encounter and the present climate of their relationship.
“You won’t tell her I said anything?”
“Don’t worry,” said Banks. He saw the desk sergeant enter the pub, F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
1 8 3
glance around and walk straight toward him. He groaned. “Shit, Ernie, what do you want?” he said.
“Always nice to find a warm welcome, sir,” said Ernie.
“I’m sure it happens a lot when you’re always the bearer of good news.”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“I never do, but that’s not stopped you yet.”
“Bloke just came in, neighbor of Joseph Randall, the one you charged.”
“And?”
“Says Randall can’t possibly have done it, sir. Wants to talk to the man in charge.”
“
A N N I E M U L L E D over her conversation with Les Ferris as she drove on the A171, along the edge of the North York Moors, quiet at that time of evening, just after dark. She put some foot-tapping pop music on the radio to keep her going, but the chatter between songs irritated her so much that she turned it off. On the face of it, what Ferris had come up with sounded absurd: one murder, one serious assault and one unsolved disappearance of eighteen years ago, a mysterious woman seen in proximity to two of the three scenes. As he had said, there was only ever officially one crime: Keith McLaren’s assault.
What could any of this possibly have to do with what happened on Sunday? Curiously enough, Annie thought there were quite a few connections. First was location. There had been no other murders around the cliffs in the past eighteen years, so why again now? Second came the strong possibility of a female killer. Women murderers are much rarer than men. Third, two of the victims were serial killers, or 1 8 4
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
perceived by many to be serial killers: Greg Eastcote and Lucy Payne.
Four, the murderer of eighteen years ago had not been caught. And that led to the fifth and final point of similarity: If the killer had been around eighteen years ago, that put her at almost forty now, and that was about the only thing they knew about the elusive Mary. Mel Danvers thought she had been about that age. It was still very tenuous, but the more Annie thought about it, the more she became convinced that it at least merited some investigation.
What about Keith McLaren, the Australian? Perhaps he had recovered more of his memory now. It was all moot until Les Ferris came up with the hair samples, anyway, and then a lot depended on whether they could match Kirsten’s to any of the hairs found on Lucy Payne’s blanket.
If not, it was a washout, but if they did, they were in business.
It was a beautiful clear eve ning, Annie thought, as she passed the road to Robin Hood’s Bay. She could see the afterglow of the sunset, dark strata of red and purple silhouetting the western hills. To the east, over the North Sea, spread that magical shade of luminescent dark blue you saw only at the time of night opposite a sunset. A silver moon hung low to the north.
Soon Annie was amid the traffic lights and streetlights, and the pleasures of the open road were lost. She found a parking spot only yards from her temporary accommodation and let herself in. The place seemed cool and dark, as if it been abandoned far longer than it had. Perhaps the nicest thing about it, Annie thought, was that she could just see a wedge of sea between the rooftops. She turned the lights on, hung up her jacket and headed for the kitchenette. She hadn’t eaten dinner, had only sipped that one pint to Ferris’s three, and she could do with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese and crackers.
Tomorrow would be a busy day, she ref lected, as she put the plate and glass beside her on the desk and turned on her laptop. There were people connected with the Paynes’ victims to be interviewed, and now another line of inquiry coming out of Les Ferris’s story.
Only one thing was certain: Given the workload they had already, if they were to follow Ferris’s leads, they were going to be seriously overstretched. Which meant Annie had to approach Detective SuperF R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
1 8 5
intendent Brough for both overtime, as she had already promised Ginger, and for extra personnel. These were the two things no budget-conscious administrator liked to authorize these days. It would be hard to sell it to Brough, but she’d worry about that later. Besides, he was bound to have his hands full with the press.
The one good thing about Brough, Annie had learned in the short time she had been working at Eastern, was that he didn’t really listen.
He was easily distracted and tended to focus on matters of public opinion and image; he was also the kind of person who was well on to his response to the next press question before you’d finished speaking.
Consequently, a lot passed by him, which you could legitimately claim to have told him, and he tended to nod abruptly, agree and say okay simply to facilitate being able to move on, to say something he thought more interesting.
The Internet connection was slow. The guesthouse didn’t have broadband, and Annie had to rely on the phone line and the computer’s internal modem. But it was good enough for e-mail, which was all she really wanted. Tonight it seemed to take an unusually long time to download. She cursed whoever it was had decided to send her a large attachment, probably some silly joke or holiday snap, then she saw Eric’s name appear next to a paper clip and her heart constricted.
