Murdoch said nothing. Ms. Melchior scribbled away on her legal pad and Winsome stared at a spot high on the wall.
“That Saturday night, after she called you names and insulted your manhood, you hurried them out and you heard them talking out front. Hayley had a loud, strident voice, especially when she was drunk or upset, which she was. You heard her telling her friends what a useless bastard you were, a ‘limp dick,’ all over again, in the public market square, for anyone to hear, and you left the door open a crack so you could hear them. How am I doing so far, Jamie?”
Murdoch continued to pick away at his fingernails.
“You heard Hayley say she was going down into the Maze to relieve herself, though I doubt that’s exactly how she put it. She had a foul mouth, didn’t she, Jamie?”
Murdoch looked up for a moment at Banks. “She was very coarse and crude,” he said.
“And you don’t like that in a woman, do you?”
He shook his head.
“Right, so we have the friends dispersed and Hayley heading off by herself into the Maze. Well, it didn’t take you long to figure out how you could get out there and give her what for, did it?”
“I’ve told you,” Murdoch said in a bored voice without looking up. “I couldn’t have got round there without being seen.”
“Jamie,” Banks said, “do you know anything about a storeroom attached to the Fountain, beyond the wainscoting upstairs?”
The pause before Murdoch said “No” told Banks all he needed to know.
“We’ve found it, Jamie,” said Banks. “No need to keep that lie afloat anymore. We’ve found the room, the way out, the clothes you kept there, your ‘assault kit,’ the condoms, the hairbrush, the lot. We’ve found it all. Planning quite a career, weren’t you?”
Murdoch turned very pale and stopped worrying the nail he was working on, but he said nothing.
“You’d been dreaming of something like that for a long time, hadn’t you?” Banks went on. “Fantasizing. You’d even prepared that kit to wipe traces of evidence from the body, pick up all your pubic hairs. Very clever, Jamie. But you had no idea Hayley would be your first, did you? You thought it would be Jill. Maybe also you just wandered around there after closing time hoping someone, anyone, would come along, but this was too good an opportunity to miss, wasn’t it? What a beginning to an illustrious career. That foulmouthed, sexy, tantalizing bitch Hayley Daniels.”
“Mr. Banks, could you tone it down a bit,” said Ms. Melchior, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“Sorry,” said Banks. “Would you prefer me to use euphemisms? Make it all sound a lot nicer?” He turned back to Jamie. “You went out by the usual way, and you saw Hayley doing her business there in the alley like a common tart. I suppose it excited you, didn’t it, the way looking through that peephole into the ladies’ excited you. You probably couldn’t even wait until she’d finished. You knew about the leather-goods storeroom and the weak lock, and that was where she was squatting, wasn’t it, right by the door? We found traces of her urine there. She’d been sick, too. You took her before she could even get her knickers up and dragged her in the shed, onto the soft pile of leather remnants. Very romantic. But one little thing went wrong, didn’t it? In all your excitement, you’d forgotten to switch your mobile off, and it plays a very distinctive ring tone quite loud, a real song, The Streets’ ‘Fit But You Know It,’ that you bought online. Very appropriate, don’t you think? Someone heard that, Jamie. He didn’t recognize it at first, but someone else heard it, too, a week later when you were leaving the Fountain. Who was it, Jamie? Your boss calling from Florida, the way he usually does at the end of the night? He couldn’t reach you on the phone in the Fountain, so he rang your mobile. Is that it? It would have been just after seven in the evening there and he was probably just settling down to his after-sunset, predinner margarita with some bimbo in a bikini, and he wants to know how his business is doing. What do you tell him, Jamie? Not very well? I imagine you probably lie about it the way you do about everything else. But that’s another problem. You should have changed your ring tone after you killed Hayley.
“How did it happen? I suppose you put your hand over Hayley’s mouth, then stuffed some leather remnants in, threatened you’d kill her if she struggled or told anyone, then you raped her. My God, you raped her. Vaginally and anally. Did that make you feel good? Powerful? And what about when you’d finished? I think you felt guilty then, didn’t you, when you realized what you’d gone and done. Fantasy is one thing, but reality… I should imagine it can come as quite a shock. There was no turning back now. She knew you. She knew what you’d done. One day, one way or another, it would get out. If she was left alive to tell the story. So you strangled her. Maybe you didn’t enjoy that. I don’t know. She looked too violated lying there with her legs open and her top pulled up. It showed you far too clearly what you’d done, like looking in a mirror, so you turned her gently on her side, put her legs together, as if she were sleeping, running in her sleep. That looked better, didn’t it? Not quite so ugly. How am I doing, Jamie?”
Murdoch said nothing.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Banks said, standing up and terminating the interview. “We’ve got all the evidence we need, and when forensics are through with it we’ll be putting you away and throwing away the key.”
Jamie didn’t move. When Banks looked more closely he could see tears dropping on the scarred and scratched surface of the table. “Jamie?”
“She was so beautiful,” Jamie said. “And so foul. She said she’d do anything. When I… when we… she said she’d do anything if I let her go.”
“But you didn’t?”
Murdoch looked at Banks, his eyes red with tears. “I wanted to, I really did, but I couldn’t. How could I? You must understand I couldn’t let her go. Not after. She wouldn’t keep her word. A girl like that. A tramp like her. I knew she wouldn’t keep her word. I knew I had to kill her.”
Banks looked over at Ms. Melchior. “Did you get that?” he asked, and left the room.
When Annie arrived at the Queen’s Arms, Templeton’s wake was in full swing, and she found out as soon as she got there that it was also being combined with a celebration of the capture of the Hayley Daniels killer, which made for a very odd sort of party indeed. Banks, Hatchley, Gervaise and the rest sat around a long table drinking pints and telling Templeton stories, the way you did at a wake, most of them funny, some of them bittersweet. Annie wasn’t going to be a hypocrite and join in, but nor was she going to sour the mood by telling some of her own Templeton stories. The poor bastard was dead, he didn’t deserve that, let him have a proper send-off.
For some reason, Annie felt in a particularly good mood that night. It wasn’t the occasion, of course, but something to do with being back in Eastvale, back in the Queen’s Arms with the old crew. Eastern Area was okay, but she felt this was where she belonged. Winsome seemed to be enjoying herself, lounging against the bar talking to Dr. Wallace. Annie went over and joined them. Winsome seemed to stiffen a bit when she arrived, but she soon relaxed and offered Annie a drink.