Winsome paused before answering. Banks noticed several people gawp at her as they walked. She knew she was a token minority, she had told Banks when he interviewed her, brought in to fulfil a quota demanded in the aftermath of the Stephen Lawrence case. There were to be more police officers from minorities, the ruling stated, even in communities where those minorities were, to all extents, nonexistent: like West Indians in the Yorkshire Dales. But she also told him she didn’t care about the tokenism and she’d do a damn good job anyway. Banks didn’t doubt her for a moment. Winsome was ACC McLaughlin’s golden girl, set for accelerated promotion and all its blessings; she’d probably be a superintendent before she was thirty-five. And Banks liked her. She was easy-going, had a wicked sense of humour, and she didn’t let the race thing get in the way of doing her job, even when other people tried to put it in the way. He knew nothing about her personal life except that she enjoyed both climbing and spelunking – the very thought of which gave Banks a severe case of the heebie-jeebies – and that she lived in a flat on the fringe of the Eastvale student area.
