Aftermath

them all, the one way at the back that hadn’t been able to get at the feast so far. It made no difference. The bread landed only inches from his beak, but before he could get to it, the others had paddled over in a ferocious pack and snapped it right from under his mouth.

Banks wanted to get a look at the whole interior of 35 The Hill before the SOCOs started ripping it apart. He didn’t know what it would tell him, but he needed to get the feel of it.

Downstairs, in addition to the kitchen with its small dining area, there was only a living room containing a three-piece suite, stereo system, television, video, and a small bookcase. Though the room was decorated with the same feminine touch as the hallway – frilly lace curtains, coral-pink wallpaper, thick-pile carpet, cream ceiling with ornate cornices – the videos in the cabinet under the TV set reflected masculine tastes: action films, tape after tape of The Simpsons, a collection of horror and science fiction films, including the whole Alien and Scream series, along with some true classics such as The Wicker Man, the original Cat People, Curse of the Demon and a boxed set of David Cronenberg films. Banks poked around but could find no porn, nothing homemade. Maybe the SOCOs would have better luck when they took the house apart. The CDs were an odd mix. There was some classical, mostly classic FM compilations and a best-of-Mozart set, but there were also some rap, heavy metal, and country-and-western CDs. Eclectic tastes.

The books were also mixed: beauty manuals, Reader’s Digest condensed specials, needlecraft techniques, romances, occult and true crime of the more graphic variety, tabloid-style biographies of famous serial killers and mass murderers. The room showed one or two signs of untidiness – yesterday’s evening paper spread over the coffee table, a couple of videos left out of their boxes – but on the whole it was clean and neat. There were also a number of knick-knacks around the place, the sort of things that Banks’s mother wouldn’t have in the house because they made dusting more difficult: porcelain figures of fairy-tale characters and animals. In the dining room, there was a large glass-fronted cabinet filled with Royal Doulton chinaware. Probably a wedding present, Banks guessed.

Upstairs were two bedrooms, the smaller one used as a home office, along with a toilet and bathroom. No shower, just sink and tub. Both toilet and bathroom were spotless, the porcelain shining bright, the air heavy with the scent of lavender. Banks glanced around the plug holes but saw only polished chrome, not a trace of blood or hair.

Their computer expert, David Preece, sat in the office clacking away at the computer keys. A large filing cabinet stood in the corner; it would have to be emptied, its contents transferred to the exhibits room at Millgarth.

“Anything yet, Dave?” Banks asked.

Preece pushed his glasses back up his nose and turned. “Nothing much. Just a few pornographic Web sites bookmarked, chat rooms, that sort of thing. Nothing illegal yet, by the looks of it.”

“Keep at it.”

Banks walked into the master bedroom. The color scheme seemed to continue the ocean theme, but instead of coral it was sea blue. Azure? Cobalt? Cerulean? Annie Cabbot would know the exact shade, her father being an artist, but to Banks it was just blue, like the walls of his living room, though a shade or two darker. The queen-size bed was covered by a fluffed-up black duvet. The bedroom suite was assemble-it-yourself blond Scandinavian pine. Another television set stood on a stand at the bottom of the bed. The cabinet held a collection of soft-core porn, if the labels were to believed, but still nothing illegal or homemade, no kiddie stuff or animals. So the Paynes were into porn videos. So what? So were more than half the households in the country, Banks was willing to bet. But more than half the households in the country didn’t go around abducting and killing young girls. Some lucky young DC was going to have to sit down and watch the lot from start to finish to verify that the contents matched the titles.

Banks poked around in the wardrobe: suits, shirts, dresses, shoes – mostly women’s – nothing he wouldn’t have expected. They would all have to be bagged by the SOCOs and examined in minute detail.

There were plenty of knickknacks in the bedroom, too: Limoges cases, musical jewelry boxes, lacquered, hand-painted boxes. The room took its musky rose and aniseed scent, Banks noticed, from a bowl of potpourri on the laundry hamper under the window.

The bedroom faced The Hill, and when Banks parted the lace curtains and looked out of the window, he could see the houses atop the rise over the street, half hidden by shrubs and trees. He could also see the activity below, on the street. He turned and looked around the room again, finding it somehow depressing in its absolute sterility. It could have been ordered from a color supplement and assembled yesterday. The whole house – except for the cellar, of course – had that feel to it: pretty, contemporary, the sort of place where the up-and-coming young middle-class couple about town should be living. So ordinary, but empty.

With a sigh, he went back downstairs.

3

Kelly Diane Matthews went missing during the New Year’s Eve party in Roundhay Park, Leeds. She was seventeen years old, five feet three inches tall and weighed just seven stones. She lived in Alwoodley and attended Allerton High School. Kelly had two younger sisters: Ashley, age nine, and Nicola, age thirteen.

The call to the local police station came in at 9:11 A.M. on the first of January, 2000. Mr. and Mrs. Matthews were worried that their daughter hadn’t come home that night. They had been to a party themselves, and hadn’t arrived back until almost 3 A.M. They noticed that Kelly wasn’t home yet but weren’t too worried because she was with friends, and they knew that these New Year’s parties were likely to go on until the wee hours. They also knew she had plenty of money for a taxi.

They were both tired and a little tipsy after their own party, they told the police, so they went straight to bed. When they awoke the following morning and found that Kelly’s bed had still not been slept in, they became worried. She had never done anything like this before. First they telephoned the parents of the two girlfriends she had gone with, reliable in their estimation. Both Kelly’s friends, Alex Kirk and Jessica Bradley, had arrived home shortly after two in the morning. Then Adrian Matthews rang the police. PC Rearden, who took the call, picked up on the genuine concern in Mr. Matthews’s voice and sent an officer around immediately.

Kelly’s parents said they last saw her around seven o’clock on the thirty-first of December, when she went to meet her friends. She was wearing blue jeans, white trainers, a thick cable-knit jumper and a three-quarter-length suede jacket.

When questioned later, Kelly’s friends said that the group had become separated during the fireworks display, but nobody was too concerned. After all, there were thousands of people about, buses were running late and the taxis were touting for business.

Adrian and Gillian Matthews weren’t rich, but they were comfortably off. Adrian oversaw the computer systems of a large retail operation and Gillian was assistant manager of a city center building society branch. They owned a Georgian-style semi-detached house not far from Eccup Reservoir, in an area of the city closer to parks, golf courses and the countryside than to factories, warehouses and grim terraces of back-to-backs.

According to her friends and teachers, Kelly was a bright, personable, responsible girl who got consistently high marks and was certain to land in the university of her choice, at the moment Cambridge, where she intended to read law. Kelly was also her school’s champion sprinter. She had beautiful gold-blond hair, which she wore long, and she liked clothes, dancing, pop music and sports. She was also fond of classical music and quite an accomplished pianist.

It soon became clear to the investigating officer that Kelly Matthews was a most unlikely teenage runaway, and he instituted a search of the park. When, three days later, the search parties had found nothing, they called it off. In the meantime, police had also interviewed hundreds of revelers, some of whom said they thought they’d seen her with a man and others with a woman. Taxi drivers and bus drivers were also questioned, to no avail.

A week after Kelly disappeared, her shoulder bag was found in some bushes near the park; in it were her keys, a diary, cosmetics, a hairbrush and a purse containing over thirty-five pounds and some loose change.

Her diary yielded no clues. The last entry, on the thirty-first of December, 1999, was a brief list of new year’s resolutions: