“Listen.” Banks leaned forward, elbows on the table. Annie saw that gleam in his piercing blue eyes she always associated with his fan-ciful theories. Sometimes, though, she had to admit they were right, or at least close to the mark. “Hardcastle and Silbert hadn’t been together all that long. Six months. By all accounts, they were very much an item, practically living together and everything, but the relationship was probably still a bit fragile, vulnerable, and we know Mark Hardcastle was a bit insecure. Both kept other apartments, for one thing. Also, as Stefan pointed out, Hardcastle’s got form for assaulting a previous lover, which may mean he has a short fuse. What if someone worked on him?”
“Worked on him? On Hardcastle?”
“Yes,” said Banks. “The way Iago worked on Othello. Plagued him with unbearable images of Silbert’s infidelity.”
“So you’re saying that someone goaded him into this?”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility. But it would be bloody difficult to prove.
It’s a hands-off murder. Murder from a distance, murder by proxy.”
“I very much doubt that you could call it murder, even if it did happen that way,” said Annie. “And I’m not saying it did.”
“We’ll find a charge.”
“But why do it?”
“To get rid of Silbert.”
“Any idea who would want to do that?”
Banks sipped his beer. “Well,” he said, “I suppose there are plenty of possibilities. Means and opportunity are obvious and easy enough, so it would simply be a matter of looking for a motive. Anyone who was close to one or both of them could have done it, really. Vernon Ross or Derek Wyman, for example. Maybe even Maria Wolsey had a 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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motive she’s not telling us about. Or Carol, Wyman’s wife. There’s no shortage of possibilities.” Banks paused. “On the other hand, it could have been someone acting for one of the secret intelligence services.
It’s just the sort of labyrinthine plot they would come up with.”
“Oh, come off it, Alan! That’s a bit far-fetched, even for you, don’t you think?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But hold on a minute,” Annie argued. “You’re begging an awful lot of questions here.”
“Like what?”
“Who could have known that Silbert was seeing someone else, if he was?”
“It doesn’t matter. If information like that hadn’t somehow fallen or been dropped into the killer’s lap, he could have made it up. After all, that’s what Iago did.”
“And how could someone know about Hardcastle’s previous form for violence against a partner?”
“Maybe he let something slip? Or, more likely, the people we’re talking about have methods of getting hold of whatever information they want, access to criminal records. I’ll bet you MI6 knew about it.
They must have vetted Hardcastle. It obviously didn’t merit his being put on their out-of-bounds list—it didn’t make him a security risk—
but I’ll also bet they tipped Silbert off, too, told him to be careful, even though he’d officially retired.”
“Well, he wasn’t, was he? Okay, let’s assume all that, for the sake of argument. One big stumbling block still remains: How could they ever be certain of the result?”
Banks scratched his temple. “Well, you do have a point there,” he said. “I’ve been grappling with that one. The previous form helps a bit. Hardcastle had a temper and it had got him into trouble with a partner before.”
“Even so, there could be no guarantee he’d do it again. Maybe he’d learned his lesson? Taken anger- management courses?”
“Push someone far enough and their reactions can be pretty predictable. People resort to patterns they’ve followed in the past. You see it all the time with abusers and the abused.”
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P E T E R R O B I N S O N
“I know,” said Annie, “but I’m still saying that as a method of murder, it sucks.”
“But why?”
“Because you can’t be sure of the outcome, that’s why. Even if Hardcastle had turned violent, even if that was predictable, he hadn’t killed before, and there could be no guarantee that he would kill this time. Maybe they’d have just had a row? There’s no way anyone could depend on Hardcastle killing Silbert. I’m sorry, Alan, but it just doesn’t make sense. It’s not reliable.”
“I know that,” said Banks. “I can see it’s a f lawed hypothesis. But I still think there are a lot of possibilities in it.”
“Okay, then,” said Annie. “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right. Then we come to the matter of motive. Why?”
Banks sat back on the bench and sipped some beer before he spoke.
“Well, that one’s easy enough,” he said. “It goes right along with who.”
