Friend of the Devil ib-17
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“A mistake. Pure and simple. When I remembered what my attacker looked like, I found I had an even stronger memory of his voice, his accent, what he said. That was what led me to Whitby. Once I was there, I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d find him. Nothing else mattered. Grimley sounded like the man who attacked me. I led him to the beach. That part was easy. Then I hit him on the head with a heavy glass paperweight. That was hard. I had to hit him again. He wouldn’t die. When he did, I dragged his body into a cave and left it for the sea to lick out. The tide was due in. Oh, I can justify it all to myself, of course.
I was on a mission, and there were bound to be mistakes. Casualties. It’s the cost of war. But I got there in the end. I got the one I was after. The right one. And when it was over, everything felt different. Do you know Saint Mary’s Church, in Whitby?”
“The one on the hill, near the abbey?”
“Yes, with the graveyard where you can’t read the names. Inside it’s divided into box pews. Some of them are for visitors, and they’re marked ‘For Strangers Only.’ After I pushed Greg Eastcote over the cliff, I went there and got into one of those boxes, and I curled up in a ball. I was there . . . oh, I don’t know how long. I thought, If they come for me now and catch me, it’s okay, I’m not running, it’s fine, that’s how it’s meant to be. I’ll just wait here until they find me. But nobody came. And when I left that pew, I was a different person. I was 3 6 8
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
calm. Totally calm. Can you believe that?” She shrugged. “I left what I had done behind me. I felt no guilt. No shame. So the name change seemed natural. I’d used different names all along, anyway. Martha Browne, Susan Bridehead. It was a sort of game as much as anything else. I was an English student. My name was Elizabeth Bennett for a while after that, but my husband’s name just happened to be Wallace.”
“But how did you find Greg Eastcote? How did you know who he was?”
“Like I told you, I remembered things. Partly it was the hypnosis.”
She paused. “He said things, you know. All the time he was doing it to me, he talked, said things. I remembered. He named places, the work he did. And there was a smell I could never forget. Dead fish. I put it all together in the end. I did make mistakes, but I got there. I got him. The right one. I made him pay for what he did to all of us.”
“What did you do afterward?”
“First I went back to Leeds, to Sarah, then back to Bath, to my parents. I tried to pick up the threads, but I was different. I was no longer one of them. I’d cut myself off by what I’d done. So I went away. I traveled a lot, all over the world. In the end, I decided to put the past behind me and become a doctor. I wanted to help people, cure people.
I know it sounds odd, after what I did, but it’s the truth. Can you believe that? But in my studies I was drawn to specialize in pathology.
Funny, isn’t it? Working with the dead. I was always nervous around the living, but I never had any qualms about handling dead bodies.
When I saw the wounds on the Paynes’ victims six years ago, I couldn’t help but revisit my own experiences. And then it just fell into my lap. Julia told me one night after dinner, when she’d had a few drinks. She had no idea, of course, who she was telling.”
“Look,” said Annie. “Please put the scalpel down. Let’s stop this before someone else gets hurt. People know I’m here. People will come.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“I can understand why you did it, all those years ago. Really, I can. I was raped once, and almost killed. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. I felt such rage. I suppose I still do. We’re not that different, you and I.”
“Oh, but we are. I actually did it. I didn’t feel rage. And I didn’t feel guilt.”
F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
3 6 9
“Now I try to stop people from doing it, or bring them to justice if they do.”
“It’s not the same. Don’t you understand?”
“Why did you kill Lucy Payne? For God’s sake, she was in a wheelchair. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. Why did you kill her? Wasn’t she suffering enough?”
Liz paused a moment and stared at Annie as if she were crazy. “You don’t get it, do you? It wasn’t about suffering. It was never about suffering. Certainly not about her suffering. I never cared whether she suffered or not.”
“So what was the point?”
“She could remember, couldn’t she?” Liz whispered.
“Remember?”
“Yes. That’s what they do. Surely you know that? That’s the whole point. They remember every moment, every cut, every thrust, every feeling they experienced, every ejaculation, every orgasm, every drop of blood they shed. And they relive it. Day after day after day. As long as she could remember it, she had all she wanted.” She tapped the side of her head. “Right there. How could I let her live with the memory of what she’d done? She could do it over and over again in her mind.”
“Why not just push her over the edge?”
“I wanted her to know what I was doing and why I was doing it. I talked to her the whole time, just the way Eastcote did to me, from the moment the blade touched her throat until . . . right up to the end.
If I’d pushed her, something might have gone wrong. Then I wouldn’t have been able to get down there and do what I had to. She might not even have died.”
“But what about Kevin Templeton?”
“Another mistake. Another casualty. I was trying to stop a memory from being made, and I thought he was the one. He shouldn’t have been there. How could I have known he was there to protect people? I think perhaps he’d sensed my presence there, and maybe he thought I was the killer. When he started to walk toward the girl, he was going to warn her to leave, but I thought he was going to attack her. I’m sorry. You’ve got the real killer now. He’s the same as Eastcote and Lucy Payne. Perhaps at the moment he seems contrite, remorseful, but you wait. That’s 3 7 0 P E T E R
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because he’s just been caught and he’s scared. Even worse, he’s beginning to realize that he won’t be able to do it again, to experience that bliss again. But he’ll still have his memories of that one glorious time.
He’ll be sitting there in the corner of his cell running over every detail.
Relishing the first second he touched her, the moment he entered her and she gasped with pain and fear, the moment he spilled his seed. His only regret will be that he won’t get to do it again.”
“You sound as if you know what it feels like,” said Annie.
Before Dr. Wallace could respond, footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Winsome appeared at the door with several uniformed officers behind her. Dr. Wallace lurched forward with the scalpel at her own throat. “Stop! Stop right there.”
Annie held her arm up and Winsome stopped in the doorway. “Get back!” Annie yelled. “All of you. Get back out of sight.” They disappeared, but Annie knew they weren’t far away, working out their options. She also knew there would be an armed response unit arriving soon, and if she had any hope of talking Liz into surrendering, she had to work fast. She looked at her watch. It had been half an hour since Dr. Wallace had picked up the scalpel. Annie had to try to keep her talking as long as possible.
Dr. Wallace glanced toward the door, and seeing no one there, seemed to relax a little.
“Do you see what I mean?” Annie said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “People know I’m here. They’ve come now. They won’t just go away. Don’t make things worse. Give me the scalpel.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dr. Wallace said. “It’s all over now, anyway.
I’ve done all I can do. God, I’m tired. Too many memories.” She was leaning back on the blood-filled gutter of the postmortem table, the half- sewn- up body behind her. Annie was about five feet away, and she calculated whether she could get over there and wrestle the scalpel out of Liz’s hand.
In the end, she decided she couldn’t. The damn thing was way too sharp to risk something like that. She had seen what damage it could do.
“Look,” said Annie. “There’s still time. You can tell your story.
People will understand. I understand. I do. We can get you help.”
Liz smiled, and for a moment Annie could see the remains of what F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
3 7 1
had probably once been a lovely young girl with a brilliant future, one who would take the world by the horns and go as far as she wanted.
Christ, she had been almost killed by a monster and had then taken her revenge, and after that she had reinvented herself as a pathologist. But she seemed weary now, and there
were deep cracks in the smile.
“Thanks, Annie,” she said. “Thanks for being understanding, even though no one can ever really understand. I wish I’d known you before.
This may sound weird, but I’m glad I got to spend my last few minutes on earth with you. You will take good care of yourself, won’t you?
Promise me. I can tell you’ve been damaged. You’ve suffered. We are kindred spirits underneath it all, in some ways. Don’t let the bastards win. Have you seen what they can do?”
She opened the front of her smock, and Annie recoiled at the jag-ged crisscross of red lines, the displaced nipple, the parody of a breast.
“Kirsten!” she cried out.
But it all happened too fast. Annie launched herself forward as Kirsten drew the scalpel across her own throat. The warm spray of blood caught Annie full in the face, and she screamed as it kept pumping and gushing down the front of her blouse, all over her jeans. The scalpel fell from Kirsten’s hand and skittered across the shiny tile f loor, leaving a zigzag of blood. Annie knelt beside Kirsten and became aware of movement all around her, soothing words, hands reaching for her, Winsome’s voice. She tried to remember her first aid and press down hard on the bleeding carotid, but it was impossible. When she did, all that happened was that the blood spurted faster from the jugular. And Kirsten couldn’t breathe. Like Templeton, she had a severed carotid, jugular and windpipe. Annie didn’t have three hands, and there was chaos all around her.
Annie screamed out for help. It was a hospital, after all; there had to be doctors everywhere. And they were trying. People milled around and manhandled her, bent over Kirsten with masks and needles, but when it was all over, she lay there on the f loor in a pool of blood, her eyes wide open, pale, dead.
Annie heard someone say there was nothing more to be done. She rubbed her mouth and eyes with the back of her hand, but she could still taste the sweet metallic blood on her lips and feel it burning in her 3 7 2 P E T E R
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eyes. God, she thought, she must look a sight, sitting on the f loor rocking, crying and covered in blood. And after what seemed like ages, who should come walking toward her but Banks.
He knelt beside her, kissed her temple, then sat on the f loor and held her to his chest. People all around them were making various motions, but Banks’s presence seemed to silence them and create a cocoon of peace. Soon it seemed as if there were only Annie, Banks and Kirsten in the room, though she knew that had to be an illusion.
Kirsten’s body was covered, and the lights seemed dimmer. Banks stroked her bloody brow. “I’m sorry, Annie,” he said. “I should have realized sooner. I was too late.”
“Me, too,” said Annie. “I couldn’t stop her.”
“I know. I don’t think anyone could. She’d come to the end. There was nowhere else for her to go. She’d already had a second lease on life. She didn’t want to live anymore. Can you imagine how terrible every day must have been for her?” Banks made a move to get up and help Annie out of the mortuary.
“Don’t leave me!” Annie cried, clinging on tight, not letting him move. “Don’t leave me. Not yet. Stay. Please. Just for a little while.
Make them all go away.”
“All right,” Banks said, and she could feel him gently stroking her hair and humming a tuneless lullaby as she held on to him tight and buried her head deep in his chest, and for a moment it really did feel as if the whole world had gone away.
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
I would like to thank the people who read and commented on the manuscript of Friend of the Devil before its publication, especially Dominick Abel, Dinah Forbes, David Grossman, Sheila Halladay, Carolyn Marino and Carolyn Mays. Also thanks to the many copy editors and proofreaders who worked hard to make it a better book, and to the people behind the scenes who make sure it gets in the shops and doesn’t go unnoticed.
About the Author
Peter Robinson’s award-winning novels
have been named a Best-Book-of-the-Year by Publishers Weekly, a Notable Book by the New York Times, and a Page-Turner-of-the-Week by People magazine. Robinson was born and raised in Yorkshire, but has lived in North America for nearly twenty-five years. He now divides his time between North America and the U.K.
www.peterrobinsonbooks.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
A L S O B Y P E T E R R O B I N S O N
G A L L O W S V I E W
A D E D I C A T E D M A N
A N E C E S S A R Y E N D
T H E H A N G I N G V A L L E Y
P A S T R E A S O N H A T E D
W E D N E S D A Y ’ S C H I L D
F I N A L A C C O U N T
I N N O C E N T G R A V E S
B L O O D A T T H E R O O T
I N A D R Y S E A S O N
C O L D I S T H E G R A V E
A F T E R M A T H
C L O S E T O H O M E
P L A Y I N G W I T H F I R E
S T R A N G E A F F A I R
P I E C E O F M Y H E A R T
Credits
Designed by Lovedog Studio
Jacket design by Ervin Serrano
Jacket photograph © by Martin Amis / Arcangel Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
FRIEND OF THE DEVIL. Copyright © 2007 by East vale Enterprises Inc.
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Document Outline
Title Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Peter Robinson
Credits
Copyright Notice
About the Publisher
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