The Retribution

by Val McDermid

  And if revenge was to be worth anything, it had to matter deep down. Tony understood the atavistic importance of getting your own back in the right way. All through his life, his mother had used him as an emotional punchbag. She’d belittled him, criticised him, made fun of him. She’d made sure he grew up without a father, without a refuge, without love. She hadn’t cared whether he succeeded or failed. And he’d grown into an emotionally limited, dysfunctional man, saved from ruin only by fragments of other people’s love and the gift of empathy.

  When he’d first found out the full scope of Vanessa’s treachery and lies, he’d sworn he never wanted to speak to her again. But the more he’d grown into the idea of changing his life and accepting the hand Arthur Blythe had offered from beyond the grave, the more he’d wanted her to know that, in spite of her best efforts, he was not destroyed. That the man she’d driven from his life had found a different kind of strength, one that could circumvent Vanessa’s confrontational negativity. And that had healed some vital part of Tony’s spirit. He couldn’t think of anything that would piss her off more than knowing that.

  So he’d driven over to Halifax one afternoon and waited for her to come home. She’d been surprised to see him, but she’d asked him in. He’d said what he had to say, raising his voice and talking over her when she tried to undercut him. Eventually, she’d shut up, settling for an expression of amused contempt. But he could read her body language, and he knew she was raging with impotent fury. ‘I’m never going to enter this house again,’ he said. ‘I’m never going to see you again. You better make your funeral arrangements in advance, Vanessa. Because I’m not even going to be there to bury you.’

  And he’d left, a lightness in his heart that was completely alien to him. Getting your own back was a wonderful thing. He understood exactly the sense of release that Vance was looking for.

  Then it hit him. He’d visited his mother’s house. A watcher would have had no idea why he was there or what had gone on inside. He’d just have seen a dutiful son visiting his mother and coming out of the house with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. The watcher had made his report and Vance had leapt to the wrong conclusion.

  All at once, Tony knew exactly where Jacko Vance was.

  53

  Paula bounced from foot to foot, dragging incessantly on her cigarette. ‘Where the fuck are they?’ she demanded, scanning the approaches to the dingy grey concrete tower where they were waiting. Above their heads were twenty-one floors of egg-box flats, all thin walls and cheap paint and peeling laminate covering cold damp concrete floors. More stolen TVs than hot dinners. Skenby Flats. Bradfield’s answer to Blade Runner.

  ‘They’re always late. It’s their way of showing how important they are,’ Kevin grumbled, trying to find a spot under the block of flats that didn’t feel like the working end of a wind tunnel. ‘Where’s Sam?’

  ‘He’s gone out to Temple Fields to see if he can pick up Kerry. You never know, she might be ready to grass him up for all those years of misery.’ Paula exhaled a long sigh of smoke. It seemed to dissolve straight into the concrete. ‘I just don’t get how you keep your mouth shut when a man starts abusing your child.’ Kevin opened his mouth to say something, then shut up, seeing her minatory shake of the head. ‘I know all the feminist arguments about being beaten down and victimised. But you have got to know that there is nothing more wrong than this. Nothing worse than this. Frankly, I don’t understand why they don’t all top themselves.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh for you, Paula,’ Kevin said, once he was sure she’d finished. The lift doors groaned as they opened. A couple of lads in hoodies and low-slung sweat pants slouched past them in a waft of cannabis and sweet wine.

  ‘What would you do if you found out someone had been abusing your kids, and your wife had known and done nothing about it?’

  Kevin’s face went into an awkward lopsided expression. ‘It’s a stupid question, Paula, because it wouldn’t happen that way in our house. But I get what you’re saying. You’ve got to know in your head there’s a huge yawning gulf between loving the very bones of them and abusing them. I’m glad I’m not Tony Hill and I don’t have to let that kind of shit contaminate the inside of my head. And speaking of Tony, has anybody heard how he’s doing? With the house and all that?’

  Paula shrugged. ‘I don’t think he’s in a good place. As much because of the chief as the house. And of course, he’s upset about Chris.’

  ‘Any news on that front?’

  ‘Elinor texted me a while back. Nothing’s changed, and apparently the longer it stays that way, the better her chances of avoiding major lung damage.’

  Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Then, his voice soft, Kevin said, ‘When she gets to the far side of this, I don’t know that she’ll thank them for saving her.’

  It was no more than Paula had already considered. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t go there. Imagine what it’s going to be like for the chief.’

  ‘Where is she, anyway?’

  ‘I have no idea. Frankly, I feel like we’re well out of it. And here we go,’ she said, pointing down the walkway to a group of half a dozen officers jogging towards them in tactical support gear. Stab vests and forage caps, door ram and a couple of semi-automatic weapons. Paula turned to Kevin. ‘Did you ask for firearms?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘That’ll be Pete Reekie, grandstanding.’

  The black-clad officers reached them and milled around, jaws up, trying for hard. None of them was displaying numbers or rank on their jumpers. They made Paula feel nervous.

  ‘My operation,’ Kevin said. ‘We’re going to do this the old-fashioned way. I’m going to knock on the door and see if Eric Fletcher is at home and whether he’ll invite us in. If he doesn’t, you can do the knock,’ he said, tapping the door ram with his knuckles. ‘Let’s go.’ He pressed the lift button.

  ‘We should use the stairs,’ the apparent leader said.

  ‘Please yourself,’ Paula said. ‘I’m on twenty a day and Eric’s on the sixteenth floor. See you there,’ she added, stepping through the opening doors, followed by Kevin. ‘At some point in history, I signed up for what was nominally the same job as them. Doesn’t that feel scary to you?’

  Kevin laughed. ‘They’re just boys. They’re more scared than the villains are. We just need to keep them well away from the action.’

  They waited by the lifts for the elite squad to make it up the stairs. Paula used the time to smoke another cigarette. ‘I’m nervous,’ she said, catching Kevin’s disapproval.

  At last the tactical group arrived and were deployed around the landing. A swirl of rain blew into their faces as Kevin and Paula walked along the gallery. The door of 16C had been badly painted so many times it looked like an entry for the Turner Prize with its array of drips and blisters and scuffs of different colours. Now it was mostly royal blue with dirty white plastic numbers.

  Kevin knocked at the door and at once they heard the shuffling scuffle of feet in the hallway. The door was opened in under a minute, bringing a waft of bacon and cigarettes with it. The man who stood there wouldn’t attract much attention at first glance. He was a couple of inches taller than Paula, with fine mousy hair that reminded her of a child’s. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that revealed pale, doughy arms. His face was pudgier than his body, and there was nothing remarkable about his pale blue eyes. But there was an intensity in his manner that was instantly obvious. If they were right about him being the killer, Paula was surprised that he managed to get prostitutes to come along with him so willingly. In her experience, most of the street women had a pretty good instinct for a punter who was a bit off. And Eric Fletcher screamed ‘off’ to her.

  They identified themselves and Kevin asked if they could come in. ‘Why do you want to do that?’ Fletcher said. His voice was dull and grating. He cocked his head at an angle, his stare challenging without being defiant.

  ‘We need to talk to you about your daughter,’ Paula
said.

  He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’ve got nothing to say about my daughter. She doesn’t live here no more.’

  ‘We’re concerned about her well-being,’ Kevin said.

  Fletcher raised one corner of his top lip in a sneer. ‘Well, I’m not, ginger.’

  ‘Do you drive a car, Mr Fletcher?’ Paula asked, hoping a change of tack would unsettle him.

  ‘What’s it to you? First it’s my daughter, now it’s my car. Make your mind up, love. Oh, but wait. You can’t, can you? You being a woman, and all.’ He made a move to shut the door, but Kevin’s arm shot out and stopped it.

  ‘We can do this inside or we can do this down the station,’ Kevin said. ‘What’s it going to be?’

  ‘I know my rights. If you want me to come down the station, you can arrest me. Otherwise you can fuck off.’ Fletcher smirked, catching the look between Kevin and Paula. It was as if he knew how little evidence they had and he wanted to taunt them.

  Part of Paula wanted to arrest him on suspicion of murder. Her years of experience told her he had something he wanted to keep hidden. But if she did that, the clock would start ticking and they’d only have thirty-six hours to question him before they had to charge him or let him go. ‘I think you should invite us in,’ Paula said in her toughest voice.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Fletcher said. There was a determination in those four words that provoked Paula beyond bearing. She knew they were right and she wasn’t going to let him slip through their fingers.

  Paula put her hand to her ear and tilted her head towards the hallway. ‘Can you hear that, Sarge? Somebody shouting for help?’ She moved forward till her leading elbow was touching Fletcher’s chest.

  Now Fletcher showed some edginess. ‘It’s not shouting for help. It’s Match of the Day, you stupid bint. It’s football supporters.’

  ‘I think you’re right, detective,’ Kevin said, moving in behind her. Fletcher was going to have to yield or be pushed aside. He spread his legs and stood his ground. Kevin turned and shouted down the landing, ‘We’ve got someone in here shouting for help.’

  And then it was all a blur of noise and movement and black. Paula flattened herself against the wall as the tactical squad batted Fletcher to the ground and cuffed him. They poured into the living room at the end of the hall like they expected Osama bin Laden’s ghost to be hunched over the gas fire. Two of them slipped back into the hall and busted into the first room. Paula saw the corner of a bathroom before the two men backed out and slammed open the door opposite. They stopped on the threshold and one said, ‘Oh, fuck.’

  Paula pushed past them and looked in. The only thing it was possible to take in was on the double bed. The remains of a woman’s body appeared to float on a sea of red. She had been slashed to ribbons, her flesh flayed from the bones in places. Just as Tony had predicted, the only intact part of her was her head. Splashes and drips of blood dotted the walls like a modern art installation. Paula turned away, an overwhelming sense of waste choking her. Tony had been right about something else too. There had been an issue of urgency. And they hadn’t been nearly urgent enough.

  Kevin was reciting the words of the caution over Fletcher’s prone body. One of the tactical squad was on his radio calling for a full crime-scene technical team, another was on the phone to Superintendent Reekie reporting on what they’d found. If this was a blaze of glory, you could stick it up your arse, Paula thought.

  The two cops by the bedroom door backed into the living room. Paula followed them into the dusty disarray and gave the TV an empty glance. ‘It was Match of the Day, after all,’ she said wearily. ‘My mistake.’ Next to the TV, a framed photo had pride of place. A few years younger, it was true, but there was no doubt that the woman on the bed was Kerry Fletcher.

  ‘She should have come home,’ Fletcher shouted. ‘None of this would have happened if she’d just come home.’

  Tony shot up the exit ramp, his tyres squealing as he hit the roundabout and dragged the car round till he was tearing back on to the motorway in the opposite direction. As soon as he could prise a hand off the wheel, he reached for his phone and hit the redial to speak to Ambrose. And went straight to voicemail. The same thing that had happened to Carol.

  ‘Please, no,’ he wailed. ‘This is crap.’ The phone beeped. ‘Alvin, this is Tony. I know where Vance is. Please, call me back as soon as you can.’

  Another five miles back to the M62, then a few more miles to the Halifax turn. What if he was too late? How easy would that be to live with?

  His phone rang, shaking him out of his introspection. The voice was crackly and remote. ‘Dr Hill? This is DC Singh. I’m dealing with DS Ambrose’s phone because he’s driving and doesn’t want to be distracted. You say you know where Vance is?’

  ‘Put Alvin on. This is important, I don’t have time to explain it from scratch.’

  There was a crackly confusion of speech. Then Ambrose’s voice boomed out. ‘What the fuck, doc? I thought Vinton Woods was a definite.’

  ‘That’s where he’s based, not where he is right now.’

  ‘So where is he right now?’

  ‘I think he’s at my mother’s house,’ Tony said. ‘He wants blood, Alvin. Bricks and mortar’s just a start. And the only blood I’ve got is my mother.’

  ‘I’ve got a whole team on their way to Vinton Woods. How can you be sure he’s not there?’

  ‘Because Carol Jordan is and she says the house is empty.’

  ‘Can you trust her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tony didn’t even have to think about that one. She might not want to be in the same room as him, but that didn’t mean she’d start lying to him about the important stuff.

  ‘And you think he’s at your mother’s house? Have you got any evidence to back that up, doc?’

  ‘No,’ Tony said. ‘Just a lifetime of experience dealing with fucked-up heads like Vance. I’m telling you, he wants blood on his hands. He killed Carol’s brother and my mother is the logical next move.’ There wasn’t any point in trying to explain Vance’s likely misunderstanding of the relationship between Tony and Vanessa. ‘I’m on my way there now. I’m probably about fifteen minutes away.’

  There was a long interval of static, then Ambrose said, ‘Give DC Singh the bloody address, then. And don’t do anything stupid.’

  Tony did the first part of what he’d been told. ‘How far away are you?’ he asked DC Singh.

  ‘We’re on the M62, a couple of miles before the Bradfield exit.’

  He was still ahead of them, but only just. And Vance was a long way ahead of all of them.

  54

  There were a few cars parked on the quiet Halifax street. Not all of the houses had drives that could accommodate all their vehicles, especially on a Saturday night when people came round to eat dinner and complain about the government. That suited Vance. Nobody would notice one extra parked among the locals. He slotted in between a Volvo and a BMW three houses down from Vanessa Hill and opened up a window on his smartphone that showed the live camera feed from her living room. The image was small and lacked resolution at that size, but it was clear enough to let him see she was still curled up on her regal sofa watching TV.

  It was hard to imagine Tony Hill at ease in that room, focused as it was on meeting the needs of one person alone. Where did he sit when he visited? Did they camp out in that sterile kitchen, or was the conservatory the place where Vanessa gave some consideration to the comfort of her guests? Or was it more that her son had inherited his lack of casual social skills from her? Over the years, Vance had replayed his encounters with the strange little man who’d chased him down based on instinct and insight rather than robust forensic evidence. He’d often wondered if Hill was autistic, so awkward was he in social encounters that were not based exclusively on drawing information from the other person. But maybe it was less interesting than that. Maybe he’d grown up with a mother who had no interest in social encounters in the home, so Hill hadn’t lear
ned how to do it at an early enough age for it ever to have become second nature.

  Whatever the dynamic here, it wasn’t going to exist for much longer.

  Vance gave a last look round to check there was nobody about, then he got out of the car and took a holdall from the boot. He walked briskly up the street and turned in at Vanessa’s gate as if he lived there. He walked past the Mercedes, his rubber-soled shoes silent on the block-paved driveway. There was a gap between the 1930s wooden garage and the house, barely wide enough for an adult turned sideways. Vance slipped into the space and sidestepped his way to the back garden. He hadn’t had a chance to scout out the back of the house; he didn’t even know whether there were security lights. But for once, he was willing to take the risk. It wasn’t as if his target was much of a challenge. An old woman with a bottle of wine inside her wasn’t exactly going to be on full alert if her back garden lights suddenly came on. Even if she noticed, she’d write it off as a cat or a fox.

  But as he emerged, no light flooded the patio. All was still, silent but for the distant hum of traffic. He put down his holdall and squatted beside it. He took out a paper overall like the ones worn by the CSI teams and struggled into it, almost falling over as he tried to get his prosthetic arm inside without dislodging any crucial connections. Plastic bootees over his shoes, blue nitrile gloves on his hands. He wasn’t trying to avoid leaving forensic traces. He didn’t care about that. But he wanted a quick getaway and he didn’t want to be soaked in blood on the short drive back to Vinton Woods. That would be the kind of carelessness that deserved to be punished by a random road accident.

  Vance stood up, rolling his shoulders and flexing his spine to make the overall settle on his body. He hefted the crowbar in his hand and set the knife down on the sill of the window by the back door. He took a good look at the door, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, and smiled. Someone had replaced the original solid wood door with a modern one whose glass panels rendered it a lot weaker. Luckily, they’d gone for wood rather than UPVC. Contemporary wooden doors were made of soft wood that splintered and broke relatively easily. This was not going to be much of a challenge.