Peter Robinson - Aftermath

Katya Pavelic had come to England from Bosnia four years ago, when she was fourteen. Like so many young girls there, she had been gang-raped by Serbian soldiers, and then shot, saving herself only by playing dead under a pile of corpses until some Canadian UN peace-keepers found her three days later. The wound was superficial and the blood had clotted. Her only problem was an infection, and that had responded well to antibiotics. Various groups and individuals had seen that Katya got to England, but she was a disturbed and troublesome girl, and she soon ran away from her foster parents when she was sixteen, and they had tried in vain to find her and contact her ever since.

The irony wasn’t lost on Banks. After having survived the horrors of the Bosnian war, Katya Pavelic had ended up raped, murdered and buried in the Paynes’ back garden. What was the bloody point of it all? he asked. As usual, he got no answer from the Supreme Ironist in the Sky, only a deep hollow laughter echoing through his brain. Sometimes, the pity and the horror of it all were almost too much for him to bear.

And there remained one more unidentified victim, the one who had been buried there the longest: a white woman in her late teens or early twenties, about five feet three inches tall, according to the forensic anthropologist, who was still conducting tests on the bones. There was little doubt in Banks’s mind that this could easily be another prostitute victim, and that might make the corpse hard to identify.

Banks had had one brainstorm and pulled in Terence Payne’s teacher friend Geoff Brighouse to help him find the Aberdeen schoolteacher the two of them had taken up to their room at the convention. Luckily, Banks turned out to be wrong, and she was still teaching in Aberdeen. Though she expressed some anger about her experience, she had kept quiet mostly because she didn’t want to damage her teaching career and had written that one off to experience. She had also been very embarrassed and angry with herself for being so drunk and foolish as to go to a hotel room with two strange men after all the things she had read in the papers. She had almost fainted when Banks told her that the man who had coerced her into having anal sex against her will was Terence Payne. She hadn’t made the connection from the photo in the newspapers and had only been on first-name terms with the two.

Banks opened his window on another fine day in the market-square, tourist buses pulling up already, disgorging their hordes on to the gleaming cobbles. A quick glance around the church’s interior, a walk up to the Castle, lunch at the Pied Piper – Banks felt depressed just thinking about what had happened there yesterday – then they’d pile back in the coach and be off to Castle Bolton or Devraulx Abbey. How he wished he could go on a long holiday. Maybe never come back.

The gold hands against the blue face of the church clock stood at five past ten. Banks lit a cigarette and planned out the rest of his day, plans that included Mick Blair, Ian Scott and Sarah Francis, not to mention the grieving parents, Christopher and Victoria Wray. Winsome had discovered nothing new from talking to the Wrays’ neighbors, none of whom had either seen or heard anything unusual. Banks still had his suspicions about them, though he found it difficult to convince himself that they could actually have killed Leanne.

He had suffered yet another restless night, this time partly because of Annie. Now, the more he thought about her decision, the more sense it made. He didn’t want to give her up, but if he was to be honest, it was best all around. Looking back at her on-again-off-again attitude toward their relationship, the way she bristled every time other aspects of his life came up, he realized that however much there had been, the relationship had also been a lot of grief, too. If she didn’t like the way his past made her face details of her own, like the abortion, then perhaps she was right to end it. Time to move on and stay “just friends,” let her pursue her career and let him try to exorcise his personal demons.

Just as he was finishing his cigarette, DC Winsome Jackman tapped at his door and walked in looking particularly elegant in a tailored pinstripe suit over a white blouse. The woman had clothes sense, Banks thought, unlike himself, and unlike Annie Cabbot. He liked Annie’s casual high style – it was definitely her – but no one could accuse her of making a fashion statement. Anyway, best forget about Annie. He turned toward Winsome.

“Come in. Sit down.”

Winsome sat, crossing her long legs, sniffing accusingly and wrinkling her nose at the smoke.

“I know, I know,” Banks said. “I’m going to stop soon, honestly.”

“That little job you asked me to do,” she said. “I thought you’d like to know that your instinct was right. There was a car reported stolen from Disraeli Street between nine-thirty and eleven o’clock on the night Leanne Wray disappeared.”

“Was there, indeed? Isn’t Disraeli Street just around the corner from the Old Ship Inn?”

“It is, sir.”

Banks sat down and rubbed his hands together. “Tell me more.”

“Keeper’s name is Samuel Gardner. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. Seems he parked there while he popped into the Cock and Bull on Palmerston Avenue, just for a pint of shandy, he stressed.”

“Of course. Perish the thought we should try to do him for drink-driving two months after the event. What do you think, Winsome?”

Winsome shifted and crossed her legs the other way, straightening the hem of her skirt over her knees. “I don’t know, sir. Seems a bit of a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

“That Ian Scott’s in the neighborhood?”

“Yes, sir. I know there are plenty of kids taking and driving away, but… well, the timing fits, and the location.”

“Indeed it does. When did he report it missing?”

“Ten past eleven that night.”

“And when was it found?”

“Not until the next morning, sir. One of the beat constables came across it illegally parked down by the formal gardens.”

“That’s not very far from The Riverboat, is it?”

“Ten-minute walk, at the most.”

“You know, this is starting to look good, Winsome. I want you to go and have a word with this Samuel Gardner, see if you can find out any more from him. Put him at ease. Make it clear we don’t give a damn whether he drank a whole bottle of whiskey as long as he tells us everything he can remember about that night. And have the car taken into the police garage for a full forensic examination. I doubt we’ll find anything after all this time, but Scott and Blair aren’t likely to know that, are they?”

Winsome smiled wickedly. “Doubt it very much, sir.”

Banks looked at his watch. “When you’ve talked to Gardner and the car’s safe in our care, have Mick Blair brought in. I think a little chat with him in one of the interview rooms might be very productive.”

“Right you are.”

“And have Sarah Francis brought in at the same time.”

“Okay.”

“And, Winsome.”

“Sir?”

“Make sure they see one another in passing, would you?”

“My pleasure, sir.” Winsome smiled, stood up and left the office.

“Look,” said Jenny, “I haven’t had any lunch yet. Instead of standing around here in the street, is there anywhere nearby we can go?” Though her immediate fears had dispersed somewhat when the young man simply asked her who she was and what she wanted, without showing any particular inclination toward aggression, she still wanted to be with them in a public place, not up in the flat.

“There’s a café down the road,” he said. “We can go there if you want.”

“Fine.”

Jenny followed them back to the arterial road, crossed at the zebra and went into a corner café that smelled of bacon. She was supposed to be slimming – she was always supposed to be slimming – but she couldn’t resist the smell and ordered a bacon butty and a mug of tea. The other two asked for the same and Jenny paid. Nobody objected. Poor students never do. Now that they were closer, sitting at an isolated table near the window, Jenny could she that she was mistaken. While the girl definitely resembled Lucy, had her eyes and mouth and the same shiny black hair, it wasn’t her. There was something softer, more fragile, more human about this young woman, and her eyes weren’t quite so black and impenetrable; they were intelligent and sensitive, though their depths flickered with horrors and fears Jenny could barely imagine.