When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery by Robinson Peter

Author:Robinson, Peter [Robinson, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2016-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

Banks had been wondering what to play on the journey from Eastvale to Leeds. His first thoughts had been maybe Bob Dylan, Patti Smith or Leonard Cohen. After all, Linda was a poet, and so were they. Or perhaps he should play nothing at all in case she wanted to talk. In the end, he asked her if there was anything she liked in particular. She thought for a moment, then said she’d always been a huge Bowie fan. Banks put on Pin Ups, not perhaps Bowie’s most popular album, but one which satisfied Banks’s love of old sixties music and Linda’s love of Bowie. The startling segue from ‘Rosalyn’ to the shimmering portamento that opened ‘Here Comes the Night’ still sent a shiver up his spine every time he heard it, like the opening chords of the Small Faces’ ‘All or Nothing’. He didn’t turn the volume so high that they couldn’t talk if they wanted to, but Linda seemed distant, lost in her own thoughts. Occasionally she pointed out a song she particularly liked – ‘See Emily Play’ or ‘Sorrow’, for example – but mostly she remained silent, staring out of the side window at the passing landscape of the Vale of York. They turned off at Wetherby, made their way past the outer ring road and into the city centre, and Banks managed to find a parking spot near the Merrion Centre, just behind the library. They walked across Millennium Square, which was crowded with people sitting out at the cafes enjoying the fine weather.

The library and art gallery were on the Headrow, next to the town hall, housed in another grand Victorian building. Inside and out, the library complex was also an architectural delight, with its magnificent stone staircases, parquet floors, marble pillars, tiles and mosaics. A reviewer had once complained that the ceiling in the reading room was so magnificent it would distract people from actually reading. Both Banks and Linda had been inside before, so they didn’t stand and gawp as much as some visitors were doing, but made their way straight to the office where Ken’s contact, Marian Hirst, was waiting for them.

Marian was a short trim woman with no-nonsense grey hair and a pair of black-rimmed glasses that hung on a chain around her neck. Her nose was beak-like and her eyes dark and lively. Banks couldn’t help thinking that she couldn’t look more like most people’s image of a librarian if she tried.

‘DCI Blackstone told me you were coming,’ she said, with a distant trace of a Scottish accent. ‘He uses the service often himself. I’ve got everything prepared for you in a little office here. Now, you know how to work the machine, I assume?’

Banks nodded. He’d used a film reader before.

‘Everything is clearly labelled, so you’ll know exactly where you are.’

‘Is it possible to get copies?’ Banks asked.

‘Not as you go,’ she said. ‘But if you put in a request our staff can provide one for you.’

She led them

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.