The Torment of Others

by Val McDermid

  Carol reread the profile. ‘Thank you, Tony,’ she said softly. As always, his concision and his insight had moved her inquiry further forward. She could go into the briefing this morning with a series of positive suggestions. Hitting the team with definite lines of inquiry always provoked their best work.

  The only thing niggling at the back of her mind was why he had chosen to email the profile to her rather than bringing it in himself and going through it with her. They had always found it productive to test his hypotheses in argument and discussion. And there was no mention of a proposed visit to the crime scene. It cut into her good mood and made her feel uneasy.

  Carol shrugged the thought aside and picked up her phone. ‘Stacey, can you find out who’s in charge of the SOCOs we’ve been working with in Derbyshire? I need them to go back to Swindale and look for another body.’

  Evans was looking pleased with himself. ‘It’s a start, at least,’ he said. They were sitting in a tearoom in Tideswell, a pile of hot buttered teacakes on a plate in front of them next to a couple of slices of lemon meringue pie. Kevin had arrived first after supervising the further excavation of Tim Golding’s grave. A mere fifteen inches below the first set of bones, more human remains had been unearthed. Carol Jordan had been right on the money, Kevin thought, pleased that his boss was so evidently back on form.

  Now a full fingertip search of Swindale was under way. Two dozen cops were still on their hands and knees in protective white suits inching through the vegetation. Kevin felt he deserved self-indulgence after two hours standing in the rain feeling the waves of hatred from the officers Derbyshire had loaned them for the search, but Evans seemed oblivious to the treats on the table.

  ‘Run it past me,’ Kevin said.

  ‘OK. I tracked down one of the three rangers who covers this patch. Nick Sanders, his name is. He told me that he had a report from some hikers earlier this summer of a flasher down that end of Chee Dale, near the entrance to Swindale. They’d spotted him exposing himself to a bunch of kids, and they chased him. But they lost him. Said he just seemed to disappear into thin air. Which of course fits with the entrance to Swindale. Later that afternoon, Sanders ran into them when he was doing a routine patrol and they gave him a description.’ Evans flipped open his notebook and read it out. ‘Early thirties. About five foot eight or nine, slim build, dark hair, bald on top. Wearing a Leeds Rhinos shirt, blue jeans and trainers.’

  ‘It is a start, I suppose,’ Kevin said, reaching for a teacake. ‘But it’s not like we’re going to pull him based on that description.’

  ‘We could release it, though. Somebody might recognize it.’

  Kevin looked sceptical. ‘Did Sanders report it to the local lads?’

  Evans’ lip curled in contempt. ‘No. He says he meant to but it slipped his mind.’

  ‘Great. Fucking woodentops out here.’

  ‘But he logged it in his daily report. He’s going to email me a copy of it when he gets back to base. He’s also going to email me a set of photos the rangers took of Swindale and Chee Dale back in July.’

  ‘What were they doing taking pictures down there?’

  ‘It wasn’t just there specifically. They did a photographic record of the whole of that part of the Wye Valley. Him and the other two guys who cover this patch were proposing a series of footpath improvements and they wanted to back it up with photographic evidence of the effectiveness of work that had been done in the past. Plus where it needed to be done now. He also told me that there was a team of conservation volunteers working in that part of the dale back in May. He didn’t have names, but he says the Peak Park HQ should be able to provide those.’

  ‘Helpful bloke, your Nick Sanders,’ Kevin said. ‘I wish the turnips Derbyshire sent us were as keen to do the business. Talk about “send in the clowns…”’

  ‘He seemed genuinely upset about Tim and Guy,’ Evans said. ‘Nearly as upset as he was about the idea of somebody fucking with his precious park.’

  ‘Nice work, Sam. So, have you got the other two rangers lined up for a chat?’

  Evans glanced at his watch. ‘Sorted. Gotta meet one in half an hour. Some place called Wormhill. Sounds tasty. The other one’s on his day off today; I’ll catch him first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Better tuck in, then. Can’t be expected to work on an empty stomach.’

  Evans reached for a teacake. ‘It’d be nice to nail this one. Make up for missing out on the action in Temple Fields.’

  Kevin snorted. ‘What action? That’s turning into the biggest waste of time and money this side of the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry. A career graveyard, that’s what that one’s going to be, mark my words. A career graveyard.’

  ‘It’s brass monkeys out here.’ Paula’s words crackled in Carol’s ears. She felt for the young DC. It was hard to imagine a worse night to be out on the streets. Freezing fog hung over the canal, sending tendrils of chill mist into the streets of Temple Fields. Moisture almost too fine to merit the name rain soaked through clothes, plastering Paula’s hair to her head. There were few pedestrians, and those there were hustled down the street, heads down, umbrellas up. In all conscience, Carol knew she couldn’t keep Paula out there for four hours. She made a mental promise to herself to knock it on the head at ten.

  ‘Rather her than me,’ Jan Shields muttered.

  ‘She looks better in a miniskirt than you would,’ Merrick commented.

  ‘And light years better than you would, Don,’ Carol pointed out. She chuckled suddenly. ‘Hey, remember when you guys had to stake out the gay club on the Thorpe case? You made such a sweet leather queen, Don.’

  ‘All right, all right, point taken,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Hang about, looks like we’ve got some action,’ Jan said urgently.

  The man had been walking down the street, snorkel parka hood pulled over his head, hiding his face. There was nothing suspicious about that in itself on such a night. But as he approached Paula, he slowed down. He came up to her from the side, obviously moving so quietly she hadn’t heard his approach. He stretched out a gloved hand and touched her, one finger on her arm.

  ‘Jesus Christ, are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack?’ Paula’s voice, loud and clear. She turned to face him.

  ‘You working?’ The man’s voice was barely audible. It sounded muffled, as if he was speaking through a scarf.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘I’m looking for something a bit unusual. You up for that?’

  ‘Depends what you have in mind.’

  ‘I’m willing to pay. Up front.’ His hand emerged from his pocket. It was impossible to tell from the cameras what he was holding.

  ‘That’ll buy you a lot of unusual. But you still haven’t said what you want. You gotta use a condom, you know that?’

  ‘That’s not a problem. Listen, I’ve got a place. You let me tie you up, I’ll pay you two hundred. Straight up.’

  Carol’s mouth dried up. She pressed the button on her mike and croaked, ‘All units, stand by. The eagle is hovering. Repeat, all units, stand by.’

  Paula was still talking. ‘Two hundred? Up front? Now?’

  Even through the intermediary of the camera, the action was unmistakable. He peeled off notes and offered them to her.

  Carol’s nose was practically up against the screen but she still couldn’t distinguish any of the man’s details. ‘Shit. We can’t see his face.’

  ‘Sounds like the real thing,’ Jan said excitedly.

  ‘All units, move to takedown positions. Move to takedown positions. Close off the area. Repeat, close off the area.’ Carol’s pulse was racing, the beat of her blood loud in her ears. On the screen, Paula was rounding the corner, the man’s hand on her elbow. On the street, other bodies were closing in on them. It was going to work. Thank Christ, it was going to work.

  Adrenaline had Paula in its electric grasp. Her breathing was shallow, her heart pumping like a drum. As they rounded the corner, she felt
herself being shunted into a narrow ginnel between buildings. ‘Where are we going?’ she said.

  In reply, he pulled her into an embrace, one hand roughly groping her breast, the other circling her back. Paula was so focused on the pain in her tweaked nipple that she never felt the sharpened electrician’s snips slicing cleanly through the wire that ran from her mike to the power pack.

  She pushed him away, saying, Oy! I thought you said you had a place to go to?’

  He swung her round by the arm. ‘It’s just here.’ He leaned past her and opened a gate in the wall, so grubby it was almost invisible against the blackened brick. He steered her inside then slipped the snib on the lock, closing it fast behind them. He ushered Paula towards the back door of a building.

  Nervous, but secure in the mistaken belief that she was still transmitting, Paula said sarcastically, ‘Mmm, very glamorous back yard. Who’d have thought such a nondescript gate in the wall would hide so lovely a place? We going into this building here then? This your place?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the man said. ‘Come on, get a move on. We haven’t got all night.’

  Carol was on her feet. ‘Paula’s gone dead. There’s nothing coming through.’ She turned to the two technical support staff. ‘Is it our end or hers?’

  Thirty seconds of unbearable suspense. Breath held. Prayers offered. Fingers crossed. Then one of the technicians shook his head. ‘It’s not our end. She’s not transmitting.’

  At once, chaos broke out. Carol shouted, Take down. Repeat, take down. The eagle has landed. All units, pursuit, pursuit.’

  ‘Fuck, shit, fuck, shit,’ Merrick kept repeating like a mantra as he wrenched open the side door of the van. He leapt out into the street as Carol ripped off her headset and tore after him, Jan in their wake. Stacey stared after them, open-mouthed, uncertain whether to stay put and hold the fort or follow. She settled for closing the van door and picking up Carol’s discarded comms equipment. Somebody had to keep track of what was happening. She didn’t mind. She who controls the technology controls the world, she told herself. It was a far more interesting option than running around on the street. Nothing would happen without her knowledge here.

  Carol pounded down the pavement, nightmare visions flooding her head. ‘No, no, no,’ she gasped on her out breaths as she covered the twenty yards to the corner where she’d last seen Paula. As she rounded the corner, she ran into the back of another officer, winding both of them. Carol staggered, then found her footing. She pushed past and found more officers milling around in the narrow ginnel where Paula had disappeared with the man. She shoved her way through, following the ginnel to its end. It led into another street intersected with lanes, alleys and back entries. It was a labyrinth.

  ‘Fan out,’ Carol shouted. ‘Cover the area. They can’t have gone far. Shit!’

  ‘It’s a rabbit warren round here, they could be anywhere,’ Merrick said, his face haggard, his voice cracking.

  ‘So don’t stand here talking, start looking. And somebody get this gate open,’ she added, pounding her fist against the door in the wall of the ginnel. ‘See where it takes us and go through it with a fine-tooth comb.’ Carol ran her hand through her hair. A sharp pain was rising from the base of her skull. How could this be happening?

  Merrick was talking urgently into his radio. ‘All units. Begin search of immediate area. Officer missing. Repeat, officer missing.’ He glanced across at Carol. ‘You want us to start door-to-door?’

  She nodded. ‘Jan, you take charge of that. And start with whatever’s behind this gate.’ Carol turned away, choking on her anger. As the officers around her dispersed, Carol wondered what she could have done differently. The worst of it was, she couldn’t think of a single thing.

  This one’s a keeper. He doesn’t know why, he just knows that’s the way it has to be. The Voice makes the decisions, the Voice knows best, the Voice doesn’t ever let him down.

  She looks like all the others, like a whore, but this one’s a cop. Knowing that makes him scared, but he still manages to do what he’s supposed to. He can’t get over how simple it’s been to capture her. Just like the Voice said it would be. The Voice said she would come along with him, meek as a lamb, good as gold, and she has.

  He plucks her off the street, easy as could be. Easier than the others, in a way, because he doesn’t know this one from before. It isn’t hard to think of her as a dirty piece of meat because she’s never done anything to make him think otherwise. He gets her into the ginnel, then he cuts her wire just like he’d been practising all afternoon. Snip, snap, just like that. She doesn’t notice a thing.

  Into the yard, through the door, up the stairs. She never pauses for a moment, just keeps wittering on, thinking there’s somebody listening to her giving directions to the room that’s been prepared for her. She doesn’t even hesitate at the double door that looks just like a cupboard when you open the outer door on the landing. She comments on it, though, thinking she’s passing the message on. When he tells her to lie down on the bed and spread her legs and arms, she does as she’s told. He can smell the anxiety coming off her, but she isn’t scared, not really scared, not nearly scared enough. The cuffs go on and still he can tell she’s waiting for the cavalry to burst through the door and save her. She doesn’t even kick when he fastens the ankle restraints.

  But when the gag goes on, that’s a different story. He can tell she doesn’t like that, not one bit. Her eyes widen and a tide of colour sweeps up from her juicy round tits to her hairline. All at once it’s dawning on her that maybe it isn’t going to play out the way it’s supposed to. That he is in control, not her and the pathetic plods on her side. He smiles at her then, the relaxed, triumphant smile of the winner.

  ‘They’re not coming,’ he says. ‘You’re on your own.’ He leans over and reaches under her body. He pulls the transmitter out from under her skirt. Then he reaches into her cleavage and yanks out the mike and its cable. He waves the cut ends in front of her eyes. ‘You’ve been talking to yourself,’ he taunts her. ‘They don’t have a fucking clue where you are. You could be anywhere in Temple Fields by now. You thought you could beat us, but you were wrong. You’re fucked, plod.’

  He turns away, ignoring the mewling noises coming through the gag. He takes out the dildo he prepared earlier. The bright light gleams on the sharp edges of the razor blades. It’s fucking wicked, this death machine. He swivels on the balls of his feet, spinning round to face her. When she sees the dildo, the colour drains from her face, leaving her chest blotchy and ugly. He steps forward, pushes up her skirt and rips her pants away. He waves the dildo in her face and grins.

  That’s when she pisses herself. Which annoys him, because it’s going to make the room smell, and that’s not very nice. Because this one’s a keeper.

  PART FOUR

  It’s a well-known fact that there exist books that change people’s lives. If anyone were to ask me if such a book had ever swept through my life, I imagine they’d be profoundly surprised by the answer. But I can still remember the impact I felt when I first read John Buchan’s The Three Hostages.

  We were on a family holiday on the Norfolk Broads. It was as if my parents were aware of the concept of holidays but didn’t really understand how they should be done. Other people got to spend the week messing about on boats, exploring the waterways and experiencing a way of life utterly different from their normal routines – locks, fens, waterfowl, the strange sensation of unreality when their feet hit solid ground after days on the water. But not us. My parents had rented a static caravan on a site where hundreds of the metal boxes sat in serried rows along a low bluff that looked out over the blue-grey waters of the North Sea. The van we’d ended up in didn’t even have that view to commend it. All we could see from the windows was other caravans. It wasn’t an improvement on home; even in a two-bedroomed council house, there was more space and privacy than in this thirty-two-foot tin can. I hated it, resented the other kids whose parents had taken them on a prop
er holiday, counted the hours till we’d be on the road home.

  The weather didn’t help either. A typically English summer week, grey drizzle alternating with days of watery sunlight when everybody from the caravan site trooped off to the shingle beach, stripped down to their bathing suits, hopping from one foot to the other over the painful stones to the water’s edge. Then they screamed at the temperature, turned round and hopped shivering back up the beach again to flasks of hot weak coffee and egg sandwiches.

  One afternoon when the rain was particularly undeniable my parents decided to go and play bingo in the community-hall-cum-snack-bar that squatted in a low concrete block in the middle of the vans. I had to go too, because at twelve I wasn’t legally old enough to be left on my own. And my parents were always nauseatingly law-abiding. Smarting at the indignity, I trailed behind them, grudging and resentful. I wanted to hang out with Amanda, the beautiful blonde girl from the van two rows down, not watch a bunch of old fogeys playing bingo.

  Dad bought me a Coke and a bag of crisps, pointed me in the direction of the ping-pong table and told me to amuse myself for a couple of hours and not to wander off. Like I was a little kid. Fuming, I stomped off. The ping-pong room was noisy with kids who looked at me like I’d dropped in from another planet. I slouched off towards the furthest corner and that’s when I spotted the shelf of tattered hardbacks. I took a couple down from the shelves, but they didn’t grab me. Then I picked The Three Hostages and from the first page, with its images of a social milieu whose lives were utterly alien to mine, I was hooked.

  Until that moment I’d never imagined it was possible to achieve total domination over another’s conscious will. The Three Hostages spoke to me of two things I wanted above everything else: absolute superiority, and access to a world of power and success. I’d been deprived of the latter by birth, but if I seized the former for myself, I could grasp at something almost as fine.

  The Three Hostages was the first step on a long journey to the heart of other people’s minds. That control was possible, I never doubted. That I could achieve it, I never doubted. That I could use it to change the world around me remained to be seen. But on balance, I thought I could probably manage it.