used to sing a song called that? Banks would know. Banks.
The more she thought about Saturday night, the more convinced she became that it wasn’t the age difference that bothered her. After all, if it were the other way round, if she were a twenty-two-year-old woman, it would seem perfectly normal for most men of forty and above to sleep with her—she bet there wasn’t one of them would turn down a Keira Knightley or a Scarlett Johansson. There were also
plenty of women in their forties who had bragged to Annie about making youthful conquests. She ought to be dead chuffed with herself for pulling Eric, rather than feeling so cheap and dirty. But she knew that she felt that way because that wasn’t who she was.
Perhaps she felt so bad because she had always believed that she chose to sleep with men she could talk to in the morning, and the fact that they were often older than her, more mature, like Banks, never seemed to matter. They had more experience, more to talk about. The young were so self-obsessed, so image- conscious. Even when she was younger, she had felt the same way, had always preferred older men and thought boys her own age somewhat shallow and lacking in everything except sexual energy and frequency. Perhaps that was enough for some women. Perhaps it ought to be enough for her, but it wasn’t; otherwise she wouldn’t feel so bad.
What upset her the most of all, and what refused to go away, was that she hadn’t known what she was doing. She had lost control. For some reason, she had been drunk enough that being fancied by a fit young lad when she’d just turned forty and was starting to feel ancient had F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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appealed to her. Waking up with a blinding hangover and a stranger was never a good thing, in Annie’s experience, but in this case the fact that he was young enough to be her son only made it worse.
And she couldn’t even claim that she had been coerced or date-raped or anything. There had been no Rohypnol or GHB, only alcohol and a couple of joints, and the worst thing about it was that, pissed as she had been, she knew she had been a willing participant in whatever had gone on. She couldn’t remember the details of the sex, only hurried fumblings, graspings, rough grunts and a sense of everything being over very quickly, but she could remember her initial excitement and enthusiasm. In the end, she assumed that it had been as un-satisfactory for him as it had been for her.
Then there was the episode with Banks last night. Again, what on earth had she thought she was doing? Now things could never be the same; she’d never be able to face him with any self-respect again. And she had put both Banks and Winsome in an awkward position, driving in that state. She could have lost her license, got suspended from her job. And that seemed the least of her problems.
The colors of the sea changed as she drove down the winding hill, and soon she was beside the houses, stopping at traffic lights in the streets of the town center, busy with normal life. A herd of reporters had massed outside the station, waving microphones and tape recorders at anyone coming or going. Annie made her way through with the help of the uniformed officers on crowd control and went to the squad room, where she found the usual scene of controlled chaos. She had hardly got in when Ginger came up to her. “You all right, ma’am?
You look at bit peaky.”
“I’m fine,” Annie growled. “Those bloody reporters are getting to me, that’s all. Anything new?”
“Got a message for you from an ex-DI called Les Ferris,” Ginger said.
“Who’s he when he’s at home?”
“Local. Used to work out of here, but he’s down in Scarborough now. Put out to pasture, officially, but they give him a cubbyhole and employ him as a civilian researcher. Pretty good at it, apparently.”
“And?”
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P E T E R R O B I N S O N
“Just says he wants to see you, that’s all.”
“Aren’t I the pop u lar one?”
“He says it’s about an old case, but he thinks it might be relevant to the Lucy Payne investigation.”
“Okay,” said Annie. “I’ll try to sneak out and fit him in later. Anything else come up while I’ve been away?”
“Nothing,
ma’am. We’ve talked to the people at Mapston Hall again. Nothing new there. If someone did know that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne, they’re hiding it well.”
“We’re going to have to put a team on checking for leaks, dig a lot deeper,” Annie said. “We need to look very closely at everyone in Julia Ford’s practice, the Mapston Hall staff, the hospital, social services, the lot. See if you can get someone local to help down in Nottingham and divide the rest up among our best researchers. Tell them it’ll mean overtime.”
“Yes, guv,” said Ginger.
“And I think we need to ask questions in other directions, too,”
said Annie, taking the folders out of her briefcase. “We’re going to have to widen the base of our inquiry. Take this list of names and divide it up between yourself, DS Naylor and the rest of the team, will you? They’re all people who suffered one way or another at Lucy Payne’s hands six years ago, most of them in West Yorkshire. I’ve already liaised with the locals there, and they’ll give us as much help as they can. We need statements, alibis, the lot. I’ll pay a visit to Claire Toth myself tomorrow. She was close to the Paynes’ last victim, blamed herself for what happened. Any questions?”
“No, ma’am,” said Ginger, scanning the list. “But it certainly seems as if we’ve got our work cut out.”
“I’ve got more, specially for you, Ginger.”
“How nice, ma’am.”
