by Val McDermid
Carol’s mouth tightened as she shook her head. ‘You know as well as I do, we don’t have the budget.’ Her voice was harsher than they were accustomed to.
Kevin flushed, his freckles fading against the scarlet. ‘I just thought … since they’re winding us up anyway, why not? You know? You’re leaving us. What have you got to lose?’
Before Carol could respond to this uncharacteristic defiance, the door to the squad room burst open. On the threshold, hair awry, one shirt tail hanging out, jacket collar askew, stood Tony Hill. He looked around wildly before his gaze settled on Carol. He gulped air, then said, ‘Carol, we need to talk.’
There was no affectionate indulgence in Carol’s glare. ‘I’m in the middle of a murder briefing, Tony,’ she said, her tone chilly.
‘That can wait,’ he said, continuing into the room and letting the door sigh shut behind him. ‘What I have to say can’t.’
10
An hour earlier, Tony Hill had been sitting in his favourite armchair, his games console controller in his hands, thumbs dancing over buttons as he whiled away the time until it was reasonable to expect Piers Lambert to be at his Home Office desk. The warbling trill of his phone broke into his concentration and his car spun off the road in a scream of brakes and a screech of tyres. He scowled at the handset on the table beside him. The best chance he’d had in ages to breach the final set of levels and now it was gone. He dropped the controller and grabbed the phone, noticing as he did so that it was late enough to call Piers. Just as soon as he’d dealt with whoever was on the phone.
‘Hello?’ There was no welcome in his greeting.
‘Is that you, Tony?’ The voice sounded like a Tory cabinet minister – posh with the edges deliberately rubbed off. A man more superstitious than Tony would have freaked out. Tony simply held the phone a few inches from his face and frowned before returning it to his ear.
‘Piers? Is that really you?’
‘Well spotted, Tony. You don’t usually cotton on so quickly.’
‘That’s because you’re not usually in the forefront of my mind, Piers.’
‘And I am today? I’d take that as a compliment if I knew less about the way your mind works. Why am I on your mind?’
There was no specific reason why being on the receiving end of a call from Piers Lambert should have unsettled Tony. But in his experience, when senior mandarins made their own phone calls, it was never the harbinger of joy. ‘You first,’ he said. ‘It’s your phone bill.’
‘I’m afraid I have some rather troubling news,’ Lambert said.
Uh-oh. When men like Lambert used words like ‘rather troubling’, most people would reach straight for ‘nightmarish’, ‘devastating’, or ‘hellish’. ‘What’s that, then?’
‘It’s to do with Jacko Vance.’
Tony hadn’t heard the name for years, but still it held the power to make him feel ill. Jacko Vance was a psychopathic charmer without a trace of conscience. That made him far from unique in Tony’s experience of the dark side of human behaviour. But Vance’s destructiveness had ripped through promise that Tony had known at first hand. Vance had shattered trust in ways that few people could have imagined before his terrible damage became known. Compassion and empathy were the principles Tony had always tried to apply to his professional life. But among the many predators whose activities had threatened to strip those qualities from him, Jacko Vance had come closest. As far as Vance was concerned, the only news Tony wanted to hear was an obituary. ‘What’s happened?’ he said, his voice rough with anxiety.
‘It appears he’s escaped from custody.’ Piers sounded apologetic. Tony could picture his pained smile, his apprehensive eyes and the way he would touch the knot of his tie for reassurance. In that instant, he wanted to grab that tie and pull it very hard.
‘Escaped? How the fuck could that happen?’ Anger overtook him, nought to ninety in seconds.
‘He took the place of another prisoner who had qualified for Release on Temporary Licence. He was due to spend the day at a local factory. The social worker who should have accompanied him wasn’t at work and it appears Vance attacked the driver of the taxi taking him to the factory assignment, then made off in the taxi.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Tony shouted. ‘What in the name of God was he doing anywhere near the category of prisoner who could qualify for Release on Temporary Licence? How could that happen?’
Lambert cleared his throat. ‘He’s been on the Therapeutic Community Wing at Oakworth for a couple of months now. A model prisoner, by all accounts. Has been for years.’
Tony opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, reaching for the right words and failing to find them.
‘There was no indication that Vance had anything planned,’ Lambert continued, his voice smooth and unruffled.
Tony found his voice. ‘Piers, can you explain what the hell Vance was doing on a Therapeutic Community Wing? He’s on a whole-life tariff, for crying out loud. Why’s he occupying a space in a rehab programme designed for people who have come to terms with their crimes? People who are working towards release? People who have a future that isn’t behind bars? Answer me, damn it! Who put him in a place he could exploit? A place he could manipulate for his own ends? The perfect bloody place for someone like him to take advantage of?’
Lambert sighed heavily. ‘There will, of course, be an inquiry. The psychologist who was assigned to him made the case for him to move to the Therapeutic Community Wing. He’s been Category C for a couple of years now, you know.’
‘Cat C?’ Tony exploded. ‘After what he’s done? God knows how many teenage girls mutilated and murdered, and he’s downgraded from Cat A to Cat C?’
‘Technically, he’s serving a single life sentence for a single murder—’
‘Not to mention the murder of a police officer,’ Tony continued, ignoring Lambert’s response. ‘A police officer who was trying to make sure no more girls died.’
‘Nevertheless, we can only punish what we can prove. And the Court of Appeal found the conviction in respect of Detective Constable Bowman to be unsafe. As I said, Vance was a model prisoner. The governor of his previous prison held out as long as he could, but there were no grounds on which the authorities could refuse to reduce his threat category.’ Tony picked up a note of frustration in Lambert’s voice. It was good to feel that he wasn’t alone in his outrage at what he was hearing. ‘His lawyer threatened us with the Human Rights Act, and we both know how that would have gone. So Vance was reduced to Cat C and transferred to Oakworth.’
‘This psychologist – was it a woman?’
‘Yes, as it happens.’ Lambert sounded startled. ‘But entirely competent.’
‘And entirely susceptible to Jacko Vance’s charisma,’ Tony said sadly. ‘If anyone had asked me, I would have insisted that no female staff come into direct contact with Vance. He’s clever, he’s charming and he’s got the knack of making men and women, but women in particular, feel like they’re the only person in the world. He’ll have made all the right noises about remorse and the need to atone, and what harm could it do to move him to a prison community where he could deal with his issues from the past? Even if he was never going to be returned to society, the system owed him that small kindness.’ Tony made a sharp noise of disgust. ‘I could write the script, Piers.’
‘I’m sure you could, Tony. Unfortunately, there’s no mechanism for allowing those involved in tracking down a criminal to have input into what happens to them once they fall within the remit of the prison system.’
Tony jumped out of his chair and began pacing the room. ‘And he managed to impersonate another prisoner well enough to get out of Oakworth? How the hell did he manage that? I mean, Vance is the original one-armed man. He’s got a bloody prosthetic arm. Not to mention the fact that he used to be on prime-time TV. Millions of people could pick him out of a line-up. How come the duty officers didn’t recognise Jacko bloody Vance?’
‘You are out of the loop, are
n’t you? Don’t you remember, Vance brought a case under the Human Rights Act against the Home Office—’
‘Yes, he said he was being discriminated against because he wasn’t being fitted with the latest prosthetics. And the court upheld his position. But it’s still a prosthesis, Piers. It’s not an arm like you and I have got.’
‘You don’t know much about state-of-the-art prosthetics, do you, Tony? We’re not talking about some bog-standard NHS artificial limb here. What Vance has got now is almost indistinguishable from what you and I have got. According to the brief I’ve got, he had surgery to reroute nerves, which in turn send messages to the electronics in the arm and the hand. He can move the fingers and thumb independent of each other. Over the top of it, he’s got a bespoke cosmesis, which apparently is fake skin, complete with freckles, veins, tendons, the lot. The whole kit and caboodle cost thousands of pounds.’
‘And we paid for that?’
‘No. He went private.’
‘This beggars belief,’ Tony said. ‘He’s a convicted killer and he gets to have private medical care?’
‘He was legitimately a multi-millionaire. He could afford it and the courts said he had the right to the best treatment available. I know it sounds insane, but that’s the law for you.’
‘You’re right. It does sound insane.’ Tony reached the far wall again and slapped his hand hard against it. ‘I thought the families of his victims sued him? How come he’s still awash with cash?’
‘Because he was clever with it.’ At last, a tinge of anger had crept into Lambert’s voice. ‘As soon as he was arrested, Vance made arrangements to take his money offshore. It’s all tied up in trusts abroad, the kind of jurisdictions where we have no way of discovering who the trustees are or who the beneficiaries of the trusts are. The civil court judgements against Vance can’t be enforced against an offshore trust. But when he needed funds for surgery, the money was made available. It’s hugely offensive, but there’s nothing we can legally do to prevent it.’
‘Unbelievable.’ Tony shook his head. ‘But even if the arm wasn’t obvious, how did he manage to fool everybody?’
Lambert groaned. ‘God knows. What I’m hearing is that the prisoner in question has a shaved head, glasses and distinctive tattoos on his arms and neck. All of which Vance had copied. Someone obviously brought in custom-made tattoo sleeves or transfers with the appropriate designs. The person most likely to realise it was the wrong man was the social worker, and she wasn’t in work today.’
Tony gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Something completely unpredictable happened to her. Her boyfriend was kidnapped or her house blew up or something.’
‘I have no idea, Tony. All I know is that she wasn’t there, so in their infinite wisdom the officers sent him off in a taxi to his work placement. I’m told it’s standard operating procedure in cases like this. Don’t forget, the prisoners who get sent on these placements are on a trajectory towards release. It’s in their interests not to mess up.’
‘This is the most terrifying news I’ve heard in a long time, you know that? There’s going to be bodies, Piers.’ An involuntary shudder rippled across Tony’s shoulders. ‘How’s the taxi driver? Is he still alive?’
‘He has head injuries, but I’m told they’re not life-threatening.’ Lambert sounded dismissive. ‘What concerns me most is that we recapture Vance as swiftly as possible. And that’s where you come in.’
‘Me? I haven’t spoken to Vance since before his first trial. I’ve no idea where his head’s at these days. You’ve got a prison psych who apparently knew him well enough to put him in a Therapeutic Community – talk to her.’ Tony let out a sharp breath of exasperation.
‘We will, of course. But I have huge respect for your abilities, Tony. I was very much on the sidelines when you put a stop to Vance all those years ago, but I remember the impact your work had on the Home Office attitude towards profiling. I want to send you the files on Vance and I want you to provide us with as detailed an assessment as possible of what he’s likely to do and where he’s likely to go.’ Lambert had recovered his poise. His request had all the force of insistence without being obvious.
‘It’d be guesswork at best.’ When it came to the big beasts of officialdom, Tony knew better than to offer any shred of hope that could be used later as a stick to beat him with.
‘Your guesswork is better by far than the considered opinion of most of your colleagues.’
When all else fails, Tony thought, wheel out the flattery. ‘One thing I will say, even without the benefit of the files … ’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know where Micky Morgan is these days, but you need to track her down and tell her Vance is on the loose. In Vance’s world view, she’ll still be his wife. It doesn’t matter that it was never a marriage in the first place, or that she had it annulled. As far as he’s concerned, she let him down. He doesn’t like being thwarted.’ Tony stopped pacing and leaned his forehead against the door. ‘As we all found out to our cost the last time. He’s a killer, Piers. Anyone who’s ever crossed him is at serious risk.’
There was a moment’s silence. When Lambert spoke again, there was a gentleness in his voice that Tony had never heard before. ‘Doesn’t that apply to you too, Tony? You and DCI Jordan? You’re the ones who brought him down. You and your team of baby profilers. If you think he’s going after the people he blames for his incarceration, surely you’re at the top of the list?’
It was a measure of Tony’s lack of narcissism that Lambert’s concern had genuinely not occurred to him. Years of clinical practice had taught him to bury his own vulnerability so deep he’d almost lost sight of it himself. And although he knew plenty about the chinks in Carol Jordan’s armour, he was so accustomed to thinking of her as her own worst enemy that he’d all but forgotten there were other threats out there, threats that could undermine her far more comprehensively than her own weaknesses. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said now, shaking his head, not wanting to believe himself a possible target. Because once he admitted that, everything he did would be tainted and skewed by the fear of who Vance might destroy next.
‘I think you ought to be aware of the possibility,’ Lambert said. ‘I’ll have the files uploaded and send you the codes to access them. As soon as we hear anything from the police in North Yorkshire, I’ll be in touch.’
‘I never said—’
‘But you will, Tony. You know you will. We’ll talk soon.’
And he was gone. For a split second, Tony thought about phoning Carol. But news like this was always better delivered face-to-face. He grabbed his car keys and jacket and headed for the door. He was halfway to Bradfield Police HQ when he remembered he’d had his own reasons for talking to Piers Lambert. But even though he thought he truly believed that no individual life was worth more than another, he had to acknowledge that, when it came to it, saving Carol Jordan was always going to trump anything else.
It wasn’t an entirely comfortable conclusion, but it was inescapable.
11
Tony advanced into the room, his eyes fixed on Carol. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I have to speak to you now. In private.’ Seeing how serious he was, Carol’s expression shifted from annoyed to perplexed. Tony had never cried wolf in all the years she’d known him. Whatever the issue was, this was clearly no frivolous interruption. ‘My office,’ she said, gesturing with her head towards the open door. Tony didn’t even break stride. Carol sighed and spread her hands wide in a gesture of helplessness towards her officers. Her team was well used to Tony’s eccentricities, but it was still infuriating to have him walk in as if he owned the place. And whatever happened in it. ‘As I said already: Kevin, talk to Suze Black’s flatmate. Take Paula with you, I think. Sam, talk to Dr Shatalov about a photo we can use to ID her. Chris, work with Stacey to get the whiteboards up to speed with the files. And don’t forget the tattooing machines.’ She glanced over her shoulder and sa
w Tony was already pacing. ‘I shall return,’ she said wearily.
Carol shut the office door behind her but didn’t bother to close the blinds. She wasn’t expecting the conversation to go anywhere that needed that kind of privacy. ‘This had better be good, Tony,’ she said, dropping heavily into her chair. ‘I’ve got three murders on the board. I don’t have time for anything less than life or death.’
Tony stopped pacing and leaned his hands on her desk, facing her. ‘I think this more than qualifies,’ he said. ‘Jacko Vance escaped from prison earlier this morning.’
Carol’s face blanked with shock. ‘What?’ It was an automatic response. Tony didn’t bother repeating himself. She stared at him for a long moment then said, ‘How could they let that happen?’
Tony made a dismissive noise. ‘Because Vance is smarter than anybody else in a Cat C prison.’
‘Cat C? How could he be in Cat C? He’s a convicted killer.’
‘And the perfect prisoner, according to the Home Office. He hasn’t put a foot out of place all the years he’s been inside. Or rather, he’s covered his tracks so well, that’s what it looks like.’ There was anger in his voice, but he couldn’t be bothered trying to suppress it. If he couldn’t show some emotion with Carol, then there was nowhere in his life he could open a door on what lay within. ‘Not only was he Cat C, he’s been on a Therapeutic Community Wing. Can you believe it? Free association, cells like hotel rooms, group therapy that he can stage-manage like the master manipulator he is.’ He pushed off from the desk and threw himself into a chair. ‘I could lay my head on your desk and weep.’
‘So did someone help him? Did he go over the wall?’
‘Obviously he’s had a lot of help, inside and out. He impersonated another prisoner who was due to go out on a day release. One of those temporary licence things where they’re supposed to learn how to adjust to the outside world.’ He slapped his hands on his thighs. ‘The other prisoner must have been in on it. You remember what Vance is like with vulnerability. He teases it out, then he homes in on it, makes people feel like he’s the heavensent answer to whatever ails them. He’ll have had something to offer that this other bloke needs.’ He jumped up again and started pacing. Carol couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him so physically worked up. Then it came to her. An apartment in Berlin. Where her personal safety had been on the line. It dawned on her that this agitation might have its roots in the same cause.
