Sleeping in the Ground: An Inspector Banks Novel (Inspector Banks Novels) by Peter Robinson

Author:Peter Robinson [Robinson, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

She added her email, address and phone number in a postscript. Filey wasn’t that far, and Banks was sure he could manage a quick visit. He remembered Julie Drake quite well. As best girlfriends often were, she and Emily were different as chalk and cheese. Julie was—or had been back then—a vivacious, flirtatious brunette who often seemed quite manic in proximity to Emily’s cool blond presence. Julie had an attractive full figure: large breasts, a pert nose and big eyes. She favored low-cut tops to reveal a tempting glimpse of cleavage. She also had a reputation for chasing the boys that Banks had often felt was undeserved. He had once seen her crying alone at a party when she thought no one was watching, while the boy she had come with was chatting up a prettier and more sophisticated girl, and more often than not, she went home alone. Banks felt that she probably tried too hard and set her sights on the wrong men. He could recognize the signs. After all, he had set his sights on the wrong woman often enough.

Banks felt his eyes prickle as he put the letter aside. Schubert’s string quintet, the very same piece of music Mahler had asked to hear on his deathbed, or so Linda Palmer had told him. He wondered whether Emily had known that.

Reading Julie’s words transported him back over forty years. Romantic and sentimental, indeed. He remembered the last time he had seen Emily. They had met in Hyde Park on a glorious summer’s day in 1973. Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine. Lovers embraced on the grass, children kicked plastic footballs around, businessmen sat with their jackets off and shirtsleeves rolled up, reading newspapers, and shorthand typists adjusted their office clothing as tastefully as possible to get lunchtime tans.

Banks was propped up against a tree not far from the Serpentine reading a secondhand paperback edition of The Exorcist. When he saw Emily walking toward him, he felt an immediate sense of foreboding. She had been distant and moody of late, and there was something in her expression, in the way she smiled at him, that made him feel apprehensive. It wasn’t long before she was telling him that she didn’t think they should see each other anymore, that things had run their course and they were going in different directions and neither of them would be truly happy if they carried on together. He didn’t understand any of what she was saying. They hadn’t had a fight—they rarely fought, in fact—and in his mind things had been going well, except for the moodiness. He guessed that perhaps there was someone else, but Emily swore blind there was no one. She just needed a break, some distance between them.

In the end, it didn’t matter what Banks said, whether he understood it or not. The result was the same. It was over. Back to drunken nights at someone’s party, halfhearted fumblings on a pile of lumpy coats in the spare bedroom.

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