All the Colors of Darkness

“I’m listening.”

A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S

2 1 1

Banks tried to explain his Othello theory, aware of how absurd it sounded every time he did so. By the end he was having a hard time believing it himself. Instead of laughing at him or scoffing, though, Tomasina sat with her brow furrowed and her hands meeting in a steeple on the desk for a full minute or so after he’d finished. And that’s a long time.

“Well?” Banks said, when he could wait no longer.

“You really believe that? That that’s how it happened?”

“I think it’s likely, yes.”

“But what evidence do you have?”

“None.” Banks wasn’t going to bring the Secret Intelligence Service into his discussion with her. He had already decided on that.

“Motive?”

“None that I’m aware of right now, other than professional jealousy.”

“So the only thing even approaching evidence you have is that this Wyman character was directing Othello, that he met up with Hardcastle in London the day before the killing, that they had some professional differences and that they had been seen drinking and talking together in a pub a couple of miles out of town?”

“And that he had a memory stick with pictures of Silbert with another man. Neither Hardcastle nor Silbert had a digital camera that took such a card.”

“What about Wyman?”

“He didn’t have one, either. His is a Fuji.”

“And that’s all you’ve got?”

“Yes. I suppose if you put it like that . . .”

“What other way is there to put it?”

“That when you add it all up together it’s damn suspicious, that’s what. Why go two miles to a grotty teens’ pub when there are plenty of good pubs in Eastvale? A group of his bloody fifteen-year-old pupils was in there, for crying out loud. And how did he get Hardcastle upset and then calm him down? Why?”

“There’s no way anyone could have known what effect playing Iago would have on two people.”

“That’s what Annie said.”

2 1 2

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

“Annie?”

“DI Cabbot. We were working on it together.”

“And now?”

“Well, officially, we’re off it. Orders from above.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. We were just told to drop it. Anyway, aren’t I the one supposed to be asking the questions here?”

She smiled that radiant smile again, the one that made you feel you had to maintain her happiness at all costs. “I told you, I’m good at my job. That was one of my best marks, interviewing techniques. Along with surveillance and research. She’s right, though, your partner.”

“I know that. Maybe it went wrong?”

“Then it wasn’t murder. A very bad practical joke, perhaps. Some sort of malicious trick backfiring. But not murder. I suppose you know that, don’t you? At the most, you’d be able to charge him with harassment or incitement, that’s if you can prove that he did indeed incite anyone to a criminal act.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Banks said. “The result’s the same. Two men are dead. And very nastily, brutally dead, I might add. One beaten to a pulp and the other hanging from a tree near a beauty spot where children were playing.”

“You can’t intimidate me with the graphic horror of it all. I’ve seen dead bodies. I’ve even seen Saw IV and Hostel Part II.”

“Well, what will work with you?”

Tomasina studied him again for what felt like another long time, then she said, “I took those photos.”

“What?”

“The photos you’re talking about. On the memory stick. I took them.”

Banks’s jaw must have dropped. “Just like that?”

“Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. I had to stay out of sight.”

“No, I mean, you’re admitting it just like that. I appreciate what you’re doing, really I do.”

Tomasina shrugged. “When a cute man—and the father of my rock hero, no less—says nice things about my arse, I can’t very well hold out on him, can I?”

A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S