by Val McDermid
When he’d first worked with Carol, all those years ago when profiling was in its early stages and she was one of his first champions, she and Michael had shared a loft apartment in a converted warehouse at the heart of the city. Very nineties. Tony remembered how Michael had helped them, offering his expertise in software development. He also remembered the unsettling period when he’d wondered whether Michael himself might be the killer. Luckily, he’d been quite wrong about that. And later, when he’d got to know Michael better, he’d felt embarrassed to have entertained so absurd a thought. Then he recalled how many killers had confounded their nearest and dearest and he felt less bad about his suspicions.
He remembered the first time he’d met Lucy. He’d come back to Bradfield after a brief and ill-fitting excursion into academic life; Carol had returned after the trauma that had nearly destroyed her. She’d moved back into the loft apartment which Michael had been sharing with Lucy. Five minutes in their company and Tony could understand why Carol had only ever seen that as a temporary solution. Some couples fitted so well together, it was impossible to imagine what could possibly drive a wedge between them. After an evening with Michael and Lucy, it was easy to picture them forty years ahead, still together, still delighting in each other’s company, still teasing each other.
And so Carol had moved into the self-contained basement flat in Tony’s house and eventually Michael and Lucy had cashed in on the twenty-first-century property boom and translated the loft into their breathtaking barn conversion on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. One of the reasons for the move had been their desire to start a family away from the pressures of city life. Tony had suspected there would be a lot more pressures, bringing up kids in the middle of nowhere, when every activity from school to play would involve a drive. But nobody had asked him. And now they were dead. The dream of children had died with them.
The smug voice of the satnav told him to take the next turn on the right. To his surprise, they were almost there. He had no recollection of most of the drive and wondered whether that had improved his driving.
They rounded the next bend and the world changed. Instead of a rural landscape where a dozen greens shaded into grey drystone walls, they’d arrived at a destination that seemed all too urban. An assortment of liveried police vehicles, the mortuary van and several unmarked cars lined the road. A white tent extended from the rear of the house, where Tony remembered the main door was. Paradoxically, it seemed more bleak than the surrounding landscape. He braked hard to avoid hitting the nearest car and pulled in abruptly behind it.
It had taken less than an hour from BMP headquarters to the barn, but Carol looked years older. Her skin had lost its bloom, the incipient lines on her face had deepened and grown firm. A soft moan escaped from her lips. ‘I so wanted to believe Blake got it wrong,’ she said.
‘Do you want me to go and find the SIO?’ Tony said, anxious to help but not being sure how to. All the years he’d known her and now she needed him most of all, he was all at sea.
Carol drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I need to see this for myself,’ she said, opening the door to a blast of chill wind.
They’d barely got out of the car when a uniformed officer with a clipboard bore down on them. ‘This is a restricted area,’ he said. ‘You can’t park here.’
Tony stepped forward. ‘This is DCI Jordan. And I’m Dr Tony Hill from the Home Office. Where will we find the SIO?’
The young PC looked perplexed. Then his face cleared as he worked out the solution to his dilemma. ‘ID?’ he said hopefully.
Carol leaned against the car and closed her eyes. Tony took the PC by the elbow and steered him away. ‘That’s her brother in there. She’s a DCI with Bradfield. She’s entitled to every bit of courtesy you can find right now. You’re not going to get into trouble for taking us to the SIO, but I will personally do my level best to make your life a fucking misery if you don’t.’ There was nothing conciliatory in his smile.
Before the situation could develop into a conflict, a tall cadaverous man with a prominent eyebrow ridge and a beaky prow of a nose emerged from the tent and caught sight of them. He waved and shouted, ‘PC Grimshaw? Bring DCI Jordan over here.’
The weight of the world removed from his shoulders, the PC led them past the cars and into Michael and Lucy’s drive. The tall man strode towards them. ‘You know him?’ Tony asked.
‘DCI John Franklin,’ Carol said. ‘We worked together, sort of, on the RigMarole murders. One of the bodies was on his patch. He didn’t like me. Nobody from West Yorkshire likes me. Or you either, come to that. Not after we made them look like fuckwits over Shaz Bowman.’
Franklin reached them, his trench coat flapping with the speed of his approach. ‘DCI Jordan,’ he said awkwardly. He had one of those Yorkshire accents that made every word feel like a bludgeon to the head. However hard he tried, sympathy was always going to elude him. ‘I’m very sorry.’ He looked Tony up and down. ‘We’ve not met,’ he said.
‘I’m Dr Tony Hill. From the Home Office.’
Franklin’s bushy eyebrows rose. ‘The profiler. Whose idea was it to bring you in?’
‘I’m not here in an official capacity,’ Tony said. ‘I’m here as a personal friend of DCI Jordan. I also knew the victims. So, if there’s anything I can do to help … ’
Franklin’s expression was sceptical. A scatter of rain blew across the bare grass surrounding the barn and Carol shivered. ‘We’ve got a mobile incident room coming, but for now … We can talk in my car.’
‘I want to see them,’ Carol said.
Franklin looked worried. ‘I don’t think that’s a great idea. It’s not the way you’d want to remember anybody you cared about.’
She seemed physically to gather herself together. ‘I’m not a child, Mr Franklin. I’ve seen crime scenes that would make most officers lose their appetite for days. I’ve got expertise here. And I know the ground. I’ve got more chance of spotting something that’s out of kilter than any of your officers.’ She indicated Tony with a nod of her head. ‘And he reads a crime scene like you read a newspaper.’
Franklin rubbed his jaw. ‘You’re an interested party, though. The defence would make hay with that.’
‘Do you have any idea what happened here?’ Tony said abruptly.
Franklin bridled. ‘An intruder walked in on the couple. They were in bed, apparently having sex—’
‘Making love,’ Carol butted in. ‘With those two, it was making love. You have no idea how much they cared about each other.’ Her expression was fierce.
Franklin took a moment to rein himself in. ‘As you say. He attacked them from behind and cut both of their throats.’ He raised his eyes to the hills. Tony reckoned he wanted to look anywhere except at Carol. ‘There’s a huge amount of blood. They pretty much bled out.’
Carol turned to Tony and gripped his arm. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought so ever since Blake broke the news. I hoped I was wrong.’
‘But you’re not wrong. You’re too bloody late with it, but you’re not wrong.’
Franklin gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Do you mind telling me what the pair of you are talking about?’
‘Jacko Vance,’ Carol said. ‘That’s who you’re looking for.’
Franklin tried to keep his incredulity under control. ‘Jacko Vance? He only busted out of prison down in the Midlands yesterday. How’s he going to be up here? And why would Jacko Vance murder your brother and his girlfriend?’
‘Because he thinks we’re the reason he spent twelve years in jail,’ Tony said. ‘He’s not big on acknowledging responsibility for his crimes. I thought he would take reprisals against the team who put him away, and his ex-wife.’ He gave Carol a pleading look. ‘I didn’t think he would take his revenge like this.’
Franklin pulled out a pack of cigarettes and bought time by firing one up. ‘So you’ve no evidence as such?’
‘Pre
sumably the SOCOs will find something,’ Carol said. ‘Now, will you let me see the scene?’
Franklin shrugged. ‘I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Likely this is just a horrible coincidence.’ He turned his collar up against a more brutal squall of rain. ‘Come into the tent, we’ll get you suited up.’ He chivvied them ahead of him into the tent, shouting past them, ‘Somebody find suits for the DCI and the profiler.’
As they went through the awkward scramble to get into the white paper suits, Tony tried to speak to Carol. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ he said.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She turned her back to him, pulling on a pair of bootees.
‘I really don’t think it’s a good idea. You wouldn’t let a victim’s family see the body of someone they loved actually at the crime scene.’
‘I’m a cop. I’m used to this.’ She snapped the elastic over her foot and stood up, easing her arms into sleeves.
‘You’re not used to seeing someone you love like this. Let me go first, at least.’
‘What – you’re saying you don’t care enough for it to matter to you?’
‘No, of course that’s not what I’m saying. This is going to give you nightmares, Carol.’
She paused and gave him a level stare. ‘And what kind of nightmares do you think it will give me if I don’t see it for myself? It’s precisely because I know what these scenes look like that I have to see it for myself. Otherwise my imagination will fill in the blanks. And how much sleep do you think I’ll get then?’
He had no answer to that. She was ready before him and she didn’t wait, walking straight across the raised metal plates that indicated the route into the crime scene. Tony scrambled to catch up with her, only succeeding in falling over as he struggled with the suit. By the time he made it past the front door, she was already out of sight.
The main area of the barn looked uncannily normal. Lucy’s jacket hung over the balustrade, her shoes kicked off nearby. There was a T-shirt in a crumpled heap near the table and a skirt pooled by the bottom of the stairs. Apart from the metallic and meaty stink of blood, there was no sign of violence down here.
Tony looked up the stairs and gasped at the sight. The ceiling above the gallery was splashed and streaked and puddled with bright scarlet. It looked as if someone had thrown a bucket of red paint at the roof. ‘You slashed the carotids,’ he said softly. He climbed the stairs, careful to stand only on the protective plates.
The scene that met him at the top of the stairs was grotesque. Michael lay on his back on a bed soaked crimson. Lucy was face down next to him, her hair a web of clotted dark red. There was a dried white streak of sperm across her lower back. Blood stained the walls, the floor and the ceiling. Carol stood at the foot of the bed, colour flooding up her neck to her face. He wanted to weep – not for Michael and Lucy, but for Carol.
‘There’s a photograph missing,’ she said bluntly to the SOCO who was working one side of the room. ‘On the wall, there. You can see the outline in the blood. It was a family photo. Michael and Lucy and me. And my mum and dad. It was taken two years ago at my cousin’s wedding. Michael said it was the best photo of all of us that he’d ever seen. He got prints made for me and our parents, and he hung his copy up here where it caught the morning light.’
She turned and looked directly at Tony. Because of the mask she was wearing all he could see were her eyes, their grey-blue sparkling with unshed tears. ‘Now that bastard Vance has my family photo. He’s taken my brother and he’s taken the picture to gloat. Either that or to make targeting my parents easier.’ Her voice was rising, fury taking over from the shock that had cradled her since Blake had broken the news.
‘This is your fault,’ she raged at him. ‘You dragged me into this in the first place. It was your fight, you and your baby profilers. But you dragged me into it, put me on the front line when it came to nailing Jacko Vance.’
The assault was shocking. Carol had never attacked him like this in all the years they’d known each other. They’d argued on occasion, but it had never gone nuclear like this. They’d always drawn back from the brink. Tony had always believed it was because they both understood the power they had to hurt each other. But all those barriers were gone now, torn down in the wake of what Vance had done here. ‘You wanted to be involved,’ he said weakly, knowing as he spoke that truth was no defence here.
‘And you never tried to stop me, did you? You never thought there might be consequences for me. You never have. All the times I’ve ended up risking everything for you. Because you needed me.’ Now the rage had a mocking edge. ‘And now this. You sat there and did your fucking risk assessment yesterday and you never once suggested that Vance might go after the people I love. Why, Tony? Did you not think I would want to know something like that? Or did it just not occur to you?’
He’d known physical pain. He’d been trussed up naked and left for dead on a concrete floor. He’d faced a killer with a pistol. But none of it hurt as much as Carol’s accusations. ‘It didn’t—’
‘Look at you. Finally, you look upset. Is that what’s bothering you now?’ She stepped close to him and pushed him hard in the chest, making him stumble backwards. ‘The fact that you didn’t predict this? Didn’t work it out? That you’re not as smart as you thought you were? The great Tony Hill fucked up and now my brother’s dead?’ She pushed him again and he had to twist away to avoid falling down the stairs. ‘Because that’s what’s happened. You’re supposed to be the one who can figure out what bastards like Vance are going to do next. But you failed.’ She waved an arm at the scene on the bed. ‘Look at it, Tony. Look at it till you can’t close your fucking eyes without seeing it. You did that, Tony. Just as much as Jacko Vance.’ Her hands balled into fists and he flinched.
‘Pitiful,’ she snarled at him. And turned on her heel, almost running down the stairs. Tony looked down and saw Franklin shaking his head at him. He realised everybody in the barn had stopped what they were doing to stare at him and Carol.
‘Can I ask where you’re going?’ Franklin said, putting out a hand to slow Carol as she drew level with him.
‘Somebody needs to tell my parents,’ she said. ‘And somebody needs to be with them to make sure Vance doesn’t destroy them too.’
‘Can you leave the address with Sergeant Moran over there?’ He pointed to a table set up in a corner of the tent where a woman in a puffa jacket and baseball cap sat at a laptop. ‘We’ll ask the local lads to sit outside till you get there.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You need to be liaising with West Mercia about the hunt for Vance too. I’ll give the details of the investigating officers to Sergeant Moran.’
Tony forced himself out of his frozen state of shock and called down to her. ‘Carol – wait for me.’
‘You’re not coming with me,’ she said. Her voice was like the slam of a door. And he was on the wrong side.
32
The office was a good place not to be. The shadow of what had happened to Carol hung over them all like a pall, Chris thought as she drove down the spine of the Pennines and into Derbyshire. She sipped coffee as she drove. It had cooled to a point where anyone sampling it would have been hard pressed to say whether it was warmed-up iced coffee or leftover hot coffee. She didn’t care. All she wanted it for was its capacity to keep her awake. She was beginning to feel welded into the car seat after yesterday’s excursion to Kay Hallam’s mansion.
In an ideal world, she’d have got her hands on a copy of Geoff Whittle’s banned book about Vance the cop killer and hunkered down in a corner of the office to read it before she went head-to-head with its author. But this seemed to be one of those rare cases where ‘banned and pulped’ meant what it said. There was no readily available copy of Sporting Kill, and even if there had been, there was no time for that kind of homework. Not now that the killing had started. Nobody was blaming Vance publicly yet for the double murder of Michael Jordan and his girlfriend, but everyone in
the MIT squad room knew exactly who to hold responsible.
It had taken Stacey approximately six minutes to come up with a current address and phone number for Geoff Whittle, and the information that he seldom left his Derbyshire cottage these days because he was on the waiting list for a hip replacement. Given long enough, Chris suspected Stacey could have found a version of the text online somewhere. But long enough was what she didn’t have.
All these years later and still it felt personal, this pursuit of Vance. Shaz Bowman’s death had changed so much about how Chris viewed herself. It had stripped away the lightness from her, turning her into a more sober and more serious person. She’d stopped looking for love in all the wrong places and made conscious decisions about how she wanted to live, rather than drifting into the next vaguely interesting thing. Working with MIT in Bradfield had offered her the chance to be the kind of copper she’d always imagined she could be. She had no idea how she was going to live up to that now.
The dull browns and greens of the Dark Peak gave way to the broken light grey and silver of the White Peak. Late lambs staggered around, coming right up to the edge of the road that curled down Winnats Pass before skittering away as the car approached. When the sun shone out here it felt like an act of God.
Castleton was a village for tourists and walkers. Chris and her partner came out this way occasionally in the winter with the dogs, enjoying the landscape when it was emptier. Already in late spring, the streets were busy with strolling visitors, stepping off the narrow pavements into the road. Chris took a right in the centre of the village and drove out along the hillside till she came to a huddle of four cottages clinging to the slope. According to Stacey, Whittle lived in the furthest.
Chris parked the car on a grassy verge already churned by tyres and walked back to the house. It was a single-storey cottage built in the local limestone. She reckoned three rooms plus kitchen and bathroom, and not a lot of light. Out here, you could make a small fortune renting out a place like this as a holiday cottage. But as a place to live full-time, Chris reckoned it had major downsides, especially if you weren’t able to get about. Obviously Geoff Whittle’s excursion into true crime hadn’t been as profitable as he’d hoped.