Puzzled, Barker shook his head. ‘No. Why?’
‘Because I got the impression she was holding something back. Something she might not have been sure about herself. I was hoping I could persuade her to tell me what it was.’
Barker lit a cigarette. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘Penny has been a bit strange the few times I’ve seen her lately. Secretive and touchy. She hasn’t said anything, though.’
Banks sat down and began tapping the frayed arm of the chair. ‘You two,’ he said, looking around the room. ‘Are you… er…?’
‘Playing house? Not really. No such luck. I was here for dinner. We just had a bit of a row about the very thing you just mentioned, actually. She left and I’m waiting for her to come back.’
‘Oh?’
‘I suggested she knew more than she was letting on, and she accused me of treating her like a criminal, just like you did.’
‘That’s what she thinks?’
‘Well, you have been giving her a rough time; you can’t deny it.’
Banks looked at his watch. ‘Is she coming back soon?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘No idea? Where is she?’
‘I told you,’ Barker said. ‘We had a row and she stormed out.’
‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did she say anything?’
‘She said she was going to see a man about a dog.’
‘A lot of help that is.’
‘Just what I thought.’
‘And you’d been on at her about knowing something?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she take the car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right.’ Banks got to his feet. ‘Come on.’
Without thinking, Barker jumped up and obeyed the command. Banks only gave him time to blow out the candles and lock the door.
‘Look, what’s going on?’ Barker asked as they shot into the darkening dale. ‘You’re driving like a bloody lunatic. Is something wrong? Is Penny in danger?’
‘Why should she be?’
‘For Christ’s sake, I don’t know. But you’re behaving damned oddly, if you ask me. What the hell’s happening?’
Banks didn’t reply. He focused all his concentration on driving, and the silence intensified as darkness grew. On the northern outskirts of Eastvale, he turned on to the York Road.
‘Where are we going?’ Barker asked a few minutes later.
‘Almost there,’ Banks replied. ‘And I want you to do exactly as I say. Remember that. I’ve only brought you with me because I know you’re fond of Penny and you happened to be in her house. I’d no time to waste, and you might be some use, but do as I say.’ He broke off to overtake a lorry.
Barker gripped the dashboard. ‘So you’ve not brought me along for the pleasure of my company?’
‘Give me a break.’
‘Seriously, Chief Inspector, is she in danger?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re going to find. Don’t worry, though, it won’t be long now,’ he said, and the tyres squealed as he turned sharp left. About a quarter of a mile along the bumpy minor road, Banks pulled into a driveway and Barker pointed and said, ‘That’s her car. That’s Penny’s car.’
A face peered through a chink in the curtains as they jumped out of the Cortina and hurried towards the door.
‘No time for pleasantries,’ Banks said after trying the handle to no avail. He stood back and gave a hard kick, which splintered the wood around the lock and sent the door flying open. With Barker close behind, he rushed into the living room and quickly took in the strange tableau.
There were three people. Michael Ramsden stood facing Banks, white-faced and slack-jawed. Penny lay inert on the couch. And a woman stood with her back to them all.
In a split second, it came to life. Barker gasped and ran over to Penny, and Ramsden started to shake.
‘My God,’ he groaned, ‘I knew this would happen. I knew it.’
‘Shut up!’ the woman said, and turned to face Banks.
She wore a clinging red dress that accentuated her curves; her hair was drawn back into a tight V on her forehead and carefully applied blusher highlighted the cheekbones of her heart-shaped face. But the most striking thing about her was her eyes. Before, Banks had only seen them watery and distorted through thick lenses, but now she was wearing contacts they were the chilly green of moss on stones, and the power that shone through them was hard and piercing. It was Emma Steadman, transformed almost beyond recognition.
Ramsden collapsed into an armchair, head in hands, whimpering, while Emma continued to glare at Banks.
‘You bastard,’ she said, and spat at him. ‘You ruined it all.’ Then she lapsed into a silence he never heard her break.
12
ONE
But Ramsden talked as willingly as a sinner in the confessional, and what he said over the first two hours following his arrest gave the police enough evidence to charge both of them. Banks was astonished at Ramsden’s compulsion to unburden himself, and realized only then what terrible pressure the man must have been under, what inner control he must have exerted.
As for Penny, she said she had been doing a great deal of thinking over the last few days. Steadman’s death, Banks’s questions and Sally’s disappearance had all forced her to look more deeply into a past she had ignored for so long, and especially into the events of a summer ten years ago.
At first she remembered nothing. She hadn’t lied; everything had seemed innocent to her. But then, she said, the more she found herself dwelling on the memory, the more little things seemed to take on greater significance than they had done at the time. Glances exchanged between Emma Steadman and Michael Ramsden – had they really happened or were they just her imagination? Ramsden’s insistent overtures, then his increasing lack of interest – again, had it really happened that way? Was there, perhaps, a simple explanation? All these things had inflamed her curiosity.
Finally, after the argument with Jack Barker, she knew it wouldn’t all just go away. She had to do something or her doubts about the past would poison any chance of a future. So she went to visit Ramsden to find out if there was any truth in her suspicions.
Yes, she knew what had happened to Sally Lumb and she also knew the police linked the girl’s death to Steadman’s, but she honestly didn’t believe she had anything to fear from Michael Ramsden. After all, they’d known each other off and on since childhood.
She questioned Ramsden and, finding his responses nervous and evasive, pushed even harder. They drank tea and ate biscuits, and Ramsden tried to convince her that there was nothing in her fears. Eventually she found difficulty focusing; the room darkened and she felt as if she were looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope. Then Penny fell asleep. When she awoke she was in Barker’s arms and it was all over.
Banks told her that Ramsden had sworn he wouldn’t have hurt her. True, he had drugged her with some prescription Nembutal and driven to the public telephone on the main road to send for Emma, but only because he
