All the Colors of Darkness

“I know what you’re going to say, but they just don’t—”

“Hear me out, Annie. This Mr. Browne with an e comes to see me and basically tells me to lay off, that any publicity around the Silbert murder would be unwelcome. What sort of disaster? I ask myself.

Now we know Silbert was an MI6 agent, and Lord knows what sort of things he got up to in his heyday. What if the government wanted rid of him for some reason? Say he knew too much? Something embarrassing? I’m sure they’ve got a good line in psych ops. They could have made certain that the information about Hardcastle’s temper resulted in the violence it did. I’ll bet they even have drugs that don’t show up on our tox screens.”

“But they’d only act if he threatened to talk, surely? And we’ve no evidence at all that he would do that. Most don’t.”

“Well, let’s say he posed some sort of threat to them. I don’t know what.”

“That’s an awful lot to suppose.”

“Hypothetically, then.”

“Okay, hypothetically he posed a threat to the MI6.”

“Or the present government’s credibility.”

“Assuming they have any left.”

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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“Anyway, it’s not so far-fetched as it sounds, Annie. These things come home to roost. The people who were your enemies yesterday are your friends today, and vice versa. Often the only thing you have in common to start with is that you’re united against the same enemy.

Alliances change and shift with the wind. Germany. Russia. Iraq.

Iran. The bloody United States, for all I know. They’ve been known to get up to some pretty dirty tricks in their time. Maybe he’s got evidence they engineered terrorist attacks in the U.K. to keep us involved in the Iraq War. God knows. I wouldn’t put anything past any of them. Silbert could have been involved in something that shows MI6

and the government, or a friendly foreign government, in a bad light, and with an election coming up . . .”

“They’d stop at nothing?”

“Something like that. If they felt threatened.”

“I still don’t swallow it, Alan. Okay, so the victim was a spook.

When these people want rid of one another, don’t they just stab them with poisoned umbrellas or slip them a dose of radioactive isotopes or something? They’d hardly be likely to go for such an unreliable method as trying to make Silbert’s partner jealous and just hope he does their job for them when they could just . . . well, push him under a bus or off a bridge.”

Banks sighed. “I know there are holes in the theory,” he said. “It’s still a work in progress.”

Banks seemed def lated, but Annie didn’t feel like giving any quarter. “Holes big enough to drive a lorry through,” she said. “And not much progress, if you ask me. No, I’m sorry, but it won’t wash.”

“Have you been got at?” Banks asked. “Has someone got to you?”

Annie’s jaw dropped. “I resent that. Have I ever given you any reason to think I wasn’t on your side? Don’t we play devil’s advocate as a matter of course? How could you even think something like that?”

“I’m sorry,” said Banks. “It’s just . . . maybe I am getting paranoid.

But look what happened. The day after Mr. Browne’s visit, Madame Gervaise says the case is closed, keeps me back after school and tells me to take some leave owing. Are you saying she hasn’t been got at?

And I thought someone was watching me in the pub at lunchtime yesterday. I’ve also had the feeling I’m being followed more than once 1 5 0

P E T E R R O B I N S O N

over the past few days, since Browne’s visit. Things are just . . . confusing.”

“Well, I haven’t been got at. I’m just trying to take a rational perspective on some of the half-baked ideas you’re coming up with.”

“Can’t you at least accept that it might have happened the way I just outlined it?”

“I don’t know that I can. Okay, I’ll accept your Othello theory up to a point. Maybe somebody did stir things up for Hardcastle. Or perhaps it was true that Silbert was having an affair. Maybe he was being blackmailed, then he told the blackmailer to bugger off, so the evidence—the memory stick—found its way to Hardcastle. But I don’t swallow all this spook junk, and I don’t care what you say about people falling back on previous patterns of behavior. Nobody could have predicted what would happen next. That’s the point I’m making.”

“We’ve found no evidence of blackmail.”

“We’ve found no evidence of anything except what forensics bears out and we all agree happened.”

“That’s not true. We know that Silbert worked for MI6. We found the memory stick and the business card with a nonexistent phone number on it. Mr. Browne came to visit me and made veiled threats.