Friend of the Devil

9

Thanks for taking the trouble to come down and see me,” said Les Ferris, the researcher who said he had information, when Annie appeared in his office late that afternoon. “It’s almost knocking-off time, and I don’t get out much,” he went on, picking up his rumpled tweed jacket from the back of his chair, “so why not let me treat you to a pint? Or a cup of tea, if that’s your poison?”

Annie thought for a moment. She’d fallen off the wagon last night with disastrous consequences, but she was feeling better now, and one pint wouldn’t do her any harm. Besides, the office was a mess and smelled of overripe banana skins. “Okay,” she said, “you’re on. A pint it is.”

Les Ferris smiled, showing stained and crooked teeth. He was a bald, roly-poly sort of man with a red face, white whiskers and sad eyes.

It was a beautiful evening in Scarborough, the sort you didn’t often get before the holiday season — or even during it, for that matter — and the locals were taking full advantage. Couples walked hand in hand on the prom and families with young children, or pushing prams, lingered at the edge of the sea, kids throwing pebbles at the waves. One brave man even rolled up his trouser legs and tested the water, but he didn’t last more than a few seconds. Annie could smell salt and seaweed and hear the gulls screeching overhead. For a second, they made her think of Lucy Payne’s body, and she shivered.

“Cold?” asked Ferris.

Annie smiled. “No,” she said. “Someone just walked over my grave.”

Ahead, where the high promontory of Scarborough Castle bulged out and brooded over the bay, Annie could see the waves smashing against the seawall, the salt spray flying high. Ferris picked a cozy pub on a corner near Marine Drive. It looked over the harbor. The tide was out and a few white, red or green fishing boats rested on the wet sand. One man in a blue jersey was painting his hull. The pub was a Jennings house with guest beers, and Annie chose a pint of Cock-a-Hoop. Ferris reached for his cigarettes after he had set the drinks down on the scratched table. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Annie. The place already reeked of smoke and several people at nearby tables were smoking. “Make the best of it while you can.”

“I’ve tried to stop about twenty times,” said Ferris, “but somehow I just can’t seem to manage it. I’m about to turn sixty-five next month, so at this point I think I’d better just resign myself to my fate, don’t you?”

That wasn’t what Annie had meant. She had been referring to the smoking ban coming into effect in July. But it didn’t matter. “Sixty-five isn’t old,” she said. “You might just as easily live to be ninety. If you stop.” She raised her glass. “Cheers. To ninety.”

“Cheers. I’ll drink to that.” After he drank, Ferris inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

“You said you had something to tell me,” Annie said.

“Yes. I’m not really sure if any of it’s relevant, but when I heard about the identity of your victim it rang a bell.”

“I’m hardly surprised,” said Annie. “Lucy Payne was quite notorious in her day.”

“No, it’s not that. Not Lucy Payne.”

“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning?”

“Yes,” said Ferris. “Yes, perhaps I had. I haven’t always been a humble researcher, you know,” he went on. “I’ve put in my time on East Yorkshire CID, as it was then. I might be past it now, but I was quite the dashing young detective at one time.” His eyes twinkled as he spoke.

“I’ll bet you were,” said Annie, hoping a bit of flattery might help him get a move on. She had no particular plans for the evening, but she was looking forward to a quiet night in her room watching TV.

“Not that we ever got many murders along this stretch of coast,” he went on, “which is probably why I thought of it. People say I’ve got a bee in my bonnet. For some reason, though, it’s always haunted me. Perhaps because it all ended up as mysterious as it began.”

“What?” said Annie. “You’ve got me intrigued.”

“A case I worked on back in 1989. A mere callow youth of forty-seven, I was then. I’d just made DS. None of your accelerated promotion rubbish in those days. Back then, you earned your stripes.”

“So I’ve heard,” Annie said.

“Aye, well, not that there aren’t plenty of good men around these days. A few women, too,” he added hastily.

“This 1989 case,” Annie said, lest he put his foot even farther in his mouth. “What exactly brought it to your mind when you heard about Lucy Payne?”

“I was just getting to that.” Ferris drained his pint. “Another?”

“Not for me. I’m driving,” said Annie. “But let me get you one.”

“Aye, all right,” Ferris said. “Women’s lib and all that. I’ll have another pint of Sneck-Lifter, please.”

“Sneck-Lifter?”

“Aye. I know it’s strong, but I don’t have far to go. Not driving, like you.”

Annie went to the bar and asked for a pint of Sneck-Lifter. The barmaid smiled and pulled it for her. She jerked her head over at Ferris. “It’ll take more than this to lift his sneck,” she said.

Annie laughed. “Luckily,” she said, “I won’t be around to find out.”

The barmaid laughed with her, handed Annie her change and said, “Cheers, love.”

Back at the table, Ferris thanked her for the pint and stared out of the window toward the sea. “Aye,” he said. “September 1989. Nasty business it was. I was working out of Whitby then, way you are now. Mostly quiet apart from a few pickpockets in high season, the occasional pub brawl, break-in or domestic incident.”

“What happened?” Annie asked him.

“Well, that’s just it,” Ferris said, scratching his chin. “We never rightly did find out. It was all nobbut speculation and conjecture. Based on what few facts we had, of course. We did our best. Anyroad, it’s stayed with me all these years.”

Annie sipped some beer. Might as well relax and let him tell it in his own time, she thought as she noticed the shadows lengthening outside. “I’m sure you did,” she said. “But what makes you think it’s linked to Lucy Payne’s murder?”

“I never said that it was. It’s just a funny coincidence, that’s all, and if you’re as good a copper as you’re supposed to be, you won’t trust coincidence any more than I do.”

“I don’t,” said Annie. “Go on.”

“First off, we don’t get many murders in these parts, and you tend to remember all of them. We got even fewer back then. It started when a local bloke, a cabinetmaker called Jack Grimley, disappeared one night after leaving a pub called the Lucky Fisherman. A couple of days later his body washed up on the beach over Sandsend way.”

“Murdered?”

“Hard to say for certain,” said Ferris. “Could have been a head wound, the doc said, a smooth rounded object, but he’d been in the water a couple of days, been bashed about on the rocks.” He paused. “And the fish had been at him.”

“Water in the lungs?”

“No. That’s the thing.”

That meant he hadn’t drowned. “So he hit the rocks first as he fell in?”

“That was one theory.”

“What was the coroner’s verdict?”

“Death by misadventure. But DI Cromer, that’s Paddy Cromer, who was in charge of the investigation, were never satisfied. He’s dead now, or I’d suggest you have a word with him yourself. He had as much of a bee in his bonnet about it as I did, right up to the end. I was his DS.”

Annie had no idea why Ferris was telling her this, or how it was relevant to the Lucy Payne murder, but she had some beer left in her glass and was content enough to spin it out for another few minutes while the sun went down. Pity they were facing east, she thought, or it would be a spectacular view. As it was, the delicate shade of blue reminded her of the blue in a piece of sculpted glass she had seen on the Venetian island of Murano once, many years ago, when she was a student. “Why wasn’t DI Cromer convinced?” she asked.

Ferris touched the side of his red, veined nose. “Instinct,” he said. “Like women’s intuition, only more reliable. Copper’s instinct.”

“So he had a hunch,” Annie said. “I still don’t get it.”

Ferris gave her a dirty look, and for a moment she thought she’d ruined whatever rapport she had with him, but then he grinned. “No flies on you, are there? Anyway, whatever it was, Paddy wasn’t happy. Me, neither. I mean, Jack Grimley could have fallen off the cliff. It’s happened before. But according to his mates he hadn’t had much to drink, and he lived in the other direction. There was no reason for him to be walking on the cliff edge. Besides, there’s a beach at the bottom, not rocks. And that was when we first heard of the mysterious woman.”

Annie pricked up her ears. “What mysterious woman?”

“Patience, lass, patience. A witness thought he saw Jack talking to a woman up near the Cook statue. It was dark, though, and he admitted he could have been mistaken. Still, it was all we had at the time, the only piece of information that placed him near the cliffs. And he was with someone.”

“Had he said anything earlier about meeting a woman?” Annie asked.

Ferris shook his head. “Not to his mates he hadn’t.”

“Not like a man,” said Annie. “Still, I suppose there could be any number of reasons for that. If it was a woman he was meeting, maybe she was married? Maybe even to one of his mates?”

“We thought of that. Thing is, no one ever came forward. We dug around, too, turned up nothing. Anyway,” he hurried on, “if that was all that had happened, I wouldn’t have dragged you all the way down here. Not that it isn’t always a pleasure to have a drink with a pretty young girl.”

Annie rolled her eyes and laughed. “How very gallant of you.”

“I meant it,” said Ferris. “You are a pretty lass.”

“It was the ‘young’ bit I was referring to.”

“Well, it’s all relative, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is,” said Annie, an image of the naked Eric flashing across her mind’s eye. “So there’s more?”

“There certainly is. I told you that Jack Grimley was just the first in a series of odd incidents that September. Odd enough to stick in my mind all these years as if they were yesterday. The second occurred a few days later, when a young Australian lad called Keith McLaren was found with a serious head wound in some woods near Dalehouse, up the coast a ways, inland from Staithes.”

“I know it,” said Annie. “Isolated spot.”

“Very. Anyway, the head wound showed remarkable similarities to Jack Grimley’s. A smooth rounded object. It was touch and go with young McLaren for a while, but he pulled through. Problem was, he’d no memory of what happened to him. The doctors said it might come back in time, in bits and pieces — it wasn’t due to any physical brain damage — but that was no use to us. Now, the interesting thing is that a couple of people said they saw him down by the harbor in Staithes, probably the day it happened, walking with a young woman with short brown hair, wearing jeans, a gray windcheater and a checked shirt. It was better than the description we got from the witness who saw Jack Grimley with a woman by the Cook statue because it was dark then, but we’d no way of proving it was even the same person, let alone of knowing who she was.”

“Anyone get a good look at her?”

“No, that’s the problem. We couldn’t even come up with a decent identikit from what we got.”

“Any idea of her age?”

“Young, they said. As in twentyish.”

“And you worked on the assumption it was the same woman in both cases?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably, given the pathologist’s assessment of the wounds. What happened to McLaren?”

“He recovered and went back to Australia.”

“Do you have an address?”

“God knows where he is now. He was from Sydney. I seem to remember he was set on becoming a lawyer, if that’s any help.”

“Okay,” said Annie, making a note. “So this mystery woman shows up in two separate accounts involving two serious attacks in the area, linked by the similarity in head wounds, possibly made by a smooth rounded object, one resulting in death. And this is an area where you get very few violent incidents. Am I to take it that you’re making a connection here between this woman and the one who showed up at Mapston Hall to take Karen Drew — or Lucy Payne — for a walk on Sunday morning?”

“That’s right.”

“But that was eighteen years ago, Les,” said Annie. “What could it possibly have to do with what happened the other day?”

Ferris grinned and shook his empty glass. “But there’s more. Buy us another Sneck-Lifter and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“Hello, Mr. Randall,” said Banks, when the officers brought Joseph Randall into the interview room. “Nice to see you again.”

“You can spare me the pleasantries,” said Randall. “What do you mean by sending a police car to drag me out of my home? You couldn’t possibly have sent a more obvious signal to my neighbors if you’d tried.”

“Signal of what?” Banks asked.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to have to walk all this way, would we?”

“Stop playing silly buggers. They wouldn’t even give me any reason why they were bringing me here.”

“They probably didn’t know themselves,” said Banks. “You know how it is. Lowly PCs. Need-to-know basis. We don’t tell them everything.”

Randall folded his arms. “This time I’ve called my solicitor. He’ll be meeting me here momentarily.”

“Good idea,” said Banks. “We like to make sure everything’s aboveboard when we get to this stage of an investigation.”

Randall paused in his display of indignation and gave Banks a worried glance. “What do you mean, ‘this stage’?”

“End game,” said Banks, casually shuffling the papers in front of him. “We find it works best for us in court if everyone knows his or her rights, so there are no possibilities of infringement. So, if you like, we’ll just wait here quietly until your solicitor arrives. It’s not the most salubrious of places.” Banks glanced around at the flaking institutional green paint, the high barred window and the bare lightbulb covered by a flyblown grille. “Still… Cup of tea while we wait?”

Randall grunted. “No, I don’t want a bloody cup of tea. I want this over with so I can get out of here and go home.”

“Mind if I have one?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

Banks asked the constable on guard to send for tea, and before it arrived, Randall’s solicitor popped his head around the door, appearing lost. As Banks had expected, he wasn’t used to having criminal clients. Most Eastvale solicitors weren’t. This one looked as if it was his first time inside a police interview room.

“Come in,” said Banks. He didn’t recognize the young man in the ill-fitting suit, untidy hair and large spectacles. “You are?”

The solicitor shook Randall’s hand and sat down in the spare chair. “Crawford. Sebastian Crawford. Solicitor.”

“Sebastian takes care of all my affairs,” said Randall.

“Good,” said Banks. “I’ll just call my colleague and we’ll be ready to start.” If Sebastian Crawford took care of all Randall’s interests, Banks thought, then he wasn’t likely to be very much of a criminal lawyer. With any luck, he would soon be way out of his depth.

The tea arrived, along with DS Stefan Nowak, and they settled down in the interview room. When he was ready, Banks turned on the video and tape machines and stated the details of date, time, place and those present. He could see how this made Randall nervous, while Crawford just sat there, fascinated by the whole routine.

“Now then, Mr. Randall,” Banks began, “there’s been a few interesting developments since we last talked, but before we get to them, I’d just like to recap briefly what you told us on the previous two times we talked to you, make sure it’s accurate.”

Randall glanced toward Crawford, who nodded. “I can see no harm in that, Joseph,” he advised. “Do as they say.”

“As I remember it,” Banks said, “you were surprised to find that you’d spent eleven minutes in the storage room with Hayley Daniels’s body before reporting it to the police station. Is that correct?”

“It was you who said I spent eleven minutes there. I didn’t think it was that long. You say someone saw me, but I thought I entered the building at eight-fifteen, not eight-ten, as your witness said.”

“It was eight-ten,” said Banks. “Don’t forget, Joseph, the CCTV cameras run in the daytime as well, and they are accurately timed. Eleven minutes is a long time to spend with a corpse. Unless there were matters to attend to, of course.”

“Mr. Banks!” said Crawford. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing, yet,” said Banks, keeping his eyes on Randall. “You also admitted that you were in the Duck and Drake earlier on Saturday evening, when Hayley and her friends were there, and that you were ogling her while she stood at the bar.”

Randall looked at Crawford. “That was his word, not mine. I admitted to no such thing, Sebastian. You see? This is what they do. They twist what you say, put words into your mouth.”

“But you did see her there,” Banks went on. “And you did try to gloss over that fact in our first interview, didn’t you?”

“I told you I didn’t remember seeing her.”

“Well, she certainly hadn’t changed her clothes,” said Banks. “And the only thing different about her appearance the following morning was that she was dead. But if you expect me to believe you saw an attractive young girl in a very revealing outfit at seven o’clock one evening and then again just after eight o’clock the next morning and didn’t know it was the same girl, I suppose I have to believe you.”

“It was the shock,” said Randall. “For Christ’s sake, man, she was dead. It might be par for the course as far as you’re concerned, but I’m not used to seeing dead bodies on my property.”

“Let’s move on to what you did on Saturday night,” said Banks. “You told me that you were at home between the hours of twelve and two, that you put the cat out and went to bed about a quarter to one. Do you stand by that?”

“Of course I do. It’s what happened.”

“It’s not very far from where you live to Taylor’s Yard, is it?” Banks said. “Though it might make more sense to drive to the car park at the back of the Maze and slip in through one of the passages not covered by CCTV.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Yes, Mr. Banks, what are you talking about?” Crawford chipped in. “My client has told you what he did on Saturday night.”

“I’m presenting an alternative version,” said Banks.

“But how could I have known the girl would go into the Maze at whatever time she did?” said Randall.

It was a good question, Banks had to admit, and he didn’t have a ready answer. The whole element of spontaneity, of Hayley’s deciding at the last minute to head into the Maze to relieve herself, bothered him. It was a stumbling block. But, he had to keep telling himself, it didn’t preclude the possibility that there was somebody already in there just waiting for an opportunity, as Templeton believed. “You know the layout back there,” he said. “What was to stop you from hiding out and waiting for a victim? It was simply a matter of time, after all, before some poor young drunken lass wandered in and got lost in there. Perhaps you’d been in the Fountain on previous occasions and knew that the barmaid there used it as a shortcut to the car park. Maybe you didn’t know she was off work that night. No matter. Everything turned out well in the end, didn’t it? I’ll bet you couldn’t believe your luck when you saw it was the girl you’d had your eye on in the Duck and Drake earlier that evening.”

“Now, come off it, Mr. Banks,” said Crawford with a nervous laugh. “Surely this is stretching our credulity a bit far, isn’t it? Do you really expect us to believe this… er… coincidence?”

“Until Mr. Randall tells us how it really happened,” said Banks, “I’m afraid it’s the best we can do.”

“I’ve told you how it happened,” said Randall. “After the Duck and Drake I went home and spent the rest of the evening watching television. At about a quarter to one, I put the cat out and went to bed. End of story.”

“I’d like to believe you,” said Banks, “but I’m afraid what you’re saying goes against the evidence.”

“What evidence?” asked Crawford. “Are you saying you can produce evidence to corroborate what you’re accusing my client of?”

Banks turned to Stefan Nowak. “We have evidence that goes a long way toward proving it,” he said. “Stefan?”

Nowak opened a folder in front of him. “According to our independent analysts, the DNA from the sample you freely gave us matches the DNA taken from traces of semen found on Hayley Daniels’s body and on two leather remnants close to that body.”

“What are you saying?” said Randall, face pale, mouth gaping.

“That the chances it was someone else who left those semen traces on Hayley Daniels’s body are about five billion to one,” said Banks. “Am I right, DS Nowak?”

“About that, yes,” said Nowak.

“And that’s good enough for any court in the country,” said Banks. “Joseph Randall, I’m charging you with the murder of Hayley Daniels. If you do not say something now that you later rely on in court, it may be held against you. Anything you do say may be taken down in evidence.” Banks stood up and opened the door. Two burly constables walked in. “Take him down to the custody suite,” said Banks.

“You can’t do this to me!” said Randall. “Sebastian, help me! Stop them. That sample was taken under duress.”

“You gave your consent,” Banks said. “We have the waiver.”

“Under duress. Sebastian! Stop them. Please don’t let them do this to me.”

Crawford wouldn’t look his client in the eye. “There’s nothing I can do right now, Joseph,” he said. “They’re quite within their rights. But believe me, I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

“Get me out of this!” yelled Randall, red-faced, twisting his head back toward Crawford as the constables dragged him out of the interview room. “Sebastian! Get me out of this now!”

Crawford was pale and hunched. He managed to summon up only the grimmest of smiles as he edged past Banks into the corridor and followed his client down the stairs.

“Now this is where it gets really interesting,” said Ferris after a long swig of Sneck-Lifter. He could certainly put it away, Annie thought, checking her watch. She could write off Coronation Street tonight, and maybe The Bill, too, the way things were going. Still, if Ferris’s story was as interesting as he obviously thought it was, maybe it would be worthwhile.

“A week or so after we found Jack Grimley’s body and the Australian lad got hurt, another local chap by the name of Greg Eastcote was reported missing by a workmate. Apparently, he hadn’t turned up at his job for several days. He was a delivery man for a fish wholesaler. We never found him, nor any trace of him.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s always more?” said Annie. “This case is starting to resemble a hall of mirrors.” There was perhaps a quarter of an inch of beer left in her glass, but she wasn’t going to have another one, not this time. Control. Getting it back.

“It is, rather, isn’t it?” said Ferris. “Anyway, we went into Eastcote’s house to see if we could find any clues to his disappearance. He lived alone. I was there, along with Paddy Cromer. We had no evidence at all that there was any connection with what happened to Grimley and McLaren, but such mysterious disappearances and violent assaults were pretty rare around these parts, as I said. As far as his workmates were concerned, Eastcote was happy with his job and seemed generally uncomplicated and worry-free, if perhaps rather quiet and antisocial. A bit of an ‘odd duck,’ as one of them put it. To be honest, we didn’t know what we’d stumbled into at the time.”

“And now?”

Ferris laughed. “I’m not much the wiser.” He drank some more beer and resumed his tale. The lights dimmed and the pub started to fill up with evening drinkers. Annie felt somehow cut off from the laughter and gaiety of the crowd, as if she and Ferris were adrift on their own island of reality, or unreality, depending on how you saw it. She couldn’t explain why she felt that way, but somehow she knew that what Ferris was telling her was important, and that it had something to do with Lucy Payne’s murder, though Lucy would have been only ten in 1989. “It was what we found there, in his home, that puzzled us,” Ferris said. “In almost every respect it was a perfectly normal house. Neat and tidy, clean, the usual books, TV and videos. Normal.”

“But?”

“This never made the media,” Ferris said, “but in one of the sideboard drawers, we found seven locks of hair tied up in pink ribbons.” Annie felt her chest constrict. Ferris must have noticed some change in her because he went on quickly. “No, there’s nothing normal about that, is there?”

“Did you?… I mean…”

“Everyone knew there had been a serial killer operating in the north, and the general feeling was that now we’d found him, or at least found out who he was. We never did find Eastcote himself. As far as our tally was concerned, he had claimed six victims, but there were other girls missing, other unexplained disappearances, and one girl who survived.”

Annie raised an eyebrow.

“Kirsten Farrow. Someone interrupted him before he could finish her off,” Ferris went on. “She was in a pretty bad way for a long time, but she recovered.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Yes. She’d been staying in Leeds at the time with a friend called Sarah Bingham. She was vague, Kirsten, but you can expect that when someone suffered the way she did, poor lass. She really couldn’t remember much about what happened to her at all. We also consulted with the investigators on the case, Detective Superintendent Elswick and his DS, Dicky Heywood. Greg Eastcote’s delivery routes coincided with the disappearances and murders of all six girls and with Kirsten’s assault. We also managed to match Kirsten’s hair sample with one of the locks, so we know that he took a sample from her, even though she survived, and another lock matched that of his most recent victim. The others were… well, they’d been buried for a while, but we did our best. And you know what hair’s like at the best of times; it’s hardy and durable enough, but practically damned impossible to make a match that’ll stand up in court, and these were early days for DNA. Too early. None of us had really heard much about it, and I doubt you could have got DNA from a hair follicle, even if there’d been one. But the hair had been shorn with sharp scissors, so that was pretty unlikely, anyway. And court was never an issue.”

“No?”

“Like I said, we never found Eastcote. A local woman said she thought she’d seen two people struggling on the cliff path just up past the abbey on the way to Robin Hood’s Bay, but she was a long way off, and she couldn’t tell us any more than that. We searched the area and found one of the fence posts had come out of the ground. It seemed as if someone had gone over the edge. We also found blood and fibers on the barbed wire, but we’d no way of knowing whose they were. We got Eastcote’s blood group from medical records, of course, and it matched, but so did forty-four percent of the country’s.”

“Were there any more killings?”

“Not after that. Not around here.”

“You think he went over?”

“We didn’t know for certain, but it was a reasonable assumption that his body had been carried out to sea on the tide.”

“So what did you do?”

“What could we do? We followed a few minor leads, queried some of the local B and Bs. One woman remembered Keith McLaren staying at her guesthouse, and that he struck up a conversation with a young woman there. Seems only natural, I suppose, when you’re young.”

“Did you question him about it?”

“When he came out of his coma, yes. He did remember something about a girl. Apparently they had a drink together, but that’s all.”

“Name?”

“Didn’t remember. Who knows, maybe he remembers more now. It’s been eighteen years.”

“Was there any follow-up?”

Ferris shook his head. “Years passed and nothing new came up. You know what it’s like.” He laughed. “Not like books or telly where the detective won’t give up until he gets his man.”

“Or woman.”

“Aye. Anyway, officially there was no murder, remember. Jack Grimley was killed by a fall, and Greg Eastcote disappeared. The only actual crime was the one against Keith McLaren, and he couldn’t remember anything, then he buggered off back to Australia. Pardon my French.” Ferris paused. “Besides, the feeling was that if Greg Eastcote was a serial killer, as he appeared to be, then someone had done us a bloody big favor.”

“I think you’d have been hard pushed telling that to Jack Grimley’s family, or to Keith McLaren.”

“Aye, well, I never said it sat well with me over the years, did I, but that’s the way things go, sometimes.”

“So you did nothing?”

“My hands were tied.”

“And that’s where it stands today?”

Ferris sighed. “Until now,” he said.

Annie frowned. The noise of laughter and conversation ebbed and flowed around them. Behind the bar, a glass smashed. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “It’s a fascinating story, but you must realize there’s nothing to connect those events directly with what happened to Lucy Payne the other day except the bee in your bonnet. It’s been eighteen years. The whole idea’s ludicrous.”

“Yes, of course. I know that. But if Eastcote was the serial killer, and a woman sent him over that cliff…”

“And Kirsten Farrow was the surviving victim…”

“The mysterious woman seen with Grimley and McLaren. Exactly.”

“But how could she be?” Annie said. “You told me yourself that she couldn’t have known who her attacker was, and she was in Leeds with her friend at the time of the crimes.”

Ferris shrugged. “That’s what she told us. And her friend corroborated it. But alibis can be fabricated. What if she had found out?”

“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

Ferris gave her a hurt look. “What do you think I am?”

Annie rubbed her forehead. “Sorry,” she said. “The media’s already in a feeding frenzy since they found out it was Lucy Payne on the edge of that cliff.”

Ferris chuckled. “I’ll bet they are. Anyroad, they’ll get nothing from me.”

Annie took out her notebook. “Okay, I’ll make a few preliminary inquiries,” she said. “You’d better start by giving me some names and last-known addresses. The Australian, Kirsten’s friend. We’re really pushed for manpower as it is, but maybe it’d be worth a bit of digging.” Then she stopped, struck by an idea that might be as crazy as it sounded.

“What is it?” Ferris said.

“You know those locks of hair you told me about?”

“Yes.”

“Did you keep them?”

“They’d be with the rest of the case material somewhere, yes,” said Ferris.

“Do you think you could dig them out?”

Ferris’s face lit up as if he had been given a new purpose in life. “Is the Pope Catholic?” he said, beaming. “I don’t see why not. I am a researcher, after all.”

The beer was flowing in the Queen’s Arms, where the landlord had put two long tables together, and even Detective Superintendent Catherine Gervaise was joining in the celebrations with a smile on her face. Only Banks stood apart, leaning against the windowsill pensively sipping his pint, occasionally glancing out through the diamond-shaped panes at the passersby on Market Street as the shadows lengthened, feeling that something wasn’t quite right, that they were perhaps being premature. But a DNA match was solid, an arrest was an arrest, and it demanded celebration. The Arctic Monkeys were on the jukebox and all was well with the world.

“What is it, sir?” asked Winsome, suddenly standing by his side, a purple drink topped with a maraschino cherry in her hand. Banks didn’t even want to know what it was. She was a little wobbly, but her voice and her eyes were clear.

“Nothing,” said Banks. “Having fun?”

“I suppose so.”

“Something wrong?”

“No,” said Winsome. “You just seemed far away. I wondered…”

“What?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Come on, out with it.”

“It’s none of my business.”

“What isn’t?”

Someone bumped into Winsome, but she managed to hold on to her drink without spilling any. The man apologized and moved on. Hatchley was telling a joke over the music and everyone at the table was waiting for the punch line. Banks had heard it before. “Busy in here tonight, isn’t it?” Winsome said.

“You can’t just start to say something, then cut it off in midstream,” said Banks. “What’s on your mind?”

“DI Cabbot, sir.”

“Annie?”

“I told you, it’s none of my business. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I know you two are friends.”

“I used to think so, too,” said Banks. Through the window, a couple of schoolgirls in disheveled uniforms passed by on their way home from a late band practice, one carrying a violin case, the other a flute.

Hatchley reached his punch line and the table started laughing. “Sir?”

“Nothing. What about DI Cabbot?”

“I had dinner with her last night. I think something’s bothering her.”

“Bothering her? In what way?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Winsome lowered her voice. “I think it’s a boyfriend. Stalking? Threatening?”

It didn’t take much to work out that Annie had probably driven over to see Banks just after her dinner with Winsome. She had mentioned toyboys, but why hadn’t she told him she was in trouble? She clearly hadn’t got the chance. “I’ll have a word,” he said, wondering just how on earth he would manage to do that given their last encounter and the present climate of their relationship.

“You won’t tell her I said anything?”

“Don’t worry,” said Banks. He saw the desk sergeant enter the pub, glance around and walk straight toward him. He groaned. “Shit, Ernie, what do you want?” he said.

“Always nice to find a warm welcome, sir,” said Ernie.

“I’m sure it happens a lot when you’re always the bearer of good news.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I never do, but that’s not stopped you yet.”

“Bloke just came in, neighbor of Joseph Randall, the one you charged.”

“And?”

“Says Randall can’t possibly have done it, sir. Wants to talk to the man in charge.”

“Man in charge?” Banks glanced over at Detective Superintendent Gervaise, who seemed to be enjoying a private chat with DC Wilson, and wondered if feminism might actually work for him, just this once, then he decided just as quickly that it wouldn’t. Why rain on their parade? If there was anything in it, they’d find out soon enough. “All right,” he said, getting to his feet. “Lead on.”

Annie mulled over her conversation with Les Ferris as she drove on the A171, along the edge of the North York Moors, quiet at that time of evening, just after dark. She put some foot-tapping pop music on the radio to keep her going, but the chatter between songs irritated her so much that she turned it off. On the face of it, what Ferris had come up with sounded absurd: one murder, one serious assault and one unsolved disappearance of eighteen years ago, a mysterious woman seen in proximity to two of the three scenes. As he had said, there was only ever officially one crime: Keith McLaren’s assault.

What could any of this possibly have to do with what happened on Sunday? Curiously enough, Annie thought there were quite a few connections. First was location. There had been no other murders around the cliffs in the past eighteen years, so why again now? Second came the strong possibility of a female killer. Women murderers are much rarer than men. Third, two of the victims were serial killers, or perceived by many to be serial killers: Greg Eastcote and Lucy Payne. Four, the murderer of eighteen years ago had not been caught. And that led to the fifth and final point of similarity: If the killer had been around eighteen years ago, that put her at almost forty now, and that was about the only thing they knew about the elusive Mary. Mel Danvers thought she had been about that age. It was still very tenuous, but the more Annie thought about it, the more she became convinced that it at least merited some investigation.

What about Keith McLaren, the Australian? Perhaps he had recovered more of his memory now. It was all moot until Les Ferris came up with the hair samples, anyway, and then a lot depended on whether they could match Kirsten’s to any of the hairs found on Lucy Payne’s blanket. If not, it was a washout, but if they did, they were in business.

It was a beautiful clear evening, Annie thought, as she passed the road to Robin Hood’s Bay. She could see the afterglow of the sunset, dark strata of red and purple silhouetting the western hills. To the east, over the North Sea, spread that magical shade of luminescent dark blue you saw only at the time of night opposite a sunset. A silver moon hung low to the north.

Soon Annie was amid the traffic lights and streetlights, and the pleasures of the open road were lost. She found a parking spot only yards from her temporary accommodation and let herself in. The place seemed cool and dark, as if it been abandoned far longer than it had. Perhaps the nicest thing about it, Annie thought, was that she could just see a wedge of sea between the rooftops. She turned the lights on, hung up her jacket and headed for the kitchenette. She hadn’t eaten dinner, had only sipped that one pint to Ferris’s three, and she could do with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese and crackers.

Tomorrow would be a busy day, she reflected, as she put the plate and glass beside her on the desk and turned on her laptop. There were people connected with the Paynes’ victims to be interviewed, and now another line of inquiry coming out of Les Ferris’s story.

Only one thing was certain: Given the workload they had already, if they were to follow Ferris’s leads, they were going to be seriously overstretched. Which meant Annie had to approach Detective Superintendent Brough for both overtime, as she had already promised Ginger, and for extra personnel. These were the two things no budget-conscious administrator liked to authorize these days. It would be hard to sell it to Brough, but she’d worry about that later. Besides, he was bound to have his hands full with the press.

The one good thing about Brough, Annie had learned in the short time she had been working at Eastern, was that he didn’t really listen. He was easily distracted and tended to focus on matters of public opinion and image; he was also the kind of person who was well on to his response to the next press question before you’d finished speaking. Consequently, a lot passed by him, which you could legitimately claim to have told him, and he tended to nod abruptly, agree and say okay simply to facilitate being able to move on, to say something he thought more interesting.

The Internet connection was slow. The guesthouse didn’t have broadband, and Annie had to rely on the phone line and the computer’s internal modem. But it was good enough for e-mail, which was all she really wanted. Tonight it seemed to take an unusually long time to download. She cursed whoever it was had decided to send her a large attachment, probably some silly joke or holiday snap, then she saw Eric’s name appear next to a paper clip and her heart constricted.

How had he got hold of her e-mail address? Then it dawned on her. They had both been playing with their new Blackberrys, which handled e-mail as well as text and phone, and Eric had shown her how to attach photos and send them. She had sent one to him in the club. That was how he had got her e-mail address. How could she be so careless?

The other messages were all junk — Viagra, breast enlargement and genuine Rolex offers, along with various sales newsletters.

She opened Eric’s message. It was short, in blue italic script, and to the point:

Annie’s heart sank when she opened the attached JPEG. She definitely didn’t remember posing for this one. It was a slightly blurred picture of her and Eric, no doubt using the self-timer. This time she had her head resting on his shoulder, his arm encircling her. Her hair was disheveled, and her eyes unfocused. All of which would have been perfectly innocent, albeit a little embarrassing, except that it was clear, even from the head and shoulders, that both she and Eric were stark-naked, and that she was holding a joint between her thumb and forefinger. And bugger it if she wasn’t smiling.

“Well, Joseph,” said Banks, back in the same interview room with the tape recorder running and Sebastian Crawford hovering nervously in the background again. “It looks as if we’re not at the bottom of this yet, doesn’t it?”

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

“I think you do,” said Banks. He leaned forward. “And I think it would be in your best interests to admit that you do.”

Randall licked his lips and looked to Crawford for guidance. Crawford said nothing.

“Right,” said Banks, leaning back in his chair. “Let me lay it out for you, then. We’ve just had a visit from your neighbor, Roger Colegate, who tells us that he saw you putting the cat out at half past twelve on Saturday night. Though we don’t as yet know the exact time Hayley Daniels was murdered, we do have evidence pointing toward the fact that she entered the Maze at twelve-twenty and was most likely accosted by her attacker by twelve twenty-five or thereabouts.”

“Well, there you are, then,” said Randall, with a triumphant glance toward Sebastian Crawford. “I couldn’t have done it, could I?”

“It would probably have taken you at least fifteen minutes to walk up to the market square from where you live,” Banks went on, “even if you had been capable of walking in a straight line at the time.”

“What do you mean?” Randall said.

“According to your neighbor, you were pissed,” said Banks. “In fact, according to Mr. Colegate, you were usually pissed by that time most nights.”

“That’s a lie,” said Randall. “I might have had a drink or two, but there’s no law against that, is there?”

“Not at all,” said Banks. “No law against getting pissed, either, providing you don’t cause any bother.”

“Well…?”

“Mr. Colegate says you were unsteady on your feet and that when he called out good evening, you replied in a slurred voice. You don’t even remember that, do you?”

“No,” said Randall, “but it doesn’t matter, does it? He remembers it. That’s what counts. Like you say, there’s no law against getting a little drunk in one’s own home once in a while, is there? I’m off the hook. I can’t have done this terrible thing. You have to let me go.”

Banks paused. “You did find the body, however.”

“You already knew that. I was the one who reported it to you. And I had a legitimate reason for being there.”

“Yes, we’ve checked with the customer you told us about. You did have a rush order for a handbag. But that’s hardly relevant.”

“What do you mean?”

“You spent eleven minutes alone with Hayley Daniels’s body.”

“So? She was dead when I found her.”

“I know that,” said Banks.

“Look, I think you should just apologize, cut your losses, let me go and have done with it. Sebastian?”

Crawford cleared his throat. “Er… My client does have a point, Chief Inspector. After all, you’ve already agreed that he couldn’t possibly have been responsible for the murder of Hayley Daniels, which is what you’ve been holding him for.”

“That could change,” Banks said.

“What do you mean?” Randall asked.

“The problem remains,” Banks went on. “Our forensic experts definitely found your DNA in semen samples taken from the victim. In fact, our crime scene coordinator had been puzzled that the semen hadn’t dried as much as he would have predicted, had it been there overnight.”

Randall folded his arms. “I told you, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there.”

“Oh, I think you can,” said Banks. He leaned forward and rested his palms on the desk, face only a couple of feet from Randall’s. “Would you like me to tell you what I think really happened in that storage room, Joseph?”

Randall licked his lips. “What’s the point? You’ll tell me anyway. More fantasy.”

“Perhaps it started as a fantasy,” said Banks, “but it wasn’t mine. I think you’re telling the truth, and so is Mr. Colegate. I think you saw Hayley Daniels in the Trumpeters after you closed up shop on Saturday night and you liked what you saw. Perhaps you’d seen her there before? After all, she frequently spent Saturday nights on the town with her college friends. Or perhaps it didn’t really matter who you saw as long as she was young and scantily dressed. I believe you went home, as you said you did, watched television, or perhaps some porn on DVD, and drank yourself into a stupor, fueling your fantasies, until you could hardly stand up at half past twelve, when you put the cat out and, in all likelihood, went to bed.”

“So what if any of this is true?” said Randall. “None of it’s illegal.”

“I’d like to believe that you dashed back to the shop, saw Hayley Daniels conveniently walking into the Maze and hurried after her,” Banks went on, “but in all fairness, I don’t think that’s very realistic. The timing doesn’t work, and it would be far too much of a coincidence.”

“Well, thank heaven for that! Can I go now?”

“But you did find the body the following morning,” Banks said.

“And reported it.”

“Something happened in those eleven minutes, didn’t it, Joseph? Something came over you, some urge you couldn’t resist.”

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

“I think you do.”

“Chief Inspector—”

“Please be quiet, Mr. Crawford. I’m not infringing your client’s rights in any way.” Banks turned back to Randall. “That’s what happened, isn’t it, Joseph? You walked into your storage room as usual to pick out some suitable remnants, turned on the light, and you saw her there, lying on her side on the soft pile of scraps as if she were asleep, some poor lost babe in the woods taking shelter from the storm. She looked so innocent and beautiful lying there, didn’t she? And you couldn’t help yourself. I’ll bet you touched her, didn’t you, Joseph? Fondled those small firm breasts, small cold breasts? Did it really turn you on, her being dead like that, unable to respond, to say or do anything, to stop you? You were in complete control, weren’t you, probably for the first time in your life? There wasn’t a thing she could do, was there? So you touched her skin, and you ran your hands over her thighs. Did you kiss her, Joseph? Did you kiss those dead lips? I think you probably did. How could you resist? She was all yours.”

Randall hung his head in his hands. Crawford moved over to him. “You don’t have to say anything, Joseph,” he said. “This is sick.”

“Indeed it is,” said Banks. “And he’s right. You don’t have to say anything. I already know, Joseph. I know everything. I know how you felt as you knelt beside her and unzipped. You were hard, weren’t you, harder than you’d ever been? And with one hand you touched her between her legs and with the other you touched yourself, and it happened, didn’t it? Perhaps sooner than you expected. Then you had to clean up. You didn’t do a very good job. That’s why we found what we did, isn’t it? You thought you’d got it all, but you were in a hurry and you missed some. Eleven minutes, Joseph.”

Randall sobbed into his hands, Crawford had one arm draped awkwardly over his shoulders. “I didn’t kill her,” Randall cried. “I didn’t hurt her. I would never have hurt her.” He looked up at Banks with a tear-streaked face. “You must believe me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Banks felt sick. He edged his chair back, stood up and went to open the door. “Take him back down to the custody suite,” he said to the constable on guard. “And ask the sergeant to charge him with committing an indignity on a dead body, or whatever the bloody hell they call it these days. Go with him, please, Mr. Crawford. Go quick. Just get him out of my sight. Now!”

Crawford helped Randall to his feet and they shuffled out into the grasp of the waiting constable. Alone in the small interview room with only the hum of the recording machines breaking the silence, Banks let out a loud expletive and kicked the only chair that wasn’t bolted to the floor so hard that it sailed across the room and smashed into the tape recorder. Then all was silent.