Peter Robinson - Aftermath

“Thank you,” he said, indicating for Winsome to follow him down the stairs.

“Isn’t that weird?” she said when they’d got outside. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“Think what, Winsome?”

“That maybe Leanne did go home that night. And that maybe when they heard we were digging up the Paynes’ garden, Mr. Wray decided it was time for redecoration.”

“Hmm,” said Banks. “Maybe you’re right, or maybe people just have different ways of showing their grief. Either way, I think we’ll be looking a bit more closely at the Wrays over the next few days. You can start by talking to their neighbors, see if they’ve seen or heard anything unusual.”

After her chat with Maureen Nesbitt, Jenny decided to visit Spurn Head itself before heading for home. Maybe a good long walk would help her think things over, blow the cobwebs away. Maybe it would also help her get rid of the eerie feeling she had had since Alderthorpe that she was being watched or followed. She couldn’t explain it, but every time she turned suddenly to look over her shoulder, she felt rather than saw something slip into the shadows. It was irritating because she couldn’t quite grasp whether she was being paranoid or whether it was a case of just because she was paranoid it didn’t mean someone wasn’t following her.

She was still feeling it.

Jenny paid her entrance fee and drove slowly along the narrow track to the car park, noticing an old lighthouse, half under water, and guessing that the sands had shifted since it was built and left it stranded there.

Jenny walked down to the beach. The place wasn’t quite as desolate as she had imagined it to be. Just ahead, on a platform a little way out to sea, attached to the mainland by a narrow wooden bridge, were a dock and control center for the Humber pilots, who guided the big tankers in from the North Sea. Behind her stood the new lighthouse and a number of houses. Across the estuary, Jenny could see the docks and cranes of Grimsby and Immingham. Though the sun was shining, there was quite a breeze and Jenny felt the chill as she walked the sands around the point. The sea was an odd combination of colors – purple, brown, lavender, everything but blue, even in the sun.

There weren’t many people around. Most of those who visited the area were serious birders, and the place was a protected wildlife sanctuary. Even so, Jenny saw a couple or two walking hand in hand, and one family with two small children. As she walked, she still couldn’t shake off the feeling of being followed.

When the first tanker came around the head, it took her breath away. Because of the sharp curve, the huge shape seemed to appear there suddenly, moving very fast, and it filled her field of vision for a few moments, then one of the pilot boats nearby guided it over the estuary toward Immingham docks. Another tanker followed only moments later.

As Jenny stood on the sand looking out over the broad waters, she thought of what Maureen Nesbitt had told her about the Alderthorpe Seven.

Tom Godwin, Lucy’s younger brother, had stayed with his foster parents until he was eighteen, like Lucy, then he had gone to live with distant relatives in Australia, all thoroughly checked out by the social services, and he now worked on their sheep farm in New South Wales. By all accounts, Tom was a sturdy, quiet sort of boy, given to long walks alone, and a sort of shyness that made him stutter in front of strangers. Often he woke up screaming from nightmares he couldn’t remember.

Laura, Lucy’s sister, was living in Edinburgh, where she was studying medicine at the university, hoping to become a psychiatrist. Maureen said Laura was well-adjusted, on the whole, after years of therapy, but there was still a timidity and reticence about her that might make it hard for her to face some of the more human challenges of her chosen profession. There was no doubt she was a brilliant and skilled pupil, but whether she could handle the daily pressures of psychiatry was another matter.

Of the three surviving Murray children, Susan had committed suicide, tragically, at the age of thirteen; Dianne was in a sort of halfway house for the mentally disturbed, suffering from severe sleep disorders and terrifying hallucinations. Keith, like Laura, was also a student, though Maureen reckoned he would be about graduation age by now. He had gone to the University of Durham to study history and English. He was still seeing a psychiatrist regularly and suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety attacks, especially in confined places, but he managed to function and do well in his studies.

And that was it: the sad legacy of Alderthorpe. Such blighted lives.

Jenny wondered if Banks wanted her to continue now that he’d let Lucy go. Maureen Nesbitt had said her best bets were clearly Keith Murray and Laura Godwin, and as Keith lived closer to Eastvale, she decided she would try to reach him first. But was there any more point to it all? She had to admit that she hadn’t found any psychological evidence that significantly strengthened the case against Lucy. She felt every bit as inadequate as many officers on the task force thought all offender profilers were anyway.

Lucy could have sustained the kind of psychological damage that made her a compliant victim of Terence Payne’s, but there again, she might not have. Different people subjected to the same horrors often go in completely different directions. Perhaps Lucy was truly a strong personality, strong enough to put the past behind her and get on with life. Jenny doubted that anyone had the strength to avoid at least some kind of psychological fallout from the events in Alderthorpe, but it was possible to heal, at least partially, over time, and to function on some level, as Tom, Laura and Keith had also demonstrated. They might be the walking wounded, but at least they were still walking.

When Jenny had covered half the circle of the head, she cut back through the long grass to the car park and set off down the narrow track. As she went, she noticed a blue Citroën in her rearview mirror and felt certain that she had seen it somewhere before. Telling herself to stop being so paranoid, she left the head and drove toward Patrington. When she’d got closer to the edges of Hull, she called Banks on her mobile.

He answered on the third ring. “Jenny, where are you?”

“Hull. On my way home.”

“Find out anything interesting?”

“Plenty, but I’m not sure that it gets us any further. I’ll try to put it all together into some sort of profile, if you want.”

“Please.”

“I just heard you had to let Lucy Payne go.”

“That’s right. We got her out of a side exit without too much fuss, and her lawyer drove her straight to Hull. They did some shopping in the city center, then Julia Ford, the lawyer, dropped Lucy off at the Liversedges’. They welcomed her with open arms.”

“That’s where she is now?”

“Far as I know. The local police are keeping an eye on her for us. Where else can she go?”

“Where, indeed?” said Jenny. “Does this mean it’s over?”

“What?”

“My job.”

“No,” said Banks. “Nothing’s over yet.”

After Jenny had hung up, she checked her rearview mirror again. The blue Citroën was keeping its distance, allowing three of four other cars between them, but there was no doubt it was still back there on her tail.

“Annie, have you ever thought of having children?”

Banks felt Annie tense beside him in bed. They had just made love and were basking in the aftermath, the gentle rushing of the falls outside, the occasional night animal calling from the woods and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks drifting up from the stereo downstairs.