Playing With Fire

not yet. “How’s Sandra doing?” she asked instead. “We do so miss her at the center. Such energy and devotion.”

Banks shrugged. “She’s fine, far as I know.”

“And the baby? It must be very strange for her, becoming a mother all over again. And at her age.”

“We don’t talk much these days,” said Banks. He did know, though, through his daughter Tracy, that Sandra had given birth to a healthy seven-pound girl on the third of December, not much more than a month ago, and that she had named her Sinead, not after the bald pop singer, but after Sean’s mother. Well, good luck to her. With a name like that, she’d need it. As far as he knew, via Tracy, both mother and daughter were doing fine. The whole business churned his guts and changed everything, especially the way he related to his past, their shared life together. In a strange way, it was almost as if none of their twenty-plus years together had happened, that it had all been a dream or some sort of previous existence. He didn’t know this woman, this child. It even made him feel different about Tracy and his son, Brian. He didn’t know exactly why, how, or in what way, but it did. And how did they feel about their new half sister?

“Of course not,” Maria said. “How insensitive of me. It must be very painful for you. Someone you spent so many years with, the mother of your children, and now she’s had a baby with another man.”

“About this artist, Tom?” Banks said.

Maria waved a finger at him. “Clever, clever. Trying to change the subject. Well, I can’t say I blame you.”

“This is the subject. At least it’s the one I intended to talk about when I asked you for a drink.”

“And here’s silly old me thinking you just wanted to talk.”

“I do. About Tom.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Have you ever encountered or heard of a local artist whose first name is Tom?”

Maria put her hand to the gold necklace around her throat. “Is this what you’re like when you interrogate suspects?” she said. “You must terrify them.”

Banks managed a weak smile. He hadn’t been lying when he told Cyril it had been a long day, and it was getting longer. Every minute spent with Maria felt like an hour. “It’s not an interrogation, Maria,” he said, “but I am tired, I don’t want to play games, and I really do need any information you might have.” He felt like adding that he had just seen the charred remains of a corpse, watched Dr. Glendenning peel away the blackened flesh and pull out the shiny organs, but that would only make things worse. Patience. That was what he needed. And plenty of it. Problem was, where could he get it?

Maria pouted, or pretended to pout, for a moment, then said, “Is that all you know about him? That his name was Tom?”

“So far, yes.”

“What did he look like?”

Banks paused, again recalling the ruined face, melted eyes, exposed jawbone and neck cartilage. “We only have a vague description,” he said, “but he was fairly short, thick-set, with long greasy brown hair. And he didn’t shave very often.”

Maria laughed. “Sounds like every artist I’ve ever met. You’d think someone capable of creating a thing of beauty might take a little more pride in his appearance, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Banks. “It must be nice to be able to wear what you want, not to have to put a suit on and worry about shaving every morning when you go to work.”

Maria looked at him, her blue eyes twinkling. “I don’t suppose you’d have to wear anything at all, would you, if it was really warm?”

“I suppose not,” said Banks, gulping more Laphroaig, followed by a deep draft of beer. “But does that description ring any bells?”

She gazed at him indulgently, as if he were a wayward schoolboy, then frowned. “That could be Thomas McMahon,” she said. “He’s certainly the shortest artist I’ve ever met. I suppose Toulouse-Lautrec was shorter, but he was before my time.” She smiled.

Banks’s ears pricked up. “But he fits the description, this Thomas McMahon?”

“Sort of. I mean, he was short and squat, a bit toadish, really. He had a beard back then, but his hair wasn’t really long. One thing I do remember, though…”

“What?”

“He had beautiful fingers.” She held out her own hand, as if to demonstrate. “Long, tapered fingers. Very delicate. Not what you’d expect for such a small man.”

Wasn’t that what Mark had said about Tom? That he had long fingers? It wasn’t a lot to base an identification on, but it was the best they had so far. “Tell me more,” Banks said.

Maria waved her empty glass. “Well, I could be bribed,” she said.

Banks had finished his Laphroaig and he still had half a pint left, but he wasn’t having any more, as he had to drive home. He went to the bar and bought Maria another Campari and soda. The pub was filling up now, and he had to wait a couple of minutes to get served. Someone put an old Oasis song on the jukebox. The Queen’s Arms was certainly a lot different from the previous summer, Banks thought, when foot-and-mouth had emptied the Dales, keeping even the locals away, and Cyril hardly had a customer from one day to the next. And this was only January, most of the people here local. Maybe the coming summer would be a boom time for the Dales businesses. They certainly needed it. Back at the table he handed Maria her drink and said, “Well?”

He was surprised when she opened her handbag and brought out a packet of Silk Cut and a slim gold lighter. He didn’t remember her as a smoker. “Do you mind?” she asked, lighting up.

It wouldn’t have mattered if he did mind; the smoke was already drifting his way, along with the perfume. “No,” he said, surprised to find that instead of a craving, for the first time he felt revulsion. Was he going to turn into one of those obnoxious, rabid antismokers? He hoped to hell not. He sipped some beer. It helped a little.

“I can’t tell you much about him,” Maria said. “If indeed he is the one you think he is.”

“Let’s assume that he is, for the sake of argument,” said Banks.

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for sending you off in the wrong direction, wasting police time.”

Banks smiled again. “Don’t worry about that. I won’t arrest you for it. Just tell me what you know and leave the rest to us.”

“It must have been about five years ago,” Maria said. “Sandra was still with us at the time. She used to talk to him quite a bit, you know. I’m sure she’d remember even better than me.”

Wonderful! Banks thought. Was he going to have to go and talk to his ex-wife to get information about a case? Maybe he’d send Annie. No, that would be cruel. Jim Hatchley, then? Or Winsome? But he knew, if it came to it, that he’d have to go himself. It would be rude and cowardly not to. No doubt he’d get to see the new baby, bounce little Sinead on his knee. Maybe Sean would be there, too, and they’d ask him to stay for dinner. Happy families. Or he might end up baby-sitting while they went out to the cinema or the theater for the evening. On the other hand, maybe it could be avoided altogether if he pressed Maria just a little harder. “Let’s start with what you remember,” he said.

“Well, as I said, it was a long time ago. McMahon was a local artist, lived on the eastern edge of town, as I recall. It was part of our job to encourage local artists – not financially, you understand, but by giving them a venue to exhibit their work.”

“So Thomas McMahon had an exhibition of his work at the community gallery?”

“Yes.”

“And there’d be records of this? A catalog, perhaps? A photograph of him?”

“I suppose so. Down in the archives.”

“Was he any good?”

Maria wrinkled her nose. “I won’t pretend to be an expert on these matters, but I’d say not. There was nothing distinguished about his work, as far as I could see. It was mostly derivative.”

“So he’d have a hard time making a career of it?”

“I imagine he would. He sneaked a couple of ghastly abstracts in, too, at the last moment. I have a feeling they were what he really wanted to paint, but you can’t make a living from that sort of thing unless you have real talent. On the other hand, you can make a fair bit from selling local landscapes to tourists, which he did.”