Friend of the Devil

by Peter Robinson

  As she started to kick her shoes off, he came toward her, and she saw him open his mouth as if to say something, but before she knew what was happening, another figure appeared behind him, this one also wearing dark clothing, impossible to make out clearly. The figure moved quickly, drawing a hand across the man’s throat from behind. They were only about three feet away now, and a warm and faintly sweet, metallic spray hit Chelsea on her face and chest. The man seemed confused and put his fingers to his neck. The other figure disappeared back into shadows.

  Chelsea staggered back a few paces. She was left alone with the man now, but he seemed fixed to the spot. He took his hand away from his throat and looked at it, then he opened his mouth as if he was trying to say something to her, but no sound came out. Then he dropped to his knees. Chelsea heard them crack as they hit the flagstones. As she stood there, hand to her mouth, the man toppled forward and fell on his face. She heard another crack as his nose hit the ground. Only then did she start screaming and running for the exit.

  JOSH RITTER was singing “Girl in the War” as Banks drove the dark winding road on the daleside just above the river. He was finally beginning to like the Porsche, he realized. It was starting to fit him better. It was a bit shabbier now, more lived-in, less ostentatious, and it handled beautifully on winding hilly roads like this. Maybe he would hang on to it after all. The valley side rose steeply to his left, fields giving way to outcrops of limestone and moors of gorse and heather, just looming shapes in the night, and the river gleamed in the moonlight as it meandered over the wide lush valley bottom through The Leas. He passed the drumlin with the four trees permanently bent by the wind and knew he would soon be on the home stretch.

  As he drove and half-listened to the music, he thought of Sophia and what a breath of fresh air she had breathed into Harriet’s dinner party. He wondered if she was married. An attractive woman like her probably had a serious boyfriend, at the very least, perhaps even lived with him. He knew there was no point, not even for a moment, in allowing himself to think that her invitation to go for a walk together meant anything more than it seemed, and he remembered his earlier advice to himself not to fall in love with her. Not much chance of that. He hoped he would at least have time to see her again on Sunday, though. As she had said, even a hotshot detective needed a few hours off now and then. And he was the boss, or close enough.

  The so-called random shuffle seemed to go into folk mode, as it did from time to time. Eliza Carthy’s “Worcester City” followed Kate Rusby’s “No Names.” Then came Isobel Campbell’s “O Love Is Teasing.” Sometimes Banks didn’t believe it was random at all, but had a devious mind of its own. Once it had followed The Small Faces’ “Here Come the Nice” with The Nice’s “America.” Nobody could convince Banks that was random.

  A mile or so past the drumlin, Banks’s mobile rang. He fumbled with it and managed to get it to his ear without losing the rhythm of his driving. He was in a very dodgy area for coverage, and what came over the line was crackly and faint, fading in and out. He got the impression that it was Winsome talking, and he thought he heard the words “murder” and “The Maze” before reception broke down completely. With a growing sense of anxiety, he switched off the mobile, and at the next farm gate he turned around and headed back toward Eastvale.

  13

  IT WAS WITH A TERRIBLE SENSE OF DÉJÀ VU THAT BANKS pulled into the market square around one o’clock in the morning and saw the crowds held back by police barriers. Many of the onlookers were drunk, had just staggered from the pubs at closing time and seen all the activity by the entrance to The Maze. One or two of them had become aggressive, and the uniforms were having a hard time keeping them back. When Banks saw the sergeant from the station, he asked him to call for reinforcements. They might not need any—drunks often lost interest as quickly as they found it—but it was better to be safe than sorry. Still feeling a sense of deep anxiety, Banks told the officers to block off the entire Maze this time, all exits.

  “But, sir,” one of the constables argued. “There are four terraced cottages near the back. People live there.”

  “We’ll worry about them later,” said Banks. “Someone has to interview them as soon as possible anyway. For the moment, I want the entire area sealed. No one goes in or out without me knowing about it. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.” The constable scuttled off.

  Banks rapped on the door of The Fountain.

  “He’s gone home, sir,” said Winsome, emerging from Taylor’s Yard and slipping under the police tape. “The place is all shut up.”

  Banks grunted. “I wish the rest of them would do the same.” He noticed the occasional camera flash—press, most likely—and one or two people were holding their mobiles in the air and taking photographs, or even video-recording the scene, the way they did at rock concerts. In some ways it was a sick trend, but it sometimes got results; occasionally, someone captured something none of the CCTV cameras or police photographers did, a suspect in the crowd, for example, and it could help bring about an early solution.

  “What the hell’s going on, anyway?” Banks asked. “I couldn’t hear a word you said over the phone. Who’s the victim. Is she dead?”

  “No, sir,” said Winsome. “This one survived. If she was meant to be the victim. But someone’s dead. I haven’t had a look at the body yet. It’s dark and I didn’t want to disturb anything before you got here. We’re waiting on SOCO, but Dr. Burns has just arrived.”

  “Okay. I’m sure he’ll be more than adequate.”

  Banks followed Winsome under the tape and into The Maze, deeper than the previous week, past the end of Taylor’s Yard, around corners and across small cobbled squares, down ginnels so narrow they almost had to walk sideways. And all the while he could see beams of light sweeping the darkness, hear the crackle of police radios in the distance. It was a labyrinth in there, and Banks wished they’d brought a ball of twine. He remembered he had said the same thing about Annie’s cottage in Harkside the first time he had dinner with her there—the first time they had made love—that it was hidden at the center of a labyrinth and he could never find his way out alone. It had been a good way of suggesting he stay the night, at any rate.

  There was little light in The Maze, so it was sometimes hard to see exactly where they were going, but Banks trusted to Winsome. She seemed to know her way without the twine.

  “Where’s Kev Templeton?” he asked from behind her.

  “Don’t know, sir. Couldn’t raise him. Maybe he’s at some club or other.”

  They came to a ginnel that led into a square, and Banks could see lights at the end, hear conversation and radios. When they approached, he noticed that someone had already put up arc lights, so the place was lit up like Christmas. Everyone seemed pale and pink around the gills. Banks recognized Jim Hatchley and Doug Wilson lingering by one wall, and a couple of the uniformed officers were making notes. Peter Darby was taking photographs and videotaping the entire scene, though Banks supposed it could hardly be videotape if it was digital, the way they were these days. Everyone glanced Banks’s way as he entered the square, then turned nervously away and a hush fell over them. His heart was in his throat. There was something going on, something he needed to be prepared for.

  Dr. Burns bent over the body, which lay facedown on the ground, an enormous pool of dark blood spread from the head area toward the wall. Dr. Burns, almost as pale and shaken as the rest, stood up to greet Banks and Winsome. “I don’t want to touch or move the body until the SOCOs get here,” he said. Even Banks could see from where he was standing that it wasn’t the body of a woman.

  “Can we have a look now?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Dr. Burns. “Just be careful.”

  Banks and Winsome knelt. The stone flags were hard and cold. Banks took a torch one of the uniformed officers offered him, and shone it on the face as best he could. When he saw the young, bloodless profile, he fell back on his tailbone and slumped against the
wall as if he had been pushed.

  Winsome squatted at his side. “Bloody hell, sir,” she said. “It’s Kev. It’s Kev Templeton. What the hell was he doing here?”

  All Banks could think was that he had never heard Winsome swear before.

  ONE OF the uniformed officers had been dispatched to fetch a pot of fresh hot coffee, even if he had to wake up one of the coffee-shop owners in the market square, and the rest of the weary troop filed into the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters, no more than about a quarter of a mile from where the body of their colleague lay, undergoing the ministrations of Stefan Nowak and his SOCOs.

  When DS Nowak and his team had arrived in The Maze, they had made it clear they wanted the scene to themselves, and that the little square was far too crowded. It was a relief for most of the officers attending there to leave, and a signal to get the investigation in motion. Everyone was stunned by Templeton’s murder, and no one seemed able to take it in, but all that confusion had to be translated into action as quickly as possible.

  Dr. Burns and Peter Darby stuck with the SOCOs, and the rest, about ten of them in all, including Banks, Hatchley and Winsome, returned to the station. Detective Superintendent Gervaise had arrived straight from bed, hurriedly dressed in black denims and a fur-collared jacket, and she was busy setting up the whiteboard while the others arranged themselves around the long polished table, pads and pens in front of them. They wouldn’t need a mobile van near the scene because the station itself was so close, but they would need to set up a special incident room, with extra phone lines, computers and civilian staff. For the moment, they would work out of the Hayley Daniels incident room, given space limitations and the shared location of the crimes.

  They would also have to assign the usual roles—office manager, receiver, statement readers, action allocators and so on. Banks was already designated SIO and Gervaise would “interface with the media,” as she put it. But she also made it clear that she wanted to be hands-on and to be kept informed every step of the way. This was one of their own, and it went without saying that there would be no concessions, no quarter. But first they needed to know what had happened to Templeton, and why.

  When the coffee arrived, everyone took a styrofoam cup. They passed milk and sugar around, along with a packet of stale custard creams someone had found in a desk drawer. Banks joined Gervaise at the head of the table, and the first thing they asked for was a summary from the officer on the scene, a PC Kerrigan, who had just happened to be on duty in the public order detail that night. “What happened?” Banks asked. “Take it slowly, lad, step by step.”

  The young PC looked as if he’d been sick, which he probably had. At least he had had the presence of mind to do it away from the immediate scene. He took a deep breath, then began. “I was standing outside my van trying to decide whether to…” He glanced at Gervaise.

  “It’s all right, man,” she said. “At the moment I don’t care whether you were having a smoke or a blow job. Get on with it.”

  The constable blushed, and everyone else was taken aback, even Banks. He hadn’t heard Superintendent Gervaise talk like that before, any more than he had heard Winsome swear, but he ought to know by now that she was full of surprises. This was turning out to be a night of firsts.

  “Y-yes, ma’am,” Kerrigan said. “Well, you see, there was a minor fracas going on over by The Trumpeters, and we were wondering whether we should just let it run its natural course, you know, like, or jump in there and risk exacerbating matters. The long and the short of it is that we decided to let it run its course. Just at that moment—and I checked my watch, ma’am, it was three minutes to twelve—a young woman came running out of The Maze covered in blood and screaming her head off.”

  “What did you do then?” Gervaise asked.

  “Well, ma’am, I couldn’t help but think that she’d been attacked, like, especially after last week, so I ran over to her. She seemed all right physically, but, as I said, there was quite a lot of blood on her, and she was pale as a ghost and shaking like a leaf.”

  “Spare us the clichés, Constable, and get on with the story,” said Gervaise.

  “Sorry, ma’am. I asked her what was wrong, and she just pointed back where she’d come from. I asked her to take me there, and she froze. She was terrified, shaking her head. Said she was never going back in there. I asked her what she’d seen, but she couldn’t tell me that either, or where it was. In the end, I persuaded her that she would be safe with me. She stuck to me like…like a…” He glanced at Gervaise. “She stuck close to me and led me to…well, you know what to.”

  “In your own words,” said Banks. “Be calm, Kerrigan. Take it easy.”

  “Yes, sir.” Constable Kerrigan took a deep breath. “We reached the area where the body was lying. I didn’t know who it was, of course. You just couldn’t tell, the way the face was squashed down on the flagstones like that. There was such a lot of blood.”

  “Did you or the girl go anywhere near the body?” Banks asked.

  “No, sir. Except right at first, to get a closer look and see if he was still alive.”

  “Did either of you touch anything?”

  “No, sir. I knew to stay well back, and there was no way she was going anywhere near it. She cowered back by the wall.”

  “Very good,” said Banks. “Go on.”

  “Well, that’s about it, sir. My mates from the van weren’t far behind me, and when I heard them all piling into the square behind me, I told them to stop, turn back and go to station and call everyone they could think of. Maybe I shouldn’t have panicked like that, but…”

  “You did the right thing,” said Gervaise. “You stayed with the body while they went?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And the girl?”

  “She stayed, too. She sort of slid down the wall and held her head in her hands. I did get her name and address. Chelsea Pilton. Funny name, I thought. Sounds like an underground stop, doesn’t it? Daft thing naming a kid after a bun or a flower show, anyway, if you ask me,” he added. “But that seems to be the way of the world these days, doesn’t it?”

  “Thank you for those words of wisdom,” muttered Gervaise with her eyes closed and the knuckle of her right middle finger against her forehead.

  “Maybe she was named after the football team,” Banks offered.

  Gervaise gave him a withering glance.

  “She lives on the East Side Estate,” Constable Kerrigan added.

  “Where is she now?” Gervaise asked.

  “I sent her to the hospital with Constable Carruthers, ma’am. She was in a proper state, the girl. I didn’t see any sense in keeping her there, next to…well, you know.”

  “You did right,” said Banks. “They’ll know what to do. I assume Constable Carruthers has instructions to stay with her until someone gets there?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  “Excellent. The parents?”

  “Constable Carruthers informed them, sir. I think they’re at the hospital now.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Nineteen, sir.”

  “Good work.” Banks called down the corridor for a PC. “Get down to the hospital,” he said, “and make sure that Chelsea Pilton is taken straight to the Sexual Assault Referral Centre. Got that? Chelsea Pilton. They’ll know what to do with her there. Ask for Shirley Wong, if she’s in tonight. That’s Dr. Shirley Wong.” The new referral center, the only one in the Western Area, was attached to the hospital, and was seen by many as a rather sad sign of the times. “And see if they can get the parents out of the way. The girl’s nineteen, so they don’t have to present during any interview or examination, and I’d rather they weren’t. Their presence might cause her to clam up. I’ll talk to them separately later.”

  “Yes, sir.” The PC set off.

  “She’s not a suspect, is she, sir?” PC Kerrigan asked.

  “At the moment,” Banks said, “even you are a suspect.” Then he smiled. “
We have to follow certain procedures. You ought to know that, Constable.”

  Kerrigan swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  “You mentioned that she had blood on her,” Banks said.

  “Yes. It looked like it had sprayed on her face and chest. Funny, it seemed like freckles in the dim light.” Kerrigan glanced nervously at Gervaise, who rolled her eyes and muttered, “God help us, a poetic PC.”

  “Did she say where it had come from?” Banks asked.

  “No, sir. I just assumed…well, that she’d been close when it happened.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “Yes, sir, but she wouldn’t answer.”

  “Did you see or hear anything or anyone else in The Maze while you were there?” Banks went on.

  “Not a dickey bird, sir.”

  “Any music or anything?”

  “No, sir. Just a bit of argy-bargy from the market square. Drunks singing, cars revving up, glass breaking, the usual sort of thing.”

  More coffee arrived, a large urn this time, indicating that it was going to be a long night for everyone, and two constables set it up at the far end of the table. Someone had obviously gained access to the station canteen. They had also brought a bigger stack of styrofoam cups, fresh milk, a bag of sugar and a packet of Fig Newtons. Everyone helped themselves. It was definitely canteen coffee, weak and bitter, but it did the trick. Banks noticed his hand trembling slightly as he raised the cup to his mouth. Delayed shock. He still found it impossible to accept that Kevin Templeton was dead, despite what he had seen with his own eyes. It just didn’t make sense. He ate a fig biscuit. Maybe the sugar would help.

  “Did Chelsea tell you anything about what she witnessed?” Banks asked.