Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

“I suppose she was,” said Austin. “There are a lot of attractive girls around the college, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“But maybe Hayley was your type?”

“What on earth do you mean? Are you asking if we were having an affair?”

“Were you?”

“No, we were not. She was nineteen, for crying out loud.”

Yes, Winsome thought, and Annie Cabbot’s latest conquest was twenty-two. Only three years’ difference. So what? she almost said. “Are you married?”

Austin hesitated before saying, “I was. Twenty years. We separated four months ago. Irreconcilable differences.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Winsome.

“These things happen. We’d been drifting apart for some time.”

Marriage and a girl’s age were the two things that never made much difference to most men, Winsome remembered from the number of passes she had evaded when she worked at the hotel. “Weren’t you ever tempted?” she asked. “All those pretty young girls around, hanging on your every word. Surely they develop crushes on you sometimes? It’s only natural, you being a teacher and all.”

“You learn to deal with it.”

Winsome paused, then asked, “Would you mind telling me where you were on Saturday night?”

“Am I a suspect?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, sir.”

“All right.” Austin glared at her. “I was at home.”

“Where’s that?”

“Raglan Road.”

“Near the town center?”

“Yes. Not far.”

“You didn’t go out at all?”

“I went to the Mitre on York Road for a couple of pints between about nine and ten.”

“Anyone see you?”

“The usual locals.”

“Then what?”

“I went back home. There was nothing that interested me on TV, so I watched a DVD.”

“What DVD?”

“Chinatown.”

“An oldie.”

“They’re often the best. Film happens to be one of my passions. When it came to a career, it was a toss-up between that and the travel business. I suppose I chose the more practical course.”

“But you didn’t go into the market square?”

“On a Saturday night? Do you think I’m crazy?” Austin laughed. “I value my life more than that.”

Winsome smiled. “We do have a bit of a problem, you see, sir. We know that Hayley wasn’t expected home on Saturday, and she wasn’t planning on going to the Bar None with her friends. She had somewhere mysterious to go, and nobody seems to know where it was.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”

“Are you sure she wasn’t coming to see you?”

“Why would she do that? And why would I want a drunk and immature teenager in my house?”

Winsome could think of plenty of reasons, most of which would make her blush to say out loud, but she decided it was best to leave Austin to think of them himself. Instead, she ended the interview and walked out of the office, making a mental note of her reservations. She wasn’t at all certain that she believed him about his relationship to Hayley, but without evidence there wasn’t much she could do.

As she walked down the stairs, a skinny long-haired male student she vaguely recognized was on his way up. He paused as they passed each other and glanced at her in an odd way. At first she thought it was because of her color. She got that all the time, especially in a place like Eastvale that wasn’t exactly high in its immigrant population. Only when she had reached the street did she realize it was something else. Recognition? Fear? Guilt? He had been one of the people with Hayley in the market square just before she disappeared down Taylor’s Yard. Winsome was certain of it. One of the people DC Wilson hadn’t traced and talked to yet, as far as she knew.

Banks was running late. He dressed hurriedly after his shower, went downstairs, grabbed his travel mug of coffee and jumped into the Porsche. Once he was on the unfenced road crossing the desolate moors, he plugged in his iPod. The shuffle started with Neko Case’s “That Teenage Feeling.” He checked the dashboard clock and realized he should make it to Annie’s by nine-thirty, barring no unforeseen traffic problems when he hit the A roads.

He still felt stunned and puzzled by her behavior of the previous evening. He had half expected a phone call of apology, and had stayed up late waiting, drinking more wine and listening to Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. But she didn’t ring. When he called her number, the answering service kicked in; same with her mobile. He hoped she hadn’t got into an accident or anything. He had even thought of calling the station when she drove away, but that was too much like telling tales on a friend. Annie could handle herself in a car, even after a few drinks. If she got done for drunk driving, there’d be hell to pay in her career. He just hoped she had got home without incident, and that was the simple message he had left on her home phone.

When he got to Harkside and knocked on her door a couple of minutes early, he got no answer. He glanced up the street, where she usually parked her purple Astra, and saw it wasn’t there. That worried him, but he assured himself that if anything had happened to her, an accident or something, it would have been on the local news that morning, and it hadn’t been. Which meant that more than likely she had wanted to avoid traveling with him and had driven off by herself.

Feeling angry and resentful, Banks headed for the A1. Neil Young followed Neko Case — a blistering “Like a Hurricane” from Live Rust, which matched his mood. By the time he negotiated the traffic on the Inner Ringroad, parked and got to the office in “fortress” Millgarth, the Leeds city center police station off Eastgate, he was six minutes late and Annie was sitting in Hartnell’s office cool as anything, with DI Ken Blackstone and Area Commander Phil Hartnell himself, who had been in overall charge of the Chameleon investigation six years ago.

“Sorry I’m late,” Banks said, easing into a vacant chair. Annie avoided looking at him. Her eyes seemed swollen, he noticed, as if she had been crying or was allergic to something.

“That’s all right, Alan,” said Hartnell. “We hadn’t really started yet. Tea? Biscuits?” He gestured to the tray sitting on his desk.

“Thanks.” Banks helped himself to tea and a couple of chocolate digestives.

Hartnell perched at the edge of his desk. “DI Cabbot was just bringing us up to speed on her investigation.”

Banks glanced at Annie again. She still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Right,” he said. “Well, it’s DI Cabbot’s case. I’m here merely to help out with the Chameleon angle.”

“As are we all, Alan. As are we all,” said Hartnell.

He had filled out over the past six years, as if he had stopped working out regularly, let himself go to seed. His hairline was receding, too. Age gets to us all eventually, Banks realized, and sooner than we expect, remembering when he had first noticed his own hair starting to gray at the temples. It’ll be bloody liver spots next, he thought gloomily, and prostate cancer. That reminded him of the doctor’s appointment he hadn’t rescheduled. It was getting closer.

“You were saying about the pathologist’s report?” Hartnell, still perching, said to Annie.

“Yes, sir,” Annie said. “The postmortem didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know already. The pathologist repeated that it’s often hard to tell handedness from slash injuries, but seemed to favor a left-to-right motion, considering pressure and depth of the wound. That gives us a right-handed killer, most likely. Again, he couldn’t commit himself to the actual weapon used but stressed that it was extremely sharp and an old-fashioned straight razor or some sort of scalpel were the most likely possibilities. Other than that, Lucy was, as we thought, a quadriplegic. In her case, that meant she couldn’t move or speak. As for time of death, that was fixed at between eight-thirty and ten-thirty A.M. As we know she left Mapston Hall at nine-thirty and was found at ten-fifteen, we can narrow that down quite a bit.”