“What was he like?”

“Graham? It’s hard to say,” said Banks. “I mean, you don’t think about things like that when you’re kids, do you?”

“Try now.”

“He was deep, I think. Quiet, at any rate. Most kids joked around, did stupid stuff, but Graham was always more serious, more reserved.” Banks remembered the small, almost secret smile as Graham had watched others act out comic routines—as if he didn’t find them funny but knew he had to smile. “You never felt you were fully privy to what was going on in his mind,” he added.

“You mean he kept secrets?”

“Don’t we all?”

“What were his?”

“They wouldn’t have been secrets if I knew them, would they? I’m just trying to give you some sense of what he was like. There was a secretive side to his nature.”

“Go on.”

She was becoming edgy, Banks thought. Rough day, probably, and not enough help. “We did all the usual stuff together: played football and cricket, listened to music, talked about our favorite TV shows.”

“What about girlfriends?”

“Graham was a good-looking kid. The girls liked him, and he liked them, but I don’t think he had anyone steady.”

“What kind of mischief did he get up to?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to incriminate myself, but we broke a window or two, did a bit of shoplifting, played truant, and we smoked cigarettes behind the cycle sheds at school. Pretty much normal stuff for teenagers back then. We didn’t break into anyone’s home, steal cars or mug old ladies.”

“Drugs?”

“This was 1965, for crying out loud.”

“Drugs were around back then.”

“How would you know? You probably weren’t even born.”

Michelle reddened. “I know King Harold got an arrow in his eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and I wasn’t born then.”

“Okay. Point taken. But drugs…? Not us, at any rate. Cigarettes were about the worst we did back then. Drugs may have been increasingly popular with the younger generation in London, but not with fourteen-year-old kids in a provincial backwater. Look, I should probably have done this before, but…” He reached into his inside pocket and took out his warrant card, laying it on the desk in front of her.

Michelle looked at it a minute, picked it up and looked more closely, then slid it back across the desk to Banks. She took off her reading glasses and set them on the table. “Prick,” she whispered.

“Come again?”

“You heard me. Why didn’t you tell me from the start you were a DCI instead of playing games and stringing me along, making me feel like a complete fool?”

“Because I didn’t want to give the impression I was trying to interfere. I’m simply here as someone who knew Graham. Besides, why did you have to come on so heavy-handed? I came here to volunteer information. There was no need to put me in an interview room and use the same tactics you use on a suspect. I’m surprised you didn’t leave me here alone to stew for an hour.”