Friend of the Devil

14

When her telephone rang at half past seven on Sunday morning, Annie had hardly managed to get back to sleep since the noise and the bad dream had woken her at three. She had lain awake thinking about Banks and Eric and Lucy Payne and Kirsten Farrow and Maggie Forrest until they all became a tangled mess in her mind, and then she had dozed fitfully for a while. Now the telephone.

Annie fumbled with the receiver and muttered her name.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” said the voice on the other end. She noticed something odd about it. At least it wasn’t Eric.

“That’s all right,” she said. “Time to get up, anyway.”

“I did wait until a reasonable hour. I called the police station first and they told me you’d be at this number. It’s half seven over there, right, and you police get up early, don’t you?”

“About that,” said Annie. Now she could place the accent. Australian. “You must be Keith McLaren,” she said.

“That’s right. I’m calling from Sydney. It’s half past six in the evening here.”

“I wish it was that here. Then my working day would be over.”

McLaren laughed. He sounded as if he were in the room with her. “But it’s Sunday.”

“Ha!” said Annie. “As if that makes any difference to Superintendent Brough. Anyway, it’s good to hear from you so promptly. Thanks for calling.”

“I don’t know if I can tell you anything new, but the officer who rang me did say it was important.”

Ginger had got in touch with McLaren through the Sydney police. It wasn’t that he had a criminal record, but they had been informed about what happened to him in Yorkshire eighteen years ago, and he was in their files. “It could be,” Annie said, tucking the cordless phone under her chin as she went to get some water and put the kettle on. She was naked, which felt like a disadvantage, but no one could see her, she told herself, and it would be harder to get dressed and talk at the same time. She sipped some water and opened the pad on the table before her. Already she could hear the kettle building to a boil. “I hope these aren’t painful memories for you,” she went on, “but I want to talk about what happened to you in England eighteen years ago.”

“Why? Have you finally found out who did it?”

“We don’t know yet, but there may be a connection with a case I’m working on. It came up, anyway. Have you been able to remember anything more about what happened over the years?”

“A few things, yes. Little details. They weren’t there, and suddenly they are. I’ve been writing things down as they come back. My doctor told me it would be good therapy, and it really does help. As I’m writing one detail I sometimes remember another. It’s odd. On the whole, I can remember quite a bit until Staithes, then it all becomes a blur. Isn’t it funny? I remember so little about my holiday of a lifetime. Waste of money, when you come to think of it. Maybe I should have asked for a refund.”

Annie laughed. “I suppose so. What about that day at Staithes? Someone thought they saw you walking near the harbor there with a young woman.”

“I know. Like I said, it’s a blur. All I have is a vague sense of talking to someone down by the harbor, and I thought it was someone I knew. But I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.”

“It was a woman,” Annie said. “Where do you think you knew her from?”

“That I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, without foundation. The police told me I met a girl at a B and B in Whitby, and I do remember her now. They seemed to think it was the same girl, but I don’t know. I’ve had recurring dreams, nightmares, I suppose, but I don’t know how truthfully they reflect the reality.”

“What nightmares?”

“It’s a bit… you know, awkward.”

“I’m a police officer,” Annie said. “Just think of me as a doctor.”

“You’re still a woman.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that.”

McLaren laughed. “I’ll do my best. It’s a bit sexual, you see. The dream. We’re in the woods, you know, on the ground, making out, kissing and stuff.”

“Got you so far,” Annie said. “And just for the record, I haven’t blushed once.” The kettle was boiling, and she put the phone back under her chin as she poured the water on the tea bag in her cup, careful not to splash any on her exposed skin.

“Well, it turns into a horror story after that,” McLaren went on. “All of a sudden she’s not a lovely young girl anymore, but a monster, with like a dog’s head, or a wolf’s, sort of like a werewolf, I suppose, but her chest is more like raw human skin, only there’s just one nipple, bleeding, and the rest is all crisscrossed with red lines where her breasts and other nipple should be. Then my head splits open. I told you it was pretty weird.”

“That’s the nature of dreams,” Annie said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to psychoanalyze you.”

“That’s no worry. I’ve been there. Anyway, that’s about it. I wake up in a sweat.”

Annie knew from her conversation with Sarah Bingham that Kirsten Farrow had surgery on her breasts after the attack, and on her vagina and pubic region. “What do you think it’s about?”

“That’s what my shrink asked me. Beats me.”

“What were you doing in Whitby?”

“I’d just finished uni and wanted to see something of the world before settling down back home. I had some money saved up, so I came over to Europe, like so many Aussies do. We’re such a long way from anywhere, and it’s such a huge country, so we feel we have to do the big trip once before settling down back here. I have an ancestor who came from Whitby. A transport. Stole a loaf of bread or something. So it was a place I’d heard a lot about while I was growing up, and I wanted to visit.”

“Tell me about the girl you met.”

“Can you just hang on a minute? I’ll get my notebook. Everything I remember is in there.”

“Great,” said Annie. She waited about thirty seconds and McLaren came on the line again.

“Got it,” he said. “I met her at breakfast one day. She said her name was Mary, or Martha, or something like that. I never have been able to remember exactly which.”

Annie felt a pulse of excitement. The woman who took Lucy from Mapston Hall had called herself Mary. “Not Kirsten?” she asked.

“That doesn’t ring any bells.”

“What sort of impression did she make on you?” Annie asked, sketching the view from her window on the writing pad, the mist like feathers over the corrugated red roof tiles, the sea a vague haze under its shroud, gray on gray, and a sun so pale and weak you could stare at it forever and not go blind.

“I remember thinking she was an interesting girl,” McLaren said. “I can’t remember what she looked like now, but she was easy on the eyes, at any rate. I didn’t know anybody in the place. I was just being friendly, really, I wasn’t on the make. Well, not much. She was very defensive, I remember. Evasive. Like she just wanted to be left alone. Maybe I did come on a bit too strong. Us Aussies sometimes strike people that way. Direct. Anyway, I suggested she might show me around town, but she said she was busy. Something to do with some research project. So I asked her out for a drink that evening.”

“You don’t give up easily, do you?”

McLaren laughed. “It was like pulling teeth. Anyway, she agreed to meet me for a drink in a pub. Just a sec… yes, it’s here… The Lucky Fisherman. Seemed to know her way around.”

“The Lucky Fisherman?” echoed Annie, her ears pricking up. That was Jack Grimley’s local, the one he had just left the evening he disappeared. “Did you tell the police this?” she asked.

“No. It’s just something I remembered years later, and they never got back to me. I didn’t think it was important.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Annie, thinking there were more holes in this case than in a lump of Swiss cheese. But Ferris was right: They didn’t have the luxury of pursuing every mystery to its solution the way TV cops did. Things fell through the cracks. “Did she turn up?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t easy having a conversation with her. It was like she was very distracted, thinking of something else. And she’d never heard of Crocodile Dundee. That’s something I remembered years later. He was big at the time.”

“Even I’ve heard of Crocodile Dundee,” said Annie.

“Well, there you go. Anyway, I was quickly getting the impression she’d rather be elsewhere. Except…”

“What?”

“Well, she wanted to know about fishing. You know, the boats, when and where they landed the catch and all that. I mean, I didn’t know, but I just thought it was another weird thing about her. To be quite honest, I was beginning to think I’d made a big mistake. Anyway, I went to the loo, and when I came back I got the distinct impression she was staring at some other bloke.”

“Who?” Annie asked.

“Dunno. Local. Wearing one of those fisherman’s jerseys. Good-looking enough in a rough sort of way, I suppose, but really…”

Jack Grimley, Annie was willing to bet, though he wasn’t actually a fisherman, and she doubted that Kirsten, if that was who it was, was studying him because she thought he was a nice bit of rough.

“Then what?”

“We left. Walked around town. Ended up sitting on a bench talking, but again I got the impression she was somewhere else.”

“Did anything happen?”

“No. Oh, I made my tentative move, you know, put my arm around her, gave her a kiss. But it obviously wasn’t going anywhere, so I gave up and we went back to the B and B.”

“To your own rooms?”

“Of course.”

“Did you see her again?”

“Not that I know of, though, as I said, the police think I might have.”

“You don’t remember anything else about that day in Staithes?”

“No. Sorry.”

“I understand it was touch and go for a while?”

“I’m lucky to be here. Everyone said so. I’m even more lucky to have been able to pick up my life and carry on, become a lawyer, get a good job, the lot. Everything except marriage and kids. And that just never seemed to happen. But there was some talk at the time of possible permanent brain damage. My guess is they don’t understand the Aussie brain over there. It’s much tougher than you pommies think.”

Annie laughed. “I’m glad.” She liked Keith McLaren, at least what she could gather of him over the telephone. He sounded as if he would be fun to go out with. He’d also be about the right age for her. Single, too. She wondered if he was good-looking. But Sydney was a long, long way away. It was good to have the fantasy, though. “You must have wondered why it happened,” she asked. “Why you?”

“Hardly a day goes by.”

“Any answers?”

McLaren paused before speaking. “Nobody ever came right out and said it at the time,” he said, “perhaps because I was either in a coma or recovering from one, but I got the distinct impression that the police didn’t discount the theory that I’d tried it on a bit too aggressively and she defended herself.”

That didn’t surprise Annie. She was almost loath to admit it, especially after talking to McLaren and liking him, but it was one of the first things that would have occurred to her, too. Whether that was because she was a woman or a police officer, or both, she didn’t know. Maybe it was because she’d been raped, herself. “They suggested you’d assaulted her, tried to rape her?”

“Not in so many words, but I got the message loud and clear. It was only the fact that there were two unexplained bodies around and she seemed to have done a runner that kept me out of jail.”

“Did you ever see her naked?”

“What a question!”

“It could be important.”

“Well, the answer’s no. Not that I remember. Like I said, I don’t know what happened that day in the woods, but I think my memory up to that point is as clear as it’s going to get. I mean, she just didn’t want to know. I kissed her that once, on the bench near the Cook statue, but that’s all.”

So, Annie thought, he couldn’t have known about Kirsten’s chest injuries — if, indeed, it was Kirsten — until they were in the woods together, which he couldn’t remember, and he had somehow got her top off. But the dream indicated that he had some subconscious knowledge of her injuries. He must have tried something on with her, then, or perhaps it was mutual up to a point, then she began to struggle, to panic. Kirsten knew by that point that she couldn’t have sex, so what was going on?

If McLaren had cottoned on to who she was, as he may well have done even if she had modified her appearance, seen through her disguise and posed a threat to her agenda of vengeance, then wasn’t there a chance that she had cold-bloodedly lured him into the woods and set out to get rid of him? That she had led him on, and when he was sufficiently distracted, attempted to kill him? What kind of creature was Annie dealing with? The moment she thought she had some kind of connection with Kirsten, the damn woman slipped beyond her understanding and sympathy again.

“What do you think about the police’s theory?” Annie asked.

“I don’t see it,” McLaren said. “I mean, it might sound weird to you, but I’m just not like that. I don’t think I have it in me. You might think every man does, I don’t know. I suppose you’ve seen it all in your line of work, and you’re a woman, but I don’t. I honestly don’t believe that I would ever attack or attempt to rape a woman.”

Annie had also experienced rape, but she didn’t happen to believe that every man was a potential rapist. “Thanks for your time, Keith,” she said. “You’ve been really helpful. And if it’s any consolation, I don’t believe you’re that sort of person, either.”

“You’re welcome,” said Keith. “And if you’re ever in Sydney, look me up. I’ll treat you to the best seafood you’ve ever had.”

Annie laughed. “I will,” she said. “Take care.”

When she hung up, she held her lukewarm tea to her skin and stared out to sea. Sydney. Now that would be fun. Images of the Harbour Bridge and the opera house that she had seen on television came into her mind. The mist was burning off the sea now and rising in thin wisps to vanish in the air, the sun was brighter, harder to look at, and a green fishing trawler was making its way to shore. A few minutes later, her phone rang again.

Kevin Templeton had lived in a one-bedroom flat in a converted school near the Green, just across the river, not far from where profiler Jenny Fuller lived when she was in town. From his third-floor window, a door led out to a small balcony which gave a magnificent west-facing view of the terraced gardens, up to the majestic ruined castle towering over the scene, high on its hill. Across the Green to the east was the East Side Estate, a blight on the face of Eastvale, but a source of continuing employment for Banks and the rest at Western Area Headquarters. It was mostly obscured by trees, but you could see the rows of identical redbrick boxes between the bare branches.

The flat was an empty shell, Banks thought as he stood in the living room, and one that didn’t give away a great deal about its occupant. The furniture was all modern, probably from Ikea or some similar flat-box merchant, no doubt pieced together in a flurry of activity one weekend with an Allen key, a six-pack of cheap lager and a great deal of swearing.

There was a DAB radio, but no stereo system or CDs. A widescreen TV dominated one wall, and beside it stood a bookcase crammed with DVDs. A lot of sports, Banks noticed, some blockbuster movies and a few American TV series, such as The Simpsons, 24 and CSI. There were a few books, too, mostly tattered paperbacks by Ken Follett, Jack Higgins, Chris Ryan or Andy McNab, along with some texts on criminal law and American tomes on investigative procedure. There were no framed family photographs on the mantelpiece, and the only wall decoration was a cheaply framed poster for Psycho that Banks remembered had been given away free in a newspaper just last year.

The toilet-and-bathroom combination revealed the usual things — shampoo, toothpaste, paracetamol, hair gel, razor, shaving cream and so on. No prescription drugs. The towel that hung over the side of the bath was still damp, and beads of moisture dotted the sides and bottom of the tub and wall tiles.

In the kitchen, Templeton’s freezer was empty apart from a tray of ice cubes, and in the fridge Banks found milk, eggs, cheese, HP Sauce, tomato ketchup, the remains of an Indian takeaway and a Tupperware container of leftover spaghetti Bolognese. There was also a wine rack full of Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s wines — pretty good ones, too, Banks noticed — and a fairly expensive espresso-making machine.

Which left the small bedroom, with its double bed and night table with shaded lamp, and one large wardrobe full of clothes and shoes. The suits were good quality. Not exactly Armani or Paul Smith, but Banks would have been very suspicious if Templeton had owned such expensive clothing on a detective sergeant’s salary. The only photograph in the flat stood on his dressing table under the window. It showed a young girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, her long hair blowing in the wind, hand held up to hold it out of her eyes, smiling at the camera, squinting slightly in the sun, autumn leaves swirling around her. Banks had no idea who it was or why Templeton kept it in his bedroom. A girlfriend, perhaps? He had never talked about his private life.

There was nothing but loose change, condoms and pen and paper in the night-table drawer. A digital alarm clock set for 6:00 A.M. stood on top.

Banks went back into the living room and sat at Templeton’s desk. The laptop computer was password-protected and would have to go down to technical support for analysis. Banks riffled through the drawers and found a stack of ledger-sized notebooks filled with Templeton’s neat but crabbed hand. Entries were dated, like a diary, but all Templeton wrote about was the cases he worked on. Banks checked the most recent ledger and found that Templeton had written up what he had done on Friday night:

So Banks’s theory about Templeton privately policing the Maze had been right. Not that it was any great consolation in the face of the young lad’s murder. Banks took one more glance around the flat, then he locked up and headed back to the station, taking the ledger with him.

It was a long drive to Eastvale and Annie wasn’t entirely sure that it was justified, but what Banks had said over the phone had intrigued and disturbed her enough. There had been no way she was going back to bed after Keith McLaren’s phone call, anyway, no matter how tired she felt. And so she meandered over the moors that Sunday morning, with hardly any traffic to slow her down. The sun had burned off the morning mist completely by then, and it was a freshly scrubbed spring day.

When Annie walked into the Western Area Headquarters at about half past ten, she could sense the strained and melancholy atmosphere. Even if Banks hadn’t told her, she would have known immediately that a policeman had been killed. There was no other atmosphere like it. People bent over their tasks with gritted teeth, tempers were short and over it all lay a pall of shock and outrage.

Banks was in his office with Winsome standing beside him as he shuffled through a pile of papers on his desk. He stood up to greet Annie, and she could detect none of the hostility from him that she might have expected after their last meeting. That only made her feel worse. He ought to hate her. Of the two, only Winsome seemed frosty. She left almost immediately after a brusque “hello.” Banks gestured for Annie to sit down and called for coffee.

“Sorry I rang so early,” he said. “I hope you didn’t have a wild night on the town last night.”

“Why would you think that?” Annie said.

“No reason. It was Saturday night, that’s all. People do tend to go out. Or maybe you stayed in with your boyfriend?”

“What boyfriend?”

“The one you told me about the other night. The young lad.”

Annie reddened. “Oh, him. Yeah, well, have you ever had a wild night out in Whitby?”

“Many times,” said Banks, with a smile.

“Then you know more about the hidden charms of the place than I do. Anyway, I was already up and working when you rang.” She paused. “I really am sorry to hear about Kev. I wasn’t a fan, as you know, but no matter what I thought of him as a man or as a detective, I’m sorry about what happened to him.”

“He wasn’t a man, really,” said Banks. “The poor sod was just a boy. A lot of us seemed to forget that.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was headstrong, impetuous, immature.”

Annie managed a weak grin. “Those qualities are the prerogative of youth all of a sudden, are they?”

“Touché,” said Banks. “Anyway, that’s what I want to talk to you about, really. What happened to Kev.” Banks gave her a quick run-down of what he knew so far, most of which he had pieced together from Chelsea Pilton’s eyewitness account and scraps of information from PC Kerrigan, Stefan Nowak and Dr. Burns. “You’ll agree there are similarities with the Lucy Payne murder?”

“My God, yes.” Annie ran her hand through her tousled hair. “I had no idea.” She told Banks about her conversations with Sarah Bingham and Keith McLaren, and how the mysterious Kirsten Farrow’s name kept coming up. “What the hell is going on, Alan?” she asked.

“I wish I knew,” said Banks. “But whatever it is, I don’t like it.”

“You and me, neither. Any ideas on who this mystery woman is?”

“I suppose it could be this Kirsten. Anything on Maggie Forrest yet?”

“Yes. Ginger tracked her down through her publishers. She’s back in Leeds. I was thinking of paying her a visit this afternoon. But what makes you think of her? I mean, she might have had a good motive for Lucy Payne’s murder, but she had none at all for Templeton’s, as far as we know.”

“True,” said Banks. “It could be two different killers. We’ll try to keep an open mind, but my guess, like yours, is that if it’s not Maggie, it could be Kirsten Farrow somehow, and for some reason, returned, remodeled. But how or why, or who or where she is, I have no idea. I don’t even know how we can get a lead on that. She dropped out of sight years ago. It’s a pity the Australian’s memory isn’t any better.”

“The only thing I can think of,” said Annie, “is to go back to the source of the leak again.”

“Leak?”

“Yes. It was one of the first things we started thinking about when we discovered that Karen Drew was really Lucy Payne. Who knew? And how?”

“And?”

“We still don’t know. Our people have been questioning the staff at Mapston Hall, and the Nottingham police have been helping us out down there at the hospital and social services. I mean, it’s a tricky one. Anyone could be lying, and we’d be hard pushed to prove it.”

“What we need,” said Banks, “is a connection between one of the people who knew that Karen was Lucy, and someone who might possibly be Kirsten Farrow or Maggie Forrest, or know one of them.”

“Yes,” said Annie, “but how do we unearth that? And how would we know if we’d found it? We don’t even know where to start looking for Kirsten. For Christ’s sake, we don’t even know that it was her who killed those men eighteen years ago.”

“But you’ve got a pretty strong feeling that it was, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

Annie thought for a moment. Her brain felt sluggish, but she recalled Les Ferris’s tale and what she had since heard from Keith McLaren and Sarah Bingham, and she tried to string her thoughts into something resembling a logical sequence. “From what I can piece together,” she said, “Kirsten must have figured out somehow the identity of her attacker, only she didn’t pass this information on to the police; she went after revenge herself. She finally tracked him down to Whitby — how, I don’t know — and after a false start — Jack Grimley, the poor unlucky sod — she killed him.”

“And the Australian?”

“I don’t know. We talked about that. It’s possible he came too close to working out what was going on. If he knew she was the same person who was in Whitby when Grimley died, and he could link her to him…? Keith McLaren did tell me that he’d noticed Kirsten staring at someone in the Lucky Fisherman — and this is something he only remembered fairly recently — so she might have figured he was a danger to her. Or…”

“Yes?”

“Well, we know he was found in some woods outside Staithes, and that he was seen with a young woman. Say they went for a walk in the woods, things went too far for Kirsten — remember, she was totally traumatized by her experiences as well as mutilated — and she killed him, or thought she had.”

“Self-defense?”

“In her eyes. Maybe overkill in ours. I really don’t believe that Keith McLaren is a rapist.”

“Okay,” said Banks. “And next?”

“I can’t imagine how she must have felt when she had done what she set out to do and finally killed Eastcote, but she couldn’t go back to her old life. She hung around the fringes of it, for a while, saw Sarah a few more times, her parents, perhaps played at being normal, then she finally dropped out of sight a couple of years later. She wasn’t a serious suspect at the time, remember. She had an alibi, and as far as anyone knew, she had no way of knowing that Greg Eastcote was her attacker. That only came out later, when the police searched his house. It’s only now that she seems to have become a suspect in four murders, two of them eighteen years after the others. Anything could have happened since then. She could have gone anywhere, become anyone, done anything.”

“So what do we know about her?” Banks said. “She’d be, what, forty by now?”

“About that, if she’d just finished uni in 1988.”

“And she could be anyone, in any walk of life?”

“Yes. But let’s not forget that she had a university degree. Only English Lit, but even so… By all accounts she was a bright girl with a great future ahead of her. I mean, the odds are that we might be dealing with a professional woman.”

“Unless her experiences completely undermined her ambitions,” Banks argued. “But it’s a good point. If she really has done what we think she’s done, she’s incredibly focused, determined and resourceful. Anyway, it narrows things down. We can certainly check university records. We’re looking for a professional woman, most likely, who could have known that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne.”

“Julia Ford, Lucy’s lawyer, for a start. Ginger went to talk to her again on Friday afternoon and she wasn’t convinced she was telling us everything she knows.”

“Lawyers are naturally tight when it comes to giving information.”

“I know,” said Annie. “But Ginger thinks it was more than that with Julia Ford. I trust her instincts.”

“Maybe I should go and have a word with Ms. Ford,” Banks said. “It’s been a while since we crossed swords.”

“Sarah Bingham’s a lawyer, too, though she says she hasn’t seen Kirsten in years.”

“Believe her?”

“I think so,” Annie said.

“Okay. Who else?”

“A doctor?” Annie suggested. “Perhaps from the hospital she was in near Nottingham. Or Mapston Hall. There are doctors and nurses there.”

“Good point,” said Banks.

“One thing still gets me, though,” said Annie. “If we’re on the right track, why would she kill Templeton?”

“Another mistake?” Banks suggested. “She thought he was the killer stalking the girl, when in fact he was protecting her, like she must have thought Grimley was her attacker eighteen years ago? But you’re right. We need much more corroboration than we’ve got so far that the murders are linked. Who’s your crime scene coordinator?”

“Liam McCullough.”

“He’s a good bloke,” said Banks. “Have him consult with Stefan on this. There has to be trace evidence in common: hairs, fibers, blood, the dimensions of the wound, something to link Lucy Payne and Kev. Let’s see if we can get the pathologists talking to each other, too, when Dr. Wallace has finished with Kev.”

“Okay,” said Annie. “Les Ferris has tracked down the hair samples from the Greg Eastcote case to compare Kirsten’s with the ones Liam and his team collected from Lucy Payne. He says he should be able to get a comparison fixed up for tomorrow morning. That could at least tell us once and for all whether it’s her we are dealing with or not. We also need to know why, if it is Kirsten, she started again after all this time.”

“If we’re right about her motivation,” said Banks, “then I’d guess it’s because she hasn’t been close to any other sex murderers over the past eighteen years. I’m going down to Leeds again sometime this week. While I’m there, I’ll talk to Julia Ford, see if I can push her in the right direction, and I’ll have a read through the old Chameleon postmortem reports Phil Hartnell got out. I have to check, but I seem to remember that the wounds the Paynes inflicted on their victims were similar to those that Kirsten’s attacker inflicted on her, from what you tell me. I know it can’t have been the same killer — Terence Payne is dead, and this Greg Eastcote seemed pretty definite for the killings eighteen years back — but maybe the similarity set her off.”

“But how could Kirsten know that the Paynes inflicted similar wounds on their victims?” Annie asked.

“There were plenty of media reports at the time, and later, after Lucy Payne was kicked loose. The press didn’t waste a moment in reminding people exactly what had been set free among them by our legal system, whether she could walk or not. Kirsten Farrow is also scarred physically, remember, and that could help us, too.”

“I don’t see how,” said Annie. “We can hardly ask every woman connected with the case to strip to the waist.”

“Pity,” said Banks. “But you’re right.”

Annie rolled her eyes.

“Anyway,” Banks went on, “we’ve got more than enough to be going on with. Let’s compare notes again when you’ve talked to Maggie Forrest.”

Annie stood up. “Right you are.” She paused at the door. “Alan?”

“Yes.”

“It’s good to be working together again.”

The rest of Banks’s Sunday went by in a whirl of meetings and interviews, none of which threw any more light on either the Hayley Daniels or the Kevin Templeton murders — both, apparently, killed by different people, for different reasons, in the same place.

Templeton’s parents arrived from Salford to identify their son’s body, and Banks had a brief meeting with them in the mortuary. It was the least courtesy he could offer under the circumstances. He thought it would also be a good idea to let them believe their son had been killed in the line of duty rather than acting on his own initiative. Templeton’s mother broke down in tears and talked about how they’d failed him, and how it all went back to when his sister ran away from home at seventeen, though she swore it wasn’t really their fault, that they couldn’t keep a girl who was sleeping with men the way she was in a god-fearing house. They’d tried to find her afterward, the father explained, even reported her missing to the police, but to no avail. And now they’d lost their son, too.

Banks now thought he knew who was in the photograph on Templeton’s bedside table, and why Kev had sometimes been so hard on families he interviewed. Christ, he thought, the secrets and burdens people carry around with them.

He needed to talk to Stuart Kinsey again about the snatch of music he had heard in the Maze the night Hayley was killed. Templeton said he had heard something similar in his notes, and Banks had a theory he wanted to put to the test.

As a result of all that, it was past six o’clock before he realized that he hadn’t rung Sophia about their proposed walk. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of her often during the day — in fact she was powerfully and frequently present in his thoughts for someone he had only just met — but time and events had conspired to push making the call out of his consciousness. It was too late for the walk now, he realized, reaching for the telephone, but at least he could apologize. He dialed the number she had given him. Her voice answered on the fourth ring.

“Sophia? It’s Alan. Alan Banks.”

“Oh, Alan. Thanks for calling. I heard about what happened last night on the news. I thought it would keep you busy.”

“I’m sorry about the walk,” said Banks.

“Well, maybe some other time.”

“You go back home on Tuesday?”

“Yes. But I’ll be back again.”

“Look,” Banks said, “even under the circumstances, I was thinking I’ve got to eat. I haven’t had anything except Fig Newtons all day. There’s a nice bistro on Castle Hill. Café de Provence. Would you consider having dinner with me instead?”

There was the briefest of pauses, then she said, “Yes. Yes, that would be nice. I’d like that. If you’re sure you can make it.”

Banks felt a knot of excitement in his chest. “I’m sure. I might not be able to stay long, but it’s better than nothing.” He checked his watch. “How about seven? Is that too early?”

“No, seven’s fine.”

“Shall I pick you up?”

“I’ll walk. It’s not far.”

“Okay. See you there, then. Seven.”

“Right.”

When he put the receiver down Banks’s palm was sweaty, and his heart was beating fast. Grow up, he told himself, and he got up and reached for his jacket.

Maggie Forrest was not only still living and working as a children’s book illustrator in the UK, she was still living in Leeds. She had spent three years in Toronto before returning and subletting a flat on the waterfront, down by the canal, and going back to her old line of work.

Granary Wharf had been developed in an area of decrepit old warehouses by the River Aire and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at the back of City Station in the late ’80s, and was now a thriving area with its own shops, market, flats, restaurants, entertainment and a cobbled canal walk. On Sunday afternoon, when Annie arrived at the car park near the canal basin, it was quiet. She found Maggie Forrest in a third-floor flat. They had met briefly during the Chameleon business, but Maggie didn’t appear to remember her. Annie showed her warrant card, and Maggie let her in.

The flat was spacious, done in bright warm shades of orange and yellow. There was also plenty of light coming in through a large skylight, which Maggie would need for her artwork Annie guessed.

“What’s it about?” asked Maggie, as Annie sat on her beige modular couch. Maggie sat cross-legged in a large winged armchair opposite. The window looked out on the building site at the back of the Yorkshire Post Building, where yet more flats were going up. On examination, Annie thought, Maggie Forrest certainly had that slight, waiflike look about her that Chelsea Pilton had noticed in the killer, and that Mel Danvers at Mapston Hall had spotted about Mary. Her nose was a bit long, and her chin rather pointed, but other than that she was an attractive woman. Her hair was cut short and peppered with gray. Her eyes looked haunted, nervous. Annie wondered if anyone — Mel, Chelsea — might recognize her from an identification parade?

“It’s a nice flat,” said Annie. “How long have you been here?”

“Eighteen months,” Maggie answered.

“Never visit your friends down on The Hill? Ruth and Charles? It’s not far away. They don’t even know you’re in town.”

Maggie looked away. “I’m sorry. I’ve neglected Ruth and Charles,” she said. “They were good to me.”

“What about Claire Toth? She misses you.”

“She hates me. I let her down.”

“She needs help, Maggie. She’s grown up now and what happened to her friend has left her with a lot of problems. You might be able to do some good there.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist, damn it. Don’t you think I’ve done enough damage? That part of my life is over. I can’t go back there.”

“Why not move farther away, then, make a clean break?”

“Because I’m from here. I need to be close to my roots. And it’s far enough.” She gestured toward the window. “Could be any modern development in any city.”

That was true, Annie thought. “Married?” she asked.

“No. Not that it’s any of your business,” Maggie answered. “And I don’t have a boyfriend, either. There’s no man in my life. I’m quite happy.”

“Fine,” said Annie. Maybe she could be happy without a man in her life, too. She’d hardly been all that happy with one. Or then again, maybe she was doomed to repeat the patterns of her old mistakes.

Maggie didn’t offer tea or coffee, and Annie was parched. She’d treat herself to something later in one of the city center cafés. “Do you own a car?” she asked.

“Yes. A red Megane. What have I done now?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Annie. “Where were you last Sunday morning, the eighteenth of March? Mother’s Day.”

“Here, of course. Where else would I be?”

“How about the Whitby area? Ever been there?”

“A few times, yes, but not last Sunday morning.”

“Know a place called Mapston Hall?”

“Only from the news,” said Maggie. “This is about Lucy Payne, isn’t it? I should have known.”

“I would have thought you did,” said Annie. “Anyway, yes. It’s about Lucy Payne.”

“You think I killed her?”

“I never said that.”

“But you do, don’t you?”

“Did you?”

“No. I was here. I told you.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. Alone. I’m always alone. I like it best that way. When you’re alone, you can’t hurt anyone, and no one can hurt you.”

“Except yourself.”

“That doesn’t count.”

A diesel train blew its horn as it entered Leeds City Station. “So there’s no way you can prove you were here?” Annie asked.

“I never thought I’d have to.”

“What did you do?”

“I don’t remember.”

“It’s only a week ago,” said Annie. “Try. Didn’t you visit your mother?”

“My mother’s dead. I was probably reading the Sunday papers. That’s what I do on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, if it’s nice, I take them down to that café with the tables outside, but I think that morning was windy and cold.”

“Remember that, do you?” said Annie.

“It’s why I stayed inside to read the papers.”

“Ever heard of Karen Drew?”

Maggie seemed surprised by the question. “No,” she said. “I can’t say that I have.”

“Funny,” said Annie. “It was in the papers when they got hold of the story about Lucy Payne. It was the name she was going under.”

“I didn’t know that. I must have missed it.”

“How do you feel about Lucy?”

“The woman tried to kill me. When it came time to go to court, you told me the CPS wasn’t even going to bother prosecuting her. How do you think I feel?”

“Resentful?”

“You could start there. Lucy Payne took my trust, took my help when she needed it the most, then she turned around and not only betrayed me, but she would have killed me, I know, if the police hadn’t arrived. So how do you think I feel?”

“Angry enough to have killed her?”

“Yes. But I didn’t. I didn’t know where she was, for a start.”

“Do you know Julia Ford?”

“I’ve met her. She was Lucy’s lawyer.”

“Stay in touch?”

“I use her firm whenever I need legal work done, which isn’t often. But do we play golf or go out to the pub together? No. Anyway, I don’t need a criminal lawyer. Mostly I deal with Constance. Constance Wells. We’re quite friendly, I suppose. She helped me find this place.”

Of course, Annie thought, remembering the framed illustration on Constance Wells’s wall. One of Maggie’s, no doubt. “You gave her that Hansel and Gretel drawing.”

Maggie looked surprised. “Yes. You’ve seen it?”

“I was in her office last week. It’s very good.”

“You don’t have to patronize me.”

“I wasn’t. I mean it.”

Maggie gave a little dismissive gesture with her shoulders.

“Where were you at about midnight last night?”

“I’d just got home from London. I had a meeting with my publishers on Friday afternoon, so I decided to stay down until Saturday, do some shopping. That’s about as much of London as I can take these days.”

“Where did you stay?”

“Hazlitt’s. Frith Street. My publisher always puts me up there. It’s very convenient.”

“And they would verify this?”

“Of course.”

Well, Annie thought, getting ready to leave, it had been a long shot, but subject to corroboration of her alibi, it didn’t look as if Maggie Forrest could have killed Kevin Templeton. When it came to Lucy Payne, though, Maggie was still high on the list. And she didn’t have an alibi for that.

Banks arrived first at the bistro, and it wasn’t so busy that Marcel, the genuine French maître d’ couldn’t give him an effusive welcome and a quiet secluded table, complete with white linen tablecloth and a long-stemmed rose in a glass vase. He hoped it wasn’t over-the-top, that Sophia wouldn’t think he was trying to impress her or something. He had no expectations of anything, but it felt good to be having dinner with a beautiful and intelligent woman. He couldn’t remember how long it had been.

Sophia arrived on time, and Banks was able to watch her as she handed her coat to Marcel and walked toward the table, fixing his eyes with hers and smiling. She was wearing designer jeans and some sort of wraparound top that tied at the small of her back. Women have to be pretty good at using their hands behind their backs, Banks had noticed over the years; they spent so much time fastening things like ponytails, bras, wraparound clothes and difficult necklace clasps.

Sophia moved elegantly toward him, with unhurried grace, and seemed to flow naturally into a comfortable position once she sat. Her hair was tied loosely at the nape of her long neck again, and a few dark stray tresses curled over her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were every bit as dark as he remembered, shining and obsidian in the candlelight. She wore no lipstick, but her full lips had natural color, well set off by her flawless olive skin.

“I’m glad you could make it,” said Banks.

“Me, too. I knew our walk was out of the question when I heard the news. Look at you. I’ll bet you didn’t get much sleep.”

“None,” said Banks. He realized as he spoke that not only hadn’t he slept or eaten since he had seen Sophia last night, but he hadn’t even been home, and he was wearing the same clothes he had worn to Harriet’s dinner party. He had to remember to keep a change of clothing at the station. It was embarrassing, but Sophia was clearly too much of a lady to say anything about it. They studied the menu and discussed a few items — Sophia, it turned out, was a keen gourmet cook and a food nut — and Banks ordered a bottle of decent claret.

“So it’s Sophia, is it?” Banks asked when they had ordered — steak and frites for him and sea bass for Sophia, with Stilton, pear and walnut salad to start.

“Sophia Katerina Morton.”

“Not Sophie?”

“No.”

“Kate?”

“Never.”

“Sophia it is, then.”

“Just don’t call me ‘Sugar.’”

“What?”

She smiled. “It’s a song. Thea Gilmore. It’s a bit cheeky, actually.”

“I know her,” Banks said. “She did an old Beatles song on one of those MOJO freebies. I liked it enough to buy a CD of other covers she’d recorded.”

“Loft Music,” said Sophia. “That’s good, but you should try her own songs.”

“I will. Do you work in the music business?”

“No. No, I’m a producer with the BBC. Arts radio, so I do occasionally get involved in music specials. I did a series about John Peel not too long ago, and I’ve done a few programs with Bob Harris.”

“The Old Grey Whistle Test Bob Harris?”

“One and the same. He introduced me to Thea at his birthday party.”

“I’m impressed.”

“You would have been. Robert Plant was there, too. I’ve never met your son, though.”

“Ah, I see. You’re wooing me just to get to my son. They all try it. It won’t work, you know.”

Sophia laughed, and it lit up her features. “I’d hardly call this wooing.”

“You know what I mean.” Banks felt himself blushing.

“I do. He is a remarkable success, though, your Brian. Cute, too. You must be very proud.”

“I am. It took a while to get used to, mind you. I don’t know about the cute bit — you should have seen him when he was a surly, spotty teenager — but it’s not the easiest thing to deal with when your son decides to give up on higher education and join a rock band.”

“I suppose not,” said Sophia.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Banks said, “what were you doing at Harriet’s dinner party last night? I mean, I must admit, it didn’t really seem like your scene at all.”

“It wasn’t. And I wasn’t going to go.”

“So why did you?”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to pass over a chance to meet Eastvale’s top cop.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously! I’d heard so much about you over the years. It might sound silly, but I’ve felt I’ve known you ever since that first meeting. When Aunt Harriet told me she was inviting you to the dinner, I said I’d do my best to get there. Really, I wasn’t going to go. That’s why I was late. I only decided after it had started that I’d kick myself if I didn’t take the chance. It could have been a dreadful bore, of course, but…”

“But?”

“It wasn’t.” She smiled. “Anyway, you clearly enjoyed it so much you didn’t even want to change your clothes. I must say, it’s the first time I’ve been out with a man who wore the same clothes two nights in a row.”

So not too much of a lady, then. Banks liked that. He smiled back, and they laughed.

Their starters arrived, and they toasted with the wine and tucked in. Banks felt he would probably be better off wolfing down a burger and chips rather than the delicate and beautifully presented salad, but he tried not to let his hunger show. At least the steak and frites would fill him up. Sophia took tiny bites and seemed to savor each one. As they ate they talked about music, London, country walks — anything but murder — and Banks found out that Sophia lived in a small house in Chelsea, that she had once been married to a successful record producer but was now divorced and had no children, that she loved her job and enjoyed the luxury of her father’s Eastvale flat to visit whenever she wanted.

She was half Greek and half English. Banks remembered Harriet saying something about having a brother in the diplomatic service, and that was Sophia’s father. He had met her mother while posted in Athens, where she had worked in her father’s taverna, and against all advice they had married and had just celebrated their ruby wedding anniversary. They were away in Greece at the moment.

Sophia had spent a great deal of her childhood moving from place to place, never settling long enough in a school or a city to make friends, so now she valued those she had more than ever. Through her job, she met a lot of interesting people in the various arts — literature, music, painting, film — and she went out to a lot of events — concerts, exhibitions, festivals.

It sounded an exhausting life to Banks, a real social whirl, and he realized he simply didn’t have time for that sort of thing. His job took pretty much all he had, and what little time he had left over he used to relax with music or a DVD and a glass of wine. He went to Opera North when he could get there, took long walks in the hills when the weather was good, dropped by the local Helmthorpe pub for folk night once in a while, though less often now that Penny Cartwright, the local femme fatale, had turned him down.

As the evening continued and they topped up their wineglasses, it felt to Banks as it had under the street lamp at the bottom of Harriet’s path, as if their illuminated circle of the universe were the only real place, and everything outside it was insubstantial as shadows. That illusion was pierced when Marcel brought the bill. Banks paid, despite Sophia’s objections, and once again they found themselves out in the street saying good night. Banks had to go back to the station to see if there had been any progress. He felt extremely lucky that neither his pager nor his mobile had gone off during dinner.

Sophia thanked him for the meal, then they leaned toward each other to do the awkward cheek-kissing thing that had become so popular, but before Banks knew how it happened their lips were touching in a real kiss, long and sweet. When it was over, they walked off in opposite directions. Banks set off down the hill back to the station, realizing that he had made no specific arrangements to see Sophia again, and after about ten paces he turned around. At about the same moment Sophia looked back, too, and they smiled at each other. How odd, Banks thought. He never looked back, and he was willing to bet that Sophia never did, either.