Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

She hadn’t actually used the word “ogling,” Banks knew, but it showed inventiveness on the new kid’s part. It had so much more impact than “looking at” or even “eyeing up.”

“I was doing no such thing,” Randall replied. “As I told you, I was sitting there quietly with my drink, reading the paper.”

“And you didn’t even notice Hayley Daniels?”

Randall paused. “I didn’t know who she was,” he said, “but I suppose one couldn’t help but notice her.”

“Oh?” said Wilson. “In what way, sir?”

“Well, the way she was dressed, for a start. Like a common trollop. All that bare leg and tummy. If you ask me, girls who dress like that are asking for trouble. You might even say they deserve what they get.”

“Is that why you lied about ogling her in the first place?” Banks said. “Because you thought if you admitted it, it would seem suspicious that you also found her body? Was it you who gave her what she deserved?”

“That’s an impertinent question, and I won’t dignify it with an answer,” said Randall, red-faced. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m leaving.”

“Are you sure you didn’t follow Hayley Daniels around for the rest of the evening and somehow lure her into your storeroom, where you knew you’d be able to have your way with her?” said Wilson, an innocent and concerned expression on his young face. “Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, but things just went too far? It could go in your favor if you told us now.”

Randall, half-standing, gave him an et tu Brutus look and collapsed back into the chair. “What I’ve told you is the truth,” he said. “She was in the pub with a group of friends. That was the first and last time I saw her. I didn’t pay her any special attention, but now you mention it, I’ll admit she stood out from the crowd, though not in a way I approve of. I didn’t mention it at first because I know the way your minds work. That’s all I have to say on the matter.” He glared at Banks. “And I am leaving now.”

“As you wish,” said Banks. He let Randall get to the door, then said, “I’d appreciate it if we could get a set of your fingerprints and a DNA sample. Just for the purposes of elimination, you understand. At your own convenience. DC Wilson will sort out the consent forms.”

Randall slammed the door behind him.

Annie was in her office at the squat brick-and-glass building on Spring Hill bright and early on Monday morning, feeling a lot better than she had on Sunday. Even the weather seemed to echo her lift in spirits. The rain had passed and the sky was bright blue dotted with fluffy white clouds. The usually gray North Sea had a bluish cast. There was a chill in the wind, but by mid-afternoon people would be taking their jackets off on the quays and piers and sitting outside at the pubs. It was almost spring, after all.

The “Wheelchair Murder” had hit the local papers and TV breakfast news, and Superintendent Brough had scheduled a press conference for later that morning. Luckily, Annie wouldn’t have to attend, but he would expect her to give him something to feed the hungry mob with.

Annie felt another quiver of guilt and self-loathing when she thought about Saturday night. Behaving like a randy teenager at her age was hardly becoming, she felt. But it had happened; now it was time to follow the old Zen lesson and let go with both hands. Life is suffering, and the cause of suffering is desire, so the Buddhists say. You can’t stop the desires, memories, the thoughts and the feelings, the teaching went, but you didn’t have to grasp them and hang on to them to torture yourself; you could simply let them go, let them float away like balloons or bubbles. That was what she did when she meditated, concentrated on one fixed thing — her breathing or a repeated sound — and watched the balloons with her thoughts and dreams inside them drift away into the void. She needed to get back to it regularly again. Anyway, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty of other things to think about this morning.

Like Karen Drew, for a start.

The first detail Annie read from the files Tommy Naylor had brought from Mapston Hall shocked her: Karen Drew had been only twenty-eight years old when she died. Annie had thought her an old woman, and even Naylor had pegged her age at around forty. Of course, they had only had the bloodless, shapeless lump under the blanket in the wheelchair with dry, graying hair to go by. Even so, Annie thought, twenty-eight seemed terribly young. How could the body betray one so cruelly?

According to the records, Karen’s car had been hit by a driver losing control and crossing the center of the road six years ago. She had been in a coma for some time and had had a series of operations and lengthy spells of hospitalization, until it became apparent to every medical expert involved that she wasn’t going to recover, and that the only real option was full-time care. She had been at Mapston Hall for three months, as Grace Chaplin had said. That wasn’t very long, Annie thought. And if Karen couldn’t communicate, she could hardly have made any enemies so quickly. Passing psychopaths aside, it seemed all the more likely that the reason for her murder lay in her past.

Medically, the report suggested, there had been no change in her physical condition, and there never would be. When someone is as limited in self-expression as Karen Drew was, the slightest hint of progress tends to be hailed as a miracle. But nobody had really known what Karen was thinking or feeling. Nobody even knew whether she wanted to live or die. That choice had been taken out of her hands now, and it was up to Annie to find out why. Was it a mercy killing, as Naylor had hinted at, or did someone benefit in some way from Karen’s death? And if mercy was the motive, who had given it to her? These were the questions she would like answered first.

One thing Annie noticed about the files was that they told her very little of Karen’s life before the accident. She had lived in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, but there was no specific address listed, nor any indication as to whether she had grown up there or moved from somewhere else. Her parents were marked as deceased, again without details, and she apparently had neither siblings nor anyone especially close, like a husband, live-in partner or fiancé. All in all, Karen Drew hardly appeared to have existed before that fateful day in 2001.

Annie was chewing on the end of her yellow pencil stub and frowning at this lack of information when her mobile rang shortly after nine o’clock. She didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway. In the course of an investigation, she gave her card out to many people.

“Annie?”

“Yes.”

“It’s me. Eric.”

“Eric?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten so quickly. That hurts.”

Annie’s mind whizzed through the possibilities, and there was only one glaringly obvious answer. “I don’t remember giving you my mobile number,” she said.

“Well, that’s a fine thing to say. Something else you don’t remember, I suppose, like my name?”

Shit . Had she been that drunk? “Anyway,” she went on, “it’s my work number. Please don’t call me on it.”

“Give me your home number, then.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then how am I supposed to get in touch with you? I don’t even know your last name.”

“You’re not. That’s the point.” Annie ended the call. She felt a tightness in her chest. Her phone rang again. Automatically, she answered.

“Look,” Eric said, “I’m sorry. We’ve got off to a bad start here.”

“Nothing’s started. And nothing’s going to start,” Annie said.