by Val McDermid
25
T
here were three branches of Pizza Express in Bradfield and no way of knowing which one Kathryn and David had visited on the Tuesday after the wedding. Karim looked at the app on his phone that stuck little purple pins in the map to show their locations. He remembered what Tony had said at the briefing about the caution and planning already evident in their killer’s behaviour and considered what he knew of the CCTV cameras that covered the city centre. Not enough, he decided.
He glanced across at the closed door of Stacey’s office and took a deep breath. He was the new boy on this team and still the outsider. Nobody had deliberately made him feel unwelcome, but it was clear that everyone else knew each other and trusted each other’s way of working. Nobody had that level of confidence in him yet; sometimes in his peripheral vision he caught his colleagues cutting their eyes at him when he’d stepped out of line or asked a stupid question. Even Paula, the friendliest of the lot, sometimes rolled her eyes when he didn’t know something he had no way of knowing. He didn’t think any of it was meant unkindly, but he didn’t feel anyone was cutting him much slack.
As for Stacey? She terrified him. She appeared to know more about data systems than any human should and she didn’t waste her time interacting with carbon-based life forms like him. She dressed the way he thought an AI office robot might, in impeccably fitted suits and blouses made of fabric that seemed to have a life independent of its wearer. As if that wasn’t enough, word was that she’d turned her skills to profitable use. Stacey Chen could buy and sell the lot of them if she felt like it.
Altogether it added up to a recipe for terror for a nice boy like Karim, who still sort of lived at home, in the granny flat above the garage that his mother had reluctantly let him move into after his actual granny had died. His mother still behaved like he was twelve, checking up on what he had in the fridge and how full his laundry basket was. All his life he’d been under the thumb of women and it seemed like ReMIT was designed to be more of the same.
So he really shouldn’t be scared of Stacey, should he? She didn’t have the power over him that his mother or the aunties had. How much scalding contempt could she pour over his head?
Before he could change his mind, Karim jumped up and hustled through to Stacey’s office, not waiting for a response to his knock. Stacey was encased in her ergonomic chair behind her screens, Alvin at her side, peering over her shoulder. Stacey didn’t even look up but Alvin glanced his way. ‘Hey, Karim. You after the human computer here?’
Stacey tutted, not taking her eye off the top-right screen. Her fingers darted back and forth over the keyboard. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Number six. Now go forth and put your witnesses to the test.’
To Karim’s ears it sounded more like an invitation to put the witnesses to the sword. ‘Have you got a minute, Stacey?’ he asked, trying not to sound timid.
Stacey leaned back and rolled her shoulders to loosen her back. ‘What do you need?’ she asked, her voice neutral.
‘I’m trying to prioritise the Pizza Express branches that David might have taken Kathryn to,’ he said. ‘Bearing in mind what Tony said about him being careful about forensic traces, I thought he might have chosen the venue based on the number of CCTV cameras that could pick up him or his car.’
Stacey flashed a smile so swift he wondered whether he’d hallucinated it. ‘Good thinking. You want me to map the restaurants on to the CCTV maps, is that it?’
He nodded, relieved that his idea hadn’t been dismissed. ‘Please. If that’s possible?’
Already her fingers were dancing, her eyes shifting between screens. ‘Come round here,’ she said.
Obediently, he rounded the IT set-up and stood at her shoulder, keeping his distance. Stacey pointed at the middle screen in the top row. ‘That’s your restaurants. On the left are the traffic cameras. On the right, Bradfield Council street cameras.’ She clicked her trackpad and the maps on either side flowed to the central map, overlaying the original. ‘I’ll send it to your terminal,’ she said.
He grinned. ‘That’s brilliant, thanks.’
‘Not quite finished yet,’ she said absently, scrolling through another menu. ‘OK. This is inevitably incomplete and probably not entirely accurate, but it shows the private CCTV systems we’re aware of in the city centre. Banks, shops, takeaways, that sort of thing.’ She clicked again and the new map overlaid the original composite. ‘I’m sending that to you as a separate file, just for reference in case you get a positive ID and need to attempt a backtrack on his movements. Good luck.’
It was a dismissal. Stacey was already on to the next task before he’d even left her side. Karim went back to his desk and printed out both maps. On the first one, he also marked the location of the tapas restaurant where Kathryn and David had gone for their second meal together.
While he was poring over the printout, Tony pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. ‘What are you trying to figure out?’ he asked.
Karim explained his theory and Tony nodded approval. ‘It makes sense that he’d scout out possible destinations. This one, for example.’ He pointed to a Pizza Express in the middle of Temple Fields, an area of the city centre known for the vibrancy and variety of its nightlife. ‘All the streets round there are bristling with cameras because of the levels of street crime.’
‘And drug dealing,’ Karim added. ‘They’ve stepped up patrols because of the amount of people getting off their heads on spice down the bottom end of Temple Fields, down towards Campion Boulevard. So I’d put that at the bottom of the list of possibles.’ He traced a line on the map with his finger. ‘But this one… You come off High Market Street which, OK, has lots of cameras, but it’s still crowded even at that time on a Friday evening. Into the lane down the blank side of Debenhams and all you have to do is turn the corner and you’re there.’
‘Looks good. What’s this you’ve circled in pen?’
‘Tapas Brava. I was a bit surprised he took her there, to be honest. It’s smack bang in the middle of Bellwether Square and that’s got to have more cameras per square metre than anywhere in Bradfield.’
‘But most of them are private ones. They tend to be focused on the shopfront or the cash machine or whatever, not so much on the street. And actually, Tapas Brava is a pretty clever choice. Look. You can hardly see it on the map, but that’s Raddle Alley. It’s too narrow to walk two abreast, and it cuts through from Groat Market, down the road from Central Station.’
Karim followed Tony’s finger. ‘I see it. I don’t know how I’ve missed it. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve been in Bellwether Square but I’ve never even noticed it was there.’
‘It’s a shortcut from town back to where my boat’s moored up in Minster Basin. That’s the only reason I know it. And it’s right next to Tapas Brava.’
Karim stood up, folding the printout and putting it in the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘I’d better crack on then,’ he said, feeling more optimistic than he had when the actions for the day had been handed out.
By lunchtime, Karim had to admit that optimism had been unfounded. Nobody at any of the busy Pizza Express branches remembered serving Kathryn and David. One of the duty managers had pointed out that they served hundreds of customers every day and unless they were a Bradfield Victoria footballer or some minor celebrity, or they’d kicked off about something, there was no chance the waiting staff would remember the faces.
Karim had asked about the possibility of checking their credit card receipts for the evening in question and the manager had laughed at him. ‘No chance, mate,’ he’d said. ‘Even if you could get a warrant, it’d be useless. People don’t just use personal credit cards. They use company cards, joint account cards. It’d be a total needle-in-a-haystack job. And besides, they might have paid cash. You still get some people that do. Because they’re old-fashioned or’ – he winked – ‘they don’t want it showing up on their credit-card statement.’
He’d saved T
apas Bravas till last because it was a much smaller establishment. There were only a dozen tables and a further fourteen seats at the long zinc counter. It was dimly lit, the dark wood of the furniture and the floor balanced by bright modern prints by artists Karim couldn’t even begin to guess at. He’d arrived at the height of the lunchtime rush and, realising it wasn’t the right time to gain the full attention of the staff, he swallowed his guilt and took the last available stool at the bar. He was entitled to a meal break, he told himself, while also recognising that on this squad nobody paid any attention to things like overtime and regular breaks. Karim told himself it was a legitimate way to ingratiate himself with potential witnesses and ordered a plate of chipirones and half a dozen fish croquetas.
By the time he’d slowly worked his way through the small plates of unfamiliar but delicious food, the place had more or less emptied out and he snagged a passing waitress. He showed her the pictures of Kathryn and David, explaining why he was there. She shrugged her lack of recognition but sent her colleagues over anyway.
One waiter, a young Spaniard who’d been working at Tapas Brava for five months, seemed less absolute than the others in his lack of recognition. When Karim reminded him of the date, he nodded. ‘I think, but I’m not sure.’ He pointed to a corner table behind them. ‘I think maybe table eight.’
‘What do you remember about them?’
‘If it was them, he paid in cash. And she said, and this is what I remember, “Do the staff get the tips?” So I tell her, we keep the cash tips but we only get half of the ones that go on the credit card.’
‘Is there any way of finding out the name the table was booked in?’
He shrugged. ‘We can look.’
Karim followed him to the computer screen where the bookings were managed, his heart beating a little faster. With the date and the time and the table number, it was easy to locate. ‘It is here,’ the waiter said. ‘Eight o’clock. It was booked in the name of David and here is the phone number.’
Karim’s face fell. He didn’t have to check his notes to know that this was the same pay-as-you-go number that Kathryn had had for David. A further twenty minutes questioning the waiter and his colleagues took him no further forward. Nobody remembered anything about the couple on table eight. Not what they were wearing, not how they had behaved towards each other. Nothing.
It looked like Tony had been right. The man who had killed Kathryn McCormick had done nothing on impulse.
26
A
few hours later, on the other side of Pennines, Amie McDonald was putting on her glad rags, ready for another date with Mark. He was bloody lovely, she thought. A true gentleman; not a ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’ merchant. He listened when she talked, he paid attention and responded to what she said. Obviously he was still holding a bit of a candle to his ex, and it wasn’t easy, going head to head with the dead because they could always trump you simply by being dead. But even though she was quite a bit younger than him, he’d obviously taken to Amie, otherwise he wouldn’t be taking her out again. It stood to reason. And age difference was no big deal these days, not now men had learned to take better care of their looks and their figures like women did.
She carefully applied her most expensive mascara, the one that claimed to double the volume and never to smudge. If she was going to get him into bed tonight, she didn’t want to wake up with panda eyes and black smudges all over the pillow. With a final touch-up of her lippie, she was ready to go.
Amie picked up her phone then, as she was about to put it in her bag, she had a sudden thought. Jamie would be chuffed to bits to know she’d got so lucky at his wedding. She tapped out a quick text message.
Hiya Gorgeous. Hope you and El are having a fab time. You weren’t the only ones who struck it lucky at the wedding. I’m off on a second date with El’s dishy friend Mark, a million times more fab than scuzzy Steve!!! Wish me luck!!! xxx
It really did feel like the start of something big. Amie had been convinced she’d found Mr Right before but there was something different about Mark. Something special. She had a funny feeling that he was the one.
And in a way that wasn’t funny at all, she was right.
One of the many things Tony liked about Carol was that she didn’t speak for the sake of hearing her own voice. She talked when she had something to say. Sometimes she had questions she thought he might be able to help her answer. Other times she had observations she wanted to test against his experience and understanding. Occasionally she wanted to think out loud, throwing the bones of a theory in the dirt to see what shape they might make. Very rarely, she opened up some seam of information about herself, almost against her will.
But if she had nothing to offer, she didn’t feel the need to fill the space with noise. Mostly, silence between them was easy. Lately, however, there had been too many occasions where it had been electric, crackling with the tension of the things unsaid. Her fight against alcohol had made for contentious exchanges and, if that were possible, even more contentious silences. Tony, empathetic to the point of self-harming, felt the pain of her abstinence as powerfully as anything he’d ever endured personally.
That evening, they’d exchanged barely a word on the drive back from Bradfield. It was an early finish for them and Tony suspected Carol felt an unreasonable guilt at leaving ReMIT while there was still light in the sky. Habitually, when she was working a murder, she was seldom away from the case for more than half a dozen hours of snatched sleep at a time. And even then her phone would be on the bedside table next to her, the ringer turned up full.
But there was nothing more to be done in the case of the murder of Kathryn McCormick. North Yorkshire officers on the ground were carrying out routine inquiries to try to track down how the car had ended up where it had, but Tony suspected they were wasting their time. This man knew what he was doing.
The forensic specialists would do their thing and deliver their results in due course, but none of Carol’s team truly believed that would take them any further forward. The fire had destroyed any chance of DNA. The firefighters had destroyed any possibility of fingermarks on the bodywork of the car. There might be some toxicology results from the largely incinerated organs of the dead woman, but even if there were, the chances of that producing something so out of the ordinary that it would have any probative value were infinitesimally small. The only outside chance was that the forensic chemists might find a chemical signature among the charred remains that would be distinctive.
What that might be, none of them could imagine.
Normally the victim would lead them towards the killer. Most murders were domestic affairs. Spouses, partners, children, friends. The webs that connected the two people whose lives had collided fatally were generally obvious, even if the motives were sometimes obscure or apparently trivial. Even when strangers attacked, there were usually markers of where their paths had crossed.
So far, they appeared to have mapped the point where Kathryn McCormick met her killer. From all Tony had read and heard, she had been a slightly dull, pleasant woman. Even the people who worked under her were unwilling to speak critically of her. She seemed to have no gift for friendship but equally no talent for creating enmity. She wasn’t unattractive but it seemed she lacked any charisma when it came to attracting men. He saw her as someone determinedly making the most of very little. The telling detail for him was Paula’s mention of Kathryn’s apparent love of cooking. Even though she had nobody to feed, she’d devoted a lot of time and money to what could be an adventurous and challenging hobby. She was trying to do something that marked her out as special. The kind of thing that a certain type of magazine promoted as a way to keep a man satisfied. That she’d chosen that route rather than the obvious Fifty Ways To Satisfy Your Man In Bed did tell Tony something about her killer.
The man who called himself David had made a clever and deliberate choice of victim. He hadn’t gone for an easy pick-up. If all he’d wanted was sex and vio
lence, he could have picked up someone in a club who was too drunk or high to care who she went home with. He could have found someone desperate for a substitute for love in a late-night bar. But this man had something else in mind. He needed something different for his satisfaction. He needed somebody who was looking for love and was in the right frame of mind to find it.
‘He needed to be able to believe she’d fallen for him,’ he said out loud when they were almost back at the barn.
‘What?’ Carol sounded startled, as if she too had been lost in thought.
‘It’s important to him. What he did with Kathryn, he courted her. He chose her because he thought he could make her fall in love with him. He picked her carefully. Everybody at a wedding is in a state of heightened emotion. A woman on her own, chances are she’s in a vulnerable state. She sees happy ever after all around her. But she’s on her own. On the outside looking in. Then out of nowhere, Mr Well-Groomed Nice Guy whisks her away from the noise and the in-your-face confection of romance to something like the real thing.’
‘You think that’s what this was? A romance?’ Carol sounded curious rather than dismissive. She’d been on the end of his explorations and explanations for long enough to trust his insights. Not always right on the money, but seldom far off. She signalled the turn that took them on to the back road leading to her barn, the road where all her recent troubles had started.
‘A simulacrum of a romance,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You know I hate to jump to conclusions on the basis of one murder, but that’s the only obvious theory that fits the facts we have. I might be completely wrong but it makes sense. He’s got a story in his head, and he wanted to make Kathryn fit it.’
‘Why?’
‘So that when he kills her it means what he wants it to mean.’
Carol frowned, saying nothing for a long moment. ‘Sometimes I wonder how you come up with these ideas.’