by Val McDermid
Tomorrow night, he’ll come home to find his supplies neatly laid out on his bed. Tomorrow night, he’ll get set, just like the last time. He tries not to think of the target as a human being. That way, his head won’t get tangled up like it did with Sandie right at the end, when he started to feel like he maybe shouldn’t be taking her life away, when it all went muddled and only the memory of the Voice kept him going.
This time, he won’t think of her as someone with a name. He’ll just think of her as rubbish that has to be got rid of before it poisons the world he has to live in. Then he’ll ride the dragon all the way to glory. He’ll be a hero, just like in the movies. Blood and glory. Blood and glory and the Voice.
Chapter 3
Once upon a time the only way respectable people could buy sex toys was to send off for what catalogues described with bizarre coyness as a ‘cordless neck massager’. But by the first decade of the twenty-first century almost every fair-sized town in the United Kingdom had at least one emporium dedicated to the fulfilment of most imaginable sexual desires. They’d started as seedy shopfronts with blacked-out windows regularly picketed by protesters ranging from evangelical Christians to women reclaiming the night. But they’d rapidly progressed to well-lit, inviting retail palaces, shelves stacked with everything from whimsical fake-fur handcuffs to implements whose functions mercifully eluded most of the customers who were intent only on having a good night in.
There was about most of these stores a relentless cheerfulness. The Pink Flaming-O was typical of the breed. It occupied a double-fronted shop that had once been, ironically, a toyshop, at the less fashionable end of the main shopping street in Firnham, one of the half-dozen satellite towns that circled Bradfield. The windows were painted opaque shocking pink to avoid offending those citizens of Firnham who steadfastly maintained their lack of interest in its contents. Given that most businesses at that end of Deansgate had a life expectancy of somewhere between six and eighteen months, and given that the Pink Flaming-O had been thriving for four years, the assumption had to be that the town boasted enough people with a lively interest in the wilder shores of sex to outweigh the censorious.
Certainly there was no lack of custom towards the end of a late autumnal Sunday afternoon. A pair of teenage girls were giggling incredulously at a display of outsize dildos, but the other half-dozen customers were giving far more serious attention to items as various as cock rings, anal-sex kits, bondage equipment, inflatable love dolls and penis pumps.
As the teenagers moved on to wonder at the range of clitoral stimulators, their place by the display of dildos was taken by a customer who had been browsing a rack of videos. A hand gloved in black leather reached out for one of the display models, a lurid scarlet latex imitation penis. Strong fingers tested its pliability and, satisfied, replaced it on the shelf. The hand picked up a boxed example of the dildo and carried it across to the counter, picking up a couple of pairs of handcuffs and ankle restraints along the way.
There was nothing sinister in the cash transaction, nothing to rouse a moment’s suspicion in the mind of the shop assistant, who was frankly more interested in Bradfield Victoria’s prospects in that evening’s premiership match than in the putative sex life of his customers. It was probably as well for his peace of mind that he had no idea that within forty-eight hours, his merchandise would have been transformed into the accoutrements of murder.
The customer walked out of the shop and turned down a side street that led to a busy supermarket. Fifteen minutes later, a blank-eyed checkout assistant rang up a basket of purchases without thought. A loaf of sliced wholemeal bread. Half a dozen premier pork sausages. Four toilet rolls. A bottle of vodka. And three packets of razor blades.
The Voice was ready.
Carol surveyed the stack of cardboard cartons, her good spirits evaporating. It had seemed a good idea at the time to order the furniture for her new home online from a chain retailer. But now she was faced with a couple of dozen flatpacks, and she knew that what lay ahead of her was a long evening of splintered fingernails and muttered oaths. Still, she told herself, it would be worth the effort. The builder had made a good job of turning the basement into an attractive flat. The acrid pungency of fresh paint still hung in the air, but that was a small price to pay for having her own space again.
Carol pulled the cork on a bottle of Viognier, sloshed it into a glass and savoured the cold freshness of the wine as it slid down. It had become a familiar ritual at the end of the working day. After Michael and Lucy were in bed, she had taken to sitting by the window, Nelson wrapping himself round her legs. With her bottle and her glass for company, she would process the fruitless activities of the day and try to avoid thinking about what lurked in her personal shadows. She knew she was growing too reliant on the comfort that came from the wine, but the only alternative that suggested itself was the talking cure, and she had little confidence that she could find a therapist she would respect enough to trust. She could talk to Tony, of course. But she needed his friendship too much to want to turn him into a therapist.
She drained the glass and refreshed it, then set to work. Bed first. Then at least she’d have somewhere to collapse when the frustration of always having three screws and a piece of wood left over grew too much.
Carol was wrestling the slats of the bed base into place when the unfamiliar sound of her doorbell pealed out. She grinned. Nothing like setting the ground rules early on. She walked through to the living room and opened her door to the outside world. Tony stood at the foot of the flight of steps, a bottle of champagne dangling from his hand. ‘I would have brought flowers,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know if you had a vase.’
She stepped back and waved him in. ‘Two, actually. They’re in the kitchen, stuffed with enough lilies to take the edge off the paint.’
He handed over the bottle. ‘Welcome to your new home.’
Carol put a hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. It was the closest they’d come in months, and the familiar smell of his skin tripped a chain reaction of confused feelings. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve no idea how much this means to me.’
Tony patted her back awkwardly. ‘You’re doing me a favour. Having you on the doorstep might just save me from becoming an eccentric recluse.’
Carol laughed, stepping away from him as the closeness grew too much. ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
He looked around at the cartons leaning against the wall. ‘Let’s make a start, then,’ he said, rolling up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. ‘I warn you, I am to DIY what George Bush is to the philosophy of language.’
‘That good, eh? Tony, I know it runs counter to your instincts, but all you have to do is follow the instructions.’
Two hours later, they’d assembled all the bedroom furniture, two bookcases and three of the dining chairs. They sat slumped in exhausted stupor, each clutching a glass of champagne in stiff and bruised fingers. ‘God, I’m aching in muscles I’d forgotten about,’ Carol moaned. ‘I keep telling myself it’ll be worth it to have a place of my own again. Michael’s been very sweet, but it’s so wearing, coming home from work and having to make small talk.’
Tony winced. ‘You had to make small talk? That definitely comes under the heading of cruel and unusual.’
‘It was that or listen to Lucy laying down the law about the incompetence, stupidity or bloody-mindedness of the police.’
‘Not what you need,’ Tony agreed.
‘Especially not when it feels like she might be right. My supposed crack squad has two cases to work, and we’re going nowhere fast with both of them. We’ve come to a full stop on Tim Golding. Stacey managed to extract the serial number of the camera that took the photo, but whoever bought it paid cash in a superstore in Birmingham and never filled in the guarantee registration. There’s nothing fresh on Guy Lefevre either. The Operation Ore techies are trawling all they’ve got to see if they can come up with any more images of either boy, but according to them, tha
t’s like looking for a needle in a field full of haystacks. I’ve got the three-week review of Sandie Foster’s murder tomorrow morning, and it’s going to be a nightmare. What have we got to show for all that slog and a huge spend? Bugger all. A handful of dead ends and not a single new idea to bless ourselves with. Canvassing Temple Fields took us nowhere. Chasing up Derek Tyler’s known associates took us nowhere. Forensics took us nowhere.’ Carol crossed her legs and wrapped her arms across her chest. ‘We questioned Jason Duffy, the kid she bought her drugs from. He claims he hadn’t seen her for a couple of days, and there’s nothing to put him with her that night. So that’s another dead end. We had a make on a four-wheel drive that Sandie got into earlier in the evening, but the punter is alibied solid from nine onwards.’ Carol longed to tell him that the punter in question was his new boss, Aidan Hart, the squeaky clean poster boy for psychiatric care. Given that he was one of the handful of people with full access to the details of Derek Tyler’s crimes, there had been a heartstopping moment when Carol had thought she had the killer in her sights. But his alibi had checked out. While Sandie Foster had been enduring the hellish attack that had killed her, Aidan Hart had been sharing a late dinner in an expensive restaurant with a senior civil servant and an MP. According to Sam Evans, who had interviewed him, Bradfield Moor’s clinical director had nearly crapped himself when he’d realized the woman he’d paid for a blow job was the victim whose killer Tony Hill was profiling. But that was one confidence she knew she couldn’t share.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t provide much of a profile,’ Tony said, breaking eerily across her thoughts.
‘Not your fault. It’s the nature of what you do, I know that. You need data to work with, and one case doesn’t provide enough.’
Tony got to his feet and paced the room. ‘No, it doesn’t. It’s one of the worst things about this job. The more times an offender walks out on the high wire and struts his stuff, the easier it becomes to figure out what the important elements of the crimes are. With a single episode, you can’t separate the background noise from the message. But the more he does it, the more I can draw out of his actions. Which leaves me in the outcast zone–I’m the only one who benefits when he strikes again. It’s no wonder some of your colleagues treat me like a leper.’
‘Maybe he won’t strike again,’ Carol said, her voice lacking all conviction.
‘Carol, he already has. Even though I profiled it as a singleton, this is really number five.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve been through the original case, Tony. There’s no question about Derek Tyler’s guilt. And there’s no indication that he was working with anyone. You’ve told me yourself: in all the cases where killers work as a pair, there’s a high level of codependency and intimacy. They’re inseparable. There was nobody like that in Derek Tyler’s life. Sam Evans went through it with a fine-tooth comb. Tyler grew up in care. He lived alone. He didn’t have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, come to that. He didn’t even have close friends. Which also means there’s nobody out there who cares enough to replicate his crimes in a bid to get him out on appeal.’
Tony leaned against the wall. ‘I hear what you’re saying, Carol. And I’ve no comfort to offer. I don’t understand what’s going on here. There isn’t a workable theory that doesn’t fly in the face of everything I know about the psychology of sexual homicide.’
‘You’ve not had any fresh thoughts?’
He shook his head. ‘My best shot is what I said to you right at the start. Your killer gets off on the idea of rape. But he wants to take rape way beyond the act itself. He’s the ultimate rapist, the benchmark everyone who comes after him will have to measure up to. That’s how he sees himself. This is about power and anger, not straightforward sexual gratification.’
Carol snorted. ‘Like sexual homicide is ever straightforward.’
Tony waved his arms expansively, tipping champagne down his arm. Startled, he rubbed the dribble of liquid away impatiently. ‘It is straightforward, Carol. It all comes down to the acting out of fantasy. Unravel the fantasy and you’ve got the mainspring of the crime. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the fantasy is primarily about getting your rocks off. But this is about more than that. This is about the assertion of absolute power. And part of that is about manipulating us. Controlling our reactions and masterminding the whole production.’ He stopped, suddenly lost in thought. Carol knew better than to interrupt, sipping her champagne while she waited him out.
‘There’s something that’s been bothering me about this profile,’ he said eventually, pushing himself off the wall and returning to his pacing. ‘The typology of rape was established way back in the seventies by Nicholas Groth and, although it’s been refined, it’s still basically the same. Now, if Sandie Foster’s attacker hadn’t killed her, he’d be a classic Power Assertive type. He’s a planner. He uses bondage because it increases the foolproof quality of his attack. He wants his victim submissive from the start. Rather than take a victim off the street, our guy has used a prostitute that he’s paying to tie up. With this kind of rapist, there’s no fondling, no kissing, no foreplay–which I’m betting was the case here. He cut away enough of her clothing to let him do what he wanted; that’s his idea of foreplay. There’s no sign of him taking souvenirs, though I suspect he probably videoed his actions. So far, so classic. But then he kills her. And that’s totally off the scale for Power Assertive rapists. All we know about this type tells us that they only use enough force to achieve their ends. They’re not sadists, by and large. That’s the first problem.
‘The second problem is much more significant for us.’ He paused in his restless movement to top up his glass. ‘The Power Assertive rapist has a high ego. He’s assured in his masculinity. He operates in his comfort zone and he is confident that he can con his victim into a position where he can assert his power. That’s beyond probability. That’s a virtual certainty.’ He fixed Carol with the full force of his magnetic blue stare. ‘Does that sound like Derek Tyler to you?’
Carol pushed her short blonde hair back from her forehead. ‘You know it doesn’t. But that’s not an argument that trumps the forensics. Do you think there’s any point in you having another go at Derek Tyler?’
Tony dropped back into his chair. ‘I’ve tried. But apart from what he said the first time, he hasn’t uttered a word. It’s like he’s learned to tune me out. If you want me to try again, I will. But don’t expect anything.’
‘At this point, Tony, you’re all I’ve got.’
DC Paula McIntyre drove slowly down the unfamiliar street, looking for the Penny Whistle pub. Rows of cramped sixties houses and maisonettes huddled together, showing the unmistakable signs that came with private ownership of former council housing–ugly jerry-built porches, nasty cheap doors, incongruous diamond-paned windows. A couple of years previously, the only reason Paula would have been in Kenton would have been in response to another drive-by shooting in the drugs war that had ravaged the inner city suburb. These days, Kenton had emerged from its no-go status thanks not to proactive policing but to its location, close to Bradfield Cross hospital and to the university, which had led to its being colonized apparently overnight by young health professionals and anxious parents who wanted to make sure their privileged offspring didn’t have to do anything as tasking as search for decent rental property.
Even so, it wasn’t a district that Paula had had non-professional reasons for visiting. She knew a couple of women who had bought round here, but not well enough to have been to their homes. It wasn’t Don Merrick’s usual stamping ground either, which was why she’d been even more surprised by his choice of venue than by his phone call asking her to meet him for a drink.
Although a friendship had grown between the two that transcended rank out of working hours, they seldom made special arrangements to meet, nor did they tend towards the sharing of intimacy about their personal lives. They’d often go for a drink after work, but they both had other concerns that ate up m
ost of their off-duty time. When he’d called to invite her for a drink, her first instinct had been to refuse. She’d been planning to join some friends in a country pub. But there had been something in Merrick’s voice that had snagged her attention, so she’d agreed. Now, as she pulled up outside an ugly 1960s barn of a pub, she was regretting it.
When she opened the door, a blast of smoky air, stale beer and male sweat hit her. The only other women in the place occupied a booth on their own. They looked ground down by poverty and children in spite of their best efforts at denial. Several of the men at the bar turned to look at her, nudged in the ribs by their friends. ‘Over here, darling,’ one of them shouted.
‘In your dreams, saddo,’ Paula muttered. She spotted Merrick in a corner booth, staring gloomily into a half-drunk pint. His shoulders were slumped, his head drooped. The country music playing in the background and the electronic cacophony of the fruit machine might as well not have existed. Paula walked over to the bar, ignoring the pathetic attempts of the drinkers to catch her attention, and bought a couple of drinks.
Merrick didn’t even look up when her shadow fell across the table. She placed a fresh bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale beside his glass. ‘There you go,’ Paula said, sliding into the booth beside him.
‘Thanks,’ he sighed.
Paula sipped her Smirnoff Ice, wondering what the hell was going on. ‘So, here we are. What’s up, Don?’
Merrick folded his arms across his chest. He looked like a man who didn’t know how to begin. ‘Why should something be up? Can’t we just meet up for a drink on our night off?’
‘Course we can. But this is far from our usual watering hole in every sense. And you’re sitting there with a face like a wet weekend in Widnes. And because I’m a detective, those two facts tell me something’s up. You can either tell me what it is, or we can sit here in this charming hostelry like a pair of bookends. Your call.’ She leaned forward, reaching for his cigarettes. The light caught her bleached blonde hair, making it luminous against the dark wood of the booth.