Free Playing with Fire by Peter Robinson

in Aspern’s reactions to his questions.
    Banks took a deep breath and pushed the doorbell. The woman who answered looked younger than he expected. About Annie’s age, early thirties, with short layered blond hair, pale, flawless skin and a nervous, elfin look about her. “Mrs. Aspern?” he asked.
    The woman nodded, looking puzzled, and put her hand to her cheek.
    â€œIt’s about your daughter, Tina. I’m a policeman. May I come in for a moment?”
    â€œChristine?” Mrs. Aspern fingered the loose neck of her cable-knit sweater. “She doesn’t live here anymore. What is it?”
    â€œIf I might come in, please?”
    She stood aside and Banks stepped onto the highly polished hardwood floor. “First on the right,” said Mrs. Aspern.
    He followed her direction and found himself in a small sitting room with a dark blue three-piece suite and cream walls. A couple of framed paintings hung there, one over the decorative, but functional, stone fireplace, and the other on the opposite wall. Both were landscapes in simple black frames.
    â€œIs your husband home?” Banks asked.
    â€œPatrick? He’s taking afternoon surgery.”
    â€œCan you fetch him for me, please?”
    â€œFetch him?” She looked alarmed. “But…the patients.”
    â€œI want to talk to you both together. It’s important,” Banks said.
    Shaking her head, Mrs. Aspern left the room. Banks took the opportunity to stand up and examine the two paintings more closely. Both were watercolors painted in misty morning light, by the looks of them. One showed the church of St. John the Baptist, just down the street, which Banks happened to have visited once with his ex-wife Sandra during his earlydays in Yorkshire. He knew it was the oldest Norman church in Leeds, built around the middle of the twelfth century. Sandra had taken some striking photographs. A plain building, it was most famous for the elaborate stone carvings on the porch and chancel arch, at which the painting merely hinted.
    The other painting was a woodland scene, which Banks assumed to be Adel Woods, again with that wispy, fey early-morning light about it, making the glade look like the magical forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream . The signature “Keith Peverell” was clear enough on both. No connection to “Tom” there, not that he had expected any.
    Mrs. Aspern returned some minutes later, along with her clearly perturbed husband. “Look,” he said, before any introductions had been made. “I can’t just leave my patients in the lurch like this. Can’t you come back at five o’clock?”
    â€œI’m afraid not,” said Banks, offering his warrant card.
    Aspern scrutinized it, and a small, unpleasant smile tugged at the corners of his lips. He glanced at his wife. “Why didn’t you say, darling? A detective chief inspector, no less,” he said. “Well, it must be important if they sent the organ grinder. Please, sit down.”
    Banks sat. Now that Aspern was pleased he’d been sent someone he thought commensurate with his social standing, though probably a chief constable would have been preferable, the patients were quickly forgotten. Things were likely to go a bit more easily. If Banks let them.
    Aspern was a good fifteen years or so older than his wife, Banks guessed. Around fifty, with thinning sandy hair, he was handsome in a sharp-angled way, though Banks was put off by the cynical look in his eyes and the lips perpetually on the verge of that nasty little superior smile. He had the slim, athletic figure of a man who plays tennis and golf and goes to the gym regularly. Being a doctor, of course, he’d know all about the benefits of exercise, though Banks knew more thanone or two doctors, the Home Office pathologist Dr. Glendenning among them, who smoked and drank and didn’t give a damn about fitness.
    â€œI’m afraid