Aftermath, page 45
She didn’t really care what happened to her as long as the nightmares—sleeping and waking—went away. Let them kick her off the Job, put her in jail, even. She didn’t care as long as they also wiped out the memory of that morning in the cellar. Didn’t they have machines or drugs that could do that, or was that only something she’d seen in a movie? Still, she was better off than Lucy Payne, she told herself. Paralyzed from the neck down in a wheelchair for life, by the sound of it. But it was no less than she deserved. Janet remembered Lucy lying in the hall, blood pooling around her head wound, remembered her own concern for the abused woman, her anger at Dennis’s male chauvinism. Appearances. Now she’d give anything to have Dennis back and thought even paralysis too slight a punishment for Lucy Payne.
Moving away from the mirror, Janet stripped off her clothes and tossed them on the floor. She would have a bath, she decided. Maybe it would make her feel better. First, she poured herself a large gin and took it into the bathroom with her. She put the plug in and turned on the taps, got the temperature right, poured in a capful of bubble bath. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Her breasts were starting to sag and the lard-colored skin was creasing around her belly. She used to take good care of herself, work out at the police gym at least three times a week, go out for a run. Not for a couple of weeks, though.
Before dipping her toes into the water, she decided to bring the bottle and set it on the edge of the tub. She’d only have to get out and fetch it soon, anyway. Finally, she lay back and let the bubbles tickle her neck. At least she could clean herself. That would be a start. No more off-license clerks asking her if she was all right because she smelled. As for the bags under her eyes, well, they wouldn’t go away overnight, but she would work on them. And on tidying up the flat.
On the other hand, she thought, after a good long sip of gin, there were razor blades in the bathroom cabinet. All she had to do was stand up and reach for them. The water was good and hot. She was certain she would feel no pain. Just a quick slit on each wrist, then put her arms underwater and let the blood seep out. It would be like going to sleep, only there would be no dreams.
As she lay there wrapped in the warmth and softness of the bubble bath, her eyelids started to droop and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. There she was again, in that stinking cellar with Dennis spurting blood all over the place and that maniac Payne coming at her with a machete. What could she have done differently? That seemed to be the question that nobody could, or would, answer for her. What should she have done?
She jerked to consciousness, gasping for breath, and at first the bathtub looked as if it were full of blood. She reached out for the gin, but she was clumsy and she knocked the bottle on the bathroom floor. It shattered on the tiles and spilled its precious contents.
Shit!
That meant she’d have to go out and buy more. She picked up the bath mat and shook it hard to get rid of any glass that might have lodged there, then she hauled herself out of the tub. When she stepped on to the mat, she underestimated her capacity for balance and stumbled a little. Her right foot hit the tiles, and she felt the sting of the glass on her sole. Janet winced with pain. Leaving a thin trail of blood on the bathroom floor, she negotiated her way into the living room without further injury, sat down and pulled out a couple of large slivers of glass, then she put on some old slippers and went back for peroxide and bandages. First she sat on the toilet seat and poured the peroxide as best she could over the sole of her foot. She almost screamed out in pain, but soon the waves abated and her foot just started to throb, then turn numb. She swathed it in bandages, then went to her bedroom and got dressed, putting on clean clothes and extra-thick socks.
She had to get out of the flat, she decided, and not just for as long as it took to go to the off-license. A good drive would help keep her awake, the windows wide open, breeze blowing in her hair, rock music and chatter on the radio. Maybe she’d drop in on Annie Cabbot, the only decent copper among them. Or perhaps she’d drive out into the country and find a B&B where nobody knew who she was or what she had done, and stay a night or two. Anything to get away from this filthy, smelly place. She could pick up another bottle on the way. At least now she was clean, and no stuffy off-license clerk was going to turn his nose up at her.
Janet hesitated a moment before she picked up her car keys, then pocketed them anyway. What more could they do to her? Add insult to injury and charge her with drink driving? Fuck the lot of them, Janet thought, laughing to herself as she limped down the stairs.
That same evening, three days since Lucy Payne had jumped out of Maggie Forrest’s bedroom window, Banks was at home listening to Thaïs in his cozy living room with the melted-Brie ceiling and the blue walls. It was his first escape from the paperwork since he had visited Maggie Forrest in hospital on Thursday, and he was enjoying it immensely. Still uncertain about his future, he had decided that before making any major career decisions, he would first take a holiday and think things over. He had plenty of leave due and had already talked to Red Ron and picked up a few travel brochures. Now it was a matter of deciding where to go.
He had also spent quite a lot of time over the past couple of days standing at his office window looking down on the market square and thinking about Maggie Forrest, thinking about her conviction and her compassion, and now he was still thinking about her at home. Lucy Payne had tied Maggie to the bed and was about to strangle her with a belt when the police broke in. Yet Maggie still saw Lucy as the victim, and could shed tears for her. Was she a saint or a fool? Banks didn’t know.
When he thought about the girls Lucy and Terry Payne had violated, terrorized and murdered—of Kelly Matthews, Samantha Foster, Melissa Horrocks, Kimberley Myers and Katya Pavelic—paralysis wasn’t sufficient; it didn’t hurt enough. But when he thought of Lucy’s violent and abusive childhood at Alderthorpe, then a quick, clean death or a lifetime of solitary confinement seemed a more apt punishment.
As usual, what he thought didn’t really matter, because the whole business was out of his hands, the judgment not his to make. Perhaps the best he could hope for was to put Lucy Payne out of his mind, which he would succeed in doing over time. Partially, at any rate. She would always be there—they all were, killers and victims—but in time she would fade and become a more shadowy figure than she was at the moment.
Banks had not forgotten the sixth victim. She had a name, and unless her childhood was like Lucy Payne’s, someone must have once loved her, held her and whispered words of comfort after a nightmare, perhaps, soothed away the pain when she fell and scraped her knee. He would have to be patient. The forensic experts were good at their jobs, and eventually her bones would yield up something that would lead to her identity.
Just as the famous “Meditation” at the end of the first CD started, his phone rang. He was off duty and at first thought of not answering, but curiosity got the better of him, as it always did.
It was Annie Cabbot, and she sounded as if she were standing in the middle of a road, there was no much noise around her: voices, sirens, car brakes, people shouting orders.
“Annie, where the hell are you?”
“Roundabout on the Ripon Road, just north of Harrogate,” Annie said, shouting to make herself heard over the noise.
“What are you doing there?”
Somebody spoke to Annie, though Banks couldn’t hear what was said. She answered abruptly and then came back on the line. “Sorry, it’s a bit chaotic down here.”
“What’s going on?”
“I thought you ought to know. It’s Janet Taylor.”
“What about her?”
“She ran into another car.”
“She what? How is she?”
“She’s dead, Alan. Dead. They haven’t been able to get her body out of the car yet, but they know she’s dead. They got her handbag out and found my card in it.”
“Bloody hell.” Banks felt numb. “How did it happen?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Annie said. “The person in the car behind her says she just seemed to speed up at the roundabout rather than slow down, and she hit the car that was going round. A mother driving her daughter home from a piano lesson.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ. What happened to them?”
“The mother’s okay. Cuts and bruises. Shock.”
“The daughter?”
“It’s touch and go. The paramedics suspect internal injuries, but they won’t know till they get her to hospital. She’s still stuck in the car.”
“Was Janet pissed?”
“Don’t know yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if drinking had something to do with it, though. And she was depressed. I don’t know. She might have been trying to kill herself. If she did . . . it’s . . .” Banks could sense Annie choking up.
“Annie, I know what you’re going to say, but even if she did do it on purpose, it’s not your fault. You didn’t go down there in that cellar, see what she saw, do what she did. All you did was carry out an unbiased investigation.”
“Unbiased! Christ, Alan, I bent over backward to be sympathetic toward her.”
“Whatever. It’s not your fault.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Annie, she was no doubt drunk, and she went off the road.”
“Maybe you’re right. I can’t believe that Janet would take someone else with her if she wanted to kill herself. But whichever way you look at it, drunk or not, suicide or not, it’s still down to what happened, isn’t it?”
“It happened, Annie. Nothing to do with you.”
“The politics. The fucking politics.”
“Do you want me to come down?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“Annie—”
“Sorry, got to go now. They’re pulling the girl out of the car.” She hung up, leaving Banks holding the receiver and breathing quickly. Janet Taylor. Another casualty of the Paynes.
The first CD had finished, and Banks had no real desire to listen to the second one after the news he had just heard. He poured himself two fingers of Laphroaig and took his cigarettes outside to his spot by the falls and, as the vivid orange and purple colors streaked the western sky, he drank a silent toast to Janet Taylor and to the nameless dead girl buried in the Paynes’ garden.
But he hadn’t been out there five minutes when he decided he should go to Annie, had to go, no matter what she had said. Their romantic relationship might be over, but he had promised to be her friend and give her support. If she didn’t need that right now, when would she? He looked at his watch. It would take him an hour or so to get there, if he moved fast, and Annie would probably still be at the scene. Even if she’d gone, she would be at hospital, and he would be able to find her there easily enough.
He left the tumbler, still half-full, on the low table and went to grab his jacket. Before he could put it on, the phone rang again. Thinking it was Annie calling back with more news, he answered. It was Jenny Fuller.
“I hope I haven’t called at an awkward moment,” she said.
“I was just going out.”
“Oh. An emergency?”
“Sort of.”
“Only I was thinking we might have a drink and celebrate, you know, now it’s all over.”
“That’s a great idea, Jenny. I can’t do it right now, though. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Story of my life.”
“Sorry. Got to go. I’ll call. Promise.”
Banks could hear the disappointment in Jenny’s voice, and he felt like a real bastard for being so abrupt with her—after all, she had worked on the case as hard as anyone—but he didn’t want to explain about Janet Taylor, and he didn’t feel like celebrating anything.
Now it’s all over, Jenny had said. Banks wondered if it would ever be all over, the aftermath of the Paynes’ rampage, if it would ever cease taking its toll. Six teenage girls dead, one still unidentified. Kathleen Murray dead these ten years or more. PC Dennis Morrisey dead. Terence Payne dead. Lucy Payne paralyzed. Now Janet Taylor dead and a young girl seriously injured.
Banks checked for his keys and cigarettes, and headed out into the night.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my editor, Patricia Lande Grader, for her help in reshaping the unruly early drafts, and my wife, Sheila Halladay, for her perceptive and helpful comments. Also, many thanks to my agent, Dominick Abel, for all his hard work on my behalf, and to Erika Schmid for her fine copyediting.
As far as research goes, the usual crowd came through: Detective Sergeant Keith Wright, Detective Inspectors Claire Gormley and Alan Young, and Area Commander Philip Gormley. Any mistakes are entirely my own and are, of course, made in the interests of dramatic fiction. Also, thanks to Woitek Kubicki for his advice on Polish names.
A number of books proved invaluable in understanding the “killer couple” phenomenon, and among those to which I owe my greatest debt of gratitude are Emlyn Williams, Beyond Belief; Brian Masters, She Must Have Known; Paul Britton, The Jigsaw Man; Gordon Burn, Happy Like Murderers; and Stephen Williams, Invisible Darkness.
Excerpt from In the Dark Places
Chapter One
Terry Gilchrist came out of the woods opposite the large hangar, which loomed ahead of him like a storage area for crashed alien space ships in New Mexico. Only he wasn’t in New Mexico; he was in North Yorkshire.
It stood at the centre of a large area of cracked and weed-covered concrete, its perimeter surrounded by a seven-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A large sign on the padlocked double gates read PRIVATE – KEEP OUT. About a quarter of a mile beyond the hangar, a passenger train sped by on the East Coast line, heading for King’s Cross.
As he usually did at this point on the walk, Gilchrist let Peaches off her leash. The space was open far enough that he could easily keep an eye on her, and she always came back when he whistled or called her name.
Peaches sniffed around the edges of the fence, and before long she had found a way in, probably the same hole the kids used when they went there to play cricket or smoke joints and try to feel up the local girls. This time, instead of continuing to sniff around the concrete and weeds, Peaches headed for the dark opening of the hangar and disappeared inside.
While he waited for her to finish her business, Gilchrist leant his stick against a tree, stretched his arms out to prop himself up against the trunk and started doing a series of simple leg exercises the army medics had given him. They were already pleased with his progress: out walking, albeit with a stick, after only four months, when they had at first thought the leg was as good as gone. But Gilchrist wanted rid of the stick now, and the only way to do that was to build up the damaged muscle tissue little by little. His leg might never look the same, but he was determined that it would function as well as it ever had.
When he had done, Peaches had still not reappeared, so he whistled and called her name. All he got in reply was a bark followed by a whine. He called again, adding a bit more authority to his tone, and the whining went on for longer, but Peaches didn’t reappear. She wasn’t coming back. What the hell was wrong with her?
Irritated, Gilchrist grasped his stick again and made his way along the side of the fence, searching for the gap Peaches had found. When he saw it, his heart sank. He could get in, of that he was certain, but it would be a difficult and painful business. And messy. He called again. Peaches continued barking and whining, as if she were calling him.
To get through the hole, Gilchrist had to lie flat on the wet ground and edge slowly forward, sticking his arms through first and pushing back against the fencing to propel himself along. There was an immediate familiarity in lying on his belly that flooded his mind with fear, more a cellular or muscular memory than anything else, and he almost froze. Then he heard Peaches barking through the haze and carried on. Standing up was another awkward manoeuvre, as he could hardly bend his leg without causing extreme pain, but he made it, hanging on the links of the fence and using them as climbing grips. Finally, he stood panting and leant back against the fence, clothes damp and muddy, then he grabbed his stick and made his way towards the hangar.
It was dim inside, but enough light came through the large opening to make it possible to see once his eyes had adjusted. Peaches was standing near the wall about thirty yards to his right; she was barking and her tail was wagging. Gilchrist made his way over, wondering what on earth was making her behave in such a wilful and excited manner. Irritation slowly gave way to curiosity.
The floor of the hangar was concreted over like the surrounding area, and it was just as cracked in places, weeds growing through despite the lack of light. He could hear rain tapping on the steel roofing and the wind moaning around the high dark spaces. He felt himself give an involuntary shudder as he approached Peaches.
Even in the dim light, it was easy to see that she was sniffing around a dark patch on the concrete, but it took the light from Gilchrist’s mobile phone to see that what interested her was a large bloodstain dotted with chips of bone and chunks of grey matter. Immediately, an image of blood on the sand flashed into his mind and he felt the panic rise like the bile in his throat.
Get a grip, he told himself, then he took several deep breaths and bent to peer more closely in the light of the mobile. He didn’t have Peaches’ acute sense of smell, but close up he picked up that rank and coppery smell of blood. It was a smell he remembered well.
The thought came into his mind unbidden: someone has died here.
‘A bloody stolen tractor,’ complained Annie Cabbot. ‘Would you merit it? I ask you, Doug. Is this why I put in all those years to make DI? Risked life and limb? Is this Homicide and Major Crimes? A stolen tractor? Is that why I was put on this earth?’
