Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

Soon Annie was amid the traffic lights and streetlights, and the pleasures of the open road were lost. She found a parking spot only yards from her temporary accommodation and let herself in. The place seemed cool and dark, as if it been abandoned far longer than it had. Perhaps the nicest thing about it, Annie thought, was that she could just see a wedge of sea between the rooftops. She turned the lights on, hung up her jacket and headed for the kitchenette. She hadn’t eaten dinner, had only sipped that one pint to Ferris’s three, and she could do with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese and crackers.

Tomorrow would be a busy day, she reflected, as she put the plate and glass beside her on the desk and turned on her laptop. There were people connected with the Paynes’ victims to be interviewed, and now another line of inquiry coming out of Les Ferris’s story.

Only one thing was certain: Given the workload they had already, if they were to follow Ferris’s leads, they were going to be seriously overstretched. Which meant Annie had to approach Detective Superintendent Brough for both overtime, as she had already promised Ginger, and for extra personnel. These were the two things no budget-conscious administrator liked to authorize these days. It would be hard to sell it to Brough, but she’d worry about that later. Besides, he was bound to have his hands full with the press.

The one good thing about Brough, Annie had learned in the short time she had been working at Eastern, was that he didn’t really listen. He was easily distracted and tended to focus on matters of public opinion and image; he was also the kind of person who was well on to his response to the next press question before you’d finished speaking. Consequently, a lot passed by him, which you could legitimately claim to have told him, and he tended to nod abruptly, agree and say okay simply to facilitate being able to move on, to say something he thought more interesting.

The Internet connection was slow. The guesthouse didn’t have broadband, and Annie had to rely on the phone line and the computer’s internal modem. But it was good enough for e-mail, which was all she really wanted. Tonight it seemed to take an unusually long time to download. She cursed whoever it was had decided to send her a large attachment, probably some silly joke or holiday snap, then she saw Eric’s name appear next to a paper clip and her heart constricted.

How had he got hold of her e-mail address? Then it dawned on her. They had both been playing with their new Blackberrys, which handled e-mail as well as text and phone, and Eric had shown her how to attach photos and send them. She had sent one to him in the club. That was how he had got her e-mail address. How could she be so careless?

The other messages were all junk — Viagra, breast enlargement and genuine Rolex offers, along with various sales newsletters.

She opened Eric’s message. It was short, in blue italic script, and to the point:

Dear Annie,

I hope you enjoyed Saturday as much as I did. You were fantastic!! I can’t wait to do it again (and more:)).

In the meantime I’m really

looking forward to our lunch tomorrow and getting to know you a bit more. I don’t even know where you come from or what you do for a living! Don’t forget: 12 noon at the Black Horse, I’ll be waiting.

Love, Eric.

Annie’s heart sank when she opened the attached JPEG. She definitely didn’t remember posing for this one. It was a slightly blurred picture of her and Eric, no doubt using the self-timer. This time she had her head resting on his shoulder, his arm encircling her. Her hair was disheveled, and her eyes unfocused. All of which would have been perfectly innocent, albeit a little embarrassing, except that it was clear, even from the head and shoulders, that both she and Eric were stark-naked, and that she was holding a joint between her thumb and forefinger. And bugger it if she wasn’t smiling.

“Well, Joseph,” said Banks, back in the same interview room with the tape recorder running and Sebastian Crawford hovering nervously in the background again. “It looks as if we’re not at the bottom of this yet, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Randall.

“I think you do,” said Banks. He leaned forward. “And I think it would be in your best interests to admit that you do.”

Randall licked his lips and looked to Crawford for guidance. Crawford said nothing.

“Right,” said Banks, leaning back in his chair. “Let me lay it out for you, then. We’ve just had a visit from your neighbor, Roger Colegate, who tells us that he saw you putting the cat out at half past twelve on Saturday night. Though we don’t as yet know the exact time Hayley Daniels was murdered, we do have evidence pointing toward the fact that she entered the Maze at twelve-twenty and was most likely accosted by her attacker by twelve twenty-five or thereabouts.”

“Well, there you are, then,” said Randall, with a triumphant glance toward Sebastian Crawford. “I couldn’t have done it, could I?”

“It would probably have taken you at least fifteen minutes to walk up to the market square from where you live,” Banks went on, “even if you had been capable of walking in a straight line at the time.”

“What do you mean?” Randall said.

“According to your neighbor, you were pissed,” said Banks. “In fact, according to Mr. Colegate, you were usually pissed by that time most nights.”

“That’s a lie,” said Randall. “I might have had a drink or two, but there’s no law against that, is there?”

“Not at all,” said Banks. “No law against getting pissed, either, providing you don’t cause any bother.”

“Well…?”

“Mr. Colegate says you were unsteady on your feet and that when he called out good evening, you replied in a slurred voice. You don’t even remember that, do you?”

“No,” said Randall, “but it doesn’t matter, does it? He remembers it. That’s what counts. Like you say, there’s no law against getting a little drunk in one’s own home once in a while, is there? I’m off the hook. I can’t have done this terrible thing. You have to let me go.”

Banks paused. “You did find the body, however.”

“You already knew that. I was the one who reported it to you. And I had a legitimate reason for being there.”

“Yes, we’ve checked with the customer you told us about. You did have a rush order for a handbag. But that’s hardly relevant.”

“What do you mean?”

“You spent eleven minutes alone with Hayley Daniels’s body.”

“So? She was dead when I found her.”

“I know that,” said Banks.

“Look, I think you should just apologize, cut your losses, let me go and have done with it. Sebastian?”

Crawford cleared his throat. “Er… My client does have a point, Chief Inspector. After all, you’ve already agreed that he couldn’t possibly have been responsible for the murder of Hayley Daniels, which is what you’ve been holding him for.”

“That could change,” Banks said.

“What do you mean?” Randall asked.

“The problem remains,” Banks went on. “Our forensic experts definitely found your DNA in semen samples taken from the victim. In fact, our crime scene coordinator had been puzzled that the semen hadn’t dried as much as he would have predicted, had it been there overnight.”

Randall folded his arms. “I told you, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there.”

“Oh, I think you can,” said Banks. He leaned forward and rested his palms on the desk, face only a couple of feet from Randall’s. “Would you like me to tell you what I think really happened in that storage room, Joseph?”