Aftermath

she’d made her mind up you couldn’t budge her. Of course, you have to remember that she’d gone on to the local comprehensive at the time of the arrests. I only taught junior school. She was with us until she was eleven.”

“But the others were still there?”

“Yes. All of them. It’s not as if there’s a lot of choice when it comes to local schools.”

“I imagine not. Anything else you can remember about Lucy?”

“Not really.”

“Did she form any close friendships outside the immediate family?”

“None of them did. That was one of the odd things. They were a mysterious group, and sometimes when you saw them together it gave you a creepy feeling, as if they had their own language and an agenda you knew nothing about. Have you ever read John Wyndham?”

“No.”

“You should. He’s quite good. For a science-fiction writer, that is. Believe it or not, I encouraged my pupils to read just about anything they enjoyed, so long as they read something. Anyway, Wyndham wrote a book called The Midwich Cuckoos about a group of strange children fathered by aliens on an unsuspecting village.”

“That sounds vaguely familiar,” Jenny said.

“Perhaps you saw the film? It was called Village of the Damned.”

“That’s it,” said Jenny. “That one where the teacher planted a bomb to destroy the children and had to concentrate on a brick wall so they couldn’t read his thoughts?”

“Yes. Well, it wasn’t quite like that with the Godwins and the Murrays, but it still gave you that sort of feeling, the way they looked at you, waited in the corridor till you’d gone by before talking again. And they always seemed to speak in whispers. Linda, I remember, was very distressed when she had to leave and go to the comprehensive before the others, but I gather from her teacher there that she quickly got used to it. She has a strong personality, that girl, despite what happened to her, and she’s adaptable.”

“Did she show any unusual preoccupations?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything particularly morbid. Death? Mutilation?”

“Not so far as I noticed. She was… how shall I put this… an early developer and rather sexually aware for a girl of her age. On average, girls peak in puberty at about twelve, but Lucy was beyond prepubescence at eleven. Her breasts were developing, for example.”

“Sexually active?”

“No. Well, as we now know she was being sexually abused in the home. But, no, not in the way you’re suggesting. She was just sexually there. It was something people noticed about her, and she wasn’t above playing the little coquette.”

“I see.” Jenny made a note. “And it was Kathleen’s absence that led you to call in the authorities?”

“Yes.” Maureen looked away, toward the window, but she didn’t look as if she were admiring the view. “Not my finest moment,” she said, bending to pour the tea. “Milk and sugar?”

“Yes, please. Thank you. Why?”

“I should have done something sooner, shouldn’t I? It wasn’t the first time I’d had my suspicions something was terribly wrong in those households. Though I never saw any bruises or clear outward signs of abuse, the children often looked undernourished and seemed timid. Sometimes – I know this is terrible – but they smelled, as if they hadn’t bathed in days. Other children would stay away from them. They’d jump if you touched them, no matter how gently. I should have known.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I talked with the other teachers, and we all agreed there was something odd about the children’s behavior. It turned out the social services already had their concerns, too. They’d been out to the houses once before but never got past the front door. I don’t know if you knew, but Michael Godwin had a particularly vicious rottweiler. Anyway, when Kathleen Murray went absent without any reasonable explanation, they decided to act. The rest is history.”

“You say you’ve kept track of the children,” Jenny said. “I’d really like to talk to some of them. Will you help me?”

Maureen paused a moment. “If you like. But I don’t think you’ll get much out of them.”

“Do you know where they are, how they are?”

“Not all the details, no, but I can give you a general picture.”

Jenny sipped some tea and took out her notebook. “Okay, I’m ready.”

14

“So what do you think of Lucy Payne?” Banks asked DC Winsome Jackman as they walked along North Market Street on their way to talk to Leanne Wray’s parents.

Winsome paused before answering. Banks noticed several people gawk at her as they walked. She knew she was a token minority, she had told Banks when he interviewed her, brought in to fulfill a quota demanded in the aftermath of the Stephen Lawrence case. There were to be more police officers from minorities, the ruling stated, even in communities where those minorities were, to all extent, nonexistent, like West Indians in the Yorkshire Dales. But she also told him she didn’t care about the tokenism and she’d do a damn good job anyway. Banks didn’t doubt her for a moment. Winsome was ACC McLaughlin’s golden girl, set for accelerated promotion and all its blessings; she’d probably be a superintendent before she was thirty-five. And Banks liked her. She was easygoing, had a wicked sense of humor, and she didn’t let the race thing get in the way of doing her job, even when other people tried to put it in the way. He knew nothing about her personal life except that she enjoyed both climbing and spelunking – the very thought of which gave Banks a severe case of the heebie-jeebies – and that she lived in a flat on the fringe of the Eastvale student area. Whether she had a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, Banks had no idea.

“I think she might have been protecting her husband,” Winsome said. “She knew, or she suspected, and she kept quiet. Maybe she didn’t even admit it to herself.”

“Do you think she was involved?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think she was attracted to the dark side, especially the sex, but I’d pull up short of assuming she was involved. Weird, yes. But a killer…?”

“Remember, Kathleen Murray died of ligature strangulation,” Banks said.

“But Lucy was only twelve then.”

“Makes you think, though, doesn’t it? Isn’t the house just down here?”

“Yes.”

They turned off North Market on to a grid of narrow streets opposite the community center, where Sandra used to work. Seeing the place and remembering the times he dropped in on her there or waited to pick her up after work to go to a play or a film made Banks feel a pang of loss, but it passed. Sandra was gone now, far, far away from the wife he used to have.

They found the house, not at all far from the Old Ship – maybe ten or fifteen minutes’ walk, and most of it along the busy, well-lit stretch of North Market Street, with its shops and pubs – and Banks knocked at the front door.

The first thing that assailed his senses as Christopher Wray opened the door was the smell of fresh paint. When Banks and Winsome stepped inside, he saw why. The Wrays were redecorating. All the wallpaper in the hallway had been stripped, and Mr. Wray was painting the living-room ceiling cream. The furniture was covered with sheets.

“I’m sorry for the mess,” he apologized. “Shall we go in the kitchen? Have you found Leanne yet?”

“No, not yet,” said Banks.

They followed him through to the small kitchen, where he put the kettle on without even asking if they wanted a cup of tea. They all sat at the small kitchen table, and for the short time it took the kettle to boil, Mr. Wray chatted on about the redecoration as if determined to avoid the real subject of their visit. Finally, tea made and poured, Banks decided it was time to steer things around to the subject of Leanne.