02.The Wire in the Blood

by Val McDermid

  ‘This is bizarre,’ he said, pushing off from the mantelpiece and striding to and fro on the hearth rug, a hand-knotted silk Bokhara that he’d chosen himself. Staring down at the grey and cream intricacies under his feet calmed him until he was able to meet the woman’s intense eyes again. ‘It’s absurd. If it wasn’t so appalling a suggestion, it would be funny. And I still don’t see what it has to do with me.’

  ‘It’s simple, sir,’ Shaz said soothingly.

  Feeling patronized, Vance stopped in his tracks and scowled. ‘What?’ he demanded, charm disintegrating by the second.

  ‘All I want you to do is to look at some photographs and tell me if you noticed the girls for any reason. Maybe they were particularly pushy with you, and someone wanted to punish them. Maybe you noticed one of your staff chatting them up. Or maybe you never spotted any of them. Just a couple of minutes of your time, then I’m out of here,’ Shaz coaxed. She leaned forward and spread the photocopies over a kilim-covered footstool the size of a coffee table.

  He moved towards her, transfixed by the photographs that she’d arranged to face him. Only a fraction of his work, that was all she’d captured. But every single smiling stare was one he’d destroyed.

  Vance forced a laugh. ‘Seven faces out of thousands? Sorry, DC Bowman, you’ve been wasting your time. I’ve never seen any of them before.’

  ‘Look again,’ she said. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’ There was an edge in her voice that hadn’t been there before, sharp and excited. He dragged his eyes away from the pale reflections of the living flesh he’d punished and met Shaz Bowman’s implacable eyes. She knew. She might not have the proof yet, but he knew she knew now. He also knew she wouldn’t stop until she had destroyed him. It had come down to dog eat dog, and she had no chance. Not handicapped by the law.

  He shook his head, a sorrowful smile on his lips. ‘I’m positive. I’ve never clapped eyes on any of them before.’

  Without even looking, Shaz pushed the middle picture closer to him. ‘You made an appeal in a national tabloid for Tiffany Thompson to call her parents,’ she said without inflexion.

  ‘My God,’ he exclaimed, forcing his features into an expression of happy astonishment. ‘Do you know, I’d completely forgotten about that? You’re right, of course, I see it now.’

  Her attention was all on his face as he spoke. In a swift movement, he swung his prosthesis round in a short arc and smashed it violently into the side of her head. Her eyes showed a momentary shock, then panic. As she fell out of the chair, her forehead smacked into the footstool. By the time she crashed to the floor, she was unconscious.

  Vance wasted no time. He raced down to the cellar where he grabbed a reel of hi-fi speaker wire and a pack of latex gloves. Within minutes, Shaz was trussed like a hog-tied steer on the polished parquet. Then he ran up to the top floor and opened his wardrobe, scrabbling around on the floor until he found what he was looking for. Back downstairs, he covered Shaz’s head with the soft flannel bag that his new leather briefcase had come in. Then he wrapped a few lengths of wire round her neck, tight enough to be uncomfortable but not so that it would constrict her breathing. He wanted her dead, but not yet. Not here, and not accidentally.

  As soon as he was sure that she wasn’t going to be able to break free, he picked up her shoulder bag and sat down with it on the sofa, gathering the photocopies and the file they’d come from on the way. Meticulously, he began to go through everything, starting with the file. The abstracts of the police reports he skimmed over, knowing he would have the opportunity to look at them in more detail later. When he came to the analysis Shaz had presented to her colleagues, he took his time, weighing and calculating how dangerous to him it might prove. Not very, he decided. The photocopies of the newspaper clippings about his visits to the places in question were meaningless; for every one connected to a disappearance, he could produce twenty that weren’t. Putting that aside, he picked up the organized offender checklist. Reading her conclusion so angered him that he jumped to his feet and gave the unconscious detective a couple of savage kicks in the stomach. ‘Fuck do you know, bitch?’ he shouted angrily. He wished he could see her eyes now. They wouldn’t be judging him, they’d be begging him for mercy.

  Furious, he stuffed the papers back in the file along with the photocopies. He’d have to study them more carefully, but there wasn’t time now. He’d been right to nip this in the bud before anyone else paid attention to this bitch’s allegations. He turned to her roomy shoulder bag and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook. A quick flick through the pages revealed nothing of interest except Micky’s phone number and their address. Since he wasn’t going to be able to deny she’d been here, that had better stay. But he tore out a handful of pages after the last entry, making it look as if someone had ripped out details pertaining to a subsequent appointment, then replaced it in the bag.

  Next out was the microcassette recorder, the tape still turning. He stopped the machine and removed the tape, placing it with the blank sheets of paper on one side. He ignored the Ian Rankin paperback and pulled out a filofax. Under that day’s date, the only entry read, ‘JV 9.30’. He considered adding another cryptic entry and settled for the single letter ‘T’ underneath her appointment with him. Let them think about that. Inside the front cover, he found what he was looking for. ‘If found, return to S. Bowman, Flat 1, 17 Hyde Park Hill, Headingley, Leeds. REWARD.’ His fingers groped around the bottom of the bag. No keys.

  Vance stuffed everything back into the shoulder bag, picked up the file and crossed to Shaz. He patted her down until he found a bunch of keys in her trouser pocket. Smiling, he went upstairs to his office and found a padded envelope big enough for the file. He addressed it to his Northumberland retreat, stamped it and sealed Shaz’s research inside.

  A quick glance at his watch told him it was barely half past ten. He went through to his bedroom and changed into jeans, one of the few short-sleeved T-shirts he possessed, and a denim jacket. He picked up a holdall from the back of the fitted wardrobes that ran deep under the eaves. He took out a Nike baseball cap that was attached to a professional quality wig of collar-length salt-and-pepper hair and put it on. The effect was remarkable. When he added a pair of aviator glasses with clear lenses and a pair of foam pads to fill out his hollow cheeks, the transformation was complete. The only giveaway was his prosthetic arm. And Jacko had the perfect answer to that.

  He let himself out of the house, careful to lock up behind himself, and opened Shaz’s car. He took a careful note of the seat position, then climbed in and adjusted it to suit his longer legs. He spent a few minutes familiarizing himself with the controls, making sure he was going to be able to manage the stick shift and steer at the same time. Then he set off, stopping only to drop the padded envelope in a pillar box in Ladbroke Grove. As he hit the approach ramp to the M1 shortly after eleven o’clock, he allowed himself a small, private smile. Shaz Bowman was going to be very sorry she’d ever crossed him. But not for long.

  The first pain was a scream of cramp in her left leg, penetrating her muzzy unconsciousness like a serrated knife across a knuckle. The instinctive attempt at stretching and flexing the muscle triggered a slash of agony around her wrists. It made no sense to a disorientated mind that had started to throb like a thumb hit with a hammer. Shaz forced her eyes open, but the blackness didn’t go away. Then she registered the damp material against her face. It was some sort of hood, made of thick fabric with a soft nap. It covered her whole head, fastening tightly round her throat, making it hard to swallow.

  Gradually, she made sense of her position. She was lying on her side on a hard surface, her hands fastened behind her back with some sort of ligature that bit cruelly into the flesh of her wrists. Her feet were also fastened at the ankle, and both sets of bonds were linked to allow minimal movement. Anything adventurous like stretching her legs or trying to shift her spot cost too much in pain. She had no idea how small or how large her area of confinement was, nor any de
sire to explore once she had experienced the torment of attempting to turn over.

  She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. The last thing she could remember was Jacko Vance’s laughing face looming over her, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, secure in the certainty that no one would ever take this pipsqueak detective seriously. No, that wasn’t quite right. Something else tugged at her memory. Shaz tried the deep breathing of relaxation techniques and tried to picture what she’d seen. The memory stirred and took shape. Out on the edge of her peripheral vision, his right arm rising, then swinging down savagely like a club. That was the last thing she could remember.

  With the memory came terror, sharper than any of her physical afflictions. Nobody knew where she was except Chris, who wasn’t expecting to hear from her anyway. She hadn’t told anyone else, not even Simon. She hadn’t been able to face their mockery, however friendly. Now the fear of being laughed at was going to cost her her life. Shaz was under no illusion about that. She’d asked Jacko Vance questions that made him realize she knew he was a serial killer and he hadn’t panicked as she’d believed he would. Instead, he’d worked out for himself that she was a maverick. That although her deductions were a threat to him, he could win himself a stay of execution by getting rid of her, the renegade cop in hot pursuit of a solo hunch. Removing Shaz would, at worst, buy him time to cover his tracks or even leave the country.

  Shaz felt a wave of sweat drench her skin. There was no question about it. She was going to die. The only question was how.

  She’d been right. And being right was going to kill her.

  Chapter 12

  Pauline Doyle was desperate. The police refused to regard Donna’s disappearance as anything other than a typical teenage runaway. ‘She’ll have gone to London, probably. There’s no point in us looking for her round here,’ one of the uniformed officers she’d mithered at the counter of the police station had said in exasperation one night.

  Pauline might shout from the rooftops that someone had stolen her daughter, but the evidence of the missing outfit was more than enough to convince overworked cops that Donna Doyle was just another teenager bored with home and convinced the streets somewhere were paved with gold. You only had to look at her photograph, that knowing smile, to understand she was nothing like as innocent as her poor misguided mother wanted to believe.

  With the police showing no interest beyond a routine posting of Donna on the missing list, Pauline was stymied. Not for her the passionate television appeals for the missing daughter, not with the absence of official backing. Even the local paper wasn’t interested, though the women’s editor toyed with the idea of running a feature on teenage runaways. But like the police, when she saw Donna’s photograph, she thought again. There was something about Donna that defied any attempt to portray her as an innocent abroad, seduced by chaste dreams. Something about the line of her mouth, the tilt of her chin said that she had crossed the line. The women’s editor reckoned Donna Doyle was the sort of Lolita that would make most women want to put blinkers on their husbands.

  Her frustration spilling over into nightly storms of tears, Pauline decided the time had come to take matters into her own hands. Her job in the estate agency wasn’t particularly well paid. It was enough to feed and clothe her and Donna and to keep a roof over their heads, but not much more than that. There was still a couple of thousand left over from Bernard’s insurance. Pauline had been saving that for when Donna went off to university, knowing how tight things would be then.

  But if Donna didn’t come back, there would be no point in saving it for university, Pauline reasoned. Better then to spend the money to try and get her home and let higher education fend for itself. So Pauline took Donna’s photograph to the local print shop and had them make up thousands of flyers with her daughter’s image occupying the whole of one side. The text on the reverse read, ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? Donna Doyle went missing on Thursday 11th October. She was last seen at quarter past eight in the morning, on her way to Glossop Girls Grammar. She was wearing school uniform of maroon skirt, maroon cardigan, white open-necked blouse. Her shoes were black Kickers, and she had a black anorak. She was carrying a black Nike backpack. If you saw her at any time after that, please contact her mother, Pauline Doyle.’ It gave the address in Corunna Street, and telephone numbers at home and the agency.

  Pauline took a week off work and stuffed the leaflets through letterboxes from dawn till dusk. She started in the town centre, thrusting the reproductions of Donna’s face at anyone who would take them, and gradually worked her way out into suburban streets, not noticing the steepness of the hills she climbed or the blisters that swelled inside her shoes.

  No one phoned.

  Chapter 13

  While Shaz Bowman was lying on his hard floor in London, conscious only of fear and pain, Jacko Vance was exploring her domain. He’d made good time to Leeds, stopping only to fill up with petrol and visit the disabled toilet at the motorway services. He’d wanted to use its sanitary disposal unit to get rid of the tape he’d unravelled from Shaz’s microcassette. In the car park, he’d crushed the casing underfoot, leaving the fragments to scatter in the blustery wind that swept across the Midlands.

  Finding Shaz’s home had been made even easier by her recently purchased A to Z, which conveniently had the street circled in blue biro. He parked the car round the corner and forced himself to combat his twitching nerves by strolling slowly down the street, empty except for a couple of small boys playing cricket on the opposite pavement. He turned in at the gate of number 17 and tried one of the two Yale keys in the heavy Victorian front door. That he got it right first time convinced him that the gods really were on his side.

  He found himself in a gloomy hallway, lit only by two thin lancet windows on either side of the door. Peering into the murk, he saw a wide and graceful staircase rising ahead of him. There seemed to be one ground-floor flat on either side. He chose the left-hand side, and was proved right again. Breathing more easily now, convinced everything was going his way, Vance let himself into the flat. He wasn’t planning on staying long, just enough to scout out the lie of the land, so he moved swiftly through the rooms. As soon as he saw the living room, he realized that Shaz could not possibly have chosen a flat better suited to his purpose. The French windows led out on to a garden surrounded by high walls, shaded by tall fruit trees. At the end, he could discern the outlines of a wooden door in the brick wall.

  Only one thing remained to be done. He slipped off his jacket and unfastened his prosthesis. From the holdall, he took an object he’d persuaded the props department to make for him a couple of years back, supposedly as a practical joke. Using the fittings from one of his previous artificial arms, an earlier model now discarded, they’d built a plaster cast with disturbingly realistic fingertips protruding from the end. Once it was fitted, especially with a jacket over it and a sling holding it in place, it looked exactly like a broken arm. When he was satisfied he’d arranged it correctly, Vance re-packed the holdall, took a deep breath and decided it was time to go.

  He let himself out of the French windows, pushing them to behind him, then strode confidently down the gravel path to the gate. He could feel the hair on his neck prickling under the wig, wondering if there were eyes behind any of the windows at his back, eyes that would remember what they’d seen once his handiwork was over and exposed to the public gaze. In a bid for reassurance, he reminded himself that any description they could come up with would sound nothing like Jacko Vance.

  He unbolted the back gate, convinced that no one would fasten it again before he returned. He found himself in a narrow lane that ran between two sets of walled back gardens and led out on to one of the main roads that ran down towards the city centre. Walking to the station took the best part of an hour, but he had barely ten minutes to wait for a London train. He was back in Holland Park and restored to Jacko Vance by half past seven.

  Before he made his final preparations, he slamm
ed a twelve-inch pizza into the oven. It wasn’t his usual idea of Saturday night dinner, but the carbohydrate should stop his stomach turning somersaults. Tension always hit him in the gut. Whenever the fever of anticipation had him in its grasp, he’d have to endure cramps and clenches, knots and nausea. He’d learned early on in his days as a live sports commentator that the only way to stop the churning and grumbling was to stodge out in advance. What worked for TV worked just as well for murder, he’d soon discovered. Now, he always ate before he picked up his targets. And of course, he always ate with them before the act itself.

  While the pizza was cooking, he loaded his Mercedes. Exertion was easier on an empty stomach. Now everything was ready for Shaz Bowman’s final performance. All he had to do was get her on stage.

  Chapter 14

  Donna Doyle was also alone. But, deranged by agony, she lacked the luxury of introspection. The first time she’d woken from broken sleep, she’d felt strong enough to explore her prison. Her fear was still overwhelming, but it was no longer paralysing. Wherever she was, it was dark as a grave and had the dank smell of the tiny coal cellar at home. She used her good arm to help her gain a sense of where she was and what was around her. She was, she realized, lying on a plastic-covered mattress. Her fingers explored the edges and felt cold tiles. Not as smooth as the ceramic ones in the bathroom at home, more like the glazed terracotta on Sarah Dyson’s mum’s conservatory steps.

  The wall behind her was rough stone. She struggled to her feet, realizing properly for the first time that her legs were shackled. She bent and let her fingers trace the outline of an iron cuff round each ankle. They were attached to a heavy chain. One-handed, it was impossible to gauge how long it was. Four hesitant steps along one wall brought her to a corner. She turned through ninety degrees and moved on. Two steps and her shin crashed painfully against something solid. It didn’t take long both by touch and smell to identify it as a chemical toilet. Pathetically grateful, Donna subsided on to it and emptied her bladder.