Aftermath, page 39
The only snippet of information about Lucy Payne was that she had withdrawn two hundred pounds from an ATM on Tottenham Court Road. It figured she would go to London if she wanted to disappear, Banks thought, remembering his search there for Chief Constable Riddle’s daughter, Emily. Perhaps he would have to go and search for Lucy, too, although this time he would have all the resources of the Metropolitan Police at his disposal. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that; maybe Lucy wasn’t involved and would simply ease herself into a new identity and a new look in a new place and try to rebuild her shattered life. Maybe.
Banks looked again at the loose sheets of papers on his desk.
Katya Pavelic.
Katya, Candy’s “Anna,” had been identified through dental records late the previous evening. Fortunately for Banks, she had suffered a toothache shortly before she disappeared, and Candy had directed Katya to her own dentist. Katya had disappeared, according to Candy, sometime last November. At least, she remembered the weather was cool and misty and the Christmas lights had recently been turned on in the city center. That likely made Katya the victim before Kelly Matthews.
Certainly Candy, or Hayley Lyndon, as she was called, had seen both Terence and Lucy Payne driving around the area on a number of occasions but couldn’t connect them directly with Katya. The circumstantial evidence was beginning to build up, though, and if Jenny’s psychological probing into the old Alderthorpe wounds turned up anything interesting, then it might be time to reel Lucy in. For the moment, let her enjoy the illusion of freedom.
Katya Pavelic had come to England from Bosnia four years ago, when she was fourteen. Like so many young girls there, she had been gang-raped by Serbian soldiers, and then shot, saving herself only by playing dead under a pile of corpses until some Canadian UN peace-keepers found her three days later. The wound was superficial and the blood had clotted. Her only problem was an infection, and that had responded well to antibiotics. Various groups and individuals had seen that Katya got to England, but she was a disturbed and troublesome girl, and she soon ran away from her foster parents when she was sixteen, and they had tried in vain to find her and contact her ever since.
The irony wasn’t lost on Banks. After having survived the horrors of the Bosnian war, Katya Pavelic had ended up raped, murdered and buried in the Paynes’ back garden. What was the bloody point of it all? he asked. As usual, he got no answer from the Supreme Ironist in the Sky, only a deep hollow laughter echoing through his brain. Sometimes, the pity and the horror of it all were almost too much for him to bear.
And there remained one more unidentified victim, the one who had been buried there the longest: a white woman in her late teens or early twenties, about five feet three inches tall, according to the forensic anthropologist, who was still conducting tests on the bones. There was little doubt in Banks’s mind that this could easily be another prostitute victim, and that might make the corpse hard to identify.
Banks had had one brainstorm and pulled in Terence Payne’s teacher friend Geoff Brighouse to help him find the Aberdeen schoolteacher the two of them had taken up to their room at the convention. Luckily, Banks turned out to be wrong, and she was still teaching in Aberdeen. Though she expressed some anger about her experience, she had kept quiet mostly because she didn’t want to damage her teaching career and had written that one off to experience. She had also been very embarrassed and angry with herself for being so drunk and foolish as to go to a hotel room with two strange men after all the things she had read in the papers. She had almost fainted when Banks told her that the man who had coerced her into having anal sex against her will was Terence Payne. She hadn’t made the connection from the photo in the newspapers and had only been on first-name terms with the two.
Banks opened his window on another fine day in the market-square, tourist buses pulling up already, disgorging their hordes on to the gleaming cobbles. A quick glance around the church’s interior, a walk up to the Castle, lunch at the Pied Piper—Banks felt depressed just thinking about what had happened there yesterday—then they’d pile back in the coach and be off to Castle Bolton or Devraulx Abbey. How he wished he could go on a long holiday. Maybe never come back.
The gold hands against the blue face of the church clock stood at five past ten. Banks lit a cigarette and planned out the rest of his day, plans that included Mick Blair, Ian Scott and Sarah Francis, not to mention the grieving parents, Christopher and Victoria Wray. Winsome had discovered nothing new from talking to the Wrays’ neighbors, none of whom had either seen or heard anything unusual. Banks still had his suspicions about them, though he found it difficult to convince himself that they could actually have killed Leanne.
He had suffered yet another restless night, this time partly because of Annie. Now, the more he thought about her decision, the more sense it made. He didn’t want to give her up, but if he was to be honest, it was best all around. Looking back at her on-again-off-again attitude toward their relationship, the way she bristled every time other aspects of his life came up, he realized that however much there had been, the relationship had also been a lot of grief, too. If she didn’t like the way his past made her face details of her own, like the abortion, then perhaps she was right to end it. Time to move on and stay “just friends,” let her pursue her career and let him try to exorcise his personal demons.
Just as he was finishing his cigarette, DC Winsome Jackman tapped at his door and walked in looking particularly elegant in a tailored pinstripe suit over a white blouse. The woman had clothes sense, Banks thought, unlike himself, and unlike Annie Cabbot. He liked Annie’s casual high style—it was definitely her—but no one could accuse her of making a fashion statement. Anyway, best forget about Annie. He turned toward Winsome.
“Come in. Sit down.”
Winsome sat, crossing her long legs, sniffing accusingly and wrinkling her nose at the smoke.
“I know, I know,” Banks said. “I’m going to stop soon, honestly.”
“That little job you asked me to do,” she said. “I thought you’d like to know that your instinct was right. There was a car reported stolen from Disraeli Street between nine-thirty and eleven o’clock on the night Leanne Wray disappeared.”
“Was there, indeed? Isn’t Disraeli Street just around the corner from the Old Ship Inn?”
“It is, sir.”
Banks sat down and rubbed his hands together. “Tell me more.”
“Keeper’s name is Samuel Gardner. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. Seems he parked there while he popped into the Cock and Bull on Palmerston Avenue, just for a pint of shandy, he stressed.”
“Of course. Perish the thought we should try to do him for drink-driving two months after the event. What do you think, Winsome?”
Winsome shifted and crossed her legs the other way, straightening the hem of her skirt over her knees. “I don’t know, sir. Seems a bit of a coincidence, doesn’t it?”
“That Ian Scott’s in the neighborhood?”
“Yes, sir. I know there are plenty of kids taking and driving away, but . . . well, the timing fits, and the location.”
“Indeed it does. When did he report it missing?”
“Ten past eleven that night.”
“And when was it found?”
“Not until the next morning, sir. One of the beat constables came across it illegally parked down by the formal gardens.”
“That’s not very far from The Riverboat, is it?”
“Ten-minute walk, at the most.”
“You know, this is starting to look good, Winsome. I want you to go and have a word with this Samuel Gardner, see if you can find out any more from him. Put him at ease. Make it clear we don’t give a damn whether he drank a whole bottle of whiskey as long as he tells us everything he can remember about that night. And have the car taken into the police garage for a full forensic examination. I doubt we’ll find anything after all this time, but Scott and Blair aren’t likely to know that, are they?”
Winsome smiled wickedly. “Doubt it very much, sir.”
Banks looked at his watch. “When you’ve talked to Gardner and the car’s safe in our care, have Mick Blair brought in. I think a little chat with him in one of the interview rooms might be very productive.”
“Right you are.”
“And have Sarah Francis brought in at the same time.”
“Okay.”
“And, Winsome.”
“Sir?”
“Make sure they see one another in passing, would you?”
“My pleasure, sir.” Winsome smiled, stood up and left the office.
“Look,” said Jenny, “I haven’t had any lunch yet. Instead of standing around here in the street, is there anywhere nearby we can go?” Though her immediate fears had dispersed somewhat when the young man simply asked her who she was and what she wanted, without showing any particular inclination toward aggression, she still wanted to be with them in a public place, not up in the flat.
“There’s a café down the road,” he said. “We can go there if you want.”
“Fine.”
Jenny followed them back to the arterial road, crossed at the zebra and went into a corner café that smelled of bacon. She was supposed to be slimming—she was always supposed to be slimming—but she couldn’t resist the smell and ordered a bacon butty and a mug of tea. The other two asked for the same and Jenny paid. Nobody objected. Poor students never do. Now that they were closer, sitting at an isolated table near the window, Jenny could she that she was mistaken. While the girl definitely resembled Lucy, had her eyes and mouth and the same shiny black hair, it wasn’t her. There was something softer, more fragile, more human about this young woman, and her eyes weren’t quite so black and impenetrable; they were intelligent and sensitive, though their depths flickered with horrors and fears Jenny could barely imagine.
“Laura, isn’t it?” she said when they’d settled.
The young woman raised her eyebrows. “Why, yes. How did you know?”
“It wasn’t difficult,” Jenny said. “You resemble your sister, and you’re with your cousin.”
Laura blushed. “I’m only visiting him. It’s not . . . I mean, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jenny. “I don’t jump to conclusions.” Well, not many, she said to herself.
“Let’s get back to my original question,” Keith Murray cut in. He was more hard-edged than Laura and not one for small talk. “That’s who are you and why you’re here. You might as well tell me what you were doing at Alderthorpe, too, while you’re at it.”
Laura looked surprised. “She was in Alderthorpe?”
“On Saturday. I followed her to Easington and then to Spurn Head. I turned back when she got to the M62.” He looked at Jenny again. “Well?”
He was a good-looking young man, brown hair a little over his ears and collar, but professionally layered, slightly better-dressed than most of the students she taught, in a light sports jacket and gray chinos, highly polished shoes. Clean-shaven. Clearly a young lad who took some pride in his rather conservative appearance. Laura, in contrast, wore a shapeless sort of shift that hung around her in a haze of material and hid any claims she might have had to the kind of figure men like. There was a reticence and tentativeness about her that made Jenny want to reach out and tell her everything was fine, not to worry, she didn’t bite. Keith also seemed very protective of her, and Jenny wondered how their relationship had developed since Alderthorpe.
She told them who she was and what she was doing, about her forays into Lucy Payne’s past, looking for answers to her present, and both Laura and Keith listened intently. When she had finished, they looked at each other, and she could tell they were communicating in some way that was beyond her. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, and she didn’t believe it was some sort of telepathic trick, just that whatever they had been through all those years ago had created a bond so strong and deep that it went beyond words.
“What makes you think you’ll find any answers there?” Keith asked.
“I’m a psychologist,” Jenny said, “not a psychiatrist, certainly not a Freudian, but I do believe that our past shapes us, makes us what we are.”
“And what is Linda, or Lucy, as she calls herself now?”
Jenny spread her hands. “That’s just it. I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to help.”
“Why should we help you?”
“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “Maybe there are some issues back there you still have to deal with yourselves.”
Keith laughed. “If we lived to be a hundred, we’d still have issues to deal with from back then,” he said. “But what’s that got to do with Linda?”
“She was with you, wasn’t she? One of you.”
Keith and Laura looked at each other again and Jenny wished she knew what they were thinking. Finally, as if they had come to a decision, Laura said, “Yes, she was with us, but in a way she was apart.”
“What do you mean, Laura?”
“Linda was the eldest, so she took care of us.”
Keith snorted.
“She did, Keith.”
“All right.”
Laura’s lower lip trembled, and for a moment Jenny thought she was going to cry. “Go on, Laura,” she said. “Please.”
“I know Linda was my sister,” Laura said, rubbing one hand against the top of her thigh, “but there’s three years between us, and that’s an awful lot when you’re younger.”
“Tell me about it. My brother’s three years older than me.”
“Well, you’ll know what I mean, then. So I didn’t really know Linda. In some ways, she was as distant as an adult to me, and just as incomprehensible. We played together when we were little, but the older we got, the more we drifted apart, especially with . . . you know . . . the way things were.”
“What was she like, though?”
“Linda? She was strange. Very distant. Very self-absorbed, even then. She liked to play games, and she could be cruel.”
“In what way?”
“If she didn’t get her own way, or if you didn’t do what she wanted, she could lie and get you in trouble with the adults. Get you put in the cage.”
“She did that?”
“Oh, yes,” said Keith. “All of us got on her bad side at one time or another.”
“Sometimes we just didn’t know if she was with us or them,” said Laura. “But she could be kind. I remember her treating a cut I had once, putting some TCP on so it didn’t get infected. She was very gentle. And sometimes she even stuck up for us against them.”
“In what ways?”
“Little ways. If we were, you know, too weak to . . . or just . . . sometimes they listened to her. And she saved the kittens.”
“What kittens?”
“Our cat had kittens and D-d-dad wanted to drown them but Linda took them and found them all homes.”
“She liked animals, then?”
“She adored them. She wanted to be a vet when she grew up.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she wasn’t clever enough. Or maybe she changed her mind.”
“But she was also their victim, too? The adults.”
“Oh, yes,” said Keith. “We all were.”
“She was their favorite for a long time,” Laura added. “That is, until she . . .”
“She what, Laura? Take your time.”
Laura blushed and looked away. “Until she became a woman. When she was twelve. Then they weren’t interested in her anymore. Kathleen became their favorite then. She was only nine, like me, but they liked her better.”
“What was Kathleen like?”
Laura’s eyes shone. “She was . . . like a saint. She bore it all without complaining, everything those . . . those people did to us. Kathleen had some sort of inner light, some, I don’t know, some spiritual quality that just shone out, but she was very f-f-fragile, very weak, and she was always ill. She couldn’t take the kind of punishments and beatings they dished out.”
“Like what?”
“The cage. And no food for days. She was too weak and frail to begin with.”
“Tell me,” said Jenny, “why did none of you tell the authorities what was going on?”
Keith and Laura looked at each other in that intense way again. “We didn’t dare,” Keith said. “They said they’d kill us if we ever told a soul.”
“And they were . . . they were family,” Laura added. “I mean, you wanted your mummy and daddy to love you, didn’t you, so you had to do, you know, what they wanted, you had to do what the grown-ups said or your d-d-daddy wouldn’t love you anymore.”
Jenny sipped some tea to cover her face for a moment. She wasn’t sure whether anger or pity had brought the tears to her eyes but she didn’t want Laura to see them.
“Besides,” Keith went on, “we didn’t know any different. How could we know life was different for other kids?”
“What about at school? You must have kept yourselves apart, been aware that you were different?”
“We kept apart, yes. We were told not to talk about what happened. It was family, and nobody else’s business.”
“What were you doing in Alderthorpe?”
“I’m writing a book,” Keith said. “A book about what happened. It’s partly therapeutic and partly because I think people should know what goes on, so maybe it can be prevented from happening again.”
“Why did you follow me?”
“I thought you might be a reporter or something, poking about the place like that.”
“You’d better get used to that idea, Keith. It won’t take them long to find out about Alderthorpe. I’m surprised they’re not swarming around already.”
“I know.”
