“What are you saying?” said Randall, face pale, mouth gaping.
“That the chances it was someone else who left those semen traces on Hayley Daniels’s body are about five billion to one,” said Banks.
“Am I right, DS Nowak?”
“About that, yes,” said Nowak.
“And that’s good enough for any court in the country,” said Banks.
“Joseph Randall, I’m charging you with the murder of Hayley Daniels. If you do not say something now that you later rely on in court, it may be held against you. Anything you do say may be taken down in evidence.” Banks stood up and opened the door. Two burly constables walked in. “Take him down to the custody suite,” said Banks.
“You can’t do this to me!” said Randall. “Sebastian, help me! Stop them. That sample was taken under duress.”
“You gave your consent,” Banks said. “We have the waiver.”
“Under duress. Sebastian! Stop them. Please don’t let them do this to me.”
Crawford wouldn’t look his client in the eye. “There’s nothing I can do right now, Joseph,” he said. “They’re quite within their rights.
But believe me, I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”
“Get me out of this!” yelled Randall, red- faced, twisting his head back toward Crawford as the constables dragged him out of the interview room. “Sebastian! Get me out of this now!”
Crawford was pale and hunched. He managed to summon up only the grimmest of smiles as he edged past Banks into the corridor and followed his client down the stairs.
F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
1 7 7
“ N O W T H I S is where it gets really interesting,” said Ferris after a long swig of Sneck-Lifter. He could certainly put it away, Annie thought, checking her watch. She could write off
“A week or so after we found Jack Grimley’s body and the Australian lad got hurt, another local chap by the name of Greg Eastcote was reported missing by a workmate. Apparently, he hadn’t turned up at his job for several days. He was a delivery man for a fish wholesaler.
We never found him, nor any trace of him.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s always more?” said Annie. “This case is starting to resemble a hall of mirrors.” There was perhaps a quarter of an inch of beer left in her glass, but she wasn’t going to have another one, not this time. Control. Getting it back.
“It is, rather, isn’t it?” said Ferris. “Anyway, we went into Eastcote’s house to see if we could find any clues to his disappearance. He lived alone. I was there, along with Paddy Cromer. We had no evidence at all that there was any connection with what happened to Grimley and McLaren, but such mysterious disappearances and violent assaults were pretty rare around these parts, as I said. As far as his workmates were concerned, Eastcote was happy with his job and seemed generally un-complicated and worry-free, if perhaps rather quiet and antisocial.
A bit of an ‘odd duck,’ as one of them put it. To be honest, we didn’t know what we’d stumbled into at the time.”
“And now?”
Ferris laughed. “I’m not much the wiser.” He drank some more beer and resumed his tale. The lights dimmed and the pub started to fill up with evening drinkers. Annie felt somehow cut off from the laughter and gaiety of the crowd, as if she and Ferris were adrift on their own island of reality, or unreality, depending on how you saw it. She couldn’t explain why she felt that way, but somehow she knew that what Ferris was telling her was important, and that it had something to do with 1 7 8 P E T E R
R O B I N S O N
Lucy Payne’s murder, though Lucy would have been only ten in 1989.
“It was what we found there, in his home, that puzzled us,” Ferris said.
“In almost every respect it was a perfectly normal house. Neat and tidy, clean, the usual books, TV and videos. Normal.”
“But?”
“This never made the media,” Ferris said, “but in one of the side-board drawers, we found seven locks of hair tied up in pink ribbons.”
Annie felt her chest constrict. Ferris must have noticed some change in her because he went on quickly. “No, there’s nothing normal about that, is there?”
“Did you? . . . I mean . . .”
“Everyone knew there had been a serial killer operating in the north, and the general feeling was that now we’d found him, or at least found out who he was. We never did find Eastcote himself. As far as our tally was concerned, he had claimed six victims, but there were other girls missing, other unexplained disappearances, and one girl who survived.”
Annie raised an eyebrow.
“Kirsten Farrow. Someone interrupted him before he could finish her off,” Ferris went on. “She was in a pretty bad way for a long time, but she recovered.”
“Did you talk to her?”
