“Well, we can’t, can we?”

“Maybe not exactly, unless we matched the DNA with a goat or a lamb they’d been serving. But it put the wind up them, I can tell you that.” Annie clinked glasses with Banks and slopped a little wine over the rim of hers onto the carpet. “Oops,” she said. “It’s red, too. Sorry.”

“Forget it. How does Gerry feel about all this?”

“The poor kid’s terrified she’s going to be sent back on probation or something. You know, I like Gerry a lot, but she can be a bit of a mouse. She’s a bit too ‘golly gosh’ and ‘jolly hockey sticks’ for me sometimes.”

“It’s a matter of background,” said Banks. “She went to a posh school, didn’t she?”

“Think so.”

“There you are, then. Give her a chance. She’ll probably be chief constable one day. Playing fields of Eton and all that.”

“I don’t think it was Eton. It was Merchant Taylors’, or some such place.”

“It’s just a saying. “‘The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.’”

“What’s it mean? Who said that? David Cameron?”

“It’s supposed to have been the Duke of Wellington, but it may well be a misquote. People who go to public school are destined for great things. Leadership. That’s the point.”

“If you say so. The old boys’ network? And the old girls’?” Annie drained her glass and waved it. “Can we have another?”

Banks got to his feet. “I’ll open another bottle if you want.”

“Can I stop here for the night? I’m too pissed to drive and I can’t afford a taxi all the way to Harkside. I’d probably be sick, if I had to go in a car.”

“I’ve got an early start in the morning, but the spare room’s made up.”

Annie hesitated for a moment, then she said, “I don’t need the spare room.”

Banks went to get another bottle of red from the rack in the kitchen, then he went into the entertainment room to put another CD on. What had she meant by that remark? he wondered. Was it some sort of come-on? Any romance they had shared had fizzled out long ago, and he had thought neither of them was foolish enough to want to rekindle it, to mix work and sex again. Now this? But Annie had had way too much to drink. She was upset, confused, and he wasn’t going to take advantage of her.

Tim Buckley had put him in a late-sixties mellow mood, so he flipped through the classics: The Grateful Dead’s American Beauty, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, CSNY’s Déjà Vu and the rest. Or should it be Astral Weeks? Harvest? Songs for Beginners? David Crosby’s If Only I Could Remember My Name? In the end he went for Love’s Forever Changes.