by Val McDermid
Tony almost felt a stab of sympathy before he remembered who he was listening to. ‘It’s hard for me to feel much sympathy for someone who thinks twenty thousand pounds is a taster.’
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed and she swung back to face him. ‘I’ve worked all my life, you little shit. Worked to keep a roof over your head, I might point out. Unlike some of us, unlike you, nobody left me a wedge of cash I’d done nothing to earn. I deserved what I had.’ She swallowed and composed herself again. ‘I gave him six months. The interest payments were good. Better than average but nothing sensational. There was even one month when there was a dip. Market fluctuation, he said. But I was still coming out well ahead. So after six months, I trusted him enough to put most of my funds in his hands. Everything was going fine till three weeks ago. My monthly cheque was late. And two days later, some twerp from the Serious Fraud Office rolled up at my door and told me Harrison Gardner had been running a Ponzi scheme.’ She slapped her hands down on the table, provoking the nearest officer to move closer to them.
‘It’s OK,’ Tony said, smiling at the officer. ‘She’s my mother, it upsets her seeing me in here.’ The guard nodded and moved back against the wall.
‘You know what a Ponzi scheme is?’ Vanessa demanded.
‘A fake investment fund. They work on the principle of greed. They offer better rates than everybody else and they use the money from new investors to pay off the earlier backers. It usually falls apart if it stops growing.’
‘Or if the bastard behind it rakes in enough money to give him the offshore life of Riley,’ Vanessa said savagely.
‘How much?’
‘Five and a quarter million.’ Now she looked her age, disgust revealing the harsh lines round her mouth. ‘I sold the company.’
Tony whistled softly. ‘And that’s everything? Gone?’
‘Gone. My pension, my bucket list.’
‘A bucket list?’ He gave a laugh that was more like a cough. ‘You were planning on spending it so I wouldn’t get a penny, am I right?’
She recovered herself. ‘Why would I leave it to someone who set me up to be murdered? Of course I was going to bloody spend it.’
‘Looks like your friend Harrison saved you the bother.’
‘I want it back. And I want Carol to sort it for me.’
Tony shook his head in genuine bewilderment. He’d thought he was beyond surprise where Vanessa’s self-obsession was concerned, but this time she had bested him. ‘Why would Carol lift a finger for you? She despises you.’
Vanessa rolled her eyes. ‘She thinks she’s hard as me, but she’s not. Where you’re concerned, she’s as hard as a marshmallow. So you’re going to ask her for me.’
He grinned. ‘You really have lost it, Vanessa.’
‘Don’t mock me, Tony. It’s not too late for me to give an exclusive interview to one of the tabloids. How my son conspired with the police to deliberately stake me out like a sacrificial lamb to tempt a serial killer out of hiding.’
She would do it in a heartbeat too, he thought. ‘Why do you think that would bother me? I’m already a pariah in the only professional world I know. You can’t damage a reputation that’s already destroyed.’
And then came the treacherous smile that still made his guts clench. The smile that signalled she had the fourth ace up her sleeve. ‘I hear you’re writing a book,’ she said. ‘I doubt your publishers think all publicity is good publicity.’
Dismay curdled his brief moment of satisfaction. How did she do it? How did she always find his Achilles heel? The one hope he was clinging to, the one key that might unlock some sort of future, and somehow she’d winkled it out.
Vanessa read him as she always had. ‘I know you can’t write a nice little note here. So when we’re done, you can sort out a phone call and leave a message on my voicemail that I can play back to Carol.’ She got to her feet. ‘Otherwise I’ll make the call. And it won’t just be you I’ll trash. It’ll be her too.’
7
One of the less obvious effects of austerity has been the increase in the numbers of the visible vulnerable. For predators, it’s been a gift-wrapped opportunity to expand their choice of victims.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Even after midnight on a week night, the Temple Fields district of Bradfield was buzzing. The compact warren of streets attached to the city centre like a carbuncle was the opposite of a chameleon; every time the mainstream caught up with its edginess and innovation, it refused to blend in and adopted the next set of transgressions. Not many years before, it had been the red-light district, dingy streets lit by occasional neons, a poor man’s film noir. It was the place to go for sleaze, and jazz clubs that survived because of the cheap rents.
There had been a couple of gay bars on the fringes. Then when it dawned on entrepreneurs that the pink pound was a thing, over the space of a few years the main drag sprouted a rash of gay bars and clubs so achingly cool that they were eventually colonised by everybody else. Now, in more gender-fluid times, no matter where someone sat on the spectrum, they could find somewhere to hang out where they’d be unexceptional. Mark Conway thought that must really piss off some of them.
It amused him to think that he wasn’t unique either. He wasn’t the first person to trawl the shoals of Temple Fields in search of someone special. Of course, he was looking for recruits, not victims. Not like those others he vaguely remembered. There had been one weirdo who had killed a string of men and dumped their bodies in the area. And another one who was responsible for torturing and killing hookers. The cases had had a lot of lurid publicity because the cops had been working with a psychological profiler. A strange little guy who always looked a bit distracted when you saw him in TV interviews until you noticed how sharp his eyes were when they flickered across the screen.
Turned out the shrink had the same kind of killer inside as the murderers he’d helped to put away. He was safely behind bars himself now. Mark had been aware of him for a long time; he’d almost had one eye on an imaginary rear-view mirror to see if the profiler was on his tail. Now he could afford to relax a bit. He didn’t think the cops would be so quick to hire another profiler in case the next one went rogue too.
But one less foe to worry about didn’t mean he could relax his vigilance. Thus far, he’d covered his tracks so well that nobody had even noticed what he was doing. What that said to Conway was that he was indeed doing the right thing. He was offering salvation to the hopeless. Not everyone was capable of redemption in this life. Growing up under the strictures of the religious brotherhood, he’d absorbed that message loud and clear. What he was doing was the obvious extension of that. The relief he felt after he’d saved another soul from degradation and despair was all the proof he needed.
As usual, he walked into Temple Fields from the car park off Bellwether Square. He cut down an alley, a shortcut for anyone who didn’t mind the smell from the waste bins behind the burger bar and the gastropub, and took a baseball cap from his pocket. He pulled the brim down low on his forehead and swiftly turned his reversible rain jacket inside out, transforming dark red into black. By the time he re-emerged from the CCTV blind spot, respectable Mark Conway had disappeared.
The nights he spent quartering the streets of Temple Fields were a form of talent-spotting. He refused to believe that the one and only person he’d ever recruited from among the junkies and rough sleepers was a once-in-a-lifetime lottery win that would never happen again. Because Gareth had turned out to be a star. So much of a star that he’d been head-hunted two years into what was supposed to be a stellar career under Mark’s wing. Now the ungrateful little shit was based in Singapore, teetering on the upper rungs of corporate life. And Mark had yet to find a replacement.
He was looking for legacy. That was what all the top businessmen wanted, he’d realised early on in his career. It wasn’t enough to be a success. Legendary status didn’t come to men who’d simply made it to the top. What Mark wanted – no, wh
at he craved – was a dynastic succession. But not the usual sort of dynasty. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to see the pattern that dogged business titans and their children. The kids never replicated the drive of their parents. They pissed it all away, secure in the knowledge of the safety net that extreme wealth provided.
No, Mark’s dynasty would be a very different thing. He’d find another Gareth. Correction. He’d find more than one Gareth. He’d pluck them from their deprived lives, lives like the one he’d endured before he dragged himself up from the gutter. And he’d help them to be the next generation of stars who would take his legacy and build higher and further and stronger.
He’d found people in the system who could do the job. That hadn’t been the problem. What he hadn’t found was another gem he could mine from the rough and transform into a glittering diamond. He wanted to show people he had something special that spotted talent and transformed lives. Something that journalists would write about, that people would respect. That would make people sit up straight in front of their granola, mouths open, wondering, could that really be Mark Conway talking on the breakfast show couch? Mark Conway who sat behind me in Year Eight Maths? Mark Conway who only ever scored one goal in ten years of football, and that only because the ball hit his arse when he was standing next to the goal? Mark Conway, whose blazer sleeves were always too short, his shoes coming apart along the welts? That Mark Conway?
To be that Mark Conway, he had to be more than just another businessman. He had to be the one who plucked young men from the jaws of despair and disaster and turned their lives around. Their saviour. It wasn’t an easy job but he knew it could be done. He’d done it for himself; he could pass on what he’d learned and make it work for someone else. It was just a case of finding the right one. And then the next one.
It had to be men. He had no time for women in business. They were too flaky. Hormones and babies. No focus, no single-mindedness. Of course, you couldn’t say anything like that these days. Not even among friends. There was nobody to whom he could explain why it was men he was looking for. Every time.
So he made his way through Temple Fields, baseball cap low over his eyes, glasses with clear lenses perched on his nose. Tonight he wore black jeans, black trainers. They looked nondescript, but to a young man on the streets, on the make, they said, designer. They said, money. They said, pay attention.
Conway didn’t slow his pace when he saw he’d snagged someone’s interest. Not on the first pass. He simply registered the moment and walked on. Then he’d circle back and find a vantage point where he could watch. Was this really someone close to hitting bottom or a tourist who had a back door out of street life? Was he hustling with an edge of creativity or repeating a monotonous mantra? Was he fucked up completely by the incomprehensible street drugs that looped through endless changes of formulae till nobody knew any more whether the next hit was going to fry their brains or just smooth out the darkness of the day? Or was he salvageable?
He’d watch for as long as he could, standing among the smokers outside a bar, then sitting in the window of a coffee shop making a flat white last for an hour. He’d watch transactions on the street, coins tossed in coffee cups, little huddles of exchange and mart. Then he’d take a second pass, to see if his target had enough about him for a second moment of recognition. Did he brighten up, dismiss him, or just look blank? Conway flared his nostrils as he passed, to catch a whiff of his smell. Too thick and dark and he’d keep moving, never go back. But if it was tolerable, he’d walk to the end of the street then turn. If the young man was still flicking glances his way, he’d saunter back and stop. Offer a cigarette. Or a beer. Or a coffee.
First time, that would be all that was on offer. He’d take it easy. Let the mark come to him. Show what he wanted out of the arrangement. Too often, what they thought he wanted was sex. They were even affronted sometimes when he knocked them back. He didn’t want sex, not from them. He wanted to transform them. He wanted to give them something much more meaningful than sex.
If they passed his exacting standards, he’d take them back to his place. Leave temptation in their path. Easy pickings. Wallet on the kitchen worktop. Drink and drugs there for the asking. Gareth had ignored all that, made it clear that what he wanted from Mark was exactly what he had to give.
Of course, disappointment was the price he had to pay for his ambition. Sometimes, like tonight, it was clear none of them had a spark he could fan to a flame, so he’d go home empty-handed. Not everyone could make the grade. And once he’d let them glimpse the possibilities, then face the crushing realisation that his world was never going to be theirs, there was no letting them down gently. Really, what he was doing was a kindness.
8
Although narcissists can appear charismatic, that charm is always and only exercised in the service of their own greater glory. They disregard the feelings and the interests of others and are often skilled at manipulating them into providing what the narcissist wants right here, right now.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Renovating the traditional stone barn where she lived had awakened something unexpected in Carol Jordan. To her surprise, she’d discovered she not only enjoyed working with her hands, but she was also good at it. The previous couple of years had taught her, in part thanks to Tony’s guidance, that the way for her to stay on anything approaching an even keel was to be busy. So once there was no detail left to complete on the barn, she had taken up carpentry. Now she was on the final stages of her first project: a bedside table with turned legs and a drawer. ‘YouTube saved my life,’ she remarked to Flash, her Border collie. The dog, as usual, was leaning into her leg. ‘I’d never have worked out what I was doing wrong with the mortice and tenon by myself.’
She put down the fine-grained sandpaper and stood up, rolling the tightness out of her shoulders. Time to do the exercises Melissa Rintoul had schooled her in. It was early days, and so far Carol couldn’t honestly say she’d noticed any difference. She still felt like an alien in her own skin, the woman she had been a distant and implausible memory. But Melissa hadn’t suggested this would be a quick fix. And if there was one thing that remained of who Carol had been, it was her persistence.
She was halfway through her arm exercises when Flash scrambled to her feet and ran to the door, belly close to the flagged floor as if she was herding a recalcitrant tup. Carol paused, then she heard what Flash had picked up ahead of her. A car turning off the road and into her parking area. Four in the afternoon on a weekday? Not Paula, who always texted first. Maybe George Nicholas, her nearest neighbour, stopping by on his way home to the big house on the other side of the hill, bearing one of his regular gifts. A brace of pheasants; a box of duck eggs; or an ‘interesting’ cheese he’d found in some farm shop. He was nicer by far than she deserved.
She wasn’t always pleased to see George. But even on her worst days, she’d have been a hell of a lot more pleased to see him than the person on her doorstep, fingers poised over the brass bell pull. Instinctively, she dropped one hand and buried it in Flash’s ruff. ‘Really? You?’ It was as sarcastic as she could make it.
Vanessa’s smile could have cut coal. ‘I’d always thought you’d been brought up to be polite.’
‘I was. But for you, I’ll always make an exception. What are you doing here?’
In reply, Vanessa held up her mobile phone and pressed PLAY on her voicemail screen.
The voice was unmistakable despite the poor quality of the reproduction. It was a jolt to the heart, literally. Carol felt her chest constrict and her stomach flip in that moment of recognition. ‘Carol? I’m really sorry about this.’ A pause, a sigh. ‘Look, I told Vanessa I wouldn’t ask you to help her, just to listen to what she has to say.’ Another sigh. ‘I really hope you’re doing well.’
Vanessa dropped the phone back into her coat pocket. ‘Now do I get to come in? I don’t know why you have to live out in the middle of nowhere, there’s a bloody gale comin
g off that moor top.’
Carol wanted to tell her to fuck off. But if she did that, she wouldn’t have the chance to listen to Tony’s message again. She’d ached to hear his voice every day since he’d banished her. She could hardly bear the bitter irony that she had Vanessa to thank for this moment. What, she wondered, had the woman used as a pressure point to force him into that recording? He wouldn’t have done it voluntarily. She stepped back, holding the door ajar, pulling Flash to one side.
Vanessa swept in, scrutinising the interior with all the acumen of an estate agent. ‘Nice job,’ she drawled. ‘No one would ever guess it was a crime scene. I’m amazed you can live under the same roof where—’
‘That’s my business.’ Carol understood that Vanessa’s cruelty was calculated to soften her up for whatever was coming. But her defences had risen the moment she’d opened the door, and not even the sound of Tony’s voice had weakened her enough to let Vanessa breach them. ‘So, what is it that you have to say?’
Vanessa settled herself into an armchair, crossing her legs and casually laying her hands in her lap. ‘I need you to find someone for me. And when you’ve found him, I need you to “persuade” him to return what he stole from me.’
‘I’m not a police officer.’ Carol leaned against the wall, arms folded across her chest, Flash at her feet. ‘I couldn’t care less about you being robbed.’
Vanessa sighed. ‘I’m astonished that both you and my son think I’m stupid. I know both of those things. But I also know that what you won’t do for me, you’ll do for him. I’ll cut to the chase, Carol. Think about how I could spin the way you two set me up to confront a killer. If you don’t help, I’ll use the press and social media to make sure that what remains of his reputation is destroyed. You would just be collateral damage. I’m not asking much. For a detective of your calibre, it should be child’s play.’ She smiled. It was more unnerving than a snarl. ‘Or you could refuse. And sit back and watch while I trash Tony’s life.’