Aftermath (39 page)

‘The cellar?’

‘Yes. Don’t you remember it?’

‘It was just a cellar,’ Lucy said. ‘Dark and cold.’

‘Was there anything else down there?’

‘I don’t know. What?’

‘Black candles, incense, a pentagram, robes. Wasn’t there a lot of dancing and chanting down there, Lucy?’

Lucy closed her eyes. ‘I don’t remember. That wasn’t me. That was Linda.’

‘Oh, come on, Lucy. You can do better than that. Why is it that whenever we come to something you don’t want to talk about, you always conveniently lose your memory?’

‘Superintendent,’ Julia Ford said. ‘Remember my client has suffered retrograde amnesia due to post-traumatic shock.’

‘Yes, yes, I remember. Impressive words.’ Banks turned back to Lucy. ‘You don’t remember going into the cellar at The Hill, and you don’t remember the dancing and
chanting in the cellar at Alderthorpe. Do you remember the cage?’

Lucy seemed to draw in on herself.

‘Do you?’ Banks persisted. ‘The old Morrison shelter.’

‘I remember it,’ Lucy whispered. ‘It was where they put us when we were bad.’

‘How were you bad, Lucy?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Why were you in the cage when the police came? You and Tom. What had you done to get yourselves put there?’

‘I don’t know. It was never much. You never had to do much. If you didn’t clean your plate – not that there was ever much on it to clean – or if you talked back or
said no when they . . . when they wanted to . . . It was easy to get locked in the cage.’

‘Do you remember Kathleen Murray?’

‘I remember Kathleen. She was my cousin.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘They killed her.’

‘Who did?’

‘The grown-ups.’

‘Why did they kill her?’

‘I don’t know. They just . . . she just died . . .’

‘They said your brother Tom killed her.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Tom wouldn’t kill anybody. Tom’s gentle.’

‘Do you remember how it happened?’

‘I wasn’t there. Just one day they told us Kathleen had gone away and she wouldn’t be coming back. I knew she was dead.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I just knew. She cried all the time, she said she was going to tell. They always said they’d kill any of us if they thought we were going to tell.’

‘Kathleen was strangled, Lucy.’

‘Was she?’

‘Yes. Just like the girls we found in your cellar. Ligature strangulation. Remember, those yellow fibres we found under your fingernails, along with Kimberley’s blood?’

‘Where are you going with this, Superintendent?’ Julia Ford asked.

‘There are a lot of similarities between the crimes. That’s all.’

‘But surely the killers of Kathleen Murray are behind bars?’ Julia argued. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Lucy.’

‘She was involved.’

‘She was a victim.’

‘Always the victim, eh, Lucy? The victim with the bad memory. How does it feel?’

‘That’s enough,’ said Julia.

‘It feels awful,’ Lucy said in a small voice.

‘What?’

‘You asked how it feels, to be a victim with a bad memory. It feels awful. It feels like I have no self, like I’m lost, I have no control, like I don’t count. I can’t
even remember the
bad
things that happened to me.’

‘Let me ask you once more, Lucy: did you ever help your husband to abduct a young girl?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Did you ever harm any of the girls he brought home?’

‘I never knew about them, not until last week.’

‘Why did you get up and go down in the cellar on that particular night? Why not on any of the previous occasions when your husband was
entertaining
a young girl in the cellar of
your house?’

‘I never heard anything before. He must have drugged me.’

‘We found no sleeping tablets in our search of the house, nor do either of you have a prescription for any.’

‘He must have got them illegally. He must have run out. That’s why I woke up.’

‘Where would he get them?’

‘School. There’s all sorts of drugs in schools.’

‘Lucy, did you know that your husband was a rapist when you met him?’

‘Did I . . . what?’

‘You heard me.’ Banks opened the file in front of him. ‘By our count he had already raped four women we know of before he met you at that pub in Seacroft. Terence Payne was the
Seacroft Rapist. His DNA matches that left in the victims.’

‘I . . . I . . .’

‘You don’t know what to say?’

‘No.’

‘How did you meet him, Lucy? None of your friends remember seeing you talk to him in the pub that night.’

‘I told you. I was on my way out. It was a big pub with lots of rooms. We went into another bar.’

‘Why should you be any different, Lucy?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean why didn’t he follow you out into the street and rape you like he did with the others?’

‘I don’t know. How should I know?’

‘You’ve got to admit it’s strange, though, isn’t it?’

‘I told you, I don’t know. He liked me. Loved me.’

‘Yet he still continued to rape other young women
after
he’d met you.’ Banks consulted his file again. ‘At least two more times, according to our account. And
they’re only the ones who reported it. Some women don’t report it, you know. Too upset or too ashamed. See, they blame themselves.’ Banks thought of Annie Cabbot and what
she’d been through over two years ago.

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘Why didn’t he rape
you
?’

Lucy gave him an unfathomable look. ‘Maybe he did.’

‘Don’t be absurd. No woman likes being raped and she’s certainly not going to marry her rapist.’

‘You’d be surprised what you can get used to if you’ve got no choice.’

‘What do you mean, no choice?’

‘What I say.’

‘It was your choice to marry Terry, wasn’t it? Nobody forced you to.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Then what do you mean?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Come on.’

‘Never mind.’

Banks shuffled his papers. ‘What was it, Lucy? Did he tell you about what he’d done? Did it excite you? Did he recognize a kindred spirit? Your Hindley to his Brady?’

Julia Ford shot to her feet. ‘That’s
enough
, Superintendent. One more remark like that and this interview’s over and I’ll be reporting you.’

Banks ran his hand over his close-cropped hair. It felt spiky.

Winsome picked up the questioning. ‘
Did
he rape you, Lucy?’ she asked, in her lilting Jamaican accent. ‘Did your husband rape you?’

Lucy turned to look at Winsome and seemed to Banks to be calculating how to deal with this new factor in the equation.

‘Of course not. I would never have married a rapist.’

‘So you didn’t know about him?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘Didn’t you find
anything
odd about Terry? I mean, I never knew him, but it sounds to me as if there’s enough there to give a person cause for concern.’

‘He could be very charming.’

‘Did he do or say
nothing
to make you suspicious in all the time you were together?’

‘No.’

‘But, somehow, you ended up married to a man who was not only a rapist but also an abductor and murderer of young girls. How can you explain that, Lucy? You’ve got to admit
it’s highly unusual, hard to believe.’

‘I can’t help that. And I can’t explain it. That’s just how it happened.’

‘Did he like to play games, sexual games?’

‘Like what?’

‘Did he like tying you up? Did he like to
pretend
he was raping you?’

‘We didn’t do anything like that.’

Winsome gave Banks a signal to take over again, and her look mirrored his feelings; they were getting nowhere and Lucy Payne was probably lying.

‘Where’s the camcorder?’ Banks asked.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘We found evidence in the cellar. A camcorder had been set up at the end of the bed. I think you liked to video what you were doing to the girls.’

‘I didn’t do anything to them. I’ve told you, I didn’t go down there, except maybe the once. I know nothing about any camcorder.’

‘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?’ he 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 bloodstains and
clothes-line fibres. 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 centre 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 behaviour 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 favourite 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 lunchtime 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?’