Friend of the Devil

by Peter Robinson

  “Decided?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Food.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Annie. “I think I’ll have a panini with mushrooms, mozzarella and roasted red peppers. Tell me what you want, and I’ll go order.”

  Eric put his hand on her arm and stood up. “No. I insist. I invited you. As it happens, I’m a vegetarian, so I’ll have the same.” He smiled. “Is that something else we have in common?”

  Annie said nothing. She watched him walk away again and found herself thinking that he had a nice bum and wondering what he thought they had in common other than being vegetarians. She chastised herself for the impure thought and steeled herself for what she had to do, faltering for just a moment as to why she had to do it. But she had no place in her life and career for a young marijuana-smoking musician-cum-hairstylist, no matter how nice his bum or his smile.

  “It’ll only be a few minutes,” Eric said, as he sat down again and lit a cigarette. He offered Annie one, but she said no.

  Annie sipped some Slimline tonic. “That e-mail you sent me last night wasn’t too cool, you know,” she said.

  “What? I’m sorry. I just thought it was a laugh, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well…that’s the difference between you and me. I didn’t. If anyone else saw it…”

  “Who else is likely to see it? I only sent it to you. Why would you show it to anyone else?”

  “That’s not the point. You know what I mean. E-mails are hardly private.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you worked for MI5. Sworn the Official Secrets Act, have you?”

  “I don’t, and I haven’t.”

  “What exactly do you do?”

  “That’s none of your bloody business.”

  “You must be a cop, then. Like Prime Suspect? That’s so cool.” He held out his hands. “You’d better cuff me, Officer. It’s a fair cop.”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Sorry. Don’t you have a sense of humor?”

  “That’s neither here nor there.”

  “Are we on again?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You and me. We’ve had our first fight, and we’re over it, so why don’t we make a few plans for some more lovely evenings like the other night?”

  “I don’t think so, Eric,” said Annie.

  His face dropped. “Why not?”

  “It’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Why I’m here.” She paused again, but not for dramatic effect. Her throat was suddenly dry, and she sipped some more tonic. Why did it come in such small bottles? The serving girl came over with their paninis. Eric tucked in and eyed her expectantly. “I really don’t know how to say this,” Annie went on, not touching her food. “I mean, you seem like a nice guy, and I had a lovely time the other night and all, but I don’t think…I mean, I just don’t think it has to lead anywhere. What I’m saying is that I don’t want it to lead anywhere.”

  “A one-night stand?”

  “If you like.”

  Eric put his panini down and shook his head. A slimy sliver of red pepper with a charred edge hung out of the bread. “I don’t like. I definitely don’t like. I don’t go in for one-night stands.”

  What was Annie supposed to say to that? she wondered. That she did? “Look,” she went on, “it’s not something I make a habit of, either. We had a few drinks and a good time and we ended up…well, you know…but that’s it. It was fun. It doesn’t have to go any further. I hope we can still be friends.” Christ, Annie, she thought, that sounded pathetic.

  “Friends?” he echoed. “Why would we be friends?”

  “Fine,” said Annie, feeling herself redden. “We won’t. I was just trying to be nice.”

  “Well, don’t bother on my account. What’s wrong with you?” He had raised his voice so much that some of the other customers were glancing their way.

  “What do you mean?” Annie scanned the pub, feeling her panic rise. “And keep your voice down.”

  “Why are you saying this? Keep my voice down? I mean, look at you, you’re old enough to be my mother. You should be bloody grateful I picked you up in that pub and gave you a good shag, and here you are trying to work it out so that you’re dumping me. Just how do you get to that, I wonder?”

  Annie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her ears buzzed and her breath caught in her throat. She could only sit there with her mouth open and her skin burning, aware of the silence all around them and everyone’s eyes on her.

  “Maybe you don’t remember,” Eric went on, “but I do. Christ, you couldn’t get enough of it the other night. You were screaming for it. You should be flattered. I mean, isn’t that just what you older women want, a young stud to give you—”

  “You bastard!” Annie stood up and tossed the rest of her Slimline tonic in his face. Unfortunately for her, there wasn’t much left in the bottom of her glass, which undermined the dramatic effect somewhat, but as she shot to her feet, her thighs caught the underside of the table and tipped it over, spilling Eric’s full pint of Guinness and his panini with the slimy red peppers all over his lap. Then, as fast as she could, she dashed out into Church Street and made her way, tears in her eyes, toward the 199 steps up Saint Mary’s Church. Only when she had got to the top and stood in the almost deserted graveyard leaning on a wind-worn tombstone did she stop for breath and start sobbing as the seagulls screeched around her, the wind howled and waves crashed on the rocks below.

  “IT MUST mean business if someone of your rank is paying house calls,” said Malcolm Austin as he let Banks and Winsome into his office late Thursday afternoon. Winsome had argued for bringing the professor into the station, but Banks thought it would be a better idea to go at him harder once more on his own territory, where he was surrounded by everything he had to lose.

  Banks glanced around at the overflowing bookcases. Sometimes he thought he wouldn’t have minded being an academic, spending his life surrounded by books and eager young minds. But he knew he’d miss the thrill of the chase, and that the young minds were not necessarily as eager or as exciting as he might think. The window was open a few inches, and Banks could smell coffee and fresh bread from the courtyard café below and hear the hum of distant conversations. All morning his mind had been full of Lucy Payne and her crimes, and of Annie’s mysterious behavior, Winsome’s aside in The Queen’s Arms, how he could approach Annie about it, but now he needed to concentrate on the job at hand: finding Hayley Daniels’s killer.

  Austin bade them sit and arranged his lanky body, legs crossed, in the swivel chair behind his messy desk. He wore track suit trousers and a red sweatshirt emblazoned with an American basketball team logo. An open laptop sat on the desk in front of him, and as he sat down he closed it. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “Do you remember the last time I talked to you?” Winsome asked.

  “Who could forget such—”

  “Never mind the bollocks, Mr. Austin,” said Banks. “You told DC Jackman that you weren’t having an affair with Hayley Daniels. Information has come to light that indicates you were lying. What do you have to say about that?”

  “What information? I resent the implication.”

  “Is it true or not that you were having an affair with Hayley Daniels?”

  Austin looked at Winsome, then back at Banks. Finally he compressed his lips, bellowed up his cheeks and let the air out slowly. “All right,” he said. “Hayley and I had been seeing one another for two months. We started about a month or so after my wife left. Which means, strictly speaking, that whatever Hayley and I had, it wasn’t an affair.”

  “Semantics,” said Banks. “Teacher shagging student. What do you call it?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” said Austin. “You make it sound so sordid. We were in love.”

  “Excuse me while I reach for a bucket.”

  “Inspector! The woman I love has just been murdered. The least you can do is show some respect.”

  “How
old are you, Malcolm?”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “And Hayley Daniels was nineteen.”

  “Yes, but she was—”

  “That’s an age difference of thirty-two years, according to my calculations. It makes you technically old enough to be her grandfather.”

  “I told you, we were in love. Do you think love recognizes such mundane barriers as age?”

  “Christ, you’re starting to sound like a bloody pedophile,” said Banks. “If I had a quid for every time I’ve heard that argument.”

  Austin flushed with anger. “I resent that remark. Where do you draw the line, Inspector? Nineteen? Twenty? Twenty-one? You know you don’t have a leg to stand on as far as the law is concerned.” He paused. “Besides, as I was about to tell you, Hayley was much older than her years, very mature for her age.”

  “Emotionally?”

  “Well, yes…”

  “Tell me what emotionally mature young woman goes out drinking with a group of friends on a Saturday night, wearing practically nothing, and drinks so much she gets legless and totters down a dark alley for a piss?” Banks could sense Winsome staring at him, and he knew she was thinking he was acting almost as badly as Templeton. But self-righteous pricks like Austin, who abused their positions of power to indulge their desires for young girls, or boys, always made him angry, and he still felt plenty of residual anger from his interview with Randall the previous evening. He knew he needed to tone it down, though, or Austin would clam up completely, so he indicated subtly to Winsome that he had got her message, knew what he was doing and was easing his foot off the accelerator.

  “I think what Mr. Banks means,” said Winsome, “is what sort of shape would Hayley have been in on Saturday night when she got to your house? If you remember, you did indicate last time I talked to you that you didn’t want a drunk and immature teenager in your house. Now you’re saying that Hayley was mature for her years. Maybe you can see our problem? We’re getting a few conflicting remarks here.”

  “That’s it exactly,” Banks said. “You see, Malcolm, according to all accounts, Hayley was pretty far gone. I find myself wondering what use she could have possibly been to you in that state.”

  Austin glared. “You might not understand this, Mr. Banks,” he said, “but love isn’t always a matter of ‘using,’ of what you can get from someone. If Hayley had come to me on Saturday night and she’d been drinking, I wouldn’t have taken advantage of her. I didn’t need for her to be drunk to make love. I would have made her some coffee, left her to sleep it off, made her as comfortable as possible.”

  Banks remembered Annie’s drunken visit of the other night. Is that what he should have done? Settled her down, made her comfortable? “Admirable,” he said. “But were you expecting her?”

  Austin paused to examine something on his desk, then he said, “She told me she might come by. Saturday was always a casual arrangement. It was her night.”

  “Then why did you lie to DS Jackman the last time she spoke to you?”

  Austin looked guiltily at Winsome. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was just that I was afraid of exactly the kind of reaction I got from you just now. Our relationship is not easy to explain. People don’t always understand.” He glared at Banks again.

  “Look,” said Banks, in his best we’re-men-of-the-world manner, “no man would deny the attractiveness of a lissome nineteen-year-old beauty like Hayley Daniels, and no one could fail to understand why you wanted to bed her. The love bit’s a touch harder to fathom, I will admit, but granted, it happens. People are strange that way. The problem isn’t so much the age difference, but that you’re a teacher and she was your student. What do the college authorities think of this sort of thing?”

  Austin looked away. “They don’t know, of course. I doubt that they’d be sympathetic. They frown on teacher-student relationships.”

  “So you didn’t want them to know? It could mean your career?”

  “That’s one reason I wasn’t completely truthful, yes. I’ve worked very hard for many years to get where I am now.”

  “Only one reason?”

  “Well, no one wants to be dragged into a murder investigation, do they?”

  “But you’re in it now. Up to your neck. Did you really think you could get away with lying about something like that?” Banks shook his head. “It just boggles my mind that people must think we’re so stupid as to overlook the obvious.” A hint of marijuana smoke drifted up from the courtyard.

  “I don’t think you’re stupid,” said Austin. “I just didn’t think it was that obvious. We tried to be discreet. We were going to go public when she finished her diploma. Now it’s all out in the open, what is it you want to know? I had nothing to do with Hayley’s death. As I told you, I love her. Loved her.”

  “Had she dropped by after going out drinking on a Saturday night before?” Banks asked.

  “Yes. I can’t honestly say I was too thrilled. I mean, she was usually, as you said, a bit the worse for alcohol. But it was her night out with her friends, and if…well, quite frankly…”

  “What?” said Banks.

  “Well, if she had to spend the night somewhere, I’d rather she spent it with me.”

  “You didn’t trust her?”

  “I didn’t say that. But she’s young. Vulnerable.”

  “So you were jealous,” said Banks. “Stands to reason. I’d be jealous too if I had a beautiful young girlfriend. A few drinks in her, and she might start shagging someone her own age.” Banks felt Winsome bristle again. Templeton-phobia or no, she had to loosen up, he thought. You sometimes had to shake the tree pretty hard to get the coconut to fall. Austin was an educated type, not without a touch of arrogance, and you weren’t going to get to him by logical argument and civilized banter.

  “If, as I am,” Austin said, “you are fortunate enough to have the love of a young woman, you soon learn that you can’t afford to be clinging in the relationship.”

  “What did you think when she didn’t turn up?” Winsome asked.

  “I didn’t think anything, really. I mean, it was by no means definite that she would.”

  “You weren’t worried about her?”

  “No.”

  “But she wasn’t expected at home,” Banks cut in, “so where did you think she was staying?”

  “With friends, I suppose.”

  “With someone else? And you were jealous. Did you go out searching for her?”

  “I told you, it doesn’t pay to be clinging. Besides, I trusted Hayley. Yes, as I said, I would rather her stop with me, but if she stopped at a friend’s flat, it didn’t mean she would be sleeping with him.” His eyes misted over. “In a way,” he said, “I suppose I hoped she wouldn’t come. I always found it hard to deal with her in that state, and I was tired on Saturday.”

  “Hard to handle when she was drunk, was she?” said Banks.

  “She could be.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Irrational, unpredictable, overtalkative.”

  “Would Hayley have arrived by one o’clock if she was coming?”

  “Usually, yes. Anyway, she had a key.”

  “Very trusting of you.”

  “It’s called love, Inspector. You really ought to try it.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing. Why should we believe you?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Banks scratched the scar beside his right eye. “You’ve lied to us once or twice, so why should we believe anything you tell us now?”

  “Because it’s the truth.”

  “Easy for you to say. But look at it from my point of view. Hayley makes her way to your house the worse for wear. You’re fed up of her drunken antics and you tell her so, in no uncertain terms. Maybe she teases you, makes fun of your age or something, and you see red. She doesn’t want it, but she’s drunk and you don’t care what she wants. You know what you want. So you do it anyway. She struggles, but that just makes it all the more excit
ing. Afterward she’s making such a fuss, maybe even threatening to tell the college what you’ve done. You can’t have that, so you strangle her. Then you’re stuck with a body. Best thing you can think of at short notice is to shove it in the boot of your car and dump it in The Maze.” A few of the facts didn’t quite match the story Banks was telling, such as the violence of the rape, the timing, and the CCTV tapes, but Austin wasn’t to know that. “How am I doing?”

  “You should write detective fiction,” Austin said. “With an imagination like that, I’m surprised you waste it on being a policeman.”

  “You’d be surprised how useful imagination is in my job,” said Banks. “Am I at least close?”

  “Miles away.” Austin leaned back in his chair. “Inspector, it would save us all a lot of trouble if you would just believe that I didn’t kill Hayley. Whatever you might think of me, I really did love her, and if I could help you, I would.” He glanced at Winsome. “I’m sorry I lied, but I really didn’t want to lose my job over this and have my name dragged through the mud. Those are the only reasons I did what I did.”

  “How well did you know Hayley?” Banks asked.

  “Well enough, I suppose. As I said, we’d been together for about two months, but I’d known her for about a year in all. And before you ask, there was nothing between us in that time.” He paused. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. Whatever you might have heard about Hayley’s behavior on Saturday night, it was…youthful high spirits. Just that. She sometimes needed to let off steam. Most of the time, as anyone will tell you, Hayley was an intelligent, sober, quiet-spoken, hardworking and ambitious young woman. That’s what I meant when I referred to her maturity. Mostly she found boys of her own age trivial and obsessed with only one thing.”

  “And you weren’t?”

  “I’ll admit that knowing Hayley gave me a new lease on life in that direction, but you mustn’t make the mistake of assuming that was what it was all about.”

  “What was it all about?”