Killing the Shadows

FIFTY-EIGHT

The city glittered below her in a tawdry galaxy, zirconium to the diamond sparkles of the stars blotted out by the light pollution. It was, Fiona thought, probably all she deserved. She’d come up to her favourite vantage point on the Heath in spite of the frosty night air because she wanted to be as alone as it was possible to be in the heart of the city.

She pulled the letter out of her pocket, fumbling it through her gloves. There was barely enough light to make out the letterhead, but she needed to check its reality. The Procurator Fiscal had decided she was not to be prosecuted for culpable homicide. There were to be no formal repercussions for that single minute of chaos when the gun had gone off, taking most of Francis Blake’s head with it. They had finally accepted that there had been nothing calculated in her actions; a few seconds either way and the outcome would have been quite different. Earlier, and Fiona might not have won a struggle for the gun. Later, and Blake would have fired and destroyed Kit utterly. Somehow, miraculously, she had landed at precisely the right moment. The gun had jerked back, Blake’s finger on the trigger, and suddenly it was all over.

Both Fiona and Kit had been injured too, which was probably what had made the police believe her story that she had had no intention of killing Blake when she jumped from the edge of the defile on to his back. It would, she thought, have been much less credible if they hadn’t taken some collateral damage.

She couldn’t really blame the police for their incredulous reaction. She must have presented a bizarre sight, staggering off the hill covered in mud and blood, soaked to the skin. Reeling from the shock of what had happened, she had been cold-hearted enough to strip Francis Blake’s body of his padded jacket and use it to make Kit as comfortable as she could. Then she’d torn herself away from him and covered the last few miles to the road in a blur of fear and pain, every stride sending a sickening wave of agony through the shoulder that had taken a blast of shot in the fatal moment.

Only adrenaline had kept her going all the way to the road. When she finally emerged from the last belt of trees, the phone box where she’d left Caroline had shimmered like a mirage through the miasma of her exhaustion. She’d staggered over to it and dialled the emergency services. Her relief when she was connected to a police officer almost made her buckle at the knees.

A squad car had been with her within minutes. Somehow, she’d managed to string her story together. And because Caroline had made the police talk to Steve, they took her seriously. But suspiciously.

And at least they’d mobilized an emergency helicopter to get Kit to hospital. She’d had no time to luxuriate in her relief; while paramedics extracted lead shot from her shoulder, the police had hovered, grim-faced and unsympathetic, waiting to pick holes in her story.

But she had been believed eventually. Everyone, from Steve to Sandy Galloway, had assured her there was no chance of her facing charges, but it had taken anxious weeks for the official notice to reach her.

She wasn’t sure what she felt. Part of her believed she deserved some sort of punishment for taking the life of another human being. But her rational self kept telling her how foolish it was to imagine that anything formal could assuage that particular guilt. And she couldn’t deny that she felt a sense of remission that she wouldn’t have to relive those terrible seconds when she had to make a life and death decision that, ultimately, had been no choice at all.

It was ironic that the only person who would ever appear in a courtroom in connection with Francis Blake’s murders was the false confessor, Charles Redford. He was languishing in prison awaiting trial, charged with perverting the course of justice, threats to kill and offences under the Protection from Harassment Act. On the same wing as Gerard Patrick Coyne, due to face a jury for the murder of Susan Blanchard. The proximity of the two men who linked the crimes of Francis Blake provided a satisfying symmetry to Fiona.

The sound of footsteps on the path broke into her thoughts. She turned her head and saw a familiar figure approaching. Fiona looked back across the city lights, unwilling to appear eager for company.

Steve cleared his throat. “I thought I’d find you here. Kit said you’d gone out for a walk.” He stood by the bench, uncertainty on his face.

“Did he also mention I didn’t want company?”

Steve looked embarrassed. “His actual words were, ‘You’re taking your life in your hands, mate. She’s off doing a Greta Garbo.’”

She sighed. “Now you’re here, you’d better sit down.” They’d rebuilt most of their bridges over the previous weeks, but the sense that Steve had somehow betrayed her still lurked in Fiona’s heart. That was something else she wanted to disappear from her consciousness, along with the memory of killing Blake.

Steve sat down beside her, keeping his physical distance. “Kit also told me the news.”

“You didn’t know already? I assumed that’s why you came,” Fiona said.

“No. I came because I finally managed to get Sarah Duvall to give me a copy of Blake’s journal. He started it while he was in prison, and kept it right up until a couple of days before his death. It was written in code, but it was pretty simple, and Sarah got it transcribed. I thought you’d be interested in seeing it.”

Fiona nodded. “Thanks.”

“It covers all the practical stuff of how he laid his plans and carried them out. How he gave the Spanish police the slip when he was supposedly over there in Fuengirola. It turns out he has a cousin who lives in Spain. This cousin lent Blake his car, and simply stayed at the villa when Blake was over in the UK and Ireland, killing Drew Shand and Jane Elias. They looked similar, and as long as the Spanish cops saw someone answering Blake’s description when they cruised past the place a couple of times a day, it never occurred to them that it wasn’t him.”

Fiona nodded listlessly. “I see.”

“He was able to enter the UK and Ireland by ferry without a problem because, of course, there was no general alert out for him. He’d got all the background information he needed from the Internet and from published material about his targets. He even managed to track down Kit’s bothy via Land Registry records. He was a clever bastard. He covered all his bases. The only mistake he made was not taking account of the CCTVs in Smithfield.”

“That’s fascinating, Steve. But does this journal answer the important question?”

“You mean, the motive?”

“What else?” Attempting to understand had kept her awake more nights than she could count. She knew there had to be some coherent motivation in Blake’s actions, even if it only appeared reasonable to him. But why he should want to take revenge on thriller writers for what had happened to him had eluded her so far.

“It’s twisted, but it makes a kind of sense,” Steve said.

“Don’t they always?” Fiona said ironically. “So, what’s the story?”

“Blake was eaten up with the desire for revenge for what happened to him. But he knew if he took direct vengeance, he’d never get away with it. The more he brooded, the more he realized that there were people other than the police he could blame.”

“Thriller writers?” Fiona protested. “I still don’t see it.”

“He reckoned that if the police had never called in a psychological profiler, he’d never have had his life destroyed. But he also decided that the main reason profilers get taken seriously is because they’ve been turned into infallible heroes. And who turned them into heroes?”

Fiona sighed deeply. “His victims all wrote novels where the profiler was responsible for tracking down the killer. And their work inspired films and TV that took the idea to a much wider audience. So, ultimately, they were the ones to blame.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Steve agreed.

“And seeing Susan Blanchard’s murder had made him realize it wasn’t such a hard taboo to break,” Fiona said, half to herself. She looked up at Steve. “Does he talk about her murder?”

“Endlessly. How much it excited him. How it made him understand that killing was the most powerful thing one person could do to another.”

“It always conics down to power,” she said softly. Fiona got to her feet. “Thanks, Steve. I needed to know that.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“Would you like to come back for dinner? I’m sure Kit’s half expecting you.”

Steve stood up. “I’d love to, but I can’t.” He stared down at the ground, then looked up to meet her quizzical look. “I said I’d meet Terry for a drink.”

Fiona’s smile was one of genuine pleasure. “Not before time,” she said, stepping forward and hugging him. “I was getting really bored with telling the pair of you how much you’d misunderstood each other.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not saying I forgive her for what she did. But we both reckon we should at least listen to what the other has to say, now the dust has settled.”

Fiona looked out over the Heath. “Is that what’s happened?” “Isn’t that always what happens after the world gets turned upside down?” Steve said. “Even if it takes a while, the dust always settles.”