by Val McDermid
He was only four minutes late joining the other two, who were deep in discussion of Paula’s interview with Shakila. Paula broke off to greet him, adding, ‘Shakila was incredibly helpful. She’s given us access to her hard drive and her social media accounts so Stacey can check out the bastards who were harassing her, see if we can come up with any crossover.’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘So, have we got anything at all to suggest linkage between the three victims?’
‘Before we get on to that, what happened yesterday? Was it adjourned, or what? Neither of us could find anything online about it,’ Paula said.
‘Which is very strange, in my experience,’ Stacey added. ‘What with the courts being open to the public.’
Tony rubbed the back of his head, screwing his face up. ‘I should have called you. Sorry. It all got a bit complicated. The case was dismissed.’
There was a moment of shocked silence. ‘Dismissed? How can that be?’ Stacey looked almost affronted. Almost as if she’d known how rock solid the case had been.
‘I thought they had her bang to rights?’ This from Paula. ‘She sounded like she was resigned to losing her licence. The works.’
For once, Tony was glad Skype robbed them of the ability to see his body language. ‘The breathalyser was faulty. So Carol and three other people had their cases dismissed.’
Paula grinned like a birthday child. ‘So she’s off the hook? No record, still driving?’
‘Still out there, able to do it again, you mean,’ Stacey said gloomily. ‘Not that I wish anything bad for Carol, but she shouldn’t do it.’
‘She’s not drinking,’ Tony said. ‘It was a wake-up call, Stacey.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, I know she’ll be in touch herself later.’
Paula gave him a quick sideways look. ‘What are you not telling us?’
That, he thought, was the downside of building friendships. People could see more than you necessarily wanted to show. ‘Nothing you won’t find out in due course from the appropriate source,’ he said stiffly. ‘Please, Paula, don’t put me on the spot.’
‘So Carol’s got something to tell us and it must be a big deal or you’d have spilled the beans by now.’
‘Stop teasing him,’ Stacey said with mock-severity. ‘There’s no point. He won’t tell us and we’ll only make him even more uncomfortable.’
Tony couldn’t remember Stacey ever having so much to say that wasn’t directly related to the digital universe. Apparently her relationship with Sam had mellowed her to the point where she noticed other people existed. He liked that people still had the power to surprise him in a good way. ‘So, now we’ve established I’m not going to tell you what’s not mine to tell, can we move on to the purpose of this conference call?’ he said.
Paula rolled her eyes. ‘Stacey, you go first.’
‘OK. I won’t bore you with all the numbers of troll posts, which are surprisingly high across all social media. I knew this was an issue, guys, but I hadn’t quite grasped that it was the same scale of epidemic as images of child sex abuse. I know I’m a geek, but even I regret some of what the internet has made possible.’
‘Bloody hell, is that the sound of the sky falling?’ Paula demanded.
‘Not funny. The key figures for our victims are these – only seven people trolled all three women. Of those seven, only five did so repeatedly. So if you’re looking for a starting point, I’d say that’s one possibility.’
‘And do we actually know who those five individuals are? In flesh-and-blood terms, I mean?’ Tony was cautiously interested.
‘I have ID on three of them. The other two are being a bit more elusive but I should be able to crack them.’
‘That’s amazing work, Stacey. It’s good to see you’ve not lost your touch, even though they’ve got you doing the equivalent of shovelling coal,’ Tony said. ‘That definitely gives us a place to start pushing.’
‘There’s something else that’s a bit odd,’ Paula said. ‘Kate Rawlins had a book of poetry on the driver’s seat next to her. According to her family, she never read poetry and they don’t recognise the book as belonging to Kate. It was by some American called Anne Sexton who killed herself. She apparently had a lot of mental health issues. But what makes it even more intriguing is that the pages of a book of poetry by Sylvia Plath were scattered all over Daisy Morton’s garden after the explosion. Plath was also an American. Also with mental health problems. Also killed herself. As if that’s not enough of a coincidence, Kate and Daisy killed themselves in roughly the same way as the dead poets did. Sexton locked herself in the garage with the engine running and Plath stuck her head in the gas oven. Though there wasn’t an explosion.’
Abruptly, Tony slapped his forehead. ‘Of course,’ he shouted. ‘I am so stupid sometimes.’ He spread his hands and grinned. ‘It’s been bothering me for days – Jasmine’s death. Walking into the river with her pockets full of stones. I knew there was something nagging at the back of my mind.’ He looked triumphant.
‘What?’ Paula said. ‘You’re going to have to give us more of a clue.’
‘Virginia Woolf. Not an American, admittedly, but another woman writer who killed herself. She committed suicide by walking into a river with her pockets full of stones. Honestly, some days I think I’m losing it altogether. Did anyone say anything about finding a Virginia Woolf book?’
Paula shook her head. ‘No. But they’re not very clear where exactly she went into the river. I imagine they didn’t think it was important to know the precise point. Apparently there’s a cycleway and footpath that runs along the estuary. She’d parked her car near the path but they’re not sure how far she walked along the bank before she walked in.’
‘Do we know anybody down there who might take a look for us?’ Tony asked.
The two women looked at each other, blank. ‘I got nothing,’ Paula said.
‘Me neither. At least, not that I know of. I don’t know the geographical whereabouts of all my network.’
Tony said no more. If Carol decided to pursue this, she could organise liaison with the local force. If she wasn’t plunged directly into a live case. Which was always a possibility. Before he could say more, Paula started. ‘My phone,’ she said, turning away. She glanced back at them. ‘Gotta go, it’s Carol.’ She disappeared from the screen, leaving Tony and Stacey staring uncertainly at each other.
‘Send me what you have on those three you’ve identified,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if anything jumps out at me.’
‘Didn’t she write A Room of One’s Own? Virginia Woolf?’
‘Yes. She said women needed a room and five hundred pounds a year if they were going to be writers. I suppose that was a kind of middle-class feminism,’ he said.
‘The feminism of privilege,’ Stacey said. He could hear her fingers whispering over the keys. ‘That’s more than twenty-seven grand a year in today’s money. She wouldn’t have done very well on the Jobseeker’s Allowance.’
‘All of our victims were making their own living, though. They weren’t expecting a man or the state to keep them. They were modern feminists.’ Tony sighed. ‘I wonder, are we making this up as we go along?’
Stacey smiled. He wasn’t familiar with her smile and was surprised by its sweetness. ‘Does it matter? There’s enough substance here to make it worth looking into. And it’s worth looking into because it needs to be dealt with.’
‘And how do we do that?’
A long pause. Then Stacey said, ‘I’m not sure. But I think I’ll know when we get there.’
28
He was going to have to try harder, that was becoming obvious. These women were like some sort of monster in a fantasy movie. Every time you cut off one head, two more appeared. Maybe he was more attuned to what was going on in the world around him. Living with Sarah, before she’d signed her own death warrant, he guessed he hadn’t been paying so much attention to what was happening in the outside world. Or maybe it was the way that social media gave a
platform to anybody, regardless of how screwed-up their message was.
One thing was certain. If Daisy Morton was anything to go by, they’d go to any lengths to twist things so they looked like the opposite of what he’d meant. How could anybody think Daisy Morton’s death had been an accident? How do you accidentally turn on all the gas rings and stick your head and shoulders in the oven? How do you accidentally blow up a house with yourself inside it? He’d been enraged when he’d read that interview with her husband. ‘Daisy must have banged her head when she was making sure the stove was working properly.’ It beggared belief.
But most of the coverage had hinted that Daisy Morton’s death had been intentional. It pointed out how vocal she’d been online and how much criticism, all of it legitimate in his eyes, she’d drawn to herself. Reading between the lines, the media view was the one he wanted the world to understand – that Daisy Morton had killed herself because of the pressure from people pointing out how wrong and stupid she was.
But he’d realised he needed to step up the pressure. To turn it into a wave that nobody could ignore. And so he’d moved a little sooner than he’d planned, because Jasmine Burton played right into his hands with her little holiday in Devon. All alone in her isolated cottage. It had been child’s play to wait for her to come home at the end of the evening and knock her to the ground with a leather cosh he’d bought from a militaria website months before. This time, it didn’t matter so much if there was damage to her body; the actions of the water would explain any bumps or bruises. She’d dropped like a stone and he’d had a couple of anxious moments, fearing he’d killed her too soon. That would have ruined his plan; he needed her to be breathing when he put her in the water. He needed her to drown.
He’d already collected the stones from further up the estuary, where he’d also left the template text. Virginia Woolf this time. Killed herself because she was an unfulfilled childless depressive who had no idea how to be a wife. Probably a lesbian too, so all the more appropriate.
Then he’d filled Jasmine Burton’s pockets with stones and driven to a slipway on the estuary where he’d dumped her on an ebbing tide. Let them try to pretend that one was an accident. It served her right, spouting her crap about how women needed to be protected from men. Women needed to learn how to behave.
There was a beauty in what he was doing, he thought. An elegance. Nobody truly felt sorry for a suicide, in spite of what bleeding-heart commentators sometimes said in public so they could sound sensitive and caring. Mostly what people felt was contempt or anger. Contempt for people who were too weak to face up to their problems. Anger for the selfishness that didn’t care about the pain inflicted on the ones left behind. So when he made their deserved deaths look like suicide, he was condemning them to a complete loss of respect. A loss of value. Nobody could take their opinions seriously when these women had opted for such a selfish, easy way out.
Slowly but surely, he was getting there. He just wanted to accelerate the process. He wanted to look out at a world where the women had learned their lesson and acted properly. That was all he wanted. A world where women like Sarah would never—
He slapped himself in the face. He needed to be stronger. He wasn’t going to think about what Sarah had done. The pain of her betrayal remained so intense it was like a red-hot needle being pushed into his flesh. He wouldn’t dwell on what she’d done. Instead he’d focus on how it had made him understand that it was time for someone to take these women on.
Take them on and win.
29
Good sense should have kept Paula’s mouth shut until Carol raised the subject. But good sense had never prevailed where her former boss was concerned. As soon as she picked up the call, Paula said, ‘Congratulations. Tony told me you got off yesterday.’
‘That’s not why I’m phoning.’ The voice was frosty. Not a great start, then.
‘No, of course, sorry, I … ’
‘How would you like to come and work with me again?’
A swirl of thoughts chased each other round Paula’s head. Yes! How? Where? Doing what? Something dodgy happened here … ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘It’s not a trick question, Paula.’ Carol’s voice had softened. ‘Would you like to come and work with me again?’
‘Of course I would. But how? I mean, you resigned. You’re not a cop any more.’ Paula wished she could see Carol’s face. Surely this couldn’t be some sort of weird joke? Or was Carol setting up as a private eye?
‘As of today, I am Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan again. Just to clarify, in case you thought I was crossing over to the dark side and going private.’
‘What? You’re coming back to BMP?’ Paula heard her pitch rising to a squeak but she couldn’t control it. Yesterday morning Carol had been facing disgrace. Now she’d somehow become flavour of somebody’s month.
‘No. It’s a new initiative. John Brandon’s fronting it up for the Home Office. We’d be a floating MIT covering six forces, only doing murders and serious sexual assaults. Maybe the odd armed robbery, but only if the local lads were pressed and we were at a loose-ish end. We’d be a small, tight team, with the locals doing the grunt work.’
Paula couldn’t quite make sense of it. Definitely something dodgy. ‘So I’d still technically be a cop?’
‘You will hold the office of constable. You’ll be considered to have continuous service and your pension rights won’t be affected. You’ll simply be reassigned to a different unit. A regional MIT, for want of a better name. No doubt some Whitehall mandarin is racking his brains trying to come up with a suitable acronym. ReMIT or something equally stupid. But we’d be like freelances, with our own budget. No more dealing with James Blake.’
‘Or DCI Fielding,’ Paula muttered. ‘Are you serious, Carol? This isn’t some kind of wind-up?’
‘Never been more serious in my life. Yesterday morning, I thought my life was being flushed down the toilet. Now, I’m looking at the best prospect in years. What’s not to like?’
Paula could hear the delight. And it was starting to rise in her too. Working for Carol again, doing serious, proper investigative work, using her interview skills on criminals who deserved the best filleting possible. Oh yes, that would be worth getting up in the morning for. ‘Where would we be based?’
‘Obviously there’ll be a lot of travel. When we’re working a case, we’ll be there on the ground. But our home ground will be here in Bradfield. They’re giving the top floor of Skenfrith Street a makeover as we speak.’
‘Coffee machine?’
‘On order.’
‘In that case you’d better count me in. When do we start?’
‘Officially, Monday. But if you want to show up tomorrow, that’d be good too. We won’t have an office yet, but I’ll text you to let you know where we’re going to meet.’
‘Have we got any cases yet?’
Carol laughed. ‘Steady on. We’ve not even got a whiteboard yet.’
‘So, we’re going to sit around and drink coffee till we do?’
‘Not exactly. I thought we might need a bit of practice to hone our skills.’ There was a forced casualness in Carol’s tone that prepared Paula for what came next. ‘We could carry on taking a look at the cyber-bullying suicides. To get our hand in.’
‘Oddly enough, I hoped you might say that. Are you busy this evening?’
Alvin Ambrose reeled in his line and stared gloomily at the untenanted hook. He’d been certain there had been something there. Well, obviously, there had been. Something that had taken the bait but not the hook. Something that was getting fatter at his expense. Angling was supposed to be calming. That’s why his wife had bought him a basic set of gear for his last birthday. ‘Go and sit on a canal bank and chill,’ she’d said. What actually happened was that he sat on a canal bank and brooded. It wasn’t the same thing. Not even remotely.
He shifted his considerable bulk on the tiny stool and, with a slight shudder, slid another m
aggot on the hook and cast the line. He didn’t often encounter maggots at work; West Mercia wasn’t exactly overloaded with murder scenes. But he’d come across them enough to have no love for them, in spite of their forensic usefulness. The heat and smell given off by maggot masses chomping their way through a corpse would turn the strongest of stomachs.
Ambrose sighed and looked down the bank. Two hundred yards away, another man sat hunched over a rod and line. He’d looked suspiciously at Ambrose as he’d walked past, offering no response to the sergeant’s cheerful greeting. That was another thing. He was accustomed to being the only black man in the room a lot of the time – in the pub, in the CID, in the courtroom – although it was getting better with every passing year. But in all those other places, people acknowledged him. He’d never seen another black man fishing by a canal, and he’d never come across another angler who was willing to exchange more than the most basic of greetings. His wife tried to convince him that it was because angling was such a solitary pursuit. But she hadn’t succeeded. So the pastime that was supposed to make him relax and feel calmer had turned him into a frustrated misfit.
His phone vibrated, breaking into his mood. If he was lucky, it might be work. Something interesting to get his teeth into. ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ he grumbled to himself, standing up so he could wrestle his phone out of the pocket of jeans that were always tight on his muscular thighs. ‘No caller ID,’ the screen read. Almost definitely work, then. ‘Ambrose,’ he said, punching authority into his tone.
‘Alvin? This is Carol Jordan. Remember me?’
As if he could forget. Carol Jordan, the woman who had plunged him into the most demanding investigations of his career. A woman who could eviscerate you with a look, but also fill you with pride and self-confidence when her smile reached her eyes. ‘Ex-DCI Jordan,’ he said. ‘This is a surprise.’
