Aftermath (31 page)

‘We’d just finished a week’s training course in town and one of the girls said it was a good place for a night out.’

‘Had you heard of the man the papers at the time called the “Seacroft Rapist”?’

‘Yes. Everybody had.’

‘But it didn’t stop you going to Seacroft.’

‘You have to live your life. You can’t let fear get the better of you, or a woman wouldn’t even dare go out of the house alone.’

‘That’s true enough,’ said Banks. ‘So you never suspected that this man you met might be the Seacroft Rapist?’

‘Terry? No, of course not. Why should I?’

‘Was there nothing at all in Terry’s behaviour that gave you cause for concern?’

‘No. We were in love.’

‘But he abused you. You admitted this the last time we talked.’

She looked away. ‘That came later.’

‘How much later?’

‘I don’t know. Christmas maybe.’

‘Last Christmas?’

‘Yes. Around then. But it wasn’t like that all the time. Afterwards, he was wonderful. He always felt guilty. He’d buy me presents. Flowers. Bracelets. Necklaces. I really wish I had them with me now to remember him by.’

‘In time, Lucy. So he always made up to you after he hit you?’

‘Yes, he was wonderful to me for days.’

‘Was he drinking more these past few months?’

‘Yes. He was out more, too. I didn’t see him as much.’

‘Where was he?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.’

‘Didn’t you ever ask him?’

Lucy looked away demurely, turning her bruised side on him. Banks got the message.

‘I think we can move on, can’t we, Superintendent,’ said Julia Ford. ‘My client’s clearly getting upset with this line of questioning.’

Pity for her
, Banks wanted to say, but he had plenty more ground to cover. ‘Very well.’ He turned to Lucy again. ‘Did you have anything to do with the abduction, rape and murder of Kimberley Myers?’

Lucy met his gaze, but he couldn’t see anything in her dark eyes; if the eyes were the windows of the soul, then Lucy Payne’s were made of tinted glass and her soul wore sunglasses. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said.

‘What about Melissa Horrocks?’

‘No. I had nothing to do with any of them.’

‘How many were there, Lucy?’

‘You know how many.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Five. That’s what I read in the papers, anyway.’

‘What did you do with Leanne Wray?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Where is she, Lucy? Where’s Leanne Wray? Where did you and Terry bury her? What made her different from the others?’

Lucy looked in consternation at Julia Ford. ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about,’ she said. ‘Ask him to stop.’

‘Superintendent,’ Julia said, ‘my client has already made it clear she knows nothing about this person. I think you should move on.’

‘Did your husband ever mention any of these girls?’

‘No, Terry never mentioned any of them.’

‘Did you ever go in that cellar, Lucy?’

‘You’ve asked me all this before.’

‘I’m giving you a chance to change your answer, to go on record.’

‘I told you, I don’t remember. I might have done, but I don’t remember. I’ve got retrograde amnesia.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘My doctor at the hospital.’

‘Dr Landsberg?’

‘Yes. It’s part of my post-traumatic shock disorder.’

It was the first Banks had heard of it. Dr Landsberg had told him she was no expert on the subject. ‘Well, I’m very glad you can put a name to what’s wrong with you. On how many occasions
might
you have gone down in the cellar, if you could remember?’

‘Just the once.’

‘When?’

‘The day it happened. When I got put in hospital. Early last Monday morning.’

‘So you admit that you
may
have gone down there?’

‘If you say so. I can’t remember. If I ever did go down, it was then.’

‘It’s not me who says so, Lucy. It’s the scientific evidence. The lab found traces of Kimberley Myers’s blood on the sleeves of your dressing-gown. How did it get there?’

‘I . . . I don’t know.’

‘There’s only two ways it could have got there: either
before
she was in the cellar or
after
she was in the cellar. Which is it, Lucy?’

‘It must be after.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I never saw her before.’

‘But she didn’t live far away. Hadn’t you seen her around?’

‘In the street, maybe. Or the shops. Yes. But I never talked to her.’

Banks paused and shuffled some papers in front of him. ‘So you admit now that you might have been in the cellar?’

‘But I don’t remember.’

‘What do you think
might
have happened, hypothetically speaking?’

‘Well, I might have heard a noise.’

‘What sort of noise?’

‘I don’t know.’ Lucy paused and put her hand to her throat. ‘A scream, maybe.’

‘The only screams Maggie Forrest heard were yours.’

‘Well, maybe you could only hear it if you were inside the house. Maybe it came up from the cellar. When Maggie heard me I was in the hall.’

‘You remember that? Being in the hall?’

‘Only very vaguely.’

‘Go on.’

‘So I might have heard a noise and gone down to investigate.’

‘Even though you knew it was Terry’s private den and he’d kill you if you did?’

‘Yes. Maybe I was disturbed enough.’

‘By what?’

‘By what I heard.’

‘But the cellar was very well soundproofed, Lucy, and the door was closed when the police got there.’

‘Then I don’t know. I’m just trying to find a reason.’

‘Go on. What might you have found there if you did go down?’

‘That girl. I might have gone over to her to see if there was anything I could do.’

‘What about the yellow fibres?’

‘What about them?’

‘They were from the plastic clothes-line that was wrapped around Kimberley Myers’s neck. The pathologist determined ligature strangulation by that line as cause of death. Fibres were also embedded in Kimberley’s throat.’

‘I must have tried to get it off her.’

‘Do you remember doing this?’

‘No, I’m still imagining how it might have happened.’

‘Go on.’

‘Then Terry must have found me and chased me upstairs and hit me.’

‘Why didn’t he drag you back down the cellar and kill you, too?’

‘I don’t know. He was my husband. He loved me. He couldn’t just kill me like . . .’

‘Like some teenage girl?’

‘Superintendent,’ Julia Ford cut in. ‘I don’t think speculation about what Mr Payne did or didn’t do is relevant here. My client says she
might
have gone down in the cellar and surprised her husband at . . . at whatever he was doing, and thus provoked him. That should explain your findings. It should also be enough.’

‘But you said Terry would kill you if you went in the cellar. Why didn’t he?’ Banks persisted.

‘I don’t know. Maybe he was going to. Maybe he had something else to do first.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Kill Kimberley?’

‘Maybe.’

‘But wasn’t she already dead?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Get rid of her body?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. I was unconscious.’

‘Oh, come on, Lucy! This is rubbish,’ said Banks. ‘The next thing you’ll be trying to convince me you did it while you were sleepwalking.
You
killed Kimberley Myers, didn’t you, Lucy? You went down in the cellar and saw her lying there and you strangled her.’

‘I didn’t! Why would I do a thing like that?’

‘Because you were jealous. Terry wanted Kimberley more than he wanted you. He wanted to keep her.’

Lucy banged the table with her fist. ‘That’s
not
true! You’re making it up.’

‘Well, why else did he have her staked out there naked on the mattress? To give her a biology lesson? It was quite a biology lesson, Lucy. He raped her repeatedly, both vaginally and anally. He forced her to fellate him. Then he – or
someone
– strangled her with a length of yellow plastic clothes-line.’

Lucy put her head in her hands and sobbed.

‘Is this kind of gruesome detail really necessary?’ asked Julia Ford.

‘What’s wrong?’ Banks asked her. ‘Afraid of the truth?’

‘It’s just a bit over the top, that’s all.’

‘
Over the top?
I’ll tell you what’s over the bloody top.’ Banks pointed at Lucy. ‘Kimberley’s blood on the sleeves of
her
dressing-gown. Yellow fibres under
her
fingernails.
She
killed Kimberley Myers.’

‘It’s all circumstantial,’ said Julia Ford. ‘Lucy’s already explained to you how it might have happened. She doesn’t remember. That’s not her fault. The poor woman was traumatized.’

‘Either that or she’s a damn good actress,’ said Banks.

‘Superintendent!’

‘Banks turned back to Lucy. ‘Who are the other girls, Lucy?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘We’ve found two unidentified bodies in the back garden. Skeletal remains, at any rate. That makes six altogether, including Kimberley. We were only looking into five disappearances, and we haven’t even found all of those yet. We don’t know of these two. Who are they?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did you ever go out in the car with your husband and pick up a teenage girl?’

The change of direction seemed to shock Lucy into silence, but she soon found her voice and regained her composure. ‘No, I did not.’

‘So you knew nothing about the missing girls?’

‘No. Only what I read in the papers. I told you. I didn’t go in the cellar and Terry certainly didn’t tell me. So how
could
I know?’

‘How indeed?’ Banks scratched the little scar beside his right eye. ‘I’m more concerned with how you could possibly
not
have known. The man you’re living with – your own husband – abducts and brings home
six
young girls that we know of so far, keeps them in the cellar for . . . God knows how long . . . while he rapes and tortures them, then he buries them either in the garden or in the cellar. And all this time you’re living in the house, only one floor away, two at the most, and you expect me to believe you didn’t know anything, didn’t even
smell
anything? Do I look as if I was born yesterday, Lucy? I don’t see how you could fail to know.’

‘I told you I never went down there.’

‘Didn’t you notice when your husband was missing in the middle of the night?’

‘No. I always sleep very heavily. I think Terry must have been giving me sleeping pills with my cocoa. That’s why I never noticed anything.’

‘We didn’t find any sleeping pills at the house, Lucy.’

‘He must have run out. That must be why I woke up on Monday morning and thought something was wrong. Or he forgot.’

‘Did either of you have a prescription for sleeping tablets?’

‘I didn’t. I don’t know if Terry did. Maybe he got them from a drug pusher.’

Banks made a note to look into the matter of sleeping tablets. ‘Why do you think he might have forgotten to drug you
this
time? Why did you go down to the cellar
this
time?’ he went on. ‘What was so different about
this
time, about Kimberley? Was it because she was too close to home for comfort? Terry must have known he was taking a huge risk in abducting Kimberley, mustn’t he? Was he obsessed with her, Lucy? Was that it? Were the others merely practice, substitutes until he could no longer stop himself from taking the one he really wanted? How did you feel about that, Lucy? That Terry wanted Kimberley more than you, more than life itself, more than freedom?’

Lucy put her hands to her ears. ‘Stop it! It’s lies, all lies! I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand what’s going on. Why are you persecuting me like this?’ She turned to Julia Ford. ‘Get me out of here now. Please! I don’t have to stay and listen to any more of this, do I?’

‘No,’ said Julia Ford, standing up. ‘You can leave whenever you like.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Banks stood up and took a deep breath. ‘Lucy Payne, I’m arresting you as an accessory in the murder of Kimberley Myers.’

‘This is ludicrous,’ shot Julia Ford. ‘It’s a travesty.’

‘I don’t believe your client’s story,’ said Banks. He turned to Lucy again. ‘You don’t have to say anything, Lucy, but if you fail to say something now that you later rely on in court it might be held against you. Do you understand?’

Banks opened the door and got two uniformed officers to take Lucy down to the custody officer. When they came towards her she turned pale.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back whenever you want. Please, I’m begging you, don’t lock me all alone in a dark cell!’

For the first time in his dealings with her, Banks got the sense that Lucy Payne was genuinely afraid. He remembered what Jenny had told him about the ‘Alderthorpe Seven’.
Kept in cages without food for days
. He almost faltered, but there was no going back now. He forced himself to remember Kimberley Myers spread-eagled on the bed in Lucy Payne’s dark cellar. Nobody had given
her
a chance. ‘The cells aren’t dark, Lucy,’ he said. ‘They’re well lit and very comfortable. They regularly get four stars in the police accommodation guide.’

Julia Ford gave him a disgusted look. Lucy shook her head. Banks nodded towards the officers. ‘Take her to the cells.’

He’d managed it by the skin of his teeth, and he didn’t even feel as good about it as he had thought he would, but he’d got Lucy Payne where he wanted her for twenty-four hours.
Twenty-four hours to find some real evidence against her.

•

Annie felt only indifference towards Terence Payne’s corpse laid out naked on the steel autopsy table. It was simply the shell, the deceptive outer human form of an aberration, a changeling, a demon. Come to think about it, though, she wasn’t even certain she believed
that.
Terence Payne’s evil was all too human. Over the centuries men had raped and mutilated women, whether as acts of plunder in wartime, for dark pleasures in the back alleys and cheap rooms of decaying cities, in the isolation of the countryside, or in the drawing rooms of the rich. It hardly needed a demon in human form to do what men themselves already did so well.