Kay Summerville. He wondered where she was, what she was doing now. Probably married with kids, the same way he had been until recently. She’d been a beauty, though, had Kay: long blond hair, slender waist, long legs, a mouth like Marianne Faithfull’s, firm tits with hard little nipples and hair like spun gold between her legs. Christ, Banks, he told himself, enough with the adolescent fantasies.

He put on his headphones and turned on his portable CD player, listening to Vaughan Williams’s Second String Quartet, and settled back to more pleasant thoughts of Kay Summerville. But as he approached the edge of sleep, his thoughts jumbled, mixing memory with dream. It was cold and dark, and Banks and Graham were walking across a rugby field, goalposts silhouetted by the moon, cracking spiderweb patterns in the ice as they walked, their breath misting the air. Banks must have said something about the Krays having been arrested—was he interested in criminals, even then?—and Graham just laughed, saying the law could never touch people like them. Banks asked him how he knew, and Graham said he used to live near them. “They were kings,” he said.

Puzzled by the memory, or dream, Banks turned the bedside light on again and picked up the diary. If what he had just imagined had any basis in reality, then it had happened in winter. He glanced through his entries for January and February 1965: Samantha Eggar, Yvonne Romain, Elke Sommer…But no mention of the Krays until the ninth of March, when he had written, “Krays went to trial today. Graham laughed and said they’d get off easy.” So Graham had mentioned them. It was flimsy, but a start.

He turned off the light again, and this time he drifted off to sleep without further thoughts of either Graham or Kay Summerville.

Chapter 8

When Banks arrived at Thorpe Wood the following morning and asked to see Detective Inspector Hart, he was surprised when a man came down to greet him. The telephone call that his mother had told him about when he got back from the pub had been from Michelle.

“Mr. Banks, or should I say DCI Banks? Come with me, please, if you would.” He stood aside and gestured for Banks to enter.

“And you are?”

“Detective Superintendent Shaw. We’ll talk in my office.”

Shaw looked familiar, but Banks couldn’t place him. It was possible they had met on a course, or even on a case, years ago, and he had forgotten, but he usually had a good memory for faces.

They didn’t speak on their way to Shaw’s office, and as soon as they got there Shaw disappeared, saying he’d be back in a couple of minutes. Old copper’s trick, Banks knew. And Shaw knew he knew.

There wasn’t likely to be anything of interest in the office if Shaw was willing to leave Banks there alone, but he had a poke around nonetheless. Second nature. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but just looking for the sake of it. The filing cabinets were locked, as were the desk drawers, and the computer required a password. It began to seem very much as if Shaw expected Banks to nose about.