Aftermath (41 page)

Christopher Wray put his hand over his wife’s. ‘Don’t get excited, love. Remember what the doctor said.’

‘I know.’ Victoria stood up. She swayed a little. ‘I think I need to go and lie down again for a while,’ she said. ‘But you mark my words, Superintendent, that’s the one you should be looking at – Ian Scott. He’s no good.’

‘Thank you,’ said Banks. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

When she’d gone, the silence stretched for a while. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ Banks asked.

‘No. No. I’m sure she wouldn’t do . . . what you say. I’m sure something must have happened to her.’

‘Why did you wait until morning to call the police? Had she done that sort of thing before?’

‘Never. I would have told you if I thought that.’

‘So why did you wait?’

‘I wanted to call earlier.’

‘Come on, Mr Wray,’ said Winsome, touching his arm gently. ‘You can tell us.’

He looked at her, his eyes beseeching, seeking forgiveness. ‘I would have called the police, honest I would,’ he said. ‘She had never stayed out all night before.’

‘But you’d had an argument, hadn’t you?’ Banks suggested. ‘When she reacted badly to the news of your wife’s pregnancy.’

‘She asked me how could I . . . so soon after . . . after her mother. She was upset, crying, saying terrible things about Victoria, things she didn’t mean, but . . . Victoria told her to get out if she wanted, and said she could stay out.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this at the time?’ Banks asked, though he knew the answer: embarrassment, that great social fear – something Victoria Wray would certainly be sensitive to – and not wanting the police involved in your private family arguments. The only way they had found out about the tension between Victoria and Leanne in the first place was through Leanne’s friends, and Leanne clearly hadn’t had time or chance to tell them about Victoria’s pregnancy. Victoria Wray was the kind of woman, Banks thought, who would make the police use the tradesman’s entrance, if they had a tradesman’s entrance – and the fact that they didn’t was probably an unbearable thorn in her side.

There were tears in Mr Wray’s eyes. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘I just couldn’t. We thought it was as you said, that perhaps she had stayed out all night to spite us, to demonstrate her anger. But no matter what, Superintendent, Leanne isn’t a bad girl. She would have come back in the morning. I’m certain of that.’

Banks stood up. ‘May we have another look at her room, Mr Wray? There may be something we missed.’

Wray looked puzzled. ‘Yes, of course. But . . . I mean . . . it’s been redone. There’s nothing there.’

‘You redecorated Leanne’s room?’ Winsome said.

He looked at her. ‘Yes. We couldn’t stand it with her gone. The memories. And now, with the new baby on the way . . .’

‘What about her clothes?’ Winsome asked.

‘We gave them to the Oxfam shop.’

‘Her books, belongings?’

‘Them, too.’

Winsome shook her head. Banks asked, ‘May we have a peek, anyway?’

They went upstairs. Wray was right. Not an object remained that indicated the room had ever belonged to a teenager like Leanne Wray. The tiny dresser, bedside drawers and matching wardrobe were all gone, as was her bed with the quilt bedspread, little bookcase, the few dolls left over from her childhood. Even the carpet was gone and the pop star posters had been ripped off the walls. Nothing remained. Banks could hardly believe his eyes. He could understand how people want to escape unpleasant memories, don’t like being reminded of someone they’ve loved and lost, but all
this
just over a month after their daughter’s disappearance, and without her body having been found?

‘Thank you,’ he said, indicating for Winsome to follow him down the stairs.

‘Isn’t that weird?’ she said when they’d got outside. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

‘Think what, Winsome?’

‘That maybe Leanne
did
go home that night. And that maybe when they heard we were digging up the Paynes’s garden, Mr Wray decided it was time for redecoration.’

‘Hmm,’ said Banks. ‘Maybe you’re right, or maybe people just have different ways of showing their grief. Either way, I think we’ll be looking a bit more closely at the Wrays over the next few days. You can start by talking to their neighbours, see if they’ve seen or heard anything unusual.’

•

After her chat with Maureen Nesbitt, Jenny decided to visit Spurn Head itself before heading for home. Maybe a good long walk would help her think things over, blow the cobwebs away. Maybe it would also help her get rid of the eerie feeling she had had since Alderthorpe that she was being watched or followed. She couldn’t explain it, but every time she turned suddenly to look over her shoulder, she
felt
rather than saw something slip into the shadows. It was irritating because she couldn’t quite grasp whether she was being paranoid or whether it was a case of just because she was paranoid it didn’t mean someone
wasn’t
following her.

She was still feeling it.

Jenny paid her entrance fee and drove slowly along the narrow track to the car park, noticing an old lighthouse, half under water, and guessing that the sands had shifted since it was built and left it stranded there.

Jenny walked down to the beach. The place wasn’t quite as desolate as she had imagined it to be. Just ahead, on a platform a little way out to sea, attached to the mainland by a narrow wooden bridge, were a dock and control centre for the Humber pilots, who guided the big tankers in from the North Sea. Behind her stood the new lighthouse and a number of houses. Across the estuary, Jenny could see the docks and cranes of Grimsby and Immingham. Though the sun was shining, there was quite a breeze and Jenny felt the chill as she walked the sands around the point. The sea was an odd combination of colours – purple, brown, lavender, everything but blue, even in the sun.

There weren’t many people around. Most of those who visited the area were serious birders, and the place was a protected wildlife sanctuary. Even so, Jenny saw a couple or two walking hand in hand, and one family with two small children. As she walked, she still couldn’t shake off the feeling of being followed.

When the first tanker came around the head, it took her breath away. Because of the sharp curve, the huge shape seemed to appear there suddenly, moving very fast, and it filled her field of vision for a few moments, then one of the pilot boats near by guided it over the estuary towards Immingham docks. Another tanker followed only moments later.

As Jenny stood on the sand looking out over the broad waters, she thought of what Maureen Nesbitt had told her about the Alderthorpe Seven.

Tom Godwin, Lucy’s younger brother, had stayed with his foster parents until he was eighteen, like Lucy, then he had gone to live with distant relatives in Australia, all thoroughly checked out by the social services, and he now worked on their sheep farm in New South Wales. By all accounts, Tom was a sturdy, quiet sort of boy, given to long walks alone and a sort of shyness that made him stutter in front of strangers. Often he woke up screaming from nightmares he couldn’t remember.

Laura, Lucy’s sister, was living in Edinburgh, where she was studying medicine at the university, hoping to become a psychiatrist. Maureen said Laura was well adjusted, on the whole, after years of therapy, but there was still a timidity and reticence about her that might make it hard for her to face some of the more human challenges of her chosen profession. There was no doubt she was a brilliant and skilled pupil, but whether she could handle the daily pressures of psychiatry was another matter.

Of the three surviving Murray children, Susan had committed suicide, tragically, at the age of thirteen. Dianne was in a sort of halfway house for the mentally disturbed, suffering from severe sleep disorders and terrifying hallucinations. Keith, like Laura, was also a student, though Maureen reckoned he would be about graduation age by now. He had gone to the University of Durham to study history and English. He was still seeing a psychiatrist regularly and suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety attacks, especially in confined places, but he managed to function and do well in his studies.

And that was it: the sad legacy of Alderthorpe. Such blighted lives.

Jenny wondered if Banks wanted her to continue now that he’d let Lucy go. Maureen Nesbitt had said her best bets were clearly Keith Murray and Laura Godwin, and as Keith lived closer to Eastvale, she decided she would try to reach him first. But was there any more point to it all? She had to admit that she hadn’t found any psychological evidence that significantly strengthened the case against Lucy. She felt every bit as inadequate as many officers on the task force thought all offender profilers were anyway.

Lucy
could
have sustained the kind of psychological damage that made her a compliant victim of Terence Payne’s, but there again, she might not have. Different people subjected to the same horrors often go in completely different directions. Perhaps Lucy was truly a strong personality, strong enough to put the past behind her and get on with life. Jenny doubted that
anyone
had the strength to avoid at least some kind of psychological fallout from the events in Alderthorpe, but it was possible to heal, at least partially, over time, and to function on some level, as Tom, Laura and Keith had also demonstrated. They might be the walking wounded, but at least they were still walking.

When Jenny had covered half the circle of the head, she cut back through the long grass to the car park and set off down the narrow track. As she went, she noticed a blue Citroen in her rearview mirror and felt certain that she had seen it somewhere before. Telling herself to stop being so paranoid, she left the head and drove towards Patrington. When she’d got closer to the edges of Hull, she called Banks on her mobile.

He answered on the third ring. ‘Jenny, where are you?’

‘Hull. On my way home.’

‘Find out anything interesting?’

‘Plenty, but I’m not sure that it gets us any further. I’ll try to put it all together into some sort of profile, if you want.’

‘Please.’

‘I just heard you had to let Lucy Payne go.’

‘That’s right. We got her out of a side exit without too much fuss, and her lawyer drove her straight to Hull. They did some shopping in the city centre, then Julia Ford, the lawyer, dropped Lucy off at the Liversedges’. They welcomed her with open arms.’

‘That’s where she is now?’

‘Far as I know. The local police are keeping an eye on her for us. Where else can she go?’

‘Where, indeed?’ said Jenny. ‘Does this mean it’s over?’

‘What?’

‘My job.’

‘No,’ said Banks. ‘Nothing’s over yet.’

After Jenny had hung up, she checked her rearview mirror again. The blue Citroen was keeping its distance, allowing three or four other cars between them, but there was no doubt it was still back there on her tail.

•

‘Annie, have you ever thought of having children?’

Banks felt Annie tense beside him in bed. They had just made love and were basking in the afterglow, the gentle rushing of the falls outside, the occasional night animal calling from the woods and Van Morrison’s
Astral Weeks
drifting up from the stereo downstairs.

‘I don’t mean . . . well, not now. I mean, not you and me. But ever?’

Annie lay still and silent for a while. He felt her relax a little and stir against him. Finally, she said, ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t know. It’s been on my mind. This case, the poor devils in the Murray and Godwin families, all the missing girls, not much more than kids, really. And the Wrays, her being pregnant.’ And Sandra, he thought, but he hadn’t told Annie about that yet.

‘I can’t say as I have,’ Annie answered.

‘Never?’

‘Maybe I got short changed when it came to handing out the maternal instinct, I don’t know. Or maybe it’s to do with my own past. Anyway, it never came up.’

‘Your past?’

‘Ray. The commune. My mother dying so young.’

‘But you said you were happy enough.’

‘I was.’ Annie sat up and reached for the glass of wine she had put on the bedside table. Her small breasts glowed in the dim light, smooth skin sloping down to the dark brown aureoles, slightly upturned where the nipples rose.

‘Then why?’

‘Good Lord, Alan, surely it’s not every woman’s duty in life to reproduce or to analyse why she doesn’t want to. I’m not a freak, you know.’

‘I know. Sorry.’ Banks sipped some of his wine, lay back against the pillows. ‘It’s just . . . well, I had a bit of a shock the other day, that’s all.’

‘What?’

‘Sandra.’

‘What about her?’

‘She’s pregnant.’ There, he’d done it. He didn’t know why it should have been so difficult, or why he had the sharp, sudden feeling that he would have been wiser to have kept his mouth closed. He also wondered why he had told Jenny straight away but delayed so long before telling Annie. Partly it was because Jenny
knew
Sandra, of course, but there was more to it than that. Annie didn’t seem to like the intimacy implied by details of Banks’s life, and she had sometimes made him feel that sharing any part of his past was a burden to her. But he couldn’t seem to help himself. Since splitting up with Sandra, he had become far more introspective and examined his life much more closely. He saw little point in being with someone if he couldn’t share some of that.

At first, Annie said nothing, then she asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How did you hear the news?’

‘From Tracy, when we went to lunch in Leeds.’

‘So Sandra didn’t tell you herself?’

‘You know as well as I do we don’t communicate much.’

‘Still, I would’ve thought . . . something like this.’

Banks scratched his cheek. ‘Well, it just goes to show, doesn’t it?’

Annie sipped more wine. ‘Show what?’

‘How far apart we’ve grown.’

‘You seem upset by this, Alan.’

‘Not really. Not
upset
so much as . . .’

‘Disturbed?’

‘Perhaps.’