Aftermath

13

Banks found chaos outside Western Divisional Headquarters early Saturday morning. Even at the back, where the entrance to the car park was located, reporters and camera-wielding television news teams pushed against one another and shouted out questions about Lucy Payne. Banks cursed to himself, turned off the Dylan CD half-way through “Not Dark Yet” and edged his way carefully but firmly through the throng.

Inside, things were quieter. Banks slipped into his office and looked out of the window over the market square. More reporters. TV station vans with satellite dishes. The works. Someone had well and truly let the cat out of the bag. First, Banks walked into the detectives’ squad room looking for answers. DCs Jackman and Templeton were at their desks, and Annie Cabbot was bending over the low drawer in the filing cabinet, a heartwarming sight in her tight black jeans, Banks thought, remembering they had a date that night. Dinner, video and…

“What the hell’s going on out there?” he asked the room in general.

Annie looked up. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“Didn’t you see her?”

“What are you talking about?”

Kevin Templeton and Winsome Jackman kept their heads down, leaving this one well alone.

Annie put her hands on her hips. “Last night, on the television.”

“I was over in Withernsea interviewing a retired copper about Lucy Payne. What did I miss?”

Annie walked over to her desk and rested her hip against the edge. “The neighbor, Maggie Forrest, was involved in a television discussion about domestic violence.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Indeed. She ended up by accusing us of persecuting Lucy Payne because we can’t wreak our revenge on her husband, and she informed the viewers in general that Lucy was being detained here.”

“Julia Ford,” Banks whispered.

“Who?”

“The lawyer. I’ll bet she’s the one told Maggie where we were holding Lucy. Christ, what a mess.”

“Oh, by the way,” Annie said with a smile, “AC Hartnell’s already phoned twice. Asked if you’d ring him as soon as you get in.”

Banks headed for his office. Before phoning Phil Hartnell, he opened his window as wide as it would go and lit a cigarette. Bugger the rules; it was shaping up to be one of those days, and it had only just begun. Banks should have known Maggie Forrest was a loose cannon, that his warning might well just egg her on to more foolish behavior. But what else could he do about her? Not much, apparently. She hadn’t committed a criminal offense, and certainly there was nothing to be gained by going around and telling her off again. Still, if he did happen to see her for any reason, he’d give her a piece of his mind. She had no idea what she was playing with.

When he calmed down, he sat at his desk and reached for the phone, but it rang before he could pick it up and dial Hartnell’s number.

“Alan? Stefan here.”

“I hope you’ve got some good news for me, Stefan, because the way this morning’s going I could do with some.”

“That bad?”

“Getting that way.”

“Maybe this’ll cheer you up, then. I just got the DNA comparison in from the lab.”

“And?”

“A match. Terence Payne was your Seacroft Rapist, all right.”

Banks slapped the desk. “Excellent. Anything else?”

“Only minor points. The lads going through all the documents and bills taken from the house have found no evidence of sleeping tablets prescribed for either Terence or Lucy Payne, and they didn’t find any illegal ones, either.”

“As I thought.”

“They did find an electronics catalog, though, from one of those places that put you on their mailing list when you buy something from them.”

“What did they buy?”

“There’s no record of their buying anything on their credit cards, but we’ll approach the company and get someone to go through the purchases, see if they used cash. And another thing: There were some marks on the floor of the cellar that on further investigation look rather like those a tripod would make. I’ve talked with Luke and he didn’t use a tripod, so-”

“Someone else did.”

“Looks that way.”

“Then where the hell is it?”

“No idea.”

“Okay, Stefan, thanks for the good news. Keep looking.”

“Will do.”

As soon as he’d hung up, Banks dialed Hartnell’s number. The man himself answered on the second ring.

“Area Commander Hartnell.”

“It’s Alan,” said Banks. “Heard you’ve been trying to get in touch with me.”

“Did you see it?”

“No. I’ve only just found out. The place is swarming with media.”

“Surprise, surprise. The stupid woman. What’s the situation with Lucy Payne?”

“I talked to her yesterday, got nowhere.”

“Any more evidence?”

“Not evidence, as such.” Banks told him about the Seacroft Rapist DNA match, the possibility of a camcorder still being hidden somewhere on the Paynes’ property, and his talk with George Woodward about the satanic paraphernalia in Alderthorpe and the ligature strangulation of Kathleen Murray.

“It’s nothing,” said Hartnell. “Certainly not evidence against Lucy Payne. For Christ’s sake, Alan, she was a victim of the most appalling abuse. I remember that Alderthorpe case. We don’t want all that raked up. Think what it will look like if we start suggesting she killed her own bloody cousin when she was only twelve.”

“I thought I might use it to push her a bit, see where she goes.”

“You know as well as I do that blood and fibers aren’t enough, and as far as evidence goes, they’re all we’ve got. This speculation about her past will do nothing but gain her more sympathy from the public.”

“There are probably as many people outraged by the crimes and thinking maybe she had more to do with them than she admits.”

“Probably, but they’re nowhere near as vocal as the people who’ve already been phoning Millgarth, believe me. Cut her loose, Alan.”

“But-”

“We caught our killer and he’s dead. Let her go. We can’t hold her any longer.”

Banks looked at his watch. “We’ve still got four hours. Something might turn up.”

“Nothing will turn up in the next four hours, believe me. Release her.”

“What about surveillance?”

“Too bloody expensive. Tell the local police to keep an eye on her, and tell her to stick around; we might want to talk to her again.”

“If she’s guilty, she’ll disappear.”

“If she’s guilty we’ll find the evidence and then we’ll find her.”

“Let me have one more shot at her first.” Banks held his breath as Hartnell paused at the other end.

“All right. Talk to her one more time. If she doesn’t confess, let her go. But be bloody careful. I don’t want any allegations of Gestapo interrogation tactics.”

Banks heard a knock at his door, put his hand over the mouthpiece and called out, “Come in.”

Julia Ford entered and gave him a broad smile.

“No worry on that score, sir,” Banks said to Hartnell. “Her lawyer will be present at all times.”

“Quite the zoo out there, isn’t it?” Julia Ford said after Banks had hung up. The fine lines around her eyes crinkled when she smiled. She was wearing a different suit this morning – gray with a pearl blouse – but it looked every bit as business-like. Her hair looked shiny, as if fresh from the shower, and she had applied just enough makeup to take a few years off her age.

“Yes,” Banks answered. “Looks as if someone tipped the entire British media off about Lucy’s whereabouts.”

“Are you going to let her go?”

“Soon. I want another chat first.”

Julia sighed and opened the door for him. “Ah, well. Once more unto the breach.”

Hull and beyond were parts of Yorkshire Jenny hardly knew at all. On her map there was a tiny village called Kilnsea right at the southern tip of land where the Humber joined the North Sea, just before a thin strip called Spurn Head, designated as a heritage coast, stuck out into the sea like a witch’s crooked, wizened finger. It looked so desolate out there that Jenny shuddered just looking at the map, feeling the ceaseless cold wind and the biting salt spray she imagined were all one would find there.

Was it named Spurn Head because someone was spurned there once, she wondered, and her ghost lingered, walking the sands and wailing in the night, or because “spurn” was a corruption of “sperm” and it looked a bit like a sperm wiggling out to sea? It was probably something much more prosaic, like “peninsula” in Viking. Jenny wondered if anybody ever went there. Birders, perhaps; they were crazy enough to go anywhere in search of the elusive lesser-speckled yellow tree warbler, or some such creature. It didn’t look as if there were any holiday resorts in the region, except perhaps Withernsea, which Banks had visited yesterday. All the hot spots were much farther north: Bridlington, Filey, Scarborough, Whitby, all the way up to Saltburn and Redcar, in Teeside.

It was a fine day: windy, but sunny with only an occasional high white cloud passing over. It wasn’t exactly warm – definitely light-jacket weather – but then it wasn’t freezing, either. Jenny seemed to be the only car on the road beyond Patrington, where she stopped briefly for a cup of coffee and a look at St. Patrick’s Church, reputed to be one of the finest village churches in England.

It was desolate country, mostly flat farmland, green fields and the occasional flash of bright yellow rapeseed. What villages she passed through were no more than mean assemblages of bungalows and the odd row of redbrick terraces. Soon, the surrealistic landscape of the North Sea Gas Terminal, with its twisted metal pipes and storage units, came into view, and Jenny headed up the coast toward Alderthorpe.

She had been thinking about Banks quite a lot during her journey and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t happy. She didn’t know why. Apart from Sandra’s pregnancy, which was obviously upsetting to him for any number of reasons, he had everything to be thankful for. For a start, his career was back on track, and he had an attractive young girlfriend. At least she assumed that Annie was attractive.

But perhaps it was Annie who was making Banks unhappy? He had never seemed quite certain of their relationship whenever Jenny had questioned him. She had assumed that was mostly due to his innate evasiveness when it came to personal and emotional matters – like most men – but perhaps he was genuinely confused.

Not that she could do anything. She remembered how disappointed she had felt last year when he had accepted her dinner invitation and failed to turn up, or even phone. Jenny had sat there in her most seductive silky outfit, duck à l’orange in the oven, ready to take a risk again, and waited and waited. At last he had phoned. He’d been called to a hostage situation. Well, it was definitely a good excuse, but it didn’t do much to dispel her sense of disappointment and loss. Since then, they had been more circumspect with each other, neither willing to risk making an arrangement in case it got screwed up, but still she fretted about Banks and still, she admitted to herself, she wanted him.

The flat, desolate landscape went on and on. How on earth could anybody live in such a remote and backward spot? Jenny wondered. She saw the sign pointing east – ALDERTHORPE 1/2 MILE – and set off down the narrow unpaved track hoping to hell there was no one coming the other way. Still, the landscape was so open – hardly a tree in sight – that she could easily see someone coming from a long way away.

The half-mile seemed to go on forever, as short distances often do on country roads. Then she saw a huddle of houses ahead, and she could smell the sea through her open window, though she couldn’t see it yet. When she found herself turning left on to a paved street with bungalows on one side and rows of redbrick terrace houses on the other, she realized this must be Alderthorpe. She saw a small post office-cum-general store with a rack of newspapers fluttering in the breeze, a greengrocer’s and a butcher’s, a squat gospel hall and a mean-looking pub called the Lord Nelson, and that was it.

Jenny pulled up behind a blue Citroën outside the post office and when she got out of the car she thought she could see curtains twitching over the road, feel curious eyes on her back as she opened the post-office door. No one comes here, she imagined the people thinking. What could she possibly want? Jenny felt as if she had walked into one of those lost-village stories, the place that time forgot, and she had the illogical sense that by walking into it she was lost too, and all memory of her in the real world was gone. Silly fool, she told herself, but she shivered, and it wasn’t cold.

The bell pinged above her head, and she found herself in the kind of shop that she guessed had ceased to exist even before she was born, where jars of barley sugar rubbed shoulders with shoelaces and patent medicines on high shelves, and birthday cards stood on a rack next to the half-inch nails and tins of evaporated milk. It smelled both musty and fruity – pear drops, Jenny thought – and the light that filtered in from the street was dim and cast strips of shadow on the sales counter. There was a small post-office wicket, and the woman standing there in a threadbare brown coat turned and stared at Jenny when she entered. The postmistress herself peered around her customer and adjusted her glasses. They had clearly been having a good natter and were none too thrilled at being interrupted.

“Can I help you?” the postmistress asked.

“I wondered if you could tell me where the old Murray and Godwin houses are,” Jenny asked.

“Why would you be wanting to know that?”

“It’s to do with a job I’m doing.”

“Newspaper reporter, are you?”

“As a matter of fact, no. I’m a forensic psychologist.”

This stopped the woman in her tracks. “It’s Spurn Lane you want. Just over the street and down the lane to the sea. Last two semis. You can’t miss them. Nobody’s lived there for years.”

“Do you know if any of the children still live around here?”

“I’ve not seen hide nor hair of any of ’em since it happened.”

“What about the teacher, Maureen Nesbitt?”

“Lives in Easington. There’s no school here.”

“Thank you very much.”

As she left, she heard the customer whisper, “Forensic psychologist? Whatever’s that when it’s at home?”

“Sightseer,” muttered the postmistress. “Ghoul, just like all the rest. Anyway, you were saying about Mary Wallace’s husband…”

Jenny wondered how they would react when the media descended en masse, which they surely would do before long. It’s not often a place such as Alderthorpe sees fame more than once in a lifetime.

She crossed the High Street, still feeling as if she were being watched, and found the unpaved lane that led east to the North Sea. Though there was a chill in the wind, the cloudless sky was such a bright piercing blue that she put on her sunglasses, remembering with a flutter of anger the day she bought them on Santa Monica Pier, with Randy, the two-timing bastard.

There were about five or six bungalows on each side of Spurn Lane near the High Street, but about fifty yards along, there was only rough ground. Jenny could see two dirty brick semis another fifty yards beyond that. They were certainly isolated from the village, which itself was isolated enough to begin with. She imagined that once the reporters and the television cameras had gone ten years ago, the silence and loneliness and sense of grief must have been devastating for the community, the questions and accusations screaming out loud in the air. Even the residents around The Hill, part of a suburb of a large, modern city, would be struggling to understand what had happened there for years, and many of the residents would need counseling. Jenny could only imagine what Alderthorpe folk probably thought of counseling.

As she approached the houses, she became more and more aware of the salt smell of the sea breeze and realized that it was out there, only yards away beyond the low dunes and marram grass. Villages along this coast had disappeared into the sea, Jenny had read; the sandy coastline was always shifting, and maybe in ten or twenty years’ time Alderthorpe would have vanished underwater, too. It was a spooky thought.

The houses were beyond repair. The roofs had caved in and the broken windows and doors were boarded up. Here and there, people had spray-painted graffiti: ROT IN HELL, BRING BACK HANGING and the simple, touching, KATHLEEN: WE WILL NOT FORGET. Jenny found herself oddly moved as she stood there playing the voyeur.

The gardens were overgrown with weeds and shrubs, but she could make her way through the tangled undergrowth closer to the buildings. There wasn’t much to see, and the doors had been so securely boarded up that she couldn’t get inside even if she wanted to. In there, she told herself, Lucy Payne and six other children had been terrorized, raped, humiliated, tormented and tortured for God knew how many years before the death of one of them – Kathleen Murray – led the authorities to the door. Now the place was just a silent ruin. Jenny felt like a bit of a fraud standing there, the way she had in the cellar of The Hill. What could she possibly do or say to make sense of the horrors that had occurred here? Her science, like all the rest, was inadequate.

Even so, she stood there for some time, then she walked around the buildings, noting that the back gardens were even more overgrown than the front. An empty clothesline hung suspended between two rusty poles in one of the gardens.

As she was leaving, Jenny almost tripped over something in the undergrowth. At first she thought it was a root, but when she bent down and pulled aside the leaves and twigs, she saw a small teddy bear. It looked so disheveled it could have been out there for years, could even have belonged to one of the Alderthorpe Seven, though Jenny doubted it. The police or the social services would have taken everything like that away, so it had probably been left as a sort of tribute later by a local child. When she picked it up it felt soggy, and a beetle crawled out from a rip in its back on to her hand. Jenny let out a sharp gasp, dropped the teddy bear and headed quickly back to the village. She had intended to knock on a few doors and ask about the Godwins and the Murrays, but Alderthorpe had spooked her so much that she decided instead to head for Easington to talk to Maureen Nesbitt.

“Right, Lucy. Shall we start?”

Banks had turned on the tape recorders and tested them. This time they were in a slightly bigger and more salubrious interview room. In addition to Lucy and Julia Ford, Banks had invited DC Jackman along too, though it wasn’t her case, mostly to get her impressions of Lucy afterward.

“I suppose so,” Lucy said in a resigned, sulky voice. She looked tired and shaken by her night in the cell, Banks thought, even though the cells were the most modern part of the station. The duty officer said she’d asked to have the light left on all night, so she couldn’t have slept much.

“I hope you were comfortable last night,” he asked.

“What do you care?”

“It’s not my intention to cause you discomfort, Lucy.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

Julia Ford tapped her watch. “Can we get on with this, Superintendent Banks?”

Banks paused, then looked at Lucy. “Let’s talk a bit more about your background, shall we?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Julia Ford butted in.

“If you’ll allow me to ask my questions, you might find out.”

“If it distresses my client-”

“Distresses your client! The parents of five young girls are more than distressed.”

“That’s irrelevant,” said Julia. “It’s nothing to do with Lucy.”

Banks ignored the lawyer and turned back to Lucy, who seemed disinterested by the discussion. “Will you describe the cellar at Alderthorpe for me, Lucy?”

“The cellar?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember it?”

“It was just a cellar,” Lucy said. “Dark and cold.”

“Was there anything else down there?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“Black candles, incense, a pentagram, robes. Wasn’t there a lot of dancing and chanting down there, Lucy?”

Lucy closed her eyes. “I don’t remember. That wasn’t me. That was Linda.”

“Oh, come on, Lucy. You can do better than that. Why is it that whenever we come to something you don’t want to talk about, you always conveniently lose your memory?”

“Superintendent,” Julia Ford said. “Remember my client has suffered retrograde amnesia due to post-traumatic shock.”

“Yes, yes, I remember. Impressive words.” Banks turned back to Lucy. “You don’t remember going into the cellar at The Hill, and you don’t remember the dancing and chanting in the cellar at Alderthorpe. Do you remember the cage?”

Lucy seemed to draw in on herself.

“Do you?” Banks persisted. “The old Morrison shelter.”

“I remember it,” Lucy whispered. “It was where they put us when we were bad.”

“How were you bad, Lucy?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why were you in the cage when the police came? You and Tom. What had you done to get yourselves put there?”

“I don’t know. It was never much. You never had to do much. If you didn’t clean your plate – not that there was ever much on it to clean – or if you talked back or said no when they… when they wanted to… It was easy to get locked in the cage.”

“Do you remember Kathleen Murray?”

“I remember Kathleen. She was my cousin.”

“What happened to her?”

“They killed her.”

“Who did?”

“The grown-ups.”

“Why did they kill her?”

“I don’t know. They just… she just died…”

“They said your brother Tom killed her.”

“That’s ridiculous. Tom wouldn’t kill anybody. Tom’s gentle.”

“Do you remember how it happened?”

“I wasn’t there. Just one day they told us Kathleen had gone away and she wouldn’t be coming back. I knew she was dead.”

“How did you know?”

“I just knew. She cried all the time, she said she was going to tell. They always said they’d kill any of us if they thought we were going to tell.”

“Kathleen was strangled, Lucy.”

“Was she?”

“Yes. Just like the girls we found in your cellar. Ligature strangulation. Remember, those yellow fibers we found under you fingernails, along with Kimberley’s blood.”

“Where are you going with this, Superintendent?” Julia Ford asked.

“There are a lot of similarities between the crimes. That’s all.”

“But surely the killers of Kathleen Murray are behind bars?” Julia argued. “It’s got nothing to do with Lucy.”

“She was involved.”

“She was a victim.”

“Always the victim, eh, Lucy? The victim with the bad memory. How does it feel?”

“That’s enough,” said Julia.

“It feels awful,” Lucy said in a small voice.

“What?”

“You asked how it feels, to be a victim with a bad memory. It feels awful. It feels like I have no self, like I’m lost, I have no control, like I don’t count. I can’t even remember the bad things that happened to me.”

“Let me ask you once more, Lucy: Did you ever help your husband to abduct a young girl?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you ever harm any of the girls he brought home?”

“I never knew about them, not until last week.”

“Why did you get up and go down in the cellar on that particular night? Why not on any of the previous occasions when your husband was entertaining a young girl in the cellar of your house?”

“I never heard anything before. He must have drugged me.”

“We found no sleeping tablets in our search of the house, nor do either of you have a prescription for any.”

“He must have got them illegally. He must have run out. That’s why I woke up.”

“Where would he get them?”

“School. There’s all sorts of drugs in schools.”

“Lucy, did you know that your husband was a rapist when you met him?”

“Did I… what?”

“You heard me.” Banks opened the file in front of him. “By our count he had already raped four women we know of before he met you at that pub in Seacroft. Terence Payne was the Seacroft Rapist. His DNA matches that left in the victims.”

“I – I-”

“You don’t know what to say?”

“No.”

“How did you meet him, Lucy? None of your friends remember seeing you talk to him in the pub that night.”

“I told you. I was on my way out. It was a big pub, with lots of rooms. We went into another bar.”

“Why should you be any different, Lucy?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, why didn’t he follow you out into the street and rape you like he did with the others?”

“I don’t know. How should I know?”

“You’ve got to admit it’s strange, though, isn’t it?”

“I told you, I don’t know. He liked me. Loved me.”

“Yet he still continued to rape other young women after he’d met you.” Banks consulted his file again. “At least two more times, according to our account. And they’re only the ones who reported it. Some women don’t report it, you know. Too upset or too ashamed. See, they blame themselves.” Banks thought of Annie Cabbot, and what she’d been through over two years ago.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Why didn’t he rape you?”

Lucy gave him an unfathomable look. “Maybe he did.”

“Don’t be absurd. No woman likes being raped, and she’s certainly not going to marry her rapist.”

“You’d be surprised what you can get used to if you’ve got no choice.”

“What do you mean, no choice?”

“What I say.”

“It was your choice to marry Terry, wasn’t it? Nobody forced you to.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“Never mind.”

“Come on.”

“Never mind.”

Banks shuffled his papers. “What was it, Lucy? Did he tell you about what he’d done? Did it excite you? Did he recognize a kindred spirit? Your Hindley to his Brady?”

Julia Ford shot to her feet. “That’s enough, Superintendent. One more remark like that and this interview’s over and I’ll be reporting you.”

Banks ran his hand over his closely cropped hair. It felt spiky.

Winsome picked up the questioning. “Did he rape you, Lucy?” she asked, in her lilting Jamaican accent. “Did your husband rape you?”

Lucy turned to look at Winsome and seemed to Banks to be calculating how to deal with this new factor in the equation.

“Of course not. I would never have married a rapist.”

“So you didn’t know about him?”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Didn’t you find anything odd about Terry? I mean, I never knew him, but it sounds to me as if there’s enough there to give a person cause for concern.”

“He could be very charming.”

“Did he do or say nothing to make you suspicious in all the time you were together?”

“No.”

“But, somehow, you ended up married to a man who was not only a rapist but also an abductor and murderer of young girls. How can you explain that, Lucy? You’ve got to admit it’s highly unusual, hard to believe.”

“I can’t help that. And I can’t explain it. That’s just how it happened.”

“Did he like to play games, sexual games?”

“Like what?”

“Did he like tying you up? Did he like to pretend he was raping you?”

“We didn’t do anything like that.”

Winsome gave Banks a signal to take over again, and her look mirrored his feelings; they were getting nowhere, and Lucy Payne was probably lying.

“Where’s the camcorder?” Banks asked.

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

“We found evidence in the cellar. A camcorder had been set up at the end of the bed. I think you liked to video what you were doing to the girls.”

“I didn’t do anything to them. I’ve told you, I didn’t go down there, except maybe the once. I know nothing about any camcorder.”

“You never saw your husband with one?”

“No.”

“He never showed you any videos?”

“Only rented or borrowed ones.”

“We think we know where he bought the camcorder, Lucy. We can check.”

“Go ahead. I never saw one, never knew about any such thing.”

Banks paused and changed tack. “You say you didn’t play sexual games, Lucy, so what made you decide to dress up and act like a prostitute?” Banks asked.

“What?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, but that wasn’t it. I mean, I didn’t… I wasn’t on the street or anything. Who told you that?”

“Never mind. Did you pick up a man in a hotel bar for sex?”

“What if I did? It was just a lark, a dare.”

“So you did like games.”

“This was before I knew Terry.”

“So that makes it all right?”

“I’m not saying that. It was a lark, that’s all.”

“What happened?”

Lucy gave a sly smile. “Same as happened often enough if I let myself get chatted up in a pub. Only this time I got paid two hundred pounds. Like I said, it was a lark, that’s all. Are you going to arrest me for prostitution?”

“Some lark,” said Banks.

Julia Ford looked a bit perplexed by the exchange, but she said nothing.

Banks knew they were still going nowhere. Hartnell was right: they had no real evidence against Lucy beyond the extreme weirdness of her relationship with Payne and the tiny bloodstains and rope fibers. Her answers might not make a lot of sense, but unless she confessed to aiding and abetting her husband in his murders, she was in the clear. He looked at her again. The bruises had almost faded to nothing and she looked quite innocent and lovely with her pale skin and long black hair, almost like a Madonna. The only thing that made Banks persist in his belief that there was far more to events than she would ever care to admit was her eyes: black, reflective, impermeable. He got the impression that if you stared into eyes like hers for too long you’d go mad. But that wasn’t evidence; that was an overactive imagination. All of a sudden, he’d had enough. Surprising all three of them, he stood up so abruptly he almost knocked over his chair, said, “You’re free to go now, Lucy. Just don’t go too far,” and hurried out of the interview room.

Easington was a pleasant change from Alderthorpe, Jenny thought as she parked her car near the pub at the center of the village. Though still almost as remote from civilization, it seemed at least to be connected, to be a part of things in a way that Alderthorpe didn’t.

Jenny found Maureen Nesbitt’s address easily enough from the barmaid and soon found herself on the doorstep facing a suspicious woman with long white hair tied back in a blue ribbon, wearing a fawn cardigan and black slacks a little too tight for someone with such ample hips and thighs.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m a psychologist,” said Jenny. “I want to talk to you about what happened in Alderthorpe.”

Maureen Nesbitt looked up and down the street, then turned back to face Jenny. “Are you sure you’re not a reporter?”

“I’m not a reporter.”

“Because they were all over me when it happened, but I told them nothing. Scavengers.” She pulled her cardie tighter over her chest.

“I’m not a reporter,” Jenny repeated, digging deep into her handbag for some sort of identification. The best she could come up with was her university library card. At least it identified her as Dr. Fuller and as a member of the staff. Maureen scrutinized the card, clearly unhappy it didn’t also bear a photograph, then she finally let Jenny in. Once inside, her manner changed completely, from grand inquisitor to gracious host, insisting on brewing a fresh pot of tea. The living room was small but comfortable, with only a couple of armchairs, a mirror above the fireplace and a glass-fronted cabinet full of beautiful crystal ware. Beside one of the armchairs was a small table, and on it lay a paperback of Great Expectations next to a half-full cup of milky tea. Jenny sat in the other chair.

When Maureen brought through the tray, including a plate of digestive biscuits, she said, “I do apologize for my behavior earlier. It’s just that I’ve learned the hard way over the years. A little notoriety can quite change your life, you know.”

“Are you still teaching?”

“No. I retired three years ago.” She tapped the paperback. “I promised myself that when I retired I would reread all my favorite classics.” She sat down. “We’ll just let the tea mash for a few minutes, shall we? I suppose you’re here about Lucy Payne?”

“You know?”

“I’ve tried to keep up with them all over the years. I know that Lucy – Linda, as she was back then – lived with a couple called Liversedge near Hull, and then she got a job at a bank and went to live in Leeds, where she married Terence Payne. Last I heard this lunch-time was that the police just let her go for lack of evidence.”

Even Jenny hadn’t heard that yet, but then she hadn’t listened to the news that day. “How do you know all this?” she asked.

“My sister works for the social services in Hull. You won’t tell, will you?”

“Cross my heart.”

“So what do you want to know?”

“What were your impressions of Lucy?”

“She was a bright girl. Very bright. But easily bored, easily distracted. She was headstrong, stubborn, and once she’d made her mind up you couldn’t budge her. Of course, you have to remember that she’d gone on to the local comprehensive at the time of the arrests. I only taught junior school. She was with us until she was eleven.”

“But the others were still there?”

“Yes. All of them. It’s not as if there’s a lot of choice when it comes to local schools.”

“I imagine not. Anything else you can remember about Lucy?”

“Not really.”

“Did she form any close friendships outside the immediate family?”

“None of them did. That was one of the odd things. They were a mysterious group, and sometimes when you saw them together it gave you a creepy feeling, as if they had their own language and an agenda you knew nothing about. Have you ever read John Wyndham?”

“No.”

“You should. He’s quite good. For a science-fiction writer, that is. Believe it or not, I encouraged my pupils to read just about anything they enjoyed, so long as they read something. Anyway, Wyndham wrote a book called The Midwich Cuckoos about a group of strange children fathered by aliens on an unsuspecting village.”

“That sounds vaguely familiar,” Jenny said.

“Perhaps you saw the film? It was called Village of the Damned.”

“That’s it,” said Jenny. “That one where the teacher planted a bomb to destroy the children and had to concentrate on a brick wall so they couldn’t read his thoughts?”

“Yes. Well, it wasn’t quite like that with the Godwins and the Murrays, but it still gave you that sort of feeling, the way they looked at you, waited in the corridor till you’d gone by before talking again. And they always seemed to speak in whispers. Linda, I remember, was very distressed when she had to leave and go to the comprehensive before the others, but I gather from her teacher there that she quickly got used to it. She has a strong personality, that girl, despite what happened to her, and she’s adaptable.”

“Did she show any unusual preoccupations?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything particularly morbid. Death? Mutilation?”

“Not so far as I noticed. She was… how shall I put this… an early developer and rather sexually aware for a girl of her age. On average, girls peak in puberty at about twelve, but Lucy was beyond prepubescence at eleven. Her breasts were developing, for example.”

“Sexually active?”

“No. Well, as we now know she was being sexually abused in the home. But, no, not in the way you’re suggesting. She was just sexually there. It was something people noticed about her, and she wasn’t above playing the little coquette.”

“I see.” Jenny made a note. “And it was Kathleen’s absence that led you to call in the authorities?”

“Yes.” Maureen looked away, toward the window, but she didn’t look as if she were admiring the view. “Not my finest moment,” she said, bending to pour the tea. “Milk and sugar?”

“Yes, please. Thank you. Why?”

“I should have done something sooner, shouldn’t I? It wasn’t the first time I’d had my suspicions something was terribly wrong in those households. Though I never saw any bruises or clear outward signs of abuse, the children often looked undernourished and seemed timid. Sometimes – I know this is terrible – but they smelled, as if they hadn’t bathed in days. Other children would stay away from them. They’d jump if you touched them, no matter how gently. I should have known.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I talked with the other teachers, and we all agreed there was something odd about the children’s behavior. It turned out the social services already had their concerns, too. They’d been out to the houses once before but never got past the front door. I don’t know if you knew, but Michael Godwin had a particularly vicious rottweiler. Anyway, when Kathleen Murray went absent without any reasonable explanation, they decided to act. The rest is history.”

“You say you’ve kept track of the children,” Jenny said. “I’d really like to talk to some of them. Will you help me?”

Maureen paused a moment. “If you like. But I don’t think you’ll get much out of them.”

“Do you know where they are, how they are?”

“Not all the details, no, but I can give you a general picture.”

Jenny sipped some tea and took out her notebook. “Okay, I’m ready.”