Aftermath

Winsome smiled wickedly. “Doubt it very much, sir.”

Banks looked at his watch. “When you’ve talked to Gardner and the car’s safe in our care, have Mick Blair brought in. I think a little chat with him in one of the interview rooms might be very productive.”

“Right you are.”

“And have Sarah Francis brought in at the same time.”

“Okay.”

“And, Winsome.”

“Sir?”

“Make sure they see one another in passing, would you?”

“My pleasure, sir.” Winsome smiled, stood up and left the office.

“Look,” said Je

“There’s a café down the road,” he said. “We can go there if you want.”

“Fine.”

Je

“Laura, isn’t it?” she said when they’d settled.

The young woman raised her eyebrows. “Why, yes. How did you know?”

“It wasn’t difficult,” Je

Laura blushed. “I’m only visiting him. It’s not… I mean, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Don’t worry,” said Je

“Let’s get back to my original question,” Keith Murray cut in. He was more hard-edged than Laura and not one for small talk. “That’s who are you and why you’re here. You might as well tell me what you were doing at Alderthorpe, too, while you’re at it.”

Laura looked surprised. “She was in Alderthorpe?”

“On Saturday. I followed her to Easington and then to Spurn Head. I turned back when she got to the M62.” He looked at Je

He was a good-looking young man, brown hair a little over his ears and collar, but professionally layered, slightly better-dressed than most of the students she taught, in a light sports jacket and gray chinos, highly polished shoes. Clean-shaven. Clearly a young lad who took some pride in his rather conservative appearance. Laura, in contrast, wore a shapeless sort of shift that hung around her in a haze of material and hid any claims she might have had to the kind of figure men like. There was a reticence and tentativeness about her that made Je

She told them who she was and what she was doing, about her forays into Lucy Payne’s past, looking for answers to her present, and both Laura and Keith listened intently. When she had finished, they looked at each other, and she could tell they were communicating in some way that was beyond her. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, and she didn’t believe it was some sort of telepathic trick, just that whatever they had been through all those years ago had created a bond so strong and deep that it went beyond words.

“What makes you think you’ll find any answers there?” Keith asked.

“I’m a psychologist,” Je

“And what is Linda, or Lucy, as she calls herself now?”

Je

“Why should we help you?”

“I don’t know,” said Je

Keith laughed. “If we lived to be a hundred, we’d still have issues to deal with from back then,” he said. “But what’s that got to do with Linda?”

“She was with you, wasn’t she? One of you.”

Keith and Laura looked at each other again and Je

“What do you mean, Laura?”

“Linda was the eldest, so she took care of us.”

Keith snorted.

“She did, Keith.”

“All right.”

Laura’s lower lip trembled, and for a moment Je

“I know Linda was my sister,” Laura said, rubbing one hand against the top of her thigh, “but there’s three years between us, and that’s an awful lot when you’re younger.”

“Tell me about it. My brother’s three years older than me.”

“Well, you’ll know what I mean, then. So I didn’t really know Linda. In some ways, she was as distant as an adult to me, and just as incomprehensible. We played together when we were little, but the older we got, the more we drifted apart, especially with… you know… the way things were.”

“What was she like, though?”

“Linda? She was strange. Very distant. Very self-absorbed, even then. She liked to play games, and she could be cruel.”

“In what way?”

“If she didn’t get her own way, or if you didn’t do what she wanted, she could lie and get you in trouble with the adults. Get you put in the cage.”

“She did that?”

“Oh, yes,” said Keith. “All of us got on her bad side at one time or another.”

“Sometimes we just didn’t know if she was with us or them,” said Laura. “But she could be kind. I remember her treating a cut I had once, putting some TCP on so it didn’t get infected. She was very gentle. And sometimes she even stuck up for us against them.”

“In what ways?”

“Little ways. If we were, you know, too weak to… or just… sometimes they listened to her. And she saved the kittens.”

“What kittens?”

“Our cat had kittens and D-d-dad wanted to drown them but Linda took them and found them all homes.”

“She liked animals, then?”

“She adored them. She wanted to be a vet when she grew up.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she wasn’t clever enough. Or maybe she changed her mind.”

“But she was also their victim, too? The adults.”

“Oh, yes,” said Keith. “We all were.”

“She was their favorite for a long time,” Laura added. “That is, until she…”

“She what, Laura? Take your time.”

Laura blushed and looked away. “Until she became a woman. When she was twelve. Then they weren’t interested in her anymore. Kathleen became their favorite then. She was only nine, like me, but they liked her better.”

“What was Kathleen like?”

Laura’s eyes shone. “She was… like a saint. She bore it all without complaining, everything those… those people did to us. Kathleen had some sort of i

“Like what?”

“The cage. And no food for days. She was too weak and frail to begin with.”