Keep Her Close

by M. J. Ford

  Hana Sigurdsson touched the note. ‘It rather looks like Anna might have paid the price, doesn’t it?’

  * * *

  Dr Stein was in agreement.

  ‘The note seems amateur to me. I mean, the hair? Whoever took Malin from her room must have knocked her unconscious, and clearly isn’t afraid to spill blood. In real cases of kidnap of such violence, I’d expect them to send a finger, perhaps an ear. It would deliver the message a lot more convincingly.’

  Stratton nodded, though he looked a little alarmed.

  ‘And bearing in mind the growing body of information on Anna Mull,’ Stein continued, ‘I’d say she shows signs of classic sociopathic behaviour. The cheating at university, the thefts from her youth. She takes short cuts and she’s willing to use others to get there.’

  It was Surrey Police who’d dug up Anna’s juvenile misdemeanours. An expulsion for stealing from a teacher, a suspension for vandalism and bullying a younger child into taking the blame. It was a wonder she’d managed to keep it all under wraps in her application to Oriel College.

  ‘So the friendship with Malin was a sham?’ asked Carrick. ‘She said they’d known each other since they started uni.’

  ‘Typically, sociopaths don’t have real friends,’ said Stein. ‘They might have had the appearance of a friendship, and indeed Malin could well have been very fond of Anna, but the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. Anna might have attached herself to Malin for the status the friendship conferred, but when she saw her chance to use it to make money, she probably didn’t hesitate.’

  ‘Even if it meant physically harming Malin?’

  ‘I admit, that’s the part that vexes me. The note, the hair – it shows a certain reticence to do harm. Whether that’s some residual core of moral conscience, or fear, I don’t know. But I don’t think Anna is the arch manipulator here. I think she’s the one who was being manipulated. Used by someone who was a step ahead. The profile I drew up initially still stands. He’s not interested in ransoms. His motives are … purer than that.’

  ‘But he killed Anna?’ said Jo.

  Stein nodded. ‘Almost definitely.’

  ‘You said before he wasn’t a murderer.’

  ‘Not by nature,’ said Stein. ‘He probably killed Anna as a logical act. A necessity. Psychopaths have a very weak moral compass – they have trouble applying the same hierarchical value systems to crimes as neurotypical people. She may have pushed him to it. I think she was part of his grand scheme, but ultimately an expendable pawn.’

  A hand rapped on the door, and it opened. It was Heidi, her face flushed, and Jo’s first thought was that she was going into labour.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she said. Her voice was an octave higher than normal. ‘At St Edmund Hall. Jack’s in trouble.’

  Chapter 22

  Carrick drove them both, speeding down the High Street with the blues on. The ambulance was already parked outside the modest entrance to the college. Jo climbed out of the car before Carrick had applied the handbrake and ran to the front doors. Two paramedics carried a stretcher through, with Pryce lying on top. Blood saturated the front of his shirt, but his eyes were open.

  Jo rushed to his side as they reached the open doors of the ambulance. ‘Jack?’

  ‘Can you move please?’ said a paramedic, practically barging her aside. ‘We need to get him in.’

  Jo stepped back. Pryce’s skin was ghostly. ‘I’m sorry, boss,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I think I killed him,’ said Pryce weakly as they loaded him in. ‘He came at me … I didn’t mean to.’

  Jo watched as the ambulance doors closed, and before she could even gather her thoughts, it was driving off, sirens screaming. She stood in shock for a moment, then headed through the college doors with Carrick, where a porter in uniform stood on the edge of a small quad. His hands were covered in blood she assumed was Pryce’s.

  ‘He’s that way,’ he said, pointing to a stone passage. ‘It was some sort of fight.’ The man didn’t seem keen to move, so Jo and Carrick went alone, through the passage to a small paved area lined with bare flowerbeds filled with muddy footprints, and copious streaks of coagulating blood. A large bowie-knife lay in the middle of it. A man in a balaclava was slumped against a wall, lying in the dirt. Blood – a hell of a lot of blood – was pooled beneath him. After the shock faded Jo felt a flood of dull relief. The balaclava suggested this was their man, the one behind the kidnaps. And he was definitely dead. It was over.

  But in the back of her mind, she knew immediately why Pryce had been apologetic. Dead men couldn’t tell you anything.

  She had no gloves, but she made the judgement call. She had to know. She stepped into the flowerbed, gripped the bottom of the balaclava, and prised it off his head. She flinched back at the sight of the man’s face.

  ‘Mary, mother of God,’ said Carrick, crossing himself.

  The man had undergone extensive plastic surgery – patches on his skin even looked slightly different shades, and there were several deep scars, tinged in a shiny pink. It gave his face the appearance of a patchwork, a modern Frankenstein’s monster. One of his lips was non-existent, drawn back to show more of his upper teeth than was natural, and his nose reminded Jo of a boxer’s, crushed in at the top. The eyebrow over his left eye twisted sharply downwards, growing into a puckered scar at the top of his nose. The whole effect reminded Jo of a strange contorted fruit. The sort of thing she would have turned her nose up at as a girl, but which her dad would have forced her to eat, with a phrase like Don’t be a fusspot, love. It’s just grown a bit funny.

  But it wasn’t his appearance that shocked Jo. It was the past, coming right back to haunt her.

  ‘I know him, Andy.’

  He blinked, coming to his senses. ‘You do?’

  Jo nodded. She’d last seen him, not in the flesh, but in a courtroom sketch. He’d worn a protective face covering the whole time he stood in the dock, and the police barrister told her later that he’d been taking regular hits of morphine from a portable tank. The press had relished the speculation about what lay behind the mask. Ben had said it served the fucker right, and he was a good advert for seatbelts.

  ‘His name’s Frank Tyndle,’ she told Carrick.

  * * *

  For the second time in less than a week, she told the story of the pursuit almost ten years earlier, when Tyndle had jumped a red light and paid a terrible price. She left out the part about the ambulance – it didn’t seem relevant. They searched his pockets, and found only a phone, which they bagged straight away. They sealed off the college completely and waited for the crime scene officers. Carrick called the ID back to the station, where Heidi set about finding out everything she could about Tyndle’s recent movements, acquaintances, address. The phone would go to the analysts for any call and location data. If the girls were still alive, time was running out.

  Jo and Carrick went to speak with the porter, passing Mel Cropper and his CSO team coming the other way. Cropper had a sausage roll in his hand. ‘You might want to finish that before you go through,’ said Andy.

  The porter told them Pryce had come to the college around eleven, just to check in. About ten minutes later he heard a commotion, and came running. The fight was over already, with Pryce crawling on the ground, the other man dying. He couldn’t tell them how the balaclava’d man had got in, but it wasn’t through the front entrance.

  Once they were gloved up, boots on as well, Jo and Carrick stood back and watched the crime scene officers photographing the aftermath of the carnage.

  ‘I’m guessing he didn’t have much luck on Tinder,’ said Cropper. The team worked professionally. One lifted the dripping knife into a transparent plastic evidence bag. They placed a sheet over Tyndle, concealing his face, but the mess of it stayed with Jo. All the time, as they processed the scene, she thought about Pryce. If he died, because of Tyndle, because of her …

  She called the hospital, but they couldn’t give her
any news other than that he’d been rushed to trauma. If she wasn’t a family member, they couldn’t give out information.

  ‘I’m his colleague,’ said Jo. ‘Detective Sergeant Masters. I just need to know how he’s doing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Detective. You know the protocol. If you want to put an official request for information through the proper channels—’

  Jo hung up. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘This isn’t your fault, Jo,’ said Carrick.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ She pointed to Tyndle’s covered corpse. ‘Because that ugly bastard begged to differ.’ A couple of the CSOs turned to look, then Cropper spoke.

  ‘Are we okay to move him?’

  ‘Go for it,’ said Carrick. ‘We’ll need his prints and a DNA sample as soon as possible for cross-referencing.’

  They watched as the body was laid out, almost reverentially. From the gash up Tyndle’s inner thigh and the volume of blood loss, she guessed that the blade must have gone through his femoral artery. The CSO zipped up the bag.

  ‘He was in for nine years,’ said Jo. ‘He must have been released quite recently.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up.’

  Jo couldn’t help it. She looked around, trying to read the scene. ‘So what was he planning to do? Drag someone away?’

  ‘Given the blade he was carrying, I think he might have had other things on his mind,’ Carrick replied.

  Just like the profiler had said. He becomes a lot more dangerous.

  If he came there to kill, what did that mean for the girls?

  Heidi called back, and Carrick listened, asked a few questions, then related the info to Jo.

  Tyndle had been released from HMP Nottingham approximately five months ago, having served eight and a half years. His liaison officer had an address in Corby, and officers were on their way there as a matter of urgency. Next of kin was listed as a daughter, who they were trying to reach. He had no registered vehicle, but a clean licence after his historic ban had been lifted.

  ‘I want to get back to the station,’ Jo said. ‘You think Stratton will be okay with it?’

  ‘I suspect it might be all hands on deck now,’ said Carrick with a sombre look.

  * * *

  There were two more detectives in the squad room back at St Aldates. One she recognised as DC Kevin Carter, her old colleague from Bath. The last six months clearly hadn’t brought great improvements in his personal hygiene, because she smelled him from the corridor. The other she didn’t know, but she learned was Nina Creasey, who’d replaced her when she transferred to Oxford officially. Jo wondered why they’d been allocated Avon and Somerset personnel rather than other Thames Valley detectives.

  ‘Can’t keep out of trouble,’ muttered Carter as she stripped off her coat.

  ‘Good to see you too, Kev,’ she said, smiling as frostily as she could.

  Stratton barely batted an eyelid at Jo’s presence.

  ‘Corby’s a dead end,’ he said. ‘Tyndle spent a couple of nights there when he first got out, but he’s not been seen since. The daughter is estranged, lives in Canada. At the moment we have no idea what that fucker’s been doing for approximately three months.’

  ‘Planning,’ said Stein. He was sitting slightly apart from everyone else. ‘He didn’t want anything getting in the way of his singular vision.’

  Jo felt a surge of impatience. Pryce was lying in hospital, going through goodness knew what, and the profiler seemed to be enjoying it. The commentary really wasn’t helpful. For all his philosophising about narratives and antagonists, Tyndle had turned out to be a simple case of a man with a grudge. A pretty severe one – the loss of his face – but a grudge nonetheless.

  ‘Nina,’ said Stratton to Detective Creasey, ‘Rob Bridges tells me you’re something of an expert in mobile comms. I want you to be the contact for Tyndle’s phone.’

  Jo understood now the reason for the Avon and Somerset secondment. Rob Bridges, her old DCI, was friends with Stratton. There was less chance of embarrassing info getting out. And Rob would be only too happy to take some of the credit for a good outcome.

  ‘Any insights on where he might have taken the girls?’ she asked Stein.

  ‘None at all,’ said Stein. ‘It may have started with an element of gamesmanship, but circumstances might have forced his hand to more desperate measures.’

  Across the room, shoulders visibly sagged. Stratton lifted his gaze as if in prayer. ‘That doesn’t get out of the building,’ he said. ‘As far as the public are concerned, we’re still looking to find these young women alive.’

  Jo let her head drop, closing her eyes. She needed a moment to digest, and to chart back how the disappearance of one college girl a week ago had descended into this current hell. If she had done something different at any stage, might things have turned out otherwise? Why hadn’t Frank Tyndle been the first person in her mind when they realised this was connected to her? Maybe because she’d never truly thought she was connected to him, or in any way responsible for what happened. It could have been any uniform in pursuit that day. And he was the one who had skipped the red light, causing the accident that disfigured him. He was the idiot who hadn’t bothered with a seatbelt.

  But more than that, it really didn’t logically make sense. How could he have known she was in the vehicle on his tail? Her name had never been connected to the broader investigation. In the tribunal that followed the crash, which was prompted by the miscarriage in the ambulance, Jo was never called on to testify in person in the courtroom. And in any document, she was named simply as P2, to protect her identity. Tyndle would have needed friends in high places to track her down.

  Not that any of the nuance would matter to DCI Stratton. If he needed a reason to throw her under the bus, this was it.

  The phone on Heidi’s desk rang, and she listened, then replaced the receiver. ‘That was the hospital. Jack’s stable and conscious.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Jo, and she meant it.

  ‘We need to interview him,’ said the DCI. ‘If Tyndle said anything, anything at all …’

  ‘I’m on it, sir,’ said Jo.

  Carter had folded his arms, shifting his bulk slightly to block the way to the door. ‘We’ll clean up the mess here, Sarge. I can have a chat with Detective Pryce.’

  ‘No, let her go,’ said Carrick. ‘She and Jack have been working together. A friendly face will do him good, I’m sure.’

  Jo was grateful for the support. When Carter didn’t move quick enough, she shoved past, harder than necessary.

  She was crossing to her car when she was approached by a middle-aged man in a suit and a long coat. ‘Detective Masters?’ he called.

  She backed away. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Tim Lester, Associated Press. Is it true these crimes are all related to you personally?’

  She smiled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘A source has told us the locations of the crimes are linked to your name.’

  ‘I really can’t comment,’ said Jo, turning away.

  ‘They’re calling his victims the “Josie Girls”,’ said the journalist. He had a Dictaphone in his hand now. Jo opened her car door.

  ‘Was the death at St Edmund Hall this morning connected in some way?’

  Jo slammed the door. Her hand was shaking as she started the engine. The journalist stood outside, coat flapping in the wind. She pulled away.

  So much for keeping things in the building. Who the fuck had leaked it? Carter was an obvious choice, but an easy conclusion to jump to. It could just as easily be one of the civilian staff who’d got wind. She phoned Heidi on the way and told her.

  ‘Better pass it on to Stratton,’ Jo said.

  ‘He will be happy,’ said Heidi. ‘Say hi to Jack for me.’

  * * *

  Pryce was still in intensive care, sickly pale, lying half-propped up in bed with a drip in his arm. One hand was heavily bandaged, the other in a sling.

&n
bsp; ‘Christ, how much blood did you lose?’ said Jo with the best smile she could muster. She hoped the forced bonhomie might make him feel better. But when he looked across at her, head rolling on the pillow, she could see he was in a lot of pain. His eyes were sunken, his forehead damp with sweat.

  ‘About two pints, apparently,’ he said. ‘My hands got the worst. The one to the gut is pretty shallow.’

  ‘I feel bad now. I didn’t even bring you any grapes.’

  He laughed, and then winced. ‘No joking, please.’ He pressed a button to deliver a kick of painkillers, then rested his head back on the pillow. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  Jo nodded. ‘We’ve got a lead, though. His name’s Frank Tyndle.’

  ‘History?’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Jo after a pause. She gave him the abbreviated version.

  ‘It makes sense,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘You ruined his life, so he’s ruining yours. Quid pro quo.’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Jo.

  ‘You don’t buy it?’

  ‘I don’t … I don’t know. When you put it like that, it seems a bit too easy. He doesn’t really match the profile that Stein came up with. I mean, he didn’t, anyway. Stein’s ideas seem malleable to say the least.’

  ‘I’ve never put much faith in them,’ said Pryce. ‘Seem to state the obvious most of the time.’

  A nurse came in to check Pryce, taking his pulse and blood pressure. Jo waited until they were alone again.

  ‘The Tyndle we knew back then was good at one thing – keeping people in line through intimidation. I wouldn’t say he was particularly bright, or forward-planning. If someone pissed him off, he broke their legs, or burned down their house. This is so much more elaborate.’

  ‘Sounds like you took a lot more from him than nine years though,’ said Pryce. ‘With a face like that, the psychological effects alone would be devastating.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Jo. Maybe I just don’t want to believe it myself. ‘But I can’t see the connection to Anna Mull. I mean, if she’s the accomplice. How the hell does she come into contact with Frank Tyndle?’