by Val McDermid
He reached for a sandwich, checked the filling, then looked up with a smile that appeared entirely free from guile. ‘I’m going to shake the tree,’ he said.
Detective Inspector Colin Wharton looked like a refugee from one of those dreadfully predictable gritty northern cops-and-robbers dramas that the networks churned out to fill the gap between the late news and bedtime, Micky thought. Once handsome in a craggy way, too much drink and junk food had blurred his features and shrouded his blue eyes in heavy pouches. She imagined him on a second marriage which would be in trouble; the kids from his first marriage would be the teenagers from hell; and he’d have a vague but worrying recurring pain somewhere in his internal organs. She crossed her legs demurely and gave him the smile that had reassured a thousand studio guests. She just knew he’d be a complete sucker for it. Him and Detective Constable Sidekick, who looked one step away from asking for her autograph.
She glanced at her watch. ‘Jacko should be back any minute. It’ll be the traffic. Same with Betsy. My personal assistant.’
‘You mentioned that,’ Wharton said. ‘If it’s all the same to you, we might as well get started. We can talk to Ms Thorne and Mr Vance when they get here.’ He consulted a folder spread across his tightly trousered lap. ‘I’m told you spoke to DC Bowman the day before she died. How did that come about?’
‘We’ve got two phone lines—one for me and one for Jacko. They’re ex-directory, very private. Only a handful of people have the numbers. I switch mine over to the mobile when I’m out and DC Bowman came through on that. It must have been about half past eight on Friday morning—I was with one of my researchers at the time, she could probably confirm that.’ Realizing she was wallowing in inconsequentiality, too obvious a marker for nervousness, Micky paused for a moment.
‘But it wasn’t your researcher?’ Wharton prompted her.
‘No. It was a voice I didn’t recognize. She said she was Detective Constable Sharon Bowman from the Metropolitan Police and she wanted to arrange an appointment with Jacko. My husband.’
Wharton nodded encouragingly. ‘And you said?’
‘I told her she’d come through on my line and she apologized and said she’d been told this was his private number. She asked if he was there, and when I said he was away she said could she leave a message. I don’t normally act as Jacko’s secretary, but since she was with the police and I didn’t know what it was about, I thought it would be best just to make a note of what she wanted and pass it on to him.’ She smiled, aiming for the self-deprecating air of a woman unsure of herself faced with authority. It was a blatant performance, but Wharton didn’t seem to notice.
‘Sensible approach, Ms Morgan,’ he said. ‘What was the message?’
‘She said it was merely a formality, a routine matter, but she’d like to interview him in connection with a case she was working on. Because of her other commitments, she said it would have to be Saturday, but she’d happily fit in with his arrangements. The time and place would be up to him. And she left a number where he could get back to her.’
‘Do you still have that number?’ Wharton asked, just another standard question.
Micky picked up a notepad and held it out to him. ‘As you see, we start a fresh page for each day. It’s a catchall—phone messages, programme ideas, domestic bits and pieces.’ She handed it over, pointing to a few lines near the top of the page.
Wharton read, ‘Det. Con. Sharon Bowman. Jacko. i/v??? Saturday??? you name time + place. 307 4676 Sgt Devine.’ That confirmed the telephone statement Chris Devine had already given them, but Wharton wanted to double-check. ‘This number…is it London?’
Micky nodded. ‘Yes. 0171. Same code as ours, that’s why I didn’t bother writing it down. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? She was with the Met.’
‘She was on secondment to a unit in Leeds,’ he said heavily. ‘That’s why she was living there, Ms Morgan.’
‘Oh God, of course,’ she said hollowly. ‘Do you know, for some reason that just hadn’t registered. How odd.’
‘Indeed,’ Wharton said. ‘So, you passed the message on to your husband and that was that?’ he said.
‘I left the message on his voice mail. He mentioned later that he’d arranged for her to come to the house on Saturday morning. He knew I wouldn’t mind since Betsy and I were going off on Le Shuttle on a freebie. Perks of the job.’ She gave him the full-beam smile again. Wharton wondered sourly why the women in his life never managed to look so gratified when they spoke to him.
Before he could ask the next question, he heard footfalls on the parquet floor of the hall. He half-turned as the door opened behind him. His first impression of Jacko Vance was a sense of tremendous energy contained within expensive tailoring. There was something irresistibly watchable about him, even doing something as banal as crossing the room and extending his left hand in a gesture of welcome. ‘Inspector Wharton, I presume,’ Vance said warmly, affecting not to notice the policeman’s fluster as he half-rose, reached out with the wrong hand then clumsily shifted his papers and grabbed at the proffered hand in an awkward shake. ‘I’m Jacko Vance,’ he said, pretending a humility Micky recognized as false as her own. ‘Desperate business, this.’ Vance turned away from the detective, nodding a friendly greeting at the hovering constable and dropped on to the sofa next to his wife. He patted her thigh. ‘All right, Micky?’ His voice dripped the same concern he always showed the terminally ill.
‘We’ve just been going over DC Bowman’s phone call,’ she said.
‘Right. Sorry I’m late. Got held up in traffic in the West End,’ he said, his mouth curling upwards in a familiar self-deprecating smile. ‘So, what can I tell you, officer?’
‘Ms Morgan passed a message on to you from DC Bowman, is that right?’
‘Absolutely,’ Vance said confidently. ‘I called the number she’d left and spoke to a detective sergeant whose name I have completely forgotten. I said that if DC Bowman came to the house on Saturday morning between half past nine and noon, I would see her then.’
‘Very generous, a busy man like yourself,’ Wharton said.
Vance raised his eyebrows. ‘I always try to help the authorities when I can. It didn’t inconvenience me in any way. All I had planned for the day was to catch up on some personal paperwork then drive up to my cottage in Northumberland in time for an early night. I was running a charity half-marathon at Sunderland on Sunday, you see.’ He leaned back negligently, fully expecting his throwaway line to be noted, believed and filed away in support of his innocence.
‘What time did DC Bowman arrive?’ Wharton asked.
Vance pulled a face and turned to Micky. ‘What time was it? You were just leaving, weren’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ she confirmed. ‘Must have been around half past nine. Betsy could probably tell you more exactly. She’s the only one in the house with any sense of time.’ She smiled wryly, amazed at how ready this policeman was to accept that two major TV personalities who anchored key programmes couldn’t measure time instinctively to the last half-minute. ‘We more or less passed on the doorstep. Jacko was on the phone upstairs, so I pointed her in here, and we were off.’
‘I didn’t keep her waiting more than a couple of minutes,’ Vance continued seamlessly. ‘She apologized for interrupting my weekend, but I explained that in this job, we don’t really have weekends. We take time for ourselves when we can, don’t we, darling?’ He gazed adoringly at her, slipping his arm round her shoulders.
‘Not often enough,’ Micky sighed.
Wharton cleared his throat and said, ‘Can you tell me what it was DC Bowman wanted to talk to you about?’
‘You mean, you don’t know?’ Micky demanded, the dormant news reporter inside her springing into action. ‘A police officer comes all the way from Yorkshire to London to interview someone with as high a profile as Jacko, and you don’t know what it was in aid of?’ She looked astonished, leaning forward, forearms on thighs, hands spread open.
Wh
arton shifted in his seat and stared fixedly at a point on the wall between the two long windows. ‘DC Bowman was attached to a new unit. Strictly speaking, she should not have been on operational duties at present. We think we know what she was working on, but as yet we have no independent corroboration of that. It’d help us a lot if Mr Vance could just tell us what transpired between the two of them on Saturday morning.’ He breathed out heavily through his nose and shot them a quick look that mingled embarrassment and pleading.
‘No problem,’ Vance said easily. ‘DC Bowman was very apologetic about invading my privacy with her questions, but she said she was working on a series of missing teenage girls. She thought they had been lured away from home by the same individual. It appeared that some of these girls had been at one of my public appearances shortly before they dropped out of sight and she wondered if some nutter was targeting my fans. She said she wanted to show me pictures of the girls, just in case I’d noticed them talking to a particular person.’
‘One of your entourage, you mean?’ Wharton prompted, proud of knowing the right word.
Vance laughed, a rich baritone laugh. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Inspector, but I don’t exactly have an entourage. When I’m doing the programme, I have a team who work very closely with me. Sometimes when I’m doing PAs—public appearances, that is—my producer or my researcher will come along to keep me company and provide a bit of back-up. But that apart, anything I spend on minders or whatever comes out of my pocket. And since most of the work I do involves earning cash for charities as well, it seems crazy to spend any more than is absolutely necessary. So, as I explained to DC Bowman, there are no loyal retainers. What there is, however, is a hard core of devotees. There are, I suppose, a couple of dozen fans who turn up regularly at virtually every event I do. Strange people, but I’d always considered them harmless.’
‘It’s a mark of celebrity,’ Micky said matter-of-factly. ‘If you don’t have your retinue of attendant weirdos, you’re nobody. Badly dressed men in anoraks and women in polyester slacks and acrylic cardies. All of them with dreadful haircuts. Not the sort your average teenage girl would run off with, take it from me.’
‘Which is pretty much what I told DC Bowman,’ Vance continued. They were so smooth, so natural, he thought. Maybe it was about time they made some programmes together. He made a mental note to explore the idea with his producer. ‘She showed me a few photographs of the girls she was concerned about, but none of them rang any bells.’ His shrug was disarming. ‘Not surprising. I can sign upwards of three hundred autographs at a PA. Well, I say sign…scrawl would be more like it.’ He looked ruefully at his prosthetic hand. ‘Writing’s one of the many things I can’t do properly any more.’
There was a moment’s silence. To Wharton it felt as long as Remembrance Sunday. He searched around for a meaningful question. ‘How did DC Bowman respond, sir? To your lack of recognition, I mean.’
‘She seemed disappointed,’ Vance said. ‘But she admitted it had always been a long shot. I said I was sorry not to have been more help, and she left. That must have been around…oh, half past ten, thereabouts?’
‘So she was here for about an hour? That seems quite a long time for a few questions,’ Wharton said, punctilious rather than suspicious.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Vance agreed. ‘But I did keep her waiting a few minutes, then I made us both some coffee, we did the usual small talk. People always want to know behind-the-scenes gossip about Vance’s Visits. Then I had to go through all the photographs. I took my time. Missing girls is too serious a subject to take lightly. I mean, no contact with their families after all this time—years, in some cases, according to DC Bowman—chances are they could have been murdered. It merited my attention.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ Wharton said heavily, wishing he hadn’t bothered asking. ‘I don’t suppose she mentioned any plans she might have for the rest of the day?’
Vance shook his head. ‘Sorry, Inspector. I had the impression she had another appointment, but she didn’t say where or with whom.’
‘What gave you that impression, sir?’ Wharton looked up, for the first time feeling he might be doing more than going through the motions.
Vance frowned for a moment, as if thinking. ‘After I’d finished with the photographs, I offered to make fresh coffee. But she looked at her watch and seemed startled. As if she hadn’t realized the time. She said she had to be going, she’d no idea we’d been talking for so long. She was out the door within minutes.’
Wharton closed his notebook. ‘As I think I should be too, sir. I very much appreciate both of you taking the time to talk to me. If there’s anything else, which I very much doubt, I’ll be in touch.’ He rose and gave his junior officer a ‘let’s go’ jerk of the head.
‘You don’t need to speak to Betsy?’ Micky asked. ‘She shouldn’t be long.’
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ Wharton said. ‘Frankly, I think DC Bowman’s visit here was almost certainly nothing to do with her death. We just have to tie up the loose ends.’
Vance crossed to the door and opened it to usher them out. ‘A shame you have to be dragged down here when the real work’s waiting for you in Yorkshire,’ he said, his sympathetic smile adding weight to the commiseration in his voice.
Micky said goodbye and watched from the window as Vance saw the police officers off the premises. She wasn’t sure what her husband was hiding. But she knew him well enough to know that what she had just heard was only a distant relative of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
When he walked back into the room, she was leaning against the fireplace. ‘Are you going to tell me what you didn’t tell them?’ she asked, her eyes giving him the shrewd appraisal that could always penetrate his glossy surface.
Vance grinned. ‘You’re a witch, Micky. Yes, I’ll tell you what I didn’t tell them. I did recognize one of the girls whose picture Bowman showed me.’
Micky’s eyes widened. ‘You did? How come? Where from?’
‘No need to panic,’ he said scornfully. ‘It’s perfectly innocent. When she went missing, her parents contacted us. Said she was my biggest fan, blah, blah, blah, never missed a show, blah, blah, blah. Wanted us to put out an appeal for her to contact them.’
‘And did you?’
‘Course not. It wouldn’t fit the format of the programme at all. Somebody from the office sent them a sympathetic letter and we got one of the tabloids to run a story saying, “Jacko begs runaway to phone home”.’
‘So why didn’t you tell Wharton? If you did something for the press, there’ll be cuttings somewhere! They could dig them out and then you’ll be in deep shit.’
‘How? They don’t even know what Bowman was doing, which doesn’t sound like they’ve got her files, does it? Look, Mick, I never met the girl. I never spoke to her. But if I tell DI Plod I recognized her…shit, Mick, you know the police are the leakiest sieve in town. Next thing you know, it’ll be “Jacko in murder quiz” splashed all over the front pages. No thanks. I can do without it. They can’t connect me to a single one of Bowman’s runaways. The king of deniability, remember?’
Micky shook her head, admiring his chutzpah in spite of herself. ‘More like Teflon Man,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Jacko. When it comes to playing the audience like a fiddle, even I can’t hold a candle to you.’
He crossed to her and kissed her cheek. ‘Never try to bullshit a bullshitter.’
Carol walked next morning into her office to find her crew had wrong-footed her by being there ahead of her. Tommy Taylor sprawled in the chair opposite hers, legs wide apart to emphasize his masculinity. Lee had the window cracked open, blowing his smoke out to join the traffic fumes. Di was in her usual position leaning against the wall, arms folded over her badly fitting suit. Carol itched to drag her kicking and screaming to the January sales to kit the woman out in clothes that would both fit and flatter her instead of the expensive and nasty st
uff she chose now.
Carol made straight for her bastion behind the desk, flipping open her briefcase as she sat. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Our serial arsonist.’
‘Crunchy nut cornflake,’ Lee said.
‘Actually, not,’ Carol said. ‘Apparently, our firebug is as sane as you or me. Well, me, anyway, since I can’t speak for you three. According to a psychologist whose judgement I trust implicitly, we’re not dealing with a psychopath. The man who’s setting these fires has a straightforward criminal motive. And that points to Jim Pendlebury’s part-timers.’ The three stared at her as if she’d suddenly slipped into Swedish.
‘You what?’ Lee managed to speak first.
Carol distributed copies of the list the fire chief had given her. ‘I want deep background checks into these men. Particular attention to financial details. And I don’t want them to get so much as a sniff that we’re interested.’
Tommy Taylor found his voice. ‘You’re accusing firemen?’
‘I think you’ll find we’re supposed to call them firefighters these days,’ Carol said mildly. ‘I’m not accusing anybody yet, Sergeant. I’m trying to gather enough information on which we can base a decision.’
‘Firemen die in fires,’ Di Earnshaw sniped mutinously. ‘They get injured, they inhale smoke. Why would a fireman set fires? He’d have to be a real sicko, and you just said this bloke isn’t. Surely that’s a contradiction in terms?’
‘He’s not sick,’ Carol said firmly. ‘Desperate, maybe, but he’s not suffering from a mental illness. We’re looking for someone who’s so deep in debt he’s lost sight of anything except how to get out of it. It’s not that he wants to put his mates at risk; he’s just not allowing himself to include them in the equation.’
Taylor shook his head sceptically. ‘It’s a helluva slur on the fire service,’ he protested.
‘No more so than outside inquiries into allegations of police corruption. And we all know that happens.’ Carol’s voice was dry. She shuffled the case papers back into her briefcase then looked up at them. ‘You lot still here?’
