by Val McDermid
If she was going to beat this challenge, she was going to have to do some serious research. And she was going to have to do it fast.
Frances was chopping vegetables when Tony walked in, Radio 4 voices laying down their authoritative counterpoint to the sound of the knife on the wooden board. He paused on the threshold to appreciate something so ordinary, so comfortable, so relatively unfamiliar in his life as a woman preparing dinner in his kitchen. Frances Mackay, thirty-seven, a teacher of French and Spanish at the high school in St. Andrews. The blue-black hair, sapphire blue eyes and pale skin of a particular Hebridean genetic strain, the trim figure of a golfer, the sharp, sly humour of a cynic. They’d met when he’d joined the local bridge club. Tony hadn’t played since he’d been an undergraduate, but it was something he knew he could pick up again, an accessible part of his past that would allow him to build another course of brickwork in his perpetual facade; what, in his own mind, he called passing for human.
Her playing partner had moved to a new job in Aberdeen and, like him, she needed someone regular with whom she could construct a bidding understanding. Right from the start, they’d been in tune across the green baize. Bridge parties had followed, away from the club, then an invitation to dinner to plan some refinements to their system before a tournament. Within weeks, they’d visited the Byre Theatre, eaten pub lunches all along the East Neuk, walked the West Sands under the whip of a north-east wind. He was fond, but not in love, and that was what had made the next step possible.
The physiological cure for the impotence that had plagued most of his adult life had been at hand for some time. Tony had resisted the pull of Viagra, reluctant to use a pharmacological remedy for a psychological problem. But if he was serious about making a new life, then there was no logical reason to hang on to the shibboleths of the old. So he’d taken the tablets.
The very fact of being able to get into bed with a woman and not have the dismal spectre of failure climb in alongside was novel. Freed from the worst of his anxiety, he’d escaped the tentative awkwardness he’d always experienced during foreplay, already dreading the fiasco to come. He’d felt self-assured, able to ask what she needed and confident that he could provide. She certainly seemed to have enjoyed it, enough to demand more. And he’d understood for the first time the macho pride of the strutting male who has satisfied his woman.
And yet, and yet. In spite of the physical delight, he couldn’t shake off the knowledge that his solution was cosmetic rather than remedial. He hadn’t even treated the symptoms; he’d simply disguised them. All he’d done was find a new and better mask to cover his human inadequacy.
It might have been different if sex with Frances had been charged with an emotional resonance. But love was for other people. Love was for people who had something to offer in return, something more than damage and need. He’d schooled himself not to consider love an option. No point in yearning for the impossible. The grammar of love was a language beyond him, and no amount of pining would ever change that. So he buried his angst along with his functional impotence and found a kind of peace with Frances.
He’d even learned to take it for granted. Moments like this, where he stood back and analysed the situation, had become increasingly rare in the circumspect life they had built together. He was, he thought, like a toddler taking his first clumsy steps. Initially, it required enormous concentration and carried its own burden of bruises and unexpected knocks. But gradually the body forgets that each time it steps forward successfully it is an aborted tumble. It becomes possible to walk without considering it a small miracle.
So it was in his relationship with Frances. She had kept her own modern semi-detached house on the outskirts of St. Andrews. Most weeks, they would spend a couple of nights at her place, a couple of nights at his and the remainder apart. It was a rhythm that suited them both in a life with remarkably little friction. When he thought about it, he considered that calm was probably a direct result of the absence of the sort of passion that burns as consuming as it does fierce.
Now, she looked up from the peppers her small hands were neatly dicing. “Had a good day?” she asked.
He shrugged, moving across the room and giving her a friendly hug. “Not bad. You?”
She pulled a face. “It’s always horrible at this time of year. Spring sets their teenage hormones raging and the prospect of exams fills the air with the smell of neurosis. It’s like trying to teach a barrel of broody monkeys. I made the mistake of setting my Higher Spanish class an essay on ‘My Perfect Sunday.’ Half the girls turned in the sort of soppy romantic fiction that makes Barbara Cartland sound hardboiled. And the lads all wrote about football.”
Tony laughed. “It’s a miracle the species ever manages to reproduce, given how little teenagers have in common with the opposite sex.”
“I don’t know who was more intent on counting the minutes till the bell at the end of the last period, them or me. I sometimes think this is no way for an intelligent adult to earn a living. You knock your pan in trying to open up the wonders of a foreign language to them, then someone translates coup de grâce as a lawnmower.”
“You’re making that up,” he said, picking up half a mushroom and chewing it.
“I wish I was. By the way, the phone rang just as I came in, but I had a couple of bags of shopping so I let the machine pick it up.”
“I’ll see who it is. What’s for dinner?” he added, as he walked towards his office, a tiny room at the front of the cottage.
“Maiale con latte with roast vegetables,” Frances called after him. “That’s pork cooked in milk to you.”
“Sounds interesting,” he shouted back, pressing the play button on the answering machine. There was a long bleep. Then he heard her voice.
“Hi, Tony.” A long moment of uncertainty. Two years of literal silence, their only communication irregular flurries of e-mail. But three short syllables were all it took to penetrate the shell that he’d grown round his emotions.
“It’s Carol.” Three more syllables, these ones entirely unnecessary. He’d know her voice through a sea of static. She must have heard the news about Vance.
“I need to talk to you,” she continued, sounding more confident. Professional, then, not personal after all. “I’ve got an assignment that I really need your help with.” His stomach felt leaden. Why was she doing this to him? She knew the reasons he’d drawn a line under profiling. She of all people should grant him more grace than this.
“It’s nothing to do with profiling,” she added, the words falling over each other in her haste to correct the false assumption she’d feared, the one he’d so readily made.
“It’s for me. It’s something I’ve got to do and I don’t know how to do it. And I thought you would be able to help me. I’d have e-mailed, but it just seemed easier to talk. Can you call me, please? Thanks.”
Tony stood motionless, staring out of the window at the blank faces of the houses that opened straight on to the pavement on the other side of the street. He’d never really believed Carol was consigned to his past.
“Do you want a glass of wine?” Frances’s voice from the kitchen cut across his reverie.
He walked back into the kitchen. “I’ll get them,” he said, squeezing past her to get to the fridge.
“Who was it?” Frances asked casually, more polite than curious.
“Someone I used to work with.” Tony hid his face in the process of pulling the cork and pouring wine into a couple of glasses. He cleared his throat. “Carol Jordan. A cop.”
Frances frowned in concern. “Isn’t she the one…?”
“She’s the one I worked with on the two serial killer cases, yes.” His tone told Frances it wasn’t a subject for discussion. She knew the bare bones of his history, had always sensed there was something unspoken between him and his former colleague. Now at last this might be the chance to turn over the stone and see what crept out.
“You were really close, weren’t you?” she prob
ed.
“Working on cases like that always brings colleagues close together for the duration. You’ve got a common purpose. Then afterwards you can’t bear their company because it reminds you of things you want to wipe off the face of your memory.” It was an answer that gave nothing away.
“Was she calling about that bastard Vance?” Frances asked, conscious that she’d been headed off at the pass.
Tony placed her glass by the side of the chopping board. “You heard about that?”
“It was on the news.”
“You didn’t mention it.”
Frances took a sip of the cool, crisp wine. “It’s your business, Tony. I thought you’d get round to it in your own good time if you wanted to talk about it. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t.”
His smile was wry. “I think you’re the only woman I’ve ever known who didn’t have the nosy gene.”
“Oh, I can be as nosy as the next person. But I’ve learned the hard way that poking my nose in where it’s not wanted is a great recipe for screwing up a relationship.” The allusion to her failed marriage was as oblique as Tony’s occasional reference to his profiling experiences, but he picked it up loud and clear.
“I’ll give her a quick ring back while you’re finishing off in here,” he said.
Frances stopped what she was doing and watched him walk away. She had a feeling tonight would be one of those nights when she was wakened in the chill hours before dawn by Tony shouting in his sleep and thrashing around beneath the bedclothes. She’d never complained to him; she’d read enough about serial killers to have an idea what terrors were lodged in his consciousness. She enjoyed what they shared, but that didn’t mean she wanted to partake of his demons.
She couldn’t have known how very different that made her from Carol Jordan.
5
Carol leaned back on the sofa, one hand clutching the phone, the other kneading the fur of her black cat, Nelson. “You’re sure you don’t mind?” she asked, knowing it was a formality. Tony never offered anything he didn’t mean.
“If you want my help, I’ll need to see whatever brief they give you. It makes much more sense for you to bring it with you so we can go through it together,” Tony said, sounding matter of fact.
“I really appreciate this.”
“It’s not a problem. Compared to what we’ve worked through in the past, it’ll be a pleasure.”
Carol shuddered. Someone walking across her grave. “You heard about Vance’s appeal?”
“It was on the radio news,” he said.
“He’s not going to succeed, you know,” she said, more confidently than she felt. “He’s just another guest of Her Majesty, thanks to us. He tried every trick in the book and a few others besides at the trial, and we still managed to convince a jury that was predisposed to love him. He’s not going to get past three law lords.” Nelson protested as her fingers dug too deeply into his flesh.
“I’d like to think so. But I’ve always had a bad feeling about Vance.”
“Enough of that. I’ll head straight out to the airport tomorrow as soon as the brief arrives and get a flight to Edinburgh. I can pick up a hire car there. I’ll call you when I have a better idea of my ETA.”
“OK. You’re…you’re welcome to stay at my place,” he said. Over the phone, it was hard to sift diffidence from reluctance.
Much as she wanted to see where two years apart would have brought them, Carol knew it made sense to leave herself a back door. “Thanks, but I’m putting you to enough trouble. Book me in at a local hotel, or a bed and breakfast place. Whatever’s most convenient.”
There was a short pause. Then he said, “I’ve heard good reports of a couple of places. I’ll sort it out in the morning. But if you change your mind…”
“I’ll let you know.” It was an empty promise; the impetus would have to come from him.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing you, Carol.”
“Me too. It’s been too long.”
She heard a soft chuckle. “Probably not. It’s probably been just about right. Till tomorrow, then.”
“Good night, Tony. And thanks.”
“Least I can do. Bye, Carol.”
She heard the click of the line going dead and cut off her own handset, letting it fall to the rug. Scooping Nelson up in her arms, she walked across to the wall of windows that looked out across the old stone church, incongruously preserved in the heart of the modern concrete complex that had become home. Only this morning, she’d looked across the piazza with a sense of elegiac farewell, imagining herself packing up and moving to Den Haag to take up her post as a brand-new ELO. It had all seemed very clear, a visualization that held the power to bring itself into being. Now, it was hard to picture what her future would hold beyond sleep and breakfast.
The Wilhelmina Rosen had passed Arnhem and moored for the night. The wharf he always used when they tied up on the Nederrijn was popular with the two crewmen he employed; there was a village with an excellent bar and restaurant less than five minutes walk away. They’d done their chores in record time and left him alone on the big barge within half an hour of tying up. They hadn’t bothered asking if he wanted to accompany them; in all the years they’d been working together, he’d only once joined them on a night’s drinking, when Manfred’s wife had given birth. The engineer had insisted that their captain should wet the baby’s head with him and Gunther. He remembered it with loathing. They’d been down near Regensburg, drinking in a series of bars that were familiar with the needs of boatmen. Too much beer, too much schnapps, too much noise, too many sluts taunting him with their bodies.
Much better to stay on board, where he could savour his secrets without fear of interruption. Besides, there was always work to be done, maintaining the old Rhineship in peak condition. He had to keep the brasswork gleaming, the paint smart and unblistered. The old mahogany of the wheelhouse and his cabin shone with the lustre of years of polishing, his hands following a tradition passed down the generations. He’d inherited the boat from his grandfather, the one good thing the bastard had done for him.
He’d never forget the liberation of the old man’s accident. None of them had even known about it till morning. His grandfather had gone ashore to spend the evening in a bar, as he did from time to time. He never drank with the crew, always preferring to take himself off to a quiet corner in some bier keller far away from the other bargees. He acted as if he was too good for the rest of them, though his grandson thought it was probably more likely that he’d pissed off every other skipper on the river with his bloody-minded self-righteousness.
In the morning, there had been no sign of the old man on board. That in itself was remarkable, for his regularity of habit was unshakeable. No illness had ever been permitted to fell him, no self-indulgence to keep him in his berth a minute after six. Winter and summer, the old man was washed, shaved and dressed by six twenty, the cover of the engines open as he inspected them suspiciously to make sure nothing evil had befallen them in the night. But that morning, silence hung ominous over the barge.
He’d kept his head down, busying himself in the bilges, stripping down a pump. It occupied his hands, avoiding any possibility of showing nervousness that might be remarked on later if anyone had become suspicious. But all the while, he’d been lit up by the inner glow that came from having taken his future into his own hands. At last, he was going to be the master of his own destiny. Millions of people wanted to liberate themselves as he had done, but only a handful ever had the courage to do anything about it. He was, he realized with a rare burst of pride, more special than anyone had ever given him credit for, especially the old man.
Gunther, busy cooking breakfast in the galley, had noticed nothing amiss. His routine was, perforce, as regular as his skipper’s. It had been Manfred, the engineer, who had raised the alarm. Concerned at the old man’s silence, he’d dared to crack open the door to his cabin. The bed was empty, the covers so tightly tucked in that a five-mark pi
ece would have trampolined to the ceiling off them. Anxiously, he’d made his way out on deck and begun to search. The hold was empty, awaiting that morning’s load of roadstone. Manfred rolled back a corner of the tarpaulin and climbed down the ladder to check it from stem to stern, worried that the old man might have decided to make one of his periodic late-night tours of the barge and either fallen or been taken ill. But the hold was empty.
Manfred had started to have a very bad feeling. Back up on deck, he edged his way round the perimeter, staring down into the water. Up near the bows, he saw what he was afraid of. Jammed between the hull and the pilings of the wharf, the old man floated face down.
The inference was obvious. The old man had had too much to drink and tripped over one of the hawsers that held the barge fast against the wharf. According to the postmortem, he’d banged his head on the way down, probably knocking himself unconscious in the process. Even if he’d only been stunned, the combination of alcohol and concussion had combined to make drowning a foregone conclusion. The official finding had been accidental death. Nobody doubted it for a minute.
Just as he’d planned it. He’d sweated it till the verdict was in, but it had all turned out the way he’d dreamed it. He’d been bewildered to discover what joy felt like.
It was his first taste of power, and it felt as luxurious as silk against his skin, as warming as brandy in the throat. He’d finally found a tiny flicker of strength that his grandfather’s constant and brutal humiliations had failed to extinguish, and he’d fed it the kindling of fantasy, then more of the hot-burning fuel of hatred and self-loathing until it flared bright enough to fire him into action. He’d finally shown the sadistic old bastard who the real man was.
He’d felt no remorse, neither in the immediate aftermath nor later, when attention had turned away from his grandfather’s death to the latest gossip of the rivermen. Thinking about what he’d done filled him with a lightness he’d never known before. The craving for more of it burned fierce inside him, but he had no idea how to satisfy it.