Insidious Intent

by Val McDermid

  The DJ was running the repertoire of sure-fire dancing tracks. ABBA, Madonna, Rod Stewart, as well as more modern stuff Tony couldn’t put a name to. The dance floor was crammed with bodies. Not everyone was dancing, however. Some of the older guests were in little knots and huddles of conversation. The parents of small children were chasing after them, whooping and laughing. The men who wouldn’t dance were mostly crowded round the bar. And a couple of women sat alone, gazing intently at their phones, pretending not to mind.

  And then Elton made his move. He approached one of the women, pulling out a chair to join her. Even from that distance, Tony could see he was employing a deal of grace and charm. Tony took out his phone and called Paula. Not Carol. ‘He’s found his target,’ he said. ‘Thirty something. Long blonde hair, red dress. I’ll call back when they’re on the move.’

  It took no more than fifteen minutes. Elton jumped to his feet and pulled the woman’s chair back as she stood. They walked to the door, heads close in conversation, his hand cupping her elbow. Tony called Paula again. ‘Coming your way,’ he said.

  He left his untouched pint and hurried after the Wedding Killer and his latest acquisition.

  There was a dimly lit cocktail bar at the far end of the corridor. Its smoked-glass windows offered a view of the Albert Dock that almost made it look glamorous. Paula and Carol had chosen a table as far away from the door as they could get, tucked round the corner of the bar. They could see the heads and shoulders of people walking in. And right on cue, moments after Tony had made his second call, Tom Elton walked in with a woman. He was paying attention to her, not to his surroundings, as he steered her towards an empty table only a dozen metres from Carol and Paula.

  He solicitously arranged a chair for the woman and was about to sit down when he glanced across and saw the two women. An expression of shock flickered over his face but as he composed himself, Carol got to her feet and moved towards him, her hand reaching into her shoulder bag.

  Paula right behind her.

  Time slowed. Carol’s hand inched out of her bag. A gleam of metal. Then Tony’s voice, urgent; loud. ‘Mr Elton.’

  Elton turned. Tony appeared to embrace him, something black sliding between them.

  Paula’s hand on Carol’s wrist, twisting it so hard the blade fell back into her bag.

  Then Elton on the floor, gasping like a landed shark, scarlet spreading across his shirt front. A woman screaming.

  And Tony standing, arms loose at his side, a black blade dripping red.

  Epilogue

  O

  ne phone call. That’s all it would have taken. One short phone call to change so many lives. Tom Elton would still have been alive. DCI Carol Jordan would no longer have been a warranted police officer. And Dr Tony Hill would not have been sitting in a room beneath Liverpool Crown Court awaiting sentence.

  Not a day passed without the newly promoted Detective Inspector Paula McIntyre cursing the delay in returning Tricia Stone’s call. If she’d been able to get through, she would have learned about the cottage in the Dales that Tom Elton had access to, that Tricia Stone had forgotten to mention when they’d spoken previously. That knowledge would surely have been enough to stay Carol Jordan’s hand.

  When Paula eventually got hold of Tricia two days later, she’d already heard about Elton’s death and was full of apologies for not having remembered the cottage in the Dales. ‘I never went there,’ she said. ‘When I left my last company, I swapped my shares for it. My lawyer dealt with everything. There was a sitting tenant, an academic. We only realised she moved out a few days ago when she rang up about some archive boxes she’d left in the loft. And then I remembered you asking about the Dales.’ Too late, Paula thought bitterly as she listened. Too bloody late.

  Tricia’s information opened up an Aladdin’s cave of forensic evidence. The DNA of all three of Elton’s victims. The Brompton bike he’d used to leave each scene. A cache of burner phones. Three boxes of packets of crisps. All the evidence they’d have needed to put him away for murder three times over.

  And her friend Tony wouldn’t be about to receive a life sentence.

  Remarkably, things had not descended into chaos after the stabbing. Paula somehow held it together. She had arrested Tony, who meekly sat in a chair until other officers arrived. She’d told the barman to close the bar. She’d quietly told Carol – who was apparently paralysed with shock – to shut the fuck up about the knife in her own bag. ‘Nobody saw it,’ she’d hissed. ‘If anybody remembers you reaching into your bag, it was your warrant card you were going for.’ Carol had nodded, mute with stupefaction.

  Then routine had taken over. Paramedics, cops, crime scene techs had staked their claim to the event. Paula had given a statement and had finally been cut loose in the small hours of the Sunday morning. Nobody would tell her what was going on or where Carol was, so reluctantly she went home. She had no recollection of the drive back to Bradfield. Elinor found her asleep at the kitchen table later that morning, a half-drunk tumbler of whisky next to her.

  When she turned her phone back on, she found a deluge of messages from the ReMIT team. She couldn’t face any of them. There was one voice message from Carol, which she listened to. ‘I’m so sorry,’ was all she said.

  They charged Tony with murder. Of course they did. Carol refused to discuss with Paula what had happened. Numb and shocked, the team pulled together the evidence against Elton, which came in handy for Tony’s defence team. But the fact that your victim had himself killed three others and was on the way to number four wasn’t a defence to murder. Nothing more than a speech in mitigation. Somehow, between them, the defence team and the Crown Prosecution Service had parlayed the charge down to voluntary manslaughter. Still, it would be a heavy sentence. The use of a knife made sure of that.

  Paula had visited Tony several times during the eight months he’d been on remand. The first time, she asked him why he’d done it. He’d given her the saddest smile and said, ‘So she wouldn’t have to.’ He refused to say anything more except to point out the irony that the black commando knife had been a joke leaving present from the Home Office task force on offender profiling that he’d led years before. ‘Like mother, like son,’ he’d said. As if she needed reminding about Vanessa’s track record.

  Tony looked up as the door opened, expecting his lawyer with a final burst of optimistic but entirely unrealistic reassurance. Instead, Carol walked in, her face a pinched mask of misery. It was the first time he had seen her since his arrest and he wasn’t in the least surprised that his heart still gave a spasm of joy at the sight of her. Ridiculous, but undeniable.

  He jumped up and moved towards her, stopping a couple of feet short. ‘It’s wonderful to see you.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d ever want to see me again. But Bronwyn said…’

  ‘I’ve missed you. I wanted to write but I didn’t want to compromise you.’

  She nodded and sat down on the bench that ran along one side of the cell. ‘I’ve been so angry with you. For doing this to yourself. For doing it because of me.’

  A crooked smile and a half-shrug. ‘I knew you couldn’t do the time. So I stopped you doing the crime.’

  ‘You’ve ruined your life. Your career. Everything.’

  He sat down next to her, turning so he could see that face that was always there when he closed his eyes at night. ‘I’ll be OK. Because I pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter with provocation, my brief reckons I’ll get somewhere between five and ten years. I won’t be in maximum security. I can do the time, Carol. I can finally get down to that book I’ve been supposedly writing for years about offender profiling and my experience in the field. I can help other prisoners who don’t get enough therapy in the system.’

  ‘Stop being so bloody noble. You know you shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘No point in thinking like that. Paula tells me you’ve still got ReMIT to keep you occupied.’ His brow wrinkled in a frown. ‘What happened to Pen
ny Burgess’s story, by the way? It never appeared.’

  Carol sighed and shook her head. ‘She never ran it. The papers turned ReMIT into heroes after Elton. You how the Daily Mail loves a vigilante. There was no mileage in trying to make us the bad guys. So I get it all, Tony. Freedom, respect, applause.’ The bitterness burst through her attempt at levity.

  ‘Good. So make the most of it. Otherwise all this was for nothing.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘You were right. About the PTSD. I should have listened to you.’

  He said nothing. There was nothing to be said.

  ‘I’m seeing someone.’

  His face was stricken, eyes wide with hurt.

  She gave a dry little laugh. ‘For therapy, you idiot. Actually, I’m seeing Jacob Gold.’

  ‘Jacob?’ Tony was startled. ‘My Jacob?’

  ‘Yes. I remembered you saying how much he had helped you over the years. So I went to see him. I didn’t want to go through official channels. For obvious reasons.’

  ‘He’s very good.’

  ‘I hope so. Because it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’

  ‘It works.’ He stood up. ‘You should go now. They’ll be taking me up for sentencing any minute.’ He paused, drinking in the sight of her looking up at him. ‘Come and visit me?’

  She stood up and touched his arm. ‘As often as they’ll let me.’

  ‘And look after Steeler. I’ll need somewhere to live when I come out.’ A single tear trickled from the corner of her eye. He lifted a hand to her face and gently brushed it away. ‘That time I said I loved you?’

  She nodded, swallowing hard.

  ‘I meant it.’

  ‘I know. I love you too, Tony.’ Then she turned away and was gone.

  Dear Reader

  I am about to presume on your goodwill. Now that you have reached the end of Insidious Intent, I believe you’ll understand the favour I’m about to ask you. I hope that the ending of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan’s tenth outing will have taken you by surprise. I like to think that although it may seem shocking, it makes a terrible kind of sense, given what we know of their character traits and the experiences both have endured at my hands.

  Nevertheless, I believe it is not predictable. And for that reason, I’m asking you not to say or write anything that is a spoiler for that ending. I really want other readers to experience that moment of indrawn breath for themselves. Remember the disapproval showered on the people who revealed the twist in The Sixth Sense and spoiled it for the rest of us? I don’t want that to happen here.

  I’m sorry if this sounds self-important, but I’ve had twenty years of readers telling me how invested they are in these characters, and I want them to enjoy this book as much as, I hope, you have.

  Thanks for your time and your continued support.

  Acknowledgements

  Like journalists, writers of fiction are only as good as their sources. And I am very lucky with mine. Professor Niamh Nic Daied gave me valuable tutorials on fire and packets of crisps. Professor Dame Sue Black demonstrated how easy it is to break a hyoid bone. Professor Jo Sharp aided and abetted me in various ways.

  As always, I have a great team at my back who work with me to make the books the best they can be. My publisher David Shelley, my editor Lucy Malagoni, my American editor Amy Hundley, my agent Jane Gregory and editorial expert Stephanie Glencross are my first readers and they all have wisdom to offer. My copy-editor Anne O’Brien knows Tony and Carol better than I do and nobody could deal more effectively with the detail where the devil resides. Laura Sherlock keeps the show on the road with a smile (in spite of the car…), and the Little, Brown sales and marketing teams get the books into readers’ hands with flair and diligence.

  Kudos to Kathryn McCormick, Amie McDonald, Eileen Walsh and Lorna Meikle, who made generous charitable donations to see their names in print. Only the names are the same!

  And then there is my family. I couldn’t do this without their love, patience, GSOH and support. Jo and Cam, you are my rocks in a stormy sea.

  It’s been thirty years since my debut, Report for Murder, was published. I never imagined I had so many books in me. I’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks to all the readers, booksellers, festival organisers and reviewers who have helped to make it so rewarding and so much fun. Let’s hope there’s many more years and many more books to share.