Peter Robinson - Aftermath

“The top of his head?”

“The cranium is that part of the head which isn’t the face, yes.”

“Hard blows? As if someone hit directly down on it?”

“Possibly. But I can’t be a judge of that. They would have been incapacitating, but not life-threatening. The top of the cranium is hard, and though the skull there was dented and fractured, as I said, the bone didn’t splinter.”

Annie made some notes.

“Those weren’t the most damaging injuries, though,” Dr. Mogabe added.

“Oh?”

“No, the most serious injury was caused by one or more blows to the back of the head, the brain-stem area. You see, that contains the medulla oblongata, which is the heart, blood vessel and breathing center of the brain. Any serious injury to it can be fatal.”

“Yet Mr. Payne is still alive.”

“Barely.”

“Is there a possibility of permanent brain damage?”

“There already is permanent brain damage. If Mr. Payne recovers, he may well spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair in need of twenty-four-hour-a-day care. The only good thing is that he probably won’t be aware of that fact.”

“This injury to the medulla? Could it have occurred as Mr. Payne fell back against the wall?”

Dr. Mogabe rubbed his chin. “Again, it’s not my place to do the police’s job, or the pathologist’s, Detective Inspector. Suffice it to say that in my opinion these wounds were caused by the same blunt instrument as the others. Make of that what you will.” He leaned forward. “In this simplest layman’s terms, this man received a most vicious beating about the head, Detective Inspector. Most vicious. I hope you believe, as I do, that the perpetrator should be brought to justice.”

Shit, thought Annie, putting her notebook away. “Of course, Doctor,” she said, heading for the door. “You will keep me informed, won’t you?”

“You can count on it.”

Annie looked at her watch. Time to head back to Eastvale and prepare her daily report for Detective Superintendent Chambers.

After his lunch with Tracy, Banks wandered around Leeds city center in a daze thinking of the news she had given him. The matter of Sandra’s pregnancy had hit him harder than he would have expected after so long apart, he realized as he stood and gazed in Curry’s window on Briggate, hardly taking in the display of computers, camcorders and stereo systems. He had last seen her in London the previous November, when he was down there searching for Chief Constable Riddle’s runaway daughter, Emily. Looking back, he felt foolish for the way he had approached that meeting, full of confidence that because he had applied for a job with the National Crime Squad that would take him back to live in London, Sandra would see the error of her ways, dump the temporary Sean and run back into Banks’s arms.

Wrong.

Instead she had told Banks that she wanted a divorce because she and Sean wanted to get married, and that cathartic event, he thought, had flushed Sandra out of his system forever, along with any thoughts of moving to the NCS.

Until Tracy told him about the pregnancy.

Banks hadn’t thought, hadn’t suspected for a moment, that they wanted to get married because they wanted to have a baby. What on earth did Sandra think she was playing at? The idea of a half brother or sister for Brian and Tracy, twenty years younger, seemed unreal to Banks. And the thought of Sean, whom he had never met, being the father seemed even more absurd. He tried to imagine their conversations leading up to the decision, the lovemaking, the maternal desire rekindled in Sandra after so many years, and even the shadowiest of imaginings made him feel sick. He didn’t know her, this woman in her early forties who wanted a baby with a boyfriend she had hardly been with for five minutes, and that also made Banks feel sad.

Banks was in Borders looking at the colorful display of bestsellers, and he didn’t even remember walking in the shop, when his mobile rang. He went outside and ducked into the Victoria Quarter before answering, leaning near the entrance across from the Harvey Nichols café. It was Stefan.

“Alan, thought you’d like to know ASAP, we’ve identified the three bodies in the cellar. Got lucky with the dentists. We’ll still run the DNA, though, cross-check with the parents.”

“That’s great,” said Banks, snapping back from his gloomy thoughts of Sandra and Sean. “And?”

“Melissa Horrocks, Samantha Foster and Kelly Matthews.”

“What?”

“I said-”

“I know. I heard what you said. I just…” People were walking by with their shopping and Banks didn’t want to be overheard. To be truthful, he also still felt like a bit of a dickhead talking on his mobile in public, though from what he saw around him, nobody else did. He had even once witnessed a father sitting in a Helmthorpe café phone his daughter in the playground across the road when it was time to go home, and curse because the kid had switched her mobile off so he had to walk across the road and shout to her instead. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“It’s the sequence,” Banks said. “It’s all wrong.” He lowered his voice and hoped that Stefan could still hear him. “Working backward: Kimberley Myers, Melissa Horrocks, Leanne Wray, Samantha Foster, Kelly Matthews. One of the three should be Leanne Wray. Why isn’t she there?”

A little girl holding her mother’s hand gave Banks a curious look as they passed him by in the arcade. Banks switched off his mobile and headed toward Millgarth.

Jenny Fuller was surprised to find Banks ringing her doorbell that evening. It was a long time since he had visited her at home. They had met many times, for coffee or drinks, even lunch or dinner, but rarely had he come here. Jenny had often wondered whether this was anything to do with that clumsy attempt at seduction the first time they had worked together.

“Come in,” she said, and Banks followed her through the narrow hall into the high-ceilinged living room. She had redecorated and rearranged the furniture since his last visit and noticed him glancing around in that policeman’s way of his, checking it out. Well, the expensive stereo was the same, and the sofa, she thought, smiling to herself, was the very same one where she had tried to seduce him.

She had bought a small television and video when she got back from America, having picked up the habit of watching there, but apart from the wallpaper and carpeting, nothing much else had changed. She noticed his gaze settle on the Emily Carr print over the fireplace, a huge dark, steep mountain dominating a village in the foreground. Jenny had fallen in love with Emily Carr’s work when she was doing postgraduate work in Vancouver and had bought that print to bring back as a reminder of her three years there. Happy years, for the most part.

“Drink?” she asked.

“Whatever you’re pouring.”

“Knew I could count on you. I’m sorry I don’t have any Laphroaig. Is red wine okay?”

“Fine.”

Jenny went to pour the wine and noticed Banks walk over to the window. The Green looked peaceful enough in the golden evening sunlight – long shadows, dark green leaves, people walking their dogs, kids holding hands. Perhaps he was remembering the second time he visited her, Jenny thought with a shudder as she poured the Sainsbury’s Côtes du Rhône.

A drugged-out kid called Mick Webster had held her hostage with a handgun and Banks had managed to defuse the situation. The kid’s mood swings had been extreme, and the whole thing had been touch and go for a while. Jenny had been terrified. Ever since that day, she had been unable to listen to Tosca , which had been playing in the background at the time. When she had poured the wine, she shook off the bad memory, put a CD of Mozart string quartets on and carried the glasses over to the sofa.