“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” said Banks. “Calm down. Take it easy. I’m just trying to find out as much as I can about what happened this morning.”
“Nothing happened this morning! I went to the storage room and I saw . . . I saw . . .” He put his hands to his head and his chest started heaving, as if he were having difficulty breathing. “Oh, God . . . I saw . . .”
“Can I get you anything?” Banks asked, afraid that Randall was having a heart attack.
“Pills,” he gasped. “They’re in my jacket pocket.” He pointed, and Banks saw a navy sports jacket hanging on the back of the door. He took out a small bottle of pills, noting that it was labeled “Activan sublingual,”
prescribed by a Dr. Llewelyn, and passed it to Randall, who opened it with shaking hands and placed a tiny tablet under his tongue.
“Water?” Banks asked.
3 8 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
Randall shook his head. “See what I mean?” he said a few moments later. “It’s my nerves. Shattered. Never been strong. I get anxiety attacks.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Randall,” said Banks, feeling his patience running out. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel compassion for anyone who found a dead body, but Randall seemed to be pushing everything just a little over the top. “Perhaps we can get back to your account of what happened next, if it isn’t too painful.”
Randall gave him a glare to indicate that the sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. “It
I can’t get the image out of my mind, out of my memory. That poor girl. As if she were just . . . asleep.”
“But you knew she was dead?”
“Yes. You can tell. I mean, there’s something . . . something missing, isn’t there? Nobody home. Just a shell.”
Banks knew the feeling and had often put it that way himself. “The image will fade in time,” he said, though he doubted that it would.
None of his had. “Just tell me exactly what happened. Try to visualize it. Concentrate on the details. There might be something important you’ve overlooked.”
Randall seemed to have calmed down. “All right,” he said. “All right, I’ll try.”
“How dark was it in the room?”
“Quite dark. I mean, I couldn’t really make anything out until I turned on the light. It’s just a bare bulb, as you probably know, but it was enough.”
“And you saw her straightaway?”
“Yes. On the pile of remnants.”
“Did you know her?”
“Of course not.”
“Ever seen her before?”
“No.”
“Did you touch her at all?”
“Why would I touch her?”
“To check if she was still alive, perhaps?”
“No, I didn’t. It never really occurred to me.”
F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
3 9
“So what did you do next?”
Randall shifted in his chair and tugged at his collar. “I just . . . I suppose I just stood there a few moments, in shock, taking it all in. You have to understand that at first it seemed so unreal. I kept thinking she would get up and run out giggling, that it was some sort of practical joke.”
“Have any of the local young people played practical jokes on you before?”
“No. Why?”
“Never mind. You said earlier that you knew she was dead.”
“That was later. These things can run through your mind at the same time. It was the shock, I suppose.”
“Did you touch anything in the room?”
“Only the door. And the light switch. I never got beyond the doorway. As soon as I saw her I stopped where I was.”
“And when you’d got over the shock?”
“I thought I’d go into the shop and dial 999, then I realized the police station was just across the square, and it would probably make more sense to go over there. So I did.”
“Can you give me any idea of how long it was, between your finding the body and getting to the station?”
“Not really. I had no concept of time. I mean, I just acted. I ran across the square.”
