“And he abused you, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Physically?”

“Sometimes he hit me. Where the bruises wouldn’t show.”

“Until Monday morning.”

Lucy touched her bandages. “Yes.”

“Why was it different that time, Lucy?”

“I don’t know. I still can’t remember.”

“That’s okay,” Jenny went on. “I’m not here to force you to say anything you don’t want. Just relax. Did your husband abuse you in other ways?”

“What do you mean?”

“Emotionally, for example.”

“Do you mean like putting me down, humiliating me in front of people?”

“That’s the kind of thing I mean.”

“Then the answer’s yes. Like, you know, if something I cooked wasn’t very good or I hadn’t ironed his shirt properly. He was very fussy about his shirts.”

“What did he do if his shirts weren’t ironed properly?”

“He’d make me do them again and again. Once he even burned me with the iron.”

“Where?”

Lucy looked away. “Where it wouldn’t show.”

“I’m curious about the cellar, Lucy. Detective Superintendent Banks here told me you said you never went down there.”

“I might have been there the once… you know… the time he hurt me.”

“On Monday morning?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t remember?”

“No.”

“You never went down there before?”

Lucy’s voice took on a strange keening edge. “No. Never. Not since we first moved in, anyway.”

“How long after that was it that he forbade you to go there?”

“I don’t remember. Not long. When he’d done his conversions.”

“What conversions?”

“He told me he’d made it into a den, his own private place.”

“Were you never curious?”

“Not much. Besides, he always kept it locked and he carried the key with him. He said if he ever thought I’d been down there he’d thrash me to within an inch of my life.”

“And you believed him?”

She turned her dark eye on Jenny. “Oh, yes. It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“Did your husband ever mention pornography to you?”

“Yes. He sometimes brought videos home, things he said he’d borrowed from Geoff, one of the other teachers. Sometimes we watched them together.” She looked at Banks. “You must have seen them. I mean, you’ve probably been in the house, searching and stuff.”

Banks remembered the tapes. “Did Terry have a camcorder?” he asked her. “Did he make his own tapes?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said.

Jenny picked up the thread again. “What sort of videos did he like?” she asked.

“People having sex. Girls together. Sometimes people tied up.”

“You said you watched the videos together sometimes. Did you like them? What effect did they have on you? Did he force you to watch them?”

Lucy shifted under her thin bedsheets. The outline of her body stirred Banks in ways he didn’t want to be stirred by her. “I didn’t really like them much,” she said in a sort of husky little-girl voice. “Sometimes, you know, though, even so… they… they excited me.” She moved again.

“Did your husband abuse you sexually, make you do things you didn’t want to do?” Jenny asked.

“No,” she said. “It was all just normal.”

Banks was beginning to wonder if the marriage to Lucy was just a part of Terence Payne’s “normal” facade, something to make people think twice about his real proclivities. After all, it had worked on DCs Bowmore and Singh, who hadn’t even bothered to reinterview him. Perhaps he went elsewhere to satisfy his more perverse tastes – prostitutes, for example. It was worth looking into.

“Do you know if he went with other women?” Jenny asked, as if reading Banks’s mind.

“He never said.”

“But did you suspect it?”

“I thought he might have done, yes.”

“Prostitutes?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t like to think about it.”

“Did you ever find his behavior bizarre?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he ever shock you, make you wonder what he was up to?”

“Not really. He had a terrible temper… you know… if he didn’t get his own way. And sometimes, during school holidays, I didn’t see him for days.”

“You didn’t know where he was?”

“No.”

“And he never told you?”

“No.”

“Weren’t you curious?”

She seemed to shrink back into the bed. “Curiosity never did you any good with Terry. ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ he’d say, ‘and if you don’t shut up, it’ll kill you, too.’ ” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I did wrong. Everything was fine. It was just a normal life. Until I met Terry. Then everything started to fall apart. How could I be such a fool? I should have known.”

“Known what, Lucy?”

“What kind of person he was. What a monster he was.”

“But you did know. You told me he hit you, humiliated you in public and in private. You did know. Are you trying to tell me you thought that was normal? Did you think that was how everybody lived?”

“No, of course not. But it didn’t make him the sort of monster you think he is.” Lucy looked away again.

“What is it, Lucy?” Jenny asked.

“You must think I’m such a weak person to let him do all that. A terrible person. But I’m not. I’m a nice person. Everybody says I am. I was frightened. Talk to Maggie. She understands.”

Banks stepped in. “Maggie Forrest? Your neighbor?”

“Yes.” Lucy looked in his direction. “She sent me those flowers. We talked about it… you know… about men abusing their wives, and she tried to persuade me to leave Terry, but I was too frightened. Maybe in a while I might have found the courage. I don’t know. It’s too late now, isn’t it? Please, I’m tired. I don’t want to talk anymore. I just want to go home and get on with my life.”

Banks wondered whether he should tell Lucy that she wouldn’t be going home for some time, that her home looked like the site of an archaeological dig and would be in the police’s hands for weeks, perhaps months, to come. He decided not to bother. She would find out soon enough.

“We’ll go now, then,” said Jenny, standing up. “Take care, Lucy.”

“Would you do me a favor?” Lucy asked as they stood in the doorway.

“What is it?” Banks asked.

“Back at the house, there’s a nice little jewelry box on the dressing table in the bedroom. It’s a lacquered Japanese box, black with all kinds of beautiful flowers hand-painted on it. Anyway, it’s got all my favorite pieces in – earrings I bought on our honeymoon on Crete, a gold chain with a heart Terry bought me when we got engaged. They’re my things. Would you bring it to me, please? My jewelry box.”

Banks tried to hold in his frustration. “Lucy,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “We believe that several young girls were sexually abused and murdered in the cellar of your house, and all you can think about is your jewelry?”

“That’s not true,” said Lucy, a hint of petulance in her tone. “I’m very sorry for what happened to those girls, of course I am, but it’s not my fault. I don’t see why it should stop me having my jewelry box. The only thing anyone’s let me have from there is my handbag and purse, and I could tell someone had even been searching through them first.”

Banks followed Jenny out into the corridor and they headed for the lifts. “Calm down, Alan,” said Jenny. “Lucy’s dissociating. She doesn’t realize the emotional significance of what’s happened.”

“Right,” said Banks glancing at the clock on the wall. “That’s just bloody fine and dandy. Now I have to go and watch Dr. Mackenzie do his next postmortem, but I’ll do my damnedest to remember that none of it is Lucy Payne’s fault and that she’s managing to dissociate herself from it all, thank you.”

Jenny put her hand on his arm. “I can understand why you’re frustrated, Alan, but it won’t do any good. You can’t push her. She won’t be pushed. Be patient.”

The lift came and they got in. “Trying to have a conversation with that woman is like trying to catch water in a sieve,” Banks said.