“Easy for you to say. But look at it from my point of view. Hayley makes her way to your house the worse for wear. You’re fed up of her drunken antics and you tell her so, in no uncertain terms. Maybe she teases you, makes fun of your age or something, and you see red. She doesn’t want it, but she’s drunk and you don’t care what she wants. You know what you want. So you do it anyway. She struggles, but that just makes it all the more exciting. Afterward she’s making such a fuss, maybe even threatening to tell the college what you’ve done. You can’t have that, so you strangle her. Then you’re stuck with a body. Best thing you can think of at short notice is to shove it in the boot of your car and dump it in The Maze.” A few of the facts didn’t quite match the story Banks was telling, such as the violence of the rape, the timing, and the CCTV tapes, but Austin wasn’t to know that. “How am I doing?”
“You should write detective fiction,” Austin said. “With an imagination like that, I’m surprised you waste it on being a policeman.”
“You’d be surprised how useful imagination is in my job,” said Banks. “Am I at least close?”
“Miles away.” Austin leaned back in his chair. “Inspector, it would save us all a lot of trouble if you would just believe that I didn’t kill Hayley. Whatever you might think of me, I really did love her, and if I could help you, I would.” He glanced at Winsome. “I’m sorry I lied, but I really didn’t want to lose my job over this and have my name dragged through the mud. Those are the only reasons I did what I did.”
“How well did you know Hayley?” Banks asked.
“Well enough, I suppose. As I said, we’d been together for about F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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two months, but I’d known her for about a year in all. And before you ask, there was nothing between us in that time.” He paused. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. Whatever you might have heard about Hayley’s behavior on Saturday night, it was . . . youthful high spirits. Just that. She sometimes needed to let off steam. Most of the time, as anyone will tell you, Hayley was an intelligent, sober, quiet-spoken, hardworking and ambitious young woman. That’s what I meant when I referred to her maturity. Mostly she found boys of her own age trivial and obsessed with only one thing.”
“And you weren’t?”
“I’ll admit that knowing Hayley gave me a new lease on life in that direction, but you mustn’t make the mistake of assuming that was what it was all about.”
“What was it all about?”
“Sharing a nice meal. Just being together. Talking. Going for walks.
Holding hands. Breakfast in bed. Going to a concert. Listening to classical music. Cuddling. Discussing a book we’d both read. Simple things. I could hardly wait until we were able to come out in the open with it. The secrecy was such agony. I’ll miss her more than you could ever imagine.”
Banks felt jealous. He hadn’t done any of those things with anyone for years, if ever, or felt that way about anyone. He and his ex-wife, Sandra, had had such different tastes and interests that their lives had been parallel rather than joined. And when the parallel lines started to diverge slightly, the end had come quickly. Even with Annie there had been more differences than things in common. Still, he wasn’t going to let sentimentality and sympathy for Austin cloud his vision.
“You say you want to help,” he went on. “If you didn’t kill her, have you any idea who did?”
“I don’t know. Some maniac, by the sound of it.”
“The truth could be closer to home,” said Winsome. “What about enemies? Is there anyone in her immediate circle she had problems with?”
“There’s Stuart Kinsey, I suppose. He was always chasing after her.”
“But you told me he wouldn’t harm anyone,” said Winsome.
“I still don’t think he would,” said Austin, “but you asked me, and 2 0 2
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I can’t think of anyone else. Hayley just wasn’t the sort of person to make enemies.”
“Well, she made one,” said Banks, standing up. “Thanks for your time, Malcolm. And stick around. We might need to talk to you again.”
Intense and rejected in love. That was a very bad combination, Banks knew. A very bad combination indeed. And Stuart Kinsey had admitted to going into The Maze, ostensibly to spy on Hayley, to find out whom she was seeing. That gave him motive and opportunity.
Could means be far behind? Time for another word with Mr. Kinsey.
I T WA S a good hour and a half or more from Whitby to Leeds, depending on the traffic, and this was the second time Annie had done it in two days. Her feelings were still smarting from the lunch with Eric. It hadn’t taken him long to show his true colors. Now she worried about what other photos he might still have on his mobile or his computer. What would he do with them? Post them on YouTube?
How could she have been so bloody foolish, drunk or not? Her hands gripped the steering wheel tight and her teeth gritted as she thought about it and remembered what he said. He had been lashing out just to be cruel, of course, but was there any truth in it? Had she seemed too desperate, too eager, too
She drove along Stanningley Road, turned off before Bramley, and found her way to The Hill. The Paynes had lived close to the top, just before the railway bridge, on the right as you drove down, and Claire Toth and her family lived practically over the street, where a row of old detached houses with overgrown gardens stood at the top of a steep rise. It was six years since Annie had last driven by, and then there had been police barriers and crime scene tape all over the place.
Now that was all gone, of course, but so was number 35, and in its place stood two new redbrick semis. Well, she supposed no one would want to live in the “House of Payne,” as the newspapers had called it, or next door, for that matter.
As she slowed down, Annie shivered at a sudden memory of the time she went down into the cellar: the
