by Val McDermid
‘It should be over the next hill,’ Kevin said, glancing at the satnav.
‘Let’s hope West Yorkshire aren’t going to get all possessive on us,’ Carol said. Although Seth had gone missing from Bradfield, his body had been found about four miles over the border in the neighbouring force’s area. She’d never worked directly for West Yorkshire but she’d managed to piss off most of their senior CID officers a few years before when she’d been working off the books with Tony on a serial killer investigation nobody but them would take seriously. ‘They’re not very keen on me over there,’ she added.
Kevin, who knew all about the history, grunted. ‘You can’t really blame them. You made them look a right bunch of wankers.’
‘I’d hope they’d be over it by now. It was a long time ago.’
‘This is Yorkshire. They’re still feeling aggrieved about the Wars of the Roses,’ Kevin pointed out as they breasted a rise. About a mile down the road they could see their destination, unmistakable in its array of vehicles, pale green tent, neon yellow tabards and white body suits. ‘If you’re lucky, all the ones you really pissed off will have retired.’
‘I should be lucky - I’m certainly not rich.’ They pulled up on the verge behind an ambulance whose doors were open to reveal a group of women huddled under thermal blankets, hands cupped round steaming drinks cartons. Carol gathered herself together, took a deep breath and headed for the uniformed constable manning the entrance to the crime scene. ‘DCI Jordan, Bradfield MIT,’ she said. ‘And this is DS Matthews. I’ve got other officers on their way.’
He checked their ID. ‘Sign in, ma’am.’ He proffered his clipboard and pen, then waved them through. ‘DCI Franklin’s the SIO. He’s in the tent.’
The tent erected by the forensics team to protect the scene sat right at the edge of the road. ‘They never make you think of camping holidays, do they?’ Carol muttered as they approached. She pulled the flap back to reveal the familiar scene. Forensic technicians in white, detectives in leather jackets of varying design but absolute predictability. Some things clearly never changed in West Yorkshire.
Heads turned as they entered and a tall cadaverous man peeled off from the group of detectives and came towards them. ‘I’m DCI John Franklin. I don’t know who you are, but this my crime scene.’
The usual friendly greeting, Carol thought. ‘I’m DCI Carol Jordan,’ she said again. ‘It may be your crime scene, but I think he’s my body.’ She pulled a sheet of paper from her bag and unfolded it to reveal Kathy Antwon’s photo of her son. ‘Seth Viner. He was wearing black jeans, a white polo shirt, a Kenton Vale school sweatshirt and a dark navy Berghaus anorak when he went missing.’
Franklin nodded. ‘Sounds about right. Come and have a look. The photo won’t be much use to you, though. He doesn’t look like that any more.’
Charm and diplomacy. The hallmarks of the Yorkshire male. Carol followed Franklin past the knot of detectives, Kevin at her shoulder. Close by the edge of the road, the earth fell away into a shallow gully a couple of feet wide. It wasn’t really a ditch, more a depression in the ground that ran for about fifteen feet. It was just deep enough to conceal the body from anyone passing in a car. But the runners hadn’t been so lucky.
It was a pitiful sight. Mud and blood caked his legs and lower torso. His head was encased in a plastic bag, taped tight round his neck. It was like a rerun of Daniel Morrison’s body. Only the clothes were different. But even through the filth and corruption it was possible to recognise Seth’s clothes. His jacket was missing, but the dark green sweatshirt and the black jeans were enough for Carol to feel certain she was looking at Julia and Kathy’s son. ‘Poor kid,’ she said, her voice low and sad.
‘You’ll be wanting a joint operation, then,’ Franklin said. There was no compassion about the man. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel it, just that he was determined not to show it in front of women and junior officers.
‘Actually, I want to claim it,’ Carol said. ‘It’s an identical MO to a murder on our patch earlier this week. You’ll have heard about it - Daniel Morrison.’
Franklin’s face contracted in a frown. ‘This is our ground. So it’s our case.’
‘I’m not disputing the territory. But this is just a body dump. He was abducted from Bradfield, chances are he was killed in Bradfield. I’ve got an identical crime in Bradfield just days ago. It makes no sense to duplicate efforts.’ Carol struggled to keep a grip on her temper. ‘We’ve all got budgets. We all know what a murder inquiry costs. I’d have thought you’d have been gagging to get rid.’
‘We’re not like you. We don’t try to offload our cases first chance we get. We’ve all heard about you and your MIT in Bradfield. Glory hunters, that’s what we hear. Going head to head with the terrorist cops, grabbing the headlines over the Bradfield bombing. Well, if there’s glory to be had for this one, it’ll be shared. If you’re lucky.’ Franklin turned on his heel and returned to his own men. Heads came together and the low rumble of indeterminate conversation reached them.
‘That went well,’ Carol said grimly. ‘Remind me I need to revisit my diplomatic skills.’
‘How do you want to play it?’
‘You stay here. The others will be along soon. Keep a watching brief, build some bridges. Make sure we’re kept in the picture. I’m going back to talk to the Chief Constable, get him to iron this out so we don’t spend the next week in mindless arguments about turf.’ She turned back to look at Seth and felt despair. ‘Those poor women,’ she said. ‘Make sure you or Paula goes with them to tell the parents. When this hits the news, they’re going to be besieged. They need all the help we can give them.’
‘I’ll see to it.’
Carol gazed out across the moors. ‘We need to stop this. We need to warn the kids and we need to catch this bastard before he does it again.’ And thought the unspoken, the unsayable. I wish Tony was here.
The sky was clouded over, the promise of rain in the air. But still Claire Darsie wanted to be outside. Ambrose had introduced Tony then left them to it. Tony was impressed by the policeman’s gentleness. The more he saw of Ambrose, the more he liked him. He suspected the feeling wasn’t mutual. Not after that morning’s fiasco.
Claire led the way out of the school building. ‘We can walk round the playing fields,’ she said. ‘There’s a sort of gazebo thing we can sit inside if you want.’ She was clearly aiming for unconcerned, but there was a brittleness about her that suggested her detachment wasn’t even skin-deep.
She set the pace, a brisk walk along a gravel path. In the summer, it would be heavily shaded by the mature trees that lined the boundary fence. But today there was plenty of light to reveal the strain in Claire’s face. Tony made sure he kept a good distance between them. She needed to feel safe, and the first step towards that was staying out of her space.
‘You and Jennifer, have you been friends a long time?’ Stick to the present tense, avoid rubbing her nose in the permanence.
‘Since primary school,’ Claire said. ‘I fell over in the play-ground on the first day and cut my knee. Jen had a hanky and she gave it to me.’ She raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘But even if that hadn’t happened, she would have been the one I would have wanted to be friends with.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because she was a nice person. I know people say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but that’s not how it is with Jen. It was what people always said about her. She was kind, you know? She didn’t have a mean bone in her body. Even when people pissed her off, she would end up seeing things from their point of view and let them off the hook.’ Claire made a noise that might have been disgust. ‘Not like me. When people piss me off, I make a point of getting my own back. I don’t know why Jen puts up with me, you know?’ Her voice wobbled and she tucked her chin into her neck. She upped the pace and pulled ahead of him. He let her go, catching up with her on the steps of the little wooden shelter at the end of the hockey pitch.
They walked inside and sat down facing each other. Claire curled in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest, but Tony stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. He let his hands fall into his lap, an open position that made him unthreatening. Now he could see clearly the shadows under her eyes and the skin round her fingernails, bitten till it had bled. ‘I know how much you love Jen,’ he said. ‘I realise you’re missing her all the time. There’s nothing we can do to bring her back, but we can maybe make things a bit better for her mum and dad if we can find the person who did this.’
Claire gulped. ‘I know. I keep thinking about it. What she would have done if things had been the other way around. She’d have wanted to help my mum and dad. But I can’t think of anything. That’s the problem.’ She looked anguished. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said gently. ‘None of this is your fault, Claire. And nobody’s going to blame you if we don’t find the man who took Jen away. I just want to have a chat. See if you can help me know Jen a bit better.’
‘How will that help?’ Natural curiosity overcame her anxiety.
‘I’m a profiler. People don’t really understand what I do, they think it’s like something on the telly. But basically, it’s my job to figure out how Jen came into contact with this person, and how she would have responded. Then I have to work out what that tells me about him.’
‘And then you help the police to catch him?’
He nodded, a crooked smile crossing his face. ‘That’s the general idea. So, what was Jennifer interested in?’
He sat back and listened to a catalogue of teen music, fashions, TV shows and celebrity culture. He heard that Jennifer generally did what she was told - homework in by the due date, home on time when they went out in the evening. Mostly because it had never really occurred to Claire and Jennifer that they could do anything else. They lived a sheltered life in their selective girls’ school, ferried around by parents, existing in an orbit that didn’t intersect with the bad girls. Time passed and Tony’s relaxed questioning finally helped Claire to relax. Now he could probe deeper.
‘You make her sound a bit too perfect,’ he said. ‘Didn’t she ever go just a bit mad? Get drunk? Try drugs? Want a tattoo? Have her navel pierced? Mess around with boys?’
Claire giggled, then put her hand to her mouth, ashamed to be so light-hearted. ‘You must think we’re really boring,’ she said. ‘We did have our ears pierced the summer we were twelve. Our mothers went mad. But they let us keep them.’
‘No sneaking out after hours to gigs? No smoking behind the bike sheds? Did Jen have a boyfriend at all?’
Claire gave him a quick sideways look but said nothing.
‘I know everybody says she’s not going out with anybody. But I find that hard to believe. A good person who was fun to hang out with. And pretty. And I’m supposed to believe she didn’t have a boyfriend.’ He spread his hands wide, palms upwards. ‘I need you to help me here, Claire.’
‘She made me promise,’ Claire said.
‘I know. But she’s not going to hold you to that promise. You said yourself, if it was the other way round, you’d want her to help us.’
‘It wasn’t a proper boyfriend. Not like going on dates and stuff. But there was this guy on Rig. ZeeZee, he called himself. Just the letters, though. Like, two zeds.’
‘We know she talked to ZZ on Rig, but they just seemed to be friends. Not boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘That was what they wanted everyone to think. Jen was paranoid about her parents finding out about him because he’s four years older than us. So she used to go to the internet café near school to talk to him online. That way her mum couldn’t check up on her. According to Jen, they were getting on really well. She said she wanted them to meet up face to face.’
‘Did she tell you about any plans they might have had?’
Claire shook her head. ‘She’d sort of gone quiet about him. Whenever I tried to get her to talk about it, she’d change the subject. But I think maybe they’d made arrangements.’
‘Why do you think that?’ Tony kept his voice free of urgency, making it sound like the most casual of inquiries.
‘Because ZZ was saying something on Rig about secrets and how we all have secrets that we don’t want anyone to know. And then him and Jen went into a sidebar. And I thought she was telling him off for hinting at what was going on between them.’
But she hadn’t been. She’d been pitched into that meeting they’d been skating round, according to Claire. It made sense of why a well-behaved girl like Jennifer would behave so recklessly. This was something that had even more of a build-up than they’d suspected. This was a killer who wasn’t taking any chances. The last time he’d encountered a killer who planned so carefully or over so long a time had been the first case he’d worked with Carol and it had taken a terrible toll. He really didn’t want to go into that dark place again. But if that was what it took to bring Jennifer Maidment’s killer to justice before he could kill again, he would do it without hesitation.
CHAPTER 25
The caravan site wasn’t going to win any beauty contests. Boxy vans in pastel shades squatted on concrete pads surrounded by weary grass and tarmac paths. Some residents had attempted window boxes and flower beds, but the prevailing winds off the bay had defeated them. But as Sam got out of his car, he had to admit the view made up for a lot. A watery sun added charm to the long expanse of sand that stretched almost to the horizon, where the sea twinkled at the fringes of Morecambe Bay. He knew this was a double-crossing beauty. Dozens had perished out there over the years, not understanding the speed and the treachery of the tides. From here, though, you’d never suspect a thing.
Sam made for the office, an incongruous log cabin that would have looked more at home in the American Midwest. According to Stacey, Harry Sim had last used his Mastercard ten days before Danuta Barnes had been reported missing. He’d used to it buy ten pounds’ worth of petrol at the garage two miles down the road from the Bayview Caravan Park. The bill had been settled by a cash payment at a Bradfield city-centre bank three weeks later. Also according to Stacey, this was an anomaly, since Harry Sim normally settled his account by posting a cheque to the credit-card company. How she managed to find out this sort of thing was little short of miraculous, he thought. And possibly not entirely legal.
The billing address for the card had been this caravan site. And that had been the last trace either Stacey or Sam had been able to find of Harry Sim. Computer searches, phone calls to Revenue and Customs, banks and credit-card providers had turned up a big fat zero. Which wasn’t entirely surprising, since Harry Sim had apparently been lying on the bottom of Wastwater for the last fourteen years.
Sam knocked on the office door and walked in, his ID front and centre. The man behind the desk was playing some kind of word game on the computer. He glanced round at Sam, froze the screen and lumbered to his feet. He looked in his mid-fifties, a big man whose bulk had started to sag into fat. His hair was a mixture of sand and silver, too dry to readily submit to brush or comb. His skin had acquired a papery texture from years of salt air and stiff winds. He was neatly dressed in a flannel shirt, a scarlet fleece and dark grey corduroy trousers. ‘Officer,’ he said, nodding a greeting.
Sam introduced himself and the man looked surprised. ‘Bradfield?’ he said. ‘You’ve come a few miles, then. I’m Brian Carson.’ He waved a vague hand at the window. ‘This is my site. I’m the owner.’
‘Have you been here long?’ Sam asked.
‘Since 1987. I used to be a printer, down in Manchester. When we all got made redundant, I sunk my money into this place. I’ve never regretted it. It’s a great life.’ He sounded sincere, which left Sam feeling baffled. He couldn’t imagine many more tedious occupations.
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ he said. ‘Because the person I need to ask you about lived here fourteen, fifteen years ago.’
Carson perked up. ‘By heck, that’s goin
g back. I’ll need to look in the records for that.’ He turned and pointed to a door behind him. ‘I keep all the files in the back. Not that I need the files. I pride myself on knowing my tenants. Not the holiday-makers so much, but the ones who keep their vans on, I know all of them. What’s occurred that you’re looking for someone from that far ago?’
Sam gave a lazy, rueful smile, the one that generally got people on his side. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to discuss the details. You know how it is.’
‘Oh.’ Carson looked disappointed. ‘Well, if you can’t, you can’t. Now, what’s the name of this person you’re interested in?’
‘Harry Sim.’
Carson’s face brightened. ‘Oh, I remember Harry Sim. He stuck out like a sore thumb round here. Most of our long-term tenants, they’re older. Retired. Or else they’ve got young families. But Harry was unusual. A single bloke, in his middle thirties, I suppose he must have been. He kept himself to himself. He never came to barbecue nights or karaoke or anything like that. And his unit was right out at the very back. He didn’t have much of a view, but he did get peace and quiet. The units down there are always the hardest to let, on account of they’ve not got the benefit of the bay view.’ He flashed an awkward smile. ‘With a name like ours, that’s what people expect. A bay view.’
‘I imagine,’ Sam said. ‘You said he lived alone. I don’t suppose you remember if he had many visitors?’
Carson was suddenly crestfallen. ‘It’s not that I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’ve no idea. Where he was, down at the end there - well, there’s no way of seeing whether people were visiting or not. And in the summer, I know it’s hard to believe, looking at it today, but it’s mayhem out there. There’s no way I could keep track of any individual’s visitors unless they’re right out there where I can see them through the window.’