“That’s right,” said Kinsey. “The music was bloody awful, some sort of the industrial hip-hop subelectronic disco . . . I don’t know what. It was loud, too. I felt . . . You know, we’d all been drinking, and it was hot in there. I was thinking about Hayley, just wishing she’d come with us and feeling jealous that, you know, she was off to see some other lucky bloke.”
“So you were upset?” Winsome asked.
“I suppose so. Not really. I mean, I wasn’t in a rage or anything, just more disappointed. I needed a p—— I needed to go to the toilet, too, so I went to the back of the club, where the toilets are, and I saw the door. I knew where it went. I’d been out that way before when I . . .”
“When you what?” Banks asked.
Kinsey managed a rare smile. “When I was under eighteen and the police came.”
Banks smiled back. “I know what you mean.” He’d been drinking in pubs since the age of sixteen. “Go on.”
“I didn’t think she’d have gone far. I know it’s confusing back there, so I figured she’d stick close to the square, just out of sight, maybe round the first corner. I don’t know what I was thinking. Honest. I suppose it was my plan to follow her and see where she went afterward, try to find out who she was seeing. I certainly wasn’t going to hurt her or anything.”
“What happened next?”
“You know what happened next. I didn’t find her. I was quite deep in The Maze before I knew it, and I thought I heard something from back toward the square. I walked closer, but I didn’t hear it again.”
“Can you describe the sound again?”
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P E T E R R O B I N S O N
“It was like a muff led sort of thump, as if you hit a door or something with a pillow round your fist. And there was like a scream . . . no, not a scream . . . that would have really made me think there was something wrong, but like a gasp, a cry. I mean, to be honest . . .”
“What?” Banks asked.
Kinsey shot a sheepish glance at Winsome, then looked back at Banks.
“I thought it was, you know, maybe someone having a quick one.”
“Okay, Stuart,” Banks said. “You’re doing fine. Carry on.”
“That’s it, really. I was scared. I scarpered. I didn’t want to interrupt anyone on the job. It can make a bloke pretty violent, that, being interrupted, you know . . . on the job.”
“Did you hear anything else?”
“There was the music.”
“What music? You didn’t mention that before.”
Kinsey frowned. “I don’t know. I’d forgotten. It was familiar, just a snatch of some sort of rap-type thing, but I just can’t place it, you know, the way it drives you crazy sometimes when you know what something is, it’s like on the tip of your tongue. Anyway, it just came and went, like . . . just a short burst, as if a door opened and closed, or a car shot by . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Like what?” said Banks. “Try to remember. It could be important.”
“Well, it just started and stopped, really short, you know, passing by, like a car going by.”
“Can you remember anything else about it?”
“No,” said Kinsey.
“What did you do next?”
“I went back to the Bar None. I walked down that arcade that leads into Castle Road—I’d gone that far into The Maze and it was the closest exit. Then I had to go back in the club the front way because the back door only opens out unless you wedge it, and I hadn’t. It’s got one of those bars you push down, but only on the inside. I had a stamp on my hand so I could get back in no problem.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it. I’m sorry. Can I go? I really have to finish that essay.”
There was no point keeping him, Banks thought. “Try to remember that music you heard,” he said. “It might help. Here’s my card.”
F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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Kinsey took the card and left.
“Do you really think the music’s important, sir?” Winsome asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” said Banks. “There was a car passing by on the CCTV tape, and Stuart said he thought the music might have been coming from a passing car. But the timing isn’t quite right, and we’re pretty sure the people in the car were going home from an anniversary dinner. They were in their fifties, too, so I doubt they’d have been listening to rap. Still, it’s a new piece of information. Who knows what might come of it?”
“What do you think, sir?” said Winsome. “I mean, in general.
Where are we?”
“I think we’re running out of suspects pretty damn quickly,” Banks said. “First Joseph Randall, then Malcolm Austin and now Stuart Kinsey.”
“You don’t think he did it?”
