Cross and Burn

by Val McDermid

  ‘But I do miss you. And not just because DCI Fielding is most emphatically not you.’ Paula accepted a cup of coffee and blew gently to cool it. ‘You made it clear you were done with Bradfield, done with the lot of us. And we all respected that. I respected that. Even though what I wanted was to be your friend. To take you out and get drunk with you. To listen to your pain. To bring you home and let Elinor cook you chicken pie and mash.’ To her annoyance, Paula could feel her throat constrict with all the tears she hadn’t shed with Carol.

  ‘I understand that. What I did was the only thing I knew how to do. The last time I thought I’d lost everything, I ran away. And it worked. I was able to heal myself enough to come back into the world. That’s what I’m trying to do this time.’ She opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy and poured a slug into her coffee.

  ‘You drank too much last time too,’ Paula said, feeling the crack of thin ice under her.

  Carol’s lip curled. ‘Tony always did over-share with you.’

  Paula shook her head. ‘Tony never said a word out of place about you. I know you drank too much because you were still drinking too much when you set up the MIT. You think we didn’t know about the miniatures of vodka in your handbag and the quarter bottles in the desk drawer?’

  Carol started as if she’d been slapped. ‘And you never said anything? You knew I was drinking on the job and you never said anything?’

  ‘Of course we didn’t. Even Sam the Snitch had more sense. Besides, why would we? It’s not like you were falling over drunk. It never interfered with the way you ran the team.’

  ‘Christ, I never realised you all knew. Call myself a detective?’ She turned away, embarrassed. ‘So, why are you here? Really? Because if you’d come here with the olive branch of friendship, Elinor would have sent a Tupperware box of home baking with you.’

  The time for bridge-building banter was over. Now it was time to cut to the chase. ‘I’m here because DCI Fielding has arrested Tony for the murder of two women.’

  Carol stared, open-mouthed, the cup halfway to her lips, disbelief growing on her face as the words sank in. She craned her head forwards as if she was straining to hear. ‘Come again?’ she said, full of obvious scepticism.

  ‘We interviewed him under caution this evening and then she decided to charge him. And it’s mad. I know it’s mad, you know it’s mad. But there’s evidence. And Fielding can’t see past that to the man. He needs your help.’

  Carol put her coffee down and held her hands up. ‘Whoa. Back up there. I’m not a cop any more, Paula.’

  ‘You think I don’t understand that? That’s exactly why he needs you and not me. I’m on a knife edge here. I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff. If Fielding finds out, it’ll be all over for me. I’ll have a dazzling career in Traffic.’

  Carol frowned. ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘I told you. Tony needs your help. He’s hopeless. Carol, you know better than anybody else what he’s like. He thinks just because he’s innocent that nothing bad will happen to him. And we both know how naïve that is.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Carol said, her voice the epitome of chilly reasonableness. ‘But why would you think I’d leap to his defence?’

  Now it was Paula’s turn to be shocked. ‘Because…’ She couldn’t bring herself to use the l-word. ‘Because he’s your friend?’

  Carol’s face had grown bitter. Now her tone matched it. ‘Look around you, Paula. I know you didn’t see what happened here, but imagine the scene. Now imagine two people you love at the heart of that scene. That’s what I went through because Tony failed them. He failed me. He didn’t do his job and we paid the price. Me and my parents and my brother and the woman he loved.’

  Paula shook her head in dismay. ‘You can’t blame Tony. He’s a psychologist, not a psychic. How can you expect him to know the details of what Vance had planned? What Vance did was off the scale of vengeance. None of us, not one of us imagined for a moment that the people we loved were at risk. Carol, I know you’re hurting. And I know how grief messes with our heads. Believe me, I know. But it was Vance who did this to you. Not Tony.’

  Carol’s mouth had a stubborn set to it. ‘It’s his job to think of the things that don’t occur to the rest of us. And everybody else paid the price, not him. Michael and Lucy, Chris, that stable lad, my parents, me. Even Vanessa suffered more than he did.’

  ‘And you think that doesn’t torture him every day? You think he’s not torn apart with guilt? I’ve watched him suffer his own sense of failure. Believe me, Carol, you can’t load more blame on him than he does on himself. How long is this going to go on? His shame and your blame? Are you going to let this define the rest of your lives? Because from where I’m standing, frankly, it’s a colossal waste of two people’s lives.’ It was out before Paula knew she was going to say it. Challenging Carol wasn’t something she’d been able to do in the past; the obligations of rank had always been the final stumbling block.

  ‘It’s none of your business, Paula.’ Carol walked out of the room, through to the barn. The dog gave Paula a baleful look then went after Carol into the chill.

  Paula hung her head and sighed. ‘Blew that one,’ she said under her breath. She waited to see whether Carol was coming back, but she was out of luck. So she returned the way she’d come. Carol was standing by a window, staring out at the dark. Paula could see her face in the glass. Her expression was as hard as the reflective surface.

  ‘This is so unfair,’ Paula said. ‘Fielding’s got everything on her side. Me included. And he’s got nothing and nobody. He hasn’t even got a lawyer.’

  ‘I don’t do pity, remember?’

  Paula kicked out at a sawhorse in her frustration then shouted at Carol for the first time in her life. ‘It’s not about pity, for fuck’s sake. It’s about justice. The woman I used to know cared about justice.’ The slam of the door behind her as she left was the only satisfying moment of the whole encounter.

  45

  Tony sat on the edge of the narrow ledge that passed for a bed in the Skenfrith Street custody suite, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. He’d been in police cells before, but only in the course of business. Talking to the damaged, the deranged and the demonised had brought him to places like this, but always with the door open. He’d often tried to put himself in the shoes of the captive, imagining how it must feel when that door slammed shut and they were alone. But he’d always started from a place of empathy – what it would be like for them. As opposed to how he would feel himself.

  Mostly what he felt was uncomfortable. Being on his own in a small space didn’t bother him. For a man who had learned to live on a narrowboat, it was no big deal. The noises-off didn’t bother him either. Working in a secure mental hospital was an inoculation against unexpected and inexplicable human clamour. He wasn’t hungry or thirsty yet, so that wasn’t an issue. But there was no getting away from the discomfort. The bed was hard. There was a thin wafer of foam which he assumed was meant to be a pillow. It was lumpy and peculiarly distorted. Using it was like putting his head on a bag of liquorice allsorts. The physical discomfort made thinking much harder. And thinking was what he needed to do.

  When the custody sergeant had closed the door behind him, Tony had almost expected him to throw it open and shout, ‘Surprise!’ That was how hard it was for him to credit what had happened. All through that bizarre interview with Paula and Alex Fielding, part of him had refused to take it seriously. He couldn’t escape the notion that it was either a wind-up or a terrible mistake that he’d be able to put right in no time. Then it had dawned on him that Fielding was serious. Serious as only someone who didn’t know him could be. Serious as only a detective driven by ambition could be.

  Paula knew. Paula understood that whatever the physical evidence said, it was impossible to envisage him as a killer. But Paula wasn’t the one making the decisions in that interview room. Paula was on trial too, her loyalty to the new boss und
er fire. Would she follow blindly where the evidence appeared to lead? Or would her fidelity to the old regime undermine Fielding’s determination to get a quick and spectacular resolution to the case? On the walk down to the cells, she’d indicated she was on his side. But she had to be careful. For both their sakes, it was vital that she didn’t get moved off the investigation. And there was only so much good that she could do by stealth.

  Fielding scared him. That rush to judgement, that adamantine certainty that the evidence was king, that unwillingness to twist the Rubik’s cube and look at things from a different angle – they all unsettled him, because there was no room for discussion. It wouldn’t be enough for him to provide an explanation for the physical evidence against him. He’d have to find a reason to direct her hunter-killer instincts towards the real murderer.

  Tony shifted awkwardly from one buttock to the other. If he hadn’t let Carol down so badly, he’d never have found himself in this position. She simply wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. No matter what cards might have been stacked against him, she would have taken his part, because she understood the limits of his capabilities.

  He permitted himself a wry smile. Nobody knew his limits better than Carol. He’d always thought she could do better than him, that there must be other men out there who could give her more of what she needed than he had. But either she wasn’t looking or she wasn’t meeting the right men. Until her brother’s death, she’d been happy to settle for their incomplete and inconclusive relationship. And then they’d found something that divided them so deeply nothing could bridge the gap. Not a shared history, not a mutual understanding. Not even love.

  Impatient with himself, Tony jumped to his feet. If sitting or lying was torture, then he would pace. Six strides one way, ninety-degree turn then eight strides the other way. Six, eight. Six, eight. Stop brooding about Carol. She was gone. She wouldn’t be there to pull him out of this particular pile of shit. It was over. He was on his own. Perhaps with a little help from his friend. Six, eight.

  So. He had to explain the bloodstain. Others could find the verification of his story once he’d reached deep inside and accessed the truth. The thumbprint, too. That wasn’t ringing any bells. ‘I know I live in my head half the time, but you’d think I’d remember picking up somebody else’s phone,’ he shouted in exasperation.

  Tony stopped pacing and leaned his forehead on the cool cement wall. He closed his eyes and dropped his shoulders. He deliberately relaxed his muscles from his scalp through his neck and arms. ‘Think about blood. Your blood. About bleeding. Bleeding enough to stain somebody else,’ he said out loud. There was the knee. The time when a crazed patient had gone on the rampage with a fire axe and had taken a swipe at Tony when he tried to talk him down. But that had been years ago, long before Nadia Wilkowa had ever come to Bradfield. A couple of times, he’d cut himself in the galley, unaccustomed to the occasional sudden movement of the boat. But there had never been anybody else there and besides, there hadn’t been much blood. It had to be something that happened at work. In Bradfield Moor. He summoned up the hospital, as if he was offering someone a guided tour. The reception area. The locked doors, the faceless corridors. His office, the therapy rooms.

  And then he remembered. Suddenly, it was all there, in crystal clear Technicolor detail. He threw his arms in the air. ‘Halle-fucking-lujah!’ The explanation of the thumbprint could wait. The DNA was the killer piece of evidence and now he knew how it had got there.

  Tony grinned. Paula would be pleased. Now he just had to think of something that would lead them to the person who was actually killing women who looked like Carol Jordan.

  46

  While Tony was dredging his memory, another conversation went like this: ‘Bronwen Scott here.’

  ‘This is Carol Jordan.’

  A pause. ‘As in, DCI Carol Jordan?’ Cautious, very cautious.

  ‘As in ex-DCI Carol Jordan. I’m not a cop any more. But you, I presume, are still the best criminal defence lawyer in Bradfield?’

  ‘That’s quite an accolade, Ms Jordan. And I always thought you hated me.’

  ‘I don’t have to like you to appreciate your professional qualities.’

  ‘So, to what do I owe this call? I’m assuming you didn’t phone me at this time of night just to bolster my self-confidence. Don’t tell me someone’s had the temerity to arrest you?’

  ‘I have a job for you. A client for you to represent. And a proposition in relation to that.’

  ‘Sounds fascinating.’ A long-drawn breath. ‘But it’s late. Won’t it wait till morning?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. Can you meet me in the car park opposite Skenfrith Street police station in half an hour?’

  ‘Very Deep Throat. Why should I do this, Ms Jordan? What’s in it for me?’

  ‘A high-profile case. And the chance to fuck up BMP. I imagine no day is wasted for you if you get to fuck up an SIO.’

  A throaty chuckle. ‘You know which buttons to push, Ms Jordan.’

  ‘I had an excellent teacher. Do we have an appointment?’

  ‘It had better be good. It had better be very good.’

  Carol smiled. ‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’ She ended the call and changed down to third gear to negotiate a series of bends that climbed over the moor top before the descent into Bradfield. It hadn’t been easy to maintain her composure during the phone call to the toughest criminal defence lawyer she’d ever jousted against. To say her feelings about the course of action she’d settled on were mixed was like saying the government had racked up a few debts. Her gut was churning and her hands were clammy on the wheel. Part of her wished she’d managed to ignore Paula altogether.

  But she hadn’t. When Paula had stormed out, Carol had barely paused before she gave chase. She caught up with her before she was halfway to her car. It didn’t take much to persuade Paula back inside, where she gave Carol the kind of briefing that had been second nature when they worked together. The more she heard, the more Carol had been inflamed by the absurdity of what had happened to Tony. ‘Not all evidence is created equal,’ she’d protested. ‘More often than not, it’s coloured by its connections. You look at someone like Tony and your starting point is, this man didn’t kill two women. So how is it that the evidence seems to point towards him? You don’t just go, “Here’s a bit of evidence, it must be you.” That’s not how you get justice.’

  And so of course she had to wade in. It wasn’t quite that simple, though. She couldn’t entirely escape the notion that she’d been played by Paula. She suspected the detective had motives that went beyond unpicking Fielding’s over-hasty decision. But if Paula thought she had set Carol on the road to reconciliation with Tony, she was in for a disappointment. This was about justice, pure and simple. The only sense in which it was about her and Tony was that their past history meant she knew him well enough to understand he wasn’t a killer. On a personal level, she wasn’t averse to the idea of him rotting in jail for something he didn’t do, since the law had no way to punish him for what he had done. But that would leave a killer at large, and that was unacceptable. She might not be a cop any longer but Carol understood what justice was about.

  That was more than she could say for Bronwen Scott. Having to get into bed with Scott was almost as hard as having to stand up for Tony. For years, Scott had been a thorn in her side, exploiting every weakness in the law to help the guilty. In theory, Carol held fast to the idea that everyone deserved a defence, no matter what their crime. But its manifestation in practice made her want to weep. She hated Scott for the maxim the lawyer regularly delivered with an air of injured innocence – ‘Do your job, Detective. Then there would be no technicalities for me to exploit.’ She despised Scott’s cavalier ability to defend clients who were manifestly guilty. Most of all, she hated the way she felt when criminals walked free because Scott had played on sentiment and emotion in the teeth of evidence.

  But now she no longer had the power of the
job on her side, she’d have to exploit Scott’s skills if she wanted to see justice done. Crucially, there was no doubt in Carol’s mind that someone had to speak for the two dead women. Fielding wasn’t doing that and because she wasn’t, Paula couldn’t. Somebody had to fill the breach. Getting Tony off the hook was merely the first step on a journey to the truth.

  All these high-flown ideals were a perfect distraction. The more Carol wrapped herself in the flag of justice, the less she had to consider her feelings for Tony. The notion that she was reaching for a way to bridge the distance between them was one she would have dismissed with contempt if she’d allowed herself even to admit it as a possibility. It wasn’t about forgiveness. It was simply that she didn’t want him in her life.

  Driving into Bradfield was a strange sensation. It had been months since she’d travelled city streets and although she could still easily navigate routes that used to be second nature she felt like a tourist following a map she’d learned by heart. This had been her home for years but she had cut her ties and already there were changes to the traffic flow. Nothing major; the odd lane change at junctions, an alteration of priorities at traffic lights. Enough to make her a stranger.

  She pulled into the multi-storey car park in Skenfrith Street five minutes early. The sixties brutalist structure was stark in the fluorescent lights. It was past eleven and there were few cars left on the ground level. Carol parked her Land Rover Defender in the middle of a strip of empty slots and got out. Her footsteps echoed on the stained concrete like a clichéd movie soundtrack. She leaned against the front of the Landie, feeling a faint flutter of nervousness. She was a woman alone in a deserted late-night city-centre car park. When she’d been a cop, the simple fact of that status had acted as a protection. Now, although it made no sense, she felt distinctly more vulnerable. Even her choice of clothes contributed to that element of risk. She’d grown accustomed to the aura of strength and competence that came from her new work clothes. Donning her former work uniform of suit and blouse and low heels made her much more of a target for passing predators. She hoped Bronwen Scott wasn’t going to be late.