“I’ve tried to stop about twenty times,” said Ferris, “but somehow I just can’t seem to manage it. I’m about to turn sixty-five next month, so at this point I think I’d better just resign myself to my fate, don’t you?”
That wasn’t what Annie had meant. She had been referring to the smoking ban coming into effect in July. But it didn’t matter. “Sixty-five isn’t old,” she said. “You might just as easily live to be ninety. If you stop.” She raised her glass. “Cheers. To ninety.”
“Cheers. I’ll drink to that.” After he drank, Ferris inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
“You said you had something to tell me,” Annie said.
“Yes. I’m not really sure if any of it’s relevant, but when I heard about the identity of your victim it rang a bell.”
“I’m hardly surprised,” said Annie. “Lucy Payne was quite notorious in her day.”
“No, it’s not that. Not Lucy Payne.”
“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning?”
“Yes,” said Ferris. “Yes, perhaps I had. I haven’t always been a humble researcher, you know,” he went on. “I’ve put in my time on 1 6 8
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
East Yorkshire CID, as it was then. I might be past it now, but I was quite the dashing young detective at one time.” His eyes twinkled as he spoke.
“I’ll bet you were,” said Annie, hoping a bit of f lattery might help him get a move on. She had no particu lar plans for the eve ning, but she was looking forward to a quiet night in her room watching TV.
“Not that we ever got many murders along this stretch of coast,” he went on, “which is probably why I thought of it. People say I’ve got a bee in my bonnet. For some reason, though, it’s always haunted me.
Perhaps because it all ended up as mysterious as it began.”
“What?” said Annie. “You’ve got me intrigued.”
“A case I worked on back in 1989. A mere callow youth of forty-seven, I was then. I’d just made DS. None of your accelerated promotion rubbish in those days. Back then, you earned your stripes.”
“So I’ve heard,” Annie said.
“Aye, well, not that there aren’t plenty of good men around these days. A few women, too,” he added hastily.
“This 1989 case,” Annie said, lest he put his foot even farther in his mouth. “What exactly brought it to your mind when you heard about Lucy Payne?”
“I was just getting to that.” Ferris drained his pint. “Another?”
“Not for me. I’m driving,” said Annie. “But let me get you one.”
“Aye, all right,” Ferris said. “Women’s lib and all that. I’ll have another pint of Sneck-Lifter, please.”
“Sneck-Lifter?”
“Aye. I know it’s strong, but I don’t have far to go. Not driving, like you.”
Annie went to the bar and asked for a pint of Sneck-Lifter. The barmaid smiled and pulled it for her. She jerked her head over at Ferris. “It’ll take more than this to lift his sneck,” she said.
Annie laughed. “Luckily,” she said, “I won’t be around to find out.”
The barmaid laughed with her, handed Annie her change and said,
“Cheers, love.”
Back at the table, Ferris thanked her for the pint and stared out of the window toward the sea. “Aye,” he said. “September 1989. Nasty business F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
1 6 9
it was. I was working out of Whitby then, way you are now. Mostly quiet apart from a few pickpockets in high season, the occasional pub brawl, break-in or domestic incident.”
“What happened?” Annie asked him.
“Well, that’s just it,” Ferris said, scratching his chin. “We never rightly did find out. It was all nobbut speculation and conjecture.
Based on what few facts we had, of course. We did our best. Anyroad, it’s stayed with me all these years.”
Annie sipped some beer. Might as well relax and let him tell it in his own time, she thought as she noticed the shadows lengthening outside. “I’m sure you did,” she said. “But what makes you think it’s linked to Lucy Payne’s murder?”
“I never said that it was. It’s just a funny coincidence, that’s all, and if you’re as good a copper as you’re supposed to be, you won’t trust coincidence any more than I do.”
“I don’t,” said Annie. “Go on.”
“First off, we don’t get many murders in these parts, and you tend to remember all of them. We got even fewer back then. It started when a local bloke, a cabinetmaker called Jack Grimley, disappeared one night after leaving a pub called The Lucky Fisherman. A couple of days later his body washed up on the beach over Sandsend way.”
“Murdered?”
