The Mermaids Singing

by Val McDermid

  Cross scowled. ‘Gays get treated same as everybody else by the lads,’ he blustered.

  Tony wished he’d kept his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted was to get into a head-to-head with Tom Cross on Bradfield police’s ‘gays and blacks don’t count’ policy. He decided to ignore the comment and forged on. ‘Also, there’s nothing in what we know about the killer’s behaviour to suggest that he’s an upfront S&M gay man. It’s clearly not from the gay scene that he’s selecting victims. However, McConnell sounds more interesting from your point of view. Do we know what he does for a living?’

  ‘He’s the manager of a gym in the city centre. The same gym that Gareth Finnegan used,’ Cross said.

  ‘Hasn’t he been questioned before?’ Brandon asked. Cross shrugged.

  ‘One of Inspector Matthews’s team has spoken to him,’ Carol butted in. ‘I noticed the report when I was preparing the material for Dr Hill,’ she added hastily, when she saw the beginnings of a scowl on Cross’s face. God forbid he should think she was trying to undermine him. ‘My dustbin memory,’ she continued, trying to make a joke of it. ‘As far as I can remember, it was simply a routine enquiry, checking up on whether Gareth had had any particular buddies or contacts at the gym.’

  ‘Do we know McConnell’s domestic arrangements?’ Tony asked.

  ‘He shares a house with another couple of shirt-lifters,’ Cross said. ‘He says they’re both in the bodybuilding game too. So, is he in the frame or not?’

  Tony doodled in the margin of his notes. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘What are the chances of getting a search warrant?’

  ‘On what we’ve got at the moment? Not good. And we’ve no grounds for a search without one. Not even in our wildest dreams can we claim that a street assault gives us grounds to search McConnell’s house for evidence relating to serial killings,’ Brandon said. ‘What would we be looking for in particular?’

  ‘A camcorder. Any indication that he has access to somewhere isolated and deserted like an old warehouse, factory, derelict house, lock-up garage.’ Tony ran a hand through his hair. ‘Polaroid photographs. Sado-masochistic pornography. Souvenirs of his victims. The jewellery missing from the bodies.’ He looked up and met Tom Cross’s sneer. ‘And you should check the deep freeze just on the off chance that he’s kept the pieces of flesh he removed from the bodies.’ He felt a moment’s gratification when Cross’s expression changed to disgust.

  ‘Charming. But first we have to get something more to go on. Any suggestions?’ Brandon asked.

  ‘Send DS Merrick and Inspector Jordan in to interview him. The realization that the man he tried to pick up is a police officer will unsettle him, make him feel that his instincts can’t be trusted. There’s a chance too that he has problems with women — ’

  ‘Of course he’s got problems with women,’ Cross interjected. ‘He’s a bloody arse bandit.’

  ‘Not all gay men dislike women,’ Tony said mildly. ‘But a lot do, and McConnell may be one of them. At the very least, Carol will make him feel threatened. All-male situations offer him the opportunity for camaraderie, so we take that off him.’

  ‘Let’s try it, then,’ Brandon said. ‘If DS Merrick is up to it.’

  ‘I’m game, sir,’ Merrick said.

  Cross looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to hit Brandon or Tony. ‘I might as well bugger off home, then,’ he blustered.

  ‘Good idea, Tom. You’ve had more than your fair share of all-nighters lately. I’ll hang on here, see what comes out of McConnell’s interview.’

  Cross stomped out of the squad room, passing Kevin Matthews on the way. The atmosphere visibly lightened in Cross’s absence. ‘Sir?’ Kevin said. ‘Ian Thomson — it looks like he’s out of the frame on the murders.’

  Brandon frowned. ‘I thought I told you not to bring the murders up? At this stage, all we want to front Thomson with is the assault.’

  ‘I didn’t bring up the murders, sir,’ Kevin said defensively. ‘But it emerged during the interview that Thomson works three nights a week as a DJ in Hot Rocks. That’s a gay club in Liverpool. He does Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. It should be easy enough to check whether he was working on the nights of the murders.’

  ‘OK, get someone on it,’ Brandon said.

  ‘Which leaves McConnell,’ Carol said thoughtfully.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Brandon said.

  ‘Any tips?’ Carol asked Tony.

  ‘Don’t be afraid to patronize him. Stay sweetness and light, but make it clear that you’re the ranking officer. And DS Merrick — you can afford to play the gratitude card a bit.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Carol said. ‘OK, Don?’

  They left Brandon and Tony together. ‘How is it going?’ Brandon asked, getting up and stretching.

  Tony shrugged. ‘I’m starting to get a feel for his victims. There’s a definite pattern there. He’s a stalker, I’m sure of it. I should have a rough profile in a day or two. It’s just bad timing that you’ve pulled in a suspect now.’

  ‘How do you mean, bad timing?’

  ‘I understand why you wanted my input. But I don’t like knowing about suspects before I draw up my profile. The danger is that I skew the profile subconsciously so that it’s a better fit for the suspect.’

  Brandon sighed. He’d always found it hard to be optimistic in the small hours. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. By this time tomorrow, our suspect might just be a distant memory.’

  FROM 3½″ DISK LABELLED: BACKUP.007; FILE LOVE.008

  Getting to know Paul was somehow more exciting than Adam had been. Partly, I suppose, because I knew now I could handle it if things didn’t work out the way I wanted. Even if Paul didn’t have the insight to see that I could give him more than anyone else, even if he rejected my love, even if he went as far as Adam and actually betrayed the inevitability of our partnership with someone else, I knew that there was an alternative scenario that could give me almost as much satisfaction as the achievement of what I deserved.

  But this time, I felt sure that I would get what I wanted. Adam, I now saw, had been immature and weak. Paul was neither of those, I could tell at once. For a start, he hadn’t chosen to live in the yuppie part of town like Adam. Paul lived on the south side of the city in Aston Hey, a leafy suburb beloved of university lecturers and alternative therapists. Paul’s house was in one of the more inexpensive streets. Like mine, it was terraced, though his two-up and two-down rooms were obviously far bigger. Unlike mine, he had a small garden at the front, and his back yard was twice the size, scattered with terracotta planters and tubs filled with flowers and dwarf shrubs. The perfect place to sit together for a preprandial drink after work on summer evenings.

  Now with Paul, I’d have the chance to live in Aston Hey, to enjoy those quiet streets, to walk in the park together, to be just like other couples. He had an interesting job, too — lecturer at Bradfield Institute of Science and Technology, specializing in CAD programs. We already had so much in common. It was a shame I’d never be able to show him what I’d achieved with Adam.

  One of the major advantages of having no mortgage is that I have virtually all of my salary to play with. It’s a substantial disposable income for someone of my age and with my lack of dependants. That means I can afford a state-of-the-art computer system, with regular upgrades to keep me out there at the leading edge. Given that one software program alone cost me nearly three thousand pounds, it’s just as well I don’t have anyone leeching off me. With my new CD-ROM system, video digitizer and special-effects software, it took me less than a day to import the videos into my computer. Once they were digitized and installed there, I could manipulate and morph the images to tell any story I wanted to see. Thanks to other video erotica I’d already installed on my system, I was even able to give Adam the erection he’d failed to achieve in life. Finally, I could fuck him, suck him, fist him, and watch him do the same to me. But the knowledge that I would be able to do that still hadn’t been e
nough to save him. Not even my computer and my imagination could give me the joy and satisfaction he could have done if he’d only been honest with himself about his desire for me. And so, every day he had to die all over again. The ultimate fantasy, constantly changing, shaped to fit my every mood and whim. At last, Adam was performing everything he could ever have fantasized about. It was a shame he couldn’t share in my pleasure.

  It wasn’t perfect, but at least I was having more fun than the police. From what I read, it was clear they were getting nowhere. Adam’s death barely merited a mention in the national media, and even the Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times gave up after five days. Adam’s body was identified after four days, when anxious colleagues reported him missing after failing to get any reply from his phone or his doorbell. I was interested in their tributes (popular, hard-working, well liked, etc.) and I felt a moment’s regret that his stupidity had deprived me of their friendship. The Sentinel Times’s crime reporter had even managed to track down Adam’s ex-wife, a mistake he’d made at twenty-one which he’d extricated himself from by his twenty-fifth birthday. Her comments made me laugh out loud.

  Adam Scott’s ex-wife Lisa Arnold, 27, fought back the tears as she said, ’I can’t believe this could have happened to Adam.

  ‘He was a friendly man, really sociable. But he wasn’t a big drinker. I can’t imagine how this weirdo managed to get hold of him.’

  Lisa, a primary-school teacher who has since remarried, went on, ’I’ve no idea what he was doing in Crompton Gardens. He never showed any gay tendencies when we were married. Our sex life was quite normal. If anything, it was a bit boring.

  ‘We married too young. Adam’s mother had brought him up to expect a wife who waited on him hand and foot, and that just wasn’t me.

  ‘Then I met someone else and I told Adam I wanted a divorce. He was really upset, but I think it was more that his pride was hurt.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since the divorce, but I heard he was living on his own. I know he’s had a few affairs over the last three years, but nothing serious as far as I know.

  ‘I just can’t get used to the idea that he’s dead. I know we hurt each other, but I’m still devastated that he’s been murdered like this.’

  I didn’t rate the chances of Lisa’s second marriage lasting the course if she still had as little insight into the workings of the male mind. Boring? Lisa was the only reason sex with Adam could be boring.

  And as for calling me a weirdo! She was the one who had turned her back on a charming, handsome man who loved her so much that he was still talking about her to complete strangers three years after she’d rejected him. I knew all about it; I’d listened to him. If anyone was a weirdo, it was Lisa.

  8

  No unpractised artist could have conceived so bold an idea as that of a noon-day murder in the heart of a great city. It was no obscure baker, gentlemen, or anonymous chimney-sweeper, be assured, that executed this work. I know who it was.

  Stevie McConnell ran both hands through his hair in a gesture of desperation. ‘Look, how many times do I have to tell you? I was telling porkies. I was trying to make myself sound the big man. I wanted to cop off, I was trying to make myself interesting. I never knew Paul Gibbs or Damien Connolly. I never saw either of them in my life.’

  ‘We can prove you knew Gareth Finnegan,’ Carol said coldly.

  ‘OK, I admit I knew Gareth. He was a member down the gym, I can’t pretend I’d never met him before. But Christ, woman, the man was a lawyer. He must have known thousands of people in the city,’ McConnell said, thumping the table with a solid fist.

  Carol didn’t even flinch. ‘And Adam Scott,’ she went on relentlessly.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said wearily. ‘Adam Scott had a trial one-month membership down the gym about two years ago. He never joined up. I bumped into him a couple of times in my local pub, we had a jar together, that’s all there was to it. I have a drink with a lot of people, you know. I’m not a bloody hermit. Christ, if I killed everybody I’ve ever stood at a bar with, youse bastards would be busy from now till the next century.’

  ‘We will prove you knew Paul Gibbs and Damien Connolly. You know that, don’t you?’ Merrick chimed in.

  McConnell sighed. His hands clenched, forcing the muscles in his powerful forearms into sharp relief. ‘If you do, you’ll have to make it up, because you can’t prove what isn’t true. You’re not going to do a Birmingham Six on me, you know. Look, if I was really this mad bastard, do you think I’d have hung around to help you? First sign of trouble, I’d have legged it. Stands to reason.’

  Sounding bored, Carol said, ‘But you didn’t know then that Sergeant Merrick was a police officer, did you? So give us your alibi for Monday night.’

  McConnell leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘Mondays is my day off,’ he recited. ‘Like I said, the guys that share my house are on their holidays, so I was on my tod. I got up late, went down the supermarket for my messages, then I went for a swim. About six o’clock, I drove out to the multi-screen off the motorway, and I went to see the new Clint Eastwood film.’

  Abruptly, he lurched forward in the chair. ‘They’ll be able to confirm it. I paid by credit card, and their system’s all computerized. They can prove I was at the pictures,’ he said triumphantly.

  ‘They can prove you bought a ticket,’ Carol said laconically. From the cinema to Damien Connolly’s house would take no more than half an hour round the motorway, even allowing for rush-hour traffic.

  ‘I can tell you the whole plot, for fuck’s sake,’ McConnell said angrily.

  ‘You could have seen it any time, Stevie,’ Merrick said gently. ‘What did you do after the pictures?’

  ‘I went home. Cooked myself a steak and some vegetables.’ McConnell paused and stared at the table. ‘Then I went into town for the last hour. Just for a quick drink with a few mates.’

  Carol leaned forward, sensing McConnell’s reluctance. ‘Where in town?’ she demanded.

  McConnell said nothing.

  Carol leaned further forward, the tip of her nose an inch from his. Her voice was quiet but icy cold. ‘If I have to stick your face on the front page of the Sentinel Times and send a team into every pub in the city, I’ll do it, Mr McConnell. Where in town?’

  McConnell breathed in heavily through his nose. ‘The Queen of Hearts,’ he spat.

  Carol leaned back, satisfied. She stood up. ‘Interview terminated at 3.17 a.m.,’ she said, leaning over to switch off the tape recorder. She looked down at McConnell. ‘We’ll be back, Mr McConnell.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he protested as Merrick got up and the two of them made for the door. ‘When am I going to get out of here? You’ve got no right to keep me!’

  Carol turned back in the doorway, smiled sweetly and said, ‘Oh, I have every right, Mr McConnell. You’ve been arrested for assault, let’s not forget. I have twenty-four hours to make your life a misery before I even have to think about charging you.’

  Merrick gave an apologetic smile as he backed out of the room in Carol’s wake. ‘Sorry, Stevie,’ he said. ‘The lady’s not wrong.’

  He caught up with Carol as she was asking the custody sergeant to return McConnell to the cells. ‘What do you think, ma’am?’ Merrick asked as they walked off together.

  Carol stopped and eyed Merrick critically. His skin was pale and clammy, his eyes feverishly bright. ‘I think you need to go home and get some sleep, Don. You look like shit on a stick.’

  ‘Never mind me. What about McConnell, ma’am?’

  ‘We’ll see what Mr Brandon has to say.’ Carol set off for the stairs, Merrick trailing behind her.

  ‘But what do you think, ma’am?’

  ‘On the face of it, he could be our man. He’s got nothing approaching an alibi for Monday night, he runs the gym where Gareth Finnegan worked out, he knew Adam Scott and by his own admission he was in the Queen of Hearts on Monday night for the last hour. He’s certainly strong enough to h
ave carted the bodies in and out of a car. He’s got form, even if it is only a couple of breaches of the peace and a Section 18 wounding. And he’s into S&M. But that’s all circumstantial. And I still don’t think we’ve got grounds for a search warrant,’ Carol rattled off. ‘What about you, Don? Got a feeling in your water about this one?’

  They turned down the corridor towards the murder squad room. ‘I kind of like him,’ Merrick said grudgingly. ‘I can’t imagine that I’d take a liking to the bastard that’s been doing these murders. But then, I suppose that’s a pretty daft reaction. I mean, he’s not the two-headed man, is he? He’s got to have something about him that lets him get close enough to his victims to do the business. So maybe it is Stevie McConnell.’

  Carol opened the door to the squad room, expecting to find Brandon and Tony still sitting there, fuelled by coffee and canteen sandwiches. The room was empty. ‘Where’s the ACC got to now?’ Carol said, tiredness lending her voice a note of exasperation.

  ‘Maybe he’s left a message at the front desk,’ Merrick suggested.

  ‘And maybe he’s done the sensible thing and buggered off home to bed. Well, that’s us for tonight, Don. McConnell can stew for a bit. See what the bosses have to say in the morning. Maybe we can try for a search warrant now we know McConnell was in the Queen of Hearts. Now, get out of my sight and go home to bed before your Jean accuses me of leading you off the straight and narrow. Get some sleep. I don’t want to see you before noon, and if your head’s hurting, stay in bed. That’s an order, Detective Sergeant.’

  Merrick grinned. ‘Yes, ma’am. See you.’

  Carol watched Merrick walk back down the corridor, worried at the slow deliberation of his movements. ‘Don?’ she called. Merrick turned enquiringly back to her. ‘Get a taxi. My authorization. I don’t want you wrapped round a lamppost on my conscience. And that’s an order, too.’ Merrick grinned, nodded and disappeared down the stairs.