Banks sat down and rubbed his hands together. “Tell me more.”
“Keeper’s name is Samuel Gardner. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. Seems he parked there while he popped into the Cock and Bull on Palmerston Avenue, just for a pint of shandy, he stressed.”
“Of course. Perish the thought we should try to do him for drink-driving two months after the event. What do you think, Winsome?”
Winsome shifted and crossed her legs the other way, straightening the hem of her skirt over her knees. “I don’t know, sir. Seems a bit of a coincidence, doesn’t it?”
“That Ian Scott’s in the neighborhood?”
“Yes, sir. I know there are plenty of kids taking and driving away, but… well, the timing fits, and the location.”
“Indeed it does. When did he report it missing?”
“Ten past eleven that night.”
“And when was it found?”
“Not until the next morning, sir. One of the beat constables came across it illegally parked down by the formal gardens.”
“That’s not very far from The Riverboat, is it?”
“Ten-minute walk, at the most.”
“You know, this is starting to look good, Winsome. I want you to go and have a word with this Samuel Gardner, see if you can find out any more from him. Put him at ease. Make it clear we don’t give a damn whether he drank a whole bottle of whiskey as long as he tells us everything he can remember about that night. And have the car taken into the police garage for a full forensic examination. I doubt we’ll find anything after all this time, but Scott and Blair aren’t likely to know that, are they?”
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 Jenny, “I haven’t had any lunch yet. Instead of standing around here in the street, is there anywhere nearby we can go?” Though her immediate fears had dispersed somewhat when the young man simply asked her who she was and what she wanted, without showing any particular inclination toward aggression, she still wanted to be with them in a public place, not up in the flat.
“There’s a café down the road,” he said. “We can go there if you want.”
“Fine.”
Jenny followed them back to the arterial road, crossed at the zebra and went into a corner café that smelled of bacon. She was supposed to be slimming – she was always supposed to be slimming – but she couldn’t resist the smell and ordered a bacon butty and a mug of tea. The other two asked for the same and Jenny paid. Nobody objected. Poor students never do. Now that they were closer, sitting at an isolated table near the window, Jenny could she that she was mistaken. While the girl definitely resembled Lucy, had her eyes and mouth and the same shiny black hair, it wasn’t her. There was something softer, more fragile, more human about this young woman, and her eyes weren’t quite so black and impenetrable; they were intelligent and sensitive, though their depths flickered with horrors and fears Jenny could barely imagine.
“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,” Jenny said. “You resemble your sister, and you’re with your cousin.”
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 Jenny. “I don’t jump to conclusions.” Well, not many, she said to herself.
“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 Jenny again. “Well?”
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 Jenny want to reach out and tell her everything was fine, not to worry, she didn’t bite. Keith also seemed very protective of her, and Jenny wondered how their relationship had developed since Alderthorpe.
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,” Jenny said, “not a psychiatrist, certainly not a Freudian, but I do believe that our past shapes us, makes us what we are.”
“And what is Linda, or Lucy, as she calls herself now?”
Jenny spread her hands. “That’s just it. I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to help.”
“Why should we help you?”
“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “Maybe there are some issues back there you still have to deal with yourselves.”
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 Jenny wished she knew what they were thinking. Finally, as if they had come to a decision, Laura said, “Yes, she was with us, but in a way she was apart.”
“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 Jenny thought she was going to cry. “Go on, Laura,” she said. “Please.”
“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.”