16

The Monday-morning sunlight spilled through Banks’s kitchen window and glinted on the copper-bottomed pans hanging on the wall. Banks sat at his pine table with a cup of coffee, toast and marmalade, the morning newspaper spread out before him and Vaughan Williams’s Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis playing on the radio. But he was neither reading nor listening.

He had been awake since before four, a million details dancing around in his mind, and though he felt dog-tired now, he knew he couldn’t sleep. He would be glad when the Chameleon case was all over, when Gristhorpe was back at work, and when he could go back to his normal duties as detective chief inspector. The responsibility of command over the past month and a half had exhausted him. He recognized the signs: lack of sleep, bad dreams, too much junk food, too much booze and too many cigarettes. He was reaching the same near-burnout state as he had been in when he left the Met for North Yorkshire years ago, hoping for a quieter life. He loved detective work, but it sometimes seemed that modern policing was a young man’s game. Science, technology and changes in management structure hadn’t simplified things; they had only made life more complicated. Banks realized that he had probably come to the limits of his ambition when he actually thought that morning, for the first time, about packing in the Job altogether.

He heard the postman arrive and went out to pick up the letters from the floor. Among the usual collection of bills and circulars, there was a hand-addressed envelope from London, and Banks immediately recognized the neat, looping hand.

Sandra.

Heart beating just a little too fast for comfort, he carried the pile back into the kitchen. This was his favorite room in the cottage, mostly because he had dreamed about it before he had seen it, but what he read in Sandra’s letter was enough to darken the brightest of rooms even more than his previous mood had darkened it.

Dear Alan,

I understand that Tracy told you Sean and I are expecting a baby. I wish she hadn’t, but there it is, it’s done now. I hope this knowledge will at least enable you to understand the need for expediency in the matter of our divorce, and that you will act accordingly.

Yours sincerely,

Sandra

That was it. Nothing more than a cold, formal note. Banks had to admit that he hadn’t been responding to the matter of divorce with any great dispatch, but he hadn’t seen any need for haste. Perhaps, he was even willing to admit, deep down, he was stubbornly clinging to Sandra, and in some opaque and frightened part of his soul he was holding to the belief that it was all just a nightmare or a mistake, and he would wake up one morning back in the Eastvale semi with Sandra beside him. Not that that was what he wanted, not anymore, but he was at least willing to admit that he might harbor such irrational feelings.

Now this.

Banks put the letter aside, still feeling its chill. Why couldn’t he just let go of this and move on, as Sandra clearly had done? Was it because of what he had told Annie, about his guilt over Sandra’s miscarriage, about being glad that it happened? He didn’t know; it all just felt too strange: his wife of over twenty years, mother of their children, now about to give birth to another man’s child.

He tossed the letter aside, picked up his briefcase and headed out for the car.

He intended to go to Leeds later in the morning, but first he wanted to drop by his office, clear up some paperwork and have a word with Winsome. The drive to Eastvale from Gratly was, Banks had thought when he first made it, one of the most beautiful drives in the area: a narrow road about halfway up the daleside, with spectacular views of the valley bottom with its sleepy villages and meandering river to his left and the steeply rising fields with their drystone walls and wandering sheep to his right. But today he didn’t even notice all this, partly because he did it so often, and partly because his thoughts were still clouded by Sandra’s letter and vague depression over his job.

After the chaos of the weekend, the police station was back to its normal level of activity; the reporters had disappeared, just as Lucy Payne had. Banks wasn’t overly concerned about Lucy’s going missing, he thought as he closed his office door and turned on the radio. She would probably turn up again, and even if she didn’t, there was no real cause for concern. Not unless they came up with some concrete evidence against her. At least in the meantime, they could keep track of her through ATM withdrawals and credit card transactions. No matter where she was, she would need money.

After he had finished the paperwork, Banks went into the squad room. DC Winsome Jackman was sitting at her desk chewing on the end of a pencil.

“Winsome,” he said, remembering one of the details that had awoken him so early in the morning, “I’ve got another job for you.”

And when he’d told her what he wanted her to do, he left by the back exit and set off for Leeds.

It was just after lunch when Annie entered the CPS offices, though she hadn’t managed to grab a bite to eat herself yet. The Crown solicitor appointed to the case, Jack Whitaker, turned out to be younger than she had expected, late twenties or early thirties, she guessed, prematurely balding, and he spoke with a slight lisp. His handshake was firm, his palm just a little damp. His office was certainly far tidier than Stafford Oakes’s in Eastvale, where every file was out of place and stained with an Olympic symbol of coffee rings.

“Any new developments?” he asked after Annie had sat down.

“Yes,” said Annie. “PC Taylor changed her statement this morning.”

“May I?”

Annie handed him Janet Taylor’s revised statement, and Whitaker read it over. When he’d finished, he slid the papers over the desk back toward Annie. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I think,” Jack Whitaker said slowly, “that we might be charging Janet Taylor with murder.”

“What?” Annie couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “She acted as a policewoman in pursuit of her duty. I was thinking justifiable homicide, or, at the very most, excusable. But murder?”

Whitaker sighed. “Oh, dear. I don’t suppose you’ve heard the news, then?”

“What news?” Annie hadn’t turned on the radio when she drove down to Leeds, being far too preoccupied with Janet’s case and her confused feelings about Banks to concentrate on news or chat.

“The jury came back on the John Hadleigh case just before lunch. You know, the Devon farmer.”

“I know about the Hadleigh case. What was the verdict?”

“Guilty of murder.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Annie. “But even so, surely that’s different entirely? I mean, Hadleigh was civilian. He shot a burglar in the back. Janet Taylor-”

Whitaker held his hand up. “The point is that it’s a clear message. Given the Hadleigh verdict, we have to be seen to be acting fairly toward everyone. We can’t afford to have the press screaming at us for going easy on Janet Taylor just because she’s a policewoman.”

“So it is political?”

“Isn’t it always? Justice must be seen to be done.”

“Justice?”

Whitaker raised his eyebrows. “Listen,” he said, “I can understand your sympathies; believe me, I can. But according to her statement, Janet Taylor handcuffed Terence Payne to a metal pipe after she had already subdued him, then she hit him twice with her baton. Hard. Think about it, Annie. That’s deliberate. That’s murder.”

“She didn’t necessarily mean to kill him. There was no intent.”

“That’s for a jury to decide. A good prosecutor could argue that she knew damn well what the effect of two more hard blows to the head would be after she’d already given him seven previous blows.”