“You know. The love life.”

“What love life?”

“Like that, is it? I thought you had a lovely young girlfriend. Italian, isn’t she?”

“I did. Oriana. It just didn’t work out, that’s all. She was too young. Then either she was too busy or I was. You know the sort of thing. There was never any talk about . . . you know . . . any commitment or anything. We had fun, that’s all.”

“So no pain?”

“I wouldn’t quite say that. I listened to Blood on the Tracks and The Boatman’s Call a few too many times after she left. Drank a bit too much Laphroaig. Felt sorry for myself. But did I slit my wrists? No.”

“With me it’s always In the Wee Small Hours and Macallan eighteen-year-old.”

“Yeah, that’s a good combination, too. I always said you had class.”

“So there’s nothing new on the horizon?”

“Not so far as I can see.”

Blackstone gestured to Banks’s almost empty glass. “Another?”

“No. Better not. I have to drive back. I’ll do a bit of shopping while I’m here first. Walk it off.” One thing Banks wanted to do was go to Waterstones and buy Linda Palmer’s latest book of poetry, along with Dart, the book she was reading when he talked to her. And maybe Ariel. They might give him a bit more insight into her character. Besides, he might also enjoy them. He would also make time to go to HMV and pick up the new Sviatoslav Richter box set, his deferred present to himself on his promotion and salary increase. If they had it in stock, of course. He still missed the old Classical Record Shop. He had been listening to a lot of solo piano music in the long summer evenings—Angela Hewitt, Imogen Cooper, Mitsuko Uchida and other contemporary pianists playing Bach, Schubert, Chopin and Mozart, mostly—but Richter was a new discovery for him. He had enjoyed the 1958 Sofia recital and was looking forward to listening to some of the live New York recordings he had read about in Gramophone.

“If I’m going to attempt to find something in the archives,” Blackstone said, “I’m going to need to know what it is. Is that a problem?”

“Not at all. As far as I’m concerned you’re an essential member of the investigative team as of now. You know as well as I do that victims’ identities are always sacred in cases like this.”

“I’ve been there. You don’t think anyone escaped the fallout from the Savile business around here, do you?”

“I suppose not. Leeds lad, wasn’t he?”

“For our sins. And you also know that if you’re dealing with something along those lines, there’s a good chance any written records of what happened might have disappeared over the years.”

“I know that, too. But it doesn’t hurt to look.”

“Not you, it doesn’t. You’re not the one who’ll be getting a lungfull of archive dust.”