How the Dead Speak

by Val McDermid

  And the lawyer was right. It had always been Carol’s sense of justice that had fired her up as a detective. So often, there was a gap between the law and justice. What charges could be brought, what the courts handed down, what the limits on sentencing were – so often, the victims, their families and the witnesses were left feeling bewildered and cheated. Not just them – Carol had sat gloomily in pubs with her team while they unpicked the many ways in which the system had failed to deliver yet again. There had been nothing in her professional life that angered and disappointed her more than that. She’d even had to admit to herself earlier that day that a small part of why she’d let herself be pushed into investigating Vanessa’s conman was the potential pleasure of seeing him pay the price, both literal and metaphorical.

  ‘I know you know Grisha,’ Bronwen said after a long moment. ‘He was the one who suggested inviting you on board. I wanted him to come and talk to you himself.’ Another quick flash of a smile. ‘I reckoned he’d have more chance of persuading you than I have. But he refused. He said you’d feel you’d been tricked if he talked you into joining us then discovered I was running the show.’ She spread her arms wide. ‘So that’s why I’m here instead of him. Carol, you are a brilliant detective. You are the smartest cop I ever butted heads with. You can’t just sit here whittling bits of wood and wasting that investigative talent.’ She dropped her hands to her side and shook her head. ‘I say this not out of emotional blackmail—’

  ‘Which means that’s exactly what you’re about to commit,’ Carol interrupted, chin up, eyes defiant. ‘I’d put money on you saying something along the lines of how disappointed Tony would be that I’m not using my skills and experience to serve justice.’

  ‘I’ll let you do the job for me,’ Bronwen said. She reached inside the extravagant swagger of her coat and opened a soft leather satchel slung across her body beneath its folds. She took out a slim brown A4 envelope and held it out towards Carol. ‘This is the case where I think you’d make a difference.’

  Carol made no move to accept it. ‘Not interested,’ she repeated.

  Bronwen carried on regardless. It was, Carol thought, a performance not many would have the nerve to give. ‘Saul Neilson. He was only twenty-eight when he was sentenced to life three years ago for murder. It’s particularly interesting because it’s a no body case. He didn’t do it, Carol.’ Bronwen tossed the envelope on to a nearby chair. ‘Here’s another bet for you. You’ll have opened that envelope before my tail lights are out of sight.’

  She turned and walked out of the door, Flash following close on her heels as if to make sure she was really going. The latch snicked into place. The car door shut with a heavy thunk. The rich grunt of a well-tuned engine starting, then its diminuendo as it headed back down the road. Then silence as thick as the darkness outside.

  Carol picked up the envelope and carried it through to the kitchen, where she dropped it in the waste paper recycling box. Whatever was on TV that evening, it would be better than opening Bronwen Scott’s envelope. She stabbed the button on the Sonos system and Alison Moyet’s glorious voice filled the room. But even that couldn’t block out Tony’s voice in her head, repeating ‘Come on, Carol. You know you want to.’

  15

  This type of murder is the end of a process that can take anything from minutes to years. The first step is the identification of possible prey. The second step is not to throw caution to the wind.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  Mark Conway liked to take his time. His mother’s words echoed in his brain: ‘More haste, less speed.’ She’d had an unerring ability to find the perfect cliché. He couldn’t remember her ever expressing an original thought. As a child, he’d had no appreciation of how hackneyed her speech was, or how closely that mapped on to her thoughts. It had taken years for him to realise it was like living with a particularly well-trained parrot. It had taken even more years for him to retrain his own speech habits. He’d made the change a conscious choice because he wanted to free his own thoughts and plans from the preordained channels and patterns he’d absorbed from her and the Christian Brothers.

  He liked to think he’d ended up with a nimble mind, with an agile grasp of possibilities, and flexible mental reactions. He’d built his business from the ground up in record time because he was quick to respond to changing circumstances. He employed people whose minds didn’t run in tramlines and he was always on the lookout for fresh talent. And because he’d had to break into business the hard way, he was willing to look in places as unconventional as his own starting point to find the next game-changer.

  Urgent though that search was, he was going to have to put it on hold. That morning’s news had hit him with the force of a hand squeezing his heart. He’d actually felt physically stricken by the newsreader’s words. He’d staggered to a chair and fallen into it like a sack of sand till he’d processed the words. Human remains uncovered at the convent of the Blessed Pearl was his worst nightmare.

  But as the ringing in his head subsided, he understood that this was nothing to do with him. The skeletal remains of children? That was down to the nuns.

  All the same . . . why had Jezza not warned him? What the actual fuck was that about? He must have known the bulldozers were about to move in. Was he really too stupid to understand how this news would have sounded to his cousin?

  A wave of nausea swept through him and he stumbled to the sink, barely making it before his orange juice and granola pebble-dashed the stainless steel. He gasped and retched till there was nothing more to come. Panting, he rinsed his mouth under the tap. Thank God Jezza hadn’t seen that. If they were going to make it through this, they’d do it because Conway was strong and smart and always one step ahead of the opposition.

  He sat down again. He needed to think this through. Jezza had been adamant that he’d done nothing that would put Conway at risk of discovery. The narrow strip of land that held the raised beds and the vegetable patches had been let to Jezza on a fifty-year lease when the convent had closed down. Although there was no actual fence or wall, they weren’t part of the land that the developers had bought. Jezza had always been clear on that point. And he swore that none of the graves the nuns had instructed him to dig were anywhere near where he’d deposited Conway’s failed recruitments. Plus, he’d promised, they were buried much deeper. And even if they were unearthed? Well, he wasn’t the one the fingers would point to.

  So really, there was no reason to panic. And clearly, for all his stupidity, Jezza wasn’t panicking either. Otherwise he’d have been ringing Conway’s phone off the hook. He’d see Jezza at the football. There was a game in a couple of days, Manchester City at the Etihad. They’d drive down together, as usual. Spend the evening at the game. Act normally. He’d find out what was going on and make sure Jezza was primed to give nothing away.

  He just needed to stay away from the Blessed Pearl till everything died down.

  More importantly, he had to curb his enthusiasm. No more trawling Temple Fields in search of the special boy he could mould into someone fit to follow his example, the successor who would cement his legacy. But it would be a pause, not a full stop. If Jezza was no longer the answer to his failures, he’d find another solution.

  His was the nimble mind, after all.

  16

  When I trained as a clinical psychologist, I envisaged a life working in some therapeutic institution, helping people come to terms with what had afflicted their lives. I had no notion of where this career would take me, which is probably just as well.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  On the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, running a man like Mark Conway to ground would take another nimble mind. Once upon a time that would have been a task laid at Tony’s door, Carol looking over his shoulder, eager for any insights that would help her team to make progress.

  But now, he didn’t even know Mark Conway existed nor how many victims he’d persuaded himself he’d
saved from a worse fate. Tony’s world had shrunk to his immediate surroundings, his only imperative to stay out of trouble he wouldn’t know how to handle. Keeping his head down, quietly getting on with writing his book, occupying a niche with the prison radio station – that was all he should focus on right now. Anything else was a distraction. There would be time enough to figure out what kind of life he might have in future. Time enough to explore whether he and Carol might find a way back to each other.

  Groggy from a restless night on his comfortless mattress, he ground through his morning routine on automatic pilot. Shave in lukewarm water, dress in jeans and T-shirt, everything a day or two past where he’d have worn it on the outside. The small degradations that all made it impossible to forget he was being punished. Then down to a breakfast of flabby sweating sausages and potato hash, half an eye on what was going on around him in case it might kick off in a fashion that could drag him into somebody else’s war. All clear, he headed back to his cell. Someone further down the wing was screaming about some perceived injustice. There was something wrong with the heating and in his brief absence, his cell had warmed up to an uncomfortable degree, amplifying the familiar smells. Still, he’d be able to carve out an hour for writing before he had to report for his shift.

  Two days ago, he’d been assigned to work three shifts a week in the prison laundry. This would be his second day of wheeling baskets through the wings, collecting dirty clothes and bedding and carting it down to the laundry where vast industrial machines grunted and churned. It was, he was told with some resentment, a cushy number.

  On the second day, the man he had learned was top dog on his landing stopped him on the way from breakfast. ‘Laundry boy,’ he’d begun, his voice loaded with disdain. ‘You know what your name is now?’

  ‘Maybe you could tell me?’ Tony tried for a conciliatory smile, knowing even as he did that it was an epic fail.

  ‘Postman Pat.’

  It wasn’t what he’d expected. ‘First-class mail?’

  The man grinned sourly. ‘I’m the cunt who makes the jokes round here. You’ll be delivering packages for me on your rounds. Is that clear?’

  Heart sinking, Tony had agreed that yes, he’d be the new delivery boy. He suspected the prison officers knew perfectly well what was going on but it was easier to let it slide than put a stop to it and have to figure out what had replaced it.

  That morning, before he could write more than a couple of sentences, a skinny prisoner with elaborate tattoos of serpents and naked women sidled into his cell. Tony had no recollection of seeing him before and was instantly wary. The man had a gaunt face and cropped dark hair with glints of silver at the temples. ‘You the shrink guy?’ he demanded. His accent was some sort of East European.

  It wasn’t the time to get into the shades of difference between psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists. ‘I guess,’ Tony said. ‘Dr Tony Hill, that’s me.’

  ‘I am Matis Kalvaitis. You are an educated man.’ He took a couple of steps further inside the cell. He folded his arms across his chest, the ropes of muscle making his tattoos move in a sinister dance.

  ‘Most people would say so.’ Tony felt the familiar tightening of fear in his chest. What did this man want?

  ‘I need you.’ He let his arms drop to his side and pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. ‘I need you to write this for me.’ He thrust it at Tony, who studied it as he unfolded it. It was a printout from a website explaining the grounds for appealing against deportation following a criminal conviction.

  ‘They want to deport you?’

  ‘Back to Lithuania. That’s no good for me.’

  ‘You think you’ve got grounds for appealing?’

  Kalvaitis nodded vigorously. ‘Fucking right. I have been in UK for eleven years. I work in garage, I am mechanic. I have English wife since eight years. I have two boys. Six and four years.’ He shrugged. ‘I got in stupid fight.’ He clapped himself on the chest. ‘I am good fighter. Too good for stupid bastard who started it. They say I am dangerous man but I just want to stay with my family. You will write letter.’ It wasn’t really a question.

  ‘You’ve got the paperwork? Your marriage certificate, work records, the birth certificates for your lads?’ Tony stalled.

  ‘Yes, yes, my wife keeps stupid papers, never throws anything away. You write letter, she will do rest.’

  ‘Why can’t she write the letter?’

  He snorted. ‘Because she is not an educated woman. We have no money for lawyer and we don’t have pitiful story for people to tweet about. You write letter and I will be your friend. Everybody needs friends in prison.’

  In Tony’s view, it wasn’t so much that you needed friends, more that you needed to avoid making enemies. The last thing he wanted was to make an enemy of a good fighter. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Kalvaitis gave him a long hard stare. ‘I’ll see what you can do, Dr Hill.’ He turned on his heel and slipped out without a backward glance. Tony looked at the paper again. It shouldn’t be too difficult to draft an appeal. Kalvaitis’ poorly educated wife could fill in the gaps, or get someone else to do that for her.

  Tony closed his laptop and turned to a fresh page in his pad. If it kept him even a fraction safer, it would be worth it. Survival, that was the prime directive.

  17

  At the first seminar I attended as a callow student of psychology, the lecturer began with a glib line designed to make him look smart. ‘You have two ears and one mouth. When it comes to practising psychology, try to use them in that proportion.’ My prescription would be a bit different. ‘You’ve got four organs of perception and observation – two eyes and two ears – and one for interrogation. You usually learn least by using your mouth.’

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  Sophie Valente followed her GPS faithfully through the undistinguished village of Bradesden, a development of identical houses jammed together behind a main street of low stone cottages with a village store and an ugly pub. The village was surrounded by rolling fields, broken up by low hedgerows and clumps of trees whose names she was perfectly happy to remain ignorant of. Sophie was a city girl; the countryside held no attractions for her. What did people do all day?

  The satnav brought her to a narrow lane. The cars parked along the verge indicated she was in the right place. The huddles of men and women leaning on car bonnets, toting shotgun mics and long lenses, confirmed that. They looked up hopefully as she drove past but dismissed her so abruptly she felt insulted.

  The police cordon consisted of an officer in a high-vis jacket standing in the middle of the road by a liveried police car. He took a step forward as she approached, holding his clipboard out as if it had the power to repel boarders. Here we go, today’s first dick-wave. Sophie wound down her window and presented her ID. ‘DI Valente from ReMIT.’

  He looked unimpressed. ‘Car park’s full,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to park down the lane and walk back up.’

  She could see empty verges beyond his car. ‘Thanks, Constable, but I think I’ll just park up ahead here in the lane.’

  ‘I’m supposed to keep the roadside clear.’

  How they enjoyed the exercise of their petty little fragments of power, she thought. She knew she couldn’t afford to back down, not so early in her new role. Everybody seemed to know her background and, given that her own immediate colleagues didn’t rate her, she couldn’t afford to lose any more face. ‘And I’m supposed to be at the crime scene. I’m not asking your permission, I’m telling you to let me through.’

  She could imagine his steady stubborn stare wearing down most people. Because most people had limited defences against silence in a face-to-face encounter. But Sophie had worked hard at not being most people. If she’d stayed in retail, she knew she’d have ended up near the top of the tree. But it had bored her. Being a cop seemed a more exciting option once the possibility opened up of not having to grind
her way through the ranks to the interesting levels. And she wasn’t going to be put off by men who thought she shouldn’t be where she was, men who didn’t have the faintest idea what transferrable skills were. ‘I don’t want to waste my time explaining to your boss why I’ve kept him waiting.’

  Slowly he stepped aside, making a show of writing on his clipboard. As she passed, she smiled. Not triumphant, not apologetic. Just a straightforward smile. ‘Thanks. I’ll mention how helpful you’ve been.’ His head came up and she caught a momentary flash of alarm. It was clear he really didn’t want his colleagues thinking he’d gone out of his way to be nice to the rookie inspector.

  She drove on, parking behind the first car she came to, reasoning that it would likely be the last in the queue. She had a pair of wellies in the boot and she swapped them for her low-heeled court shoes before she headed up the lane and through a pair of stone pillars whose wrought-iron gates had been opened as wide as they would go. The tiny car park of the convent had probably never seen so much traffic, she thought. Police cars, the mobile forensics lab, the mortuary van, not to mention a canine patrol van. The whole of one side was occupied by the mobile incident room trailer, its generator keeping up a low grumble in the background.

  Sophie made for the incident room. She had a name – DCI Alex Fielding – and she planned to use it. She walked in, passing a couple of uniforms who were heading out. Nobody looked up as she walked in; they all had their tasks and that was what they were focused on. She admired that. She stopped at the first desk she came to and cleared her throat. A grey-faced young man dragged his red-rimmed eyes from the screen. ‘Yeah?’ he said.