of greaseproof paper. Office workers cut through on their way to or from Oxford Street and the Tottenham Court Road tube station. Already a few young people had gathered around the fringes of the park to prepare for that night’s concert at the Astoria—tight jeans, straight dyed hair and T-shirts bearing band logos. Banks remembered he had been to see Brian’s band there a couple of years ago and had felt very ancient and out of it. He passed the odd little gardener’s hut at the park’s center, and the statue of King Charles II, then crossed Oxford Street and continued on Rathbone.
The pubs were filling up, smokers crowding the pavements outside.
On Charlotte Street the patios were mostly full already—Bertorelli’s, Pizza Express, Zizzi’s—the streets packed with people searching for somewhere to eat. The high-end restaurants with their discreet facades, like Pied-a- Terre, would be filling up later, but for now, in the early-evening light, people wanted to be seen. Most of them were tourists, and Banks heard American accents along with couples speaking German and French.
Not quite sure what he was going to do, Banks made a quick dash when he saw someone leaving one of the outside tables at Zizzi’s, getting there before a couple of Americans, who had also had their eye on it. The woman glared at him, but her husband tugged her sleeve and they walked away.
Banks hadn’t made any firm arrangements for dinner with Sophia, wasn’t even sure what time she’d be home or whether she would have stopped off for a bite, so he decided he was hungry and he might as well have a pizza and a glass of wine, rather than the curry he had been fancying earlier. He was only taking up a table for two, so he didn’t get such a dirty look from the waitress when she finally arrived and took his order. The wine soon arrived, a nice large glass, and Banks settled back to sip and watch the pageant.
This was much what Derek Wyman and Mark Hardcastle must have seen when they sat out here about two weeks ago, Banks thought.
Mostly pedestrians, some just walking back and forth until they found somewhere to eat, a few beautiful people in evening dress piling out of taxis and limos to some special event in the club next door. Pale pretty blond girls in jeans and T-shirts carrying backpacks. Gray-haired men 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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wearing powder-blue polo shirts and white trousers walking next to impossibly skinny, tanned women with faces sewn and stretched tight over their skulls, and angry, restless eyes.
What had they been talking about? By then, Banks now guessed, Derek Wyman would have picked up the memory stick and prints of the digital photographs it contained from Tom Savage. Had he given them to Hardcastle here? Perhaps even at this very table? And what had Hardcastle’s reaction been? Had they simply gone off to the cinema as planned, or was that another lie? Hardcastle had probably gone and got pissed that night. Banks would have. He knew that Silbert was away in Amsterdam and wouldn’t be back until Friday, so he had been in no hurry to get back to Castleview Heights. He had driven up the next day, no doubt drank some more, examined the photos again, brooded over them, got angry, and by the time Silbert got home he had reached breaking point.
Tom Savage had told Banks that she gave Wyman the memory stick on the Wednesday afternoon at about four o’clock, so it would have been fresh in his possession around six when he met Hardcastle here for an early pizza before the film. He must have removed Tomasina’s business card, which was probably paper-clipped to the photos, and put it in the top pocket of his shirt and forgotten about it. Perhaps he didn’t want Hardcastle to know the source of the photos so he wouldn’t be able to go around asking questions himself.
When the waitress reappeared with his pizza diavolo, Banks asked her if she had a spare moment. She was clearly busy, but the sight of his warrant card, discreetly shown, drew a curt nod, and she leaned closer.
“Do you work here regularly?” Banks asked.
“Every day.”
“Were you working on Wednesday two weeks ago? This same shift?”
“Yes. I work every day same shift.”
“Did you notice two men sitting outside at one of these tables about six o’clock?”
“There were many people,” she said. “Very busy. Long time ago.”
Banks thought he detected an Eastern European accent. She glanced over her shoulder, apparently worried that her boss was watching her.
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Banks hurried on. “Two men together. One gave something to the other. There might have been an argument or a fuss of some sort.”
She put her hand to her mouth. “The man who tear the photographs?”
“What?” Banks said.
“I was delivering order to other table, over there, and this man—I think he dye his hair blond—he look at some photographs and then he get angry and tear them up.”
“Did you see the other man give him the photos?”
“No. Very busy. I just notice he tear them.”
“Was this two weeks ago today?”
“I no know. Not sure. Maybe. I must go.”
It was hardly likely, Banks thought, that two such incidents had occurred in the past couple of weeks. “Did they leave then?” he asked.
“They pay me. Separate bills. Very strange. Then he leave, the one who tear the photographs.”
“And the other?”
“He gather up the pieces and stay longer. I must go.”
“Thank you, “ Banks said. “Thank you very much.”
