On his way home, Banks had made a detour to the station. Moss had already got one of the TV crews set up in the press room, so Banks had recorded a brief impromptu appeal on television for any sightings of Zelda. Now he sat outside his cottage in the mild evening warmth, a glass of wine on the table in front of him.
Why had Tadić abducted Zelda? And why now? Banks wouldn’t have been surprised if Tadić didn’t even remember what he had done to her thirteen years ago. So why was she now suddenly so valuable, or so dangerous, to him?
Banks flipped through the Moleskine notebook again. The last entry concerned a visit to Chișinău at the end of the previous week to see someone called Vasile Lupescu, another demon from her past. There were several lengthy descriptions of the Moldovan countryside, complete with its wineries and peasants in traditional dress, along with old memories of Chișinău. On her flight home, she had written about their conversation, how Lupescu had at first denied setting her up for her abductors, then admitted it, and finally insisted that he had been forced into it by threats against his family. It was a tense and dramatic scene, and it confirmed Banks’s suspicions that the notebook was most likely a record of feelings and inquiries about her past, perhaps noted down for use in a story or memoir of some kind. Zelda clearly felt very strongly about the people responsible for ruining her life — and quite rightly so — and this notebook must be one of her ways of expressing all that, including fantasies about what she would like to do to some of them.
But it could get her into trouble. The disjointed meanderings might mean nothing to most people, but some police officers took everything quite literally, made no allowance for wishful thinking and fantasy. It could get Banks into trouble, too. He was beginning to think that taking it might have been the first step on a slippery slope to career suicide. At the very least it was misappropriating evidence. What on earth did he think he was doing? Protecting Zelda? From what? Whatever his rationale, Banks knew he should have left it where it was, let it become an exhibit in whatever followed. But it was too late for that now. There was no way he could explain hanging on to it to his superiors, and he knew as well as anyone that what might seem like a minor transgression could quickly blow up into a full IOPC investigation, meaning at least temporary suspension, and possibly being fired.
The Hotel Belgrade, Burgess had said, used to be a hangout for Tadić and his cronies until recently. How had Zelda found out about it? From Faye Butler? And had she gone there searching for Keane, only to find Goran Tadić instead? How would she have reacted to that? By fantasising about killing him? What had happened at the Hotel Belgrade? In their talk at the Relton Arms yesterday, Zelda hadn’t mentioned anything about finding the Tadićs in London.
Just in case, Banks phoned the hotel, identified himself and asked if a woman matching Zelda’s description had checked in recently. The answer was no. Had someone of that description ever stayed at the hotel? They couldn’t possibly remember something like that. Guests came and went, many attractive women. Had she been seen there around a month ago? There was no way of knowing that. CCTV? Overwritten by now. Besides, there had been personnel changes, too, and changes in management. It was a fast turnover business. Tadić? No, they had never heard of anyone by that name.
Frustrated by the lack of response, Banks considered arranging for a team to search the place, but he had no real evidence for ordering such an action. And what would they find? As Burgess had said, the Hotel Belgrade used to be the Tadićs’ hangout, but they had moved on, and no one there admitted to having heard of them. In any case, they would be unlikely to be keeping Zelda there.
Blue tits and goldfinches flitted around his shrubbery, ate at the feeder and splashed in the birdbath, until a local cat jumped over the wall, arched its back and mewed at Banks, then loped on. Only a robin, intent on searching the grass for worms at the bottom of the garden, was unflustered and didn’t fly off. The other birds returned, and bees sucked on fuchsia that hung from branches like teardrops of blood.
Banks yawned. It had been a long day, and he hadn’t had much sleep the previous night at Ray’s. There wasn’t anything more he could do tonight, and if he was going to be of any use in the search for Zelda tomorrow, he was going to have to be on the ball. So instead of pouring another glass of wine, he picked up Ray’s overflowing ashtray from the table and went back inside, where he dumped its contents into the waste bin and went to bed, taking his mobile with him. Some Brian Eno ambient music might see him off to sleep early tonight.
Zelda woke up with a dry mouth and a terrible headache. When she found the nerve to open her eyes, she thought at first that she was in complete darkness. As her sight adjusted slowly in what little light there was around the boarded-up window, she realised she was in a room, lying on a floor that felt like bare boards. When she tried to move, she found that she was chained by her right ankle to a heavy old iron radiator fixed to the wall. She tried to jerk free a number of times but quickly realised that she couldn’t. Then she shouted out, but her voice merely echoed in the empty room.
As her eyes adapted further, she came to see that the room she was in was more like an office than anything else. All the furniture had been removed, desk and filing cabinets, and she couldn’t make out the colour of the walls. They seemed to be partially covered in that material with holes in it. She had seen it before in offices. The ceiling seemed high, and there was only the one window. Her hands were tied together with plastic handcuffs that only tightened if she tried to escape from them.
So what had happened? Zelda tried to piece it all together. Why was it all so vague? She and Raymond had argued and she had shut herself in her studio drinking wine and working on a painting. Angry brushstrokes. Red slashes. Why was she angry? Alan, that was why. He had pushed her into telling him certain things that she hadn’t wanted him to know. Maybe enough for him to find his way to the truth. And Raymond had hardly been sympathetic. Raymond. What happened to him? He had gone out, of course. The Leeds Art Gallery lecture he had been so nervous about. But would they leave someone to wait for him and hurt him when he got back?
As far as she could tell, she seemed OK in herself, apart from the dry mouth and headache. They had injected her with some sort of anaesthetic, she remembered; that was what was making her feel this way. Nausea, too, perhaps because the room was so hot and stuffy. But there was no pain in any of her limbs, and everything felt intact. She hadn’t been raped or sexually interfered with in any way. She would know.
She hadn’t heard their car. All she knew was that suddenly the studio door burst open and there stood two men. One of them was Petar Tadić, of that she was certain — she would recognise his stocky body, his near non-existent neck and his beady eyes anywhere, even after all the years — but she didn’t recognise the other one. As far as she could tell, Tadić didn’t recognise her.
Had they found out what she had done to Goran and tracked her down? That could be the only explanation. It was as she had feared; they had resources, contacts, and methods that the police lacked. Something might have led them to poor innocent Faye Butler, and under torture Faye might have given them enough clues to lead to Zelda. They wouldn’t have reported Goran’s death to the authorities, but would most likely have got rid of the body themselves, perhaps in several pieces. She had thrown her glass at them and struggled when they grabbed her, but the needle went in and its effect was quick. She remembered nothing more, not even how much time had passed, how long she had been out.