by Val McDermid
‘Is that Dr Hill? Dr Tony Hill?’ It was a woman’s voice, tickling at the edge of his memory but not quite falling into place.
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Penny Burgess, Dr Hill. From the Evening Sentinel Times. We’ve spoken before.’
Penny Burgess. He recalled a woman in a trench coat, collar turned up against the rain, face arranged in a tough expression, long dark hair escaping from its confines. He also recalled how he’d been variously transformed in the stories under her byline, from omniscient sage to idiot scapegoat. ‘Rather less than you’d have your readers believe,’ he said.
‘Just doing my job, Dr Hill.’ Her voice was a lot warmer than their history merited. ‘There’s been another woman murdered in Bradfield,’ she continued. She was about as good at small talk as he was, Tony thought, trying to avoid the wider implications of her words. When he failed to respond, she said, ‘A sex worker. Like the two last month.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Tony said, choosing his words like steps in a minefield.
‘Why I’m ringing you … My source tells me this one has the same signature as the previous two. I’m wondering what you make of that?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve currently got no operational involvement with Bradfield CID.’
Penny Burgess made a low sound in her throat, almost a chuckle but not quite. ‘I’m sure your sources are at least as good as mine,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe DCI Jordan is out of the loop on this one, and if she knows, you know.’
‘You’ve got a very strange notion of my world,’ Tony said firmly. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about a serial killer, Dr Hill. And when it comes to serial killers, you’re the man.’
Abruptly, Tony ended the call, shoving his phone back in his pocket. He raised his eyes to meet Ambrose’s assessing gaze. ‘Hack,’ he said. He swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘Actually, no. She’s better than that. Carol’s crew have left her with egg all over her face more than once, but she just acts like that’s an occupational hazard.’
‘All the same … ’ Ambrose said.
Tony nodded. ‘Right. You can respect them without being willing to give them anything.’
‘What was she after?’
‘She was fishing. We’ve had two street prostitutes killed in Bradfield over the last few weeks. Now there’s a third. As far as I was aware, there was no reason to connect the first two – completely different MO.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, I say that, but I know nothing officially. Not Carol’s cases, and even if they were, she doesn’t share.’
‘But your hack’s saying something different?’
‘She says there’s a signature connection. But it’s still nothing to do with me. Even if they decide they need a profile, it won’t be me they come to.’
‘Stupid bastards. You’re the best there is.’
Tony finished his drink. ‘That may well be true. But as far as James Blake is concerned, staying in-house is cheaper and it means he keeps control.’ A wry smile. ‘I can see his point. If I was him, I probably wouldn’t employ me either. More trouble than it’s worth.’ He pushed back from the table and stood up. ‘And on that cheerful note, I’m off up the motorway.’
‘Is there not a part of you that wishes you were out there at that crime scene?’ Ambrose drained his second pint and got to his feet, deliberately standing back so he didn’t loom over his friend.
Tony considered. ‘I won’t deny that the people who do this kind of thing fascinate me. The more disturbed they are, the more I want to figure out what makes them tick. And how I can help them to make the mechanism function a bit better.’ He sighed. ‘But I am weary of looking at the end results. Tonight, Alvin, I’m going home to bed, and believe me, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.’
3
The safest place to hide anything was in plain sight. People only ever see what they expect to see. Those were some of the truths he’d learned a long time before his life had been shrunk by prison walls. But he was smart and he was determined, so he hadn’t stopped learning just because his physical environment had become constrained.
Some people closed down as soon as they found themselves behind bars. They were seduced by a life less chaotic, consoled by predictability. One of the lesser-known aspects of prison life was the high incidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Jails were full of men and women who found a comfort in repetitive behaviour that had never occurred to them on the outside. Right from the start, Jacko Vance had steeled himself against the seduction of routine.
Not that he’d had much routine to start with. There’s nothing prisoners love more than fucking up a celebrity inmate. When George Michael was banged up, the entire wing kept him awake all night roaring tuneless renderings of his greatest hits, altering the words to suit their mood as the night wore on. With Vance, as soon as they were locked in for the night, they’d whistled the theme tune from his TV show, on and on like a track on repeat. Once Vance’s Visits had worn down their patience, they’d started on football-style chants about his wife and her girlfriend. It had been an ugly introduction, but it hadn’t upset him. He’d walked on to the landing in the morning as composed and calm as he’d been the night before.
There was a reason for his composure. Right from the start, he’d been determined he was going to get out. He knew it would take years and he had forced himself to accept that. He had legal avenues to explore, but he wasn’t convinced they would work. So he needed to get Plan B in place as quickly as possible to give him something to focus on. Something to aim for.
The composure was the first step on the journey. He had to prove that he deserved respect without making it look like he was trying to step on someone else’s territory, particularly since they all knew he’d killed teenage girls, which made him a borderline nonce. None of it had been easy, and there had been occasional false steps along the way. But Vance still had contacts on the outside who clung on to their belief in his innocence. And he was perfectly willing to exploit those contacts to the full. Keeping sweet the alpha males inside was often a matter of oiling the wheels outside. Vance still had plenty of grease where it counted.
Keeping his nose clean inside the system was another key element in the plan. Whatever he was up to, he had to make it look like he was sticking to the rules. Good behaviour, that’s what he wanted the prison staff to see. Put up with the shit and be a good boy, Jacko. But that was as much of an act as anything else.
Years ago he’d been watching the TV magazine show his ex-wife used to host when she’d interviewed the governor of a prison where there had been a terrifying riot, with the prisoners effectively taking control of the jail for three days. The governor had had a world-weary air to him, and Vance could still summon up his image when he recalled his words: ‘Whatever you put in place, they’ll find a way round it.’ At the time, Vance had been intrigued, wondering if it might be a hook for a TV programme for him and his team. Now, he embraced what it really meant.
Of course, in prison your options were limited when it came to finding a way round anything. You were thrown back on your own resources. That gave Vance a head start over most of his fellow inmates, who didn’t have much to draw on. But the attributes that had made him the most popular male presenter on British TV were perfectly suited to prison. He was charismatic, handsome, charming. And because he’d been a world-class sportsman before the accident that had ultimately led him to his TV career, he could lay claim to being a man’s man. And then there was the George Cross, awarded for risking his life to save small children after a fogbound multiple-vehicle accident on the motorway. Or maybe it was supposed to be a consolation for losing his arm in the failed attempt to get a trapped trucker out of his crushed cab. Either way, he didn’t think there was another jailbird in the country who had been awarded the highest honour for civilian heroism. It all stacked up in the plus column.
At the heart of his plan had been one
simple element – befriend the people who had the power to change his world. The top guns who run the inmates; the officers who choose who gets the perks; the psychologist who decides how you serve your time. And all the while, he’d be alert for the key player he’d need to make it all come together.
Brick by brick, he’d built the foundations for his escape. The electric razor, for example. He’d deliberately sprained his wrist so he could plead the impossibility of a one-armed man shaving any other way. Then there had been the convenience of the Human Rights Act, which had ensured his access to state-of-the-art prosthetics. Because the money he’d made before he’d been revealed as a serial killer of adolescent girls had not been the proceeds of crime, the authorities couldn’t touch it. So his artificial limb was the very best that money could buy, allowing him intuitive control and individual finger movements. The synthetic skin was so good, people who didn’t know any better wouldn’t believe it wasn’t real. If you weren’t looking for fake, you wouldn’t see it. An eye for detail, that was what counted.
There had been a moment when he’d thought all his work had been wasted. But wasted in a good way. To the surprise of most people, the appeal court had eventually overturned the verdict against him. For a glorious moment, he’d thought he’d be walking out into the world a free man. But those bastard cops had slammed him with another murder charge before he could even get out of the dock. And that one had stuck like glue, as he’d always feared it might. And so it was back to the cell and back to the drawing board.
Being patient, sticking with the plan had been hard. Years had trickled by with little to show. But he’d toughed things out before. Recovering from the terrible accident that had robbed him of his Olympic medal dreams and the woman he loved had given him reserves of willpower that few people had access to. Years of training to reach the pinnacle of his sport had taught him the value of perseverance. Tonight, all that would pay off. Within a few hours, it would all have been worth it. Now he just had to make the final preparations.
And then he would teach some people a lesson they would never forget.
4
It was hard to see the victim clearly because of the white-suited forensic technicians working the crime scene. As far as Detective Superintendent Pete Reekie was concerned, that was no bad thing. It wasn’t that he was squeamish. He’d seen enough blood over the years to be pretty much immune to its stomach-churning potential. He could take any amount of straightforward violence. But when he was confronted by the perverse, he’d do all he could to avoid the kind of eye contact with the dead that would leave their broken and profaned bodies etched on his memory. DS Reekie didn’t like sick minds having access to his head.
It was bad enough that he’d already had to listen to his DI run through it on the phone. Reekie had been having a perfectly pleasant evening in front of his giant plasma screen, a can of Stella in one hand, cigar in the other, watching Manchester United cling on to a single goal lead against more stylish opposition in the European Championship, when his mobile had rung.
‘It’s DI Spencer,’ his caller announced. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but we’ve got a bad one out here and I thought you might want to be informed.’
Ever since he’d taken over Bradfield’s Northern Divisional CID, Reekie had made it clear to his minions that he didn’t ever want to be blindsided by some case that the media decided to turn into an audience-grabbing crusade. This was the downside, being dragged away from a key match with fifteen minutes still to play. ‘Will it not wait till morning?’ Reekie demanded, knowing the answer before the question was finished.
‘I think you’ll want to be out here,’ Spencer said. ‘It’s another prostitute murder, same tattoo on the wrist, according to the doc.’
‘Are you saying we’re looking at a serial killer?’ Reekie made no attempt to hide his incredulity. Ever since Hannibal Lecter, every bloody detective wanted to jump on the serial-killer bandwagon.
‘Hard to say, sir. I never saw the first two, but the doc says it looks the same. Only … ’
‘Spit it out, Spencer.’ Already, Reekie had regretfully dumped his can on the table by his chair and stubbed out his cigar.
‘The MO … well, it’s pretty radical, compared to the other two.’
Reekie sighed, backing out of the room, half his mind on the languid centre-forward ambling towards a perfectly calibrated pass. ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean, Spencer? “Pretty radical”?’
‘She’s been crucified. Then stood upside down. Then had her throat cut. In that order, according to the doc.’ Spencer’s tone was clipped. Reekie wasn’t sure whether it was because Spencer was shocked himself or trying to shake his boss. Either way, it had certainly done the business for Reekie. He felt acid in the back of his throat, alcohol and smoke transformed into bile.
So he’d known even before he left the house that he wouldn’t want to look at this one. Now, Reekie stood with his back to the horrible tableau, listening to Spencer trying to make something substantial out of the shreds of information they had so far. As Spencer began to run out of steam, Reekie interrupted. ‘You say the doc’s sure it’s the third of three?’
‘As far as we know. I mean, there could be more.’
‘Exactly. A bloody nightmare. Not to mention what it’ll do to the budget.’ Reekie straightened his shoulders. ‘No disrespect, DI Spencer, but I think this is one for the specialists.’
He saw the dawning light of comprehension in Spencer’s eyes. There was a way the DI could dodge endless hours of unpaid overtime, the perpetual weight of the media monkey on his back and the emotional drain on his officers. Spencer wasn’t a shirker, but everybody knew how souls were shrivelled by cases like this. And there was no need for it, not when there were people with an appetite for this sort of shit. And protocols that demanded certain kinds of case should be shunted sideways. Spencer nodded. ‘As you say, sir. I know my limitations.’
Reekie nodded, stepping away from the bright lights and the soft rustle of movement that marked the crime scene. He knew just who to call.
5
Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan grasped the handle of the bottom drawer on the left side of her desk. This was the price she had to pay for deciding to leave Bradfield. At the end of the month, her seasoned team of experts would be disbanded and she would be on her way. By then, every desk drawer, every filing cabinet, every cupboard in her office would have to be filleted. There would be personal stuff she’d want to take with her – photographs, cards, notes from colleagues, cartoons torn from magazines and newspapers that had made Carol and her colleagues smile. There would be professional material that needed to be filed somewhere within the confines of Bradfield Metropolitan Police. There would be scribbled notes that made no sense out of the context of their particular investigation. And there would be plenty of fodder for the shredder – all those bits of paper that nobody else would ever need to see. That’s why she’d stayed behind to make a start on it after the rest of the team had called it a day.
But glumness set in as soon as she yanked the drawer open. It was stuffed full, case papers layered like geological strata. Cases that had been shocking, terrifying, heartbreaking and mystifying. Cases she’d probably never see the like of again. It wasn’t something she should have to attack unfortified. Carol swivelled in her chair and reached for the middle filing cabinet drawer with its more familiar contents. She helped herself to one of the miniature bottles of vodka she’d collected from hotel mini bars, train buffets and business flights. She tipped the dregs of a mug of coffee into the bin, wiped it out with a tissue and poured the vodka. It didn’t look much. She grabbed a second bottle and added it. It still barely looked like a drink. She knocked it back and thought it barely felt like a drink either. She tipped another two miniatures into the mug and set it on the desk.
‘For sipping,’ Carol said out loud. She did not have a drink problem. Whatever Tony Hill might think, she was in control of the alcohol. No
t the other way round. There were points in her past when it had been a close thing, but they were behind her. Enjoying the fact that a couple of drinks took the edge off did not constitute a problem. It didn’t interfere with the standard of her work. It didn’t interfere with her personal relationships. ‘Whatever those are,’ she muttered, dragging a bundle of files from the drawer.
She’d worked her way through enough of the stack for a ringing phone to feel like rescue. The screen of her phone showed a police-issue mobile but she didn’t recognise the specific number. ‘DCI Jordan,’ she said, reaching for the mug, surprised to find it empty.
‘Detective Superintendent Reekie from Northern Division,’ a gruff voice said.
Carol didn’t know Reekie, but it had to be important if someone that far up the pecking order was working so late into the evening. ‘How can I help you, sir?’
‘We’ve got something here that I think is right up your team’s street,’ Reekie said. ‘I thought it best to bring you into it soon as. While the crime scene’s still fresh.’
‘That’s how we like them,’ Carol said. ‘But my squad’s winding up, you know.’
‘I’d heard you were working out your notice,’ Reekie said. ‘But you’re still in harness, right? Thought you might want to get your teeth into one last special one.’
They weren’t the words she’d have chosen, but she understood what he meant. They all knew the difference between the run-of-the-mill domestics and criminal infighting that made up most homicides, and murders that signalled a warped mind at work. Cases where there was any element of mystery at all were relatively rare. So she supposed that ‘special’ wasn’t such a strange word to assign to a murder. ‘Text me the location and I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ she said, replacing the unexamined files and kicking the drawer shut.