by Val McDermid
He pulled the chair out and turned it so he was sitting at an angle to Tyler. He deliberately chose a relaxed posture, body open and unthreatening. Tyler moved his head so Tony was out of his line of vision. Tony glimpsed a raw-boned face with deep-set pale eyes. He had the sense that Tyler was perfectly capable of connection but that he chose to avoid it. ‘My name is Tony Hill,’ he said. ‘I work here at the hospital. But I also work with the police. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you.’ He waited, taking in the bareness of the room. It was like a monastic cell. No books, no family photographs tacked to the walls, no Page Three girls. The only personal item in the room was a large framed black-and-white photograph of Temple Fields, looking down the pedestrianized street with the canal off to one side.
After a few long minutes, Tony decided it was time to get to work. His strategy was, he knew, basic. But it was the best he could come up with on short notice with a patient he’d no previous clinical engagement with. ‘I understand why you might not want to talk about it. Who could possibly comprehend what it was like to do the things you did?’
Tyler shifted slightly, but his bony face remained resolutely turned away. Tony lowered his voice, making it warm and sympathetic. ‘But that’s not the main problem, is it? The trouble is, when you start to talk, everybody just wants to talk back at you. And that way you can’t hear the voice, can you, Derek?’
Tyler jerked his head round momentarily, a flash of surprise on his face. It was over so quickly that Tony could almost have believed he’d imagined the response. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it?’ he said. Then he waited a good two minutes before speaking again. ‘You can hear it when I shut up, can’t you?’
Nothing from Tyler. But that single glance had told Tony he was moving in the right direction. ‘But the voice can only tell you stuff from before. It can’t tell you what’s happening now, outside here. You have to rely on me for that. You know why that is? You know why it’s all gone quiet? It’s because your voice is talking to somebody else now.’
Tyler’s whole body swivelled round till he was facing Tony. He was all attention now, his grey-blue eyes shrouded under his heavy brows. Tony spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘I’m sorry, Derek, but that’s the way it is. You’re shut up in here, you’re no use any more. I told you I work with the police. The reason I’m here is that somebody else is doing exactly what you did, Derek. And that has to be because the voice isn’t talking to you any more. It’s talking to him.’
Anger flared in Tyler’s eyes. His hands tightened their grip on each other, the veins on his thin arms standing out like cords. Tony wondered if anyone on Aidan Hart’s team had ever provoked this tightly coiled violence in Tyler. He doubted it. If they’d seen what he was looking at now, he didn’t think Tyler would be allowed into the general population. ‘I’m not making this up, Derek,’ Tony said reasonably. ‘The voice has left you for somebody else. All you’ve got is memories.’
Abruptly, Tyler jumped up and walked past Tony to the doorway. He rang the call button on the wall and banged on the door with his fist for good measure.
Tony continued speaking as if nothing had happened. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? The voice isn’t yours any more. So you might as well talk.’
A nurse in white scrubs appeared in the corridor. Tony could see Aidan Hart hovering behind him. Tyler stood meekly by the door.
‘What’s happened?’ the nurse asked.
Tony smiled. ‘I think Derek wants to go away and think about what I’ve been saying to him, don’t you, Derek?’
‘You’re OK, are you, Doc?’
I’m fine. In good fettle and in good voice.’
The nurse looked from Tony to Tyler and back again, unable to fathom what was going on. ‘Come on then, Derek, we’ll take you down to the day room.’ The nurse reached out for Tyler’s arm.
In the doorway, Tyler turned and growled in a voice rusty from disuse, ‘You’re not the voice. You could never be the voice.’
Aidan Hart’s mouth fell open. He watched speechless as Tyler walked down the hall, head high, narrow shoulders thrown back. Tony stood up and replaced the chair. ‘Well, that’s a start,’ he said cheerfully, walking past his new boss at a brisk pace.
Stan’s Café featured in none of the tourist guides to Bradfield. Even the indie internet websites that prided themselves on offering their readers the echt experience normally only available to natives shuddered away from a greasy spoon frequented principally by hookers, rent boys, homeless people and drug dealers. Unlike some low-life dives that made it into alternative guides, nobody went to Stan’s for the food. The clientele frequented Stan’s because it was somewhere to go out of the cold and rain. When Temple Fields glamorized itself into the Gay Village in the nineties, the bar owners had started to become more picky about who they allowed across their thresholds, especially if they were the sort of customers who could make a half of bitter last hours. The only beneficiary of this more stringent approach was Stan’s. Fat Bobby, who owned Stan’s, didn’t care who occupied the split and sticky vinyl seats as long as they bought food and drink and fags from him.
That morning, half a dozen tables were taken. Two young Asian men were hunched over eggs on toast, a velvet jeweller’s roll of knock-off watches half-exposed between them. They were clearly brothers, sharing the same tight, sharp features, the same slack-lipped mouths stained with tomato sauce. In between mouthfuls, they argued prices and pitches. A gangling youth lounged against the fruit machine, frowning at the reels as they spun and settled in response to the coins a chunky lad with classic Black Irish looks was feeding into the machine. ‘Why d’you keep doing it when you don’t win?’ the spectator asked.
‘If I don’t do it, I won’t win, will I?’ the player grunted. ‘Fuck off, you’re bringing me bad luck.’
Dee Smart sat at a corner table near the toilets, back to the door, huddled over a cigarette. Her eyelids were puffy and heavy, her mouth downturned and tight. She stared into a grey cup of coffee, looking miserable. A gawky, slack-jawed youth emerged from the toilets and caught sight of her. He slid into the seat opposite. ‘You sad about Sandie, Dee?’ he said. He had some sort of problem with his speech which turned everything he said into a long drawl.
Dee took a drag on her cigarette and sighed. Jason Duffy was not what she needed right then. ‘Yeah, Jason, I’m sad about Sandie.’
He patted her hand awkwardly. ‘You need something to take the edge off? I got some nice skunk.’
‘Not a good idea just now, Jason. I’m waiting for the dibble,’ Dee said wearily. ‘Besides, you know I don’t buy from you.’
Jason’s face twitched with nervous anxiety and he edged quickly out of the seat, almost falling over his feet in his haste. ‘Be seeing you, then.’ He headed for the door without a backward glance.
The youth by the slot machine abandoned his post and moseyed over to the counter to order a tea. The door to the outside swung open and Jason Duffy nearly ran head first into Carol Jordan in his haste to be gone. Carol sidestepped him and walked in, her stomach rebelling at the steamy, smoke-filled atmosphere. Stale bacon fat and vinegar conspired in a foul miasma that made her regret her excesses of the previous night once more. Jan followed her, eyes dredging the room for Dee Smart. ‘Over there,’ she said, indicating Dee with her head. ‘You want a coffee?’
Carol wrinkled her nose. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘They don’t do mineral water,’ Jan said acidly. ‘A Coke might settle your stomach.’
Carol tried to hide her surprise. ‘Sorry?’
‘You’ve been looking off colour all morning. The morgue will do that to you.’ Jan weaved through the tables to the counter. Carol followed, checking out the room. She might as well have been invisible for the amount of eye contact she could garner. Every time she looked at someone, their eyes slid off her like water off wax. ‘Who’s who?’ she asked.
Jan’s eyes swept the room. ‘The lad playing the fruit machine is Tyrone
Donelan. He nicks cars.’ As if he’d heard her, Tyrone Donelan took one glance over his shoulder and made straight for the door to the toilets.
‘The two Asians, that’s Tariq and Samir Iqbal. Snide watches, pirate DVDs–that kind of thing. Their old man’s a serious player in the counterfeit game. I think he got a tug a year or so back, did three months.’ The Iqbals suddenly lost interest in their eggs on toast, grabbed their stash of watches and hurriedly left.
‘What about the kid who nearly knocked me over when we came in?’
‘Jason Duffy. Low-level dealer. Smack and whiz mostly. He’s not the full shilling, Jason. His claim to fame is that his mother was the first person in Bradfield to be arrested for dealing crack.’ She indicated the gangling youth with a sideways jerk of the head. ‘That’s another one from the same mould: Carl Mackenzie. He mostly deals to the street girls. More of a range than Jason, but not much smarter. As far as what we’re looking for goes, there’s not one of them that would be as much use as a chocolate chip pan.’
Carol nodded. Thanks.’ She moved at a leisurely pace towards Dee and sat down opposite her. Dee raised her head and gave her a calculated stare. Carol took in the lank hennaed hair and the weary, suspicious eyes.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘Hi, Dee,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to meet you yesterday. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Jordan. Carol Jordan.’ Carol smiled and extended a hand.
Obviously taken aback, Dee shifted her cigarette from one hand to the other and accepted the shake. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘So you obviously know who I am.’
‘I’m sorry about Sandie,’ Carol said.
‘Not half as sorry as I am.’
‘Naturally. She wasn’t my friend. But I want you to know that I’ll pursue whoever killed her just as hard as if she had been.’
The sincerity in Carol’s voice seemed to penetrate Dee’s carapace of toughness. ‘That’s what the other bloke said. That you’d take it seriously.’ She sounded surprised.
Jan reached the table, a can of Coke in each hand. She dumped the drinks on the table and plonked herself down in a chair at right angles to the other two women. ‘Dee, this is…’ Carol began.
‘I know who this is,’ Dee said. Her manner had shifted back to her earlier truculence.
‘Hi, Dee. How are you doing?’ Jan asked.
‘How do you think?’ She angled herself away from Jan.
Carol popped the top of her Coke and took a mouthful. Sugar and caffeine and bubbles hit her, giving her an instant lift. ‘I know this is a hard time for you, but we do need your help.’
Dee sighed. ‘Look, like I said when you phoned. I told everything I know to that bloke last night.’
Jan shook her head. ‘There’s always more, Dee. We all know that. Stuff you think isn’t important, stuff you think is too important. Who did she score from?’
Dee looked panicked. Her eyes swivelled towards the counter, where Carl Mackenzie was leaning, mug in hand, talking to the girl behind the counter. ‘I dunno,’ she mumbled.
‘Course you do.’ Jan followed Dee’s glance in time to see Carl heading for the door, throwing a nervous glance in her direction.
‘Was that Carl Mackenzie going out just now?’ Jan asked.
‘I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. And if it was, what of it? It’s still a free country, isn’t it? People can have a cup of coffee wherever they want, can’t they?’ Dee was talking too much, Carol thought.
Jan clearly agreed. ‘Sandie scored off Carl, didn’t she?’
Dee snorted scornfully. ‘Sandie wasn’t a low-life. I don’t know who she used, but it wasn’t Carl, OK? You stay off his back, he’s harmless.’
‘That would be because he’s dealing to you, would it?’ Jan drawled wearily.
‘Fuck off. Look, she might have got some stuff off Jason Duffy now and again, but that’s all I know.’
‘Did she have a pimp?’ Carol asked.
Dee shook her head. ‘There’s less poncing round Temple Fields than you’d think. Her lot saw to that,’ she said, gesturing towards Jan with her thumb.
‘We cleared out a lot of the pimps a while back,’ Jan said to Carol. ‘We made it clear we were going to nail their earnings under the Proceeds of Crime legislation.’ She turned to Dee. ‘I’d have thought you lot would be grateful to us for getting them off your backs.’
‘We’d have been a fuck of a sight more grateful if you hadn’t tried to get the punters off the streets at the same time,’ Dee said bitterly. ‘You’re the ones who pushed us off the main drags and into the side streets. And now it’s all happening again.’
Carol felt the rapport she’d started to build with Dee slithering away out of her reach. ‘We want to stop it happening,’ she insisted.
‘Yeah, well, I’ve told you all I can.’ Dee pushed her chair back.
Carol tried a last desperate appeal. ‘If you remember anything at all, however insignificant it seems, it could be important for our investigation, Dee. We’re here to help.’
Dee snorted. ‘Yeah, well, it’s not helping me earning a living, sitting in Stan’s being clocked talking to the dibble. I’m out of here.’
She grabbed her skimpy denim jacket from the back of her chair and stalked off. Carol looked after her, fed up and puzzled. ‘She was a lot more co-operative with Kevin last night,’ she said.
Jan shrugged. ‘Maybe she prefers men.’
‘She seemed edgy about Carl Mackenzie.’
Jan looked bored. ‘She scores from him. She doesn’t want us taking him off the streets. He’s harmless. Mental age of about ten. The girls treat him like a pet.’
‘You think Dee was telling the truth? About Sandie not using him?’
Jan considered, rolling her drink between her palms. ‘Probably. If Sandie bought off Jason, she wouldn’t have been using Carl as well. They’re both street dealers for the same middleman. Plus, what’s Dee got to gain by lying about it?’
‘Like you said, it keeps her source on the street, where she needs it,’ Carol pointed out.
Jan pulled a dubious face, making her look like a pouting cherub past its sell-by date. ‘I can’t see it. I’ll check the overnights, see if he’s been spoken to, if you like.’
‘That’d be good. And if he hasn’t, maybe you could have a word.’ She’d skimmed the reports herself that morning, but she couldn’t remember the detail. ‘Same goes for Jason Duffy.’
Carol knew she was clutching at straws, always tempting when an investigation didn’t throw up solid early leads. She was beginning to have a bad feeling about Sandie Foster’s murder. It was showing all the hallmarks of a case that was going nowhere fast. If they didn’t get a break soon, Carol’s squad would be transformed from great white hopes to scapegoats. And that wasn’t something she thought she could handle right now.
He’s big news. Front page of the evening paper. He can’t read well, but he can manage big headlines. He wasn’t expecting it to be like that, not with Sandie being just a whore. The cops must be pissed off, he thinks. Big headlines about murder make them look bad.
He can tell by the way the streets are full of them, talking to anybody they can get their hands on, that they don’t know where to look. They’re desperate to find what he knows isn’t there. He knows it’s not there because he did it exactly as he was told.
He’s proud of himself. He can’t remember ever feeling like this before. There must have been a time when he did something right, something he could hold his head up about. But when he searches his fucked-up memories, nothing surfaces.
The Voice understands that. The Voice is proud of him too. He knows because when he got back to his place last night, there was a reward. A small parcel was sitting on top of his TV/video combo, wrapped in nice shiny holographic paper with a big gold ribbon round it. It was so beautiful that he almost didn’t want to open it. He wanted to swagger round with it so people would realize he was the kind of person who got sp
ecial presents. He didn’t, though. He knew that would be stupid. And he’s trying very hard not to be stupid these days.
Instead he sat on the bed for ages, turning it over in his hands. Eventually, he decided to unwrap it and see what was inside. He had a pretty good idea, but he wanted to be sure. First, he untied the ribbon, forcing his clumsy fingers to go slow over the knot rather than ripping it apart with his teeth or cutting it with his Swiss Army knife. Then he folded up the paper and ribbon carefully, before putting it away in a drawer.
Inside was the reward he expected. A video cassette. With sweating hands, he slid it into the slot in the video, reaching for the remote to turn on the TV. And there it was, in all its glory. His first mission, his first cleansing. This time, he didn’t lose his erection.
PART THREE
Three weeks later
He used to have nightmares when he was a kid. He hasn’t thought about them in years; they stopped once he started spliffing. He can’t recall the last time he went to bed without at least one joint humming in his veins, so likewise he can’t recollect the last time a bad dream woke him screaming and quivering between the sheets. But he does remember how there was always someone towering over him, mouth opening and closing, spewing violent words. He seemed to shrink under the attack, while the shouting figure swelled like a monster in a manga comic. He could never make out the words, but they seemed to strip the very skin from him till he felt raw and bleeding.
What made it worse was that he had nothing to make it better when he woke. There was no comforting memory of gentleness or kindness to set against the sound and fury of his nightmare.
It’s hard to believe how much things have changed. Now he falls asleep lulled by the rockabye rhythms of the Voice. He wouldn’t mind betting that if he gave up the weed, he’d sleep like a baby these days. Not that he’s about to give it a try. He likes life without nightmares too much to take a chance.
Tonight, he’s making plans. The Voice is in his head, telling him it’s time to move again. Time for the next chapter of the lesson, according to the Voice. Time for another cleansing.