by Val McDermid
‘Di and me, we’ve been re-interviewing the victims, like you said. There doesn’t seem to be any linking factor that we’ve come across so far,’ Tommy said, his voice distant following Carol’s snub.
‘A variety of insurance companies, that kind of thing,’ Di amplified.
‘What about a racial motive?’ Carol asked.
‘Some Asian victims, but not what you’d call enough to make it look significant,’ Di said.
‘Have we spoken to the insurers themselves yet?’
Di looked at Tommy and Lee stared out of the window. Tommy cleared his throat. ‘It was on Di’s list for today. First chance she’s had.’
Unimpressed, Carol shook her head. ‘Right. Here’s what we do next. I’ve had some experience in offender profiling…’ She stopped when Tommy muttered something. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant Taylor, did you have a contribution?’
Confidence restored, Tommy grinned insolently back at Carol. ‘I said, “We’d heard,” ma’am.’
For a moment, Carol said nothing, merely staring him down. It was situations like this that could make the job degenerate into a misery if they weren’t handled right. So far, it was only cheeky disrespect. But if she let it go, it would quickly slide into full-scale insubordination. When she spoke, her voice was quiet but chill. ‘Sergeant, I can’t think why you have this burning ambition to go back into uniform and play at community policing, but I’ll be more than happy to oblige you if CID work continues not to be to your taste.’
Lee’s mouth twitched in spite of himself; Di Earnshaw’s dark eyes narrowed, waiting for the explosion that never came. Tommy pushed his shirtsleeves above his elbows, looked Carol straight in the eye and said, ‘Reckon I’d better show you what I’m made of then, Guv.’
Carol nodded. ‘You better had, Tommy. Now, I’m going to work on a profile, but to make that anything more than a bit of an academic exercise, I’m going to need a lot of raw data. Since we can’t find any evidence of linkage between the victims, I’m going to stick my neck out and say we’ve got a thrill seeker rather than a torch for hire. Which means we’re looking for a young adult male. He’s probably unemployed, likely to be single and still living with his parents. I’m not going to go into all the psychobabble about social inadequacy and all that right now. What we need to look for is someone with a record of police contact for petty nuisance offences, vandalism, substance abuse, that sort of thing. Maybe minor sex offences. Peeping Tom, exposing himself. He’s not going to be a mugger, a burglar, a thief, a fly boy. He’s going to be a sad bastard. In and out of minor bother since he was a pre-teen. He probably doesn’t have a car, so we need to look at the geography of the fires; chances are if you drew a line linking the outermost fires, he’ll live inside its boundaries. He’ll probably have watched all the fires from a vantage point, so have a think about where that might have been and who might have witnessed him there.
‘You know the ground. It’s your job to bring me suspects that we can match against my profile. Lee, I want you to talk to the collator and see who uniform know that fits those criteria. I’ll get going on a fuller profile and Tommy and Di will do the routine work-up on the crime itself, liaising with forensics and organizing a door-to-door in the area. Hell, I don’t have to tell you how to run a murder inquiry…’
A knock at the door interrupted Carol’s flow. ‘Come in,’ she called.
The door opened on John Brandon. It was, Carol realized, a measure of how far she had to go before she’d be accepted into the East Yorkshire force that no one had stuck a head round the door to warn her the chief was on his way. She jumped to her feet, Tommy nearly toppled in his hurry to get out of his chair and Lee cracked his elbow on the filing cabinet pushing himself upright. Only Di Earnshaw was already in place, standing against the back wall with her arms folded across her chest. ‘Sorry to interrupt, DCI Jordan,’ Brandon said pleasantly. ‘A word?’
‘Certainly, sir. We’re pretty much finished here. You three know what we’re after, I’ll leave you to it.’ Carol’s smile managed to dismiss as well as encourage and the three junior officers edged out of the office with barely a backward glance.
Brandon waved Carol to her seat as he folded his long body into the guest chair. ‘This fatal fire at Wardlaw’s,’ he began without formalities.
Carol nodded. ‘I was out there earlier.’
‘So I heard. One of your series then, I take it?’
‘I think so. It’s got all the hallmarks of it. I’m waiting to hear from the fire investigators, but Jim Pendlebury, the fire chief, reckons it’s got generic similarities to the earlier incidents we’d identified.’
Brandon chewed one side of his lower lip. It was the first time Carol had ever seen him look anything other than completely composed. He breathed heavily through his nose and said, ‘I know we talked about this before and you were convinced that you could handle it. I’m not saying that you can’t, because I think you’re a bloody good detective, Carol. But I want Tony Hill to take a look at this.’
‘There’s really no need,’ Carol said, feeling heat spreading up her chest and into her neck. ‘Certainly not at this stage.’
Brandon’s gloomy bloodhound face seemed to grow even longer. ‘It’s no slur on your competence,’ he said.
‘I’m bound to say that’s what it looks like from here,’ Carol said, trying not to sound as mutinous as she felt, forcing herself to remember how angry Tommy Taylor’s earlier impertinence had made her feel. ‘Sir, we’ve barely started our own inquiries. It may well be that we’ll have this whole thing wrapped up in a matter of days. There can’t be that many potential suspects in Seaford who fit the serial arsonist profile.’
Brandon shifted in his chair, as if struggling to find an appropriate arrangement for his long legs. ‘I find myself in a slightly awkward position here, Carol. I’ve never been happy with the “theirs not to reason why” approach to command. I’ve always thought things run better when my officers understand why I issue the orders I do rather than having to rely on blind obedience. On the other hand, for operational reasons, sometimes things have to be taken on trust. And when other units outside my command are involved, even when I think there’s no earthly reason for confidentiality, I have to respect what they ask for. If you follow me?’ He raised his eyebrows in an anxious question. If any of his officers could read between so oblique a set of lines, it would be Carol Jordan.
Carol frowned as she digested Brandon’s words. ‘So, hypothetically,’ she eventually said, taking her time to think through what she was saying, ‘if a new unit was being set up with a specialist area of responsibility, and they wanted a sympathetic force to let them use one of their cases as a sort of guinea pig, even if you thought the officer in charge had a right to know what the score was, you’d be obliged to go along with their demand for confidentiality as to the real reason why they were being handed the case? That sort of thing, sir?’
Brandon smiled gratefully. ‘Speaking purely hypothetically, yes.’
There was no answering smile. ‘This wouldn’t be an appropriate occasion for such an experiment, in my opinion.’ She paused. ‘Sir.’
Brandon looked surprised. ‘Why not?’ he asked.
Carol thought for a moment. Few fast-track graduates climbed the greasy pole as fast as she’d done, particularly women. John Brandon’s patronage had given her more than she could ever have expected. And she couldn’t even be certain if her real reasons for reluctance were the ones she was about to voice. Nevertheless, she’d stuck her neck out this far and she’d never been a quitter. ‘We’re a new force,’ she said carefully. ‘I’ve only just arrived to work with a group of people who have been a team for a long time. I’m trying to build up a working relationship that will allow us to protect and serve our community. I can’t do that if I’m stripped of the first major case that’s crossed my desk since I got here.’
‘No one’s talking about taking the case away from you, Chief Inspector,’ Brandon said, reflec
ting Carol’s formality. ‘We’re talking about using the new task force on a consultancy basis.’
‘It’ll look like you’ve no confidence in me,’ Carol insisted.
‘That’s nonsense. If I had no confidence in your abilities, why on earth would I have appointed you to a promoted post?’
Carol shook her head in disbelief. He really didn’t get it. ‘I’m sure the canteen cowboys won’t have any trouble coming up with ideas on that score, sir,’ she said bitterly.
Brandon’s eyes widened as he grasped her meaning. ‘You think they … That can’t be … It’s ridiculous! I never heard anything so absurd!’
‘If you say so, sir.’ Carol managed a twisted smile and ran a hand through her shaggy blonde hair. ‘I didn’t think I looked that rough.’
Brandon shook his head in disbelief. ‘It never occurred to me that people would misinterpret your promotion. You’re self-evidently such a good copper.’ He sighed and chewed his lip again. ‘Now I’m in an even worse position than I was when I walked in.’ He looked up at her and made a decision.
‘I’m going to speak off the record. Paul Bishop has been having liaison problems with the local brass in Leeds. They’ve made it clear they don’t want his team on their ground and they won’t let him near any of their crimes. He needs a real case for his officers to learn their trade, and for obvious reasons, he doesn’t want some high-profile serial killer or rapist. He rang me because we’re next door to him and he asked me to keep an eye out for something that might do for his squad to cut their teeth on before they’re officially available to catch cases from every Tom, Dick and Harry. To be perfectly honest, I was going to offer them your serial arsonist even before it turned fatal.’
Carol tried to keep her anger out of her face. It was always the way. Just when you thought you’d got them house-trained, they reverted to Neanderthal. ‘It’s a murder now. You don’t get much more high profile than that,’ she said. ‘For my own self-respect, never mind the respect of my team, I need to head the investigation. I do not need to be seen to be hanging on the coat-tails of the National Offender Profiling Task Force,’ she continued coldly. ‘If I’d thought sending in visiting firemen was the best way to police serious crime, I’d have applied to join them. I can’t believe you’d undermine me like this. Sir.’ The last word came out like a expletive.
Brandon’s method of dealing with threatened insubordination was very different from Carol’s. A man in his position had little need of veiled threats; he could afford to be more creative. ‘I have no intention of undermining any of my officers, DCI Jordan. That’s why you will be the only officer who has direct dealings with the task force. You will go to them in Leeds, they will not come on our ground. I will make it clear to Commander Bishop that his officers will discuss the case with no other officer of the East Yorkshire force. I trust you will find that satisfactory?’
Carol couldn’t help feeling a grudging respect for the speed with which her chief had thought on his feet. ‘You’ve made your orders perfectly clear,’ she said, leaning back in resignation.
Relieved that the crisis had been resolved without anything that would have been embarrassing to report back to Maggie, Brandon got to his feet with a relaxed smile. ‘Thanks, Carol. I appreciate it. Funny, I could have sworn you’d have jumped at the chance to work with Tony Hill again. The two of you hit it off so well when you worked liaison on the Bradfield murders.’
She coaxed her muscles to conjure up a smile from memory and hoped it would pass for the real thing. ‘My reluctance was nothing to do with Dr Hill,’ she said, wondering whether Brandon would believe her when she couldn’t even convince herself.
‘I’ll let them know you’ll be in touch.’ Brandon closed the door on his way out, a courtesy Carol was profoundly grateful for.
‘I can hardly wait,’ she said grimly to the empty room.
* * *
Shaz bounced through the door of the police station where the task force was based and grinned at the uniformed officer behind the desk with cheerful expectation. ‘DC Bowman,’ she said. ‘NOP task force. There should be a package for me?’
The constable looked sceptical. ‘Here?’
‘That’s right.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It was supposed to be sent by overnight courier. For delivery by nine a.m. And since my watch says it’s ten past…’
‘Then you owe somebody a bollocking, because there’s nowt here for you, love,’ the constable said, incapable of keeping the satisfaction out of his voice. It wasn’t often he had the chance to score a point against a task force outsider and patronize a woman in a single go.
‘You sure?’ Shaz asked, trying not to show the consternation that she knew would only increase his smugness.
‘I’ve got my reading badge, love. Trust me, I’m a bobby. There’s no package here for you.’ Bored now, he ostentatiously turned away and pretended to be interested in a pile of paperwork.
Fizzing with frustration, her good mood history, Shaz bypassed the bank of lifts and jogged up the five flights of stairs to the task force operations room. ‘Never trust someone else, never trust someone else,’ pounded in her head in sync with her feet on the stairs and the blood in her ears. She marched straight into the room that held their computer terminals and threw herself into her chair, barely managing to grunt a greeting to Simon, the only other occupant of the room. Shaz grabbed her phone and punched in Chris’s home number. ‘Bugger!’ she muttered when the answering machine picked up. She yanked her personal organizer out of her bag and keyed in Chris’s name. Her index finger stabbed out the direct line at New Scotland Yard. The phone was answered on the second ring. ‘Devine.’
‘It’s Shaz.’
‘Whatever it is you’re after, the answer’s no, doll. I don’t think I’m ever going to get the dust and ink out from under my fingernails after yesterday’s little exercise. Definitely a non-starter on the “fun things to do with your day off” list.’
‘I really appreciate it, you know that. Only…’
Chris groaned. ‘What, Shaz?’
‘The stuff hasn’t arrived.’
Chris snorted. ‘That all? Listen, by the time I’d got finished – which I have to tell you I only managed by flashing the old warrant card and roping the staff in – it was too late to get an overnight delivery. Best they could do was by noon. So you should get it some time this morning. All right?’
‘It’ll have to be,’ Shaz said, aware she was being ungracious, but unable to care.
‘Relax, doll. It’s never the end of the world. You’re going to give yourself an ulcer,’ Chris told her.
‘I’ve got to present my case tomorrow afternoon,’ Shaz pointed out.
Chris laughed. ‘So what’s the problem? ’King hell, Shaz, that Yorkshire air’s slowing you up. Time was, you were greased lightning. You got a whole night to turn it around. Don’t tell me you’re getting soft.’
‘I do like the odd bit of sleep between dusk and dawn,’ Shaz said.
‘Just as well you and me never got it together, then, isn’t it? Gimme a call if you haven’t got the stuff by the middle of the afternoon, all right, doll? Just hang loose. Nobody’s going to die.’
‘I flaming hope not,’ Shaz said to a dead line.
‘Problems?’ Simon asked, plonking himself down next to her and pushing a mug of coffee towards her.
Shaz shrugged, reaching for the brew. ‘Just some stuff I wanted to check out before we report back on the exercise tomorrow.’
Simon’s interest suddenly expanded beyond the erotic possibilities of a fling with Shaz. ‘You on to something?’ he asked, trying for nonchalant and failing.
Shaz’s grin was evil. ‘You mean you haven’t spotted the cluster?’
‘Course I have. Saw it right away, no messing,’ he said, clearly blustering.
‘Right. So you also found the external link?’ Shaz enjoyed the momentary blankness that crossed Simon’s milk-pale face before he regained command. She snor
ted with laughter. ‘Good try, Simon.’
He shook his head. ‘All right, Shaz, you win. Will you tell me what you’ve got if I buy you dinner tonight?’
‘I’ll tell you what I’ve got tomorrow afternoon, same time as I tell everybody else. But if the offer’s genuine and not just a bribe, I’d say yes to a drink before we go for the curry on Saturday night.’
Simon thrust out his hand. ‘Deal, DC Bowman.’ Shaz took his hand and matched his grip.
The prospect of a pre-dinner drink with Simon, enticing though it was, couldn’t distract Shaz from the anticipation of her parcel. At coffee break, she was at the front counter before the others had even brewed up. For the rest of the morning, as Paul Bishop took them through the application of a profile to a suspect list, Shaz, normally the most attentive of students, fidgeted like a four-year-old at the opera. As soon as they broke for lunch, Shaz was off down the stairs like a greyhound out of a trap.
This time, her prayers were answered. A cardboard archive box sealed with what looked like an entire roll of packing tape sat on the front counter. ‘Any longer and I’d have phoned the bomb disposal squad to get rid of it,’ the desk officer said. ‘We’re a police station, not a post office.’
‘Just as well. You’d never stand the pace.’ Shaz swept the box off the counter and marched out to the car park with it. She opened the boot of her car and snatched a quick look at her watch. She reckoned she had about ten minutes to spare before her absence from the communal lunch table would excite comment. Hastily, she ripped at the packing tape with her fingernails, managing to unpick it enough to force the lid open.
Her heart sank. The box was almost brimful of photocopies. For a brief moment, she wondered if she couldn’t just ignore her hunch. Then she thought of the seven teenage girls, their faces smiling up at her with all the expectation that, however many disappointments life might hold, at least they’d have a life. This wasn’t just an exercise. Somewhere out there was a cold-hearted killer. And the only person who seemed to be aware of it was Shaz Bowman. Even if it did take all night, she owed them that effort at the very least.
