“I suppose that she was killed here, in the wheelchair?”
“Yes. I consulted with the doc on that. Lividity is as you’d expect if that were the case, and there’s enough blood on the grass around the chair to bear it out. She was killed where she sat. We haven’t finished spatter analysis yet—the grass makes it difficult—but we’ve photographed and videoed every square inch.”
“Okay. Well, carry on, Liam. And thanks for the update.”
McCullough doffed his imaginary cap. “No problem. I trust you’re in charge of this inquiry?”
“Detective Superintendent Brough’s the official SIO.”
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“So we send everything to you?” McCullough smiled.
Annie smiled back. “Might as well. But do it discreetly.”
“My middle name, discretion. Bye, ma’am.”
“See you,” said Annie. She shivered as a gust of wind blew in from the sea and a seagull glided over her. She walked to the edge of the cliff and stood as close as she dared on the treacherous, slippery grass, looking down. The tide was well up now, the crashing waves dizzying and magnetic. She could understand how people had been drawn to jump into moving water, hypnotized and seduced by its sinuous swirling motion. Feeling a twinge of vertigo, she glanced at the empty wheelchair. It would have been so easy just to push it that extra foot or so, onto the rocks. No fuss. No blood. Why go to the trouble and mess of slitting Karen Drew’s throat?
Unless, Annie thought with a sinking feeling, it was done to make some kind of statement. In her experience, killers who wanted to make statements were like bores at a party, a bugger to shut up until they’d finished what they had to say.
W H I L E J O S E P H R A N D A L L waited in an interview room, Banks sat in his office enjoying his first few moments of peace and quiet since Templeton’s phone call that morning. He had remembered to phone his mother, who thanked him for the card, and he was pleased to hear that all was well in the Banks household. His parents were going on a Mediterranean cruise in June, she had told him—their first time abroad, except for the time his father was in the army toward the end of the war. They were leaving from Southampton so they didn’t have to f ly.
Now Banks was sipping a cup of tea, eating a KitKat and listening to Anna Netrebko’s Russian Album as he jotted down a list of actions and TIEs—Trace, Interview and Eliminate—he thought should be carried out as quickly as possible in the Hayley Daniels murder investigation.
Winsome had questioned the father, Geoff Daniels, and the hotel staff at the Faversham confirmed his alibi. No one had seen him leave his room since he arrived with his girlfriend Martina rather the worse for wear around three o’clock in the morning. The barman and doorman at the club in Keighley also remembered the couple, who had been there F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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the whole time between about midnight and two-thirty. They had had more than enough to drink, he said, and at one point they were practically doing it right there on the dance f loor. The bouncer even had to step in and ask them to cool it. There was no way either, or both, of them could have driven to Eastvale and killed Hayley. Winsome hadn’t tracked down the taxi driver yet, but it was just a matter of time.
Also, mostly for form’s sake, Winsome had checked Donna McCarthy’s alibi with her friend and neighbor, Caroline Dexter. They had indeed spent the eve ning together eating pizza and watching Casino Royale, until well after midnight.
Officers were already reviewing as much CCTV footage as they had been able to gather, and forensics experts were still busy in Taylor’s Yard, while most of the samples the SOCOs had collected were being prepared for analysis. Nothing would happen until Monday, of course, and results wouldn’t start coming until Tuesday, or even later in the week, depending on the tests and workloads of the labs involved. If only DNA results came as quickly as they seemed to do on television, Banks thought, his job would be a lot easier. Sometimes waiting was the worst part.
Banks put the writing pad aside. He’d enter it all into the computer later. He glanced out of the window and was surprised to see snow-f lakes blowing horizontally on the wind, obscuring the market square.
He watched for a few moments, hardly believing what he saw, then it stopped and the sun came out. Strange weather, indeed.
He glanced at the map of The Maze he had had enlarged and pinned to his corkboard. There were far more ways in and out than he had realized, and it covered a greater area. Next to the map hung his Dalesman calendar. The month of March lay in neat columns below a photograph of Settle marketplace on a busy day. He had check-up appointments with both his dentist and his GP, having thought at the time it was best to get both unpleasant duties out of the way simul-taneously. Now, he was beginning to wonder. Perhaps he should postpone the dentist until next month. Or the doctor.
His only upcoming social engagement was a dinner party at Harriet Weaver’s, his old next-door neighbor in Eastvale, the following Saturday. Informal, Harriet had said, about ten or twelve people; bring a bottle, he would enjoy himself. Her niece Sophia was up from 6 2 P E T E R
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London and might drop by. Every man fell in love with Sophia, Harriet said. Banks thought it would be a very foolish thing to do, in that case, and determined not to. It was all very well for middle-aged writ-ers, artists or rock stars to go around falling in love with younger women, but most irresponsible for a police detective with as much baggage as he was carrying.
Banks hated dinner parties, anyway, and he was only going because he felt guilty about not having kept in touch with Harriet and her husband since he had split up with Sandra. And she had had the good grace to invite him. Well, he’d go, then he’d leave as quickly as he decently could. It shouldn’t be too hard to get Winsome or someone to call his mobile on some pretext or other. It would save him from having to explain the latest crime statistics, or why so many obvious rapists and murderers got off, the usual sort of stuff you get at parties when people know you’re a policeman. One woman had even had the nerve to ask Banks to put a tail on her husband, whom she suspected of having an affair with a local estate agent. After Banks explained that he wasn’t Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, the woman lost all interest in him and started making eyes at the host.
Banks got up. It was time to have a chat with Joseph Randall, who didn’t seem too happy at being dragged down to Western Area Headquarters that afternoon and left to stew in an interview room accom-panied only by a taciturn constable who wouldn’t tell him why he was there. There was no reason for the delay other than to make Randall nervous and angry. In that state, he might make a slip. He had his Activan with him if he needed it, and the constable had been warned to watch out for any signs of a panic attack, so Banks hadn’t been worried on that score.
The interview room was cramped, with one high barred window, a bare bulb covered by a rusty grille, metal table bolted to the f loor, three
fold-up chairs and the recording equipment. The interview would be videotaped, and as Banks set it up, DC Doug Wilson sat facing a disgruntled Randall, who began by asking for his solicitor.
“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.”
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“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 shuff led 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 eve ning?” 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.”
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“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 particu lar. 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.
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“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 im-pact 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 sup-6 6 P E T E R
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pose 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 eve ning 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 the 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 con venience. 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 f luffy 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 f loat away like balloons or bubbles. That was what she did when she meditated, concentrated on one 6 8 P E T E R
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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?
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