Peter Robinson: Friend of the Devil

“What was she doing in the Maze by herself?” Gervaise asked.

“That’s one thing we have to find out,” said Banks. “But, for a start, we don’t know that she was by herself. She could have gone in there with someone.”

“To take drugs, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. We found some pills in her handbag. Ecstasy. Or maybe she just got separated from her friends and someone lured her there with the promise of drugs? Still, you hardly need to hide away in the Maze to pop E. You can do it in any pub in town. She could have been taking a shortcut to the car park or the river.”

“Did she have a car?”

“We don’t know yet. She did have a driving license.”

“Follow it up.”

“We will. She was probably drunk,” Banks said. “At least tipsy. There was a whiff of vomit in the storeroom, so she may have been sick, if it wasn’t our killer’s. Forensics should solve that one, anyway. She most likely wouldn’t have been thinking about safety, and I doubt there’s any great mystery as to how or why she came to be in the Maze alone. There are any number of possibilities. She could have had an argument with her boyfriend, for example, and run off.”

“And someone was lying there in wait for her?”

“Or the chance of someone like her. Which indicates it might be a killer who knows the habits of the locals on a Saturday night in Eastvale after closing time.”

“Better round up the usual suspects, then. Local sex offenders, known clients of sex workers.”

“It’s being done.”

“Any idea where she’d been?”

“Judging by the way she was dressed,” Banks said, “it seems as if she’d been doing the rounds of the market square pubs. Typical Saturday-night getup. We’ll be canvassing all the pubs as soon as they open.” He glanced at his watch. “Which won’t be long now.”

Gervaise squinted at him. “Not personally, I hope?”

“Too much of a job for me, I’m afraid. Thought I’d put Detective Sergeant Hatchley in charge of it. He’s been housebound lately. Do him good to get out and about.”

“Keep him on a tight leash, then,” said Gervaise. “I don’t want him offending every bloody minority group we’ve got in town.”

“He’s mellowed a lot.”

Gervaise gave him a disbelieving look. “Anything else?” She dotted her mouth with a paper serviette after a couple of dainty nibbles of tea cake.

“I’ll get a couple of officers to work on reviewing all the CCTV footage we can find of the market square last night. A lot of the pubs have CCTV now, and I know the Bar None does, too. There should be plenty, and you know what the quality’s like, so it’ll take time, but we might find something there. We’ll also conduct a thorough search of the Maze, adjacent buildings, the lot, and we’ll do a house-to-house of the immediate area. Trouble is, there are ways in and out that don’t show up on any CCTV cameras. The exit into the car park above the river gardens, for example.”

“Surely there must be cameras in the car park?”

“Yes, but not covering it from that angle. They’re pointing the other way, into the car park from the alley. Easy to slip under them. It’s only a snicket, and hardly anyone uses it. Most people use the Castle Road exit, which is covered. We’ll try our luck, anyway.”

“Check them all out as best you can.”

Banks told her what Dr. Burns had said about cause and approximate time of death.

“When will Dr. Wallace be available to do the postmortem?” she asked.

“Tomorrow morning, I should hope,” said Banks. Dr. Glendenning had retired, in his own words, “to play golf,” about a month ago, and Banks hadn’t really seen his replacement at work, since there hadn’t been any suspicious deaths in that period. From what he could gather from his brief meetings with her, she seemed to be a dedicated professional and efficient pathologist.

“The picture on the driving license I found in the handbag matches the victim,” Banks said, “and we’ve got an address from the flyleaf of her address book. Hayley Daniels. From Swainshead.”

“Reported missing?”

“Not yet.”

“So perhaps she wasn’t expected home,” said Gervaise. “Any idea how old she was?”

“Nineteen, according to the license.”

“Who’s following up?”

“DC Jackman’s gone to Swainshead to talk to the parents. She ought to be arriving there about now.”

“Rather her than me,” said Gervaise.

Banks wondered if she had ever been given the job of breaking bad news to a victim’s parents.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Gervaise said with a smile. “You’re thinking me, with all my nice upper-middle-class upbringing, university degrees, accelerated promotion and the rest, what would I know about it, aren’t you?”

“Not at all,” said Banks with a straight face.

“Liar.” Gervaise sipped some tea and stared at a spot just over Banks’s head. “My first week as a probationary PC,” she said, “I was working at Poole, Dorset. Mostly making tea and coffee. Friday morning they found the body of an eleven-year-old schoolboy on a tract of wasteland at the edge of town. He’d been raped and beaten to death. Working-class family. Guess who they sent?”

Banks said nothing.

“Christ, I was sick to my stomach,” Gervaise said. “Before I went out there. Really, physically sick. I was convinced I couldn’t do it.”

“But you did?”

She looked Banks in the eye. “Of course I did. And do you know what happened? The mother went berserk. Threw a plate of eggs, beans and chips at me. Cut my head open. I had to put the bloody handcuffs on to restrain her in the end. Temporarily, of course. She calmed down eventually. And I got ten stitches.” Gervaise shook her head. “What a day.” She looked at her watch. “I suppose I’d better ring my son and tell him lunch is off.”

Banks glanced out of the window. The wind was blowing harder, and the people coming out of church were having a difficult time keeping their hats on and stopping their umbrellas from turning inside out. He thought of the body on the pile of leather. “I suppose so,” he said. “Today isn’t looking too good so far, either.” Then he went to the counter to pay.

Swainshead, or “The Head,” as the locals called it, started with a triangular village green which split the main road at the T-junction with the Swainsdale road. Around the green were the church, the village hall and a few shops. This, Winsome knew, was called Lower Head, and was the part most frequently visited by tourists. The Daniels Family lived in Upper Head, where the two branches of the road joined into one and separated two rows of stone cottages facing each other. Behind the cottages on both sides, the pastures rose slowly, crisscrossed by drystone walls, and finally gave way to steep fells ending in moorland.

The area was so named because the source of the river Swain was to be found in the surrounding hills. It began as a mere puddle bubbling forth from the earth, overflowing into a thin trickle and then gaining strength as it went, finally plunging over the edge of a hanging valley at Rawley Force to cut its main course along the dale. Banks had once told Winsome about a case he’d worked on there, long before her time in Eastvale. It had taken him as far as Toronto in search of a missing expatriate. As far as Winsome knew, none of the people involved still lived in Swainshead, but those who did live there remembered the incident; it had become a part of village folklore. Years ago, people would have written songs about it, the kind of old broadsheet folk ballads that Banks liked so much. These days, when the newspapers and telly had picked the bones clean, there was nothing left for anyone to sing about.