Peter Robinson - Aftermath

“I wasn’t trying to be nosy,” Shannon said. “I was only asking because I haven’t seen you since and I’ve been reading about those girls in Leeds.” She gave a little shudder. “It’s horrible. I remember being in Milwaukee – that’s where I’m from, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – when all the Jeffrey Dahmer stuff was going on. I was only a kid but I knew what it was all about and we were all scared and confused. I don’t know how people can do things like that, do you?”

Banks looked at her, saw the innocence, the hope and the faith that her life would turn out to be worth living and that the world wasn’t an entirely evil place, no matter what bad things happened in it. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“So you haven’t found her, then? Leanne?”

“No.”

“It’s not that I knew her or anything. I only saw her once. But, you know, when something like that happens, like you think you might be the last person to have seen someone, well…” She rested her hand on her chest. “It sort of sticks with you, if you know what I mean. I can’t get the picture out of my mind. Her sitting over there by the fireplace.”

Banks thought of Claire Toth, whipping herself over Kimberley Myers’s murder, and he knew that anyone remotely connected with what Payne had done felt tainted by it. “I know what you mean,” he said.

One of the old men came up to the bar and plunked his half-pint glass down. Shannon filled it for him; he paid and went back to his chair. She wrinkled her nose. “They’re in here every day. You can set your watch by them. If one of them didn’t turn up I’d have to call an ambulance.”

“When you say you can’t get Leanne’s image out of your mind, does that mean you’ve given any more thought to that evening?”

“Not really,” said Shannon. “I mean, I thought… you know, that she’d been taken, like the others. That’s what everyone thought.”

“I’m starting to believe that might not be the case,” said Banks, putting his fear into words for the first time. “In fact, I’m beginning to think we might have been barking up the wrong tree on that one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Anyway,” Banks went on. “I just thought I’d drop by, see if you remembered anything you forgot to mention before, that sort of thing. It’s been a while.” And that, he knew, meant that any trail Leanne may had left would have gone cold. If they had screwed up in assuming too quickly that Leanne Wray had been abducted by the same person, or persons, as Kelly Matthews and Samantha Foster, then any clues as to what had really happened could well have vanished forever by now.

“I don’t know how I can help,” said Shannon.

“Tell me,” said Banks, “you say they were sitting over there, right?” He pointed to the table by the empty tiled fireplace.

“Yes. Four of them. At that table.”

“Did they drink much?”

“No. I told the policewoman before. They only had a drink or two each. I didn’t think she was old enough but the landlord tells us not to bother too much, unless it’s really obvious.” She put her hand over her mouth. “Shoot, I probably shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

“Don’t worry about it. We know all about Mr. Parkinson’s practices. And don’t worry about what you told us before, Shannon. I know I could go and look it all up in the files if I wanted, but I want you to start again, as if it had never happened before.”

It was hard to explain to a civilian, but Banks needed the feel of investigating Leanne’s disappearance as if it were a fresh crime. He didn’t want to start by poring over old files in his office – though it would no doubt come to that if something didn’t turn up soon – he wanted to start by revisiting the place where she had last been seen.

“Did Leanne seem intoxicated at all?” he asked.

“She was a bit giggly, a bit loud, as if maybe she wasn’t used to the drink.”

“What was she drinking?”

“I can’t remember. Not beer. Maybe wine, or it could have been Pernod, something like that.”

“Did you get the impression that the four of them had paired off? Anything along those lines?”

Shannon thought for a moment. “No. Two of them were clearly a couple. You could tell by the way they were touching one another casually. I mean, it’s not as if they were necking or anything. But the other two, Leanne and…”

“Mick Blair,” said Banks.

“I don’t know their names. Anyway, I got the impression he might have been a bit keen, and she was flirting a bit, maybe because of the drinks.”

“Was he bothering her at all?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that, or I’d have a made a point of saying so before. No, just the way I caught him looking at her once or twice. They seemed comfortable enough together, but as I say, I just thought maybe he fancied her and she was playing him along a bit, that’s all.”

“You didn’t mention this before.”

“It didn’t seem important. Besides, nobody asked me. Back then, everyone was more concerned that she’d been abducted by a serial killer.”

True enough, Banks thought, with a sigh. Leanne’s parents had been adamant that she was a good girl and would never, under any normal circumstances, break a curfew. So certain were they that she must have been attacked or abducted that their certainty influenced the investigation, and the police broke one of their cardinal rules: Don’t make assumptions until you’ve checked out every possible angle. People were also making noises about Kelly Matthews and Samantha Foster at the time, so Leanne’s disappearance – another nice, well-adjusted teenager – became linked with theirs. And there was, of course, the matter of the abandoned shoulder bag. In it were Leanne’s inhaler, which she needed in case of an asthma attack, and her purse, which contained twenty-five pounds and a handful of change. It made no sense that she would throw away her money if she was running away from home. Surely she would need all she could get?

DC Winsome Jackman had questioned Shannon, and perhaps she should have asked more probing questions, but Banks couldn’t blame Winsome for the omissions. She had discovered what mattered at the time: that the group had been well-behaved, that they had caused no problems, that there had been no arguments, that they weren’t drunk, and that there had been no unwelcome attention from strangers. “What was their general mood?” Banks asked. “Did they seem quiet, rambunctious, or what?”

“I don’t remember anything unusual about them. They weren’t causing any trouble, or I’m sure I’d have said. Usually you get that with people who know they’re drinking underage. They know they’re under sufferance, if you know what I mean, so they tend not to draw attention to themselves.”

Banks remembered the feeling well. At sixteen he had sat, proud and terrified, with his mate Steve in a poky little pub a mile or so from the estate where they both lived, drinking their first pints of bitter in a corner by the jukebox, smoking Park Drive tipped. They had felt like real grown-ups, but Banks also remembered being worried in case the police came around, or someone who knew them came in – one of his father’s friends, for example – so they tried to fade into the woodwork as much as possible.

He sipped his shandy and crumpled up the crisp packet. Shannon took it from him and put it in the waste bin behind the bar.

“I do remember that they seemed excited about something just before they left, though,” Shannon added. “I mean they were too far away for me to hear anything and they weren’t really noisy about it, but I could tell someone had come up with a good idea for something to do.”