Friend of the Devil

by Peter Robinson

  “You’re not under arrest, Mr. Randall, and you haven’t been charged with anything,” Banks explained, sitting down. “You’re simply here to help us with our inquiries.”

  “Then I don’t have to talk to you?”

  Banks leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. “Mr. Randall,” he said. “We’re both reasonable men, I hope. Now this is a serious case. A young girl has been raped and murdered. On your property. I’d think you’d be as interested as I am in getting to the bottom of it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I am,” said Randall. “I just don’t understand why you’re picking on me.”

  “We’re not picking on you.” Banks turned to DC Wilson. Might as well give the new kid a chance. “Detective Constable Wilson, why don’t you tell Mr. Randall here what you found out from the barmaid at The Duck and Drake?”

  Wilson shuffled his papers nervously, played with his glasses and licked his lips. Banks thought he looked rather like a nervous schoolboy about to translate a Latin unseen for the class. The blazer he wore only enhanced the image. “Were you in The Duck and Drake around seven o’clock yesterday evening?” Wilson asked.

  “I had a couple of drinks there after I closed the shop, yes,” said Randall. “As far I was aware, that’s not against the law.”

  “Not at all, sir,” said Wilson. “It’s just that the victim, Hayley Daniels, was also seen in the pub around the same time.”

  “I wouldn’t have recognized her. How could I? I didn’t know her.”

  “But you’d remember her now, sir, wouldn’t you?” Wilson went on. “Since you saw her in the storage shed. You’d remember how she looked, what she was wearing, wouldn’t you?”

  Randall scratched his forehead. “I can’t say I do, as a matter of fact. There are always a lot of young people in The Duck and Drake at that time on a Saturday. I was reading the paper. And in the shed it was all such a blur.”

  “Is it your local, then, The Duck and Drake?”

  “No. I don’t have a local, really. I just go where it strikes my fancy if I want a drink after shutting up. It’s not very often I do. Usually I just go home. The drinks are cheaper.”

  “Where were you between the hours of midnight and two A.M. last night?” Wilson asked.

  “At home.”

  “Can anybody corroborate that?”

  “I live alone.”

  “What time did you go to bed?”

  “About a quarter to one, shortly after I’d put the cat out.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  “I don’t know. The street was quiet. I didn’t see anybody.”

  “What were you doing before that?”

  “After I left the pub, about eight, I picked up some fish and chips on my way home and watched television.”

  “Where did you get the fish and chips?”

  “Chippie on the corner. Now, look, this is—”

  “Let’s go back to The Duck and Drake, shall we?” Wilson persisted.

  Randall crossed his arms and sat in a rigid position, lips set in a hard line.

  “Now you’ve had a chance to think back, sir,” Wilson went on, “do you remember seeing Hayley Daniels in the pub?”

  “I suppose I might have.”

  “Did you or didn’t you?”

  “If she was there, I suppose I must have seen her. I just don’t remember her in particular. I wasn’t really interested.”

  “Oh, come off it,” said Banks. “A beautiful girl like her. A lonely old pervert like you. You were giving her the eye. Why don’t you admit it? You want us to think you’d never seen her before because you set your sights on her right from the start. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Randall glared at him and turned back to DC Wilson, his ally. Sometimes, Banks thought, good cop, bad cop was that easy. They hadn’t even decided to play it this way; it just worked out as the interview went on. For all the courses he’d done and all the books he’d read on interview techniques over the years, Banks found that a spontaneous approach often worked best. Go in with a general, vague outline and play it by ear. The most revealing questions were often the ones that just came to you as you sat there, not the ones you had worked out in advance. And when there were two of you doing the interviewing, a whole new dynamic sprang up. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. Then you ended up with egg on your face. But young Wilson didn’t seem to need telling what his role was, and that was good.

  “She was with a group of people about her own age, and they were laughing and talking and drinking at the bar. Is that right?” Wilson went on.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see anybody touch her? If she had a special boyfriend, he might touch her on the shoulder, let his hand linger, hold hands, sneak a quick kiss, that sort of thing.”

  “I didn’t see anything like that.” Randall glared over at Banks. “But as I’ve been trying to explain, I wasn’t paying much attention.”

  “Who left first?”

  “They did. One minute they were there, noisy and full of themselves, the next minute they were gone and it was nice and quiet.”

  “Full of themselves?” Banks echoed. “What do you mean by that?”

  Randall shifted in his chair. “You know what I mean. Preening, showing off for one another, laughing at their own jokes, that sort of thing.”

  “Don’t you like young people?”

  “I don’t like ruffians.”

  “And you think they were ruffians?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of them. I know how things get around here on a weekend when they all go binge drinking. It’s got so a decent person can’t go out for a drink in town on a Saturday night. Sometimes I wonder what you police are here for. I’ve seen the vomit and the rubbish outside my shop the morning after.”

  “But this morning it was something different, wasn’t it?” Banks said.

  “The thing is, sir”—Wilson cut in so gently, Banks admired him for it—“that the barmaid in The Duck and Drake distinctly remembers you ogling Hayley Daniels.”

  She hadn’t actually used the word “ogling,” Banks knew, but it showed inventiveness on the new kid’s part. It had so much more impact than “looking at” or even “eyeing up.”

  “I was doing no such thing,” Randall replied. “As I told you, I was sitting there quietly with my drink, reading the paper.”

  “And you didn’t even notice Hayley Daniels?”

  Randall paused. “I didn’t know who she was,” he said, “but I suppose one couldn’t help but notice her.”

  “Oh?” said Wilson. “In what way, sir?”

  “Well, the way she was dressed, for a start. Like a common trollop. All that bare leg and tummy. If you ask me, girls who dress like that are asking for trouble. You might even say they deserve what they get.”

  “Is that why you lied about ogling her in the first place?” Banks said. “Because you thought if you admitted it, it would seem suspicious that you also found her body? Was it you who gave her what she deserved?”

  “That’s an impertinent question, and I won’t dignify it with an answer,” said Randall, red-faced. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m leaving.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t follow Hayley Daniels around for the rest of the evening and somehow lure her into your storeroom, where you knew you’d be able to have your way with her?” said Wilson, an innocent and concerned expression on his young face. “Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, but things just went too far? It could go in your favor if you told us now.”

  Randall, half-standing, gave him an et tu Brutus look and collapsed back into the chair. “What I’ve told you is the truth,” he said. “She was in the pub with a group of friends. That was the first and last time I saw her. I didn’t pay her any special attention, but now you mention it, I’ll admit she stood out from the crowd, though not in a way I approve of. I didn’t mention it at first because I know the way your minds work. That’s all I have to say on t
he matter.” He glared at Banks. “And I am leaving now.”

  “As you wish,” said Banks. He let Randall get to the door, then said, “I’d appreciate it if we could get a set of your fingerprints and a DNA sample. Just for the purposes of elimination, you understand. At your own convenience. DC Wilson will sort out the consent forms.”

  Randall slammed the door behind him.

  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.