The Retribution thacj-7

by Val McDermid

  I believe Vance suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The key to any understanding of Vance is his need to be in control. He wants an environment where he is in charge. It’s always all about him. He needs to manipulate the individuals around him and to be in charge of the way events unfold. Some controlling personalities use threats and fear to keep people in line; Vance uses charisma to blind them to what he is really about. That’s not just because it’s easier to maintain – it’s also because he needs their adoration. He needs to have people look up to him. It’s what his whole life was about before he went to prison and I imagine it shaped his life behind bars.

  He has enormous self-discipline, which dates back to his adolescence. He was desperate to carve a niche for himself where people would respect and admire him. His mother largely ignored him and his father treated him with contempt. He didn’t like the way they made him feel and he was determined to make the world take notice of him. Probably the only thing that kept him from violent criminality in his teenage years was the discovery of his athletic talent. Once that had been identified, it offered him an avenue to the sort of adulation he wanted to experience.

  But to realise that goal, he had to acquire self-discipline. He had to train and he had to find a way to organise himself mentally as well as physically. That he had such a phenomenally successful athletic career is testament to how well he succeeded. He was only months away from an almost certain Olympic gold in javelin when he had the accident that cost him the lower half of his throwing arm. At least one psychologist who has interviewed Vance has identified the accident and its aftermath as being a transformative moment, as if Vance had been a mentally healthy individual up to that point. The evidence cited in support of this position is that the destruction of his arm came about as a result of a heroic act.

  It’s my contention that Vance has always been mentally disordered. The amputation was a stress point in his life that tipped him over the edge. We have anecdotal evidence of sadistic sexual behaviour before the accident and also of violent cruelty to animals. The level of sadistic torture he exhibited towards his victims demonstrated no learning curve – he was already at a place mentally where this was what he wanted.

  Vance has always been very good at hiding his deviant behaviour behind the appearance of candour and charm. That he is physically attractive has always been a significant factor in his ability to convince others that he is not the problem. In the years when he was a leading TV personality, it was often said that women wanted to sleep with him and men wanted to be him. I do not imagine he has lost the power to command that sort of response. I recommend a review of his time in prison and a reassessment of any questionable incidents in his contact circle, particularly any violent or suspicious deaths.

  I don’t know the details of his escape from Oakworth, but I would be very surprised if they did not involve collaboration from inside and outside the prison. Although it is more than twelve years since he was sent to prison, he still has a cohort of the faithful on the outside. There is a Facebook group called Jacko Vance is Innocent. As of this morning, 3,754 people ‘like’ this. One of those people – and I use the number advisedly, because Vance doesn’t take chances and having more than one person knowingly involved is taking a chance – has helped him. I recommend checking the logs of his visitors. It would be helpful to know who he has spoken to on the phone, but he will almost certainly have had a contraband mobile for any crucial communications.

  Do not rule out any of the professionals with whom he has had contact in prison. Remember Myra Hindley and the prison officer who became her lover. They hatched an escape plan that never got off the ground. Vance is undoubtedly a smarter operator than Hindley ever was. We know that he managed to persuade a prison psychologist that he was a fit and proper person to occupy a place on a Therapeutic Community Wing. Personally, if the only way to keep Jacko Vance off a TCW was to burn down the prison, I’d be there with a can of petrol.

  Tony paused and read the last sentence again. It was harsh, no doubt about that. And he hadn’t built his career on slagging off his colleagues. On the other hand, someone who was supposed to be immune to manipulative bastards like Vance had been lulled into putting him where he absolutely shouldn’t have been. Psychologists were trained to understand damage and how it avenges itself; someone had been woefully lacking here and he didn’t feel like covering her back. Not now Jacko Vance was out there and in all probability looking for revenge. Especially since he himself might be one of the targets of his vengeful rage. So he let the words stand, stark in their informality.

  There was supposed to be a prison social worker accompanying him to the work placement. It is possible that this individual is also implicated in his escape. If there is a genuine reason for the social worker’s absence, it may also have been engineered by Vance from inside the prison. If, for example, the social worker’s family was under threat of some kind.

  Nevertheless, prison professionals must not be above suspicion, both in what has happened and what may happen. Vance has certainly been given support from outside and it is extremely likely that he’s going to continue in that mode.

  He pushed his glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘So much for the straightforward stuff,’ he muttered. Everything he’d written so far should be self-evident to anyone with half a brain. But he’d learned over the years that there was a game to be played here. You had to include the obvious so that those who read the report could congratulate themselves on being as perspicacious as the professional. Then they didn’t feel so aggrieved when you hit them with something they hadn’t expected. Never mind that that was what they paid you for. Deep down, everybody thought what he did was little more than applied common sense.

  Some days, he thought they were right. But not today.

  Tony rolled his shoulders and laid his fingers on the keys. He took a deep breath, like a pianist waiting for the conductor’s baton, then started typing furiously.

  Vance is a planner. He has a bolthole which has been organised by whoever has been working on his behalf on the outside. He will stay clear of his old stamping grounds because he knows that’s where we will look. He will not be in London or Northumberland. Where he chooses to base himself will be dependent on what he plans to do.

  This is going to be a temporary base. He will stay here only for as long as it takes to do what he plans to do. He will already have arranged a further destination where he will go to ground and rebuild a life for himself. He would be foolish to try to do this in the UK; I suspect he will have chosen a destination abroad. He has a substantial amount of money at his disposal, so he has a lot of options. It’s tempting to assume he will go for somewhere that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK, but he’s arrogant enough to think he’s not going to be found. There’s nothing in the records to suggest he speaks another language. He needs to be able to communicate in order to control, so he’ll go some place where English is the primary language. The USA is hard to get into, but once you’re there it’s easy to lose yourself, particularly if, like Vance, you’ve got plenty of money and therefore no need to trouble the social security system. He’ll also want to be somewhere he can have access to the best in prosthetics with no questions asked, so again that points to the USA. And, unlike Australia or New Zealand, they tend not to show UK TV programmes, so there’s little chance of anyone spotting him from reruns of Vance’s Visits. There are also possibilities offered by some of the Gulf states, where privacy is highly prized and where English is widely spoken. Normally I’d say follow the money, except that guys like Vance know people who know how to make the money disappear without a trail.

  So the big question is what he has planned before he leaves for his ultimate destination. Based on how he behaved towards Shaz Bowman when he thought there was a possibility of her thwarting him, I believe Vance intends to avenge himself on the people he holds responsible for his incarceration.

  His prime target will be the polic
e officer who was responsible for tracking him down and arresting him: Carol Jordan, currently a DCI with Bradfield Metropolitan Police. There were other officers involved in the unofficial investigation: Chris Devine, currently a DS in the same force; Leon Jackson, who was a DC with the Metropolitan Police; Kay Hallam, who was a DC with Hampshire; and Simon McNeill, who was a DC with Strathclyde. Given the relatively high profile of my own involvement in the process, I would expect also to be on his list of targets.

  Seeing it on the screen in black and white made it seem less real somehow. Just words on a page, nothing to lie awake worrying and wondering about. Really, what were the chances of Vance coming after him like an avenging angel? ‘Whistling in the dark,’ he muttered. ‘And out of tune, at that.’

  He carried on typing.

  The other main targets will be his ex-wife, Micky Morgan, and her partner Betsy Thorne. In Vance’s world view, they failed to keep their end of the bargain. Micky betrayed him by revealing that their marriage was a sham. She refused to support him in court and never came near him in prison. When she had the marriage annulled because it had never been consummated, she made him a figure of derision and contempt. She became the enemy. Wherever she is, Vance will show up sooner rather than later. Staking out these potential targets may well be the most effective way of snaring Vance.

  All of which was very bloodless, very academic. Nothing to do with the screaming in the back of Tony’s brain when the image of Shaz Bowman’s destruction flashed unbidden before his eyes. He didn’t want Piers Lambert to think he was hysterical, but he wanted to make damn sure he paid attention.

  Jacko Vance is probably the most efficient and focused killer I have ever encountered. He is vicious and without remorse or compassion. I suspect he has no limits. He does not kill for pleasure. He kills because that’s what his victims deserve, according to his self-righteous view of the world. He has committed a highly organised escape from jail. I don’t think there’s anything significant in the timing. I think it’s simply taken him this long to get everything perfectly in place. And now, unless we take decisive action, the killing will start.

  20

  Stacey wasn’t the only one who knew how to get information out of a computer, Kevin told himself. He had a twelve-year-old son who used his home computer like an extension of himself. It had been a steep learning curve, but Kevin was determined to keep abreast of his son. Back when he was a boy, his dad had shared his knowledge of what went on under a car’s bonnet and that had been the single thing that had kept them on speaking terms during Kevin’s own adolescence. It seemed to Kevin that the twenty-first-century equivalent of messing about in lock-ups with motors was being able to play World of Warcraft online with your kid. Beyond that, he’d learned how to do slide presentations, how to typeset a poster and how to refine his Google searches. He kept quiet about it in the office, though. He had no desire to tread on Stacey’s toes or to have the limits of his capabilities cruelly exposed.

  Ten minutes with Google and another metasearch engine revealed that there was no shortage of businesses that could supply a tattooing machine. Even given the current obsession with body art, Kevin found it hard to believe they could all make a living. He had no tattoos himself; he reckoned they’d look weird on his freckled skin. His wife had a scarlet lily on her shoulder and he’d always admired it, but she’d never fancied another and he hadn’t loved it enough to try to persuade her otherwise.

  His searches had thrown up too many listings for there to be any point in trying to track down a recent purchase in the Bradfield area, even supposing the vendors were cooperative. Since many of those who practised body art liked to think of themselves as being mavericks and enemies of the system, he suspected most of them would be reluctant to help.

  After scrolling through a dozen screens, Kevin came up with three suppliers with local addresses. Two were tattoo parlours, the third a business that seemed to cover everything from hair-dressing sundries to jewellery for piercings. He copied their details and made an action file, suggesting officers should visit all three businesses and ask about recent sales, both online and in person. It was the sort of tedious inquiry that Northern Division could handle. And if it produced something worth chasing, then office politics would be satisfied as well as the inquiry.

  He smiled as he hit the ‘send’ button. It felt good to delegate the drudgery. Too often, Kevin was convinced he got the boring routine work in MIT. It was the chip on his shoulder. Maybe that would change when they were scattered throughout the force. He wouldn’t mind a bit. It was about time he got to show the flair that might earn him promotion.

  It never occurred to him that Carol Jordan passed routine inquiries his way because his thoroughness was exemplary. In a world where most officers did as little as they could get away with, Kevin was notable for his attention to detail, his finicky insistence on having everything nailed down. He didn’t realise it, but he was the reason Carol Jordan’s blood pressure was as low as it was. And she knew it.

  Vance dressed in the clothes Terry had left neatly folded on the toilet cistern. New underwear and socks, chinos and a long-sleeved blue twill shirt with a neat button-down collar. At the bottom of the pile was a wig – a thick mop of mid-brown threaded with silver. Vance put it on. The hair fell naturally into a parting on the opposite side to his own hair. Although the style was similar to the old Jacko Vance from the days of TV glory, he somehow looked distinctively different. The final touch was a pair of clear glasses with stylish black oblong frames. The man in the mirror looked nothing like Jason Collins. Not much like the old Jacko Vance either, he thought with a trace of regret. There were lines where none had been before, a little sagging along the jaw, a few broken veins in the cheeks. Prison had aged him faster than life on the outside would have. He’d lay money that his ex-wife was wearing better. Still, he’d put a few more lines on her face before he was done with her.

  When he emerged, Vance was gratified by the look of delighted surprise on Terry’s face. ‘You look great,’ he said.

  ‘You did a good job,’ Vance said, patting Terry’s shoulder. ‘Everything’s perfect. Now, I’m starving. What have you got for me?’

  While he ate, Vance checked the contents of the briefcase Terry had brought with him. It contained two counterfeit passports with matching driving licences – one set British, the other Irish; a thick wad of twenty-pound notes; a list of bank accounts in names matching the passports with the accompanying pin numbers; several credit cards; a set of utility bills for a house on the outskirts of Leeds; and four pay-as-you-go mobile phones. Tucked into a pocket were sets of car keys and house keys. ‘Everything else you need is at the house,’ Terry said. ‘Laptop, landline, satellite TV … ’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Vance said, finishing the last forkful of salad with tuna and edamame beans. ‘Half of this food, I’ve no idea what it is. But it tastes bloody good.’

  ‘I stocked the fridge at the house yesterday,’ Terry said eagerly. ‘I hope you like what I got.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’ Vance wiped his mouth on a paper napkin, then scooped the detritus of their picnic into a bin. ‘It’s time we made a move,’ he said. He stood up, then turned back to the bed where Terry had been sitting. He pulled down the covers and punched the pillow to create an indentation. ‘Now it looks like someone slept here. When the maid comes in, there won’t be anything untoward for her to remember if the police come asking questions.’

  Vance let Terry lead the way to the car, saying simply, ‘You drive,’ when they reached the Mercedes. He didn’t doubt his ability to drive; Terry had done as he was told and bought an automatic with cruise control. And something called satnav; that was an innovation since he’d last driven a car. Nevertheless, he’d rather make his first attempt away from potential witnesses, just in case.

  As Terry pulled out of the parking space, Vance relaxed into his seat, letting his head lean on the contoured rest. His eyelids flickered. The adrenaline had finally
died down, leaving him tired and depleted. There would be no harm in sleeping while Terry drove him to his new home. Because there were still plenty of things to deal with before he could properly rest.

  The jolt of driving over a speed-control bump in the road roused Vance. He woke with a jerk, momentarily disorientated. ‘What the—? Where are we?’ he gasped as he came to, looking wildly around. They were passing what looked like a security gatehouse, but it appeared to be empty. Just beyond the gatehouse was a pair of brick pillars. Gateposts without gates or walls, Vance thought irrelevantly.

  ‘Welcome to Vinton Woods,’ Terry said proudly. ‘Just what you asked for. A private estate set out on its own; detached houses with a bit of garden to separate you from the houses next door. The kind of place where nobody knows their neighbours and everybody minds their own business. You’re eight miles from the motorway, six miles from the centre of Leeds, seventeen miles from Bradfield.’ He followed a curving road lined with substantial houses with brick and half-timbered facades. ‘This is the Queen Anne section,’ Terry said. At a junction, he turned left. ‘If you go right, you come to the Georgian bit, but we’re in the Victorian part of the estate.’ These houses had stone facades and twice-mocked Gothic turrets. They were scaled-down versions of the mansions mill owners built in salubrious suburbs after the coming of the railways meant they didn’t have to live on top of their factories. Vance thought these modern replicas were ugly and pitiful. But one of these fakeries would be perfect for now.

  Terry turned off the main drag into a cul-de-sac of six substantial houses set back from the street. He drove towards one of the pair at the head of the street, slowing and steering towards the triple garage that extended out on one side. He took a remote control from the door pocket and pointed it at the garage. One door rose before them and he drove in, making sure the door was closed before he turned off the engine and got out.