revelation, his epiphany.
Someone had once told him that there were places you could go that would change you, which was probably why so many kids in the sixties set off for India or Kathmandu. It might be a country, a culture, religion, or perhaps a certain kind of landscape-the ocean, mountains, a desert. It might be a place associated with a powerful childhood experience, or with a dream. Sometimes, perhaps, you just didn’t know. But it changed you.
Banks had been having a dream from time to time since his childhood, and it stayed with him. He was swimming underwater through waving fronds that tried to grab him and pull him down. The dark rocks below terrified him with their shifting shapes, and with the thought of what lurked in the depths between them, through underwater tunnels that led to other tunnels, narrower, deeper and darker. He was running out of air, his lungs straining, his strength failing, when he finally broke the water’s surface and found himself on the edge of paradise. The damn thing was that he couldn’t remember anything about it. It was a special place, he knew that much, one that had the power to change him and heal him, but all he remembered was the journey, the darkness, the fear and agony of his bursting lungs, and that blissful moment when water ceased to be water and became air, when darkness became light and the white sand led…somewhere green and pure.
For so long he seemed to have been struggling in the dark, and in that desert night, when the motel’s blinking red neon was nothing but a dot on the horizon, he found an epiphany of a kind. But it was nothing momentous. No road to Damascus, no lightning strike of revelation or enlightenment, as he had hoped for. First, he was aware only of the silence when he stopped, a silence unlike any he had ever known-nothing rustling, no animal sounds, no birdsong, no distant cars or lorries. Nothing. Just the smell of dry earth and the tall, still silhouettes of the saguaro cacti, arms reaching out and up, all around him.
The epiphany, when it came, was nothing more than a simple fleeting ripple of happiness that went through him as a light cool breeze might brush one’s skin on a hot day. He felt as if something had clicked into place, like the final number of a combination lock, the tumblers finding their positions. That was all. He wasn’t even sure whether it was something opening or closing, but he knew that he would be okay, that he was okay, that he could deal with things. His problems didn’t matter in the midst of the desert night-the myriad stars above and grains of sand under his feet. He would still hurt. He would still carry the burden of his past mistakes. He would still feel the deep ache of loss and betrayal and guilt and horror. Paradise would always remain just beyond his reach. But he would go on somehow. Perhaps not in the same way he had been, doing the job he did, but somehow. Future uncertain. Prospects unclear. End always near. He remembered thinking that he was a long, long way from home, but, oddly enough, he didn’t feel so far away at that moment.
Banks took one more look at the dark range of peaks on the horizon, then he turned and walked back to the blinking pinpoint of light. He slept like a baby until the blinding sunlight found him through a chink in the curtains at nine o’clock the following morning. After a huge breakfast of eggs and ham and hash browns at the diner, he checked out and headed for the interstate to Los Angeles with Vieux Farka Toure’s “Slow Jam” playing loudly through the car stereo.
THE SATNAV got Annie to Leeds easily enough after work on Tuesday, but it had a difficult time negotiating the twists and turns of Headingley, once off Otley Road, and she found herself getting more and more frustrated. That it was the tail end of rush hour didn’t help, either, but she wanted to time her arrival for roughly that period between when people get home from work and before they go out again for the evening. She knew that Tracy Banks worked at Waterstone’s on Albion Street, in the city center, and that her hours were probably irregular, but she didn’t think the shop stayed open particularly late.
The preliminary gun report hadn’t told them much except that they were dealing with a 9-mm Smith & Wesson automatic, over twenty years old, and the serial number had been filed down. There were ways of recovering it, of course, but they would take time. As yet, too, there was no record of a registered owner. It would also take some time to run the weapon through the National Firearms Forensic Intelligence Database and check it for fingerprints to run through IDENT1.
If they wanted to know whether the gun had been used in the commission of a crime-which, of course, they did-it would have to be fired under controlled circumstances, and the bullet compared with the information in the Integrated Ballistics Identification System. If the result was positive, to be absolutely certain the bullet would then have to be compared with the actual bullet and/or cartridge casing fired during the crime. Rush or not, this would all take time. There was no explanation yet of how the gun had come into Erin Doyle’s possession, and Erin still wasn’t talking. A boyfriend was everyone’s natural assumption. Juliet Doyle had mentioned someone called “Geoff,” but Rose Preston had told the Leeds police that Erin’s boyfriend was called “Jaff.” An easy mistake to make if you didn’t see it written down. Whoever he was, they hadn’t got a line on him yet.
When the satnav told Annie that she had reached her destination, she was still two streets away, but she managed to find her way easily enough with the aid of a simple A to Z.
The house was the kind of property that had probably belonged to a moderately wealthy family between the wars, Annie guessed as she took in the weathered sandstone, gables and slate roof. The lawn, surrounded by a low wall, was overgrown, and weeds were poking between the flagstones of the path. When Annie got out of the car she noticed that it had just begun to rain, more of a fine drizzle really. So much for the late-summer sunshine. She knocked at the door and a young woman she didn’t recognize opened it. She was wearing oval glasses with black rims, a short skirt, black tights and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the logo “Scars on 45,” a rock band, Annie guessed. Her light brown hair was tied in a ponytail.
Annie introduced herself and showed her warrant card. The girl said her name was Rose Preston and asked her in as if a visit from the police were the most natural thing in the world…
“I was just having my dinner, if that’s all right,” Rose said.
“Fine,” said Annie, following her into the living room, where Rose picked up a fork and a plate of pasta-probably microwaved-from the coffee table and sat with her legs folded under her on the armchair opposite the TV, where Emmerdale had just begun.
“Sorry to interrupt your program,” Annie said.
“Oh, that. It’s nothing. Just company while I eat.” Rose picked up the remote from the arm of the sofa, pointed it at the TV set and pressed. Chastity Dingle disappeared in the midst of an angry tirade directed toward Paddy.
“I’d have thought you had more than enough company, sharing with two other girls,” Annie said, remembering her own student days.
“If they were ever here.”
“Anyway, that’s what I’ve come to see you about. I’m looking for Tracy Banks. Is she home yet?”
Rose seemed confused. “Tracy Banks, did you say? There’s no one with that name lives here.”
Annie confirmed the address with Rose again. She was certain it was the same one that Harriet Weaver had given her the previous evening, though she could have transposed a number. The area was full of student housing. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“There’s Francesca Banks,” said Rose. “Maybe it’s her sister or something?”
“Or her middle name?” Annie suggested. She didn’t think Tracy had a middle name, but it was possible. “She’s about five foot five, twenty-four, blond hair to her shoulders, dark eyebrows. Has a degree in history from the University of Leeds, comes from Eastvale, works at Waterstone’s. She grew up with Erin Doyle, the other girl who lives here.”
“That sounds like Francesca,” Rose said. “Must be her middle name, then.”
“But it must be a while since you’ve seen her,” Rose added. “What do you mean?”
“She got her hair cut short a few weeks ago and put a few colored streaks in it. Pink. Purple. You know. Nothing permanent, but she looks different. She got a tattoo and a couple of piercings as well.”
“Piercings?”
“Yeah. Nothing drastic. Eyebrow and just below the lower lip.” Rose paused and smiled. “I mean, there may be others she hasn’t told me about, more intimate ones, but I don’t think so.”
That didn’t sound like the Tracy Banks Annie knew, a bright, sensible, hard-working young woman with good prospects, working at a temporary job in a bookshop until something more like a career came along. Banks was always so proud of her. Still, people change, and fashions, especially among the young, don’t necessarily mean that much. Annie had worn some pretty weird clothes in her time, including torn jeans and a safety pin through her ear. Some of the nicest, most creative, intelligent people she had ever met had had green mo-hawks, ragged T-shirts
