“I told you I don’t want the police here. What can they do?”
“Well, the insurance company—”
“Bugger the sodding insurance company! They can’t replace any of this.”
Banks stared at the heap of broken treasures and knew she was right. Everything here was personal, none of it worth a great deal of money. He knew that he should call the police, but he also knew that he wouldn’t. And not only because Sophia didn’t want him to. There was only one explanation for all this, Banks knew, and in a way it did make him guilty. There was no point calling the police. The people who had done this were shadows, wills-o’-the-wisp, to whom fancy alarm systems were child’s play. Mr. Browne had known where Sophia lived, all right. Banks knelt down beside the wreckage. Sophia wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Come on,” he said, sighing, “I’ll help you clean up.”
“Thank you,” said Gervaise when Annie came back with the drinks. “Where was I?”
“9/11 and the London bombings.”
“Ah, yes. My little digression. Anyway, I’m sure you get the picture. Work around these people long enough and you get to think like them. One of the lads on our team, let’s call him Aziz, was a Muslim. His family came from Saudi Arabia, and he’d grown up here, spoke like an Eastender, but they still went to the local mosque, said their prayers, the whole thing. This was all in the wake of the July London bombings and the unfortunate shooting of that Brazilian on the tube. Tempers were a little frazzled all round, as you can imagine. Anyway, Aziz made some criticism of the way our local Special Branch-MI5 liaison officer handled a situation at a mosque, said something to indicate that he thought we were all being a bit heavy-handed about it all, and the next thing you know he’s got a file as thick as your wrist. They’d fitted him up with a legend. It was all in there, the training camps in Pakistan, the meetings with terrorist cell leaders, all documented, photographs, the lot. Personal friend of Osama bin Laden. I’m sure you get the picture, anyway. And every word, every image of it, was a lie. Aziz had never left England in his life. Hardly even left London. But there it was, in glorious Technicolor, the life of a terrorist. We all knew it was crap. Even MI5 knew it was crap. But they had a point to make and they made it.”
Gervaise paused to drink some beer. “They talk about giving their field agents legends,” she went on. “Aliases, alternative life histories, complete with all the proof and documentary evidence anyone could ask for. Well, they gave Aziz this, without his even asking for it or needing it. Of course, they searched his flat, interrogated him, told him they’d be back, pestered his friends and colleagues. This was something that could happen to any one of us who stepped out of line, they were saying. Aziz just happened to be dark-skinned, happened to be a Muslim, but we weren’t immune just because we were white police officers. You might think I was being paranoid, Annie, but you weren’t there.”
“What happened to Aziz?”
“His career was over. They took back all the files about training camps and stuff, of course—that was all for effect—but they’d made their point as to what they could do. A week later Aziz jumped off an overpass on the M1. I mean, I don’t suppose it’s fair to blame MI5 for that. They couldn’t have predicted how deeply unstable he was. Or could they?”
“What are you saying?”
Gervaise sipped more beer. “I’m just telling you a story, Annie, that’s all.”
“You’re warning me off.”
“Warning you off what? You’re reading too much into what I’m saying. If I’m doing anything at all, Annie, I’m telling you to be very careful, and you can pass that on to DCI Banks the next time you talk to him.”
“There’s something else,” Annie went on. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something else. Don’t you believe there’s something odd about the Hardcastle-Silbert business, something that doesn’t quite fit, that doesn’t make sense? You do, don’t you?”
“You know as well as I do there are always things that don’t quite add up. But I would like to point out that, whatever baroque theories you and DCI Banks might have dreamed up, scientific evidence, combined with a thorough police investigation, proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Mark Hardcastle killed Laurence Silbert and then hanged himself. You’re not arguing with that, are you. With the facts?”
“No. I’m—”
“Then there is no case to pursue.” Gervaise regarded Annie. “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, talking of baroque theories, that DCI Banks had some outlandish idea about someone putting Hard-castle up to it. Showing him fake photos, putting ideas in his head, making innuendos, getting him all riled up, that sort of thing. I went to see Othello the other night, and I understand DCI Banks took his girlfriend last weekend. Maybe he got it from there. I knew the play from school, of course, but I hadn’t seen it or thought about it for years. It’s really quite a powerful story. Interesting, don’t you think? Of course, Iago turned a man against his wife, but there’s no reason that shouldn’t translate into homosexual terms, is there, especially given the element of overkill we sometimes find in gay killings?”
“What?” said Annie. She knew she was on dangerous ground now. She hadn’t wanted to reveal the Othello theory to Gervaise for fear of being mocked, but now here the woman was quoting it to her. No doubt in order to demolish it in due course.
Gervaise gave her a sideways glance and smiled. “Oh, don’t be so disingenuous, Annie. I’m not so green as I’m cabbage-looking, as I believe they say around these parts. Can you think of any other reason why you, or DCI Banks, should think it a case worth pursuing other than that you thought someone put Hardcastle up to it? I’m sure the two of you know as well as I do that our security services have any number of psychological tricks up their sleeves. I mean, even you two don’t usually fly in the face of scientific evidence and flaunt fact. You must have a reason for doing what you’re doing, and my guess is that that’s it. And as for DCI Banks, well, you probably know as well as I do that if you tell him to do something, he does the opposite. I just hope he realizes what happens to spies who go on missions behind enemy lines. Well, am I right? What’s wrong, Annie? Lost your voice?”
Banks was in a quandary when he left Sophia’s. What should he do? he wondered as he sat in the Porsche down the street, his heart still pounding, hands still shaking. He supposed he could stay at Sophia’s house, though it would be unbearable sleeping there on his own after what had just occurred. It was late, but he could also just head home. He’d only had the one glass of wine, and that was some time ago, so he wasn’t over the limit. He didn’t even feel too tired to drive, though he knew he was distracted. There was always Brian’s fl at, too, or a hotel.
Sophia had been inconsolable. No matter what he said, she couldn’t let go of the idea that he had forgotten to set the alarm and someone had been watching and had taken advantage. He supposed, in a way, that was preferable to the truth—that someone from their own intelligence services had done this, perhaps to give Banks a stern message. He also couldn’t entirely ignore the fact that he had talked to Victor Morton, Sophia’s father, about Silbert, and that Victor had spent his working life in the various British consulates and embassies of the world. There had been that strange man at the bar of The Bridge, and all the other strange faces Banks had seen in the street lately. Paranoid? Perhaps. But there was no denying what had happened tonight. Someone with enough gadgetry or know-how to bypass a sophisticated alarm system had walked into Sophia’s house and calmly smashed a number of her most treasured possessions and left them in a heap on the living room floor. Messages didn’t get much clearer than that. From what Banks had been able to gather from a cursory look around the whole house, nothing had been taken and no other room had been disturbed; there was just the mess on the living room carpet. But it was enough. It was more than enough.