Aftermath (17 page)

‘What?’

‘A noise. I can’t remember.’

‘What did you do next?’

‘I don’t know. I just remember getting up and then it hurt and everything went dark.’

‘Do you remember having an argument with Terry?’

‘No.’

‘Did you go in the cellar?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember. I might have done.’

Covering all the possibilities. ‘Did you
ever
go in the cellar?’

‘That was Terry’s room. He would have punished me if I went down there. He kept it locked.’

Interesting, Banks thought. She could remember enough to distance herself from whatever they might have found in the cellar. Did she know? Forensics ought to be able to confirm whether she was telling the truth or not about going down there. It was the basic rule: wherever you go, you leave something behind and take something with you.

‘What did he do down there?’ Banks asked.

‘I don’t know. It was his own private den.’

‘So you never went down there?’

‘No. I didn’t dare.’

‘What do you think he did down there?’

‘I don’t know. Watched videos, read books.’

‘Alone?’

‘A man needs his privacy sometimes. That’s what Terry said.’

‘And you respected that?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about that poster on the door, Lucy? Did you ever see it?’

‘Only from the top of the steps, coming in from the garage.’

‘It’s quite graphic, isn’t it? What did you think of it?’

Lucy managed a thin smile. ‘Men . . . men are like that, aren’t they? They like that sort of thing.’

‘So it didn’t bother you?’

She did something with her lips that indicated it didn’t.

‘Superintendent,’ Dr Landsberg cut in, ‘I really think you ought to be going now and let my patient get some rest.’

‘Just a couple more questions, that’s all. Lucy, do you remember who hurt you?’

‘I . . . I . . . it must have been Terry. There was no one else there, was there?’

‘Had Terry ever hit you before?’

She turned her head sideways, so the only side Banks could see was bandaged.

‘You’re upsetting her, Superintendent. I really must insist—’

‘Lucy, did you ever see Terry with Kimberley Myers? You do know who Kimberley Myers is, don’t you?’

Lucy turned to face him again. ‘Yes. She’s the poor girl that went missing.’

‘That’s right. Did you ever see Terry with her?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘She was a pupil at Silverhill, where Terry taught. Did he ever mention her?’

‘I don’t think so . . . I . . .’

‘You don’t remember.’

‘No. I’m sorry. What’s wrong? What’s happening? Can I see Terry?’

‘I’m afraid you can’t, not at the moment,’ said Dr Landsberg. Then she turned to Banks. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. You can see how agitated Lucy is becoming.’

‘When can I talk to her again?’

‘I’ll let you know. Soon. Please.’ She took Banks by the arm.

Banks knew when he was beaten. Besides, the interview was going nowhere. He didn’t know whether Lucy was telling the truth about not remembering or whether she was confused because of her medication.

‘Get some rest, Lucy,’ Dr Landsberg said as they left.

‘Mr Banks? Superintendent?’

It was Lucy, her small, thick, slurred voice, her obsidian eye fixing him in its gaze.

‘Yes?’

‘When can I go home?’

Banks had a mental image of what
home
would look like right now, and probably for the next month or more.
Under construction
. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Outside in the corridor, Banks turned to Dr Landsberg. ‘Can you help me with something, Doctor?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Her not remembering. Is that symptomatic?’

Dr Landsberg rubbed her eyes. She looked as if she got about as much sleep as Banks did. Someone paged a Dr Thorsen over the PA system. ‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘In cases like this there’s often post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the effects of which can be retrograde amnesia.’

‘Do you think that’s the case with Lucy?’

‘Too early to say, and I’m not an expert in the field. You’d have to talk to a neurologist. All I can say is that we’re pretty certain there’s no physical brain damage, but emotional stress can be a factor, too.’

‘Is this memory loss selective?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She seems to remember her husband was hurt and that he was the one who hit her, but nothing else.’

‘It’s possible, yes.’

‘Is it likely to be permanent?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘So her complete memory might come back?’

‘In time.’

‘How long?’

‘Impossible to say. As early as tomorrow, as late as . . . well, maybe never. We know so little about the brain.’

‘Thank you, Doctor. You’ve been very helpful.’

Dr Landsberg gave him a puzzled glance. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Superintendent, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but I had a word with Dr Mogabe – he’s Terence Payne’s doctor – just before you came.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s very concerned.’

‘Oh?’ This was what DC Hodgkins had told Banks the day before.

‘Yes. It seems as if his patient was assaulted by a policewoman.’

‘Not my case,’ said Banks.

Dr Landsberg’s eyes widened. ‘Just like that? You’re not at all concerned?’

‘Whether I’m concerned or not doesn’t enter into it. Someone else is investigating the assault on Terence Payne and will no doubt be talking to Dr Mogabe in due course. My interest is in the five dead girls and the Paynes. Goodbye, Doctor.’

And Banks walked off down the corridor, footsteps echoing, leaving Dr Landsberg to her dark thoughts. An orderly pushed a whey-faced, wrinkled old man past on a gurney, IV hooked up, on his way to surgery by the look of things.

Banks shuddered and walked faster.

One good thing
about the family-style chain pubs, thought Maggie, was that nobody raised an eyebrow if you only ordered a pot of tea or a cup of coffee, which was all she wanted when she met Lorraine Temple at the Woodcutter that Tuesday lunchtime.

Lorraine was a plump, petite brunette with an easy manner and an open face, a face you could trust. She was about Maggie’s age, early thirties, wearing black jeans and jacket over a white silk blouse. She bought the coffees and put Maggie at ease with some small talk and sympathetic noises about the recent events on The Hill, then she got down to business. She used a notebook rather than a tape recorder, Maggie was glad to see. For some reason, she didn’t like the idea of her voice, her words, being recorded as sounds, but as squiggles on the page, they hardly seemed to matter.

‘Do you use shorthand?’ she asked, thinking nobody used that any more.

Lorraine smiled up at her. ‘My own version. Would you like something to eat?’

‘No, thanks. I’m not hungry.’

‘Okay. We’ll start, then, if that’s all right with you?’

Maggie tensed a little, waiting for the questions. The pub was quiet, mostly because it was a weekday and the bottom of The Hill was hardly a tourist area or a business centre. There were a couple of industrial estates near by, but it wasn’t quite lunchtime yet. Pop music played on the jukebox at an acceptable level, and even the few children in the family room seemed more subdued than she would have expected. Maybe the recent events had got to everyone in one way or another. It felt as if a pall lay over the place.

‘Can you tell me how it happened?’ Lorraine asked first.

Maggie thought for a moment. ‘Well, I don’t sleep very well, and maybe I was awake or it woke me up, I’m not sure, but I heard noises across the street.’

‘What noises?’

‘Voices arguing. A man’s and a woman’s. Then a sound of glass breaking and then a thud.’

‘And you know this was coming from across the street?’

‘Yes. When I looked out of the window, there was a light on and I thought I saw a shadow pass across it.’

Lorraine paused a moment to catch up with her notes. ‘Why were you so sure it was a domestic incident?’ she asked, as she had done over the phone.

‘It just . . . I mean . . .’

‘Take your time, Maggie. I don’t want to rush you. Think back. Try to remember.’

Maggie ran her hand over her hair. ‘Well, I didn’t
know
for certain,’ she said. ‘I suppose I just assumed, from the raised voices and, you know . . .’

‘Did you recognize the voices?’

‘No. They were too muffled.’

‘But it
could
have been someone fighting off a burglar, couldn’t it? I understand there’s quite a high burglary rate in this area?’

‘That’s true.’

‘So what I’m getting at, Maggie, is that maybe there was some other reason you thought you were witnessing a domestic argument.’

Maggie paused. Her moment of decision had arrived, and when it came, it was more difficult than she had thought it would be. For one thing, she didn’t want her name splashed all over the papers in case Bill saw it back in Toronto, though she very much doubted that even he would come this far to get at her. There was little likelihood of such exposure with a regional daily like the
Post
, of course, but if the national press got onto it, that would be another matter. This was a big story, and the odds were that it would at least make the
National Post
and the
Globe
and
Mail
back home.

On the other hand, she had to remember her goal, focus on what was important here: Lucy’s predicament. First and foremost she was talking to Lorraine Temple in order to get the image of
Lucy the victim
in people’s minds. Call it a pre-emptive strike: the more the public saw her that way from the start, the less likely they were to believe that she was the embodiment of evil. All people knew so far was that the body of Kimberley Myers had been found in the Paynes’s cellar, and a policeman had been killed, most likely by Terence Payne, but everyone knew they were digging there, and everyone knew what they were likely to find. ‘Maybe there was,’ she said.

‘Could you elaborate on that?’

Maggie sipped some coffee. It was lukewarm. In Toronto, she remembered, they would come round and refill your cup once or twice. Not here. ‘I might have had reason to believe that Lucy Payne was in danger from her husband.’

‘Did she tell you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘That her husband abused her?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do
you
think of Terence Payne?’

‘Not much, really.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘Not particularly.’
Not at all
, Maggie admitted to herself. Terence Payne very much gave her the creeps. She didn’t know why, but she would cross the street if she saw him coming rather than meet, say hello and make small talk about the weather, all the time with him looking at her in that curiously empty, dispassionate way he had, as if she were a butterfly pinned to a felt pad, or a frog on the table ready for dissection.

As far as she knew, though, she was the only one to feel that way. He was handsome and charming on the surface, and according to Lucy he was popular at school, both with the kids and with his colleagues on the staff. But there was still something about him that put Maggie off, an emptiness at his centre that she found disturbing. With most people, she felt that whatever it was she communicated, whatever radar or sonar beam went out, bounced off something and came back in some manner, made some sort of blip on the screen. With Terry, it didn’t; it disappeared in the vast, sprawling darkness inside him, where it echoed for ever unheard. That was the only way she could explain how she felt about Terry Payne.

She admitted to herself that she might be imagining it, responding to some deep fear or inadequacy of her own – and God knew, there were enough of those – so she had resolved to try to like him for Lucy’s sake, but it had been difficult.

‘What did you do after Lucy told you this?’

‘Talked to her, tried to persuade her to seek professional help.’

‘Have you ever worked with abused women?’

‘No, not really. I . . .’

‘Were you a victim of abuse, yourself?’

Maggie felt herself tightening up inside; her head started to spin. She reached for her cigarettes, offered one to Lorraine, who refused, then lit up. She had never talked about the details of her life with Bill – the pattern of violence and remorse, blows and presents – with anyone here except her psychiatrist and Lucy Payne. ‘I’m not here to talk about me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to write about me. I’m here to talk about Lucy. I don’t know what happened in that house, but it’s my feeling that Lucy was as much a victim as anything else.’

Lorraine put her notebook aside and finished her coffee. ‘You’re Canadian, aren’t you?’ she asked.

Surprised, Maggie answered that she was.

‘Where from?’

‘Toronto. Why?’

‘Just curious, that’s all. I’ve got a cousin lives there. That house you’re living in. Tell me, but doesn’t it belong to Ruth Everett, the illustrator?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘I thought so. I interviewed her there once. She seems like a nice person.’

‘She’s been a good friend.’

‘How did you meet, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘We met professionally, at a convention a few years ago.’

‘So you’re an illustrator, too?’

‘Yes. Children’s books, mostly.’

‘Perhaps we can do a feature on you and your work?’

‘I’m not very well known. Illustrators rarely are.’

‘Even so. We’re always looking for local celebrities.’

Maggie felt herself blush. ‘Well I’m hardly that.’

‘I’ll talk with my features editor, anyway, if that’s okay with you?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s all right.’

‘But—’

‘Please! No. Okay?’

Lorraine held her hand up. ‘All right. I’ve never known anyone turn down a bit of free publicity before, but if you insist. . .’ She put her notebook and pencil in her handbag. ‘I must be going now,’ she said. ‘Thank you for talking to me.’

Maggie watched her leave, feeling oddly apprehensive. She looked at her watch. Time for a little walk around the pond before heading back to work.