Peter Robinson - Aftermath

“She’ll love that,” said Blackstone.

“She’s already made her feelings quite clear.”

“You’ve told her?”

“I tried to put a positive spin on it to make her feel better, but… it sort of backfired.”

Blackstone smiled. “Are you two still an item?”

“I think so, sort of, but half the time I’m not sure, to be honest. She’s very… elusive.”

“Ah, the sweet mystery of woman.”

“Something like that.”

“Maybe you’re expecting too much of her?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes when a man loses his wife he starts looking for a new one in the first woman who shows any interest in him.”

“Marriage is the last thing on my mind, Ken.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. I haven’t bloody time, for a start.”

“Talking about marriage, how do you think the wife, Lucy Payne, fits in?” Blackstone asked.

“I don’t know.”

“She must have known. I mean, she was living with the bloke.”

“Maybe. But you saw the way things were set up back there. Payne could have sneaked anyone in through the garage and taken them straight into the cellar. If he kept the place locked and barred, nobody need have known. It was pretty well soundproofed.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t convince me that a woman lives with a killer who does what Payne did and she hasn’t a clue,” said Blackstone. “What does he do? Get up after dinner and tell her he’s just off down to the basement to play with a teenage girl he’s abducted?”

“He doesn’t have to tell her anything.”

“But she must be involved. Even if she wasn’t his accomplice, she must at least have suspected something.”

Someone gave the cricket ball a hell of a whack and a cheer went up from the field.

Banks stubbed out his cigarette. “You’re probably right. Anyway, if there’s anything at all to connect Lucy Payne to what happened in the cellar, we’ll find out. For the moment, she’s not going anywhere. Remember, though, unless we find out differently, we’d better remember that she’s a victim first and foremost.”

The SOCO teams might be spending weeks at the scene, Banks knew, and very soon number 35 The Hill would resemble a house undergoing major structural renovations. They would be taking in metal detectors, laser lights, infrared, UV, high-powered vacuums and pneumatic drills; they would be collecting fingerprints, flaked skin, fibers, dried secretions, hairs, paint chips, Visa bills, letters, books and personal papers; they would strip the carpets and punch holes in the walls, break up the cellar and garage floors and dig up the gardens. And everything they gathered, perhaps more than a thousand exhibits, would have to be tagged, entered in HOLMES and stored in the evidence room at Millgarth.

Their meals arrived and they tucked right in, waving away the occasional fly. The stew was hearty and mildly spiced. After a few mouthfuls, Blackstone shook his head slowly. “Funny Payne’s got no form, don’t you think? Most of them have something odd in their background. Waving their willies at schoolkids, or a touch of sexual assault.”

“More than his job’s worth. Maybe he’s just been lucky.”

Blackstone paused. “Or we’ve not been doing our jobs properly. Remember that series of rapes out Seacroft way two years or so back?”

“The Seacroft Rapist? Yes, I remember reading about it.”

“We never did catch him, you know.”

“You think it might have been Payne?”

“Possible, isn’t it? The rapes stopped, then girls started disappearing.”

“DNA?”

“Semen samples. The Seacroft Rapist was an excretor, and he didn’t bother wearing a condom.”

“Then check them against Payne’s. And check where he was living at the time.”

“Oh, we will, we will. By the way,” Blackstone went on, “one of the DCs who interviewed Maggie Forrest, the woman who phoned in the domestic, got the impression that she wasn’t telling him everything.”

“Oh. What did he say?”

“That she seemed deliberately vague, holding back. She admitted she knew the Paynes but said she knew nothing about them. Anyway, he didn’t think she was telling the complete truth as far as her relationship with Lucy Payne went. He thinks they’re a lot closer than she would admit.”

“I’ll talk to her later,” said Banks, glancing at his watch. He looked around at the blue sky, the white and pink blossoms drifting from the trees, the men in white on the cricket pitch. “Christ, Ken, I could sit here all afternoon,” he said, “but I’d better get back to the house to check on developments.”

As she had feared, Maggie was unable to concentrate on her work for the rest of that day and alternated between watching the police activity out of her bedroom window and listening to the local radio for news reports. What came through was scant enough until the area commander in charge of the case gave a press conference, in which he confirmed that they had found the body of Kimberley Myers, and that it appeared she had been strangled. More than that, he wouldn’t say, except that the case was under investigation, forensic experts were on the scene and more details would be available shortly. He stressed that the investigation was not yet over and appealed for anyone who had seen Kimberley after eleven o’clock on Friday evening to come forward.

When the knock on her door and the familiar call, “It’s all right, it’s only me,” came after half-past three, Maggie felt relieved. For some reason, she had been worried about Claire. She knew that she went to the same school as Kimberley Myers and that Terence Payne was a teacher there. She hadn’t seen Claire since Kimberley’s disappearance but imagined she must have been frantic with worry. The two were about the same age and surely must know each other.

Claire Toth often called on her way home from school, as she lived two doors down, both her parents worked, and her mother didn’t get home until about half-past four. Maggie also suspected that Ruth and Charles had suggested Claire’s visits as a sneaky way of keeping an eye on her. Curious about the newcomer, Claire had first just dropped in to say hello. Then, intrigued by Maggie’s accent and her work, she had become a regular visitor. Maggie didn’t mind. Claire was a good kid, and a breath of fresh air, though she talked a mile a minute and Maggie often felt exhausted when she left.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so awful,” Claire said, dropping her backpack on the living room floor and plunking herself down on the sofa, legs akimbo. This was odd, for a start, as she usually headed straight for the kitchen, to the milk and chocolate chip cookies Maggie fed her. She pulled back her long tresses and tucked them behind her ears. She was wearing her school uniform, green blazer and skirt, white blouse and gray socks, which had slipped down around her ankles. She had a couple of spots on her chin, Maggie noticed: bad diet or time of the month.

“You know?”

“It was all around school by lunchtime.”

“Do you know Mr. Payne?”

“He’s my biology teacher. And he lives across the street from us. How could he? The pervert. When I think of what must have been going through his mind while he was teaching us about reproductive systems and dissecting frogs and all that stuff… ugh.” She gave a shudder.

“Claire, we don’t know that he did anything yet. All we know is that Mr. and Mrs. Payne had a fight and that he hit her.”

“But they’ve found Kim’s body, haven’t they? And there wouldn’t be all those policemen over the road if all he’d done was hit his wife, would there?”

If all he’d done was hit his wife. Maggie was often amazed at the casual acceptance of domestic violence, even by a girl-child such as Claire. True enough, she didn’t mean it the way it sounded and would be horrified if she knew the details of Maggie’s life back in Toronto, but still, the language came so easily. Hit his wife. Minor. Not important.