Cold Is The Grave

“Not particularly.”

“Liar.” She jumped up again, a smile of triumph on her face. “Besides, they were just a joke. A laugh. Daddy’s got nothing to worry about from them. It’s not as if I’ve taken up a career in the porno business or anything.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Banks.

“He’s just worried about me ruining his spotless reputation, isn’t he?”

“That’s part of it.” Banks didn’t feel he necessarily had to paint an idealized picture of Riddle, especially to his run away daughter. She probably knew him better than anyone. “But he did also seem genuinely concerned about you.”

“I’m sure he did.” Emily had sat down again now and seemed thoughtful. “Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle, champion of family values, quality time, the caring, concerned copper. ‘My daughter the slut’ wouldn’t fit at all with that image, would it?”

“It wouldn’t do any harm if you just gave him a call and reassured him everything’s okay, would it?” Banks said. “And what about your mother? She’s worried sick, too.”

Her eyes flashed. “You don’t know anything. What do you know about it?” She fingered the collar of her sweater and seemed to draw in on herself. “It was like being in prison up there. You can’t go here. You can’t do that. You can’t see him. You can’t talk to her. Don’t forget your piano lessons. Have you done your homework? Be in before eight o’clock. I’d no room to breathe. It was stifling me. I couldn’t be free, couldn’t be myself.”

“Are you now?”

“Of course I am.” She stood up again. Red patches glowed on her cheeks. “Tell Daddy to fuck off. Tell the old man to just fuck off. Let him wonder. Let him worry. I’m not going to set his mind at rest. Because… you know what?”

“What?”

“Because he was never fucking there anyway. He used to make all these rules and you know what… he was never even there to enforce them. Mummy had to do that. And she didn’t even care enough. He was never even there to enforce his own stupid rules. Isn’t that a laugh?” She went to lean against the fireplace again. Alanis Morissette was singing about seeing right through someone, and Banks knew what she meant. Still, he’d done his job, done as he’d been asked. He could give Jimmy Riddle Emily’s London address, tell him about Barry Clough. If Riddle wanted to send in the locals to check out Clough’s gun collection, set the forensic accountants on his business interests and put in a call to the drugs squad, that was his business. Banks’s job was over. It was up to Riddle to take it from there. He tore a page from his notebook and wrote on it. “If you change your mind, or if there’s anything else you want to tell me, any message you want me to deliver, this is where I’m staying. You can phone and leave a message if I’m not there.”

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to take it, but she did. Then she glanced at it once, crumpled it up and threw it in the fire. The door opened and Barry Clough strode in, smile on his face. He tapped his wristwatch. “Better get ready, love,” he said to Emily. “We’re due at Rod’s place in half an hour.” He looked at Banks, the smile gone. “And your time’s up, mate,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the front door. “On your bike.”

4

Banks was running about five minutes late for his dinner with Sandra when he got off the tube at Camden Town. The drizzle had turned into a steady downpour now, and puddles in the gutter were smeared with the gaudy reflections of shop signs and traffic lights. Luckily, the restaurant wasn’t far from the underground.

Banks turned up his jacket collar, but he was still soaked by the time he dashed into the restaurant. At first he didn’t recognize the woman who smiled and waved him over to her table by the window. Though he had seen Sandra briefly just a couple of months ago, she had changed her appearance completely since then. For a start, she had had her blond hair cut short and layered. If anything, the style emphasized her dark eyebrows more than ever, and Banks had always found Sandra’s eyebrows one of her sexiest features. She was also wearing a pair of round gold-rimmed glasses, not much bigger than the “granny glasses” that were so popular in the sixties. He had never seen her in glasses before, hadn’t known she needed them. From what he could make out, her clothes looked artsy, all different layers: a black shawl, a red silk scarf, a red-and-black-patterned jumper.

Banks edged into the chair opposite her. He was starving. It seemed ages since that dismal chicken pot pie in Kennington. “Sorry I’m a bit late,” he said, drying off his hair with a serviette. “I’d forgotten what a pain the bloody tube can be.”

Sandra smiled. “It’s all right. Remember, I’m used to your being late.”

Banks let that one go by. He looked around. The restaurant was busy, bustling with waiters and parties coming and going. It was one of those places that Banks thought trendy in its lack of trendiness, all scratched wood tables and partitions, pork chops, steaks and mashed potatoes. But the mashed potatoes had garlic and sun-dried tomatoes in them and cost about three quid a side order.

“I’ve already ordered some wine,” Sandra said. “A half-liter of the house claret. I know you prefer red. Okay with you?”

“Fine.” Banks had turned down a drink at Clough’s house because he hadn’t wanted to be beholden to the bastard in any way, but he wanted one now. “You’re looking good,” he said. “You’ve changed. I don’t mean that you didn’t always look good. You know what I mean.”

Sandra laughed, blushed a little and turned away. “Thank you,” she said.

“What’s with the glasses?”

“They come with age,” she said. “Anytime after you fortieth birthday.”

“Then I’m really living on borrowed time.”

A waiter brought the wine and left it for them to pour themselves. Pretentious in its unpretentiousness. Sandra paused as Banks filled their glasses, then lifted hers for a toast. “How are you, Alan?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Banks. “Just fine. Couldn’t be better.”

“Working?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“I thought Jimmy Riddle had shuffled you off to the hinterlands?”

“Even Riddle needs my particular skills every now and then.” Banks sipped some wine. Perfectly quaffable. He looked around and saw it was okay to light a cigarette. “May I cadge one?” Sandra asked.

“Of course. Still can’t give them up completely?”

“Not completely. Oh, Sean doesn’t like it. He keeps going on at me to stop. But I don’t think one or two a month is really bad for your health.”

Good sign, that, Banks thought: Sean the nag. “Probably not,” he said. “I keep waiting for them to announce they were wrong all along and cigarettes are really good for you, and it’s all the raw vegetables and fruit that do the damage.”

Sandra laughed. “You’ll have a long wait.” She clinked glasses. “Cheers.”

“Cheers. I was out where we used to live this lunchtime. Kennington.”

“Really? Why? A sentimental journey?”

“Work.”

“It was a pretty cramped flat, as I remember. Much too small with the kids. And that dentist I worked for was a groper.”

“You never told me that.”

“There’s lots of things I never told you. You usually seemed to have enough on your plate as it was.”

They studied the menu for a couple of minutes. Banks saw that he was right about the mashed potatoes. And the garlic and sun-dried tomatoes. And the price. He ordered venison sausage with braised red cabbage and garlic mashed potatoes. No sun-dried tomatoes. It seemed the perfect comfort meal for a night like this. Sandra went for steak and frites. Their orders given to the waiter, they smoked and drank in silence awhile longer. Now he was here with her, Banks didn’t know how to approach what he wanted to say. He felt curiously tongue-tied, like a teenager on his first date.

If Sandra would put this silliness with Sean aside and come back, he wanted to tell her, it was still possible that