Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

“A few. We’re waiting on forensics and toxicology results,” said Banks. “And there are some more people we need to talk to. Kev Templeton thinks we’ve got a serial killer on our hands already. He might have a point. Even though there’s been only one definite victim so far, it has all the hallmarks of a violent sex crime, and people who do that don’t usually stop at one.”

“Kevin Templeton’s an arsehole,” said Annie.

“That may be, but he can be a good copper if he puts his mind to it.”

Annie snorted in disbelief. “Anyway,” she said, “I think you’ll be interested in what’s happened out Whitby way.”

“Oh?” said Banks. “I’m intrigued. I did hear something about a woman in a wheelchair being killed out there.”

“Yes,” Annie said. “A woman by the name of Karen Drew.”

“It doesn’t ring any bells.”

“It wouldn’t,” said Annie. “It’s not her real name.”

“Oh.”

“No. Julia Ford told me what her real name was yesterday.”

Banks paused with the burger halfway to his mouth and put it back down on the plate. “Julia Ford. Now there’s a blast from the past.”

“Starting to ring some bells?”

“Yes, but I don’t like the sound they’re making. Julia Ford. Woman in a wheelchair. Sounds very dissonant to me.”

“It was Lucy Payne.”

“Shit,” said Banks. “I take it the media don’t know yet?”

“No, but they’ll find out soon enough. Detective Superintendent Brough’s trying to head them off at the pass. He’s called a press conference for this afternoon.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to feel any pity for her,” Banks said.

“It always struck me that you had a very complicated relationship with her,” said Annie. “That’s partly why I’ve come to you.”

“Complicated? With the ‘Friend of the Devil’? Ruined a perfectly good Grateful Dead song for me, that’s all. Now, whenever I hear it, I see her face, see those bodies in the cellar.”

“Come off it, Alan. It’s me, remember. Annie. I’m not Jim Hatchley. You don’t have to play the yahoo with me.”

Banks sipped some beer. Annie looked at him and tried to figure out what he was thinking. She never could. He thought he was transparent, but he was really as cloudy as an unfiltered pint.

“She was a complicated woman,” Banks said. “But she was a killer.”

“A young and beautiful killer,” Annie added.

“That, too,” Banks agreed. “Are you saying that affected my judgment?”

“Oh, come on. I’ve never known a time when a woman’s beauty hasn’t affected a man’s judgment. You don’t even need to go back as far as Helen of Troy to work that one out.”

“I wasn’t her champion, you’ll remember,” said Banks. “As far as I was concerned, she was as guilty as her husband, and I wanted her put away for it.”

“Yes, I know, but you understood her, didn’t you?”

“Not for a moment.” Banks paused. “I’m not saying I might not have wanted to, or even tried to, but it wasn’t anything to do with her beauty. She was in bandages most of the times I saw her, anyway. Look below the surface and there was a hell of a lot of darkness. Okay, I’ll admit she was a complex and interesting killer. We’ve both come across those.”

“Touché,” said Annie, thinking of Phil Keane, who had wreaked so much havoc on her and Banks’s lives not much more than a year ago, damage Annie had certainly not yet got over if her recent behavior was anything to go by. A charming psychopath, Keane had used Annie to monitor the investigation of a crime he had committed, and when he came close to getting caught, he had almost killed Banks.

“But Lucy Payne had a most unusual and deeply troubled childhood,” Banks went on. “I’m not saying that excuses anything she did, or even really explains it, but can you really get your head around being kept in a cage and sexually abused by your family day after day, year after year?”

“The abused becomes the abuser?”

“I know it sounds like a cliché, but isn’t that often the case? Anyway, you didn’t come to me for my theories on Lucy Payne. In a way, death was probably a blessing for her.” He raised his glass for a moment, as if in a mock toast, then drank.

“True,” said Annie. “What I was thinking was that I have to revisit that case if I want to have a hope in hell of catching her killer.”

“And what makes you want to do that?”

“My nature,” Annie said. “I can’t even believe you’d ask me such a question.”

“Come off it, Annie. You thought she was as guilty as I did.”

“I know,” said Annie. “So what? If anything, that makes me want to solve her murder even more.”

“To prove you can overcome your own prejudices?”

“What’s so wrong with that? I might never have said it, but I was glad when she ended up paralyzed. Death would have been too easy for her. This way she suffered more, and a part of me thought that was just, given the way she’d made those poor girls suffer. Karma, if you like.”

“And the other parts of you?”

“Told me what a load of self-justifying bollocks that was. Whatever she did, whatever she was, Lucy Payne was a human being. As a society, we don’t tolerate executing people anymore, but someone has taken the law into his or her own hands and slit Lucy Payne’s throat as she sat there unable to defend herself. That goes against everything I believe in. No matter what she did, it was nobody’s right to take Lucy Payne’s life.”

“What, they should have let her go on suffering a kind of living death? Come on, Annie, someone did her a favor.”

“It wasn’t a mercy killing.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve never come across anyone who felt she deserved the tiniest drop of mercy, that’s why. Except perhaps you.”

“Well, I didn’t kill her,” said Banks.

“Now you’re playing silly buggers.”

Banks touched the scar beside his right eye. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so sarcastic. All I’m saying is that you have to be sure you want to open that can of worms. You know who the main suspects will be.”

“Of course I do,” said Annie. “The parents and families and friends of the girls the Paynes raped, abused and killed, for a start. That neighbor, Maggie Forrest, who was taken in by Lucy and then betrayed. Maybe even one of the police officers on the case. A friend or relative of Janet Taylor’s, who was another victim of the whole business. When you get right down to it, lots of people would want her dead, including publicity seekers. Can you imagine the confessions we’ll get?”

“So why do you want to go back there?”

“Because I have to. It’s the only place to go, and only by going there can I get where I want to be.”

“That sounds a bit too mystical to me, like the sound of one hand clapping.”

“Well, you’ve listened to enough Pink Floyd. You ought to know what that sounds like. The thing is, Alan, why I’m here, what I wanted to ask, is can I count on you?”

Banks sighed, took another bite of his burger and washed it down with Tetley’s. Then he stared Annie straight in the eye, gave her one of the most guileless looks she’d ever had from him. “Of course you can,” he said softly. “You knew that from the start. I’ll see if I can arrange a meeting for us with Phil Hartnell and Ken Blackstone in Leeds tomorrow morning.”

Annie threw a chip at him. “Then why did you give me such a bloody hard time about it, then?”

Banks smiled. “You wouldn’t have had it any other way. Anyway, now you’re here, you can tell me about all the interesting things going on in your life these days.”