“Did you ever see any signs of abuse?”
“You mean did he hit her and stuff?”
“Yes.”
“No. Nothing. I never saw any bruises or anything like that.”
“Did Lucy seem to change in any way?”
“What do you mean?”
“Recently. Did she become more withdrawn, seem afraid of anything?”
Pat chewed on her the edge of her thumb for a moment before answering. “She changed a bit the past few months, now you come to mention it,” she said finally. “I can’t say exactly when it started, but she seemed more nervy, more distracted, as if she had a problem, a lot on her mind.”
“Did she confide in you?”
“No. We’d drifted apart quite a bit by then. Was he really beating her? I can’t understand it, can you, how a woman, especially a woman like Lucy, can let that happen?”
Jenny could, but there was no point trying to convince Pat. If Lucy sensed that would be her old friend’s attitude toward her problem, it was no surprise that she turned to a neighbor like Maggie Forrest, who at least showed empathy.
“Did Lucy ever talk about her past, her childhood?”
Pat looked at her watch. “No. All I know is that she’s from somewhere near Hull and it was a pretty dull life. She couldn’t wait to get away, and she didn’t keep in touch as much as she should, especially after Terry came on the scene. Look, I really have to get back now. I hope I’ve been of help.” She stood up.
Jenny stood and shook her hand. “Thanks. Yes, you’ve been very helpful.” As she watched Pat scurry back to the bank, Jenny looked at her watch, too. She had enough time to drive out to Hull and see what Lucy’s parents had to say.
It was several days since Banks had last stopped in at his Eastvale office, and the amount of accumulated paperwork was staggering, since he had temporarily inherited Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s workload. Consequently, when he did find time to drop by the station late that afternoon, driving straight back after his interview with Geoff Brighouse, his pigeonhole was stuffed with reports, budget revisions, memos, requests, telephone message slips, crime statistics and various circulars awaiting his signature. He decided to clear up some of the backlog of paperwork and take Annie Cabbot for a quick drink at the Queen’s Arms to discuss her progress in the Janet Taylor investigation, and maybe build a few bridges in the process.
After leaving a message for Annie to drop by his office at six o’clock, Banks closed the door behind him and dropped the pile of papers on his desk. He hadn’t even changed his
It was Thursday, the eleventh of May. Hard to believe it was only three days since the gruesome discovery at number 35 The Hill. Already the tabloids were rubbing their hands with glee and calling the place “Dr. Terry’s House of Horrors” and, even worse, “The House of Payne.” They had somehow got hold of photographs of both Terry and Lucy Payne – the former cropped from a school class picture, by the look of it, and the latter from an “employee of the month” presentation to Lucy at the NatWest branch where she worked. Both photos were poor in quality, and you’d have to know who they were before you’d recognize either of them.
Banks turned on his computer and answered any E-mail he thought merited a response, then he picked away at the pile of papers. Not much, it seemed, had happened in his absence. The major preoccupation had been with a series of nasty post office robberies, in which one masked man terrorized staff and customers with a long knife and an ammonia spray. No one had been hurt yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be. There had been four such robberies in the Western Division over a month. DS Hatchley was out rounding up his ragbag assortment of informants. Apart from the robberies, perhaps the most serious crime on their hands was the theft of a tortoise that happened to be sleeping in a cardboard box nicked from someone’s garden, along with a Raleigh bicycle and a lawn mower.
Business as usual. And somehow Banks found an odd sort of comfort in these dull, predictable crimes after the horrors of the Paynes’ cellar.
He turned on his radio and recognized the slow movement from a late Schubert piano sonata. He felt a tight pain between his eyes and massaged the spot gently. When that didn’t work he swallowed a couple of Paracetamol he kept in his desk for emergencies such as this, washed them down with tepid coffee, then he pushed the mound of papers aside and let the music spill over him in gentle waves. The headaches were coming more frequently these days, along with the sleepless nights and a strange reluctance to go to work. It reminded him of the pattern he went through just before he left London for Yorkshire, when he was on the edge of burnout, and he wondered if he was getting in the same state again. He should probably see his doctor, he decided, when he had time.
The ringing telephone disturbed him, as it had so often before. Scowling, he picked up the offending instrument and growled, “Banks.”
“Stefan here. You asked me to keep you informed.”
Banks relaxed his tone. “Yes, Stefan. Any developments?” Banks could hear voices in the background. Millgarth, most likely. Or the Payne house.
“One piece of good news. They’ve lifted Payne’s prints from the machete used to kill PC Morrisey, and the lab reports both yellow plastic fibers from the rope in the scrapings taken from under Lucy Payne’s fingernails, along with traces of Kimberley Myers’s blood on the sleeve of her dressing gown.”
“Kimberley’s blood on Lucy Payne’s dressing gown?”
“Yes.”
“So she
“Looks like it. Mind you, she could explain away the fibers by saying she hung out the washing. They did use the same kind of clothes-line in the back garden. I’ve seen it.”
“But the blood?”
“Maybe more tricky,” said Stefan. “There wasn’t very much, but at least it proves that she was down there.”
“Thanks, Stefan. It’s a big help. What about Terence Payne?”
“The same. Blood and yellow fibers. Along with a fair quantity of PC Morrisey’s blood.”
“What about the bodies?”
“One more, skeletal, out in the garden. That makes all five.”
“Skeletal? How long would that take?”
“Depends on temperature and insect activity,” said Stefan.
“Could it have happened in just a month or so?”
“Could have, with the right conditions. It hasn’t been very warm this past month, though.”
“But is it possible?”
“It’s possible.”
Leanne Wray had disappeared on the thirty-first of March, which was slightly over a month ago, so there was at least some possibility that it was her remains.
“Anyway,” Stefan went on, “there’s plenty of garden left. They’re digging very slowly and carefully to avoid disturbing the bones. I’ve arranged for a botanist and an entomologist from the university to visit the scene tomorrow. They should be able to help us with time of death.”
“Did you find any clothing with the victims?”
“No. Nothing of a personal nature.”
“Get to work on identifying that body, Stefan, and let me know the minute you have anything, even if it’s negative.”
“Will do.”
Banks said good-bye to Stefan and hung up, then he walked over to his open window and sneaked a prohibited cigarette. It was a hot, muggy afternoon, with the sort of tension in the air that meant rain would probably come soon, perhaps even a thunderstorm. Office workers sniffed the air and reached for their umbrellas as they headed home. Shopkeepers closed up and wound back the awnings. Banks thought about Sandra again, how when she used to work at the community center down North Market Street they would often meet for a drink in the Queen’s Arms
