The Retribution

by Val McDermid

‘Blake’s an idiot,’ Tony said. Just then, his phone beeped. He patted his pockets till he found it. ‘Message from Carol,’ he said. ‘She wants me to come in so Chris can debrief us.’

  ‘What’s she been up to? I haven’t seen her since yesterday lunchtime.’

  ‘She’s been tracking down the other three cops who worked with me and Carol on putting Vance away. They needed to be warned personally, not left to hear about it all on the news.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better get over there.’

  ‘I’ll give you a ten-minute start,’ Paula said. ‘The last time we went behind her back, she made me feel like a toddler on a tear. And not in a good way. Let’s not give her any reason to start paying attention to us.’

  As soon as he walked in the door, Tony realised he was the one who should have stayed behind in the coffee shop. Carol was sitting by Chris’s desk and she looked up when he walked in. ‘That was quick,’ she said. ‘I thought you were planning to stay at home all day?’

  ‘I was,’ he said. ‘But Penny Burgess came knocking so I thought I’d come in here and hide.’ He nearly elaborated, but stopped just in time. The best lies are the ones with the most truth, he reminded himself.

  Chris had dark smudges under her eyes and her hair looked like it had been slept on. Her usually jaunty air was subdued, like a dog that’s been walked to exhaustion. She covered a yawn with her hand and barely raised her eyebrows in greeting. ‘What’s up, doc?’ she managed, in a pale reflection of her normal style.

  ‘We’re all dancing the Jacko Vance tango,’ he said ruefully, pulling up a chair and joining the two women. ‘He must be rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of us all running around chasing our tails, wondering where he is and what he’s doing.’

  ‘I just spoke to West Mercia,’ Carol said. ‘They’re coordinating the search. They’ve had even more than the usual spate of so-called sightings everywhere from Aberdeen to Plymouth. But not a single confirmed sighting.’

  ‘One of the problems is we’ve got no idea what he looks like,’ Tony said. ‘We can be certain he doesn’t look like a caricature of an England football supporter any more. He’ll be wearing a wig, he’ll have different facial hair and different-shaped glasses.’

  ‘He’s still the one-armed man,’ Chris said. ‘He can’t hide that.’

  ‘The prosthesis he’s got isn’t immediately obvious. After I spoke to my Home Office contact, I checked it out online. The cosmetic covers they have now are amazing. You’d have to look closely to realise they’re not real skin, and most of us don’t look closely at anything much. And what Vance has got is the best that money can buy.’

  ‘Thanks to the European Court of Human Rights,’ Carol muttered. ‘So what we know is that we don’t know much. Vance could actually be anywhere from Aberdeen to Plymouth. So how did you get on, Chris?’

  Chris straightened up in her chair and glanced at her notebook. ‘OK. Leon’s still with the Met. He’s done well for himself. He’s exactly what the brass want – graduate, black, smart and presentable. And demonstrably not corrupt.’ She grinned at Carol. ‘He’s a DCI now, with SO19.’

  Tony snorted with laughter. ‘Leon’s in Diplomatic Protection? Leon, who used to be about as diplomatic as me?’

  ‘According to my old muckers on the Met, he’s learned to keep his mouth shut and play the game. But he’s got respect, up and down. So I got hold of him on the phone and marked his card.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Tony said, remembering Leon with his sharp suits and swagger. He’d been smart enough to accommodate lazy, getting by on his wits rather than his work. To have climbed so far, he must have learned to buckle down. He’d have liked to have seen that, a Leon honed by work and responsibility.

  ‘He laughed it off. But then, he would.’

  ‘What’s his domestic set-up?’ Carol asked.

  ‘He’s got an ex-wife and two kids in Hornsey, and he lives with his current partner in Docklands. I tried to persuade him to move them for now, but he won’t have it.’ Chris pulled a face. ‘He said, “If I read an obit for Carol Jordan and Tony Hill, I’ll head for the hills. But right now, I can’t say I’m too worried.” I couldn’t budge him on that.’

  ‘He does have a point,’ Tony said. ‘Leon’s not near the top in terms of seniority or alphabetical order or geographical order. And given that none of us has a clue how long this is going to go on, he’s probably right not to turn his life on its head just yet.’

  ‘Unless of course the rest of us make ourselves so hard to hit Vance ends up taking out Leon by default,’ Carol said, acid in her tone. ‘You might want to mention that, Chris.’

  Chris looked less than thrilled at the prospect. ‘Simon McNeill isn’t a cop any more. He stayed with Strathclyde for a couple of years after Shaz Bowman’s murder, then he quit to take up a job teaching criminology at Strathclyde University.’

  Tony remembered Simon’s unruly black hair, his intensity and his infatuation with Shaz Bowman. Tony had heard on the grapevine that he’d had a breakdown, been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and been gently eased out of the job. ‘Poor sod,’ he said absently. He realised both women were looking at him oddly. ‘I mean, because he was besotted with Shaz, not because he ended up teaching at Strathclyde. Obviously.’

  Chris looked amused as she continued. ‘He’s got a long-term partner and four kids. They live out in the country about an hour’s drive out of Glasgow. He seemed quite unnerved by the news. He’s going to talk to his local law enforcement about increased patrols. But he said where they live is at the end of a track – one way in and out. And they have shotguns. He’s taking it seriously, but it sounds like he was already prepared for a siege. He told me that Western capitalism was headed for a cataclysm and then crime would skyrocket. Every man for himself. But he’s made his arrangements.’

  It sounded like the PTSD wasn’t entirely a thing of the past. ‘Christ, I hope Vance doesn’t show up there,’ Tony said. ‘There’d be a bloodbath and chances are Vance would be the only one who’d walk away from it.’

  ‘So that’s two we can’t do much about,’ Carol said. ‘Tell me Kay Hallam isn’t gung-ho or running her own Home Counties militia.’

  ‘Kay Hallam is why I look like a woman who’s slept in her car. Because I am that woman. I had a job trying to track her down. I struggled to pick up the trail because she left to get married. Mr Right turned out to be an accountant with a practice in the Cayman Islands. The kind of bastard who helps all those loaded gits to avoid paying their taxes like the rest of us.’

  Carol whistled. ‘Quiet little Kay. Who’d have thought it?’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Tony said. ‘She had that knack of watching and waiting till she was sure of her ground then she’d mirror your attitudes and position. Everybody always thought Kay was on their side and she always ran into problems with the kind of exercise where you have to nail your colours to the mast and defend your position. When Mr Right swam into her orbit, she’ll have watched and waited, then swum up alongside him and made him feel he’d finally met the one person who really understood him.’ He watched the two women consider his words then nod in agreement. ‘It was what made her such a good interviewer. Paula has the same chameleon knack, but Paula’s also got a personality of her own that she slips straight back into. I never had any idea who the real Kay Hallam was.’

  ‘She’s a tough cookie under that diffident exterior,’ Chris said. ‘She’s in the UK at the moment. They’ve got a house near Winchester. Her boys are at boarding school there, she’s back for a parental visit. She got the point as soon as I told her what was going on. And she just railroaded me. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Threatened me with everything from the Daily Mail to the Police Complaints Commission. In the end, I had to drive down there and brief the local nick and the two security guards she’d hired from God knows what agency. I don’t know about Vance, but they scared the living shit out of me.’ Chris shook her head in disbelief. ‘Can you believe
that I did that?’

  ‘Not only can I believe it, but if I had her resources, I’d probably do the same thing in her shoes,’ Tony said. ‘Vance is seriously scary.’ He frowned. ‘Chris – didn’t some hack write a book about Vance after the first trial?’

  ‘That rings a faint bell. Didn’t they have to withdraw it after he won his appeal?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Carol said. ‘They said it was libellous now Vance had been cleared. It might be worth tracking down the author and seeing if he’s got anything to say. He might have information we don’t have about associates and other properties Vance may have owned.’

  ‘I’ll get on to it,’ Chris said.

  Before Carol could respond, Paula walked into the squad room with the evening paper. ‘Secret’s out,’ she said, brandishing the front page, where a banner headline read, SERIAL KILLER TARGETS BRADFIELD.

  28

  It was a beautiful day, Vance thought. Never mind that the sky was grey and there was a promise of rain in the air. He was out of jail, driving through the Yorkshire Dales, master of his own fate. By definition, that made it a beautiful day. The car was easy to drive, it had a digital radio that made it amazingly easy to switch between stations, and the GPS navigation meant he couldn’t get lost among the drystone walls and sheep folds. He’d slept well, breakfasted well in front of the laptop, enjoying the coverage of his escape on the Internet. He almost felt sorry for the hapless Governor, nailed by the media like a moth on a pin. The hacks were portraying him as an incompetent fool who’d fallen for Vance’s lies about rehabilitation. The truth, as usual, was more complex. The Governor was at heart a good man, clinging to the last shred of idealism. He desperately wanted to believe it was possible for a man like Vance to redeem himself. Which made him an easy mark for a manipulator as skilled as Vance.

  The Governor wasn’t crap. He’d just come face-to-face with a far superior creature.

  After breakfast, he’d checked his cameras. This morning, he – or rather, Terry – had had an email from the PI saying he’d finally managed to get the last set of cameras installed. When Vance had used the code, he’d been able to activate them and spy on another location, a late addition to his list, tagged on as a result of the most recent research Terry had carried out for him. It was the perfect little extra to complete phase one of his plans.

  But that lay in the future. Now he had to concentrate on the business in hand. Today he was Patrick Gordon, complete with a thick head of chestnut hair and a few artfully applied freckles across his cheeks. The moustache and horn-rimmed glasses completed the job. He was dressed like a posh country dweller – brown brogues, corduroy trousers, Tattersall check shirt and a mustard V-necked sweater. Stockbroker turned Yorkshire gentleman. All he needed was a Labrador to complete the picture.

  Just after noon, he pulled into the forecourt of a smart country pub that advertised food and traditional ales. Terry, being the thorough sort, had researched pleasant places to eat and drink near all of Vance’s targets. It was as if he imagined Vance was going on some sort of grand tour, taking lunch and tea with old acquaintances. At first, Vance had thought it a crazy eccentricity, but the more he thought about it, the more appealing it seemed to flaunt himself under the noses of the neighbours.

  Only a couple of tables were occupied, one by a middle-aged couple dressed for a walk in the dales, the other by a pair of men in suits. Vance studied the range of real ales, all of whose names seemed based on bad puns or fake dialect, and settled for one called Bar T’at. The barman didn’t give him a second glance when he ordered his pint. He asked for a steak-and-ale pie and settled in a quiet corner where he could look at his tablet computer without being overlooked. The tablet was amazing. He’d found it in the desk drawer this morning and he’d been entranced by what it seemed capable of. It was an awkward size, really – too big for a pocket – but it was much more portable than a laptop. While he was waiting for his food, he tuned in to the cameras that were trained on the barn conversion.

  Now it was daylight, Vance could see much more clearly. The area that had been blacked out in the night was revealed as a separate unit within the barn – a sort of self-contained guest flat with a tiny kitchen and bathroom of its own. A door led outside and, on the opposite wall, another presumably led into the main living area of the barn. At any rate, there was a door in a corresponding position there.

  But that wasn’t the most interesting element in the quadrant. So close to the camera that it was only possible to see the top of his tousled grey-blond head and one shoulder, a man sat at a long desk. The camera angle wasn’t very helpful, but Vance could just make out the corner of a keyboard and the top edge of a computer monitor. Further along the desk was another keyboard, set in front of a pair of large monitors. It was impossible to make out any detail on the screens, but Vance thought it was probably computer program code. The man wasn’t moving much; in all likelihood he was doing something on the computer.

  There was no sign of life anywhere else in the barn. The duvet had been thrown untidily over the bed, and the linen basket was overflowing, a T-shirt hanging over the edge. So the woman wasn’t around. Never mind, Vance thought. He had plenty of time. He closed the window as his food arrived and put the tablet to one side while he tucked in. After years of prison food, any meal would have seemed a treat, but this was a genuine delight. He took his time, then indulged himself with a bowl of apple crumble and thick custard.

  By the time he left, the pub had filled with customers. Nobody looked twice at him as he weaved through the throng at the bar and back out to the car park. About half of the men looked like they belonged to the same sartorial club as him. He relaxed into the car, admitting to himself that he had been a little tense on this first public outing. But it had all gone perfectly.

  Twenty minutes later, he drove past the converted barn that was the focus of his interest. About half a mile beyond it, he parked on a grass verge rutted with tyre tracks. He took out the tablet and waited for the page to load and refresh. In the short time since he’d left the pub, everything had changed. The man was standing by the kitchen range stirring a pan on the stove, moving rhythmically as if to music. Vance wished he had a sound feed. By the time it had occurred to him, it had been too late to set it up.

  Then the bathroom door opened and the woman emerged, dressed in the black and white of a barrister who’s just spent the morning in court. She ran a hand over her head, pulling off some sort of clip and letting her hair tumble over her shoulders. She shrugged out of her jacket and threw it over the banister. She kicked off her low heels and sashayed over to the man, keeping the same beat in her movements. She came up behind him and put her arms round his waist, snuggling into his back. He reached up over his shoulder with his free hand and rumpled her hair.

  The woman stepped away and took a loaf out of the bread bin. Knife from the block, wooden board from a recess, basket from a deep drawer. A few strokes of the blade and she placed a basket of bread on the table as the man fetched bowls from a cupboard and ladled a chunky soup into them. They sat down and set about their lunch.

  Vance reclined the car seat a little. He needed to wait for the right moment, and that might take a while. But that was OK. He’d waited years for this. He was good at waiting.

  Carol took her time reading the Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times’ splash. Sometimes when a story leaked, it staggered into the paper with the wobbly support of rumour and innuendo. This had marched on to the front page with all guns blazing. Penny Burgess had the key elements for a strong story, and she hadn’t put a foot wrong. Well, not unless you counted exploiting the deaths of three women to sell newspapers. But why would it matter, this final exploitation of women whose lives had, in their different ways, been exemplars of the way lives could be so cheaply used? Carol tried not to give in to a familiar disgust and failed.

  ‘Someone’s leaked,’ Carol said. ‘Comprehensively.’

  ‘Yeah, and we all know who,’ Paula said bitter
ly. ‘First they slag us off, then when you call them on it, some resentful little shit decides to try and shaft us like this.’ She stabbed a finger at the paper. ‘Never mind that we wanted it kept close for solid operational reasons. Getting a dig in at the Minorities Integration Team obviously matters more than catching a serial killer.’

  Tony took the paper from her and read carefully. ‘She doesn’t even make the assumption that these are sexual homicides,’ he said. ‘That’s interesting. Looks like she was satisfied with what she got from her source without implying there’s more to it.’

  ‘Fucking Penny Burgess,’ Chris said.

  ‘Isn’t that what Kevin used to do?’ Sam asked of nobody in particular.

  ‘Shut up,’ Paula snapped.

  ‘Yes, Sam. If you can’t be helpful, be silent,’ Carol said. ‘This means that we can’t actually trust Northern with any leads we’re developing. We can still get their uniforms to do the grunt work – door-to-door, showing photos around, that sort of thing. But anything else, we play very close to our chests.’

  Stacey emerged from behind her screens with a glossy print in her hands. ‘Does that mean we keep stuff off the whiteboards?’ she said.

  ‘What sort of stuff are we talking about here?’ Carol could feel the dull beat of a headache starting behind her eyes. Too many decisions, too much pressure, too many balls to juggle; West Mercia was acquiring more of a gloss with every passing day. She did not expect to crave a stiff drink before noon in her office in Worcester. That was not the least of her reasons for moving.

  Stacey turned the print round so they could all see it. ‘Traffic-light camera two hundred metres from Dances With Foxes,’ she said. ‘Heading away from town.’ The colour print showed a Toyota that could have been red or maroon, the number plate clear enough to read. The passenger looked like a woman, long hair evident. The driver’s face was half-hidden beneath a baseball cap; what was visible wasn’t clear enough for ID.