“Not that old,” said Naylor. “I reckon that sort of injury ages a person prematurely, but if you can see past the hair and the pasty complexion, you’ll see she’s not more than forty or so. Maybe late thirties. And she was probably quite a looker. Good cheekbones, a nice mouth.”
“Anyway,” Naylor added, “it takes all sorts.”
“Oh, Tommy, don’t come the world-weary cynic with me. It might suit your rumpled appearance, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. You saw her, the chair, halo brace and all, and you heard what the doc said. She probably couldn’t move at all. Maybe even couldn’t talk, either. What kind of a threat could she have posed to anyone?”
“I’ll bet she wasn’t always in a wheelchair,” said Ginger from the backseat.
“Good point,” said Annie, turning her head. “Very good point.
And as soon as we find out who she was we’ll start digging into her past. What do you think of the bloke who found her, Tommy?”
“If he did it, he’s a damn good actor. I think he’s telling us the truth.”
Tommy Naylor was a solid veteran in his early fifties with no interest in the greasy poles of ambition and promotion. In the short while they had been working together, Annie had come to respect his opinions. She didn’t know much about him, or about his private life, except rumor had it that his wife was dying of cancer. He was taciturn and undemonstrative, a man of few words, and she didn’t know whether he approved of her or not, but he got the job done without question, and he showed initiative when it was called for. And she trusted his judgment. That was as much as she could ask.
“So someone took her walkies out there, cut her throat and just left her to bleed to death?” she said.
“Looks that way,” said Naylor.
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Annie mulled that over for a moment, then said, “Right. Ginger, you go see about setting up the murder room. We’ll need a manned mobile unit out here, too. And, Tommy, let’s you and me get down to Mapston Hall and see if we can find out if that’s where she came from.
Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll even offer us a cup of tea.”
W H I L E D E T E C T I V E Superintendent Gervaise went to the station to set up the mechanics of the murder investigation and deal with the press, the various experts performed their specialist tasks, and Detective Sergeant Hatchley orga nized a canvassing of the town-center
pubs, Banks decided to pay a visit to Joseph Randall, the leather-shop owner who had discovered Hayley Daniels’s body.
Hyacinth Walk was an unremarkable street of run-down prewar redbrick terraces just off King Street, about halfway down the hill between the market square and the more modern Leaview Estate, a good fifteen- or twenty-minute walk from The Maze. Inside, Joseph Randall’s house was starkly furnished and neat, with plain coral wallpaper. A large TV set, turned off at the moment, held center stage in the living room.
Randall seemed still dazed by his experience, as well he might be, Banks thought. It’s not every day you stumble across the partially clad body of a young girl. While everyone else was no doubt eating their Sunday lunch, Randall didn’t seem to have anything cooking. Radio 2 was playing in the background: Parkinson interviewing some empty-headed celebrity on his
“Sit down, please,” said Randall, pushing his thick-lensed glasses up on the bridge of his long thin nose. Behind them, his gray eyes looked bloodshot. His wispy gray hair was uncombed, f lattened to the skull in some places and sticking up in others. Along with the shabby beige cardigan he wore over his round shoulders, it made him appear older than his fifty-five years. And maybe this morning’s trauma had something to do with that, too.
Banks sat on a brown leather armchair which proved to be more F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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comfortable than it seemed. A gilt-edge mirror hung at an angle over the fireplace, and he could see himself ref lected in it. He found the image distracting. He tried to ignore it as best he could while he spoke to Randall.
“I’d just like to get a bit of clarification,” he began. “You said you discovered the body when you went round to the storage building to pick up some samples. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“But it was Sunday morning. What on earth could you possibly want with a few swatches of leather on a Sunday?”
“When you run your own business, Mr. Banks, you find yourself working the oddest hours. I’m sure it must be the same for you.”
“In a way,” said Banks, thinking that he had little choice in the matter, especially when it came to murder. “Who were the samples for?”
“For me.”
“Why?”
“Someone asked me to make a woman’s handbag for his wife’s birthday, wanted to know what the options were.”
“You didn’t have samples in the shop?”
“Some, but not the ones I wanted.”
