Aftermath

4

Samantha Jane Foster, eighteen years old, five feet five and seven stone three pounds, was a first-year English student at the University of Bradford. Her parents lived in Leighton Buzzard, where Julian Foster was a chartered accountant and Teresa Foster a local GP. Samantha had one older brother, Alistair, unemployed, and a younger sister, Chloe, still at school.

On the evening of the twenty-sixth of February, Samantha attended a poetry reading in a pub near the university campus and left alone for her bed-sit at about eleven-fifteen. She lived just off Great Horton Road, about a quarter of a mile away. When she didn’t turn up for her weekend job in the city center Waterstone’s bookshop, one of her coworkers, Penelope Hall, became worried and called at the bed-sit during her lunch break. Samantha was reliable, she later told the police, and if she wasn’t going to come in to work because of illness, she would always ring. This time she hadn’t. Worried that Samantha might be seriously ill, Penelope managed to persuade the landlord to open the bed-sit door. Nobody home.

There was a very good chance that the Bradford Police might not have taken Samantha Foster’s disappearance seriously – at least not so quickly – had it not been for the shoulder bag that a conscientious student had found in the street and handed in after midnight the previous evening. It contained a poetry anthology called New Blood; a slim volume of poetry signed “To Samantha, between whose silky thighs I would love to rest my head and give silver tongue” and dated by the poet, Michael Stringer, who had read in the pub the previous evening; a spiral notebook full of poetic jottings, observations, reflections on life and literature, including what looked to the desk officer like descriptions of hallucinogenic states and out-of-body experiences; a half-smoked packet of Benson amp; Hedges; a red packet of Rizzla cigarette papers and a small plastic bag of marijuana, less than a quarter of an ounce; a green disposable cigarette lighter; three loose tampons; a set of keys; a personal CD player with a Tracy Chapman CD inside it; a little bag of cosmetics; and a purse containing fifteen pounds in cash, a credit card, student union card, shop receipts for books and CDs and various other sundry items.

Given the two occurrences – an abandoned shoulder bag and a missing girl – especially as the young DC who was given the assignment remembered something similar had happened in Roundhay Park, Leeds, on New Year’s Eve – the inquiry began that very morning with calls to Samantha’s parents and close friends, none of whom had seen her or heard of any change in her plans or normal routine.

For a brief time, Michael Stringer, the poet who had been reading his work at the pub, became a suspect, given the inscription he had written in his book of poems for her, but a number of witnesses said he carried on drinking in the city center and had to be helped back to his hotel around three-thirty in the morning. The hotel staff assured the police that he hadn’t seen the light of day again until teatime the following day.

Inquiries around the university turned up one possible witness, who thought she saw Samantha talking to someone through a car window. At least the girl had long blond hair and was wearing the same clothes Samantha was when she left the pub – jeans, black calf-high boots and a long, flapping overcoat. The car was dark in color, and the witness remembered the three last letters on the number plate because they formed her own initials: Kathryn Wendy Thurlow. She said she had no reason to believe that there was any problem at the time, so she crossed over to her street and carried on to her own flat.

The last two letters of a car number plate indicate the origin of its registration, and WT signifies Leeds. The DVLA at Swansea were able to supply a list of over a thousand possibles – as Kathryn hadn’t been able to narrow the search down to make or even color – and the owners were interviewed by Bradford CID. Nothing came of it.

All the searches and interviews that followed turned up nothing more about Samantha Foster’s disappearance, and rumblings were starting on the police tom-toms. Two disappearances, almost two months and about fifteen miles apart, were enough to set off a few alarm bells but not a full-blown panic.

Samantha didn’t have many friends, but those she did have were loyal and devoted to her, in particular Angela Firth, Ryan Conner and Abha Gupta, who were all devastated by her disappearance. According to them, Samantha was a very serious sort of girl, given to long reflective silences and gnomic utterances, with no time for small talk, sports and television. She had a level head on her shoulders, though, they insisted, and everyone said she wasn’t the type to go off with a stranger on a whim, no matter how much she talked about the importance of experiencing life to the full.

When the police suggested that Samantha might have wandered off under the influence of drugs, her friends said it was unlikely. Yes, they admitted, she liked to smoke a joint occasionally – she said it helped her with her writing – but she didn’t do any harder drugs; she also didn’t drink much and couldn’t have had more than two or three glasses of wine the entire evening.

She didn’t have a boyfriend at the moment and didn’t seem interested in acquiring one. No, she wasn’t gay, but she had spoken of exploring sexual experiences with other women. Samantha might appear unconventional in some ways, Angela explained, but she had a lot more common sense than people sometimes imagined on first impressions; she was just not frivolous, and she was interested in a lot of things other people laughed at or dismissed.

According to her professors, Samantha was an eccentric student with a tendency to spend too much of her time reading outside the syllabus, but one of her tutors, who had published some verse himself, said that he had hopes she might make a fine poet one day if she could cultivate a little more self-discipline in her technique.

Samantha’s interests, so Abha Gupta said, included art, poetry, nature, Eastern religions, psychic experiences and death.

Banks and Ken Blackstone drove out to The Greyhound, a low-beamed rustic pub with Toby jugs all around the plate racks in the village of Tong, about fifteen minutes from the crime scene. It was going on for two o’clock, and neither of them had eaten yet that day. Banks hadn’t eaten much in the past two days, in fact, ever since he had heard of the fifth missing teenager in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Over the past two months, he had sometimes thought his head would explode under pressure of the sheer amount of detail he carried around in it. He would awaken in the early hours of the morning, at three or four o’clock, and the thoughts would spin around his mind and prevent him from going back to sleep. Instead, he would get up and brew a pot of tea and sit at the pine kitchen table in his pajamas making notes for the day ahead as the sun came up and spilled its liquid honey light through the high window or rain lashed against the panes.

These were lonely, quiet hours, and while he had got used to, even embraced, solitude, sometimes he missed his previous life with Sandra and the kids in the Eastvale semi. But Sandra was gone, about to marry Sean, and the kids had grown up and were living their own lives. Tracy was in her second year at the University of Leeds, and Brian was touring the country with his rock band, going from strength to strength after the great reviews their first independently produced CD had received. Banks had neglected them both, he realized, over the past couple of months, especially his daughter.

They ordered the last two portions of lamb stew and rice and pints of Tetley’s bitter at the bar. It was warm enough to sit outside at one of the tables next to the cricket field. A local team was out practicing, and the comforting sound of leather on willow punctuated their conversation.

Banks lit a cigarette and told Blackstone about AC Hartnell giving North Yorkshire the PC Taylor investigation, and his certainty that it would go to Annie.

“She’ll love that,” said Blackstone.

“She’s already made her feelings quite clear.”

“You’ve told her?”

“I tried to put a positive spin on it to make her feel better, but… it sort of backfired.”

Blackstone smiled. “Are you two still an item?”

“I think so, sort of, but half the time I’m not sure, to be honest. She’s very… elusive.”

“Ah, the sweet mystery of woman.”

“Something like that.”

“Maybe you’re expecting too much of her?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes when a man loses his wife he starts looking for a new one in the first woman who shows any interest in him.”

“Marriage is the last thing on my mind, Ken.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. I haven’t bloody time, for a start.”

“Talking about marriage, how do you think the wife, Lucy Payne, fits in?” Blackstone asked.

“I don’t know.”

“She must have known. I mean, she was living with the bloke.”

“Maybe. But you saw the way things were set up back there. Payne could have sneaked anyone in through the garage and taken them straight into the cellar. If he kept the place locked and barred, nobody need have known. It was pretty well soundproofed.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t convince me that a woman lives with a killer who does what Payne did and she hasn’t a clue,” said Blackstone. “What does he do? Get up after dinner and tell her he’s just off down to the basement to play with a teenage girl he’s abducted?”

“He doesn’t have to tell her anything.”

“But she must be involved. Even if she wasn’t his accomplice, she must at least have suspected something.”

Someone gave the cricket ball a hell of a whack and a cheer went up from the field.

Banks stubbed out his cigarette. “You’re probably right. Anyway, if there’s anything at all to connect Lucy Payne to what happened in the cellar, we’ll find out. For the moment, she’s not going anywhere. Remember, though, unless we find out differently, we’d better remember that she’s a victim first and foremost.”

The SOCO teams might be spending weeks at the scene, Banks knew, and very soon number 35 The Hill would resemble a house undergoing major structural renovations. They would be taking in metal detectors, laser lights, infrared, UV, high-powered vacuums and pneumatic drills; they would be collecting fingerprints, flaked skin, fibers, dried secretions, hairs, paint chips, Visa bills, letters, books and personal papers; they would strip the carpets and punch holes in the walls, break up the cellar and garage floors and dig up the gardens. And everything they gathered, perhaps more than a thousand exhibits, would have to be tagged, entered in HOLMES and stored in the evidence room at Millgarth.

Their meals arrived and they tucked right in, waving away the occasional fly. The stew was hearty and mildly spiced. After a few mouthfuls, Blackstone shook his head slowly. “Funny Payne’s got no form, don’t you think? Most of them have something odd in their background. Waving their willies at schoolkids, or a touch of sexual assault.”

“More than his job’s worth. Maybe he’s just been lucky.”

Blackstone paused. “Or we’ve not been doing our jobs properly. Remember that series of rapes out Seacroft way two years or so back?”

“The Seacroft Rapist? Yes, I remember reading about it.”

“We never did catch him, you know.”

“You think it might have been Payne?”

“Possible, isn’t it? The rapes stopped, then girls started disappearing.”

“DNA?”

“Semen samples. The Seacroft Rapist was an excretor, and he didn’t bother wearing a condom.”

“Then check them against Payne’s. And check where he was living at the time.”

“Oh, we will, we will. By the way,” Blackstone went on, “one of the DCs who interviewed Maggie Forrest, the woman who phoned in the domestic, got the impression that she wasn’t telling him everything.”

“Oh. What did he say?”

“That she seemed deliberately vague, holding back. She admitted she knew the Paynes but said she knew nothing about them. Anyway, he didn’t think she was telling the complete truth as far as her relationship with Lucy Payne went. He thinks they’re a lot closer than she would admit.”

“I’ll talk to her later,” said Banks, glancing at his watch. He looked around at the blue sky, the white and pink blossoms drifting from the trees, the men in white on the cricket pitch. “Christ, Ken, I could sit here all afternoon,” he said, “but I’d better get back to the house to check on developments.”

As she had feared, Maggie was unable to concentrate on her work for the rest of that day and alternated between watching the police activity out of her bedroom window and listening to the local radio for news reports. What came through was scant enough until the area commander in charge of the case gave a press conference, in which he confirmed that they had found the body of Kimberley Myers, and that it appeared she had been strangled. More than that, he wouldn’t say, except that the case was under investigation, forensic experts were on the scene and more details would be available shortly. He stressed that the investigation was not yet over and appealed for anyone who had seen Kimberley after eleven o’clock on Friday evening to come forward.

When the knock on her door and the familiar call, “It’s all right, it’s only me,” came after half-past three, Maggie felt relieved. For some reason, she had been worried about Claire. She knew that she went to the same school as Kimberley Myers and that Terence Payne was a teacher there. She hadn’t seen Claire since Kimberley’s disappearance but imagined she must have been frantic with worry. The two were about the same age and surely must know each other.

Claire Toth often called on her way home from school, as she lived two doors down, both her parents worked, and her mother didn’t get home until about half-past four. Maggie also suspected that Ruth and Charles had suggested Claire’s visits as a sneaky way of keeping an eye on her. Curious about the newcomer, Claire had first just dropped in to say hello. Then, intrigued by Maggie’s accent and her work, she had become a regular visitor. Maggie didn’t mind. Claire was a good kid, and a breath of fresh air, though she talked a mile a minute and Maggie often felt exhausted when she left.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so awful,” Claire said, dropping her backpack on the living room floor and plunking herself down on the sofa, legs akimbo. This was odd, for a start, as she usually headed straight for the kitchen, to the milk and chocolate chip cookies Maggie fed her. She pulled back her long tresses and tucked them behind her ears. She was wearing her school uniform, green blazer and skirt, white blouse and gray socks, which had slipped down around her ankles. She had a couple of spots on her chin, Maggie noticed: bad diet or time of the month.

“You know?”

“It was all around school by lunchtime.”

“Do you know Mr. Payne?”

“He’s my biology teacher. And he lives across the street from us. How could he? The pervert. When I think of what must have been going through his mind while he was teaching us about reproductive systems and dissecting frogs and all that stuff… ugh.” She gave a shudder.

“Claire, we don’t know that he did anything yet. All we know is that Mr. and Mrs. Payne had a fight and that he hit her.”

“But they’ve found Kim’s body, haven’t they? And there wouldn’t be all those policemen over the road if all he’d done was hit his wife, would there?”

If all he’d done was hit his wife. Maggie was often amazed at the casual acceptance of domestic violence, even by a girl-child such as Claire. True enough, she didn’t mean it the way it sounded and would be horrified if she knew the details of Maggie’s life back in Toronto, but still, the language came so easily. Hit his wife. Minor. Not important.

“You’re quite right,” she said. “It is more than that. But we don’t know that Mr. Payne was responsible for what happened to Kimberley. Someone else might have done it.”

“No. It’s him. He’s the one. He killed all those girls. He killed Kim.”

Claire started crying and Maggie felt awkward. She found a box of tissues and went to sit next to her on the sofa. Claire buried her head in Maggie’s shoulder and sobbed, her thin veneer of teenage cool stripped away in a second. “I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling. “I don’t usually act like such a baby.”

“What is it?” Maggie asked, still stroking her hair. “What is it, Claire? You can tell me. You were her friend, weren’t you? Kim’s?”

Claire’s lip trembled. “I just feel so awful.”

“I can understand that.”

“But you don’t. You can’t! Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“That it was my fault. It was my fault that Kim got killed. I should have been with her on Friday. I should have been with her!”

And when Claire buried her face in Maggie’s shoulder again, there came a loud knock at the door.

DI Annie Cabbot sat at her desk still cursing Banks under her breath and wishing she had never accepted the appointment to Complaints and Discipline, even though it had been the only divisional opening available for her at the level of inspector after passing her boards. Of course, she could have stayed in CID as a detective sergeant, or gone back to uniform for a while as an inspector in Traffic, but she had decided that C amp; D would be a worthwhile temporary step up until a suitable position became available in CID, which Banks had assured her wouldn’t be long. The Western Division was still undergoing some structural reorganization, part of which involved staffing levels, and for the moment CID was taking a backseat to more visible on-the-street and in-your-face policing. But their day would come. This way, at least, she would gain experience at the rank of inspector.

The one good thing about the new appointment was her office. Western Division had taken over the building adjoining the old Tudor-fronted headquarters, part of the same structure, knocked through the walls and redone the interior. While Annie didn’t have a large room to herself like Detective Superintendent Chambers, she did have a partitioned space in the general area, which gave her some degree of privacy and looked out over the marketplace, like Banks’s office.

Beyond her frosted-glass compartment sat the two detective sergeants and three constables who, along with Annie and Chambers, made up the entire Western Division Complaints and Discipline Department. After all, police corruption was hardly a hot issue around Eastvale, and about the most serious case she had worked on so far was that of a beat policeman accepting free toasted teacakes from the Golden Grill. It turned out that he had been going out with one of the waitresses there and she was finding the way to his heart. Another waitress had become jealous and reported the matter to Complaints and Discipline.

It probably wasn’t fair to blame Banks, Annie thought, standing at the window and looking down on the busy square, and perhaps she was only doing so because of the vague dissatisfaction with their relationship that she was already feeling. She didn’t know what it was, or why, only that she was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with it. They hadn’t seen each other that often because of the Chameleon case, of course, and Banks had sometimes been so tired that he fallen asleep even before… but it wasn’t that that bothered her so much as the easy familiarity their relationship seemed to be attaining. When they were together, they were behaving more and more like an old married couple and Annie, for one, didn’t want that. Ironic as it seemed, the comfort and familiarity were making her feel distinctly uncomfortable. All they needed was the slippers and the fireplace. Come to think of it, in Banks’s cottage they even had those, too.

Annie’s phone rang. It was Detective Superintendent Chambers summoning her to his office next door. She knocked and went in when he said, “Enter,” the way he liked it. Chambers sat behind his messy desk, a big man with the waistcoat buttons of his pinstripe suit stretched tight across his chest and belly. She didn’t know if his tie was covered with food stains or if it was supposed to look that way. He had the kind of face that seemed to be wearing a perpetual sneer, and small piggy eyes that Annie felt undress her as she walked in. His complexion was like a slab of beef, and his lips were fleshy, wet and red. Annie always half expected him to start drooling and slobbering as he spoke, but he hadn’t done it yet. Not one drop of saliva had found its way on to his green blotter. He had a Home Counties accent, which he seemed to think made him posh.

“Ah, DI Cabbot. Please be seated.”

“Sir.”

Annie sat as comfortably as she could, careful to make certain that her skirt didn’t ride too high over her thighs. If she’d known before she left for work that she was going to be summoned to see Chambers, she would have worn trousers.

“I’ve just been handed a most interesting assignment,” Chambers went on. “Most interesting indeed. One that I think will be right up your alley, as they say.”

Annie had the advantage of him but didn’t want to let it show. “Assignment, sir?”

“Yes. It’s about time you started pulling your weight around here, DI Cabbot. How long have you been with us now?”

“Two months.”

“And in that time you’ve accomplished…?”

“The case of Constable Chaplin and the toasted teacakes, sir. Scandal narrowly averted. A satisfactory resolution all around, if I might say so-”

Chambers reddened. “Yes, well, this one might just take the edge off your attitude, Inspector.”

“Sir?” Annie raised her eyebrows. She couldn’t stop herself baiting Chambers. He had the kind of arrogant, self-important bearing that cried out for pricking. She knew it could be bad for her career, but even with the rekindling of her ambition, Annie had sworn to herself that her career wasn’t worth anything if it cost her her soul. Besides, she had an odd sort of faith that good coppers like Banks, Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe and ACC McLaughlin might have more say in her future than pillocks like Chambers, who, everyone knew, was a lazy slob just waiting for retirement. Still, she hadn’t been a lot more careful with Banks at first, either, and it was only her good fortune that he had been charmed and seduced by her insubordination rather than angered by it. Gristhorpe, poor man, was a saint, and she hardly ever saw Red Ron McLaughlin, so she didn’t get a chance to piss him off.

“Yes,” Chambers went on, warming to his task, “I think you’ll find this one a bit different from toasted teacakes. This’ll wipe the grin off your face.”

“Perhaps you’d care to tell me about it, sir?”

Chambers tossed a thin folder toward her. It slipped off the edge of the desk on to Annie’s knees and then to the floor before she could catch it. She didn’t want to bend over and pick it up so that Chambers could have a bird’s-eye view of her knickers, so she left it where it was. Chambers’s eyes narrowed and they stared at one another for a few seconds, but finally he eased himself out of his chair and picked it up himself. The effort made his face red. He slammed the file down harder on the desk in front of her.

“Seems a probationary PC in West Yorkshire has overdone it a bit with her baton and they want us to look into it. Trouble is, the chappie she overdid it with is suspected to be that Chameleon killer they’ve been after for a while, which, as I’m sure even you will realize, puts a different complexion on things.” He tapped the folder. “The details, such as they are at the moment, are all in there. Do you think you can handle it?”

“No problem,” said Annie.

“On the contrary,” said Chambers, “I think there’ll be plenty of problems. It’ll be what they call a high-profile case, and because of that my name will be on it. I’m sure you understand that we can’t have a mere inspector still wet behind the ears running a case of this importance.”

“If that’s the case,” said Annie, “why don’t you investigate it yourself?”

“Because I happen to be too busy at the moment,” said Chambers, with a twisted grin. “Besides, why own a dog and bark yourself?”

“Absolutely. Why, indeed? Of course,” said Annie, who happened to know that Chambers couldn’t investigate his way out of a paper bag. “I understand completely.”

“I thought you would.” Chambers stroked one of his chins. “And as my name’s on it, I want no cock-ups. In fact, if any heads roll over this business, yours will be the first. Remember, I’m only a hairs-breadth away from retirement, so the last thing on my mind is career advancement. You, on the other hand… Well, I’m sure you catch my drift.”

Annie nodded.

“You’ll be reporting to me directly, of course,” Chambers went on. “Daily reports required, except in the event of any major developments, in which case you’re to report to me immediately. Understood?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Annie.

Chambers narrowed his eyes at her. “One day that mouth of yours will get you into serious trouble, young lady.”

“So my father told me.”

Chambers grunted and shifted his weight in his chair. “There’s one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t like the way this assignment was delivered to me. There’s something fishy about it.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I don’t know.” Chambers frowned. “Acting Detective Superintendent Banks from CID is running our part of the Chameleon investigation, isn’t he?”

Annie nodded.

“And if my memory serves me well, you used to work with him as a DS before coming over here, didn’t you?”

Again, Annie nodded.

“Well, it might be nothing,” said Chambers, looking away from her, at a point high on the wall. “Summat and nowt, as they say up here. But on the other hand…”

“Sir?”

“Keep an eye on him. Play your cards close to your chest.”

He looked at her chest as he spoke and Annie gave an involuntary shudder. She stood up and walked over to the door.

“And another thing, DI Cabbot.”

Annie turned. “Sir?”

Chambers smirked. “This Banks. Watch out for him. He’s got the reputation for being a bit of a ladies’ man, in case you don’t know that already.”

Annie felt herself flush as she left the office.

Banks followed Maggie Forrest into the living room, with its dark wainscoting and brooding landscapes in heavy gilt frames on the walls. The room faced west, and the late-afternoon sun cast dancing shadows of twisted foliage on the far walls. It was not a feminine room, but more like the kind to which the men withdrew for port and cigars in BBC period dramas, and Banks sensed that Maggie was uncomfortable in it, though he wasn’t quite certain what gave him that impression. Noticing a whiff of smoke in the air and a couple of cigarette ends in the ashtray, Banks lit up, offering Maggie a Silk Cut. She accepted. He looked at the schoolgirl on the sofa, head lowered, bare knees close together, one of them scabbed from a recent fall, thumb in her mouth.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” he asked Maggie.

“Detective…?”

“Banks. Acting Detective Superintendent.”

“Detective Superintendent Banks, this is Claire Toth, a neighbor.”

“Pleased to meet you, Claire,” said Banks.

Claire looked up at him and mumbled hello, then she took a crumpled packet of ten Embassy Regal from her blazer pocket and joined the adult smokers. Banks knew this was no time for lectures on the dangers of smoking. Something was clearly wrong. He could see by her red eyes and the streaks on her face that she had been crying.

“I’ve missed something,” he said. “Anyone care to fill me in?”

“Claire went to school with Kimberley Myers,” said Maggie. “Naturally, she’s upset.”

Claire grew edgy, her eyes flitting all over the place. She took short, nervous puffs on the cigarette, holding it affectedly, straight out with her first two fingers vertical, letting go as she puffed, then closing her fingers. She didn’t seem to be inhaling, just doing it to look and act grown up, Banks thought. Or perhaps even to feel grown up, because only God knew what turbulent feelings must be churning inside Claire right now. And it would only get worse. He remembered Tracy’s reaction to the murder of an Eastvale girl, Deborah Harrison, just a few years ago. They hadn’t even known each other well, had come from differing social backgrounds, but they were about the same age, and they had met and talked on several occasions. Banks had tried to protect Tracy from the truth for as long as he could, but in the end the best he could do was comfort her. She was lucky; she got over it in time. Some never do.

“Kim was my best friend,” Claire said. “And I let her down.”

“What makes you think that?” Banks asked.

Claire flicked her eyes toward Maggie, as if seeking permission. Maggie nodded almost imperceptibly. She was an attractive woman, Banks noticed, not so much physically, with the slightly long nose and pointed chin, though he also admired her elfin looks and her trim, boyish figure, but it was the air of kindness and intelligence about her that struck him. He could see it in her eyes, and there was an artist’s grace in the economy of her simplest movements, such as flicking ash from her cigarette, in her large hands with the long, tapered fingers.

“I should have been with her,” Claire said. “But I wasn’t.”

“Were you at the dance?” Banks asked.

Claire nodded and bit her lip.

“Did you see Kimberley there?”

“Kim. I always called her Kim.”

“All right: Kim. Did you see Kim there?”

“We went together. It’s not far. Just up past the roundabout and along Town Street, near the Rugby ground.”

“I know where you mean,” said Banks. “It’s the Congregational church opposite Silverhill Comprehensive, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you went to the dance together.”

“Yes, we walked up there and… and…”

“Take your time,” said Banks, noticing that she was about to cry again.

Claire took a final puff at her cigarette, then stubbed it out. She didn’t do a good job, and the ashes continued to smolder. She sniffled. “We were going to walk home together. I mean… people had said… you know… it was on the radio and television and my father told me… we had to be careful, stick together.”

Banks had been responsible for the warnings. There was a fine line between panic and caution, he knew, and while he wanted to avert the kind of widespread paranoia that the Yorkshire Ripper case had whipped up for years in the early eighties, he also wanted to make it clear that young women should be cautious after dark. But short of instituting a curfew, you can’t force people to be careful.

“What happened, Claire? Did you lose sight of her?”

“No, it wasn’t that. I mean, not really. You don’t understand.”

“Help us to understand, Claire,” said Maggie, holding her hand. “We want to. Help us.”

“I should have been with her.”

“Why weren’t you?” Banks asked. “Did you have an argument?”

Claire paused and looked away. “It was a boy,” she said finally.

“Kim was with a boy?”

“No, me. I was with a boy.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she pressed on. “Nicky Gallagher. I’d fancied him for weeks and he asked me to dance. Then he said he wanted to walk me home. Kim wanted to leave just before eleven, she had a curfew, and normally I’d have gone with her, but Nicky… he wanted to stay for a slow dance… I thought there would be lots of people around… I…” Then she broke down in tears again and buried her head in Maggie’s shoulder.

Banks took a deep breath. Claire’s pain and guilt and grief were so real they broke over him in waves and made his breath catch in his chest. Maggie stroked her hair and muttered words of comfort, but still Claire let it all pour out. Finally, she came to the end of her tears and blew her nose in a tissue. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Really, I am. I’d give anything to live that night over again and do it differently. I hate Nicky Gallagher!”

“Claire,” said Banks, who was no stranger to guilt himself. “It’s not his fault. And it’s certainly not yours.”

“I’m a selfish bitch. I had Nicky to walk me home. I thought he might kiss me. I wanted him to kiss me. See? I’m a slut, too.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Maggie. “The superintendent is right. It’s not your fault.”

“But if I’d only-”

“If. If. If,” said Banks.

“But it’s true! Kim had no one, so she had to walk home by herself and Mr. Payne got her. I bet he did awful things to her before he killed her, didn’t he? I’ve read about people like him.”

“Whatever happened that night,” said Banks, “is not your fault.”

“Then whose fault is it?”

“Nobody’s. Kim was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been-” Banks stopped. Not a good idea. He hoped Claire hadn’t picked up on the implication, but she had.

“Me? Yes, I know that. I wish it had been.”

“You don’t mean that, Claire,” said Maggie.

“Yes, I do. Then I wouldn’t have to live with it. It was because of me. Because she didn’t want to be a gooseberry.” Claire started crying again.

Banks wondered if it could have been Claire. She was the right type: blond and long-legged, as so many young northern girls were. Was it as random as that? Or had Payne had his eyes on Kimberley Myers all along? Jenny might have some theories on that.

He tried to picture what had happened. Payne parked in his car, near the youth club, perhaps; knowing there was a dance on that night, knowing the one he’d had his eye on would be there. He couldn’t count on her going home alone, of course, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. There was always a chance. A risk, of course, but it would have been worth it to him. His heart’s desire. All the others were practice. This was the real thing, the one he had wanted right from the start, there at school under his very eyes, tormenting him, day after day.

Terence Payne would also have known, as Banks did, that Kimberley lived about two hundred yards farther down The Hill than her friend Claire Toth, under the railway bridge, and that there was a dark, desolate stretch of road there, nothing but a wasteland on one side and a Wesleyan chapel on the other, which would have been in darkness at that hour, Wesleyans not being noted for their wild late-night parties. When Banks had walked down there on Saturday afternoon, the day after Kimberley had disappeared, following the route she would have taken home from the dance, he had thought it would have made an ideal pickup place.

Payne would have parked his car a little ahead of Kimberley and either jumped her or said hello, the familiar, safe Mr. Payne from school, somehow maneuvered her inside, then chloroformed her and taken her back through the garage to the cellar.

Perhaps, Banks realized now, Payne couldn’t believe his luck when Kimberley started walking home alone. He would have expected her to be with her friend Claire, if not with others, and could only hope that the others would live closer to the school than Kimberley did and that she would end up alone for that final short but desolate stretch. But with her being alone right from the start, if he was careful and made sure that nobody could see, he could even have offered her a lift. She trusted him. Perhaps he had even, being the good, kind neighbor, given her a lift before.

“Get in the van, Kimberley, you know it’s not safe for a girl your age to be walking the streets alone at this hour. I’ll take you home.”

“Yes, Mr. Payne. Thank you very much, Mr. Payne.”

“You’re lucky I happened by.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now fasten your seat belt.”

“Superintendent?”

“I’m sorry,” said Banks, who had been lost in his imaginings.

“Is it all right if Claire goes home? Her mother should be back by now.”

Banks looked at the child. Her world had shattered into pieces around her. All weekend she must have been terrified that something like this had happened, dreading the moment when the shadow of her guilt was made substance, when her nightmares proved to be reality. There was no reason to keep her here. Let her go to her mother. He knew where she was if he needed to talk to her again. “Just one more thing, Claire,” he said. “Did you see Mr. Payne at all on the evening of the dance?”

“No.”

“He wasn’t at the dance?”

“No.”

“He wasn’t parked outside the youth club?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Did you notice anyone at all hanging around?”

“No. But I wasn’t really looking.”

“Did you see Mrs. Payne at all?”

“Mrs. Payne? No. Why?”

“All right, Claire. You can go home now.”

“Is there any more news of Lucy?” Maggie asked after Claire had left.

“She’s comfortable. She’ll be fine.”

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” said Banks. “Just a few loose ends from this morning’s interview, that’s all.”

“Oh?” Maggie fingered the neck of her T-shirt.

“Nothing important, I shouldn’t think.”

“What is it?”

“One of the officers who interviewed you gave me the impression that he thought you weren’t telling the full story about your relationship with Lucy Payne.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows. “I see.”

“Would you describe the two of you as close friends?”

“Friends, yes, but close, no. I haven’t known Lucy long.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Yesterday. She dropped by in the afternoon.”

“What did you talk about?”

Maggie looked down at her hands on her lap. “Nothing, really. You know, the weather, work, that sort of thing.”

Kimberley Myers was tied naked in the cellar of the Payne house, and Lucy had dropped by to talk about the weather. Either she really was innocent, or her evil went way beyond anything Banks had experienced before. “Did she ever give you any cause to suspect that anything was wrong at home?” he asked.

Maggie paused. “Not in the way you’re suggesting. No.”

“What way am I suggesting?”

“I assume it’s to do with the murder? With Kimberley’s murder?”

Banks leaned back in his armchair and sighed. It had been a long day, and it was getting longer. Maggie wasn’t a convincing liar. “Ms. Forrest,” he said, “right now anything at all we can find out about life at number thirty-five The Hill would be useful to us. And I mean anything. I’m getting the same impression as my colleague – that you’re keeping something back.”

“It’s nothing relevant.”

“How the hell would you know!” Banks snapped at her. He was shocked by the way she flinched at his harsh tone, at the look of fear and submission that crossed her features and the way she wrapped her arms around herself and drew in. “Ms. Forrest… Maggie,” he said more softly. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve had a bad day, and this is becoming very frustrating. If I had a penny for every time someone told me their information was irrelevant to my investigation I’d be a rich man. I know we all have secrets. I know there are some things we’d rather not talk about. But this is a murder investigation. Kimberley Myers is dead. PC Dennis Morrisey is dead. God knows how many more bodies we’ll unearth there, and I have to sit here and hear you tell me that you know Lucy Payne, that she may have shared certain feelings and information with you and that you don’t think it’s relevant. Come on, Maggie. Give me a break here.”

The silence seemed to go on for ages, until Maggie’s small voice broke it. “She was being abused. Lucy. He… her husband… he hit her.”

“Terence Payne abused his wife?”

“Yes. Is that so strange? If he can murder teenage girls, he’s certainly capable of beating his wife.”

“She told you this?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she do something about it?”

“It’s not as easy as you think.”

“I’m not saying it’s easy. And don’t assume that you know what I think. What did you advise her?”

“I told her to seek professional help, of course, but she was dragging her heels.”

Banks knew enough about domestic violence to know that victims of it often find it very difficult to go to the authorities or get out: they feel shame, feel it’s their own fault, feel humiliated and would rather keep it to themselves, believing it will turn out all right in the end. Many of them have nowhere else to go, no other lives to live, and they are scared of the world outside the home, even if the home is violent. He also got the impression that Maggie Forrest knew firsthand what she was talking about. The way she had flinched at his sharp tone, the way she had been so reluctant to talk about the subject, holding back. These were all signs.

“Did she ever mention that she suspected her husband of any other crimes?”

“Never.”

“But she was frightened of him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you visit their house?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“Notice anything unusual?”

“No. Nothing.”

“How did the two of them behave together?”

“Lucy always seemed nervous, edgy. Anxious to please.”

“Did you ever see any bruises?”

“They don’t always leave bruises. But Lucy seemed afraid of him, afraid of putting a foot wrong. That’s what I mean.”

Banks made some notes. “Is that all?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Is that all you were holding back, or is there something else?”

“There’s nothing else.”

Banks stood up and excused himself. “Do you see now,” he said at the door, “that what you’ve told me is relevant, after all? Very relevant.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Terence Payne has serious brain injuries. He’s in a coma from which he may never recover, and even if he does, he might remember nothing. Lucy Payne will mend quite easily. You’re the first person who’s given us any information at all about her, and it’s information from which she could benefit.”

“How?”

“There are only two questions as regards Lucy Payne. First, was she involved? And second, did she know and keep quiet about it? What you’ve just told me is the first thing that tips the scales in her favor. By talking to me, you’ve done your friend a service. Good evening, Ms. Forrest. I’ll make sure there’s an officer keeping an eye on the place.”

“Why? Do you think I’m in danger? You said Terry-”

“Not that sort of danger. The press. They can be very persistent, and I wouldn’t want you telling them what you’ve just told me.”