Cross and Burn

by Val McDermid

  Which sounded great except that there wasn’t much to commit to memory. It was dark, the lighting was designed to help people find their cars, not to allow CCTV operatives to make like Martin Scorsese. All you could definitively say about the stalker was that he was medium height, medium build, wore glasses with thick frames and owned a jacket whose hood, pulled forwards, almost completely obscured his face. He kept his head down; he was clearly well aware of the risks of being captured on pixels. The rectangular case in his hand seemed quite heavy, though that fact offered no clue to its contents. Nadia disappeared from the top left of the screen, followed by the man. Even the gender was a presumption, Paula thought.

  The third camera was the one that had picked up the action. Nadia’s car was close to the limit of its field of view, so again, there wasn’t much detail to be seen. She unlocked the car as she walked, taking the keys from her handbag. As she opened the boot, the man suddenly speeded up. ‘He takes something from his pocket,’ Cody said, his voice rising with excitement.

  ‘We think it’s a taser,’ Fielding said, watching Nadia put her shopping in the hatchback boot.

  ‘Where’s the confetti?’ Hussain asked.

  ‘Not all taser cartridges contain confetti,’ Paula said. ‘Usually it’s only law enforcement who use it, so there’s a record.’

  ‘And she kind of crumples forward as he comes up from behind,’ Cody continued.

  It was over in next to no time. The kidnapper scooped up Nadia’s legs and shoved them in the boot. He straightened up and took something out of his other pocket then leaned into the boot. ‘What’s he doing?’ one of the others asked.

  ‘Hard to say,’ Cody said. ‘We watched it a few times and couldn’t make it out.’

  ‘Packing tape,’ Paula said. ‘He’s restraining her.’

  Cody flashed a quick look at her. She couldn’t tell whether he was impressed or pissed off.

  ‘Could be,’ Fielding said. ‘We’ll take another look after we’ve seen the rest of it.’

  There wasn’t much more of it. He finished whatever he was doing, closed the boot, walked round to the driver’s door, got in and shortly after, drove out of shot. All of it without letting the camera have even a fleeting glimpse of his features. It was as if he knew exactly where he was being surveyed from, so effectively did he avoid the lens, Paula thought.

  ‘Let’s have it again,’ Fielding said. This time, Cody slowed it down after the man tipped Nadia into the boot. It still wasn’t clear what was happening; the man’s body obscured what he was taking from his pocket. But Fielding conceded Paula was probably right. With a marker pen, she wrote what they knew about the man on the board. ‘Anything else?’

  A hand went up in the far corner of the room. A woman who looked like she wanted to disappear into the woodwork. ‘Boss? I think he’s got a limp.’

  ‘A limp? How do you work that out, Butterworth?’ Fielding was already moving away from the whiteboard.

  ‘You can’t see it in the diagonal shot because of the angle. And then he’s running. But when he walks round to the driver’s seat, it looks like he’s limping.’

  Fielding frowned. ‘Play it again, Cody. Just the last bit. And slow it down.’

  Cody did as he was told. And as they watched, it was clear that DC Butterworth had spotted something the rest of them had missed. The man was limping. Whether it was temporary or permanent, they had no way of knowing. But that Saturday night in the car park of the Trafford Centre, the man who had abducted Nadia Wilkowa had something wrong with his left leg.

  32

  Day twenty-six

  The sun was a thin brilliant line across the top of the moors. For the first time in more than a week, the morning sky was clear, dark blue fading into eggshell as dawn broke. The light crept down the side of the hill, bringing the colours to life. White Edge Beck sparkled as the broken water caught the light and the rocks glistened. Early morning dog walking didn’t get any better than this, Paul Eadis thought as he drove up the twisting single-track road to the National Trust car park. His two lurchers, caged in the rear section of his estate car, were restless, as if they too could sense a change in the weather.

  He rounded the last bend. As usual at this time of the morning, the White Edge car park was empty, the only break in the skyline the stone rubbish bin and the hollow cairn where motorists were supposed to deposit a pound whenever they parked. Paul had never paid to park here; that was for tourists, and he considered himself a local. For five years now, he’d been running George Nicholas’s dairy operation. He’d done more for the local economy in that time than most folk around here managed in a lifetime.

  He turned off the road and parked in a random slot. Paul liked to pretend to himself that he was an enemy of habit; the truth was he fetishised variety in small things so he could kid himself he wasn’t hidebound in the things that mattered. It was one of the things that made him such an effective herd manager.

  Humming under his breath, he got out of the car and released the lurchers from their captivity. They took off with their usual enthusiasm. But in the business of closing the tailgate and locking up, Paul missed the sudden arrest of their headlong plunge for the moors. When he turned, expecting to see the dogs a distant blur of movement, he was astonished to see they’d stopped behind the bin, nosing at something on the ground. ‘Bloody dead sheep,’ he muttered, pulling leashes from his pocket and heading for the dogs.

  But it wasn’t a sheep.

  Startled awake by an unfamiliar sound, Carol was out of bed and halfway to the door before she registered what she was actually hearing. A scratch at the door, followed by a soft whimper. Then a more insistent scratch. The bloody dog, that’s what it was. She let out the breath she’d been holding and felt her muscles loosen as the adrenalin fled. ‘OK, Flash, I’m coming,’ she called through the door, hastily pulling on jeans, T-shirt and fleece. She opened the door into the main body of the barn and a bundle of black and white threw itself at her, threading a figure of eight round her legs, barking with delight at being reunited with the new human.

  Carol staggered under the onslaught, laughing in spite of her grumpiness at being wakened on a schedule other than her own. She ruffled the dog’s fur, then said, ‘Sit,’ in her most commanding voice. Flash obeyed, but looked over her shoulder at the door to the outside world, another soft whimper escaping from her mouth. ‘You need to go out,’ Carol said. She crossed the room barefoot, looking out for wood splinters and stone chips, then opened the door on a glorious clear morning, the chill in the air invigorating and inviting. Flash ran out into the yard, heading for the rough grass at the edge of the cobbled parking apron. Carol watched while she peed, concerned in case the dog made a run for her old home over the hill. But Flash simply trotted back to the barn after she’d finished, rubbing herself against Carol as she re-entered.

  ‘Good dog,’ Carol said. She headed into her room to put on socks and boots so they could go for a walk. ‘Listen to me,’ she grumbled. ‘Already I’m talking to you as if you’re going to answer.’ The dog thumped her tail on the floor. ‘It was at least a month before I started talking to my cat like that, you know. I’m turning into a weird old hermit.’

  She grabbed her waxed jacket and the leash Nicholas had left her and headed for the hill. The dog stayed at heel until they climbed the stile into the rough pasture, then she ranged back and forth, scenting the air and the ground, but always checking to see where the human was. Carol was amazed at how quickly the dog appeared to have bonded with her. Flash had watched Nicholas leave with apparent indifference. No crying, no casting around as if wondering where he might have gone, nothing that remotely resembled pining. Instead, she’d followed Carol round, lying down with her head between her paws near where she was working. They’d gone for a walk along the lane in the afternoon, Flash docile on the leash, apart from a couple of tugs towards open ground.

  In the evening, Flash had sat politely by while Carol cooked and ate, then she’d la
in at her feet while she drank wine and browsed the news on her iPad. Come bedtime, though, Carol had shooed her into the main barn, pointing to the dog’s bed and blankets, set next to the door behind which her new mistress would be sleeping. She drew the line at sharing her bed – or even her bedroom – with a dog. Nelson had been a relatively unobtrusive bed-sharer. She suspected Flash didn’t know what unobtrusive meant.

  She’d been mildly surprised that there had been no protest from Flash. According to Nicholas, Flash had been accustomed to sleeping in the utility room with her mother and litter mates. Carol had worried that the dog might be lonely. But she seemed perfectly content with her lot, and she showed no signs of wanting to escape from her new life.

  ‘Didn’t take me long to fall for you, did it?’ she said, scrambling up the hill behind the happy dog, feeling noticeably more cheerful than she had the previous day. Maybe it was the weather. But maybe the dog’s joie de vivre was irresistible. ‘What exactly did Michael tell George Nicholas about me that made him think I needed a dog? Because, damn it, he might be right.’

  They covered the ground to the trees at the top of the hill in good time. The dog seemed as fresh as when they’d left and Carol recalled Nicholas’s injunction about exercise. ‘Come on then, we’ll go through the trees and along the ridge,’ she said, striking off at an angle through the mix of birch and alder that struggled against the prevailing wind on the shoulder of the hill.

  Ten minutes brought Carol to the far side of the woodland and a breathtaking vista of the moors and the valley below. But this morning, the view she’d grown accustomed to had an added element. A familiar element, but one seen from a very different angle.

  Over to the east, perhaps quarter of a mile away, spotlit by the newly risen sun, the roadside past White Edge car park was occupied by a string of vehicles though the car park itself was empty. She identified half a dozen police cars and Land Rovers, the ID numbers emblazoned on their roofs revealing them to be from the West Yorkshire force. One displayed the solid circle of a Dog Unit but the others were standard response units. There were also four unmarked cars and an ambulance. She could see what looked like crime-scene tape fluttering round the perimeter, and several figures were milling around something she couldn’t identify. Something waist high, stone-built, possibly.

  It was a crime scene. And a serious one at that. The only crimes that would merit this sort of police presence so early in the day were murder, attempted murder or serious sexual assault involving a high level of violence. The kind of crimes that had been her bread and butter, her meat and drink, and the icing on her cake for years. The kind of crimes she’d built a career on. The kind of crimes that both answered and thwarted her fundamental craving for justice.

  It felt strange to be a distant spectator at the first stages of an investigation. For so long, she had been the person controlling the scene. Taking the decisions. Deploying the personnel. Driving everyone to do their best for the dead and the living. And now, she was just another rubbernecker.

  ‘Flash, come,’ she said, snapping her fingers for the dog, who was quartering the hillside a hundred yards away. Low to the ground, Flash moved swiftly to her side and dropped down beside her, tongue lolling out of her mouth. Carol crouched down and buried her hand in the thick mane at the back of the dog’s neck. She didn’t want to leave yet; her history wouldn’t let her go. But she didn’t want to be obvious to anyone scanning the landscape from below.

  While she watched, another car came hammering up the road. And instead of West Yorkshire’s 13 on the roof, this one carried the 51 that signified Bradfield Metropolitan Police. What had brought BMP officers to a West Yorkshire crime scene? She knew from her own experience that there was little love lost between the detectives of the two forces. There would have to be a very good reason for BMP cops to be here this early in an investigation.

  The BMP car pulled up by the entrance, double parking to let two people out. Even from that distance she could see they were women. Carol couldn’t rely on the evidence of her eyes to identify them. But common sense told her the small, dark figure who had been in the front seat could only be DCI Alex Fielding. Her equal in rank, but her opposite in so many other aspects. Fielding was authoritarian and formal where Carol was more relaxed and inclined towards teamwork. Fielding was all about hard facts and never mind the story behind them; Carol loved working with Tony because he helped her to understand why. Fielding was married with a son, a hinterland of emotional connection that Carol had failed to establish. And now it appeared Fielding had a new bagman. Her former sergeant had been a lanky raw-boned Ulsterman who always talked about going home. Wherever he’d gone, the person filling his shoes looked very familiar. Carol couldn’t have sworn to it, but she’d have put serious money on Fielding’s new bagman being Paula McIntyre.

  The realisation provoked a confusion of feelings in Carol. Outrage at Paula’s skills being put at the service of so unimaginative a boss; a stab of regret that it wasn’t her down there; an acceptance that that life was behind her; and a benediction to Paula, who could still manage to do what she would not.

  Carol stood up, backing into the trees. This was no place for her. She’d turned away from all that was going on down there, and she was slowly growing better for it. Hard physical work, all those books and movies she’d missed out on over the years, a dog for company. Somewhere in the middle of that, she’d finally manage to forgive herself.

  Let other people speak for the dead.

  When she turned to go, a spasm of shock flashed across her chest, stopping her breath and making her heart clench. A few feet away, a man stood watching her. How could he have come so close without her realising? And why was the dog not reacting? Carol was on the point of making a run for it when her brain clocked on and she understood what she was seeing. The reason for Flash’s passivity was that the man standing in the shelter of the trees was George Nicholas. At his heels, Jess, cheerfully licking her pup’s head.

  He held up his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. You were so intent on that lot down there —’ He nodded towards the cars and cops in the valley below.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’ Carol didn’t care how rude she sounded. She was rattled but not so much so that she could let go of instincts honed by years of policing serious crime.

  ‘Same as you. Walking my dog. Nothing more sinister than that, I promise you.’

  He looked innocuous enough in his waxed jacket and tweed cap, recently shaven face pink with the cold autumn air. But she knew only too well the viciousness and treachery that could lie behind so harmless an appearance. ‘I thought she was a working dog? Doesn’t that give her the exercise she needs?’

  Nicholas smiled. ‘What she needs and what she wants are two different things. Jess loves to run more than anything else. Answering her whims keeps me fit. If I didn’t do this, I’d sit around getting fat. Usually we don’t see anyone else up here. This morning, it’s a bit like Bellwether Square. What are they doing down there, do you know?’

  Carol shook her head. ‘Something serious. A murder or a serious sexual assault, given the number of warm bodies and the presence of two forces.’

  ‘Two forces? How can you tell?’

  She pointed to the vehicles below. ‘Different transport codes. West Yorkshire and Bradfield Met.’

  ‘Your former colleagues. That must feel strange.’

  Carol deliberately walked past him, not wanting to give anything away. ‘It’s exactly the sort of case I would have been called out to when I was still a serving officer,’ she said. ‘Being a spectator is… unexpected.’

  ‘Nowhere’s immune these days,’ Nicholas said. ‘My wife. Your brother and Lucy. And now this. The world has become smaller, Carol. And that means the unpleasantness infects places like this, places that used to be immune from the worst excesses of human behaviour.’

  ‘You’re wrong. This isn’t some communicable disease that’s spread ou
t from the city. It’s always been here. Lurking under the beauty. Wherever you are, somebody’s inflicting horror on another human being. It’s just that there are some environments where it’s easier to get away with it. You can pretend all you like, but underneath your country idyll, the bad stuff is simmering and seeping in all directions.’

  Nicholas tilted his head back and laughed. ‘Christ, Carol, you make it sound like The Wicker Man. Look, why don’t you come down and have breakfast with me? So I can show you that the big house isn’t a dark, brooding presence on the far side of the hill? Come on. There will be fresh eggs and —’ He pulled a paper bag out of one of his big side pockets and dangled it at her. ‘Fresh field mushrooms. I picked them on the way up. And sourdough bread from Bentley’s in the village.’ He looked eager and open-faced. And if there was anything sinister about his presence on the hilltop, either because of her presence or that of the police, she would have the chance to ferret it out at close quarters.

  ‘All right,’ she said, making it sound as if it was as appealing as a colonoscopy. Nicholas lit up like a birthday boy. ‘Come on, Flash.’ The dog didn’t need telling twice. Carol almost wished she could find so uncomplicated a response in her own heart. But those days were long gone. With one last look over her shoulder, she set off down the hill.

  Let other people speak for the dead.

  33

  The call had roused Paula from the glorious depths of sleep. They’d gone to bed before midnight, but Elinor had wanted to revisit her conversation with Bev’s sister Rachel. ‘But after I IM’d with Torin’s dad and he gave us his blessing, I’m still not sure I was right to encourage her to come up,’ she’d said for what Paula reckoned was the eighth or ninth time.

  ‘Torin’s in limbo,’ Paula said. For only the third time, she thought. ‘He needs the stability he’ll get from his family. He hardly knows us, love.’