Aftermath

“I know.” Victoria stood up. She swayed a little. “I think I need to go and lie down again for a while,” she said. “But you mark my words, Superintendent, that’s the one you should be looking at – Ian Scott. He’s no good.”

“Thank you,” said Banks. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

When she’d gone, the silence stretched for a while. “Is there anything else you can tell us?” Banks asked.

“No. No. I’m sure she wouldn’t do… what you say. I’m sure something must have happened to her.”

“Why did you wait until morning to call the police? Had she done that sort of thing before?”

“Never. I would have told you if I thought that.”

“So why did you wait?”

“I wanted to call earlier.”

“Come on, Mr. Wray,” said Winsome, touching his arm gently. “You can tell us.”

He looked at her, his eyes beseeching, seeking forgiveness. “I would have called the police, honest I would,” he said. “She had never stayed out all night before.”

“But you’d had an argument, hadn’t you?” Banks suggested. “When she reacted badly to the news of your wife’s pregnancy.”

“She asked me how could I… so soon after… after her mother. She was upset, crying, saying terrible things about Victoria, things she didn’t mean, but… Victoria told her to get out if she wanted, and said she could stay out.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this at the time?” Banks asked, though he knew the answer: embarrassment, that great social fear – something Victoria Wray would certainly be sensitive to – and not wanting the police involved in your private family arguments. The only way they had found out about the tension between Victoria and Leanne in the first place was through Leanne’s friends, and Leanne clearly hadn’t had time or chance to tell them about Victoria’s pregnancy. Victoria Wray was the kind of woman, Banks thought, who would make the police use the tradesman’s entrance, if they had a tradesman’s entrance – and the fact that they didn’t was probably an unbearable thorn in her side.

There were tears in Mr. Wray’s eyes. “I couldn’t,” he said. “I just couldn’t. We thought it was as you said, that perhaps she had stayed out all night to spite us, to demonstrate her anger. But no matter what, Superintendent, Leanne isn’t a bad girl. She would have come back in the morning. I’m certain of that.”

Banks stood up. “May we have another look at her room, Mr. Wray? There may be something we missed.”

Wray looked puzzled. “Yes, of course. But… I mean… it’s been redone. There’s nothing there.”

“You redecorated Leanne’s room?” Winsome said.

He looked at her. “Yes. We couldn’t stand it with her gone. The memories. And now, with the new baby on the way…”

“What about her clothes?” Winsome asked.

“We gave them to the Oxfam shop.”

“Her books, belongings?”

“Them, too.”

Winsome shook her head. Banks asked, “May we have a peek, anyway?”

They went upstairs. Wray was right. Not an object remained that indicated the room had ever belonged to a teenager like Leanne Wray. The tiny dresser, bedside drawers and matching wardrobe were all gone, as was her bed with the quilt bedspread, little bookcase, the few dolls left over from her childhood. Even the carpet was gone and the pop star posters had been ripped off the walls. Nothing remained. Banks could hardly believe his eyes. He could understand how people want to escape unpleasant memories, don’t like being reminded of someone they’ve loved and lost, but all this just over a month after their daughter’s disappearance, and without her body having been found?

“Thank you,” he said, indicating for Winsome to follow him down the stairs.

“Isn’t that weird?” she said when they’d got outside. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“Think what, Winsome?”

“That maybe Leanne did go home that night. And that maybe when they heard we were digging up the Paynes’ garden, Mr. Wray decided it was time for redecoration.”

“Hmm,” said Banks. “Maybe you’re right, or maybe people just have different ways of showing their grief. Either way, I think we’ll be looking a bit more closely at the Wrays over the next few days. You can start by talking to their neighbors, see if they’ve seen or heard anything unusual.”

After her chat with Maureen Nesbitt, Jenny decided to visit Spurn Head itself before heading for home. Maybe a good long walk would help her think things over, blow the cobwebs away. Maybe it would also help her get rid of the eerie feeling she had had since Alderthorpe that she was being watched or followed. She couldn’t explain it, but every time she turned suddenly to look over her shoulder, she felt rather than saw something slip into the shadows. It was irritating because she couldn’t quite grasp whether she was being paranoid or whether it was a case of just because she was paranoid it didn’t mean someone wasn’t following her.

She was still feeling it.

Jenny paid her entrance fee and drove slowly along the narrow track to the car park, noticing an old lighthouse, half under water, and guessing that the sands had shifted since it was built and left it stranded there.

Jenny walked down to the beach. The place wasn’t quite as desolate as she had imagined it to be. Just ahead, on a platform a little way out to sea, attached to the mainland by a narrow wooden bridge, were a dock and control center for the Humber pilots, who guided the big tankers in from the North Sea. Behind her stood the new lighthouse and a number of houses. Across the estuary, Jenny could see the docks and cranes of Grimsby and Immingham. Though the sun was shining, there was quite a breeze and Jenny felt the chill as she walked the sands around the point. The sea was an odd combination of colors – purple, brown, lavender, everything but blue, even in the sun.

There weren’t many people around. Most of those who visited the area were serious birders, and the place was a protected wildlife sanctuary. Even so, Jenny saw a couple or two walking hand in hand, and one family with two small children. As she walked, she still couldn’t shake off the feeling of being followed.

When the first tanker came around the head, it took her breath away. Because of the sharp curve, the huge shape seemed to appear there suddenly, moving very fast, and it filled her field of vision for a few moments, then one of the pilot boats nearby guided it over the estuary toward Immingham docks. Another tanker followed only moments later.

As Jenny stood on the sand looking out over the broad waters, she thought of what Maureen Nesbitt had told her about the Alderthorpe Seven.

Tom Godwin, Lucy’s younger brother, had stayed with his foster parents until he was eighteen, like Lucy, then he had gone to live with distant relatives in Australia, all thoroughly checked out by the social services, and he now worked on their sheep farm in New South Wales. By all accounts, Tom was a sturdy, quiet sort of boy, given to long walks alone, and a sort of shyness that made him stutter in front of strangers. Often he woke up screaming from nightmares he couldn’t remember.

Laura, Lucy’s sister, was living in Edinburgh, where she was studying medicine at the university, hoping to become a psychiatrist. Maureen said Laura was well-adjusted, on the whole, after years of therapy, but there was still a timidity and reticence about her that might make it hard for her to face some of the more human challenges of her chosen profession. There was no doubt she was a brilliant and skilled pupil, but whether she could handle the daily pressures of psychiatry was another matter.

Of the three surviving Murray children, Susan had committed suicide, tragically, at the age of thirteen; Dianne was in a sort of halfway house for the mentally disturbed, suffering from severe sleep disorders and terrifying hallucinations. Keith, like Laura, was also a student, though Maureen reckoned he would be about graduation age by now. He had gone to the University of Durham to study history and English. He was still seeing a psychiatrist regularly and suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety attacks, especially in confined places, but he managed to function and do well in his studies.

And that was it: the sad legacy of Alderthorpe. Such blighted lives.

Jenny wondered if Banks wanted her to continue now that he’d let Lucy go. Maureen Nesbitt had said her best bets were clearly Keith Murray and Laura Godwin, and as Keith lived closer to Eastvale, she decided she would try to reach him first. But was there any more point to it all? She had to admit that she hadn’t found any psychological