After he had been waiting about ten minutes, a young woman opened the locked door that led to the main part of the station and beckoned him inside. Conservatively dressed in a navy-blue suit, skirt below the knees, and a button-down white blouse, she was petite and slim, with shoulder-length blond hair parted in the middle and tucked behind her small, delicate ears. She had a jagged fringe that came almost down to her eyes, which were a startling green, a color Banks remembered seeing somewhere in the sea near Greece. Her mouth was slightly down-turned at the edges, which made her look a bit sad, and she had a small, straight nose. All in all, she was a very attractive woman, Banks thought, but he sensed a severity and a reserve in her—a definite “No Entry” sign—and there was no mistaking the lines that suffering had etched around her haunting and haunted eyes.

“Mr. Banks?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

Banks stood up. “Yes.”

“I’m Detective Inspector Hart. Please follow me.” She led him to an interview room. It felt very strange being on the receiving end, Banks thought, and he got an inkling of the discomfort some of his interviewees must have felt. He looked around. Though it was a different county, the basics were still the same as every interview room he had ever seen: table and chairs bolted to the floor, high window covered by a grille, institutional green paint on the walls, and that unforgettable smell of fear.

There was nothing to worry about, of course, but Banks couldn’t help feeling just a little nervous as DI Hart put on her silver-rimmed oval reading glasses and shuffled the papers around in front of her, as he had done many times himself, to draw out the tension and cause anxiety in the person sitting opposite. It touched the raw nerve of his childhood fear of authority, even though he knew he was authority himself, now. Banks had always been aware of that irony, but a situation like this one really brought it home.

He also felt that DI Hart didn’t need to act this way with him, that she was putting on too much of a show. His fault, perhaps, for not saying who he was, but even so, it was a bit heavy-handed to talk to him in an official interview room. He had come in voluntarily, and he was neither a witness nor a suspect. She could have found an empty office and sent for coffee. But what would he have done? The same, probably; it was the “us and them” mentality, and in her mind he was a civilian. Them.

DI Hart stopped playing with her papers and broke the silence. “So you say you can help with the Graham Marshall investigation?”

“Perhaps,” said Banks. “I knew him.”

“Have you any idea at all what might have happened to him?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Banks. He had intended to tell her everything but found it wasn’t as easy as that. Not yet. “We just hung around together.”