The Mermaids Singing th-1

by Val McDermid

  ‘That’s right. We knew that before he legged it.’ Kevin lay back on the pillows, blissfully unaware of the look of distilled hatred that Penny was beaming in his direction.

  ‘So what exactly was that pantomime at court this morning in aid of?’ she demanded in tones her elocution mistress would have been proud of.

  Kevin smirked. ‘Well, most of us had already decided that McConnell wasn’t our man. But Brandon had put a tail on him, so when he tried to skip the country, we were more or less obliged to pull him in. By that time, it was starting to look definite that McConnell isn’t the Queer Killer. Plus, he doesn’t fit the profile that Tony Hill came up with.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Penny said sharply.

  Kevin finally registered that all was not well. ‘What? You got a problem, darling?’

  ‘Just a fucking bit,’ said Penny, enunciating each syllable crisply. ‘You mean to tell me you’ve not only put an innocent man on remand, you’ve also let the world’s press broadcast the assumption that this man is quite probably the Queer Killer?’

  Kevin propped himself up and took another swig of his drink, reaching out to rumple Penny’s hair with his other hand. She pulled away with a jerk. ‘It’s no big deal,’ he said patronizingly. ‘Nobody can get a lynch mob together and go round his house while he’s inside. And we reckon that telling the world between the lines that we’ve got the killer banged up might just provoke the real killer into getting in touch with us to make sure we know he’s still out there.’

  ‘You mean you want to drive him to kill again?’ Penny demanded, her voice rising.

  ‘Of course not,’ Kevin said indignantly. ‘I mean, to get in touch. Like he did after he’d killed Gareth Finnegan.’

  ‘My God,’ Penny said wonderingly. ‘Kevin, how can you sit there and tell me that nothing bad can happen to Stevie McConnell while he’s locked up in prison?’

  While Penny Burgess and Kevin Matthews were arguing the morality of Stevie McConnell’s remand, in C Wing of Her Majesty’s Prison Barleigh, three men were taking turns to show Stevie McConnell what happens to sex cases in prison. At the end of the landing, a warden stood impassively, appearing as oblivious to McConnell’s screams and entreaties as a deaf man with his hearing aid switched off. And on the moors above Bradfield, a ruthless killer put the finishing touches to the torture instrument that would help show the world that the man in prison was not the person responsible for four perfectly executed serial punishments.

  The HOLMES room was a quiet hum of activity, operators staring into screens and tapping keys. Carol found Dave Woolcott sitting in his office picking listlessly at fish and chips. He looked up when she entered and managed a wan smile. ‘Thought you were having a night off,’ he said.

  ‘I’m still hoping to. My brother promised to buy me a bucket of popcorn all to myself if I make it to the multiscreen before the film begins. I just wanted to swing by and run something past you.’ She dumped two plastic bags on Dave’s desk. Glossy computer magazines spilled out.

  ‘I’ve got this theory,’ she said. ‘Well, more of a hunch.’ For the third time, Carol outlined her idea about the killer importing videos and transforming them into supports for his fantasies.

  Dave listened carefully, nodding as Carol’s ideas sank in. ‘I like it,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve read that profile a couple of times now, and I really can’t accept what Dr Hill says about keeping stable just by using videos of the killings. It doesn’t make sense. Your idea does. So what do you want from me?’

  ‘Michael reckons that tracing the buyers of Vicom 3D Commander might lead us to him if we’re right. I’m not so sure. It’s possible that the company the killer works for has the software, and he does the manipulation work there. To be on the safe side, though, he’d need to do all the scanning and digitizing at home. So I thought it would also be worthwhile doing a trawl of the suppliers of video digitizers and video capture cards. We can find suppliers via the ads in these magazines, since virtually all computer stuff comes mail order. We should also contact local computer clubs too. If you’ve got any bodies to spare, that is.’

  Dave sighed. ‘Dream on, Carol.’ He picked up a magazine and flicked through the pages. ‘I suppose I could draw up a list tonight and tomorrow, and first thing Monday morning we could get a couple of DCs to do a ring-round. When my operators will have time to input the data, I don’t know, but I will see that it gets done. OK?’

  Carol grinned. ‘You’re a star, Dave.’

  ‘I’m a bloody martyr, Carol. My youngest’s cut two teeth that I haven’t even seen yet.’

  ‘I could stay and help you go through the magazines,’ Carol said reluctantly.

  ‘Oh, bugger off. Go and enjoy yourself. It’s about time one of us did. What are you going to see?’

  Carol pulled a face. ‘It’s a Saturday Special double bill – Manhunter and The Silence of the Lambs.’

  Dave’s laughter echoed in her ears all the way to the car.

  The long howl seemed to come from the pit of his stomach. As his orgasm shuddered through him like a runaway train, Tony felt a glorious sense of release. ‘Oh, God,’ he groaned.

  ‘Oh, yeah, yeah,’ Angelica gasped. ‘I’m coming again, again, oh, Tony, Tony…’ Her voice faded in a gulping sob.

  Tony lay back on his bed, chest heaving, the smell of sweat and sex heavy around him. He felt as if he’d been suddenly detached from a burden he had been carrying for so long he had ceased to notice its weight. Was this what being cured felt like, this sense of light and colour, this sensation of having dumped the past like sacks of coal in a bunker? Was this how his patients felt when they’d unloaded their mess on him?

  In his ear, he could hear the ragged sound of her breathing. After a few moments, she said, ‘Wow. Just wow. That was the best ever. I just love the way you love me.’

  ‘It was good for me, too,’ Tony said, meaning it for once. For the first time since they had started this strange combination of therapy and sexual game-playing, he’d had no trouble with his erection. Right from the start, he’d been hard as a rock. No fading, no wilting, no shame. Just the first problem-free sex he’d had for years. OK, so Angelica wasn’t actually in the room with him, but it was a giant step in the right direction.

  ‘We make the sweetest music,’ Angelica said. ‘Nobody’s ever turned me on like you do.’

  ‘Do you do this often?’ Tony asked languidly.

  Angelica chuckled, a husky, sexy gurgle of laughter. ‘You’re not the first.’

  ‘I could tell that. You’re far too much of an expert,’ Tony flattered, not entirely insincerely. She’d been the perfect therapist for him, that much was certainly true.

  ‘I’m very choosy about the men I allow to share with me,’ Angelica said. ‘It’s not everyone who appreciates what I have to offer,’ she added.

  ‘They’d have to be very strange not to enjoy it. I know I do.’

  ‘I’m glad, Anthony. You’ll never know how glad. I have to go now,’ she said, her tone changing abruptly to the businesslike one Tony had come to associate with the end of their calls. ‘Tonight has been really special. We’ll talk soon.’

  The line went dead. Tony switched off the phone and stretched out. Tonight, with Angelica, for the first time in his life, Tony had felt a protective care that succoured without smothering. His grandmother, he knew intellectually, had loved him and cared for him, but theirs had never been a demonstrative family, and her love had been brusque and practical, meeting her needs rather than his. The women he’d been involved with in the past had, he now realized, been her emotional doppelgangers. Thanks to Angelica, he dared hope the pattern had been broken. It had caused him enough pain over the years.

  His sexual life had started later than most of his contemporaries, in part because his body had been reluctant to mature. Until his seventeenth year, he’d been by far the smallest boy in his class, condemned to dating the thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds who were even m
ore scared of sex than he was. Then, suddenly, he’d shot up five inches in as many months. By the time he’d gone to university, he’d lost his virginity in a clumsy fumble on a single bed, the candlewick bedspread leaving him with uncomfortable friction burns for days afterwards. His girlfriend, relieved to be rid at last of the encumbrance of her virginity, had dumped him days later.

  At university, he’d been too shy and hard-working to improve his experience by much. Then, when he’d started work on his doctorate, he’d fallen head over heels with a young philosophy tutor in his college. Because he was bright and interesting, he captured her interest. Patricia made no secret of the fact that she was a woman of the world, just as she made no secret of the fact that she had ended their relationship because of his lacklustre performance between the sheets. ‘Face it, sweetheart,’ she’d told him, ‘your brain might be DPhil material, but your fucking wouldn’t earn you an O level.’

  It had been downhill from then. The last couple of women Tony had been involved with had thought he was a perfect gentleman, never pressurizing them into bed. Until they got him there and discovered how seldom he could actually deliver. He had long ago discovered how hard it was to convince a woman that the fact that he couldn’t get it up had nothing whatsoever to do with her. ‘They just got fed up with having their egos bashed,’ he said aloud.

  Maybe now he had finally found a way to confront the past and move forward. A few more nights like tonight with Angelica and maybe, just maybe, he’d be ready to try the real thing. He wondered if her services extended to that. Perhaps he should start thinking about dropping a few hints.

  Brandon read the sheet of paper on his desk and rubbed the grit of sleep from his eyes. He and Dave Woolcott had spent the evening going through the dozens of reports that had flowed in from the actions Dave had ordered in response to the correlations thrown out by the HOLMES computer. In spite of their determined efforts to find some slender thread of evidence to unravel back to the killer, there was nothing that either of them could identify as a lead.

  ‘Maybe this idea of Carol’s will do the business for us,’ Dave yawned.

  ‘We’ve tried everything else,’ Brandon said, his voice as depressed as his face. ‘It can’t hurt to run with it.’

  ‘She’s a smart operator, that one,’ Dave remarked. ‘She’ll be running the shop one of these days.’ There was no bitterness in his tone, only a tired admiration. Another yawn split his face.

  ‘Go home, Dave. When was the last time you saw Marion awake?’

  Dave groaned. ‘Don’t you start, sir. I was going to knock off anyway, there’s not a lot doing. I’ll be in tomorrow, finish off listing these computer suppliers.’

  ‘OK, but not too early, you hear? Give your family a treat. Eat breakfast with them.’ Before he took his own advice, Brandon wanted to go through the witness statements and officers’ impressions once more, unable to believe that there wasn’t something lurking in there that would give them their first serious break. By the time he was halfway through he was finding it almost impossible to motivate himself to get through the rest of the pile. The prospect of tucking himself round Maggie’s warm body was overwhelmingly appealing.

  Brandon sighed and focused on the next sheet of paper. His scrutiny was interrupted by the insistent trill of his telephone. ‘Brandon,’ he sighed.

  ‘Sergeant Murray here, front desk. Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but none of the inspectors are in the station at the moment. Thing is, there’s a gentleman down here I think you’ll want to talk to. He’s a neighbour of Damien Connolly’s, sir.’

  Brandon was already out of his chair. ‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

  The man at the front desk was sitting on the wooden bench that ran along the wall, head down, the rough blur of stubble dark along his jaw. As Brandon came round from behind the counter, he looked up. Late twenties, Brandon estimated. Sun-bed tan, bruised circles under his eyes. Some sort of businessman, judging by the expensive but sombre suit and the silk tie hanging askew under the open top button of the shirt. He had the rumpled, red-eyed look of someone who’s been travelling so long they’ve forgotten which day or which city it is. Seeing someone more tired than himself seemed to inject Brandon with fresh energy. ‘Mr Harding?’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m John Brandon, the Assistant Chief Constable in charge of the investigation into Damien Connolly’s death.’

  The man nodded. ‘Terry Harding. I live a couple of doors down from Damien.’

  ‘My sergeant tells me you might have some information for us.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Terry Harding said, his voice thick with exhaustion. ‘I saw a stranger driving out of Damien’s garage the night he was killed.’

  F ROM 3" DISK LABELLED: BACKUP. 007; FILE LOVE. 016

  I had already started work on Dr Tony Hill even before I had dispatched Damien Connolly. It seemed poetic justice to me that, like Damien, his name was already on my list as a potential partner. If I had needed any kind of reinforcement that I was doing the right thing by punishing him, that was it.

  So, I already knew where he lived, where he worked and what he looked like. I knew what time he left the house in the morning, what tram he caught to work, and how long he stayed in his little office in the university.

  I only realized how smoothly everything had gone up till now when things started to move in directions I hadn’t predicted and didn’t like. I suppose I’d made the mistake of underestimating the stupidity of the forces opposed to me. I’d never thought there was much brain power shared out among the officers of Bradfield police, but the latest developments shook even me. They arrested the wrong man!

  Their incredible lack of intelligence and perception was matched only by the media, following uncritically like sheep. I couldn’t believe it when I picked up the Sentinel Times to read that a man was in custody helping police enquiries into my killings. The arrest came after a street assault involving a police officer. How on earth could they imagine that someone who had taken as much care as I had would end up in some street brawl in Temple Fields? It was an insult to my intelligence. Did they really think I was some out-of-control street yob?

  I read and reread the article, unable to credit the depths of their foolishness. Anger burned inside me. I could feel it in my guts like indigestion and wind cramps rolled into a spiky ball. I wanted to do something vicious and dramatic, something that would prove to them how wrong they were.

  I worked out with my weights till my muscles were trembling from effort and my kit was saturated with sweat, but still the anger refused to abate. I stormed upstairs to my computer and worked on the videos of Damien that I’d imported into my system. By the time I’d finished, we’d performed sexual gymnastics that the Russian national team would have been proud of. But nothing satisfied me. Nothing took the anger away.

  Luckily, unlike them I’m not stupid. I know how dangerous uncontrolled anger could be for me. I needed to harness my anger, to be creative with it and make it work for me. I forced myself to channel my rage into constructive pathways. I planned in meticulous detail how I would capture Dr Tony Hill, and what I would do with him when I got him. I’d be keeping him in suspense – literally.

  Squassation and strappado. The Spanish Inquisition knew exactly how to make the most of what was available. They simply harnessed the most powerful force on the planet, the force of gravity. All you need is a winch, a pulley, a few ropes and a lump of stone. You fasten the victim’s hands behind his back and run a rope from them through the pulley. Then you tie the stone to his feet.

  In his book The Horrid Cruelties of the Inquisition, published in 1770, John Marchant described this efficient torture most eloquently:

  He is then drawn up on high, till his head reaches the pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sudden he is let down with a jerk, by the slacking of the rope, but is kept from coming quite to th
e ground, by which terrible shake, his arms and legs are disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock which he receives by the sudden stop of his fall, and the weight at his feet stretching his whole body more intensely and cruelly.

  The Germans added a refinement that attracted me. Behind the victim, they placed a spiked roller, so that as he descended, the rollers cut into and excoriated his back, leaving his body a bloody, dislocated mass. I considered reproducing this effect, but even after a lot of juggling with the layout, I couldn’t come up with a design on the computer that I was satisfied would work smoothly, unless I cuffed his hands in front of him, which makes the squassation and strappado far less effective. Keep it simple, that’s my motto.

  While I was planning and constructing, I took steps to draw my web even tighter around Dr Hill. He might think he could climb inside my head, but he’d got things the wrong way round.

  I couldn’t wait to get started. I was counting the hours.

  16

  ‘Now, Miss R., supposing that I should appear at about midnight at your bedside, armed with a carving knife, what would you say?’ To which the confiding girl had replied, ‘Oh, Mr Williams, if it was anybody else, I should be frightened. But as soon as I heard your voice, I should be tranquil.’ Poor girl; had this outline sketch of Mr Williams been filled in and realized, she would have seen something in the corpse-like face, and heard something in the sinister voice, that would have unsettled her tranquillity forever.

  When the phone rang, Carol’s first reaction was outrage. Ten past eight on a Sunday morning could only mean work. She stirred, a long, low growl of discontent making Nelson’s ears prick. Carol’s arm appeared from under the covers, groping around on the bedside table. She connected with the phone and grunted, ‘Jordan,’ into it.