Aftermath, page 6
“Well, it’s my problem,” said Hartnell, rubbing his forehead. “But it’s a decision that has to be made very quickly. Naturally, as I said, I’d like to keep it with us, but I can’t do that.” He paused and looked at Banks. “On the other hand, PC Taylor is West Yorkshire and it seems to me that North Yorkshire might reasonably be considered a neighboring force.”
“True,” said Banks, beginning to get that sinking feeling.
“That would help keep it as close as we can, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” said Banks.
“As a matter of fact, ACC McLaughlin’s an old friend of mine. It might be worthwhile my having a word. How’s your Complaints and Discipline Department? Know anyone up there?”
Banks swallowed. It didn’t matter what he said. If the matter went to Western Division’s Complaints and Discipline, the burden would almost certainly land in Annie Cabbot’s lap. It was a small department—Annie was the only detective inspector—and Banks happened to know that her boss, Detective Superintendent Chambers, was a lazy sod with a particular dislike of female detectives making their way up the ranks. Annie was the new kid on the block, and she was also a woman. Not a hope of her getting out of this one. Banks could almost see the bastard rubbing his hands for glee when the order came down.
“Don’t you think it might seem just a bit too close to home?” he said. “Maybe Greater Manchester or Lincolnshire would be better.”
“Not at all,” said Hartnell. “This way we get to be seen to do the right thing while still keeping it pretty close to us. Surely you must know someone in the department, someone who’ll realize it’s in his best interests to keep you informed?”
“Detective Superintendent Chambers is in charge,” said Banks. “I’m sure he’ll find someone suitable to assign.”
Hartnell smiled. “Well, I’ll have a word with Ron this morning and we’ll see where it gets us, shall we?”
“Fine,” said Banks, thinking, She’ll kill me, she’ll kill me, even though it wasn’t his fault.
Jenny Fuller noted with distaste the obscene poster as she went through the cellar door, with DS Stefan Nowak right behind her, then she put her feelings aside and viewed it dispassionately, as a piece of evidence. Which it was. It marked the keeper of the portal to the dark underworld where Terence Payne could immerse himself in what he loved most in life: domination, sexual power, murder. Once he had got beyond this obscene guardian, the rules that normally governed human behavior no longer applied.
Jenny and Stefan were alone in the cellar now. Alone with the dead. She felt like a voyeur. Which she was. She also felt like a fraud, as if nothing she could say or do would be of any use. She almost felt like holding Stefan’s hand. Almost.
Behind her, Stefan switched off the overhead light and made Jenny jump. “Sorry. It wasn’t on at first,” he explained. “One of the ambulance crew turned it on so they could see what they were dealing with, and it just got left on.”
Jenny’s heartbeat returned to normal. She could smell incense, along with other odors she had no desire to dwell on. So this was his working environment: hallowed, church-like. Several of the candles had burned down by now, and some of them were guttering out, but a dozen or more still flickered, multiplied into hundreds by the arrangement of mirrors. Without the overhead light, Jenny could hardly make out the dead policeman’s body on the floor, which was probably a blessing, and the candlelight softened the impact of the girl’s body, gave her skin such a reddish-gold hue that Jenny could have almost believed Kimberley alive were it not for the preternatural stillness of her body and the way her eyes stared up into the overhead mirror.
Nobody home.
Mirrors. No matter where Jenny looked, she could see several reflections of herself, Stefan and the girl on the mattress, muted in the flickering candlelight. He likes to watch himself at work, she thought. Could that be the only way he feels real? Watching himself doing it?
“Where’s the camcorder?” she asked.
“Luke Selkirk’s—”
“No, I don’t mean the police camera, I mean his, Payne’s.”
“We haven’t found a camcorder. Why?”
“Look at the setup, Stefan. This is a man who likes to look at himself in action. It’d surprise me a great deal if he didn’t keep some record of his actions, wouldn’t it you?”
“Now you come to mention it, yes,” said Stefan.
“That sort of thing’s par for the course in sex killings. Some sort of memento. A trophy. And usually also some sort of visual aid to help him relive the experience before the next one.”
“We’ll know more when the team’s finished with the house.”
Jenny followed the phosphorescent tape that marked the path to the anteroom, where the bodies lay, still untouched, awaiting the SOCOs. In the light of Stefan’s torch, her glance took in the toes sticking through the earth, and what looked like a finger, perhaps, a nose, a kneecap. His menagerie of death. Planted trophies. His garden.
Stefan shifted beside her, and she realized she had been holding his arm, digging in hard with her nails. They went back into the candle-lit cellar. As Jenny stood over Kimberley noting the wounds, small cuts and scratch marks, she couldn’t help herself but found she was weeping, silent tears damp against her cheek. She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand, hoping Stefan didn’t notice. If he did, he was gentleman enough not to say anything.
Suddenly, she wanted to leave. It wasn’t just the sight of Kimberley Myers on the mattress, or the smell of incense and blood, the images flickering in mirrors and candlelight, but the combination of all these elements made her feel claustrophobic and nauseated standing there observing this horror with Stefan. She didn’t want to be here with him, or with any man, feeling the things she did. It felt obscene. And it was an obscenity performed by man upon woman.
Trying to conceal her trembling, she touched Stefan’s arm. “I’ve seen enough down here for now,” she said. “Let’s go. I’d like to have a look around the rest of the house.”
Stefan nodded and turned back to the stairs. Jenny had the damnedest sensation that he knew exactly what she was feeling. Bloody hell, she thought, the sixth sense she could do without right now. Life was complicated enough with the usual five at work.
She followed Stefan past the poster up the worn stone stairs.
“Annie. Got much on right now?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m wearing a mid-length navy-blue skirt, red shoes and a white silk blouse. Do you want to know about my underwear?”
“Don’t tempt me. I take it you’re alone in the office?”
“All on my little lonesome.”
“Listen, Annie, I’ve got something to tell you. Warn you about, actually.” Banks was sitting in his car outside the Payne house talking on his mobile. The mortuary wagon had taken the bodies away, and Kimberley’s stunned parents had identified her body. The SOCOs had located two more bodies so far in the anteroom, both of them in so advanced a state of decomposition that it was impossible to make visual identification. Dental records would have to be checked, DNA sampled and checked against the parents. It would all take time. Another team was still combing through the house, boxing up papers, accounts, bills, receipts, snapshots, letters, anything and everything.
Banks listened to the silence after he had finished explaining the assignment he thought Annie would be getting in the near future. He had decided that the best way to deal with it was to try to put it in a positive light, convince Annie that she would be good for the job and that it was the right job for her. He didn’t imagine he would have much success, but it was worth a try. He counted the beats. One. Two. Three. Four. Then the explosion came.
“He’s doing what? Is this some kind of sick joke, Alan?”
“No joke.”
“Because if it is you can knock it off right now. It’s not funny.”
“It’s no joke, Annie. I’m serious. And if you think about it for a minute you’ll see what a great idea it is.”
“If I thought about it for the rest of my life it still wouldn’t seem like a great idea. How dare he . . . You know there’s no way I can come out of this looking good. If I prove a case against her, then every cop and every member of the public hates my guts. If I don’t prove a case, the press screams cover-up.”
“No, they won’t. Have you any idea of what sort of monster Terence Payne is? They’ll be whooping for joy that populist justice is served at last.”
“Some of them, perhaps. But not the ones I read. Or you, for that matter.”
“Annie, it’s not going to bury you. It’ll be in the hands of the CPS well before that stage. You’re not judge, jury and executioner, you know. You’re just a humble investigator trying to get the facts right. How can that harm you?”
“Was it you who suggested me in the first place? Did you give Hartnell my name, tell him I’d be the best one for the job? I can’t believe you’d do this to me, Alan. I thought you liked me.”
“I do. And I haven’t done anything. AC Hartnell came up with it all by himself. And you and I both know what’ll happen as soon as it gets into Detective Superintendent Chambers’s hands.”
“Well, at least we’re agreed on that. You know, the fat bastard’s been chomping at the bit all week because he hasn’t been able to find anything really messy for me to do. For crying out loud, Alan, couldn’t you do something?”
“Like what?”
“Suggest he hand it over to Lancashire or Derbyshire. Anything.”
“I tried, but his mind was made up. He knows ACC McLaughlin. Besides, this way he thinks I can hold on to some degree of control over the investigation.”
“Well, he can bloody well think again about that.”
“Annie, you can do some good here. For yourself, for the public interest.”
“Don’t try appealing to my better nature. I haven’t got one.”
“Why are you resisting so strongly?”
“Because it’s a crap job and you know it. At least give me the courtesy of not trying to soft-soap me.”
Banks sighed. “I’m only the advance warning. Don’t kill the messenger.”
“That’s what messengers are for. You’re saying I’ve no choice?”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Yeah, the right one and the wrong one. Don’t worry, I won’t make a fuss. But you’d better be right about the consequences.”
“Trust me. I’m right.”
“And you’ll respect me in the morning. Sure.”
“Look, about the morning. I’m going back to Gratly tonight. I’ll be late, but maybe you could come over, or I could drop by your place on my way?”
“What for? A quickie?”
“Doesn’t have to be that quick. Way I’m sleeping these days it could take all night.”
“No way. I need my beauty sleep. Remember, I’ve got to be up bright and early in the morning to drive to Leeds. Bye.”
Banks held the silent mobile to his ear for a few moments, then put it back in his pocket. Christ, he thought, you handled that one really well, Alan, didn’t you? People skills.
4
Samantha Jane Foster, eighteen years old, five feet five and seven stone three pounds, was a first-year English student at the University of Bradford. Her parents lived in Leighton Buzzard, where Julian Foster was a chartered accountant and Teresa Foster a local GP. Samantha had one older brother, Alistair, unemployed, and a younger sister, Chloe, still at school.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth of February, Samantha attended a poetry reading in a pub near the university campus and left alone for her bed-sit at about eleven-fifteen. She lived just off Great Horton Road, about a quarter of a mile away. When she didn’t turn up for her weekend job in the city center Waterstone’s bookshop, one of her coworkers, Penelope Hall, became worried and called at the bed-sit during her lunch break. Samantha was reliable, she later told the police, and if she wasn’t going to come in to work because of illness, she would always ring. This time she hadn’t. Worried that Samantha might be seriously ill, Penelope managed to persuade the landlord to open the bed-sit door. Nobody home.
There was a very good chance that the Bradford Police might not have taken Samantha Foster’s disappearance seriously—at least not so quickly—had it not been for the shoulder bag that a conscientious student had found in the street and handed in after midnight the previous evening. It contained a poetry anthology called New Blood; a slim volume of poetry signed “To Samantha, between whose silky thighs I would love to rest my head and give silver tongue” and dated by the poet, Michael Stringer, who had read in the pub the previous evening; a spiral notebook full of poetic jottings, observations, reflections on life and literature, including what looked to the desk officer like descriptions of hallucinogenic states and out-of-body experiences; a half-smoked packet of Benson & Hedges; a red packet of Rizzla cigarette papers and a small plastic bag of marijuana, less than a quarter of an ounce; a green disposable cigarette lighter; three loose tampons; a set of keys; a personal CD player with a Tracy Chapman CD inside it; a little bag of cosmetics; and a purse containing fifteen pounds in cash, a credit card, student union card, shop receipts for books and CDs and various other sundry items.
Given the two occurrences—an abandoned shoulder bag and a missing girl—especially as the young DC who was given the assignment remembered something similar had happened in Roundhay Park, Leeds, on New Year’s Eve—the inquiry began that very morning with calls to Samantha’s parents and close friends, none of whom had seen her or heard of any change in her plans or normal routine.
For a brief time, Michael Stringer, the poet who had been reading his work at the pub, became a suspect, given the inscription he had written in his book of poems for her, but a number of witnesses said he carried on drinking in the city center and had to be helped back to his hotel around three-thirty in the morning. The hotel staff assured the police that he hadn’t seen the light of day again until teatime the following day.
Inquiries around the university turned up one possible witness, who thought she saw Samantha talking to someone through a car window. At least the girl had long blond hair and was wearing the same clothes Samantha was when she left the pub—jeans, black calf-high boots and a long, flapping overcoat. The car was dark in color, and the witness remembered the three last letters on the number plate because they formed her own initials: Kathryn Wendy Thurlow. She said she had no reason to believe that there was any problem at the time, so she crossed over to her street and carried on to her own flat.
The last two letters of a car number plate indicate the origin of its registration, and WT signifies Leeds. The DVLA at Swansea were able to supply a list of over a thousand possibles—as Kathryn hadn’t been able to narrow the search down to make or even color—and the owners were interviewed by Bradford CID. Nothing came of it.
All the searches and interviews that followed turned up nothing more about Samantha Foster’s disappearance, and rumblings were starting on the police tom-toms. Two disappearances, almost two months and about fifteen miles apart, were enough to set off a few alarm bells but not a full-blown panic.
Samantha didn’t have many friends, but those she did have were loyal and devoted to her, in particular Angela Firth, Ryan Conner and Abha Gupta, who were all devastated by her disappearance. According to them, Samantha was a very serious sort of girl, given to long reflective silences and gnomic utterances, with no time for small talk, sports and television. She had a level head on her shoulders, though, they insisted, and everyone said she wasn’t the type to go off with a stranger on a whim, no matter how much she talked about the importance of experiencing life to the full.
When the police suggested that Samantha might have wandered off under the influence of drugs, her friends said it was unlikely. Yes, they admitted, she liked to smoke a joint occasionally—she said it helped her with her writing—but she didn’t do any harder drugs; she also didn’t drink much and couldn’t have had more than two or three glasses of wine the entire evening.
She didn’t have a boyfriend at the moment and didn’t seem interested in acquiring one. No, she wasn’t gay, but she had spoken of exploring sexual experiences with other women. Samantha might appear unconventional in some ways, Angela explained, but she had a lot more common sense than people sometimes imagined on first impressions; she was just not frivolous, and she was interested in a lot of things other people laughed at or dismissed.
According to her professors, Samantha was an eccentric student with a tendency to spend too much of her time reading outside the syllabus, but one of her tutors, who had published some verse himself, said that he had hopes she might make a fine poet one day if she could cultivate a little more self-discipline in her technique.
Samantha’s interests, so Abha Gupta said, included art, poetry, nature, Eastern religions, psychic experiences and death.
Banks and Ken Blackstone drove out to The Greyhound, a low-beamed rustic pub with Toby jugs all around the plate racks in the village of Tong, about fifteen minutes from the crime scene. It was going on for two o’clock, and neither of them had eaten yet that day. Banks hadn’t eaten much in the past two days, in fact, ever since he had heard of the fifth missing teenager in the wee hours of Saturday morning.
Over the past two months, he had sometimes thought his head would explode under pressure of the sheer amount of detail he carried around in it. He would awaken in the early hours of the morning, at three or four o’clock, and the thoughts would spin around his mind and prevent him from going back to sleep. Instead, he would get up and brew a pot of tea and sit at the pine kitchen table in his pajamas making notes for the day ahead as the sun came up and spilled its liquid honey light through the high window or rain lashed against the panes.
