Banks worried perhaps more than he should about Brian. The only great detective with a drug problem Banks knew of was Sherlock Holmes, and he had been pretty good at his job. Pity he wasn’t real.
Banks shut the newspaper and pushed it aside. He had to work out his day. What he needed was information about Laurence Silbert, and it wasn’t going to be easy to get. Sophia’s father had come across him in Bonn in the mid-eighties. At that time Silbert would have been about forty, and given his condition when he died, probably at the height of fitness. What had he been doing in Germany? Most likely the same as everyone else in his line of work had been doing then—getting defec-tors over the Berlin Wall, penetrating the Eastern bloc for information 1 8 4
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
about scientific, military, industrial and political goings-on, perhaps even carrying out the occasional unofficial assassination. The whole business was such a complex jumble of espionage and counterespio-nage, single, double and triple agents, that it was probably impossible for an outsider and layman to know where to start. In addition, much of the information on the shady activities of those times had been lost or buried. Only the Germans seemed determined to reassemble their old Stasi files, even going so far as to invent a computer program that could put together shredded documents in the blink of an eye. Everyone else just wanted to forget the dirty deeds they had done.
There was, however, one place he could start.
Banks washed off his breakfast dishes, made sure the coffeemaker was turned off and that he had everything he needed in his briefcase.
At the front door he paused and set the alarm system, then he headed up to the King’s Road and turned left toward the Sloane Square tube station, cursing not for the first time that it was served only by the District and Circle lines, which meant that he would either have to go all the way round to Baker Street or change at both Victoria and Green Park. But he wasn’t in a hurry, and it wouldn’t take long to get to Swiss Cottage and find out if Laurence Silbert’s old lover Leo Westwood still lived there.
A N N I E WA S no stranger to Detective Superintendent Gervaise’s office and had no hesitation in accepting the offer of tea, which Gervaise immediately sent for. The last time Annie had sat in that chair she had been facing a lengthy torrent of both praise and censure for the way her last major case had turned out. She could understand that.
Crimes solved was a good thing; dead bodies as part of the solution were not. In the end she was lucky to come out without any serious black marks against her. It was possible that Gervaise had gone easy on her because of her fragile emotional state at the time, but then Gervaise wasn’t known for making such allowances. On the whole, Annie felt that she had been fairly treated.
“How are things going?” Gervaise asked, making small talk while A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
1 8 5
they waited for the tea. “That’s a nice new hairdo, by the way. It suits you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Annie. “Everything’s going fine.” What else was she going to say? Besides, things
“Good. Good. Nasty business, this East Side Estate. Any ideas?
What do you think about this Jackie Binns character?”
“He’s a waste of space,” Annie said. “Nicky Haskell is actually quite bright, once you get past the posturing and the imitation gangbanger talk. Despite his aversion to school, he might actually make something of himself. But Binns is a lost cause.”
“I’m not sure that it’s healthy to regard members of our community in such a negative way, DI Cabbot, particularly
“I’m sure it’s not, ma’am,” said Annie with a smile. “Just put it down to copper’s instinct.”
“Did he do it?”
“You mean did Jackie Binns stab Donny Moore?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“I’m not sure,” said Annie. “I don’t think so. I was talking with DS
Jackman about that very thing and we agreed that Haskell is scared, and we don’t think he’d be that scared of Binns. They have a history, more a bit of mutual grudging respect than anything else. They’ve had a couple of scraps. Thing is, it’s not like Binns to take a knife to a kid like Donny Moore. I’m not saying he’s honorable or anything. It’s just . . .”
“Not his style?”
“That’s right.”
“Who says he did?”
“Nobody. That’s the problem. That’s what we’re trying to get someone to tell us. He’s certainly the leader of the south estate gang and if he felt Haskell and Moore were encroaching on his territory he’d probably feel he had every right to take action. He could have delegated the task. But no one has admitted to seeing anything yet.”
“So if not him, who?”
“No idea, ma’am. But we’re still investigating it. At least there haven’t been any more incidents or reprisals.”
1 8 6
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
“That’s a good thing,” said Gervaise. “Don’t want to upset the tourists, do we?”
“I doubt if any of them have even heard of the East Side Estate, unless they got lost like the Paxtons did the other night. They won’t forget it in a hurry.”
