Friend of the Devil

4

Annie was in her office at the squat brick-and-glass building on Spring Hill bright and early on Monday morning, feeling a lot better than she had on Sunday. Even the weather seemed to echo her lift in spirits. The rain had passed and the sky was bright blue dotted with fluffy white clouds. The usually gray North Sea had a bluish cast. There was a chill in the wind, but by mid-afternoon people would be taking their jackets off on the quays and piers and sitting outside at the pubs. It was almost spring, after all.

The “Wheelchair Murder” had hit the local papers and TV breakfast news, and Superintendent Brough had scheduled a press conference for later that morning. Luckily, Annie wouldn’t have to attend, but he would expect her to give him something to feed the hungry mob with.

Annie felt another quiver of guilt and self-loathing when she thought about Saturday night. Behaving like a randy teenager at her age was hardly becoming, she felt. But it had happened; now it was time to follow the old Zen lesson and let go with both hands. Life is suffering, and the cause of suffering is desire, so the Buddhists say. You can’t stop the desires, memories, the thoughts and the feelings, the teaching went, but you didn’t have to grasp them and hang on to them to torture yourself; you could simply let them go, let them float away like balloons or bubbles. That was what she did when she meditated, concentrated on one fixed thing — her breathing or a repeated sound — and watched the balloons with her thoughts and dreams inside them drift away into the void. She needed to get back to it regularly again. Anyway, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty of other things to think about this morning.

Like Karen Drew, for a start.

The first detail Annie read from the files Tommy Naylor had brought from Mapston Hall shocked her: Karen Drew had been only twenty-eight years old when she died. Annie had thought her an old woman, and even Naylor had pegged her age at around forty. Of course, they had only had the bloodless, shapeless lump under the blanket in the wheelchair with dry, graying hair to go by. Even so, Annie thought, twenty-eight seemed terribly young. How could the body betray one so cruelly?

According to the records, Karen’s car had been hit by a driver losing control and crossing the center of the road six years ago. She had been in a coma for some time and had had a series of operations and lengthy spells of hospitalization, until it became apparent to every medical expert involved that she wasn’t going to recover, and that the only real option was full-time care. She had been at Mapston Hall for three months, as Grace Chaplin had said. That wasn’t very long, Annie thought. And if Karen couldn’t communicate, she could hardly have made any enemies so quickly. Passing psychopaths aside, it seemed all the more likely that the reason for her murder lay in her past.

Medically, the report suggested, there had been no change in her physical condition, and there never would be. When someone is as limited in self-expression as Karen Drew was, the slightest hint of progress tends to be hailed as a miracle. But nobody had really known what Karen was thinking or feeling. Nobody even knew whether she wanted to live or die. That choice had been taken out of her hands now, and it was up to Annie to find out why. Was it a mercy killing, as Naylor had hinted at, or did someone benefit in some way from Karen’s death? And if mercy was the motive, who had given it to her? These were the questions she would like answered first.

One thing Annie noticed about the files was that they told her very little of Karen’s life before the accident. She had lived in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, but there was no specific address listed, nor any indication as to whether she had grown up there or moved from somewhere else. Her parents were marked as deceased, again without details, and she apparently had neither siblings nor anyone especially close, like a husband, live-in partner or fiancé. All in all, Karen Drew hardly appeared to have existed before that fateful day in 2001.

Annie was chewing on the end of her yellow pencil stub and frowning at this lack of information when her mobile rang shortly after nine o’clock. She didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway. In the course of an investigation, she gave her card out to many people.

“Annie?”

“Yes.”

“It’s me. Eric.”

“Eric?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten so quickly. That hurts.”

Annie’s mind whizzed through the possibilities, and there was only one glaringly obvious answer. “I don’t remember giving you my mobile number,” she said.

“Well, that’s a fine thing to say. Something else you don’t remember, I suppose, like my name?”

Shit. Had she been that drunk? “Anyway,” she went on, “it’s my work number. Please don’t call me on it.”

“Give me your home number, then.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then how am I supposed to get in touch with you? I don’t even know your last name.”

“You’re not. That’s the point.” Annie ended the call. She felt a tightness in her chest. Her phone rang again. Automatically, she answered.

“Look,” Eric said, “I’m sorry. We’ve got off to a bad start here.”

“Nothing’s started. And nothing’s going to start,” Annie said.

“I’m not proposing marriage, you know. But won’t you at least allow me to take you out to dinner?”

“I’m busy.”

“All the time?”

“Pretty much.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Washing my hair.”

“Wednesday?”

“Tenants association meeting.”

“Thursday?”

“School reunion.”

“Friday?”

Annie paused. “Visiting my aging parents.”

“Aha! But you hesitated there,” he said. “I distinctly heard it.”

“Look, Eric,” Annie said, adopting what she thought was a reasonable but firm tone. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to play this game anymore. It’s not going to happen. I don’t want to be rude or nasty or anything, but I’m just not interested in a relationship right now. End of story.”

“I only asked you to dinner. No strings.”

In Annie’s experience, there were always strings. “Sorry. Not interested.”

“What’s wrong? What did I do? When I woke up you were gone.”

“You didn’t do anything. It’s me. I’m sorry. Please don’t call again.”

“Don’t ring off!”

Against her better judgment, Annie held on.

“Are you still there?” he asked after a moment’s silence.

“I’m here.”

“Good. Have lunch with me. Surely you can manage lunch one day this week? How about the Black Horse on Thursday?”

The Black Horse was in Whitby’s old town, on a narrow cobbled street below the ruined abbey. It was a decent enough place, Annie knew, and not one that was frequented by her colleagues. But why was she even thinking about it? Let go with both hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’ll be there at the noon,” Eric said. “You do remember what I look like?”

Annie remembered the young face with the slept-on hair, the stray lock, the night’s growth of dark beard, the strong shoulders, the surprisingly gentle hands. “I remember,” she said. “But I won’t be there.” Then she pressed the end-call button.

She held the phone in her shaking hand for a few moments, heart palpitating, as if it were some sort of mysterious weapon, but it didn’t ring again. Then a very unpleasant memory started surfacing into the light of consciousness.

She had only had her new mobile for a week. It was a Blackberry Pearl, which combined phone, text and e-mail, and she was still learning all its bells and whistles, like the built-in camera. She remembered that Eric had the same model, and he had shown her how to work one or two of its more advanced features.

Hand trembling, she clicked on her recent saved photographs. There they were: her head and Eric’s leaning toward each other, touching, almost filling the screen as they made faces at the camera with the club lights in the background. She remembered she had sent the photo to his mobile. That would be how he had got hold of her number. How could she be so stupid?

She put the phone in her handbag. What was she playing at? She ought to know she couldn’t trust her judgment in these matters. Besides, Eric was just a kid. Be flattered and let go. Enough of this crap. Why did she even let her behavior haunt her so? She picked up a slip of paper from her desk. Time to go and talk to the social worker who had got Karen Drew placed in Mapston Hall. The poor woman had to have had some kind of life before her accident.

Dr. Elizabeth Wallace’s postmortem approach was far less flamboyant and flippant than Glendenning’s, Banks discovered in the basement of Eastvale General Infirmary late that Monday morning. She seemed shy and deferential as she nodded to acknowledge Banks’s presence and made her initial preparations with her assistant, Wendy Gauge. They made sure that the equipment she would need was all at hand and the hanging microphone on which she recorded her spoken comments was functioning properly. She seemed to be holding her feelings in check, Banks noticed, and it showed in the tight set of her lips and the twitching muscle beside her jaw. Banks couldn’t imagine her smoking the way he and Glendenning had, or making bad jokes over the corpse.

Dr. Wallace first performed her external examination in a studied, methodical way, taking her time. The body had already been examined for traces and intimate samples, and everything the doctor and the SOCOs had collected from Hayley Daniels and her clothes had been sent to the lab for analysis, including the leather remnants that had been stuffed in her mouth, presumably to keep her quiet. Banks glanced at Hayley, lying on her back on the table, pale and naked. He couldn’t help to but stare at the shaved pubes. He had already been told about it at the scene, but seeing it for himself was something else entirely. Just above the mound was a tattoo of two small blue fishes swimming in opposite directions. Pisces. Her birth sign.

Dr. Wallace caught him staring. “It’s not unusual,” she said. “It doesn’t mean she was a tart or anything. It’s also not recent, not within the past few months, anyway, so the killer can’t have done it. Tattoos like that are common enough, and a lot of young girls shave or get a wax these days. They call it a Brazilian.”

“Why?” said Banks.

“Fashion. Style. They also say it increases pleasure during intercourse.”

“Does it?”

She didn’t crack a smile. “How would I know?” she said, then went back to her examination, pausing every now and then to study an area of skin or an unusual mark closely under the magnifying lens and speaking her observations into the microphone.

“What’s that brown discoloration below the left breast?” Banks asked.

“Birthmark.”

“The arms, and between the breasts?”

“Bruising. Premortem. He knelt on her.” She called to her assistant. “Let’s get her opened up.”

“Anything you can tell me so far?” Banks asked.

Dr. Wallace paused and leaned forward, her hands on the metal rim of the table. A couple of strands of light-brown hair had worked their way out of her protective head cover. “It certainly appears as if she was strangled manually. No ligature. From the front, like this.” She held her hands out and mimicked the motion of squeezing them around someone’s neck.

“Any chance of fingerprints from the skin, or DNA?”

“There’s always a chance that some of the killer’s skin, or even a drop of blood, rubbed off on her. It looks as if he cleaned her up afterward, but he might not have caught everything.”

“There was something that might have been semen on her thigh,” Banks said.

Dr. Wallace nodded. “I saw it. Don’t worry, the lab has samples of everything, but it’ll take time. You ought to know that. Fingerprints? I don’t think so. I know it’s been done, but there was so much slippage in this case. Like when you open a doorknob, your fingers slip on its surface and everything gets smeared and blurred.”

“Did she struggle?”

Dr. Wallace glanced away. “Of course she bloody did.”

“I was thinking of scratches.”

Dr. Wallace took a deep breath. “Yes. There might be DNA in the samples the SOCOs took from under her fingernails. Your killer might have scratches on his forearms or face.” She paused. “Frankly, though, I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope. As you can see, her fingernails were bitten to the quicks.”

“Yes, I’d noticed,” said Banks. “And the bruising?”

“As I said, he knelt on her arms, and at one point on the center of her chest, probably to hold her down while he used his hands to strangle her. She didn’t have a chance.”

“You’re sure it’s a man?”

Dr. Wallace gave him a scornful glance. “Take it from me, this is a man’s work. Unless someone’s girlfriend did the strangling after the boyfriend raped and sodomized her.”

It had been done, Banks knew. Couples had acted in tandem as sexual predators or killers. Fred and Rosemary West. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. Terry and Lucy Payne. But he thought Dr. Wallace was probably right to dismiss it in this case. “Were all the injuries inflicted while she was alive?”

“There’s no evidence of postmortem maltreatment, if that’s what you mean. The bruising and tearing in the vagina and anus both indicate she was alive while he raped her. You can see the marks on her wrists where he held her. And you can see her upper arms, neck and chest for yourself, as well as the bruising on her thighs. This was a rough and violent rape followed by strangulation.”

“How did he restrain her while he was raping her?” Banks mused out loud. “He couldn’t have done it with his knees on her arms.”

“He could have had a weapon. A knife, say.”

“So why not stab her? Why strangle her?”

“I couldn’t tell you. He may simply have used threats to control her. Isn’t it often the case that rapists will threaten to kill their victims if they don’t cooperate, or even to hunt them down later, harm their families?”

“Yes,” said Banks. He knew his questions might sound crude and insensitive, but these were things he had to know. That was why it had always been so easy with Dr. Glendenning. Working with a woman pathologist was different. “Why kill her at all?” he asked.

Dr. Wallace looked at Banks as she might a specimen on her table. “I don’t know,” she said. “To shut her up, perhaps. Maybe she recognized him or could identify him. That’s your job, isn’t it, to figure out things like that?”

“I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud. Bad habit of mine. I was also just wondering if there was any evidence that the strangulation was part of the thrill, rough sex gone wrong?”

Dr. Wallace shook her head. “I don’t think so. Though he was certainly rough with her. As I said, it very much looks as if he had one knee pushing against her chest as he strangled her, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, in that position to perform a sexual assault on her. I’d say in this case that he strangled her when he’d done with her.”

“Dr. Burns estimated time of death at between midnight and two A.M. on Sunday morning. Do you agree?”

“I can’t find anything that would argue against that estimate,” Dr. Wallace said. “But it is just an estimate. Time of death is—”

“I know, I know,” said Banks. “Notoriously difficult to establish. The one thing that can sometimes help us most. Just one more of life’s little ironies.”

Dr. Wallace didn’t respond.

“Anything odd or unusual?”

“All perfectly normal so far, for this sort of thing.” Dr. Wallace sounded weary and too old for her years, as if she’d seen it all too many times before. Banks stood back and kept quiet to let her get on with her work. She gripped the scalpel and started to make the Y incision quickly and precisely and Banks felt a shiver run up his spine.

Annie took Ginger with her to Nottingham to talk to Gail Torrance, Karen Drew’s social worker, while Tommy Naylor held the fort back in Whitby. Annie liked Ginger’s company, felt at ease with her. She was irreverent and funny, chewing gum constantly, talking a mile a minute, complaining about the other drivers, and she always seemed cheerful. Perhaps because of her rather butch appearance, many of the blokes at the station had first thought she was a lesbian, but it turned out that she had a stay-at-home husband and two young kids. For a moment, as Annie drove and listened to the hilarious tirade about the kids’ weekend with a bouncy castle, she thought that Ginger might be someone she could talk to about Eric — there, he had a name now — but she realized it wouldn’t be appropriate, that she didn’t really know her well enough, and that she didn’t want anyone to know, at least not right now. What did she expect? Advice? She didn’t need any. She knew what to do. And if she talked to anyone about it, it would be Winsome, though they hardly saw each other these days.

Annie was driving because she didn’t feel safe with Ginger behind the wheel. And Ginger knew that. Though she had somehow got her license, driving was simply one of the skills she hadn’t truly mastered yet, she apologized, and she was due for yet another training course in a month’s time. But by the time they got lost in an area of desolate industrial estates, Annie was wishing she had handed the wheel over to Ginger, who was proving to be an even worse navigator than she was a driver.

They finally found the social services offices in West Bridgford. It was almost lunchtime when they arrived, and Gail Torrance was more than happy to join them in the nearest pub. The place was already busy with office workers, but they found a table cluttered with the previous occupants’ leftover chips, salad and remains of Scotch eggs, along with empty lipstick-stained half-pint glasses with pools of pale warm lager in the bottom. The ashtray, too, was overflowing with crushed pink-ringed cigarette ends, one of them still smoldering slightly.

Ginger took the orders and went up to the bar. By the time she got back with the drinks, a sullen teenage waitress had cleared away the debris, then brought knives and forks folded in paper serviettes. Annie and Ginger drank Slimline Bitter Lemon and Gail sipped a Campari and soda. She lit a cigarette. “Ah, that’s better,” she said, blowing out the smoke.

Annie managed to smile through the smoke. “As you know,” she said, “we’ve come to talk about Karen Drew.” She noticed Ginger take out her pen and notebook. Despite her size and her flaming red hair, she had the knack of disappearing into the background when she wanted to.

“You’re probably wasting your time,” said Gail. “I mean, I can’t really tell you very much about her.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know anything.”

“But you were her liaison between the hospital and Mapston Hall.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. I mean, I handle all sorts of similar residential care cases all over the county.”

“So tell us what you do know.”

Gail pushed back her hair. “About four months ago,” she began, “the administration at Grey Oaks, the hospital where Karen had been for almost three years, got in touch with me — I’ve worked with them before — and told me about a woman they had been treating who needed special care. That’s my area. I went out there and met Karen — for the first and only time, I might add — and talked to her doctors. They had assessed her needs, and from what I could see, I agreed with them — not that my opinion on the matter was required, of course.” She flicked the ash off her cigarette. “There was nothing suitable available locally, and I’d dealt with the Mapston Hall people before, so I knew their area of specialization matched Karen’s needs. It was just a matter of waiting for a bed, getting the paperwork done, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. I really had nothing more to do with it than that.”

“What were your personal impressions of Karen?” Annie asked.

“That’s a funny question.”

“Why?”

“Well, what impression can you have of someone who just sits there and says nothing?”

“She must have had a life before the accident.”

“I suppose so, but that wasn’t any of my business.”

“Didn’t you have to contact her family at all?”

“She didn’t have any. You must have read her file.”

“Yes. It tells me nothing.”

“Which is about as much as I can tell you, too.” Gail stubbed out her cigarette as the food arrived. Burgers and chips for Gail and Ginger, the inevitable cheese-and-tomato sandwich for Annie. Maybe she should start eating meat again, she thought, then decided that her diet was probably the only part of her life she seemed to have much control over at the moment. The conversations ebbed and flowed around them. At one table, a group of women laughed loudly at a bawdy joke. The air was full of smoke tinged with hops.

“Karen lived in Mansfield before the accident, according to her file,” said Annie. “Do you know what her address was?”

“Sorry,” said Gail. “But you should be able to find out from Morton’s, the estate agents. They handled the sale for her. I do happen to know that. It was part of the financing.”

“Okay,” said Annie. “How do you know about the estate agents?”

“Her solicitor told me about them.”

“Karen Drew had a solicitor?”

“Of course. Someone had to take care of her affairs and look after her interests. She couldn’t do it herself, could she? And a proper bloody busybody she was, too. Always ringing about this, that or the other. Voice like fingernails on a blackboard. ‘Gail, do you think you could just…’ ‘Gail, could you…’” She gave a shudder.

“Do you remember her name?”

“Do I? Connie Wells. That was her name. Constance, she called herself. Insisted on it. Right bloody smarmy stuck-up bitch.”

“Do you have her phone number or address?”

“Probably, somewhere in my files. She worked for a firm in Leeds, that’s all I can remember. Park Square.”

It would be, thought Annie. Leeds. That was interesting. If Karen Drew lived in Mansfield, why was her solicitor with a firm in Leeds? It wasn’t far away, true, just up the motorway, but there were plenty of lawyers in Mansfield or Nottingham. Well, she could Google Constance Wells easily enough once she got back to Whitby. Maybe the solicitor would be able to tell them something about Karen Drew’s mysterious past.

“Look, there she goes,” said DS Kevin Templeton, pointing at the television screen. “Right there.”

They were in the viewing room on the ground floor of Western Area Headquarters reviewing one of the CCTV tapes. It could have been a clearer image, Banks thought, and perhaps technical support could tidy it up, but even blurred in the dark, with flaws and light flares, there was no doubt that the tall, long-legged girl, a little unsteady on her pins, heading up the alley between Joseph Randall’s leather shop and the Fountain pub was Hayley Daniels, teetering on her high heels, reaching her hands out to touch the walls on both sides as she made her way down Taylor’s Yard.

She had come out of the pub with a group of people at twelve-seventeen, said something to them, and after what looked like a bit of a heated discussion waved them away and headed into the alley at twelve-twenty. It was hard to make out exactly how many of them there were, but Banks estimated at least seven. He could see the backs of a couple of her friends as they lingered and watched her disappear, shaking their heads, then they shrugged and walked in the direction of the Bar None after the others. Banks watched as Hayley’s figure was finally swallowed up by the darkness of the Maze. Nobody waited for her.

“Anyone go down there before or after her?”

“Not on any of the surveillance tapes we’ve seen,” said Templeton. “It’s her, though, isn’t it, sir?”

“It’s her, all right,” said Banks. “The question is, was he waiting or did he follow her?”

“I’ve watched it through till half past two in the morning, sir, well after the doc’s estimate of time of death,” said Templeton, “and no one else went up Taylor’s Yard earlier, and no one goes up there after her. No one comes out, either. We’ve got some footage from the Castle Road cameras to view, but this is it for the market square.”

“So whoever it was entered by some other way, an entrance not covered by CCTV,” said Banks.

“Looks that way, sir. But surely no one could have known she was going to go into the Maze? And if no one followed her…”

“Someone was already there, waiting for just such a likelihood? Possibly,” said Banks.

“A serial killer?”

Banks gave Templeton a long-suffering look. “Kev, there’s only one victim. How can it be a serial killer?”

“So far there’s only one victim,” said Templeton. “But that doesn’t mean it’ll stop with one. Even serial killers have to start somewhere.” He grinned at his own weak joke. Banks didn’t follow suit.

Banks knew what he meant, though. Sexual predators who had done what this man had done to Hayley Daniels didn’t usually stop at just one victim, unless the killer was a personal enemy of Hayley’s, an area that remained to be explored. “What if she isn’t his first victim?” he said.

“Sir?”

“Get on the National Database,” Banks went on. “See if you can find any similar incidents in the last eighteen months, anywhere in the country. Get Jim Hatchley to help you. He’s not much good with a computer, but he knows his way around the county forces.”

“Yes, sir,” said Templeton.

A few years ago, Banks knew, such information would not have been easily available, but a lot had changed in the wake of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation and other interforce fiascos. Now, belatedly, Banks thought, they had come kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century with the realization that criminals don’t respect city, county or even country borders.

“I still wonder why she went into the Maze alone,” Templeton said, almost to himself. “No one went in with her or waited for her to come back.”

“She was well pissed,” said Banks. “They all were. You could see that for yourself. People don’t think straight when they’re pissed. They lose their inhibitions and their fears, and sometimes it’s only your fears that keep you alive. I’ll send DC Wilson out to the college. He looks young enough to be a student there himself. We’ve got to find those people she was with, and the odds are that they were fellow students. She talked to them. You can see her doing it. They talked to her. It looked as if they were maybe trying to persuade her not to go. Someone must know something.”

“She could have arranged to meet someone in there earlier. The Maze, that is.”

“She could have,” Banks agreed. “Again, we need to talk to her friends about that. We need to interview everyone she met that night from the time they set out to the time she went into that alley. We’ve let ourselves be sidetracked by Joseph Randall.”

“I’m still not sure about him,” said Templeton.

“Me, neither,” Banks agreed. “But we have to broaden the inquiry. Look, before you get cracking on that database, have another word with the bartender who was on duty at the Fountain on Saturday night. Find out if there were any incidents in the pub itself. Any sign of him on the tapes?”

“Oddly enough, yes, sir,” said Templeton.

“Why oddly?”

“Well, he wheeled his bicycle out of the front door and locked up.”

“What’s so strange about that?”

“It was nearly half past two in the morning.”

“Maybe he’s a secret drinker. What did he have to say?”

“He wasn’t there when the lads canvassed the pubs yesterday. Day off. Nobody’s talked to him yet.”

“Interesting. If he’s not there today, find out where he lives and pay him a visit. Ask him what he was doing there so late and see if he remembers anything more. We know Hayley and her friends left the Fountain, had a discussion in the market square, then three minutes later she left to go down Taylor’s Yard. Maybe something happened in the pub? It’s almost the last place she was seen alive in public.”

“Yes, sir.”

Templeton left the viewing room. Banks took the remote control and rewound the surveillance tape. He pressed “play” again and watched Hayley Daniels argue with her friends and head down Taylor’s Yard. He couldn’t read her lips; the tape was of too poor a quality. There was also an annoying, flickering strip of light, as you get on old film prints, behind the group, beside Taylor’s Yard. It disappeared. When Hayley stretched her arms out for balance, she could touch both sides of the alley easily. The glitter on the cheap plastic belt around her waist caught the headlights of a passing car.

After she had disappeared into the darkness, Banks rewound and watched the tape one more time. They might be able to isolate and enhance the license plate of that car, he thought, reasoning that if the driver had seen a pretty girl walking into the Maze alone, he might have zipped around the back and entered from the car park, where there were no CCTV cameras, and seized his opportunity. It was a long shot, but in the absence of anything else, it was worth a try. Banks called DC Wilson down from the squad room.

THERE WAS no point in going all the way back to Whitby first, Annie realized, as she aimed the car toward Leeds on the M1. Not when she could ring DI Ken Blackstone at Millgarth and find out exactly where on Park Square Constance Wells practiced law.

“Annie,” said Blackstone. “How nice to hear from you. How’s things?”

“Fine, Ken.”

“And Alan?”

Blackstone sometimes spoke as if Banks and Annie were still an item, or as if he wished they were, but it didn’t bother her. “Haven’t seen him for a while,” she said. “I’m on loan to Eastern Area. Look, maybe you can help me?”

“Of course, if I can.”

“Should be easy enough. I’m trying to track down a Park Square solicitor name of Constance Wells. Ring any bells?”

“No, but give me a few minutes. I’ll call you back.”

They passed close by the massive cooling towers near Sheffield, and around the bend Annie saw the sprawl of Meadowhall, the popular shopping mall, to her left, cars parked everywhere.

Annie’s mobile rang and she answered immediately. “Ken?”

“Ken?” said the voice. “Who’s that? Do I have a rival? Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s me. Eric.”

“What do you want?”

“I just wanted to check if you were still going to join me for lunch on Thursday.”

“I’m expecting an important call. I can’t talk now,” Annie said.

“See you Thursday, then. Black Horse.”

Annie pressed “end.” She felt her face flush as Ginger gave her a sideways look. “Boyfriend trouble?” she asked.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

Ginger held her hands up. “Sorry.”

Annie glanced at her, then laughed. “Some blokes just won’t take no for an answer, right?” she said.

“Tell me about it.”

It wasn’t an invitation, or Annie might have relented. As it was, the mobile saved her. Ken Blackstone this time.

“Yes?” Annie said.

“Constance Wells does indeed work in Park Square,” he said. “Conveyancing.”

“Makes sense,” said Annie.

“Anyway, she’s with the firm of Ford, Reeves and Mitchell.” Blackstone gave an address on Park Square. “That help?”

“Very much,” said Annie. “It even sounds familiar. Would that be Julia Ford’s practice?”

“Indeed it would,” said Blackstone.

Julia Ford was a hotshot solicitor who specialized in high-profile criminal cases. Annie had seen her name and picture in the papers from time to time, though they had never met. “Thanks, Ken,” she said.

“My pleasure. And don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t.”

“Say hello to Alan from me, and ask him to give me a ring when he has time.”

“I’ll do that,” said Annie, not at all sure as to when she would get the chance. “Bye.” She ended the call and concentrated on the road. They were coming to the eastern edge of Leeds, where the tangle of roads and motorways merging and splitting almost rivaled Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction. Annie followed the signs to the city center as best she could and, with Ginger’s help, ended up completely lost. Eventually, they found a car park near the back of City Station and, with only some vague idea of where they were, left the Astra there and walked the rest of the way. It was easy enough when they got to City Square, with its old post office turned into a restaurant, the statue of the Black Prince and torch-bearing nymphs, and a pedestrian area where people sat at tables eating and drinking when the weather was good. Even today, one or two brave souls had ventured out into the open.

They walked along Wellington Street for a short distance, then turned up King Street and made their way over to Park Square. The buildings were mostly Georgian, and the solicitors’ offices hadn’t been modernized that much inside. A receptionist sat clicking away at her computer in the high-ceilinged entrance hall and asked them what they wanted.

“We’d like to see Constance Wells, please,” Annie said, showing her warrant card.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She picked up her telephone. “Let me see if Ms. Wells is available right now. Please take a seat.” She gestured toward the L-shaped sofa with the table of magazines. Annie and Ginger looked at each other, then sat. Annie picked up Hello and Ginger went for Practical Mechanics. They hadn’t got very far when the receptionist called out. “She says she can see you in ten minutes, if you’d care to wait?”

“Of course,” said Annie. “Thank you.”

“Probably just sitting twiddling her thumbs making us wait,” said Ginger.

“Or twiddling something else,” Annie added.

Ginger laughed, a deep guffaw. The receptionist glared at her, then went back to her computer. The time passed quickly enough, and Annie was just about to find out the secrets of the latest megastar divorce settlement when the receptionist’s phone buzzed and she directed them toward the first office at the top of the stairs.

Constance Wells appeared lost behind the huge desk. She was a petite woman with wispy dark curls, probably somewhere in her mid-thirties, Annie guessed. Filing cabinets and bookcases rested against the walls, and her window looked out over the square. A framed illustration of a scene from Hansel and Gretel hung on one wall. Annie admired the delicate colors and fluid lines. It was quality work. A couple of hard-backed chairs had been placed before the desk. “Please,” she said, gesturing. “Sit down. How can I help you?”

“Karen Drew,” Annie said.

Constance Wells blinked once. “Yes?”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh, I…”

“I’m sorry to be so abrupt,” said Annie, “but it’s why we’re here. Karen Drew’s death. Murder, rather. It raises a few questions.”

Constance put her hand to her chest. “I do apologize,” she said. “You took me quite by surprise. I’m not used to such things. Murder, you said?”

“Yes. Karen was murdered yesterday morning on the coast not far from Mapston Hall. Someone took her for a walk and didn’t bring her back.”

“But… who?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Annie. “So far we’re not having a lot of luck.”

“Well, I don’t see how I can help you.”

Annie turned to Ginger. “That’s what everyone says, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ginger. “Quite frankly, I’m getting sick of it, myself.”

“I can’t help that,” said Constance Wells. “It happens to be true.”

“We understand that you’re her solicitor and that, among other things, you handled the sale of her house.”

“Yes.”

“An address would help, for a start.”

Constance Wells managed a tight smile. “I think I can help you with that,” she said, walking over to a cabinet. She was wearing a green pastel skirt and matching jacket over a white blouse with a ruffled front. She opened a drawer, extracted a file and gave them an address. “I can’t really see how that will help you, though,” she said, sitting down again.

“It’s a start. Can you tell us anything else about her?”

“As Ms. Drew’s solicitor,” Constance said, “all communications between us are strictly privileged.”

“Ms. Wells, you don’t seem to understand. Karen Drew is dead. Someone slit her throat from ear to ear.”

Constance Wells turned pale. “Oh… you…”

“I’m sorry if I shocked you,” said Annie. “But believe me, it nearly shocked me right out of my breakfast.” She hadn’t had any breakfast yesterday, she remembered, having flown from Eric’s flat like a bat out of hell, but Constance Wells wasn’t to know that.

“Yes, well… I… look, I really can’t help you. I’m bound by… I only acted for Karen in her business affairs, the house sale, but I… I think you should… would you excuse me for a moment?”

She got up and dashed out of the office. Annie and Ginger stared at each other.

“What’s with her?” Ginger said. “Off to be sick? Taken short?”

“No idea,” said Annie. “Interesting reaction, though.”

“Very. What do we do?”

“We wait.”

It was almost five minutes before Constance Wells came back, and by then she seemed more composed. Ginger had stayed in her chair, but Annie was standing by the window looking down on Park Square, people-watching. She turned when she heard the door open.

“I’m sorry,” said Constance. “I suppose that was rude of me, but it’s… well, it’s all rather unusual.”

“What is?” Annie asked.

“Karen’s case. Look, Julia, that’s Ms. Ford, one of our senior partners, would like to see you. Can you spare her a few moments?”

Annie and Ginger exchanged another glance. “Can we?” Annie said. “Oh, I think so, don’t you, DC Baker?” And they followed Constance down the corridor.