“
He grinned at his own weak joke. Banks didn’t follow suit.
Banks knew what he meant, though. Sexual predators who had done what this man had done to Hayley Daniels didn’t usually stop at just one victim, unless the killer was a personal enemy of Hayley’s, an area that remained to be explored. “What if she isn’t his first victim?”
he said.
“Sir?”
“Get on the National Database,” Banks went on. “See if you can find any similar incidents in the last eighteen months, anywhere in the country. Get Jim Hatchley to help you. He’s not much good with a computer, but he knows his way around the county forces.”
“Yes, sir,” said Templeton.
A few years ago, Banks knew, such information would not have been easily available, but a lot had changed in the wake of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation and other interforce fiascos. Now, belatedly, Banks thought, they had come kicking and screaming into the twenty-first 8 0 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
century with the realization that criminals don’t respect city, county or even country borders.
“I still wonder why she went into The Maze alone,” Templeton said, almost to himself. “No one went in with her or waited for her to come back.”
“She was well pissed,” said Banks. “They all were. You could see that for yourself. People don’t think straight when they’re pissed. They lose their inhibitions and their fears, and sometimes it’s only your fears that keep you alive. I’ll send DC Wilson out to the college. He looks young enough to be a student there himself. We’ve got to find those people she was with, and the odds are that they were fellow students. She talked to them. You can see her doing it. They talked to her. It looked as if they were maybe trying to persuade her not to go. Someone must know something.”
“She could have arranged to meet someone in there earlier. The Maze, that is.”
“She could have,” Banks agreed. “Again, we need to talk to her friends about that. We need to interview everyone she met that night from the time they set out to the time she went into that alley. We’ve let ourselves be sidetracked by Joseph Randall.”
“I’m still not sure about him,” said Templeton.
“Me, neither,” Banks agreed. “But we have to broaden the inquiry.
Look, before you get cracking on that database, have another word with the bartender who was on duty at The Fountain on Saturday night. Find out if there were any incidents in the pub itself. Any sign of him on the tapes?”
“Oddly enough, yes, sir,” said Templeton.
“Why oddly?”
“Well, he wheeled his bicycle out of the front door and locked up.”
“What’s so strange about that?”
“It was nearly half past two in the morning.”
“Maybe he’s a secret drinker. What did he have to say?”
“He wasn’t there when the lads canvassed the pubs yesterday. Day off. Nobody’s talked to him yet.”
“Interesting. If he’s not there today, find out where he lives and pay F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
8 1
him a visit. Ask him what he was doing there so late and see if he remembers anything more. We know Hayley and her friends left The Fountain, had a discussion in the market square, then three minutes later she left to go down Taylor’s Yard. Maybe something happened in the pub? It’s almost the last place she was seen alive in public.”
“Yes, sir.”
Templeton left the viewing room. Banks took the remote control and rewound the surveillance tape. He pressed “play” again and watched Hayley Daniels argue with her friends and head down Taylor’s Yard. He couldn’t read her lips; the tape was of too poor a quality.
There was also an annoying, f lickering strip of light, as you get on old film prints, behind the group, beside Taylor’s Yard. It disappeared.
When Hayley stretched her arms out for balance, she could touch both sides of the alley easily. The glitter on the cheap plastic belt around her waist caught the headlights of a passing car.
After she had disappeared into the darkness, Banks rewound and watched the tape one more time. They might be able to isolate and enhance the license plate of that car, he thought, reasoning that if the driver had seen a pretty girl walking into The Maze alone, he might have zipped around the back and entered from the car park, where there were no CCTV cameras, and seized his opportunity. It was a long shot, but in the absence of anything else, it was worth a try.
Banks called DC Wilson down from the squad room.
T H E R E WA S no point in going all the way back to Whitby first, Annie realized, as she aimed the car toward Leeds on the M1. Not when she could ring DI Ken Blackstone at Millgarth and find out exactly where on Park Square Constance Wells practiced law.
“Annie,” said Blackstone. “How nice to hear from you. How’s things?”
