Strange Affair (42 page)

“What are you going to doff Are you going to hurt me?” Lambert whined.

Banks hurled the iron bar. It clanged into the tangled metal about two inches above Lambert’s head. Then Banks walked away, bent over and vomited on the floor. When he had finished, he took a few deep breaths, hands on his knees, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took out his mobile.

One evening a few days later, Banks crossed the old packhorse bridge at the western end of Helmthorpe High Street and turned right on the riverside path. It was a walk he had often enjoyed before. Flat and easy, between the trees and water, no hills to climb, and he’d end up back in Helmthorpe, where there were three pubs to choose from.

As he walked he thought about the events of the past month, how it had all started that night he saw Penny Cartwright in the Dog and Gun singing “Strange Affair.” He thought about Roy, Jennifer Clewes, Carmen Petri, Dieter Ganz and the rest.

And Gareth Lambert.

Now it was just about over. Artyom and Mazuryk were dead. Gareth Lambert was in custody, along with Boris and Max Broda, and the odds were good that they would get very long sentences. Banks’s actions had forced his hand, but Dieter Ganz seemed to think his team had enough evidence to convict them on charges of trafficking in underage girls across international borders for the purposes of prostitution. Unfortunately, raids on similar houses in Paris, Berlin and Rome had netted only minor players, as word of what happened in London had spread fast. In the Balkans, guides, drivers, kidnappers and traders had scattered. They would be back, though, Dieter had told Banks, and he would be waiting for them.

Whether Lambert would be tied to the conspiracy to kill Roy Banks and Jennifer Clewes was another matter. Lambert’s more sinister intentions couldn’t be proved. And as he had said, only he and the doctor knew what they intended to do with Carmen’s baby, and neither was talking. Banks had received a reprimand for his treatment of Lambert at the abandoned factory, which would also tend to discredit anything he claimed Lambert had told him. Still, there was a good chance that Max Broda would implicate him in the conspiracy rather
than take the fall alone. And Lambert’s mobile phone records for that Friday, the eleventh of June, at the Albion Club, showed a call to Mazuryk’s number at about eleven o’clock.

As for the rest, Banks wasn’t quite sure how things would turn out. Mazuryk’s girls would eventually be processed and sent home, but who was going to repair their lives, heal their broken spirits? Perhaps some would recover in time and move on, but others would drift back into the only life they knew. Carmen Petri, Annie had told Banks, was to be reunited with her parents in Romania, where contrary to what Gareth Lambert thought, there was a good chance that her baby might end up with a decent crack at life. Carmen had been abducted from the street three years ago and in all that time her parents hadn’t given up hoping she was still alive.

Of all of them, perhaps Mercedes Lambert had come out of it worst of all, and Banks felt deeply for her. Not only was her husband probably going to jail for a long time, but in all likelihood, short of a miracle, her baby Nina was going to die soon. The police were investigating Banks’s accusation and had questioned her about it, so now she also had to live with the knowledge of what her husband had been about to do. Banks could only imagine how knowledge like that might tear a mother apart and haunt her dreams forever. What might have been. The nameless, faceless issue of a Romanian prostitute she had never met measured against the life of her daughter.

His mind turned to other thoughts. He had just got back from Roy’s funeral in Peterborough. Needless to say, it had been a sad and tearful affair, but at least he had spent some time with Brian and Tracy, who had come in for the occasion, and it had given his parents some sense of that closure they valued so much. Banks never really got it. For him there was no closure.

The good news was that his mother had managed to get speedy results on the medical tests. Her colon cancer was operable and her chances of making a full recovery were excellent. She also seemed to be coping a bit better with the loss of her son, though Banks knew she would never fully recover from it, never be her old self again.

Brilliant green dragonflies hovered above the water’s surface and clouds of gnats and midges gathered above the path. The sun had almost set and the water was dark blue, the sky streaked blood orange. Banks could hear the calls of night birds from the trees and the sounds of small animals scuffling through the undergrowth. Across the river he could see the backs of the shops and houses on Helmthorpe High Street. People were sitting outside in the beer garden of the Dog and Gun and he could hear muffled conversations and music from the jukebox. It should have been Delius’s “Summer Night on the River,” he thought, breathing in the perfumed air, but it wasn’t even “Strange Affair,” it was Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives.”

Banks paused to light a cigarette and saw a figure walking towards him from the other direction. He couldn’t make out any more than a dark shape but when it got closer he saw it was Penny Cartwright. He stood aside to let her pass. The overhanging leaves brushed the back of his neck and made him shiver. It felt like a spider had slipped under his collar and was making its way down his back.

As she passed Banks nodded politely and said hello, making to hurry along, but her voice came from behind him. “Wait a minute.”

Banks turned. “Yes?”

“Got a light?”

As Banks flicked his lighter she leaned in towards him, cigarette in her mouth, and her eyes were on his as she inhaled. “Thanks,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yes. Fancy. Good night, then.”

“Don’t go. I mean, wait a sec. Okay?”

She sounded nervous and edgy. Banks wondered what was wrong. They stood and faced one another on the narrow path. An owl hooted deep in the woods. Elvis continued to watch the detectives. It was almost dark now, only a few streaks of purple and crimson in the sky like some great god’s robes.

“I was sorry to read about your brother,” she said.

“Thank you.”

Penny pointed to the beer garden. “Do you remember that night?” she said. “All those years ago?”

Banks remembered. He had sat in the garden with his wife Sandra, Penny and her boyfriend Jack Barker, explaining the Harry Steadman murder. It had been a warm summer evening, just like tonight.

“How’s Jack?” he asked.

Penny smiled. She wasn’t a woman who smiled easily, and it was worthwhile when she did. “I’m sure Jack’s doing fine,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in ages. He went off to live in Los Angeles. Does a bit of TV writing. You even see his name on the screen sometimes.”

“I thought you two were…?”

“We were. But it was a long time ago. Things change. You ought to know that.”

“I suppose so,” said Banks.

“Kath behind the bar told me about the fire, about what happened to your cottage, after she saw us talking. I’m really sorry.”

“Water under the bridge,” said Banks. “Besides, I’m having it restored.”

“Still…Anyway,” she went on, not looking at him. “I was rude that night, and I’m sorry. There, I’ve said it.”

“Why did you react the way you did?”

“It wasn’t deliberate, if that’s what you mean.”

“What, then?”

Penny paused and stared into the river. “You really don’t know, do you? All those years ago,” she said finally, “the way I felt. It was like some sort of violation. I know you saved my life and I should thank you for that, but you treated me like a criminal. You actually believed that I killed my best friend.”

At one point, that was probably true, Banks thought. It was just a part of his job, and he had never stopped to think how it might have made Penny feel. Everyone gets tainted by a murder investigation. Roy had wanted his big brother, Banks remembered, not a policeman. But where does the one end and the other begin?

“And there you were,” she went on, “asking me out to dinner, casual as anything, as if none of it had ever happened.”

“People aren’t always what they seem,” he said. “When the police come around asking questions, people lie. Everyone’s got something to hide.”

“So you suspect everyone?”

“More or less. Anyone who might have motive, means and opportunity.”

“Like me?”

“Like you.”

“But I cared about Harry Steadman.”

“That’s what you told us.”

“I could have been lying?”

“As I remember it, that case was full of lies.”

Penny took one last drag on her cigarette and flicked the stub into the river. “Oops,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that. The river police will be after me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Banks. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

She favoured him with another flicker of a smile. “I’d better be going,” she said, edging away. “It’s getting late.”

“All right.”

She started along the path, paused and half turned to face him. “Good night, then, Mr. Policeman. And I’m sorry I reacted so badly. I just wanted to tell you why.”

“Good night,” said Banks. He felt a tightness in his chest, but it was now or never. “Look,” he went on, calling after her, “maybe I’m being insensitive again, and I’m sorry I got off on the wrong foot, but is it at all within the bounds of possibility, you know, what I asked you about the other night, maybe the possibility of us, of you and me, you know…having dinner sometime?”

She turned briefly. “I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “You still don’t get it, do you?” And she walked off into the shadows.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for the time and care they have put into helping this book into its final shape: Sarah Turner, Maria Rejt and Nicholas Blake at Pan-Macmillan; Dan Conaway, Jill Schwartzman and Erika Schmid at William Morrow; and Dinah Forbes at McClelland & Stewart. I would also like to thank Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Sharyn Rosenblum, Angela Tedesco, Dominick Abel, David Grossman, David North, Katie James, Ellen Seligman and Parmjit Parmar for all their ongoing hard work and support.

I also want to thank Commander Philip Gormley, head of SO
₁₉
, the Metropolitan Force Firearms Unit, and Detective Inspector Claire Stevens of the Thames Valley Police. As usual, any mistakes are my own and are made entirely in the interests of the story.

I also owe a debt of thanks to the music of Richard Thompson and to Victor Malarek for his book
The Natashas
.

OTHER INSPECTOR BANKS NOVELS
BY PETER ROBINSON

Gallows View

A Dedicated Man

A Necessary End

The Hanging Valley

Past Reason Hated

Wednesday’s Child

Final Account

Innocent Graves

Blood at the Root

In a Dry Season

Cold Is the Grave

Aftermath

The Summer That Never Was

Playing With Fire

ALSO BY PETER ROBINSON

Caedmon’s Song

Not Safe After Dark & Other Stories

Copyright © 2005 by Eastvale Enterprises Inc.

Cloth edition published 2005

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Robinson, Peter, 1950-
Strange affair : an Inspector Banks novel / Peter Robinson.

eISBN: 978-1-55199-221-1

I. Title.

PS
8585.
O
35176
S
87 2005
A
   
C
813'.54    
C
2005-902558-1

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
The Canadian Publishers
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com

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