The Torment of Others

by Val McDermid

  I find the voice within myself. The one I know he is conditioned to obey. ‘Lie down, Carl. Lie down and everything will be all right. I am the Voice. I am your Voice. Whatever I tell you to do is for the best. I am the Voice, Carl. Lie down.’ And it works. His subconscious mind overrides his panic enough for him to do as he is told. He’s shivering and sweating, but he’s doing what he’s told.

  I reach for the pillow and put it to the side of his head. I press the gun barrel into the pillow. His eyes are wide with trust. ‘I am the Voice,’ I remind him. ‘I am your Voice.’ And I pull the trigger.

  Carol looked up from the file she was reading and recognized the man who’d just entered the squad-room as one of the fingerprint technicians. ‘We’ve got a result from AFIS,’ he said.

  ‘Who is it?’ she demanded, getting to her feet and reaching for the sheet of paper in the technician’s hand. ‘Carl Mackenzie. Twenty-six. Possession of cannabis, possession of ecstasy, indecent exposure…’

  ‘I know him, he’s a small-time street dealer,’ Kevin said. ‘He hangs out in Stan’s Café.’

  ‘Last known address, Flat 4, 7 Grove Terrace, Bradfield,’ Carol said. ‘Come on, Kevin, let’s hit it.’ She pushed past the fingerprint officer, shouting for Merrick.

  ‘He went off to get some sleep,’ Kevin reminded her. ‘I could call his mobile.’

  Carol shook her head. ‘Never mind. Stacey, get your coat,’ she called across the room.

  The technician stood in the doorway of Carol’s office watching them go. ‘Thanks for all your hard work, lads,’ he mimicked sarcastically.

  Carol, Kevin and Stacey pounded pell-mell down the corridor. ‘We’ll take my car,’ Kevin shouted. ‘I’ve got a noddy light.’

  Carol nodded agreement as they hurtled down the stairs and into the car park. They piled into Kevin’s car, Carol yanking open the glove box and pulling out the blue flashing light. Fumbling with the connector, she finally managed to plug it into the cigarette lighter slot, then opened the window and slammed it on the roof.

  They were already out in the traffic, the rush hour jamming the streets with cars. Kevin leaned on the horn, the light flashed and it gradually dawned on other drivers that they needed to pull over. But it still felt like painfully slow progress.

  Carol chewed on the skin by her thumbnail. Please, God, let us find Carl Mackenzie. And please, God, let him lead us to Paula.

  Tony paid off the taxi and stood for a long moment, taking in the house in front of him. It was a modern detached brick building, part of a depressingly uninspired development on the outskirts of the city centre. It occupied the central plot at the head of a cul-de-sac with an unimpeded view of any car coming up the street. He wasn’t in the least surprised. The Creeper would need to be in control of every possible aspect of her environment.

  Jan Shields’ house was even more lacking in personality than its neighbours, if that were possible. White paintwork, white front door, white garage door. Boring block paving on the drive and pathway. A tidy lawn with evenly spaced shrubs and conifers round the edge, all trimmed with obsessive neatness. Nothing that surprised Tony one whit.

  He walked up the path and tried the mortice key in the lock. It was reluctant to turn at first, but Tony jiggled it a little and the tongue slipped back into its bed. The first Yale wouldn’t fit, but the second slipped home easily. As the door opened, he heard the insistent beep of a burglar alarm’s warning tone. He looked around for the control box, eventually spotting it behind him. His luck was still running; it was a key-operated system rather than one controlled by an electronic combination. He fumbled with the two small keys, his hands sweating as he jammed the first of them into the lock and turned.

  Silence fell. Tony wiped the sweat from his face with both hands and turned to examine the house he believed to be the Creeper’s lair. His evidence for that conviction was not the sort that would cut any ice with a cop. He could imagine Carol’s face. ‘It was the way she spoke about power and vulnerability. Her contempt for the weak,’ he’d say. And then he’d see the struggle on Carol’s face between her desire to believe him and her copper’s dependence on tangible evidence. Actually, there was something else too, but that was equally intangible. From the very beginning the cutting of the wire had troubled him. If Paula had noticed it happening, she’d have kicked off there and then. For her not to have noticed, it must have been done without fumbling. And for it to have been done without fumbling, whoever abducted her couldn’t have relied on a lucky guess. He had to have known. And that narrowed it down to Carol and her team.

  At first, he’d been more interested in Chen and Evans. They were the most obvious outsiders because of their racial backgrounds. It wasn’t hard to imagine the resentments building up over the years as they perceived themselves powerless in the face of an organization that was implacably geared towards handing control to others. Chen had seemed particularly appealing because of her obsession with machines. Interacting with people was something that didn’t come easily to her, which, if she was the killer, might tempt her to use the agency of another. There was a coldness in Evans too, a distance that suggested he might enjoy exploiting others for his own ends.

  And then he’d realized Jan was not only another outsider but one with a unique connection to Paula. So he’d driven that morning’s conversation in a direction that he hoped would tell him more about her. Which it had done. And then he’d remembered Carol mentioning that Jan had been with Paula when she’d chosen her outfit. Nobody was better placed to make sure the wire was where it was supposed to be. And so he was here, staking everything on his gut instinct.

  He flicked on the light switches in the hall. It was a risk, but there wasn’t any point in being here in the dark. The floor was covered in thick cream carpet as far as the eye could see. It extended into the living room and up the stairs and it was spotless. No children or animals here. He looked down at his feet and saw a pair of slippers by the front door. Nothing from the outside world was going to be allowed to soil this place.

  He moved through to the living room, standing on the threshold and drinking it all in, moving from first impression to a fuller scrutiny. The room was big, an archway leading from the seating area to a dining space. Two big cream sofas dominated the first part of the room, each replete with four precisely placed burgundy velvet cushions. In front of one there was a glass-and-wood coffee table. On it sat a Radio Times and that morning’s paper, each perfectly aligned. The walls were painted a deeper shade of cream than the carpet. Above the fake coal fire hung a reproduction of a geometric Mondrian painting. A flat-screen TV dominated one corner of the room, DVD and video players underneath it.

  On the other side of the chimney breast bookshelves had been built into the wall. Tony crossed to look at them, but he was distracted by the sight of a laptop on the dining table. He ducked through the arch, opened it and pressed the button to turn it on. While he waited for it to boot up, he went back to the bookshelves. ‘There’s got to be a record,’ he murmured.

  The lower shelves contained videos, the upper ones books. Most of the books were lesbian fiction, from pulp romance to more serious literature by writers such as Sarah Waters, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson. Incongruously, half a dozen tattered hardbacks of John Buchan thrillers. On the top shelf, legal textbooks, police manuals. He bent over to study the videos. American cop shows like CSI, NYPD Blue, Law & Order dominated, though there were also a few lesbian classics such as Bound and Show Me Love. He took out a couple of cases at random, but the contents matched the covers.

  ‘Gotta be a record,’ he repeated. He went back to the computer and gazed at it. The trouble was, he wasn’t much of a techie. He knew enough to run the programs he wanted to run and that was about it. He needed Stacey Chen. But that was about as likely as a moonwalk right now. ‘It’s not going to be here. You’re too clever for that. You know what people like Stacey can do. No, you’re going to want something tangible, something you can access without
leaving footprints.’ He looked around the room. There was nowhere to hide anything down here. Wherever the puppetmaster kept the records of her exercises in power, they weren’t here.

  Purposefully, Tony headed for the stairs. He wasn’t worried about being disturbed; all Carol’s officers were working flat out round the clock. Jan wouldn’t be back for hours yet. Plenty of time to have a good look round.

  The three cops thundered up the dimly lit stairs of 7 Grove Terrace, ignoring the open-mouthed student who had let them in and who was now shouting, ‘Hey, what the fuck…’

  They stumbled into one another on the landing outside the door of flat 4. Carol banged the door with the side of her fist. ‘Police, open up,’ she shouted, venting all the anger, fear and frustration of the past few days.

  No reply. Kevin pushed his way to the door and hammered so hard the wooden panel cracked. ‘Open up, Carl. The party’s over.’

  ‘Kick it in,’ Carol said.

  Kevin stepped back and threw himself at the door. It vibrated, but didn’t break open. As he backed up for another attempt, Stacey intervened. ‘Gimme a chance,’ she said.

  Kevin almost burst out laughing. ‘You what?’

  But Stacey was already somewhere else. She stood side-on to the door, breathing deeply. She seemed to coil into herself then she erupted in a blur of movement, one leg shooting out and hitting the door right next to the lock. There was a splintering of wood and the door sagged open.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Kevin said.

  Carol gave Stacey a perplexed glance. ‘You’re full of surprises,’ she said, pushing the door open. What faced them stripped away any sense of wonder or levity. Carl Mackenzie lay sprawled on the bed, blood and brains on the covers and the wall behind him. The air was thick with the salt metallic taste of blood. In his right hand, a gun lay, his fingers curled loosely around the grip.

  ‘Gunshot wound to the right temple. Gun in his hand,’ Carol said automatically.

  ‘Oh Jesus, no,’ Kevin shouted. ‘Fucking bastard, why couldn’t you give us Paula first? Fucking selfish bastard.’

  ‘Looks like suicide to me,’ Stacey said.

  Carol bent forward to peer closely at the body on the bed. ‘Except I can’t see any powder burns round the wound.’ She reached out and laid the back of her hand against his arm. ‘Still warm. Very fucking convenient.’

  Stacey frowned. ‘Convenient for who?’

  ‘For whoever wants us to believe that Carl Mackenzie was smart enough to plan a series of murders and to kidnap a cop.’

  ‘I don’t understand. His prints were on Paula’s powerpack. Do you mean he was working with someone?’

  Carol sighed. ‘Not with someone, Stacey. For someone.’

  It wasn’t so bad after all. Nothing like as exciting as making the others do the work, but still a thrill. Having the power to take a life and having the nerve to exercise it; how could that not be close to as good as it gets?

  I wonder how long the suicide scenario will hold water. It depends on whether they find him because they know they’re looking for him for the murders or whether they just find him. If it’s the ice blonde and her team of nodding dogs, it won’t take them long to realize Carl wasn’t alone when he died. It’s a pity I had to use the pillow, but I didn’t have a silencer and it was more important that I got away than that I made the scene watertight and some nosy neighbour clocked me leaving after the gunshot.

  Maybe I should have tried the line that I was interviewing him when suddenly he reached for the gun and shot himself. I could have been the hero of the hour. But that would have been a high-risk strategy, and I haven’t got this far by taking unnecessary risks. I’ve always stacked the odds in my favour. Like with the trained monkeys: I always made sure they were well in my debt before I started pushing the buttons to make them perform. With Derek, there was the evidence of the rape that I conveniently made disappear. With Carl, there were the drugs.

  Now it’s time to finish clearing up. I’m keeping an eye open for what I need, doubling down the side streets a couple of miles from Carl’s place. And there it is, tucked down an alley. A builder’s skip, full of wood and broken furniture and rubble. I pull up at the mouth of the alley and grab the ruined pillow. I stuff it under a broken sheet of chipboard and I’m back in the car inside a minute.

  I need to get back on to the visible plane, but I want to see her first. I’m aching for her; it’s been a long time since this morning, and Carl won’t be bringing any more videos. I’m going to have to go there myself later to change the video cassette and to check on her. Shoving a dildo garnished with razor blades into a woman’s vagina myself will be less satisfying. Making someone else do it, now that’s worth the candle. But getting my own hands dirty was never part of the game plan.

  But there’s no other way out. Left to her own devices, she’ll take too long to die. They’ll have found where I’m keeping her long before that happens. And even though there’s nothing there to point the finger at me, I’d prefer her to be dead when they get to her.

  Of course, there might be more pleasure to be had in her staying alive…Watching her struggle with the damage my power has inflicted might just offer something rather special to savour. It’s possible that would amuse me while I look for another monkey to train.

  Yes. Perhaps for once the exercise of mercy might be a more entertaining route to take.

  But first I want to see her suffer some more.

  The immaculate cream carpet continued throughout the upper floor of the house. The room straight ahead was clearly the main bedroom. Although it was as perfectly ordered as the living room–no clothes thrown over chairs, bed neatly made, dressing table as organized as Dr Vernon’s instrument tray in the pathology lab–it wasn’t what he’d expected. Somehow, though the overall effect managed to be sterile, this was undoubtedly intended to be a boudoir. Decorated in peaches and cream, the curtains matching the bed linen, the room contained more flounces and frills than Tony had ever seen outside the bedding department of John Lewis.

  ‘Who are you trying to be here?’ he asked out loud. ‘Who do you bring here? Are you trying to lull them into a false sense of security? Are you trying to kid them that you’re not really a shark?’ He walked over to the chest of drawers and, feeling uncomfortably like the sort of sexual pervert that ended up as his patient, he slid open the top drawer. It was crammed with excessively feminine lingerie of the kind Tony had only ever seen in expensive shops and then only in occasional glimpses. But even here, order prevailed. Bras on one side of the drawer, briefs that deserved their name on the other. He gingerly moved his hand among the lace and silk. Nothing untoward met his fingers.

  The next drawer contained carefully folded T-shirts, many of them silk, and an assortment of hosiery. The bottom drawer was packed with sweaters. He closed it, having found nothing except clothes.

  He looked over at the bed. Kingsize, traditional iron bedstead painted cream. It was, Tony thought, a measure of his intellectual investment in perversion that he could never contemplate such a bed without automatically thinking of bondage. On either side there was a bedside table complete with lamp. It was impossible to tell which side Jan slept on.

  He checked the drawer of the bedside table nearest the door. Empty. The other offered a couple of books of lesbian erotica, one with an S&M theme, a dildo and a small anal probe. Nothing very remarkable, he thought. ‘Of course, I could be wrong about you. It does run counter to the probabilities,’ he muttered. ‘And if I am, that could be very embarrassing.’ He shut the drawer and looked around purposefully.

  One wall of the room appeared to consist solely of doors. Tony tried the first and found himself inside a small en suite shower room. Not a hiding place in sight. The next door opened into a walk-in wardrobe stretching the rest of the length of the room. He moved slowly along, flicking through the clothes. Suits, trousers, jackets, blouses, a couple of formal evening dresses. Everything clean and ironed, some items still in their dry-c
leaning bags. He got down on his knees to look behind the shoes. She had what he thought Carol would find a depressing penchant for cowboy boots.

  Probing among the boots, his fingers brushed against the coolness of metal. Scrabbling under the footwear, he discovered a metal file case pushed back into a recess in the wall. ‘Bingo,’ he breathed. He pulled it out into the light and tried the remaining key he’d had cut.

  The lock turned with the smoothness of frequent use. Hoping for more than a stash of porn, Tony opened the lid.

  Carol stood on the landing in Grove Terrace, watching the SOCOs work their tedious magic. She could hear Stacey’s voice floating down from the floor above.

  ‘How well did you know Carl Mackenzie?’

  Then a woman replying, ‘I wouldn’t say I knew him. We’d speak on the stairs, that sort of thing. But that’s as far as it went. He wasn’t the full shilling, poor lad.’

  ‘Did you ever see other people coming and going from his flat?’

  ‘Can’t say I noticed anybody. A proper Billy No-Mates, that was Carl. Eager to please, but not the sort you’d want following you round.’

  ‘And did you hear anything this afternoon?’

  ‘Not me, love. I was watching the telly.’

  Kevin walked up from the floor below. He shook his head. ‘Nobody heard a thing.’

  Carol sighed. ‘They really didn’t, or they conveniently didn’t?’

  ‘I think they were telling the truth,’ he said despairingly. There’s a little old lady downstairs, she’d love to have heard or seen something. She hasn’t had this much excitement since the Boer War.’

  ‘You know, Kevin, if Carl Mackenzie killed himself, I’ll apply for a transfer to Traffic. Get the uniforms to search the bins.’

  ‘The bins? What are we looking for?’

  ‘Look at the bed. What’s wrong with this picture?’

  Kevin looked but he couldn’t see past the body steadily cooling on the soiled sheets. He shrugged. ‘There’s no pillow. Can you sleep without a pillow,