Strange Affair

That was enough. Everyone grabbed their bags, dashed for the door and ran down the platform to the street.

Banks had hoped to be back in London by late morning, early afternoon at the latest, but it wasn’t to be. For a start, he slept in. Lying there in his old bed, he hadn’t been able to get to sleep for thinking about Roy and worrying about his parents, and only after the light began to grow and the birds started singing did he finally doze off until nine-thirty. Even then, he was the first one up.

If that had been the only problem, he could probably still have made fairly good time, but after he had made a pot of tea, made sure his new mobile was fully charged and walked across the road for a copy of The Independent, his mother was up and fussing. Whether the fact of Roy’s death had really sunk in yet, Banks couldn’t tell, but she seemed u

“Your father’s having a lie-in,” she said. “He’s tired.”

“That’s okay,” said Banks. “You could have rested awhile longer yourself.”

“I rested quite enough yesterday, thank you. Now…”

And then she launched into the most extraordinary litany of “things to do,” the upshot of which was that Banks spent a good part of the day driving her around to the various relatives who lived close enough to visit, the ones in Ely, Stamford and Huntingdon, at any rate. Many had already phoned the previous evening after hearing about Roy on the news, but Banks had taken care of the telephone – including the reporters – and made sure neither his mother nor his father was disturbed.

Now Ida Banks told each one, calmly, that Roy had died and she didn’t know when the funeral would be, but they should be on the lookout for a notice in the paper.

Banks’s father was up when they got back from the first visit, just sitting in his armchair staring into space. He said he was okay, but Banks worried about him, too; he seemed to have no energy, no will.

Banks had already seen a piece about the murder in The Independent, which referred to Roy as the “wealthy entrepreneur brother of North Yorkshire policeman Alan Banks, who almost lost his life in a fire earlier this year.” Uncle Frank told him it had been on the television, too, and there had been a picture of Banks and some old footage of his cottage after the fire. Banks was glad he hadn’t seen it. God only knew what stories the tabloids were telling. Were they implying a link between the fire and Roy’s murder?

By the time he saw his mother settled back at home and had fed her another of Dr. Grenville’s pills, it was mid-afternoon. Mrs. Green, a neighbor, came over to sit with them for a while and Banks was finally able to say his good-byes and set off back to London. Before he left, he rang Burgess, gave him his new mobile number and arranged to meet at a pub in Soho around five o’clock. It was time to pick up the threads of his investigation again.

Lacking CDs, the best he could do was turn on the car radio. Classic FM was playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Radio Three had Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra. Banks chose the Tippett because he didn’t know it as well as he did the Beethoven.

On the motorway somewhere around Stevenage, Banks noticed that a red Vectra had been following him for some time. He slowed down; the Vectra slowed. He speeded up; the Vectra kept pace. It was the middle of a warm summer afternoon on a busy road, but still Banks felt the chill of fear. He played cat and mouse with the Vectra for a while longer, then it shot past him. He couldn’t get a really good look, but he could tell there were two people in the car, one in the front and one in the back. The one in the back had a ponytail, and when the car was passing Banks’s Renault, he turned sideways and smiled, miming a shooting gun with his left hand, thumb signifying the hammer, then he tilted his hand up and blew over the tops of his first two fingers, smiling. It was a split-second vignette, then they were streaking ahead.

Banks tried to keep up with them, but it was no good. The driver was skillful and managed to weave in and out of the lanes of traffic until they had left Banks far behind. Not before he had memorized the number, though.

As he approached Welwyn Garden City, where it started to rain again, Banks wondered what the hell all that had been about. Then he realized with a sudden chill that they must have followed him from Peterborough. They were letting him know that they knew where his parents lived.

“You again,” said Roger Cropley, when Kev Templeton turned up at his front door again. “You’ve got a bloody nerve. What the hell do you want?”

“Just a few more questions,” said Templeton. “I’m by myself this time. As a matter of fact, I’m very surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be down in London. It was your wife I was pla

“I’m off sick,” said Cropley. “Summer cold. What do you want to talk to Eileen about?”

“Oh, this and that. But now that you’re here, too, let’s have a party, shall we?” Templeton edged his way into the hall. Eileen Cropley was standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Ah, Mrs. Cropley. Good afternoon. I don’t believe we had a proper chance to get acquainted on my last visit.”

“That’s because you were so rude, if I remember correctly. Roger, what does this man want? What have you been up to?”

“I haven’t been up to anything. It’s all right, dear.” Cropley sighed. “You’d better come through,” he said.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

The living room still smelled of lavender, but the flowers had wilted and shed a few petals. “I might have been a little hasty last time,” said Templeton, when both Mr. and Mrs. Cropley had sat down. They sat on the sofa, Templeton noticed, one at each end, like bookends. Mrs. Cropley was definitely frosty. Cropley himself seemed resigned. “I hadn’t got all my ducks in a row.”

“You can say that again,” said Cropley.

“But that’s water under the bridge, isn’t it? No hard feelings?”

Cropley regarded him suspiciously.

“Anyway,” Templeton went on, “I’m glad I found both of you in. Gives me a chance to make up for bad first impressions. We’ve talked to the AA, Mr. Cropley, and they verify that you were, indeed, at the time in question, stuck on the hard shoulder of the M1 just south of the Derby turnoff.”

“As I told you.”

“Indeed. And I apologize for any… disbelief… I might have shown at the time. We tend to get quite wrapped up in our search for justice, and sometimes we trample on people’s finer feelings.”

“So what do you want this time?”

“Well, we’ve got a bit more information than we had before, and it looks as if these two men you saw in the dark Mondeo followed Je

“This is all very interesting,” said Cropley, “but I still don’t see how my wife or I can help.”

“Hear the man out, Roger,” said Mrs. Cropley, who seemed interested despite herself.

“Thank you, Mrs. Cropley. Anyway, we got a description of the man who dropped off the car in London and a colleague down there has just faxed me an artist’s impression. I was wondering if you’d have a look at it and see if you can identify him.”

“I told you,’ said Cropley, “I didn’t get a good look. I’m not very good at describing people.”