The Retribution

by Val McDermid

  Chris parked the car on a grassy verge already churned by tyres and walked back to the house. It was a single-storey cottage built in the local limestone. She reckoned three rooms plus kitchen and bathroom, and not a lot of light. Out here, you could make a small fortune renting out a place like this as a holiday cottage. But as a place to live full-time, Chris reckoned it had major downsides, especially if you weren’t able to get about. Obviously Geoff Whittle’s excursion into true crime hadn’t been as profitable as he’d hoped.

  On closer inspection, the cottage was less prepossessing. The paint on the window frames was flaking, weeds were sprouting between the flagstones on the path and the net curtains at the window sagged precariously. Chris raised a heavy black iron knocker and let it crash back into place.

  ‘Coming,’ a voice from inside called out. There was a long pause, some shuffling and banging, then the door inched open, the aperture limited by a heavy chain. A head topped with wiry white hair appeared in the gap, peering up through grimy glasses. ‘Who are you?’ the man asked in a surprisingly strong voice.

  Chris flipped open her ID. ‘Detective Sergeant Devine. Mr Whittle, is it?’

  ‘Are you my police protection?’ He seemed indignant. ‘What’s taken you so long? He’s been out on the streets since yesterday and I’ve not had a moment’s rest since I saw it on the news. And how come I heard it on the news and not from one of your lot?’

  ‘You think Vance is after you?’ Chris tried not to sound as baffled as she felt.

  ‘Well, of course he is. My book told the truth about him for the first time. He managed to suppress it after the fact, but he swore at the time he’d get his own back on me.’ He almost closed the door so he could release the chain. ‘You’d better come in.’

  ‘I’m not here to protect you,’ Chris said as she followed him into a dim and cluttered kitchen that seemed to double as an office.

  He stopped his lopsided slo-mo shuffle and turned to face her. ‘What do you mean? If you’re not here to protect me, what the hell are you here for?’

  ‘Information,’ Chris said. ‘Like you said, you told the truth about him. I’m here to pick your brains.’

  He gave her a shrewd look. ‘Normally that would cost you. But I can sell the story all round town and make more money that way. “Police seek author’s help to track jailbreak Jacko.” That’ll work nicely. Stick a police-budget-cuts angle on it and I might even manage to flog it to the Guardian. Sit down,’ he said, waving vaguely at a couple of chairs tucked under a pine table. He settled into a high wooden carver at the far end of the table. ‘What did you want to know?’

  ‘Anything that might help us find Vance,’ Chris said, shifting a pile of newspapers on to the floor so she could sit down. ‘Who he might turn to for help. Where he might go for shelter. That sort of thing.’

  Whittle rubbed his chin. Chris could hear the rasp of stubble against his fingers. ‘He was a loner, Vance. Not one for mates. He relied a lot on his producer, but he popped his clogs a few years ago. The only other person he might turn to would be a bloke called Terry Gates. He’s a market trader—’

  ‘We know about Terry Gates,’ Chris said.

  Whittle pulled a face. Chris could see dried saliva encrusted in the corners of his downturned mouth. ‘Then it’s hard to say who,’ he said. ‘Except maybe … ’ He gave Chris a shrewd look. ‘Have you considered his ex-wife?’

  ‘I thought there was no love lost there,’ Chris said, her interest suddenly quickening.

  Whittle gave a throaty chuckle full of phlegm and winked. ‘That’s what she’d like you to believe.’

  There was still nothing on the radio about his earlier exploits, which surprised Vance. He’d thought that in a world of 24/7 rolling news, someone would have leaked the double murder to a media contact. He hoped they’d taken him seriously when he’d reported it from a public phone outside the pub where he’d had lunch. It would be ironic if it had been dismissed as a crank call.

  Obviously, he hadn’t hung around to see for himself. He had work to do and even though he was convinced of the effectiveness of his disguise, he wasn’t about to take silly chances.

  After he’d finished with lovely Lucy, Vance had bundled his bloody clothes into a plastic sack. He’d taken a long hot shower, getting rid of all the traces of his victims. He’d removed the family photo from the wall as a final act intended to freak out Carol Jordan, then dressed downstairs in the clothes he’d brought with him – the trousers of a pinstripe suit and a formal shirt. He swapped the wig he’d arrived with for one that was shorter and differently styled. A better match for Patrick Gordon’s ID. He walked back along the path to his car, taking care not to appear hurried or to show any signs of the elation that was pumping through him. Live with that, Carol Jordan, for the rest of your miserable life. The way he’d had to live every day with what she’d done to him, shut up in a prison where he didn’t belong, surrounded by ugliness and stupidity. Let her discover what it was like to suffer. Only she wouldn’t be able to break out of the prison he’d made for her.

  He’d dumped the bloody clothes in an industrial skip behind a hotel near Leeds-Bradford airport before parking the Mercedes in the long-stay car park. Like so many things, the system here had changed since he’d gone inside. Now, you had to take a ticket and hang on to it, paying at some machine somewhere else. He wondered how many dim-witted parking attendants had been made redundant, and how much it had added to the sum of human happiness not to have to deal with the surly bastards.

  Vance put on the suit jacket and picked up a briefcase. Then took a bus to the terminal, but instead of making for the checkin desks, he headed towards the car-rental counters. The Mercedes could have been spotted, or picked up on traffic cameras, and he wasn’t taking any chances. Using the Patrick Gordon ID, he hired an anonymous Ford saloon complete with GPS and charged it to an account that ultimately wound its way back to Grand Cayman. The ease of the transaction was something else that had changed for the better. He flirted mildly with the woman behind the counter, but not so much that she’d remember him.

  Within twenty minutes, he was on his way, the necessities of vengeance transferred from one vehicle to another. If everything went according to plan, he’d have completed his second act of vengeance within hours. Maybe even his third, if he had a fair wind at his back. The only question in his mind was whether he should book into a motel later, or drive all the way back to Vinton Woods. What luxury, to have such options, he thought. For too long, he’d been trapped without anything but the most basic choices, confined within someone else’s rules. He had so much lost time to make up for, thanks to Carol Jordan and Tony Hill and his bitch of an ex-wife. Still, they were all going to be condemned to a lifetime of suffering. Suffering from which there could be no escape.

  Vance smiled at the thought as he pulled into a petrol station. There was true satisfaction in what he was doing. When he was safely installed in his Caribbean villa or his Arabian mansion, he’d be able to look back on this and feed off the sheer pleasure of it for the rest of his life. Knowing his victims still felt the pain would just be the icing on the cake.

  33

  There was no question of following Carol. Tony stood helpless at the top of the stairs, flayed and gouged by her savagery. It felt as if the bond between them had been ruthlessly severed. He was cast adrift, not least because Carol of all people knew exactly how to cause him maximum damage. She was right, too. She’d given him all her trust, taken wild risks for him, put her life on the line for him. And he’d failed.

  He should have considered the bigger picture. But he’d been so sure that he remembered all that was important about Vance. He hadn’t talked to the prison psychologist because he’d dismissed her professional value on the grounds that she’d let herself be seduced by his charm. That didn’t mean she didn’t have something valid to say. He hadn’t talked to the prisoner whose place Vance had taken on the temporary release. He’d been too cocksure to think
Vance’s dupe would have any useful insights. He’d left it to Ambrose to do the interviews he should have sat in on, at the very least. It wasn’t arrogance to believe that he’d have got more from them, just cold hard fact. And he’d let himself be distracted by Paula’s desire to have Carol walk out the door in a blaze of glory. It had been a desire he shared. He’d always wanted only the best for Carol. He suspected he’d failed more often than he’d succeeded.

  He stood by the stairs, gazing at the macabre spectacle, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. It had to be Vance. Tony had never had any difficulty with the notion of coincidence, but sometimes what your brain told you was happening was exactly the way it was. For this to be random was beyond the bounds of credibility.

  There was, of course, another possibility. There usually was.

  ‘Dr Hill?’ Franklin was shouting his name, calling him back to the here and now.

  He turned away from the scene and went downstairs. ‘This wasn’t about sex,’ he said to Franklin, who looked incredulous.

  ‘What do you mean, it wasn’t about sex? According to the preliminary reports, he killed them when they were having sex and then, after he’d slit her throat, he fucked a dying woman.’ Franklin sounded like a man who couldn’t decide between anger and sarcasm. ‘Can you tell me in what sense that’s not about sex?’

  Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘Let me put it this way. Michael and Lucy have been together for ten years or so. If you were trying to catch them having sex so you could get off on killing them while they were in the act, would you choose a Friday after lunch?’ Now it was Tony’s turn for sarcasm. ‘Would you reckon that was the best time to find them fucking each other’s brains out, Chief Inspector? Is that the way it works round here?’

  Franklin scowled. ‘When you put it like that … ’

  Tony shrugged. ‘I think he just got lucky. He came here to kill them and it turned out much easier than he expected. As for the sex – he’s been banged up for a dozen years. Lucy was an attractive woman. Even in death. And he turned her over, so he wouldn’t have to look at her face.’ He looked at the floor. ‘At what he’d done to her.’

  ‘How do you know he turned her over? She could have been on her stomach all along.’

  ‘The blood. If she’d been on her front, the blood couldn’t have sprayed as far as it did outwards and upwards.’

  ‘Suddenly you’re a blood-spatter specialist as well as a shrink.’ Franklin shook his head.

  ‘No. But I’ve seen a few crime scenes in my time.’ Tony turned away. ‘Take it or leave it, it’s not about the sex.’

  ‘So what is it about?’

  Tony blinked hard, surprised at the urge towards tears. ‘It’s about payback. Welcome to the wonderful world of Jacko Vance, Chief Inspector.’

  Franklin looked uncertain. ‘You seem bloody sure of yourself, doc.’

  ‘Who found them?’

  ‘There was an anonymous phone call from a box in a village about fifteen minutes’ drive away. The caller was a male, nothing distinctive about his accent. A local patrol car was dispatched. The door was open, our lads came in.’ The corners of his mouth turned down in sympathy. ‘First time for the pair of them. I doubt they’ll sleep tonight. Does that tell you anything?’

  ‘It’s Vance. The one murder he did outside his serial murders had the same element of spectacle. What he did then, he’s doing again, now. He’s sending a message. It’s targeted at a specific group of people, just like the last time. And he wants to make sure the message comes through loud and clear. He tipped you off once he was well clear of the crime scene, because he wanted it to be fresh when you got here. He wanted Carol Jordan to see the full horror of what he’d done to the people she loved.’ He felt bitterness like a taste on his tongue. He’d been so slow, so stupid.

  Franklin looked unconvinced. ‘You don’t think you’re maybe bigging this up, making yourself a bit too important? Maybe it’s not all about you and DCI Jordan. Maybe it is just a random psycho. Or maybe it’s got something to do with Lucy Bannerman. She was a criminal defence barrister, doc. It’s a job where you piss people off quite regularly.’ His accent thickened, giving even more weight to his words.

  ‘To the extent where this seems like a reasonable response?’ Tony jerked a thumb upwards.

  ‘You’re the psychologist. People don’t always deliver… what is it you folk call it? “A proportionate response”? Somebody she should have got off gets sent down … ’ He spread his hands. ‘They order it from inside. Or some toerag on the outside decides topping the brief is a way to earn brownie points.’ He moved towards the tent entrance, reaching for another cigarette. Tony followed him into the open, where a light rain obscured the nearby hills. ‘Alternatively, she got some bastard off – a kiddie fiddler or rapist or something where feelings run high – and some Charles Bronson vigilante weighs in to teach the system a lesson.’ Franklin cupped his hands round the cigarette and lit up, taking in a deep lungful of smoke and exhaling it with a dramatic sigh.

  ‘In all the years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve never come across the murder of a lawyer because somebody didn’t like the outcome of a case. Not outside TV shows, anyway,’ Tony said. ‘That’s pretty lame as an alternative scenario. And so’s the random psycho. Random psychos tend to be sex killers. And I just explained to you why this wasn’t about sex. Saying it’s about Lucy’s job makes about as much sense as saying it was provoked by the violence in the computer games Michael coded.’

  Franklin opened his mouth to say something but he was interrupted by one of the technicians calling from inside the barn. ‘Boss? You need to see this.’

  ‘What is it?’ Franklin threw his cigarette aside with an irritated air and stomped back inside. Tony followed him, figuring any chance to pick up more information about the case was worth taking.

  The techie was pointing to where one of the hammer beams of the roof met the wall. A stepladder stood nearby. ‘It’s almost impossible to see it. I saw a tiny flash of light when I was coming down the stairs. You wouldn’t see it in normal lighting, it’s just because we’ve got the crime-scene lamps up.’

  ‘I still can’t see what you’re on about,’ Franklin said, screwing up his face and peering into the roof.

  ‘I went up and had a look. It’s a tiny TV camera. We need to do a full electronic sweep. But it looks like somebody’s been spying on them.’

  Franklin gave Tony a scornful look over his shoulder. ‘So much for your theory. Vance was banged up until yesterday morning. There’s no way he could be behind this.’

  ‘You don’t think so? Talk to Sergeant Ambrose at West Mercia about Vance’s contacts with the outside world.’

  ‘If it makes you any happier, doc, I’ll bear all this in mind,’ Franklin said, condescending. ‘But I’m not putting my next month’s wages on Jacko Vance.’

  ‘We’ll see whose DNA turns up in the sperm on Lucy’s back.’ Frustrated and fed up, Tony turned away and began to clamber out of his paper suit. There was nothing more for him here. Franklin might pretend to have an open mind, but it was a pretence. He was convinced the answer to this crime lay in Lucy Bannerman’s professional life, and that would be the thrust of his investigation until the undeniable forensics came up with something more than Tony’s conviction based only on experience and instinct.

  He was halfway back to the road when he realised Carol had left him stranded.

  34

  In a little over twenty-four hours, life had been turned on its head for Micky Morgan. News of her ex-husband’s escape had arrived at her farmhouse door in the shape of half a dozen cops who looked like they’d escaped from some TV crime drama. Black outfits, forage caps, stab vests and faces like slabs of granite. Micky was accustomed to being admired and it was disconcerting to have men’s eyes slide off her and show more apparent interest in the layout of her kitchen and back yard. The one in charge introduced himself as Calman. She assumed it was his surname but was too dis
comfited to ask.

  In spite of the fact that her kitchen was big enough for a dozen stable lads to sit round the table eating breakfast, the men in black seemed to fill all the available space. ‘I don’t understand,’ Micky said. ‘How did he escape?’

  ‘I don’t have much detail,’ Calman said. ‘Only that he impersonated another prisoner who was due to go out on day release.’

  ‘And he was in Oakworth? Jesus, that’s no distance from here.’

  ‘It’s about forty-five miles. Which is one of the reasons why we’re so concerned for your safety.’

  Betsy had entered from outside just in time to hear Calman’s response. She pulled off her riding hat and shook her head to free her hair. Her face was flushed from riding out and she looked ridiculously fresh compared to the storm troopers mooching round their kitchen. ‘What’s about forty-five miles?’ she said, automatically going to Micky’s side and putting a hand on her partner’s arm.

  ‘Oakworth Prison. Which, apparently, is where Jacko has just escaped from.’ Micky flashed a look at Betsy that signalled caution. ‘These officers are here to offer us protection.’

  ‘Do we need protection?’ Betsy said. ‘Why would Jacko want to hurt us?’

  ‘My orders, Ms Thorne,’ Calman said.

  He knows exactly what the set-up is here, Micky thought. He’s been briefed. Someone told him about the subterfuge of marriage we concocted between Jacko and me to save my TV career from the homo-phobic tantrums of the tabloids. Is he here to protect us or to keep an eye on us? ‘I agree with Betsy,’ Micky said.

  But that had been before Calman had broken the news of a double murder in Yorkshire that his bosses believe might be Vance’s handiwork. This time, the officer by his side in the kitchen had a gun, a big black affair the like of which she’d never seen outside a TV screen. It screamed incongruity. H&K just didn’t go with Aga. ‘I don’t believe Jacko would do that,’ Micky said. ‘Surely there are other possibilities?’