“Yes. She’d been staying in Leeds at the time with a friend called Sarah Bingham. She was vague, Kirsten, but you can expect that when someone suffered the way she did, poor lass. She really couldn’t remember much about what happened to her at all. We also consulted with the investigators on the case, Detective Superintendent Elswick and his DS, Dicky Heywood. Greg Eastcote’s delivery routes coincided with the disappearances and murders of all six girls and with Kirsten’s assault. We also managed to match Kirsten’s hair sample with one of the locks, so we know that he took a sample from her, even though she survived, and another lock matched that of his most recent victim. The others were . . . well, they’d been buried for a while, but we did our best. And you know what hair’s like at the best of times; it’s hardy and durable enough, but practically damned impossible to make a match that’ll stand up in court, and these were early days for F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
1 7 9
DNA. Too early. None of us had really heard much about it, and I doubt you could have got DNA from a hair follicle, even if there’d been one. But the hair had been shorn with sharp scissors, so that was pretty unlikely, anyway. And court was never an issue.”
“No?”
“Like I said, we never found Eastcote. A local woman said she thought she’d seen two people struggling on the cliff path just up past the abbey on the way to Robin Hood’s Bay, but she was a long way off, and she couldn’t tell us any more than that. We searched the area and found one of the fence posts had come out of the ground. It seemed as if someone had gone over the edge. We also found blood and fibers on the barbed wire, but we’d no way of knowing whose they were. We got Eastcote’s blood group from medical rec ords, of course, and it matched, but so did forty-four percent of the country’s.”
“Were there any more killings?”
“Not after that. Not around here.”
“You think he went over?”
“We didn’t know for certain, but it was a reasonable assumption that his body had been carried out to sea on the tide.”
“So what did you do?”
“What could we do? We followed a few minor leads, queried some of the local B and Bs. One woman remembered Keith McLaren staying at her guesthouse, and that he struck up a conversation with a young woman there. Seems only natural, I suppose, when you’re young.”
“Did you question him about it?”
“When he came out of his coma, yes. He did remember something about a girl. Apparently they had a drink together, but that’s all.”
“Name?”
“Didn’t remember. Who knows, maybe he remembers more now.
It’s been eighteen years.”
“Was there any follow-up?”
Ferris shook his head. “Years passed and nothing new came up.
You know what it’s like.” He laughed. “Not like books or telly where the detective won’t give up until he gets his man.”
“Or woman.”
“Aye. Anyway, officially there was no murder, remember. Jack 1 8 0
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
Grimley was killed by a fall, and Greg Eastcote disappeared. The only actual crime was the one against Keith McLaren, and he couldn’t remember anything, then he buggered off back to Australia. Pardon my French.” Ferris paused. “Besides, the feeling was that if Greg Eastcote was a serial killer, as he appeared to be, then someone had done us a bloody big favor.”
“I think you’d have been hard pushed telling that to Jack Grimley’s family, or to Keith McLaren.”
“Aye, well, I never said it sat well with me over the years, did I, but that’s the way things go, sometimes.”
“So you did nothing?”
“My hands were tied.”
“And that’s where it stands today?”
Ferris sighed. “Until now,” he said.
Annie frowned. The noise of laughter and conversation ebbed and f lowed around them. Behind the bar, a glass smashed. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “It’s a fascinating story, but you must realize there’s nothing to connect those events directly with what happened to Lucy Payne the other day except the bee in your bonnet. It’s been eighteen years. The whole idea’s ludicrous.”
“Yes, of course. I know that. But if Eastcote
“And Kirsten Farrow was the surviving victim . . .”
“The mysterious woman seen with Grimley and McLaren. Exactly.”
“But how could she be?” Annie said. “You told me yourself that she couldn’t have known who her attacker was, and she was in Leeds with her friend at the time of the crimes.”
Ferris shrugged. “That’s what she told us. And her friend corroborated it. But alibis can be fabricated. What if
