Refreshing. Edwina took the opportunity to order another gin and tonic. Birds twittered in the shrubbery. The sun felt warm on the back of Banks’s neck. “We’ve also been thinking,” he went on, “that Mark may have had suspicions regarding Laurence’s faithfulness, or lack of it. Laurence might have been having an affair. Mark could have found out about it.”
“I wish I could help you,” said Edwina, “but I certainly wasn’t privy to all Laurence’s comings and goings. I would very much doubt 9 2 P E T E R
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it, though. While Laurence could be as promiscuous and unfaithful as the next man when his feelings weren’t engaged in a relationship, well . . . when he was in love, it was a different matter. He took that sort of thing seriously.”
“What about the man in the photo?” Banks said. “They’re touching.”
“I shouldn’t think that means anything, would you?” Edwina said.
“It’s just a natural gesture when you usher someone through a door before you. I mean, it’s hardly sexual, or even sensual, is it?”
“But a jealous person might see it that way.”
“True. There’s no accounting for the way some people interpret things.”
“Might Mark have seen it that way?”
“He could have. I wouldn’t have said he was
Just a little insecure. When you think you’ve landed such a wonderful catch you’re understandably nervous about losing it. I’m not boasting about my son here. All these things are relative.”
“I understand,” said Banks, thinking that no matter how often the analysts told us the class system had disappeared, there was always plenty of evidence to the contrary. “What about Laurence’s business interests?” he asked. “I gather he was a retired civil servant?”
Edwina paused. “Yes,” she said.
“But he also helped you with Viva, didn’t he?”
She almost spilled her gin and tonic. “What? Where on earth did you get
“But I thought that might explain some of his frequent trips to London and elsewhere, if he worked as a sort of business consultant.”
“Good Lord, no. You
“Have I?”
“Office space in London is far too expensive. Our head office is in Swindon. Well, outside Swindon. One wouldn’t want to actually
Banks cursed himself. They should have checked. It wouldn’t have been that difficult to find out where Viva’s head office was. “When I found out who you were, I just assumed that was perhaps why Laurence went to London so often, to help you take care of Viva.”
A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
9 3
“Laurence? Viva? You must be joking. Laurence had no head for figures, no business acumen at all.
“There were also a number of transfers from Swiss bank accounts we’ve been unable to account for. Would they have anything to do with Viva?”
“I very much doubt it,” Edwina mumbled, tapping out another cigarette and lighting it. “Though I should imagine that someone in the employ of the foreign service for as many years as Laurence was would have squirreled a certain amount away, wouldn’t you?”
“Expenses?”
She looked away, up at the hills again. “Expenses. Contingency fund. Mad money. Escape hatch. Call it what you will.”
Banks’s head was beginning to swim. Edwina seemed to have wrapped herself in a cloud of verbal smoke, as well as the real stuff, and her answers were vague and slow to come. He felt as if the interview were suddenly slipping away from him, and he didn’t know why.
“Do
“I’m afraid not.”
“Or why he’d go to Amsterdam? He was there from Tuesday until Friday morning last week.”
“I have no idea. Old friends, perhaps? Contacts. He had them all over the world. They were his life’s blood.”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand you.”
When she gazed at him, he sensed a guarded look in her eyes. “It’s perfectly clear,” she said. “Laurence had no business affairs. Whatever he did down in London after he retired, it certainly wasn’t business. I would guess that he was meeting old colleagues, talking shop, playing golf, perhaps, visiting casinos, lunching at various clubs. Who knows?”
“Could it have had anything to do with his job? The civil service job he retired from?”
