She asked Pratt to open the window. He complied, but it didn’t do much good. The air outside was still and hot. Even the gargoyles on the upper walls of the community center looked grumpy and sweaty.

“Did Mr. Rothwell ever express any interest in pornography?”

Pratt raised his eyebrows. “Good lord. How do you mean? As a business venture or for personal consumption?”

“Either.”

“Not in my presence. As I said, I don’t know about the extent of his business interests, but he always struck me as rather… say… sexless. When we were younger, of course, we’d chase the lasses, but since his marriage… ”

“Have you ever met a solicitor called Daniel Clegg?”

“No. The name doesn’t sound familiar. Are you sure he practices in Eastvale?”

“You’ve never met him?”

“I told you, I’ve never even heard of him. Why do you ask? Is there some-”

“Did Mr. Rothwell ever mention him?”

“Is there some connection?”

“Did Mr. Rothwell ever mention him?”

Pratt stared at Susan for about fifteen long seconds, then said, “No, not that I recall.”

Susan ran the back of her hand across her moist brow. She was beginning to feel a little dizzy. “What about Robert Calvert?”

“Never heard of him, either. Is this another business colleague of Keith’s? I told you we never talked about his business. He played his cards close to his chest.”

“Did he ever mention a woman called Pamela Jeffreys?”

Pratt raised an eyebrow. “A woman? Keith? Another woman? Good lord, no. I told you he didn’t strike me as the type. Not these days, anyway. Besides, Mary would have killed him. Oh, my God… ”

“It’s all right, Mr. Pratt,” Susan said. “Slip of the tongue. Jealous type, is she?”

He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “Mary? Well, I’d guess so, yes.”

“But you don’t know for certain?”

“No. It’s just the impression she gives. How everything centered around Keith, the house, the family. If anything came along to jeopardize that, threaten it, then she’d be a formidable enemy. Possessive, selfish, I’d say, definitely. Is that the same thing?”

Susan closed her notebook and stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Pratt. Thank you very much. Again, you’ve been most helpful.” Then she hurried out of the hot, stuffy office before she fainted.

3

They walked down to Stumps, under the museum, and made their way to the bar, where Burgess ordered a pint of McEwan’s lager and Banks a pint of bitter. It wasn’t Theakston’s, but it would have to do.

As it was a warm day, they took their drinks outside and found a free table. There was a broad, tiled area between the museum-library complex and the buses roaring by on The Headrow, and pedestrians hurried back and forth, some heading for the Court Centre or the Town Hall and some taking shortcuts to Calverley Street and the Civic Hall. A group of people stood playing chess with oversize figures on a board drawn on the tiles. Scaffolding covered the front of one of the nineteenth-century buildings across The Headrow, Banks noticed. Another renovation.

Banks felt both puzzled and apprehensive at Burgess’s arrival on the scene. The last time they had locked horns was over the killing of a policeman at an antigovernment demonstration in Eastvale back in the Thatcher era.

Burgess had fitted in just fine back then. An East Ender, son of a barrow boy, he had fought his way up from the bottom with a fierce mixture of ego, ambition, cunning and a total disregard for the rules most people played by. He also felt no sympathy for those who had been unable to do likewise. Now, at about Banks’s age, he was a Detective Superintendent working for a Scotland Yard department that was not quite Special Branch and not quite M15, but close enough to both to give Banks the willies.

In a period when a fully functioning human heart was regarded as a severe disability, he had been one of the new, golden breed of working-class Conservatives, up there in the firmament of the new Britain alongside the bright young things in the City, the insider traders and their like. Cops and criminals: it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference, as long as you were successful. But then, it never did to some people.

Nobody could gainsay Burgess’s abilities – intelligence and physical courage being foremost among them – but “The end justifies the means” could have been written just for him. The “end” was some vague sort of loyalty to whatever the people in power wanted done for the preservation of order, as long as the people in power weren’t liberals or socialists, of course; and as for the “means,” the sky was the limit.

Maybe he had changed, Banks wondered. After all the recent inquiries and commissions, a policeman could surely no longer walk into a pub, pick up the first group of Irish people he saw and throw them in jail as terrorists, could he? Or walk down Brixton Road and arrest the first black person he saw running? According to the public-relations people, today’s policeman was a cross between Santa Claus and a hotel manager.

On the other hand, perhaps that was only according to the PR people: truth in advertising, caveat emptor and the rest. Besides, if there was one thing not likely to make the slightest impression on Burgess’s obsidian consciousness, it was political correctness.

Banks lit a cigarette and held out his lighter as Burgess fired up one of his Tom Thumb cigars. He was still in good shape, though filling out a bit around the belly. He had a square jaw and slightly crooked teeth. His black, slicked-back hair was turning silver at the temples and sideboards, and the bags under his seen-it-all gray eyes looked as if they had taken on a bit more weight since Banks had last seen him. About six feet tall, casually dressed in black leather jacket, open-neck shirt and gray cords, he was still handsome enough to turn the heads of a few thirtyish women, and had a reputation as something of a rake. It wasn’t entirely unfounded, Banks had discovered the last time they worked together.

Banks reached for his pint. “To what do I owe the honor?” he asked. He had never dignified Burgess with the “sir” his rank demanded, and he was damned if he was about to start now.

Burgess swigged some lager, swished it around his mouth and swallowed.

“Well?” said Banks. “Enough bloody theatrics, for Christ’s sake.”

“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I’d missed you?”

“Get on with it.”

“Right. Thought not. Ever heard of a place called St. Corona?”

“Of course. It’s a Caribbean island, been in the news a bit lately.”

“Clever boy. That’s the one. Population about four point eight million. Area about seven thousand square miles. Chief resources, bauxite, limestone, aluminum, sugar cane, plus various fruits and spices, fish and a bit of gold, silver and nickel. A lot of tourism, too, or there used to be.”

“So you’ve been studying Whitaker’s Almanac,” said Banks. “Now what the bloody hell is this all about?”

A tipsy youth bumped into the table and spilled some of Burgess’s lager. The youth stopped to apologize, but the look Burgess gave him sent him stumbling off into the bright afternoon sunlight before he could get the words out.

“Fucking lager lout,” Burgess muttered, wiping the beer off the table-top with a handkerchief. “Gone to the dogs, this country. Where was I? Oh, yes. St. Corona. Imports just about everything you need to live, including the machinery to make it. Lots of television sets, radios, fridges, washing machines.” He paused and whistled between his teeth as a young redhead in a mini-skirt walked by. “Now that’s not bad,” he said. “Which reminds me, have you rogered that young redhead in Eastvale yet? You know, the psychologist.” He flicked the stub of his cigar toward the gutter; it hit the wall just above with a shower of sparks.