The Retribution

by Val McDermid

  He pushed against the top and bottom of the door to test whether there were any bolts, but apparently Hill hadn’t invited his good friend DCI Jordan round to sort out his mother’s security. It seemed that the door was only secured by the mortice lock and the door catch.

  Vance pushed the point of the crowbar into the spot where the door met the jamb. It was a tight fit, but he was strong enough to force it in, denting the soft wood of the door-frame in the process. He pushed harder, trying to put more stress on the lock before he began the serious business of forcing it.

  Once he was satisfied he had the leverage right, Vance leaned into the crowbar, using his weight as well as his strength against the wood and metal holding the door closed. At first, his only reward was a faint creak of wood. He put more effort into it, grunting softly like a pianissimo tennis player on the serve. This time, he felt something give. He paused to realign the crowbar’s bite and put everything into shifting the lock body out of the box keep. This time, there was a scream of metal and a splintering of wood as the door burst open.

  Vance stood panting on the threshold, feeling very pleased with himself. He shifted the crowbar into his prosthetic hand, checking his grip was secure. It was amazing how well this worked. He could actually ‘feel’ that he was holding something and he could judge how much pressure he needed to apply to keep hold of it. And those bastards had wanted to deny him access to this technology. He shook his head, smiling at the memory of his delight at their defeat in the European Court. But this was no time for basking in past victories. He had work to do. Vance reached for the knife with the seven-inch blade that he’d left on the window sill and stepped inside the kitchen.

  To his surprise, there was no sign of Vanessa Hill. He hadn’t made a lot of noise, it was true, but most people were attuned to the sounds of their home at an unconscious level, particularly when they were home alone. Anything out of the ordinary would bring them to their feet to investigate. Apparently Vanessa Hill was either hard of hearing or so engrossed in whatever crap she was watching on TV that she hadn’t heard him break in. Admittedly, the door into the hallway was closed, which might have made the difference between hearing and not.

  Vance moved across the kitchen as quietly as he could, lifting his feet high to avoid the shuffle of his bootees on the tiled floor. He inched the door open and wasn’t surprised to hear American voices talking and laughing. He walked down the hall, his movements loose and relaxed now he was so close to accomplishing his goal. First he’d taken Tony Hill’s home from him. Now he was going to rob him of his only relative, his beloved mother. Vance’s one regret was that he wouldn’t be sticking around to see the suffering at first hand.

  Two steps away from the threshold of the living room he paused, straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders. The flickering TV light reflected on the shining steel of his blade.

  Then he was through the door and round the sofa and brandishing his weapons at the woman sitting upright among the cushions. Her response was not what he expected. Instead of screaming panic, Vanessa Hill was simply looking at him with mild curiosity.

  ‘Hello, Jacko,’ she said. ‘What kept you?’

  55

  Tony assumed the blue flashing lights that were gaining on him all the way up the main drag belonged to Ambrose. He turned into the side street leading to his mother’s road just ahead of them and managed to stop them overtaking him before they all took a hard left into her street.

  Tony abandoned his car in the road, making no attempt at parking. He ran for the front door, but before he got there, a young Asian man grabbed him in a bear hug and slammed him into the side of the house. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. Then Ambrose was in front of him, struggling into a stab vest the size of a car door.

  ‘Take it easy, Tony,’ he said softly. ‘You don’t go in first. Have you got a key?’

  Tony snorted. ‘No. And no, I don’t know if any of the neighbours has one. I’d doubt it, though. She’s a very private person, my mother.’

  A couple of other officers were hanging back near the gate. ‘We could just ring the bell,’ one of them said.

  ‘We don’t want a hostage situation,’ Ambrose said.

  ‘You’re not going to get a hostage situation,’ Tony said. ‘He’s here for a reason. He’ll kill then leave. If he’s still in there, it’s only because he’s in the process of leaving.’ He gestured with his head towards the narrow passage by the garage. ‘You might want to send one of your lads down there in case Vance is going out the back door.’

  Ambrose pointed to one of the officers then stabbed his thumb at the gap. ‘Take a look.’ He gave Tony a perplexed look. ‘Let’s ring the bell, then.’ He pointed a finger at Tony. ‘But you stay behind us. Whatever happens, you stay behind us.’

  They walked up to the door, surprisingly quietly for such big men. Tony found enough space between Singh and Ambrose to see what was going on. Ambrose rang the bell then stepped back so he was out of reach of anyone swinging a punch from the doorway.

  Tony felt his stomach clench. He was convinced he was closer to Vance than he’d been at any time in the past twelve years. Whether the killer was in the house already or on his way here, this was the place where they’d find him. What the cost of that confrontation might be, Tony didn’t want to consider right now. What he wanted was to see Vance caged again and caged for good. No question about it, he was one of the ones who should never have any kind of freedom. It went against the grain of Tony’s heartfelt conviction that rehabilitation should always be the goal of the judicial process, but every now and again, he was forced to accept that someone was beyond help. Unredeemable. Vance was a walking exemplar whose very existence felt like a rebuke. He and his kind reminded Tony that the system’s failures generally created more fallout than its successes.

  A light snapped on behind the glass and they could hear a key turning in the lock. The door inched open and Vanessa’s face appeared in the gap, her hair disarranged as if she’d been roused from a nap. Ambrose and Singh held out their ID and garbled their names and ranks. Tony gave a thin smile and waved at her. ‘Hello, Mum,’ he said, sounding as weary as he suddenly felt.

  ‘That was fast,’ Vanessa said, opening the door wider to reveal a scarlet stain spreading across her kaftan from chest to mid-thigh. ‘I’ve only just rung 999. You’d better come in.’

  Ambrose turned and looked at Tony, wide-eyed with shock. Feeling light-headed, Tony pushed past the cops and stepped inside as Vanessa pulled the door back and invited them in.

  She pointed to the barely ajar living-room door and said in a matter-of-fact way, ‘You won’t want to go in there. It’s what you lot call a crime scene. But we can go into the dining room. He didn’t go in there at all, so there’s nothing to contaminate.’ She led the way down the hall to another door and swung it open. ‘Don’t just stand there, come through.’

  Ambrose took a step forward and nudged the living-room door further open. Tony edged round so he could see past him. A man was sprawled on the floor like a marionette, legs askew, arms out to the side, a blonde wig adrift above his head. ‘It’s Vance,’ Tony said. ‘I recognise him.’ Vance’s overall was ripped open. His abdomen was bright red and blood had flowed on to the carpet around him. His chest was motionless. Tony didn’t know much about emergency medicine, but he reckoned the paramedics would be wasted on Jacko Vance.

  ‘She killed him?’ Ambrose said, incredulous.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Tony said.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  Tony felt as if he might burst into tears. ‘Nothing about Vanessa has ever surprised me. Let’s go and see what she has to say for herself before the local plods arrive.’

  They followed Singh and the other officer into the dining room, where Vanessa had settled herself at the head of the table. When they came in, she said, ‘Tony, fetch me a brandy. There’s a bottle and glasses in the sideboard.’

  ‘I don’t think you should drink,’
Ambrose said. ‘You’re in shock.’

  Vanessa gave him the contemptuous look her staff had learned to fear. ‘In shock, be blowed,’ she said, sounding eerily like Patricia Routledge channelling Hyacinth Bouquet. ‘This is my house and my brandy and I won’t be bossed around by the likes of you.’

  ‘Believe me, it’s easier to go with the flow,’ Tony said, opening the sideboard and fixing his mother a drink. He took it to her and said, ‘What happened?’

  ‘He came in through the back door armed with a crowbar and a knife and walked into my living room, bold as brass. Of course, I recognised him.’ She took a sip of brandy and pursed her lips. For the first time since they’d arrived, the mask slipped, revealing age and tiredness normally held at bay by cosmetics and willpower. ‘I’d been expecting him, truth be told.’

  ‘Expecting him?’ Ambrose sounded as gobsmacked as Tony felt.

  ‘I do watch the news, Sergeant. And aren’t you a little bit low down the totem pole to be dealing with a murder?’

  ‘Sergeant Ambrose isn’t here in response to your phone call. He’s here because we have been trying to catch Vance.’

  Vanessa gave a dry little laugh. ‘Should have been here earlier then, shouldn’t you.’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘I saw the news and I recognised that house Eddie left you down in Worcester. I’d already heard about your girlfriend’s brother.’

  Ambrose gave Tony a startled glance.

  Tony sighed. ‘She is not my girlfriend. How many times?’

  Vanessa waved a dismissive hand at him and drank more brandy. ‘Then his attack on the ex-wife. I thought to myself, he started on a high with murder, now he’s on a downward spiral and he’s not going to be impressed with himself over two racehorses and a stable lad who didn’t even merit a name check. So I reckoned he might be daft enough to think that killing me would cause that one some grief.’ She tipped her head towards Tony. ‘Stupid bugger.’ It wasn’t at all clear whether she meant Tony or Vance. ‘So I thought, better safe than sorry. I got a knife out of the kitchen drawer and tucked it down the side of the sofa. I didn’t hear him break in at all. The first I knew about it, he was standing in my living room like he owned the place.’ She gave a shiver. Tony thought it was entirely calculated.

  ‘He came at me with the knife. I grabbed my own weapon and struck out at him. I took him by surprise. He fell on top of me and it took all my strength to push him away. That’s when I got covered.’ She swept her hand from her chin to her knees. ‘It was him or me.’

  ‘I understand,’ Ambrose said.

  ‘Shouldn’t somebody caution her?’ Tony couldn’t quite believe that Ambrose seemed to be falling under his mother’s monstrous spell.

  ‘Caution me? When all I’ve done is defend myself against a convicted murderer attacking me in my own home?’ Vanessa went for pitiful rather than outraged.

  ‘It’s for your own protection,’ Ambrose said. ‘And Tony’s right. We should say that you do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention now something you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.’

  Vanessa gave Tony one of her indefinable looks. He’d learned the hard way that it meant he would pay for it later. It was one of the pleasures of having her out of his life that these days there could be no later. ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ she said, giving him a frail smile.

  Before anyone could say anything more, there were voices in the hall. Ambrose went out and returned moments later with a couple of local uniformed officers. ‘I’ve told these officers they need to contact DCI Franklin in the first instance,’ he said to Tony. ‘They’ll need a statement from you at some point. But right now, I think you need to get off.’

  Tony looked puzzled for a moment. ‘You don’t need me to stay?’

  Ambrose gave him the hard stare of a man trying to communicate a meaning beyond his words. ‘The colleague we spoke to earlier? At the marina? I think you need to liaise.’

  Now Tony understood. He turned to Vanessa. ‘You’ll be all right?’

  ‘Of course. These lovely men will take care of me.’ Vanessa stood and walked into the hall behind him.

  When they were out of earshot, he said bitterly, ‘You’ve always been handy with a knife, Mother.’

  ‘You must have realised I was a target. You should have warned me,’ Vanessa fired straight back at him. With her back to everyone, she could show her true face: vindictive, hateful and unforgiving.

  Tony looked her up and down, appalled at the thought sneaking around in the darkness at the back of his mind. He believed this really might be the last time he would ever willingly be in the same room with her. ‘Why?’ he said as he walked away.

  56

  It was midnight when Tony drove wearily on to the Vinton Woods estate. There were few lights visible as he tried to find his way round the development. He made a couple of wrong turns before he finally found himself on the right street. He crawled along, looking from side to side, trying to spot Carol’s car.

  Then he saw her, tucked away in someone’s driveway, opposite the mouth of a cul-de-sac. He parked on the street and laid his head on the steering wheel for a moment. He’d reached that point of exhaustion where his very bones seemed to hurt. He dragged himself out of the driver’s seat and walked back towards Carol’s car, barely capable of maintaining a straight line.

  Tony reached the gate and stood there, occupying the middle of the drive. The way things were, he didn’t feel he could presume to open the passenger door and get in beside her. It felt too much like invading her space.

  A long time seemed to pass but finally the driver’s door opened and Carol emerged. She looked haggard, wired, beyond his reach. ‘You’ll scare him off, standing there,’ she hissed at him. ‘For Christ’s sake. Get in the car.’

  Tony shook his head. ‘He’s not coming, Carol.’

  A flare of hope livened her eyes. ‘He’s been taken?’

  ‘He’s been killed.’

  She stared wordlessly at him for what felt like minutes, the small muscles in her face shifting between joy and pain. ‘What happened?’ she said at last, her lips barely moving.

  Tony stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and shrugged like an awkward teenager. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Vanessa … she stabbed him.’

  ‘Vanessa? Your mother, Vanessa?’

  Incredulity, Tony thought. He was going to have to get used to that. Yes, it was my mother who killed the notorious serial killer Jacko Vance. That was going to provoke a lot of very odd looks. For now, he had to get through the only explanation that counted. ‘He broke into her house. To kill her. But she’d figured it out. Can you believe that? The woman with the empathy bypass figured out what none of us with all our training could work out. That she was on his list.’ He could hear the bitterness and anger in his voice, but he didn’t care. ‘So she had a knife tucked down the side of the bloody sofa.’

  ‘She went for him?’

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ‘She says he went for her and she caught him unawares. Whatever happened, that’ll be the official version.’

  Carol giggled, a strangled hysterical sound. ‘Vanessa killed him? She stabbed him?’

  ‘She’s got better at it since the last time.’

  ‘How do you feel about that, Doctor Hill?’ There was a harsh sarcastic edge to Carol’s question.

  ‘I’m not sorry Vance is dead.’ He raised his chin and looked Carol straight in the eye. ‘But if things had gone the other way, I wouldn’t have been sorry about that either. That’s the hard one I’m going to have to live with.’

  ‘Still a bloody sight easier than the one I’m going to have to live with.’

  He spread his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know you are. That doesn’t make it any easier.’

  ‘But at least he’s dead now. The damage goes no f
urther. It’s over.’

  Carol’s expression mixed sorrow and pity. ‘It’s not all that’s over, Tony.’ She turned away and got back into the car. The engine burst into life and the headlights blinded him. He jumped to one side and watched her drive away, not sure whether it was the sudden brightness of the lights or the bone-weary exhaustion that had brought the tears to his eyes.