by Val McDermid
Leon shook his head admiringly. ‘I never said I had an interest in the man. But if that’s who you want to talk about, be my guest.’
‘My, they’re teaching them subtlety these days,’ McGowan said acidly, striking a match and applying it to his pipe. He sucked and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that swallowed whole the feeble spiral from Leon’s cigarette. ‘What’s Jacko supposed to have done? Whatever it is, I bet you never manage to nick him for it.’
Leon remained silent. It nearly killed him, but he managed it. This clever old bastard wasn’t going to put one over on him, he thought, almost convincing himself.
‘I haven’t seen Jacko in years,’ McGowan finally said. ‘He’s not that keen on faces who remember what he was like when he had all his limbs. He hates being reminded of what he lost.’
‘You’d think what he’s got now would be compensation,’ Leon said. ‘Great job, more money than any reasonable geezer could spend, gorgeous wife, house the size of a stately home. I mean, how many Olympic gold medallists got a better deal than that?’
McGowan slowly shook his head. ‘Nothing can compensate a man who thinks he’s a god for the discovery of his vulnerability. That lass of his was lucky she got out from under. She’d have been the obvious choice when it came to making somebody pay for what the gods had done to Jacko Vance.’
‘Jimmy said you knew more about Jacko than anybody else.’
‘Only superficially. I followed his career, I interviewed him. I probably caught a few glimpses behind the mask, but I wouldn’t say I knew him. I can’t think of anybody that did. Really, there’s nothing I want to say about Jacko Vance that I haven’t already put in writing.’
McGowan breathed out another plume of smoke. Leon thought it smelled like Black Forest gateau, all cherries and chocolate. He couldn’t imagine wanting to smoke a pudding. ‘Jimmy also said that you kept cuttings files on the athletes that really interested you.’
‘My, you did get a lot out of old Jimmy. He must have taken to you in a big way. Mind you, he’s always had a lot of respect for black athletes. He reckoned they had to work twice as hard as anybody else to get their start. I suppose he reckoned it was probably much the same in the police.’
‘Or maybe I’m just a good interviewer,’ Leon said drily. ‘Any chance of you letting me take a look at your cuttings?’
‘Any in particular, Detective?’ McGowan teased.
‘I’d be guided by you as to what was interesting, sir.’
McGowan, his eyes firmly on the basketball, said, ‘A career as long as mine, it’d be hard to pick out particular highlights.’
‘I’m sure you could manage it.’
‘This finishes in ten minutes. Perhaps you’d care to come back and look at my files?’
Half an hour later, Leon was sitting in a room in McGowan’s two-bedroomed terrace that managed to be both spartan and cluttered. The only furniture was a battered leather swivel chair that looked as if it had seen service in the Spanish Civil War, and a scarred and scratched gun-metal grey desk. All four walls were covered with industrial metal shelving and packed with shoeboxes, each with a label stuck to the outer edge. ‘This is incredible,’ he said.
‘I always promised myself that when I retired, I’d write a book,’ McGowan said. ‘Amazing how we delude ourselves. I used to travel the world covering the top sporting events. Now my world’s shrunk to the satellite screens in the Dog and Gun. You’d think I’d be depressed. But the funny thing is, I’m not. I’ve never been so bloody contented all my born days. It’s reminded me that what I always liked best about sport was watching it. Freedom without responsibility, that’s what I’ve got now.’
‘A dangerous mixture,’ Leon said.
‘A liberating mixture. Three years ago, you turning up would have had me sniffing a story. I’d not have rested until I’d found out what was going on. Now, it’s hard to imagine how I could care less. I’m more excited about the Vegas fight on Saturday than I could ever be about anything Jacko Vance has said or done.’ He pointed to a shelf. ‘Jacko Vance. Fifteen shoeboxes full. Enjoy yourself, lad. I’ve got an appointment with a tennis match at the Dog and Gun. If you’re gone before I get back, just pull the front door closed behind you.’
When Mike McGowan returned just before midnight, Leon was still working his way systematically through the cuttings. The journalist brought him a mug of instant coffee and said, ‘I hope they’re paying you overtime, lad.’
‘More of a labour of love, you might say,’ Leon said wryly.
‘Yours or your boss’s?’
Leon thought for a moment. ‘One of my mates. Call it a debt of honour.’
‘The only kind worth paying. I’ll leave you to it. Try not to slam the door behind you when you go.’
Leon was half aware of the sounds of someone getting ready for bed: floorboards creaking, plumbing grumbling, a toilet flushing. Then silence apart from the whisper of yellowed newsprint.
It was almost two when he found what he thought he might just be looking for. There was only one cutting, a fleeting mention. But it was a start. When he let himself out into the dark and empty street, Leon Jackson was whistling.
Her eyes were as candid as any he could remember. She pushed the last morsel of the smoked duck on to her fork, speared a final mangetout and said, ‘But surely it has an effect on you, spending so much time and energy getting inside such twisted logic?’
Tony took longer than he needed to finish his mouthful of polenta. ‘You learn to build Chinese walls,’ he said at last. ‘You know but you don’t know. You feel but you don’t feel. I imagine it’s similar to being a news journalist. How do you sleep at night after you’ve been out reporting on something like the Dunblane massacre or the Lockerbie bombing?’
‘Yes, but we’re always outside the event. You have to get inside or you fail, surely?’
‘You’re not always outside the event, though, are you? When you met Jacko, the story invaded your life. You must have had to build walls between what you knew of the man personally and what you reported to the world. When his ex-girlfriend was doing her kiss-and-tell revelations with the tabloids, you can’t have looked at that as just another story. Didn’t it affect the way you viewed your world?’ he said, seizing the first chance he’d had to get her talking about her husband.
Micky pushed her hair back from her face. Twelve years on, he could see the contempt for Jillie Woodrow hadn’t grown less. ‘What a bitch,’ she muttered. ‘But Jacko said it was mostly fiction, and I believe him. So it didn’t really get under my defences.’
The arrival of the waiter let her off the hook and he cleared their plates in silence. Then, alone again, Tony repeated the question.
‘You’re the psychologist,’ she parried, reaching into her bag and producing a pack of Marlboro. ‘Do you mind if I…?’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t realize you did.’
‘Only after dinner. A maximum of five a day,’ she said, a droll twist to her mouth. ‘The control freak’s control freak, that’s me.’
The expression gave him a jolt. The one and only time he’d used the expression, he’d been talking about a compulsive killer who had almost robbed him of his own life. To hear it from her lips was dislocating and strange.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ she said, inhaling her first mouthful of smoke with an air of sensuous pleasure.
‘Just a stray memory,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of very bizarre resonances kicking around inside my head.’
‘I bet. Something I’ve always wondered is how you know when you’re getting it right in a profile.’ She inhaled deeply and blew pale filtered smoke down her nostrils, an expression of interest on her face.
He gave her an appraising look. It was now or never. ‘The same way any of us work out anything about people. A mixture of knowledge and experience. Plus knowing the right question to ask.’
‘Such as?’
The interest was so genuine he almost fe
lt guilty for what he was about to do to their pleasant evening. ‘Doesn’t Jacko mind that Betsy’s in love with you?’
Her face froze and her pupils dilated in a panic reflex. After a long moment she swallowed and managed a faint laugh. ‘If you were trying to wrong-foot me, you certainly succeeded.’ It was one of the best recoveries he’d ever seen, but he hadn’t imagined the confession in her eyes.
‘I’m no danger to you,’ he said softly. ‘Confidentiality is second nature to me. But I’m not a fool either. You and Jacko, it’s as fake as a nine-bob note. Betsy was there first. Oh, there were rumours. But you and Jacko had the most public courtship since Charles and Diana. It killed the gossip.’
‘Why are you bringing this up?’ she asked.
‘We’re both here because we’re curious. I’ve answered all the questions you asked me. You can return the compliment, or not.’ His smile was, he hoped, warm.
‘God,’ she said wonderingly. ‘You have got a nerve.’
‘How do you think I got to be the best?’
Micky looked speculatively at him, waving away the waiter who was approaching with the dessert menus. ‘Bring us another bottle of the Zinfandel,’ she said as an afterthought. She leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘What do you want to ask?’
‘What’s in it for Jacko? Surely he’s not gay?’
Micky shook her head emphatically. ‘Jillie dumped Jacko after his accident because she didn’t want to be with a man who wasn’t perfect. He swore he would never enter into another sexual relationship where his emotions were engaged. He needed a decoy to keep the women away from him, I needed a man to hide Betsy behind.’
‘Mutual benefit.’
‘Oh, yes, mutual benefit. And to be fair to Jacko, he’s never tried to renege on the deal. I don’t know what he does for sex, though I suspect well-paid call girls come into it. Frankly, I don’t care as long as he never embarrasses me.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and gave him the accomplished frank gaze she normally directed at the camera.
‘I’m amazed that someone who’s paid to be curious about other people is so lacking in curiosity about her own husband.’
Her smile was ironic. ‘If there’s one thing that eleven years of marriage to Jacko has taught me, it’s that nobody gets to know Jacko. It’s not that I think he tells lies,’ she said consideringly, ‘just that I don’t think he tells very much of the truth. Different people get little bits of Jacko’s truth, but I don’t think anybody gets it all.’
‘How do you mean?’ Tony picked up the discreetly delivered bottle of wine, refilling Micky’s glass and topping up his almost full one.
‘I get to see Jacko behaving in public like the perfect, solicitous husband, but I know that’s an act. When there’s only the three of us around, he’s so distant it’s hard to believe we’ve all lived under the same roof for the last dozen years. When he’s working he acts like people expect a TV celeb to behave—perfectionist, a bit OTT, yelling at the crew and his PA when things don’t get done just so. But with the public, he’s Mr Charm. Then, when it comes to raising money, he’s a hard-headed businessman. Do you know that for every pound he makes for charity, he earns two for himself?’
Tony shook his head. ‘I suppose he’d argue that he’s generating funds for the charity they wouldn’t get otherwise.’
‘And why should he work for free? Right. Me, when I do charity events, I don’t even take my expenses. But then there’s the other side, the volunteer work he does with people who are terminally ill or severely damaged after accidents. He spends hours by their bedsides, listening, talking, and nobody knows what goes on between them. One time a journalist tried to sneak in a tape recorder to reveal “the secret heart of Jacko Vance”. Jacko found out about it and he smashed the tape recorder. He literally stamped it to pieces. They thought he was going to do the same to the journalist, but the guy had the good sense to make his legs do the walking.’
‘A man who likes his privacy,’ Tony said.
‘Oh, he gets plenty of that. He’s got a house in Northumberland, out in the middle of nowhere. I’ve seen it once in twelve years and that was only because Bets and I were driving up to Scotland and we decided to drop in on him. I practically had to force him to make us a cup of tea. I’ve never felt less welcome in my whole life.’ Micky smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, you could say that Jacko likes his privacy. But that’s OK with me. Better that than hanging around in my face all the time.’
‘He can’t have been very pleased to have the police poking their noses in, then,’ Tony said. ‘After Shaz Bowman’s visit, I mean.’
‘You’re not kidding. It was actually me who called the police, you know. The way Betsy and Jacko reacted, you’d think I’d shopped them on a murder rap. It was a nightmare, trying to make the pair of them see that we couldn’t ignore the fact that this poor woman had been at the house not long before she was murdered.’
‘Just as well one of you has a sense of duty,’ Tony said drily.
‘Well, yes. Besides, at least one other person knew she was coming to the house—that other police officer that Jacko spoke to. It wasn’t as if we could hope to keep it to ourselves.’
‘I feel so guilty about Shaz,’ Tony said, half-turning away. ‘I knew she was worrying away at some theory of her own, but I didn’t think she’d take action on it without clearing it with me.’
‘You mean you don’t know what she was working on either?’ Micky said incredulously. ‘The cops who came to the house didn’t seem to have much of a clue, but I thought you’d be sure to know.’
Tony shrugged. ‘Not really. I know she had some idea that there was a serial killer preying on teenage girls and that he might be a celebrity stalker as well. But I didn’t have the details. It was only supposed to be a training exercise, not the real thing.’
Micky shivered and emptied her glass. ‘Can we change the subject? It’s bad for the digestion, talking about murder.’
For once, he wasn’t about to argue. The gamble had paid off handsomely. And he’d never been greedy. ‘OK. Tell me how you got the Agriculture Minister to admit his involvement with that biotechnology company.’
Carol stared down the three mutinous faces opposite her. ‘I know nobody likes stakeout work. But that’s the way we’re going to catch our man. At least the intervals between his outings are pretty short, so the chances are we’re going to get lucky within a few days. Now, this is the way I want it to work. We’re going to do it single-handed. I realize that makes it tougher, but you know what budgets are like. I’ve spoken to uniform and they’ve agreed to let us have some bodies to cover during daylight hours. Each night at ten, two of you will pick up the surveillance. You’ll each work two nights on and one off. You will each use the other as back-up if it looks like we’ve got something going off. We start today. The first watchers are out there now. Any questions?’
‘What if we get clocked?’ Lee asked.
‘We don’t get clocked,’ Carol said. ‘But if the unthinkable happens, you pull off, call your oppo and swap targets at the first opportune moment. I appreciate this is a tough operation with such a low body count. But I have every confidence that you can pull this off. Don’t disappoint me, please.’
‘Ma’am?’ Di said.
‘Yes?’
‘If we’re really that tight on staffing levels, why don’t we prioritize our two suspects and focus on the most likely with all our resources?’
It was an awkward question, and an intelligent one. It was one Carol herself had debated with Nelson over breakfast that morning. It had taken her mind off a growing fear that was coming to obsess her. ‘Good question,’ she said now. ‘I considered it myself. Then I thought, what if we go for the wrong candidate and we only find that out after another fatal fire?’ She let the question hang in the air. ‘So I decided it was probably better in terms of public policy to opt for thin cover over both suspects.’
Di nodded. ‘Fair enough. I just wondered.’ ‘Right. Sort out the
rota among yourselves, and knock off now until ten. Keep me posted. Anything happens, I’m only a phone call away. Don’t keep me in the dark.’
‘When you say only a phone call away, ma’am…’ Tommy drawled suggestively.
‘I want to be there when you make an arrest.’
‘Aye, that’s what I thought you meant.’
His feigned disappointment was aimed at annoying her, she knew. Determined not to show he’d succeeded, Carol smiled sweetly. ‘Believe me, Tommy, you should be grateful for that. Now get out of here and let me get some work done.’ Her hand was on the phone before she’d finished speaking. She hit the first number on a list in front of her, tapping her pad with a pencil as Seaford’s finest trooped out with all the brio of a snail on Valium. ‘Close the door behind you, please,’ she called. ‘Hello? Force control? This is DCI Jordan from East Yorkshire. I need to talk to someone about Mispers…I sent out an information request about teenage girls…’
Tony eased the car on to the slip road, wondering whether he’d enjoy driving more if he had one of those ultimate driving machines he saw in all the glossy adverts instead of a clapped out old Vauxhall. Somehow, he doubted it. But that wasn’t what he was supposed to be thinking about as his windscreen wipers slapped the slanting Yorkshire rain away to reveal a distant prospect of Bradford. At the ring road, he followed the achingly precise instructions he’d been given and eventually pulled up outside a terraced house whose obsessive neatness was matched only by the military precision of its single flower bed. Even the curtains appeared to have been drawn back so that exactly the same amount of lining showed at each side of the window.
The doorbell was a nasty insistent buzz. It opened to reveal a man Tony had spotted at every Jacko Vance event he’d attended. He’d persuaded him and a couple of other camera-toting enthusiasts to part with names and addresses on the pretext that he was doing a study of the phenomenon of fame as seen through the eyes of the fans rather than the famous. It was meaningless drivel, but it made them feel important enough to be co-operative.
