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  “Is that like her?”

  “No. She’s usually quite normal, when it comes to conversation and such. Always has been. Cheerful. Quick to smile. Gregarious, even. But this time she’s been acting like a hermit, staying in her room.”

  “Did she ask you for any help at all?”

  Juliet frowned. “What do you mean? What sort of help?”

  “Financial, emotional, medical. Anything. Could she be in trouble?”

  “You mean pregnant?”

  “It’s a possibility,” said Gervaise. “Though that wasn’t what I meant specifically. Would she have been able to talk to you about something like that?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “How long has she been back here in Eastvale?”

  “Since Friday morning. We kept her room. Always. Just as it was. Well, tidier.”

  “Lots of parents do that,” Gervaise said. “It offsets the sense of loss when their children leave home. Sometimes it’s hard to let go.”

  Annie knew that the superintendent had two children of her own, though it was hard to imagine it at the moment, as she perched there in her pinstripe skirt, buttoned-up jacket and crisp white blouse, all business.

  “Yes,” said Juliet.

  “Did you get the impression that this time it’s more than a passing visit?”

  “Definitely.”

  “And is this the first time she’s come to stay for any length of time since she left home?”

  “Yes.”

  Gervaise paused. “Now, about the gun you found on top of the wardrobe,” she went on.

  “It was near the back, where you couldn’t possibly see it unless you stood on a chair or a stepladder. It was wrapped in a tea cloth. I suppose she thought it was safe up there. I mean, she doesn’t really think about housework or anything like that.”

  “It would have been if it hadn’t been for your thoroughness,” said Gervaise. “You did the right thing coming to us, Mrs. Doyle.”

  “I don’t know,” Juliet said, shaking her head. “My own daughter. I feel like such a…Judas. What will happen to her?”

  Annie had deeply conflicted feelings toward Juliet Doyle at that moment. On the one hand, the poor woman was turning in her own daughter, and she must be going through hell. Whether Juliet was aware of it or not, Annie knew there was a mandatory five year sentence for possession of a handgun, and the courts tended to be strict in its application, though there had recently been some complaints about overly lenient judges. Perhaps they would take special circumstances into account for a young woman with no prior record, but however forgiving they were, Erin Doyle was looking at a prison sentence of some sort, rather than probation or community service. And she would come out with a criminal record. Juliet probably didn’t suspect this. Still, Annie reminded herself, as yet they had absolutely no evidence that Erin Doyle was guilty of anything.

  “It’s a very serious matter,” Gervaise went on. “Guns are dangerous weapons, and the more we get off the streets the safer our towns and cities will be.”

  It was the party line, Annie knew, and Gervaise was clearly trying to make Juliet feel more at ease with her betrayal, feel like a right-thinking citizen. But Annie sensed that Juliet Doyle was getting seriously worried now, and beginning to regret that she had come. She was probably thinking that she and her husband could have dealt with the whole mess themselves, disposed of the gun, chucked it in the river, given Erin a good talking to. In a way, Annie thought, she was right.

  For a mother to take such a step was almost inconceivable to Annie, no matter how much police policy encouraged it, or how much, as an officer of the law and a campaigner against gun crime, she was supposed to applaud it. While a part of her admired Juliet’s sacrifice to duty, to the greater good, another part of her felt disgust for what the woman was doing. Though Annie had never raised a child herself, she didn’t think she would be capable of betraying her daughter. She was certain that her own mother would never have done such a thing, though she had died when Annie was very young. Her father would have given her a stern talking to and thrown the gun in the sea, but he would never have turned her in to the police, either. But, she reminded herself, Juliet Doyle had come here asking for Banks’s help. No doubt she had hoped that he would have been able to deal with the matter unofficially, off the record.

  “What happens now?” Juliet asked.

  Gervaise moved away from the edge of her desk and went to sit behind it. She didn’t seem quite so imposing there, and Annie felt the atmosphere lighten a little. “There are procedures to be followed,” Gervaise said. “Where is the gun now?”

  “In the kitchen. Patrick has it. We didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to carry it in the street, and I must admit the idea made me very nervous.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “She’s with him. We agreed this was the best way. They would stay at the house. I would come here and talk to Alan, ask him to go back with me, but…”

  “Yes, I understand that DCI Banks was a neighbor,” Gervaise said. “Don’t worry, we’re all professionals here. We’ll deal with this just as he would. I know it’s much more pleasant to have a familiar face around in a situation like this, but we all want the same thing. First of all, are you absolutely certain it’s a real gun? You have no idea how many people we get reporting replicas or ball-bearing guns.”

  “Patrick said it is. He used to belong to a gun club, many years ago, after grammar school. I don’t know about such things.”

  “Did he also happen to check if it’s loaded?”

  “He says it is. He handled it very carefully.”

  “Good,” said Gervaise. “Did he unload it?”

  “No. He said it was best to leave it as it was, not to contaminate the evidence.”

  Wonderful, thought Annie. Another one been watching too many episodes of CSI. A loaded gun. Now they would have to bring in the Firearms Support Unit for certain. It would have had more sense, and been much safer, if Patrick Doyle had unloaded the gun. Annie also knew that most people rarely act sensibly during crises. After all, how often do you find a loaded gun in your daughter’s bedroom?

  “Did he happen to mention what kind of gun it is?” Gervaise asked.

  “He said something about a semiautomatic. Can that be right?”

  Annie knew very little about firearms, but she knew that a semiautomatic used a removable magazine to hold cartridges, rather than a cylinder. It usually held several rounds of ammunition, and it fired one shot each time you pulled the trigger.

  “So when you left the house,” Gervaise went on, “your husband and daughter were in the kitchen and the gun was on the table?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still wrapped?”

  “Patrick wrapped it up in the tea cloth again after he’d examined it, yes.”

  “What state of mind was Erin in then?”

  “She was upset, obviously. Angry. Tearful. Frightened.”

  “Did you ask her who she’d got the gun from?”

  “Of course. But she wouldn’t say.”

  Gervaise pursed her lips and thought for a moment, then she glanced at Annie and stood up. “Thank you,” she said to Juliet Doyle. “I’m going to ring for someone to take care of you for the time being while we deal with the problem of the gun. That has to be our priority, you understand. We need to get that loaded gun out of your house and into safekeeping, and there are strict procedures we need to follow.” She picked up the telephone and talked to the officer on the front desk.

  Juliet looked pleadingly toward Annie. “Will you stay with me?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid I need DI Cabbot,” said Gervaise. “She’s the only other senior officer I have here at the moment. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re nice and comfortable with WPC Smithies in the canteen.”

  “Can’t I go home?”

  “Not just yet,” said Gervaise. “Not until we’ve cleared the premises of the firearm.”

 
“But can’t I go with you?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Gervaise. She touched Juliet’s arm. “Don’t worry. I told you, you’ll be well taken care of.”

  “Can I ring my husband?”

  “Sorry,” said Gervaise. “It might seem petty and silly to you, but we can’t allow any contact until the matter is settled and the firearm is safely in our possession.”

  “But what harm could it possibly do if I talked to my husband?”

  It could do a lot of harm, Annie thought. It could precipitate an argument between father and daughter in the house, for example, and with a loaded gun lying on the table and tempers no doubt already stretched to breaking point, that could prove fatal. But before Gervaise could answer the question, assuming she was intending to, WPC Smithies knocked at the door and escorted a reluctant Juliet Doyle to the canteen.

  Gervaise beckoned Annie to stay. “We’ll do this by the book, Annie. I don’t want any guns on my patch, and I certainly don’t want any accidents with them due to haste or negligence. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Annie. “Want me to log the incident and call in an Armed Response Vehicle?”

  “Yes. And get one of the DCs to run a check on the Doyles, especially the daughter. Everything seems hunky-dory on the surface, but find out if we’ve any cause for alarm. I’ll ring ACC McLaughlin and he’ll no doubt get in touch with Deputy Chief Constable. I also want to arrange for the Leeds police to search Erin’s house. I hardly think she’s an arms dealer, but we’d better cover it. Let’s get this in motion. The longer we delay, the more chance there is of something going wrong.”

  IT WASN’T the first time Annie had witnessed an armed police raid. She had been involved in two of them in London a few years earlier. The first had gone smoothly, but the second had been a disaster. Shots had been fired and two men had been killed. This time, she felt much stranger, being just down the road from the police station, across from Banks’s old suburban semi. It all seemed so ordinary. A black cat picked its way through a flower bed; people passed by the end of the street with their shopping and paused to see what was happening.

  Annie sat silently in an unmarked police car with Detective Superintendent Gervaise and waited for the Armed Response Vehicles to arrive. She almost wished she smoked. It would be something to do to help pass the time. Instead, she just gazed out at the bay-windowed semis with their low-walled gardens, pebble-dash and trim lawns, and she realized she found it hard to imagine Banks ever living here as a family man. To her, he had always been very much a lone figure, even when they had had their brief romance. Now she couldn’t fathom him at all. Something had changed in him, something fundamental had broken, and she wasn’t sure if it could ever be mended.

  Two Volvo T5s parked at the junction with Market Street. Each Armed Response Vehicle from the Firearms Support Unit comprised two Authorised Firearms Officers, or AFOs, in full Personal Protective Equipment, carrying PR24 batons, rigid handcuffs and CS spray, in addition to Glock sidearms and Tasers. They would have Heckler and Koch MP5 carbines locked in the boots of their Volvos, along with an array of other lethal weapons.

  Laburnum Way was a cul-de-sac about a hundred yards in length, so their arrival effectively cut off the street. Two patrol cars were parked at the far end. People were already watching at their windows.

  The four AFOs had already been briefed on the layout of the house, as provided by Juliet Doyle, should they need to effect entry. They didn’t expect to have to do that, however, as Patrick Doyle and his daughter knew where Juliet had gone, and they were expecting a police visit.

  Annie thought one of the team members was a woman, but it was hard to tell behind all the body armor and equipment she was carrying. Another car pulled up and Mike Trethowan, the Firearms Cadre’s superintendent, also wearing full PPE, spoke briefly with his officers, then came over to join Annie and Gervaise.

  “Any change?” he asked.

  “None,” said Gervaise. “According to our information they’re just sitting there in the kitchen waiting for us to arrive.”

  “And the kitchen is where?”

  “Back of the house. Down the hall, door off to the right.”

  The superintendent sniffed the air, nodded and went back to his team.

  This wasn’t a firearms hostage situation or a fatal shooting. So far, nothing had happened, and the procedure was a simple one. As it didn’t appear that anyone was intent on using the firearm, and that the situation was more or less under the control of the girl’s father, the uniformed officers would knock at the door and shout for Patrick and Erin Doyle to come out. Once they appeared, they would be asked to hand over the weapon in question and step away. It was simply a matter of being on guard and of using the usual extra care and caution around firearms. The house was certainly quiet enough from the outside.

  Things started to go wrong right from the start, when no one answered the door. Because of the natural tension when firearms are involved, everyone was a little impatient, but even Annie had to admit that a pensioner in a Zimmer frame could have got there by the time Superintendent Trethowan recalled the local officers, sent two armed men around the back and two up the front path. Annie glanced at Gervaise, whose expression was set, teeth clenched, Cupid’s bow mouth almost a single straight red line.

  Getting no response to their shouts, the AFOs used a battering ram on the door, which splintered open, and the two officers rushed inside, making as much noise as they could. Within seconds they had disappeared from view, and after a brief silence Annie heard a muffled shout and then a clicking sound, like some distant cicada chattering in the trees, followed by a scream and a lot of shouting and banging about.

  She and Gervaise jumped out of the car and dashed for the garden, but Superintendent Trethowan, outside the house, raised his hand to warn them to stay back, then he went inside. Annie could hear the other two officers breaking in at the back, then more shouting, the sound of a chair or a table crashing over, and finally another loud scream, a different voice this time.

  Annie felt her heart beating so hard and fast that she thought it would explode inside her chest. She was shaking all over. For what seemed like ages, nothing happened. The house fell silent again, apart from the sounds of the team walking about inside, doors opening and closing. Finally, Trethowan came out with two officers, and the three of them walked toward the van.

  “What happened?” Gervaise asked as they passed by.

  But Trethowan simply shook his head. Annie couldn’t see his expression because of the protective headgear.

  About thirty seconds later someone shouted the all-clear, and another officer came out carrying a small item wrapped in a tea cloth. So that was what it was all about, Annie thought. So tiny. So deadly. And from what she could see as the man passed right by her, the tea cloth had a map of the Yorkshire Dales printed on it. A moment later the final two armed response officers came out, dragging between them a struggling and screaming young woman in rigid handcuffs: Erin Doyle. Then came the sound of an ambulance speeding toward them down Market Street.

  “Oh, shit,” said Gervaise. “Here we go.”

  2

  RIGHT,” SAID ACC RON MCLAUGHLIN WHEN EVERYONE was seated in the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters. “We’ve got the house on Laburnum Way locked down. Erin Doyle is in custody, and Juliet Doyle is at the hospital by her husband’s bedside. I hardly need to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that we appear to be looking at a cock-up of gigantic proportions.”

  McLaughlin had called the meeting to make some sense out of what had just happened and to determine what should be done next, and by whom. The room was crowded and the atmosphere tense. Though no media had arrived at the station yet, Annie could sense the vibrations thrumming through the ether, hear the tom-toms beating in the distance and see the smoke signals curling into the sky.

  In plain gray T-shirts and combats, the AFOs looked as if they had just come from the nearest fitness center. Annie saw tha
t she was right about one of the team being female. She had seen the woman around County HQ at Newby Wiske on the few occasions she had been there, and they had exchanged brief and polite greetings, but she hadn’t known the woman was a trained AFO. Luckily, Western Area hadn’t had much use for their services lately. There were few enough women in the force, and Annie reckoned that this one must be very good if she was a member of the AFO team. Training was tough and standards were high. The female officer had closely cropped spiky dark hair over a heart-shaped face with large eyes, a small mouth and an olive complexion. She was short, with a barrel-shaped muscular upper body, as if she lifted a lot of weights. Annie caught her eye and gave her a smile of solidarity. She gave Annie a grim, shy smile of understanding back, then turned away.

  One of the team members, a youngish-looking fellow whom Annie didn’t recognize, seemed paler than the rest and was chewing on the end of a Biro. The hand in which he held it was shaking, and it didn’t take a genius to work out that he was the shooter, the one who had dashed out of the house and thrown up in the herbaceous border. He didn’t look any older than eighteen, but Annie knew that he had to be in his mid-to-late twenties to have completed the training and psychological testing necessary to be an AFO.

  “I think you all know the drill,” McLaughlin went on once everybody had a coffee in front of them. “I’m going to hand over to Superintendent Chambers from Professional Standards now, to get the ball rolling. Once we’ve got the general picture, we’ll try to make some decisions on how best to proceed. Reg?”

  Chambers cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair and put his pen down on his notepad. The buttons on his waistcoat stretched tight across his chest and belly. Annie thought he had the faintly ridiculous air of a Dickensian character. She had once worked with Chambers for a few weeks herself, and had quickly come to understand why the Internal Affairs Department was always referred to as the “Rat Squad” on American television programs.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Chambers. “Let’s just get a few facts straight, first of all, shall we? Who called in the FSU?” He had a Home Counties accent, which he seemed to think made him sound posh.