The Mermaids Singing th-1

by Val McDermid

  ‘An example. A body is found in bushes ten feet away from the road. A police officer will note that fact. He’ll check the ground all around for clues. Are there footprints? Has anything been discarded by the killer? Have any fibres been snagged on the bushes? But for me, that single fact is only the starting point for speculations that, taken in conjunction with all the other information at my disposal, may well lead me to useful conclusions about the killer. I’ll ask myself, was the body deliberately placed there? Or was the killer too knackered to carry it further? Was he hiding it or dumping it? Did he want it to be found? How long did he expect or want it to stay hidden? What is the significance of this site for him?’ Tony lifted his shoulders and held out his hands in an open, questioning gesture. The audience looked on, unmoved. God, how many tricks of the trade was he going to have to pull out of the hat before he got a response? The prickle of sweat along the back of his neck was becoming a trickle, sliding down between his skin and his shirt collar. It was an uncomfortable sensation that reminded him of who he really was behind the mask he’d assumed for his public appearance.

  Tony cleared his throat, focused on what he was projecting rather than what he was feeling, and continued. ’Profiling is just another tool that can help investigating officers to narrow the focus of their investigation. Our job is to make sense of the bizarre. We can’t give you an offender’s name, address and phone number. But what we can do is point you in the direction of the kind of person who has committed a crime with particular characteristics. Sometimes we can indicate the area where he might live, the kind of work we’d expect him to do.

  ‘I know that some of you have questioned the necessity for setting up a National Criminal Profiling Task Force. You’re not alone. The civil libertarians are screaming about it too.’ At last, Tony thought with profound relief. Smiles and nods from the audience. It had taken him forty minutes to get there, but he’d finally cracked their composure. It didn’t mean he could relax, but it eased his discomfort. ‘After all,’ he went on, ‘we’re not like the Americans. We don’t have serial killers lurking round every corner. We still have a society where more than ninety per cent of murders are committed by family members or people known to the victims.’ He was really taking them with him now. Several pairs of legs and arms uncrossed, neat as a practised drill-hall routine.

  ‘But profiling isn’t just about nailing the next Hannibal the Cannibal. It can be used in a wide variety of crimes. We’ve already had notable success in airport anti-hijacking measures, in catching drug couriers, poison-pen writers, blackmailers, serial rapists and arsonists. And just as importantly, profiling has been used very effectively to advise police officers on interview techniques for dealing with suspects in major crime enquiries. It’s not that your officers lack interviewing skills; it’s just that our clinical background means we have developed different approaches that can often be more productive than familiar techniques.’

  Tony took a deep breath and leaned forward, gripping the edge of the lectern. His final paragraph had sounded good in front of the bathroom mirror. He prayed it would hit the right spot rather than stamp on people’s corns. ‘My team and I are now one year into a two-year feasibility study on setting up the National Criminal Profiling Task Force. I’ve already delivered an interim report to the Home Office, who confirmed to me yesterday that they are committed to forming this task force as soon as my final report is delivered. Ladies and gentlemen, this revolution in crime fighting is going to happen. You’ve got a year to make sure it happens in a form that you feel comfortable with. My team and I have all got open minds. We’re all on the same side. We want to know what you think, because we want it to work. We want violent, serial offenders behind bars, just like you do. I believe you could use our help. I know we can use yours.’

  Tony took a step backwards and savoured the applause, not because it was particularly enthusiastic, but because it signalled the end of the forty-five minutes he’d been dreading for weeks. Public speaking had always been firmly outside the boundaries of his comfort zone, so much so that he’d turned his back on an academic career after achieving his doctorate because he couldn’t face the constant spectre of the lecture theatre. The ability to perform was not a reason in itself for doing so. Somehow, spending his days poking around in the distorted recesses of the minds of the criminally insane was far less threatening.

  As the short-lived clapping died away, Tony’s Home Office minder bounced to his feet from his front-row chair. While Tony provoked a wary distrust in the police section of his audience, George Rasmussen generated more universal irritation than a flea bite. His eager smile revealed too many teeth and a disturbing resemblance to George Formby that was at odds with the seniority of his Civil Service post, the elegant cut of his grey pinstripe suit and the yammering bray of a public-school accent so exaggerated that Tony was convinced Rasmussen had really been educated in some inner-city comprehensive. Tony half listened as he shuffled his notes together and replaced his acetates in their folder. Grateful for fascinating insight, blah, blah… coffee and those absolutely delicious biscuits, blah, blah… opportunity for informal questions, blah, blah… remind you all submissions to Dr Hill due by…

  The sound of shuffling feet drowned out the rest of Rasmussen’s spiel. When it came to a choice between a civil servant’s vote of thanks and a cup of coffee, it was no contest. Not even for the civil servants. Tony took a deep breath. Time to abandon the lecturer. Now he had to be the charming, well-informed colleague, eager to listen, to assimilate and to make his new contacts feel he was really on their side.

  John Brandon stood up and stepped aside to allow the other people in his row to move out of their seats. Watching Tony Hill’s performance hadn’t been as informative as he’d hoped. It had told him a lot about psychological profiling, but almost nothing about the man, except that he seemed self-assured without being arrogant. The last three quarters of an hour hadn’t made him any more certain that what he was planning was the right course of action. But he couldn’t see any alternative. Staying close to the wall, Brandon moved forward against the flow until he was level with Rasmussen. Seeing his audience vote with its feet, the civil servant had sharply wound up his speech and switched off his smile. As Rasmussen gathered up the papers he’d dumped on his seat, Brandon slipped past him and crossed the floor towards Tony, who was fastening the clasps on his battered Gladstone bag.

  Brandon cleared his throat and said, ‘Dr Hill?’ Tony looked up, polite enquiry on his face. Brandon swallowed his qualms and continued. ‘We haven’t met before, but you’ve been working on my patch. I’m John Brandon…’

  ‘The ACC Crime?’ Tony interrupted, a smile reaching his eyes. He’d heard enough about John Brandon to know he was a man he wanted on his side. ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Mr Brandon,’ he said, injecting warmth into his voice.

  ‘John. It’s John,’ Brandon said, more abruptly than he’d intended. He realized with a spurt of surprise that he was nervous. There was something about Tony Hill’s calm assurance that unsettled him. ‘I wonder if we can have a word?’

  Before Tony could reply, Rasmussen was between them. ‘If you’d excuse me,’ he interjected without any note of humility, the smile back in place. ‘Tony, if you’d just come through now to the coffee lounge, I know our friends in the police will be eager to chat to you on a more intimate basis. Mr Brandon, if you’d like to follow us.’

  Brandon could feel his hackles rising. He felt awkward enough about the situation without having to fight to keep their conversation confidential in a room full of coffee-swilling coppers and nosy Home Office mandarins. ‘If I could just have a word with Dr Hill in private?’

  Tony glanced at Rasmussen, noting the slight deepening of the parallel lines between his eyebrows. Normally, it would have tickled him to wind up Rasmussen by continuing his conversation with Brandon. He always enjoyed pricking pomposity, reducing the self-important to impotent. But too much hung on the success of his encoun
ters with other police officers today, so he decided to forego the pleasure. Instead, he turned pointedly away from Rasmussen and said, ‘John, are you driving back to Bradfield after lunch?’

  Brandon nodded.

  ‘Perhaps you could give me a lift, then? I came on the train, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather not wrestle with British Rail on the way back. You can always drop me at the city limits if you don’t want to be seen fraternizing with the Trendy Wendies.’

  Brandon smiled, his long face creasing into simian wrinkles. ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I’ll be just as happy to drop you at force headquarters.’ He stood back and watched Rasmussen steer Tony to the doors, fussing all the way. He couldn’t shake off the slightly disconcerted feeling that the psychologist had given him. Maybe it was simply that he’d grown so accustomed to being in control of everything in his world that asking for help had become an alien experience that automatically made him feel uncomfortable. There was no other obvious explanation. Shrugging, Brandon followed the crowd through to the coffee lounge.

  Tony snapped the seat belt closed and savoured the comfort of the unmarked Range Rover. He said nothing as Brandon manoeuvred out of the Manchester force headquarters’ car park and headed for the motorway network, unwilling to interfere with the concentration necessary to avoid missing the way in an unfamiliar city. As they cruised down the slip road and joined the fast-flowing traffic, Tony broke the silence. ‘If it helps, I think I already know what it is you wanted to talk to me about.’

  Brandon’s hands tensed on the wheel. ‘I thought you were a psychologist, not a psychic,’ he joked. He surprised himself. Humour wasn’t his natural mode; he normally resorted to it only under pressure. Brandon couldn’t get used to how nervous he felt asking this favour.

  ‘Some of your colleagues would take more notice of me if I was,’ Tony said wryly. ‘So, do you want me to have a guess and run the risk of making a complete fool of myself?’

  Brandon snatched a quick look at Tony. The psychologist looked relaxed, hands palm down on his thighs, feet crossed at the ankles. He looked as though he’d be more at home in jeans and a sweater than in the suit which even Brandon recognized as well past its fashionable sell-by date. He could relate to that, remembering the scathing comments his daughters routinely passed on his own plain clothes. Brandon said abruptly, ‘I think we’ve got a serial killer operating in Bradfield.’

  Tony released a small, satisfied sigh. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d noticed,’ he said ironically.

  ‘It’s by no means a unanimous opinion,’ Brandon said, feeling the need to warn Tony before he’d even asked for his help.

  ‘I’d gathered as much from the press coverage,’ Tony said. ‘If it’s any comfort to you, I’m as certain as I can be from what I’ve read that your analysis is right.’

  ‘That’s not entirely the impression you gave in those quotes of yours I saw in the Sentinel Times after the last one,’ Brandon said.

  ‘It’s my job to cooperate with the police, not to undermine them. I assumed you had your own operational reasons for not going public with the serial-killer angle. I did stress to them that what I was saying was no more than an informed guess based on the information that was in the public domain,’ Tony added, his genial tone contradicting the sudden tensing of his fingers that ruched the material of his trousers into loose pleats.

  Brandon smiled, aware only of the voice. ‘Touche. So, are you interested in giving us a hand?’

  Tony felt a warm rush of satisfaction. This was what he had craved for weeks now. ‘There’s a service area a few miles down the road. D’you fancy a cup of tea?’

  Detective Inspector Carol Jordan stared at the broken chaos of flesh that had once been a man, determinedly forcing her eyes to remain out of focus. She wished she hadn’t bothered to snatch that stale cheese sandwich from the canteen. Somehow, it was acceptable for young male officers to throw up when they were confronted with victims of violent death. They even got sympathy. But in spite of the fact that women were supposed to lack bottle anyway, when female officers chucked up on the margins of crime scenes they instantly lost any respect they’d ever won and became objects of contempt, the butts of locker-room jokes from the canteen cowboys. Pick the logic out of that, Carol thought bitterly as she clamped her jaws tighter together. She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her trench coat and clenched her fists, the nails pressing into her palms.

  Carol felt a hand on her arm, just above the elbow. Grateful for the chance to look away, she turned to find her sergeant looming above her. Don Merrick towered a good eight inches over his boss, and had developed a strange hunchbacked stoop when he spoke to her. At first, she’d found it amusing enough to regale friends with over drinks or the occasional dinner party when she managed to squeeze a night off. Now, she didn’t even notice. ‘Area’s all cordoned off now, ma’am,’ he said in his soft Geordie accent. ‘Pathologist’s on his way. What d’you think? Are we looking at number four?’

  ‘Don’t let the Super hear you say that, Don,’ she said, only half joking. ‘I’d say so, though.’ Carol looked around. They were in the Temple Fields district, in the rear yard of a pub which catered primarily to the gay trade, with an upstairs bar that was lesbian three nights a week. Contrary to the jibes of the macho men she’d overtaken in the promotion stakes, it wasn’t a bar Carol had ever had reason to enter. ‘What about the gate?’

  ‘Crowbar,’ Merrick said laconically. ‘It’s not wired into the alarm system.’

  Carol surveyed the tall rubbish dumpsters and the stacked crates of empties. ‘No reason why it should be,’ she said. ‘What’s the landlord got to say?’

  ‘Whalley’s talking to him now, ma’am. Seems he locked up last night about half past eleven. They’ve got bins on wheels behind the bars for the empties, and at closing time they just wheel them into the yard back there.’ Merrick waved over towards the back door of the pub, where three blue plastic bins stood, each the size of a supermarket trolley. ‘They don’t sort them out till the afternoon.’

  ‘And that’s when they found this?’ Carol asked, gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb.

  ‘Just lying there. Open to the elements, you might say.’

  Carol nodded. A shudder ran through her that was nothing to do with the sharp north-eastern wind. She took a step towards the gate. ‘OK. Let’s leave this to the SOCOs for now. We’re only in the way here.’ Merrick followed her into the narrow alley behind the pub. It was barely wide enough for a single vehicle to squeeze down. Carol looked up and down the alley, now closed off by police tapes and guarded at either end by a pair of uniformed constables. ‘He knows his turf,’ she mused softly. She walked backwards along the alley, keeping the gate of the pub in constant view. Merrick followed her, waiting for the next set of orders.

  At the end of the alley, Carol stopped and swung round to check out the street. Opposite the alley was a tall building, a former warehouse that had been converted into craft workshops. At night, it would be deserted, but in midafternoon, almost every window framed eager faces, staring out from the warmth within at the drama below. ‘Not much chance of anyone looking out of a window at the crucial time, I suppose,’ she remarked.

  ‘Even if they had, they wouldn’t have taken any notice,’ Merrick said cynically. ‘After closing time, the streets round here are jumping. Every doorway, every alley, half the parked cars have got a pair of poofs in them, shagging the arse off each other. It’s no wonder the Chief calls Temple Fields Sodom and Gomorrah.’

  ‘You know, I’ve often wondered. It’s pretty clear what they were up to in Sodom, but what do you suppose the sin of Gomorrah was?’ Carol asked.

  Merrick looked bewildered. It increased his resemblance to a sad-eyed Labrador to a disturbing degree. ‘I’m not with you, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind. I’m surprised Mr Armthwaite hasn’t got Vice pulling them all in on indecency charges,’ Carol said.

  ‘He
did try it a few years back,’ Merrick confided. ‘But the police committee had his bollocks barbecued for it. He fought them, but they threatened him with the Home Office. And after the Holmwood Three business, he knew he was already on thin ice with the politicians, so he backed down. Doesn’t stop him slagging them off every chance he gets, though.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I hope this time our friendly neighbourhood killer has left us a bit more to go on, or our beloved leader might just pick another target for his next slagging off.’ Carol straightened her shoulders. ‘Right, Don. I want a door-to-door of the businesses, now. And tonight, we’re all going to be out on the streets, talking to the trade.’

  Before Carol could complete her instructions, a voice from beyond the tapes interrupted. ‘Inspector Jordan? Penny Burgess, Sentinel Times. Inspector? What have you got?’

  Carol closed her eyes for a brief moment. Dealing with the recalcitrant bigots in the chain of command was one thing. Dealing with the press was infinitely worse. Wishing she’d stayed in the yard with the grisly corpse, Carol took a deep breath and walked towards the cordon.

  ‘Let me get this straight. You want me to come on board for the duration of this murder enquiry, but you don’t want me to tell anyone?’ The look of amusement in Tony’s eyes masked his anger at the reluctance of influential policemen to accept the value of what he could do.

  Brandon sighed. Tony wasn’t making it easy for him, but then, why should he? ‘I want to avoid any suggestions in the press that you are helping us. The only chance I have of getting you formally involved with the investigation is to persuade the Chief Constable that you’re not going to be stealing the limelight from him and his coppers.’

  ‘And that it won’t become public knowledge that Derek Armthwaite, the Hand Of God, is turning to the mumbo-jumbo men for help,’ Tony said, an edge in his voice betraying more than he wanted to.