It might be worth having a word with Carol Wyman alone, Annie thought. Better not get caught, though. Superintendent Gervaise wouldn’t take kindly to her moonlighting for Banks. They’d be tarred by the same brush, if they weren’t already. And for what? A half-baked theory based on a Shakespeare play that, even if it was true, couldn’t lead to any criminal charges that she was aware of. Still, Annie had to admit that she was intrigued by the whole business, and there were enough niggling doubts in her mind to make her willing to take the occasional risk.
The first item on the agenda, though, was to phone Banks, if he was available. Annie found his last call in the log and pressed the call button. It rang. When Banks answered, she could hear traffic in the background.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Are you driving? Can you talk?”
“I can talk,” said Banks. “I’m just entering Soho Square. Hang on a minute. I’ll sit on the grass.” There was a short pause, then he came back on the line. “That’s better. Okay, what is it?”
“I just thought we should get up to date, that’s all. I talked to Derek Wyman in the school staff room. We were asking him about Nicky Haskell and the stabbing, but on the way out I let him know he’d been seen with Mark Hardcastle in the Red Rooster.”
“And?”
“He got very stroppy indeed. Told me I should mind my own business and he had a right to drink anywhere and with anyone he wanted. Well, words to that effect.”
“The strain’s showing?”
“I’d say that, yes. Assuming you’re right about this, the Iago business and all that—and I’m not saying you are right—but let’s say something along those lines did happen.”
“I’m still with you. I think.”
“Well, have you thought how it changes things?”
“In what way?”
“If Derek Wyman did poison Mark Hardcastle against Laurence Silbert—”
“There’s no ‘if’ about it, Annie. He did. I just found the private detective he hired to follow Silbert and take the photos.”
Annie practically dropped her phone. “He did what?”
“He hired a private detective. Which is quite a luxury on his part, because he wasn’t exactly rolling in money. You should have seen the B-and-B he stayed at in Victoria. Definitely cheap and cheerful. But I imagine he had no choice. With school duties and everything, he couldn’t get down to London as often as he would have liked. And I’ll bet he didn’t want to be recognized, either. Remember, he had met Silbert once or twice at dinners.”
“So what happened?”
“This woman followed Silbert from the Bloomsbury pied-a-terre to Regent’s Park, where he met a bloke on a bench, then the two of them carried on to the house in Saint John’s Wood. Wyman wasn’t interested in what they were doing together, apparently, or in anything other than the photos. That’s all he wanted, Annie. Photos of Silbert with another man. Evidence.”
“So it could have been completely innocent?”
“I doubt it. The pictures are ambiguous, to say the least. They meet on a park bench, walk and go into a house. There’s no hand holding or anything. The only time they touch is when Silbert precedes the other man into the house. But I’d say with Iago’s powers of persuasion they made pretty good icing on the cake.”
“So what were Silbert and his pal up to?”
“My guess is that they were probably working on something together. Some intelligence service project or other. I’ve been to that house and the old couple who own it are definitely dodgy. The sweet little old lady lied to me through her teeth, which leads me to believe she’s one of them, too, rather than the madam of a posh shag pad.”
“So he was still spying? He hadn’t retired?”
“Something like that. Or he was working for the other side, whoever that is. But imagine what it would seem like to Hardcastle, Annie, especially with the help of Wyman’s sly innuendos and graphic images.”
“The point I was trying to make,” Annie went on, “was that if1—or because—Wyman poisoned Hardcastle against Silbert, there’s no reason to believe that Silbert was the intended victim. Wyman hardly knew him. He did know Hardcastle quite well, though.”
“So you’re saying Mark Hardcastle was the victim?”
“I’m saying he could have been. And you still have to consider the simple but significant fact that Wyman could not have been certain of the effects of his actions.”
“I agree he couldn’t have known that Hardcastle would kill Silbert, then himself.”
“Well, thank the Lord for that.”
“But he did know he was stirring up a volatile situation, and that someone might get hurt.”
“True. Even if only emotionally, even if his only intention was to split them up.”
“Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Isn’t it what you’d expect if you convinced someone his partner was being unfaithful, rather than bloody murder and suicide? And Wyman had plenty of reason to be upset with Hardcastle over developments at the theater. Not enough to kill him, obviously, but perhaps enough to want to do a bit of mischief.”
“Perhaps,” said Banks.
“In which case,” Annie went on, “all this spooks business is beside the point. What happened wasn’t anything to do with the security of the realm, terrorists, the Russian Mafia, or any of that claptrap.”
“What about Mr. Browne?”
“You pissed in his swimming pool, Alan. For God’s sake, we’d be swarming around quickly enough if it was one of our blokes died that way.”
“Julian Fenner, Import-Export, the mysterious phone number that doesn’t ring?”
“Tradecraft? Part of what Silbert was up to when he was in London? How he contacted the man in the photo? I don’t know.”
“And us being warned off?”
“They don’t want publicity. It does so happen that Silbert was a member of MI6, and he’d probably been involved in a fair bit of dirty business over the years. Probably still was, judging by what you were telling me. They don’t want to take the slightest chance that any of that might come out in the press or in the courts. They don’t want their dirty laundry washing in public. It was all neatly wrapped up. Murder-suicide. Sad but simple. No need for any further messy investigations. And then you come along sticking your chest out and waving your fist in the air crying foul.”
“Is that how you see me?”
Annie laughed. “A bit, I suppose.”
“Charming. I thought I was more of a knight on a white charger tilting against windmills and throwing a spanner in the works.”
“Now you’re really mixing your metaphors. Oh, you know what I mean, Alan. Bloke stuff. Pissing contest.”
“I’m still not convinced.”
“But you admit that I could be right, that it was all about Hard-castle, not Silbert?”
“It could be. Why don’t you nose around into Wyman’s and Hard-castle’s backgrounds a bit more deeply, see if you can find anything? Who knows, maybe you’ll find the missing link somewhere in all that? It’s also possible that someone else was involved, that someone put Wyman up to it. Paid him, even. And I know you don’t like to consider the spook stuff, but it’s also possible that someone in that line of work who wanted to hurt Silbert put Wyman up to it, too. Not as likely, I admit, because the outcome was far from certain, but not entirely out of the question.”
“But we concentrate on the Wyman-Hardcastle angle for the time being rather than... Oh, shit!”
“What is it, Annie?”
Annie looked up at the slight but commanding figure of Detective Superintendent Gervaise standing in the doorway, a pint in her hand. “Ah, DI Cabbot,” Gervaise said. “So this is your little hideaway. Mind if I join you?”