Killing the Shadows

by Val McDermid

  The final shot in the gallery showed a completely different side of Jane Elias. Taken at the finishing line of a charity half-marathon in Dublin, it revealed Jane in mid-stride, her running shorts and vest showing off the smooth planes of well-developed muscle that covered legs and arms. The camera had caught her in a candid moment, her expression exposing the blissed-out altered state of the athlete who has gone through the pain barrier. She looked more attractive here than anywhere else, Fiona noticed with detachment.

  From studying the photographs, Fiona moved to the condolence book. If she’d been involved with the investigation, she’d have suggested the police take a look at the messages posted by fans. Given the tendency of psychopaths to attempt to insert themselves into the inquiry into their crimes, it was an obvious place for Jane’s killer to go. The dozen messages Fiona scrolled through seemed innocuous enough, but there was plenty of time for the strange and bizarre to show up. She book marked the page, resolving to return in a day or two to see if anything resembling Kit and Georgia’s letters showed up.

  There was nothing else on the fan site that interested her, so, like a child saving its favourite part of the meal for the last, she directed her web browser to Murder Behind the Headlines. She typed in ‘Jane Elias’ in the search box and hit the return key. Queen of the serial killer thriller Jane Elias has finally found out what it’s like to suffer what she handed out to dozens of victims in her books. Unfortunately, she won’t be able to put her experiences to good commercial effect because the man or woman who abducted her made sure she wouldn’t live to tell the tale. Elias’s body was found on a back road in the early hours of the morning by a forestry worker whose truck ran into the body, strategically placed in the middle of the road just round a blind bend near the novelist’s estate in County Wicklow, Ireland. This shows striking similarities to one of the body dumps in Death on Arrival, Elias’s first novel which was turned into an Oscar-winning vehicle for the luscious Michelle Pfeiffer. And according to MBTH’s sources in the County Wicklow coroner’s office, Elias suffered injuries that have much in common with the description of what happened to the victims in that novel, only in her case they were postmortem, rather than while she was still alive. Maybe her killer was more squeamish than his victim. Here’s the template from the book:

  The delayed sting of the razor cut. The blossoming of a burn from a smart to a roar of pain that spread inwards as the smell of barbecued flesh drifted outwards. The searing agony of flesh forced to accommodate more than it has room for. The sickening pain of a broken bone never allowed time to knit. The dull distress of a blow strategically aimed at the organs nestling beneath the skin.

  Creepy, huh? Especially after the recent copycat murder of Copycat writer Drew Shand in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unlikely though it may sound, conspiracy theorists are already speculating that somebody is taking out serial killer thriller writers. Now that’s taking criticism a little too far. But the truth may lie in a different direction. MBTH can exclusively reveal that Jane Elias’s greatest secret was that for the last five years, she had been involved in an affair with undercover drugs cop Pierce Finnegan, one of the key figures in the Irish Republic’s police force, the Garda Siochana’s fight against drug dealers. Finnegan was instrumental in the cracking of a major heroin supply route last year, and the word is that there’s a price on his head from senior gangland figures still awaiting trial. He is reportedly liaising with Europol presently, and has high connections with the US drug enforcement authorities. Frankly, his affair with Elias was a far better kept secret than anything in the leaky Garda files. Elias met Finnegan when he was attending an International convention of criminal intelligence personnel at Quantico. Friends claim she was visiting the convention anonymously, under the wing of a software company in Florida who were pioneering a computer photo fit program. During the convention, she was able to sneak into several closed sessions, where she heard Finnegan speak. Later, friends introduced them and the two immediately formed a close personal bond. Not even his Garda bosses knew about the affair. As a result, Elias moved to Ireland, where Finnegan was a regular visitor to her high-security compound in County Wicklow, though among locals, it’s doubtful if even Elias’s security staff knew his true identity. Elias often had secret liaisons with her lover when he was on the road. She would check into the same hotel and the two would share clandestine nights of love. So, no mystery about where her plot lines came from. Now speculation is rife that whoever killed Elias was either taking revenge on Finnegan or sending him a warning to back off and compromise his trial evidence. The death of Drew Shand could have provided the killer with the perfect blueprint for a killing that would send the desired message to Finnegan without necessarily being connected to any of the Garda agent’s cases. Of course, that would only work if the affair remained a secret. Sorry, Pierce. Sorry, Mr. Murderer. We just blew your cover.

  REMEMBER YOU READ IT FIRST ON MURDER BEHIND THE HEADLINES

  Fiona took a deep breath. This was dynamite if it was true. Having a lover who was an undercover drugs investigator provided a far more credible motive for so violent a murder than the notion that a serial killer was targeting writers. Knowing how law enforcement agencies worked against their own, Fiona seriously doubted that the relationship was a secret to Finnegan’s bosses, but the pair had certainly done a good job of keeping it out of the public eye.

  She couldn’t help feeling relief. Although her logical self had been reluctant to accept the possibility of a murderer who wanted to rid the world of thriller writers, her emotional self had known nothing but the gnaw of fear ever since she’d read the newspaper headline. Fiona knew far too much about the relentless capabilities of serial offenders; the notion that Kit might be a name on a hit list had been rattling round her head for the past hour and she was selfishly grateful that there was a logical explanation for Jane’s death that could not touch her own lover.

  She closed down the computer and made her way downstairs. Kit was back in the kitchen, tipping couscous into a pan of boiling water. He looked round and forced a crooked smile. “Ten minutes,” he said.

  “Did you manage any work?” Fiona asked, topping up his glass and refilling her own.

  “Nothing like other people’s tragedies to get the words flowing,” he said, a sharp edge to his voice. “It’s like a defence mechanism. My brain uses writing to block out the static. As long as I’m staring at the screen and getting stuff down, I can’t be thinking about the hell Jane had to go through before this bastard let her die.”

  “That’s the trouble with having an imagination,” Fiona said. “Especially one like yours. You don’t even have to try to come up with a hundred harrowing scenarios.” She crossed the room and he turned to accept her hug. “Her injuries were postmortem. She wasn’t tortured.”

  “I suppose we should be grateful for that,” Kit mumbled into her hair. He pulled away gently. “So what did you dig up?”

  “Bottom line? You shouldn’t be worried on your own account.” She sat down at the table and outlined her researches in detail.

  “You know what I think about those muckrakers,” Kit protested. “How can you be sure they’ve got it right about her relationship with the undercover guard? Maybe they were just mates. Maybe he was just a contact that she milked for ideas and deep background.”

  Fiona shrugged. “I can’t be certain. But they’ve obviously got some very high-level sources and they exploit them to the hilt. So unless we hear otherwise, I’d take what they say at face value.”

  “Easier said than done,” he muttered.

  “One thing that might help set your mind at rest when you’re ringing round to see if anybody else has had threatening letters, see if anybody knows whether Jane had one. If she didn’t, then it’s even more evidence to support my theory that people who write death threats aren’t the ones who kill.”

  “Maybe I should just ring the local police and ask them.”

  “Yeah, right. Like they’re going to te
ll you.”

  “They might tell Steve.”

  Fiona acknowledged the sense of his statement with a dip of her head.

  “And I’m meeting him tomorrow night anyway,” Kit continued, taking the roasting dish of vegetables out of the oven and tipping them into the couscous. He placed the food on the table with a flourish and sat down facing Fiona. “I’m going to ask Steve if he can find out about whether Jane got any death threat letters,” he said. “If she didn’t, then you’re probably right, and Georgia and I are in the clear. And in the meantime, I promise to be careful without being paranoid. Will that do you?”

  Fiona smiled. “That’ll do me fine. But if somebody does come after you with a knife, no heroics. Just leg it.”

  “What? You don’t want me to stand my ground and be a man?” Kit teased.

  “God, no. I’m far too busy to take time off to organize a funeral.” Fiona tasted her dinner. “Mmm. Wonderful. Take care of yourself, darling, I could never afford to replace you in the kitchen.”

  Kit pretended to look hurt. “Only in the kitchen?”

  “If I don’t eat every day, I die,” she said. “I’d miss shagging you, but it wouldn’t kill me.”

  “You think not?” he said dangerously.

  “Let’s not put it to the test.”

  He grinned. “Right answer, Doctor. So, do you fancy a quiet night in?”

  “Kit, we’ve never had a quiet night in. Why would we start now?” She raised her eyebrows provocatively. “But I wouldn’t say no to fucking your brains out.”

  “You talked me into it, you smooth bastard.” Kit’s grin promised to take no prisoners.

  Jane Elias would soon be cold in earth. Neither of them had forgotten that for a moment. Keeping the ghosts at bay was the most important thing they could do for each other, and they knew it. It was, as so often in the past, their unspoken contract.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Georgia Lester sat at the kitchen table, hands cradling a china cup of weak Earl Grey tea, staring unseeingly down past autumn-bedraggled herbaceous borders to the skeleton apple trees at the bottom of her cottage garden. She didn’t register the perennials that were due to be cut back, the roses that would be pruned when next the gardener came. That was neither her interest nor her job. She only ever noticed the garden when it was beautiful. Ugliness she preferred to tune out. There was enough of that in her head without adding to it from outside.

  What she enjoyed about her cottage was the peace. Being Georgia Lester was a tiring business. It was a constant effort to maintain the image of sophisticated beauty and elegance that the world expected from her. Of course, she had created that expectation herself, a conscious invention of a persona and style that would mark her out from the herd. But that didn’t make it any easier, and these days, whenever she looked in the mirror in the morning, it seemed as if the mountain was looming higher every day. Perhaps it was time for another visit to that charming man in Harley Street who had done such a good job with that loose skin around her jawline.

  But here at the cottage, she could absolve herself from the need to maintain the facade. Well, she could when she was here alone, she amended, a sly smile of reminiscence lifting the corners of her mouth. A girl did need distraction now and again, and devoted as Anthony was, he couldn’t quite provide the stimulus of a taut young body with all the sexual energy that accompanied it. None of her flirtations lasted long, she made sure of that. Nor did they mean anything more to her than a kind of blood transfusion something necessary but somehow impersonal.

  This weekend, however, Georgia had a different agenda. No dressing up for lovers, just working on her rewrites. Unlike most of the writers she knew, Georgia loved the revision process. It allowed her to step back from the nuts and bolts of getting her first draft on paper and focus on the quality of the writing itself. She’d established a reputation for finely crafted prose, and she always maintained that came from her attention to the detailed sentence-on-sentence shape of her book. She had three clear days of her favourite work ahead now, and she was looking forward to it.

  Already, her mind was racing onwards to the section of the book she would be working on that day. The typescript was already sitting on her desk, next to the Mont Blanc Meisterst¨ck fountain pen she always used to make the revisions her secretary would later transfer to the computer. She wasn’t even going to bother dressing yet. She’d slob around in her fluffy dressing gown, hair hidden in a silk turban, until lunchtime. Then she’d soak in the bath while she listened to The World At One. A snack for lunch, then she’d have to venture out into Dorchester. There was plenty of food in the freezer, but she’d inexplicably run out of white wine, and dinner without a glass of chilled Chablis was unthinkable. She firmly believed that writers needed the discipline of routine. And that included the small pleasures of life as well as the habits of mind that made it possible for her to turn out a book a year.

  Georgia finished her tea and poured a fresh cup. She planned to make the most of these three days. When they were over, she would be plunged into an author tour to promote her latest hardback. Thinking of it reminded her that she still hadn’t persuaded her publisher to foot the bill for the handsome bodyguard she’d hired before leaving London. She didn’t really think anyone was after her, in spite of her protestations to dear, sweet Kit that they should take those tiresome letters to the police. But she had no objections to cashing in on the possibility. It never hurt to keep one’s name firmly in the public eye. The notion that she was sufficiently significant a writer to attract the attention of a stalker would inevitably draw new readers to her, curious to discover what it was about her that was so special. And once drawn to her, Georgia was utterly convinced they would remain to devour her backlist in its entirety.

  Thanks to astute planning like that, she had climbed to the top of the heap. She was well aware that her activities earned her disapproval from many of her fellows. It bothered her not a whit. They could pretend all they liked that they were too high-minded to stoop to her tactics. The reality was that they were jealous of the column inches she gathered.

  Unaware that she was about to generate the greatest publicity of her career, Georgia sipped her tea and felt very, very contented.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Fiona was running late. Literally. Dodging students, she swerved into her secretary’s office. “Bloody Northern Line,” she gasped, trying to wrestle her coat off and open her office door at the same time. She crossed the threshold, shedding jacket and briefcase and reaching for the folder of notes for the departmental meeting that had been due to start five minutes earlier, her secretary following her.

  “There’s a Spanish policeman been trying to get you,” she said. She consulted a message sheet in her hand. “A Major Salvador Berrocal. He’s been ringing every ten minutes for the last half-hour.”

  “Shit, shit shit!” Fiona muttered savagely.

  “He said would you call him back as soon as possible,” her secretary added helpfully as Fiona dithered between desk and doorway. “It sounded urgent.”

  “I’ve got to go to this meeting,” she said. “Barnard’s been trying to dump half his seminars and I don’t want to be landed with them.” She ran a hand through her hair. “OK. Call Berrocal and tell him I’m unavoidably detained but I’ll get back to him as soon as I can. Sorry, Lizzie, I’ve got to run.”

  She raced down the corridor and skidded to a halt outside the meeting room, attracting curious looks from those who had only ever seen Fiona in cool and elegant mode. She paused for a moment, smoothing her hair and taking a deep breath to regain her composure, then swept in with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, tube,” she muttered, taking her place halfway down one side of the conference table. Professor Barnard neither faltered in his convoluted sentence nor graced her with a glance.

  It felt like the longest meeting in history, and Fiona had to force herself not to fidget restlessly as they ploughed through seemingly endless departmental minutiae. She managed to c
ontain her impatience, refusing to allow Barnard’s domineering presence to fluster her into accepting more than one additional seminar group. But even as she argued her case, half her mind was on Berrocal’s urgent message. He must have a suspect in custody. Or so she hoped.

  At the end of the meeting, Fiona scooped up her papers and swept out, earning raised eyebrows and an exchange of meaningful looks between those of her colleagues who preferred to dismiss her as being too arrogant by half. Back in her office, she asked Lizzie to hold her calls and started to dial Berrocal’s number before she was even seated.

  “Major Berrocal?” she asked when the phone was answered on the second ring.

  “Si. Dr. Cameron?” His tone gave no clue to the nature of his news.

  “I’m sorry not to have called back before this, but I couldn’t get away,” she gabbled. “You have a development?”

  He sighed. “Not the sort I had hoped for. I am afraid we have another murder.”

  Fiona’s heart sank. This was the news she had been dreading so much she had refused to consider it a serious possibility. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said inadequately.

  “I am calling to ask if it is possible for you to come back to Toledo and consult further with us. Perhaps the information generated by this latest murder might help you pinpoint where we should be looking for our suspect now.”

  Fiona closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he could hear the genuine regret in her voice. “It’s impossible at present. I have too many commitments here that I can’t avoid.”

  There was a ponderous silence. Then Berrocal said, “I was afraid you would say that.”

  “There’s no reason why I can’t examine the evidence if you can fax the details to me,” she said, her sense of duty kicking in ahead of her common sense.