Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

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Friend of the Devil: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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When Karen Drew is found sitting in her wheelchair staring out to sea with her throat cut one chilly morning, DI Annie Cabbot, on loan to Eastern Area, gets lumbered with the case. Back in Eastvale, that same Sunday morning, 19-year-old Hayley Daniels is found raped and strangled in the Maze, a tangle of narrow alleys behind Eastvale's market square, after a drunken night on the town with a group of friends, and DCI Alan Banks is called in. Banks finds suspects galore, while Annie seems to hit a brick wall — until she reaches a breakthrough that spins her case in a shocking and surprising new direction, one that also involves Banks.
Then another incident occurs in the Maze which seems to link the two cases in a bizarre and mysterious way. As Banks and Annie dig into the past to uncover the deeper connections, they find themselves also dealing with the emotional baggage and personal demons of their own relationship. And it soon becomes clear that there are two killers in their midst, and that at any moment either one might strike again.

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“No, I didn’t,” said Donna. “I never went through Hayley’s handbag.”

Daniels glanced over at Templeton in disgust.

“Does it surprise you?” Templeton asked.

“No,” said Donna. “She knew if she was going to do anything she had to be careful. They all do these days.”

“If she kept the boyfriend a secret,” Winsome said, “we’re wondering what the reason is. Perhaps he was an older man? Perhaps he was married?”

“I still can’t tell you anything,” said Donna.

Templeton turned to Daniels. “You’ve had some experience in that department, haven’t you?” he said. “Shagging Martina Redfern while Hayley was getting herself killed? Like them young, do you? Maybe it’s you we should be looking at a lot more closely.”

If he expected to get a further rise out of Daniels, Winsome thought, he’d lost that one. Daniels sat there, spent and miserable. “I’ve made my mistakes,” he said. “Plenty of them. And I only hope Donna can find it in her heart to forgive me. But my mistakes aren’t going to help you catch my daughter’s killer. Now, if you can’t do anything except sit there and try to stir things up, why don’t you just get up off your arse and start doing your job?”

“We are trying to do our jobs, sir,” Winsome said, surprising herself that she was coming to Templeton’s defense. But to defend the interview, she had to defend Templeton. She vowed she would never let anyone put her in this position again, no matter what they said. “Did she ever talk about any of her lecturers at college, for example?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” said Donna.

“Was there anyone in particular?”

“Austin,” said Daniels suddenly. “Malcolm Austin. Remember, Donna, that bloke that led the class trip to Paris last April?”

“Yes,” said Donna. “She mentioned him a few times. But that was her favorite class. I don’t think there was… I mean…”

“Have you met him?” Winsome asked.

“No,” said Donna. “We haven’t met any of them. When she was at school we met her teachers, like, but when they’re at college, I mean, you don’t, do you?”

“So you don’t know how old he is, whether he’s married or anything?”

“Sorry,” said Donna. “Can’t help you there. You asked if she ever mentioned anyone and that was the only one.”

“Romantic city, Paris,” said Templeton, buffing his fingernails on his thigh the way a cricketer rubs the ball.

Winsome got to her feet. “Well, thanks,” she said. “It’s a start. We’ll have a word with Mr. Austin.”

Templeton remained seated, and his lack of movement was making Winsome nervous. She knew that he outranked her, so he should be the one to give the signal to leave, but she was so intent on damage control and getting out of there that she hadn’t really thought about that. Finally, he stood up slowly, gave Daniels a long, lingering look and said, “We’ll be talking to you again soon, mate.” Then he took out his card and pointedly handed it to Donna, who was contemplating her husband as a matador contemplates a bull. “If you think of anything else, love,” Templeton said, “don’t hesitate to ring me, day or night.”

When they got outside to the car, he grabbed Winsome’s arm and leaned so close to her that she could smell the spearmint chewing gum on his breath and said, “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

“There won’t be any again,” Winsome said, surprised at her own vehemence. Then she jerked her arm free and surprised herself even more by saying, “And take your fucking hands off me. Sir.”

Banks was glad to get home at a reasonable hour on Tuesday, though he was still preoccupied with what Annie had told him about Lucy Payne’s murder. He had watched Brough’s Eastern Area press conference in the station that afternoon, and now Lucy Payne and the murders at 35 The Hill, or the “House of Payne” as one newspaper had dubbed it at the time, were all over the news again.

Banks put Maria Muldaur’s Heart of Mine on the CD player and peered out of his front window as he tried to decide whether to warm up the lamb korma or try another Marks & Spencer’s chicken Kiev. Maria was singing Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain,” but the weather had improved considerably. The sun was going down and streaks of vermilion, magenta and crimson shot through the western sky, casting light on the fast-flowing Gratly Beck, so that at moments it seemed like a dark swirling oil slick. Next weekend they would be putting the clocks ahead, and it would be light until late in the evening.

In the end, he made himself a ham-and-cheese sandwich and poured a glass of Peter Lehmann Shiraz. The main sound system was in the extension, along with the plasma TV, but he had set up speakers in the kitchen and in the front room, where he would sometimes sit and read or work on the computer. The couch was comfortable, the shaded lamps cozy, and the peat fire useful on cool winter evenings. He didn’t need it tonight, but he decided to eat his dinner in there, anyway, and read the notes he had brought home with him from the office. He had got both Ken Blackstone and Phil Hartnell to agree to a meeting in Leeds the following morning. Annie was staying over at her cottage in Harkside that night, and he was due to pick her up there at nine-thirty in the morning. But before that, he needed to do his homework.

In a way, though, he already knew his subject. He didn’t have to read the files to know their names: Kimberley Myers, age fifteen, failed to return home from a school dance one Friday night; Kelly Diane Matthews, age seventeen, went missing during a New Year’s Eve party in Roundhay Park, Leeds; Samantha Jane Foster, eighteen years old, disappeared on her way home from a poetry reading at a pub near the University of Bradford; Leanne Wray, sixteen, vanished on a ten-minute walk between a pub and her parents’ house in Eastvale; Melissa Horrocks, aged seventeen, failed to return home from a pop concert in Harrogate. Five young girls, all victims of Terence Payne, who came to be called the “Chameleon” and, many people believed, also of his wife Lucy Payne, who later became the notorious “Friend of the Devil.”

Two police officers on routine patrol had been called to the Payne house in west Leeds after a neighbor reported hearing sounds of an argument. There they had found Lucy Payne unconscious in the hall, the apparent victim of an attack by her husband. In the cellar, Terence Payne had set upon the officers with a machete and killed PC Dennis Morrisey. Morrisey’s partner, PC Janet Taylor, had managed to get in several blows with her nightstick, and she didn’t stop hitting Terence Payne until he was no longer moving, no longer a threat. He subsequently died of his injuries.

Banks was called to the cellar, where the local police had found the body of Kimberley Myers bound naked and dead on a mattress surrounded by candles, her body slashed around the breasts and genitals. The other girls were found dismembered and buried in the next room, and postmortems discovered them to have been similarly tortured. What Banks remembered most, apart from the smell, was the way their toes stuck up through the earth like tiny mushrooms. Sometimes he had nightmares about that time he had spent in the cellar at 35 The Hill.

He thought about his conversation with Annie that afternoon and decided that he had definitely been on the defensive. He remembered Lucy Payne best as she was the first time he had seen her in her hospital bed, when she hadn’t been quite as beautiful as some of the photographs the newspapers printed. Half her face had been covered in bandages, her long raven’s-wing hair had been spread out on the pillow under her head, and the one good eye that stared at him with unnerving directness was as black as her hair.

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