The Retribution

by Val McDermid

  The unrelenting stupidity of its plots and the illogicality of the protagonist’s conclusions were probably what had limited its lifespan to a single series. Chances were, it had probably been revived on some satellite channel in the middle of the night, but it had passed Tony by. However, if he was right, it had not bypassed the man who was killing sex workers in Bradfield.

  Excited now, Tony googled Maze Man and clicked on its IMDB entry. Twenty-four episodes made in 1996, starring Larry Geitling and Joanna Duvell. Tony barely remembered her, a cookie-cutter California blonde, but Geitling’s face remained fresh in his memory, all chin and cheekbones and crinkles round the sapphire blue eyes when he went thoughtful. Which happened mostly just before the commercial breaks, as Tony recalled. Geitling’s name rang a vague bell, but he couldn’t put his finger on it and Google didn’t help.

  But he knew the name was in his head for a reason. Working on the principle that anything is worth a try, he summoned up Stacey’s patent case-indexing system. It trawled every document scanned or imported into a case and created a master index. He typed in ‘Larry Geitling’ and nearly tipped his chair over when he got a hit immediately. Larry Geitling had been the name used by the man who had checked into room five in the Sunset Strip motel, the room whose carpet and towels had been saturated with water the night Suze Black had gone missing. This was a real connection, not just the mad profiler’s hunch.

  He went back to Google and tracked down an episode-by-episode chronology of the series, complete with dismally low-res screenshots, all compiled by some sad bastard in Oklahoma City who was convinced Maze Man was the most criminally underrated show ever produced by American TV. However, Tony was grateful to him today, for this peculiar little website confirmed what had been jittering away at the back of his mind for the past few days. Impossible as it seemed, the four murders in Bradfield corresponded exactly to the crimes in the first four episodes of Maze Man.

  He’d been absolutely right when he’d said these killings were not about lust or sex. He didn’t even think they were about power. They were about something completely different. At the heart of these murders was a man who needed to kill, but not for any of the usual reasons. He wasn’t killing because he wanted to watch women die, or because he hated them. The paraphernalia of the murders didn’t matter to him; he hadn’t been able to come up with a coherent way of killing. It was as if he was trying on different methods to see if he could find one that worked for him. He was using the TV series as a source of templates for serial murder. Tony had never encountered anything quite like this, but it made a twisted sort of sense.

  So if it wasn’t about the killing itself, what was the motivation for these murders? The answer had to lie with the victims, somehow. But what could it be?

  In the meantime, he had something to share. He picked up his phone and called Paula. As soon as she answered, he said, ‘This is going to sound really weird.’

  ‘I was just about to call you,’ Paula said.

  ‘Have you had a break in the case?’

  ‘No, Tony. I was going to call you because I just heard about your house and I wanted to commiserate,’ she said patiently.

  Sometimes Tony ran out of road when he was passing for human. He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  ‘It’s what friends do,’ Paula said. ‘I’m really sorry about your house.’

  ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘And about Carol’s brother and his partner. And about Chris. How is she, by the way? Any news?’

  ‘No change. Which they say is a good thing.’

  ‘I wish I could do something more positive to put him back behind bars. But I don’t seem to be able to do much with Vance, so I took a look at the stuff Stacey sent me this morning.’

  ‘I sent it, actually. Stacey’s on her way to Worcester. Play your cards right, she might buy you a coffee.’

  Tony was taken aback. How had he fallen this far out of the loop? ‘Stacey’s coming here? Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘The DCI’s ordered her down to Worcester to drill into the hard drives of a couple of crappy old computers from some geezer called Terry Gates. Apparently he—’

  ‘I know who Terry Gates is and what we’re all hoping to find on the computers. I just didn’t know Stacey was involved. I thought West Mercia had their own specialist.’

  ‘Ambrose couldn’t get hold of him. Anyway, the chief decided—’

  ‘You said that before. How is Carol involved? I thought she was at her parents’ place?’

  ‘According to Stacey, she’s at West Mercia HQ, calling the shots. Sort of picking up the reins a bit early, you could say.’

  The knowledge was like a weight in his chest. He knew Carol would believe she was capable of running an investigation, but he didn’t think she was. She needed time and space to process what had happened and its implications. If she didn’t do that, when the inevitable crash came, she would fall hard and she would fall far. He’d seen that happen to her before and he didn’t know if he could bear it a second time, not when he bore a large share of the responsibility. ‘Great,’ he said heavily. ‘I don’t suppose anybody’s had the bottle to tell her to back off?’

  Paula snorted. ‘Like that’s going to happen.’

  ‘She shouldn’t be doing this.’

  There was a long pause. Then Paula said, ‘So, was there a reason why you were calling me?’

  ‘Are you old enough to remember a TV series called Maze Man?’

  ‘I don’t know. Am I? Because I don’t remember it.’

  ‘It was on Channel 5.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly watched Channel 5.’

  Tony chuckled. ‘You’re such a snob. Anyway, they only made one series. It was about a profiler and a cop—’

  ‘Sounds familiar. Was she blonde?’

  ‘You’re not funny, Paula. Anyway, it was pretty crap. But I watched most of it because it was so bad it made me feel like a profiling genius. But here’s the thing. These four murders you’ve got – they’re identical to the murder methods in the first four episodes of Maze Man.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. Strangulation. Drowning in a bath and dumping the body in a canal. Inverted crucifixion and throat cutting. And dismemberment and delivery in a cardboard box. And the clincher is this: He’s using the name of the actor who played the hero, the psychologist. Larry Geitling. That’s who he checked into the motel as, right?’

  ‘Jesus. That’s sick.’

  ‘I’m sending you a link to a website. Some guy in Bumfuck, Nowhere USA is a Maze Man nut and he’s catalogued every episode. Actually, now I think about it … maybe you should talk to him, see if he’s in contact with any other Maze Man anoraks. Because our killer has to be another Maze Man nut. The series has never been released on DVD or video, as far as I can make out. Our guy must have taped it back in 1997. He must still have it.’

  ‘Or maybe his video recorder just chewed up the tapes and he’s decided to recreate it for himself.’

  ‘Have I ever told you how much I hate cop humour?’ Tony said. ‘Listen, Paula, this is really interesting. Serial killers do what they do because something in the process, the shape of how they do it, the act itself – something pushes their hot button. They mutilate breasts because they have issues with femininity. They rape with knives because they have issues with sexual potency. They put out eyes because they have issues with being spied on. Whatever. But this guy – he doesn’t have a hot button. Or at least, he hasn’t found it yet. It’s like he’s working his way through a list of murder methods, trying them out for size. Does this one fit? Does this give me a rush?’

  ‘What? You mean, he wants to be a serial killer, but he doesn’t know what to do to enjoy it?’

  ‘Kind of, yes. Either that or each time he’s been so disgusted he’s had to find another way to do it next time.’ Now he was pacing. Three steps one way, wheel, three steps the other way. ‘There’s a reason why he’s killing. But it�
��s not the killing itself. He’s sending a message with the tattoo, he’s saying, “Look at me, these are MY achievements.” Paula, if he could find another way to achieve his goal, a way that didn’t involve killing, he would.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a strange profile, Tony.’

  ‘I know. And worst of all, I don’t see how it takes you any further forward in terms of nailing this guy.’

  ‘Back in the old days, you’d be right,’ Paula said. ‘But your suggestion that he might be in touch with the Maze Man geek – that’s a cracking idea. Chances are, they’ll have a forum or a weblist or some such nonsense. Or even a set-up that captures all the visitors to the site. Stacey’s going to love this – something to get her teeth into at last, instead of just being a clearing house for Northern’s data. Soon as we get her back, she can get stuck in. Tony, I knew I was right to drag you into this.’

  ‘The way I feel this morning, it’s me who should be thanking you. It’s good to have a distraction to stop me from throwing myself in the canal.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ she said awkwardly, not entirely comfortable at being in such personal territory with Tony. It wasn’t the sort of area where their friendship normally went.

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ he lied.

  ‘So if you’re right about Maze Man, what’s the next murder in the sequence?’

  Tony cleared his throat. ‘She’ll be flayed. Her face will be untouched, but her body will be flayed.’

  Paula felt faintly sick. ‘What I love about this job,’ she said. ‘Always something to look forward to.’

  42

  Carol knew she was being a pain in the arse to Ambrose and Patterson but she didn’t care. Their opinion of her was a poor second to tracking down Vance. Ambrose had printed out the list of Terry Gates’s diary appointments and given it to her. ‘I’ve put one of my best lads on this, but we’re not getting very far because it’s a Saturday and nobody’s answering their office phones,’ he’d said. ‘I thought you might like to take a look, see if it kicked up any ideas.’

  She thought he was just trying to keep her out of his way, but she didn’t care. She was just grateful for something to do. Carol couldn’t cope with inactivity. It was that quality, rather than her inability to deal with her parents’ grief and blame, that had brought her to Worcester in the first place. Now, left with time on her hands, she wouldn’t be able to avoid thinking about Michael. And that would lead straight to the bottle. This time, she really didn’t want to go down that route. She didn’t want to become the disaster in her own life. She didn’t know whether she’d be able to find her way back a second time.

  So she started on the list. She soon realised it could be broken down into three separate trips to London and one to Manchester. The first London visit consisted of three appointments. There were phone numbers, addresses and initials for all three. Patterson had reluctantly set her up with a phone and a computer and she started with a visit to Google, which led her to a company that provided a directory of office tenants throughout London. Two of the addresses appeared on the site, with full lists of the buildings’ tenants, but the third drew a blank.

  Both of the companies she’d tracked immediately also had websites. They specialised in providing off-the-shelf companies in countries whose financial regulatory systems were less than transparent. Carol printed out the scant information on each and put them to one side.

  She rang the number attached to the third appointment of the day and found herself listening to the recorded message of the City of Westminster Archives Centre. Curious now, she accessed their website. Halfway down the list of site contents, she saw what she thought might have been a likely target for Gates – General Register Office Indexes. If Vance was building new identities, he’d need ID. In the bad old days, a criminal looking to construct a new identity only had to go to St Catherine’s House or, later, the Family History Centre in Islington, where the records of births, marriages and deaths were kept. There, they could find the death certificate of someone around the same age as them, preferably one who had died as a baby or a young child. From there, they could backtrack to the birth certificate and then order a copy of it.

  Armed with a birth certificate, other layers of genuine ID could be built up. Driver’s licence. Passport. Utility bills. Bank accounts. Credit cards. And there was a whole new identity that would pass muster in an airport or a ferry terminal.

  But terrorism had closed many of those doors, making it all a lot harder. The certificates were kept away from public gaze. All that was available were skeleton details, attached to an index number that you had to have before you could order the certificate itself. It took a lot more time and patience to set the scam in motion, and it left a paper trail. Carol quickly typed out a suggested action for Monday morning and forwarded it to Ambrose. Some lucky sod was going to have to get on to the General Register and find out whether Terry Gates had commissioned any birth, marriage or death certificates. That would at least provide a starting point for possible aliases for Vance.

  Of course, these days nobody bothered with the slow patient layering of a real ID. Forgery had become so sophisticated that providing the forger with a name, a date of birth and a photograph was enough for them to come up with a whole suite of documents that looked entirely authentic. But you still had to have a genuine starting place in case anyone checked. Carol would have bet a month’s salary that Terry Gates had gone to the Westminster index to find a plausible ID for Jacko Vance. Maybe even more than one.

  Checking details like the ones on Terry Gates’s SIM card was infinitely quicker and easier, thanks to the resources of the Internet and the databases the police could access. A few years back, what Carol achieved inside a couple of hours would have taken several detectives days of footslogging and questioning people who operated on the fringes of the law. Even though the only human being she’d managed to talk to was an old mate on the Fraud squad, she had a pretty clear idea of what Terry Gates had been doing. Company formation, ID documents, private banks, a private investigations firm that was definitely dodgy and an ex-solicitor who specialised in crawling through the Land Registry to sell property information to scummy tabloid hacks. It pointed to two distinct operations. The first was to create new IDs and set up conduits for Vance to be reconnected with his money. The second goal was clearly directed at tracing and tracking other individuals. Presumably Vance’s vengeance targets. A bunch of detectives were going to be very busy indeed come Monday morning if they hadn’t found Vance by then. At least by that time they would have a clearer idea of the extent of the payback Vance had planned.

  She’d almost finished a detailed note for Patterson when Stacey Chen walked in. She looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of a weekend supplement with her perfectly coordinated designer leisurewear and a Henk case. Carol knew, because she’d googled it, that the sleek black carbon-fibre carry-on cost more than ten grand. There was a time when she’d wondered whether Stacey was on the take. Then she’d done a bit more digging and discovered that just one of the software applications Stacey had developed in her spare time had made her over a million a year for the past five years.

  Carol had once asked Stacey why she bothered with the day job. ‘What I do at work – if I did it as a private citizen, I’d be arrested. I like having a licence to dig around in other people’s data,’ she’d said. She’d also thrown a quick expressionless glance at Sam Evans, which was an answer of a different kind.

  Stacey spotted her and headed over. ‘Thanks for coming,’ Carol said.

  ‘It sounds a lot more interesting than the Bradfield cases,’ Stacey said. ‘So far, that’s just been routine processing. Though Paula has come up with something that definitely has data-mining prospects.’

  ‘Really?’ Bradfield had slipped off Carol’s radar completely in the past twenty-four hours. Stacey’s comment reminded her that she had responsibilities elsewhere. ‘She hasn’t said anything to me.’

  Stacey’
s face gave nothing away. ‘We all thought you had enough on your plate. And it’s such a weird idea, Paula wanted to check it out before she made a big deal out of it.’

  ‘So what is it?’ Anything to distract her, even if it was a case that felt a million miles away.

  ‘There’s been another body, did you know about that?’

  Carol shook her head. ‘Someone should have told me that, at least.’

  Stacey gave Carol a quick run-down on the case. ‘Because this was so distinctive, so bizarre, the connection was indisputable,’ she concluded. ‘There was an obscure American TV series in the late nineties called Maze Man, and these killings mirror the murders in the first four episodes. And there’s a fan site run by a guy in Oklahoma. Paula was going to call him to see if he had any contact with other fans in the UK, but I told her he might clam up. These anoraks are often very protective of each other, they see themselves as lone heroes standing up against the tide.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Us being the tide, in this case. Weirdos. Anyway, I suggested I take a look at the site first. They might have a forum, or a visitors’ book, or a Twitter feed that I can raid. I’ll poke about and see what I can find.’ She smiled, dissolving her sternness. ‘There’s always a back door.’

  ‘Very interesting. And Paula came up with this all by herself?’

  Stacey busied herself with the Henk, hefting it on to a desk and opening it. ‘Apparently.’

  With anyone else, Carol would have written this off as displacement activity. With Stacey, it was hard to be sure. Still, her instincts said there was something a little off in Stacey’s account. ‘Would I be crazy if I said it sounds a lot like the way Tony’s mind works?’

  Stacey gave her a look. ‘Paula’s a big fan, you know that. Maybe his way has rubbed off on her.’

  Carol knew the brick wall of loyalty when she ran into it. ‘Terry Gates’s computers are over there.’ She pointed to the table. ‘See what you can do with them. Don’t ignore the Bradfield cases either. His cycle is definitely speeding up.’