Aftermath (44 page)

‘He had the bodies.’

‘His trophies? Yes. And that probably explains why there was no further mutilation, no need to take a finger or a toe to remember them by. Payne had the whole body. But it’s not just that. Someone like Payne would have needed more, something that enabled him to relive the events.’

Banks told her about the tripod marks and the electronics catalogue.

‘So if he had one, where is it?’ she asked.

‘That’s the question.’

‘And why is it missing?’

‘Another good question. Believe me, we’re looking hard for it. If it’s in that house, even if it’s buried ten feet down, we’ll find out. We won’t leave a brick of that place standing until it’s given up all its secrets.’

‘
If
it’s in the house.’

‘Yes.’

‘And there’ll be tapes, too.’

‘I haven’t forgotten them.’

Jenny pushed her plate aside. ‘I suppose I’d better go and get some work done.’

Banks looked at his watch. ‘And I’d better go and see Mick Blair.’ He reached forward and touched her arm lightly. She was surprised at the tingle she felt. ‘Take care, Jenny. Keep your eyes open, and if you see that car again phone me right away. Understand?’

Jenny nodded. Then she noticed someone she didn’t know approaching them, walking with an easy, confident grace. An attractive young woman, tight jeans emphasizing her long and shapely legs, what looked like a man’s white shirt hanging open over a red T-shirt. Chestnut hair cascaded in shiny waves to her shoulders, and the only flaw on her smooth complexion was a small mole to the right of her mouth. Even that wasn’t so much an imperfection as a beauty spot. Her serious eyes were almond in shape and colour.

When she got to the table, she pulled up a chair and sat down without being invited. ‘DI Cabbot,’ she said, stretching out her hand. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘Dr Fuller.’ Jenny shook. Firm grasp.

‘Ah, the famous Dr Fuller. A pleasure to meet you at last.’

Jenny felt tense. Was this woman, surely
the
Annie Cabbot, staking out her territory? Had she seen Banks touching her arm and thought something of it? Was she here to let Jenny know as subtly as possible to keep her hands off Banks? Jenny knew she was not bad when it came to the looks department, but she couldn’t help feeling somehow
clumsy
and even a bit dowdy next to Annie.
Older
, too. Definitely older.

Annie smiled at Banks. ‘Sir.’

Jenny could sense something between them. Sexual tension, yes, but it was more than that. Had they had a disagreement? All of a sudden the table was uncomfortable and she felt she had to leave. She picked up her bag and started rummaging for her car keys. Why did they always sink to the bottom and get lost among the hairbrushes, paper hankies and make-up?

‘Don’t let me interrupt your lunch,’ said Annie, smiling again at Jenny, then turning to Banks, ‘but I just happened to be in the station catching up on some paperwork after lunch. Winsome told me you were here and that she’d got a message for you. I said I’d deliver it.’

Banks raised his eyebrows. ‘And?’

‘It’s from your mate Ken Blackstone in Leeds. It seems Lucy Payne’s done a runner.’

Jenny gasped. ‘What?’

‘Local police dropped by her parents’ house this morning just to make sure everything was okay. Turns out her bed hadn’t been slept in.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Banks. ‘Another cock-up.’

‘Just thought you’d want to know as soon as possible,’ said Annie, untangling herself from the chair. She looked at Jenny. ‘Nice to meet you.’

Then she walked out with the same elegant grace she had walked in with, leaving Banks and Jenny to sit and stare at one another.

•

Mick Blair, the fourth person in the group on the night Leanne Wray disappeared, lived with his parents in a semi in North Eastvale, near enough to the edge of town for a fine view over Swainsdale, but close enough to the centre for easy access. After Annie’s revelation about Lucy Payne, Banks wondered whether he should change his plans, but he decided that Leanne Wray was still a priority and Lucy Payne was still a victim in the eyes of the law. Besides, there would be plenty of coppers keeping an eye open for her; it was the most they could do until, and unless, they had anything to charge her with.

Unlike Ian Scott, Mick had never been in trouble with the police, though Banks suspected he might well have been buying drugs from Ian. He had a slightly wasted look about him, not quite all there, and didn’t seem to have much time for personal grooming. When Banks called after his lunch with Jenny that Sunday, Mick’s parents were out visiting family, and Mick was slouching around in the living room listening to Nirvana loud on the stereo, wearing torn jeans and a black T-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on it, above his birth and death dates.

‘What do you want?’ Mick asked, turning down the volume and flopping onto the sofa, hands behind his head.

‘To talk about Leanne Wray.’

‘We’ve already been over that.’

‘Let’s go over it again.’

‘Why? Have you found out something new?’

‘What would there be to find out?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just surprised at your coming here, that’s all.’

‘Was Leanne your girlfriend, Mick?’

‘No. It wasn’t like that.’

‘She’s an attractive girl. Didn’t you fancy her?’

‘Maybe. A bit.’

‘But she wasn’t having any of it?’

‘It was early days, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Some girls need a bit of time, a bit of working on. They don’t all just jump into bed with you the first time you meet.’

‘And Leanne needed time?’

‘Yes.’

‘How far had you got?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How far? Holding hands? Necking? Tongue or no tongue?’ Banks remembered his own adolescent gropings and the various stages you had to pass. After necking usually came touching above the waist, but with clothes on, then under the blouse but over the bra. After that, the bra came off, then it was below the waist, and so on until you got to go all the way. If you were lucky. With some girls it seemed to take for ever to move from one stage to another, and some might let you get below the waist but not go all the way. The whole negotiation was a minefield fraught with the danger of being dumped at every turn. Well, at least Leanne Wray hadn’t been an easy conquest and, for some odd reason, Banks was glad to know that.

‘We necked once in a while.’

‘What about that Friday night, the thirty-first of March?’

‘Nah. We were in a group, like, with Ian and Sarah.’

‘You didn’t neck with Leanne in the cinema?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is that a yes or a no?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Might you have had a falling out?’

‘What are you getting at?’

Banks scratched the scar beside his right eye. ‘It’s like this, Mick. I come here to talk to you again, and it seems to bother you, but you don’t ask me if we’ve found Leanne alive, or found her body yet. It was the same with Ian—’

‘You’ve talked to Ian?’

‘This morning. I’m surprised he didn’t get straight on the phone to you.’

‘He can’t have been very worried.’

‘Why should he be?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The thing is, you see, that you both
ought
to be asking me if we’ve found Leanne alive, or if we’ve found her body, or if we’ve identified her remains.’

‘Why?’

‘Why else would I come to talk to you?’

‘How should I know?’

‘But the fact that you
don’t
ask makes me wonder if you know something you’re not telling me.’

Mick folded his arms. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

Banks leaned forward and held Mick’s gaze. ‘Know what? I think you’re lying, Mick. I think you’re all lying.’

‘You can’t prove anything.’

‘What would I need to prove?’

‘That I’m lying. I told you what happened. We went for a drink in the Old—’

‘No. What you told us was that you went for coffee after the film.’

‘Right. Well . . .’

‘That was lying, wasn’t it, Mick?’

‘So what?’

‘If you can do it once, you can do it again. In fact it gets easier the more you practise. What really happened that night, Mick? Why don’t you tell me about it?’

‘Nothing happened. I already told you.’

‘Did you and Leanne have a fight? Did you hurt her? Maybe you didn’t mean to. Where is she, Mick? You
know
, I’m certain of it.’

And Mick’s expression told Banks that he
did
know, but it also told him that he wasn’t going to confess to anything. Not today, at any rate. Banks felt pissed off and culpable at the same time. It was
his
fault that this line of inquiry hadn’t been properly followed up. So fixated had he become on a serial killer abducting young girls, that he had ignored the basics of police work and not pushed hard enough at those in the position to know best what had happened to Leanne: the people she had been with at the time she disappeared. He should have followed up, knowing of Ian Scott’s criminal record and that it involved drugs. But no. Leanne was put down as the third victim of the unidentified serial killer, another pretty young blonde victim, and that was that. Winsome Jackman had done a bit of follow-up work, but she had pretty much accepted the official story too. Banks’s fault, all of it, just like Sandra’s miscarriage. Just like bloody everything, it seemed sometimes.

‘Tell me what happened,’ Banks pushed again.

‘I’ve told you. I’ve fucking told you!’ Mick sat up abruptly. ‘When we left the Old Ship, Leanne set off home. That was the last any of us saw of her. Some pervert must have got her. All right? That’s what you thought, isn’t it? Why are you changing your minds?’

‘Ah, so you
are
curious,’ Banks said, standing up. ‘I’m sure you’ve been following the news. We’ve got the pervert who took and killed those girls – he’s dead, so he can’t tell us anything – but we found no trace of Leanne’s body on the premises, and believe me we’ve taken the place apart.’

‘Then it must’ve been some other pervert.’

‘Come off it, Mick. The odds against one are wild enough, the odds against two are astronomical. No. It comes down to you. You, Ian and Sarah. The last people she was seen with. Now, I’m going to give you time to think about it, Mick, but I’ll be back, you can count on that. Then we’ll have a proper talk. No distractions. In the meantime, stick around. Enjoy the music.’

When Banks left, he paused just long enough at the garden gate to see Mick, silhouetted behind the lace curtains, jump up from the sofa and head over to the telephone.

The Monday morning
sunlight spilled through Banks’s kitchen window and glinted on the copper-bottomed pans hanging on the wall. Banks sat at his pine table with a cup of coffee, toast and marmalade, the morning newspaper spread out before him and Vaughan Williams’s
Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
playing on the radio. But he was neither reading nor listening.

He had been awake since before four, a million details dancing around in his mind, and though he felt dog-tired now, he knew he couldn’t sleep. He would be glad when the Chameleon case was all over, when Gristhorpe was back at work, and when he could go back to his normal duties as a detective chief inspector. The responsibility of command over the past month and a half had exhausted him. He recognized the signs: lack of sleep, bad dreams, too much junk food, too much booze and too many cigarettes. He was reaching the same near-burnout state as he had been in when he left the Met for North Yorkshire years ago, hoping for a quieter life. He loved detective work, but it sometimes seemed that modern policing was a young man’s game. Science, technology and changes in management structure hadn’t simplified things; they had only made life more complicated. Banks realized that he had probably come to the limits of his ambition when he actually thought that morning, for the first time, about packing in the job altogether.

He heard the postman arrive and went out to pick up the letters from the floor. Among the usual collection of bills and circulars, there was a hand-addressed envelope from London, and Banks immediately recognized the neat, looping hand.

Sandra
.

Heart beating just a little too fast for comfort, he carried the pile back into the kitchen. This was his favourite room in the cottage, mostly because he had dreamed about it before he had seen it, but what he read in Sandra’s letter was enough to darken the brightest of rooms even more than his previous mood had darkened it.

That was it. Nothing more than a cold, formal note. Banks knew he hadn’t been responding to the matter of the divorce with any great dispatch, but he hadn’t seen any need for haste. Perhaps, deep down, he was stubbornly clinging to Sandra, and in some opaque and frightened part of his soul he was holding on to the belief that it was all just a nightmare or a mistake, and he would wake up one morning back in the Eastvale semi with Sandra beside him. Not that that was what he wanted, not any more, but he was at least willing to admit that he might harbour such irrational feelings.

Now this.

Banks put the letter aside, still feeling its chill. Why couldn’t he just let go of this and move on, as Sandra clearly had done? Was it because of what he had told Annie, about his guilt over Sandra’s miscarriage, about being glad that it happened? He didn’t know; it all just felt too strange: his wife of over twenty years, mother of their children, now about to give birth to another man’s child.

He tossed the letter aside, picked up his briefcase and headed out for the car.

He intended to go to Leeds later in the morning, but first he wanted to drop by his office, clear up some paperwork and have a word with Winsome. The drive to Eastvale from Gratly was, Banks had thought when he first made it, one of the most beautiful drives in the area: a narrow road about halfway up the daleside, with spectacular views of the valley bottom with its sleepy villages and meandering river to his left and the steeply rising fields with their drystone walls and wandering sheep to his right. But today he didn’t even notice all this, partly because he did it so often, and partly because his thoughts were still clouded by Sandra’s letter and a vague depression over his job.