Friend of the Devil

by Peter Robinson

  “Now then, Mr. Randall,” Banks began, “there’s been a few interesting developments since we last talked, but before we get to them, I’d just like to recap briefly what you told us on the previous two times we talked to you, make sure it’s accurate.”

  Randall glanced toward Crawford, who nodded. “I can see no harm in that, Joseph,” he advised. “Do as they say.”

  “As I remember it,” Banks said, “you were surprised to find that you’d spent eleven minutes in the storage room with Hayley Daniels’s body before reporting it to the police station. Is that correct?”

  “It was you who said I spent eleven minutes there. I didn’t think it was that long. You say someone saw me, but I thought I entered the building at eight-fifteen, not eight-ten, as your witness said.”

  “It was eight-ten,” said Banks. “Don’t forget, Joseph, the CCTV cameras run in the daytime as well, and they are accurately timed. Eleven minutes is a long time to spend with a corpse. Unless there were matters to attend to, of course.”

  “Mr. Banks!” said Crawford. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing, yet,” said Banks, keeping his eyes on Randall. “You also admitted that you were in The Duck and Drake earlier on Saturday evening, when Hayley and her friends were there, and that you were ogling her while she stood at the bar.”

  Randall looked at Crawford. “That was his word, not mine. I admitted to no such thing, Sebastian. You see? This is what they do. They twist what you say, put words into your mouth.”

  “But you did see her there,” Banks went on. “And you did try to gloss over that fact in our first interview, didn’t you?”

  “I told you I didn’t remember seeing her.”

  “Well, she certainly hadn’t changed her clothes,” said Banks. “And the only thing different about her appearance the following morning was that she was dead. But if you expect me to believe you saw an attractive young girl in a very revealing outfit at seven o’clock one evening and then again just after eight o’clock the next morning and didn’t know it was the same girl, I suppose I have to believe you.”

  “It was the shock,” said Randall. “For Christ’s sake, man, she was dead. It might be par for the course as far as you’re concerned, but I’m not used to seeing dead bodies on my property.”

  “Let’s move on to what you did on Saturday night,” said Banks. “You told me that you were at home between the hours of twelve and two, that you put the cat out and went to bed about a quarter to one. Do you stand by that?”

  “Of course I do. It’s what happened.”

  “It’s not very far from where you live to Taylor’s Yard, is it?” Banks said. “Though it might make more sense to drive to the car park at the back of The Maze and slip in through one of the passages not covered by CCTV.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Yes, Mr. Banks, what are you talking about?” Crawford chipped in. “My client has told you what he did on Saturday night.”

  “I’m presenting an alternative version,” said Banks.

  “But how could I have known the girl would go into The Maze at whatever time she did?” said Randall.

  It was a good question, Banks had to admit, and he didn’t have a ready answer. The whole element of spontaneity, of Hayley’s deciding at the last minute to head into The Maze to relieve herself, bothered him. It was a stumbling block. But, he had to keep telling himself, it didn’t preclude the possibility that there was somebody already in there just waiting for an opportunity, as Templeton believed. “You know the layout back there,” he said. “What was to stop you from hiding out and waiting for a victim? It was simply a matter of time, after all, before some poor young drunken lass wandered in and got lost in there. Perhaps you’d been in The Fountain on previous occasions and knew that the barmaid there used it as a shortcut to the car park. Maybe you didn’t know she was off work that night. No matter. Everything turned out well in the end, didn’t it? I’ll bet you couldn’t believe your luck when you saw it was the girl you’d had your eye on in The Duck and Drake earlier that evening.”

  “Now, come off it, Mr. Banks,” said Crawford with a nervous laugh. “Surely this is stretching our credulity a bit far, isn’t it? Do you really expect us to believe this…er…coincidence?”

  “Until Mr. Randall tells us how it really happened,” said Banks, “I’m afraid it’s the best we can do.”

  “I’ve told you how it happened,” said Randall. “After The Duck and Drake I went home and spent the rest of the evening watching television. At about a quarter to one, I put the cat out and went to bed. End of story.”

  “I’d like to believe you,” said Banks, “but I’m afraid what you’re saying goes against the evidence.”

  “What evidence?” asked Crawford. “Are you saying you can produce evidence to corroborate what you’re accusing my client of?”

  Banks turned to Stefan Nowak. “We have evidence that goes a long way toward proving it,” he said. “Stefan?”

  Nowak opened a folder in front of him. “According to our independent analysts, the DNA from the sample you freely gave us matches the DNA taken from traces of semen found on Hayley Daniels’s body and on two leather remnants close to that body.”

  “What are you saying?” said Randall, face pale, mouth gaping.

  “That the chances it was someone else who left those semen traces on Hayley Daniels’s body are about five billion to one,” said Banks. “Am I right, DS Nowak?”

  “About that, yes,” said Nowak.

  “And that’s good enough for any court in the country,” said Banks. “Joseph Randall, I’m charging you with the murder of Hayley Daniels. If you do not say something now that you later rely on in court, it may be held against you. Anything you do say may be taken down in evidence.” Banks stood up and opened the door. Two burly constables walked in. “Take him down to the custody suite,” said Banks.

  “You can’t do this to me!” said Randall. “Sebastian, help me! Stop them. That sample was taken under duress.”

  “You gave your consent,” Banks said. “We have the waiver.”

  “Under duress. Sebastian! Stop them. Please don’t let them do this to me.”

  Crawford wouldn’t look his client in the eye. “There’s nothing I can do right now, Joseph,” he said. “They’re quite within their rights. But believe me, I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

  “Get me out of this!” yelled Randall, red-faced, twisting his head back toward Crawford as the constables dragged him out of the interview room. “Sebastian! Get me out of this now!”

  Crawford was pale and hunched. He managed to summon up only the grimmest of smiles as he edged past Banks into the corridor and followed his client down the stairs.

  “NOW THIS is where it gets really interesting,” said Ferris after a long swig of Sneck-Lifter. He could certainly put it away, Annie thought, checking her watch. She could write off Coronation Street tonight, and maybe The Bill, too, the way things were going. Still, if Ferris’s story was as interesting as he obviously thought it was, maybe it would be worthwhile.

  “A week or so after we found Jack Grimley’s body and the Australian lad got hurt, another local chap by the name of Greg Eastcote was reported missing by a workmate. Apparently, he hadn’t turned up at his job for several days. He was a delivery man for a fish wholesaler. We never found him, nor any trace of him.”

  “Why do I get the feeling there’s always more?” said Annie. “This case is starting to resemble a hall of mirrors.” There was perhaps a quarter of an inch of beer left in her glass, but she wasn’t going to have another one, not this time. Control. Getting it back.

  “It is, rather, isn’t it?” said Ferris. “Anyway, we went into Eastcote’s house to see if we could find any clues to his disappearance. He lived alone. I was there, along with Paddy Cromer. We had no evidence at all that there was any connection with what happened to Grimley and McLaren, but such mysterious disappearances and v
iolent assaults were pretty rare around these parts, as I said. As far as his workmates were concerned, Eastcote was happy with his job and seemed generally uncomplicated and worry-free, if perhaps rather quiet and antisocial. A bit of an ‘odd duck,’ as one of them put it. To be honest, we didn’t know what we’d stumbled into at the time.”

  “And now?”

  Ferris laughed. “I’m not much the wiser.” He drank some more beer and resumed his tale. The lights dimmed and the pub started to fill up with evening drinkers. Annie felt somehow cut off from the laughter and gaiety of the crowd, as if she and Ferris were adrift on their own island of reality, or unreality, depending on how you saw it. She couldn’t explain why she felt that way, but somehow she knew that what Ferris was telling her was important, and that it had something to do with Lucy Payne’s murder, though Lucy would have been only ten in 1989. “It was what we found there, in his home, that puzzled us,” Ferris said. “In almost every respect it was a perfectly normal house. Neat and tidy, clean, the usual books, TV and videos. Normal.”

  “But?”

  “This never made the media,” Ferris said, “but in one of the sideboard drawers, we found seven locks of hair tied up in pink ribbons.” Annie felt her chest constrict. Ferris must have noticed some change in her because he went on quickly. “No, there’s nothing normal about that, is there?”

  “Did you?…I mean…”

  “Everyone knew there had been a serial killer operating in the north, and the general feeling was that now we’d found him, or at least found out who he was. We never did find Eastcote himself. As far as our tally was concerned, he had claimed six victims, but there were other girls missing, other unexplained disappearances, and one girl who survived.”

  Annie raised an eyebrow.

  “Kirsten Farrow. Someone interrupted him before he could finish her off,” Ferris went on. “She was in a pretty bad way for a long time, but she recovered.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “Yes. She’d been staying in Leeds at the time with a friend called Sarah Bingham. She was vague, Kirsten, but you can expect that when someone suffered the way she did, poor lass. She really couldn’t remember much about what happened to her at all. We also consulted with the investigators on the case, Detective Superintendent Elswick and his DS, Dicky Heywood. Greg Eastcote’s delivery routes coincided with the disappearances and murders of all six girls and with Kirsten’s assault. We also managed to match Kirsten’s hair sample with one of the locks, so we know that he took a sample from her, even though she survived, and another lock matched that of his most recent victim. The others were…well, they’d been buried for a while, but we did our best. And you know what hair’s like at the best of times; it’s hardy and durable enough, but practically damned impossible to make a match that’ll stand up in court, and these were early days for DNA. Too early. None of us had really heard much about it, and I doubt you could have got DNA from a hair follicle, even if there’d been one. But the hair had been shorn with sharp scissors, so that was pretty unlikely, anyway. And court was never an issue.”

  “No?”

  “Like I said, we never found Eastcote. A local woman said she thought she’d seen two people struggling on the cliff path just up past the abbey on the way to Robin Hood’s Bay, but she was a long way off, and she couldn’t tell us any more than that. We searched the area and found one of the fence posts had come out of the ground. It seemed as if someone had gone over the edge. We also found blood and fibers on the barbed wire, but we’d no way of knowing whose they were. We got Eastcote’s blood group from medical records, of course, and it matched, but so did forty-four percent of the country’s.”

  “Were there any more killings?”

  “Not after that. Not around here.”

  “You think he went over?”

  “We didn’t know for certain, but it was a reasonable assumption that his body had been carried out to sea on the tide.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What could we do? We followed a few minor leads, queried some of the local B and Bs. One woman remembered Keith McLaren staying at her guesthouse, and that he struck up a conversation with a young woman there. Seems only natural, I suppose, when you’re young.”

  “Did you question him about it?”

  “When he came out of his coma, yes. He did remember something about a girl. Apparently they had a drink together, but that’s all.”

  “Name?”

  “Didn’t remember. Who knows, maybe he remembers more now. It’s been eighteen years.”

  “Was there any follow-up?”

  Ferris shook his head. “Years passed and nothing new came up. You know what it’s like.” He laughed. “Not like books or telly where the detective won’t give up until he gets his man.”

  “Or woman.”

  “Aye. Anyway, officially there was no murder, remember. Jack Grimley was killed by a fall, and Greg Eastcote disappeared. The only actual crime was the one against Keith McLaren, and he couldn’t remember anything, then he buggered off back to Australia. Pardon my French.” Ferris paused. “Besides, the feeling was that if Greg Eastcote was a serial killer, as he appeared to be, then someone had done us a bloody big favor.”

  “I think you’d have been hard pushed telling that to Jack Grimley’s family, or to Keith McLaren.”

  “Aye, well, I never said it sat well with me over the years, did I, but that’s the way things go, sometimes.”

  “So you did nothing?”

  “My hands were tied.”

  “And that’s where it stands today?”

  Ferris sighed. “Until now,” he said.

  Annie frowned. The noise of laughter and conversation ebbed and flowed around them. Behind the bar, a glass smashed. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “It’s a fascinating story, but you must realize there’s nothing to connect those events directly with what happened to Lucy Payne the other day except the bee in your bonnet. It’s been eighteen years. The whole idea’s ludicrous.”

  “Yes, of course. I know that. But if Eastcote was the serial killer, and a woman sent him over that cliff…”

  “And Kirsten Farrow was the surviving victim…”

  “The mysterious woman seen with Grimley and McLaren. Exactly.”

  “But how could she be?” Annie said. “You told me yourself that she couldn’t have known who her attacker was, and she was in Leeds with her friend at the time of the crimes.”

  Ferris shrugged. “That’s what she told us. And her friend corroborated it. But alibis can be fabricated. What if she had found out?”

  “Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

  Ferris gave her a hurt look. “What do you think I am?”

  Annie rubbed her forehead. “Sorry,” she said. “The media’s already in a feeding frenzy since they found out it was Lucy Payne on the edge of that cliff.”

  Ferris chuckled. “I’ll bet they are. Anyroad, they’ll get nothing from me.”

  Annie took out her notebook. “Okay, I’ll make a few preliminary inquiries,” she said. “You’d better start by giving me some names and last-known addresses. The Australian, Kirsten’s friend. We’re really pushed for manpower as it is, but maybe it’d be worth a bit of digging.” Then she stopped, struck by an idea that might be as crazy as it sounded.

  “What is it?” Ferris said.

  “You know those locks of hair you told me about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you keep them?”

  “They’d be with the rest of the case material somewhere, yes,” said Ferris.

  “Do you think you could dig them out?”

  Ferris’s face lit up as if he had been given a new purpose in life. “Is the Pope Catholic?” he said, beaming. “I don’t see why not. I am a researcher, after all.”

  THE BEER was flowing in The Queen’s Arms, where the landlord had put two long tables together, and even Detective Superintendent Catherine Gervaise was joining in the celebrations
with a smile on her face. Only Banks stood apart, leaning against the windowsill pensively sipping his pint, occasionally glancing out through the diamond-shaped panes at the passersby on Market Street as the shadows lengthened, feeling that something wasn’t quite right, that they were perhaps being premature. But a DNA match was solid, an arrest was an arrest, and it demanded celebration. The Arctic Monkeys were on the jukebox and all was well with the world.

  “What is it, sir?” asked Winsome, suddenly standing by his side, a purple drink topped with a maraschino cherry in her hand. Banks didn’t even want to know what it was. She was a little wobbly, but her voice and her eyes were clear.

  “Nothing,” said Banks. “Having fun?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No,” said Winsome. “You just seemed far away. I wondered…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Come on, out with it.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “What isn’t?”

  Someone bumped into Winsome, but she managed to hold on to her drink without spilling any. The man apologized and moved on. Hatchley was telling a joke over the music and everyone at the table was waiting for the punch line. Banks had heard it before. “Busy in here tonight, isn’t it?” Winsome said.

  “You can’t just start to say something, then cut it off in midstream,” said Banks. “What’s on your mind?”

  “DI Cabbot, sir.”

  “Annie?”

  “I told you, it’s none of my business. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I know you two are friends.”

  “I used to think so, too,” said Banks. Through the window, a couple of schoolgirls in disheveled uniforms passed by on their way home from a late band practice, one carrying a violin case, the other a flute.

  Hatchley reached his punch line and the table started laughing. “Sir?”

  “Nothing. What about DI Cabbot?”

  “I had dinner with her last night. I think something’s bothering her.”