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Bloody hell! It was Dirty Dick Burgess. “Merry Christmas,” Banks said. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Got a Christmas present for you.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I didn’t.”
“Okay, I give up. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I thought it would come better from me, rather than you reading about it when it’s all over the papers or watching it on television.”
“What would?”
“Barry Clough.”
“Barry Clough? What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Stop talking like a bloody parrot, Banks. Yes. Dead. DEAD Dead.”
Banks gripped the handset tighter and sat down. “Tell me what happened.”
As far as Banks knew, after he and A
“In the early hours of the morning,” Burgess said, “Clough was coming out of a nightclub in Arenys de Mar, just up the coast from Barcelona, and somebody shot him. Dead.”
“Who?”
“Girl named Amanda Khan. Supposed to be some kind of pop star – that’s why it’s going to be a big story – but I can’t say as I’ve ever heard of her. Sounds like an A-rab to me.”
“She’s half Pakistani,” said Banks. Amanda Khan. Clough’s new girlfriend. Emily’s replacement.
“Whatever. Anyway, it sounds like the classic love triangle from what I’ve managed to pick up so far. Seems that Clough jilted her for some dago bimbo, and this Amanda was a few stops closer to Barking than he realized. Fu
“You can say that again.” Banks didn’t usually smoke in the mornings, but he reached for his cigarettes.
“What makes it even fu
“Indeed.” Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in England; she had shot her lover outside a London pub. “Was the girl hurt?”
“Winged. One bullet in her upper arm. Flesh wound. Nothing serious. According to my Spanish sources, the Khan woman fired six shots. Two of them hit Clough: one in his ugly mug and one in his miserable bloody heart. Wonder it didn’t just bounce off, but he was dead before he hit the ground. Two hit Jamie Gilbert: one in the chest and one in the groin. He’s not dead, but they say he’ll never be quite the same again and his voice has gone up a few octaves. One shot hit the girl, and the last hit an i
“So,” said Banks, “justice of a kind.”
“Best we’ll get.”
“Thanks for calling. The girl, how is she?”
“Amanda Khan? Why? Don’t tell me you know her, too?”
“No. I was just wondering.”
“As well as anyone in the custody of the Spanish police can expect to be. Bye-bye, Banks. Have a good Christmas.”
“You, too.”
Banks put the phone down slowly. Clough dead. He could only feel a sense of relief that something had finally gone wrong for the bastard. For a while, Clough had seemed able to get away with anything and everything and thumb his nose at the rest of the world while he was doing it. No more. It probably wasn’t very Christian to celebrate another man’s death, especially on Christmas Day, but Banks would have been a hypocrite if he hadn’t admitted to himself that he was glad Clough wouldn’t be around to wreak his peculiar brand of havoc on the world anymore.
He also imagined the pain and confusion that must have driven Amanda Khan to such an extreme act, how those six shots had probably destroyed her life, too: her future, her career. But if any death was worth celebrating, it was Barry Clough’s.
Banks stubbed out the half cigarette that remained, then went back into the kitchen and washed his hands before he started working the sausage meat into the sage-and-onion mixture. He looked at the chicken, not entirely certain which end was which.
Rubén González’s delicate, joyous piano playing on “Pueblos Nuevo” drifted through from the living room. A little sunlight spilled over the long anvil-shaped top of Low Fell into the kitchen and glinted on the copper bottoms of the pans hanging from the wall. Banks heard stirrings from upstairs, old floorboards creaking. Probably Tracy. Brian liked to sleep all morning.
Banks remembered how, when they were kids, they got up before dawn to open their presents. Once, as he had been creeping around their rooms at one o’clock in the morning filling pillowcases with presents, he was certain he had felt Brian’s eyes on him, awake to see if there really was a Santa Claus. Neither of them had ever referred to the incident, and Brian had acted as he always did when he opened his presents, but Banks suspected that from that Christmas on, his son had lost a little of his i
That was probably how it happened, he mused – i
Banks remembered standing by the riverbank that day, rain pitting the water, smiling like an idiot, being polite, clutching the big stone to his chest so as not to wet the gentleman passing by. Then the struggle, the hot beery breath, his heels slipping on the muddy bank, the terror, the punch. The world had changed for him that day, and even now he could still taste the dirty, sweaty cloth of the man’s sleeve as he leaned against the kitchen counter.
He thought of Emily Riddle, of Rosalind, of Ruth Walker and Amanda Khan. When he heard Tracy’s footsteps on the staircase, he had a sudden image of Dr. Glende
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, many thanks to those who read and commented on the manuscript throughout its development: my wife and first reader, Sheila Halladay; my agent, Dominick Abel; my editor, Patricia Lande Grader; and my copyeditor, Erika Schmid. Also, many thanks to Robert Barnard for reading the finished manuscript and providing valuable comments.
While I frequently tweak police procedure for dramatic purposes, any accuracy I may demonstrate in the matter is owing entirely to my conversations with Area Commander Phil Gormley, Detective Inspector Alan Young and Detective Inspector Claire Stevens, all of Thames Valley Police, and Detective Sergeant Keith Wright, of Nottingham C.I.D. Any mistakes are my own.