Aftermath

Young girls go missing all the time, Je

The number became four, then five, and no traces whatsoever could be found of any of the girls through the usual cha

In the end, Je

Victimology. What did they have in common? All the girls were young, had long blond hair, long legs and trim, athletic figures. It seemed to indicate the type of girl he liked, Je

By victim number four, Je

The criminal had chosen his haunts well. Open-air parties, pubs, dances, clubs, cinemas and pop concerts were all places where you were very likely to find young people, and they all had to get home one way or another. She knew that the team referred to him as the “Chameleon” and agreed that he showed a very high level of skill in taking his pick of victims without being seen. All had been abducted at night in urban settings – desolate stretches of city streets, ill-lit and deserted. He had also managed to stay well beyond the range of the CCTV cameras that covered many city centers and town squares these days.

A witness said she saw Samantha, the Bradford victim, talking to someone through the window of a dark car, and that was the only information Je

While the New Year’s Eve party, the Harrogate pop concert, the cinema and university pub were common knowledge, and obvious hunting grounds, one question that had bothered Je

Now she knew: Terence Payne lived just down the street, taught at the local comprehensive. Knew the victim.

Also, now, some of the things she had learned that day were making sense of some of the other puzzling facts and questions she had gathered over the weeks. Of the five abductions, four had occurred on a Friday night, or in the early hours of Saturday morning, which had led Je

From this scant information – all this before the Kimberley Myers abduction – Je

Je

Now she had seen the anteroom, where the killer had buried, or partially buried, the bodies, and she didn’t think that had been done by chance or done badly. She didn’t think that the toes of one victim were sticking through the earth because Terence Payne was a sloppy worker; they were like that because he wanted them that way, it was part of his fantasy, because he got off on it, as they said back in America. They were part of his collection, his trophy room. Or his garden.

Now Je

And there was another thing. Now Je

Had Lucy known what her husband was doing?

It was possible, at least, that she had her suspicions.

Why didn’t she come forward?

Because of some misguided sense of loyalty, perhaps – this was her husband, after all – or fear. If he had hit her with a vase last night, he could have hit her at other times, too, warned her of the fate that awaited her if she told anyone the truth. It would have been a living hell for Lucy, of course, but Je

But was Lucy more involved?

Again, possible. Je

Were women capable of such evil?

Definitely. And if they were ever caught, the outrage against them was far greater than against any male. You only had to look at the public’s reactions to Myra Hindley, Rosemary West and Karla Homolka to see that.

So was Lucy Payne a killer?

Banks felt bone-weary when he pulled up in the narrow lane outside his Gratly cottage close to midnight that night. He knew he should have probably taken a hotel room in Leeds, as he had done before, or accepted Ken Blackstone’s offer of the sofa, but he had very much wanted to go home tonight, even if A