The Mermaids Singing

18

The truth is, I am a very particular man in everything relating to murder; and perhaps I carry my delicacy too far.

Don Merrick walked into the HOLMES room munching a two-inch-thick double cheese and Bar-B-Q bacon burger. ‘How do you do it?’ Dave Woolcott asked. ‘How do you get those slack Alices down the canteen to cook you edible food? They could burn a cup of tea, that lot, but you always manage to twist them round your little finger.’

Merrick winked. ‘It’s my natural Geordie charm,’ he said. ‘I just pick on the ugliest one and tell her she reminds me of my mother when she was in her prime.’ He sat down and stretched his long legs. ‘I’ve checked out the half-dozen Discoveries your sergeant gave me. They’re all in the clear. Two of them are women, two of them have got rock-solid alibis for at least two of the nights in question, one’s got multiple sclerosis, so he couldn’t have done the jobs, and the sixth sold his to a dealership in the Midlands three weeks ago.’

‘Great,’ Dave said heavily. ‘Give the list to one of the operators so we can update the file.’

‘Where’s the guv?’

‘Carol or Kevin?’

Merrick shrugged. ‘I still think of Inspector Jordan as my guv’nor.’

‘She’s off chasing wild geese,’ Dave said.

‘She got a result, then?’ Merrick asked.

‘Two cross-matches.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ Merrick said.

Dave rummaged among his papers and found three sheets of paper stapled together. The first listed the two correlations. Merrick frowned and flicked over a page. The second was a print-out of the result of a criminal records search on Philip Crozier. Nothing known. Hurriedly, he turned to the third page, which listed two Christopher Thorpes. One had a last-known address in Devon and several convictions for burglary. The second had a last-known address in Seaford. There were a string of juvenile convictions; assaulting a football referee, breaking windows at a school, shoplifting. There were half a dozen adult convictions, all for soliciting prostitution. Merrick sucked in his breath sharply and turned back to the front page. ‘Fuck,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Dave asked, suddenly alert.

‘This here. Christopher Thorpe, the Seaford one?’

‘Yeah? Carol reckoned it wasn’t the same one as ours. I mean, he’s got convictions for being a male prostitute, but this one in Bradfield looks to be married, because the woman at the same address has his surname. And let’s face it, you don’t get dockland rent boys driving around in serious motors like the Discovery.’

Merrick shook his head. ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong. I know this Christopher Thorpe from Seaford. I worked on Vice in Seaford before I came here, remember? I was the arresting officer on two of these charges in soliciting. Christopher Thorpe was halfway to a sex change at the time. He had the tits and everything, he was trying to earn enough money to get the operation. Guess what his working name was? Dave, Christopher Thorpe isn’t married to Angelica Thorpe, he is Angelica Thorpe.’

‘Fuck,’ Dave echoed.

‘Dave, where the hell is Carol?’

Angelica stood in front of him, hands on hips, chewing one corner of her mouth. ‘You can’t, can you? You can’t prove it because you know nothing about my life.’

‘In one sense you’re absolutely right, Angelica. I don’t know the facts of your life,’ Tony said carefully, ‘but I think I know a bit about the shape of it. Your mother didn’t do a very good job of loving you. Maybe she had a problem with drink or with drugs, or maybe she just didn’t understand what a little kid needed. Either way, she didn’t make you feel loved when you were little. Am I right?’

Angelica scowled. ‘Go on. Dig yourself a hole.’

Tony felt a prickle of fear tingle at the base of his skull. What if he’d got it wrong? What if this woman was the exception to every statistical near certainty Tony had held at the front of his mind during the whole enquiry? What if she was the one serial killer who had come from a happy, loving family? Dismissing his doubts as a luxury he couldn’t afford right now, Tony ploughed on. ‘Your father wasn’t around much when you were growing up, and he never showed you he was proud of his son, even though you did everything you knew how to make him feel that pride. Your mother expected too much of you, kept telling you you were the man of the house, and giving you a bad time when you behaved like the child you were instead of the man she wanted to pretend you were.’ Angelica’s face twitched in a spasm of recognition. Tony paused.

‘Go on,’ she grated between clenched teeth.

‘It’s not easy for me to talk, doubled over like this. Can’t you slacken the rope a bit, let me stand upright?’

She shook her head, her mouth sulky as a child’s.

‘I can’t look at you properly like this,’ Tony tried. ‘You’ve got a fabulous body, you must know that. If it’s going to be the last thing I see, at least let me appreciate it.’

She cocked her head to one side, as if replaying his words to check them for truth or trickery. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘It doesn’t mean anything’s changed, though,’ she added as she moved to the winch and released it. She let out about a foot of slack.

Tony couldn’t bite back the scream of pain that shot through his shoulders as the muscles were released from the strain that had stretched them to their limit. ‘It’ll wear off,’ Angelica said roughly as she returned to her station by the camcorder. ‘Keep talking,’ she instructed him. ‘I’ve always enjoyed fantasy fiction.’

He eased himself upright, struggling against the pain. ‘You were a bright kid,’ he gasped. ‘Brighter than the rest of them. It’s never easy making friends when you’re so much smarter than the other kids. And maybe you moved around a bit. Different neighbours, maybe even different schools.’

Angelica was back in control of herself, her face impassive as he continued. ‘It wasn’t easy to make friends. You knew you were different from everybody else, special, but you couldn’t work out why at first. Then as you grew up, you realized what it was. You weren’t the same as the other boys because you weren’t a boy at all. You had no interest in girls sexually, but it wasn’t because you were gay. No way. It was because you were really a girl yourself. What you discovered was that dressing up in women’s clothes made you feel like you’d come home, like this was how you were meant to be.’ He paused and gave her a crooked smile. ‘How am I doing so far?’

‘Very impressive, Doctor,’ she said coldly. ‘I’m fascinated. Carry on.’

Tony flexed his shoulder muscles, relieved to discover that the damage so far seemed to be only temporary. The pins and needles that raged across his back seemed no more than a minor irritation after what he’d been through. He took a deep breath and carried on. ‘You decided to become the person you were inside, the woman you knew you really were. God, Angelica, I’ve got so much respect for you, putting yourself through that. I know how hard it is to get the medical profession to take the idea seriously. All the hormone therapy, the electrolysis, living as a half-man, half-woman while you waited for the operations, and then all the pain of the surgery.’ He shook his head, wonderingly. ‘I know I wouldn’t have the courage to put myself through all that.’

‘It wasn’t easy.’ The words escaped from Angelica’s lips, almost against her will.

‘I believe you,’ Tony said sympathetically. ‘And after all that, to find yourself wondering if it had been worth it after all, when you realized that the stupidity, the insensitivity, the lack of insight you’d identified in men didn’t just disappear because you were a woman. They were still the same old bunch of bastards, incapable of recognizing an exceptional woman when they were offered her love and affection on a plate.’ He paused, studying her face, deciding if the time was right for the big gamble. The coldness had left her eyes, replaced by a look almost of misery. He softened his voice and lowered the volume. Please God, let his training pay off.

‘They rejected you, didn’t they? Adam Scott, Paul Gibbs, Gareth Finnegan, Damien Connolly. They turned you down.’

Angelica shook her head violently, as if by activity she could deny the past. ‘They let me down. They let me down, they didn’t turn me down. They betrayed me.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Tony said softly, praying that his hard-earned techniques weren’t going to fail him now. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Why should I?’ she shouted, stepping forward and slapping him so hard he tasted blood as his cheek impacted against his teeth. ‘You’re no better than them. What about that slag? That blonde bitch, that fucking plonk you’ve been giving one to?’

Tony swallowed the warm salty blood that filled his mouth. ‘You mean Carol Jordan?’ he said, playing for time. How should he play this? Should he lie or tell the truth?

‘You know full well who I mean. I know you’ve been with her, don’t fucking try lying to me,’ she hissed, raising her hand again. ‘You treacherous, faithless bastard.’ Her hand cracked him across the face again, so hard he heard his neck crick under the force of it.

Tears sprang to his eyes involuntarily. The truth wasn’t going to work. It would only earn him more punishment. Praying he could lie with conviction, Tony pleaded, ‘Angelica, she was just a fuck, just someone to scratch the itch. You’d got me so horny with your phone calls. I didn’t know when you were going to call again, or even if you were.’ He allowed anger to creep into his voice. ‘I wanted you and you didn’t tell me how I could get hold of you. Angelica, it’s like you with the other ones. I was filling in time, waiting for my equal. You can’t believe that a mere cop would answer my fantasies, do you? You should know, you’ve had one too.’

Angelica stepped back, shock on her face. Sensing he had made some kind of a breakthrough, Tony pursued her with his words. ‘We were different, you and me. They weren’t worthy of you. But we were special. You must know that, from our phone calls. Didn’t you sense that we had something extraordinary? That this time it would be different? Isn’t that what you really want? You don’t want the killing. Not really. The killing only happened because they weren’t worthy, because they let you down. What you really want is a worthy partner. What you want is love. Angelica, what you want is me.’

For a long moment she stared at him, eyes wide, mouth open. Then confusion took over, as obvious to Tony as a hooker’s come-on. ‘Don’t use that word to me, you worthless scumbag,’ she stuttered. ‘Don’t fucking say it!’ Her voice was a low, throaty scream. Suddenly, she turned on her heel and ran from the room, her heels clattering up the stairs.

‘I love you, Angelica,’ Tony shouted desperately after her retreating footsteps. ‘I love you.’

Carol and DC Morris stood on the doorstep of the small terraced house in Gregory Street. She didn’t need to be a psychologist to read his body language. Morris was fed up at trailing round pursuing Carol’s daft hunch. ‘They must be out at work,’ he remarked after their fourth assault on the doorbell.

‘Looks that way,’ Carol agreed.

‘Shall we come back later?’

‘Let’s go on the knocker,’ Carol suggested. ‘See if any of the neighbours are around. Maybe they can tell us when the Thorpes get back from work.’

Morris looked as if he’d rather be on crowd control at a student demo. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said in a bored voice.

‘You take across the street, I’ll go for this side.’ Carol watched him trudge across the street as wearily as a miner at the end of his shift, shook her head with a sigh and turned her attention to number twelve. This was much more the kind of territory Tony had suggested for their killer. Thinking of Tony just made Carol cross again. Where the hell was he? She really needed his input today, not to mention a bit of support for an idea that everybody else seemed to think was a complete waste of time. He couldn’t have picked a worse moment to go on the missing list. It was unforgivable. At least he could have phoned his secretary and not left her having to field his calls and make excuses for him.

There was no bell on the door of number twelve, so Carol bruised her knuckles on the solid wood. The woman who opened it looked like a caricature from a soap opera. In her forties, her make-up would have been over the top for dinner in LA, never mind mid-afternoon in a Bradfield back street. Her dyed platinum blonde hair was piled high in a lopsided beehive. She wore a tight black sweater with a scoop neck revealing a cleavage the texture of crumpled tissue, shiny blue skin-tight leggings, white stilettoes and a thin gold ankle chain. A cigarette dangled from a corner of her mouth. ‘What is it, love?’ she said nasally.

‘Sorry to trouble you,’ Carol said, flashing her warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Carol Jordan, Bradfield police. I’m trying to get in touch with your next-door neighbours at number fourteen, the Thorpes, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody home. I wonder if you happen to know what time they get in from work.’

The woman shrugged. ‘Search me, love. That cow comes and goes at all hours.’

‘What about Mr Thorpe?’ Carol asked.

‘What Mr Thorpe? There’s no Mr Thorpe next door, love.’ She gave a croak of laughter. ‘It’s easy seen you’ve never clapped eyes on her. Any man that married that ugly cow would have to be blind and bloody hard up. So what’ve you got her for?’

‘It’s just routine enquiries,’ Carol said.

The woman snorted. ‘Don’t give me that fanny,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched enough episodes of The Bill to know they don’t send inspectors out on routine enquiries. It’s about time you put that cow behind bars, if you want my opinion.’

‘Why is that, Mrs…?’

‘Goodison, Bette Goodison. As in Bette Davis. Because she’s an ugly, anti-social cow, that’s why.’

Carol smiled. ‘I’m afraid that’s not a crime, Mrs Goodison.’

‘No, but murder is, isn’t it?’ Bette Goodison crowed triumphantly.

Carol swallowed, hoping the effect of the word wasn’t as visible as it was palpable. ‘That’s a very serious accusation.’

Bette Goodison took a final drag of her cigarette and expertly flipped the dog end across the narrow pavement and into the gutter. ‘I’m glad you think so. It’s more than your mates at Moorside nick did.’

‘I’m sorry you feel you’ve not been well served by my colleagues,’ Carol said in a concerned tone. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what you’re talking about?’ Please God, let this not be a rerun of the Yorkshire Ripper case, where the killer’s best friend told the police they suspected he was the Ripper and the police paid no attention.

‘Prince, that’s who we’re talking about.’

For one wild moment, Carol had a vision of the diminutive American rock star buried in the back yard of a Bradfield terrace. Pulling herself together, she said, ‘Prince?’

‘Our German shepherd. Always complaining about him, that Angelica Thorpe was. And she had no grounds. That dog was doing her a service. Anybody so much as walked down our ginnel and that dog let you know about it. She’d have paid a fortune for a burglar alarm as efficient as that dog. Any road up, a few months back… August, it were, weekend before Bank Holiday, we come home from work, Col and me, and Prince is gone. Now, there’s no way he could have got out of that yard, and he’d have gone for anybody that came in. There’s only one way he could have disappeared, and that’s if he was murdered,’ Mrs Goodison said, stabbing Carol in the chest with her finger for emphasis. ‘She poisoned him and then she got rid of the body so there would be no proof. She’s a murderer!’

Normally, Carol would have walked a mile barefoot to avoid this conversation, but she was in pursuit of Handy Andy, and any oddity was something to be grasped eagerly. ‘How can you be so sure it was Mrs Thorpe?’ she asked.

‘Stands to reason. She were the only one that ever complained about him. And the day he went missing, me and Col were out at work, but she were home all day. I know that for a fact, because she were on nights that week. And when we knocked on her door to ask did she know anything about him going missing, she just smiled all over that ugly gob of hers. I could have put her face in for her,’ Mrs Goodison said emphatically. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘I’m afraid that without evidence, there’s not much we can do,’ Carol said sympathetically. ‘You’re sure, are you, that Mrs Thorpe lives alone?’

‘Nobody’d want to live with an ugly cow like that. She never even has visitors. Not surprising, mind, she looks like a brick shithouse in drag.’

‘Do you happen to know what kind of car she drives?’ Carol asked.

‘One of them bloody yuppie jeep things. I ask you, who needs a bloody great jeep in the middle of Bradfield? It’s not like we live up some farm track, is it?’

‘And do you know where she works?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, my serial’s starting.’

Carol watched the door close behind Bette Goodison, an unpleasant suspicion starting to form in her mind. Before she could try number ten, her pager bleeped insistently. ‘Phone Don at Scargill Street. Double urgent,’ she read.

‘Morris!’ Carol shouted. ‘Get me to a phone. Pronto monto.’ Whatever was going on in Gregory Street could wait. Don clearly couldn’t.

Exhausted, Tony had slipped into some nightmare delirium doze. A gout of freezing water thrown in his face smacked him straight to agonized attention, his head snapping back painfully. ‘Augh,’ he groaned.

‘Wakey, wakey,’ Angelica said roughly.

‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ Tony said through swollen lips. ‘You’ve had time to think about it, and you know I’m right. You want the killing to stop. They had to die, they deserved to die. They let you down, they betrayed you, they didn’t deserve you. But all that can change now. It can be different with me, because I love you.’

The rigid mask of her face crumpled before his eyes, becoming softer, more tender. She smiled at him. ‘It’s never been about sex, you know. I could always have sex. Men paid me for sex. They paid me a lot of money for sex. That’s how I paid for the surgery, you know. They always wanted me.’ Her voice was filled with a strange mixture of pride and anger.

‘I can see why,’ Tony lied, arranging his face in what he hoped was an expression of hunger and admiration. ‘But what you really wanted was love, wasn’t it? You wanted more than loveless sex on the streets or faceless sex down the phone. You deserve that. God, you deserve it. That’s what I can give you, Angelica. Love isn’t just physical attraction, though God knows you’re attractive. But love’s about respect, admiration, fascination, and I feel all of that for you. Angelica, you can have what you want. You can have it with me.’

Her warring emotions were written plainly on her face. He could see that part of her desperately wanted to believe him, wanted to escape into the normal world of relationships. But that part had to contend with a level of self-esteem that was so low she couldn’t imagine anyone worth loving wanting to love her. And, underlying it all, suspicion that he was trying to entrap her. ‘How can we?’ she demanded harshly. ‘You’ve been trying to hunt me down. You’re with the police. You’re on their side.’

Tony shook his head. ‘That was before I realized you were the same woman I’d fallen in love with on the phone. Angelica, love is the one emotion that overrides duty. Yeah, I’ve worked with the police, but I’m not one of them.’

‘You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas,’ she sneered. ‘You’ve been trying to put me away, Anthony. You expect me to believe you? You must think I’m really stupid.’

‘Quite the opposite. If you want to talk about stupid, talk about the police. Mostly, they’re one-dimensional, boring bigots who couldn’t keep a psychologist interested for more than five minutes. I don’t have anything in common with them,’ he argued desperately.

She shook her head, more in sorrow than in anger. ‘You work for the Home Office. Your whole career, you’ve spent catching serial offenders and treating them. And you expect me to believe you’d suddenly change sides and stay loyal to me? Come on, Anthony, I’m not going to fall for crap like that.’

Tony felt his powers flagging. His brain just wasn’t fast enough any longer to keep her at bay. Wretchedly, he said, ‘I’ve not made a career of catching people, only treating them. I had to do that, don’t you understand? Inside the places where I’ve worked is the only place where I can find minds that are complex enough to be interesting. It’s like going to see animals at the zoo. You want to watch them in their natural habitat, but if the only way you are ever going to see them is at the zoo, you go. I’ve always had to wait till they were in captivity before I could study them. But you, you’re still in the wild, still the way you want to be, perfected in your craft. And compared to them, you’re the cream of the crop. You’re exceptional. I want to spend the rest of my life being excited by your mind. I can’t imagine ever finding you boring.’ Terrifying, maybe, but never boring.

Her lower lip thrust out, bringing an expression of calculating petulance to her face. She nodded in the direction of his groin, where his penis hung limp. ‘So if you find me that attractive, how come it doesn’t show?’

It was the one question to which Tony had no answer at all.

‘What have we actually got, Carol?’ Brandon challenged.

Carol paced the floor of Brandon’s office, ticking off her points on her fingers. ‘We’ve got a transsexual. Not a transsexual who went through the controlled, counselled National Health Service process, but one who, according to Don, was turned down for a sex change here and had to finance an operation abroad by selling sex. So right from the start, we know we’ve got someone who has been examined by psychiatrists and found to be unstable. We’ve got this transsexual driving a vehicle identical to the one driven by a suspect in Damien Connolly’s murder. We’ve got a neighbour who’s convinced that Angelica Thorpe offed her dog. The dog was killed a fortnight before the first murder. Angelica Thorpe bought software that would allow her to manipulate videos in her computer system, which fits a theory of the killer’s behaviour developed by me and endorsed by our psychological profiler. She even lives in the kind of house Tony said she would,’ Carol argued vehemently.

‘When she was Christopher, she was definitely a few butties short of a picnic,’ Don chipped in.

‘I wish we could ask Tony about this,’ Brandon said, stalling.

‘So do I,’ Carol said through her teeth. ‘But he’s obviously found something more important to do today.’ A sudden thought hit Carol like a sandbag to the neck. Her knees started to buckle and she collapsed into the nearest chair. ‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped.

‘What is it?’ Brandon asked, concerned.

‘Tony. He hasn’t been in touch with anybody since he left here yesterday. He had two task-force meetings arranged for today, according to his secretary, but he hasn’t shown up at work, and he hasn’t phoned in. He wasn’t home last night, and he’s not there now.’ Carol’s words hung in the air like a cloud of poisonous smoke. A wave of nausea lurched up from her stomach, almost choking her. Somehow, she maintained her composure under Brandon’s concentrated stare.

With fingers that trembled, Carol picked up Brandon’s copy of the profile from his desk. Urgently, she flicked through the pages till she found what she was looking for. ‘“It is possible that his next target may also be a police officer, perhaps even one who is working on the investigation. This alone will not be sufficient motive for the killer to choose them; they must also fit the victim criteria that he has drawn up in his own mind in order for the killing to assume its full meaning for him. I would strongly recommend that any officers who fit the victim profile employ extra vigilance at all times, noting any suspicious vehicles parked near their homes, and checking to see whether they are being followed to and from work and social events.” Think about it, sir. Think about the victim profile. Sir, Tony fits it perfectly.’

Not wanting to believe what Carol was suggesting, Brandon said, ‘But it’s not eight weeks. It’s not time!’

‘But it is a Monday. Don’t forget, Tony also pointed out that his timetable could be accelerated if something happened to traumatize him. Stevie McConnell, sir. Think of all the publicity. Someone else was getting the credit for his crimes. Look, it’s in here, sir: “Another possible scenario is that an innocent person is charged with the killings. That would be such an affront to his sense of himself that he might commit his next murder ahead of schedule.” Sir, we’ve got to move on this now!’

Brandon’s hand was on the phone before she’d even started her last sentence.

The front door opened directly into the house. Downstairs couldn’t have looked more normal. The small living room was furnished inexpensively but comfortably with a two-seater sofa and matching chair upholstered in moss-green Dralon. There was a TV, video, mid-priced stereo system and a coffee table complete with a copy of Elle. A pair of framed posters of whales in the ocean hung on the walls. The single bookshelf contained a selection of science-fiction classics, a couple of Stephen King novels and a trio of Jackie Collins bonkbusters. Carol, Merrick and Brandon moved cautiously through the room, past the stairs and into the kitchen diner. It was surgically neat as a showroom, work surfaces clean and uncluttered. On the drainer, one mug, one plate, one fork, one knife.

With Brandon leading the way, they climbed the narrow stairs built between the two downstairs rooms. The front bedroom was pink and frothy as a strawberry milkshake. Even the kidney-shaped dressing table, with its skirt of lace, was pink. ‘Barbara Cartland, eat your heart out,’ Merrick muttered. Brandon opened the wardrobe and flicked through the array of women’s clothes. Carol headed for the drawers in a pink tallboy and worked her way down. They contained nothing more disturbing than a selection of tacky underwear, much of it in red satin.

It was Merrick who first broached the back bedroom. As soon as he opened the door, he knew no one was going to be screaming to the papers about magistrates granting warrants on non-existent evidence. ‘Sir?’ he shouted. ‘I think we’ve cracked it.’

The room was arranged as an office. A large desk held a computer and assorted peripherals that none of them could identify. To one side was a telephone linked to a sophisticated tape recorder. A small video-editing desk was in one corner, next to a filing cabinet. A wheeled trolley carried a television and video, both state of the art and top of the range. Shelves lined two walls, filled with computer games, videos, cassettes and computer disks, each box labelled neatly in firm capitals. The only alien object in the room was a leather recliner, the material slung hammock-like on a steel frame.

‘Bingo,’ Brandon breathed. ‘Well done, Carol.’

‘Where the fuck do we start?’ Merrick said.

‘Do either of you know how to work the computer?’ Brandon asked.

‘I think we should leave that to the experts,’ Carol said. ‘It might be programmed to crash the data if someone else tries to log on.’

‘OK. Don, you take the filing cabinet, I’ll take the videos, and Carol, you take the cassettes.’

Carol moved across to the shelves of cassettes. The first couple of dozen seemed to be music tapes, ranging from Liza Minnelli to U2. Next were a dozen marked ‘AS’ and numbered from one to twelve. Fourteen marked ‘PG’ followed, then fifteen with ‘GF’, eight with ‘DC’ and six with ‘AH’. The concatenation of initials was far beyond the boundaries of coincidence. Carol picked the first ‘AH’ tape and, heart heavy with misgivings, slotted it into the cassette player. She picked up the headphones plugged into the machine and gingerly pushed them into her ears. She heard the sound of a telephone ringing, then a voice so familiar she could have wept. ‘Hello?’ Tony said, his voice reduced by the telephone line.

‘Hello, Anthony,’ a voice not entirely strange to her said.

‘Who is this?’ Tony asked.

A chuckle, low and sexy. ‘You’ll never guess. Not in a million years.’ Got it, thought Carol, grim foreboding gripping her. The voice on the answering machine.

‘OK, so tell me,’ Tony said, his voice curious, friendly, joining in the game.

‘Who would you like me to be? If I could be anyone in the world?’

‘Is this some kind of wind-up?’ Tony demanded.

‘I’ve never been more serious in my life. I’m here to make your dreams come true. I’m the woman of your fantasies, Anthony. I am your telephone lover.’

There was a moment’s silence, then the phone slammed down at Tony’s end. Over the dialling tone, Carol heard the strange woman say, ‘ Hasta la vista, Anthony.’

She stabbed the stop button and violently pulled out the headphones. She turned round to see Brandon transfixed by the image of Adam Scott stretched out on a rack, naked and apparently unconscious. Part of her mind could not comprehend what she was seeing. Evil, she thought, should be drenched in blood, not prosaically displayed on a suburban television screen.

‘Sir,’ she forced out. ‘The tapes. She’s been stalking Tony.’

Tony tried a laugh. It came out more like a sob, but he carried on regardless. ‘You expect me to get an erection? Trussed up like this? Angelica, you chloroformed me, kidnapped me and left me to come round alone in a torture chamber. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve got no experience of bondage. I’m too bloody scared to get a hard-on.’

‘I’m not letting you go, you know. Not to run straight back to them.’

‘I’m not asking you to let me go. Believe me, I’m happy to be your prisoner if that’s the only way I can spend time with you. I want to get to know you, Angelica. I want to prove my feelings to you, I want to show you what love feels like. I want to show you whose side I’m really on here.’ Tony tried to turn on the kind of smile he’d learned that women responded to.

‘So show me,’ Angelica challenged, letting one hand run caressingly down her body, lingering over her nipples and edging towards her crotch.

‘I’m going to need your help. Just like I needed you on the phone. You made me feel so good, like a real man. Please, help me now,’ Tony pleaded.

She took a step towards him, moving sinuously as a stripper. ‘You want me to turn you on?’ she drawled in a ghastly parody of seduction.

‘I don’t think I can do it like this,’ Tony said. ‘Not with my arms pinned behind me like this.’

Angelica stopped dead and scowled. ‘I said, I’m not letting you go.’

‘And I said I’m not asking you to. All I’m asking is that you cuff my hands in front of me. So I can touch you.’ Again, he forced the gentle smile.

She looked at him consideringly. ‘How do I know I can trust you? I’d have to set your hands free so I could cuff them in front of you. Maybe you’re trying to double-cross me.’

‘I won’t. I give you my word. If it makes you feel safer, chloroform me again. Do it while I’m unconscious,’ Tony said, gambling again. Her reaction would tell him all he needed to know about his chances.

Angelica moved behind him. An exultant voice in his head screamed ‘Yes!’ He felt the warmth of her hand between his as she gripped the cuffs and painfully jerked them up. ‘Shit!’ Tony yelled as new arrows of pain shot up his arms and through his shoulders. He heard a click of metal as the shackle connecting the rope to the handcuffs snapped free. Angelica released the handcuffs and Tony collapsed to his knees, his legs buckling under him. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he swore as he crashed forwards on to his face, feeling the rough stone graze his cheek.

Moving swiftly, Angelica unlocked one side of the handcuffs, seized the back of his hair and pulled him upwards. Still holding the arm with the handcuffs attached, she stepped in front of him and roughly gripped his other arm just below the bicep, dragging it across his body. Seconds later, his hands were cuffed again, this time in front of him. He knelt like a supplicant, his discomfort doubled by the tight leather straps round his ankles. ‘You see?’ he gasped. ‘I told you I wouldn’t try anything.’

Panting slightly, Angelica stood in front of him, legs apart. ‘So show me,’ she demanded.

‘You’ll have to help me up. I can’t do it by myself,’ he protested weakly.

She bent down and grabbed his hair again, hauling him up on to legs whose muscles trembled with the effort of staying upright. They stood, inches apart, the silk of her kimono brushing his hands. He could feel the warmth of her breath on the raw flesh of his grazed cheek. ‘Kiss me,’ he said softly. Whores never get to kiss, he told himself. This’ll make it different.

Something flickered in Angelica’s eyes, but she leaned over him, releasing his hair and pulling his face to hers. It took every ounce of his willpower not to flinch as her lips met his, her tongue invading his mouth, exploring his teeth and tongue. Your life depends on it, he told himself. You’ve got a plan. Tony forced himself to kiss her back, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, telling himself there were worse things in the world, and this woman had made her previous victims endure some of them.

After what felt like the longest kiss of his life, Angelica pulled away, looking critically down to his groin. ‘I’m going to need some help here,’ Tony said. ‘It’s not been an easy day.’

‘What kind of help?’ Angelica asked, panting slightly through parted lips. It was clear that she was having no difficulty with the sexual arousal that was beyond him.

‘Give me head. That’s the one thing that always works when I’m having trouble. I’ve felt your mouth now; I just know you’ll be terrific. Please, I really want to make love to you.’

Almost before he’d finished speaking, she was on her knees, hands flickering over his balls. Tenderly, she lifted his flaccid penis and slipped it into her mouth, not taking her eyes from his face. Tony reached out and began to stroke her hair. Then, with what felt like infinite slowness, he pulled her head forward on to him, forcing her head down, her eyes away from him.

Then, summoning up what remained of his strength, Tony raised his hands and brought the handcuffs crashing down on the back of Angelica’s head.

The blow caught her completely off guard and she went crashing forward between his legs, her teeth snagging agonizingly on him. Tony let himself fall backwards, feeling a tearing in his ankles as they protested against a movement they were never designed to make. As he hit the ground, he doubled forwards and grabbed Angelica’s head, banging it hard on the stone floor till her body stopped thrashing.

He dragged himself over her prone figure till his numb fingers could reach the ankle straps. With maddening clumsiness, he struggled to unfasten the sets of buckles that fixed him to the stone slab. After what felt like hours, he was finally free. As he tried to stand, his ankles refused the challenge, turning over and catapulting him to the floor again, sending excruciating daggers of pain up his legs. Moaning, he dragged himself across the floor towards the steps. He had barely travelled a couple of yards when the body on the floor groaned. Angelica lifted her head, blood and mucus turning her face into a grisly Hallowe’en mask. When she saw him, she roared like a wounded animal and started scrambling to her feet.

The search for a clue to Angelica’s killing ground was growing more desperate as their fear and concern for Tony grew. They had emptied out the contents of the filing cabinet on to the floor. Every scrap of paper was scrutinized for any hint of the location of the cellar revealed in the video. Invoices, guarantees, bills and receipts all got the treatment. Carol was wading through a file of official correspondence, hoping to come across some lease or mortgage details, anything that related to another property. Merrick was ploughing through the files relating to Thorpe’s sex change. Brandon had already had one false alarm, coming across a stack of solicitor’s letters relating to a property in Seaford. It soon became clear, however, that they concerned the sale of Thorpe’s late mother’s home in the town.

It was Merrick who found the key. He’d finished with the sex-change files and started on a bundle of assorted letters, filed under ‘Tax’. When he came across the letter, he had to read it twice to make sure wishful thinking wasn’t making him imagine things.

‘Sir,’ he said cautiously. ‘I think this might be what we’re looking for.’

He handed the letter to Brandon, who read the letterhead of Pennant, Taylor, Bailey and Co., Solicitors. ‘Dear Christopher Thorpe,’ it said. ‘We have received a letter from your aunt, Mrs Doris Makins, in New Zealand, authorizing us to pass on to you the keys for Start Hill Farm, Upper Tontine Moor, by Bradfield, W. Yorkshire. As her agents, we are empowered to allow you access to said property for the purposes of maintenance and security. Please make arrangements with this office to collect the keys at your convenience…’

‘Access to an isolated rural property,’ Carol said, looking over Brandon’s shoulder. ‘Tony said that’s what the killer might have. And now she’s got him there.’ A wave of anger poured through her, displacing the slow burn of fear that had been eating through her from the moment they’d unlocked the macabre secrets of that superficially normal office.

Brandon closed his eyes momentarily then said tightly, ‘We don’t know that, Carol.’

‘And even if she has got him, he’s a clever bloke. If anyone can keep himself out of trouble with his gob, it’s Tony Hill,’ Don chipped in.

‘Never mind whistling in the bloody dark,’ Carol said sharply. ‘Where the hell is Start Hill Farm? And how soon can we get there?’

Tony looked around in desperation. The rack of knives was over to his left, impossibly high up. As Angelica got to her knees, he clawed at the stone bench and hauled himself upright. His hand closed on the haft of the knife as she staggered to her feet and threw herself at him, still bellowing like a cow bereft of its calf.

Her weight and the momentum of her charge bent Tony backwards over the bench. Her hands scrabbled for his throat, gripping his windpipe so tightly that white lights started to dance in front of his eyes. Just when he thought he could hold on no longer, he felt the warm, sticky gush of blood against his stomach and Angelica’s grasp became flabby as a wet newspaper.

Before he could take it all in, he heard footsteps crashing down the stone steps. Like a mad vision of paradise, Don Merrick crashed downstairs, rapidly followed by John Brandon, his jaw dropping at the tableau in front of him.

‘Fucking hell,’ Brandon breathed.

Carol pushed past the two men and stared uncomprehendingly at the carnage before her.

‘You lot took your time,’ Tony gasped. As he passed out, the last thing he heard was his own hysterical laughter.