Aftermath

down around her ankles. She had a couple of spots on her chin, Maggie noticed: bad diet or time of the month.

“You know?”

“It was all around school by lunchtime.”

“Do you know Mr. Payne?”

“He’s my biology teacher. And he lives across the street from us. How could he? The pervert. When I think of what must have been going through his mind while he was teaching us about reproductive systems and dissecting frogs and all that stuff… ugh.” She gave a shudder.

“Claire, we don’t know that he did anything yet. All we know is that Mr. and Mrs. Payne had a fight and that he hit her.”

“But they’ve found Kim’s body, haven’t they? And there wouldn’t be all those policemen over the road if all he’d done was hit his wife, would there?”

If all he’d done was hit his wife. Maggie was often amazed at the casual acceptance of domestic violence, even by a girl-child such as Claire. True enough, she didn’t mean it the way it sounded and would be horrified if she knew the details of Maggie’s life back in Toronto, but still, the language came so easily. Hit his wife. Minor. Not important.

“You’re quite right,” she said. “It is more than that. But we don’t know that Mr. Payne was responsible for what happened to Kimberley. Someone else might have done it.”

“No. It’s him. He’s the one. He killed all those girls. He killed Kim.”

Claire started crying and Maggie felt awkward. She found a box of tissues and went to sit next to her on the sofa. Claire buried her head in Maggie’s shoulder and sobbed, her thin veneer of teenage cool stripped away in a second. “I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling. “I don’t usually act like such a baby.”

“What is it?” Maggie asked, still stroking her hair. “What is it, Claire? You can tell me. You were her friend, weren’t you? Kim’s?”

Claire’s lip trembled. “I just feel so awful.”

“I can understand that.”

“But you don’t. You can’t! Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“That it was my fault. It was my fault that Kim got killed. I should have been with her on Friday. I should have been with her!”

And when Claire buried her face in Maggie’s shoulder again, there came a loud knock at the door.

DI Annie Cabbot sat at her desk still cursing Banks under her breath and wishing she had never accepted the appointment to Complaints and Discipline, even though it had been the only divisional opening available for her at the level of inspector after passing her boards. Of course, she could have stayed in CID as a detective sergeant, or gone back to uniform for a while as an inspector in Traffic, but she had decided that C amp; D would be a worthwhile temporary step up until a suitable position became available in CID, which Banks had assured her wouldn’t be long. The Western Division was still undergoing some structural reorganization, part of which involved staffing levels, and for the moment CID was taking a backseat to more visible on-the-street and in-your-face policing. But their day would come. This way, at least, she would gain experience at the rank of inspector.

The one good thing about the new appointment was her office. Western Division had taken over the building adjoining the old Tudor-fronted headquarters, part of the same structure, knocked through the walls and redone the interior. While Annie didn’t have a large room to herself like Detective Superintendent Chambers, she did have a partitioned space in the general area, which gave her some degree of privacy and looked out over the marketplace, like Banks’s office.

Beyond her frosted-glass compartment sat the two detective sergeants and three constables who, along with Annie and Chambers, made up the entire Western Division Complaints and Discipline Department. After all, police corruption was hardly a hot issue around Eastvale, and about the most serious case she had worked on so far was that of a beat policeman accepting free toasted teacakes from the Golden Grill. It turned out that he had been going out with one of the waitresses there and she was finding the way to his heart. Another waitress had become jealous and reported the matter to Complaints and Discipline.

It probably wasn’t fair to blame Banks, Annie thought, standing at the window and looking down on the busy square, and perhaps she was only doing so because of the vague dissatisfaction with their relationship that she was already feeling. She didn’t know what it was, or why, only that she was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with it. They hadn’t seen each other that often because of the Chameleon case, of course, and Banks had sometimes been so tired that he fallen asleep even before… but it wasn’t that that bothered her so much as the easy familiarity their relationship seemed to be attaining. When they were together, they were behaving more and more like an old married couple and Annie, for one, didn’t want that. Ironic as it seemed, the comfort and familiarity were making her feel distinctly uncomfortable. All they needed was the slippers and the fireplace. Come to think of it, in Banks’s cottage they even had those, too.

Annie’s phone rang. It was Detective Superintendent Chambers summoning her to his office next door. She knocked and went in when he said, “Enter,” the way he liked it. Chambers sat behind his messy desk, a big man with the waistcoat buttons of his pinstripe suit stretched tight across his chest and belly. She didn’t know if his tie was covered with food stains or if it was supposed to look that way. He had the kind of face that seemed to be wearing a perpetual sneer, and small piggy eyes that Annie felt undress her as she walked in. His complexion was like a slab of beef, and his lips were fleshy, wet and red. Annie always half expected him to start drooling and slobbering as he spoke, but he hadn’t done it yet. Not one drop of saliva had found its way on to his green blotter. He had a Home Counties accent, which he seemed to think made him posh.

“Ah, DI Cabbot. Please be seated.”

“Sir.”

Annie sat as comfortably as she could, careful to make certain that her skirt didn’t ride too high over her thighs. If she’d known before she left for work that she was going to be summoned to see Chambers, she would have worn trousers.

“I’ve just been handed a most interesting assignment,” Chambers went on. “Most interesting indeed. One that I think will be right up your alley, as they say.”

Annie had the advantage of him but didn’t want to let it show. “Assignment, sir?”

“Yes. It’s about time you started pulling your weight around here, DI Cabbot. How long have you been with us now?”

“Two months.”

“And in that time you’ve accomplished…?”

“The case of Constable Chaplin and the toasted teacakes, sir. Scandal narrowly averted. A satisfactory resolution all around, if I might say so-”

Chambers reddened. “Yes, well, this one might just take the edge off your attitude, Inspector.”

“Sir?” Annie raised her eyebrows. She couldn’t stop herself baiting Chambers. He had the kind of arrogant, self- important bearing that cried out for pricking. She knew it could be bad for her career, but even with the rekindling of her ambition, Annie had sworn to herself that her career wasn’t worth anything if it cost her her soul. Besides, she had an odd sort of faith that good coppers like Banks, Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe and ACC McLaughlin might have more say in her future than pillocks like Chambers, who, everyone knew, was a lazy slob just waiting for retirement. Still, she hadn’t been a lot more careful with Banks at first, either, and it was only her good fortune that he had been charmed and seduced by her insubordination rather than angered by it. Gristhorpe, poor man, was a saint, and she hardly ever saw Red Ron McLaughlin, so she didn’t get a chance to piss him off.

“Yes,” Chambers went on, warming to his task, “I think you’ll find this one a bit different from toasted teacakes. This’ll wipe the grin off your face.”

“Perhaps you’d care to tell me about it, sir?”

Chambers tossed a thin folder toward her. It slipped off the edge of the desk on to Annie’s knees and then to the floor before she could catch it. She didn’t want to bend over and pick it up so that Chambers could have a bird’s-eye view of her knickers, so she left it where it was. Chambers’s eyes narrowed and they stared at one another for a few seconds, but finally he eased himself out of his chair and picked it up himself. The effort made his face red. He slammed the file down harder on the desk in front of her.

“Seems a probationary PC in West Yorkshire has overdone it a bit with her baton and they want us to look into