‘You came here by yourself?’
‘Yes. With my family’s blessing. They wanted a better life for me. A life they couldn’t have. I did well in school back home and came here to go to university.’
‘What did you study?’
‘Psychology.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be critical. I can be a bit over-defensive at times.’ Lisa paused. ‘So what’s going to happen to me now? I didn’t see you taking any notes, so I assume I can deny everything I said? Your word against mine.’
‘If you like,’ said Winsome.
‘It depends. Are you going to arrest me?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘I must have done something wrong somewhere in all that I’ve told you.’
‘Being raped isn’t illegal, having an abortion isn’t illegal, travelling around Europe isn’t illegal. Maybe you’re not as much of a criminal as you like to think you are.’
‘What about lying to the police?’
‘Well, that’s another matter. In general, lying isn’t an arrestable offence. We’d have to put the whole world in jail if we could arrest people for lying. But you’ve slowed us down and misdirected us. We have many ways of dealing with that. Mostly it’s up to the individual officer’s discretion. And remember, you can always just deny everything you told me.’
‘I’m not like that.’
‘I didn’t think so. As far as I can see, you’re the victim in this, not the perpetrator.’
‘I’m not a perp! Well, that’s a relief.’
Winsome smiled. ‘Did you ever tell anyone at all about what happened to you? The rape? The pregnancy? The abortion?’
Lisa shook her head. ‘Nope. You’re the first.’
‘Don’t you think you ought to seek professional help after what you’ve been through?’
‘A shrink?’
‘Not necessarily. A counsellor of some sort.’
‘Maybe that’s what I needed four years ago, but I think I have my life together the way I like it now.’
‘Why did you tell me about it?’
‘I don’t know. It just seemed... right. I must say, though, it seems a long way from Mr Miller’s murder. I don’t see how it helps you.’
‘Maybe it doesn’t, but we don’t work in quite as linear a way as that, however straight you think we are. I add bits to the overall picture, then—’
‘What bits?’ Lisa sounded concerned.
‘Relevant bits. Not about a young girl getting raped, then finding out she’s pregnant and having an abortion.’
‘I don’t want anyone else knowing what happened to me. I don’t want to be treated like a victim.’
‘Don’t worry, you won’t be.’ Winsome shifted in her armchair, put her mug down on the table and leaned forward. ‘But let’s just examine one possibility that comes out of what you’ve told me tonight. You told me that you suspected Gavin Miller knew what had happened to you, about the roofies and the rape?’
‘Yes. I can’t really say why. It was just the way he looked at me. Maybe I’m imagining it. He’d probably have said something if he’d known, made me go see someone, like you suggested, or go to the police.’
‘Perhaps. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that he did suspect something of the sort. You don’t know who the boy was. You can’t even describe him. You say you didn’t really pursue it, didn’t try to find out.’
‘What good would it have done?’
‘But what if Gavin Miller did try to find out? What if he succeeded? You like to think he cared about you, so maybe that was his way of doing something to help. He got Kyle McClusky off the campus, but maybe he got more. The name of the boy who bought the drug and gave it to you.’
‘That took him four and a half years?’
‘These things happen. Maybe he was too devastated to try to find out at first, after he was dismissed. Maybe he didn’t even pick up the trail until you two reconnected a few months ago. Maybe he bumped into one of your old friends who was at the concert and in the bar with you that night. He or she might have remembered what the boy looked like, or what his name was. You never even asked them. Who knows?’
‘But if that were the case, wouldn’t it have been that boy who got hurt, not Mr Miller?’
‘I know it sounds far-fetched, but sometimes even police officers have to let our imaginations run free. Perhaps Gavin Miller arranged to meet him. On the railway bridge near his home, say. The boy went along, perhaps expecting blackmail, whatever. Gavin Miller confronted him. There was a fight. As you know, Mr Miller wasn’t in such good shape towards the end. He was malnourished and emaciated. I doubt he could have put up much of a fight against a younger and stronger opponent.’
‘Christ,’ said Lisa. ‘Are you saying I got him killed now? That it was because of me?’
‘It’s not all about you. If it did happen that way, it was about Gavin Miller. What he needed. Besides, all I’m doing is putting things together, making connections, stretching the facts a bit to do it. Half the time we make up stories from what we know, then test them out.’
‘But Mr Miller didn’t say anything about it when we met for coffee earlier this year. We never talked about the past at all, except like, way back, when he was a hippy and all that.’
‘But you didn’t say anything to anyone about it. At least not until tonight, to me. Maybe Gavin Miller did work it out and kept it to himself for reasons of his own. Especially if he intended to harm the boy in revenge for what he’d done to you. Anyway, I’m only giving you a hypothetical example of how some of the things you’ve told me might affect the investigation. It’s only speculation. There are some things I’ll have to share with my boss — crimes have been committed, not by you, but against you — but I promise none of what you told me will go any further than that and I’ll keep what I can to myself. What you told me is... well... it’s...’
‘In confidence?’ suggested Lisa.
‘Yes.’
‘Like between friends?’
Winsome reached for her mug. ‘Yes.’
Lisa smiled. ‘All right, then.’
‘So what brings you here at this time of night?’ Banks asked when he answered the insistent knocking at his door.
‘You know damn well what,’ said Annie, walking in and slamming the door behind her.
‘No, I don’t.’ He hated it when people said that and he didn’t know damn well what. His mother used to say it, without the swearing, if ever he asked what he was supposed to have done wrong: ‘You know quite well.’ It always made him feel like a naughty boy.
‘Come off it, Alan. You’ve been playing us for fools, Winsome and me, running two investigations and sending us out on the dummy one. You’ve been using us as cover. You don’t believe for a moment that Gavin Miller’s death has anything to do with his getting dismissed from Eastvale College. With Beth Gallagher or Kayleigh Vernon or Trevor Lomax or Jim Cooper and that crowd. You think it’s all about what happened forty years ago at the University of Essex. That’s why you’ve had Little Miss Masterson running around doing your private research and God knows what else for you while you send us off to waste our bloody time!’
They were standing in what used to be Banks’s living room and was now a sort of office-cum-den. ‘Stop pacing and sit down,’ Banks said. ‘Catch your breath. Drink? Shall we go through to the back and have a—’
‘No, I don’t want a bloody drink. And I don’t want to go through to the back. I won’t be stopping.’ Annie remained on her feet while Banks sat. ‘Of all the shitty tricks you’ve ever pulled, Alan, this one has to be—’
‘That’s not true,’ Banks argued. ‘Both lines of inquiry are still equally important. Essential. We have no idea why Gavin Miller was killed. We can’t afford to overlook Lomax and Cooper and the rest.’