by Val McDermid
He needed it to be a public place. The last thing he wanted was to risk being alone with her in private. Yes, it had been years since they’d been lovers. He’d only ever seen her since at crime scenes and press conferences where he was protected by his job and the presence of other people, but even so, he’d felt the old drag of attraction to her. She would always be trouble where he was concerned and he couldn’t afford to take the risk of meeting her behind closed doors.
But it couldn’t be the kind of public place where they’d be seen by someone who recognised them. It would be ironic if a colleague spotted him and thought he’d returned to his old ways when he was trying to do the opposite of leaking. So that ruled out bars and coffee shops in the city centre.
Halfway down the A1 on his way home, the answer finally occurred to him. He pulled off at the next services and spent half an hour composing a text.
Hi Penny. I’d like to buy you a coffee. No strings. Meet me in the café at Dobson’s Garden World at 4pm? Kevin M.
She lived in a flat. There was no reason for her to be an habitué of the sprawling garden centre a mile from where she lived. Kevin was an occasional visitor now he’d taken up the allotment, but he and Stella went somewhere else when they were buying stuff for the garden, one that was nearer home. He’d never seen anyone he knew on his visits there, and the café was tucked away from the main concourse. What could be less redolent of adultery than a suburban garden centre?
Kevin arrived first. Nervous, he pottered around the tools section, settling on a new pair of secateurs and a different rose for his watering can. At five to four, he bought himself a Coke and chose a table apart from the handful of other customers. He wasn’t worried that she hadn’t replied to his text. She was the queen of wrong-footing people. Of course she wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of some anodyne reply.
He took a swig of his drink and instantly felt his stomach revolt. She’d always gone straight to his guts, he remembered that now. He could never eat or drink ahead of their rendezvous.
And then all at once there she was. She’d bypassed the counter and made straight for the table. ‘Well. If it isn’t Kevin Matthews,’ she sighed. She scarcely looked a day older than when they’d first met. Her dark hair was the same cascade of mingled dark brown shades, her skin looked clear and soft, her lips slightly parted in that half-smile that was both knowing and inviting. There were a few more lines around her eyes, but they only made her look more interesting. As always, she wore clothes that were expensively simple, that emphasised all the right curves and disguised any that she wanted to hide. Her job might be provincial but Penny Burgess was anything but.
Kevin stumbled to his feet. ‘Penny. Thanks for coming. You look great.’ He hated himself for the words as soon as they were uttered. So much for playing it cool. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’
She shuddered and sat down. ‘God, no. It’s one of those horrible machines. Press a button, out comes frothy milk substitute and a nasty, bitter brew. You know me, Kevin, I only settle for the best.’ Her voice was not the one she used at press conferences. Then, she was forceful and strong, impossible to ignore. Here she was as impossible to ignore but for very different reasons. This voice was low and warm, intimate and subtle.
He sat too, thankful that she hadn’t offered her face for a kiss. His mouth felt dry and vast. ‘I see your byline all the time. You’ve been doing some interesting work.’
She smiled. ‘I have managed to extend the crime beat to cover all sorts of wickedness.’ She leaned forward and put her hand over Kevin’s. The shock was electric but he forced himself to look at the hand itself. Now he could see the signs of ageing that Penny had banished from her face. ‘I missed you, my little ginger pig.’
‘Yeah, well, sometimes we can’t have what we want. Penny, this isn’t me looking to revive things between us. I want to ask you a favour.’
She raised one eyebrow in a calculated move. ‘And why would I want to do you a favour?’
Kevin drew his hand back. ‘For old times’ sake? Because I know that, in spite of what you want people to think, you’re a decent human being? Because it never hurts to have a favour in the bank? All of the above?’
She gave a wry smile and shook her head. ‘I’m amazed you’d even ask, after what happened to your career last time you got into bed with me, figuratively and literally.’
He forced himself to meet her eyes. ‘Believe me, if there was any other way, I wouldn’t be here. But we meant a lot to each other once. So I thought it was worth asking.’
‘Ah, Kevin, you were always so serious. It was hard sometimes to have fun with you. It always had to mean so much … ’
He shook his head. ‘If that’s how you want to play it, fine. But I know it meant something to you too.’
‘Sweet.’ Her expression was anything but.
‘ReMIT. That’s what I want to talk to you about.’
‘Ah yes, the holy grail that brought you out of retirement and gave you your old status back.’
‘It’s a big deal, Penny, and it’s on your patch. There’s going to be a lot of great stories coming out of ReMIT, and because we’re based in Bradfield, you’ll be on the front line.’
‘Well, duh, Kevin. I had worked that one out for myself. But surely you’re not offering yourself up as a source?’
He shook his head with a rueful smile. ‘I’m not that stupid, Penny. I don’t want to throw away a second chance. And that’s where I think we have something in common. We both have self-interest in making sure ReMIT works. Me because of the job. And you because of the stories.’
Penny crossed her elegant legs and sat back in her seat. ‘You’re interesting me now, Kevin. Where is this common interest going to take us?’
‘You saw the story at the weekend? About Carol Jordan?’
She gave a scornful laugh. ‘Oh yes. A mess of unsubstantiated innuendo and information that hadn’t been knitted together properly. They should have taken more time with it and bottomed it properly. There was a good story lurking in there. Probably.’
‘It nearly holed us below the waterline before we got started,’ Kevin said. ‘Obviously, we’ve got enemies. One in particular who took a chance on pulling together a half-arsed tale and leaking it.’
‘And you want to know who that is.’
‘Of course I do. And frankly, so should you. They’re leaking to someone who isn’t you, who doesn’t know how to run a good story. But more than that, they’re trying to bring down something that will keep you supplied with cracking good stories for years to come.’
Penny laughed. ‘That’s better, Kevin. I like it when you stop appealing to my good nature and go for my naked self-interest.’ She gave him a long, considering look. ‘Suppose I did find out what you want to know. You’d remember that down the line?’
‘I won’t leak, Penny. But when we have something we can release, you’ll be the first on the list.’ It was a promise he couldn’t keep, but he didn’t care. There would be no comeback. Because what he’d realised as the conversation had progressed was that although she made his heart race and his palms sweat, he wasn’t helpless any more. He’d somehow grown up in the ways that mattered. Yes, he wanted her. But he knew he wasn’t about to give in to that desire.
She sucked her lips in, then blew them out in a kissing motion. ‘A business arrangement, then. All right, Kevin. I’ll see what I can do.’ She stood up. ‘It’s lovely to see you. Let’s do this again.’
And she was gone as swiftly as she’d arrived. Kevin felt his body relax, his head swim. It was going to be all right. Really, it was going to be all right.
47
Paula had laid claim to one of the small interview rooms on the new ReMIT floor. It smelled of cut wood and fresh carpet, with a faint note of low emission paint underlying it. It felt slightly alien to her to be in police offices that didn’t have the lingering tang of stale nicotine and male sweat. Décor was always low down on the budget totem pole; she r
eckoned the main Skenfrith Street incident room had last been decorated some time in the early nineties. And yet, there was something comforting about its familiar scruffiness. Here, there were no flyers and memos on the walls, their curling edges yellow with age, no squad rotas with their crossings-out and scribbled notes. Even the furniture was new, unscuffed and clean. The room had no history; it was a clean slate.
Time to change that. Paula opened a new A4 notebook and took out her phone. She woke her tablet from sleep and called up the briefing Stacey had prepared. The first woman on the list was Maxine Silvers, a successful businesswoman who had been appointed to a seat on the board of a Championship football club and dared to put her head over the parapet on the subject of homophobia in football. Stacey had provided a sample of some of the abuse she’d had on social media. Paula wondered whether the wives and girlfriends and mothers of these men had any idea of the vileness that spewed out on their computer screens. Somehow, she doubted it. No point in calling Maxine’s number; she’d never answer a stranger, given the level of unpleasantness she’d had to deal with. Paula texted her instead, asking her to call via the BMP switchboard to reassure her.
She went through the same process with the next three women before Maxine Silvers rang on the landline. ‘Thanks for getting back to me,’ Paula said.
‘No problem, I’m just glad somebody’s doing something about these morons,’ she said, a strong Welsh lilt to her voice.
‘I understand you have reported the abuse to your local police?’ That was, after all, how Stacey had found Maxine.
‘Yes, and they were very sympathetic. But to be honest, I don’t have any confidence that they knew what to do about it. It’s one thing if you’re a household name, then they get off their backsides because of the publicity, but if you’re not an A-list celebrity, it’s not such a high priority. The likes of me, we don’t get the VIP treatment.’
‘I’m sorry you feel like that. In this unit, we don’t care what your status is, we want to do what we can to put a stop to this sort of harassment.’ Not strictly true, but not a lie either. ‘Can you tell me when you started to get these hate messages?’
‘It was about three weeks ago … Let me check … Yes, the first one was three weeks tomorrow. Right after I had my little rant about why men’s football is so scared of acknowledging they have gay men in the game. The women are coming to terms with it, but the men seem to be running scared. That’s pretty much what I said. And within minutes of it being reported, the trolls started. I can send you a copy of what I’ve been getting.’
‘That would be helpful. Can I ask, what was your reaction?’
‘Well, to be honest, I was shocked. Shocked and a bit shaken. I knew that kind of abuse was out there, but I really didn’t think I’d said anything particularly new. There’s a whole campaign against homophobia in football, for heaven’s sake. The problem seems to be that, as a woman, I have no place in the conversation.’
‘Did you take any action? Close down your Twitter account or your Facebook page or anything like that?’
Maxine laughed. ‘God, no. My whole bloody life is online these days. No, once I was over the initial shock, I set about blocking the little bastards. You only get one pop at me, then you’re gone, out of my life forever.’
‘You weren’t frightened by them?’ Paula scribbled Not scared off on her pad.
She tutted. ‘They weren’t on my doorstep. The kind of people who resort to name-calling online, they’re not the ones to worry about. They’re stupid little boys shouting names in the playground. If I went round their houses and called them on it, they’d wet themselves.’
‘And yet you reported it to the police?’
‘It’s against the law, isn’t it? Threatening people? It’s nasty. I hoped that they’d get a fright like the fright they gave me. Some big bad policeman – or policewoman, I suppose – turning up on their doorstep and ruining their day like they’d tried to ruin mine. Didn’t get me anywhere, though, did it?’ Maxine sounded more disappointed than angry.
‘The main thing is that you don’t feel threatened.’
‘Not threatened, love. Just pissed off. It puts other people off speaking out when they see the kind of crap that the likes of me get when we say what we think. And that’s not a good thing, believe me.’
‘Have you had any indication at all that any of the people making threats against you might put them into action?’
‘Not a one. No bricks through the windows or scratches on my car.’ She laughed, a throaty sound redolent of cigarettes. ‘Well, except for the ones I put there.’
‘No signs of anyone following you? No strangers hanging around at home or at work?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed. Should I be looking?’
‘There’s no reason to think so, no. But I have to ask.’
‘Fair enough. So what are you going to do about these morons?’
Good question. ‘I wish I could tell you something concrete. We’re trying to develop a joined-up strategy so we can deal with them. But I’ll be honest. The problem we keep running into is the companies who run the social media sites hiding behind data protection legislation.’
Maxine grunted. ‘Tell me about it. Well, good luck with that. If there’s anything else I can help you with, call me. But I’m not losing any sleep over these bastards, let me tell you.’
Paula hung up and leaned back in her chair. She wasn’t sure what the point of these interviews was. As far as she could tell, there was little in common between the responses of the three dead women. Kate Rawlins had been uncomfortable but dismissive, Jasmine Burton had been frightened and upset, and Daisy Morton had given them the metaphorical finger. Paula had a hunch that it wasn’t their responses that counted. It was what they’d said. And on that basis, Maxine Silvers didn’t fit.
She sighed. That didn’t mean she shouldn’t focus on the task she’d been given. For all she knew, her hunch was wide of the mark. There might yet be something lurking in the shadows. And as far as her colleagues were concerned, if there was anything to be got, she was the one to get it.
Three hours and five more interviews later, she was ready to concede defeat. Of the six possibles Stacey had identified, Paula reckoned only two fitted the pattern – Ursula Foreman, a Bradfield blogger and journalist, and a Norwich novelist called Zoe Brewster. They’d both expressed opinions that were similar to the dead women and they both had moderately high profiles.
The question was, what were they going to do about it? They didn’t have any solid evidence to back up their theory and even if they did, and they had the resources to put surveillance on the women, it was doubtful whether they would know what they were looking for.
This case was like wrestling fog. Although she despised herself for it, Paula couldn’t help longing for some twisted killer doing the kind of tangible things you could put your finger on and go, ‘There. That’s what he does. That’s who he is. And here’s how we find him.’
Had they lost their way? Had something gone horribly wrong? Had Carol been out of the game for too long? Had Tony and Carol finally gone off the rails and sent them all flying through the air on a wild goose chase? Paula put her head in her hands and groaned softly. Her head was spinning; she had no idea what to do next. Was this what it was like when the wheels came off?
48
Nothing was ever as straightforward as you thought it was going to be, Stacey chided herself. She ought to know by now. Armed with the access codes for Valhalla.co.uk, she’d let herself into the retail giant’s site by the back door. On the basis that there would be traps for the unwary, she’d moved cautiously through the opening levels of security, doing the digital equivalent of peering round corners before she turned them. Eventually, after a few heart-stopping moments where screens froze on her or raced past at breakneck speed, she reached a place where she felt fairly confident she could move around with a degree of safety.
Her first attempt was a hopeful one, wondering whet
her she could enter all three titles in one search. Clearly it was possible but equally clearly it would take time for the system to spit out a result. Aware of the clock ticking, Stacey drummed her fingers along the edge of the keyboard, feeling the tension in her back and neck. After a few minutes, she actually got to her feet and did some shoulder stretches against the wall.
When she got back to her screen, she was faced with a moment of crushing disappointment. According to the search, not one single customer had bought all three titles together. Ever. She slumped in her seat. It had been a great idea of Tony’s but it looked as if he’d been dancing in the dark once too often.
Because she was still in the system and she had some time left, she set up searches for all the possible pairings of the three titles. Almost immediately, the system spewed out 1,279 results for Woolf and Plath together. Stacey copied the list and printed it out, belt and braces as ever. Were they set texts, or something? Stacey had a vague memory of girls she’d been at school with fetishising Plath. What was it about suicide that was so appealing to adolescents? It had never crossed her mind, even at her lowest points. There was always the promise of better days over the horizon. New programs, new possibilities, new tricks to learn.
Given that result, it was all the more surprising that there were no results at all for the other pairings. Nobody who had bought Ariel and A Room of One’s Own had bought The Death Notebooks with it, either at the same time or on a separate occasion. It looked as if the killer had gone elsewhere for a copy of the Anne Sexton. Unless of course he’d already owned it. That and the other titles too.
Stacey sighed. She hated to admit defeat but maybe this time the defeat had come at the hands of circumstance rather than her lack of competence. But she wasn’t going to give in until she’d tried everything. She decided to do one last search, for the Anne Sexton on its own. And up it popped. Valhalla had sold eleven second-hand copies of the out-of-print title in the past year, which seemed amazing to Stacey. Eleven people who cared that much about a dead American poet she’d never heard of. She scrutinised the records, noticing that being second-hand seemed to put the book in a separate category to the new books. Could that be the answer?