“I think so,” said Blair. “I don’t know about the exact spot, but within a couple of hundred yards. You’ll know it when you see the old wall.”
Banks looked at Winsome. “Get a search party together, would you, DC Jackman, and have young Mick here go out with them. Let me know the minute you find anything. And have Ian Scott and Sarah Francis picked up.”
Winsome stood up.
“That’ll do for now,” Banks said.
“What’ll happen to me?” Blair asked.
“I don’t know, Mick,” said Banks. “I honestly don’t know.”
19
The interview had gone well, Maggie thought as she walked out on to Portland Place. Behind her, Broadcasting House looked like the stern of a huge ocean liner. Inside, it had been a maze. She hadn’t known how anyone could find their way around, even if they had worked there for years. Thank the Lord the program’s researcher had met her in the lobby, then guided her through security to the entrails of the building.
It started to rain lightly, so Maggie ducked into Starbucks. Sitting on a stool by the counter that stretched along the front window, sipping her latte and watching the people outside wrestle with their umbrellas, she reviewed her day. It was after three o’clock in the afternoon and the rush hour already seemed to have begun. If it ever ended in London. The interview she had just given had focused almost entirely on the generalities of domestic abuse – things to watch out for, patterns to avoid falling into – rather than her own personal story, or that of her co-interviewee, an abused wife who had gone on to become a psychological counselor. They had exchanged addresses and phone numbers and agreed to get in touch, then the woman had had to dash off to give another interview.
Lunch with Sally, the art director, had gone well, too. They had eaten at a rather expensive Italian restaurant near Victoria Station, and Sally had looked over the sketches, making helpful suggestions here and there. Mostly, though, they had talked about recent events in Leeds, and Sally had shown only the natural curiosity that anyone who happened to live across the street from a serial killer might expect. Maggie had been evasive when questioned about Lucy.
Lucy. The poor woman. Maggie felt guilty for leaving her alone in that big house on The Hill, right opposite where the nightmare of her own life had recently come to a head. Lucy had said she would be okay, but was she just trying to put a brave face on things?
Maggie hadn’t been able to get tickets for the play she wanted to see. It was so popular it was sold out, even on a Wednesday. She thought she might book into the little hotel anyway and go to the cinema instead, but the more she thought about it, and the more she looked out at the hordes of passing strangers, the more she thought she ought to be there for Lucy.
What she would do, she decided, was wait till the rain stopped – it only looked like a mild shower, and she could already see some blue clouds in the sky over the Langham Hilton across the road – do some shopping on Oxford Street, and then head home in the early evening and surprise Lucy.
Maggie felt much better when she had decided to go home. After all, what was the point going to the cinema by herself when Lucy needed someone to talk to, someone to help take her mind off her problems and help her decide what to do with her future?
When the rain had stopped completely, Maggie drained her latte and set out. She would buy Lucy a little present, too, nothing expensive or ostentatious, but perhaps a bracelet or a necklace, something to mark her freedom. After all, as Lucy had said, the police had taken all her things and she didn’t want them back now; she was about to start a new life.
It was late in the afternoon when Banks got the call to drive out to the Wheaton Moor, north of Lyndgarth, and he took Winsome with him. She had done enough work on the Leanne Wray case to be there at the end. Most of the daffodils were gone, but white and pink blossoms covered the trees, and the hedgerows glowed with the burnished gold stars of celandines. Gorse flowered bright yellow all over the moors.
He parked as close as he could to the cluster of figures, but they still had almost a quarter of a mile to walk over the springy gorse and heather. Blair and the others had certainly carried Leanne a long way from civilization. Though the sun was shining and there were only a few high clouds, the wind was cold. Banks was glad of his sports jacket. Winsome was wearing calf-high leather boots and a herringbone jacket over her black polo-neck sweater. She strode with grace and confidence, whereas Banks caught his ankle and stumbled every now and then in the thick gorse. Time to get out and exercise more, he told himself. And time to stop smoking.
They reached the team that Winsome had dispatched about three hours ago, Mick Blair handcuffed to one of the uniformed officers, greasy hair blowing in the wind.
Another officer pointed down the shallow sinkhole, and Banks saw part of a hand, most of the flesh eaten away, the still-white bone showing. “We tried to disturb the scene as little as possible, sir,” the officer went on. “I sent for the SOCOs and the rest of the team. They said they’d get here ASAP.”
Banks thanked him. He glanced back toward the road and saw a car and a van pull up, figures get out and make their way across the rough moorland, some of them in white coveralls. The SOCOs had soon roped off an area of several yards around the mound of stones, and Peter Darby, the local crime scene photographer, got to work. Now all they needed was Dr. Burns, the police surgeon. Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, would most likely conduct the PM, but he was too old and important to go scrambling across the moors anymore. Dr. Burns was skilled, Banks knew, and he already had plenty of experience of on-scene examinations.
It was another ten minutes before Dr. Burns arrived. By then Peter Darby had finished photographing the scene intact, and it was time to uncover the remains. This the SOCOs did slowly and carefully, so as not to disturb any evidence. Mick Blair had said that Leanne died after taking Ecstasy, but he could be lying; he could have tried to rape her and choked her when she didn’t comply. Either way, they couldn’t go around jumping to conclusions about Leanne. Not this time.
Banks began to feel that the whole thing was just too damn familiar, standing out there on the moors with his jacket flapping around him as men in white coveralls uncovered a body. Then he remembered Harold Steadman, the local historian they had found buried under a similar drystone wall below Crow Scar. That had been only his second case in Eastvale, back when the kids were still at school and he and Sandra were happily married, yet it seemed centuries ago now. He wondered what on earth a drystone wall was doing up here anyway, then realized it had probably marked the end of someone’s property long ago, property that had now gone to moorland, overgrown with heather and gorse. The elements had done their work on the wall, and nobody had any interest in repairing it.
Stone by stone, the body was uncovered. As soon as he saw the blond hair, Banks knew it was Leanne Wray. She was still wearing the clothes she had gone missing in – jeans, white Nike trainers, T-shirt and a light suede jacket – and that was something in Blair’s favor, Banks thought. Though there was some decomposition and evidence of insect and small-animal activity – a missing finger on her right hand, for example – the cool weather had kept her from becoming a complete skeleton. In fact, despite the splitting of the skin to expose the muscle and fat on her left cheek, Banks was able to recognize Leanne’s face from the photographs he had seen.
When the body was completely uncovered, everyone stood back as if they were at a funeral paying their last respects before the interment rather than at an exhumation. The moor was silent but for the wind whistling and groaning among the stones like lost souls. Mick Blair was crying, Banks noticed. Either that or the chill wind was making his eyes water.