Peter Robinson - Aftermath

“No.”

She stood up so abruptly that she banged the table hard and her drink spilled right on to Banks’s lap, then she ran out of the pub before he could say another word. All he could do was sit there feeling the cold liquid seep through his trousers, aware of everyone’s eyes on him, thankful only that they hadn’t been in the Queen’s Arms, where everyone knew him. And he’d thought the day couldn’t get any worse.

After taking her last tutorial group and clearing up some paperwork, Jenny left her office at York early on Tuesday afternoon and headed for the A1 to Durham. The traffic was heavy, especially lorries and delivery vans, but at least it was a pleasant, sunny day, not pouring down with rain.

After talking to Keith Murray – if he agreed to talk to her – Jenny thought she would still have time to continue on to Edinburgh later in the afternoon and look up Laura Godwin. It would mean an overnight stay – either that or a long drive home in the dark – but she could worry about that later. She had an old student friend in the Psychology Department at the University of Edinburgh, and it might be fun to get together and catch up with each other’s history. Not that Jenny’s recent history was anything to write home about, she thought glumly, and now that she had met Banks’s girlfriend, she decided there probably wasn’t much hope for her there, either. Still, she was used to that by now; after all, they had known each other for seven years or more, and they hadn’t once strayed beyond the bounds of propriety, more was the pity.

She still wasn’t certain whether The Girlfriend had been jealous when she came over to them in the Queen’s Arms. She must certainly have seen Banks touch Jenny’s arm, and though it was merely a friendly, concerned gesture, it was open to misinterpretation, like so much body language. Was The Girlfriend the jealous kind? Jenny didn’t know. Annie had seemed self-assured and poised, yet Jenny had sensed something in her attitude that made her feel strangely concerned for Banks, who was probably the only man she had ever met whom she worried about, wanted to protect. She didn’t know why. He was independent, strong, private; perhaps he was more vulnerable than he let on, but he certainly wasn’t the sort of person you went around feeling you needed to protect or mother.

A white van sped by on her outside lane just as she was turning off, and still lost in thought, she almost hit it. Luckily, instinct kicked in and she had time to swing back abruptly into her own lane without causing anyone else great distress, but she missed the turnoff she wanted. She honked her horn and cursed him out loud – impotent gestures, but all she could come up with – and drove on to the next junction.

When she had got off the A1, she switched the radio channel from a dreary Brahms symphony to some cheerful pop music, tunes she could hum along with and tap out the rhythm on the steering wheel.

Durham was on odd sort of place, Jenny had always thought. Though she had been born there, her parents had moved away when she was only three, and she didn’t remember it at all. Very early in her academic career, she had applied for a job at the university, but she got pipped at the post by a man with more publications to his name. She would have liked living here, she thought as she looked at the distant castle high on the hill, and all the greenery surrounding it, but York suited her well enough, and she had no desire to start applying for a new job at this stage in her career.

She had found from her map that Keith Murray lived out by the university sports grounds, so she was able to bypass the central maze around the cathedral and colleges, the city’s main tourist area. Even so, she still managed to get lost on a couple of occasions. There was a chance that Keith might be out at lectures, Jenny realized, though she remembered how few lectures she had attended when she was an undergraduate. If he was, she could wait until later if she had to, explore the city, have a pub lunch, and still be in plenty of time to get to Edinburgh to talk to Laura.

She pulled over into a small car park in front of some shops and consulted the map again. Not far away now. She just had to watch out for the one-way streets or she would end up back where she started.

On the second try, she got it right and pulled off the arterial road into an area of narrow streets. She was concentrating so much on finding the right street and the right house number that she almost didn’t see the car she parked behind until the last moment. When she did, her heart jumped into her throat. It was a blue Citroën.

Jenny told herself to be calm, that she couldn’t be certain it was the same blue Citroën that had followed her around Holderness because she hadn’t seen the number plate. But it was the exact same model, and she didn’t believe in coincidences.

What should she do? Go ahead anyway? If the Citroën belonged to Keith Murray, what had he been doing at Alderthorpe and Spurn Head, and why had he followed her? Was he dangerous?

As Jenny was trying to make up her mind what to do, the front door of the house opened and two people walked over to the car: a young man with keys in his hand and a woman who looked remarkably like Lucy Payne. Just as Jenny decided to pull away, the young man saw her, said something to Lucy, then walked over and jerked open the driver’s door of Jenny’s car before she had time to lock it.

Well, she thought, you’ve well and truly done it now, this time, haven’t you, Jenny?

There were no new developments at Millgarth, according to Ken Blackstone on the phone that morning. The SOCOs were getting to the point where there wasn’t much left of the Payne house to take apart. Both gardens had been dug up to a depth of between six and ten feet and searched in a grid system. The concrete floors in the cellar and the garage had been ripped up by pneumatic drills. Almost a thousand exhibits had been bagged and labeled. The entire contents of the house had been stripped and taken away. The walls had been punched open at regular intervals. In addition to the crime scene specialists going over all the collected material, forensic mechanics had taken Payne’s car apart looking for traces of the abducted girls. Payne might be dead, but a case still had to be answered, and Lucy’s role had still to be determined.

The only snippet of information about Lucy Payne was that she had withdrawn two hundred pounds from an ATM on Tottenham Court Road. It figured she would go to London if she wanted to disappear, Banks thought, remembering his search there for Chief Constable Riddle’s daughter, Emily. Perhaps he would have to go and search for Lucy, too, although this time he would have all the resources of the Metropolitan Police at his disposal. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that; maybe Lucy wasn’t involved and would simply ease herself into a new identity and a new look in a new place and try to rebuild her shattered life. Maybe .

Banks looked again at the loose sheets of papers on his desk.

Katya Pavelic.

Katya, Candy’s “Anna,” had been identified through dental records late the previous evening. Fortunately for Banks, she had suffered a toothache shortly before she disappeared, and Candy had directed Katya to her own dentist. Katya had disappeared, according to Candy, sometime last November. At least, she remembered the weather was cool and misty and the Christmas lights had recently been turned on in the city center. That likely made Katya the victim before Kelly Matthews.

Certainly Candy, or Hayley Lyndon, as she was called, had seen both Terence and Lucy Payne driving around the area on a number of occasions but couldn’t connect them directly with Katya. The circumstantial evidence was beginning to build up, though, and if Jenny’s psychological probing into the old Alderthorpe wounds turned up anything interesting, then it might be time to reel Lucy in. For the moment, let her enjoy the illusion of freedom.