by Val McDermid
Vance smiled in the darkness. Very soon he planned to take the guesswork out of the equation.
7
The liveried police car made a slow turn at Carol’s direction. ‘Third house on the left,’ she said, her voice a weary sigh. She’d left Paula at the crime scene, making sure things were done the way the Major Incident Team preferred. Carol had no problem with delegation, not with a hand-picked squad like this one. She wondered whether she’d have that same luxury in Worcester.
‘Ma’am?’ The driver, a stolid twenty-something traffic officer, sounded cautious.
Carol roused herself to attention. ‘Yes? What is it?’
‘There’s a man sitting in a parked car outside the third house on the left. It looks like his head’s leaning on the steering wheel,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to PNC the index number?’
As they drew level, Carol looked out of the window, surprised but not shocked to see Tony, as the PC had said, leaning on his arms on the steering wheel. ‘No need to trouble the computer,’ she said. ‘I know who he is.’
‘Do you need me to have a word?’
Carol smiled. ‘Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. He’s entirely harmless.’ That wasn’t strictly true, but in the narrow terms of reference of a traffic cop, it was as close as damn it.
‘Your call,’ he said, drawing in front of Tony’s car and coming to a halt. ‘Night, ma’am.’
‘Good night. No need to wait, I’m fine.’ Carol got out of the car and walked back to Tony’s car. She hung on till the police car drove off, then opened the passenger door and got in. At the sound of the lock clicking shut, Tony’s head jerked back and he gasped as if he’d been struck.
‘What the fuck,’ he said, his voice frightened and disorientated. His head jerked from side to side as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. ‘Carol? What the …?’
She patted his arm. ‘You’re outside the house in Bradfield. You were asleep. I came home from work and saw you. I thought you might not have intended to spend the whole night spark out in the car.’
He rubbed his hands over his face as if splashing himself with water, then turned to her, wide-eyed and startled. ‘I was listening to a podcast. The fabulous Dr Gwen Adshead from Broadmoor talking about dealing with the disasters that are our patients. I got home and she was still talking and I wanted to hear the end of it. I can’t believe I fell asleep, she was talking more sense than anybody I’ve heard in a long time.’ He yawned and shook himself. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just after three.’
‘God. I got back not long after midnight.’ He shivered. ‘I’m really cold.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Carol opened the door. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going indoors.’
Tony scurried out of his side and met her at the gate to the house. ‘Why are you only coming home just after three? Do you want a drink? I’m wide awake now.’
He could be so like a small child, she thought. Out of nowhere, all eagerness and curiosity. ‘I’ll come in for a nightcap,’ she said, following him to the front door rather than to the side door that led to her self-contained basement flat.
Inside, the house had the still cold air of a space that’s been empty for more than a few hours. ‘Put the fire on in my office, it warms up faster than the living room,’ Tony said, heading for the kitchen. ‘Wine or vodka?’
He knew her well enough not to bother offering anything else. ‘Vodka,’ she called as she squatted down to struggle with the ignition of the gas fire. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d suggested he have the fire serviced so it wouldn’t be a wrestling match to get it going. It didn’t matter now. Within a couple of weeks, the sale of this house and her flat within it would be completed and he’d have the problems of a whole new house to ignore. But then, the problems wouldn’t have the chance to turn into nagging irritations. Because she’d be living there, and she didn’t tolerate infuriating shit like that.
The fire finally caught as Tony returned with a bottle of Russian vodka, a bottle of Calvados and a pair of tumblers that looked as if he’d collected them free with petrol sometime in the 1980s. ‘I packed the nice glasses already,’ he said.
‘Both of them?’ Carol reached for the bottle, flinching at the cold. It had obviously been in the freezer and the spirit slid down the bottle in sluggish sobs as she poured it.
‘So why are you coming home after three? You don’t look like it was a party.’
‘Superintendent Reekie at Northern wants me to go out in a blaze of glory,’ she said drily.
‘That would be a budget buster, then?’ Tony raised his glass in a cynical toast. ‘You’d think it came out of a different pot altogether, not just a different department in the same organisation. It’s amazing how many cases have had “Major Incident Team” stamped on them since the Chief Constable’s austerity drive.’
‘Even more so since the word got around that I’m leaving.’ Carol sighed. ‘This one, though … in less frugal times, we’d have been fighting Northern for it anyway.’
‘A bad one?’
Carol swallowed a mouthful of vodka and topped up her glass. ‘The worst kind. Your kind. Somebody nailed a prostitute to a cross. Upside down. Then he cut her throat.’ She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Northern think he’s done it before. Not like that, obviously. We would have heard before now if he had. But they’ve had two dead sex workers recently. Different methods. One strangled, one drowned.’
Tony was leaning forward in his chair, elbows on knees, eyes as far from sleep as could be. ‘I had a call from Penny Burgess earlier. I think it might have been about this.’
‘Really? What did she have to say?’
‘I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. But she seemed to think I should be involved. That there’s something serial going on.’
‘She could be right. All three of the victims have what looks like a tattoo on the inside of their wrist. “MINE”, it says.’
‘They didn’t connect the first two?’ Tony sounded incredulous.
‘To be fair, they only got the chance to make the connection yesterday. The one who was drowned, she wasn’t in the best condition. Grisha’s not had the body long, and it took a bit of time for them to be sure what they were looking for.’ Carol shrugged, running her fingers through her shaggy blonde hair. ‘It was hard to pick up any significance on the first body – she had other tatts on her arms and torso, no reason to think MINE had any greater significance than the tramp stamp that said BECKHAM.’
‘And this latest one? She’s got MINE on her wrist too? Interesting.’
‘It looks like it. There’s a lot of blood and swelling, because he nailed her to the wood through her wrist—’ Carol shuddered. ‘But there’s definitely something there. So Reekie called me and handed it off to us. They’ll do the footslogging.’
‘But it’ll still come out of your budget. Make you look the extravagant one, not Reekie. The women, the victims – were they local to Northern? Or were they working somewhere like Temple Fields and just got killed outside the city centre?’
‘Both local. Small time, on the street, not indoor workers.’
‘Young? Older?’
‘Young. Drug users, not surprisingly. And of course, because of the way they earned their money, we can’t be sure if they were sexually assaulted.’ She held up a hand. ‘I know, I know. Chances are, sex will come into it somewhere.’
‘Just not always in the obvious way.’ Tony sniffed his glass and made a face. ‘It’s always better where you buy it, isn’t it? This stuff smelled wonderful in Brittany. Now it’s like lighter fluid.’ He took a tentative sip. ‘Tastes better than it smells. So will you be looking at using a profiler?’
‘It would be the obvious port of call. But Blake won’t want to pay for you, and I don’t want to work with the homegrown products of the national academy.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You remember the idiot they sent us on the RigMarole killings? All the emotional i
ntelligence of a brick wall. I promised the team I’d never go down that road again. Better to do without than let the Chief Constable foist another one of those on us.’
‘Would you like me?’ Tony said. His raised eyebrows promised the faintest possibility of double entendre, but Carol wasn’t buying.
‘It’s the sensible option, if we want to get a result sooner rather than later.’ She reached for the bottle and topped up her glass. ‘But there’s no way I’ll be allowed to spend that kind of money.’
‘What if it didn’t cost you anything?’
Carol frowned. ‘I’ve told you before. I refuse to take advantage of our personal relationship—’
‘Whatever it is … ’
‘Whatever it is. You’re a professional. When we use expertise from outside the police service, we should pay for it.’
‘The labourer is worthy of his hire,’ he said, softening the darkness of his tone with a lopsided smile. ‘We’ve had this out before, and neither of us is going to shift our ground. You say tomato and I say potato.’ He waved one hand as if he was batting away an insect. ‘I think there’s a way of doing this that means I get paid and you get my expertise.’
Carol frowned. ‘How do you work that out?’
Tony tapped the side of his nose. ‘I need to talk to someone at the Home Office.’
‘Tony, it may have escaped your notice, but we have a new government. There is no money. Not for essentials, never mind luxuries like psychological profilers.’ Frustrated, Carol sighed.
‘I know you think I live on another planet, Carol, but I did know that.’ He pulled a sad clown face that emphasised the lines his job had carved there. ‘But my go-to guy at the Home Office is above the political fray. And I think he owes me.’ Tony paused for a moment, his eyes drifting to the top left corner of the room. ‘Yes, he does.’ He shifted in his seat and stared directly at Carol. ‘All those years ago, we started something in this city. Reekie’s right. You should go out in a blaze of glory. And I should be there at your side, just like I was that first time.’
8
Dawn came and he had not slept. But Jacko Vance was wired, not tired. He listened to the small noises of the wing coming to life, happy in the thought that this would be the last time he was forced to start his day in the company of so many. He checked Collins’ watch every few minutes, waiting for the right moment to rise and start the day. He’d had to calculate another man’s mentality in all of this. Collins would be eager, but not too eager. Vance had always had a good sense of timing. It was one of the elements that had made him so successful an athlete. But today, much more depended on that timing than a mere medal.
When he judged the moment was perfect, he got out of bed and headed for the toilet. He passed the electric razor over his head and his chin again, then dressed in Collins’ ratty jeans and baggy polo shirt. The tattoos looked spot on, Vance thought. And people saw what they expected to see. A man with Collins’ tattoos and clothes must, in the absence of any contradictory features, be Collins.
The minutes crawled by. At last, a fist banged his door and a voice called out. ‘Collins? Get yourself in gear, time to make a move.’
By the time the door opened, the officer was already distracted, paying more attention to an argument further down the corridor about the previous evening’s football results than he was to the man who emerged from the cell. Vance knew the officer – Jarvis, one of the regular day-shift crew, chippy and irritable, but not someone who had ever taken any personal interest in any of his charges. So far, so good. The screw cast a cursory glance over his shoulder then led the way down the hall. Vance stood back while the first door was unlocked remotely, enjoying the solid clunk of the metal tongue sliding open. Then he followed the officer into the sally port and tried to breathe normally while one door closed and the other opened.
And then they were off the wing, moving through the main administrative section of the jail towards the exit. Trying to calm himself with distraction, Vance wondered why anyone would choose a working environment with sickly yellow walls and metalwork painted battleship grey. To spend your days here without descending into deep depression, you’d have to have no visual taste whatsoever.
Another sally port, then the final hurdle. A couple of bored-looking officers sat behind thick glass windows like bank counters, with gaps where documents could be passed through. Jarvis nodded to the nearest, a skinny young man with a crew cut and bad skin. ‘Is the social worker here for Collins?’ he said.
Not likely, Vance thought. Not if things had gone to plan. Not many women would turn up for work after they’d been wakened in the night by someone trying to smash into their house. Especially since the putative burglar/rapist had taken the precaution of slashing all four tyres on her car and cutting her phone line. She’d been lucky. If he’d been doing the job himself instead of having to delegate it, he’d have slashed her dog’s throat and nailed it to the front door. Some things you couldn’t outsource. Hopefully, what he had managed to arrange would be enough. Unfortunate for poor Jason really. He would have to set off for his Release on Temporary Licence day without the support of someone who knew him.
‘No,’ the man on the desk said. ‘She’s not coming in today.’
‘What?’ Jarvis moaned. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming in today?’
‘Personal issues.’
‘So what am I supposed to do with him?’ He jerked his head towards Vance.
‘There’s a taxi here.’
‘He’s going off in a taxi? Without an escort?’ Jarvis shook his head, mugging incredulity for his audience.
‘What’s the odds? He’ll have all day on the ROTL without an escort, regardless. Just means it starts a bit earlier, that’s all.’
‘What about orientation? Isn’t he supposed to have some sort of orientation with the social worker?’
Crew cut picked a spot, examined his fingernail and shrugged again. ‘Not our problem, is it? We ran it past the Assistant Governor and he said it was OK. He said Collins presented no cause for concern.’ He looked at Vance. ‘You all right with that, Collins? Otherwise the ROTL gets cancelled.’
Vance shrugged right back at him. ‘I might as well go since I’m here now.’ He was quite pleased with the way it came out. He thought it was a decent representation of how Collins spoke. More importantly, he didn’t sound at all like himself. He thrust his hands into his pockets as he’d seen Collins do a thousand times, hunching his shoulders slightly.
‘I want it on the record that I’m not happy with this, no matter what the AG says,’ Jarvis grumbled as he led Vance through the high baffle gate that led to the outside world. He pushed open the door and Vance followed him on to a paved area flanked by a roadway. A tired-looking Skoda saloon sat by the kerb, its diesel engine rumbling. Vance smelled the dirty exhaust, a cloying note in the fresh morning air. It was a combination he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Jarvis pulled open the passenger door and leaned in. ‘You take him to Evesham Fabrications, right? Nowhere else. I don’t care if he says he’s having a bloody heart attack and needs to go to the hospital, or he’s going to shit himself if he doesn’t get to a toilet pronto. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200. Evesham Fabrications.’
The driver looked baffled. ‘You need to chill, mate,’ he said. ‘You’ll give yourself a stroke. I know my job.’ He craned his head so he could see past Jarvis. ‘In you get, mate.’
‘In the front, so the driver can keep an eye on you.’ Jarvis stepped back, allowing Vance to slide into the passenger seat. He reached for the seat belt with his prosthesis, hoping any clumsiness would be put down to the length of time since he’d last been in a car. ‘I don’t want to hear you’ve caused any trouble, Collins,’ Jarvis said, slamming the door shut. The car smelled of synthetic pine air freshener overlaid with coffee.
The cabbie, a shambolic-looking Asian man in his mid-thirties, chuckled as he pulled away. ‘He’s in a good mood.’
&n
bsp; ‘It’s not a mood, it’s his permanent state,’ Vance said. His heart was racing. He could feel sweat in the small of his back. He couldn’t quite believe it. He’d made it out of the front door. And with every passing minute, he was further from HMP Oakworth and closer to his dream of freedom. OK, there were still plenty of obstacles between him and that steak dinner, but the hardest part was behind him. He reminded himself that he’d always believed he led a charmed life. The years in jail had just been an interruption of his natural state, not a termination. The dice were rolling in his favour again.
If he needed reinforcement in that conviction, it came as Vance took a closer look at his surroundings. The car was an automatic, which would make his life a lot easier. He hadn’t driven since his arrest; getting behind the wheel would be a steep enough revision curve without having to deal with gear changes. Vance relaxed a fraction, smiling as he took in neat fields of spring grass with their tightly woven hedges. Fat sheep grazed, their stolid lambs mostly past the gambolling stage. They passed orchards, rows of stumpy trees covered in blossom that was beginning to look a little bedraggled. The road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was a foreigner’s ideal of the English countryside.
‘Must make a nice change for you, getting out like this,’ the cabbie said.
‘You’ve got no idea,’ Vance said. ‘I’m hoping this is just the start. Rehab, that’s what this has been for me. I’m a changed man.’ Changed, in the sense that he was determined never to repeat the kind of mistakes that got him confined. But he was still a killer; he’d just learned how to be a better one.
Now, he was studying the landscape, matching their route to the map in his head. Seven and a half miles of quiet country roads before they hit the major artery leading towards Birmingham.
