When the Music's Over (15 page)

Winsome gave Banks an anxious look, and he glanced at his watch. “I'm afraid we'd better be off now,” he said.

“You're no fun. You're going to leave an old lady alone with her memories and her gin?”

“Needs must.”

She waved her glass at them and some of the gin slopped over the side, dribbled down her hand and splashed on the front of her T-shirt to join the cigarette ash. “Now see what you've made me do.” She pouted. “Go on, then. Off you go. They all do in the end.”

Banks and Winsome took their leave. As Winsome got behind the wheel, she turned to Banks and said, “I know it's only the second day, guv, but already I have to confess I'm getting sick to death of this case and these people.”

Banks had expected something like that. He wondered if Annie would have been able to keep quiet as long as Winsome had in Carol Canning's company. He doubted it. She wasn't quite as sensitive as Winsome, and not as well behaved. She usually gave as good as she got, or thought she was getting. “My sentiments exactly,” he said. “Give me a down-to-earth honest criminal anytime. The more god-awful these people are, the more we owe it to Linda Palmer to make a good case against Danny Caxton.”

“Yeah,” Winsome said. “I suppose so. I suppose you're right.”

“And cheer up. You know what the woman in the movie said: ‘Tomorrow's another day.'”

A
FTER A GLASS OF GRAPEFRUIT JUICE, A MUG OF
green tea and a bowl of muesli, Annie was ready to set off for work. She was hoping there would be something from forensics that morning, and an identification of the victim would also be welcome. When the news came on on her car radio, it was no surprise to hear that one of the main stories was about the unidentified young girl found murdered on a leafy lane in Yorkshire, and the other was about Danny Caxton being interviewed on a matter of historical sexual abuse. As yet, the media had only scant details about both cases. One of the things they didn't know, and were at all costs not to find out about, was that there had been a second car in the “leafy lane” on the night of the girl's murder. For the time being, it suited Annie for the rapists to think they were suspected of murder and the murderer to think he was home-free. That way the rapists might panic and perhaps make a mistake, and the killer would carry on blithely unaware while the police closed in on him. At least, that was the theory.

After they had drawn a blank in the Eastvale tattoo parlor and takeaway, Annie had told Gerry to work on the assumption that the victim was being transported from the northeast to some point south of Eastvale by a route off the beaten track. She had also assumed that the victim was from the northeast, but she had realized, lying awake in bed the previous night, that the vehicle might have been carrying the
girl
home
. Someone might have picked her up in Middlesbrough or Sunderland, for example, and been in the process of driving her back down south, to where she lived, when things had gone wrong and the driver had taken a detour down a quiet country lane and dumped her. Raped and bruised, but alive. But if that were the case, why was she walking back the way she had come?

Annie ignored the throng of media and made her way up to the squad room. Neither Winsome nor DC Doug Wilson was in, but Gerry sat at her desk working on the computer, hair held back by a tortoiseshell headband, which looked surprisingly cool on her. She maintained good posture, Annie noticed, unlike herself, who bent over, hunched and round-shouldered, as she hunted and pecked. Gerry seemed poised, ergonomically perfect, as if being at a computer keyboard were the most comfortable position in the world, everything at the right height and the right angle. And, of course, she touch-typed like a pro, eyes on the screen all the time.

“Anything yet?” Annie flopped into her chair, put her feet up on the desk and took a sip of the coffee she had picked up at the Starbucks on Market Street. She was trying to give it up, hence the green tea, but the lure of a latte was just too much at the start of the working day. Only one, though. That was her rule.

“Still nothing,” said Gerry, pausing at her labors. “The lab's finished with Roger Stanford's work clothes. Nothing there, as we suspected. We've also run checks on his background. Nothing. I think we can scratch him from our list. I've been in touch with Cleveland, Northumbria and the Durham Constabulary, and they'll offer us all the help we want. They're appalled by what happened, of course. They've already got patrol cars out to check up on the tattoo parlors and kebab and pizza places.”

“Good. How about CCTV?”

“That's a bit more interesting,” Gerry said, reaching for a file folder. “Though nothing to get too excited about. The nearest cameras service the big roundabout on the southwest edge of Eastvale, the end of Market Street. You'd turn off at the third exit for Bradham Lane, which is about two miles west.”

“OK. So we can find out who went that way.”

“Right, guv. But this is where it gets interesting. After the end of Bradham Lane, a mile or so west, there's another roundabout, where you'd take the first exit if you were heading for Harrogate and West Yorkshire.”

“Cameras?”

“Yes.”

“So if we find the same car on
both
roundabout cameras, separated by however long it takes to travel down Bradham Lane, and if the timing is right, then we might be on to something?”

“Yes.”

“Better stick at it then. Anything from missing persons yet?”

“Nothing. Either nobody's missed her yet or she makes a habit of disappearing for days at a time. I've also initiated inquiries at schools and social services. Oh, and you might not have seen this yet.” Gerry tossed one of the morning tabloids toward Annie's desk. “Page two.”

On the front page was a huge photograph of Danny Caxton receiving his MBE, circa 1985, and on page two was a short article about the mysterious naked girl found dead in the Yorkshire Dales. Beside it was an artist's impression of the victim, without broken teeth and swollen lips. Annie hadn't seen it yet. “She scrubs up nicely,” she said, shaking her head. “A pretty young girl. Jesus Christ, what a waste.”

“What do you think?”

“It's good.” Annie tapped the newspaper. “Someone might actually recognize her from this.”

The door opened and the diminutive Jazz Singh stood there in her lab coat, brandishing a buff file folder. “Before you ask,” she said, “I worked late last night, as did everyone in toxicology. This is a particularly nasty one and whatever you need, you know . . .”

“Thanks, Jazz,” said Annie. “What've you got for us?”

Jazz sat down in Doug Wilson's empty chair. “We're still waiting for the DNA results to process,” she began, “but it looks as if there were three distinct samples of seminal fluid in the girl's body. All secretors.”

Annie's jaw tightened. Three. The magic number. Gang bang. It was three men who had tried to rape her once. She flashed on the image of the naked girl being assailed from all sides, in all orifices, by
three men turned to animals by lust. Maybe they had jobs, families, loved their mothers, but that night, whether under the influence of drugs or not, they had become inhuman, bestial, and had violated and humiliated a vulnerable young girl.

“How can you tell how many there were if they were all mixed up?” she asked.

“We have our little secrets. You use Y-STR to separate them. The Y chromosome. The male line. And STR means short tandem repeats. They're—”

Annie held her hand up. “All right, all right. Sorry I asked. You've blinded me with science.”

“That didn't take long.”

“
Three
men, you say? Christ.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Jazz, as if reading Annie's thoughts. “What can I say? I only deliver the news. I should have DNA profiles before the end of the day, then at least we can check them against the database.”

“They won't be there,” said Annie. “They never are.”

“Don't be so negative. At least we've got three shots this time.”

“True. Anything else?”

Jazz pulled out some sheets of paper. “Preliminary tox results show a fair bit of alcohol in her system—”

“Enough to make her drunk?”

“Oh, yes. Tipsy at any rate. I don't know how well she could hold her booze, but Dr. Glendenning said her liver and kidneys show an unusual amount of damage for someone so young.”

“That's because someone booted them into her lungs,” said Annie. “Maybe we should be thankful she was pissed. She might have felt less pain and fear.”

“She wouldn't have felt much at all,” said Jazz. “We also found significant traces of ketamine in her system. The girl was off her face.”

“Enough to go along willingly with what they wanted?”

“Impossible to say for sure, but highly likely. Definitely high as a kite. Probably no sense of judgment. Even without the booze she'd have been gaga. A lot depends on when she took it, or was given it. It's fast-acting, but it doesn't last more than a couple of hours if you ingest
it. The doc didn't find any needle marks on her skin, so we're figuring she took it orally. I assume you're both aware of the effects?”

Annie glanced over at Gerry, who shook her head. “Remind us,” she said. “DC Masterson here failed drugs 101.”

“Hallucinations, sense of detachment from the body, depersonalization.” Jazz paused. “From what we can tell, it was a high dose, around a hundred milligrams.”

“What does that mean?” Gerry asked.

Jazz picked up another sheet of paper. “Have you heard of the K-hole?”

“Vaguely,” said Annie.

Gerry merely looked puzzled.

“It's a state some users enter into when the dosage is somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred and twenty-five milligrams. People have described it as like entering an alternate universe or another dimension, a black hole in the soul. You leave everything you know behind, including yourself. Loss of identity, loss of bodily awareness, sensation of floating, euphoria, loss of time perception.”

“Sounds like fun,” said Annie.

“As I said, I don't think she would have felt any pain. With any luck, she might have had no sensation at all, been somewhere else entirely, not really aware of what was happening to her.”

“Until later,” said Annie. “It may explain why they kicked her out of the van.”

“Yes,” Jazz agreed. “But it can also cause amnesia. You forget it all like you forget a dream. If you come back at all, that is. They say it's a state very close to clinical schizophrenia.”

No matter how high or depersonalized the girl had been, Annie doubted that she had been completely unaware of what was being done to her in the van.

“Well, we'll never know what she felt, will we?” said Gerry. “So there's not much point in speculating. But now we know she was raped by three men, and she had been plied with alcohol and ketamine, we've got a bit more to go on, haven't we? Her murder could be drug-related.”

Annie smiled. “Ever the practical one, Gerry. Ask the locals to
check known dealers—especially in ketamine. But it hardly narrows down the field much, does it?”

“Same general area?”

“For the time being. If we draw a blank we can expand the search.”

“I said there were traces of sperm from three distinct sources,” said Jazz. “Not that she was raped by three men.”

“You didn't see the body,” said Annie. “But we'll bear that in mind.”

“The dental records and tats photos are still doing the rounds,” Gerry added. “We might get something from them, though it doesn't appear she visited a dentist very often.”

Annie turned to Jazz. “Thanks for getting this done so quickly,” she said. “And we'll keep our fingers crossed there's a hit with the DNA database.”

“Even if there isn't, I should have a bit more information on the assailants for you later. Pity DNA doesn't indicate home address.”

Annie laughed. “It would certainly make our job a hell of a lot easier. Thanks again.”

“
IT'S ABOUT
time we had that celebratory drink,” said DCI Ken Blackstone. “Congratulations on the promotion, Alan.”

They raised their glasses and clinked. Banks sipped some of his Sam Smith's and forked up a piece of black pudding and smoked bacon Scotch egg. Blackstone was eating a prawn and Marie Rose sandwich washed down with a glass of chilled California blush.

“I'm not sure ‘congratulations' is the right word for it,” Banks said. “But thanks, anyway.”

Blackstone scratched his head. “What do you mean? Too much paperwork?”

“That, too. But . . . that's not why I wanted to see you. The drink, of course, but . . .”

“Something on your mind?”

“My first big case as a superintendent.”

“Yes?”

“Danny Caxton.”

Blackstone put his sandwich down. “Oh, bloody hell. They certainly chucked you in at the deep end.”

“That's an understatement. Though I must say, having talked to both the accuser and the man himself, I'm a lot more keen than I was a couple of days ago.”

They were sitting opposite each other at the end of a wooden bench in the narrow alley outside Whitelock's, one of Leeds city center's oldest pubs, and usually one of the most crowded. That lunchtime was no exception. Summer students sat on nearby benches smoking and idling over their pints, shop girls from the Trinity Centre gossiped over a gin and orange or white wine spritzers and office clerks chatted over a quick half of bitter. The used plates, emptied of their beef in ale pies, burgers, hotdogs or cheese and chutney sandwiches, were piling up. The staff could hardly keep up with the serving, let alone the clearing away. The buildings were high on both sides of the narrow alley, letting in no sun, but the heat certainly had everyone wilting, Banks included. Blackstone remained immaculate and cool in suit, shirt and tie. With the glasses, bald spot on top and tufts of hair above his ears, he was getting to resemble Philip Larkin or Eric Morecambe a bit more every time Banks saw him. He had also put on a little weight, Banks noticed. Though the alley was crowded, there was a gap between Banks and Blackstone and the group of students, German by the sound of them, sitting next to them. And it wasn't too noisy to have a conversation.

Banks had spent the morning with Winsome going over the itemized lists of stuff the search team had taken from Caxton's house the previous evening and sending out inquiries for lists of his friends, employees and associates in the late sixties. There was nothing so far from the search, only a bit of mild Internet porn, but there were diaries and appointment calendars that might prove useful in pinning down his movements at critical times, and predigital photographs that might link him with some of his victims. He had left Winsome to continue the task while he drove to Leeds.

“There were always rumors about him,” Blackstone said. “You know he lived not too far from here for a while?”

“Yes. Otley, wasn't it?”

“That's right. Had a nice big house after his first flush of fame in the early sixties. Before my time, of course, but there were rumors of parties. Orgies, I suppose. Quite the ‘A' guest list, too, if the stories are to be believed. High-ranking coppers, judges, politicians, a bishop or two.”