Cold Is The Grave

skin, which was as pale as her mother’s. Perhaps she had stayed indoors or walked around under a parasol like a Southern belle.

Rosalind was a little shorter and fuller-figured than her daughter, and of course her hairstyle was different. Emily had a ragged fringe, and her fine, natural-blond hair fell straight to her shoulders and brushed against them as she moved. Tall and long-legged, she also had that anorexic, thoroughbred look of a professional model. Heroin- chic. She was wearing denim capris that came halfway up her calves, and a loose cable-knit sweater. She walked barefoot, he noticed, showing off her shapely ankles and slim feet, the toenails painted crimson. For some reason, Coleridge’s line from “Christabel” flashed through Banks’s mind: “…her blue-veined feet unsandalled were.” It had always seemed an improbably erotic image to him, ever since he first came across the poem at school, and now he knew why.

Though Emily walked with style and self-possession, there was a list to her progress, and when he looked closely, Banks noticed a few tiny grains of white powder in the soft indentation between her nose and her upper lip. Even as he looked, her pointed pink tongue slipped out of her mouth and swept it away. She smiled at him. Her eyes were slightly unfocused and the pupils dilated, little random chips of light dancing in them like feldspar catching the sun.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” she said, stretching out her hand to him. It came at the end of an impossibly long arm. Banks stood up and shook. Her cool, soft fingers grasped his loosely for a second, then disengaged. He introduced himself. Emily sat in an armchair by the fire, legs curled under her, and toyed with a loose thread at the end of one sleeve.

“So you’re Banks?” she said. “I’ve heard of you. Detective Chief Inspector Banks. Am I right?”

“You’re right. All good, I hope?”

She smiled. “Intriguing, at least.” Then her expression turned to one of boredom. “What does Daddy want after all this time? Oh, Christ, what is this dreadfully dull music? Sometimes Barry plays the most depressing things.”

“Joy Division,” said Banks. “He committed suicide. The lead singer.”

“I’m not bloody surprised. I’d commit suicide if I sounded like him.” She got up, shut off the CD and replaced it with Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Alanis sang about all she really wanted. She didn’t sound a lot more cheerful than Joy Division, Banks thought, but the music was more upbeat, more modern. “He’s still an old punk at heart, is Barry. Did you know he used to be a roadie for a punk band?”

“What does he do now?” Banks asked casually.

“He’s a businessman. Bit of this, bit of that. You know the sort of thing.” She laughed. It sounded like a crystal glass shattering. “Come to think of it, I don’t really know what he does. He’s away a lot. He doesn’t talk about it much.” She put a finger to her lips. “It’s all terribly hush-hush.”

I’ll bet it is, thought Banks. As she had been speaking, he found himself trying to place her accent. He couldn’t. Riddle had probably moved counties more times than he’d had hot dinners to make chief constable by his mid- forties, so Emily had ended up with a kind of characterless, nowhere accent, not especially posh, but certainly without any of the rough edges a regional bias gives. Banks knew that his own accent was hard to place, too, as he had grown up in Peterborough, lived in London for over twenty years and in North Yorkshire for about seven.

As Emily talked now, she walked around the room touching objects, occasionally picking up an ornament, such as a heavy glass paperweight with a rose design trapped inside, and putting it back, or moving it somewhere else. She ended up standing by the fireplace, elbow leaning on the mantelpiece, fist to her cheek, one hip cocked. “Did you tell me what you’d come for?” she asked. “I don’t remember.”

“You haven’t given me a chance yet.”

She put her hand to her mouth and stifled a giggle. “Ooh, I’m sorry. That’s me, that is. Talk, talk, talk.”

Banks saw an ashtray on the table with a couple of butts crushed out in it. He reached for his cigarettes, offered Emily one, which she took, and lit one for himself. Then he leaned forward a little in his armchair and said, “I was talking to your father a couple of days ago, Emily. He’s worried about you. He wants you to get in touch with him.”

“My name’s Louisa. And I’m not going home.”

“Nobody said you were. But it wouldn’t do you any harm to get in touch with him and let him know how you’re doing, where you are, would it?”

“He’d only get angry.” She pouted, then moved away from the fireplace. “How did you find me? I didn’t tell anyone where I’m from. I didn’t even use my real name.”

“I know,” said Banks. “But, really: Louisa Gamine. You’re a clever girl, you’ve had an expensive education. It took me a little while to work it out, but I got there in the end. Gamine means a girl with mischievous charm, but ‘gamine’ is an anagram of ‘enigma,’ which means puzzle, or, in this case, Riddle. Your father said you were very good with language.”

She clapped her hands together. “Clever man. You got it. What a brilliant detective. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”

“Your little brother saw your photo on the Internet.”

Emily’s jaw dropped and she fell back onto the chair. It was hard to tell, but Banks thought her reaction was genuine. “Ben? Ben saw that?”

Banks nodded.

“Oh, shit.” She flicked her half-smoked cigarette into the fire. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I don’t imagine it was.”

“And he told Mum?”

“That’s right.”

“She’d never have told Dad. Not in a million years. She knows what he’s like as well as I do.”

“I don’t know how he found out,” said Banks, “but he did.”

Emily laughed. “I’d love to have seen his face.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“And he sent you to look for me?”

“That’s about it.”

“Why?”

“Why did he send me?”

“Well, I’m damn sure he wouldn’t bother coming himself, but why you? He doesn’t even like you.”

“But he knows I’m good at my job.”

“Let me guess. He’s promised you he’ll leave you alone if you do as he asks? Don’t trust him.”

“I can’t honestly say as I do, but I’ve got…”

“What?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me what you were going to say.”

“No.” Banks didn’t want to tell her about Tracy, that in an odd sort of way he was doing this for her, making up for his own absences and shortcomings as a father.

Emily sulked for a few moments, then she stood up again and paced in front of him, counting off imaginary points on her fingers. “Let me see… the pictures took you to GlamourPuss… right? That took you to Craig…? But he doesn’t know where I am. I told… Ah, Ruth! Ruth told you?”

Banks said nothing.

“Well, she would. She’s a jealous cow. She’d just love to cause trouble for me, the ugly bitch, just because I’ve met someone like Barry and she’s still stuck in her poky little flat in Kennington. Do you know…”

“What?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“What were you going to say?”

Emily smiled. “No. Now it’s my turn to tease. I’m not telling you.” Before Banks could frame a response, she stopped pacing and knelt in front of him, looking up into his face with her sparkling blue eyes. “So you saw them, too, did you? The photos.”

Banks swallowed. “Yes.”

“Did you like them? Did they excite you?”