Peter Robinson - Aftermath

“Thanks, Jenny. You’ve done a great job.”

“And I’ve only just begun.”

“Keep in touch.”

“Promise.”

When Banks put the phone down, Mahalia Jackson was singing “Come Sunday.” He turned up the volume and took his drink outside to his little balcony over Gratly Falls. The rain had stopped, but the downpour had been heavy enough to swell the sound of the falls. It was just after sunset and the deep vermilions, purples and oranges were dying in the western sky, streaked with dark ribs of cloud, while the darkening east went from pale to inky blue. Just across the falls was a field of grazing sheep. In it stood a clump of huge old trees where rooks nested and often woke him early in the morning with their noisy squabbling. Such ill-tempered birds, they seemed. Beyond the field, the daleside sloped down to the river Swain and Banks could see the opposite hillside a mile or more away, darkening in the evening, rising to the long, grinning skeleton’s mouth of Crow Scar. The runic patterns of the drystone walls seemed to stand out in relief as the light faded. Just a little to his right, he could see the Helmthorpe Church tower poking up from the valley bottom.

Banks looked at his watch. Still early enough to stroll down there and have a pint or two in the Dog and Gun, maybe chat with one or two of the locals he’d become friendly with since his move. But he decided he didn’t fancy company; he had too much on his mind, what with Terence Payne’s death, the mystery of Leanne Wray, and the revelations Jenny Fuller had just come through with as regards Lucy’s past. Since taking on the Chameleon investigation, he realized, he had become more and more of a loner, less inclined to make small talk at the bar. Partly, he supposed, it was the burden of command, but it was also something more; the proximity to such evil, perhaps, that tainted him somehow and made small talk seem like a completely inadequate response to what was happening.

The news of Sandra’s pregnancy was also still weighing on his mind, bringing back some memories he had hoped to forget. He knew he wouldn’t be good company, but nor would he be able to get to sleep so early. He nipped inside and poured another shot of whiskey, then picked up his cigarettes and went back outside to lean against the damp wall and enjoy the last of the evening light. A curlew piped up on the distant moors and Mahalia Jackson sang on, humming the tune long after she had run out of words.

Friday morning started badly for Maggie. She had spent a night disturbed by vague and frightening nightmares that scuttled away into the shadows the minute she awoke screaming and tried to grasp them. Getting back to sleep was difficult not only because of the bad dreams, but also because of the eerie noises and voices she could hear from across the road. Didn’t the police ever sleep?

Once, getting up to go for a glass of water, she looked out of her bedroom window and saw some uniformed police officers carrying cardboard boxes into a van waiting with its engine running. Then some men carried what looked like electronic equipment through the front door, and a short while later Maggie fancied she could see a strange ghostly light sweeping the living room of number 35 behind the drawn curtains. The digging continued in the front garden, surrounded by a canvas screen and lit on the inside, so that all Maggie could see was enlarged and deformed shadows of men silhouetted against the canvas. These figures carried over into her next nightmare, and in the end she didn’t know whether she was asleep or awake.

She got up a little after seven o’clock and headed for the kitchen, where a cup of tea helped soothe her frayed nerves. This was one English habit that she had slipped into easily. She planned to spend the day working on Grimm again, perhaps “Hänsel and Gretel,” now that she had satisfactory sketches for “Rapunzel,” and trying to put the business of number 35 out of her head for a few hours at least.

Then she heard the paperboy arrive and the newspaper slip through her letter box on to the hall mat. She hurried out and carried it back to the kitchen, where she spread it on the table.

Lorraine Temple’s story was prominent on the front page, beside the bigger headline story about Terence Payne’s dying without recovering consciousness. There was even a photograph of Maggie, taken without her knowledge, standing just outside her front gate. It must have been taken when she was going down to the pub to talk with Lorraine, she realized, as she was wearing the same jeans and light cotton jacket as she had worn on Tuesday.

HOUSE OF PAYNE: NEIGHBOR SPEAKS OUT, ran the headline, and the article went on to detail how Maggie had heard suspicious sounds coming from across The Hill and called the police. Afterward, calling Maggie Lucy’s “friend,” Lorraine Temple reported what Maggie had said about Lucy’s being a victim of domestic abuse, and how she was scared of her husband. All of which was fine and accurate enough, as far as it went. But then came the sting in the tail. According to sources in Toronto, Lorraine Temple went on to report, Maggie Forrest herself was on the run from an abusive husband: Toronto lawyer, William Burke. The article detailed the time Maggie had spent in hospital and all the fruitless court orders issued to stop Bill’s going near her. Describing Maggie as a nervous, mousy sort of woman, Lorraine Temple also mentioned that she was seeing a local psychiatrist called Dr. Simms, who “declined to comment.”

Lorraine ended by suggesting that, perhaps because of Maggie’s own psychological problems, Maggie had been gullible, and that her identification with Lucy’s plight may have blinded her to the truth. Lorraine couldn’t come out and say that she thought Lucy was guilty of anything – the laws of libel forbade that – but she did have a very good stab at making her readers think Lucy might just be the sort of manipulative and deceitful person who could twist a weak woman like Maggie around her little finger. It was rubbish, of course, but effective rubbish, nonetheless.

How could she do that? Now everybody would know.

Every time Maggie walked down the street to go to the shops or catch the bus into town, the neighbors and shopkeepers would look at her differently, with pity and perhaps just the merest hint of blame in their eyes. Some people would avoid looking her in the eye and perhaps even stop talking to her, associating her too closely for comfort with the events at number 35. Even strangers who recognized her from the photograph would wonder about her. Perhaps Claire would stop coming to see her altogether, though she hadn’t been since the time the policeman turned up, and Maggie was already worried about her.

Perhaps even Bill would find out.

It was her own fault, of course. She had put herself in harm’s way. She had been trying to do a favor for poor Lucy, trying to garner her some public sympathy, and the whole thing had backfired. How stupid she had been to trust Lorraine Temple. One lousy article like this and her whole new fragile, protected world would change. Just like that. It wasn’t fair, Maggie told herself as she cried over the breakfast table. It just wasn’t fair .

After a short but satisfying night’s sleep – perhaps due to the generous doses of Laphroaig and Duke Ellington – Banks was back in his Millgarth cubbyhole by eight-thirty on Friday morning, and the first news to cross his desk was a note from Stefan Nowak informing him that the skeletal remains dug up in the Paynes’s garden were not Leanne Wray’s. Had Banks been harboring the slightest hope that Leanne might still be alive and well after all this time, he would have jumped for joy, but as it was, he rubbed his forehead in frustration; it looked as if it was going to be another one of those days. He punched in Stefan’s mobile number and got an answer after three rings. It sounded as if Stefan was in the middle of another conversation, but he muttered a few asides and gave his attention to Banks.