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ANNIE WAS IN THE STATION BRIGHT AND EARLY ON MON-day morning after a good night’s sleep and nothing stronger than a cup of hot chocolate over the course of the eve ning. She was just kicking the coffee machine the way you had to to get a cup out of it when Detective Superintendent Brough walked by and said, “My office, DI Cabbot. Now.”
Annie felt a chill. Was Brough a defender of the coffee machine or had Eric set out to harm her career? Had he got more photos that she hadn’t seen and sent them to Brough, or the chief constable? Or had he reported her behavior the other night? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Brough’s office was spacious and well appointed, as befitted a senior officer. He sat behind his desk and gruff ly bade Annie sit opposite him in the hard chair. Her heart was thudding. She could argue that she had been drunk, but that ref lected no better on her than sleeping with a snake like Eric in the first place.
“What have you got to say for yourself ?” Brough asked, which didn’t help a great deal.
“About what?” Annie said.
“You know damn well what. The Lucy Payne murder. I’ve got the press so far up my arse I can taste their pencil lead, and absolutely bugger all to tell them. It’s been a week now, and as far as I can see you’ve just been marking time.”
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In an odd way, Annie felt relieved that it was about the case and not about Eric. He hadn’t been in touch since Annie had paid him her visit on Friday, and that, she thought, was a good sign. Maybe he’d got the hint, which had been about as subtle as a blow to the head with a blunt object.
This was professional. This she could deal with. “With all due respect, sir,” she said, “we’ve done everything we can to trace this mystery woman, but she seems to have disappeared into thin air. We’ve questioned everyone at Mapston Hall twice—staff and patients alike, wherever possible—but no one there seems able to provide us with any kind of a lead or information whatsoever. No one knew anything about Karen Drew. It’s not as if most of the people there lead active social lives.”
Brough grunted. “Is someone lying?”
“Could be, sir. But all the staff members are accounted for during the time of the murder. If anyone there was involved, it was in passing over the information that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne, and not in committing the actual murder itself. Believe me, sir, we’re working on it.”
“Why is it all taking so long?”
“These things do take a long time, sir. Background checks. Ferret-ing out information.”
“I hear you’ve been going off on a tangent over some old case, gal-livanting off to Leeds and Eastvale to talk to your old boyfriend. I’m not running a dating service here, DI Cabbot. You’d do well to remember that.”
“I resent that implication,” Annie said. She could take only so much from authority, and then her father’s streak of anarchy and re-bellion broke through, and to the devil with the consequences. “And you’ve no right to speak to me like that.”
Brough seemed taken aback by her angry outburst, but it sobered him. He straightened his tie and settled back in his chair. “You don’t know how much pressure I’m under to get a result here,” he said, by way of a lame explanation.
“Then I suggest you do it by encouraging your team and supporting them, rather than by resorting to personal insults. Sir.”
Brough looked like a slapped arse. He f lustered and blathered and 3 0 8
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then got around to asking Annie exactly where she thought she was going with the Kirsten Farrow angle.
“I don’t know for certain that I’m going anywhere yet,” said Annie,
“but it’s starting to appear very much as if the same killer—whoever it is—has now killed again.”
“That Eastvale detective, yes. Templeton. Bad business.”
“It is, sir. I knew Kev Templeton.” Annie stopped short of saying he was a friend of hers, but she wanted Brough to dig into whatever reserves of police solidarity and sympathy he might have. “And in my opinion he was killed by the same person who killed Lucy Payne.
We don’t have that many murders around here, for a start, the distance isn’t that great, and how many do we have that, according to witnesses, were committed by a mysterious woman using a straight razor, or some such similar sharp blade, to slit the throat of the victim?”
“But Templeton’s not our case, damn it.”
“He is if it’s the same killer, sir. Do you really believe there are two women going around slitting people’s throats—people they believe to be dangerous killers?”
“Put like that it does sound—”
“And do you find it so hard to believe that these might be related to an unsolved case in which a woman also may have killed two men, one of whom was a serial killer and one of whom she may have mistaken for him?”
“May have. You said ‘May have.’ I’ve looked over the files, DI Cabbot. There’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Greg Eastcote was murdered, either by a woman or by anyone else. He could have faked his disappearance because he thought the police were getting too
close. In fact that’s the most logical explanation.”
“He could have,” Annie agreed. “But the police weren’t getting close. And a woman was seen with Jack Grimley and with the Australian boy, Keith McLaren, and she conveniently disappeared, too.”
“But this was eighteen years ago, for God’s sake. You can’t even prove that this Kirsten, or whoever she was, knew that Eastcote had attacked her. It’s absurd.”
“No more than most cases when you don’t have all the pieces, sir.
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I’m also trying to locate Kirsten’s psychiatrist. She had a course of hypnosis in Bath in 1988, and it might have helped her recover some of her memory of the attack.”
Brough grunted. Not impressed by the idea of hypnotherapy, Annie guessed. “The MO is completely different,” he went on. “The attacker used a rock on Keith McLaren and some sort of sharp blade on Lucy Payne.”
“MOs can change. And perhaps if she only kills killers, or people she mistakes for them, she hasn’t come across any in the last eighteen years? Perhaps she’s been abroad?”
“It’s all speculation.”
“If you don’t speculate, sir, you don’t get anywhere.”
“But I need something I can tell the press. Something real. Something substantial.”
“Since when have the press cared about reality or substance?”
“DI Cabbot!”
“Sorry, sir. Why don’t you tell them we’ve got a new lead we’re following, but you can’t say any more about it right now. They’ll understand.”
“What new lead?”
“Kirsten Farrow. We’re going to interview everyone we know was connected with Karen/Lucy until we get a connection to the killer.”
“Whom you believe to be Kirsten Farrow?”
“Yes,” said Annie. “But you don’t have to tell them that. Even if I’m wrong, we’re heading in the right direction. I’m not wearing blinkers, sir. Someone knew that Karen was Lucy, and that someone is either the killer herself, or the person who told the killer. And I’m trying to get some evidence to prove that Kirsten killed Lucy Payne.
With any luck I should have it before the end of the day.”
“Okay,” said Brough. “That’s the kind of thing I want to hear. And I do take your point. It makes sense when you get rid of all that 1989
gobbledygook. Just be careful whose feet you’re treading on. Remember, these are professional people, you know, doctors and the like.”
“Oh, don’t worry, sir, I won’t eat any of them,” Annie said. “Now can I go?”
He jerked his head. “Go on. Get to work. And hurry up. And this 3 1 0
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evidence? Don’t forget, I expect to see some positive results
before the end of the day.”
“Yes, sir,” Annie said as she left the office, fingers crossed.
D E S P I T E B E I N G dog-tired, Banks hadn’t slept at all well when he got home from the station well after midnight on Monday. They were no closer to finding Templeton’s killer, or Hayley Daniels’s, for that matter, and part of the program for the day was to start a complete review of both cases so far.
Everything about the Hayley Daniels murder pointed toward a scared rapist, someone the victim knew, who had strangled Hayley to avoid being named and caught, someone who was also possibly ashamed of what he’d done and had arranged the body in a pose more suggestive of sleep than rape and murder. Under further questioning, Joseph Randall had finally admitted that he had touched Hayley and masturbated at the scene, but he insisted that he hadn’t changed the position of the body, and Banks believed him. At that point, he had no reason to lie.
The Templeton murder, efficient and practical as it had been, seemed very much as if it had been a mistake on the part of a killer, who in the darkness of The Maze had thought she had been protecting Chelsea Pilton and ridding the world of a budding serial killer.
When Banks asked himself who might think that and why, he came back to Kirsten Farrow. And nobody knew what had become of her. The only thing that gave rise to any doubts at all in Banks’s mind about Kirsten’s being responsible was that the first murders, the 1989
ones, involved someone who had directly harmed Kirsten, mutilated her, and she had not been a victim of Lucy and Terence Payne. That meant that, if it was Kirsten, she had extended her parame ters.
Or, Banks thought, with a quiver of excitement, perhaps she did have some connection with the Paynes. What it could be he had no idea, but it was a direction worth pursuing, and something he needed to tell Annie about, if she hadn’t thought of it herself. Annie had been right yesterday when she said it was good to be working together again. It was. Personal problems aside, he hadn’t realized how much he had missed her since she had gone to Eastern Area.
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First thing on the agenda was another look at all the CCTV footage they had on both cases. Hayley Daniels f irst. As soon as the team was gathered—Banks, Winsome, Hatchley, Wilson, with the gaping absence of Templeton and the off-the-wall comments everyone had come to expect from him—they started watching the footage.
There it was again, the familiar scene of the market square at closing time, young men and women being sick, squabbling, singing with their arms around one another. Then the group from The Fountain standing together brief ly while Hayley explained that she was going down Taylor’s Yard for a piss and then . . . ? Well, she hadn’t told them where after that. To Malcolm Austin’s, perhaps?
But why would she want to go there? She was nineteen, pissed as a newt, out with her mates for a night on the town. Why would she want to go and visit a sober, older lover, who was probably lounging around in his carpet slippers sipping sherry and watching films that were made long before she was born? Well, love is blind, they say, but sometimes Banks thought it must be drunk as well. It didn’t matter, anyway.
Wherever Hayley had intended to go, she didn’t get there. Someone intercepted her, and unless it was someone who had been lying in wait for any young girl to come by, as Templeton had believed, then it had to be someone who knew she would be there, a decision she had made only in the last minute or so, as they watched.
Banks glanced again at the people around her. He recognized Stuart Kinsey, Zack Lane and a couple of others. Their names were all on file.
Their alibis had been checked and rechecked, their statements taken.
They could all be reinterviewed. Someone had to know something.
Maybe someone was covering for a friend he thought had done it?
The car went by, the couple on their way back from celebrating their wedding anniversary. And there was that annoying, f lickering strip of light, like on restored copies of old black-and-white films. Banks made a note to ask technical services if they could get rid of it, though doing so probably wouldn’t reveal anything new. Then Hayley staggered off down Taylor’s Yard, and the rest headed for the Bar None.
Banks knew that Stuart Kinsey had sneaked out of the back exit almost immediately to spy on Hayley, but what about the others? They said they stayed at the Bar None until about two o’clock, and various 3 1 2
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staff, customers and doormen said they had seen them during that period. But it didn’t take long to sneak out, and if you were clever enough, you could wedge the back door open and hope no one noticed before the time you got back. But why would Hayley linger in The Maze once she had done what she went there to do? She had no reason to do so, unless she was meeting someone there, and why would she do that when she had Malcolm Austin waiting for her? Unless there was someone else.
It didn’t make sense. The killer had to be someone who knew that Hayley was going into The Maze, which meant that whoever it was had to act fast. How long does it take a woman to go down an alley and relieve herself in the dark? She was drunk, which would definitely slow her progress. And she’d been sick, too. On the other hand, she had little in the way of clothing to inhibit her. He could always ask a female constable to go in and do it, and time her. That would go down about as well as asking every woman connected with the Lucy Payne murder to take her top off. Sometimes the easiest and most obvious route was the only way you couldn’t go.
Banks estimated about five minutes, in and out, and felt that was fairly generous. That gave the killer about three or four minutes to follow Hayley and grab her before she finished. Stuart Kinsey had gone in there about three or four minutes after her, which made it unlikely that anyone else in the Bar None could have gone out the same way at the same time. They would have bumped into each other.
And Stuart Kinsey had at least heard part of the assault against Hayley, and he said he had seen no one else in The Maze.
The tapes went on and on, Jamie Murdoch leaving with his bicycle at two-thirty, a few stragglers from the Bar None getting into a shoving match, then nothing. DC Doug Wilson switched off the player, put on the lights, and they all stretched. Over three hours had gone by, and nothing. It was time to send the team out on the streets to start talking to people again, and Banks had an appointment he wished he didn’t have to keep.
B A N K S L E A N E D on a wall outside Eastvale General Infirmary, feeling queasy, and took a few slow, deep breaths. Dr. Wallace had perF R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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formed her postmortem on Kevin Templeton with her usual brisk speed and efficiency, but it had been difficult to watch. There had been no banter, no black humor—hardly a word spoken, in fact—and she had seemed to work with the utmost concentration and detachment.
And nothing new had come of her efforts.
Cause of death was the cut throat, time was fixed by the eyewitness Chelsea Pilton, and other than that he was dead, Templeton had been in good health. The postmortem also hadn’t told Dr. Wallace anything more about the weapon, though she leaned toward the theory that a straight- blade razor had been used, pulled most likely from left to right across Templeton’s throat, cutting the carotid, the jugular and the windpipe. It had been quick, as Dr. Burns had noted at the scene, but long enough for Templeton to have known what was happening to him as he struggled for breath and felt himself weaken through loss of blood and oxygen. The consolation was that he would have been in no great pain, but when it came down to it, Banks thought, only Templeton himself could have known that for certain.
Banks stood on the steps of the infirmary, leaning beside the door, with a chill March wind blowing around him, and when he had regained his composure he decided to drive over to Eastvale College to talk to Stuart Kinsey again. On his way, he plucked up the courage to ring Sophia and ask her if she fancied a drink later. She did.
He tracked Kinsey down in the co
ffee lounge, and they found a dim quiet corner. Banks bought two lattes and a couple of KitKats at the counter and sat down.
“What is it now?” Stuart asked. “I thought you believed me?”
“I do believe you,” said Banks. “At least I believe that you didn’t murder Hayley Daniels.”
“What, then?”
“Just a few more questions, that’s all.”
“I’ve got a lecture at three.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be done long before then if we can make a start.”
“All right,” said Stuart, reaching for a cigarette. “What do you want to know?”
“It’s about the night you followed Hayley into The Maze.”
“I didn’t follow her.”
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“But you went to spy on her. You knew she was there.” The smoke drifted toward Banks, and for the first time in ages it didn’t bother him. In fact, it made him crave a smoke himself. Must have been the stress of seeing Templeton opened up on the table. He fought the urge and it waned.
“I wasn’t spying!” Stuart said, glancing around to make sure no one could hear them. “I’m not a pervert. I told you, I wanted to see where she went.”
“Did you think she was meeting someone?”
“Not there, no. What ever I thought of Hayley, I didn’t think she was the type for a quick drunken fumble in a dark alley. No, she went there for a piss, that’s all. I thought she was going to meet someone later, somewhere else.”
Banks took the silver paper from his KitKat. “Did Hayley give any indications, either that night or at any other time, that there was something or someone bothering her?”
“No. Not that I can think of. Why?”
“She wasn’t worried about anything?”
“You’ve asked me this before. Or the other officer did.”
“Well, I’m asking you again.”
“No. Nothing. Hayley was pretty happy-go-lucky. I mean, I never saw her really down about anything.”
“Angry?”
“She had a bit of temper. Had quite a mouth on her. But it took a lot to get her riled.”
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