Friend of the Devil

by Peter Robinson

Julia seemed surprised. “Liz? Yes, of course. We go back years. Why?”

  “She’s our pathologist, that’s all.”

  “I know. She always was a bright spark. I’m sure she’s very good at her job, especially if her golf game is anything to go by.”

  “Do you also know a psychiatrist called Dr. Susan Simms?”

  “I’ve met her. For crying out loud, her office is just across the square. We’ve had lunch together now and then, when our paths have crossed.”

  “How have your paths crossed?”

  “In court, on occasion. I don’t think it’s any secret that she sometimes does forensic psychiatry.”

  “Does she also know Dr. Wallace?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Maggie Forrest was one of her patients.”

  “What can I say? It’s a small world. I really don’t know where you’re going with this, Alan, but I can’t tell you anything.” She glanced at her perfect, tiny gold watch. “Look, I have another appointment in a few minutes, and I’d like some time to prepare. If there’s nothing else…?”

  Banks got to his feet. “A pleasure, as ever,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t lie. You think I was put on this earth just to stand in your way and make your life difficult. I really am sorry about that policeman who was killed. Was he a friend of yours?”

  “I knew him,” said Banks.

  DURING THE long drive over the moors to Eastvale, Annie spoke on her mobile with Ginger, when she could get a signal. It was too early for the DNA results from the hair, but Ginger had been burning up the phone lines, fax circuits and e-mail accounts. There was no way that Maggie Forrest could be Kirsten Farrow, she had concluded. Maggie was the right age, and she had been born in Leeds, but she had grown up in Canada, and in 1989, she had been attending art college in Toronto, specializing in graphic illustration. She married a young lawyer, and their relationship ended in a bad divorce a few years later. Apparently, he was a bully and a wife beater. After her divorce she came to live and work in England, staying at Ruth and Charles Everett’s house on The Hill, and befriending Lucy Payne, until the notorious events of six years ago sent her reeling back to Canada.

  But Maggie was working in England again and, according to Ginger, seeing Dr. Simms again. This in itself seemed odd to Annie. Why return? She could get book illustration work easily enough in Canada, surely? Maggie had told Annie that it was because she needed to be close to her roots, but was it really because she had decided to go after Lucy, get her revenge? Just because Maggie wasn’t Kirsten Farrow, that didn’t mean she hadn’t killed Lucy Payne.

  The main question in Annie’s mind, given the links between the professional women—Maggie Forrest, Susan Simms, Julia Ford and Elizabeth Wallace—was had she had help from one of them? And if so, why? And where was Kirsten Farrow in all this? It was possible that someone could have planted one of her hairs on Lucy Payne’s blanket, but how, and why? The hair could also have got there in Mapston Hall, for example. The Mapston Hall staff had been checked and rechecked, but she supposed it would do no harm to check again, dig even deeper, perhaps include the most regular visitors of other patients, deliverymen, maintenance contractors, the postman, everyone who set foot in the place.

  Annie parked in Eastvale market square rather than behind the police station. It was a bit of a walk down King Street to the infirmary, but the fresh air would do her good. Afterward, she would call in at the station and see how everyone was recovering after last night’s wake. Annie felt quite proud of herself for drinking only one pint over the course of the evening, then driving back to Whitby.

  Reception told Annie that Dr. Wallace was in her office in the basement. Annie didn’t like Eastvale General Infirmary, especially the basement. The corridors were high and dark with old green tiles, and footsteps echoed. The whole place was a Victorian Gothic monstrosity, and even though the mortuary and the postmortem theater had been modernized with the best equipment, the surroundings felt antiquated to Annie, associated with the barbaric times of no anesthetics and unhygienic conditions. She shivered as her shoes clicked along the tiled corridor. The other thing about the basement that gave her the creeps was that there was hardly ever anyone around. She didn’t know what else was down there other than storage and the mortuary. Maybe the bin where they dumped all the amputated limbs and extracted organs, for all she knew.

  Dr. Wallace was actually in the postmortem theater, sitting at the long lab table mixing some chemicals over a Bunsen burner when Annie entered. There was a body on the table. The Y incision had already been made and the internal organs were all on display. The raw-lamb smell of dead human flesh hung in the air, mixed with disinfectant and formaldehyde. Annie felt slightly nauseated.

  “Sorry,” said Dr. Wallace, with a weak smile. “I was just finishing up when I got sidetracked by this test. Wendy had to leave early—boyfriend trouble—or she’d have done it for me.”

  Annie glanced at the body. She could relate to boyfriend trouble. “Right,” she said. “Just a few questions, as I mentioned.”

  “I’ll get him closed up while we talk, if that’s all right. Does it bother you? You seem a bit pale.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Dr. Wallace gave her an amused glance. “So what burning questions bring you all the way down to my little lair?”

  “It’s what we were talking about last night. Lucy Payne and Kevin Templeton.”

  “I don’t see how I can help you. Lucy Payne wasn’t my case. We agreed there were similarities, but that’s all.”

  “It’s not so much that,” Annie said, settling on a high swivel stool by the lab bench. “Not specifically, at any rate.”

  “Oh? What, then? I’m curious.” Dr. Wallace unceremoniously dumped the organs back into the chest cavity and prepared the large needle and heavy thread.

  “You went to university with the lawyer, Julia Ford. You’re still friends. Right?”

  “That’s true,” said Dr. Wallace. “Julia and I have known each other a long time. We’re practically neighbors, and we play the occasional round of golf together.”

  “What did you do before then?” Annie asked.

  “Before playing golf?”

  Annie laughed. “No, before going to medical school. You were a mature student, weren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say I was all that mature, but I’d lived an interesting life.”

  “Did you travel?”

  “For a few years.”

  “Where to?”

  “All over. The Far East. America. South Africa. I’d get some low-paying job and support myself for a while, then move on.”

  “And before that?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I don’t suppose it does. Not if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t.” Dr. Wallace looked at Annie. “I had a disturbing phone call from an old friend of mine at university just an hour or two ago,” she said. “She wanted to let me know that there had been a Detective Constable Helen Baker ringing up and asking questions about me. Is that true?”

  “Quite the grapevine,” said Annie.

  “Is it true?”

  “Okay. Look, this is a bit delicate,” Annie said, “but Julia Ford was one of the few people who knew the true identity of the woman in Mapston Hall. Lucy Payne. Her firm made the arrangements to place her there, took care of all her affairs. As I just said, we know the two of you went to university together, that you’re neighbors and friends. Did you know anything about this arrangement?”

  Dr. Wallace turned back to her corpse. “No,” she said. “Why should I?”

  Annie felt that she could sense a lie, or at least an evasion. There was something about the pitch of Dr. Wallace’s voice that wasn’t quite right. “I was just wondering if, you know, during the course of an evening, she might have let something slip, and that you might have done the same.”

  Dr. Wallace paused in her sewing and turned to Annie. “Are you suggesting
,” she said, “that Julia would break a professional confidence? Or that I would?”

  “These things happen,” said Annie. “A couple of drinks. No big deal. Not the end of the world.”

  “‘Not the end of the world.’ What an odd phrase to use. No, I don’t suppose it would be the end of the world.” She went back to sewing dead flesh. Annie could feel the tension rising in the room, as if the very air itself were thinning and stretching. She also felt even more nauseated by the smell.

  “Well, did she?” she pressed on.

  Dr. Wallace didn’t look up. “Did she what?”

  “Tell you about the arrangements her firm had made for Lucy Payne?”

  “What does it matter if she did?”

  “Well,” said Annie. “It means…I mean…that someone else knew.”

  “So?”

  “Did she tell you?”

  “She might have done.”

  “And did you tell Maggie Forrest, for example? Or Dr. Susan Simms?”

  Dr. Wallace seemed surprised. “No. Of course not. I vaguely know Susan Simms as a fellow professional, and from the occasional court appearance, but we’re hardly in the same field. I don’t know any Maggie Forrest.”

  “She was the neighbor who befriended Lucy Payne and almost died at her hand.”

  “More fool her. But wasn’t that a long time ago?”

  “Six years. But Maggie’s disturbed. She had a strong motive for wanting Lucy dead, and no alibi. All we’re trying to find out now is whether she—”

  “Knew that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne. Yes, I know where you’re going with this.”

  “Karen Drew?”

  “What?”

  “You said Karen Drew. How did you know that?”

  “I suppose I read it in the paper after the body was found, like everyone else.”

  “Right,” said Annie. It was possible, of course. The body had been identified as Karen Drew’s, but she would have thought that subsequent discoveries and all the publicity given to the Chameleon case and the “House of Payne” had driven that minor detail from most people’s minds. Maggie Forrest had said she didn’t recognize Karen Drew’s name, only Lucy’s. In the eyes of the world, Annie had thought, the dead woman in the wheelchair was Lucy Payne. Clearly not.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” Dr. Wallace said.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  Dr. Wallace paused in her sewing and glanced over the body at Annie. “Well, it amounts to the same thing, really, doesn’t it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Either you don’t know anything, or you’re being willfully obstructive, which I find very odd behavior in a Home Office pathologist. You’re supposed to be on our side, you know.”

  Dr. Wallace stared at Annie. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m asking you if you gave anyone this information, for any reason.” Annie softened her tone. “Look, Liz,” she said. “You might have had good intentions. Perhaps you knew one of the victims’ families, or someone who had been damaged by the Paynes? I can understand that. But we need to know. Did you tell anyone about Lucy Payne being registered at Mapston Hall under the name Karen Drew?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know about it?”

  Dr. Wallace sighed, put her needle and thread down and leaned on the edge of the table. “Yes,” she said. “I knew.”

  In the silence that followed, Annie felt a growing tightness in her chest. “But that means…”

  “I know what it means,” said Dr. Wallace. “I’m not stupid.”

  She had exchanged her needle for a scalpel and was moving away from the body on the table.

  “GOOD TO see you again, Alan,” said DI Ken Blackstone, meeting Banks at the front desk of Millgarth and escorting him through security. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “It looks as if we’ve got Hayley Daniels’s killer.” Banks explained about Jamie Murdoch’s confession and the hidden way out of The Fountain.

  “Just one more to go, then,” said Blackstone. “I was sorry to hear about Kev Templeton.”

  “We all were,” said Banks.

  “Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  “Did you get the Chameleon files out for Annie Cabbot?”

  “How are you two doing, by the way?”

  “Better, I think. At least we’re working together again. I’m still not sure what’s going on with her, though.”

  “You’re not…?”

  “No. That’s been over for a long time.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Maybe. Ken, about those files?”

  Blackstone laughed. “Yes, of course. Getting quite nosy in my old age, aren’t I? Sorry. The files are in my office. Most of them, anyway. There isn’t room for everything. Not if I want to sit in there, too. Why?”

  “Mind if I have a look?”

  “Not at all. It was your case. Partly, at any rate. Anything I can do?”

  “A cup of coffee would go down a treat, Ken. Black, no sugar. And maybe a KitKat. I like the dark-chocolate ones.”

  “Your diet’s terrible. Anyone ever told you? I’ll send down. Want me out of the way?”

  “Not at all.”

  They went into Blackstone’s office, and Banks saw immediately that he hadn’t been exaggerating. They could hardly move for boxes.

  “Know where everything is?” Banks asked.

  “Not exactly.” Blackstone picked up his phone and called for two coffees and a dark-chocolate KitKat. After anything in particular?”

  “I got to thinking about the Kirsten Farrow case,” said Banks. “Anyway, I seemed to remember that the wounds were rather similar in both cases, and I wondered if that was what had set her off again after eighteen years. That and finding out where Lucy Payne was hiding out. It might have acted as a trigger.”

  “But what about the other woman you mentioned? Maggie Forrest?”

  “She’s not out of the picture yet. There could even be some connection between her and Kirsten Farrow. There are a number of odd links in this case, strange tangents, and I won’t rest until I get them sorted.”

  “So you’ll be wanting the pathologist’s reports?”

  “That’s right. Dr. Mackenzie, I believe it was.”

  The coffee and KitKat arrived while they were digging through the boxes. Blackstone thanked the PC who brought it and got back to helping Banks. At last they unearthed the pathology reports, and Banks started reading through them while Blackstone left the office for a while.

  It was as he had thought. Many of the bodies were badly decomposed, as they had been buried in the dirt of the cellar or the back garden. But Dr. Mackenzie had been able to identify slash marks to the areas of the victims’ breasts and genitalia in all cases, probably made with the same machete Terence Payne used to attack and kill Janet Taylor’s partner. They were similar to the wounds Kirsten Farrow had suffered, though the weapon was different, and they were wounds, unfortunately, not uncommon to vicious sexual assaults. They showed a deep hatred of the women men felt had betrayed, humiliated and rejected them all their lives, or so the profilers said. Of course, not all men who had been betrayed, humiliated or rejected by women became rapists and murderers, or the female population would be a lot smaller and the jails would be even more full of men than they already were, Banks thought.

  Twenty minutes or more must have passed as Banks read the grisly details, most of which he remembered firsthand, then Blackstone returned.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “It’s as I thought,” Banks said. “Now I just need to find out how much of this was reported in the press at the time.”

  “Quite a lot, as I remember,” said Blackstone. “Alan, what is it? Have you found something?”

  Banks had let the last file slip out of his hand to the floor, not because the details were more gruesome than any of the others, but because of a sheet of paper he had seen clipped to the end of the pile. It was simply a record of all those involved in the p
reparation of the reports and postmortems, including the men who had transported the bodies to the mortuary and the cleaners who had cleaned up afterward, initialed beside each name, partly kept to ensure a continuous chain of custody. “I can’t believe it,” said Banks. “It’s been staring me in the bloody face all along, and I never knew.”

  Blackstone moved closer. “What has? What is it?”

  Banks picked the papers up off the floor and pointed with his index finger to what he had read. On the list of those involved with the Chameleon victims’ postmortems were several lab assistants, trainees and assistant pathologists, and one of them was a Dr. Elizabeth Wallace.

  “I should have known,” said Banks. “When Kev Templeton went on about patrolling The Maze for a would-be serial killer, Elizabeth Wallace was the only one who was as adamant as he was that we were dealing with a killer who would strike again. And she tried to convince us that the weapon was a razor, not a scalpel.”

  “So? I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t you see it? She was there, too. Elizabeth Wallace was keeping an eye on The Maze, and she had easy access to sharp scalpels. Much better to have us believe the weapon was a razor that anyone could have got hold of. They were at cross-purposes, her and Kev. They didn’t talk to each other. Neither knew the other was going to be there. Elizabeth Wallace thought Kev Templeton was going to rape and kill Chelsea Pilton. She couldn’t have recognized him from behind. It was too dark. And there can be only one reason why she was there.”

  “Which is?”

  “To kill the killer. She’s Kirsten Farrow. The one we’re looking for. She was a trainee on the Chameleon victims’ postmortems. That means she knew at first hand about the wounds. They brought back her own memories. She knows Julia Ford, and Julia must have let slip about Lucy Payne being at Mapston Hall under a false name. It fits, Ken. It all fits.”

  “She killed Templeton, too?”

  “Almost certainly,” said Banks. “By mistake, of course, the same way she killed Jack Grimley eighteen years ago. But she did kill him. Her MO is different now, but she trained as a doctor since then, so that makes sense. And do you know what?”

  Blackstone shook his head.