Killing the Shadows

by Val McDermid

  All through dinner, Steve had kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it didn’t. She didn’t even demur when he insisted on paying for the meal. “You earn a lot more than me, sugar,” she’d said with a casual shrug.

  It was after ten when they emerged on Clerkenwell Green. A thin rain had started while they’d been inside so they huddled together under the awning to wait for a vacant taxi. The white neon of the restaurant’s name cast its shadow on Steve’s face, turning it into a chiaroscuro of planes and angles. Terry’s hair flared platinum in its glow. She snuggled into Steve and grinned up at him. “So, handsome,” she said, “did you put clean sheets on this morning?”

  Steve laughed out loud. “Why? Did you?”

  “In spite of the fact that I figure your place will be a lot more civilized than mine, yes, I did.”

  He shook his head, his smile crinkling the skin round his eyes. “OK, I’ll own up to being presumptuous. Yes, I changed the sheets this morning.” He squeezed her close.

  In response, Terry shifted so that she was facing him. She stood on tiptoe and leaned into his body. She gripped his lapels and pulled his face down to hers. Then she kissed him. Long, languid and luxurious.

  It was all the reply he needed. Any pretence at caution disappeared in the instantaneous heat of his desire for her. When they got back to his flat, for the first time in years, Steve unplugged the phone and turned off his pager. For tonight, there was nothing so urgent it couldn’t wait until morning. Nothing except Terry, and that was more than enough.

  Night in the city. A few years previously, the streets around Smithfield Market would have been deserted at this time of night. Tall grey buildings, blank-faced, turned the narrow streets into twisting canyons. The streetlights hardly seemed to cut the gloom. The market itself was closed, the vast Victorian glass, brick and iron construction under restoration.

  But now, all that had changed. Bistros and brasseries, bars and restaurants had colonized the area, their bright lights spilling on to pavements and making the streets lively with patrons. Old buildings had been developed into luxury apartments for the new rich and Smithfield had reinvented itself as a brave attempt at the epitome of cool.

  The market halls had been restored to their former glory. Even when it was closed for business which was how most people only ever saw it — it was an impressive sight. Tall elaborate wrought-iron railings stretched the length of the avenue dividing the East from the West Building, richly painted in grape-purple, dark-cyclamen and deep-aqua, with their details picked out in gold. From their midst, ornate cast-iron pillars sprouted, acanthus leaves flowing into cantilevered struts supporting flat canopies that sheltered the roadway from the rain.

  The inside was a marriage of magnificent Victorian ironwork and relentlessly modern technology. Lorries carrying carcasses backed into special sealed loading bays to protect the meat from the elements, then the meat was loaded on to a mechanical meat rail system and delivered directly to the tailor-made trading units. Smaller boxed and crated deliveries were brought into temperature-controlled service corridors running either side of both buildings. It was a far cry from the old market system of porters rushing hither and thither with meat exposed to whatever airborne contamination came its way. It was a system that should have made the killer’s job much harder.

  Just before ten o’clock, Sarah Duvall’s team arrived. Some came in unmarked cars, but most had walked the short distance from their briefing at Snow Hill police station. Duvall had been adamant that the operation should be kept as low-key as possible. The last thing she wanted was a squad of liveried police vans and cars lined up outside Smithfield late at night. Such a sight would inevitably alert the news media and once they had the sniff of a story, it wouldn’t take them long to ferret out what was going on.

  Darren Green had done his job well. The traders knew what was coming, and surprisingly few had complained about the potential disruption to the night’s trading. Now the search was about to begin, it was Green’s moment. His earlier irritation had given way to excitement and he was buzzing round the uniformed officers like a fly around uncovered meat, making sure they were all supplied with the overalls and headgear they needed to comply with the strict hygiene regulations.

  Duvall surveyed the team before her. She’d managed to scramble together a dozen uniforms, half a dozen detectives, and four butchers who would assist the officers permanently based at the market in the search. Tom Blackett was there, along with two of his assistants from nearby Bart’s. As they waited for the last stragglers to arrive, Blackett crossed to Duvall’s side. “I’m amazed you got a warrant for this,” he said. It was half a grumble.

  “I called so many favours in on this that if I end up with egg on my face, I’m going to be in payback city for years.”

  “I can imagine. Not many magistrates would stick their neck out on something as tenuous as this.” Blackett’s smile was as cheerful as the drizzle that had just started to fall. “Let’s hope we find something.” He moved away to talk to his assistants.

  Duvall cleared her throat. “Right, everybody. You all know what you’re supposed to be doing once we get inside. Professor Blackett and his assistants will wait with me under the clock in Middle Street. If anyone finds anything at all suspicious, come to us at once and the pathologists will go with you and examine whatever it is you’ve found. Mr. Green?”

  Barren stepped forward with a theatrical gesture that looked completely absurd. “This way,” he announced.

  “Good luck,” Duvall called as the team filed in. She followed them as they fanned out to their allotted sections. “We’ll need it,” she added under her breath.

  THIRTY-NINE

  For once, Kit was awake first. He shifted across the bed and wrapped his arms round Fiona, kissing the back of her neck. “Unnh,” she groaned.

  “I’m getting up now,” he said. “I’m going to make kedgeree for breakfast.”

  “Oh God,” Fiona sighed. “Must you? Couldn’t we just lie here and luxuriate in the afterglow for a while?”

  Kit chuckled. “The afterglow was then. This is now. I can’t think why, but I’ve woken up with an appetite. Get yourself out of bed, Dr. Cameron. Breakfast in…oh, make it forty minutes.” He peeled himself away from her with another kiss and jumped out of bed, pumped with energy. When it came to displacement activity, like most writers, Kit had turned it into a fine art.

  Fiona listened to his receding footsteps, then dragged herself into a sitting position. She yawned, stretched her spine and got out of bed, flexing shoulders that had stiffened in the night. Too much tension, she told herself. Far too much tension. Not knowing what was happening in Sarah Duvall’s investigation was a kind of torture. And given how she’d left things with Steve, she couldn’t even use him as a way in.

  If Georgia was dead, she needed to know. Her fear for Kit vibrated through her constantly now, and she couldn’t be with him twenty-four hours a day. At least if they found Georgia’s remains in the market, they could take steps to make him safer than he was now. And if she was wrong…For once in her life, Fiona longed to be hopelessly, embarrassingly wrong. She wanted nothing more than to see Georgia’s face smiling out of the morning papers, restored to Anthony’s arms in one piece. She’d even forgive her for the anxiety she’d caused, if only it meant she could feel Kit was safe again. She didn’t know how she was going to get through a normal day at work when her mind was so heavily occupied elsewhere.

  Twenty minutes later she was showered, dressed and decently made up. More than that, she was awake. Over breakfast, they said little, allowing the radio to fill the silence. There were too many thoughts and fears rumbling in the background of their minds for idle chatter to be possible. Fiona finally pushed her plate away after two helpings. “That was wonderful,” she said. “Not only a night to remember, but a morning as well.” She stood up and reached for her briefcase.

  “You’re lucky to have me,” he said, grinning wolfishly, then spoiling it
with a wink.

  “I know. And I plan to keep it that way. You will look after yourself today, won’t you?” Fiona gave a nervous smile and stepped into his arms for a hug. “Take care,” she said softly.

  “Of course I’ll take care. I’ve got a book to finish, love. I’ll talk to you later.” It was a promise he fully intended to keep.

  Like a child on Christmas Eve, Steve had scarcely been able to sleep. What had happened between him and Terry thus far had left him feeling breathless and exhilarated. But the promise of what could follow had robbed him of all but the sketchiest of sleep. And yet he wasn’t tired.

  He leaned back on the pillows, stretching his arms over his head and arching his spine. Relaxing again, he rolled on his side to watch her. She was a sprawler, legs and arms extended like a giant starfish. Terry lay on her stomach, face turned towards him. Even with smudged make — up and sleep-distorted hair, he thought she was gorgeous. He felt dazzled and dazed in equal measure. His own body felt strange and new. He’d made more technically perfect love with a woman before, but last night technique had seemed irrelevant. He’d occupied his body entirely, not a scrap of himself available for scrutiny of what he was doing. There had been none of that sense of performing for someone else’s benefit, or his own. Whatever had happened between him and Terry, it had consumed him as never before.

  And it had been fun. They hadn’t just burned up in the heat of passion, they’d found laughter as well. Steve had woken in the same familiar space, but he was looking at the morning with the eyes of an explorer. It was unnerving, almost frightening to find himself so thoroughly gripped by attraction. All his adult sophistication, all his professional shrewdness had left him unprepared and vulnerable, and he didn’t know how to handle it.

  Terry stirred, making a small indeterminate noise in the back of her throat. Her face twitched, eyebrows rising. Then she opened her eyes.

  A moment’s disorientation, then her mouth spread in a self-satisfied grin. “Thank fuck it wasn’t a dream,” she said, gathering her limbs together and snuggling against him.

  He rubbed his chin, bristled with overnight stubble, across the snarl of her hair, slipping his arms around her. “You academics have a real way with words.”

  “Ah, but actions speak louder than words, and I am definitely a woman of action,” Terry countered, running her fingers down the defined muscles of his chest and across his ribs. She could feel him hard against her, and hooked one leg over his, languorously moving her hips towards him.

  Steve groaned softly. “You’re a morning person, then,” he said, his voice roughening with arousal.

  She pulled her head back and pouted. “You have a problem with that?” Her voice was as much of a tease as what her body was doing to his.

  He drew her into his arms, her breasts warm against his chest. “Not unless you have to be somewhere in the next hour.”

  Sarah Duvall felt sick. She knew it had more to do with having had no sleep and too much coffee than with what she’d seen at Smithfield Market, but understanding didn’t make her faint underlying nausea go away. Explaining to Anthony Fitzgerald exactly what he was going to have to identify at the morgue hadn’t helped either. She almost wished that the killer had stuck more closely to the text. Then there would have been one less horror for them to face.

  She sat grim-faced in the back of the car. But the immobility of her features disguised a mind that was racing. This case was messy in more ways than the obvious. It was going to produce potentially devastating media interest, which meant every move she and her team made would be under scrutiny not only from an army of hacks but also from a nervous hierarchy worried lest she should do or say the wrong thing.

  And then there was Fiona Cameron. With this latest development, Fiona would no longer be the only person putting two and two together and coming up with a serial killer. It wasn’t something Duvall wanted to acknowledge publicly, but she had no conviction that they could continue to maintain there was no connection between the deaths of Drew Shand, Jane Elias and Georgia Lester. Either way, it wouldn’t be long before some bright and ambitious journalist remembered that Fiona lived with a crime writer. They’d be beating a path to her office, and while she believed Fiona was unlikely to go to the press off her own bat, Duvall had no idea how she would respond to a direct question from a journalist. And once the kite was in the air, there would be a stream of panicking thriller writers demanding police protection. It was a minefield. Especially if the media also found out that someone had been sending out death threats to crime writers.

  And then there was the investigation itself. This morning had been a nightmare, but that was only the beginning. After the gruesome discovery just after midnight, she had tried to prevent the market from opening for trading less than four hours later. But Barren Green had argued vigorously that she was out of order. By no stretch of the imagination could she claim the whole market was a crime scene. It was obvious, he pointed out, displaying an intelligence and a steely determination she wouldn’t have suspected him capable of, that whatever had been done had been done some time previously. Hundreds of people had been in and out of the market since then, and there was no chance of the police finding any traces of their quarry anywhere other than the immediate vicinity of the freezer in question.

  His trump card had been to point out that the best way to make sure the police questioned every potential witness was to allow the market to function as normal. They could take names and addresses of everybody who turned up and maybe even begin their interviews.

  It had been a smart suggestion, not least because it allowed Duvall to save face. So they’d sealed off the storage area and drafted in a small army of officers to make sure nobody entered Smithfield without providing contact details. Meanwhile, the SOCOs had begun the painstaking task of examining every inch of the equipment store where the grisly discovery had been made.

  So far, so bad. What made it even worse was that she was going to have to continue her liaison with the local police in Dorset. Whatever had happened to Georgia Lester might have ended up on her ground, but it had started on their patch. If there were going to be eyewitnesses, the chances were far higher that they’d turn them up down there. Much more likely that someone noticed something out of the ordinary in a remote country area than that one person with a load of meat would attract attention in Smithfield Market. Always provided the officers down there knew what the hell they were doing, she added automatically. Duvall had never been good at delegating authority even to her own team, but having to rely on another force for the core of an investigation was her idea of hell on a stick. Thus far, she’d not found anything specific to complain about in the work of her Dorset colleagues, but nevertheless she felt a general unease that they weren’t moving sharply enough on the case. She’d have to set up a meeting, preferably down there so she could get a feel for where the initial abduction had taken place.

  But that would have to wait. First, she owed Steve Preston the courtesy of filling him in on what his steer had led to, so she’d asked her driver to detour to New Scotland Yard before returning to her offices in Wood Street. She took the lift to his floor and stalked down the corridor, earning a few apprehensive looks from those she passed. A quick tap on the door, and straight in. Her first impression was that Steve had somehow squeezed a week’s holiday into the last twenty-four hours. The lines of strain round his eyes had relaxed. Instead of the pallor of the senior officer overworking on an obsession, his skin had a healthy tone. His eyes were bright and the grin he greeted her with was light years away from the careworn smile of the previous day.

  “You look as if your caseload is going better than mine,” Duvall said, easing herself into the seat opposite him, aware that her suit was crumpled and she probably smelled stale as a pub ashtray.

  Steve arched his eyebrows in surprise. “Must be an optical illusion. I hear you had a long night.”

  Duvall nodded, pushing her glasses up her nose. “And it’s goin
g to be a long day. I thought you’d like to know how it worked out.”

  “Appreciate it,” Steve said, dipping his head in acknowledgement.

  “We went in around ten and started turning the place upside down. Butchers and bobbies searching freezers and cold cabinets for dodgy-looking meat, traders screaming about their stock being interfered with, pathologists poking around anything that looked remotely abnormal. Which there wasn’t much of, I have to say. The deal was, if we found anything seriously suspicious, the pathologists would take it back to the lab and test to see if it was human or not. I’d had the whole team briefed about what they should be looking for. But when it came to it, it was all academic.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Around midnight, the lads found a freezer at the back of a storage area. It was padlocked shut, and nobody would admit to having keys for it. According to the market supervisor’s office, it had been put there a month ago by one of the traders who was supposed to arrange for it to be taken away. But he was adamant that it hadn’t been locked, and two of his staff backed him up on that. So we took the bolt cutters to it. When they opened the door, it was full of packaged meat. Except for one shelf. All that contained was a parcel wrapped in black plastic bin liners.” Duvall paused for effect, her expression a question.