by Val McDermid
He watched the first fifty minutes of the programme with a connoisseur’s eye, assessing and appraising the performance of his wife and her colleagues. That Midlands reporter was going to have to go, he decided. He’d have to tell Micky. Vance hated journalists who brought the same breathless urgency to stories of distant wars, cabinet reshuffles and soap opera plots. It revealed a lack of empathy most successful hacks learned to hide early on.
It was strange, he thought, how he’d never felt the slightest twinge of sexual desire for his wife. True, she wasn’t his type, but even so, he’d periodically found women attractive who didn’t conform to his blueprint of desire. Never Micky, however. Not even on those rare occasions when he’d glimpsed her naked. It was probably as well, given the basis of their relationship. One glimmer of what he really wanted from the female of the species and Micky would be history. And he definitely didn’t want that. Particularly not now.
‘And after the break,’ Micky said with that intimate warmth he suspected of causing erections among unemployed youths throughout the land, ‘I’ll be talking to a man who spends his days inside the heads of serial offenders. Psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill reveals the inside secrets of the new national police task force. And we pay tribute to the officer who has already tragically lost her life in that battle. All that, and the news on the hour, after the break.’
As the adverts took over, Vance pressed the record button on the video remote. He swung his feet to the floor and leaned forward, intent on the screen. The last commercial faded to the logo of Midday with Morgan and his wife was smiling out at him as if he were the only light of her life. ‘Welcome back,’ Micky said. ‘My guest now is the distinguished clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill. Nice to have you with us, Tony.’
The director switched to a two-shot, giving Vance his first sight of Shaz Bowman’s boss. The colour drained from his cheeks then raced back in a dark flush. He’d thought Tony Hill was going to be a stranger. But he knew the man on the screen. He’d spotted him first three gigs ago at the sponsored sequence dancing competition. Lurking on the fringes, talking to some of the regulars. He’d initially written him off as the latest addition to the sad squad of his camp followers. But the night before, at the sports centre, when he’d spotted him handing business cards out to the others, he’d wondered. He’d planned to send someone over to check him out, but it had slipped his mind. Now, here was the stranger, sitting on a sofa talking to Vance’s wife in front of millions of viewers.
This was no routine nutter. This was no dumbshit plod. This was Shaz Bowman’s boss. This might just also be an adversary.
* * *
‘How has the tragic death of one of your trainees affected the squad?’ Micky asked solicitously, her eyes glistening perfectly to convey heartfelt sympathy as she leaned forward.
Tony’s eyes slid away from hers, the pain obvious. ‘It’s been a shocking blow,’ he said. ‘Shaz Bowman was one of the brightest officers it’s ever been my privilege to work with. She had a real flair for offender profiling work, and she’ll be impossible to replace. But we’re determined that her killer will be caught.’
‘Are you working closely with the investigating officers on the case?’ Micky asked. His response to what she’d thought was a routine question was interesting. His eyebrows flashed up and his eyes widened momentarily.
‘Everyone on the profiling task force is doing all they can to help,’ he said quickly. ‘And it’s possible that your viewers could also help us.’
She was impressed with the speed of his recovery. She doubted if one in a thousand of her viewers had even noticed the blip. ‘How is that, Tony?’
‘As you know, Shaz Bowman was murdered in her flat in Leeds. However, we have reason to believe this wasn’t a random killing. Indeed, her murderer may not even be a local man. Shaz was in London on Saturday morning, about twelve hours before she was murdered. We don’t know where she went or who she saw after about ten thirty on Saturday morning. It’s possible that her killer made contact with her that early in the day.’
‘You mean it could have been a stalker?’
‘I think it’s possible that she was followed back to Leeds from London.’
That wasn’t quite the same thing, but Micky knew she didn’t have time to quibble. ‘And you hope someone witnessed this?’
Tony nodded and stared directly into the camera with the red light showing. She could see his sincerity on the monitor in front of her. God, he was a natural, all nervousness gone as he made his impassioned appeal. ‘We’re looking for anyone who saw Shaz Bowman after half past ten on Saturday morning. She was very distinctive-looking. She had particularly bright blue eyes, very noticeable. You may have seen her alone or with her killer, perhaps filling her car with petrol – she drove a black Volkswagen Golf. Or possibly in one of the motorway service areas between London and Leeds. You may have noticed someone taking an unusual amount of interest in her. If so, we need to hear from you.’
‘We have the number of the Leeds incident room,’ Micky cut in as it appeared on a ribbon across the foot of the monitor screen. She and Tony disappeared to be replaced by a head and shoulders shot of Shaz grinning at the camera. ‘If you saw Shaz Bowman on Saturday, no matter how briefly, call the police and let them know.’
‘We want to catch him before he kills again,’ Tony added.
‘So don’t be afraid to call West Yorkshire Police or even your local police station if you can help. Tony, thanks for coming in and talking to us.’ Her smile shifted to the camera because her director was bellowing from the control room. ‘And now, over to the newsroom for the lunchtime bulletin.’
Micky leaned back and let out her breath in an explosive sigh, ‘Thanks, Tony,’ she said, unclipping her mike and leaning forward so their knees touched in the angle of the sofa.
‘It’s me that should be thanking you,’ he said in a rush as Betsy strode efficiently towards them. She reached over his shoulder to unfasten his mike.
‘I’ll see you out,’ Betsy said.
Micky jumped to her feet. ‘It’s been fascinating,’ she said. ‘I wish we could have had longer.’
Grabbing the chance, Tony said, ‘We could have dinner.’
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Micky said, sounding surprised at herself. ‘Are you free this evening?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘Let’s make it this evening, then. Is six thirty OK? I need to eat early, working this show.’
‘I’ll book a table.’
‘No need. Betsy’ll see to it, won’t you, Bets?’
There was a flicker of indulgent amusement in the woman’s face, Tony thought. Almost immediately, the professional mask was back. ‘No problem. But I need to get Dr Hill off set, Micky,’ she said, with an apologetic smile at him.
‘OK. See you later, Tony.’ She watched Betsy hustle him away, savouring the anticipation of picking the brains of someone really interesting for a change. The demented bleating in her earpiece brought her back to the cold reality of getting the rest of the programme out of the way. ‘We go straight to the classroom anarchy piece, yeah?’ she said peering up at the control booth, her mind back on her job, Shaz Bowman already a memory.
* * *
Carol stared out of her office window at the port below. It was cold enough to get rid of the casual strollers. Everyone out there was brisk, even the dog walkers. She hoped her detectives were following their example. She dialled the hotel number Tony had left her. She was as eager to hear about his TV appearance as she was to pass on her own news. She didn’t have to listen to the ‘Cuckoo Waltz’ for long. ‘Hello?’ she heard him say.
‘Midday with Morgan was great, Tony. What did you think? Did you see Jack the Lad?’
‘No, I didn’t see him, but I liked her more than I expected to. She’s a good interviewer. Lulls you into a false sense of security then sticks in a couple of awkward questions. I managed to make the points I wanted to make, though.’
‘S
o Vance wasn’t around?’
‘Not at the studios, no. But she said she’d told him I was going to be on, so I wouldn’t take any bets on Jack the Lad having missed today’s programme.’
‘Do you think she has any idea?’
‘That we suspect her husband?’ He sounded surprised at the question.
‘That her husband’s a serial killer.’ He was a little slow tonight, Carol thought. Normally he read any conversation as if he’d seen the script in advance.
‘I don’t think she has the faintest notion. I doubt she’d be with him if she did.’ He sounded unusually positive. It wasn’t like Tony to categorize things as black or white.
‘He really is a smooth operator.’
‘As silk. Now we have to sit back and see how much more it takes to unsettle him. Starting with tonight. I’m taking his wife out to dinner.’
Carol couldn’t help the pang of jealousy, but she kept her voice even. She’d had plenty of practice with Tony. ‘Really? How did you manage that?’
‘I think she’s genuinely interested in the profiling,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope I can dig some information out of her that we can use.’
‘If anyone can, you can. Tony, I think we’ve got a problem. With Simon.’ Briefly, she relayed her conversation with John Brandon. ‘What do you think? Should we persuade him to turn himself in?’
‘I think we leave it up to him. If you’re comfortable with that? Given that he might well be sitting in your living room again before all of this is over.’
‘I don’t expect it to be a problem,’ Carol said slowly. ‘It’s only an internal bulletin we’re talking about here. It’s not as if there’s going to be a nationwide manhunt with his picture splashed across the papers. Well, not for a couple of days yet, anyway. If it runs into next week and he’s not been home or in contact with his friends and family, it might get more serious, in which case we’d have to persuade him to come in from the cold.’
‘You’re assuming he won’t meekly walk into police HQ in Leeds?’
Carol snorted derisively. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think he’s got too much invested in what we’re doing. And speaking of which, how have the team been doing?’
She filled him in on Kay’s grand tour of the grieving. When she came to the photograph she’d pried from the unwilling hands of Kenny and Denise Burton, Carol heard a sharp intake of breath.
‘The zealots,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Zealots. Fanatics. Jacko Vance’s disciples. I’ve been to three of his public appearances so far, and there’s a few obsessives who show up every time. Just three or four of them. I noticed them right away.’
‘You ever end up on the dole, you could get a job as a spotter for Neighbourhood Watch,’ she said. ‘You could call it Nutter Watch.’
He laughed. ‘The point is, two of them were taking photos.’
‘Gotcha?’
‘Could be. Could very well be. This is very, very good. This might just give us the edge. He’s clever, Carol. He’s the best I’ve ever seen, ever heard about, ever read about. Somehow, we’ve got to be better.’ His voice was soft but keen, charged with determination.
‘We are. There are five of us. He only ever sees things from one angle.’
‘You’re so right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, OK?’
She could sense his eagerness to be active, to be gone. She couldn’t blame him. Micky Morgan would be a real challenge to his skills and Tony was a man who adored a challenge. Whether he obtained fresh information from her or merely used their dinner date to set the cat among Jacko Vance’s pigeons, he would be more effective than anyone else she could think of. But she couldn’t let him go just yet. ‘There’s one more thing … the arsonist?’
‘Oh God, yes, of course, I’m sorry. Any progress?’
She outlined the discoveries of her team, giving a thumbnail sketch of the two suspects. ‘I’m not sure at this stage whether to bring them both in for questioning and try for a search warrant for their homes, or set up surveillance. I thought I’d run it past you.’
‘How do they spend their money?’
‘Brinkley and his wife go in for conspicuous consumption. New cars, household goods, store credit cards. Watson looks like a gambler. He raises cash any way he can and passes it on to the bookies.’
Tony said nothing for a moment. She pictured him frowning, a hand running through his thick black hair, his deep-set eyes dark and distant as his mind moved over the question. ‘If I was Watson, I’d bet on Brinkley,’ he said eventually.
‘How so?’
‘If Watson is truly a compulsive gambler, he’s convinced it’s the next bet, the next lottery ticket that will solve all his problems. He’s a believer. Brinkley hasn’t got that conviction. He thinks if he can just keep ahead of the game, cut down on spending, find some extra cash, he can get out of this mess by some conventional route. That’s my reading of it. But whether I’m right or wrong, bringing them in for questioning isn’t going to get you a result. It might stop the fires, but nobody will ever be charged with them. A search warrant won’t help either, from what you’ve told me about how the fires are started. I know it’s not the answer you want to hear, but surveillance is your best chance of a conviction. And you need to cover both of them in case I’ve got it wrong.’
Carol groaned. ‘I knew you were going to say that,’ she complained. ‘Surveillance. A copper’s favourite job. A budgetary nightmare.’
‘At least you only have to cover the hours of darkness. And he’s operating frequently, so it’s not going to last for long.’
‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’
‘It’s the best I can manage.’
‘OK. Not your fault. Thanks for your help, Tony. Off you go and enjoy dinner. I’m going home to a frozen pizza and, hopefully, updates from Simon and Leon. And, please God, an early night. Sleep…’ The last word sounded like a caress.
Tony laughed. ‘Enjoy it.’
‘Oh, I will,’ she promised fervently. ‘And Tony – good luck.’
‘In the absence of miracles, I’ll settle for that.’
The click of his receiver going down sliced off any chance of her telling him the other thing she’d initiated that day. She couldn’t work out exactly why she’d felt impelled to do it, but her instinct told her it was important. And past experience had taught her painfully that her instinct was sometimes far more reliable than logic. Something had niggled at the back of her mind until, in the midst of all the other tasks for the day, she’d found time to send a query out to all the other police forces in the country. Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan of East Yorkshire Police wanted to hear about any recent reports of teenage girls inexplicably missing from home.
* * *
‘Mike McGowan? That’s him, over in the corner booth, duck,’ the barmaid said, gesturing with her thumb.
‘What does he drink?’ Leon asked. But the barmaid had already moved on to another customer. The pub was moderately busy, occupied almost completely by men. In a small East Midlands town like this, there were clear distinctions between pubs where men went to spend their time with women and ones where they went to avoid that necessity. The giveaway here was the large board outside advertising ‘All day satellite sport, giant screens’.
Leon sipped his lager shandy and took a moment to watch Mike McGowan. Jimmy Linden had offered his name as the media expert on Jacko Vance. ‘Like me, Mike spotted him early on and he wrote a lot about him over the years,’ he’d said. When Leon had contacted McGowan’s old paper in London, he’d discovered that the journalist had been made redundant three years before. Divorced, his children grown and scattered round the country, there had been nothing to keep McGowan in the expensive capital, so he’d returned to the Nottinghamshire town where he’d grown up.
The ex-reporter looked more like a caricature of an Oxbridge don than any national newspaperman Leon had ever seen. Even sitting down, he wa
s clearly tall. A mop of grey-blond hair cut in a heavy fringe that flopped over his eyes, big tortoiseshell glasses and pink and white skin gave him the same boyish looks that Alan Bennett and David Hockney turned into trademarks. His jacket was the sort of ancient tweed that takes fifteen years to look wearable then lasts another twenty without any sign of attrition. Beneath it he wore a grey flannel shirt and a striped tie with a narrow tight knot. He sat alone in the narrow corner booth, staring up studiously at a 56-inch TV screen where two teams were playing basketball. As Leon watched, McGowan tapped the bowl of a pipe against the ashtray, automatically cleaning and filling it without taking his eyes from the screen.
When Leon loomed up next to him, he still didn’t take his eyes off the basketball. ‘Mike McGowan?’
‘That’s me. And who are you?’ he said, local vowels as distinctive as the barmaid’s shattering the illusion of lofty academe.
‘Leon Jackson.’
McGowan threw him a quick look of assessment. ‘Any relation to Billy Boy Jackson?’
Astounded, Leon almost crossed himself. ‘He was my uncle,’ he blurted out.
‘You’ve got the same shaped head. I should know. I was ringside the night Marty Pyeman fractured your uncle’s skull. That’s not what you’ve come to see me about, though, is it?’ The quick glance this time was shrewd.
‘Can I get you a drink, Mr McGowan?’
The journalist shook his head. ‘I don’t come here for the drink. I come for the sport. My pension’s crap. I can’t afford a satellite subscription or a screen like this. I was at school with the landlord’s dad, so he doesn’t bother that I make a single pint last the best part of the day. Sit down and tell me what you’re after.’
