“I don’t know.” Lucy paused and put her hand to her throat. “A scream, maybe.”
“The only screams Maggie Forrest heard were yours.”
“Well, maybe you could only hear it if you were inside the house. Maybe it came up from the cellar. When Maggie heard me I was in the hall.”
“You remember that? Being in the hall?”
“Only very vaguely.”
“Go on.”
“So I might have heard a noise and gone down to investigate.”
“Even though you knew it was Terry’s private den and he’d kill you if you did?”
“Yes. Maybe I was disturbed enough.”
“By what?”
“By what I heard.”
“But the cellar was very well soundproofed, Lucy, and the door was closed when the police got there.”
“Then I don’t know. I’m just trying to find a reason.”
“Go on. What might you have found there if you did go down?”
“That girl. I might have gone over to her to see if there was anything I could do.”
“What about the yellow fibers?”
“What about them?”
“They were from the plastic clothesline that was wrapped around Kimberley Myers’s neck. The pathologist determined ligature strangulation by that line as cause of death. Fibers were also embedded in Kimberley’s throat.”
“I must have tried to get it off her.”
“Do you remember doing this?”
“No, I’m still imagining how it might have happened.”
“Go on.”
“Then Terry must have found me and chased me upstairs and then hit me.”
“Why didn’t he drag you back down the cellar and kill you, too?”
“I don’t know. He was my husband. He loved me. He couldn’t just kill me like…”
“Like some teenage girl?”
“Superintendent,” Julia Ford cut in, “I don’t think speculation about what Mr. Payne did or didn’t do is relevant here. My client says she
“But you said Terry would kill you if you went in the cellar. Why didn’t he?” Banks persisted.
“I don’t know. Maybe he was going to. Maybe he had something else to do first.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kill Kimberley?”
“Maybe.”
“But wasn’t she already dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Get rid of her body?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was unconscious.”
“Oh, come on, Lucy! This is rubbish,” said Banks. “The next thing you’ll be trying to convince me is you did it while you were sleep-walking.
“I didn’t! Why would I do a thing like that?”
“Because you were jealous. Terry wanted Kimberley more than he wanted you. He wanted to keep her.”
Lucy banged the table with her fist. “That’s
“Well, why else did he have her staked out there naked on the mattress? To give her a biology lesson? It was quite a biology lesson, Lucy. He raped her repeatedly, both vaginally and anally. He forced her to fellate him. Then he – or
Lucy put her head in her hands and sobbed.
“Is this kind of gruesome detail really necessary?” asked Julia Ford.
“What’s wrong?” Banks asked her. “Afraid of the truth?”
“It’s just a bit over-the-top, that’s all.”
“
“It’s all circumstantial,” said Julia Ford. “Lucy’s already explained to you how it might have happened. She doesn’t remember. That’s not her fault. The poor woman was traumatized.”
“Either that or she’s a damn good actress,” said Banks.
“Superintendent!”
Banks turned back to Lucy. “Who are the other girls, Lucy?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’ve found two unidentified bodies in the back garden. Skeletal remains, at any rate. That makes six altogether, including Kimberley. We were only looking into five disappearances, and we haven’t even found all of those yet. We don’t know these two. Who are they?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Did you ever go out in the car with your husband and pick up a teenage girl?”
The change of direction seemed to shock Lucy into silence, but she soon found her voice and regained her composure. “No, I did not.”
“So you knew nothing about the missing girls?”
“No. Only what I read in the papers. I told you. I didn’t go in the cellar and Terry certainly didn’t tell me. So how
“How indeed?” Banks scratched the little scar beside his right eye. “I’m more concerned with how you could possibly
“I told you I never went down there.”
“Didn’t you notice when your husband was missing in the middle of the night?”
“No. I always sleep very heavily. I think Terry must have been giving me sleeping pills with my cocoa. That’s why I never noticed anything.”
“We didn’t find any sleeping pills at the house, Lucy.”
“He must have run out. That must be why I woke up on Monday morning and thought something was wrong. Or he forgot.”
“Did either of you have a prescription for sleeping tablets?”
“I didn’t. I don’t know if Terry did. Maybe he got them from a drug pusher.”
Banks made a note to look into the matter of sleeping tablets. “Why do you think he might have forgotten to drug you
Lucy put her hands to her ears. “Stop it! It’s lies, all lies! I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand