by Val McDermid
She paused and tried to get the measure of what was going on. ‘I understand what you’re saying. I’m not stupid.’ The boy’s voice was miserable rather than aggressive. ‘But I’m asking you to understand that this is different.’ He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. ‘Not everybody’s the same, man. You can’t just go with one size fits all.’ His accent was local but, in spite of his best attempts, unmistakably middle-class.
The civilian staffing the counter muttered something she couldn’t make out. The boy started bouncing on the balls of his feet, all wound up and nowhere to go. He wasn’t the sort of lad who would kick off, she thought she knew that. But that was no reason not to try and placate him. Keeping a lid on things wasn’t the only point of getting to the bottom of what was bothering the punters.
Paula stepped forward and put a hand on the boy’s arm. ‘It’s Torin, isn’t it?’
He swivelled round, his face startled and anxious. A thick mop of dark hair framed the pale skin of a teenage boy-cave dweller. Wide blue eyes with dark smudges beneath, a prominent wedge of nose, a narrow mouth with incongruous rosebud lips under the faintest shadow of what might one day become a moustache. Paula cross-checked the mental catalogue against her memory and ticked all the boxes. No mistake here.
The tightness round his eyes relaxed a little. ‘I know you. You’ve been to our house. With the doctor.’ He frowned, struggling for a memory. ‘Elinor. From casualty.’
Paula nodded. ‘That’s right. We came round for dinner. Your mum and Elinor are mates from work. I’m Paula.’ She smiled at the small grey man behind the counter as she produced her ID from her jacket pocket. ‘Detective Sergeant McIntyre, CID – DCI Fielding’s team.’
The man nodded. ‘I’m telling this lad, there’s nothing we can do for him till his mum’s been missing for twenty-four hours.’
‘Missing?’ Paula’s question was drowned by Torin McAndrew’s frustrated riposte.
‘And I’m telling this…’ He breathed heavily through his nose. ‘… this man that you can’t treat every case the same because everybody’s different and my mum doesn’t stay out all night.’
Paula didn’t know Bev McAndrew well, but she’d heard plenty about the chief pharmacist from Elinor Blessing, her partner and the senior registrar in A&E at Bradfield Cross Hospital. And nothing she’d heard tended to contradict Bev’s son’s adamantine certainty. None of which would cut any ice with the civilian behind the counter.
‘I’m going to have a chat with Torin here,’ she said firmly. ‘Have you got an interview room?’ The man nodded towards a door on the other side of the barren waiting area. ‘Thanks. Please call up to CID and let DCI Fielding know I’m on the premises and I’ll be up shortly.’
He didn’t look thrilled, but he did pick up the phone. Paula gestured with her thumb towards the interview room. ‘Let’s have a sit-down and you can tell me what’s going on,’ she said, leading the way.
‘’Kay.’ Torin followed her, shuffling his oversized trainers across the floor in the typical slouch of an adolescent who’s still not quite accustomed to the margins of his body.
Paula opened the door on a tiny boxroom with barely enough space for a table and three steel-framed chairs upholstered in a zingy blue-and-black pattern. Seen worse, she thought, ushering Torin to a seat. She sat opposite him, pulling from her shoulder bag a spiral notebook with a pen rammed down its metal spine.
‘Right then, Torin. Why don’t you start at the beginning?’
Being stalled at the rank of Detective Constable had been the price Paula had willingly paid for membership of DCI Carol Jordan’s Major Incident Team. So when that squad had been wound up, she’d applied for the first three-stripe job that had come up with Bradfield Metropolitan Police. It had been so long since she’d passed her sergeant’s exams, she was afraid they’d make her resit.
This wasn’t how she’d imagined her initiation into the rank of Detective Sergeant. She’d thought doing preliminary interviews would be someone else’s scut work now. But then, that was the thing about being a cop. Not much ever turned out the way you imagined.
4
The blackout blinds did exactly what they were supposed to. And that was good, because pitch-black meant you didn’t get shadow tricks setting your imagination on fire. The one thing Carol Jordan didn’t need was anything to stimulate her imagination. She could manage quite enough on her own without any extra provocation.
It wasn’t as if she was a stranger to bloody crime scenes. Most of her adult life had been punctuated by images of sudden violent death. She’d been confronted with victims of torture; banal domestic violence gone overboard; sexual sadism that was nothing to do with middle-aged, middle-class fantasy; pick your brutality of choice and Carol had seen its end result. Sometimes they’d kept sleep at bay, driven her to the vodka bottle to blur the outlines. But never for more than a few nights. Her need for justice had always stepped in, transforming horror into a spur to action. Those images became the engine that drove her investigations, the motivation for bringing killers to face the consequences of their crimes.
This time was different, though. This time, nothing diminished the power of what she’d seen. Not time, not drink, not distance. These days, there seemed to be a film running on a perpetual loop in her head. It wasn’t a long film, but its impact wasn’t dulled by repetition. The weird thing was that it wasn’t simply a rerun of what she’d seen. Because she was in the film. It was as if someone had been right behind her with a hand-held camera, making a jerky home movie of the worst moment of her life, the colours slightly off, the angles somehow wrong.
It began with her walking into the barn, the view over her shoulder the familiar interior with its inglenook fireplace, exposed stone walls and hammer beams. Sofas she’d once lounged on; tables where she’d discarded newspapers, eaten meals, set wine glasses down; hand-stitched wall hangings she’d marvelled at; and a sweater she’d seen her brother wear a dozen times, casually thrown over the back of a chair. There was a crumpled T-shirt on the floor near the dining table, where the remains of lunch still sat. And at the foot of the gallery stairs, two uniformed bobbies in their high-vis jackets, one looking appalled, the other embarrassed. Between them, a concertina of fabric that might have been a skirt. Disconcerting, but not terrifying. Because film couldn’t convey the stink of spilt blood.
But as Carol approached the wooden stairs, the camera panned back to reveal the ceiling above the sleeping gallery. It was like a Jackson Pollock painting whose sole palette was red. Blood; sprayed, slashed and streaked across the stark white plaster. She’d known then that it was going to be very, very bad.
The camera followed her up the steps, recording every stumbling step. The first thing she saw was their legs and feet, marbled with blood, drips and smears on the bed and the floor. She climbed higher and saw Michael and Lucy’s bloodless bodies marooned like pale islands in a sea of scarlet.
That was where the film froze, locked on that single terrible frame. But her brain didn’t stop running just because the film had. The blame circled and rattled in her head like a hamster on a wheel. If she’d been a better cop. If she’d taken matters into her own hands instead of relying on Tony to come up with answers. If she’d forewarned Michael that a man on the loose had his own twisted reasons to wreak vengeance on her. If, if, if.
But none of those things had happened. And so her brother and the woman he loved had been butchered in the barn they’d restored with their own labour. A place with walls three feet thick, where they had every right to feel safe. And nothing in her life was untainted by that single terrible event.
She’d always found much of her self-definition in her work. It was, she had thought, the best of her. A clear channel for her intelligence, it offered a place where her dogged determination was valued. Her ability to recall verbatim anything she’d heard had a practical application. And she’d discovered she had the knack of inspiring loyalty in the officers she worked with. Carol had
taken pride in being a cop. And now she had cut herself adrift from all that.
She’d already handed in her notice with Bradfield Metropolitan Police when Michael and Lucy had been murdered. She’d been about to take up a new post as a Detective Chief Inspector with West Mercia. She’d burned her bridges there and she didn’t care. She’d also been planning to take a deep breath and share the sprawling Edwardian house in Worcester that Tony had unexpectedly inherited. But that dream was over too, her personal life as much a victim of a brutal killer as her professional life.
Homeless and jobless, Carol had returned to her parents’ house. Home, according to popular mythology, was where they were supposed to take you in when all else failed. It seemed her judgement had missed the mark there too. Her parents hadn’t turned her away, that much was true. Nor had they openly blamed her brother’s death on her choices. But her father’s silent misery and her mother’s sharpness had been perpetual reproaches. She’d stuck it out for a couple of weeks, then she’d repacked her bags and left.
All she’d left behind was her beloved cat Nelson. Tony had once joked that her relationship with the black cat was the only functional one in her life. The trouble was, that was too close to the bone to be funny. But Nelson was old now. Too old to be stuffed in a cat carrier and traipsed round the country from pillar to post. And her mother was better able to be kind to the cat than she was to Carol. So Nelson stayed and she went.
She still owned a flat in London but it had been so long since she’d lived there, it no longer felt like home. Besides, the difference between her mortgage payments and the rent from her long-term tenant was all she had to live on until the lawyers were done picking over the remnants of Michael’s life. Which left her with a single option.
According to Michael’s will, in the absence of Lucy, Carol inherited his estate. The barn was in his sole name; their house in France had belonged to Lucy. So once probate had been granted, the barn would be hers, blood and ghosts and all. Most people would have hired industrial cleaners, redecorated what couldn’t be cleaned, and sold the place to some off-comer ignorant of the barn’s recent history.
Carol Jordan wasn’t most people. Fractured and fragile as she was, she held fast to the determination that had dragged her through disasters before. And so she’d made a plan. This was her attempt at carrying it out.
She would remove every trace of what had happened here and refashion the barn into a place where she could live. A kind of reconciliation, that’s what she was aiming for. Deep down, she didn’t think it was a likely outcome. But she couldn’t come up with anything else to aim for and it was a project that would keep her occupied. Hard physical work during the days to make her sleep at night. And if that didn’t work, there was always the vodka bottle.
Some days, she felt like the writer in residence at the DIY warehouse, her shopping list a liturgy of items newly discovered, laid out on the page like a sequence of haikus. But she made sense of the dense poetry of home improvement and mastered unfamiliar tools and new techniques. Slowly but inevitably, she was erasing the physical history of the place. She didn’t know whether that would bring her soul any ease. Once upon a time she would have been able to ask Tony Hill’s opinion. But that wasn’t an option now. She’d just have to learn to be her own therapist.
Carol snapped on the bedside lamp and pulled on her new working uniform – ripped and filthy jeans, steel-toed work boots over thick socks, a fresh T-shirt and a heavy plaid shirt. ‘Construction Barbie’, according to one of the middle-aged men who frequented the trade counter at the DIY warehouse. It had made her smile, if only because nothing could have been less appropriate.
While she was waiting for the coffee machine to produce a brew, she headed through the main body of the barn and stepped out into the morning, seeing the promise of rain in the low cloud that shrouded the distant hills. The colour was leaching out of the coarse moorland grass now autumn was creeping up on winter. The copse of trees on the shoulder of the hill was changing colour, its palette shifting from green to brown. A couple of tiny patches of sky were visible through the branches for the first time since spring. Soon there would be nothing but a tracery of naked branches, stripping the only cover from the hillside. Carol leaned on the wall and stared up at the trees. She breathed deeply, trying for serenity.
Once upon a time, the highly evolved sixth sense that keeps talented cops out of trouble would have raised the hairs on the back of her neck. It was a measure of how far she’d come from the old Carol Jordan that she was completely oblivious to the patient eyes watching her every move.
5
Rob Morrison glanced at his watch again, then pulled out his phone to double-check the time. 6:58. The new boss was cutting it fine if she wanted to make a good impression on her first day. But before he could settle into his smugness, the clatter of heels on floor tiles alerted him to an arrival from the street door rather than the underground car park. He swung round and there she was, mac shimmering with raindrops, shoes splashed with dirt. Marie Mather, his new opposite number. Director of Marketing to his Director of Operations.
‘Morning, Rob.’ She shifted her laptop bag to join her handbag over her shoulder so she could free up a hand to shake his. ‘Thanks for taking the time to get me settled in.’
‘Might as well start off on the right foot.’ He squeezed out a half-smile that took the sourness from his face. ‘Since we’ll be yoked together like horses in the traces, pulling the mighty chariot that is Tellit Communications.’ He enjoyed the flash of surprise as the extravagance of his sardonic comment sank in. He liked to upset people’s general assumption that a man who ran the operations side of a mobile phone company must be a stranger to culture. ‘You didn’t drive in?’
She shook the sparkle of rain from her thick blonde bob and gestured with her head towards the street outside. ‘We’re only five minutes’ walk from the tram terminus so I always get a seat. It’s a better start to the day than fighting the rush-hour traffic.’ When she smiled, her nose wrinkled, as if she’d smelled something delicious. In terms of aesthetics, Rob reckoned she was a distinct improvement on Jared Kamal, her predecessor. ‘So. What’s the drill?’
‘We’ll sort you out with security passes. Then I’ll take you up to the main floor and give you the guided tour.’ As he spoke, Rob steered her over to the security desk, a hand on her elbow, aware of a spicy floral aroma that clung to her in spite of the tram and the Bradfield rain. If she was as good at her job as she was at brightening the place up, Rob’s working life was set to improve exponentially.
Minutes later, they emerged from the lift straight on to the main sales floor. At this time of day, the lighting was dim. ‘Staff operate the lighting levels at their own pods. It gives them the illusion of control and it gives us a quick and easy way to spot who’s actually working.’ Rob led the way across the room.
‘Somebody’s early.’ Marie nodded towards a pool of light in the far corner.
Rob rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘That’s Gareth Taylor.’ He arranged his features in a standard expression of sorrow. ‘Lost his family recently.’ Personally, he was over Gareth’s grief. Time to move on, get a life. But Rob knew he was in the minority on that one so he kept quiet around the water cooler, content to grunt supportively when colleagues went into one of their ‘Poor Gareth’ spasms.
Marie’s expression softened. ‘Poor bloke. What happened?’
‘Car crash. Wife and two kids, died at the scene.’ Rob forged onwards, not a backward glance at his bereaved colleague.
Marie broke stride momentarily then caught up. ‘And he’s in here at this time of the morning?’
Rob shrugged. ‘He says he’d rather be here than staring at the walls at home. Fine by me. I mean, it’s been three or four months now.’ He turned and gave her a dark smile. ‘We’re fucked if he starts claiming his TOIL though.’
Marie made a noncommittal noise and followed him into a generous cubicle at the end of the room. A desk
, two chairs. A couple of whiteboards and a paper recycling bin. Rob gave a cynical little bow. ‘Home sweet home.’
‘It’s a decent size, at least.’ Marie put her laptop on the desk, tucked her bag in a drawer and hung her coat on a hook on the back of the door. ‘Now, first things first. Where’s the coffee and what’s the system?’
Rob smiled. ‘Follow me.’ He led her back into the main office. ‘You buy tokens from Charyn on the front desk. Five for a pound.’ As they grew closer to his workspace, the light from Gareth Taylor’s pod revealed a door tucked away in a nearby alcove. It led to a small room furnished with a pair of coffee machines. Rob gestured at a series of bins that contained little plastic pods. ‘You choose your poison, slot the pod in the machine and pay for it with a token.’ He rummaged in the pocket of his chinos and produced a red disc. ‘Have your first one on me.’ He handed it over as if conferring a great honour. ‘I’ll let you get settled in.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘One or two things I need to deal with before the hordes arrive. I’ve arranged a meeting with key personnel at half eight in the small conference room. Ask anybody, they’ll direct you.’
And that was it. He was gone, leaving Marie with an array of beverage choices. She opted for a cappuccino and was pleasantly surprised by the result. She stepped back into the main office, where there were now three or four illuminated work stations. She decided to start getting to know her staff and moved towards Gareth Taylor, consciously applying a warm smile.
He glanced up as she approached, his expression startled. His fingers flew over the keyboard and as she rounded the corner of his partition, she had the impression of a computer screen quickly refreshing. It looked like Tellit resembled everywhere Marie had worked, with employees who liked to feel they were scoring points by doing their own thing in company time with company resources. Human nature, the same all over. It was a tendency that didn’t bother Marie, so long as productivity was acceptable and nobody took the piss.
