Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

“Murdered?”

“Hard to say for certain,” said Ferris. “Could have been a head wound, the doc said, a smooth rounded object, but he’d been in the water a couple of days, been bashed about on the rocks.” He paused. “And the fish had been at him.”

“Water in the lungs?”

“No. That’s the thing.”

That meant he hadn’t drowned. “So he hit the rocks first as he fell in?”

“That was one theory.”

“What was the coroner’s verdict?”

“Death by misadventure. But DI Cromer, that’s Paddy Cromer, who was in charge of the investigation, were never satisfied. He’s dead now, or I’d suggest you have a word with him yourself. He had as much of a bee in his bonnet about it as I did, right up to the end. I was his DS.”

Annie had no idea why Ferris was telling her this, or how it was relevant to the Lucy Payne murder, but she had some beer left in her glass and was content enough to spin it out for another few minutes while the sun went down. Pity they were facing east, she thought, or it would be a spectacular view. As it was, the delicate shade of blue reminded her of the blue in a piece of sculpted glass she had seen on the Venetian island of Murano once, many years ago, when she was a student. “Why wasn’t DI Cromer convinced?” she asked.

Ferris touched the side of his red, veined nose. “Instinct,” he said. “Like women’s intuition, only more reliable. Copper’s instinct.”

“So he had a hunch,” Annie said. “I still don’t get it.”

Ferris gave her a dirty look, and for a moment she thought she’d ruined whatever rapport she had with him, but then he grinned. “No flies on you, are there? Anyway, whatever it was, Paddy wasn’t happy. Me, neither. I mean, Jack Grimley could have fallen off the cliff. It’s happened before. But according to his mates he hadn’t had much to drink, and he lived in the other direction. There was no reason for him to be walking on the cliff edge. Besides, there’s a beach at the bottom, not rocks. And that was when we first heard of the mysterious woman.”

Annie pricked up her ears. “What mysterious woman?”

“Patience, lass, patience. A witness thought he saw Jack talking to a woman up near the Cook statue. It was dark, though, and he admitted he could have been mistaken. Still, it was all we had at the time, the only piece of information that placed him near the cliffs. And he was with someone.”

“Had he said anything earlier about meeting a woman?” Annie asked.

Ferris shook his head. “Not to his mates he hadn’t.”

“Not like a man,” said Annie. “Still, I suppose there could be any number of reasons for that. If it was a woman he was meeting, maybe she was married? Maybe even to one of his mates?”

“We thought of that. Thing is, no one ever came forward. We dug around, too, turned up nothing. Anyway,” he hurried on, “if that was all that had happened, I wouldn’t have dragged you all the way down here. Not that it isn’t always a pleasure to have a drink with a pretty young girl.”

Annie rolled her eyes and laughed. “How very gallant of you.”

“I meant it,” said Ferris. “You are a pretty lass.”

“It was the ‘young’ bit I was referring to.”

“Well, it’s all relative, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is,” said Annie, an image of the naked Eric flashing across her mind’s eye. “So there’s more?”

“There certainly is. I told you that Jack Grimley was just the first in a series of odd incidents that September. Odd enough to stick in my mind all these years as if they were yesterday. The second occurred a few days later, when a young Australian lad called Keith McLaren was found with a serious head wound in some woods near Dalehouse, up the coast a ways, inland from Staithes.”

“I know it,” said Annie. “Isolated spot.”

“Very. Anyway, the head wound showed remarkable similarities to Jack Grimley’s. A smooth rounded object. It was touch and go with young McLaren for a while, but he pulled through. Problem was, he’d no memory of what happened to him. The doctors said it might come back in time, in bits and pieces — it wasn’t due to any physical brain damage — but that was no use to us. Now, the interesting thing is that a couple of people said they saw him down by the harbor in Staithes, probably the day it happened, walking with a young woman with short brown hair, wearing jeans, a gray windcheater and a checked shirt. It was better than the description we got from the witness who saw Jack Grimley with a woman by the Cook statue because it was dark then, but we’d no way of proving it was even the same person, let alone of knowing who she was.”

“Anyone get a good look at her?”

“No, that’s the problem. We couldn’t even come up with a decent identikit from what we got.”

“Any idea of her age?”

“Young, they said. As in twentyish.”

“And you worked on the assumption it was the same woman in both cases?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably, given the pathologist’s assessment of the wounds. What happened to McLaren?”

“He recovered and went back to Australia.”

“Do you have an address?”

“God knows where he is now. He was from Sydney. I seem to remember he was set on becoming a lawyer, if that’s any help.”

“Okay,” said Annie, making a note. “So this mystery woman shows up in two separate accounts involving two serious attacks in the area, linked by the similarity in head wounds, possibly made by a smooth rounded object, one resulting in death. And this is an area where you get very few violent incidents. Am I to take it that you’re making a connection here between this woman and the one who showed up at Mapston Hall to take Karen Drew — or Lucy Payne — for a walk on Sunday morning?”

“That’s right.”

“But that was eighteen years ago, Les,” said Annie. “What could it possibly have to do with what happened the other day?”

Ferris grinned and shook his empty glass. “But there’s more. Buy us another Sneck-Lifter and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“Hello, Mr. Randall,” said Banks, when the officers brought Joseph Randall into the interview room. “Nice to see you again.”

“You can spare me the pleasantries,” said Randall. “What do you mean by sending a police car to drag me out of my home? You couldn’t possibly have sent a more obvious signal to my neighbors if you’d tried.”

“Signal of what?” Banks asked.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to have to walk all this way, would we?”

“Stop playing silly buggers. They wouldn’t even give me any reason why they were bringing me here.”

“They probably didn’t know themselves,” said Banks. “You know how it is. Lowly PCs. Need-to-know basis. We don’t tell them everything.”

Randall folded his arms. “This time I’ve called my solicitor. He’ll be meeting me here momentarily.”

“Good idea,” said Banks. “We like to make sure everything’s aboveboard when we get to this stage of an investigation.”

Randall paused in his display of indignation and gave Banks a worried glance. “What do you mean, ‘this stage’?”

“End game,” said Banks, casually shuffling the papers in front of him. “We find it works best for us in court if everyone knows his or her rights, so there are no possibilities of infringement. So, if you like, we’ll just wait here quietly until your solicitor arrives. It’s not the most salubrious of places.” Banks glanced around at the flaking institutional green paint, the high barred window and the bare lightbulb covered by a flyblown grille. “Still… Cup of tea while we wait?”