It sounded an exhausting life to Banks, a real social whirl, and he realized he simply didn’t have time for that sort of thing. His job took pretty much all he had, and what little time he had left over he used to relax with music or a DVD and a glass of wine. He went to Opera North when he could get there, took long walks in the hills when the weather was good, dropped by the local Helmthorpe pub for folk night once in a while, though less often now that Penny Cartwright, the local femme fatale, had turned him down.
As the evening continued and they topped up their wineglasses, it felt to Banks as it had under the street lamp at the bottom of Harriet’s path, as if their illuminated circle of the universe were the only real place, and everything outside it was insubstantial as shadows. That illusion was pierced when Marcel brought the bill. Banks paid, despite Sophia’s objections, and once again they found themselves out in the street saying good night. Banks had to go back to the station to see if there had been any progress. He felt extremely lucky that neither his pager nor his mobile had gone off during dinner.
Sophia thanked him for the meal, then they leaned toward each other to do the awkward cheek-kissing thing that had become so popular, but before Banks knew how it happened their lips were touching in a real kiss, long and sweet. When it was over, they walked off in opposite directions. Banks set off down the hill back to the station, realizing that he had made no specific arrangements to see Sophia again, and after about ten paces he turned around. At about the same moment Sophia looked back, too, and they smiled at each other. How odd, Banks thought. He never looked back, and he was willing to bet that Sophia never did, either.
15
Annie was in the station bright and early on Monday morning after a good night’s sleep and nothing stronger than a cup of hot chocolate over the course of the evening. She was just kicking the coffee machine the way you had to to get a cup out of it when Detective Superintendent Brough walked by and said, “My office, DI Cabbot. Now.”
Annie felt a chill. Was Brough a defender of the coffee machine or had Eric set out to harm her career? Had he got more photos that she hadn’t seen and sent them to Brough, or the chief constable? Or had he reported her behavior the other night? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Brough’s office was spacious and well appointed, as befitted a senior officer. He sat behind his desk and gruffly bade Annie sit opposite him in the hard chair. Her heart was thudding. She could argue that she had been drunk, but that reflected no better on her than sleeping with a snake like Eric in the first place.
“What have you got to say for yourself?” Brough asked, which didn’t help a great deal.
“About what?” Annie said.
“You know damn well what. The Lucy Payne murder. I’ve got the press so far up my arse I can taste their pencil lead, and absolutely bugger all to tell them. It’s been a week now, and as far as I can see you’ve just been marking time.”
In an odd way, Annie felt relieved that it was about the case and not about Eric. He hadn’t been in touch since Annie had paid him her visit on Friday, and that, she thought, was a good sign. Maybe he’d got the hint, which had been about as subtle as a blow to the head with a blunt object.
This was professional. This she could deal with. “With all due respect, sir,” she said, “we’ve done everything we can to trace this mystery woman, but she seems to have disappeared into thin air. We’ve questioned everyone at Mapston Hall twice — staff and patients alike, wherever possible — but no one there seems able to provide us with any kind of a lead or information whatsoever. No one knew anything about Karen Drew. It’s not as if most of the people there lead active social lives.”
Brough grunted. “Is someone lying?”
“Could be, sir. But all the staff members are accounted for during the time of the murder. If anyone there was involved, it was in passing over the information that Karen Drew was Lucy Payne, and not in committing the actual murder itself. Believe me, sir, we’re working on it.”
“Why is it all taking so long?”
“These things do take a long time, sir. Background checks. Ferreting out information.”
“I hear you’ve been going off on a tangent over some old case, gallivanting off to Leeds and Eastvale to talk to your old boyfriend. I’m not running a dating service here, DI Cabbot. You’d do well to remember that.”
“I resent that implication,” Annie said. She could take only so much from authority, and then her father’s streak of anarchy and rebellion broke through, and to the devil with the consequences. “And you’ve no right to speak to me like that.”
Brough seemed taken aback by her angry outburst, but it sobered him. He straightened his tie and settled back in his chair. “You don’t know how much pressure I’m under to get a result here,” he said, by way of a lame explanation.
“Then I suggest you do it by encouraging your team and supporting them, rather than by resorting to personal insults. Sir.”
Brough looked like a slapped arse. He flustered and blathered and then got around to asking Annie exactly where she thought she was going with the Kirsten Farrow angle.
“I don’t know for certain that I’m going anywhere yet,” said Annie, “but it’s starting to appear very much as if the same killer — whoever it is — has now killed again.”
“That Eastvale detective, yes. Templeton. Bad business.”
“It is, sir. I knew Kev Templeton.” Annie stopped short of saying he was a friend of hers, but she wanted Brough to dig into whatever reserves of police solidarity and sympathy he might have. “And in my opinion he was killed by the same person who killed Lucy Payne. We don’t have that many murders around here, for a start, the distance isn’t that great, and how many do we have that, according to witnesses, were committed by a mysterious woman using a straight razor, or some such similar sharp blade, to slit the throat of the victim?”
“But Templeton’s not our case, damn it.”
“He is if it’s the same killer, sir. Do you really believe there are two women going around slitting people’s throats — people they believe to be dangerous killers?”
“Put like that it does sound—”
“And do you find it so hard to believe that these might be related to an unsolved case in which a woman also may have killed two men, one of whom was a serial killer and one of whom she may have mistaken for him?”
“May have. You said ‘May have.’ I’ve looked over the files, DI Cabbot. There’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Greg Eastcote was murdered, either by a woman or by anyone else. He could have faked his disappearance because he thought the police were getting too close. In fact that’s the most logical explanation.”
“He could have,” Annie agreed. “But the police weren’t getting close. And a woman was seen with Jack Grimley and with the Australian boy, Keith McLaren, and she conveniently disappeared, too.”
“But this was eighteen years ago, for God’s sake. You can’t even prove that this Kirsten, or whoever she was, knew that Eastcote had attacked her. It’s absurd.”
“No more than most cases when you don’t have all the pieces, sir. I’m also trying to locate Kirsten’s psychiatrist. She had a course of hypnosis in Bath in 1988, and it might have helped her recover some of her memory of the attack.”