The Aden Vanner Novels

by Jeff Gulvin

‘And no one heard anything?’

  Vanner shook his head.

  Glenn turned and looked at him. ‘Chilling indictment of our society don’t you think?’

  Vanner shrugged. ‘Car backfiring. Something like that. I have a theory that Joe Public would have to at least hear something twice before he did anything about it. You hear a bang in the night. It takes a few minutes to figure out where it came from. Then you wait to hear it again to make sure your guess was right. If you don’t hear it again you don’t do anything. That’s if you bother to be interested at all, of course.’

  Glenn turned down his mouth at the corners. ‘Next door in a terraced house?’

  ‘There was nobody in next door.’

  ‘Both sides?’

  Vanner nodded.

  ‘Odd.’

  ‘June,’ Vanner said. ‘People on holiday.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  ‘Either that or timing.’

  Glenn sat down again and fingered the pictures. ‘Letter?’

  ‘Evening Post. I think it’s sharpened up a reporter called Little. He keeps calling me for an interview.’

  ‘Will you give him one?’

  ‘I told him to attend the press conferences. So what do you think, Ian, who are we dealing with?’

  Glenn stacked the photographs. ‘This,’ he began, ‘I mean what you’ve shown me—Scotland, Highbury, Brighton and now Muswell Hill. This is so clinical. As I’ve said before it’s like the work of an assassin.’

  ‘An assassin,’ Vanner stated, ‘usually gets paid.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Glenn looked sharply at him. ‘And they kill important people. This … this is the work of a vigilante, a psychopath with an overdeveloped sense of justice. The work is calculating. There seems to be no malice here. No passion. That’s why there’s nothing for your forensic people. The killings appear to be, in the simple sense of the word, executions.’

  ‘So who are we dealing with? It’s hardly your unemployed skinhead, living with his mother and watching Driller Killer every night.’

  ‘Quite,’ Glenn said.

  ‘Who then?’

  Glenn looked down at the paper. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘If we take the killings in isolation—I mean the method, weapon, timing. The rhythm of it all.’

  ‘Soldier,’ Vanner said.

  Glenn looked evenly at him. ‘Or a policeman. I don’t think you need my qualifications to work that out.’

  Vanner sat where he was. He stared at Glenn, who looked quietly back at him. For a moment the heat went out of the room. Cold night, dark night, rain on the street and the smell of a gun in the air. Vanner sat forward. ‘But the killings aren’t in isolation are they.’

  Glenn scratched his head. ‘No. There’s the photographs. What executioner takes polaroid pictures of his victims?’ He picked up the single sheet of typescript. ‘All my pretty ones? Did you say all?’

  ‘A single line from somewhere,’ Vanner said, ‘just like the last ones.’

  ‘The Linds had no more children did they?’

  Vanner shook his head.

  ‘Well in that way it’s a direct reference. But,’ Glenn opened a drawer in his desk. ‘Galashiels,’ he said. ‘Same photos, victim and the victim’s victim.’ He furrowed his brow and read: “But in these cases we still have judgement here”. I wish I knew where that came from. The killings are dispassionate yes, but the letters and the pictures indicate something else. As I’ve said in the past the initials, the JH, are probably genuine. In a warped kind of way the crimes are honest. It follows that there will be honesty in any justification of them. But I can’t think of any executioner who feels the need to justify himself. Can you?’

  Vanner sat back. ‘What’s he like, Ian? What’s going on inside his head?’

  Glenn looked down at the papers once more. ‘Detached professionalism tarred by smothered emotion. There’s tremendous pain here. Loss. Ongoing, long-term loss.’

  Vanner looked at him. ‘What kind of loss?’

  ‘A loved one maybe. More than one.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘Possibly. But not necessarily.’

  ‘A member of the family. Somebody getting killed, somebody dying on them. Are we talking about a specific event that sparked all this off?’

  ‘The personality is as it is,’ Glenn stated, ‘shaped by formative years. The emotions, the reactions would be there, the potential for violent psychosis—dormant maybe, but there.’

  ‘Waiting for something to trigger it?’

  Glenn nodded. ‘Possibly. Some trauma or other. But it’s not always that way. A slow progression, a lifetime of events even.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  Glenn spread his fingers on the desk before him. ‘Well that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. We have to consider the psyche.’ He gestured with both hands. ‘This person is a loner. He has few if any friends. Almost certainly he lives alone. I would say he has no regular partner. He’s intelligent. The planning required is immense. Not only that but the notes, whatever they are, indicate great depth of thought. The personality is very controlled, and yet at the same time—desperate.’

  ‘You said long-term loss. What d’you mean exactly?’ Vanner asked him.

  Glenn looked up at him. ‘I would say the trauma, if that’s what we’re talking about, happened a long time ago. It’s shaped the way he thinks.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Because of the combination of control and anger. If the loss was immediate it would be just rage: indiscriminate, uncontrolled violence. Besides, we know it was at least four years ago.’

  ‘But you think it goes further back than that?’

  Glenn looked over his glasses at him. ‘Given that all the killings display the same control—yes.’

  ‘How much further?’

  ‘Difficult to say.’

  ‘Childhood?’

  Glenn made a face. ‘Possibly. Difficult upbringing. Not much stability.’ He sat forward. ‘Human beings refer, Aden. Mentally, subconsciously. Adulthood is very dependent on childhood. When things happen to you in adulthood your subconscious mind refers, looks for past reference points, past stability. That’s how we cope.’

  ‘You mean parental stability.’

  ‘It’s a factor, certainly. It can help create emotional stability, but it’s not everything.’

  ‘Which parent does a child depend on?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Emotional stability.’

  ‘Now you really are asking. In this day and age what is a safe answer?’

  ‘I don’t want a safe answer. I want a real one.’

  ‘Okay. Strength, security—from a father. That’s global security if you like. Emotional security—tenderness, love—generally is learned from the mother.’

  Nicholls met him at the desk when Vanner came back in. ‘Guvnor, Mr McCague wants you upstairs.’

  Vanner raised his eyebrows. ‘Trouble?’

  Nicholls grimaced. ‘Home Office.’

  Vanner walked into McCague’s office without knocking. McCague stood up. Sebastian Harker, the Chief Inspector of Constabularies, sat where he was, drinking tea. He was about McCague’s age with swept grey hair that looked as though it was glossed with lint every morning.

  ‘Vanner,’ McCague said. ‘You’ve met Mr Harker.’

  Vanner nodded. Why did these civil servants always look the same? Pin-stripe suits, striped shirts and cuff links straight from De Beers. You’d never know that once they had been policemen.

  ‘Yes. How are you, Sir?’

  ‘Mr Harker is concerned,’ McCague said. Vanner caught the roll in his eyes.

  ‘I want to know what’s happening, Vanner,’ Harker said. ‘What developments there are.’

  ‘Developments?’ Vanner ran his tongue over the word.

  ‘Muswell Hill. Operation Watchman. When are you going to make an arrest?’

  Vanner caught the warning look that drifted towards him from McCague
and he bit his tongue. ‘I can’t tell you that, Sir. The Muswell Hill incident is as bereft of forensic evidence as all the others. And the killing looked as though it was timed to take place when both the neighbours were on holiday.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, Sir.’

  Harker laid down his tea cup. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Vanner. The Home Secretary is extremely worried about this business. This sort of thing undermines the due process of law and order and the consequences of that are disastrous.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Sir.’

  Harker looked at McCague. ‘The press speculation is hugely unwelcome. Some of the editorial coming out is very damaging indeed.’

  ‘I’m aware of that too, Sir. It doesn’t exactly make our job any easier.’ Vanner sat forward. ‘So far we have very little evidence. The Muswell Hill killing gave us a black acrylic fibre that is being tested as we speak. Apart from that we have four bullets with similar rifling patterns. The bullets came from a Browning 9mm pistol. We believe the same one.’ He paused. ‘We have the letters and pictures that were sent to the editors of the four regional papers where the crimes were committed. The letters or lines, which they appear to be, are cryptic in some way. We don’t know where they come from. Lines from poems or songs maybe. The typeface from the letters is Zenith 2. Nothing particularly special in that I’m afraid. It’s a market leader. We even use it.’ He glanced at McCague.

  Harker interrupted him. ‘I need something to tell the Home Secretary, Inspector.’

  Vanner took a deep breath and looked briefly at the floor. ‘I’ve been in touch with Dr Ian Glenn, a psychologist we’ve used from time to time.’

  ‘A profile?’

  Vanner nodded.

  ‘What does he think?’ Harker shot the question at him as if his life depended on it. Vanner held back before answering. ‘He’s still considering, Sir. It’s not an exact science.’

  ‘I know that, man. But he must have said something.’

  Vanner glanced across at McCague. ‘All right, sir. He thinks we’re dealing with a psychopath. Somebody who lives alone, has few friends, probably has emotional difficulties sustaining relationships, things like that. According to Glenn, the killings demonstrate a conflict of learned professional control and extreme, but suppressed emotion. Somewhere, sometime, the person has been hurt, lost a loved one maybe. The pictures they send—the cryptic messages—are a demonstration of their emotional instability. An inability to deal with their past so to speak. But the quality of the killings—the timing, the information required to exact them—that and the method itself, Chinese execution, indicate a professionalism that can only have been learned. The general opinion is that he must be a soldier or a policeman.’

  Harker was very still then, the colour dribbling from his face like paint running. He stood up and straightened his jacket. ‘You better pray it’s the former.’

  After he had gone, McCague looked at Vanner. ‘Joe Nicholls tells me you had a phone call this morning.’

  ‘That’s right?’

  ‘You didn’t mention it—just now I mean.’

  Vanner made a face. ‘I don’t think it’s part of the game, Sir.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  Vanner shifted his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Just a feeling. The way he said my name—Joe told you what was said?’

  McCague inclined his head.

  ‘Something in his voice. I recognised it.’

  ‘He said “You’ll never catch me,” didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well I think we’d better take it seriously, don’t you? We haven’t exactly got leads coming out of our ears.’

  Vanner stared across the desk at him. ‘I’ve put a tape on the phone.’

  ‘Good,’ McCague said. ‘Let’s hope something comes of it.’

  ‘And that was the first call?’ Morrison said. ‘Back in June, a couple of weeks after Jennings was murdered.’ Sarah moved uneasily under his gaze. Morrison in Loughborough Street for a third time. She had been on her way to the canteen when he collared her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘Excuse me, Sir, but is this official?’

  ‘It’s part of my inquiry, yes.’

  ‘I have things to do, Sir.’

  ‘I need you to answer my questions, Constable.’

  ‘I thought that Daniels had withdrawn his charge against DCI Vanner,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Yes he did didn’t he. Convenient that.’ Morrison’s face stiffened again. ‘That doesn’t alter the facts of what happened, Constable. Vanner still assaulted him. He’s still suspended. And he remains the subject of a CIB inquiry. Just because his accuser has somehow changed his mind about pressing charges, doesn’t mean they won’t be pressed anyway. We still have Vanner’s statement and that of Sergeant Nicholls.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘The Commander will make the final decision.’

  Sarah held his eye. ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘I’ll want to speak to you again. Please make yourself available.’ Morrison stepped aside and let her go.

  Nicholls caught up with her as she joined the queue in the canteen. ‘Morrison here again. What’s he digging for, Sarah?’

  ‘Vanner by the sounds of things. I might be wrong but he seems to be delving pretty hard into the investigation.’

  ‘He grilled me too.’

  ‘I can’t understand why the old man is letting him wander about. Wasn’t Daniels’ withdrawal supposed to stop all this?’

  ‘McCague is just being careful. He wants to be seen to be co-operative. If CIB pursue this themselves, Vanner is finished. Nobody wants that.’

  ‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘Of course not.’

  Vanner left the train at Norwich station and crossed the road to the humpbacked bridge that spanned the river. Picking his way through the road works, he walked down to the towpath on the northern flank, where flat, chilled water lapped the bank with barely a ripple. The river was empty, no Broads boats at this time of year; all back in the yards till the season.

  Traffic stopped and started, belched and coughed on the road behind him. He stared at the silent stillness of the water and the bitter reflection of the naked willow that draped the far bank. Beyond it the Cathedral grounds, where the chipped height of the buildings scraped at a winter sky.

  Two young men, boys really, walked the far bank with nylon sports bags hooked by one finger across their shoulders. They walked closely together; blazers undone, ties loose, deep in conversation. Vanner watched them and remembered. Black blazer, white shirt, scuffed shoes. He stared beyond the Cathedral at the walled school where for three years he himself had attended. For a time he had been one of those boys. In summer they would come down here to the river bank; blazers off, cast over one shoulder or forgotten, draped over a rough chair by a worn and ancient desk. Summer days; the smell of the river and the laughter of girls on the cruisers. Cuffs hanging loose and shirts undone by three buttons; they would saunter along that towpath as if the very world was there for the taking. The sun swollen above them, filtering the purest, brightest light through the leaves of old man willow tree.

  So long ago; days of summer, the summer of youth and the freedom. That short awakening when life opens before a young man, ripe, like an unpicked apple. The talk would be of girls, of drink. The smell of burning cigarettes. The daring stroll to the Unicorn and the promise of illicit alcohol. If they were lucky—beer and sandwiches and the heady scent of a summer afternoon, accentuated by the warm mist that spread through the body with drink.

  Days of hope. Days of wonder; when every breath is both pleasure and pain, every thought the beginning and the end, every word both the right one and the wrong one. Because his father was a clergyman attached to the school, and therefore his place was not only that of scholarship but that of the cloth, dangers were inherent. No brothers, no sisters, no mother. The only family he had known was the
Army; trailing the world for the ten years of his father’s chaplaincy.

  Men. Men who were men; men in uniform; heavy black boots, close-cropped hair and thickly muscled arms that were always bare to the elbow. Men who swore, men smelling habitually of sweat and cigarettes and last night’s beer. His father was respected by those men and Vanner grew, in his way, to love them. When he got to the school however, the son of the Rector, so the whispering started. To his credit his father had warned him as much. For a few weeks Vanner thought about what he could do. He decided he would box. He boxed for the school and he won.

  His mother had died before he was two. The Yemen. Of course he did not remember. He had no memory of motherhood. There were photographs, grainy old black and whites and the odd one in colour, touched in after it was taken. A face, a smile, the darkness he saw in his own eyes. But that was all there had been, the image of a woman, nothing more than that; like a tracing, an outline on paper. Throughout his childhood there had only been men. Soldiers, schoolmasters and men in black robes with white collars; tall austere men with rings on their fingers and metal crosses round their necks.

  He had been at the school when his father married his stepmother. He knew nothing about her other than his father’s gruff and mumbled words: ‘I’ve met someone.’ He had been fifteen. Before that there had only ever been the two of them.

  Vividly now, standing here on the tarmacked banks of the river, he recalled his indifference.

  ‘I’ve met someone, Aden. We’re going to be married.’ Indifference. Then marriage, stepmother and the smell of a woman in their house. She was much younger than his father, ten years or more: attractive in her way, but she had never been his mother.

  It began to rain. For a while he ignored it and then it fell more earnestly, as if intent on reducing the world to rough shapes by its wash. Buttoning his jacket, he climbed the steps and crossed the bridge towards the city centre.

  There had been love once. He knew that now, though it was lost and, with it, perhaps, the knowledge of how. The love of a man for a woman.

  When his father announced his engagement to this woman, Anne, who was to become his stepmother, his indifference had been born out of ignorance. Nothing in his past could prepare him for what it meant. He had had nothing to base it on. No woman’s influence, no soft hands or warm breath. He had only known men; the laughing, shouting, raucous rancour of men. He could only suppose that was what it was. How does one look back on childhood from the fragile bridge of manhood with any kind of certainty? You were certain as a child. There was certainty of sorts in youth. But in maturity, nothing was ever certain. He supposed that his father loved this woman, Anne. Why else did people get married?