Aftermath

“Yes, yes, I remember. Impressive words.” Banks turned back to Lucy. “You don’t remember going into the cellar at The Hill, and you don’t remember the dancing and chanting in the cellar at Alderthorpe. Do you remember the cage?”

Lucy seemed to draw in on herself.

“Do you?” Banks persisted. “The old Morrison shelter.”

“I remember it,” Lucy whispered. “It was where they put us when we were bad.”

“How were you bad, Lucy?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why were you in the cage when the police came? You and Tom. What had you done to get yourselves put there?”

“I don’t know. It was never much. You never had to do much. If you didn’t clean your plate – not that there was ever much on it to clean – or if you talked back or said no when they… when they wanted to… It was easy to get locked in the cage.”

“Do you remember Kathleen Murray?”

“I remember Kathleen. She was my cousin.”

“What happened to her?”

“They killed her.”

“Who did?”

“The grown-ups.”

“Why did they kill her?”

“I don’t know. They just… she just died…”

“They said your brother Tom killed her.”

“That’s ridiculous. Tom wouldn’t kill anybody. Tom’s gentle.”

“Do you remember how it happened?”

“I wasn’t there. Just one day they told us Kathleen had gone away and she wouldn’t be coming back. I knew she was dead.”

“How did you know?”

“I just knew. She cried all the time, she said she was going to tell. They always said they’d kill any of us if they thought we were going to tell.”

“Kathleen was strangled, Lucy.”

“Was she?”

“Yes. Just like the girls we found in your cellar. Ligature strangulation. Remember, those yellow fibers we found under you fingernails, along with Kimberley’s blood.”

“Where are you going with this, Superintendent?” Julia Ford asked.

“There are a lot of similarities between the crimes. That’s all.”

“But surely the killers of Kathleen Murray are behind bars?” Julia argued. “It’s got nothing to do with Lucy.”

“She was involved.”

“She was a victim.”

“Always the victim, eh, Lucy? The victim with the bad memory. How does it feel?”

“That’s enough,” said Julia.

“It feels awful,” Lucy said in a small voice.

“What?”

“You asked how it feels, to be a victim with a bad memory. It feels awful. It feels like I have no self, like I’m lost, I have no control, like I don’t count. I can’t even remember the bad things that happened to me.”

“Let me ask you once more, Lucy: Did you ever help your husband to abduct a young girl?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you ever harm any of the girls he brought home?”

“I never knew about them, not until last week.”

“Why did you get up and go down in the cellar on that particular night? Why not on any of the previous occasions when your husband was entertaining a young girl in the cellar of your house?”

“I never heard anything before. He must have drugged me.”

“We found no sleeping tablets in our search of the house, nor do either of you have a prescription for any.”

“He must have got them illegally. He must have run out. That’s why I woke up.”

“Where would he get them?”

“School. There’s all sorts of drugs in schools.”

“Lucy, did you know that your husband was a rapist when you met him?”

“Did I… what?”

“You heard me.” Banks opened the file in front of him. “By our count he had already raped four women we know of before he met you at that pub in Seacroft. Terence Payne was the Seacroft Rapist. His DNA matches that left in the victims.”

“I – I-”

“You don’t know what to say?”

“No.”

“How did you meet him, Lucy? None of your friends remember seeing you talk to him in the pub that night.”

“I told you. I was on my way out. It was a big pub, with lots of rooms. We went into another bar.”

“Why should you be any different, Lucy?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, why didn’t he follow you out into the street and rape you like he did with the others?”

“I don’t know. How should I know?”

“You’ve got to admit it’s strange, though, isn’t it?”

“I told you, I don’t know. He liked me. Loved me.”

“Yet he still continued to rape other young women after he’d met you.” Banks consulted his file again. “At least two more times, according to our account. And they’re only the ones who reported it. Some women don’t report it, you know. Too upset or too ashamed. See, they blame themselves.” Banks thought of Annie Cabbot, and what she’d been through over two years ago.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Why didn’t he rape you?”

Lucy gave him an unfathomable look. “Maybe he did.”

“Don’t be absurd. No woman likes being raped, and she’s certainly not going to marry her rapist.”

“You’d be surprised what you can get used to if you’ve got no choice.”

“What do you mean, no choice?”

“What I say.”

“It was your choice to marry Terry, wasn’t it? Nobody forced you to.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“Never mind.”

“Come on.”

“Never mind.”

Banks shuffled his papers. “What was it, Lucy? Did he tell you about what he’d done? Did it excite you? Did he recognize a kindred spirit? Your Hindley to his Brady?”

Julia Ford shot to her feet. “That’s enough, Superintendent. One more remark like that and this interview’s over and I’ll be reporting you.”

Banks ran his hand over his closely cropped hair. It felt spiky.

Winsome picked up the questioning. “Did he rape you, Lucy?” she asked, in her lilting Jamaican accent. “Did your husband rape you?”