When Annie walked into the Western Area Headquarters at about half past ten, she could sense the strained and melancholy atmosphere.
Even if Banks hadn’t told her, she would have known immediately that a policeman had been killed. There was no other atmosphere like it.
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People bent over their tasks with gritted teeth, tempers were short and over it all lay a pall of shock and outrage.
Banks was in his office with Winsome standing beside him as he shuff led through a pile of papers on his desk. He stood up to greet Annie, and she could detect none of the hostility from him that she might have expected after their last meeting. That only made her feel worse.
He ought to hate her. Of the two, only Winsome seemed frosty. She left almost immediately after a brusque “hello.” Banks gestured for Annie to sit down and called for coffee.
“Sorry I rang so early,” he said. “I hope you didn’t have a wild night on the town last night.”
“Why would you think that?” Annie said.
“No reason. It was Saturday night, that’s all. People do tend to go out. Or maybe you stayed in with your boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend?”
“The one you told me about the other night. The young lad.”
Annie reddened. “Oh, him. Yeah, well, have you ever had a wild night out in Whitby?”
“Many times,” said Banks, with a smile.
“Then you know more about the hidden charms of the place than I do. Anyway, I was already up and working when you rang.” She paused.
“I really am sorry to hear about Kev. I wasn’t a fan, as you know, but no matter what I thought of him as a man or as a detective, I’m sorry about what happened to him.”
“He wasn’t a man, really,” said Banks. “The poor sod was just a boy. A lot of us seemed to forget that.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was headstrong, impetuous, immature.”
Annie managed a weak grin. “Those qualities are the prerogative of youth all of a sudden, are they?”
“Touche,” said Banks. “Anyway, that’s what I want to talk to you about, really. What happened to Kev.” Banks gave her a quick run-down of what he knew so far, most of which he had pieced together from Chelsea Pilton’s eyewitness account and scraps of information from PC Kerrigan, Stefan Nowak and Dr. Burns. “You’ll agree there are similarities with the Lucy Payne murder?”
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“My God, yes.” Annie ran her hand through her tousled hair. “I had no idea.” She told Banks about her conversations with Sarah Bingham and Keith McLaren, and how the mysterious Kirsten Farrow’s name kept coming up. “What the hell is going on, Alan?” she asked.
“I wish I knew,” said Banks. “But whatever it is, I don’t like it.”
“You and me, neither. Any ideas on who this mystery woman is?”
“I suppose it could be this Kirsten. Anything on Maggie Forrest yet?”
“Yes. Ginger tracked her down through her publishers. She’s back in Leeds. I was thinking of paying her a visit this afternoon. But what makes you think of her? I mean, she might have had a good motive for Lucy Payne’s murder, but she had none at all for Templeton’s, as far as we know.”
“True,” said Banks. “It could be two different killers. We’ll try to keep an open mind, but my guess, like yours, is that if it’s not Maggie, it could be Kirsten Farrow somehow, and for some reason, returned, remodeled. But how or why, or who or where she is, I have no idea. I don’t even know how we can get a lead on that. She dropped out of sight years ago. It’s a pity the Australian’s memory isn’t any better.”
“The only thing I can think of,” said Annie, “is to go back to the source of the leak again.”
“Leak?”
“Yes. It was one of the first things we started thinking about when we discovered that Karen Drew was really Lucy Payne. Who knew?
And how?”
“And?”
“We still don’t know. Our people have been questioning the staff at Mapston Hall, and the Nottingham police have been helping us out down there at the hospital and social services. I mean, it’s a tricky one.
Anyone could be lying, and we’d be hard pushed to prove it.”
“What we need,” said Banks, “is a connection between one of the people who knew that Karen was Lucy, and someone who might possibly be Kirsten Farrow or Maggie Forrest, or
“Yes,” said Annie, “but how do we unearth that? And how would we know if we’d found it? We don’t even know where to start looking F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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