Aftermath

11

The drive to Eastvale went smoothly enough. Banks ordered an unmarked car and driver from Millgarth and left through a side exit with Julia Ford and Lucy Payne. They didn’t run into any reporters. During the journey Banks sat in the front with the driver, a young female DC, and Julia Ford and Lucy Payne sat in the back. Nobody spoke a word. Banks was preoccupied by the discovery of another body in the Payne’s back garden, news he had just received from Stefan Nowak on his mobile as they set off from the infirmary. That made one body too many, and by the sound of it, he didn’t think this one was Leanne Wray’s either.

Occasionally, Banks caught a glimpse of Lucy in the rearview mirror and saw that she was mostly gazing out of the window. He couldn’t read her expression. Just to be on the safe side, they entered the Eastvale Police Station through the rear entrance. Banks settled Lucy and Julia in an interview room and went to his office, where he walked over to the window and lit a cigarette and prepared himself for the coming interview.

He had been so preoccupied with the extra body on the journey up that he had hardly noticed it was another gorgeous day out there. There were plenty of cars and coaches parked on the cobbled market square, family groups milling about, holding on to their children’s hands, women with cardigans fastened loosely by the sleeves around their necks, just in case a cool breeze sprang up, clutching umbrellas against the possibility of rain. Why is it we English can never quite entrust ourselves to believe that fine weather will last? Banks wondered. We’re always expecting the worst. That was why the forecasters covered all bases: sunny with cloudy periods and chance of a shower.

The interview room smelled of disinfectant because its last inhabitant, a drunken seventeen-year-old joyrider, had puked up a take-away pizza all over the floor. Other than that, the room was clean enough, though very little light filtered in through the high barred window. Banks inserted tapes in the machine, tested them, and then went through the immediate formalities of time, date and those present.

“Right, Lucy,” he said when he’d finished. “Ready to begin?”

“If you like.”

“How long have you been living in Leeds?”

“What?”

Banks repeated the question. Lucy looked puzzled by it but said, “Four years, more or less. Ever since I started working at the bank.”

“And you came from Hull, from your foster parents Clive and Hilary Liversedge?”

“Yes. You know that already.”

“Just getting the background clear, Lucy. Where did you live before then?”

Lucy started to fidget with her wedding ring. “Alderthorpe,” she said quietly. “I lived at number four Spurn Road.”

“And your parents?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, they lived there, too.”

Banks sighed. “Don’t play games with me, Lucy. This is a serious business.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Lucy snapped. “You drag me out of hospital all the way up here for no reason, and then you start asking about my childhood. You’re not a psychiatrist.”

“I’m just interested, that’s all.”

“Well, it wasn’t very interesting. Yes, they abused me, and yes, I was taken into care. The Liversedges were good to me, but it’s not as if they were my real parents or anything. When the time came, I wanted to go out on my own in the world, put my childhood behind me and make my own way. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“No,” said Banks. He wanted to find out more about Lucy’s childhood, especially the events that occurred when she was twelve, but he knew he wasn’t likely to find out much from her. “Is that why you changed your name from Linda Godwin to Lucy Liversedge?”

“Yes. Reporters kept bothering me. The Liversedges arranged it with the social services.”

“What made you choose to move to Leeds?”

“That’s where the job was.”

“The first one you applied for?”

“That I really wanted. Yes.”

“Where did you live?”

“I had a flat off Tong Road at first. When Terry got the job at Silverhill, we bought the house on The Hill. The one you say I can’t go back to, even though it’s my home. I suppose you expect me to keep making the mortgage payments while your men rip the place apart, too?”

“You moved in together before you were married?”

“We already knew we were getting married. It was such a good deal at the time that we’d have been fools to turn it down.”

“When did you marry Terry?”

“Just last year. The twenty-second of May. We’d been going out together since the summer before.”

“How did you meet him?”

“What does that matter?”

“I’m just curious. Surely it’s a harmless question.”

“In a pub.”

“Which pub?”

“I can’t remember what it was called. It was a big one, though, with live music.”

“Where was it?”

“Seacroft.”

“Was he by himself?”

“I think so. Why?”

“Did he chat you up?”

“Not in so many words. I don’t remember.”

“Did you ever stay at his flat?”

“Yes, of course I did. It wasn’t wrong. We were in love. We were going to get married. We were engaged.”

“Even then?”

“It was love at first sight. You might not believe me, but it was. We’d only been going out two weeks when he bought me my engagement ring. It cost nearly a thousand pounds.”

“Did he have other girlfriends?”

“Not when we met.”

“But before?”

“I suppose so. I didn’t make a fuss about it. I assumed he’s led a pretty normal life.”

“Normal?”

“Why not?”

“Did you ever see any evidence of other women in his flat?”

“No.”

“What were you doing in Seacroft when you lived off Tong Road? It’s a long way.”

“We’d just finished a week’s training course in town and one of the girls said it was a good place for a night out.”

“Had you heard of the man the papers at the time called the Seacroft Rapist?”

“Yes. Everybody had.”

“But it didn’t stop you going to Seacroft.”

“You have to live your life. You can’t let fear get the better of you, or a woman wouldn’t even dare go out of the house alone.”

“That’s true enough,” said Banks. “So you never suspected that this man you met might be the Seacroft Rapist?”

“Terry? No, of course not. Why should I?”

“Was there nothing at all in Terry’s behavior that gave you cause for concern?”

“No. We were in love.”

“But he abused you. You admitted this the last time we talked.”

She looked away. “That came later.”

“How much later?”

“I don’t know. Christmas, maybe.”

“Last Christmas?”

“Yes. Around then. But it wasn’t like that all the time. Afterward, he was wonderful. He always felt guilty. He’d buy me presents. Flowers. Bracelets. Necklaces. I really wish I had them with me now to remember him by.”

“In time, Lucy. So he always made up to you after he hit you?”

“Yes, he was wonderful to me for days.”

“Was he drinking more these past few months?”

“Yes. He was out more, too. I didn’t see him as much.”

“Where was he?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t you ever ask him?”

Lucy looked away demurely, turning her bruised side on him. Banks got the message.

“I think we can move on, can’t we, Superintendent,” said Julia Ford. “My client’s clearly getting upset with this line of questioning.”

Pity for her, Banks wanted to say, but he had plenty more ground to cover. “Very well.” He turned to Lucy again. “Did you have anything to do with the abduction, rape and murder of Kimberley Myers?”

Lucy met his gaze, but he couldn’t see anything in her dark eyes; if the eyes were the windows of the soul, then Lucy Payne’s were made of tinted glass and her soul wore sunglasses. “No, I didn’t,” she said.

“What about Melissa Horrocks?”

“No. I had nothing to do with any of them.”

“How many were there, Lucy?”

“You know how many.”

“Tell me.”

“Five. That’s what I read in the papers, anyway.”

“What did you do with Leanne Wray?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Where is she, Lucy? Where’s Leanne Wray? Where did you and Terry bury her? What made her different from the others?”

Lucy looked in consternation at Julia Ford. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” she said. “Ask him to stop.”

“Superintendent,” Julia said, “my client has already made it clear she knows nothing about this person. I think you should move on.”

“Did your husband ever mention any of these girls?”

“No, Terry never mentioned any of them.”

“Did you ever go in that cellar, Lucy?”

“You’ve asked me all this before.”

“I’m giving you a chance to change your answer, to go on record.”

“I told you, I don’t remember. I might have done, but I don’t remember. I’ve got retrograde amnesia.”

“Who told you that?”

“My doctor at the hospital.”

“Dr. Landsberg?”

“Yes. It’s part of my post-traumatic shock disorder.”

It was the first Banks had heard of it. Dr. Landsberg had told him she was no expert on the subject. “Well, I’m very glad you can put a name to what’s wrong with you. On how many occasions might you have gone down in the cellar, if you could remember?”

“Just the once.”

“When?”

“The day it happened. When I got put in hospital. Early last Monday morning.”

“So you admit that you may have gone down there?”

“If you say so. I can’t remember. If I ever did go down, it was then.”

“It’s not me who says so, Lucy. It’s the scientific evidence. The lab found traces of Kimberley Myers’s blood on the sleeves of your dressing gown. How did it get there?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“There’s only two ways it could have got there: either before she was in the cellar or after she was in the cellar. Which is it, Lucy?”

“It must be after.”

“Why?”

“Because I never saw her before.”

“But she didn’t live far away. Hadn’t you seen her around?”

“In the street, maybe. Or the shops. Yes. But I never talked to her.”

Banks paused and shuffled some papers in front of him. “So you admit now that you might have been in the cellar?”

“But I don’t remember.”

“What do you think might have happened, hypothetically speaking?”

“Well, I might have heard a noise.”

“What sort of noise?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy paused and put her hand to her throat. “A scream, maybe.”

“The only screams Maggie Forrest heard were yours.”

“Well, maybe you could only hear it if you were inside the house. Maybe it came up from the cellar. When Maggie heard me I was in the hall.”

“You remember that? Being in the hall?”

“Only very vaguely.”

“Go on.”

“So I might have heard a noise and gone down to investigate.”

“Even though you knew it was Terry’s private den and he’d kill you if you did?”

“Yes. Maybe I was disturbed enough.”

“By what?”

“By what I heard.”

“But the cellar was very well soundproofed, Lucy, and the door was closed when the police got there.”

“Then I don’t know. I’m just trying to find a reason.”

“Go on. What might you have found there if you did go down?”

“That girl. I might have gone over to her to see if there was anything I could do.”

“What about the yellow fibers?”

“What about them?”

“They were from the plastic clothesline that was wrapped around Kimberley Myers’s neck. The pathologist determined ligature strangulation by that line as cause of death. Fibers were also embedded in Kimberley’s throat.”

“I must have tried to get it off her.”

“Do you remember doing this?”

“No, I’m still imagining how it might have happened.”

“Go on.”

“Then Terry must have found me and chased me upstairs and then hit me.”

“Why didn’t he drag you back down the cellar and kill you, too?”

“I don’t know. He was my husband. He loved me. He couldn’t just kill me like…”

“Like some teenage girl?”

“Superintendent,” Julia Ford cut in, “I don’t think speculation about what Mr. Payne did or didn’t do is relevant here. My client says she might have gone down in the cellar and surprised her husband at… at whatever he was doing, and thus provoked him. That should explain your findings. It should also be enough.”

“But you said Terry would kill you if you went in the cellar. Why didn’t he?” Banks persisted.

“I don’t know. Maybe he was going to. Maybe he had something else to do first.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Kill Kimberley?”

“Maybe.”

“But wasn’t she already dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Get rid of her body?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I was unconscious.”

“Oh, come on, Lucy! This is rubbish,” said Banks. “The next thing you’ll be trying to convince me is you did it while you were sleep-walking. You killed Kimberley Myers, didn’t you, Lucy? You went down in the cellar and saw her lying there and you strangled her.”

“I didn’t! Why would I do a thing like that?”

“Because you were jealous. Terry wanted Kimberley more than he wanted you. He wanted to keep her.”

Lucy banged the table with her fist. “That’s not true! You’re making it up.”

“Well, why else did he have her staked out there naked on the mattress? To give her a biology lesson? It was quite a biology lesson, Lucy. He raped her repeatedly, both vaginally and anally. He forced her to fellate him. Then he – or someone – strangled her with a length of yellow plastic fiber clothesline.”

Lucy put her head in her hands and sobbed.

“Is this kind of gruesome detail really necessary?” asked Julia Ford.

“What’s wrong?” Banks asked her. “Afraid of the truth?”

“It’s just a bit over-the-top, that’s all.”

“Over-the-top? I’ll tell you what’s over the bloody top.” Banks pointed at Lucy. “Kimberley’s blood on the sleeves of her dressing gown. Yellow fibers under her fingernails. She killed Kimberley Myers.”

“It’s all circumstantial,” said Julia Ford. “Lucy’s already explained to you how it might have happened. She doesn’t remember. That’s not her fault. The poor woman was traumatized.”

“Either that or she’s a damn good actress,” said Banks.

“Superintendent!”

Banks turned back to Lucy. “Who are the other girls, Lucy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’ve found two unidentified bodies in the back garden. Skeletal remains, at any rate. That makes six altogether, including Kimberley. We were only looking into five disappearances, and we haven’t even found all of those yet. We don’t know these two. Who are they?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Did you ever go out in the car with your husband and pick up a teenage girl?”

The change of direction seemed to shock Lucy into silence, but she soon found her voice and regained her composure. “No, I did not.”

“So you knew nothing about the missing girls?”

“No. Only what I read in the papers. I told you. I didn’t go in the cellar and Terry certainly didn’t tell me. So how could I know?”

“How indeed?” Banks scratched the little scar beside his right eye. “I’m more concerned with how you could possibly not have known. The man you’re living with – your own husband – abducts and brings home six young girls that we know of so far, keeps them in the cellar for… God knows how long… while he rapes and tortures them, then he buries them either in the garden or in the cellar. And all this time you’re living in the house, only one floor away, two at the most, and you expect me to believe you didn’t know anything, didn’t even smell anything? Do I look as if was born yesterday, Lucy? I don’t see how you could fail to know.”

“I told you I never went down there.”

“Didn’t you notice when your husband was missing in the middle of the night?”

“No. I always sleep very heavily. I think Terry must have been giving me sleeping pills with my cocoa. That’s why I never noticed anything.”

“We didn’t find any sleeping pills at the house, Lucy.”

“He must have run out. That must be why I woke up on Monday morning and thought something was wrong. Or he forgot.”

“Did either of you have a prescription for sleeping tablets?”

“I didn’t. I don’t know if Terry did. Maybe he got them from a drug pusher.”

Banks made a note to look into the matter of sleeping tablets. “Why do you think he might have forgotten to drug you this time? Why did you go down to the cellar this time?” he went on. “What was so different about this time, about Kimberley? Was it because she was too close to home for comfort? Terry must have known he was taking a huge risk in abducting Kimberley, mustn’t he? Was he obsessed with her, Lucy? Was that it? Were the others merely practice, substitutes until he could no longer stop himself from taking the one he really wanted? How did you feel about that, Lucy? That Terry wanted Kimberley more than you, more than life itself, more than freedom?”

Lucy put her hands to her ears. “Stop it! It’s lies, all lies! I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand what’s going on. Why are you persecuting me like this?” She turned to Julia Ford. “Get me out of here now. Please! I don’t have to stay and listen to any more of this, do I?”

“No,” said Julia Ford, standing up. “You can leave whenever you like.”

“I don’t think so.” Banks stood up and took a deep breath. “Lucy Payne, I’m arresting you as an accessory in the murder of Kimberley Myers.”

“This is ludicrous,” shot Julia Ford. “It’s a travesty.”

“I don’t believe your client’s story,” said Banks. He turned to Lucy again. “You don’t have to say anything, Lucy, but if you fail to say something now that you later rely on in court, it might be held against you. Do you understand?”

Banks opened the door and got two uniformed officers to take her down to the custody officer. When they came toward her she turned pale.

“Please,” she said. “I’ll come back whenever you want. Please, I’m begging you, don’t lock me all alone in a dark cell!”

For the first time in his dealings with her, Banks got the sense that Lucy Payne was genuinely afraid. He remembered what Jenny had told him about the Alderthorpe Seven. Kept in cages without food for days. He almost faltered, but there was no going back now. He forced himself to remember Kimberley Myers spread-eagled on the bed in Lucy Payne’s dark cellar. Nobody had given her a chance. “The cells aren’t dark, Lucy,” he said. “They’re well-lit and very comfortable. They regularly get four stars in the police accommodation guide.”

Julia Ford gave him a disgusted look. Lucy shook her head. Banks nodded toward the guards. “Take her down.”

He’d managed it by the skin of his teeth, and he didn’t even feel as good about it as he had thought he would, but he’d got Lucy Payne where he wanted her for twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours to find some real evidence against her.

Annie felt only indifference toward Terence Payne’s corpse laid out naked on the steel autopsy table. It was simply the shell, the deceptive outer human form of an aberration, a changeling, a demon. Come to think about it, though, she wasn’t even certain she believed that. Terence Payne’s evil was all too human. Over the centuries men had raped and mutilated women, whether as acts of plunder in wartime, for dark pleasures in the back alleys and cheap rooms of decaying cities, in the isolation of the countryside, or in the drawing rooms of the rich. It hardly needed a demon in human form to do what men themselves already did so well.

She turned her attention to events at hand: Dr. Mackenzie’s close examination of the exterior of Terence Payne’s skull. Identity and time of death had not been a problem in this case: Payne had been pronounced dead by Dr. Mogabe at Leeds General Infirmary at 8:13 P.M. the previous evening. Naturally, Dr. Mackenzie would do a thorough job – his assistant had already carried out the weighing and measuring, and photographs and X rays had been taken – indeed, Annie guessed Mackenzie to be the kind of doctor who would do a thorough postmortem on a man shot dead right in front of his very eyes. It didn’t do to make assumptions.

The body was clean and ready for cutting, as there’s no man cleaner than one who has just been through surgery. Luckily, the police surgeon had been dispatched to take fingernail scrapings, bloodstained clothing and blood samples when Payne had first arrived at the infirmary, so no evidence had been lost due to the scruples of hospital hygiene.

At the moment, Annie was interested only in the blows to Payne’s head, and Dr. Mackenzie was paying particular attention to the cranium before performing the full postmortem. They had already examined the fractured wrist and determined that it was broken by a blow from PC Janet Taylor’s baton – which lay on the lab bench by the white-tiled wall – and there were also several defense bruises on Payne’s arms, where he had tried to ward off PC Taylor’s blows.

Unless Payne had been murdered by a nurse or doctor while he was in hospital, PC Janet Taylor’s actions were most likely directly responsible for his death. What had yet to be determined was just how culpable she was. An emergency operation to relieve a subdural hematoma had complicated matters, Dr. Mackenzie had told Annie, but it should be easy enough to separate the surgical procedure from the unskilled bludgeoning.

Payne’s head had already been shaved before his surgery, which made the injuries easier to identify. After a close examination, Mackenzie turned to Annie and said, “I’m not going to be able to tell you the exact sequence of blows, but there are some interesting clusters.”

“Clusters?”

“Yes. Come here. Look.”

Dr. Mackenzie pointed toward Payne’s left temple, which looked to Annie, with its shaved hair and bloody rawness, rather like a dead rat in a trap. “There are at least three distinct wounds overlapping here,” Dr. Mackenzie went on, tracing the outlines as he went, “from the first one – this indentation here – followed by a later wound superimposed and a third, here, which overlaps parts of both.”

“Could they have been delivered in quick succession?” Annie asked, remembering what Janet Taylor had told her about the flurry of blows, and the way she had imagined it all herself when she visited the scene.

“It’s possible,” Dr. Mackenzie admitted, “but I’d say any one of these blows would have incapacitated him for a while, and perhaps changed his position in relation to his attacker.”

“Can you explain?”

Dr. Mackenzie brought his hand around gently to the side of Annie’s head and pushed. She went with the light pressure and stepped back, head turned. When he reached out again, his hand was closer to the back of her head. “Had that been a real blow,” he said, “you would have been turned even farther away from me, and the blow would have stunned you. It might have taken you a little time to get back to the same position.”

“I see what you mean,” Annie said. “So that would lead you to believe that perhaps other blows came between?”

“Mmm. There’s the angles to consider, too. If you look very closely at the indentations, you’ll see that the first blow came when the victim was standing.” He glanced toward the baton. “See. The wound is relatively smooth and even, allowing for the differences in height between PC Taylor and the victim. I’ve measured the baton, by the way, and matched it closely to each wound, and that, along with the X rays, gives me a better idea of the victim’s position at the time of each blow.” He pointed again. “At least one of those blows to the temple was delivered when the victim was on his knees. You can see the way the impression deepens. It’s even clearer on the X ray.”

Dr. Mackenzie led Annie over to the X ray viewer on the wall, slipped in a sheet of film and turned on the light. He was right. When he pointed to it, Annie could see how the wound was deeper toward the back, indicating that the baton had come down at an angle. They went back to the table.

“Could he have got up again after a blow like that?” Annie asked.

“It’s possible. There’s no telling with head wounds. People have been known to walk around for days with a bullet in their brains. The main problem would be the rate of blood loss. Head wounds bleed an awful lot. That’s why we usually leave the brain until last in a postmortem. Most of the blood has drained off by then. Less messy.”

“What are you going to do with Payne’s brain?” Annie asked. “Keep it for scientific study?”

Dr. Mackenzie snorted. “I’d as soon read his character by the bumps on his head,” he said. “And speaking of which…” He asked his assistants to turn the body over. Annie saw another raw, pulpy area at the back of Payne’s head. She thought she could see splinters of bone sticking out, but realized she must be imagining things. Payne had been treated in hospital and they wouldn’t leave bone splinters sticking out of the back of his head. There was also some evidence of surgical stitching, which probably gave the impression of splinters. She only shivered because it was cold in the room, she told herself.

“These wounds were almost certainly inflicted when the victim was at an inferior level, say on his hands and knees, and they were delivered from behind.”

“As if he were moving away from his attacker on all fours, looking for something?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Mackenzie. “But it’s possible.”

“It’s just that at one point she says she hit him on the wrist and he dropped his machete, which she kicked into a corner. Apparently he went scrabbling after it on his hands and knees and she hit him again.”

“That would concur with this kind of injury,” Dr. Mackenzie conceded, “though I count three blows to the same general area: the brain stem, by the way, by far the most dangerous and vulnerable to attack.”

“She hit him there three times?”

“Yes.”

“Would he have been able to get up after that?”

“Again, I can’t say. A weaker man might well have been dead by then. Mr. Payne survived for three days. Perhaps he found his machete and got up again.”

“So that is a possible scenario?”

“I can’t rule it out. But look at these.” Dr. Mackenzie directed Annie’s attention toward the deep depressions at the top of the skull. “These two wounds, I can say with some certainty, were administered when the victim was in an inferior position to the attacker, perhaps sitting or squatting, given the angle, and they were administered with tremendous power.”

“What sort of power?”

Mackenzie stood back, raised both his arms high in the air, behind his head, and clasped his hands, then he brought them down as if wielding an imaginary hammer with all his might on to the head of an imaginary victim. “Like that,” he said. “And there was no resistance.”

Annie swallowed. Damn. This was turning into a real bugger of a case.

Elizabeth Bell, the social worker in charge of the Alderthorpe Seven investigation, hadn’t retired, but she had changed jobs and relocated to York, which made it easy for Jenny to drop in on her after a quick stop by her office at the university. She found a narrow parking spot several doors away from the terrace house off Fulford Road, not far from the river, and managed to squeeze her car in without doing any damage.

Elizabeth answered the door as quickly as if she had been standing right behind it, though Jenny had been vague on the phone about her time of arrival. It hadn’t mattered, Elizabeth said, as Friday was her day off this week, the kids were at school and she had ironing to catch up with.

“You must be Dr. Fuller,” Elizabeth said.

“That’s me. But call me Jenny.”

Elizabeth led Jenny inside. “I still don’t know what you want to see me about, but do come on in.” She led Jenny into a small living room, made even smaller by the ironing board and basket of laundry balanced on a chair. Jenny could smell the lemon detergent and fabric softener, along with that warm and comforting smell of freshly ironed clothes. The television was on, showing an old black-and-white thriller starring Jack Warner. Elizabeth cleared a pile of folded clothes from the armchair and bade Jenny sit.

“Excuse the mess,” she said. “It’s such a tiny house, but they’re so expensive around here and we do so love the location.”

“Why did you move from Hull?”

“We’d been looking to move for a while, then Roger – that’s my husband – got a promotion. He’s a civil servant. Well, hardly all that civil, if you catch my drift.”

“What about you. Job, I mean?”

“Still the social. Only now I work down the benefits office. Do you mind if I carry on ironing while we talk? Only I’ve got to get it all done.”

“No. Not at all.” Jenny looked at Elizabeth. She was a tall, big-boned woman wearing jeans and a plaid button-down shirt. The knees of her jeans were stained, Jenny noticed, as if she had been gardening. Under her short, no-nonsense haircut, her face was hard and prematurely lined, but not without kindness, which showed in her eyes and in the expressions that suddenly softened the hardness as she spoke. “How many children do you have?” Jenny asked.

“Only two. William and Pauline.” She nodded toward a photograph of two children that stood on the mantelpiece: smiling in a playground. “Anyway, I’m intrigued. Why are you here? You didn’t tell me very much over the telephone.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to be mysterious, honestly. I’m here about the Alderthorpe Seven. I understand you were involved?”

“How could I forget. Why do you want to know? It was all over ten years ago.”

“Nothing’s ever ‘all over’ in my line of work,” said Jenny. She had debated how much to tell Elizabeth and had even spoken with Banks on the phone about this. Useful as ever, he had said, “As much as you have to, and as little as you need to.” Jenny had already asked Mr. and Mrs. Liversedge not to reveal Lucy’s true origins or name to reporters, but it wouldn’t be long before some bright spark came across a slip of paper or recognized a photo from the newspaper’s morgue. She knew that she and Banks had a very narrow window of opportunity in which to operate before trainloads of media people got off at York and Hull, and even found their way to sleepy little Alderthorpe. She took a risk that Elizabeth Bell wasn’t likely to tip them off, either.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked.

Elizabeth looked up from the shirt she was ironing. “If I have to. I have done before.”

“The person I’m interested in is Lucy Payne.”

“Lucy Payne?”

“Yes.”

“That name is familiar, but I’m afraid you’ll have to jog my memory.”

“It’s been in the news a lot recently. She was married to Terence Payne, the schoolteacher the police believe was responsible for the murder of six young girls.”

“Of course. Yes, I did see a mention in the paper, but I must admit that I don’t follow such things.”

“Understandable. Anyway, Lucy’s parents, Clive and Hilary Liversedge, turn out to be foster parents. Lucy was one of the Alderthorpe Seven. You’d probably remember her as Linda Godwin.”

“Good heavens.” Elizabeth paused, holding the iron in midair, as if traveling back in her memory. “Little Linda Godwin. The poor wee thing.”

“Perhaps now you can see why I asked you about keeping secrets?”

“The press would have a field day.”

“Indeed they would. Probably will, eventually.”

“They won’t find out anything from me.”

A worthwhile risk, then. “Good,” said Jenny.

“I think I’d better sit down.” Elizabeth propped the iron on its end and sat opposite Jenny. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you can tell me. How did it all begin, for a start?”

“It was a local schoolteacher who tipped us off,” said Elizabeth. “Maureen Nesbitt. She’d been suspicious about the state of some of the children for some time, and some of the things they said when they thought no one could overhear them. Then, when young Kathleen didn’t show up for school for a week and nobody had a reasonable explanation-”

“That would be Kathleen Murray?”

“You know about her?”

“I just did a bit of background research among old newspapers at the library. I know that Kathleen Murray was the one who died.”

“Was murdered. Should have been the Alderthorpe Six, as one of them was already dead by the time the whole thing blew up.”

“Where did Kathleen fit in?”

“There were two families involved: Oliver and Geraldine Murray, and Michael and Pamela Godwin. The Murrays had four children, ranging from Keith, age eleven, to Susan, age eight. The two in the middle were Dianne and Kathleen, age ten and nine respectively. The Godwins had three children: Linda, at twelve, was the eldest, then came Tom, who was ten, and Laura, nine.”

“Good Lord, it sounds complicated.”

Elizabeth grinned. “It gets worse. Oliver Murray and Pamela Godwin were brother and sister, and nobody was quite sure exactly who fathered whom. Extended-family abuse. It’s not as uncommon as it should be, especially in small, isolated communities. The families lived next door to one another in two semis in Alderthorpe, just far enough away from the other houses in the village to be guaranteed their privacy. It’s a remote enough part of the world to begin with. Have you ever been there?”

“Not yet.”

“You should. Just to get the feel of the place. It’s creepy.”

“I intend to. Were they true, then? The allegations.”

“The police would be able to tell you more about that. I was mostly responsible for separating the children and making sure they were cared for, getting them examined, and for fostering them, too, of course.”

“All of them?”

“I didn’t do it all on my own, but I was in overall charge, yes.”

“Did any of them ever go back to their parents?”

“No. Oliver and Geraldine Murray were charged with Kathleen’s murder and are still in jail, as far as I know. Michael Godwin committed suicide two days before the trial and his wife was declared unfit to stand trial. I believe she’s still in care. A mental institution, I mean.”

“There’s no doubt about who did what, then?”

“As I said, the police would know more about that than me, but… If ever I’ve come face-to-face with evil in my life, it was there, that morning.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened, it was just… I don’t know… the aura around the place.”

“Did you go inside?”

“No. The police wouldn’t let us. They said we’d only contaminate the scene. We had a van, a heated van, and they brought the children out to us.”

“What about the satanic angle? I understand it didn’t come up in court.”

“Wasn’t necessary, the lawyers said. Would only confuse things.”

“Was there any evidence?”

“Oh, yes, but if you ask me, it was nothing but a load of mumbo jumbo to justify drinking, drug-taking and abusing the children. The police found cocaine and marijuana in both houses, you know, along with some LSD, ketamine and Ecstasy.”

“Is that case why you gave up social work?”

Elizabeth paused before answering. “Partly, yes. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you like. But I was already close to burning out long before that. It takes it out of you, it does, dealing with ill-treated kids all the time. You lose sight of the humanity, the dignity of life. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so,” said Jenny. “Spending too much time with criminals has a similar effect.”

“But these were children. They had no choice.”

“I see what you mean.”

“You meet some proper losers down at the benefits office, believe me, but it’s not like child care.”

“What state was Lucy in?”

“Same as the rest. Dirty, hungry, bruised.”

“Sexually abused?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“What was she like?”

“Linda? Or I suppose I’d better start calling her Lucy from now on, hadn’t I? She was a sweet little thing. Shy and scared. Standing there with a blanket around her and that look on her face like a grubby little angel. She hardly said a word.”

“Could she speak?”

“Oh, yes. One of the children, Susan, I think, lost the use of her voice, but not Lucy. She’d been abused in just about every way imaginable, yet she was surprisingly resilient. She’d speak if she wanted to, but I never once saw her cry. In fact, she seemed to have assumed the role of caregiver to the younger ones, though she wasn’t in a position to offer much in the way of care. She was the eldest, at least, so maybe she could offer them some comfort. You’d know more about this than I do, but I guessed she was repressing the full horror of what she’d been through, holding it back. I often wondered what would become of her. I never suspected anything like this.”

“The problem is, Elizabeth-”

“Call me Liz, please. Everyone does.”

“Okay. Liz. The problem is that we just don’t know what Lucy’s role in all this is. She claims amnesia, and she was certainly abused by her husband. We’re trying to find out whether she knew anything about his other activities, or to what degree she might have been involved.”

“You can’t be serious! Lucy involved in something like that? Surely her own experiences-”

“I know it sounds crazy, Liz, but the abused often become the abusers. It’s all they know. Power, pain, withholding, tormenting. It’s a familiar cycle. Studies have shown that abused children as young as eight or ten have gone on to abuse their younger siblings or neighbors.”

“But not Lucy, surely?”

“We don’t know. That’s why I’m asking questions, trying to fit the psychology together, build a profile of her. Is there anything more you can tell me?”

“Well, as I said, she was quiet, resilient, and the other children, the younger ones, seemed to defer to her.”

“Were they afraid of her?”

“I can’t say I got that impression.”

“But they took notice of her?”

“Yes. She was definitely the boss.”

“What else can you tell me about Lucy’s personality then?”

“Let me think… not much, really. She was a very private person. She’d only let you see what she wanted you to see. You have to realize that these children were probably as much, if not more, shaken up by the raid, by being taken from their parents so abruptly. That was all they knew, after all. It might have been hell, but it was a familiar hell. Lucy always seemed gentle, but like most children she could be cruel on occasion.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t mean torturing animals or that sort of thing,” said Elizabeth. “I assume that is the sort of thing you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

“Such early patterns of behavior can be a useful guide, but I’ve always thought they were overrated, myself. To be honest, I once pulled the wings off a fly myself. No, I just want to know about her. How could she be cruel, for example?”

“When we were arranging for foster parents, for example, you realize it was impossible to keep the siblings together, so they had to be split up. It was more important at the time that each child have a stable, possibly long-term caring environment. Anyway, I remember Laura, in particular – Lucy’s younger sister – was upset, but all Lucy said was she’d just have to get used to it. The poor girl just wouldn’t stop crying.”

“Where did she end up?”

“Laura? With a family in Hull, I believe. It’s a long time ago, so forgive me if I don’t remember all the details.”

“Of course. Can you tell me what happened to any of the other children at all?”

“I’m afraid I left there shortly after, so I never got to keep track of them. I often wish I had, but…”

“Is there anything more you can tell me?”

Elizabeth stood up and went back to her ironing. “Not that I can think of.”

Jenny stood up, took her card from her purse and handed it over. “If you think of anything at all…”

Elizabeth peered at the card and set it on the edge of the ironing board. “Yes, of course. I’m only too glad to have been of help.”

But she didn’t look it, Jenny thought as she maneuvered her car out of the tiny parking spot. Elizabeth Bell had looked like a woman forced to confront memories she would sooner forget. And Jenny didn’t blame her. She didn’t know if she’d learned anything much of value except confirmation that satanic paraphernalia had been found in the cellar. Banks would certainly be interested in that. Tomorrow, she would go all the way to Alderthorpe and see if she could find anyone who knew the families before the investigation, and, as Elizabeth had suggested, to “get the feel of the place.”