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Back Many Rivers to Cross Save as PDF
Chapters (21)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Chapter 1
  4. Chapter 2
  5. Chapter 3
  6. Chapter 4
  7. Chapter 5
  8. Chapter 6
  9. Chapter 7
  10. Chapter 8
  11. Chapter 9
  12. Chapter 10
  13. Chapter 11
  14. Chapter 12
  15. Chapter 13
  16. Chapter 14
  17. Chapter 15
  18. Chapter 16
  19. About the Author
  20. Also by Peter Robinson
  21. About the Publisher

As he finished his wine, Banks found his thoughts turning to Samir. He was still feeling depressed from his meeting with the boy’s uncle and aunt on Thursday. Samir had come on ahead to “light the way” and make money to send his family so they might follow him, but somehow or other he had lost the address of his aunt and uncle and had probably—so Banks thought—ended up drifting into, or being forced into, working for a county lines drug dealer. Perhaps he was earning good money, or perhaps, like so many trafficked refugees, he was working off a debt that only grew bigger day by day. For Samir, in a way, had been stolen from his normal life, just as surely as Zelda had been stolen from hers. They had both made long journeys and encountered many obstacles. And the damned thing was that Samir’s parents had been killed in an explosion after he had left Syria, and he had had no idea that they were dead. He had been working to make money that could never bring him what he wanted. His family. And now he was dead, too.

Banks drained his glass, climbed back over the drystone wall and crossed his gravel drive to the cottage. Perhaps just a touch more Negroamaro and some Dylan before bed. The Nico moment had passed. He had been listening to the fragments and outtakes of Blood on the Tracks recently, and for some reason that had given him the desire to listen to its predecessor, the underrated Planet Waves, for the first time in a few years.

Chapter 11

11

BANKS LISTENED TO CAROLYN SAMPSON SINGING BACH’S “Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut” as he drove to Blaydon’s house. A Bach cantata seemed appropriate for Sunday morning. The traffic was light, and soon he was driving once again through the wrought-iron gates and along the winding drive under an arch of trees to Blaydon’s estate, focused on the job at hand.

There were several cars parked at various angles on the gravel apron in front of the house, and someone had put a bowler hat on the head of one of the stone cherubs. When Banks turned off his engine and got out of the car, he could hear music coming from inside the house. Not a thumping, pounding beat, but something a bit more middle of the road. It took him a few moments to realize it was Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon.”

He rang the doorbell, expecting Roberts the butler to answer, but Blaydon himself opened the door. He was wearing an orange terry cloth robe and had a white towel draped around his neck.