“That’s better, mate,” said the barman.
Banks thanked him and drained his pint. When he put his glass down and started working, more slowly, on the brandy, the barman filled up his pint glass again without asking. Banks also watched him pour a large whiskey for himself.
“Suicide car bomber, they think,” the barman said, gesturing over toward the television set, to which the other customers were still glued. “That’s a new one on me. Pulled out of Great Portland Street into Oxford Street, just shy of the Circus. Makes sense. You can’t park around there, and only buses and taxis can drive on Oxford Street. Bastards. They always find a way.”
“How many injured?” Banks asked.
“They don’t know for sure yet. Twenty-four dead and about the same seriously injured is the latest count. But that’s conservative. You were there, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“Right in the thick of it?”
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
Banks took a sip of brandy.
“Sorry. I should know better than to ask,” said the barman. “I’ve seen my share. Ex-para. Northern Ireland. For my sins.” He stuck out his hand. “Joe Geldard’s the name, by the way.”
Banks shook hands. “Good to meet you, Joe Geldard,” he said. “Alan Banks. And thank you for everything.”
“It’s nothing, mate. How you feeling?”
Banks drank some more brandy. He noticed that his hand was still shaking. His left hand was slightly burned, he saw for the first time, but he couldn’t feel any pain yet. It didn’t look too bad. “Much better for this,” he said, hoisting his brandy glass. “I’ll be all right.”
Joe Geldard moved to the end of the bar to keep an eye on the TV with the rest. Banks was left alone. For the first time, his mind managed to focus a little, come to grips with what had just happened, unbelievable as it still seemed.
Apparently, a terrorist suicide bomber had set off a car bomb just around the corner from where he’d been walking. And if he hadn’t decided that the crowds on Regent Street were too much and turned onto Great Marlborough Street at the time he did, he would have walked down Oxford Street, and who knows what might have happened to him. It wasn’t courage that had driven him into the flames, he knew, just blind instinct, despite nearly dying in a house fire himself not so many years ago.
He thought about Brian and Tomasina. They would be fine. Both were taking the underground from Piccadilly Circus. They might find themselves unable to get a train if the service had been shut down quickly enough, but apart from that, they’d be fine. He would phone both of them later, when he’d got himself together, just to make sure. It also entered his head that they might be worried about him, too.
And Sophia? Christ, she often worked at Western House, up Great Portland Street, unless she was off in another studio or out somewhere producing live interviews. She might have wandered down to Oxford Street shopping on her lunch break. She never did, though, Banks remembered. Said she hated it, with all the tourists. On a nice day she’d buy a sandwich at Pret and eat it by the gardens in Regent’s Park, or maybe there was a lunchtime concert at the open-air theater. He’d phone her, though, not least because he wanted a chance to put things right between them.
A wave of nausea came over him and he took a gulp of brandy. It made him cough, but it helped. Glancing over at the TV, he saw helicopter shots of blossoming smoke, and he didn’t know if the sound of sirens came from the scene on the news or from the real street outside. A tickertape was running underneath the images detailing breaking news. The death count was up to twenty-seven, injured thirty-two.
Banks turned to the bar and worked on his second pint. His right hand had almost stopped shaking, and his left hand was starting to throb a bit. When he glanced in the mirror behind the range of spirits and wine bottles, he hardly recognized the face that stared back at him. It was time to make a move.
He realized that first of all he would need new clothes. He had his wallet and both his mobiles, but nothing else. The rest of his gear was back in his car at the hotel. He knew he could get there bypassing Oxford Circus, but he didn’t want to. Not only didn’t he want to be anywhere near there right now, he also didn’t want to drive back to Eastvale, he realized. He would buy new clothes, then go to King’s Cross and take a train, come back for the car when he felt better. Sophia had a key—she sometimes liked to drive the Porsche herself — so he could ask her to pick it up and park it outside her house, where it would be safe. Surely she would do that much for him, even if she wasn’t talking to him?
Then he realized that all the underground and mainline stations would probably be closed for a while. It was all too much to contemplate; his brain wasn’t fully functioning, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. The alcohol was slowly calming him down and blotting out some of the horrors of the last hour, so he called out for another pint and told Joe Geldard to have one on him.
15
Annie wondered why Banks wanted her to drive out to his Gratly cottage early on Saturday morning. She had assumed that he would be staying in London with Sophia, at least for the weekend, but obviously not.
All her attempts to phone him the previous evening had been frustrated, as he had been unable or unwilling to answer either mobile. After work, she had simply gone home and watched in horror the events unfold on television after the Oxford Circus bombing. Special counterterrorist units were already on the move in Dewsbury, Birmingham and Leicester, so it was reported, and there were claims that three people had already been arrested and one mosque in London raided.
The Muslim community was up in arms about the sanctity of their place of worship, but Annie doubted they had many sympathetic listeners, not after the images from the TV screen had seared themselves on people’s minds and Al Qaeda had already claimed responsibility. While Annie tried to respect all faiths, she knew that religion had been used as an excuse for more wars and criminal activities than anything else throughout human history. It was getting harder now, when religious extremism was on the rise, to cling to the sanctity of any system of belief as an excuse for mass murder.
Still, it was a lovely morning for a drive into the dale, she thought, putting the news images aside as her ancient Astra rounded the curves and bounced over the sudden rises. The Leas lay spread out to her right, flat wetlands around the river Swain, which meandered slowly through the meadows of buttercups, cranesbill and clover. Beyond, the daleside rose gently at first, crisscrossed with drystone walls, then more steeply to the higher pasture. The green of the grass turned more sere as it rose to the craggy uplands of limestone outcrops that marked the start of the open moorland. She had her window rolled down and a Steely Dan greatest hits CD playing on the stereo, “Bodhisattva.” Banks probably wouldn’t approve, but she didn’t give a damn. All was well with the world.
Almost.
Winsome had caught a break on the East Side Estate business when one of the local thugs had let slip that there was a new player on the block, “an Albanian or Turk or something” just up from London, and all the kids who had previously had free rein in what petty dealing of drugs went on, were now expected to bow out gracefully, work for him, or... perhaps get stabbed. They hadn’t yet been able to find the newcomer, who went by the name of “the Bull,” but Annie knew it was only a matter of time. There were also rumors that he had connections and was planning on importing heroin into Eastvale in a big way. Catching the Bull would definitely be a feather in their caps as far as Superintendent Gervaise was concerned, not to mention ACC McLaughlin and the chief constable himself, who would be able to appear on television and say they were winning the war against drugs.