Aftermath, page 19
Pat chewed on her lower lip and thought for a moment, then she leaned forward and gripped her teacup in both hands. “Well, once she wanted to go to some of those clubs in Chapeltown.”
“West Indian clubs?”
“Yes. I mean, most nice white girls wouldn’t go near places like that, but Lucy thought it would be exciting.”
“Did she go?”
“Yes, she went with Jasmine, a Jamaican girl from the Boar Lane branch. Of course, nothing happened. I think she might have tried some drugs, though.”
“Why? What did she say?”
“She just hinted and did that, you know, that knowing sort of thing with her eyes, like she’d been there and the rest of us had only seen it on television. She can be quite unnerving like that, can Lucy.”
“Was there anything else?”
“Yes.” Once Pat was in full flow, it seemed there was no stopping her. “She once told me she’d acted as a prostitute.”
“She’d what?”
“It’s true.” Pat looked around to make sure no one was interested and lowered her voice even more. “It was over a couple of years ago, before Terry came on the scene. We’d talked about it in a pub one night when we saw one—you know, a prostitute—wondering what it would be like and all, doing it for money, just as a bit of a laugh, really. Lucy said she’d like to try it and find out and she’d let us know.”
“Did she?”
“Uh-huh. That’s what she told me. About a week later, she said the night before she’d put on some slutty clothes—fishnet tights, high heels, a black leather miniskirt and a low-cut blouse and she sat at the bar of one of those business hotels near the motorway. It didn’t take long, she said, before a man approached her.”
“Did she tell you what happened?”
“Not all the details. She knows when to hold back, does Lucy. For effect, like. But she said they talked, very business-like and polite and all that, and they came to some financial arrangement, then they went up to his room and . . . and they did it.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Not at first. I mean, it’s outrageous, isn’t it? But . . .”
“Eventually you did?”
“Well, like I said, Lucy’s always capable of surprising you, and she likes danger, excitement. I suppose it was when she showed me the money that tipped the balance.”
“She showed you?”
“Yes. Two hundred pounds.”
“She could have got it out of the bank.”
“She could, but . . . Anyway, that’s all I know about it.”
Jenny made some more notes. Pat tilted her head to see what she was writing. “It must be a fascinating job, yours,” she said.
“It has its moments.”
“Just like that woman who used to be on television. Prime Suspect.”
“I’m not a policewoman, Pat. Just a consultant psychologist.”
Pat wrinkled her nose. “Still, it’s an exciting life, isn’t it? Catching criminals and all that.”
Excitement wasn’t the first word that came to Jenny’s mind, but she decided to leave Pat to her illusions. Like most people’s, they wouldn’t do her any real harm. “What about after Lucy met Terry?”
“She changed. But then you do, don’t you? Otherwise what’s the point of getting married? If it doesn’t change you, I mean.”
“I see your point. How did she change?”
“She became a lot more reserved. Stopped home more. Terry’s a bit of a homebody, so there was no more clubbing. He’s the jealous type, too, is Terry, if you know what I mean, so she had to watch herself chatting up the lads. Not that she did that after they were married. It was Terry, Terry, Terry all the way then.”
“Were they in love?”
“I’d say. Dotty about each other. At least that’s what she said, and she seemed happy. Mostly.”
“Let’s back up a bit. Were you there when they met?”
“She says so, but I can’t for the life of me remember them meeting.”
“When was it?”
“Nearly two years ago. July. A warm, muggy night. We were at a girls’ night out at a pub in Seacroft. One of those really big places with lots of rooms and dancing.”
“How do you remember it?”
“I remember Lucy leaving alone. She said she hadn’t enough money for a taxi and she didn’t want to miss her bus. They don’t run late. I’d had a few drinks, but I remember because I said something about her being careful. The Seacroft Rapist was active around then.”
“What did she say?”
“She just gave me that look and left.”
“Did you see Terry there that night? Did you see him chatting her up?”
“I think I saw him there, by himself at the bar, but I don’t remember seeing them talking.”
“What did Lucy say later?”
“That she’d talked to him when she went to the bar for drinks once and quite liked the look of him, then they met again on her way out and went to some other pub together. I can’t remember. I was definitely a bit squiffy. Anyway, whatever happened, that was it. From then on it was a different Lucy. She didn’t have anywhere near enough time for her old friends.”
“Did you ever visit them? Go for dinner?”
“A couple of times, with my fiancé, Steve. We got engaged a year ago.” She held up her ring. The diamond caught the light and flashed. “We’re getting married in August. We’ve already booked the honeymoon. We’re going to Rhodes.”
“Did you get along with Terry okay?”
Pat gave a little shudder. “No. I don’t like him. Never did. Steve thought he was all right, but . . . That’s why we stopped going over, really. There’s just something about him . . . And Lucy, she was sort of like a zombie when he was around. Either that or she acted like she was on drugs.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s just a figure of speech. I mean, I know she wasn’t really on drugs, but just, you know, overexcited, talking too much, mind jumping all over the place.”
“Did you ever see any signs of abuse?”
“You mean did he hit her and stuff?”
“Yes.”
“No. Nothing. I never saw any bruises or anything like that.”
“Did Lucy seem to change in any way?”
“What do you mean?”
“Recently. Did she become more withdrawn, seem afraid of anything?”
Pat chewed on her the edge of her thumb for a moment before answering. “She changed a bit the past few months, now you come to mention it,” she said finally. “I can’t say exactly when it started, but she seemed more nervy, more distracted, as if she had a problem, a lot on her mind.”
“Did she confide in you?”
“No. We’d drifted apart quite a bit by then. Was he really beating her? I can’t understand it, can you, how a woman, especially a woman like Lucy, can let that happen?”
Jenny could, but there was no point trying to convince Pat. If Lucy sensed that would be her old friend’s attitude toward her problem, it was no surprise that she turned to a neighbor like Maggie Forrest, who at least showed empathy.
“Did Lucy ever talk about her past, her childhood?”
Pat looked at her watch. “No. All I know is that she’s from somewhere near Hull and it was a pretty dull life. She couldn’t wait to get away, and she didn’t keep in touch as much as she should, especially after Terry came on the scene. Look, I really have to get back now. I hope I’ve been of help.” She stood up.
Jenny stood and shook her hand. “Thanks. Yes, you’ve been very helpful.” As she watched Pat scurry back to the bank, Jenny looked at her watch, too. She had enough time to drive out to Hull and see what Lucy’s parents had to say.
It was several days since Banks had last stopped in at his Eastvale office, and the amount of accumulated paperwork was staggering, since he had temporarily inherited Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s workload. Consequently, when he did find time to drop by the station late that afternoon, driving straight back after his interview with Geoff Brighouse, his pigeonhole was stuffed with reports, budget revisions, memos, requests, telephone message slips, crime statistics and various circulars awaiting his signature. He decided to clear up some of the backlog of paperwork and take Annie Cabbot for a quick drink at the Queen’s Arms to discuss her progress in the Janet Taylor investigation, and maybe build a few bridges in the process.
After leaving a message for Annie to drop by his office at six o’clock, Banks closed the door behind him and dropped the pile of papers on his desk. He hadn’t even changed his Dalesman calendar from April to May, he noticed, flipping over from a photo of the stone bridge at Linton to the soaring lines of York Minster’s east window, pink and white may blossom blurred in the foreground.
It was Thursday, the eleventh of May. Hard to believe it was only three days since the gruesome discovery at number 35 The Hill. Already the tabloids were rubbing their hands with glee and calling the place “Dr. Terry’s House of Horrors” and, even worse, “The House of Payne.” They had somehow got hold of photographs of both Terry and Lucy Payne—the former cropped from a school class picture, by the look of it, and the latter from an “employee of the month” presentation to Lucy at the NatWest branch where she worked. Both photos were poor in quality, and you’d have to know who they were before you’d recognize either of them.
Banks turned on his computer and answered any E-mail he thought merited a response, then he picked away at the pile of papers. Not much, it seemed, had happened in his absence. The major preoccupation had been with a series of nasty post office robberies, in which one masked man terrorized staff and customers with a long knife and an ammonia spray. No one had been hurt yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be. There had been four such robberies in the Western Division over a month. DS Hatchley was out rounding up his ragbag assortment of informants. Apart from the robberies, perhaps the most serious crime on their hands was the theft of a tortoise that happened to be sleeping in a cardboard box nicked from someone’s garden, along with a Raleigh bicycle and a lawn mower.
Business as usual. And somehow Banks found an odd sort of comfort in these dull, predictable crimes after the horrors of the Paynes’ cellar.
He turned on his radio and recognized the slow movement from a late Schubert piano sonata. He felt a tight pain between his eyes and massaged the spot gently. When that didn’t work he swallowed a couple of Paracetamol he kept in his desk for emergencies such as this, washed them down with tepid coffee, then he pushed the mound of papers aside and let the music spill over him in gentle waves. The headaches were coming more frequently these days, along with the sleepless nights and a strange reluctance to go to work. It reminded him of the pattern he went through just before he left London for Yorkshire, when he was on the edge of burnout, and he wondered if he was getting in the same state again. He should probably see his doctor, he decided, when he had time.
The ringing telephone disturbed him, as it had so often before. Scowling, he picked up the offending instrument and growled, “Banks.”
“Stefan here. You asked me to keep you informed.”
Banks relaxed his tone. “Yes, Stefan. Any developments?” Banks could hear voices in the background. Millgarth, most likely. Or the Payne house.
“One piece of good news. They’ve lifted Payne’s prints from the machete used to kill PC Morrisey, and the lab reports both yellow plastic fibers from the rope in the scrapings taken from under Lucy Payne’s fingernails, along with traces of Kimberley Myers’s blood on the sleeve of her dressing gown.”
“Kimberley’s blood on Lucy Payne’s dressing gown?”
“Yes.”
“So she was down there,” Banks said.
“Looks like it. Mind you, she could explain away the fibers by saying she hung out the washing. They did use the same kind of clothes-line in the back garden. I’ve seen it.”
“But the blood?”
“Maybe more tricky,” said Stefan. “There wasn’t very much, but at least it proves that she was down there.”
“Thanks, Stefan. It’s a big help. What about Terence Payne?”
“The same. Blood and yellow fibers. Along with a fair quantity of PC Morrisey’s blood.”
“What about the bodies?”
“One more, skeletal, out in the garden. That makes all five.”
“Skeletal? How long would that take?”
“Depends on temperature and insect activity,” said Stefan.
“Could it have happened in just a month or so?”
“Could have, with the right conditions. It hasn’t been very warm this past month, though.”
“But is it possible?”
“It’s possible.”
Leanne Wray had disappeared on the thirty-first of March, which was slightly over a month ago, so there was at least some possibility that it was her remains.
“Anyway,” Stefan went on, “there’s plenty of garden left. They’re digging very slowly and carefully to avoid disturbing the bones. I’ve arranged for a botanist and an entomologist from the university to visit the scene tomorrow. They should be able to help us with time of death.”
“Did you find any clothing with the victims?”
“No. Nothing of a personal nature.”
“Get to work on identifying that body, Stefan, and let me know the minute you have anything, even if it’s negative.”
“Will do.”
Banks said good-bye to Stefan and hung up, then he walked over to his open window and sneaked a prohibited cigarette. It was a hot, muggy afternoon, with the sort of tension in the air that meant rain would probably come soon, perhaps even a thunderstorm. Office workers sniffed the air and reached for their umbrellas as they headed home. Shopkeepers closed up and wound back the awnings. Banks thought about Sandra again, how when she used to work at the community center down North Market Street they would often meet for a drink in the Queen’s Arms before heading home. Happy days. Or so they had seemed. And now she was pregnant with Sean’s baby.
The Schubert piano music played on, the serene and elegiac opening of the final, B-flat sonata. Banks’s headache began to subside a little. The one thing he remembered about Sandra’s pregnancies was that she hadn’t enjoyed them, hadn’t glowed with the joys of approaching motherhood. She had suffered extreme morning sickness, and though she didn’t drink or smoke much, she continued to do both because back then nobody made such a fuss about it. She also continued to go to galleries and plays and meet with friends, and complained when her condition made it difficult or impossible for her to do so.
While pregnant with Tracy, she had slipped on the ice and broken her leg in her seventh month and spent the rest of her confinement with a cast on. That more than anything had driven her crazy, unable to get out and about with her camera the way she loved to do, stuck in their poky little Kennington flat watching gray day follow gray day all that winter while Banks was working all hours, hardly ever home. Well, perhaps Sean would be around for her more often. Lord only knew, perhaps if Banks had been . . .
But he didn’t get to follow that thought to the particular circle of hell he was sure must be reserved for neglectful husbands and fathers. Annie Cabbot tapped at his door and popped her head around, giving him a temporary escape from the guilt and self-recrimination that seemed to be so much his lot these days, no matter how hard he tried to do the right thing.
“You did say six o’clock, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Sorry, Annie. Miles away.” Banks picked up his jacket, checking the pockets for wallet and cigarettes, then cast a backward glance at the pile of untouched paperwork on his desk. To hell with it. If they expected him to do two, three jobs at once, then they could wait for their bloody paperwork.
As Jenny drove through a shower and looked out at the ugly forest of cranes that rose up from Goole docks, she wondered for the umpteenth time what on earth had induced her to return to England. To Yorkshire. It certainly wasn’t family ties. Jenny was an only child and her parents were retired academics living in Sussex. Both her mother and father had been far too wrapped up in their work—he as a historian, she as a physicist—and Jenny had spent more of her childhood with a succession of nannies and au pairs than with her parents. Given their natural academic detachment, too, Jenny often felt that she had been far more of an experiment than a daughter.
It didn’t bother her—after all, she didn’t know any different—and it was very much the way she had lived her life, too: as an experiment. Sometimes she looked back and it all seemed so shallow and self-centered that she felt herself panic; other times it seemed just fine.
She would turn forty that coming December, was still single—had never, in fact, been married—and while a bit shop-soiled, battered and bruised, she was far from down and out for the count. She still had her looks and her figure, though she needed more and more magic potions for the former and had to work harder and harder at the university gym to keep those excess pounds from creeping on, given her taste for good food and wine. She also had a good job, a growing reputation as an offender profiler, publications to her credit.
So why did she sometimes feel so empty? Why did she always feel she was in a hurry to get somewhere she never arrived at? Even now, with the rain lashing against her windscreen, the wipers going as fast as they could go, she was doing ninety kilometers per hour. She slowed down to eighty, but her speed soon started creeping up again, along with the feeling that she was late for something, always late for something.
The shower ended. Elgar’s Enigma Variations was playing on Classic FM. To the north, a power station with its huge corset-shaped cooling towers squatted against the horizon, the steam it spewed almost indistinguishable from the low cloud. She was nearing the end of the motorway now. The east-bound M62 was like so many things in life; it left you just short of your destination.
