All the Colors of Darkness

“Wouldn’t that be the perfect world? Schools without pupils, universities without students, doctors without patients, police without criminals? Then we could all get on with the real work.”

“A secret service without spies?”

“Ah, yes, that would be a good one.” Browne leaned forward.

“We’re not so different, you and I, Mr. Banks.” He gestured vaguely toward the source of the music, which still played quietly in the background. “We both like Stanford. Elgar, too, perhaps? Vaughan Williams. Britten—though he did have a few dodgy habits and left these shores for the United States at a rather inconvenient time. The Beatles, even, given today’s perspective? Oasis? The Arctic Monkeys? I can’t say that I have ever listened to any of these, but I know your tastes in music are somewhat eclectic, and they are British. Whatever you think of The Beatles, even they represented traditional British values in their heyday. The four lovable moptops. And sometimes one has to stand up and fight for those values, you know. Sometimes one even has to do things that go counter to what one would deem right.”

“Why? That’s what I said about the ends and the means, isn’t it? Is that what Silbert did? Was he a government assassin? Did he betray people?”

Browne finished his drink and edged out of his corner to stand by the kitchen door. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. It’s not at all what the fiction writers say it is, you know.”

“Isn’t it? I always thought Ian Fleming aimed for realism.”

Browne’s lip curled. “I don’t think this is a very productive discussion, do you?” he said. “I’m not sure what it is that’s got you up on your moral high horse, but we still have a very real world to deal with out there. Take the Litvinenko business. That set us back years with the Russians. Do you know that there are as many Russian spies operating in Britain today as there were at the height of the Cold War? I came here seeking some sort of reassurance that, for the good of the country, your investigation into the death of Laurence Silbert wasn’t likely to cause any . . . any further ripples that might embarrass the service or the government. That it could be swiftly and neatly con-1 1 8

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cluded, and you could head off back to Chelsea to see your lovely young girlfriend.”

“As far as I remember,” said Banks, feeling a chill crawl up his spine, “Lugovoi denied that he had anything to do with murdering Litvinenko. Didn’t the Russians claim that MI6 did it?”

Browne chuckled. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a fan of conspiracy theories.”

“I’m not,” said Banks. “One just hears these rumors.”

“Well, I hope you realize that’s as ridiculous as the claim that MI6

had something to do with the death of Princess Diana,” he said. “Not to mention naive. As Sir Richard Dearlove said under oath, MI6 does not sanction or involve itself in assassination. Of course the Russians denied it. Of course they made a counteraccusation. That’s what they always do. Andrei Lugovoi left a trail of Polonium 210 that practically glowed in the dark and led the police to his front door.”

“The police? Or you?”

“As I said before. We’re on the same side.”

“Are you telling me that Silbert was somehow connected with Russia? With the Litvinenko affair, even? Do you think there’s something about his murder that could stir things up internationally? Is there a terrorist connection? A Russian Mafia connection? Or maybe he was involved in the conspiracy over Princess Di’s death? Was he a double agent? Is that where the Swiss bank accounts come in?”

Browne stared at Banks and his eyes narrowed, turned hard and cold. “If you can’t give me the assurances I seek, then I’ll have to seek elsewhere,” he said, and turned to leave.

Banks followed him through the living room to the front door. “As far as I know,” he said, “it looks like a simple murder-suicide. Happens more often than you think. Silbert’s lover, Mark Hardcastle, killed your man, then he killed himself out of grief.”

Browne turned. “Then there’s no need for a messy investigation, is there, no chance of an awkward trial, of anything uncomfortable slipping out into public view?”

“Well, there probably wasn’t,” said Banks. “Not until you turned up, that is. I only said that’s what it looks like.”

“Good night, Mr. Banks, and grow up,” said Browne. He shut the 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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door firmly behind him. Banks didn’t hear a car engine start until a few minutes later, far away, at the end of the lane. He went back to the kitchen and stared at the mess he had made of the storage center. Suddenly he didn’t feel like dealing with it anymore. Instead, he topped up his whiskey, noticing that his hands were shaking a little, and carried it through to the TV room, where he replaced Stanford with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, cranked up the volume on “Rich Woman” and thought about Sophia. Now, how on earth did Browne know about her?

O N T H U R S D AY morning, Detective Superintendent Gervaise called a meeting in the boardroom, at which Banks, Winsome, Annie and Stefan Nowak were in attendance. Banks had told her about Mr.

Browne’s visit beforehand, but she didn’t seem either particularly surprised or interested.

After tea and coffee had been sorted, everyone turned to Stefan Nowak for his forensic summary. “I suppose I should note first of all,”

Nowak said, “that I just got the DNA results this morning, and on the evidence of the birthmark on the victim’s arm and the DNA comparison with the mother, we can definitely state that the identity of the deceased found at 15 Castleview Heights is Laurence Silbert. According to Dr. Glendenning’s postmortems, Hardcastle died of liga-ture strangulation—the yellow clothesline he hanged himself with—

and Silbert was killed by a series of blows to the head and throat from a hard f lat object—which we’ve