How the Dead Speak

by Val McDermid

  All of this had left Tony with uncomfortably tangled feelings. Engrossing himself in his writing made it possible to let go the fear that had run like an electric current through his veins from the moment he’d entered custody. That had been relief beyond words. There was no doubt about that. Losing all awareness of his surroundings while he sat at the keyboard and tried to marshal his knowledge and experience into a coherent narrative was a blessing. What tempered these comforts was guilt.

  He’d taken a life. That had broken the most fundamental taboo of his profession. The fact that he’d done it to prevent the woman he loved from having to do it herself was no excuse. Nor was their conviction that taking that one life had saved others. The man Tony had killed would have murdered again and again, and who knew whether there would ever have been a shred of significant evidence against him? But that didn’t diminish the enormity of what Tony had done.

  So he deserved to be suffering. There should be a component of pain and retribution in his days. But truly, all the grief he knew was that he missed Carol. And if he’d been willing to, he could have seen her every time he was granted a visiting order. Refusing to allow her the opportunity to sit with him was a choice he told himself he was making for her sake. Maybe that was his form of atonement. If it was, it was probably a lower price than everybody else he was banged up with was paying.

  When he considered what his fellow inmates had lost, he couldn’t deny that he felt lucky. All around him, he saw lost livelihoods, lost homes, lost families, lost hopes. He’d escaped all that, but it felt wrong nevertheless. His escape came with a constant scouring of guilt.

  And so he’d decided he needed to find a more constructive way to repay what people glibly called the debt to society. He’d use his talents for empathy and communication to try to make a difference in the lives of the men who shared his current address. Starting today.

  But before he could get ready for that, he had something far worse to prepare himself for.

  His mother was coming to visit. He’d initially refused her request. Vanessa Hill was monstrous. That was a word whose weight he understood and he did not use it lightly. She had blighted his childhood, stolen his chances of knowing his father, attempted to steal his inheritance from him. The last time he’d seen her, he’d hoped it would be the last time.

  But Vanessa was not so easily thwarted. She’d sent a message via his lawyer. ‘I’ve always known we were the same, you and me. Now you know it too. You owe me, and you know that too.’ She still knew how to push his buttons. He’d fallen for it in spite of himself.

  Hook, line and sinker.

  2

  There’s a kind of mythology that’s sprung up around psychological profiling, not least because some of its early proponents were tremendous self-promoters. They wrote books, delivered lectures, gave interviews where they seemed almost godlike in their ability to read the minds of criminals. The truth is that profilers are only as good as the team they work with.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  The great conurbations of the north of England insist on their individuality. But they have one undeniable feature in common: none of them is far from achingly beautiful countryside. Those who work out that sort of thing assert that the Peak District National Park is within an hour’s drive of a quarter of the population of England. In normal circumstances, Detective Inspector Paula McIntyre would have relished a day in the woodland of the foothills of the Dark Peak, following twisting paths through what still felt close to a wilderness. Certainly on the high bleak moors above, it was easy to feel that civilisation was a lot further away than the far side of the next ridge.

  But these were not normal circumstances. Paula struggled to pull her foot free from the grip of a boggy puddle. It emerged with a disgusting squelch. ‘Dear God, look at the state of that,’ she complained, glaring at her mud-covered walking boot.

  Detective Constable Stacey Chen, who had managed to avoid the puddle thanks to Paula’s mishap, screwed up her face in disgust. ‘Has it gone inside your boot?’

  Paula wiggled her toes. ‘I don’t think so.’ She set off again down the faint trail they’d been following. ‘Bloody fucking team-building exercises.’

  ‘At least you already had the gear for it. I’ve spent a fortune getting kitted out for this. Who knew going for a walk in the woods could cost so much?’ Stacey plodded after Paula, tired and glum.

  Paula chuckled. ‘Most of us don’t splash out on a top-of-the-range outdoor wardrobe in a oner. Look at you.’ She half-turned and waved a hand at Stacey, clad from head to toe in technical wear. ‘Queen of merino and Gore-Tex.’

  ‘You can have it all after we get through today. I never want to wear it again.’ The trail ended in a T-junction with a wider path. ‘Which way do we go now?’

  Paula pulled the map out of her pocket and traced their route with a finger. ‘We’re going north.’

  ‘That doesn’t help me.’

  ‘Look at the trees.’

  ‘They’re big tall wooden things. With needles. Which, unlike compass needles, are not helpfully magnetic.’

  Paula shook her head in mock-despair. ‘Check out the moss. It grows more heavily on the north side of the trunk.’ She moved closer to one of the Scotch pines that grew in a clump by the junction. ‘Look. You can see the difference.’ She pointed to the left. ‘We go this way.’

  ‘How do you know this stuff?’

  ‘Same way you know all the intricacies of the Web. Need to know, plus experience. I probably started hillwalking around the time you got your first computer.’ Paula checked her watch. ‘We should get to the rendezvous with a bit to spare. You did well to end up with me, we’ll get brownie points for making good time.’

  ‘This is a crazy way to spend a day. All we hear is, there’s a budget crisis. Whole categories of crime aren’t being investigated at all because we don’t have the resources. And we’re wasting a day yomping through the woods instead of trying to solve crimes. I truly don’t see the point of this,’ Stacey complained as they set off again at what Paula clearly considered a reasonable pace. As far as Stacey was concerned, it was a route march.

  ‘Me neither. But we’re not in Kansas any more.’

  ‘I don’t think DCI Rutherford and Carol Jordan even went to the same police college. Carol would never have done this to us. We didn’t need to play at team building, we were a team.’

  There was no arguing with that. ReMIT – the Regional Major Incident Team that DCI Carol Jordan had assembled – had been hand-picked for their skills and their individual approaches to the job. But more than that, they understood how to play nicely with others. As long as the others were inside the tent. But Carol was gone, and ReMIT had only now been resurrected after months of dormancy. According to the ugly sisters, Rumour and Gossip, there had been more than a little uncertainty about the value of a unit that straddled several diverse forces. Those who had originally been in favour had had their fingers burned, while those who had been more cautious were now, paradoxically, more enthusiastic. If there were going to be operational disasters, they thought, better to divert the blame.

  So while they’d hummed and hawed, Paula had been transferred back to Bradfield, her home force. She’d been seconded to a long-running investigation into people trafficking and sexual exploitation, an operation that had been emotionally tougher than anything she’d previously encountered. The call back to ReMIT had felt like salvation.

  Stacey had been sent on attachment to the Met to work on financial crimes. The hardest aspect of the job had been remembering not to show how much she could do. Working with Carol Jordan, first in Bradfield and then in ReMIT, had given Stacey absolute freedom to go where she wanted online and do whatever they needed her to do. She had become adept at the post hoc validation of things she really shouldn’t have been poking around in. As long as the end result looked clean, Carol had left her to it.

  It had taken her three days to understand that doing things the
straight way left her frustrated. Worse, it bored her. It had forced her to recognise that, in spite of her apparent adherence to convention, she was actually more in tune with the renegades than the hunters. ‘The only good thing about it is that I’ve got so much free headspace, I’ve developed a lovely little app for working out the calorific value of your keystrokes at the computer,’ she’d confided to Paula over a Chinese takeaway back in Bradfield.

  ‘Why would anybody want to know that?’ Bemused, Paula frowned at the wonton she’d just speared with a chopstick.

  ‘Exercise and diet freaks want to know everything. Trust me, they’ve elevated narcissism to a whole new level. Got to keep the business moving forward, Paula. It’s shark to the max out there. If you stop moving forward, you die.’ It was a stealthy reminder that Stacey’s police salary was only a fraction of her income. She’d developed her first commercial program when she was an undergraduate and had grown her business quietly and successfully ever since. It was the reason she could afford to be the best-dressed police officer in the North of England. Merino and Gore-tex was a flea bite on her bank account.

  She fell into step alongside Paula. ‘I’m going to have to be extra careful with the company now,’ she said.

  ‘You worried about Rutherford finding out?’

  ‘It’s not exactly a secret. But he’s so by-the-book, I don’t see him turning a blind eye.’

  ‘You do the business in your own time, though. It’s not a conflict.’

  Stacey shrugged. ‘There’s an argument that I’m applying knowledge and understanding I acquire from the job.’

  ‘I’d have thought the knowledge transfer went the other way. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you had to quit, would it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be bored, that’s for sure. There’s plenty of challenges out there to keep me engaged. But I’d really miss the job.’ She cast a sideways glance at her friend. ‘I’ve never said this before to anyone. But I love that being a cop legitimises poking into other people’s lives. I know I go above and beyond all the time, and theoretically I could carry on doing that if I wasn’t in the job any more. I’ve still got all the back doors open. But I’d have no justification for it.’ She scoffed. ‘That sounds crazy, but it’s the way I was brought up, I guess. Traditional Chinese values. Or something.’

  ‘Makes sense to me. So let’s just tread warily till we have a better sense of the DCI. We both know there’s often a disconnect between what the brass say and what they do. Once we’re in the thick of it, he might turn as much of a blind eye as Carol.’

  ‘You heard from her lately?’ Stacey rummaged in one of her pockets and produced a bar of artisanal chocolate. She broke off a couple of strips and handed one to Paula.

  ‘Mmm, ginger.’ Paula approved. ‘I try to get out there every couple of weeks. Just to see how she’s doing. I feel like the diplomatic mission between North and South Korea. I visit Tony in jail, then I visit Carol in a different kind of prison.’

  ‘He’s still refusing to see her?’

  ‘He’s convinced she’s got PTSD. Which, frankly, is a no-brainer. He’s told her, no Visiting Order till she gets treatment for it.’

  ‘And is she? Getting treatment?’

  Paula laughed. ‘Can you imagine asking Carol Jordan that? “So, boss, how’s the PTSD? Are you in therapy yet?” That’d go well.’

  ‘Reading between the lines, though. Do you think she’s making any progress?’

  ‘She’s not drinking. Which is amazing, all things considered. But as far as the rest is concerned—’

  Whatever Paula was about to say was cut off by a short sharp scream from the woodland to the west. ‘What the fuck?’ she exclaimed.

  A wordless cry came next, abruptly cut off. Then the sound of feet crashing through the undergrowth. And Paula was off, dodging through the trees in what she thought was the right direction. Stacey, less practised in direct action, hesitated briefly then set her mouth in a grim line and plunged after her.

  Paula pushed on, stopping momentarily to check she was still heading for what sounded like a noisy pursuit. She shifted her orientation and carried on. When the noise stopped abruptly, Paula stopped too, holding up a hand to stop Stacey in her tracks. Then she moved forward as stealthily as possible. In less than a minute, she found herself on the edge of a clearing.

  A few metres away, a young woman in running gear was pinned against a tree by a bulky man in jeans and a hoodie. In his right hand he held a knife, it was pressed against her throat.

  3

  None of us is immune to trauma. Some people seem to shrug off the terrible things life throws in their way; that’s an illusion, one whose roots lie deep in their past in the shape of unresolved horrors. When she was working at Broadmoor secure mental hospital, Dr Gwen Adshead used to say, ‘Our people come to us as disaster victims. But these people are the disasters in their own lives.’ Even the actions of psychopaths are shaped by their own personal traumas . . .

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  Despite having programmed it into her satnav, Carol Jordan had struggled to find Melissa Rintoul’s address. She’d only been to Edinburgh a couple of times previously and she held a vague memory of the New Town as a place of wide streets, tall grey Georgian buildings and private gardens enclosed by the kind of iron railings designed to impale trespassers. But behind those severe façades there were apparently mazes of back alleys and narrow mews whose coach houses were now bijou apartments. Or small businesses like the one Carol was looking for.

  She’d found a remarkably expensive parking slot for her Land Rover a few streets away and spent the half hour before her appointment prowling round the area. These days, she liked to familiarise herself with the potential escape routes. She never wanted to be cornered again.

  Melissa Rintoul operated out of a two-storey cottage in a pretty cobbled lane that cut a narrow slice between tenement blocks. Pots of lavender, rosemary and hydrangea lined the narrow pavement, forcing pedestrians to walk with one foot in the gutter. Carol almost missed the discreet plaque that identified the Recovery Centre, sandwiched between a podiatrist and a boutique selling lamps made from reconfigured industrial machinery.

  It wasn’t too late. She didn’t have to do this. She could carry on shouldering her own burdens. She was surviving, after all. But the voice in her head, the voice she knew as well as her own, wasn’t having that. ‘Surviving isn’t enough.’ The last time she’d spoken to Tony Hill in the flesh, he’d said just that. And followed it up with, ‘The people who care about you want you to live your life to the full. Surviving shouldn’t satisfy you.’ The words echoed in her head, trumping her misgivings.

  So Carol took a deep breath and pushed open the door. A woman in her twenties dressed in what looked like yoga clothes sat at a small table in one corner of a tiny reception area. Opposite her were two comfortable-looking armchairs. She looked up from her laptop screen with a smile. ‘Hi, welcome to the Recovery Centre,’ she said. ‘How can I help?’

  Carol fought the urge to run. ‘I have an appointment with Melissa Rintoul.’

  Another smile. ‘You must be Carol?’

  ‘Yes. I must be.’ She gave a tired smile. ‘I don’t have a choice.’

  A flick of the eyebrows. The woman rose in one fluid movement and tapped on a door near the table. She opened it a few inches. ‘Carol is here,’ she said. The reply was muffled, but she opened the door widely and smiled even more widely. ‘Melissa’s ready for you.’

  The room Carol entered was painted a pale sage green, the floor covered with a carpet a couple of shades darker. Two generous armchairs faced each other in front of a minimalist gas fire whose flames flickered in a low line behind smoked glass. The woman who rose from the upholstered window seat had an air of comfortable calm. Carol, who had trained herself to itemise people as if she would be called on later to provide a police bulletin, found herself struggling for detail. Melissa Rintoul’s defining feature was a shoulde
r-length mop of corkscrew copper curls, but her facial features were somehow harder to pin down. The overall impression was of placidity. But there was nothing bovine or dull about her. She crossed the room and wrapped both hands round Carol’s right. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. Her voice was deep and warm, her accent faintly Scottish.

  The two women sat opposite each other. Melissa met Carol’s gaze unwaveringly. ‘Can I ask how you found out about us?’

  Carol rummaged in her canvas satchel and produced a dog-eared flyer. ‘I picked this up in my osteopath’s waiting room. I thought it was worth a try.’

  ‘Can I ask what you’re hoping for here?’

  Carol breathed heavily through her nose. ‘Recovery,’ she said. A long pause, which Melissa showed no signs of breaching. ‘I believe I’m suffering from PTSD.’

  ‘I see. Have you had a formal diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’ Another pause. Carol knew there was nothing for it but to explain herself but that inevitability didn’t make it any easier. ‘I’m a former police officer. I led a major incident team. My closest colleague from those days is a clinical psychologist. He was also probably my closest friend. He worked with us for years as an offender profiler. We dealt with the most serious offences you can imagine.’ She sighed and stopped.

  ‘You’re doing well,’ Melissa said. ‘I’m not seeking the details of what your work was like. All I’d like to know is what led you here.’

  Carol knew she should tell Melissa more about the catastrophic day that had ended with Tony in jail and her in disgrace. But her shame silenced her. She wasn’t ready to expose herself so completely. Instead, she said, ‘He said he thought I had PTSD. I didn’t want to acknowledge it at the time, but I’ve come to accept it. I had a problem with alcohol. An addiction. He helped me get clear of it. I’m not drinking any more.’ Every sentence was like pushing against a closing door.