The Blood Whisperer

by Zoe Sharp

  “Yes sir.”

  Sensing dismissal O’Neill put down his coffee cup and rose.

  Quinlan nodded. “All right Vince. Keep me up to speed on this one. The press are already having a field day but I’ll keep them off your back as much as I can. The longer it goes on the more they’re going to parade out Jacks’s record and wave it in our faces. Let’s try to put a lid on this thing before that happens and we all end up in the brown sticky stuff, eh?”

  “Yes sir,” he repeated.

  Somehow, O’Neill reflected as he jogged down the stairs, it made it worse that the chief super hadn’t chewed him out over letting Jacks slip through their fingers. He hadn’t needed to—O’Neill felt bad enough about that without any help from on high and the headache tightening its grip around the base of his skull was proof of that. There was a packet of cigarettes already gripped in his hand like a weapon as he headed for the fire exit prepared to bite the head off anyone foolish enough to get in the way of a nicotine fix.

  “Boss?”

  O’Neill spun at the call, scowling furiously. From the panicked look on DC Dempsey’s face he knew the young detective had just been handed the short straw.

  “What?”

  “Erm, there’s just been a phone call for you—”

  “Unless it’s someone with the precise current GPS coordinates for Kelly Jacks it can wait,” O’Neill ground out already moving again.

  “Erm, not really, boss.”

  O’Neill stopped, turned with slow precision and glared at his junior officer. “Oh for God’s sake Dempsey, spit it out.”

  Dempsey swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously above the knot of his tie. A weedy lad who looked younger than his years, the last remnants of his teenage acne warring with clusters of freckles. “Erm it’s someone called Allardice. Claims he knows you,” Dempsey said still hesitant. “And he claims he knows Kelly Jacks too.”

  O’Neill felt some of the anger uncoil itself from his neck and shoulders, the black buzzing cloud lift a little from his vision. Regretfully he put the cigarettes back in his pocket.

  Maybe—just maybe—he’d finally caught a break.

  “Well, he should know Jacks,” he said as he strode back along the corridor. “Allardice was the one who arrested her last time.”

  42

  “Will I pass?”

  Matthew Lytton glanced up from his laptop and found his fingers faltering on the keys of his laptop. Kelly Jacks stood in the doorway to the private washroom that came adjoined to all the office suites at the racecourse, one hand on the frame. At his attention she let go and walked sedately into the office itself.

  “Wow,” he said with quiet awe, pushing back from the desk a little to take in all of her. “Quite a transformation.”

  And it was. Gone was the loose confident stride, the wild black hair, the stud through her nose. In its place was the sway of heels, a sleeked down style and understated makeup.

  The dress was lavender with a short matching jacket. And while the particular shade had complemented Veronica’s cool English rose looks, it looked stunning against Kelly’s darker colouring. She’d damped down her hair and used a couple of grips to tame it into place.

  Earlier that day he’d been fascinated to watch Kelly calmly scale a wall onto a low roof and from there onto an extension, moving up and on without fear or hesitation as she headed for the aerial access to her flat.

  When she slid back into the Aston afterwards hardly out of breath he’d mentally pigeonholed her into a category that put her way outside his scope of experience. No man likes to think he’s with a woman who can manage perfectly well—if not better—without him.

  And yet when he’d persuaded her to come to the racecourse, to take her onto Veronica’s turf, he’d known he’d have to disguise her in some way. Perhaps he’d just been experimenting to see if it could be done.

  He reflected now the answer to that one was a resounding yes. The two women couldn’t have been more different in colouring, height or style but the dress was an acceptable length and fit and the two of them took the same size in shoes.

  Now she regarded him with a wary frown as he rose and came forward.

  “Are you sure this doesn’t feel creepy?” she asked. “Dressing me up in her things?”

  He sighed. “Half the clothes Vee bought she never wore. You probably realised that at the apartment. She kept a change here in case of emergency, but if I ever saw her in this I’ve long forgotten the occasion,” he said. “Besides, she was five ten in heels, curvaceous, blonde and one of the coldest women I’ve ever met.” He smiled down at Kelly—lean, dark and fierce. “There’s no way I’d ever confuse the two of you.”

  She frowned as if about to question him further then dismissed it with a light, “Just goes to show I can still scrub up when the occasion demands.”

  But he sensed a hint of sadness in her and realised for the first time the extent of what she’d lost—and stood to lose again.

  Being a CSI must have been a good responsible job and a source of pride to her even if it had served to alienate her family. That exile had spurred her to succeed and from what he’d read she’d been well-respected in her field. Along with that kudos naturally came a nicer flat in a better area than her current address demonstrated, a newer car and no doubt a wardrobe befitting her position.

  The woman who’d emerged from her ordeal was far different—tougher inside and out. She might be able to scrub up as she put it, but now it would always be make-believe where once it had been the real Kelly. She was even carrying her ordinary clothes with her in the small backpack she’d brought with her from her flat as if not wanting to be entirely separated from her old persona.

  “You scrub up very nicely indeed.”

  “Are you sure this is necessary?” she asked, tugging at the front of the jacket.

  “If we bump into racecourse security it’s best to look like we belong rather than we’re casing the place.”

  She shrugged. “Isn’t that what we’re doing in a sense—casing the place?”

  “I hope so.” He stepped back, inviting her to join him. “Come on. Come and see exactly what Vee got up to and then—seeing as you’re dressed up for it—I’ll buy you lunch.”

  As she moved past he put a hand in the small of her back. She stopped and glanced down.

  “I can walk,” she said. “But keep that up and you might not be able to.”

  43

  O’Neill spotted Frank Allardice as soon as he walked into the little tapas place just outside Covent Garden. The retired detective chief inspector was holding court at the bar, a pint of lager half-drunk by his elbow, giving the barman the benefit of his vast experience.

  O’Neill paused in the doorway. Allardice was just the same as he remembered. Older maybe, browner of skin and thicker of waist, but still the same arrogant sod he’d always been.

  Allardice turned at that moment and spotted him, giving the barman chance to beat a hasty retreat.

  “Vince! Good to see you, old son.” Allardice thrust out a meaty hand for a bone-crushing shake. “What’ll you have—a pint? My shout.”

  “Just a half, Frank,” O’Neill said, disengaging his fingers while they still had feeling. “Some of us have got to work this afternoon.” And the days of turning up half-cut after long boozy lunches went out about the same time you did.

  “If you say so. Hey! Half a lager down here rápido, por favor.”

  O’Neill leaned an elbow on the bar, friendly but less rooted than taking the next stool along. “So how’s life on the Costa Del Crime these days?”

  “Flourishing, my son,” Allardice said taking a swig of his lager and pulling his lips back in appreciation. “Better than this poxy shit-hole that’s for sure. Any time you fancy packing in the daily grind and coming out to run another bar for me, sergeant, you let me know.”

  “It’s inspector now,” O’Neill said mildly, nodding his thanks to the barman who put down the half-pint and fled
again.

  Allardice pursed his lips. “Is it now? Well done, old son. Always knew you were destined for greatness—right from when you were a newly minted DC still wet behind the ears and only just old enough to shave the bum-fluff off your chin.”

  It was hard to tell, O’Neill reflected, if Allardice was being sincere. His style of delivery had always veered between sardonic and outright sarcastic.

  “So what can I do for you, Frank?” he asked. “I assume you didn’t ask for a meet to discuss my career prospects.”

  Allardice grinned at him. “Still the same old impatient Vince eh?” he said. “All cut to the chase and no foreplay with you is there?”

  “I can dance when I have to,” O’Neill said taking a sip of his drink. It was cold enough for condensation to have formed already on the outside of the glass. “But your ego was always plenty healthy enough without any stroking from me.”

  “You got that right, old son,” Allardice agreed amicably. “You must have learned to play the suck-up game though. You’re still a bit of a whippersnapper to have made DI.”

  O’Neill suddenly got the impression he was being sounded out about something. He kept his expression neutral. “Didn’t you hear, Frank? Our policemen are getting younger every day.”

  Allardice laughed out loud at that. “Too right,” he said. He slid off his stool and picked up what remained of his drink. O’Neill noticed that the man’s hands were starting to liver-spot and although the hair on his head was still suspiciously dark and glossy, the mat visible at the open neck of his shirt was looking decidedly grizzled. Allardice and Quinlan had been contemporaries but the chief super had aged if not better then certainly more gracefully.

  “Let’s go sit out back while we’re still allowed to have a smoke there at least,” Allardice said with a jerk of his head.

  O’Neill picked up his lager and followed the ex-copper out to a tiny yard at the rear of the bar. A couple of rickety patio tables were huddled together under a space heater. An attempt at landscaping had been made with a scatter of half-hearted plants in terracotta pots that had been used as ashtrays. Allardice sat and looked around him with contempt. He fished in his pocket for a red and white pack of Fortuna cigarettes and offered them across.

  “Gawd. If they gave me charge of this place for six months I’d double their turnover for them,” he remarked, lighting up. “No worries.”

  “Quite the expert aren’t you?”

  Allardice grinned and raised his glass. “I’ve three bars and a restaurant now,” he said. “Bloody entrepreneur that’s me.”

  O’Neill tired of the swagger. “Why did you come back, Frank?”

  “I heard the news about Kelly Jacks—up to her old tricks again,” he said. “Thought you might want all the gen straight from the horse’s mouth. Doing you a favour.”

  “Heard the—” O’Neill began and his eyes narrowed. “It was only released this morning.”

  “So? Spain’s a civilised country. Our EU brothers and all that. Besides, I had a bit of business back home anyway, so—two birds. I pulled a few strings and hopped on the first cheap package jet out of Málaga. Rang you from Heathrow.”

  “Why the big hurry?”

  Allardice regarded him for a moment with that expressionless gaze he’d used to such effect during his years as a copper on a tough patch. “Because I warned ’em when they locked her up that she was one loopy bitch. They should have thrown away the key but she was clever. Clever enough for there to be an element of doubt about why she did it.”

  “The amnesia plea you mean?”

  “Amnesia my arse,” Allardice snorted. “She did it and she knows full well she did it. That was the best she could come up with to wriggle out of a cast iron murder charge. She attacked and killed Callum Perry and tried to get away with it. End of story.”

  O’Neill paused. “She keeps bringing up the case she was working on at the time,” he said carefully. “I’ve been looking into the files. A dead prostitute. Remember that one too?”

  “I may have gone soft around the middle old son but that doesn’t mean I’ve gone soft in the head. ’Course I remember. Jacks was just trying to make a name for herself—you know how they get. They watch too many TV shows and think it’s all about the geeks. It was just another hooker made a bad decision and paid the price for it. End of story. Jacks just couldn’t face being wrong.”

  O’Neill frowned. “Did she even know Perry?”

  Allardice took a long pull on his cigarette and shook his head as he exhaled. “Not as far as we could work out. He was just a barman up the East End. Jacks claimed he’d asked for a meet but we couldn’t find anything to support that. She said she didn’t know what he wanted and next thing he’s dead.” He gave a short laugh. “Difficult to claim it was an accident when she stabbed the poor bugger about eighteen times, so she comes up with all that crap about not being able to remember.”

  “And you never found out what Perry might have known in relation to the case?” O’Neill asked. He fixed his former boss with a cool eye. “If this is going to come apart on me Frank, I’d like a heads up.”

  “Not a sausage,” Allardice said firmly. “Whatever he knew—if there was anything for him to know in the first place—he took it with him. Kelly Jacks made sure of that.”

  44

  “You look . . . pensive,” Lytton said. He sat relaxed, draping an arm along the back of the empty chair alongside him.

  “Wouldn’t you in my position?” Kelly asked. They were in the members’ bar at the top of the modern grandstand. Midweek with no event in progress the place was almost deserted and the view was stunning.

  Directly beneath them were the private boxes with their slanted glass walls looking out over the track. The boxes were set slightly forwards of the grandstand seating to give unobstructed sight of the action. Here the privileged could go from expensive lunch to closeted luxury without ever having to mix it with the hoi polloi below.

  Kelly glanced at the debris of an excellent meal which had yet to be cleared from the starched tablecloth and admitted, “If this is being on the run I could get to like it.”

  Lytton smiled, then asked, “You really think you’ll get to the bottom of this when the police haven’t?”

  “I don’t think they’re trying,” she said levelly. “It’s too tempting to go for the obvious explanation and forget the rest. And I worked for the police don’t forget. I was a crime-scene specialist for nearly ten years so I know the real cleanup rate not just the figures massaged for public consumption.”

  He nodded and reached for his glass of imported lager. Kelly had started out on sparkling water and was now drinking tea. They sat in comfortable silence until he asked suddenly, “There was something in the news reports about you—from back then—I didn’t quite understand.” Only his raised eyebrow made it a question.

  Kelly forced herself not to tense up. “And what was that?”

  “Your nickname,” he said. “They said you were known as ‘the blood whisperer’. It’s not a term I’ve ever come across.”

  She smiled. “I’m not surprised. It was more a bit of poetic licence than anything else.”

  He gestured with his glass. “Go on.”

  She took a moment to find the right words, neither too serious nor flippant. “Evidence speaks to me,” she said at last simply. “Maybe I learned how to listen better than most.”

  “And what did Vee’s workspace have to say to you?”

  “It tells me the kind of person she was.”

  “Which is?”

  Kelly hesitated again, choosing her words carefully. For all his apparent detachment he still referred to his wife—still thought of her—in the present tense.

  “Organised,” she said, “maybe to the point of obsession. She seemed to write everything down more than once. There was a diary and a day-planner—both were filled in and kept up to date. So I would say . . . good on the details, neat, sharp, vain.”

  “Vain?�
�

  Again Kelly paused. How do I say that she doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d ruin her good looks by putting the barrel of a gun into her mouth and blowing the back of her head off? Pills yes. Maybe even a hosepipe from the car exhaust. But a rifle? No.