Banks first went upstairs to his bedroom, took off his suit and shirt and put on jeans and a T-shirt. It was another sultry evening, and back downstairs he opened the windows in the conservatory before pouring himself a large glass of Barossa’s best shiraz and raising a silent toast to Peter Lehmann, his favorite winemaker, who had died not so long ago. He felt like listening to something a bit different from the string quartets and trios he had been playing lately, so he flipped through his CDs in the entertainment room and put on Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence. He hadn’t expected to like her after all the hype over her first album, but he’d seen a performance clip from Glastonbury and had enjoyed both the sound and the summer dress she was wearing. He took easily to the spaced-out music, the sound wash of distant, distorted, swirling guitars and haunting background vocals of her second album, and her delivery, attitude and lyrics intrigued him. She seemed curiously disengaged yet full of disturbed and conflicting emotions and imagery, the voice both vulnerable and threatening. It was often uncomfortable listening. Anyone who dared quote the old Crystals song “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)” in this day and age had a lot of nerve. And if Del Rey’s version of Jessie Mae Robinson’s “The Other Woman” wasn’t as powerful as Nina Simone’s, it was still pretty damn good.

Naturally, the title track “Ultraviolence” got Banks thinking about the Caxton case, as well as the unidentified victim on Bradham Lane Annie had told him about. As detective superintendent, he was head of the Homicide and Major Crimes Unit, so in addition to the Caxton investigation, he also had to keep on top of any other cases the squad was handling. He knew he could trust Annie to do a thorough job, and he had no intentions of dogging her every footstep. Yes, she herself had been raped—he remembered the shock he had felt when she had first recounted the experience to him in a cozy Soho bistro—but she would use her anger to fuel her search for who had beaten the poor girl to death. And if her foot slipped and somehow connected with his wedding tackle when she found him . . . well, these things happen to the best of us. Even in this day and age. Banks would probably be too busy to be of much use to her, but he would keep an eye on the case and try to be there if she needed him.