Friend of the Devil

18

Banks enjoyed the drive to Leeds. The weather was fine, the traffic not too horrendous, and the iPod shuffle treated him to a truly random medley of David Crosby, John Cale, Pentangle and Grinderman, among others. A mild beer hangover from Kev Templeton’s wake hammered away insistently in the back of his head, muffled by extra-strength aspirin and plenty of water. At least he had had the sense to avoid spirits and sleep on Hatchley’s sofa, though the children had awoken him at some ungodly hour of the morning. Annie had gone home early and said she would be coming back to Eastvale sometime to talk to Elizabeth Wallace. Banks and Annie planned to meet for a late lunch and compare notes.

Julia Ford had agreed to see Banks at eleven o’clock, sounding a little mystified by his request on the telephone, but perfectly pleasant and polite. In Leeds, he was fortunate in finding a parking spot not far off Park Square and arrived at the office in good time for his appointment. A young receptionist, messing with the flowers in the vestibule when he arrived, greeted him, then phoned through and led him to Julia’s office.

Julia Ford stood up behind her large, tidy desk, leaned forward, shook hands and smiled. She was wearing a very subtle and no doubt expensive perfume. “DCI Banks,” she said. “What a pleasure to see you again. You seem well.”

“You, too, Julia. May I call you Julia?”

“Of course. And it’s Alan, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you.” And it was true. Her chocolate-brown hair was longer, curled at her shoulders, and there was the occasional strand of gray. Her eyes were as watchful and suspicious as ever, indicating a mind that never stopped working.

She sat down and patted her skirt. “Flattery will get you nowhere. What can I do for you?” Julia was quite slight in stature and seemed dwarfed by the desk.

“It’s a rather delicate matter,” Banks said.

“Oh, I think I’m used to those, don’t you? As long as you don’t expect me to give away any secrets.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” said Banks. “Actually, there are a couple of things. First of all, do you know a woman called Maggie, or Margaret, Forrest?”

“The name rings a bell. I believe we do some legal work for her, yes. Not, I hasten to add, criminal. That’s my area. The other members of the firm cover a wide range of legal services. I believe Ms. Forrest is a client of Constance’s.”

“Have you spoken with her recently?”

“Not personally, no.”

“Perhaps I could talk to Constance?”

“I don’t think that would help,” said Julia. “My associates and partners are all just as discreet as I am.”

“Somebody hasn’t been,” Banks said.

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you implying?”

“Your office knew from the start that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne. You arranged for the name change, the false reason for her quadriplegia, the transfer to Mapston Hall. Whatever else Lucy Payne was, she was your client. You took care of all her affairs.”

“Of course. That was what we were engaged to do. I don’t see what your point is.”

“Someone found out and killed Lucy.”

“But surely other people knew? You’re not trying to blame the firm for what happened, are you?”

“We’ve talked to everyone else.” Banks paused. “It comes back to you, Julia. You can help us out here.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“We think that Lucy Payne was killed either by Maggie Forrest or by the same woman who killed two men in the same area eighteen years ago. Her name is Kirsten Farrow, though it’s very unlikely she goes under that name now. A hair on Lucy’s blanket has been matched with hairs taken from Kirsten eighteen years ago. The hair from the blanket has also yielded DNA, which is currently being processed. It would really help us a lot if we could find out who knew that Karen was Lucy, and where that information might have gone. Did you or someone else in your firm tell Maggie Forrest?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Our lips were sealed.”

“Come on, Julia. This is important. People are dead.”

“They usually are when you turn up.”

“A policeman is dead.”

Julia touched her hair. “Yes. I was sorry to hear about that. I wish I could help.”

“Have you ever heard of Kirsten Farrow, the woman I just mentioned?”

“Never.”

“She’d be about forty now. About your age.”

“I already told you flattery would get you nowhere.”

“Do you know Dr. Elizabeth Wallace?”

Julia seemed surprised. “Liz? Yes, of course. We go back years. Why?”

“She’s our pathologist, that’s all.”

“I know. She always was a bright spark. I’m sure she’s very good at her job, especially if her golf game is anything to go by.”

“Do you also know a psychiatrist called Dr. Susan Simms?”

“I’ve met her. For crying out loud, her office is just across the square. We’ve had lunch together now and then, when our paths have crossed.”

“How have your paths crossed?”

“In court, on occasion. I don’t think it’s any secret that she sometimes does forensic psychiatry.”

“Does she also know Dr. Wallace?”

“How would I know?”

“Maggie Forrest was one of her patients.”

“What can I say? It’s a small world. I really don’t know where you’re going with this, Alan, but I can’t tell you anything.” She glanced at her perfect, tiny gold watch. “Look, I have another appointment in a few minutes, and I’d like some time to prepare. If there’s nothing else…?”

Banks got to his feet. “A pleasure, as ever,” he said.

“Oh, don’t lie. You think I was put on this earth just to stand in your way and make your life difficult. I really am sorry about that policeman who was killed. Was he a friend of yours?”

“I knew him,” said Banks.

During the long drive over the moors to Eastvale, Annie spoke on her mobile with Ginger, when she could get a signal. It was too early for the DNA results from the hair, but Ginger had been burning up the phone lines, fax circuits and e-mail accounts. There was no way that Maggie Forrest could be Kirsten Farrow, she had concluded. Maggie was the right age, and she had been born in Leeds, but she had grown up in Canada, and in 1989, she had been attending art college in Toronto, specializing in graphic illustration. She married a young lawyer, and their relationship ended in a bad divorce a few years later. Apparently, he was a bully and a wife beater. After her divorce she came to live and work in England, staying at Ruth and Charles Everett’s house on the Hill, and befriending Lucy Payne, until the notorious events of six years ago sent her reeling back to Canada.

But Maggie was working in England again and, according to Ginger, seeing Dr. Simms again. This in itself seemed odd to Annie. Why return? She could get book illustration work easily enough in Canada, surely? Maggie had told Annie that it was because she needed to be close to her roots, but was it really because she had decided to go after Lucy, get her revenge? Just because Maggie wasn’t Kirsten Farrow, that didn’t mean she hadn’t killed Lucy Payne.

The main question in Annie’s mind, given the links between the professional women — Maggie Forrest, Susan Simms, Julia Ford and Elizabeth Wallace — was had she had help from one of them? And if so, why? And where was Kirsten Farrow in all this? It was possible that someone could have planted one of her hairs on Lucy Payne’s blanket, but how, and why? The hair could also have got there in Mapston Hall, for example. The Mapston Hall staff had been checked and rechecked, but she supposed it would do no harm to check again, dig even deeper, perhaps include the most regular visitors of other patients, deliverymen, maintenance contractors, the postman, everyone who set foot in the place.

Annie parked in Eastvale market square rather than behind the police station. It was a bit of a walk down King Street to the infirmary, but the fresh air would do her good. Afterward, she would call in at the station and see how everyone was recovering after last night’s wake. Annie felt quite proud of herself for drinking only one pint over the course of the evening, then driving back to Whitby.

Reception told Annie that Dr. Wallace was in her office in the basement. Annie didn’t like Eastvale General Infirmary, especially the basement. The corridors were high and dark with old green tiles, and footsteps echoed. The whole place was a Victorian Gothic monstrosity, and even though the mortuary and the postmortem theater had been modernized with the best equipment, the surroundings felt antiquated to Annie, associated with the barbaric times of no anesthetics and unhygienic conditions. She shivered as her shoes clicked along the tiled corridor. The other thing about the basement that gave her the creeps was that there was hardly ever anyone around. She didn’t know what else was down there other than storage and the mortuary. Maybe the bin where they dumped all the amputated limbs and extracted organs, for all she knew.

Dr. Wallace was actually in the postmortem theater, sitting at the long lab table mixing some chemicals over a Bunsen burner when Annie entered. There was a body on the table. The Y incision had already been made and the internal organs were all on display. The raw-lamb smell of dead human flesh hung in the air, mixed with disinfectant and formaldehyde. Annie felt slightly nauseated.

“Sorry,” said Dr. Wallace, with a weak smile. “I was just finishing up when I got sidetracked by this test. Wendy had to leave early — boyfriend trouble — or she’d have done it for me.”

Annie glanced at the body. She could relate to boyfriend trouble. “Right,” she said. “Just a few questions, as I mentioned.”

“I’ll get him closed up while we talk, if that’s all right. Does it bother you? You seem a bit pale.”

“I’m fine.”

Dr. Wallace gave her an amused glance. “So what burning questions bring you all the way down to my little lair?”

“It’s what we were talking about last night. Lucy Payne and Kevin Templeton.”

“I don’t see how I can help you. Lucy Payne wasn’t my case. We agreed there were similarities, but that’s all.”

“It’s not so much that,” Annie said, settling on a high swivel stool by the lab bench. “Not specifically, at any rate.”

“Oh? What, then? I’m curious.” Dr. Wallace unceremoniously dumped the organs back into the chest cavity and prepared the large needle and heavy thread.

“You went to university with the lawyer, Julia Ford. You’re still friends. Right?”

“That’s true,” said Dr. Wallace. “Julia and I have known each other a long time. We’re practically neighbors, and we play the occasional round of golf together.”

“What did you do before then?” Annie asked.

“Before playing golf?”

Annie laughed. “No, before going to medical school. You were a mature student, weren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say I was all that mature, but I’d lived an interesting life.”

“Did you travel?”

“For a few years.”

“Where to?”

“All over. The Far East. America. South Africa. I’d get some low-paying job and support myself for a while, then move on.”

“And before that?”

“What does it matter?”

“I don’t suppose it does. Not if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t.” Dr. Wallace looked at Annie. “I had a disturbing phone call from an old friend of mine at university just an hour or two ago,” she said. “She wanted to let me know that there had been a Detective Constable Helen Baker ringing up and asking questions about me. Is that true?”

“Quite the grapevine,” said Annie.

“Is it true?”

“Okay. Look, this is a bit delicate,” Annie said, “but Julia Ford was one of the few people who knew the true identity of the woman in Mapston Hall. Lucy Payne. Her firm made the arrangements to place her there, took care of all her affairs. As I just said, we know the two of you went to university together, that you’re neighbors and friends. Did you know anything about this arrangement?”

Dr. Wallace turned back to her corpse. “No,” she said. “Why should I?”

Annie felt that she could sense a lie, or at least an evasion. There was something about the pitch of Dr. Wallace’s voice that wasn’t quite right. “I was just wondering if, you know, during the course of an evening, she might have let something slip, and that you might have done the same.”

Dr. Wallace paused in her sewing and turned to Annie. “Are you suggesting,” she said, “that Julia would break a professional confidence? Or that I would?”

“These things happen,” said Annie. “A couple of drinks. No big deal. Not the end of the world.”

“‘Not the end of the world.’ What an odd phrase to use. No, I don’t suppose it would be the end of the world.” She went back to sewing dead flesh. Annie could feel the tension rising in the room, as if the very air itself were thinning and stretching. She also felt even more nauseated by the smell.

“Well, did she?” she pressed on.

Dr. Wallace didn’t look up. “Did she what?”

“Tell you about the arrangements her firm had made for Lucy Payne?”

“What does it matter if she did?”

“Well,” said Annie. “It means… I mean… that someone else knew.”

“So?”

“Did she tell you?”

“She might have done.”

“And did you tell Maggie Forrest, for example? Or Dr. Susan Simms?”

Dr. Wallace seemed surprised. “No. Of course not. I vaguely know Susan Simms as a fellow professional, and from the occasional court appearance, but we’re hardly in the same field. I don’t know any Maggie Forrest.”

“She was the neighbor who befriended Lucy Payne and almost died at her hand.”

“More fool her. But wasn’t that a long time ago?”

“Six years. But Maggie’s disturbed. She had a strong motive for wanting Lucy dead, and no alibi. All we’re trying to find out now is whether she—”

“Knew that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne. Yes, I know where you’re going with this.”

“Karen Drew?”

“What?”

“You said Karen Drew. How did you know that?”

“I suppose I read it in the paper after the body was found, like everyone else.”

“Right,” said Annie. It was possible, of course. The body had been identified as Karen Drew’s, but she would have thought that subsequent discoveries and all the publicity given to the Chameleon case and the “House of Payne” had driven that minor detail from most people’s minds. Maggie Forrest had said she didn’t recognize Karen Drew’s name, only Lucy’s. In the eyes of the world, Annie had thought, the dead woman in the wheelchair was Lucy Payne. Clearly not.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” Dr. Wallace said.

“Can’t or won’t?”

Dr. Wallace paused in her sewing and glanced over the body at Annie. “Well, it amounts to the same thing, really, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t. Either you don’t know anything, or you’re being willfully obstructive, which I find very odd behavior in a Home Office pathologist. You’re supposed to be on our side, you know.”

Dr. Wallace stared at Annie. “What are you saying?”

“I’m asking you if you gave anyone this information, for any reason.” Annie softened her tone. “Look, Liz,” she said. “You might have had good intentions. Perhaps you knew one of the victims’ families, or someone who had been damaged by the Paynes? I can understand that. But we need to know. Did you tell anyone about Lucy Payne being registered at Mapston Hall under the name Karen Drew?”

“No.”

“Did you know about it?”

Dr. Wallace sighed, put her needle and thread down and leaned on the edge of the table. “Yes,” she said. “I knew.”

In the silence that followed, Annie felt a growing tightness in her chest. “But that means…”

“I know what it means,” said Dr. Wallace. “I’m not stupid.”

She had exchanged her needle for a scalpel and was moving away from the body on the table.

“Good to see you again, Alan,” said DI Ken Blackstone, meeting Banks at the front desk of Millgarth and escorting him through security. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“It looks as if we’ve got Hayley Daniels’s killer.” Banks explained about Jamie Murdoch’s confession and the hidden way out of the Fountain.

“Just one more to go, then,” said Blackstone. “I was sorry to hear about Kev Templeton.”

“We all were,” said Banks.

“Anyway, what can I do for you?”

“Did you get the Chameleon files out for Annie Cabbot?”

“How are you two doing, by the way?”

“Better, I think. At least we’re working together again. I’m still not sure what’s going on with her, though.”

“You’re not…?”

“No. That’s been over for a long time.”

“Anyone else?”

“Maybe. Ken, about those files?”

Blackstone laughed. “Yes, of course. Getting quite nosy in my old age, aren’t I? Sorry. The files are in my office. Most of them, anyway. There isn’t room for everything. Not if I want to sit in there, too. Why?”

“Mind if I have a look?”

“Not at all. It was your case. Partly, at any rate. Anything I can do?”

“A cup of coffee would go down a treat, Ken. Black, no sugar. And maybe a KitKat. I like the dark-chocolate ones.”

“Your diet’s terrible. Anyone ever told you? I’ll send down. Want me out of the way?”

“Not at all.”

They went into Blackstone’s office, and Banks saw immediately that he hadn’t been exaggerating. They could hardly move for boxes.

“Know where everything is?” Banks asked.

“Not exactly.” Blackstone picked up his phone and called for two coffees and a dark-chocolate KitKat. After anything in particular?”

“I got to thinking about the Kirsten Farrow case,” said Banks. “Anyway, I seemed to remember that the wounds were rather similar in both cases, and I wondered if that was what had set her off again after eighteen years. That and finding out where Lucy Payne was hiding out. It might have acted as a trigger.”

“But what about the other woman you mentioned? Maggie Forrest?”

“She’s not out of the picture yet. There could even be some connection between her and Kirsten Farrow. There are a number of odd links in this case, strange tangents, and I won’t rest until I get them sorted.”

“So you’ll be wanting the pathologist’s reports?”

“That’s right. Dr. Mackenzie, I believe it was.”

The coffee and KitKat arrived while they were digging through the boxes. Blackstone thanked the PC who brought it and got back to helping Banks. At last they unearthed the pathology reports, and Banks started reading through them while Blackstone left the office for a while.

It was as he had thought. Many of the bodies were badly decomposed, as they had been buried in the dirt of the cellar or the back garden. But Dr. Mackenzie had been able to identify slash marks to the areas of the victims’ breasts and genitalia in all cases, probably made with the same machete Terence Payne used to attack and kill Janet Taylor’s partner. They were similar to the wounds Kirsten Farrow had suffered, though the weapon was different, and they were wounds, unfortunately, not uncommon to vicious sexual assaults. They showed a deep hatred of the women men felt had betrayed, humiliated and rejected them all their lives, or so the profilers said. Of course, not all men who had been betrayed, humiliated or rejected by women became rapists and murderers, or the female population would be a lot smaller and the jails would be even more full of men than they already were, Banks thought.

Twenty minutes or more must have passed as Banks read the grisly details, most of which he remembered firsthand, then Blackstone returned.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“It’s as I thought,” Banks said. “Now I just need to find out how much of this was reported in the press at the time.”

“Quite a lot, as I remember,” said Blackstone. “Alan, what is it? Have you found something?”

Banks had let the last file slip out of his hand to the floor, not because the details were more gruesome than any of the others, but because of a sheet of paper he had seen clipped to the end of the pile. It was simply a record of all those involved in the preparation of the reports and postmortems, including the men who had transported the bodies to the mortuary and the cleaners who had cleaned up afterward, initialed beside each name, partly kept to ensure a continuous chain of custody. “I can’t believe it,” said Banks. “It’s been staring me in the bloody face all along, and I never knew.”

Blackstone moved closer. “What has? What is it?”

Banks picked the papers up off the floor and pointed with his index finger to what he had read. On the list of those involved with the Chameleon victims’ postmortems were several lab assistants, trainees and assistant pathologists, and one of them was a Dr. Elizabeth Wallace.

“I should have known,” said Banks. “When Kev Templeton went on about patrolling the Maze for a would-be serial killer, Elizabeth Wallace was the only one who was as adamant as he was that we were dealing with a killer who would strike again. And she tried to convince us that the weapon was a razor, not a scalpel.”

“So? I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you see it? She was there, too. Elizabeth Wallace was keeping an eye on the Maze, and she had easy access to sharp scalpels. Much better to have us believe the weapon was a razor that anyone could have got hold of. They were at cross-purposes, her and Kev. They didn’t talk to each other. Neither knew the other was going to be there. Elizabeth Wallace thought Kev Templeton was going to rape and kill Chelsea Pilton. She couldn’t have recognized him from behind. It was too dark. And there can be only one reason why she was there.”

“Which is?”

“To kill the killer. She’s Kirsten Farrow. The one we’re looking for. She was a trainee on the Chameleon victims’ postmortems. That means she knew at first hand about the wounds. They brought back her own memories. She knows Julia Ford, and Julia must have let slip about Lucy Payne being at Mapston Hall under a false name. It fits, Ken. It all fits.”

“She killed Templeton, too?”

“Almost certainly,” said Banks. “By mistake, of course, the same way she killed Jack Grimley eighteen years ago. But she did kill him. Her MO is different now, but she trained as a doctor since then, so that makes sense. And do you know what?”

Blackstone shook his head.

“Annie’s going to see her today to push about her past and her friendship with Julia Ford. Alone.” Banks took out his mobile and pressed the button for Annie’s number. No signal. “Shit,” he said. “She wouldn’t have turned it off, surely?”

“Why don’t you try the station?”

“I’ll ring Winsome on the way to Eastvale,” said Banks, heading for the door. He knew he could get there in three quarters of an hour, maybe less if he put his foot down. He hoped that would be fast enough.

“Liz, what are you doing?” said Annie, getting up from her stool and edging toward the door.

“Don’t move. Keep still.” Dr. Wallace waved the scalpel in her hand. It glinted under the light. “Sit down again.”

“Don’t do anything foolish,” Annie said, returning to the stool. “We can work this out.”

“You do speak in clichés and platitudes, don’t you? Don’t you realize it’s too late for any of that now?”

“It’s never too late.”

“It was too late eighteen years ago,” said Dr. Wallace.

“So you’re Kirsten,” Annie whispered. Somehow, she had known it, at least in some part of her mind, since she had talked to Dr. Wallace in the Queen’s Arms the previous evening, but that knowledge didn’t do her a lot of good now.

“Yes. Elizabeth is my middle name. Wallace is from an ill-advised marriage that I should never have entered into. A marriage of convenience. An American student. At least I got the name from him, and he got his British citizenship from me. Needless to say, the marriage was never consummated. If you’d have dug deeper, you’d have uncovered it all. It’s a matter of public record. All you really had to do was check the registry of marriages. I didn’t even try very hard to hide it, really. When I went to medical school, I simply enrolled as Elizabeth Wallace. A new life. A new name. It caused one or two problems with my old records, but the university was patient, and we managed to get it all sorted out. I told them I was trying to avoid an abusive husband and would appreciate their discretion. But they would have told you in the end.”

“So you moved on, changed your name, became a doctor.”

“I didn’t know what would become of me. I had no plans. I’d done what I set out to do. A terrible thing, really. A murder. No matter that the victim didn’t deserve to live, was the worst kind of excuse for a human being you could imagine. And it wasn’t my first. I’d also killed an innocent man and harmed a silly boy.”

“I’ve talked to Keith McLaren,” Annie said. “He’s all right. He recovered. But why him?”

Dr. Wallace managed a tiny, tight smile. “I’m glad,” she said. “Why? The Australian recognized me in Staithes, even though I was in disguise. I had to think fast. He’d been with me in the Lucky Fisherman, where I saw Jack Grimley. If they ever questioned him…”

“I’ve been there,” said Annie. “The Lucky Fisherman. Why Grimley, too?”

“A mistake. Pure and simple. When I remembered what my attacker looked like, I found I had an even stronger memory of his voice, his accent, what he said. That was what led me to Whitby. Once I was there, I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d find him. Nothing else mattered. Grimley sounded like the man who attacked me. I led him to the beach. That part was easy. Then I hit him on the head with a heavy glass paperweight. That was hard. I had to hit him again. He wouldn’t die. When he did, I dragged his body into a cave and left it for the sea to lick out. The tide was due in. Oh, I can justify it all to myself, of course. I was on a mission, and there were bound to be mistakes. Casualties. It’s the cost of war. But I got there in the end. I got the one I was after. The right one. And when it was over, everything felt different. Do you know Saint Mary’s Church, in Whitby?”

“The one on the hill, near the abbey?”

“Yes, with the graveyard where you can’t read the names. Inside it’s divided into box pews. Some of them are for visitors, and they’re marked ‘For Strangers Only.’ After I pushed Greg Eastcote over the cliff, I went there and got into one of those boxes, and I curled up in a ball. I was there… oh, I don’t know how long. I thought, If they come for me now and catch me, it’s okay, I’m not running, it’s fine, that’s how it’s meant to be. I’ll just wait here until they find me. But nobody came. And when I left that pew, I was a different person. I was calm. Totally calm. Can you believe that?” She shrugged. “I left what I had done behind me. I felt no guilt. No shame. So the name change seemed natural. I’d used different names all along, anyway. Martha Browne, Susan Bridehead. It was a sort of game as much as anything else. I was an English student. My name was Elizabeth Bennett for a while after that, but my husband’s name just happened to be Wallace.”

“But how did you find Greg Eastcote? How did you know who he was?”

“Like I told you, I remembered things. Partly it was the hypnosis.” She paused. “He said things, you know. All the time he was doing it to me, he talked, said things. I remembered. He named places, the work he did. And there was a smell I could never forget. Dead fish. I put it all together in the end. I did make mistakes, but I got there. I got him. The right one. I made him pay for what he did to all of us.”

“What did you do afterward?”

“First I went back to Leeds, to Sarah, then back to Bath, to my parents. I tried to pick up the threads, but I was different. I was no longer one of them. I’d cut myself off by what I’d done. So I went away. I traveled a lot, all over the world. In the end, I decided to put the past behind me and become a doctor. I wanted to help people, cure people. I know it sounds odd, after what I did, but it’s the truth. Can you believe that? But in my studies I was drawn to specialize in pathology. Funny, isn’t it? Working with the dead. I was always nervous around the living, but I never had any qualms about handling dead bodies. When I saw the wounds on the Paynes’ victims six years ago, I couldn’t help but revisit my own experiences. And then it just fell into my lap. Julia told me one night after dinner, when she’d had a few drinks. She had no idea, of course, who she was telling.”

“Look,” said Annie. “Please put the scalpel down. Let’s stop this before someone else gets hurt. People know I’m here. People will come.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“I can understand why you did it, all those years ago. Really, I can. I was raped once, and almost killed. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. I felt such rage. I suppose I still do. We’re not that different, you and I.”

“Oh, but we are. I actually did it. I didn’t feel rage. And I didn’t feel guilt.”

“Now I try to stop people from doing it, or bring them to justice if they do.”

“It’s not the same. Don’t you understand?”

“Why did you kill Lucy Payne? For God’s sake, she was in a wheelchair. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. Why did you kill her? Wasn’t she suffering enough?”

Liz paused a moment and stared at Annie as if she were crazy. “You don’t get it, do you? It wasn’t about suffering. It was never about suffering. Certainly not about her suffering. I never cared whether she suffered or not.”

“So what was the point?”

“She could remember, couldn’t she?” Liz whispered.

“Remember?”

“Yes. That’s what they do. Surely you know that? That’s the whole point. They remember every moment, every cut, every thrust, every feeling they experienced, every ejaculation, every orgasm, every drop of blood they shed. And they relive it. Day after day after day. As long as she could remember it, she had all she wanted.” She tapped the side of her head. “Right there. How could I let her live with the memory of what she’d done? She could do it over and over again in her mind.”

“Why not just push her over the edge?”

“I wanted her to know what I was doing and why I was doing it. I talked to her the whole time, just the way Eastcote did to me, from the moment the blade touched her throat until… right up to the end. If I’d pushed her, something might have gone wrong. Then I wouldn’t have been able to get down there and do what I had to. She might not even have died.”

“But what about Kevin Templeton?”

“Another mistake. Another casualty. I was trying to stop a memory from being made, and I thought he was the one. He shouldn’t have been there. How could I have known he was there to protect people? I think perhaps he’d sensed my presence there, and maybe he thought I was the killer. When he started to walk toward the girl, he was going to warn her to leave, but I thought he was going to attack her. I’m sorry. You’ve got the real killer now. He’s the same as Eastcote and Lucy Payne. Perhaps at the moment he seems contrite, remorseful, but you wait. That’s because he’s just been caught and he’s scared. Even worse, he’s beginning to realize that he won’t be able to do it again, to experience that bliss again. But he’ll still have his memories of that one glorious time. He’ll be sitting there in the corner of his cell running over every detail. Relishing the first second he touched her, the moment he entered her and she gasped with pain and fear, the moment he spilled his seed. His only regret will be that he won’t get to do it again.”

“You sound as if you know what it feels like,” said Annie.

Before Dr. Wallace could respond, footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Winsome appeared at the door with several uniformed officers behind her. Dr. Wallace lurched forward with the scalpel at her own throat. “Stop! Stop right there.”

Annie held her arm up and Winsome stopped in the doorway. “Get back!” Annie yelled. “All of you. Get back out of sight.” They disappeared, but Annie knew they weren’t far away, working out their options. She also knew there would be an armed response unit arriving soon, and if she had any hope of talking Liz into surrendering, she had to work fast. She looked at her watch. It had been half an hour since Dr. Wallace had picked up the scalpel. Annie had to try to keep her talking as long as possible.

Dr. Wallace glanced toward the door, and seeing no one there, seemed to relax a little.

“Do you see what I mean?” Annie said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “People know I’m here. They’ve come now. They won’t just go away. Don’t make things worse. Give me the scalpel.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dr. Wallace said. “It’s all over now, anyway. I’ve done all I can do. God, I’m tired. Too many memories.” She was leaning back on the blood-filled gutter of the postmortem table, the half-sewn-up body behind her. Annie was about five feet away, and she calculated whether she could get over there and wrestle the scalpel out of Liz’s hand. In the end, she decided she couldn’t. The damn thing was way too sharp to risk something like that. She had seen what damage it could do.

“Look,” said Annie. “There’s still time. You can tell your story. People will understand. I understand. I do. We can get you help.”

Liz smiled, and for a moment Annie could see the remains of what had probably once been a lovely young girl with a brilliant future, one who would take the world by the horns and go as far as she wanted. Christ, she had been almost killed by a monster and had then taken her revenge, and after that she had reinvented herself as a pathologist. But she seemed weary now, and there were deep cracks in the smile. “Thanks, Annie,” she said. “Thanks for being understanding, even though no one can ever really understand. I wish I’d known you before. This may sound weird, but I’m glad I got to spend my last few minutes on earth with you. You will take good care of yourself, won’t you? Promise me. I can tell you’ve been damaged. You’ve suffered. We are kindred spirits underneath it all, in some ways. Don’t let the bastards win. Have you seen what they can do?”

She opened the front of her smock, and Annie recoiled at the jagged crisscross of red lines, the displaced nipple, the parody of a breast.

“Kirsten!” she cried out.

But it all happened too fast. Annie launched herself forward as Kirsten drew the scalpel across her own throat. The warm spray of blood caught Annie full in the face, and she screamed as it kept pumping and gushing down the front of her blouse, all over her jeans. The scalpel fell from Kirsten’s hand and skittered across the shiny tile floor, leaving a zigzag of blood. Annie knelt beside Kirsten and became aware of movement all around her, soothing words, hands reaching for her, Winsome’s voice. She tried to remember her first aid and press down hard on the bleeding carotid, but it was impossible. When she did, all that happened was that the blood spurted faster from the jugular. And Kirsten couldn’t breathe. Like Templeton, she had a severed carotid, jugular and windpipe. Annie didn’t have three hands, and there was chaos all around her.

Annie screamed out for help. It was a hospital, after all; there had to be doctors everywhere. And they were trying. People milled around and manhandled her, bent over Kirsten with masks and needles, but when it was all over, she lay there on the floor in a pool of blood, her eyes wide open, pale, dead.

Annie heard someone say there was nothing more to be done. She rubbed her mouth and eyes with the back of her hand, but she could still taste the sweet metallic blood on her lips and feel it burning in her eyes. God, she thought, she must look a sight, sitting on the floor rocking, crying and covered in blood. And after what seemed like ages, who should come walking toward her but Banks.

He knelt beside her, kissed her temple, then sat on the floor and held her to his chest. People all around them were making various motions, but Banks’s presence seemed to silence them and create a cocoon of peace. Soon it seemed as if there were only Annie, Banks and Kirsten in the room, though she knew that had to be an illusion. Kirsten’s body was covered, and the lights seemed dimmer. Banks stroked her bloody brow. “I’m sorry, Annie,” he said. “I should have realized sooner. I was too late.”

“Me, too,” said Annie. “I couldn’t stop her.”

“I know. I don’t think anyone could. She’d come to the end. There was nowhere else for her to go. She’d already had a second lease on life. She didn’t want to live anymore. Can you imagine how terrible every day must have been for her?” Banks made a move to get up and help Annie out of the mortuary.

“Don’t leave me!” Annie cried, clinging on tight, not letting him move. “Don’t leave me. Not yet. Stay. Please. Just for a little while. Make them all go away.”

“All right,” Banks said, and she could feel him gently stroking her hair and humming a tuneless lullaby as she held on to him tight and buried her head deep in his chest, and for a moment it really did feel as if the whole world had gone away.