Friend of the Devil

by Peter Robinson

  “So why do you want to go back there?”

  “Because I have to. It’s the only place to go, and only by going there can I get where I want to be.”

  “That sounds a bit too mystical to me, like the sound of one hand clapping.”

  “Well, you’ve listened to enough Pink Floyd. You ought to know what that sounds like. The thing is, Alan, why I’m here, what I wanted to ask, is can I count on you?”

  Banks sighed, took another bite of his burger and washed it down with Tetley’s. Then he stared Annie straight in the eye, gave her one of the most guileless looks she’d ever had from him. “Of course you can,” he said softly. “You knew that from the start. I’ll see if I can arrange a meeting for us with Phil Hartnell and Ken Blackstone in Leeds tomorrow morning.”

  Annie threw a chip at him. “Then why did you give me such a bloody hard time about it, then?”

  Banks smiled. “You wouldn’t have had it any other way. Anyway, now you’re here, you can tell me about all the interesting things going on in your life these days.”

  “That’s a laugh,” said Annie, turning away and twirling her hair with her fingers.

  WINSOME HAD never liked working with Templeton. It wasn’t because he beat her to sergeant, though that did rankle, but she didn’t like his methods, his callous disregard of people’s feelings, or the way he kept ogling her. If she was going to take a boyfriend, which she wasn’t, Templeton would be the last on her list. But in the meantime they had to work together, so she tried to keep her feelings in check as he prattled on about clubs and DJs she’d never heard of, and hinted at a sexual prowess she wasn’t interested in, as he sneaked glances at her thighs and breasts. She knew she could probably report him for sexual harassment, but that sort of thing had a way of coming back on you, especially if you were a woman. You didn’t run to the boss and tell tales; you dealt with it yourself.

  Winsome had told Banks that she thought he was taking a big risk in sending Templeton to talk to Hayley Daniels’s parents. Banks said he knew that, but they were short-staffed, and it would help to have a different perspective. Sometimes, he added cryptically, Templeton’s unsavory and idiosyncratic methods could result in a breakthrough. Winsome remained unconvinced; she’d seen the bastard in action in ways that Banks hadn’t. Annie Cabbot would understand, but she wasn’t around.

  Winsome pulled up outside the Daniels house in Swainshead, once again drawing curious stares from the old men on the bridge.

  “What’s up with them?” said Templeton. “They act like they’ve never seen a black woman before.”

  “They probably hadn’t before I came along,” Winsome said.

  The reporters had gone and the house looked abandoned. It had only been two days since the news of Hayley’s death, and already the place seemed shabbier somehow. When Winsome knocked, Geoff Daniels answered. He averted his eyes and appeared embarrassed to see her, as well he might, but he stood aside and let her and Templeton enter. Donna McCarthy was in the living room sitting on an armchair. She looked as if she hadn’t slept since Sunday. There was a strained atmosphere, Winsome sensed, though she couldn’t tell whether Templeton felt it. Even if he did, in her experience, he would simply ignore it and do what he wanted anyway.

  “Any news?” asked Donna, as her husband slumped down in another armchair by the window. Winsome and Templeton took the sofa, and Winsome automatically pulled her skirt down over her knees. If she’d known she was going to be riding out with Templeton this morning, she would have worn trousers. As it was, she’d gone and put on a business-style pinstripe skirt and matching jacket. Already, she could see him eyeing up Donna McCarthy, assessing his chances there.

  “Perhaps,” said Templeton. “But we’ve got a few more questions to ask you.”

  “Oh?” said Donna.

  “You told DC Jackman here that you didn’t know of any particular boyfriends Hayley had, but that you thought she was sexually active. Am I right?”

  Donna twisted her wedding ring. “Well…I…”

  “Is that true, Donna?” Daniels butted in, face red with anger. “You told the police my daughter was some sort of slut?”

  “I never said any such thing,” said Donna.

  “You’ve got some room to talk,” said Templeton to Daniels, “tied to a bed while some young tart bounced up and down on your jollies.”

  “What’s this?” Donna asked, looking at her husband. “What’s he talking about?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Templeton said, a smirk of disbelief on his face. “He didn’t tell you?”

  “I didn’t think it was—” Winsome began.

  “No,” Templeton went on, waving her down. “I think she should know.”

  “Know what?” said Donna. “What are you talking about?”

  “When we found your husband, he wasn’t at a convention, unless it was a convention of perverts. He was tied to a hotel bed while a naked young lady had her way with him. Our Winsome here got a front-row seat, didn’t you, love?”

  “You bastard!” said Daniels. “I’ll bloody have you for that.”

  “Is this true, Geoff? Who was she? That little bitch from the office, the one who can’t keep her legs closed?”

  Winsome rolled her eyes. “Calm down, everyone,” she said. “I’m sorry, you’ll just have to deal with this between yourselves later. We have more important things to talk about. And no one implied that your daughter was promiscuous, Mr. Daniels.”

  “She was innocent,” Daniels said. “Innocent. A victim. Do you both get that?”

  Winsome nodded, but she could see that Templeton was rallying for another attack. Not a good sign. “Of course,” Templeton began. “And I’m sorry if I implied in any way that your late daughter was the town bicycle. That wasn’t my intention. The point is that it has come to our attention that she might have had a secret boyfriend. We were wondering if you could shed any light on this.”

  “What boyfriend? Who said that?” said Daniels.

  “It doesn’t matter who said it,” Templeton replied. “Is it true?”

  “How would we know?” said Donna, still glaring at her husband. “If she kept it secret.”

  “What do you think?” Templeton asked. “Were there any signs, any unexplained absences, any occasions she wouldn’t say where she was going, any nights she didn’t come home?”

  “She sometimes stayed with friends from college if she went into Eastvale for a night out.”

  “I know,” said Templeton. “She didn’t want to drive because she set out to get paralytic. Do you know that people can lose all sense of judgment when they’re that pissed?”

  “I don’t think Hayley drank that much,” said Donna. “She was just having fun with her mates.”

  “Come off it,” said Templeton. “She was so bladdered on Saturday she went off into The Maze alone for a piss. You can’t tell me that’s using good judgment.”

  Donna started sobbing and Daniels lurched forward to make a grab for Templeton’s jacket collar, shouting, “How can you talk about our daughter like that, you filthy heartless bastard?”

  “Gerroff!” said Templeton, pushing him away and straightening his jacket.

  Wonderful, thought Winsome, regretting that Daniels hadn’t managed to land a good punch, another shambles of a Templeton interview. How on earth did such an insensitive pillock make sergeant in this day and age? She stepped into the breach. “Let’s all calm down. DS Templeton might not always be diplomatic in his approach, but he has raised some serious questions, and any answers you give may help us catch Hayley’s killer. Does either of you know anything about a boyfriend?”

  They both shook their heads, Daniels glaring at Templeton the whole time and Donna looking as if she were ready to kill both of them.

  “Well, somebody must know something,” Templeton said. “Surely you didn’t just let her run wild and do whatever she wanted?”

  “She was nineteen, Mr. Templeton,” said Donna. “You can’t contro
l a nineteen-year-old.”

  Only with handcuffs in a bed, Winsome bet, making herself blush at the thought. “Did she never let anything slip?” she asked. “Or didn’t you notice any signs, woman-to-woman?”

  “You’re making me feel guilty now,” Donna said, reaching for a tissue. “You’re saying I should have paid more attention and it might not have happened.”

  “That’s not true,” Winsome said. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. There’s only one person responsible for what happened to Hayley, and that’s the killer.”

  “But maybe if I’d just…I don’t know…been there…”

  “Did you know she carried condoms in her handbag?” Templeton asked.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Donna. “I never went through Hayley’s handbag.”

  Daniels glanced over at Templeton in disgust.

  “Does it surprise you?” Templeton asked.

  “No,” said Donna. “She knew if she was going to do anything she had to be careful. They all do these days.”

  “If she kept the boyfriend a secret,” Winsome said, “we’re wondering what the reason is. Perhaps he was an older man? Perhaps he was married?”

  “I still can’t tell you anything,” said Donna.

  Templeton turned to Daniels. “You’ve had some experience in that department, haven’t you?” he said. “Shagging Martina Redfern while Hayley was getting herself killed? Like them young, do you? Maybe it’s you we should be looking at a lot more closely.”

  If he expected to get a further rise out of Daniels, Winsome thought, he’d lost that one. Daniels sat there, spent and miserable. “I’ve made my mistakes,” he said. “Plenty of them. And I only hope Donna can find it in her heart to forgive me. But my mistakes aren’t going to help you catch my daughter’s killer. Now, if you can’t do anything except sit there and try to stir things up, why don’t you just get up off your arse and start doing your job?”

  “We are trying to do our jobs, sir,” Winsome said, surprising herself that she was coming to Templeton’s defense. But to defend the interview, she had to defend Templeton. She vowed she would never let anyone put her in this position again, no matter what they said. “Did she ever talk about any of her lecturers at college, for example?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” said Donna.

  “Was there anyone in particular?”

  “Austin,” said Daniels suddenly. “Malcolm Austin. Remember, Donna, that bloke that led the class trip to Paris last April?”

  “Yes,” said Donna. “She mentioned him a few times. But that was her favorite class. I don’t think there was…I mean…”

  “Have you met him?” Winsome asked.

  “No,” said Donna. “We haven’t met any of them. When she was at school we met her teachers, like, but when they’re at college, I mean, you don’t, do you?”

  “So you don’t know how old he is, whether he’s married or anything?”

  “Sorry,” said Donna. “Can’t help you there. You asked if she ever mentioned anyone and that was the only one.”

  “Romantic city, Paris,” said Templeton, buffing his fingernails on his thigh the way a cricketer rubs the ball.

  Winsome got to her feet. “Well, thanks,” she said. “It’s a start. We’ll have a word with Mr. Austin.”

  Templeton remained seated, and his lack of movement was making Winsome nervous. She knew that he outranked her, so he should be the one to give the signal to leave, but she was so intent on damage control and getting out of there that she hadn’t really thought about that. Finally, he stood up slowly, gave Daniels a long, lingering look and said, “We’ll be talking to you again soon, mate.” Then he took out his card and pointedly handed it to Donna, who was contemplating her husband as a matador contemplates a bull. “If you think of anything else, love,” Templeton said, “don’t hesitate to ring me, day or night.”

  When they got outside to the car, he grabbed Winsome’s arm and leaned so close to her that she could smell the spearmint chewing gum on his breath and said, “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

  “There won’t be any again,” Winsome said, surprised at her own vehemence. Then she jerked her arm free and surprised herself even more by saying, “And take your fucking hands off me. Sir.”

  BANKS WAS glad to get home at a reasonable hour on Tuesday, though he was still preoccupied with what Annie had told him about Lucy Payne’s murder. He had watched Brough’s Eastern Area press conference in the station that afternoon, and now Lucy Payne and the murders at 35 The Hill, or the “House of Payne” as one newspaper had dubbed it at the time, were all over the news again.

  Banks put Maria Muldaur’s Heart of Mine on the CD player and peered out of his front window as he tried to decide whether to warm up the lamb korma or try another Marks & Spencer’s chicken Kiev. Maria was singing Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain,” but the weather had improved considerably. The sun was going down and streaks of vermilion, magenta and crimson shot through the western sky, casting light on the fast-flowing Gratly Beck, so that at moments it seemed like a dark swirling oil slick. Next weekend they would be putting the clocks ahead, and it would be light until late in the evening.

  In the end, he made himself a ham-and-cheese sandwich and poured a glass of Peter Lehmann Shiraz. The main sound system was in the extension, along with the plasma TV, but he had set up speakers in the kitchen and in the front room, where he would sometimes sit and read or work on the computer. The couch was comfortable, the shaded lamps cozy, and the peat fire useful on cool winter evenings. He didn’t need it tonight, but he decided to eat his dinner in there, anyway, and read the notes he had brought home with him from the office. He had got both Ken Blackstone and Phil Hartnell to agree to a meeting in Leeds the following morning. Annie was staying over at her cottage in Harkside that night, and he was due to pick her up there at nine-thirty in the morning. But before that, he needed to do his homework.

  In a way, though, he already knew his subject. He didn’t have to read the files to know their names: Kimberley Myers, age fifteen, failed to return home from a school dance one Friday night; Kelly Diane Matthews, age seventeen, went missing during a New Year’s Eve party in Roundhay Park, Leeds; Samantha Jane Foster, eighteen years old, disappeared on her way home from a poetry reading at a pub near the University of Bradford; Leanne Wray, sixteen, vanished on a ten-minute walk between a pub and her parents’ house in Eastvale; Melissa Horrocks, aged seventeen, failed to return home from a pop concert in Harrogate. Five young girls, all victims of Terence Payne, who came to be called the “Chameleon” and, many people believed, also of his wife Lucy Payne, who later became the notorious “Friend of the Devil.”

  Two police officers on routine patrol had been called to the Payne house in west Leeds after a neighbor reported hearing sounds of an argument. There they had found Lucy Payne unconscious in the hall, the apparent victim of an attack by her husband. In the cellar, Terence Payne had set upon the officers with a machete and killed PC Dennis Morrisey. Morrisey’s partner, PC Janet Taylor, had managed to get in several blows with her nightstick, and she didn’t stop hitting Terence Payne until he was no longer moving, no longer a threat. He subsequently died of his injuries.

  Banks was called to the cellar, where the local police had found the body of Kimberley Myers bound naked and dead on a mattress surrounded by candles, her body slashed around the breasts and genitals. The other girls were found dismembered and buried in the next room, and postmortems discovered them to have been similarly tortured. What Banks remembered most, apart from the smell, was the way their toes stuck up through the earth like tiny mushrooms. Sometimes he had nightmares about that time he had spent in the cellar at 35 The Hill.

  He thought about his conversation with Annie that afternoon and decided that he had definitely been on the defensive. He remembered Lucy Payne best as she was the first time he had seen her in her hospital bed, when she hadn’t been quite as beautiful as some of the photographs the newspapers printed. Half her
face had been covered in bandages, her long raven’s-wing hair had been spread out on the pillow under her head, and the one good eye that stared at him with unnerving directness was as black as her hair.

  Naturally, she had denied any involvement in or knowledge of her husband’s crimes. When Banks had talked to her, he had sensed her striding always one step ahead, or aside, anticipating the questions, preparing her answers and the requisite emotions of regret and pain, but never of guilt. She had been, by turns, vulnerable or brazen, victim or willing sexual deviant. Her history, when it came out, recounted a childhood of unimaginable horrors in a remote coastal house, where the children of two families had been subjected to ritual sexual abuse by their parents until the social workers pounced one day amid rumors of Satanic rites.

  Banks got up and poured another glass of wine. It was going down far too well. As he drank, he thought of the people he had encountered during the Chameleon investigation, from the parents of the victims to neighbors and schoolfriends of some of the girls. There was even a teacher who had come briefly under suspicion, a friend of Payne’s called Geoffrey Brighouse. It was a large cast, but at least it would give Annie and her team somewhere to start.

  Thinking of the Paynes’ victims, Banks’s mind drifted to Hayley Daniels. He couldn’t let this new case of Annie’s interfere with the investigation. He owed Hayley that much. With any luck, by the time he got back from Leeds tomorrow, some of the lab results would have started to trickle in, and between them, Wilson and Templeton would have talked to most of the friends Hayley was with on Saturday night and interviewed the possible boyfriend, Malcolm Austin.

  Banks knew he had made a mistake in putting Winsome and Templeton together on the Daniels-McCarthy interview. He could tell from the atmosphere when the two returned to the station that it hadn’t gone well. Neither would talk to him about it, he knew, though he sensed there was obviously more than Templeton’s overactive libido behind it.