did Silbert walk into when he got home on Friday morning? I wonder. How far are we from the airport, about forty-five minutes, an hour?”
“Forty-five minutes, depending on the traffic on the A1,” said Annie. “And as far I know, they don’t service a lot of destinations directly through Durham Tees Valley. It’s a pretty small airport.”
“I remember,” said Banks. “We f lew from there to Dublin once not A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
4 7
long ago. I also think BMI f lies to Heathrow. Anyway, that would fix his arrival at Castleview Heights around quarter past to half past ten.”
“And by one o’clock he was dead,” added Superintendent Gervaise.
They all sat in silence for a moment to let that sink in, then Banks said, “And Mark Hardcastle was definitely in London on Wednesday and Thursday?”
“Yes,” said Annie. “He was there with Derek Wyman, the director of
“On his way home then,” said Banks. “If he was at Watford Gap at two twenty-six p.m. and drove straight home, he’d be here by about half past five, maybe a bit earlier. What’s the restaurant?”
“One of the Zizzi’s chain, on Charlotte Street. Pizza trentino and a glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. A large one, going by the price.”
“Hmm,” said Banks. “That would indicate that Hardcastle probably ate alone. Or he and Wyman went Dutch, or shared the pizza. Any idea where Hardcastle stayed on Wednesday night?”
“No,” said Annie. “We’re hoping Derek Wyman might be able to tell us. He’s not back yet. I was planning on interviewing him first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Any idea what Hardcastle did on Thursday evening after he got back to Eastvale?” Banks asked.
“Who knows?” Annie said. “He must have stopped in, most likely at Castleview. The downstairs neighbor at Branwell Court says she hasn’t seen him since last week, and most of the letters are postmarked around that time or later. We haven’t been able to find anybody who saw him go out. He wasn’t at the theater. All we know is that the next day around lunchtime, he went into Grainger’s shop, smelling of alcohol, bought a length of clothesline and went and hanged himself in Hindswell Woods. So between late Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, he’d had a few drinks, or a lot of drinks, and he possibly killed Laurence Silbert.”
“Anything else of interest in Silbert’s wallet?” Banks asked.
“Credit cards, a little cash, a business card, sales receipts, driving li-4 8 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
cense. He was born in 1946, by the way, which makes him sixty-two.
Nothing yet to give a hint of his profession or sources of income.”
“Business card? Whose? His own?”
“No.” Annie slid the plastic folder over to him.
“Julian Fenner, Import-Export,” Banks read. “That covers a multi-tude of sins. It’s a London phone number. No address. Mind if I hang on to it?”
“Okay by me,” said Annie. “Maybe it’s another lover?”
“More speculation,” said Gervaise. “What we need is solid information.” She rested both her palms on the table as if to push herself up to leave, but she remained seated. “Right,” she said. “We’ll keep at it.
We still have a lot of questions to answer before we can close the book on this one. Is there much else on in Major Crimes at the moment?”
“Not much,” said Annie. “Couple of gang-related incidents on the East Side Estate, a spate of shoplifting in the Swainsdale Centre—
looks organized—and a break-in at the Castle Gift Shop. And the traffic cones, of course. They’re still disappearing. DS Hatchley and CID
are dealing with most of it.”
“Good,” said Gervaise. “Then we’ll let DS Hatchley worry about the traffic cones and the shoplifting. Stefan, how long do you think it will take the lab to get the basic blood work done?”
“We can get the samples typed by tomorrow,” said Nowak. “That’s easy enough. DNA and toxicology will take longer, of course, depending whether we put a rush on it or not, and that costs money. I’d say by midweek, at best.”
“Any idea when Dr. Glendenning might get around to the postmortems?”
