Aftermath (14 page)

About five hundred kids wandered into the converted theatre, including Melissa and her friends Jenna and Kayla. The concert ended at half past ten and the three girls stood around outside for a while talking about the show. The three of them split up at about a quarter to eleven and went their separate ways. It was a mild night, so Melissa said she was going to walk. She didn’t live far from the city centre and most of her walk home took her along the busy, well-lit Ripon Road. Two people later came forward to say they saw her close to eleven o’clock walking south by the junction of West Park and Beech Grove. To get home, she would turn down Beech Grove and then turn off after about a hundred yards, but she never got there.

At first there was a faint hope that Melissa might have run away from home, given the ongoing battle with her parents. But Steven and Mary, along with Jenna and Kayla, assured Banks this could not be the case. The two friends, in particular, said they shared everything, and they would have known if she was planning on running away. Besides, she had none of her valued possessions with her, and she told them she was looking forward to seeing them the next day at the Victoria Centre.

Then there was the Satanic element, not to be lightly dismissed when a girl had disappeared. The members of the band were interviewed, along with as many audience members as could be rounded up, but that went nowhere, too. Even Banks had to admit when examining the statements later that the whole thing had been pretty tame and harmless, the black magic merely theatre, as it had been for Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper in his day. Beelzebub’s Bollocks didn’t even bite the heads off chickens on stage.

When Melissa’s black leather shoulder-bag was found in some bushes two days after her disappearance, as if it had been tossed from the window of a moving car, money still intact, the case came to the attention of Banks’s ‘Chameleon’ task force. Like Kelly Matthews, Samantha Foster and Leanne Wray before her, Melissa Horrocks had disappeared into thin air.

Jenna and Kayla were devastated. Just before Melissa had walked off into the night, they had joked, Kayla said, about perverts, but Melissa pointed to her chest and said the occult symbol on her T-shirt would ward off evil spirits.

•

The incident room was crowded at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning. Over forty detectives sat on the edges of their desks or leaned against the walls. Smoking was not permitted in the building, and many of them chewed gum or fidgeted with paper clips or rubber bands instead. Most had been on the task force since the beginning, and they had all put in long hours, invested a lot of themselves in the job, emotionally as well as physically. It had taken its toll on all of them. Banks happened to know that one unfortunate DCs marriage had broken up over the hours he spent away from home and the neglect he displayed towards his wife. It would have happened some other time, anyway, Banks told himself, but an investigation like this one can put the pressure on, can push events to a crisis point, especially if that crisis point isn’t too far away to start with. These days, Banks also felt that he was approaching his own crisis point, though he had no idea where it was or what would happen when he got there.

Now there was at least some sense of progress, no matter how unclear things still seemed, and the air buzzed with speculation. They all wanted to know what had happened. The mood was mixed: on the one hand, it looked as if they had their man; on the other, one of their own had been killed and his partner was about to be put through the hoops.

When Banks strode in somewhat the worse for wear after another poor night’s sleep, despite a third Laphroaig and the second disc of Bach’s cello sonatas, the room hushed, everyone waiting to hear the news. He stood next to Ken Blackstone, beside the photographs of the girls pinned to the cork-board.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll do my best to explain where we are with this. The SOCOs are still at the scene, and it looks as if they’ll be there for a long time yet. So far, they’ve uncovered three bodies in the cellar anteroom, and it doesn’t look as if there’s room for any more. They’re digging in the back garden for the fourth. None of the victims has been identified yet, but DS Nowak says the bodies are all young and female, so it’s reasonable to assume for the moment that they’re the young girls who went missing. We should be able to make some headway on identification later today by checking dental records. Dr Mackenzie performed the post mortem on Kimberley Myers late yesterday and found that she had been subdued by chloroform but death was due to vagal inhibition caused by ligature strangulation. Yellow plastic fibres from the clothes-line were embedded in the wound.’ He paused, then sighed and went on. ‘She was also raped anally and vaginally and forced to perform fellatio.’

‘What about Payne, sir?’ someone asked. ‘Is the bastard going to die?’

‘The last I heard was that they had to operate on his brain. Terence Payne is still in a coma, and there’s no telling how long that might last, or how it will end. By the way, we now know that Terence Payne lived and taught in Seacroft before he moved to west Leeds in September the year before last, at the start of the school year. DCI Blackstone has him in the frame for the Seacroft rapist, so we’re already checking DNA. I’ll want a team to go over the casework on that one with the local CID. DS Stewart, can you get that organized?’

‘Right away, sir. That’ll be Chapeltown CID.’

Chapeltown would be hot to trot on this, Banks knew. It was a ‘red inker’ for them – an easy way of closing several open case files at one fell swoop.

‘We’ve also checked Payne’s car registration with DVLA in Swansea. He was using false plates. His own plates end in KWT, just like the witness in the Samantha Foster disappearance saw. The SOCOs found them hidden in the garage. That means Bradford CID must have already interviewed him. I’d imagine it was after that he switched to the false ones.’

‘What about Dennis Morrisey?’ someone asked.

‘PC Morrisey died of blood loss caused by the severing of his carotid artery and jugular vein, according to Dr Mackenzie’s examination at the scene. He’ll be doing the PM later today. As you can imagine, there’s getting to be quite a queue down at the mortuary. He’s looking for assistance. Anyone interested?’

Nervous laughter rippled through the room.

‘What about PC Taylor?’ one of the detectives asked.

‘PC Taylor’s coping,’ said Banks. ‘I talked to her yesterday evening. She was able to tell me what happened in the cellar. As you all probably know, she’ll be under investigation, so let’s try to keep that one at arm’s length.’

A chorus of boos came up from the crowd. Banks quieted them down. ‘It’s got to be done,’ he said. ‘Unpopular as it is. We’re none of us above the law. But let’s not let that distract us. Our job is far from over. In fact, it’s just beginning. There’s going to be a mountain of stuff coming out of forensic examinations at the house. It’ll all have to be tagged, logged and filed. HOLMES is still in operation, so the green sheets will have to be filled out and fed in.’

Banks heard Carol Houseman, the trained HOLMES operator, groan, ‘Oh,
bugger
it!’

‘Sorry, Carol,’ he said, with a sympathetic smile. ‘Needs must. In other words, despite what’s happened, we’re still very much in business for the time being. We need to gather the evidence. We need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Terence Payne is the killer of all five missing girls.’

‘What about his wife?’ someone asked. ‘She must have known.’

Just what Ken Blackstone had said. ‘We don’t know that,’ said Banks. ‘For the moment she’s a victim. But her possible involvement is one of the things we’ll be looking into. We’re already aware that he
might have had
an accomplice. She should be able to talk to me later this morning.’ Banks glanced at his watch and turned to DS Filey. ‘In the meantime, Ted, I’d like you to put a team together to go over all the statements and re-interview everyone we talked to when the girls were first reported missing. Family, friends, witnesses, everyone. Okay?’

‘Right you are, Guv,’ said Ted Filey.

Banks hated being called ‘Guv’ but he let it go by. ‘Get some photographs of Lucy Payne and show one to everyone you talk to. See if anyone remembers seeing her in connection with any of the missing girls.’

More muttering broke out, and Banks quieted them down again. ‘For the moment,’ he said, ‘I want you all to keep in close touch with our office manager, DS Grafton here—’

A cheer went up and Ian Grafton blushed.

‘He’ll be issuing actions and TIEs, and there’ll be plenty of them. I want to know what Terence and Lucy Payne eat for breakfast and how regular their bowel movements are. Dr Fuller suggested that Payne would have kept some sort of visual record of his deeds – video most likely, but maybe just ordinary still photographs. Nothing’s been found at the scene yet, but we’ll need to know if the Paynes ever owned or rented video equipment.’

Banks noticed a number of sceptical looks at the mention of Jenny Fuller. Typical narrow-minded thinking, in his opinion. Consultant psychologists might not be possessed with magic powers and able to name the killer within hours, but in Banks’s experience, they could narrow the field and target the area where the offender might live. Why not use them? At best they could help, and at worst they did no harm. ‘Remember,’ he went on, ‘five girls were abducted, raped and murdered.
Five
girls. You don’t need me to tell you any one of them could have been
your
daughter. We think we’ve got the man responsible, but we can’t be sure he acted alone, and until we can
prove
it was him, no matter what shape he’s in, there’ll be no slacking on this team. Got it?’

The assembled detectives muttered, ‘Yes, sir,’ then the group started to split up, some drifting outside for a much-needed cigarette, others settling back at their desks.

‘One more thing,’ said Banks. ‘DCs Bowmore and Singh. In my office. Now.’

•

After a brief meeting with Area Commander Hartnell – who
definitely
gave her the eye – and Banks, who seemed uncomfortable about the whole thing, DI Annie Cabbot read over PC Janet Taylor’s file as she waited in the small office assigned her. Hartnell himself had decided that as Janet Taylor was coming in voluntarily, and as she wasn’t under arrest, an office would be a far less threatening environment for the preliminary talk than a standard grungy interview room.

Annie was impressed by PC Taylor’s record. There was little doubt that she would find a place in the Accelerated Promotion Course and make the rank of inspector within five years if she was cleared of all charges. A local girl, from Pudsey, Janet Taylor had four A-levels and a degree in sociology from the University of Bristol. She was just twenty-three years old, unmarried and living alone. Janet had high scores on all her entrance exams, and in the opinions of those who had examined her she showed a clear grasp of the complexities of policing a diverse society, along with the sort of cognitive skills and problem-solving abilities that augured well for a detective. She was in good health and listed her hobbies as squash, tennis and computers. Throughout her student career she had spent her summers working for security at the White Rose Centre, in Leeds, both manning the cameras and patrolling the shopping precinct. Janet had also done voluntary community work for her local church group, helping the elderly.

All of this sounded quite dull to Annie, who grew up in an artists’ commune near St Ives surrounded by oddballs, hippies and weirdos of all sorts. Annie had also come late to the police, and though she had a degree, it was in art history, not much use in the force, and she hadn’t got on the APC because of an incident at her previous county, when three fellow officers had attempted to rape her at a party following her promotion to sergeant. One succeeded before she had managed to fight them off. Traumatized, Annie had not reported the incident until the following morning, by which time she had spent hours in the bath washing away all evidence. The DCS had accepted the words of the three officers against hers, and while they admitted that things had got a little out of hand, with a drunken Annie leading them on, they said they had retained their control and no sexual assault had taken place.

For a long time, Annie hadn’t much cared about her career, and no one had been more surprised than she had at the rekindling of her ambition, which had meant dealing with the rape and its aftermath – more complicated and traumatic than anyone but her really knew – but it had happened, and now she was a fully fledged inspector investigating a politically dodgy case for Detective Superintendent Chambers, who was clearly scared stiff of the assignment himself.

A brief tap at the door was followed by the entry of a young woman with short black hair, which looked rather dry and lifeless. ‘They told me you were in here,’ she said.

Annie introduced herself. ‘Sit down, Janet.’

Janet sat and tried to make herself comfortable on the hard chair. She looked as if she hadn’t slept all night, which didn’t surprise Annie in the least. Her face was pale and there were dark semicircles under her eyes. Perhaps beyond the ravages of sleeplessness and abject terror, Janet Taylor was an attractive young woman. She certainly had beautiful eyes, the colour of loam, and the kind of cheekbones that models hang their careers on. She also seemed a very serious person, weighed down by the gravity of life, or perhaps that was a result of recent events.

‘How is he?’ Janet asked.

‘Who?’

‘You know. Payne.’

‘Still unconscious.’

‘Will he survive?’

‘They don’t know yet, Janet.’

‘Okay. I mean, it’s just that . . . well, I suppose it makes a difference. You know, to my case.’

‘If he dies? Yes, it does. But don’t let’s worry about that for the time being. I want you to tell me what happened in the Paynes’s cellar, then I’ll ask you a few questions. Finally, I want you to write it all down in a statement. This isn’t an interrogation, Janet. I’m sure you went through hell down in that cellar and nobody wants to treat you like a criminal. But there are procedures to be followed in cases like this and the sooner we get going the better.’ Annie wasn’t being entirely truthful, but she wanted to set Janet Taylor as much at ease as possible. She knew she would have to push and prod a bit, maybe even go in hard now and again. It was her interrogation technique; after all, it was often under pressure of some sort that the truth slipped out. She would play it by ear, but if she needed to badger Janet Taylor a bit, then so be it. Damn Chambers and Hartnell. If she was going to do the bloody job, she was going to do it properly.