Aftermath

10

Friday morning started badly for Maggie. She had spent a night disturbed by vague and frightening nightmares that scuttled away into the shadows the minute she awoke screaming and tried to grasp them. Getting back to sleep was difficult not only because of the bad dreams, but also because of the eerie noises and voices she could hear from across the road. Didn’t the police ever sleep?

Once, getting up to go for a glass of water, she looked out of her bedroom window and saw some uniformed police officers carrying cardboard boxes into a van waiting with its engine running. Then some men carried what looked like electronic equipment through the front door, and a short while later Maggie fancied she could see a strange ghostly light sweeping the living room of number 35 behind the drawn curtains. The digging continued in the front garden, surrounded by a canvas screen and lit on the inside, so that all Maggie could see was enlarged and deformed shadows of men silhouetted against the canvas. These figures carried over into her next nightmare, and in the end she didn’t know whether she was asleep or awake.

She got up a little after seven o’clock and headed for the kitchen, where a cup of tea helped soothe her frayed nerves. This was one English habit that she had slipped into easily. She planned to spend the day working on Grimm again, perhaps “Hänsel and Gretel,” now that she had satisfactory sketches for “Rapunzel,” and trying to put the business of number 35 out of her head for a few hours at least.

Then she heard the paperboy arrive and the newspaper slip through her letter box on to the hall mat. She hurried out and carried it back to the kitchen, where she spread it on the table.

Lorraine Temple’s story was prominent on the front page, beside the bigger headline story about Terence Payne’s dying without recovering consciousness. There was even a photograph of Maggie, taken without her knowledge, standing just outside her front gate. It must have been taken when she was going down to the pub to talk with Lorraine, she realized, as she was wearing the same jeans and light cotton jacket as she had worn on Tuesday.

HOUSE OF PAYNE: NEIGHBOR SPEAKS OUT, ran the headline, and the article went on to detail how Maggie had heard suspicious sounds coming from across The Hill and called the police. Afterward, calling Maggie Lucy’s “friend,” Lorraine Temple reported what Maggie had said about Lucy’s being a victim of domestic abuse, and how she was scared of her husband. All of which was fine and accurate enough, as far as it went. But then came the sting in the tail. According to sources in Toronto, Lorraine Temple went on to report, Maggie Forrest herself was on the run from an abusive husband: Toronto lawyer, William Burke. The article detailed the time Maggie had spent in hospital and all the fruitless court orders issued to stop Bill’s going near her. Describing Maggie as a nervous, mousy sort of woman, Lorraine Temple also mentioned that she was seeing a local psychiatrist called Dr. Simms, who “declined to comment.”

Lorraine ended by suggesting that, perhaps because of Maggie’s own psychological problems, Maggie had been gullible, and that her identification with Lucy’s plight may have blinded her to the truth. Lorraine couldn’t come out and say that she thought Lucy was guilty of anything – the laws of libel forbade that – but she did have a very good stab at making her readers think Lucy might just be the sort of manipulative and deceitful person who could twist a weak woman like Maggie around her little finger. It was rubbish, of course, but effective rubbish, nonetheless.

How could she do that? Now everybody would know.

Every time Maggie walked down the street to go to the shops or catch the bus into town, the neighbors and shopkeepers would look at her differently, with pity and perhaps just the merest hint of blame in their eyes. Some people would avoid looking her in the eye and perhaps even stop talking to her, associating her too closely for comfort with the events at number 35. Even strangers who recognized her from the photograph would wonder about her. Perhaps Claire would stop coming to see her altogether, though she hadn’t been since the time the policeman turned up, and Maggie was already worried about her.

Perhaps even Bill would find out.

It was her own fault, of course. She had put herself in harm’s way. She had been trying to do a favor for poor Lucy, trying to garner her some public sympathy, and the whole thing had backfired. How stupid she had been to trust Lorraine Temple. One lousy article like this and her whole new fragile, protected world would change. Just like that. It wasn’t fair, Maggie told herself as she cried over the breakfast table. It just wasn’t fair.

After a short but satisfying night’s sleep – perhaps due to the generous doses of Laphroaig and Duke Ellington – Banks was back in his Millgarth cubbyhole by eight-thirty on Friday morning, and the first news to cross his desk was a note from Stefan Nowak informing him that the skeletal remains dug up in the Paynes’s garden were not Leanne Wray’s. Had Banks been harboring the slightest hope that Leanne might still be alive and well after all this time, he would have jumped for joy, but as it was, he rubbed his forehead in frustration; it looked as if it was going to be another one of those days. He punched in Stefan’s mobile number and got an answer after three rings. It sounded as if Stefan was in the middle of another conversation, but he muttered a few asides and gave his attention to Banks.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“Problems?”

“Typical breakfast chaos. I’m just trying to get out of the house.”

“I know what you mean. Look, about this identification-”

“It’s solid, sir. Dental records. DNA will take a bit longer. There’s no way it’s Leanne Wray. I’m just about to set off back to the house. The lads are still digging.”

“Who the hell can it be?”

“Don’t know. All I’ve been able to find out so far is that it’s a young woman, late teens to early twenties, been there a few months and there’s a lot of stainless steel in her dental work, including a crown.”

“Meaning?” Banks asked, a faint memory beckoning.

“Possible Eastern European origin. They still use a lot of stainless steel over there.”

Right. Banks had come across something like that before. A forensic dentist had once told him that Russians used stainless steel. “Eastern European?”

“Just a possibility, sir.”

“All right. Any chance of that DNA comparison between Payne and the Seacroft Rapist turning up before the weekend?”

“I’ll get onto them this morning, see if I can give them a prod.”

“Okay. Thanks. Keep at it, Stefan.”

“Will do.”

Banks hung up, more puzzled than ever. One of the first things AC Hartnell had instituted when the team was first put together was a special squad to keep tabs on all missing persons cases throughout the entire country – “mispers,” as they were called – particularly if they involved blond teenagers, with no apparent reasons for running away, disappearing on their way home from clubs, pubs, cinemas and dances. The team had monitored scores of cases every day, but none had met the criteria of the Chameleon investigation, except one girl in Cheshire, who had turned up alive and contrite two days later after a brief shack-up with her boyfriend, about which she just happened to forget to tell her parents, and the sadder case of a young girl in Lincoln who, it turned out, had been run over and had not been carrying any identification. Now here was Stefan saying they’d probably got a dead Eastern European girl in the garden.

Banks didn’t get very far with his chain of thought before his office door opened and DC Filey dropped a copy of that morning’s Post on his desk.

Annie parked her purple Astra up the street and walked toward number 35 The Hill, shielding her eyes from the morning sunlight. Crime scene tape and trestles blocked off that section of pavement in front of the garden wall, so that pedestrians had to make a detour on to the tarmac road to get by. One or two people paused to glance over the garden gate as they passed, Annie noticed, but most walked to the other side of the road and averted their eyes. She even saw one elderly woman cross herself.

Annie showed her warrant card to the officer on duty, signed in at the gate and walked down the garden path. She wasn’t afraid of seeing gruesome sights, if indeed there were any left inside the house, but she had never before visited a scene so completely overrun with SOCO activity, and just walking into it made her edgy. The men in the front garden ignored her and went on with their digging. The door was ajar, and when Annie pushed gently, it opened into the hall.

The hallway was deserted and at first the house seemed so quiet inside that Annie thought she was alone. Then someone shouted, and the sound of a pneumatic drill ripped through the air, coming up from the cellar, shattering her illusion. The house was hot, stuffy and full of dust, and Annie sneezed three times before exploring further.

Her nerves gradually gave way to professional curiosity, and she noted with interest that the carpets had been taken up, leaving only the bare concrete floors and wooden stairs, and that the living room had been stripped of furniture, too, even down to the light fixtures. Several holes had been punched in the walls, no doubt to ensure that no bodies had been entombed there. Annie gave a little shudder. Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” was one of the more frightening stories she had read at school.

Everywhere she went she was conscious of the narrow roped-off pathway she knew she was supposed to follow. In an odd way it was like visiting the Brontë parsonage or Wordsworth’s cottage, where you could only stand and look beyond the rope at the antique furniture.

The kitchen, where three SOCO officers were working on the sink and drains, was in the same sorry state – tiles wrenched up, oven and fridge gone, cupboards bare, fingerprint dust everywhere. Annie hadn’t thought anyone could do so much damage to a place in three days. One of the SOCOs looked over at her and asked her rather testily what she thought she was doing there. She flashed him her warrant card and he went back to ripping out the sink. The pneumatic drill stopped and Annie heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner from upstairs, an eerily domestic sound amidst all the crime scene chaos, though she knew its purpose was far more sinister than getting rid of the dust.

She took the silence from the cellar as her cue to go down there, noting as she did so the door open to the garage, which had been stripped as bare as the rest of the house. The car was gone, no doubt in the police garage being taken apart piece by piece, and the oil-stained floor had been dug up.

She sensed herself becoming hypersensitive as she approached the cellar door, her breath coming in short gasps. There was an obscene poster of a naked woman with her legs spread wide apart on the door which Annie hoped the SOCOs hadn’t left there because they enjoyed seeing it. That must have unnerved Janet Taylor to start with, she thought, advancing slowly, as she imagined Janet and Dennis had done. Christ, she felt apprehensive enough herself, even though she knew the only people in there were SOCOs. But Janet and Dennis hadn’t known what to expect, Annie told herself. Whatever it was, they hadn’t expected what they got. She knew far more than they had, and no doubt her imagination was working overtime on that.

Through the door, much cooler down here, trying to feel the way it was, despite the two SOCO officers and the bright lighting… Janet went in first, Dennis just behind her. The cellar was smaller than she had expected. It must have happened so quickly. Candlelight. The figure leaping out of the shadows, wielding a machete, hacking into Dennis Morrissey’s throat and arm because he was the closest. Dennis goes down. Janet already has her side-handled baton out, extended, ready to ward off the first blow. So close she can smell Payne’s breath. Perhaps he can’t believe that a woman, weaker and smaller than him, can thwart him so easily. Before he can recover from his shock, Janet lashes out and hits him on the left temple. Blinded by pain and perhaps by blood, he falls back against the wall. Next he feels a sharp pain on his wrist and he can’t hold on to the machete. He hears it skitter away across the floor but doesn’t know where. He rears up and goes at her. Angry now because she knows her partner is bleeding to death on the floor, Janet hits him again and again, wanting it to be over so she can tend to Dennis. He scrabbles after where he thought the machete went, blood dripping down his face. She hits him again. And again. How much strength does he have left by now? Annie wondered. Surely not enough to overpower Janet? And how many more times does she hit him now he’s down, handcuffed to the pipe, not moving at all?

Annie sighed and watched the SOCOs shifting their drill to dig into another spot.

“Are you going to start that thing up again?” she asked.

One of the men grinned. “Want some earmuffs?”

Annie smiled back at him. “No, I’d rather just get out of here before you start. Can you give me another minute or so?”

“Can do.”

Annie glanced around at the crude stick figures and occult symbols on the walls and wondered how integral a part of Payne’s fantasy they were. Banks had also told her that the place was lit by dozens of candles, but they were all gone now, as was the mattress they had found the body on. One of the SOCOs was on his knees looking at something on the concrete floor over by the door.

“What is it?” Annie asked him. “Found something?”

“Dunno,” he said. “Some sort of little scuff marks in the concrete. It hardly shows at all, but there seems to be some sort of pattern.”

Annie knelt to look. She couldn’t see anything until the SOCO pointed to what looked like small circles in the concrete. There were three of them in all, pretty much equidistant.

“I’ll try a few different lighting angles,” he said, almost to himself. “Maybe some infrared film to highlight the contrasts.”

“Could be a tripod,” Annie said.

“What? Bugger me – sorry, love – but you could be right. Luke Selkirk and that funny little assistant of his were down here. Maybe they left the marks.”

“I think they’d have been more professional, don’t you?”

“I’d better ask them, hadn’t I?”

Annie left him to it and walked through the far door. The ground had been sectioned into grids and the soil had been dug up. Annie knew that three bodies had been found there. She followed the narrow marked path across to the door, opened it and walked up the steps into the back garden. Crime scene tape barred her entrance at the top of the steps, but she didn’t need to go any farther. Like the anteroom in the cellar, the overgrown garden had been divided into grids and marked out with rope. Most of them had already been cleared of grass and weeds and topsoil, but some, farther back, remained overgrown. At the far wall, a large waterproof sheet used to protect the garden from yesterday’s rain lay rolled up like a carpet.

This was a delicate job, Annie knew from watching the excavation of a skeleton at the village of Hobb’s End. It was far too easy to disturb old bones. She could see the hole, about three feet deep, where one body had been dug up, and now there were two men gathered around another hole, taking off the soil with trowels and passing it to a third man, who ran it through a sieve as if he were panning for gold.

“What is it?” Annie asked from the top of the cellar steps.

One of the men looked up at her. She hadn’t recognized Stefan Nowak at first. She didn’t know him well, as he hadn’t been at Eastvale’s Western Divisional Headquarters for long, but Banks had introduced them once. Stefan was the man, ACC Ron McLaughlin had said, who would drag North Yorkshire kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. Annie had found him rather reserved, a bit mysterious, even, as if he were carrying around a grave secret or a great weight of past pain. He affected a cheery enough demeanor on the surface, but she could tell it didn’t run very deep. He was tall, over six feet, and handsome in a clean-cut, elegant sort of way. She knew his background was Polish and had often wondered if he was a prince or a count or something. Most of the Poles she had ever met said they were descended from counts or princes at one time or another, and there was something regal and stately in Stefan’s bearing.

“It’s Annie, isn’t it?” he said. “DS Annie Cabbot?”

“DI, now, Stefan. How’s it going?”

“Didn’t know you were on this case.”

“One of them,” Annie explained. “Terence Payne. I’m with Complaints and Discipline.”

“I can’t believe the CPS will even let that one see the light of day,” said Stefan. “Justifiable homicide, surely?”

“I hope that’s how they’ll see it, but you never know with them. Anyway, I just wanted a look at the place.”

“I’m afraid we’ve made rather a mess,” said Stefan. “It looks as if we’ve just found another body. Want a look?”

Annie ducked under the tape. “Yes.”

“Be careful,” said Stefan. “Follow the marked path.”

Annie did as he said and soon found herself standing beside the partially excavated grave. This one was a skeleton. Not quite as stained and filthy as the one she had seen at Hobb’s End, but a skeleton nonetheless. She could see part of the skull, one shoulder and part of the left arm. “How long?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” Stefan answered. “More than a few months.” He introduced the two men who had been poring over the grave with him, one a botanist and the other an entomologist. “These lads should be able to help with that. And we’re getting Dr. Ioan Williams to come over from the university and give us a hand.”

Annie remembered the young doctor with the long hair and the prominent Adam’s apple from the Hobb’s End case, the way he had caressed Gloria Shackleton’s pelvic bone and leered over it at Annie.

“I know this isn’t my case,” Annie said, “but isn’t this one body too many?”

Stefan looked up at her and shielded his eyes from the sun. “Yes,” he said. “It is. Rather throws a spanner in the works, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed it does.”

Annie walked back toward her car. There was nothing more to be gained from hanging around The Hill. Besides, she realized, glancing at her watch, she had a postmortem to attend.

“What the hell do you mean, talking to press like that?” said Banks. “Didn’t I warn you about it?”

“This is the first I’ve heard we’re living in a police state,” said Maggie Forrest, arms folded over her chest, eyes angry and tearful. They stood in her kitchen, Banks brandishing the Post and Maggie in the midst of clearing away her breakfast dishes. After seeing the article at Millgarth, he had headed straight for The Hill.

“Don’t give me that adolescent crap about police states. Who do you think you are, a student protesting some distant war?”

“You’ve no right to talk to me like this. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Anything wrong? Have you any idea of the wasp’s nest you could be helping to stir up?”

“I don’t know what you mean. All I wanted to do was tell Lucy’s side of the story, but that woman twisted it all.”

“Are you so naïve that you didn’t expect that?”

“There’s a difference between being naïve and caring, but a cynic like you probably wouldn’t understand it.”

Banks could see that Maggie was shaking, either with anger or fear, and he was worried that he had given too free a rein to his anger. He knew she had been abused by her husband, that she was a bruised soul, so she was probably scared stiff of this man raising his voice in her kitchen. It was insensitive of him, but damn it, the woman irritated him. He sat at the kitchen table and tried to cool things down a bit. “Maggie,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, but you could cause us a lot of problems.”

Maggie seemed to relax a little. “I don’t see how.”

“Public sympathy is a very fickle thing, and when you mess with it, it’s like dancing with the devil. It’s just as likely to reach out and eat you up as anyone else.”

“But how would people find out what Lucy went through at her husband’s hands? She won’t talk about it, I can guarantee you that.”

“None of us know what went on in Lucy’s house. All you’re doing is jeopardizing her chance of a fair trial, if-”

“Trial? Trial for what?”

“I was going to say, ‘if it comes to that.’ ”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t agree.” Maggie put the electric kettle on and sat opposite Banks. “People need to know about domestic abuse. It’s not something that should be swept under the carpet for any reason. Especially not just because the police say so.”

“I agree. Look, I understand you’re prejudiced against us, but-”

“Prejudiced? Right. With your help I ended up in hospital.”

“But you have to understand that in many of these matters our hands are tied. We’re only as good as the information we have and the laws of the land allow.”

“All the more reason for me to speak out about Lucy. After all, you’re not exactly here to help her, are you?”

“I’m here to find out the truth.”

“Well, that’s all very high-and-mighty of you.”

“Now who’s the cynic?”

“We all know the police only want convictions, that they’re not overly concerned with the truth, or with justice.”

“Convictions help, if they keep the bad guys off the street. Too often they don’t. And justice we leave to the courts, but you’re wrong about the rest. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m very much concerned with the truth. I’ve worked day and night on this case since the beginning of April, and every case I work I want to know what happened, who did it and why. I don’t always find out, but you’d be surprised how much I do learn. Sometimes it gets me into trouble. And I have to live with the knowledge, take it into my life, take it home with me. I’m that snowball rolling down the hill, only the pure snow’s run out and I’m picking up layer after layer of dirt and gravel just so that you can sit safe and warm at home and accuse me of being some sort of Gestapo officer.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. And I wasn’t always safe and warm.”

“Do you know that what you’ve just done actually stands a good chance of warping the truth, whatever it may be?”

“I didn’t do that. It was her. That journalist. Lorraine Temple.”

Banks slapped the table and immediately regretted it when Maggie jumped. “Wrong,” he said. “She was only doing her job. Like it or not, that’s what it was. Her job’s to sell newspapers. You’ve got this all backward, Maggie. You think the media’s here to tell the truth and the police to lie.”

“You’re confusing me now.” The kettle boiled and Maggie got up to make tea. She didn’t offer Banks a cup, but when it was ready, she poured him one automatically. He thanked her.

“All I’m saying, Maggie, is that you might be doing Lucy more harm than good by talking to the press. Look at what happened this time. You say it came out all wrong and that they practically said Lucy is as guilty as her husband. That’s hardly helping her, is it?”

“But I told you. She twisted my words.”

“And I’m saying you should have expected that. It made a better story.”

“Then where am I supposed to go to tell the truth? Or to find it?”

“Christ, Maggie, if I knew the answer to that I’d-”

But before Banks could finish, his mobile rang. This time it was the PC on duty at the infirmary. Lucy Payne had just been cleared for release, and she had a solicitor with her.

“Do you know anything about this solicitor?” Banks asked Maggie when he’d finished on the phone.

She smiled sheepishly. “As a matter of fact, yes, I do.”

Banks said nothing, not trusting himself to respond in a civilized manner. Leaving his tea untouched, he bid Maggie Forrest a hurried farewell and dashed out to his car. He didn’t even stop to talk to Annie Cabbot when he saw her walking out of number 35, but managed only a quick wave before jumping in his Renault and roaring off.

Lucy Payne was sitting on the bed painting her toenails black when Banks walked in. She gave him a look and demurely pulled her skirt down over her thighs. The bandages were gone from her head, and the bruises seemed to be healing well. She had rearranged her long black hair so it covered the patch the doctor had shaved for his stitches.

Another woman stood in the room, over by the window: the solicitor. Slight in stature, with chocolate brown hair cropped almost as closely as Banks’s, and watchful, serious hazel eyes, she was dressed in a charcoal pinstriped jacket, matching skirt and a white blouse with some sort of ruffled front. She wore dark tights and shiny black pumps.

She walked over and held her hand out. “Julia Ford. I’m Lucy’s solicitor. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“A pleasure,” said Banks.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve talked to my client, is it, Superintendent?”

“No,” said Banks.

“And the last time you were accompanied by a psychologist named Dr. Fuller?”

“Dr. Fuller’s our consulting psychologist on the Chameleon task force,” said Banks.

“Just be careful, Superintendent, that’s all. I’d have very good grounds to argue that anything Dr. Fuller might have got from my client is inadmissible as evidence.”

“We weren’t gathering evidence,” said Banks. “Lucy was questioned as a witness, and as a victim. Not as a suspect.”

“A fine line, Superintendent, should matters change. And now?”

Banks glanced at Lucy, who had resumed painting her toenails, seeming indifferent to the banter between her solicitor and Banks. “I wasn’t aware you thought you needed a solicitor, Lucy,” he said.

Lucy looked up. “It’s in my best interests. They’re discharging me this morning. Soon as the paperwork’s done, I can go home.”

Banks looked at Julia Ford in exasperation. “I hope you haven’t encouraged her in this fantasy?”

Julia raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Banks turned back to Lucy. “You can’t go home, Lucy,” he explained. “Your house is being taken apart brick by brick by forensic experts. Have you any concept of what happened there?”

“Of course I have,” said Lucy. “Terry hit me. He knocked me out and put me in hospital.”

“But Terry’s dead now, isn’t he?”

“Yes. So?”

“That changes things, doesn’t it?”

“Look,” said Lucy. “I’ve been abused, and I’ve just lost my husband. Now you’re telling me I’ve lost my home, too?”

“For the time being.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go?”

“How about your foster parents, Linda?”

Lucy’s look let Banks know that she hadn’t missed the emphasis. “I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?”

“Anyway, it won’t be a problem for a while yet,” Banks went on. “We found traces of Kimberley Myers’s blood on the sleeves of your dressing gown, along with some yellow fibers under your fingernails. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do before you go anywhere.”

Lucy looked alarmed. “What do you mean?”

Julia Ford narrowed her eyes and looked at Banks. “What he means, Lucy, is that he’s going to take you in to the police station for questioning.”

“Can he do that?”

“I’m afraid so, Lucy.”

“And he can keep me there?”

“Under the PACE regulations, he can, yes, if he’s not satisfied with the answers you give him. For twenty-four hours. But there are very strict guidelines. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“You mean I could be in prison for a whole day? In a cell?”

“Don’t be alarmed, Lucy,” said Julia, stepping over and touching her client’s arm. “Nothing bad will happen to you. Those days are gone now. You’ll be well looked after.”

“But I’ll be in prison!”

“Possibly. It all depends.”

“But I haven’t done anything!” She gave Banks an angry look, black eyes burning like coals. “I’m the victim here. Why are you picking on me?”

“Nobody’s picking on you, Lucy,” said Banks. “There’s a lot of questions need answering, and we think you can help us.”

“I’ll answer your questions. I’m not refusing to cooperate. You don’t have to take me to the police station for that. Besides, I’ve already answered them.”

“Hardly. There’s a lot more we need to know, and there are certain formalities, procedures to be followed. Anyway, it’s all changed now that Terry’s died, hasn’t it?”

Lucy looked away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You can speak freely now. You don’t have to be afraid of him.”

“Oh, I see.”

“What did you think I meant, Lucy?”

“Nothing.”

“That you could change your story? Just deny everything?”

“I told you. Nothing.”

“But there’s the blood to explain now. And the yellow fibers. We know you were in the cellar. We can prove it.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I don’t remember.”

“Very convenient. Aren’t you sorry Terry’s dead, Lucy?”

Lucy packed her nail polish away in her handbag. “Of course I am. But he beat me up. It was him who put me here, him who got me into all this trouble with the police. It’s not my fault. None of it’s my fault. I haven’t done anything wrong. Why should I have to be the one who suffers?”

Banks shook his head and stood up. “Maybe we’d better just go.”

Lucy looked over to Julia Ford.

“I’ll come with you,” said Julia. “I’ll be present when you’re questioned and nearby in case you need me.”

Lucy managed a weak smile. “But you won’t stay in the cell with me?”

Julia smiled back, then looked at Banks. “I’m afraid they don’t make doubles, Lucy.”

“That’s right,” said Banks. “Like girls, do you, Lucy?”

“There was no need for that, Superintendent,” Julia Ford said. “And I’ll thank you to keep any more questions you might have until we’re in the interview room.”

Lucy just glared at Banks.

“Anyway,” Julia Ford went on, turning back to Lucy. “Let’s not be pessimistic. It might not come to that.” She turned to Banks. “Might I suggest, Superintendent, that we leave by a discreet exit? You can’t have failed to notice the media presence.”

“It’s a big story for them,” Banks said. “But yes, that’s a good idea. I’ve got another one, too.”

“Oh?”

“That we take Lucy to Eastvale for questioning. You and I know damn well that Millgarth will be a zoo once the press find out she’s there. This way we’ve got a chance of avoiding all that chaos, at least for a while.”

Julia Ford thought for moment, then looked at Lucy. “It’s a good idea,” she said.

“Will you come to Eastvale with me? I’m scared.”

“Of course.” Julia looked at Banks. “I’m sure the Superintendent here can recommend a decent hotel?”

“But how could she possibly know I’m seeing you?” Maggie asked Dr. Susan Simms at the start of her session that afternoon.

“I’ve no idea, but you can be certain I didn’t tell anyone. And I told her nothing.”

“I know,” said Maggie. “Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it, dear. It’s a matter of professional ethics. This implied support of yours for Lucy Payne, is it true?”

Maggie felt her anger bristle again as she remembered her argument with Banks that morning. She still felt upset by it. “I think Lucy’s been a victim of abuse, yes.”

Dr. Simms remained silent for a while, gazing our of the window, then she shifted in her chair and said, “Just be careful, Margaret. Just be careful. You seem to be under a lot of stress. Now, shall we begin? I believe last time we were talking about your family.”

Maggie remembered. It was their fourth session, and the first time they’d touched on Maggie’s own family background. Which surprised her. She’d been expecting Freudian questions about her relationship with her father right from the start, even though Dr. Simms had insisted she wasn’t a Freudian analyst.

They were sitting in a small office overlooking Park Square, a peaceful, elegant bit of eighteenth-century Leeds. Birds sang in the trees among the pink and white blossoms, and students sat on the grass reading or simply enjoying the sun again after yesterday’s rain. Most of the humidity seemed to have cleared away and the air was crisp and warm. Dr. Simms had her window open, and Maggie could smell flowers from the window box; she didn’t know what kind, but they were flowers, all right, red and white and purple. She could just see the top of the town hall dome over the trees and elegant facades of the houses on the opposite side of the square.

The place was just like a doctor’s office, Maggie thought, or at least an old-style doctor’s office, with a solid desk, diplomas on the wall, fluorescent lights, filing cabinets and bookcases full of psychological journals and textbooks. There was no couch; Maggie and Dr. Simms sat in armchairs, not facing each other, but at a slight angle so that eye contact was easy but not mandatory, cooperative rather than confrontational. Dr. Simms had been recommended by Ruth, and so far she was turning out to be a real find. In her mid-fifties, solidly built, matronly, even, and with a severe look about her, she always wore old-fashioned Laura Ashley-style clothes, and her blue-gray hair was lacquered into whorls and waves that looked razor-sharp. Appearances to the contrary, Dr. Simms had the kindest, most compassionate manner Maggie could wish for, without being soft. For she certainly wasn’t soft; sometimes she was downright prickly, especially if Maggie – whom she always called Margaret for some reason – got her defenses up or started whimpering.

“There was never any violence in the home when we were growing up. My father was strict, but he never used his fists or his belt to discipline us. Neither my sister Fiona nor me.”

“So what did he do for discipline?”

“Oh, the usual things. Grounded us, stopped our pocket money, lectured us, that sort of thing.”

“Did he raise his voice?”

“No. I never heard him yell at anyone.”

“Did your mother have a violent temper?”

“Good Lord, no. I mean, she might get mad and shout if Fiona or I did something annoying, like not tidying up our rooms, but it’d be all over and forgotten in no time.”

Dr. Simms put her fist under her chin and rested on it. “I see. Let’s get back to Bill, shall we?”

“If you like.”

“No, Margaret, it’s not for me to like. It’s for you to want.”

Maggie shifted in her chair. “Yes, all right.”

“You told me in our previous session that you’d seen signs of his aggressiveness before you were married. Can you tell me more about that?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t directed toward me.”

“Toward whom was it directed? The world in general, perhaps?”

“No. Just some people. People who screwed up. Like waiters or delivery men.”

“Did he beat them up?”

“He got mad, lost his temper, yelled at them. Called them idiots, morons. What I meant was that he channeled a lot of aggression into his work.”

“Ah, yes. He’s a lawyer, right?”

“Yes. For a big firm. And he wanted to make partner very badly.”

“He’s competitive by nature?”

“Very. He was a high-school sports star, and he might have ended up playing professional football if he hadn’t ripped his knee apart in a championship game. He still walks with a slight limp, but he hates it if anyone notices it and mentions it. It doesn’t stop him playing with the firm’s softball team. But I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

Dr. Simms leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Margaret, I want you to see, to understand, where your husband’s anger and violence come from. They didn’t come from you; they came from him. They didn’t come out of your family background in any way, either. They came from his. Only when you see that, when you see that it was his problem and not yours, will you start to believe that it wasn’t your fault, and will you find the strength and courage to go on and live your life as fully as you can, rather than continue in this shadow existence you have at the moment.”

“But I already see that,” Maggie protested. “I mean, I know it was his aggression, not mine.”

“But you don’t feel it.”

Maggie felt disappointed; Dr. Simms was right. “Don’t I?” she said. “I suppose not.”

“Do you know anything about poetry, Margaret?”

“Not much, no. Only what we did at school, and one of my boy-friends at art college used to write me stuff. Terrible drivel, really. He just wanted to get in my pants.”

Dr. Simms laughed. Another surprise, for it came out as a loud, horsey guffaw. “Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem called ‘Dejection: An Ode.’ It was partly about his inability to feel anything, and one of the quotes that has always stuck in my mind was when he wrote about looking at the clouds, the moon and the stars and ended up saying, ‘I see, not feel, how beautiful they are.’ I think that applies to you, Margaret. And I think you know it. Intellectual awareness of something, through reason, does not guarantee emotional acceptance. And you are a very intellectual person, despite your obvious creative inclinations. If I were a Jungian, which I am not, I would probably classify you as the introverted, thinking type. Now tell me more about this courtship.”

“There’s not much to tell.” A door opened and closed out in the corridor. Two male voices rose and fell. Then only the birdsongs and the sounds of distant traffic on The Headrow and Park Lane remained. “I suppose he swept me off my feet,” she went on. “It was about seven years ago, and I was just a young art school graduate without a career, still wet behind the ears, hanging out with the artsy crowd in bars and arguing philosophy in Queen Street West pubs and coffeehouses, thinking one day some rich patron would appear and discover my genius. I’d had a few affairs in college, slept with a few boys, nothing satisfactory, then along came this tall, dark, intelligent, handsome man in an Armani suit who wanted to take me to concerts and expensive restaurants. It wasn’t the money. That wasn’t it at all. Not even the restaurants. I wasn’t even eating much then. It was his style, his panache, I suppose. He dazzled me.”

“And did he prove to be the patron of the arts you’d been dreaming of?”

Maggie looked down at the scuffed knees of her jeans. “Not really. Bill was never very much interested in the arts. Oh, we had all the requisite subscriptions: symphony, ballet, opera. But somehow I…”

“Somehow you what?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I’m being unfair. But I think maybe it was just some sort of a business thing. Being seen. Like going to a client’s box at the Skydome. I mean, he’d be excited about going to the opera, for example, take ages getting dressed up in his tux and fuss about what he wanted me to wear, then we’d have drinks in the members’ bar beforehand, rub shoulders with colleagues and clients, all the local bigwigs. But I just got the impression that the music itself bored him.”

“Did any problems manifest themselves early on in your relationship?”

Maggie twisted her sapphire ring around her finger, the “freedom” ring she had bought after she had thrown Bill’s wedding and engagement rings into Lake Ontario. “Well,” she said, “it’s easy to identify things as problems in retrospect, isn’t it? Claim that you saw it coming, or should have, after you’ve found out where things were leading. They might not have seemed strange at the time, might they?”

“Try.”

Maggie continued twisting at her ring. “Well, I suppose the main problem was Bill’s jealousy.”

“About what?”

“Most things, really. He was very possessive, he didn’t like me talking to other men for too long at parties, that sort of thing. But mostly he was jealous of my friends.”

“The artists?”

“Yes. You see, he never had much time for them, he thought them all a bunch of deadbeats, losers, and he felt he’d somehow rescued me from them.” She laughed. “And they, on their part, didn’t want to mix with corporate lawyers in Armani suits.”

“But you continued to see your friends?”

“Oh, yes. Sort of.”

“And how did Bill react to this?”

“He used to make fun of them to me, put them down, criticize them. He called them pseudo-intellectuals, no-brainers and layabouts. If we ever met any of them when we were together, he’d just stand there, looking up at the sky, shifting from foot to foot, glancing at his Rolex, whistling. I can see him now.”

“Did you defend them?”

“Yes. For a while. Then there seemed no point.” Maggie remained silent for a moment, then she went on. “You have to remember that I was head over heels in love with Bill. He took me to movie premieres. We’d go for weekends in New York, stay at the Plaza, take horse-and-buggy rides in Central Park, go to cocktail parties full of stockbrokers and CEOs, you name it. There was a romantic side to it all. Once we even flew down to L.A. for a movie premiere the firm’s entertainment lawyers had been involved with. We went to the party, too, and Sean Connery was there. Can you believe it? I actually met Sean Connery!”

“How did you handle all this high living?”

“I fit in well enough. I was good at mixing with them – businessmen, lawyers, entrepreneurs, the movers and shakers. Believe it or not, many of them are far more cultured than the artsy crowd thinks. A lot of them sponsored corporate art collections. My friends believed that everyone in a suit was dull and conservative, and a philistine to boot. But you can’t always go by appearances. I knew that. I think they were being very immature about it all. I think Bill saw me as a positive enhancement to his career, but he saw my friends as dead weights that would drag me down with them if they could. Maybe him, too, if we weren’t careful. And I didn’t feel anywhere near as uncomfortable in his world as he did in mine. I began to feel I’d only been playing the starving artist role, anyway.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, my dad’s a pretty important architect, and we always moved in elevated circles. Traveled around the continent a fair bit on commissions, too, when I was younger, just after we emigrated from England. Sometimes, if it was school holidays, he’d take me with him. So I didn’t come from a blue collar background, or a bohemian one. Dad appreciates the arts, but he’s very conservative. And we weren’t poor. Anyway, as time went on, I suppose I began to agree with Bill. He wore down my defenses, like he did in a lot of other ways. I mean, all my friends seemed to do was drift from one social security check to the next without making any attempt to do anything because it would compromise their precious art. The greatest sin in our crowd was to sell out.”

“Which you did?”

Maggie stared out of the window for a moment. The blossoms were falling from the trees in slow motion. She suddenly felt cold and hugged herself. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I did. As far as my friends were concerned I was lost to them. I’d been seduced by the almighty dollar. And all because of Bill. At one of his firm’s parties I met a small publisher who was looking for an illustrator for a children’s book. I showed him my work and he loved it. I got the job, then that led to another, and so on.”

“How did Bill react to your success?”

“He was pleased at first. Thrilled. Proud that the publisher liked my work, proud when the book was published. He bought copies for all his nephews and nieces, his clients’ kids. His boss. Dozens of copies. And he was pleased that it was because of him all this had happened. As he never ceased to tell me, it would never have happened if I’d chosen to stay with my deadbeat friends.”

“This was at first. What about later?”

Maggie felt herself shrinking in the chair, her voice becoming smaller. “That was different. Later, after we were married and Bill still hadn’t made partner, I think he started to resent my success. He started referring to art as my ‘little hobby’ and suggested I might have to give it up at any time and start having babies.”

“But you chose not to have babies?”

“No. I had no choice. I can’t have babies.” Maggie felt herself slipping down the rabbit hole, just like Alice, darkness closing around her.

“Margaret! Margaret!”

She could hear Dr. Simms’s voice only as if from a great distance, echoing. With great effort, she struggled up toward it, toward the light, and felt herself burst out like a drowning person from the water, gasping for air.

“Margaret, are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m… I… But it wasn’t me,” she said, aware of the tears flowing down her cheeks. “It isn’t me who can’t have babies. Bill can’t. It’s Bill. It’s something to do with his sperm count.”

Dr. Simms gave Maggie a little time to dry her eyes, calm down and compose herself.

When she had done so, Maggie laughed at herself. “He used to have to masturbate into a Tupperware container and take it in for testing. Somehow that seemed so… well, Tupperware, I mean, it all seemed so Leave It to Beaver.”

“Pardon?”

“An old American TV program. Mom at home, pop at the office. Apple pie. Happy families. Perfect children.”

“I see. Couldn’t you have adopted a child?”

Maggie was back out in the light now. Only it felt too bright. “No,” she said. “That wouldn’t do for Bill. The child wouldn’t be his then, you see. No more than if I’d had someone else’s sperm in artificial insemination.”

“Did the two of you discuss what to do?”

“At first, yes. But not after he found out it was his physical problem, and not mine. After that, if I ever mentioned children again, he hit me.”

“And around this time he came to resent your success?”

“Yes. Even to the point of committing little acts of sabotage so I’d be behind on a deadline. You know, throwing away some of my colors or brushes, misplacing an illustration or a package for the courier, accidentally wiping images from the computer, from my computer, forgetting to tell me about an important phone call, that sort of thing.”

“So at this time he wanted to have children but discovered that he couldn’t father any, and he also wanted to be a partner in his law firm, but he didn’t get to be?”

“That’s right. But that’s no excuse for what he did to me.”

Dr. Simms smiled. “True, Margaret. Very true. But it’s a pretty volatile combination, don’t you think? I’m not making excuses, but can you imagine the stress he must have been under, how it might have triggered his violent feelings?”

“I couldn’t see it coming at the time. How could I?”

“No, you couldn’t. No one could expect you to. It’s as you said. Hindsight. Retrospect.” She leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs and looked at the clock. “Now, I think that’s enough for today, don’t you?”

Now was the time. “I’ve got a question,” Maggie blurted out. “Not about me.”

Dr. Simms raised her eyebrows and looked at her watch.

“It won’t take a minute. Honest it won’t.”

“All right,” said Dr. Simms. “Ask away.”

“Well, it’s this friend of mine. Not really a friend, I suppose, because she’s too young, just a schoolgirl, but she drops by, you know, on her way home from school.”

“Yes?”

“Claire’s her name, Claire Toth. Claire was a friend of Kimberley Myers.”

“I know who Kimberley Myers was. I read the newspapers. Go on.”

“They were friends. They went to the same school. Both of them knew Terence Payne. He was their biology teacher.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“And she felt responsible, you know, for Kimberley. They were supposed to walk home together that night, but a boy asked Claire to dance. A boy she liked, and…”

“And her friend walked home alone. To her death?”

“Yes,” said Maggie.

“You said you had a question to ask me.”

“I haven’t seen Claire since she told me this on Monday afternoon. I’m worried about her. Psychologically, I mean. What would something like this do to someone like her?”

“Not knowing the girl in question, I can’t possibly say,” said Dr. Simms. “It depends on her inner resources, on her self-image, on family support, on many things. Besides, it seems to me that there are two separate issues here.”

“Yes?”

“First, the girl’s proximity to the criminal and to one victim in particular, and second, her feeling of responsibility, of guilt. As far as the first is concerned, I can offer a few general considerations.”

“Please do.”

“First of all, tell me how you feel about it all.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“I… I don’t know yet. Afraid, I suppose. Not so trusting. He was my neighbor, after all. I don’t know. I haven’t been able to work it all out yet.”

Dr. Simms nodded. “Your friend probably feels the same way. Mostly confused for the moment. Only she’s younger than you, and she probably has fewer defenses. She’ll certainly be more mistrustful of people. After all, this man was her teacher, a figure of respect and authority. Handsome, well-dressed, with a nice house and a pretty young wife. He didn’t look at all like the sort of monster we usually associate in our minds with crimes such as these. And she’ll experience a heightened sense of paranoia. She may not feel comfortable going out alone, for example, may feel she’s being stalked or watched. Or her parents might not let her go out. Sometimes parents take control in these situations, especially if they feel they’ve been guilty of any sort of neglect.”

“So her parents might be keeping her at home? Keeping her from visiting me?”

“It’s possible.”

“What else?”

“From what I can gather so far, these are sex crimes, and as such they are bound to have some effect on a vulnerable young schoolgirl’s burgeoning sexuality. Exactly what effect is hard to say. It takes different people different ways. Some girls might become more childlike, suppress their sexuality, because they think that will afford them some kind of protection. Others may even become more promiscuous because being good girls didn’t help the victims. I can’t tell you which way she’ll go.”

“I’m sure Claire wouldn’t become promiscuous.”

“She may become withdrawn and preoccupied with the case. I think it’s most important that she doesn’t keep these feelings bottled up, that she struggles to understand what happened. I know that’s difficult, even for us adults, but we can help her.”

“How?”

“By accepting its effect on her but also reassuring her that it was some sort of aberration, not the natural course of things. There’s little doubt the effects will be deep and long-lasting, but she will have to learn how to readjust to the way her worldview has altered.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re always saying that teenagers feel immortal, but any immortality your friend felt she had will have been stripped away by what’s happened. That’s a hard adjustment to make, that what happened to someone close to you could happen to you, too. And the full horror of it hasn’t even come out yet.”

“What can I do?”

“Probably nothing,” said Dr. Simms. “You can’t make her come to you, but if she does you should encourage her to talk, be a good listener. But don’t push her, and don’t try to tell her how to feel.”

“Should she be seeing a psychologist?”

“Probably. But that’s her decision. Or her parents’.”

“Could you recommend someone? I mean, if they’re interested.”

Dr. Simms wrote a name on a slip of paper. “She’s good,” she said. “Now, off you go. I’ve got my next patient waiting.”

They arranged another appointment and Maggie walked out into Park Square thinking about Claire and Kimberley and human monsters. That numb sensation had come back, the feeling that the world was at a distance, through mirrors and filters, cotton wool, through the wrong end of the telescope. She felt like an alien in human form. She wanted to go back to where she came from, but she didn’t know where it was anymore.

She walked down to City Square, past the statue of the Black Prince and the nymphs bearing their torches, then she leaned against the wall near the bus stop on Boar Lane and lit a cigarette. The elderly woman beside her gave her a curious look. Why was it, Maggie wondered, that she always felt worse after these sessions with Dr. Simms than she did before she went?

The bus arrived. Maggie trod out her cigarette and got on.