The Torment of Others

by Val McDermid

  ‘It can make you vulnerable on the street. Unless you take steps to turn it to your advantage. You can’t rely on anybody else to do it for you. Of course, it’s not the only thing that makes you vulnerable. Any sort of difference can have the same effect: race, being disabled…They’re all things people have to compensate for.’

  In every exploration he had made into the criminal mind, Tony had arrived at a moment where something crucial fell into place and made sense of everything. It wouldn’t have registered if he hadn’t been thinking so hard about power and vulnerability that morning, but because his mind was already running on those lines, it assumed the correct significance. At last he thought he understood. And he also knew he hadn’t a hope in hell of convincing Carol or anyone else. Not wanting Jan to see his reaction, he looked out of the passenger window. ‘I suppose. Must be just as hard for Evans and Chen,’ he said nonchalantly.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never asked them.’

  ‘What? No solidarity among minorities?’ Tony asked.

  I’ve got nothing against them. But I’ve got nothing in common with them either. Why should I expect them to fight my battles?’

  ‘Fair enough. So I suppose Brandon wants this profile yesterday? That would be why they took the trouble to send someone to fetch me?’

  ‘I guess so. Nothing else is going anywhere. Carol’s even going over the old Derek Tyler cases with Sam to see if there were any loose ends they can chase up now.’ She reached out and turned on the CD player. Bonnie Raitt sang that love had no pride.

  ‘You think you’re going to bring Paula home alive?’ Tony asked.

  ‘Honest answer?’

  ‘Honest answer.’

  ‘I think she’s already dead. I think he’s playing with us.’

  More than anything else he’d heard that day, the words thrust a chill spear of fear into Tony’s heart.

  Evans marked his place with a finger and looked up. ‘DCI Jordan? I can’t seem to find any mention of Paula on the original inquiry list.’

  Carol thought for a moment. ‘She probably wasn’t on it, Sam. She was a CID aide on the Thorpe case, but that was only a six-month posting. She’d probably have gone back to uniform by then. You think there’s any significance in that?’

  ‘If there is, I don’t know what it could be,’ he said. ‘Just clutching at straws.’ They went back to work, heads bent, minds on full alert, mining the mountain of paper.

  Half an hour of silence later, they were disturbed by a SOCO. ‘Are you DCI Jordan?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Carol tried to squash the quickening of interest. She couldn’t bear any more false hope.

  ‘We’ve been going through the bins in the search area and we’ve found the radio mike and transmitter that DC McIntyre was wearing,’ he said, sounding pleased with himself.

  Carol snapped to full attention. ‘And?’ She was half-aware of the arrival of Jan and Tony, but all her focus was on the SOCO.

  ‘The wire from the mike to the transmitter had been snipped. There are two partial prints on the transmitter. We’re working on them right now. We should know soon if they match anything on AFIS.’

  Tony stayed discreetly in the background, but Jan dumped her coat and bag by her desk and moved closer to the action.

  ‘Why has it taken this long to find?’ Carol demanded. ‘What have you people been doing for the past two days?’

  He looked wounded. ‘It turned up a couple of hundred yards away from where she was last seen. That’s a lot of rubbish to get through.’

  ‘It is when you work nine to five. Jan, see who you can rustle up to get back on the streets with you. Then widen the search area out from where they found the mike. Sam, you go too.’

  Jan didn’t pause to discuss the order, heading straight out the door towards the murder room. Evans capped his Cross fountain pen, slipped it into his inside pocket and followed her. Meanwhile, Tony casually sat down at Jan’s desk, apparently waiting for Carol’s attention.

  ‘How long will it be before you get a result from AFIS?’ she asked.

  Unnoticed by anyone, Tony leaned down and flipped open Jan’s handbag. He slid his fingers inside, probing till her found her bunch of keys. He closed his hand round them then silently lifted them clear and slipped them in his pocket.

  ‘Hard to say,’ the SOCO replied. ‘It depends how much traffic there is on the system.’

  Tony stood up. ‘I’m just going for a coffee.’

  Carol barely registered his words. ‘Can’t we put a priority status on it?’

  ‘I already did,’ Tony heard the SOCO say as he walked out of the office. He hurried downstairs and out into the front reception of the police station. He paused at the counter.

  ‘Do you know where the nearest heel bar is?’ he asked.

  The civilian behind the counter thought for a moment. ‘If you go into the mini-mall round the corner, there’s one up the back in the basement.’

  Tony left at a trot. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the heel bar. The smell of solvents and glue caught his throat and made his eyes water. Luckily there was no one waiting to be served ahead of him. He deposited the bunch of keys on the counter. As well as the car keys, there was a Chubb mortice, a couple of Yales and two small keys. ‘I need copies of all of these, except for the car keys,’ he said. ‘And I’m in a hurry, I’m afraid.’

  The youth behind the counter gave the keys a swift appraisal. ‘No problem. Ten minutes do you?’

  ‘Brilliant. I’ll be right back.’ He hurried out of the shop and ran through the arcade of stalls to the coffee shop by the escalators. Again, he was spared the tension of waiting in a queue. ‘Large macchiato to go, please.’ He drummed his fingers on the counter while he waited for the pitifully slow barista to get to grips with his technology and assemble the drink. He grabbed the carton then walked briskly back to the heel bar.

  Five minutes later, he walked nonchalantly up to Jan’s sports car. He put his coffee on the ground, unlocked the car and put the keys in the ignition. Then, trying to look like a man with nothing more demanding on his mind than coffee and a serial killer profile, he made his way back up to the squadroom.

  He walked in just as Jan was upending the contents of her bag on to her desk. She looked up, frustration on her face. ‘You didn’t see what I did with my keys, did you?’

  Tony scratched his head, frowning in recollection. ‘You know, I don’t remember you actually locking the car,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck.’ Jan shovelled everything back into her bag, grabbed her jacket and ran from the room. Evans raised his eyebrows at Tony as he followed her at a more leisurely pace.

  Tony shrugged. ‘What can I say? I have that effect on women.’

  Honey–whose real name was Emma Thwaite–had started to think of herself as streetwise. It had only been a matter of months since she’d left the shitty council flat in Blackburn to escape the responsibilities of raising three younger brothers while her mother spent her time in the pub, cadging drinks from men she would bring back and fuck on the living-room settee. But it felt like a lifetime. She could hardly remember who she’d been back then.

  She knew she’d been lucky to end up under Jackie’s wing, and she’d been naïve enough to believe she’d learned enough from that position of relative safety to manage on her own. But the past few days had thrust upon her the realization that she was a lot less capable of dealing with the world than she had thought. She wanted someone to take Jackie’s place, someone to help take the edge off the fear and the loneliness.

  So when she walked into Stan’s Café that afternoon, she gravitated straight to the table where Dee Smart sat alone, smoking and staring out of the window. ‘Hiya, Dee,’ she said. ‘Fancy another cuppa?’

  Dee looked her up and down, as if calculating what the price might be. ‘Yeah, go on,’ she said with a shallow sigh.

  Honey clattered off on her high heels, returning with two mugs and two chocolate biscuits. ‘There you g
o,’ she said, settling in opposite Dee and stripping the wrapper off her biscuit.

  Dee carried on staring into the street. ‘Bastard cops everywhere. They’re scaring the punters away.’

  ‘Sooner they catch whoever’s doing this, the better for us,’ Honey said.

  Dee gave her a contemptuous look. ‘That’s not going to happen any time soon.’

  ‘You think?’ Honey tried not to let her apprehension show.

  ‘I know. You think the Creeper isn’t pulling the strings?’

  The name took Honey by surprise. It had never occurred to her to connect it with the crimes that had turned her world difficult and sour. ‘This has got something to do with the Creeper?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course it has,’ Dee said impatiently. ‘I’ve had them all over me, asking their questions. Do I know the Creeper? Do I know anybody who had it in for Sandie? Blah blah blah.’

  ‘And you haven’t told them?’ Honey couldn’t figure out why Dee would have kept silent about something so important.

  Dee’s eyes narrowed. ‘You crazy? You think I want to be next on the hit list?’

  Honey frowned. She knew she wasn’t exactly Brain of Britain, but she didn’t think what Dee was saying made sense. ‘There won’t be no hit list if the Creeper’s locked up,’ she pointed out.

  Dee flicked the ash from her cigarette in a gesture of exasperation. ‘Grow up, Honey. They’re never going to lay a finger on the Creeper.’

  ‘All the same…’

  Dee shook her head vigorously. ‘Don’t even think about it. It’d be your funeral, girl.’ She pushed her tea away from her, as if deciding that drinking it would place her under too much of an obligation. ‘I’d have thought you’d have learned your lesson from what happened to Jackie. If you don’t want to end up like her, keep your nose out of the Creeper’s business.’

  Honey watched Dee walk out. It hurt that her overture had been rejected, but she was more disconcerted by the reason than the fact itself. Maybe Dee was right, the best thing was to keep her head down and make sure she didn’t rock the boat. But what if Dee was wrong?

  Don Merrick decided he didn’t like the Scottish Highlands. He’d never been anywhere so empty in his whole life. He remembered a trip he and Lindy had taken before the kids came along, a four-wheel-drive safari into the Sahara. Compared to this louring emptiness, the desert had felt positively thronged. It hadn’t been so bad for a few miles after he’d left Inverness airport in the hire car, but when he’d turned off the main arterial road to strike out west, he had rapidly found himself in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere. According to the map, this was supposed to be an A-road, but it was more like one of the narrow back roads of the Peak District.

  You could go mad out here, he thought. Nothing but grey rock and greeny-brown vegetation. Correction. Nothing but grey rock and greeny-brown vegetation and the occasional grey-brown pond. Sometimes the grey rock manifested itself as the crumbling gable end of what might once have been a house or a barn. But signs of human life were few and far between. The only living things he could see were sheep. In an hour’s driving he’d passed two vehicles, both travelling in the opposite direction: a Land Rover and a red minibus with PostBus emblazoned along the side. Don supposed some people might like the grandeur and the isolation, but he found himself longing for the bustle and scrum of the city.

  When he’d looked at the map, he’d thought he could check out Nick Sanders’ putative foxhole in a matter of hours. Before anyone would even notice he’d been gone. He’d capture the fugitive and restore his self-respect in one. Then the glory of success would bring forgiveness for his insubordination. Carol would be forced to respect his abilities if he brought Nick Sanders in before nightfall.

  But the light faded faster up here too. It was only mid-afternoon, and already he felt twilight closing in. He’d be lucky if he made it to Achmelvich by nightfall, never mind back to Bradfield. He wished he’d brought a torch with him. He had a feeling that Achmelvich wasn’t going to be well endowed with streetlights. If he ever found anything approximating civilization again, he’d stop and stock up on some essentials.

  He wondered if they had chocolate up here.

  Tony had chosen to sit at the desk Kevin Matthews normally occupied for the good reason that, from her office, Carol couldn’t see what he was doing. She was still busy on the phone, which gave him the freedom to flick through the pages of the phone book. With one ear cocked, he ran his finger down a column of names. God, it was getting harder to read the small print, he thought. Time to have his eyes tested.

  It sounded as if Carol was winding up her call. ‘Yes, I do know that everybody thinks their request is a priority. But I’ve got an officer who’s been abducted by a killer…’ A pause. ‘OK. I appreciate it.’

  Just in time, he found what he was looking for. He jotted it on a piece of scrap paper and shoved it into his pocket as Carol emerged from her office and headed towards him. ‘Did Jan fill you in?’ she asked.

  ‘Jan? Fill me in?’ he echoed.

  ‘Brandon wants a profile. He already told the noon press conference he was calling on the services of a psychological profiler. Which of course the local media will assume is you.’

  ‘Oh, that. Right. Yes, she did say something,’ he said, aware he was sounding flustered and hoping Carol would put it down to his customary vagueness. ‘I take it you don’t want me to refer to what we discussed last night?’ he asked, hoping that might divert her from noticing anything unusual in his behaviour.

  Carol raised her eyebrows. ‘Not if you want Brandon to take anything else you say seriously.’

  ‘And you? Have you thought about it?’

  Carol pushed a hand through her hair. She looked frazzled and unhappy. ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to take me any further forward. I’m sorry, Tony, but unless you’ve got something concrete, I haven’t got time for this now.’

  He stood up. ‘That’s OK. I understand. I’m going home. I’ll work better there.’

  ‘Fine, we’ll talk later,’ she said absently. Her mind was already on the next thing, the phone to her ear, her fingers on the buttons.

  Out on the street, Tony hailed a taxi. He pulled the paper from his pocket and gave the driver the address. He sagged back into the seat and stared into the middle distance. So deep in his thoughts was he that he wasn’t even aware of it when he started to speak out loud. Nor was he conscious of the apprehensive eyes of the driver in the rear-view mirror. All that interested him was the process of a killer’s mind.

  ‘You didn’t get what you wanted,’ he muttered. ‘The bad fairy at the christening gave you a shit deal, and the brains to see how shit it was. So you learn how to take the power, hide the vulnerability. Get your retaliation in first. Hide your weakness behind a show of force. But sooner or later, the cracks start to show. You stop believing in your own publicity. You have to find a way to reassure yourself. A way to take more power to yourself. You become the voice.’ He nodded in satisfaction. It made sense. It had the structure of a logical argument. Pretzel logic, but logic all the same.

  ‘At first, you take your power from the weak. You find your listener in Derek. You make him do your bidding. You make him take your prey and you control every move of the puppet show. But Derek fucks up and you’re back where you started. And it takes time to carve another will into the shape of your own.

  ‘But, eventually, you get there. You find another mind you can dominate, another head you can perch inside. And it begins again. And then you get the chance to take on someone your own size. And you can’t resist, can you?’

  His reverie was broken by the anxious voice of the taxi driver. ‘You all right, mate?’ he asked.

  Tony leaned forward. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But I will be soon, I hope.’

  One of the reasons for my success is my ability to think on my feet, to adapt my plans to accommodate changing circumstances. After the time it took to train him, I’d hoped to get more use out of
this monkey, but it’s become clear that sooner rather than later he’s going to be fingered–and that presents a risk I’m not prepared to take. I was sure of Tyler, sure he would keep the faith because he had such a personal stake in the work I set him. But this one is weaker. He’ll give me up without even knowing he’s doing it.

  I pull up round the corner from the shithole where he lives. It’s getting dark now, and everyone’s in too much of a hurry to get somewhere warm to pay attention to anybody else. I check the mirrors, just in case anybody’s watching, then remove the gun from the glove compartment, enjoying the heft of it in my hand.

  When the coast is clear, I get out, head down, and walk briskly to my destination. I have a key to the street door and I run up the stairs to the first landing. Two grubby green doors open off it. I reach up with a gloved hand and knock on the door with the number four painted on it.

  I can feel my heart rate speeding up. I’ve never done this face to face before, and I’m curious to see how it will feel. Seconds pass, then the door inches open. Carl is peering out through the gap, dressed only in grey sagging jockey shorts and a crumpled T-shirt. He looks as if he’s just woken up. His expression is suspicious, but when he sees it’s me, his face clears.

  ‘Hiya,’ he says, a goofy grin on his greasy face. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

  He steps back to allow me to enter. It’s a dank, untidy room. Unmade bed, clothes in piles, Britney poster on the wall. It smells of masturbation and sweat. Every time I’ve been here, it’s depressed me to think this was the best I could do.

  Carl is gibbering something, but this afternoon I’ve no time for small talk. I’m supposed to be somewhere else. I pull out the gun and take pleasure in the panic that spreads across his face. He’s not very bright, but even he knows what a gun means when it’s at his head. I back him towards the bed.

  ‘I did what you said. I never told anybody,’ he whimpers. His legs hit the edge of the bed and he tumbles backwards. He scrambles towards the head of the bed. He’s crying now. ‘I promise, I won’t give you up.’