Templeton scratched his forehead. “Can’t tell you that, ma’am. Only that they were both there at the same time.”
Winsome shot Annie a glance. Annie smiled at her. One day she’d get Kevin Templeton out of the habit of calling her “ma’am,” too. Coming from a handsome young lad like him, it really did make her feel like an old maid.
“In my experience,” Annie said, “it’s pretty unlikely that art and commerce students shared the same interests. I doubt they’d ever mix.”
“Not the same subjects, maybe,” said Templeton, “but that’s only a part of what college is all about, isn’t it? There’s the pub, student politics, the music scene. Leeds Poly always had great bands. They could have met through something like that.”
“ ‘Could have’ isn’t good enough, Kev. If we’re to make any sort of link, we need to know for certain. And we need to know who else they hung out with. There’s a fair chance that whoever killed them met them back then, was someone who was maybe part of the same scene. I certainly don’t believe it’s a coincidence that two men who were murdered so close together and in much the same way just happened to go to the same poly at the same time. But we need a definite connection, if one exists. And there’s the late William Masefield to consider, too. How was he linked with the others, if he was?”
“Well,” said Templeton, “I could always get on to the authorities in Leeds. I’m sure their records go back that far.”
“And what do we do then? Check up on every student who attended Leeds Poly from 1978 to 1981? It’d be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“Can you think of any other way?”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Winsome.
Annie and Templeton looked at her. “Go on,” Annie said.
“Friends Reunited dot com. I’m a member. I’ve used it before to locate people. I admit it’s a short cut, but it might help narrow things down a bit. Of course, you’ve only got the people who have taken the trouble to register on the site, but there’s a chance one of them might remember McMahon or Gardiner. We can send out an e-mail to everyone on the list who left Leeds Poly in 1981, asking if they knew a Thomas McMahon and a Roland Gardiner, and see what kind of response we get back. Plenty of people are constantly online these days, so if we’re lucky we might even get a speedy reply.”
“It’s worth a try,” said Annie, getting to her feet. “Come on, let’s do it.”
The interview room was the same as just about every interview room Banks had ever been in: small, high window covered by a grille, bare bulb similarly covered, metal table bolted to the floor. The institutional green paint looked fresh, though, and Banks fancied he could still smell traces of it in the stale air. Either that or the Scotch he had drunk with Ken Blackstone the previous night was giving him a headache. He massaged his temples.
Frances Aspern sat opposite Banks and DI Gary Bridges, who was not only wearing the same suit as he had last night, but looked as if he’d slept in it, too. Dressed in disposable navy overalls, Frances Aspern seemed listless and distant, and much older than she had when Banks first saw her. The dark circles under her eyes testified that she hadn’t slept, and she was fidgeting with a ring. Not her wedding ring, Banks noticed. That was gone.
“Are you ready to talk to us?” Bridges asked, when he had issued the caution and set the tape machine rolling.
Frances nodded, a faraway look in her eyes.
“Can you speak your answers out loud, please?” Bridges asked.
“Yes,” she said, in a small voice. “Sorry.”
“What happened last night?”
Frances paused so long before answering that Banks was beginning to think she hadn’t heard DI Bridges’s question. But eventually she began to speak. “We were asleep. Patrick heard a noise downstairs. He took his gun out of the cabinet and went down.” Her voice was a monotone, disconnected from her feelings, as if the things she was saying were of no interest to her.
“What happened then?”
“I waited. A long time. I don’t know how long. Then I went downstairs. He was going to hurt the boy. I picked up his gun and shot him, then I cut the boy free and told him to go.”
“What about the fire?” DI Bridges asked.
“Fire cleanses,” she said. “I wanted to purify the house.”
“What did you use to start it?”
“Rubbing alcohol. It was on the table.”
“What happened?”
“The boy came back and put it out. I told him not to, but he didn’t listen. Then he made me sit down and he rang the police. I just felt so tired I didn’t care what happened, but I couldn’t sleep.”
“I’m trying to understand all this, Frances,” Bridges said. “Why did you kill your husband?”
Frances looked at Banks, not at Bridges, her eyes burning with tears now. “Because he was going to hurt the boy.”
“He was going to hurt Mark?” It was DI Bridges who spoke, but Frances continued to look at Banks.
“Yes,” she said. “Patrick is a cruel man. You must know that. He was going to hurt the boy. He was tied to the chair.”
“But why did he want to hurt Mark?” Bridges asked.
Slowly, Frances turned to face him, still fiddling with her ring. “Because of Christine,” she said. “The boy took Christine from him. Patrick couldn’t bear to lose.”
Banks felt a chill ripple up his spine. Bridges turned to him, looking confused. “DCI Banks,” he said, “you’re familiar with the background to this case. Is there anything you’d like to ask?”
Banks turned to Frances Aspern. “You’re saying that your husband was going to harm Mark because Mark lived with Christine on the boat, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Did Patrick go to the boat last Thursday evening? Did he start the fire?”
Frances looked up sharply, surprised. “No,” she said. “No, we were at home. That much is true.”
“But was your husband sexually abusing Christine?”
The tears spilled over from Frances’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, but she didn’t sob or wail. “Yes,” she said.
“For how long?”
“Since she was twelve. When she… you know, when she started to develop. He couldn’t stop touching her.”
“Why didn’t she stop him? She must have known what was happening, that it was wrong? She could have gone to the authorities.”
Frances wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks with the sleeve of her overalls and gave Banks a what-do-you-know look. “He was the only father she had ever known,” she said. “He was strict with her when she was growing up. Always. She was terrified of him. She never dared disobey his demands.”
“And you knew about the sexual abuse from the start?”
“Yes. From very early on, at any rate.”
“How did you find out?”
“It’s not hard to recognize the signs, when you’re around all the time. Besides…”
“It happened with you, too?”
“How do you know?”
“I’m just guessing.”
She looked away. “I tried to tell Daddy, but I couldn’t. He wouldn’t have believed me, anyway, and if he had, it would have broken his heart.”
“So you did nothing about Christine, either?”
“How could I? I was terrified of him.”
“Even so, after your experiences, your own daughter…”
She slapped the table with her palm. “You’ve no idea how cruel Patrick could be. No idea.”
“Why? Did he hit you? Did he hit Christine?”
She shook her head. “No. What he did… it was worse than that, much worse. Cold, calculated.”
“What did he do?”
Frances looked away again, at a spot on the wall above Banks’s head, her eyes unfocused. “He… he knew chemicals.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Of course he did, he was a doctor, after all, wasn’t he?”
“What do you mean, Frances?”
She looked directly at Banks, her expression unfathomable. “Patrick knew drugs. Not illegal drugs. Prescriptions. What made you sleep. What made you stay awake. What made your heart beat like a frightened bird inside your chest. What made you sick. What made you have to go to the toilet all the time. What made your skin burn and your mouth dry.”