Aftermath, page 27
“Is there anything more you can tell me?”
Elizabeth stood up and went back to her ironing. “Not that I can think of.”
Jenny stood up, took her card from her purse and handed it over. “If you think of anything at all . . .”
Elizabeth peered at the card and set it on the edge of the ironing board. “Yes, of course. I’m only too glad to have been of help.”
But she didn’t look it, Jenny thought as she maneuvered her car out of the tiny parking spot. Elizabeth Bell had looked like a woman forced to confront memories she would sooner forget. And Jenny didn’t blame her. She didn’t know if she’d learned anything much of value except confirmation that satanic paraphernalia had been found in the cellar. Banks would certainly be interested in that. Tomorrow, she would go all the way to Alderthorpe and see if she could find anyone who knew the families before the investigation, and, as Elizabeth had suggested, to “get the feel of the place.”
12
Banks hadn’t had a break all day, had even missed his lunch interviewing Lucy Payne, so with no real plan in mind, around three o’clock that afternoon, he found himself wandering down an alley off North Market Street toward the Old Ship Inn, heavy with the recent news that the second body discovered in the back garden of 35 The Hill was definitely not Leanne Wray’s.
Lucy Payne was being held in a cell in the basement of police headquarters and Julia Ford had booked herself in at The Burgundy, Eastvale’s best, most expensive hotel. The task force and forensics people were working as fast and as hard as they could, and Jenny Fuller was probing Lucy’s past—all looking for that one little chink in her armor, that one little piece of hard evidence that she was more involved with the killings than she let on. Banks knew that if they unearthed nothing more by noon tomorrow, he’d have to let her go. He had one more visit to make today: to talk to George Woodward, the detective inspector who had done most of the legwork on the Alderthorpe investigation, now retired and running a B&B in Withernsea. Banks glanced at his watch. It would take him about two hours: plenty of time to head out there after a drink and a bite to eat and still get back before too late.
The Old Ship was a shabby, undistinguished Victorian watering hole with a few benches scattered in the cobbled alley out front. Not much light got in, as the buildings all around were dark and high. Its claim to fame was that it was well-hidden and known to be tolerant of underage drinkers. Many an Eastvale lad, so Banks had heard, had sipped his first pint at the Old Ship well before his eighteenth birthday. The sign showed an old clipper ship, and the windows were of smoked, etched glass.
It wasn’t very busy at that time of day, between the lunch-hour and the after-work crowd. Indeed, the Old Ship wasn’t busy very often at all, as few tourists liked the look of it, and most locals knew better places to drink. The interior was dim and the air stale and acrid with more than a hundred years’ accumulated smoke and beer spills. Which made it all the more surprising that the barmaid was a pretty young girl with short, dyed red hair and an oval face, a smooth complexion, a bright smile and a cheerful disposition.
Banks leaned against the bar. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cheese-and-onion sandwich, is there?”
“Sorry,” she said. “We don’t serve food after two. Packet of chips—sorry, crisps—okay?”
“Better than nothing,” said Banks.
“What flavor?”
“Plain will do fine. And a pint of bitter shandy, too, please.”
As she was pouring the drink and Banks was dipping into a packet of rather soggy potato crisps, she kept glancing at him out of the corner of her eye and finally said, “Aren’t you the policeman who was here about that girl who disappeared a month or so ago?”
“Leanne Wray,” said Banks. “Yes.”
“I thought so. I saw you here. You weren’t the policeman I talked to, but you were here. Have you found her yet?”
“It’s Shannon, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “You remember my name and you never even talked to me. I’m impressed.”
Shannon, Banks remembered from the statement taken by DC Winsome Jackman, was an American student taking a year off from her studies. She had already traveled around most of Europe, and through relatives and, Banks suspected, a boyfriend, she had ended up spending a few months in Yorkshire, which she seemed to like. Banks guessed that she was working at the Old Ship, perhaps, because the manager wasn’t concerned about visas and permits, and paid cash in hand. Probably not much of it, either.
Banks lit a cigarette and looked around. A couple of old men sat smoking pipes by the window, not speaking, not even looking at one another. They seemed as if they might have been there since the place first opened in the nineteenth century. The floor was worn stone and the tables scored and wobbly. A watercolor of a huge sailing ship hung crookedly on one wall, and on the opposite one, a series of framed charcoal sketches of seagoing scenes, quite good to Banks’s untrained eye.
“I wasn’t trying to be nosy,” Shannon said. “I was only asking because I haven’t seen you since and I’ve been reading about those girls in Leeds.” She gave a little shudder. “It’s horrible. I remember being in Milwaukee—that’s where I’m from, Milwaukee, Wisconsin—when all the Jeffrey Dahmer stuff was going on. I was only a kid but I knew what it was all about and we were all scared and confused. I don’t know how people can do things like that, do you?”
Banks looked at her, saw the innocence, the hope and the faith that her life would turn out to be worth living and that the world wasn’t an entirely evil place, no matter what bad things happened in it. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“So you haven’t found her, then? Leanne?”
“No.”
“It’s not that I knew her or anything. I only saw her once. But, you know, when something like that happens, like you think you might be the last person to have seen someone, well . . .” She rested her hand on her chest. “It sort of sticks with you, if you know what I mean. I can’t get the picture out of my mind. Her sitting over there by the fireplace.”
Banks thought of Claire Toth, whipping herself over Kimberley Myers’s murder, and he knew that anyone remotely connected with what Payne had done felt tainted by it. “I know what you mean,” he said.
One of the old men came up to the bar and plunked his half-pint glass down. Shannon filled it for him; he paid and went back to his chair. She wrinkled her nose. “They’re in here every day. You can set your watch by them. If one of them didn’t turn up I’d have to call an ambulance.”
“When you say you can’t get Leanne’s image out of your mind, does that mean you’ve given any more thought to that evening?”
“Not really,” said Shannon. “I mean, I thought . . . you know, that she’d been taken, like the others. That’s what everyone thought.”
“I’m starting to believe that might not be the case,” said Banks, putting his fear into words for the first time. “In fact, I’m beginning to think we might have been barking up the wrong tree on that one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Anyway,” Banks went on. “I just thought I’d drop by, see if you remembered anything you forgot to mention before, that sort of thing. It’s been a while.” And that, he knew, meant that any trail Leanne may had left would have gone cold. If they had screwed up in assuming too quickly that Leanne Wray had been abducted by the same person, or persons, as Kelly Matthews and Samantha Foster, then any clues as to what had really happened could well have vanished forever by now.
“I don’t know how I can help,” said Shannon.
“Tell me,” said Banks, “you say they were sitting over there, right?” He pointed to the table by the empty tiled fireplace.
“Yes. Four of them. At that table.”
“Did they drink much?”
“No. I told the policewoman before. They only had a drink or two each. I didn’t think she was old enough but the landlord tells us not to bother too much, unless it’s really obvious.” She put her hand over her mouth. “Shoot, I probably shouldn’t have said that, should I?”
“Don’t worry about it. We know all about Mr. Parkinson’s practices. And don’t worry about what you told us before, Shannon. I know I could go and look it all up in the files if I wanted, but I want you to start again, as if it had never happened before.”
It was hard to explain to a civilian, but Banks needed the feel of investigating Leanne’s disappearance as if it were a fresh crime. He didn’t want to start by poring over old files in his office—though it would no doubt come to that if something didn’t turn up soon—he wanted to start by revisiting the place where she had last been seen.
“Did Leanne seem intoxicated at all?” he asked.
“She was a bit giggly, a bit loud, as if maybe she wasn’t used to the drink.”
“What was she drinking?”
“I can’t remember. Not beer. Maybe wine, or it could have been Pernod, something like that.”
“Did you get the impression that the four of them had paired off? Anything along those lines?”
Shannon thought for a moment. “No. Two of them were clearly a couple. You could tell by the way they were touching one another casually. I mean, it’s not as if they were necking or anything. But the other two, Leanne and . . .”
“Mick Blair,” said Banks.
“I don’t know their names. Anyway, I got the impression he might have been a bit keen, and she was flirting a bit, maybe because of the drinks.”
“Was he bothering her at all?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that, or I’d have a made a point of saying so before. No, just the way I caught him looking at her once or twice. They seemed comfortable enough together, but as I say, I just thought maybe he fancied her and she was playing him along a bit, that’s all.”
“You didn’t mention this before.”
“It didn’t seem important. Besides, nobody asked me. Back then, everyone was more concerned that she’d been abducted by a serial killer.”
True enough, Banks thought, with a sigh. Leanne’s parents had been adamant that she was a good girl and would never, under any normal circumstances, break a curfew. So certain were they that she must have been attacked or abducted that their certainty influenced the investigation, and the police broke one of their cardinal rules: Don’t make assumptions until you’ve checked out every possible angle. People were also making noises about Kelly Matthews and Samantha Foster at the time, so Leanne’s disappearance—another nice, well-adjusted teenager—became linked with theirs. And there was, of course, the matter of the abandoned shoulder bag. In it were Leanne’s inhaler, which she needed in case of an asthma attack, and her purse, which contained twenty-five pounds and a handful of change. It made no sense that she would throw away her money if she was running away from home. Surely she would need all she could get?
DC Winsome Jackman had questioned Shannon, and perhaps she should have asked more probing questions, but Banks couldn’t blame Winsome for the omissions. She had discovered what mattered at the time: that the group had been well-behaved, that they had caused no problems, that there had been no arguments, that they weren’t drunk, and that there had been no unwelcome attention from strangers. “What was their general mood?” Banks asked. “Did they seem quiet, rambunctious, or what?”
“I don’t remember anything unusual about them. They weren’t causing any trouble, or I’m sure I’d have said. Usually you get that with people who know they’re drinking underage. They know they’re under sufferance, if you know what I mean, so they tend not to draw attention to themselves.”
Banks remembered the feeling well. At sixteen he had sat, proud and terrified, with his mate Steve in a poky little pub a mile or so from the estate where they both lived, drinking their first pints of bitter in a corner by the jukebox, smoking Park Drive tipped. They had felt like real grown-ups, but Banks also remembered being worried in case the police came around, or someone who knew them came in—one of his father’s friends, for example—so they tried to fade into the woodwork as much as possible.
He sipped his shandy and crumpled up the crisp packet. Shannon took it from him and put it in the waste bin behind the bar.
“I do remember that they seemed excited about something just before they left, though,” Shannon added. “I mean they were too far away for me to hear anything and they weren’t really noisy about it, but I could tell someone had come up with a good idea for something to do.”
Banks hadn’t heard about this before. “You’ve no idea what it was?”
“No, it was just like, they were going, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ Then a couple of minutes later they left.”
“What time was this?”
“Must have been about a quarter to eleven.”
“And they were all excited about this idea? Including Leanne?”
“I couldn’t honestly separate out the reactions for you,” Shannon said with a frown. “It was just a general sort of thing, as if someone had an idea for something to do and they all thought it would be fun.”
“This great idea, did you get the impression it was something they were going to do right then, after they left here?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. Why?”
Banks finished his drink. “Because Leanne Wray had an eleven-o’clock curfew,” he said. “And according to her parents she never stayed out past her curfew. If she was planning on going off anywhere with them after they’d been here, she’d have missed it. There’s something else, too.”
“What?”
“If they were all planning to do something, it means her friends all lied.”
Shannon thought for a moment. “I see what you mean. But there was no reason to think she wasn’t going home. She might have. I mean, it could have been just the three of them planning something. Look, I’m really sorry . . . I mean, I never thought, you know, last time. I tried to remember everything that was important.”
“It’s okay,” said Banks, smiling. “Not your fault.” He looked at his watch. Time to head out for Withernsea. “Must dash.”
“Oh. I’m leaving at the end of next week,” said Shannon. “I mean, my last night’s a week next Wednesday, you know, if you’d like to stop by for a drink, say good-bye.”
Banks didn’t know how to take the invitation. Was it a come-on? Surely not. Shannon couldn’t have been a day over twenty-one. Still, it was nice to think there was even the remotest chance that a younger girl fancied him. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it, so in case I don’t, I’ll say bon voyage now.”
Shannon gave a little “whatever” sort of shrug and Banks walked out into the dismal alley.
It was only mid-afternoon, but Annie would have sworn that Janet Taylor was drunk. Not totally, falling-down pissed, but emitting a slight buzz, fuzzy around the edges. She’d had a bit of experience with drunks at the artists’ commune where she had grown up with her father, Ray. There had once, briefly, been an alcoholic writer, she remembered, a big, smelly man with rheumy eyes and a thick, matted beard. He hid bottles all over the place. Her father told her to stay away from him and once, when the man, whose name she couldn’t remember, started talking to her, her father got angry and made him leave the room. It was one of the few times she had ever seen Ray really angry. He liked a drop or two of wine now and then, and no doubt he still smoked a bit of pot, but he wasn’t a drunk or a drug addict. Most of the time he was consumed by his work, whatever painting it happened to be at the time, to the exclusion of pretty much everything, including Annie.
Janet’s flat was a mess, with clothes strewn everywhere and half-full cups of tea on the windowsill and mantelpiece. It also smelled like a drunk’s room, that peculiar mix of stale skin and the sweet-and-sour smell of booze. Gin, in Janet’s case.
Janet slumped on to a wrinkled T-shirt and a pair of jeans on the armchair, leaving Annie to fend for herself. She cleared some newspapers off a hard-backed chair and sat.
“So what is it now?” Janet asked. “You come to arrest me?”
“Not yet.”
“What, then? More questions?”
“You’ve heard Terence Payne died?”
“I’ve heard.”
“How are you doing, Janet?”
“How am I doing? Ha. That’s a good one. Well, let me see.” She started counting off on her fingers as she spoke. “Apart from not being able to sleep, apart from pacing the flat and feeling claustrophobic whenever it gets dark, apart from reliving the moment over and over again whenever I close my eyes, apart from the fact that my career’s pretty much fucked, let me see . . . I feel just fine.”
Annie took a deep breath. She certainly wasn’t there to make Janet feel any better, though in a way she wished she could. “You know, you really should seek some sort of counseling, Janet. The Federation will—”
“No! No, I’m not seeing any shrinks. I’ll not have them messing with my head. Not with all this shit going on. When they’ve done with me, I’ll not know whether I’m coming or going. Imagine how that would look in court.”
Annie held her hands up. “Okay. Okay. It’s your choice.” She took some papers from her briefcase. “I’ve attended Terence Payne’s postmortem, and there’s a couple of things I’d like to go over on your statement.”
“Are you saying I was lying?”
“No, not at all.”
Janet ran her hand through her lifeless, greasy hair, “Because I’m not a liar. I might have been a bit confused about the sequence of events—it all happened so fast—but I told it as I remember it.”
“Okay, Janet, that’s fine. Look, in your statement you say you hit Payne three times on the left temple and once on his wrist, and that one of the blows to the temple was delivered two-handed.”
