Friend of the Devil

by Peter Robinson

  Banks couldn’t help but smile, even through the pain in his chest. That wasn’t the official caution at all, and surely Get Christie Love! was way before Winsome’s time? “That’s all right, Winsome,” he said, still panting. “Well done. Pick the bastard up and cuff him. We’ll deal with him back at the station.”

  17

  BANKS, WINSOME AND JAMIE MURDOCH SAT IN THE BLEAK interview room, Murdoch in his orange police-issue coverall, picking his fingernails. The duty solicitor, Ms. Olivia Melchior, sat in the corner. She had already had a word with Jamie and explained the situation, told him it was best to answer simply and truthfully unless he was in danger of incriminating himself or having his rights violated—and she would be the judge of that. Banks turned on the tape recorders and video, went through the preamble about time, date and those present, then gave Jamie his proper caution, the one about the disadvantages of not saying now something he might later rely on in court. Jamie kept on staring down at his fingernails.

  “Right,” said Banks. “Why did you run away, Jamie?”

  “You were going to fit me up, weren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For the smuggling charge. The cigs and booze. You were going to fit me up. I’ve heard about things like that.”

  “This isn’t about smuggling, Jamie.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “This is about the rape and murder of Hayley Daniels.”

  Murdoch glanced back down at his fingernails. “I’ve already told you, I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Come on, Jamie, you were just around the corner.”

  “The walls are thick. You can’t hear much from inside.”

  “You can if the door is open, though, can’t you, Jamie?” Winsome said.

  Murdoch stared at her. “Huh?”

  “When Hayley Daniels and her friends left,” Winsome went on, “you left the door open a crack and were able to hear what they were saying. We think you heard Hayley say she was going into The Maze on her own.”

  “So what?”

  “Do you admit this?” Winsome pressed.

  “I might have. You know, it’s bad manners to slam the door and lock it the minute your last punters are out in the street. You give them a few seconds. Somebody might have forgotten something. A handbag, a jacket.”

  “Very considerate of you, I’m sure,” said Banks. “And I thought you were supposed to lock up fast to avoid a break-in.”

  “That, too. But…”

  “Hayley Daniels gave you a hard time, didn’t she?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “When you told her the toilets weren’t working so she couldn’t use them, she gave you a verbal mouthful, used bad language. Come on, Jamie, we’ve been through this before.”

  “It was vile,” Murdoch said. He shook his head slowly. “I’ve never known such vile words coming from…from…”

  “Such a pretty mouth? She was a good-looking girl, wasn’t she, Jamie. Nice body, too.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Banks. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. Even I noticed, and she was dead when I saw her.”

  Ms. Melchior gave Banks a warning glance. She obviously knew that he had a tendency to go off on weird, almost surreal, tangents to throw his suspects off their predetermined stories.

  “She was fit enough,” said Murdoch.

  “Fit and she knew it?”

  “They usually do.”

  “What do you mean by that, Jamie?”

  “What I say. Girls like her. They know they’re fit.”

  “Is that why you like the song, have it as your ring tone?”

  “It’s just a bit of fun.”

  “Flaunt it, do they, these fit lasses?”

  “You should see the clothes they wear—or don’t.” He gave an unpleasant, harsh laugh.

  “Like Jill?”

  “Jill?”

  “Yes, the girl who works for you. Jill Sutherland. She’s a pretty lass, isn’t she? She used to take shortcuts to the car park through The Maze, didn’t she? Is that where you got the idea?”

  “What idea?”

  “That it was a suitable place for an ambush.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “But it’s enough to drive any red-blooded bloke crazy, isn’t it?” Banks said. “The way they dress and the things they say.”

  “Don’t answer that, Jamie,” said Ms. Melchior. “He’s leading you.” She gave Banks a stern glance. “And you, stop it. Stick to the relevant questions.”

  “Yes, Ms.,” said Banks.

  Ms. Melchior glared at him.

  “How long had you known Hayley?” Winsome asked.

  “I didn’t know her,” said Jamie. “Just saw her when she came in the pub with her friends.”

  “But according to the records, you were both in the first year of college together, before you dropped out,” said Winsome. She adjusted her reading glasses and tapped the file on the table in front of her.

  “Maybe I saw her around. It’s a big college.”

  “Ever ask her out?”

  “I might have done. So what?”

  “Just that you have a history, that’s all.” Winsome took off her glasses and leaned back in her chair.

  “You fancied her right from the start, didn’t you?” Banks said.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “But she wouldn’t have anything to do with you. She was fussy about who she went out with. Preferred older men, professors, someone with a bit of experience, money, brains.”

  Jamie slammed his fist on the table.

  “Calm down, Jamie,” Ms. Melchior said. “Is this going anywhere?” she asked Banks.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Isn’t it, Jamie? You know where it’s going, don’t you? Saturday the seventeenth of March. Saint Patrick’s Day. What was special about that day?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know.”

  “Some yobbos wrecked your toilets, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened? Did they find your peephole from the storeroom to the ladies’?”

  Murdoch froze. “What?”

  It had been a long shot on Banks’s part—no one had mentioned such a thing—but it was turning out to be a good guess. It was exactly the sort of thing he thought someone like Murdoch would do. “We’ll leave that for the moment,” Banks went on. “Hayley was looking particularly good that night, wasn’t she? The short skirt, low top. Looked a bit like a tart, didn’t she?”

  “DCI Banks,” Ms. Melchior interrupted. “Fewer of those sorts of comments, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sorry,” said Banks. “But you fancied her, didn’t you, Jamie?”

  “She was very attractive.”

  “And you’d wanted her for a long time.”

  “I liked her, yes.”

  “And she knew it?”

  “I suppose she did.”

  “And then this business with the toilets came up.”

  “She should never have said the things she did.”

  “She humiliated you in front of everybody, didn’t she?”

  “She shouldn’t have called me those names.”

  “What names, Jamie?”

  “Terrible names. About my manhood and things.” He gave a shifty glance toward Ms. Melchior, who seemed enthralled.

  “She called you impotent, didn’t she? ‘Limp dick.’ That really got your goat, didn’t it?”

  “How could she say something like that? She knew I…knew I liked her. How could she be so cruel?”

  “She was drunk, Jamie. And she needed a piss.”

  “Mr. Banks!”

  Banks held his hand up. “Sorry.”

  “I couldn’t help that, could I?” said Jamie. “It wasn’t me wrecked the fucking bogs!”

  Banks heard a tap at the door. Winsome answered, came back and whispered in h
is ear.

  “This interview is suspended at six-thirteen P.M.,” Banks said. “DCI Banks and DC Jackman are leaving the room, PC Mellors is entering to keep an eye on the suspect.” Banks glanced at Ms. Melchior. “You coming?”

  She seemed torn between her client and whatever new revelation had just come up. “You’ll be all right, Jamie?”

  “He’ll be all right, ma’am,” the PC said.

  Jamie nodded, eyes averted.

  “Very well, then.” Ms. Melchior gathered up her papers and briefcase and strutted out after Banks and Winsome, across the market square to The Fountain. A brisk wind had sprung up, and she had to hold her lilac skirt down with one hand as she walked. There was already a crowd gathered outside the pub, and the two uniformed constables were doing a sterling job of defending the crime scene.

  Once they had signed the sheet, Banks and the others were allowed inside The Fountain, where a thorough search had been in progress ever since they had taken Jamie Murdoch over to the station, all legal and aboveboard. The SOCOs were dressed in protective clothing and wore breathing filters against the dust, and an assistant handed out the same gear to Banks, Winsome and Ms. Melchior, who seemed a bit embarrassed in her hard hat, overalls and face mask.

  The pub was a shambles. There were dust and crumbled plaster everywhere. The landlord would go crazy when he found out, Banks thought, though with any luck that would be the least of his problems. They followed Stefan Nowak upstairs to one of the storerooms above the bar that abutted on Taylor’s Yard and The Maze. Someone had moved a piece of the old wainscoting away to reveal a hole big enough for a man to get through. Banks could hear voices and see the beam of a torch waving around on the other side.

  “There’s no light switch,” said Stefan, handing out torches, “and no window.” He bent and made his way through the hole. Banks followed. Ms. Melchior seemed reluctant, but Winsome held back to let her go first and brought up the rear. With all the beams of light, the room they found themselves in was more than bright enough. It smelled moldy and airless, which it no doubt was, and stacked against one wall were cases of lager and cartons of cigarettes.

  “Is this it?” said Banks, disappointed. “Is there no access to The Maze?”

  “Hold your horses,” said Stefan, moving to the other side of the room, where he swung a hinged panel toward him. “Follow me.”

  They followed. The next room was just as cramped and musty as the first, but a steep wooden staircase led down to the ground floor, where a door with well-oiled hinges and a recently installed Yale lock opened into the anonymous alley at the back of Taylor’s Yard, where no CCTV camera lens ever penetrated.

  “Bingo,” said Banks.

  “It’s like the bloody Phantom of the Opera,” said Stefan. “Secret passages and God knows what.”

  “They were only secret from us,” Banks pointed out. “Houses and storage areas cheek by jowl like this are often connected by crawl spaces or what have you. Murdoch simply found a way of removing the covering and replacing it so he could come and go as he wanted. Originally, it just made a great hiding place for storing the smuggled goods, but when Hayley Daniels pushed him past the end of his tether, it made the perfect way for him to get back at her. He knew where she was going, and he knew he could get there in seconds without being seen. How long would it take him to get from the front door to The Maze by this route?”

  “Less than five minutes,” said Stefan.

  “Sir?” One of the SOCOs approached them, torch shining into a corner.

  “What is it?” Banks asked.

  “A plastic bag of some sort,” Stefan said. He took some photographs, the flash blinding them all momentarily in the confined space, then carefully picked up the bag with his gloved hands and opened it. “Voilà,” he said, showing the contents to Banks. “Clothes. Condoms. Hairbrush. Cloth. Bottle of water.”

  “It’s his kit,” said Banks. “Templeton was right. The bastard liked it so much he was planning on doing it again.”

  “Or he’d been planning it for some time,” Stefan added. “Possibly both.”

  “I don’t think you should assume that,” said a pale Ms. Melchior, who was clearly by now in duty-solicitor mode again, just trying to do her job against all the mounting horror of her client’s guilt that she must have been feeling.

  “We’ll see what the lab has to say,” said Banks. “Good work, Stefan, lads. Come on, let’s get back to the interview room. We don’t want to keep Mr. Murdoch waiting too much longer, do we?”

  AFTER LUNCH with Ginger, Annie went back to the police station to see if anything had come in. She was hoping for more good news from forensics but had learned over the years that she had to be patient. In the meantime, she busied herself locating Dr. Laura Henderson who, as it turned out, was still practicing in Bath. After a few engaged signals, Annie finally got through and introduced herself. Dr. Henderson was naturally suspicious and insisted on taking down Annie’s extension number and ringing back through the automated station switchboard.

  “Sorry about that,” Dr. Henderson said when they finally got connected again, “but you can’t be too careful in my business.”

  “Mine, too,” said Annie. “No problem.”

  “Anyway, what can I help you with?”

  “Do you remember a patient called Kirsten Farrow? This would be around 1988, perhaps early 1989. I know it’s a long time ago.”

  “Of course I remember Kirsten,” said Dr. Henderson. “There are some patients you never forget. Why? Has anything happened to her?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Annie. “In fact, that’s the problem. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of her in about eighteen years. Has she been in touch with you at all?”

  “No, she hasn’t.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Could you hang on a moment? I’ll dig out the file. I’m afraid anything from that long ago isn’t on the computer.” Annie waited, tapping her pencil on the desk. A few moments later, Dr. Henderson came back on. “Our last session was on the ninth of January, 1989,” she said. “I haven’t seen Kirsten since then.”

  “Why did she stop coming to see you?”

  There was a long pause at the other end. “I’m not sure I should be discussing this with you,” said Dr. Henderson.

  “I’m trying to locate her,” Annie said. “Anything you could tell me might help. I wouldn’t expect you to breach confidentiality.”

  “Why are you looking for her?”

  “She might know something about a case I’m working on.”

  “What case?”

  Annie felt like saying she couldn’t divulge that information, but that would be playing the same silly game. Give a little, maybe get a little in return. “A woman has been killed in the same location Kirsten used to visit,” she said. “We were thinking—”

  “Oh my God!” said Dr. Henderson. “You think he’s back, don’t you? The killer.”

  It wasn’t what Annie was about to say at all, but she recognized a good opening when she heard one. “It’s a possibility,” she said. “They never did catch him.”

  “But I still don’t see how I can help you.”

  “Why did Kirsten stop seeing you?”

  There was another pause, and Annie could almost hear the argument raging in Dr. Henderson’s mind. Finally, the pros seemed to win out over the cons. “The reason she gave me was that our sessions were becoming too painful for her,” she said.

  “In what way?”

  “You have to realize that Kirsten had blocked out what happened to her on the night she was attacked, and that was causing her all kinds of problems: depression, nightmares, anxiety attacks. Along with her other problems—”

  “The inability to have sex or children?”

  “You know about that?” Dr. Henderson sounded surprised.

  “I know a little,” Annie said.

  “Well, yes…along with all those other problems, she was in…well, you probably also know, th
en, that she did attempt suicide. I’m sure it’s in the police files.”

  “Yes,” Annie lied. No point in letting Dr. Henderson think she’d given too much away. She would only clam up.

  “I suggested a course of hypnotherapy, and Kirsten agreed.”

  “The aim of which was?”

  “Healing, of course. Sometimes you have to confront your demons to vanquish them, and you can’t do that if your memory is blocking them out.”

  Annie felt she knew a thing or two about that. “And did she?”

  “No. As I said, I think it was becoming too painful for her. She was getting too close. At first, progress was very slow, then she started remembering too much too fast. I think she felt she was losing control, and she started to panic.”

  “What about confronting the demons?”

  “It takes time,” said Dr. Henderson. “Sometimes you need a lot of preparation. You need to be ready. I don’t think Kirsten was. It would have felt like driving down a busy motorway before she’d learned to drive.”

  “How far did she get?” Annie asked. “Did she remember anything significant about her attacker?”

  “That wasn’t the point of the treatment.”

  “I realize that, Doctor, but perhaps as a by-product?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dr. Henderson said.

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

  “That last session, Kirsten’s voice was difficult to hear, her words hard to catch. Afterward, when she came out of it, she seemed shocked, stunned at what she remembered. Even more so than usual.”

  “But what was it?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I don’t know. She left in a hurry, and she didn’t come back, except to let my secretary know that she wouldn’t be coming anymore.”

  “But what do you think it was? What do you think shook her so much?”

  Dr. Henderson paused again, then Annie heard her say in a voice barely above a whisper, “I think she remembered what he looked like.”

  “WHERE’VE YOU been?” said Murdoch. “I’m getting fed up of this. I want to go home.”