Aftermath, page 32
“You never saw your husband with one?”
“No.”
“He never showed you any videos?”
“Only rented or borrowed ones.”
“We think we know where he bought the camcorder, Lucy. We can check.”
“Go ahead. I never saw one, never knew about any such thing.”
Banks paused and changed tack. “You say you didn’t play sexual games, Lucy, so what made you decide to dress up and act like a prostitute?” Banks asked.
“What?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, but that wasn’t it. I mean, I didn’t . . . I wasn’t on the street or anything. Who told you that?”
“Never mind. Did you pick up a man in a hotel bar for sex?”
“What if I did? It was just a lark, a dare.”
“So you did like games.”
“This was before I knew Terry.”
“So that makes it all right?”
“I’m not saying that. It was a lark, that’s all.”
“What happened?”
Lucy gave a sly smile. “Same as happened often enough if I let myself get chatted up in a pub. Only this time I got paid two hundred pounds. Like I said, it was a lark, that’s all. Are you going to arrest me for prostitution?”
“Some lark,” said Banks.
Julia Ford looked a bit perplexed by the exchange, but she said nothing.
Banks knew they were still going nowhere. Hartnell was right: they had no real evidence against Lucy beyond the extreme weirdness of her relationship with Payne and the tiny bloodstains and rope fibers. Her answers might not make a lot of sense, but unless she confessed to aiding and abetting her husband in his murders, she was in the clear. He looked at her again. The bruises had almost faded to nothing and she looked quite innocent and lovely with her pale skin and long black hair, almost like a Madonna. The only thing that made Banks persist in his belief that there was far more to events than she would ever care to admit was her eyes: black, reflective, impermeable. He got the impression that if you stared into eyes like hers for too long you’d go mad. But that wasn’t evidence; that was an overactive imagination. All of a sudden, he’d had enough. Surprising all three of them, he stood up so abruptly he almost knocked over his chair, said, “You’re free to go now, Lucy. Just don’t go too far,” and hurried out of the interview room.
Easington was a pleasant change from Alderthorpe, Jenny thought as she parked her car near the pub at the center of the village. Though still almost as remote from civilization, it seemed at least to be connected, to be a part of things in a way that Alderthorpe didn’t.
Jenny found Maureen Nesbitt’s address easily enough from the barmaid and soon found herself on the doorstep facing a suspicious woman with long white hair tied back in a blue ribbon, wearing a fawn cardigan and black slacks a little too tight for someone with such ample hips and thighs.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“I’m a psychologist,” said Jenny. “I want to talk to you about what happened in Alderthorpe.”
Maureen Nesbitt looked up and down the street, then turned back to face Jenny. “Are you sure you’re not a reporter?”
“I’m not a reporter.”
“Because they were all over me when it happened, but I told them nothing. Scavengers.” She pulled her cardie tighter over her chest.
“I’m not a reporter,” Jenny repeated, digging deep into her handbag for some sort of identification. The best she could come up with was her university library card. At least it identified her as Dr. Fuller and as a member of the staff. Maureen scrutinized the card, clearly unhappy it didn’t also bear a photograph, then she finally let Jenny in. Once inside, her manner changed completely, from grand inquisitor to gracious host, insisting on brewing a fresh pot of tea. The living room was small but comfortable, with only a couple of armchairs, a mirror above the fireplace and a glass-fronted cabinet full of beautiful crystal ware. Beside one of the armchairs was a small table, and on it lay a paperback of Great Expectations next to a half-full cup of milky tea. Jenny sat in the other chair.
When Maureen brought through the tray, including a plate of digestive biscuits, she said, “I do apologize for my behavior earlier. It’s just that I’ve learned the hard way over the years. A little notoriety can quite change your life, you know.”
“Are you still teaching?”
“No. I retired three years ago.” She tapped the paperback. “I promised myself that when I retired I would reread all my favorite classics.” She sat down. “We’ll just let the tea mash for a few minutes, shall we? I suppose you’re here about Lucy Payne?”
“You know?”
“I’ve tried to keep up with them all over the years. I know that Lucy—Linda, as she was back then—lived with a couple called Liversedge near Hull, and then she got a job at a bank and went to live in Leeds, where she married Terence Payne. Last I heard this lunch-time was that the police just let her go for lack of evidence.”
Even Jenny hadn’t heard that yet, but then she hadn’t listened to the news that day. “How do you know all this?” she asked.
“My sister works for the social services in Hull. You won’t tell, will you?”
“Cross my heart.”
“So what do you want to know?”
“What were your impressions of Lucy?”
“She was a bright girl. Very bright. But easily bored, easily distracted. She was headstrong, stubborn, and once she’d made her mind up you couldn’t budge her. Of course, you have to remember that she’d gone on to the local comprehensive at the time of the arrests. I only taught junior school. She was with us until she was eleven.”
“But the others were still there?”
“Yes. All of them. It’s not as if there’s a lot of choice when it comes to local schools.”
“I imagine not. Anything else you can remember about Lucy?”
“Not really.”
“Did she form any close friendships outside the immediate family?”
“None of them did. That was one of the odd things. They were a mysterious group, and sometimes when you saw them together it gave you a creepy feeling, as if they had their own language and an agenda you knew nothing about. Have you ever read John Wyndham?”
“No.”
“You should. He’s quite good. For a science-fiction writer, that is. Believe it or not, I encouraged my pupils to read just about anything they enjoyed, so long as they read something. Anyway, Wyndham wrote a book called The Midwich Cuckoos about a group of strange children fathered by aliens on an unsuspecting village.”
“That sounds vaguely familiar,” Jenny said.
“Perhaps you saw the film? It was called Village of the Damned.”
“That’s it,” said Jenny. “That one where the teacher planted a bomb to destroy the children and had to concentrate on a brick wall so they couldn’t read his thoughts?”
“Yes. Well, it wasn’t quite like that with the Godwins and the Murrays, but it still gave you that sort of feeling, the way they looked at you, waited in the corridor till you’d gone by before talking again. And they always seemed to speak in whispers. Linda, I remember, was very distressed when she had to leave and go to the comprehensive before the others, but I gather from her teacher there that she quickly got used to it. She has a strong personality, that girl, despite what happened to her, and she’s adaptable.”
“Did she show any unusual preoccupations?”
“What do you mean?”
“Anything particularly morbid. Death? Mutilation?”
“Not so far as I noticed. She was . . . how shall I put this . . . an early developer and rather sexually aware for a girl of her age. On average, girls peak in puberty at about twelve, but Lucy was beyond prepubescence at eleven. Her breasts were developing, for example.”
“Sexually active?”
“No. Well, as we now know she was being sexually abused in the home. But, no, not in the way you’re suggesting. She was just sexually there. It was something people noticed about her, and she wasn’t above playing the little coquette.”
“I see.” Jenny made a note. “And it was Kathleen’s absence that led you to call in the authorities?”
“Yes.” Maureen looked away, toward the window, but she didn’t look as if she were admiring the view. “Not my finest moment,” she said, bending to pour the tea. “Milk and sugar?”
“Yes, please. Thank you. Why?”
“I should have done something sooner, shouldn’t I? It wasn’t the first time I’d had my suspicions something was terribly wrong in those households. Though I never saw any bruises or clear outward signs of abuse, the children often looked undernourished and seemed timid. Sometimes—I know this is terrible—but they smelled, as if they hadn’t bathed in days. Other children would stay away from them. They’d jump if you touched them, no matter how gently. I should have known.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I talked with the other teachers, and we all agreed there was something odd about the children’s behavior. It turned out the social services already had their concerns, too. They’d been out to the houses once before but never got past the front door. I don’t know if you knew, but Michael Godwin had a particularly vicious rottweiler. Anyway, when Kathleen Murray went absent without any reasonable explanation, they decided to act. The rest is history.”
“You say you’ve kept track of the children,” Jenny said. “I’d really like to talk to some of them. Will you help me?”
Maureen paused a moment. “If you like. But I don’t think you’ll get much out of them.”
“Do you know where they are, how they are?”
“Not all the details, no, but I can give you a general picture.”
Jenny sipped some tea and took out her notebook. “Okay, I’m ready.”
14
So what do you think of Lucy Payne?” Banks asked DC Winsome Jackman as they walked along North Market Street on their way to talk to Leanne Wray’s parents.
Winsome paused before answering. Banks noticed several people gawk at her as they walked. She knew she was a token minority, she had told Banks when he interviewed her, brought in to fulfill a quota demanded in the aftermath of the Stephen Lawrence case. There were to be more police officers from minorities, the ruling stated, even in communities where those minorities were, to all extent, nonexistent, like West Indians in the Yorkshire Dales. But she also told him she didn’t care about the tokenism and she’d do a damn good job anyway. Banks didn’t doubt her for a moment. Winsome was ACC McLaughlin’s golden girl, set for accelerated promotion and all its blessings; she’d probably be a superintendent before she was thirty-five. And Banks liked her. She was easygoing, had a wicked sense of humor, and she didn’t let the race thing get in the way of doing her job, even when other people tried to put it in the way. He knew nothing about her personal life except that she enjoyed both climbing and spelunking—the very thought of which gave Banks a severe case of the heebie-jeebies—and that she lived in a flat on the fringe of the Eastvale student area. Whether she had a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, Banks had no idea.
“I think she might have been protecting her husband,” Winsome said. “She knew, or she suspected, and she kept quiet. Maybe she didn’t even admit it to herself.”
“Do you think she was involved?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think she was attracted to the dark side, especially the sex, but I’d pull up short of assuming she was involved. Weird, yes. But a killer . . . ?”
“Remember, Kathleen Murray died of ligature strangulation,” Banks said.
“But Lucy was only twelve then.”
“Makes you think, though, doesn’t it? Isn’t the house just down here?”
“Yes.”
They turned off North Market on to a grid of narrow streets opposite the community center, where Sandra used to work. Seeing the place and remembering the times he dropped in on her there or waited to pick her up after work to go to a play or a film made Banks feel a pang of loss, but it passed. Sandra was gone now, far, far away from the wife he used to have.
They found the house, not at all far from the Old Ship—maybe ten or fifteen minutes’ walk, and most of it along the busy, well-lit stretch of North Market Street, with its shops and pubs—and Banks knocked at the front door.
The first thing that assailed his senses as Christopher Wray opened the door was the smell of fresh paint. When Banks and Winsome stepped inside, he saw why. The Wrays were redecorating. All the wallpaper in the hallway had been stripped, and Mr. Wray was painting the living-room ceiling cream. The furniture was covered with sheets.
“I’m sorry for the mess,” he apologized. “Shall we go in the kitchen? Have you found Leanne yet?”
“No, not yet,” said Banks.
They followed him through to the small kitchen, where he put the kettle on without even asking if they wanted a cup of tea. They all sat at the small kitchen table, and for the short time it took the kettle to boil, Mr. Wray chatted on about the redecoration as if determined to avoid the real subject of their visit. Finally, tea made and poured, Banks decided it was time to steer things around to the subject of Leanne.
“I must say,” he began, “that we’re at a bit of a loss.”
“Oh?”
“As you know, our men have been working at the Payne house for days now. They’ve recovered six bodies, four of which have been identified, but none of the six is your daughter’s. They’re running out of places to look.”
“Does that mean Leanne might still be alive?” Wray asked, a gleam of hope in his eyes.
“It’s possible,” Banks admitted. “Though I’ve got to say, after all this time without contact, especially given the nationwide appeals on TV and in the press, I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope.”
“Then . . . what?”
“That’s what we’d like to find out.”
“I don’t see how I can help you.”
“Perhaps you can’t,” Banks said, “but the only thing to do when a case is stalled like this is to go right back to first principles. We’ve got to go over the ground we covered before and hope we see it from a new perspective this time.”
Wray’s wife, Victoria, appeared in the doorway and looked puzzled to see Banks and Winsome enjoying a chat and a cup of tea with her husband. Wray jumped up. “I thought you were resting, dear,” he said, giving her a peck on the cheek.
Victoria wiped the sleep from her eyes, though she looked to Banks as if she had spent at least a few minutes putting on her face before coming down. Her skirt and blouse were pure Harvey Nichols, and her accent was what she thought sounded like upper class, though he could hear traces of Birmingham in it. She was an attractive woman in her early thirties, with a slim figure and a full head of shiny, natural-brown hair that hung over her shoulders. She had a slightly retroussé nose, arched eyebrows and a small mouth, but the effect of the whole was rather more successful than one might imagine from the separate parts. Wray himself was about forty and pretty much medium in whatever category you might describe him, except for the chin, which slid down toward his throat before it even got started. They were an odd couple, Banks remembered thinking from the first time he had met them: he was a rather basic, down-to-earth bus driver, and she was an affected social climber. What had drawn them together in the first place Banks had no idea, except perhaps that people who have suffered a great loss, as Christopher Wray had, might not necessarily be the best judges of their next move.
Victoria stretched, sat down and poured herself a cup of tea.
“How are you feeling?” her husband asked.
“Not bad.”
“You know you’ve got to be careful, in your condition. The doctor said so.”
“I know. I know.” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll be careful.”
“What condition’s that?” Banks asked.
“My wife’s expecting a baby, Superintendent.” Wray beamed.
Banks looked at Victoria. “Congratulations,” he said.
She inclined her head in a queenly manner. Banks could hardly imagine Victoria Wray going through anything as messy and painful as childbirth, but life was full of surprises.
“How long?” he asked.
She patted her stomach. “Almost four months.”
“So you were pregnant when Leanne went missing?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I’d just found out that morning.”
“What did Leanne think of it?”
Victoria looked down into her teacup. “Leanne could be willful and moody, Superintendent,” she said. “She certainly wasn’t quite as ecstatic as we hoped she would be.”
“Now, come on, love, that’s not fair,” said Mr. Wray. “She’d have got used to it in time. I’m certain she would.”
Banks thought about the situation: Leanne’s mother dies a slow and painful death from cancer. Shortly afterward, her father remarries—to a woman Leanne clearly can’t stand. Not long after that, the stepmother announces she’s pregnant. You didn’t need to be a psychologist to see that there was a situation ripe for disaster. It was a bit close to the bone for Banks, too, though he had hardly been in Leanne’s position. Still, whether it’s your father having a baby with your new stepmother or your estranged wife having one with the bearded Sean, the resulting feelings could be similar, perhaps even more intense in Leanne’s case, given her age and her grief over her mother.
“So she wasn’t happy with the news?”
“Not really,” Mr. Wray admitted. “But it takes time to get used to things like that.”
“You have to be at least willing to try first,” said Victoria. “Leanne’s too selfish for that.”
“Leanne was willing,” Mr. Wray insisted.
“When did you tell her?” Banks asked.
