Free Strange Affair by Peter Robinson

parapet above Gratly Beck, looking at the stars and listening to the water. And there would always be music: Bill Evans, Lucinda Williams, Van Morrison, and string quartets she didn’t recognize.
    Annie felt tears in her eyes and she brushed them away roughly and headed downstairs. She handed back the keys without a word and hurried down the path.
     
    Banks sat in a pub on Old Brompton Road playing with Roy’s mobile, learning what the functions were and how to use them. He found a call list which gave him the last thirty incoming, outgoing and missed calls. Some were just first names, some numbers, and quite a few of the incoming calls were “unknown.” The last call had been made at 3:57 on Friday afternoon to “James.” Banks pressed the “call” button and listened to a phone ring. Finally someone picked it up and uttered a frazzled “Yeah?” Banks could hear David Bowie in the background singing “Moonage Daydream.”
    “Can I speak to James?” he said.
    “Speaking.”
    “My brother, Roy Banks, rang you yesterday. I was wondering what it was about.”
    “That’s right,” said James. “He was ringing to make an appointment for next Wednesday, I believe. Yeah, here it is, Wednesday at half past two.”
    “Appointment for what?”
    “A haircut. I’m Roy’s hairdresser. Why? Is everything okay?”
    Banks rang off without answering. At least Roy had been certain enough at 3:57 on Friday afternoon of being around next Wednesday to make an appointment with his hairdresser. Banks had never done such a thing in his life. He went to a barber’s and waited his turn like everyone else, reading old magazines.
    Banks washed down the last of his curry of the day with a pint of Pride, lit a cigarette and looked around. It was odd being in London again. He had visited many times since he had left, mostly in connection with cases he was working on, but with each visit he came to feel increasingly like a stranger, a tourist, though he had once lived there for over fifteen years.
    Still, that had been quite a while ago, and things changed. Down-at-heel neighborhoods became desirable residences and once-chic areas went downhill. Villains’ pubs became locals for the trendy young crowd and up-market pubs started to go to seed. He had no idea what was “in” these days. London was a vast sprawling metropolis, and Banks had never, even when he was living there, been familiar with it beyond Notting Hill and Kennington, places where he had lived, and the West End, where he had worked. South Kensington might have been another city as far as he was concerned.
    He turned his mind to Roy’s disappearance, oblivious to the ebb and flow of conversation around him. He would run through the rest of the call list later, back at the house. He also wanted to check out the data CD. There were plenty of Internet cafés around, and some of them would even allow him to read a CD and print out material, but they were far too public, and anything he did would leave traces. He had violated his brother’s privacy, but he felt he had good reason, whereas there was no reason at all to risk making any of Roy’s secrets known to strangers.
    He realized he didn’t know anyone in London who owned a computer. Most of the people he had known there, criminals and coppers alike, had either moved, retired or died. Except Sandra, his ex-wife, who had moved from Eastvale to Camden Town when she left him. Sandra would probably have a computer. But his last meeting with her had been disastrous, and she had hardly been a constant visitor in his days of need. In fact, she hadn’t visited at all, merely sent her condolences through Tracy. Then there was the husband, Sean, and the new baby, Sinéad. No, he didn’t think he would be paying any visits to Sandra in the foreseeable future.
    He also couldn’t go official with what he’d got for the same reason he couldn’t use an Internet café: in case the disk held something incriminating against Roy.