The Wire in the Blood

by Val McDermid

  When he saw that translation from adoration to alarm, their faces seemed to lose all individuality. They no longer merely resembled Jillie, they became her. It made the punishment so easy and so perfectly right.

  What also made it appropriate was the unfairness. Almost all of his girls spoke about their families with affection. It might be shrouded behind a veil of adolescent frustration and exasperation, but it was obvious as he listened to them that their mothers or fathers or siblings cared about them even though their sluttish readiness to do whatever he wanted demonstrated they didn’t merit that concern. He’d deserved their lives, and what had he got?

  Anger surged through him, but like a thermostat, self-control cut in and tamped the fires down. This was not an appropriate time or place for that energy, he reminded himself. His anger could be channelled in a variety of useful directions; ranting pointlessly about what he had been deprived of wasn’t one of them.

  He took a series of deep breaths and forced his emotions into another mould. Satisfaction. That’s what he ought to be feeling. Satisfaction at a job well done, a danger neutralized.

  Little Jack Horner

  Sat in the corner

  Eating his pudding and pie.

  He put in his thumb

  And pulled out a plum

  And said, “What a good boy am I!”

  Vance giggled softly. He’d put in his thumbs and pulled out the glistening plum of Shaz Bowman’s eyes and felt the silent scream vibrating in his very core. It had been easier than he’d expected. It took surprisingly little force to pop an eye free from its roots.

  The only pity of it was that you couldn’t then see her expression when you poured the acid in or sliced the ears off. He didn’t anticipate any need for there to be a next time, but if there were, he’d have to think carefully about the order of the ceremony.

  Sighing with satisfaction, he rewound the tape.

  * * *

  If Micky hadn’t been such a purist about her morning routine, they might have heard about Shaz’s death on the radio news or seen it on satellite TV. But Micky insisted on no exposure to the day’s news until she was behind the closed door of her office at the studios. So they breakfasted to Mozart and drove in to Wagner. No one from the programme was ever foolish enough to thrust a tabloid at Micky as she strode from car parking slot to her desk. Not twice, anyway.

  So, because their early morning start forced them to bed before the late bulletins that had alerted Jacko, it was Betsy who had the first shock of recognition at Shaz’s picture. Even dulled by newsprint, her blue eyes were still the first thing that demanded notice. ‘My God,’ Betsy breathed, moving round behind Micky’s desk the better to examine the front pages.

  ‘What is it?’ Micky said without pausing in the habitual process of removing her jacket, placing it on a hanger and checking it critically for creases.

  ‘Look, Micky.’ Betsy thrust the Daily Mail towards her. ‘Isn’t that the policewoman who came to the house on Saturday? Just as we were leaving?’

  Micky registered the thick black type before she took in the photograph. SLAUGHTERED, it read. Her eyes moved to Shaz Bowman’s smiling face underneath the peak of a Metropolitan Police cap. ‘There can’t be two of them,’ she said. She sat down heavily on one of the visitors’ armchairs that faced her desk and read the melodramatic copy that provided Shaz’s epitaph. Words like ‘nightmare’, ‘gory’, ‘blood-soaked’, ‘agony’ and ‘gruesome’ leapt out to ambush her. She felt strangely queasy.

  In a television career that had spanned war zones, massacres and individual tragedy, no one in Micky’s life had ever been touched personally by any of the catastrophes she had reported. Even a connection as tangential as hers to Shaz Bowman was all the more shocking because it had no precedent. ‘Jesus,’ she said, stretching the syllables. She looked up at Betsy, who read the shock in her face. ‘She was in our house on Saturday morning. According to this, they think she was murdered late Saturday or early Sunday. We spoke to her. And within hours, she was dead. What are we going to do, Bets?’

  Betsy moved round the desk and crouched beside Micky, hands flat on her thighs, staring up into her face. ‘We’re going to do nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s not up to us to do anything. She came to see Jacko, not us. She’s nothing to do with us.’

  Micky looked appalled. ‘We can’t do nothing,’ she protested. ‘Whoever killed her, they must have hooked up with her after she left our house. At the very least, it lets the police know she was alive and well and walking around of her own free will in London on Saturday morning. We can’t ignore it, Bets.’

  ‘Sweetheart, take a deep breath and think about what you’re saying. This isn’t any old murder victim. She was a police officer. That means her colleagues are not going to be satisfied with a one-page statement saying she came to the house and we left. They’re going to be stripping our lives down to the bone, on the off chance that there’s something there they should know about. You know and I know that we just won’t stand up to that kind of scrutiny. I say, leave it to Jacko. I’ll give him a call and tell him to say we’d gone before she arrived. It’s simplest that way.’

  Micky pushed herself back violently. The chair slid along the carpet and Betsy almost toppled forward. Micky jumped to her feet and started pacing agitatedly. ‘And what happens if they start questioning the neighbours and there’s some nosy old biddy who remembers DC Bowman arriving and then us leaving? Anyway, I was the one who spoke to her in the first place. I made the appointment. What if she jotted that down in her notebook? What if she even taped the call, for God’s sake? I can’t believe you think we should just shut up about it.’

  Betsy struggled to her feet, her chin tipped back to reveal a stubborn set to her firm jaw. ‘If you’d stop being such a bloody drama queen, you’d see I’m talking sense,’ she said in a low, angry voice. She’d spent too long providing the advice that Micky routinely acted upon to abandon the role now it had become so crucial. ‘No good will come of it,’ she added ominously.

  Micky stopped by the desk and picked up the phone. ‘I’m ringing Jacko,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘He won’t be up yet. At least I can break the news more gently than the tabloids.’

  ‘Good. Maybe he’ll talk some sense into you,’ Betsy said caustically.

  ‘I’m not calling for permission, Betsy. I’m calling to tell him I’m about to phone the police.’ As she punched in her husband’s private number, Micky looked sadly at her lover. ‘God, I can’t believe you’re running so scared that you’d kid yourself you can walk away from doing the right thing.’

  ‘It’s called love,’ Betsy said bitterly, turning away to hide the tears of anger and humiliation that had sprung without warning.

  ‘No, Betsy. It’s called fear … Hello, Jacko? It’s me. Listen, I’ve got some terrible news for you…’

  Betsy turned her head and watched Micky’s mobile face with its frame of silky blonde hair. It was a sight that had given her pleasure beyond dreams of avarice over the years. All she felt now was an unreasonable, unfathomable sense of impending disaster.

  * * *

  Jacko leaned back on his pillows and considered what he’d just heard. He’d been in two minds whether to call the police himself. On the one hand, it argued for his innocence, since, for all he knew, nobody outside his household knew DC Bowman had been anywhere near him. On the other hand, it made him look a little too eager to be involved in a high-profile murder inquiry. And one of the things everyone who had read a book on psychopathic killers knew was that the murderer often tried to insert himself into the investigation.

  Leaving it to Micky was somehow much safer. It demonstrated his innocence at second hand; she was his devoted wife, crammed with public probity and therefore to be trusted in her account of events. He knew it was safe to assume she’d go straight to the police as soon as she saw Shaz’s picture, which would be well before his normal rising time, so there would be no question of him having known and sai
d nothing. Because, of course, officer, he’d been too busy to watch the evening news the previous day. Why, sometimes he barely had time to watch his own show, never mind his wife’s!

  What he had to do now was to work out his strategy. There would be no question of him having to schlepp up to Leeds to talk to the investigating plods; the police would come to him, he felt sure. If he was proved wrong, he wouldn’t call in any favours just yet. He’d play along, the magnanimous man with nothing to hide. Of course you can have an autograph for your wife, officer.

  The important thing now was to plan. Imagine every contingency and work out in advance how best to deal with it. Planning was the secret of his success. It was a lesson he’d almost had to learn the hard way. The first time, he’d not really worked out the eventualities ahead of time. He’d been intoxicated by the possibilities he saw opening in front of him, and he’d not realized how necessary it was to project all the conceivable outcomes and work out how to deal with them. He’d not had the Northumberland cottage then, relying foolishly on a tumbledown walkers’ hut that he remembered from hill-walking expeditions in his youth.

  He’d thought no one would be using the place in the dead of winter and knew he could drive right up to it on an old drovers’ track. Because he dared not leave her alive, he’d had to finish her off the night he’d taken her there. But it had been almost dawn by the time she’d taken her last breath. Shaken and exhausted by the effort of confining her, carrying the heavy vice that would crush her arm to a bloody pulp, then killing her with a wicked ligature made from a guitar string (symbolic, if he’d but considered it, of another of the accomplishments he’d lost), the planned burial had been beyond him. He decided to leave her where she was and come back the following night to deal with the carcass.

  Jacko sucked his breath in at the memory. He’d been on the main road, only a couple of miles from the turnoff to the track, when the local news bulletin announced that the body of a young woman had been discovered by a group of ramblers within the past hour. The shock had nearly sent the Land Rover off the road.

  Somehow, he’d controlled himself and driven home in a lather of clammy sweat. Amazingly, he hadn’t left sufficient forensic traces for there to be any trail leading back to him. He was never questioned. As far as he knew, he was never even considered. The previous connection was so minimal as to be insignificant.

  He’d learned three crucial things from that experience. Firstly, he needed to find a way to make it last so he could savour her suffering as she went through what he’d endured.

  Secondly, he didn’t actually enjoy the act of killing. He liked what led up to it, the agony and the terror, and he loved the sense of control that having been responsible for taking a life gave him, but despatching a strong, healthy young woman was no fun. Far too much like hard work, he had decided. He didn’t much mind whether they died of septicaemia or despair, he preferred it when he didn’t have to do it himself.

  And thirdly, he needed a place of safety, both metaphorically and literally. Micky, Northumberland and the voluntary work with the terminally ill had been the tripartite answer. For the six months it had taken to put that answer together, he’d simply had to be patient. It hadn’t been easy, but it had made the next one all the more sweet.

  He wasn’t about to give up on that sweet and secret pleasure just because Shaz Bowman had thought she was smarter than him. All it would take was a little bit of planning.

  Jacko closed his eyes and considered.

  * * *

  Carol took a deep breath and knocked on the door. A familiar voice told her to come in and she walked into Jim Pendlebury’s office as if there had never been a moment’s tension between them. ‘Morning, Jim,’ she said briskly.

  ‘Carol,’ he said. ‘Come with some news for me?’

  She sat down opposite him, shaking her head. ‘I’ve come for the list of part-time firemen we spoke about last night.’

  His eyes widened. ‘You’re not still entertaining that daft idea in the cold light of morning?’ he said scornfully. ‘I thought you must just be humouring your guest.’

  ‘When it comes to criminal investigation, I’d back Tony Hill’s ideas over yours any time.’

  ‘You expect me to sit back and help you turn my men into scapegoats?’ he said, his voice low. ‘When they’re the ones who stand at risk every time we get a call-out?’

  Carol sighed in vexation. ‘I’m trying to put an end to that risk. Not just for your firefighters, but for the poor sods like Tim Coughlan who don’t even know they’re taking a chance. Don’t you understand that? This isn’t a witch-hunt. I’m not out to frame the innocent. If you think that’s what I’m about, then you certainly don’t know enough about me to have the right to turn up at my home unannounced and uninvited and expect to cross the threshold ever again.’

  Long seconds dragged past while they stared each other down. Finally, Pendlebury shook his head in resignation, his mouth a thin line. ‘I’ll give you the list,’ he said, loathing every word. ‘But you won’t find your arsonist on it.’

  ‘I hope not,’ she said calmly. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t want this to be one of yours, any more than I enjoy the prospect of uncovering police corruption. It undermines all of us. But I can’t ignore the possibility now it’s been pointed out to me so convincingly.’

  He turned away and walked his chair over to a filing cabinet. He pulled out the bottom drawer and took out a sheet of paper. With a flick of the wrist, he floated it across the desk to her. All it contained were the names, addresses and telephone numbers of Seaford’s twelve part-time fire officers.

  ‘Thank you,’ Carol said. ‘I appreciate this.’ She half-turned to go, then looked back as if struck by an afterthought. ‘One thing, Jim. These fires. Do they all come under one division or are they more spread out?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘They’re all on Seaford Central’s patch. If they hadn’t been, you wouldn’t be walking out the door with that bit of paper.’

  It confirmed what she’d already thought. ‘I figured it might be something like that,’ she said, her voice offering armistice. ‘Believe me, Jim, there’d be nobody happier than me if all your lads check out.’

  He looked away. ‘They will do. I know those lads. I’ve trusted my life to them. Your psychologist – he knows nothing about it.’

  Carol walked to the door. As she opened it, she looked back. He was staring intensely at her. ‘We’ll see, Jim.’

  The steel-capped heels of her brown boots clattered on the stairs as she ran down to the anonymous security of her car. The pain of Jim Pendlebury’s conviction that she would scapegoat a fellow member of the emergency services cut deep. ‘Damn it,’ Carol said, slamming the door closed behind her and jabbing the key angrily at the ignition. ‘Damn it all to hell.’

  * * *

  Working on the principle that any psychologist worth his salt would see straight through any attempts at manipulation, they’d clearly decided to dispense with finesse. They had, however, paid Tony the compliment of rank. Detective Chief Superintendent McCormick and Detective Inspector Colin Wharton rubbed shoulders at the narrow table in the interview room. The tape was running. They hadn’t even bothered with the spurious reassurance that it was for his benefit.

  They’d run through the discovery of the body first, their questions clearly directed at tripping him up in his assertion that he’d never been to Shaz’s flat before and had no idea which windows were hers. Now they were moving into areas for which there was less obvious justification. Tony was not unprepared. He’d fully expected to be given a hard time. For one thing, he wasn’t actually a cop, so if they were looking for a scapegoat, he’d be a preferable choice to one of his team. Add to that the local force’s resentment at having to hand over space and resources to a bunch of outsiders led by a Home Office boffin they regarded as one step away from a leader of Satanic rituals, and he was inevitably on a hiding to nothing. With this in mind, he’d been running
alternative scenarios on the projection screen inside his head almost before his eyes had opened. Concern about the interview had preoccupied him through breakfast, in spite of Carol’s best efforts to reassure him that it would be no more than routine.

  On the train back to Leeds he had stared out of the window without registering anything except that he had to find a way to convince his interrogators that they should be looking outside Shaz’s circle of friends and colleagues for whoever had done this to her. Now he was faced with the reality, he wished he’d caught a train to London instead. Already the muscles in his shoulders were cramped into tight knots. He could actually feel the creeping rigidity climbing up the back of his neck and into his scalp. He was going to have one hell of a headache.

  ‘Take us right back to the beginning,’ McCormick said brusquely.

  ‘When did you first meet DC Bowman?’ Wharton demanded. At least they weren’t playing ‘nice cop, nasty cop’. They were both comfortably displaying their true colours as oppressive aggressors.

  ‘Commander Bishop and I interviewed her in London about eight weeks ago. The exact date is in our office diary.’ His voice was blank and even, kept so by willpower alone. Only a Voice Stress Analyser could have detected the micro-tremors skittering beneath the surface. Luckily for Tony, the technology hadn’t penetrated that far.

  ‘You interviewed her together?’ McCormick with the question this time.

  ‘Yes. Following the interview, Commander Bishop withdrew and I administered some psychological tests. Then DC Bowman left and I did not see her again until the start of the task force’s training period.’

  ‘How long were you alone with Bowman?’ McCormick again. Wharton was leaning back in his seat, fixing Tony with a professional blend of speculation, contempt and suspicion.