Fever of the Bone

by Val McDermid

  Next time. As soon as he had the thought, Tony understood its significance. There would be a next time. Something had shifted inside him in the previous twenty-four hours. From wanting to maintain the distance between him and Arthur, he now wanted connection. He didn’t know yet what form that would take. But he’d know when he got there.

  What he did know was that he wasn’t ready for Arthur’s message yet. He might never be. But right now, he had work to do. Work that was more important than his own emotional state. He turned back to his laptop and started typing again.

  ‘The killer is likely to be white,’ he wrote. Almost invariably this kind of killer stayed within their own ethnic group. ‘He is aged between twenty-five and forty.’ Twenty-five, because it needed a level of maturity to engage in this degree of planning and to sustain the plan once the killing started. And forty, because the rule of probabilities stated that by then they’d either been caught, killed or calmed down.

  He is not a lorry driver - several of the locations where he has used public-access computers are not convenient for lorry parking, e.g. Manchester Airport and the shopping centre in Telford. But he certainly owns his own vehicle - he would not risk leaving traces in a vehicle owned by a third party. It’s likely to be a reasonably large car, probably a hatchback. I don’t think he’s a commercial vehicle driver, even though that is a hypothesis that has some attractions. It would certainly account for his movements up and down the motorway network. But given the tight schedules of commercial drivers, I doubt whether this would give him the degree of flexibility or free time to have set Jennifer up then abducted her.

  He is likely to be educated to university or college level. His awareness of computer technology and his level of familiarity with its possibilities indicates a high level of skill in this area. I believe he is an ICT professional, probably self-employed. The electronics industry is a loosely knit community of consultants who have a great deal of flexibility in their working hours and the locations of the companies they contract to.

  In terms of personality, we’re looking at a high-functioning psychopath. He can mimic human interaction but he has no genuine empathy. He’s likely to live alone and to have no deep emotional ties. This will not mark him out as particularly unusual in his work community, since many ICT professionals appear similar although in fact many of them are perfectly capable of emotional interaction. They just prefer their machines because that takes less effort.

  He may well be addicted to computer gaming, particularly to violent online multi-user games. These will present him with an outlet for the nihilistic feelings he has towards other people.

  Tony read over what he’d written without any sense of satisfaction. Apart from his highlighting of the fact that this was not a sexual homicide, he felt he’d come up with nothing that wasn’t either textbook or plain common sense. There was much more to be deduced about this killer, he was sure of that. But until someone came up with the connection between the killer and the choice of victim, they were all dancing in the dark.

  CHAPTER 26

  After the tragedy of Jessica Morrison’s death, the last thing Paula wanted to do was sit down with another set of grieving parents. What was worse was having to do it on her own. Whatever had happened at top level, West Yorkshire had backed right off, to the point where they didn’t want anything to do with the death knock. And Kevin was busy setting up protocols for collating all the West Yorkshire intel. So here she was, doing what she liked least. But if she’d learned one thing from her own encounters with grief it was that avoidance never worked. What they said about having to get back on the horse was right. That still didn’t make it feel any easier.

  The woman who opened the door looked like she was at war with the world. Her dark eyes were angry, her skin tone faded to jaundiced yellow, her mouth set in a tight line. ‘We’ve got nothing to say,’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m not a journalist,’ Paula said, trying not to feel insulted by the mistake. ‘I’m Detective Constable Paula McIntyre from Bradfield Police.’

  The woman’s hands clawed at her cheeks. ‘Oh fuck. No, tell me this is just routine.’ She stumbled backwards, caught by a second woman who had appeared behind her. They fell into a tight hug, the second, slightly taller woman meeting Paula’s eyes with a look of naked terror.

  ‘If I could just come in?’ Paula said, wondering where the hell the FLO was.

  The women edged backwards and Paula slipped inside. ‘Are you on your own?’ she asked.

  ‘We sent your liaison person away. We couldn’t settle with her here. I’m Julia Viner,’ the second woman said, postponing what she must know was inevitable with the gloss of social convention. ‘And this is Kathy. Kathy Antwon.’

  Kathy turned to look at Paula, tears streaming down her face. ‘This is bad news, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Paula said. ‘A body was found earlier today. From the description of what he was wearing, we believe it’s Seth.’ Her mouth opened but she could find nothing else to say so she closed it again.

  Julia’s eyes closed. ‘I’ve been waiting for this,’ she sighed. ‘Ever since we realised he was missing. I knew he was gone.’

  They clung together wordlessly for what felt like hours. Paula stood there, dumb as a rock and feeling about as much use. When it was clear they weren’t going to speak any time soon, she slipped past them and found the kitchen, where she put the kettle on. Sooner or later there would be a need for tea. There always was.

  There was a teapot on the worktop nearby. All she needed now was to find the tea. She opened the cupboard above the kettle and saw a ceramic jar marked tea. She took it down and opened it. Instead of tea, she found it contained two five-pound notes, a few pound coins and a scrap of paper. Curious, she took it out. In a barely legible scrawl, it said, IOU ₤10. JJ taking me to meet band, need money for train. X Seth.

  This was new, she was sure of it. She needed to run this past Julia and Kathy, but who knew when they were going to be up to that? Stepping to the far end of the kitchen, she pulled out her phone and called Stacey back at the office. ‘I’m at Seth Viner’s house,’ she said. ‘Something’s come up. The person who was talking to Seth on Rig was called JJ, right?’

  ‘Yes. The initials, not spelled out.’

  ‘I think Seth arranged to meet him at the station.’

  ‘Bradfield Central?’

  ‘It doesn’t say. But we should start there. Can you have another look at the CCTV?’

  ‘Sure. If I’ve got a specific time and place to look at, I can try enhancing it with the predictive software and see what happens. Thanks, Paula, that’s a real help.’

  Paula closed her phone and squared her shoulders. Now all she had to do was find the real tea.

  Sam was at the door of the Lexus before the woman had even turned off the engine. He’d been waiting for three hours for Angela Forsythe because he wanted to catch her on the back foot rather than pussyfoot his way past receptionists and PAs. He wasn’t about to make a hash of his big chance because his witness was forewarned and forearmed.

  One of the curiosities about the Barnes file was that the report of Danuta’s disappearance had come not from Nigel, her husband, but from Angela Forsythe. She’d been the house lawyer at the private bank where Nigel Barnes, his wife Danuta and Harry Sim had all worked before Danuta had chosen motherhood over climbing the greasy pole. If anyone knew what the scoop was between Harry Sim and Danuta Barnes, chances were it was Angela. And the good thing about lawyers was that, even when they changed jobs, you could always track them down via the Law Society. As soon as Sam had discovered the connection between the two adult bodies in the lake, he’d been on to Stacey, asking her to find Angela for him. She’d got straight on it. For some reason, she never hung about when he asked her for stuff. He reckoned it was because she’d identified him as the one on the team with ambition, the one who was going places. And she wanted to make sure her career went meteoric alongside his.

  And so
, thanks to Stacey, he’d been staking out a personal parking space in the converted 1920s cigarette factory that had recently become one of the most desirable addresses in Bradfield. Only minutes’ walk from the heart of the city’s office district, it sat in its own park with a view across the canal to the restored Victorian merchant area where wool and cloth dealers had done business and taken their more public pleasures.

  Angela Forsythe looked startled to see a well-built mixed-race man looming over her car. Her first reaction softened as she took in his suit, his smile, but mostly his warrant card. Still with the engine running, she lowered her window a few inches. A faint aura of something floral and spicy floated across to Sam. ‘Is there a problem, officer?’

  ‘I hope not, ma’am,’ he said, opting for the excessive respect that he suspected might appeal to this expensively groomed woman with the tired lines round her eyes. He thought the dark green suit and cream shirt were well chosen, making her look sober but stylish. ‘I wondered if I might talk to you about Danuta Barnes?’

  A lesser woman would have gasped, he thought. But this one was trained not to give much away. ‘Have you found her, then?’

  It was a question he didn’t really want to answer. He wanted the element of surprise intact when he confronted Nigel Barnes, and years of dealing with human duplicity had taught him not to trust witnesses, even if they seemed virulently hostile to the suspect. ‘We’re pursuing a new line of inquiry.’ He smiled.

  She wasn’t taken in. ‘It’s all right. I’m not going to tell bloody Nigel,’ she said, winding up the window and turning off the engine. She opened the door and slid out, her short but shapely legs almost knocking Sam out of the way. ‘You’d better come up,’ she said.

  The flat was on the third floor, the original metal-framed Art Deco windows augmented by an additional plain glass panel to muffle any noise from outside. The living room was like Angela Forsythe herself - warm, colourful and sophisticated. He suspected she considered her effects carefully. She waved him to a comfortably overstuffed sofa and settled in a wing chair opposite. Clearly there was to be no hospitality or small talk. ‘Danuta was my best friend,’ she said. ‘I imagine your file tells you I was the one who reported her missing?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She nodded, crossing her legs with a whisper of friction. ‘Nigel said he hadn’t called the police because he thought she’d left him. Supposedly there had been a note but he’d been so upset that he’d burned it.’

  All of which Sam knew already. ‘That’s not what I wanted to ask you about.’

  Her eyebrows rose. She pushed her bobbed dark hair behind one ear, her head tilting to one side. ‘No? That’s interesting. ‘

  ‘I wanted to ask if you knew Harry Sim.’

  The name demolished her lawyer’s guard. ‘Harry Sim? What in God’s name has Harry Sim to do with Danuta?’

  Sam held his hands up, palms facing her. ‘Ms Forsythe, I’m pursuing a new line of inquiry. I really don’t want to disclose any details at this point. Not because I think you might be in cahoots with Nigel Barnes, but because I don’t want to prejudice people’s responses in any way. So I would really appreciate it if you could indulge me by answering my questions even if they seem strange or pointless to you.’ He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this polite. Carol Jordan would have to give him credit for this.

  Her smile was wry. ‘You’re rather good at this,’ she said. ‘With a bit of work, you could be a lawyer. Fine, Mr Evans. Fire away. I will do my best to answer you as objectively as possible.’

  ‘How do you know Harry Sim?’

  ‘He worked at Corton’s. I was already there when he joined us, so it must have been around ‘91 or ‘92. Danuta and Nigel were account service managers and Harry was in investments. He worked for both of them, dealing with their client deposits.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  She chewed her lower lip for a moment, considering. ‘He wasn’t really a team player, Harry. Limited social skills. That didn’t much matter, because he wasn’t front of house, and he was good at his job. Danuta really rated him.’

  ‘Were they friends?’

  Angela held her breath then let it out in a sigh. ‘I wouldn’t say friends, no. Not exactly. When he had his crack-up, Danuta was incredibly kind to him. But more the way you would be to a distant relative than a friend. Obligation rather than genuine affection, if you see what I mean.’

  Sam’s antenna stood to attention. ‘His crack-up?’

  ‘Let me see . . . It must have been late ‘94. He’d been under a lot of pressure to help us out-perform our rivals and he’d made a few bad judgement calls. Harry always took things very personally, and he just went to pieces. One of the partners found him curled under his desk, sobbing. And that was the end of the line for poor Harry.’

  ‘They just dumped him?’

  Angela gave a little peal of laughter. ‘Good God, no. Corton’s was always tremendously paternalistic. They made sure he had the best of care in some discreet clinic. But of course, they couldn’t take him back at the bank. You can’t take chances with the customers’ money.’ This time, the laugh was bitter. ‘That sounds pretty bloody hollow in today’s financial world, doesn’t it? But it was how they thought back then at Corton’s.’

  ‘So what happened to Harry?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. I drew up the severance papers, so I do know he went out the door with a year’s money. And he would have had his own portfolio. So money wouldn’t have been an issue. Not for a while, anyway. Danuta visited him in the clinic.’ Angela frowned, rubbing the bridge of her nose. ‘I vaguely remember her saying something about him selling his house and moving away,’ she said slowly. ‘But I wasn’t really paying attention. I wasn’t that bothered about Harry, to be honest.’

  ‘It sounds like Danuta was.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not really. She felt sorry for him, that’s all. She was always much kinder than me.’ Matter of fact, not the over-emphasis of someone protecting her friend.

  ‘Is there any chance they could have been having an affair?’

  There was nothing artificial about Angela’s reaction. She threw her head back and roared with laughter. ‘Christ,’ she spluttered. ‘Leaving aside the fact that Harry had all the emotional intelligence of a starfish, you obviously haven’t seen a photo of him. Trust me, Danuta was several divisions out of his league. No, Mr Evans. Nobody who knew Danuta could believe that for a nanosecond.’ She swallowed, recovering herself. ‘I don’t know who’s set you off on this track, but you are so barking up the wrong tree.’ Then suddenly she was sober and serious again. ‘I so hoped you were bringing me news. Even bad news would have been better than the uncertainty, believe me. I still think of her.’ She sighed. ‘I so hoped someone was finally going to nail that bastard Nigel Barnes.’ A sharp look at Sam. ‘He killed her, you know. I’ve never doubted that for a minute.’

  ‘What makes you so sure of that?’

  ‘He’s always been ruthless. As far as business is concerned, he’d cut your throat before he’d let you get one over on him. Danuta was his trophy wife. Smart, beautiful and not quite as successful as him. But after the baby was born, that all changed. She decided she didn’t want to work any more. She wanted to be a full-time mother. Not wife and mother, just mother. She was entirely focused on her child.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘To tell you the truth, I found the whole thing pretty tedious. I hoped the novelty would wear off and the old Danuta would come out to play again. I’ve always thought Nigel couldn’t stand the competition. So they had to go.’

  ‘He could just have got divorced, surely?’

  ‘Money and reputation,’ Angela said. ‘Nigel wouldn’t want to part with either.’

  ‘He’d have lost a lot more than that if he’d killed them and been caught.’

  Angela Forsythe gave him a long, level stare. ‘But he hasn’t been, has he?’

  CHAPTER 27

  Tim
Parker had never been to Bradfield before. All he knew about it was that they had a Premier League football team that usually bumped along somewhere in the middle of the table. Raking up history lessons from school, he vaguely remembered it had grown rich in the nineteenth century on textiles, though he couldn’t recall whether it was cotton or wool. Or something else altogether. Had there been anything else in the nineteenth century? Linen, he supposed. Well, whatever.

  Nominally a detective sergeant, Tim liked to think of himself as above and beyond the narrow confines of rank. He’d taken a first in PPE at Jesus College, Oxford and had raced through the graduate fast-track process of the Metropolitan Police. He’d never had any intention of pounding the beat. He knew he was too smart for that. His goal had always been the cool end of the job, working in intelligence of one sort or another. He didn’t much mind whether it was NCIS or SOCA or Europol. As long as it provided a challenge and made him feel like he was one of that handful who truly made a difference. He’d sort of slipped sideways into the profiling stream at the National Police Faculty and found he’d had a knack for it. He’d sailed through his courses and impressed most of his instructors. Well, the academic ones, anyway. The clinical psychologists who actually worked in secure mental hospitals hadn’t been quite so glowing. Especially that weird little fuck from Planet Vague who talked about messy heads and passing for human. Like that had any scientific rigour.

  Now he was more than ready for the real thing. It was just a pity it had to kick off on a Saturday. He and his girlfriend had tickets for Chelsea at home to Villa. A bunch of them were supposed to be meeting up for lunch before the game, then going on afterwards for a night out. But instead he was on his way to Bradfield. Susanne had been disappointed, but she’d got over it. By the time he’d left, she’d already fixed up for her pal Melissa to take his place.