“Nothing will turn up in the next four hours, believe me. Release her.”
“What about surveillance?”
“Too bloody expensive. Tell the local police to keep an eye on her, and tell her to stick around; we might want to talk to her again.”
“If she’s guilty, she’ll disappear.”
“If she’s guilty we’ll find the evidence and then we’ll find her.”
“Let me have one more shot at her first.” Banks held his breath as Hartnell paused at the other end.
“All right. Talk to her one more time. If she doesn’t confess, let her go. But be bloody careful. I don’t want any allegations of Gestapo interrogation tactics.”
Banks heard a knock at his door, put his hand over the mouthpiece and called out, “Come in.”
Julia Ford entered and gave him a broad smile.
“No worry on that score, sir,” Banks said to Hartnell. “Her lawyer will be present at all times.”
“Quite the zoo out there, isn’t it?” Julia Ford said after Banks had hung up. The fine lines around her eyes crinkled when she smiled. She was wearing a different suit this morning – gray with a pearl blouse – but it looked every bit as business-like. Her hair looked shiny, as if fresh from the shower, and she had applied just enough makeup to take a few years off her age.
“Yes,” Banks answered. “Looks as if someone tipped the entire British media off about Lucy’s whereabouts.”
“Are you going to let her go?”
“Soon. I want another chat first.”
Julia sighed and opened the door for him. “Ah, well. Once more unto the breach.”
Hull and beyond were parts of Yorkshire Jenny hardly knew at all. On her map there was a tiny village called Kilnsea right at the southern tip of land where the Humber joined the North Sea, just before a thin strip called Spurn Head, designated as a heritage coast, stuck out into the sea like a witch’s crooked, wizened finger. It looked so desolate out there that Jenny shuddered just looking at the map, feeling the ceaseless cold wind and the biting salt spray she imagined were all one would find there.
Was it named Spurn Head because someone was spurned there once, she wondered, and her ghost lingered, walking the sands and wailing in the night, or because “spurn” was a corruption of “sperm” and it looked a bit like a sperm wiggling out to sea? It was probably something much more prosaic, like “peninsula” in Viking. Jenny wondered if anybody ever went there. Birders, perhaps; they were crazy enough to go anywhere in search of the elusive lesser-speckled yellow tree warbler, or some such creature. It didn’t look as if there were any holiday resorts in the region, except perhaps Withernsea, which Banks had visited yesterday. All the hot spots were much farther north: Bridlington, Filey, Scarborough, Whitby, all the way up to Saltburn and Redcar, in Teeside.
It was a fine day: windy, but sunny with only an occasional high white cloud passing over. It wasn’t exactly warm – definitely light-jacket weather – but then it wasn’t freezing, either. Jenny seemed to be the only car on the road beyond Patrington, where she stopped briefly for a cup of coffee and a look at St. Patrick’s Church, reputed to be one of the finest village churches in England.
It was desolate country, mostly flat farmland, green fields and the occasional flash of bright yellow rapeseed. What villages she passed through were no more than mean assemblages of bungalows and the odd row of redbrick terraces. Soon, the surrealistic landscape of the North Sea Gas Terminal, with its twisted metal pipes and storage units, came into view, and Jenny headed up the coast toward Alderthorpe.
She had been thinking about Banks quite a lot during her journey and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t happy. She didn’t know why. Apart from Sandra’s pregnancy, which was obviously upsetting to him for any number of reasons, he had everything to be thankful for. For a start, his career was back on track, and he had an attractive young girlfriend. At least she assumed that Annie was attractive.
But perhaps it was Annie who was making Banks unhappy? He had never seemed quite certain of their relationship whenever Jenny had questioned him. She had assumed that was mostly due to his innate evasiveness when it came to personal and emotional matters – like most men – but perhaps he was genuinely confused.
Not that she could do anything. She remembered how disappointed she had felt last year when he had accepted her dinner invitation and failed to turn up, or even phone. Jenny had sat there in her most seductive silky outfit, duck à l’orange in the oven, ready to take a risk again, and waited and waited. At last he had phoned. He’d been called to a hostage situation. Well, it was definitely a good excuse, but it didn’t do much to dispel her sense of disappointment and loss. Since then, they had been more circumspect with each other, neither willing to risk making an arrangement in case it got screwed up, but still she fretted about Banks and still, she admitted to herself, she wanted him.
The flat, desolate landscape went on and on. How on earth could anybody live in such a remote and backward spot? Jenny wondered. She saw the sign pointing east – ALDERTHORPE 1/2 MILE – and set off down the narrow unpaved track hoping to hell there was no one coming the other way. Still, the landscape was so open – hardly a tree in sight – that she could easily see someone coming from a long way away.
The half-mile seemed to go on forever, as short distances often do on country roads. Then she saw a huddle of houses ahead, and she could smell the sea through her open window, though she couldn’t see it yet. When she found herself turning left on to a paved street with bungalows on one side and rows of redbrick terrace houses on the other, she realized this must be Alderthorpe. She saw a small post office-cum-general store with a rack of newspapers fluttering in the breeze, a greengrocer’s and a butcher’s, a squat gospel hall and a mean-looking pub called the Lord Nelson, and that was it.
Jenny pulled up behind a blue Citroën outside the post office and when she got out of the car she thought she could see curtains twitching over the road, feel curious eyes on her back as she opened the post-office door. No one comes here, she imagined the people thinking. What could she possibly want? Jenny felt as if she had walked into one of those lost-village stories, the place that time forgot, and she had the illogical sense that by walking into it she was lost too, and all memory of her in the real world was gone. Silly fool, she told herself, but she shivered, and it wasn’t cold.
The bell pinged above her head, and she found herself in the kind of shop that she guessed had ceased to exist even before she was born, where jars of barley sugar rubbed shoulders with shoelaces and patent medicines on high shelves, and birthday cards stood on a rack next to the half-inch nails and tins of evaporated milk. It smelled both musty and fruity – pear drops, Jenny thought – and the light that filtered in from the street was dim and cast strips of shadow on the sales counter. There was a small post-office wicket, and the woman standing there in a threadbare brown coat turned and stared at Jenny when she entered. The postmistress herself peered around her customer and adjusted her glasses. They had clearly been having a good natter and were none too thrilled at being interrupted.
“Can I help you?” the postmistress asked.
“I wondered if you could tell me where the old Murray and Godwin houses are,” Jenny asked.
“Why would you be wanting to know that?”
“It’s to do with a job I’m doing.”
“Newspaper reporter, are you?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I’m a forensic psychologist.”
This stopped the woman in her tracks. “It’s Spurn Lane you want. Just over the street and down the lane to the sea. Last two semis. You can’t miss them. Nobody’s lived there for years.”