‘Do you know where any of them live?’
‘I’ve seen a couple of them coming or going from houses when I’ve been shopping.’
‘It might help if you could let me know the addresses.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember. The streets are all named after trees, and I get confused. I could probably point out some of the houses.’
Winsome nodded and Terry watched her make a note in her black book. ‘We’ll send someone over when it’s convenient for you,’ she said. ‘Maybe tomorrow morning, if that’s OK? We’d like to have a word with some of them.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I don’t suppose they’ll be able to tell you much, though. After all, they wouldn’t have been there when the lorries were.’
‘No, but even so…’
‘Yes. You have to be thorough.’ Again, Terry felt disappointed that she wasn’t going to accompany him on a walk around the village to identify the children’s houses. He could point out the highlights of Drewick, such as they were. As it happened, he could only remember where one or two of the children lived, so it probably wouldn’t do her any good. They could canvass the whole village if they wanted. It wouldn’t take long. He also realised that it probably wasn’t a job for someone of her rank; she’d send a patrol car, most likely, and at most a DC to question the kids. But she had come to see him again in person. That was something to hold on to.
Almost before he noticed, she was putting away her notebook and preparing to get up and leave. He was trying to think of a way to get her to stay when he had forgotten to offer her basic hospitality. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I forgot to ask if you wanted anything to drink. Would you like something? Tea? Coffee?’
Winsome smiled. ‘No, thanks. It’s getting a bit late. I ought to be off. We’re not only in it for the perks, you know.’
He started to protest that wasn’t what he meant when he noticed the cheeky grin on her face. ‘Got me there,’ he said.
He grasped the arms of the chair to heave himself up and follow her out, but she said, ‘No, that’s all right. Stay there. I can find my own way. Don’t worry about it.’ Then she smiled again and the next thing he knew the door had closed behind her.
He sagged back into the chair feeling like an abject failure. He banged the chair arm with his fist, then thumped his gammy leg, too, just for good measure.
Banks got home to a cold house at about eight o’clock. He turned up the thermostat, promising himself yet again that if he ever got a pay increase, the first thing he would buy would be a better heating system. He dumped his bag and satchel on the floor, hung up his coat and picked up the post from the inside mat. It consisted mostly of bills, subscription renewal forms and a box set of Janet Baker CDs that had only just fit through the letter box.
There was also a postcard from his parents, who were cruising the Amazon: a picture of the Manaus opera house. Banks turned it over and read his mother’s small neat handwriting. His father didn’t like to write, Banks knew, because he was self-conscious about his spelling and grammar. His mother, with her typical economy, had crammed as many words in the small space as she possibly could. ‘We thought you might like this, being an opera fan and all. It’s very hot and muggy here, so bad some days your poor dad can hardly breathe. The food is good on the ship. Some of the other passengers are really rude and stuck-up but we’ve made friends with a couple from York and some nice people from near Stratford. We went for a boat ride around some islands yesterday and saw a sloth, two iguanas and a conda. Your dad caught a piranha off the side of the boat. He’s proper chuffed with himself!’
Banks puzzled for a moment over ‘and a conda’ then guessed his mother meant an anaconda. She was in her eighties, after all. He could just imagine them in their sunhats and long-sleeved shirts, sweating in the heat, busy spending their inheritance. Good for them, he thought. They had never got much out of life, and they had had to suffer the death of their favourite son Roy not so very long ago. Spend it while you’re alive to enjoy it, Banks thought, admiring them for their adventurousness. When he’d been young and excited by all the strange faraway places in the atlas, he could never have imagined his father – a beer and fish and chips sort of bloke if ever there was one – or his mother – homemaker, queen of the overcooked roast beef and soggy sprouts – venturing far beyond Skeggy or Clacton. But there they were, cruising the Amazon, something he himself had never managed to do. Banks had inherited his brother’s Porsche, and for a long time he had tried to convince himself to sell it. Now it felt lived in, he found that he sort of liked it. And it was a link with his dead brother, a link he hadn’t felt when Roy was alive.
He put the postcard down beside his computer and walked through the hall to the kitchen, where he poured himself a couple of fingers of Macallan twelve-year-old. He was still working his way back to Laphroaig. He took a sip and sat at the breakfast nook to open the Janet Baker package, then went into the entertainment room and put on the disc that started with Les Nuits d’Été. He found the second disc of Oriana’s Tosca in the CD player and put it back in its jewel case. There was a small pile of her CDs beside the amp, mostly opera and early music – Hildegard von Bingen, Byrd, Tallis, Monteverdi – and those damn U2 CDs she had insisted on bringing. Banks couldn’t stand U2. All their songs sounded the same to him, and Bono and the bloke with the woolly hat and silly name got on his nerves. He turned up the volume on Janet Baker a notch, went to collect his whisky from the kitchen and went through to the conservatory, where he settled in his well-worn wicker armchair.
Oriana’s wide-brimmed straw hat lay on the other chair, and on the low, glass-topped table stood two stem glasses, the red wine crystallised at the bottom. One of them had lipstick stains on the rim, a faint pink semicircle that made Banks think of Oriana’s lips and her kisses. They had been running late on Thursday, he remembered, and had left in such a hurry that she had forgotten her hat and he had forgotten to clear away the glasses. There were fragments of her life all over the house, Banks realised, though they didn’t live together. Oriana was still at the Chalmers’ place. It suited her – her second family, the two daughters like younger sisters, people she’d known all her life, and her job as PA to Lady Veronica. And Banks liked his solitude. No reason to change things, he thought. If it ain’t broke…
He felt a sudden urge to phone her. She was leaving for Australia in a couple of days on a book tour, accompanying Lady Veronica Chalmers, who wrote romances under the pseudonym Charlotte Summers. Then he remembered they had agreed not to phone. They both hated protracted goodbyes, and he knew that if he rang her, it would hurt after the call was over. Best stay with the music, whisky and memories of the weekend.
It was only the second time he had met Oriana’s Italian family, and he could tell that they were still suspicious of him, Oriana’s older man, but they also knew that she was special, that she wasn’t one for the callous young boys of the neighbourhood, who were only interested in one thing, or even in the more serious youths, who wanted to marry her and tie her to home and kitchen and keep her barefoot and pregnant. The family knew that Oriana was a free spirit, so they respected her choice and tolerated Banks. Besides, he thought the Italians were far less concerned about age differences than the more stuffy English, though he didn’t know where he got that idea from. One of her uncles even called him commissario, usually with a humorous glint in his eye.
Finding the privacy to make love had been difficult, as the relatives insisted on separate rooms for their unmarried guests, but Banks and Oriana had managed to circumvent the problem once or twice in the early hours. Banks was sure an aged aunt on her way back to her room from the toilet had spotted him once. She had glowered at him the rest of the weekend but said nothing, perhaps because she couldn’t speak a word of English. Whether she had spoken to Oriana or one of her uncles, Banks had no idea. Oriana never brought up the matter, and he thought it best to let things lie.