“She couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”

“No. But she knew things were coming to a head. She was working on damage control, and hiding the tapes was part of it. Where were they?”

“The loft,” Maggie said. “She knew I didn’t go up there.”

“And she knew she’d be able to get at them without too much trouble, that you were probably the only person in the whole country who’d give her house room. That was the other clue. There was really nowhere else for her to go. First we talked to your neighbors, and when Claire’s mother told us you’d just got home and another neighbor said she’d seen a young woman knocking at your back door a couple of nights ago, it seemed to add up.”

“You must think I was so stupid to take her in.”

“Foolish, maybe, naïve, but not necessarily stupid.”

“She just seemed so… so…”

“So much the victim?”

“Yes. I wanted to believe in her, needed to. Maybe as much for me as for her. I don’t know.”

Banks nodded. “She played the role well. She could do that because it was partially true. She’d had a lot of practice.”

“What do you mean?

Banks told her about the Alderthorpe Seven and the murder of Kathleen Murray. When he had finished, Maggie turned pale, swallowed and lay back in silence, staring at the ceiling. It was a minute or so before she spoke again. “She killed her cousin when she was only twelve?”

“Yes. That’s partly what set us looking for her again. At last we had a bit of evidence that suggested she was more than she pretended to be.”

“But a lot of people have terrible childhoods,” said Maggie, some color returning to her face. “Perhaps not as terrible as that, but they don’t all turn into killers. What was so different about Lucy?”

“I wish I knew the answer,” said Banks. “Terry Payne was a rapist when they met, and Lucy had killed Kathleen. Somehow or other, the two of them getting together the way they did created a special sort of chemistry, acted as a trigger. We don’t know why. We’ll probably never know.”

“And if they’d never met?”

Banks shrugged. “It may never have happened. None of it. Terry finally gets caught for rape and put in jail, while Lucy goes on to marry a nice young man, have two point four children and become a bank manager. Who knows?”

“Makes sense. She’d done it before. He hadn’t.”

“She said she did it out of kindness.”

“Maybe she did. Or out of self-protection. Or out of jealousy. You can’t expect her to understand her own motives any better than we can, or to tell the truth about them. With someone like Lucy it was probably some strange sort of combination of all three.”

“She also said they met because he raped her. Tried to rape her. I couldn’t really understand. She said she raped him as much as he raped her.”

Banks shifted in his chair. He wished he could have a cigarette, even though he had determined to quit before the year was out. “I can’t explain it any more than you can, Maggie. I might be a policeman, and I might have seen a lot more of the dark side of human nature than you, but something like this… for someone with a past like Lucy’s, who knows how topsy-turvy things can get? I should imagine that after the things that had been done to her in Alderthorpe, and given her peculiar sexual tastes, Terence Payne was a bit of a pussycat to deal with.”

“She said to think of her as a five-legged sheep.”

The image took Banks back to his childhood, when the traveling fair came around at Easter and in autumn and set up on the local recreation ground. There were rides – Waltzers, Caterpillar, Dodgems and Speedway – and stalls where you could throw weighted darts at playing cards or shoot at tin figures with an air rifle to win a goldfish in a plastic bag full of water; there were flashing lights and crowds and loud music; but there was also the freak show, a tent set up on the edge of the fairground, where you paid your sixpence and went inside to see the exhibits. They were ultimately disappointing, not a genuine bearded lady, elephant man, spider woman or pinhead in sight. Those kinds of freaks Banks only saw later in Todd Browning’s famous movie. None of these freaks were alive, for a start; they were deformed animals, stillborn or killed at birth, and they floated in the huge glass jars full of preserving fluid – a lamb with a fifth leg sticking out of its side; a kitten with horns; a puppy with two heads, a calf with no eye sockets – the stuff that nightmares were made of.

“Despite what happened,” Maggie went on, “I want you to know that I’m not going to let it turn me into a cynic. I know you think I’m naïve, but if that’s the choice, I’d rather be naïve than bitter and untrusting.”

“You made a mistake in judgment and it almost got you killed.”

“Do you think she would have killed me if you hadn’t come?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. But Lucy was… she was as much a victim as anything. You weren’t there. You didn’t hear her. She didn’t want to kill me.”

“Maggie, for crying out loud, will you just listen to yourself! She murdered God knows how many young girls. She would have killed you, believe me. If I were you, I’d put the victim thing right out of my mind.”

“I’m not you.”

Banks took a deep breath and sighed. “Lucky for both of us, isn’t it? What will you do now?”

“Do?”

“Will you stay at The Hill?”

“Yes, I think so.” Maggie scratched at her bandages, then squinted at Banks. “I don’t really have anywhere else to go. And there’s still my work, of course. Another thing I’ve discovered through all this is that I can also do some good. I can be a voice for people who don’t have one, or who don’t dare speak out. People listen to me.”

Banks nodded. He didn’t say so, but he suspected that Maggie’s very public championing of Lucy Payne might well tarnish her ability to act as a believable spokesperson for abused women. But perhaps not. About all you could say about the public, when it came right down to it, was that they were a fickle lot. Maybe Maggie would emerge as a heroine.

“Look, you’d better get some rest,” Banks said. “I just wanted to see how you were. We’ll want to talk to you in some detail later. But there’s no hurry. Not now.”

“Isn’t it all over?”

Banks looked into her eyes. He could tell she wanted it to be over, wanted to stand at a distance and think it through, get her life going again – work, good deeds, the lot. “There still might be a trial,” he said.

“A trial? But I don’t…”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“I just assumed… oh, shit.”

“I’ve been pretty much out of it, what with the drugs and all. What is it?”

Banks leaned forward and rested his hand on her forearm. “Maggie,” he said, “I don’t know how to say this any other way, but Lucy Payne isn’t dead.”

Maggie recoiled from his touch and her eyes widened. “Not dead? But I don’t understand. I thought… I mean, she…”

“She jumped out of the window, yes, but the fall didn’t kill her. Your front path is overgrown, and the bushes broke her fall. The thing is, though, she landed on the sharp edge of one of the steps and broke her back. It’s serious. Very serious. There’s severe damage to the spinal cord.”

“What does that mean?”

“The surgeons aren’t sure of the full extent of her injuries yet – they’ve got a lot more tests to do – but they think she’ll be paralyzed from the neck down.”

“But Lucy’s not dead?”

“No.”

“She’ll be in a wheelchair?”

“If she survives.”

Maggie looked toward the window again. Banks could see tears glistening in her eyes. “So she is in a cage, after all.”

Banks stood up to leave. He was finding Maggie’s compassion for a killer of teenage girls difficult to take and didn’t trust himself not to say something he’d regret. Just as he got to the door, he heard her small voice: “Superintendent Banks?”