Cold Is The Grave

definitely something.”

Lust, no doubt, thought Banks. “Were you and Ruth lovers?”

“Ruth and me? Nah. Nothing like that. We were just friends.”

The food came – balti prawns for Craig and lamb korma for Banks, along with pullao rice, mango chutney and naans – and they paused as they shared out the dishes. The ubiquitous sitar music droned in the background.

“Okay,” said Banks after a few bites to stay the rumbling of his stomach. “What happened next?”

“Well, Ruth had got Louisa a job at the same company she worked for out Canary Wharf way. Nothing much, just fetching and carrying, really. Louisa didn’t have any great job skills. But it brought in a quid or two, helped get her on her feet.”

“Did Louisa talk much about her past?”

“Only to put it down. Sounds as if you gave her a pretty rough time. Sorry, but you asked.”

“I suppose I did.” Banks tasted the lamb. It was a bit too greasy, but it would do. He soaked up some sauce with his naan.

“Anyway,” Craig went on, “she didn’t last long there. Didn’t seem to take to office work at all, as a matter of fact. Or any work, for that matter.”

“Why was that?”

“I think it was mostly her attitude. Louisa thinks other people are there to work for her, not the other way around. And she’s got attitude with a capital A.”

“How did she survive after that?”

“She had a few quid of her own in the bank. She never said how much, but she never seemed to go short. Sometimes she borrowed off Ruth or me. She could go through money like nobody’s business, could Louisa.”

“And the new boyfriend?”

Craig nodded. “If he’s the sort of bloke who can afford minders, then he’s probably not short of a few quid, is he? Gone up in the world, she had, young Louisa.”

That’s right, Banks thought. And if he’s the sort of bloke who needs minders, then the odds are that he makes his money in a dodgy way, a way that could make him enemies who want to do him physical harm, a way that could also put Emily in jeopardy. The more Banks heard, the more worried about her he became. “Are you sure you’ve got no idea who he is, where I can find them?”

“Sorry. If I knew, I’d tell you. Believe me.”

“Do you think Ruth Walker might know?”

“It’s possible. She wouldn’t tell me when I asked her, but I think Louisa must have told her I was obsessed with her, stalking her or something.”

“Were you?”

“Course not.”

“Then what makes you think that?”

“Just the way she looked at me. We haven’t been quite the same since that whole thing with Louisa, Ruth and me. But she might tell you.”

Banks shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

Craig gave him the address of Ruth’s flat in Kennington. “You know, I really liked Louisa,” he mused. “Maybe I loved her… I don’t know. She was pretty wild, and her mood swings… well… all I can say is she could make one of those divas look stable. But I liked her. Still, maybe I’m better off without her. At least I can concentrate on my work now, and I need to do that. Lord knows, she ran me ragged. But for a while there, when she’d first gone, there was a big hole in my life. I know it sounds corny, but I’d no energy, no real will to go on. The world didn’t look the same. Not as bright. Not as interesting. Gray.”

Welcome to reality, thought Banks. He had come prepared to be hard on Craig Newton – after all, Craig had taken the nude photographs of Emily that had ended up on the GlamourPuss Web site for every pervert to drool over – but the lad was actually turning out to be quite likable. If Craig was to be believed, he had genuinely thought that Emily was nineteen – and who wouldn’t, going by the evidence Banks had seen and heard so far – and the Web photos had simply been a foolish lark. Craig also seemed to care about Emily – he hadn’t only been with her for the sex, or whatever else a sixteen-year-old girl had to offer a twenty-seven-year-old man – and that went a long way in Bank’s estimation.

On the other hand, this new boyfriend sounded like trouble, and Emily Louise Riddle herself sounded like a royal pain in the arse.

“Why did you move out here?” Banks asked. “Because of Louisa?”

“Partly. It was around that time. It’s funny, but I’d mentioned getting out of London a couple of times and Louisa went all cold on me, the way she did when she wasn’t getting her own way or heard something she didn’t like. Anyway, I got the chance of a partnership in a small studio here with a bloke I went to college with. A straight-up, legit business this time – portraits and weddings, mostly. No porn. I was fed up of London by then, anyway. Not just the thing with Louisa, but other things. Too expensive. Too hard to make a living. Too much competition. The hours I was putting in. You’ve really got to hustle hard there, and I was discovering I’m not much of a hustler at heart. I began to think I’d be better off as a bigger fish in a smaller pond.”

“And?”

He looked up from his prawns and smiled. “It seems to be working out.” Then he paused. “This is weird, though. I never thought I’d be sitting down having a curry with Louisa’s dad, chatting in a civilized manner. I’ve got to say, you’re not at all what I imagined.”

“So you said. A boring old fart.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what she said. Wouldn’t let her do anything, go anywhere. Kept her a virtual prisoner in the house.”

“Lock up your daughters?”

“Yeah. Did you?”

“You know what she’s like. What do you think I should have done?”

“With Louisa? I used to think I knew what she was like. Now I’m not so sure. From what you say, she told me a pack of lies right from the start. How can I believe anything about her? What do you do with someone like her?”

Indeed, thought Banks, feeling just a little guilty over his deception. What do you do? The thing was, that the more he found himself pretending to be Louisa’s father, the more he found himself slipping into the role. So much so that on the slow train back to Euston later that evening, after Craig had kindly given him a lift to the station, when he thought about what his own daughter might be up to in Paris with Damon, he wasn’t sure whether he was angry at Tracy or at Emily Riddle.

And the more he thought about the situation, the more he realized that it had never been finding Emily Riddle that concerned him; it was what he was going to do after he’d found her that really bothered him.

3

Saturday morning dawned cool and overcast, but the wind was quickly tearing a few holes in the ragged clouds. “Enough blue sky to make baby a new bonnet,” as Banks’s mother would say. Banks lingered over coffee and a toasted tea cake in a cafe on Tottenham Court Road, not far from his hotel, reading the morning papers and watching people checking out the electronics shops across the road.

He had slept well. Surprisingly so, since the hotel was the same one that he and Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot had stayed in during his last case. Not the same room, thank God, but the same floor. Memories of her skin warm and moist against his kept him awake longer than he would have liked and made him feel vaguely guilty, but in the end he drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep, from which he awoke feeling unusually refreshed.

According to his A to Z, Ruth Walker lived quite close to the cramped flat off Clapham Road that Banks and Sandra had lived in for a few years in the early eighties, when the kids were little. Not exactly the “good old days,” but happy for the most part, before the Job started taking too much of a toll on him. Simpler, maybe. Sandra worked part-time as a dental receptionist on Kennington Park Road, he remembered,