Insidious Intent

by Val McDermid

  ‘And that’s it? I just have to hand over the information?’

  ‘Yes. It’s that simple.’

  ‘I think I need to speak to head office about this,’ he said uncertainly.

  She glanced at her watch. ‘Be my guest. But they’ll tell you the same thing as me.’ She leaned forward slightly and said with a confiding air, ‘Look, we’ve done this in the most low-key way possible. With this warrant, I could have come in mob-handed and closed down this branch while I served it. How would that play in the media? Northern Bank allegedly implicated in the financing of terrorism. Your head office would love that. This is a matter of some urgency.’ She fixed him with her steeliest glare. ‘If there is a problem, my team are five minutes away. I promise you, they don’t give a shit about the reputation of your bank.’

  He opened and closed his mouth, looking pained. Then self-preservation kicked in. ‘Well, this paperwork all seems to be in order, Detective. Give me a moment…’ He pushed back from his desk.

  Her heart hammered harder. She couldn’t let him leave and talk this through with a colleague. ‘Do what you have to do here,’ Stacey said briskly. She gestured to his computer. ‘You have access to the systems.’ She leaned across and turned his screen so she could see what he was doing. ‘It’s a question of security. No more people involved than absolutely have to be.’

  He cleared his throat and started hammering his old-fashioned keyboard. ‘Of course. I’m just taken aback,’ he jabbered. ‘I can’t believe…’

  ‘Nobody ever can,’ she said briskly, her eyes on the screens. She couldn’t quite believe she was getting away with this.

  ‘That can’t be right.’ Haynes frowned. ‘I know this customer. He’s not a terrorist. He’s a plumber. He took out a loan with us last year to expand his business.’

  Stacey pulled out her phone and snapped a photograph of the details on the screen. Norman Jackson. An address in Harriestown. ‘I appreciate what you’re saying. And there may well be a completely innocent explanation for the intelligence that has come to us.’ She stood up. ‘I appreciate your assistance. Please don’t discuss this conversation with anyone.’ She flashed a quick smile. ‘Nobody understands security like a banker, right?’

  Haynes’ smile was uncertain. ‘Absolutely.’ He got up and walked round the desk to show her out. Stacey leaned across to get her bag, making sure her body shielded her slipping the fake warrant into it. Pulse racing, she walked past the manager and carried on across the lobby and into the street.

  Stacey let out a long sigh of relief as she turned the first corner she came to. She leaned against the cool brick wall, eyes closed, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. She’d done it. She’d abandoned her screens. She’d gone out into the field and fooled a man who should have known better.

  And now she knew who had tried to blow a hole in her friend’s life.

  53

  T

  here was nobody home at the well-maintained between-the-wars semi that Sean Garrity had shared with his late wife Claire. Paula walked round to the other half of the house, which looked distinctly scruffier. A glance through the bay window of the living room revealed a chaos of children’s toys and folded clothes. She rang the bell and heard a child’s wail in response. The door opened to reveal a young woman, blonde hair in an untidy ponytail, a whimpering baby on her hip and a sticky-faced toddler clinging to her leg. She looked about ready to join the baby in its tears. ‘What?’ she demanded.

  Paula held out her ID. ‘I’m looking for Sean Garrity. There doesn’t seem to be anyone home.’

  ‘Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? He’ll be at work. Lucky bastard.’ She jiggled her leg, unsuccessfully trying to shake off the toddler who was staring at Paula as if she was a creature from another galaxy.

  ‘And where is work? Do you know?’

  ‘He manages that gastropub in Kenton Vale. What’s it called…?’ She screwed up her face in an attempt to remember.

  ‘The Dog and Gun?’ Paula vaguely recalled reading something in the paper about the revamping of the traditional local into something more upmarket.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. He invited us to the opening. I only had the one then…’ She looked dreamy for a moment, then a full-scale howl from the baby brought her back to reality. She shushed the baby ineffectually. ‘You’ll find him down there. Thrown himself into it, you might say. Since Claire died. You know his wife died? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘Thanks, you’ve been very helpful.’ Paula backed away, glad to escape the aura of sour milk and stale flesh that clung to the harassed woman. She drove off, car window open so she could vape. God, but she missed smoking. Vaping made her feel like the toddler clinging to its mother’s leg. There was something infantilising about the cigarette substitute that made Paula feel she probably needed to knock that on the head too.

  She reached the Dog and Gun ten minutes after opening time. It was all faux distressed wood and antiqued tables. The heritage it was channelling was the Yukon gold rush rather than Bradfield’s industrial past. The hipster behind the bar perked up at the sight of her, clearly thinking she was the first customer of the day. His face fell when she showed him her ID and said she was looking for Sean Garrity. ‘He’s through the back,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get him. Is this about that twat that drove into Claire?’

  ‘If you could just fetch Mr Garrity?’ Paula softened her words with a genial smile.

  Sean Garrity appeared moments later. He was a lanky six-footer with a shaved head and a full beard. It was a look that Paula found faintly ridiculous. He wore a checked shirt buttoned to the neck and low-slung skinny jeans. A pair of silver skull earrings completed the image. But there was nothing fashionable about the dark shadows under his eyes or the tumbler of rum in his hand. ‘You’re a cop?’ he said, aggression in his stance and his tone. ‘Is this about that tosser who killed my wife? Are you actually going to charge him with something?’

  ‘Can we go somewhere more private?’

  He gestured to the far corner of the bar where a trio of high-backed booths were clustered. ‘That do?’

  Paula nodded and followed him. His gait was a little unsteady and as she drew closer to him, she could smell alcohol in his sweat. This was a man who was dealing with his grief through the medium of drink. Never helpful when it came to eliciting information.

  He threw himself into the booth and glared belligerently at Paula. ‘Well? What’s happening?’

  ‘I’m not on the team investigating what happened to your wife,’ she said, keeping it slow and calm. ‘I’m with the Regional Major Incident Team.’

  He snorted and took a swig from his glass. ‘What happened to Claire. That was a major fucking incident, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s what it was for you, Mr Garrity. But I can’t comment on it because I don’t know the circumstances.’

  ‘So what are you doing here if you’re not interested in Claire?’ Another swallow and the glass was empty. ‘Norrie,’ he shouted. ‘Bring me the bottle.’

  ‘Did your wife do much on social media?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘We think someone hacked Claire’s RigMarole account after her death, and we’re trying to find out who and how.’

  The barman scuttled over with a bottle of artisanal rum with a ridiculously over-designed label. Garrity waved him away and poured three fingers into the glass. ‘What kind of sick fuck does that?’

  The kind who gets a kick out of fucking with his victims. ‘We believe this may be connected with a series of serious crimes. Do you happen to know what Claire’s password on RigMarole was?’

  ‘Yeah. It was Claire890714. Her birth date in reverse. The fourteenth of July 1989. But she hardly ever used RigMarole. She couldn’t be arsed. She liked talking to people, not sending stupid messages to people she’d never met.’

  It wouldn’t have taken much to work out that password, Paula thought. All the
information the killer needed would have been there in Claire’s death notice. Stacey was right. People were depressingly stupid about passwords. She took the photo from her bag and laid it on the table. ‘Do you know this man?’

  Garrity peered at it. ‘I don’t think so. He’s not one of our friends and I don’t recognise him from in here. Norrie?’ He summoned the barman again. ‘He’d know better than me.’ He waved the photo at Norrie when he arrived.

  The barman studied it. ‘He’s definitely not a regular. Other than that, I can’t say. Has he done something we should know about?’

  ‘He may have hacked Claire’s RigMarole account after she died.’

  Norrie’s mouth curled and his eyes screwed up in an expression of disgust. ‘That’s sick.’

  ‘Maybe you should go round to Freshco.’ Seeing Paula’s frown, Garrity continued. ‘Where Claire worked. She was the bakery supervisor. It might be one of the weirdos who work there. Most of them, I wouldn’t give them houseroom in here.’ He clambered out of the booth, almost tripping over his own feet. ‘So if that’s it, we’ve got work to do. Right, Norrie?’ And he stumbled away, trying to straighten up and look sober but failing.

  ‘He’s taken it hard,’ Norrie said. ‘He used to be a really nice guy, you know? He totally worshipped Claire.’

  ‘Get him some help,’ Paula said. ‘You’re not doing him any favours colluding in the drinking. Trust me, I’ve seen colleagues go down that road.’

  Freshco in Kenton Vale was a ten-minute drive away. It took Paula almost the same length of time to find a parking space then walk back to the store. As usual during the day, the aisles were busy with shoppers. All human life is here, she thought, dodging a dozy-looking man in drooping sweat pants and stained T-shirt, only to step into the path of an elderly woman pushing a trolley containing a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk and a tin of beans.

  Two hours later, she emerged into daylight, feeling dazed and frustrated. The HR department in the superstore had insisted on consulting head office before they would even look at the photograph she was toting. But once they got the go-ahead, she had to admit they’d been helpful. She’d been introduced to Claire’s workmates in the bakery and when none of them admitted recognising the man in the picture, the helpful HR boss had taken her on a tour of every department, showing the picture to every member of staff they encountered. And nobody showed any sign of knowing who he was. One check-out operative said she thought he might have come through her till a couple of times, but her colleagues rolled their eyes and said, ‘Stop showing off, Varya.’

  It was a bust. The HR woman had made copies of the photo and promised to put it up in the staff room and on the various department noticeboards. But Paula couldn’t feel even the faintest stirring of hope. Another lead going precisely nowhere. She’d never known a case like it. Usually there were frustrations a-plenty in any investigation. But at the heart of it, there would be something that finally broke in their favour. A moment of carelessness by the killer. A chance encounter that broke an alibi. A forensic breakthrough.

  But this man was too sharp for that. Too sharp for them, which was unnerving. Carol Jordan, Tony Hill and Stacey Chen were, in Paula’s view, the best in the business. And the rest of the team were the coppers she’d hand-pick herself if she was building an elite squad. Yet they’d hardly advanced the case an inch in over six weeks.

  Blake was a bully but he’d meant what he said. He was longing to turn on them because Carol Jordan had outflanked him in the past. But there were other chiefs without a personal agenda who wouldn’t be slow in following suit. Sooner or later, the bosses were going to turn on them. If they didn’t deliver something soon, it wouldn’t be long before they were consigned to the scrapheap.

  54

  H

  e’d never been busier. Even when the business had been going gangbusters with Tricia, he’d had more time to call his own. But executing his careful plans to perfect his revenge took time. It wasn’t simply going on the dates with the women, it was preparing the ground. He only ever sent them texts or spoke to them using the burner phones. And to cover his tracks, he only ever made the calls from the cities the women lived in, then removed SIM cards and batteries. The only time those calls would show up in Bradfield was when he was courting a victim in Bradfield. So as well as running his business, he was running around chasing women. Luckily he often managed to roll the two things up together and text his next target in between meetings in other cities.

  He’d been listening to a Bradfield Victoria football match in the car driving to Liverpool the other evening when he’d heard something that he liked. The commentators were talking at half-time about football chants and the inventiveness of fans. One mentioned a chant he’d heard from the terraces of a team on a losing streak: ‘You’re nothing special, we get beaten every week.’ It had made him think about the final showdown with Tricia and what he could say to her. ‘You’re nothing special, I’ve done this too often to count,’ perhaps? That wasn’t bad, but something snappier would come to him, he was sure.

  That morning, he’d already supervised the layout for two different magazines and spoken to a couple of key advertisers demanding circulation updates. The latest figures had not left anyone feeling happy; he was going to have to cut the rates both advertisers had been paying. And now he had a meeting with Carrie McCrystal, a businesswoman who ran a chain of beauty spas across the North. He hoped she was going to offer him a juicy slice of advertising revenue to stave off the problems coming at him from all sides. He might even be able to afford to hire someone to take on the editorial work Tricia had done so effectively.

  She arrived right on time, a walking advertisement for her business. Her hair flowed to her shoulders; dark, glossy and well-kempt. Her make-up was flawless, emphasising slightly eerie pale blue eyes and full lips. She wore a well-fitting business suit with a pencil skirt and nude heels. He couldn’t help a buzz of admiration at her style. He took care with his own appearance and always appreciated it when others did the same. It showed respect for the people you dealt with. Tricia had always maintained an impeccable façade, however. And look how that had turned out – the perfect mask for her insincerity. So he wasn’t going to take Carrie McCrystal at face value.

  They met in a small conference room that he used for team briefings. It was plain but smart and gave nothing away. He poured coffee and let her witter about the weather and the traffic till finally they sat facing each other across the table. ‘I expect you’re wondering why I asked for this meeting,’ was her opener.

  ‘I assumed you wanted to talk about an advertising deal.’

  Her smile reminded him of a cat. ‘Oh, Tom, if that was all I wanted, I’d have dealt with Marianne in advertising. We’ve always managed to come to a satisfactory arrangement in the past. No, I have bigger fish to fry today.’

  He leaned back in his chair, head cocked to one side. ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  ‘A little bird tells me that your business partner has left the building.’ She let the words hang in the air.

  He struggled to keep his anger in check. The idea of other people discussing his private life enraged him. Was that to be Tricia’s legacy? To make him look inadequate in other people’s eyes? ‘People move on,’ he said, managing to keep his voice even and pleasant.

  ‘Tell me about it. We’re business people, we understand that nothing is forever. But it occurred to me that you might be interested in bringing another partner into the business. Now, I’ve no direct experience of running magazines but I have a brilliant press and PR person who has a background in precisely that. Melanie was the editorial manager of Leeds Alive before I snapped her up. I think she could do wonders in this business and I have lots of promotional ideas to bring to the table.’ She gave him a brilliant smile. Teeth that would glow in the dark, he thought. All the better to eat you with.

  ‘That’s a very interesting proposition, Carrie,’ he said. A lifeline for the business he’d spent
so long building. A chance to salvage what Tricia had so nearly destroyed. But did he really want to put his fate in the hands of someone else? And how the fuck was he going to get his hands on Tricia’s shares? He couldn’t sell what he didn’t have.

  She opened her substantial handbag and took out a thin cardboard file. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of putting a financial proposal together. Obviously, I don’t have access to your commercially sensitive information, but I’ve been taking a long hard look at what you do and even taking into account that slight but noticeable dip in quality recently, I think this is a great little business.’ She pushed the file across to him. ‘Tell me whether I’m wide of the mark.’

  He opened the file. At first, the figures were a blur but he forced himself to focus and he had to admit, she’d done a remarkably thorough job. He almost wondered if she’d picked Tricia’s brains before coming to him. But no, he told himself. This was not a conspiracy. He couldn’t start thinking like that. This was a report that could have been assembled by anyone with enough business experience who knew where to look. He took his time, going through the pages line by line till he came to the end. Her estimate of what his business was worth and her proposal to buy into it.

  He was momentarily stunned. He’d resigned himself to the fact that his business was going down the tubes. He knew the content was suffering, he knew he’d been too busy chasing editorial to keep a tight grip on design. The gradual decline of his magazines was something else to lay at Tricia’s door, and that quantum of blame had added fuel to the blaze of his determination and anger.

  But Carrie McCrystal was offering him an alternative ending to one part of the catastrophe that Tricia had inflicted on him. Her financial offer was a reasonable starting point. He’d have to meet this Melanie and see her work to decide whether she was good enough to make a difference. But it was a potential reprieve, no doubt about it. The only question was whether he wanted to be saved or to go down in flames to make a point.