Friend of the Devil ib-17

by Peter Robinson

  “Maybe,” said Banks, with a glance toward Winsome, who indicated that she was getting it all down. “But it could have been a woman?”

  Chelsea thought for a moment and said, “Yes. Yes, I think it could have been.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Dark clothing. Jeans and a black jacket. Maybe leather.”

  “Could you have a guess at the age?”

  “I never got a good look at her. Sorry. Not really old, though, I mean, you know, she moved fast enough.”

  “What happened next?” Banks asked.

  “I think I screamed again, then I ran for the market square, by The Fountain. I knew that was where I had the best chance of finding a policeman, and even if there wasn’t one standing around watching all the fun, the station’s just across the square. Well, you know that.”

  “Good thinking,” said Banks.

  Chelsea shivered. “I still can’t believe it. What was going on, Mr.

  Banks? What did I see?”

  “I don’t know,” said Banks. “All I know is that you’re safe now.” He glanced toward Winsome, who took Chelsea’s hand.

  “Come on, love,” she said. “Let me take you back to your parents.

  They’ll take you home.”

  “What about my clothes?”

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  “We’re going to have to keep them for the moment to do some tests,” Banks said. “The blood. It helps our forensic scientists. We’ll see if Dr. Wong can rustle up something temporary for you.”

  On her way out, Chelsea looked at Banks. “The man,” she said.

  “Was he going to kill me?”

  “No,” said Banks. “I think he was there to protect you.”

  After Chelsea and Winsome had gone, Banks sat for a long time in the calm room mulling over what he’d just heard. Now, even more than before, he knew that he had to contact Annie Cabbot about this.

  Possibly a female killer. A sharp blade. A slit throat. Banks didn’t believe in coincidences like that, and he knew Annie didn’t, either.

  14

  WHEN HER TELEPHONE RANG AT HALF PAST SEVEN ON

  Sunday morning, Annie had hardly managed to get back to sleep since the noise and the bad dream had woken her at three. She had lain awake thinking about Banks and Eric and Lucy Payne and Kirsten Farrow and Maggie Forrest until they all became a tangled mess in her mind, and then she had dozed fitfully for a while. Now the telephone.

  Annie fumbled with the receiver and muttered her name.

  “Sorry, did I wake you?” said the voice on the other end. She noticed something odd about it. At least it wasn’t Eric.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Time to get up, anyway.”

  “I did wait until a reasonable hour. I called the police station first and they told me you’d be at this number. It’s half seven over there, right, and you police get up early, don’t you?”

  “About that,” said Annie. Now she could place the accent. Australian. “You must be Keith McLaren,” she said.

  “That’s right. I’m calling from Sydney. It’s half past six in the evening here.”

  “I wish it was that here. Then my working day would be over.”

  McLaren laughed. He sounded as if he were in the room with her.

  “But it’s Sunday.”

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  P E T E R R O B I N S O N

  “Ha!” said Annie. “As if that makes any difference to Superintendent Brough. Anyway, it’s good to hear from you so promptly. Thanks for calling.”

  “I don’t know if I can tell you anything new, but the officer who rang me did say it was important.”

  Ginger had got in touch with McLaren through the Sydney police.

  It wasn’t that he had a criminal record, but they had been informed about what happened to him in Yorkshire eighteen years ago, and he was in their files. “It could be,” Annie said, tucking the cordless phone under her chin as she went to get some water and put the kettle on. She was naked, which felt like a disadvantage, but no one could see her, she told herself, and it would be harder to get dressed and talk at the same time. She sipped some water and opened the pad on the table before her. Already she could hear the kettle building to a boil.

  “I hope these aren’t painful memories for you,” she went on, “but I want to talk about what happened to you in England eighteen years ago.”

  “Why? Have you finally found out who did it?”

  “We don’t know yet, but there may be a connection with a case I’m working on. It came up, anyway. Have you been able to remember anything more about what happened over the years?”

  “A few things, yes. Little details. They weren’t there, and suddenly they are. I’ve been writing things down as they come back. My doctor told me it would be good therapy, and it really does help. As I’m writing one detail I sometimes remember another. It’s odd. On the whole, I can remember quite a bit until Staithes, then it all becomes a blur.

  Isn’t it funny? I remember so little about my holiday of a lifetime.

  Waste of money, when you come to think of it. Maybe I should have asked for a refund.”

  Annie laughed. “I suppose so. What about that day at Staithes?

  Someone thought they saw you walking near the harbor there with a young woman.”

  “I know. Like I said, it’s a blur. All I have is a vague sense of talking to someone down by the harbor, and I thought it was someone I knew.

  But I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.”

  “It was a woman,” Annie said. “Where do you think you knew her from?”

  F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L

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  “That I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, without foundation. The police told me I met a girl at a B and B in Whitby, and I do remember her now. They seemed to think it was the same girl, but I don’t know.

  I’ve had recurring dreams, nightmares, I suppose, but I don’t know how truthfully they ref lect the reality.”

  “What nightmares?”

  “It’s a bit . . . you know, awkward.”

  “I’m a police officer,” Annie said. “Just think of me as a doctor.”

  “You’re still a woman.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that.”

  McLaren laughed. “I’ll do my best. It’s a bit sexual, you see. The dream. We’re in the woods, you know, on the ground, making out, kissing and stuff.”

  “Got you so far,” Annie said. “And just for the record, I haven’t blushed once.” The kettle was boiling, and she put the phone back under her chin as she poured the water on the tea bag in her cup, careful not to splash any on her exposed skin.

  “Well, it turns into a horror story after that,” McLaren went on. “All of a sudden she’s not a lovely young girl anymore, but a monster, with like a dog’s head, or a wolf ’s, sort of like a werewolf, I suppose, but her chest is more like raw human skin, only there’s just one nipple, bleeding, and the rest is all crisscrossed with red lines where her breasts and other nipple should be. Then my head splits open. I told you it was pretty weird.”

  “That’s the nature of dreams,” Annie said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to psychoanalyze you.”

  “That’s no worry. I’ve been there. Anyway, that’s about it. I wake up in a sweat.”

  Annie knew from her conversation with Sarah Bingham that Kirsten Farrow had surgery on her breasts after the attack, and on her vagina and pubic region. “What do you think it’s about?”

  “That’s what my shrink asked me. Beats me.”

  “What were you doing in Whitby?”

  “I’d just finished uni and wanted to see something of the world before settling down back home. I had some money saved up, so I came over to Europe, like so many Aussies do. We’re such a long 2 8 4

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  way from anywhere, and it’s such a huge country, so we feel we have to do the big trip
once before settling down back here. I have an ancestor who came from Whitby. A transport. Stole a loaf of bread or something. So it was a place I’d heard a lot about while I was growing up, and I wanted to visit.”

  “Tell me about the girl you met.”

  “Can you just hang on a minute? I’ll get my notebook. Everything I remember is in there.”

  “Great,” said Annie. She waited about thirty seconds and McLaren came on the line again.

  “Got it,” he said. “I met her at breakfast one day. She said her name was Mary, or Martha, or something like that. I never have been able to remember exactly which.”

  Annie felt a pulse of excitement. The woman who took Lucy from Mapston Hall had called herself Mary. “Not Kirsten?” she asked.

  “That doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “What sort of impression did she make on you?” Annie asked, sketching the view from her window on the writing pad, the mist like feathers over the corrugated red roof tiles, the sea a vague haze under its shroud, gray on gray, and a sun so pale and weak you could stare at it forever and not go blind.

  “I remember thinking she was an interesting girl,” McLaren said. “I can’t remember what she looked like now, but she was easy on the eyes, at any rate. I didn’t know anybody in the place. I was just being friendly, really, I wasn’t on the make. Well, not much. She was very defensive, I remember. Evasive. Like she just wanted to be left alone. Maybe I did come on a bit too strong. Us Aussies sometimes strike people that way.

  Direct. Anyway, I suggested she might show me around town, but she said she was busy. Something to do with some research project. So I asked her out for a drink that eve ning.”

  “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  McLaren laughed. “It was like pulling teeth. Anyway, she agreed to meet me for a drink in a pub. Just a sec . . . yes, it’s here . . . The Lucky Fisherman. Seemed to know her way around.”

  “The Lucky Fisherman?” echoed Annie, her ears pricking up. That F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L

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  was Jack Grimley’s local, the one he had just left the eve ning he disappeared. “Did you tell the police this?” she asked.

  “No. It’s just something I remembered years later, and they never got back to me. I didn’t think it was important.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Annie, thinking there were more holes in this case than in a lump of Swiss cheese. But Ferris was right: They didn’t have the luxury of pursuing every mystery to its solution the way TV cops did. Things fell through the cracks. “Did she turn up?”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t easy having a conversation with her. It was like she was very distracted, thinking of something else. And she’d never heard of Crocodile Dundee. That’s something I remembered years later. He was big at the time.”

  “Even I’ve heard of Crocodile Dundee,” said Annie.

  “Well, there you go. Anyway, I was quickly getting the impression she’d rather be elsewhere. Except . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, she wanted to know about fishing. You know, the boats, when and where they landed the catch and all that. I mean, I didn’t know, but I just thought it was another weird thing about her. To be quite honest, I was beginning to think I’d made a big mistake. Anyway, I went to the loo, and when I came back I got the distinct impression she was staring at some other bloke.”

  “Who?” Annie asked.

  “Dunno. Local. Wearing one of those fisherman’s jerseys. Good-looking enough in a rough sort of way, I suppose, but really . . .”

  Jack Grimley, Annie was willing to bet, though he wasn’t actually a fisherman, and she doubted that Kirsten, if that was who it was, was studying him because she thought he was a nice bit of rough.

  “Then what?”

  “We left. Walked around town. Ended up sitting on a bench talking, but again I got the impression she was somewhere else.”

  “Did anything happen?”

  “No. Oh, I made my tentative move, you know, put my arm around her, gave her a kiss. But it obviously wasn’t going anywhere, so I gave up and we went back to the B and B.”

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  “To your own rooms?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you see her again?”

  “Not that I know of, though, as I said, the police think I might have.”

  “You don’t remember anything else about that day in Staithes?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “I understand it was touch and go for a while?”

  “I’m lucky to be here. Everyone said so. I’m even more lucky to have been able to pick up my life and carry on, become a lawyer, get a good job, the lot. Everything except marriage and kids. And that just never seemed to happen. But there was some talk at the time of possible permanent brain damage. My guess is they don’t understand the Aussie brain over there. It’s much tougher than you Pommies think.”

  Annie laughed. “I’m glad.” She liked Keith McLaren, at least what she could gather of him over the telephone. He sounded as if he would be fun to go out with. He’d also be about the right age for her. Single, too. She wondered if he was good-looking. But Sydney was a long, long way away. It was good to have the fantasy, though.

  “You must have wondered why it happened,” she asked. “Why you?”

  “Hardly a day goes by.”

  “Any answers?”

  McLaren paused before speaking. “Nobody ever came right out and said it at the time,” he said, “perhaps because I was either in a coma or recovering from one, but I got the distinct impression that the police didn’t discount the theory that I’d tried it on a bit too aggressively and she defended herself.”

  That didn’t surprise Annie. She was almost loath to admit it, especially after talking to McLaren and liking him, but it was one of the first things that would have occurred to her, too. Whether that was because she was a woman or a police officer, or both, she didn’t know.

  Maybe it was because she’d been raped, herself. “They suggested you’d assaulted her, tried to rape her?”

  “Not in so many words, but I got the message loud and clear. It was F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L

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  only the fact that there were two unexplained bodies around and she seemed to have done a runner that kept me out of jail.”

  “Did you ever see her naked?”

  “What a question!”

  “It could be important.”

  “Well, the answer’s no. Not that I remember. Like I said, I don’t know what happened that day in the woods, but I think my memory up to that point is as clear as it’s going to get. I mean, she just didn’t want to know. I kissed her that once, on the bench near the Cook statue, but that’s all.”

  So, Annie thought, he couldn’t have known about Kirsten’s chest injuries—if, indeed, it was Kirsten—until they were in the woods together, which he couldn’t remember, and he had somehow got her top off. But the dream indicated that he had some subconscious knowledge of her injuries. He must have tried something on with her, then, or perhaps it was mutual up to a point, then she began to struggle, to panic. Kirsten knew by that point that she couldn’t have sex, so what was going on?

  If McLaren had cottoned on to who she was, as he may well have done even if she had modified her appearance, seen through her disguise and posed a threat to her agenda of vengeance, then wasn’t there a chance that she had cold-bloodedly lured him into the woods and set out to get rid of him? That she had led him on, and when he was sufficiently distracted, attempted to kill him? What kind of crea-ture was Annie dealing with? The moment she thought she had some kind of connection with Kirsten, the damn woman slipped beyond her understanding and sympathy again.

  “What do you think about the police’s theory?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t see it,” McLaren said. “I mean, it might sound weird to you, but I’m just not like that. I don’t think I have it in me. You might think ev
ery man does, I don’t know. I suppose you’ve seen it all in your line of work, and you’re a woman, but I don’t. I honestly don’t believe that I would ever attack or attempt to rape a woman.”

  Annie had also experienced rape, but she didn’t happen to believe that every man was a potential rapist. “Thanks for your time, Keith,”

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  she said. “You’ve been really helpful. And if it’s any consolation, I don’t believe you’re that sort of person, either.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Keith. “And if you’re ever in Sydney, look me up. I’ll treat you to the best seafood you’ve ever had.”

  Annie laughed. “I will,” she said. “Take care.”

  When she hung up, she held her lukewarm tea to her skin and stared out to sea. Sydney. Now that would be fun. Images of the Har-bour Bridge and the opera house that she had seen on television came into her mind. The mist was burning off the sea now and rising in thin wisps to vanish in the air, the sun was brighter, harder to look at, and a green fishing trawler was making its way to shore. A few minutes later, her phone rang again.

  K E V I N T E M P L E TO N had lived in a one-bedroom f lat in a converted school near The Green, just across the river, not far from where profiler Jenny Fuller lived when she was in town. From his third-f loor window, a door led out to a small balcony which gave a magnificent west-facing view of the terraced gardens, up to the majestic ruined castle towering over the scene, high on its hill. Across The Green to the east was the East Side Estate, a blight on the face of Eastvale, but a source of continuing employment for Banks and the rest at Western Area Headquarters. It was mostly obscured by trees, but you could see the rows of identical redbrick boxes between the bare branches.

  The f lat was an empty shell, Banks thought as he stood in the living room, and one that didn’t give away a great deal about its occupant.

  The furniture was all modern, probably from Ikea or some similar f lat-box merchant, no doubt pieced together in a f lurry of activity one weekend with an Allen key, a six-pack of cheap lager and a great deal of swearing.