In A Dry Season

mistakes piled up alongside the hidden gems. Discs he never listened to shared shelf space with some that were almost worn out.

First, he crouched down and checked the CD titles in the cabinet under the stereo. It was an odd collection: Gregorian chants, Don Cherry’s Eternal Now and several “ambient” pieces by Brian Eno. There was also an extensive blues collection, from Mississippi John Hurt to John Mayall. Next to these stood a few pop and folk titles: Emmylou Harris’s The Wrecking Ball, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, some k.d. lang.

The books mainly centered around Eastern philosophy; it was a real sixties treasure trove, considering that Annie was a nineties woman. Banks remembered some of the titles. He had come across them first in Jem’s room, in the Notting Hill days, and he had even borrowed and read some of them: Baba Ram Dass’s Be Here Now; Gurd-jieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men; Ouspensky, Carlos Castaneda, Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, and old blue-covered Pelican paperbacks about yoga, Zen and meditation.

Seeing them again took him right back to the dim, candlelit room with the melting-butter walls and the jasmine joss sticks, to the first time he smoked hash, with Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” on the stereo; earnest, all- night arguments about Marx and Marcuse, changing the system, love and revolution, with Banks, more often than not, playing the straight man, the devil’s advocate. Gentle, sweet-natured Jem, his gaunt face always in shadows, dark hair spilling over his narrow shoulders, his soft, husky voice and his unwillingness to kill even the mice that sometimes walked across the room right in front of them as they talked. His record collection: Rainbow Bridge, Bitches Brew, Live Dead, Joy of a Toy.

Strange days. Old days.

Back then, Banks had spent half his time studying industrial psychology and cost accounting and the other half listening to Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Roland Kirk and The Soft Machine. One way led to security and what his parents wanted; the other led to uncertainty and God only knew what else. Poverty and drug addiction, as like as not. Hard to believe now that there had been a time when it was all balanced on a razor’s edge, when he could have gone either way.

Then Jem died and Banks joined the police, a third option he hadn’t considered before, even in his wildest dreams.

The shower stopped, and a few seconds later Banks heard the roar of a hair dryer. Shaking off the memories that seemed to cling to his mind like cobwebs, he wandered into the kitchen. Like the living room, it was decorated in light colors, white tiles for the most part, with chocolate brown around the work area, just for contrast. In addition to the small oven, fridge, sink and countertops, there was a dining table. It could probably seat about four comfortably, he guessed.

Banks opened the fridge and took out a bottle of Black Sheep. He found an opener in one of the drawers and a pint glass in one of the cupboards. Carefully, he poured out the beer so it had just enough head on it, then he took a sip and went back into the living room. The hair dryer stopped, and he could hear Annie walking around upstairs. He took Eternal Now from its jewel case and put it in the CD player. He had heard of Don Cherry, a jazz trumpeter who used to play with Ornette Coleman, but didn’t actually know his work.

The music started with strummed chords on oddly tuned stringed instruments, then a deep, echoey flutelike instrument entered. Banks turned down the volume, picked up the CD liner notes and sat down to read while he waited for Annie, abandoning himself to the weird combinations of wooden saxophones, Indian harmoniums and Polynesian gamelans.

Before the first track had finished, Annie breezed into the room exuding freshly scrubbed warmth.

“I never took you for a Don Cherry fan,” she said, a wicked grin on her face.

“Life is full of surprises. I like it.”

“I thought you were an opera buff?”

“Been asking around?”

“Just station gossip. I’ll start dinner now, if you want.”

Banks smiled. “Fine with me.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. “You can keep me company,” she called out over her shoulder.

Banks put the CD case back on the shelf and carried his beer through. He sat down at the kitchen table. Annie was bending over pulling vegetables out of the fridge. The jeans looked good on her.

“Pasta okay?” she asked, half turning her head.

“Great. It’s a long time since I’ve had any home cooking. Mostly these days it’s been either pub grub or something quick and easy from Marks and Sparks.”

“Ah, the lonely eater’s friends.”

Banks laughed. It was funny, and rather sad, he had often noticed, how you saw so many young, single men and women wandering around the Marks food section just after five on a weeknight, reaching for the prawn vindaloo, then changing their minds, going instead for the single portion of chicken Kiev and the carton of mixed vegetables. He supposed it might be a good place to pick up a girl.

Annie filled a large pan with water, added a little salt and oil, then set it on the gas ring. She didn’t waste a gesture as she washed and chopped mushrooms, shallots, garlic and courgettes. There was a certain economic grace to her movements that Banks found quite hypnotic; she seemed to possess a natural, centered quality that put him at ease.

She went to the kitchen cupboard, took down a bottle of red wine and uncorked it.

“Want some?”

Banks held up his beer. “I’ll finish this first.”

Annie poured herself a generous glass. Soon the oil was hot in the frying pan and she was dropping the vegetables in a handful at a time. When they were done, she added a cup or two of tinned tomatoes and a handful of herbs. Banks decided to make cooking his next project, after he had fixed up the cottage. Something else to keep depression at bay. He liked food, so it made sense to learn how to cook it properly now that he was alone.

About the time Banks finished his beer, Annie announced that dinner was ready and delivered two steaming plates to the table. Don Cherry finished, and she put on Emmylou Harris, whose voice seemed to catch on sharp notches inside her throat before it came out, singing about loneliness, loss, pain. All things Banks could relate to. He ground pepper and grated Parmesan onto the pasta and tucked in. After a couple of bites, he complimented Annie.

“See,” she said. “It’s not all salads and tofu. You learn to be more inventive in the kitchen when you’re a vegetarian.”

“I can tell.”

“Wine?”

“Please.”

Annie brought over the bottle of Sainsbury’s Bulgarian Merlot, refilled her glass and poured one for Banks. “Plenty more where that came from,” she said. “You know, I’d really like to find out more about this Hobb’s End artist, Michael Stanhope.”

“Why? Because you think he’s connected to the case?”

“Well, he might be, mightn’t he? He was living in Hobb’s End during the war. Maybe he knew the Shackleton woman. There may be other paintings. They might tell us something.”

“They might,” Banks agreed. “Though I’m not sure how far art could be trusted as evidence, even if he painted the murder itself.”

Annie smiled. “Not technically, perhaps. But artists often distort reality to reveal the truth about it.”

“Do you believe that?”

Annie’s eyes, the color of milk chocolate, shone in the failing light. “Yes,” she said. “I do. Not about my own work. As I said, I’m technically competent, but I lack whatever it is that makes a great artist. Vision. Passion. Intensity. Insanity. I don’t know. Probably what most people call genius. But the true artist’s reality is every bit as valid as any other. Perhaps more so in some ways because an artist struggles to see more deeply, to illuminate.”

“A lot of art is far from illuminating.”

“Yes, but that’s often because the subject, the truth he’s trying to get at, is so elusive that only symbols or vague images will do to approach it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that artists are always trying to get some