Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

Brough grunted. “Is someone lying?”

“Could be, sir. But all the staff members are accounted for during the time of the murder. If anyone there was involved, it was in passing over the information that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne, and not in committing the actual murder itself. Believe me, sir, we’re working on it.”

“Why is it all taking so long?”

“These things do take a long time, sir. Background checks. Ferreting out information.”

“I hear you’ve been going off on a tangent over some old case, gallivanting off to Leeds and Eastvale to talk to your old boyfriend. I’m not running a dating service here, DI Cabbot. You’d do well to remember that.”

“I resent that implication,” Annie said. She could take only so much from authority, and then her father’s streak of anarchy and rebellion broke through, and to the devil with the consequences. “And you’ve no right to speak to me like that.”

Brough seemed taken aback by her angry outburst, but it sobered him. He straightened his tie and settled back in his chair. “You don’t know how much pressure I’m under to get a result here,” he said, by way of a lame explanation.

“Then I suggest you do it by encouraging your team and supporting them, rather than by resorting to personal insults. Sir.”

Brough looked like a slapped arse. He flustered and blathered and then got around to asking Annie exactly where she thought she was going with the Kirsten Farrow angle.

“I don’t know for certain that I’m going anywhere yet,” said Annie, “but it’s starting to appear very much as if the same killer — whoever it is — has now killed again.”

“That Eastvale detective, yes. Templeton. Bad business.”

“It is, sir. I knew Kev Templeton.” Annie stopped short of saying he was a friend of hers, but she wanted Brough to dig into whatever reserves of police solidarity and sympathy he might have. “And in my opinion he was killed by the same person who killed Lucy Payne. We don’t have that many murders around here, for a start, the distance isn’t that great, and how many do we have that, according to witnesses, were committed by a mysterious woman using a straight razor, or some such similar sharp blade, to slit the throat of the victim?”

“But Templeton’s not our case, damn it.”

“He is if it’s the same killer, sir. Do you really believe there are two women going around slitting people’s throats — people they believe to be dangerous killers?”

“Put like that it does sound—”

“And do you find it so hard to believe that these might be related to an unsolved case in which a woman also may have killed two men, one of whom was a serial killer and one of whom she may have mistaken for him?”

“May have. You said ‘May have.’ I’ve looked over the files, DI Cabbot. There’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Greg Eastcote was murdered, either by a woman or by anyone else. He could have faked his disappearance because he thought the police were getting too close. In fact that’s the most logical explanation.”

“He could have,” Annie agreed. “But the police weren’t getting close. And a woman was seen with Jack Grimley and with the Australian boy, Keith McLaren, and she conveniently disappeared, too.”

“But this was eighteen years ago, for God’s sake. You can’t even prove that this Kirsten, or whoever she was, knew that Eastcote had attacked her. It’s absurd.”

“No more than most cases when you don’t have all the pieces, sir. I’m also trying to locate Kirsten’s psychiatrist. She had a course of hypnosis in Bath in 1988, and it might have helped her recover some of her memory of the attack.”

Brough grunted. Not impressed by the idea of hypnotherapy, Annie guessed. “The MO is completely different,” he went on. “The attacker used a rock on Keith McLaren and some sort of sharp blade on Lucy Payne.”

“MOs can change. And perhaps if she only kills killers, or people she mistakes for them, she hasn’t come across any in the last eighteen years? Perhaps she’s been abroad?”

“It’s all speculation.”

“If you don’t speculate, sir, you don’t get anywhere.”

“But I need something I can tell the press. Something real. Something substantial.”

“Since when have the press cared about reality or substance?”

“DI Cabbot!”

“Sorry, sir. Why don’t you tell them we’ve got a new lead we’re following, but you can’t say any more about it right now. They’ll understand.”

“What new lead?”

“Kirsten Farrow. We’re going to interview everyone we know was connected with Karen/Lucy until we get a connection to the killer.”

“Whom you believe to be Kirsten Farrow?”

“Yes,” said Annie. “But you don’t have to tell them that. Even if I’m wrong, we’re heading in the right direction. I’m not wearing blinkers, sir. Someone knew that Karen was Lucy, and that someone is either the killer herself, or the person who told the killer. And I’m trying to get some evidence to prove that Kirsten killed Lucy Payne. With any luck I should have it before the end of the day.”

“Okay,” said Brough. “That’s the kind of thing I want to hear. And I do take your point. It makes sense when you get rid of all that 1989 gobbledygook. Just be careful whose feet you’re treading on. Remember, these are professional people, you know, doctors and the like.”

“Oh, don’t worry, sir, I won’t eat any of them,” Annie said. “Now can I go?”

He jerked his head. “Go on. Get to work. And hurry up. And this evidence? Don’t forget, I expect to see some positive results before the end of the day.”

“Yes, sir,” Annie said as she left the office, fingers crossed.

Despite being dog-tired, Banks hadn’t slept at all well when he got home from the station well after midnight on Monday. They were no closer to finding Templeton’s killer, or Hayley Daniels’s, for that matter, and part of the program for the day was to start a complete review of both cases so far.

Everything about the Hayley Daniels murder pointed toward a scared rapist, someone the victim knew, who had strangled Hayley to avoid being named and caught, someone who was also possibly ashamed of what he’d done and had arranged the body in a pose more suggestive of sleep than rape and murder. Under further questioning, Joseph Randall had finally admitted that he had touched Hayley and masturbated at the scene, but he insisted that he hadn’t changed the position of the body, and Banks believed him. At that point, he had no reason to lie.

The Templeton murder, efficient and practical as it had been, seemed very much as if it had been a mistake on the part of a killer, who in the darkness of the Maze had thought she had been protecting Chelsea Pilton and ridding the world of a budding serial killer.

When Banks asked himself who might think that and why, he came back to Kirsten Farrow. And nobody knew what had become of her. The only thing that gave rise to any doubts at all in Banks’s mind about Kirsten’s being responsible was that the first murders, the 1989 ones, involved someone who had directly harmed Kirsten, mutilated her, and she had not been a victim of Lucy and Terence Payne. That meant that, if it was Kirsten, she had extended her parameters.

Or, Banks thought, with a quiver of excitement, perhaps she did have some connection with the Paynes. What it could be he had no idea, but it was a direction worth pursuing, and something he needed to tell Annie about, if she hadn’t thought of it herself. Annie had been right yesterday when she said it was good to be working together again. It was. Personal problems aside, he hadn’t realized how much he had missed her since she had gone to Eastern Area.