“Including reinterviewing the list of car owners Bradford CID got from the DVLA.”
“Over a thousand, sir.”
“Indeed,” said Banks, “but am I correct in assuming that you had plenty of help, that the action was split up and that the letter P was among those alphabetically assigned to you? Because that’s what it says in my files. P for Payne.”
“There were still a lot to go, sir. We haven’t got around to them all yet.”
“You haven’t got around to them yet? This was at the beginning of April. Over a month ago. You’ve been dragging your feet a bit, haven’t you?”
“It’s not as if it was the only action assigned us, sir,” said Bowmore.
“Look,” said Banks, “I don’t want any excuses. For one reason or another, you failed to reinterview Terence Payne.”
“But it wouldn’t have made any difference, sir,” Bowmore argued. “I mean, Bradford CID didn’t exactly mark him down as their number one suspect, did they? What was he going to tell us that he didn’t tell them? He wasn’t going to decide to confess just because we went to talk to him, was he?”
Banks ran his hand over his hair and muttered a silent curse. He was not a natural authoritarian – far from it – and he hated this part of the job, dishing out bollockings, having been on the receiving end of plenty himself, but if anyone ever did, these two prize pillocks deserved the worst he could give. “Is this supposed to be an example of you using your initiative?” he said. “Because if it is, you’d have been better advised to stick to procedure and follow orders.”
“But, sir,” Singh said, “he was a schoolteacher. Newly married. Nice house. We did read over all the statements.”
“I’m sorry,” said Banks, shaking his head. “Am I missing something here?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Well, I’m not aware that Dr. Fuller had given us any sort of profile of the person we were looking for at this point.”
DC Singh grinned. “Hasn’t given us much of anything when you get right down to it, has she, sir?”
“So what made you think you could rule out a recently married schoolteacher with a nice house?”
Singh’s jaw opened and shut like a fish mouth. Bowmore looked down at his shoes.
“Well?” Banks repeated. “I’m waiting.”
“Look, sir,” said Singh, “I’m sorry, but we just hadn’t got around to him yet.”
“Have you talked to any of the people on your list?”
“A couple, sir,” muttered Singh. “The ones Bradford CID had marked down as possibles. There was one bloke had a previous for flashing, but he had a solid alibi for Leanne Wray and Melissa Horrocks. We checked that out, sir.”
“So when you’d nothing better to do, you’d fill in a bit of overtime by ticking a name or two off the list, names that Bradford CID had put question marks beside. Is that it?”
“That’s not fair, sir,” Bowmore argued.
“Not fair. I’ll tell you what’s not bloody fair, DC Bowmore. It’s not bloody fair that at least five girls that we know of so far have most likely died at the hands of Terence Payne. That’s what’s not fair.”
“But he wouldn’t have admitted it to us, sir,” Singh protested.
“You’re supposed to be detectives, aren’t you? Look, let me put it simply. If you’d gone around to Payne’s house when you were supposed to, say last month, then one or two more girls might not have died.”
“You can’t put that down to us, sir,” Bowmore protested, red in the face. “That’s just not on.”
“Oh, isn’t it? What if you’d seen or heard something suspicious while you were in the house interviewing him? What if your finely developed detective’s instinct had picked up on something and you’d asked to have a look around?”
“Bradford CID didn’t-”
“I don’t give a damn what Bradford CID did or didn’t do. They were examining a single case: the disappearance of Samantha Foster. You, on the other hand, were investing a case of serial abductions. If you’d had any reason at all to look in the cellar you’d have had him, believe me. Even if you’d poked around his video collection it might have raised your suspicions. If you’d looked at his car, you’d have noticed the false plates. The ones he’s using now end in NGV, not KWT. That might have rung a few alarm bells, don’t you think? Instead you decide on your own that this action isn’t worth rushing on. God knows what else you thought was so much more important. Well?”
They both looked down.
“Nothing to say for yourselves?”
“No, sir,” muttered a tight-lipped DC Singh.
“I’ll even give you the benefit of the doubt,” said Banks. “I’ll assume that you were pursuing other angles and not just skiving off. But you still screwed up.”
“But he must’ve lied to Bradford CID,” Bowmore argued. “He’d only have lied to us, too.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” said Banks. “I’ve told you. You’re supposed to be detectives. You don’t take anything at face value. Maybe you’d have noticed something about his body language. Maybe you’d have caught him out in a lie. Maybe – God forbid – you might have even checked one of his alibis and found it didn’t hold up. Maybe just something might have made you a little bit suspicious about Terence Payne. Am I making myself clear? You had at least two, maybe three, more things to go on than Bradford had, and you blew it. Now you’re off the case, both of you, and this is going on your records. Clear?”
Bowmore looked daggers at Banks, and Singh seemed close to tears, but Banks had no sympathy for either of them at that moment. He felt a splitting headache coming on. “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “And don’t let me see you in the incident room again.”
Maggie hid herself away in the sanctuary of Ruth’s studio. Spring sunshine spilled through the window, which she opened an inch or two to let in some air. It was a spacious room at the back of the house, originally the third bedroom, and while the view through the window left a lot to be desired – a grotty, litter-strewn back passage and the council estate beyond – the room itself was perfect for her needs. Upstairs, in addition to the three rooms, toilet, and bathroom, there was also a loft, accessed by a pull-down ladder, that Ruth said she used for storage. Maggie didn’t store anything there; in fact, she never even went up there, as she felt disturbed by spidery, dusty, neglected places, the mere thought of which made her shiver. She had allergies, too, and the slightest hint of dust made her eyes burn and her nose itch.
Another bonus today was that upstairs at the back of the house, she wasn’t constantly distracted by all the activity out on The Hill. It was open to traffic again, but number 35 was screened off and people kept coming and going, bringing out boxes and bags of God knew what. She couldn’t quite put it out of her mind, of course, but she didn’t read the newspaper that morning, and she tuned the radio to a classical station that had few news breaks.
She was preparing to illustrate a new coffee-table selection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, working on thumbnails and preliminary sketches, and what nasty, gruesome little stories they were, she discovered on reading through them for the first time since childhood. Back then, they had seemed remote, cartoonish, but now the horror and the violence seemed all too real. The sketch she had just finished was for “Rumpelstiltskin,” the poison dwarf who helped Anna spin straw into gold in exchange for her firstborn. Her illustration was a bit too idealized, she thought: a sad-looking girl-child at a spinning wheel, with just the suggestion of two burning eyes and the distorted shadow of the dwarf in the background. She could hardly use the scene where he stamped so hard his foot went through the floor and his leg came off as he tried to pull it out. Matter-of-fact violence, no dwelling on blood and guts the way so many films did these days – special effects for the sake of it – but violence nonetheless.