“No,” she said. “Really. I’m not stopping long.” There wasn’t much else Annie could do for Luke except wait, and she had promised herself a nice pint of bitter at the Black Sheep in Relton, where she could sit in peace and mull things over before calling it a day. “I just want to make certain that you’ll report any future communications, if there are any, straight to me. You’ve got the numbers where I can be reached?”

Both Martin and Robin nodded.

“And, of course, you’ll let me know the second Luke turns up.”

“We will,” said Robin. “I just hope and pray that he does come home soon.”

“Me, too,” said Annie, getting up. “There’s one more thing that puzzles me.”

“What?” asked Robin.

“Last night, when you rang to tell me you’d heard from Luke, you said he would be back tonight.”

“That’s what he told Martin. The kidnapper. He said that if we left the money this morning, then Luke would be home unharmed by tonight.”

“And you know that I wanted to see Luke as soon as he got back, to talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“So how were you going to explain everything?” asked Annie. “I’m curious.”

Robin looked over at her husband, who answered, “We were going to persuade Luke to tell you what we said happened in the first place, that he’d run away and phoned us the night before to say he was coming back.”

“Who thought of this?”

“The kidnapper suggested it.”

“Sounds like the perfect crime,” said Annie. “Only you two, Luke and the kidnapper would ever know that it had been committed, and none of you would be likely to talk.”

Martin looked down at his drink.

“He would have done that?” Annie went on. “Luke would have lied to the police?”

“He would have done it for me,” said Robin.

Annie looked at her, nodded and left.

The Krays, Banks thought as he lay in his narrow bed that night. Reggie and Ronnie. He didn’t remember the exact dates, of course, but he had an idea that they were flying high in the mid-sixties, part of the swinging London scene, mixing with celebrities, pop stars and politicians.

It had always intrigued him the way gangsters became celebrities: Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, John Dillinger, Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel. Figures of legend. He had known a few of the lesser ones in his time, and they almost always rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous, as if celebrity recognized only itself and was blind to all else—morality, decency, honor—and they never lacked for beautiful women to run around with, the kind who were attracted by danger and the aura of violence. There seemed to be a glamour and mystique attached to making your money out of running prostitutes, supplying drugs and threatening to destroy people’s livelihoods if they didn’t pay protection, and it was more than likely that most film stars, sports personalities and pop stars were addle-brained enough to fall for it, the glamour of violence. Or was it the violence of glamour?