The Retribution

He pushed his glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘So much for the straightforward stuff,’ he muttered. Everything he’d written so far should be self-evident to anyone with half a brain. But he’d learned over the years that there was a game to be played here. You had to include the obvious so that those who read the report could congratulate themselves on being as perspicacious as the professional. Then they didn’t feel so aggrieved when you hit them with something they hadn’t expected. Never mind that that was what they paid you for. Deep down, everybody thought what he did was little more than applied common sense.

Some days, he thought they were right. But not today.

Tony rolled his shoulders and laid his fingers on the keys. He took a deep breath, like a pianist waiting for the conductor’s baton, then started typing furiously.

Vance is a planner. He has a bolthole which has been organised by whoever has been working on his behalf on the outside. He will stay clear of his old stamping grounds because he knows that’s where we will look. He will not be in London or Northumberland. Where he chooses to base himself will be dependent on what he plans to do.

This is going to be a temporary base. He will stay here only for as long as it takes to do what he plans to do. He will already have arranged a further destination where he will go to ground and rebuild a life for himself. He would be foolish to try to do this in the UK; I suspect he will have chosen a destination abroad. He has a substantial amount of money at his disposal, so he has a lot of options. It’s tempting to assume he will go for somewhere that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK, but he’s arrogant enough to think he’s not going to be found. There’s nothing in the records to suggest he speaks another language. He needs to be able to communicate in order to control, so he’ll go some place where English is the primary language. The USA is hard to get into, but once you’re there it’s easy to lose yourself, particularly if, like Vance, you’ve got plenty of money and therefore no need to trouble the social security system. He’ll also want to be somewhere he can have access to the best in prosthetics with no questions asked, so again that points to the USA. And, unlike Australia or New Zealand, they tend not to show UK TV programmes, so there’s little chance of anyone spotting him from reruns of Vance’s Visits. There are also possibilities offered by some of the Gulf states, where privacy is highly prized and where English is widely spoken. Normally I’d say follow the money, except that guys like Vance know people who know how to make the money disappear without a trail.

So the big question is what he has planned before he leaves for his ultimate destination. Based on how he behaved towards Shaz Bowman when he thought there was a possibility of her thwarting him, I believe Vance intends to avenge himself on the people he holds responsible for his incarceration.

His prime target will be the police officer who was responsible for tracking him down and arresting him: Carol Jordan, currently a DCI with Bradfield Metropolitan Police. There were other officers involved in the unofficial investigation: Chris Devine, currently a DS in the same force; Leon Jackson, who was a DC with the Metropolitan Police; Kay Hallam, who was a DC with Hampshire; and Simon McNeill, who was a DC with Strathclyde. Given the relatively high profile of my own involvement in the process, I would expect also to be on his list of targets.

Seeing it on the screen in black and white made it seem less real somehow. Just words on a page, nothing to lie awake worrying and wondering about. Really, what were the chances of Vance coming after him like an avenging angel? ‘Whistling in the dark,’ he muttered. ‘And out of tune, at that.’

He carried on typing.

The other main targets will be his ex-wife, Micky Morgan, and her partner Betsy Thorne. In Vance’s world view, they failed to keep their end of the bargain. Micky betrayed him by revealing that their marriage was a sham. She refused to support him in court and never came near him in prison. When she had the marriage annulled because it had never been consummated, she made him a figure of derision and contempt. She became the enemy. Wherever she is, Vance will show up sooner rather than later. Staking out these potential targets may well be the most effective way of snaring Vance.

All of which was very bloodless, very academic. Nothing to do with the screaming in the back of Tony’s brain when the image of Shaz Bowman’s destruction flashed unbidden before his eyes. He didn’t want Piers Lambert to think he was hysterical, but he wanted to make damn sure he paid attention.

Jacko Vance is probably the most efficient and focused killer I have ever encountered. He is vicious and without remorse or compassion. I suspect he has no limits. He does not kill for pleasure. He kills because that’s what his victims deserve, according to his self-righteous view of the world. He has committed a highly organised escape from jail. I don’t think there’s anything significant in the timing. I think it’s simply taken him this long to get everything perfectly in place. And now, unless we take decisive action, the killing will start.

20

Stacey wasn’t the only one who knew how to get information out of a computer, Kevin told himself. He had a twelve-year-old son who used his home computer like an extension of himself. It had been a steep learning curve, but Kevin was determined to keep abreast of his son. Back when he was a boy, his dad had shared his knowledge of what went on under a car’s bonnet and that had been the single thing that had kept them on speaking terms during Kevin’s own adolescence. It seemed to Kevin that the twenty-first-century equivalent of messing about in lock-ups with motors was being able to play World of Warcraft online with your kid. Beyond that, he’d learned how to do slide presentations, how to typeset a poster and how to refine his Google searches. He kept quiet about it in the office, though. He had no desire to tread on Stacey’s toes or to have the limits of his capabilities cruelly exposed.

Ten minutes with Google and another metasearch engine revealed that there was no shortage of businesses that could supply a tattooing machine. Even given the current obsession with body art, Kevin found it hard to believe they could all make a living. He had no tattoos himself; he reckoned they’d look weird on his freckled skin. His wife had a scarlet lily on her shoulder and he’d always admired it, but she’d never fancied another and he hadn’t loved it enough to try to persuade her otherwise.

His searches had thrown up too many listings for there to be any point in trying to track down a recent purchase in the Bradfield area, even supposing the vendors were cooperative. Since many of those who practised body art liked to think of themselves as being mavericks and enemies of the system, he suspected most of them would be reluctant to help.

After scrolling through a dozen screens, Kevin came up with three suppliers with local addresses. Two were tattoo parlours, the third a business that seemed to cover everything from hair-dressing sundries to jewellery for piercings. He copied their details and made an action file, suggesting officers should visit all three businesses and ask about recent sales, both online and in person. It was the sort of tedious inquiry that Northern Division could handle. And if it produced something worth chasing, then office politics would be satisfied as well as the inquiry.

He smiled as he hit the ‘send’ button. It felt good to delegate the drudgery. Too often, Kevin was convinced he got the boring routine work in MIT. It was the chip on his shoulder. Maybe that would change when they were scattered throughout the force. He wouldn’t mind a bit. It was about time he got to show the flair that might earn him promotion.

It never occurred to him that Carol Jordan passed routine inquiries his way because his thoroughness was exemplary. In a world where most officers did as little as they could get away with, Kevin was notable for his attention to detail, his finicky insistence on having everything nailed down. He didn’t realise it, but he was the reason Carol Jordan’s blood pressure was as low as it was. And she knew it.

Vance dressed in the clothes Terry had left neatly folded on the toilet cistern. New underwear and socks, chinos and a long-sleeved blue twill shirt with a neat button-down collar. At the bottom of the pile was a wig – a thick mop of mid-brown threaded with silver. Vance put it on. The hair fell naturally into a parting on the opposite side to his own hair. Although the style was similar to the old Jacko Vance from the days of TV glory, he somehow looked distinctively different. The final touch was a pair of clear glasses with stylish black oblong frames. The man in the mirror looked nothing like Jason Collins. Not much like the old Jacko Vance either, he thought with a trace of regret. There were lines where none had been before, a little sagging along the jaw, a few broken veins in the cheeks. Prison had aged him faster than life on the outside would have. He’d lay money that his ex-wife was wearing better. Still, he’d put a few more lines on her face before he was done with her.

When he emerged, Vance was gratified by the look of delighted surprise on Terry’s face. ‘You look great,’ he said.

‘You did a good job,’ Vance said, patting Terry’s shoulder. ‘Everything’s perfect. Now, I’m starving. What have you got for me?’

While he ate, Vance checked the contents of the briefcase Terry had brought with him. It contained two counterfeit passports with matching driving licences – one set British, the other Irish; a thick wad of twenty-pound notes; a list of bank accounts in names matching the passports with the accompanying pin numbers; several credit cards; a set of utility bills for a house on the outskirts of Leeds; and four pay-as-you-go mobile phones. Tucked into a pocket were sets of car keys and house keys. ‘Everything else you need is at the house,’ Terry said. ‘Laptop, landline, satellite TV … ’

‘Brilliant,’ Vance said, finishing the last forkful of salad with tuna and edamame beans. ‘Half of this food, I’ve no idea what it is. But it tastes bloody good.’

‘I stocked the fridge at the house yesterday,’ Terry said eagerly. ‘I hope you like what I got.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’ Vance wiped his mouth on a paper napkin, then scooped the detritus of their picnic into a bin. ‘It’s time we made a move,’ he said. He stood up, then turned back to the bed where Terry had been sitting. He pulled down the covers and punched the pillow to create an indentation. ‘Now it looks like someone slept here. When the maid comes in, there won’t be anything untoward for her to remember if the police come asking questions.’

Vance let Terry lead the way to the car, saying simply, ‘You drive,’ when they reached the Mercedes. He didn’t doubt his ability to drive; Terry had done as he was told and bought an automatic with cruise control. And something called satnav; that was an innovation since he’d last driven a car. Nevertheless, he’d rather make his first attempt away from potential witnesses, just in case.

As Terry pulled out of the parking space, Vance relaxed into his seat, letting his head lean on the contoured rest. His eyelids flickered. The adrenaline had finally died down, leaving him tired and depleted. There would be no harm in sleeping while Terry drove him to his new home. Because there were still plenty of things to deal with before he could properly rest.

The jolt of driving over a speed-control bump in the road roused Vance. He woke with a jerk, momentarily disorientated. ‘What the—? Where are we?’ he gasped as he came to, looking wildly around. They were passing what looked like a security gatehouse, but it appeared to be empty. Just beyond the gatehouse was a pair of brick pillars. Gateposts without gates or walls, Vance thought irrelevantly.

‘Welcome to Vinton Woods,’ Terry said proudly. ‘Just what you asked for. A private estate set out on its own; detached houses with a bit of garden to separate you from the houses next door. The kind of place where nobody knows their neighbours and everybody minds their own business. You’re eight miles from the motorway, six miles from the centre of Leeds, seventeen miles from Bradfield.’ He followed a curving road lined with substantial houses with brick and half-timbered facades. ‘This is the Queen Anne section,’ Terry said. At a junction, he turned left. ‘If you go right, you come to the Georgian bit, but we’re in the Victorian part of the estate.’ These houses had stone facades and twice-mocked Gothic turrets. They were scaled-down versions of the mansions mill owners built in salubrious suburbs after the coming of the railways meant they didn’t have to live on top of their factories. Vance thought these modern replicas were ugly and pitiful. But one of these fakeries would be perfect for now.

Terry turned off the main drag into a cul-de-sac of six substantial houses set back from the street. He drove towards one of the pair at the head of the street, slowing and steering towards the triple garage that extended out on one side. He took a remote control from the door pocket and pointed it at the garage. One door rose before them and he drove in, making sure the door was closed before he turned off the engine and got out.

Vance stepped out of the car and looked around. Terry’s van occupied the third bay of the garage. The signwriting advertised his market stall, where he sold a mind-boggling range of tools, both new and second-hand. He’d clearly used it to deliver his personal gift to Vance.

The garage had a workbench running down one wall. Above it, tools hung in a gleaming array. Two sturdy vices were fitted at opposite ends of the bench. If anyone other than Terry had been responsible, Vance would have been enraged. But he knew there was no hidden meaning here. After all, Terry didn’t believe the prosecution’s story of the terrible things Vance had done to young girls with the last vice he’d owned. He took a step towards the workbench, imagining the feel of firm flesh in his hands. ‘I took the liberty of kitting out your workshop,’ Terry said. ‘I know how you like to work in wood.’

‘Thank you,’ Vance said. Later, he told himself. Much later. He reached for his most charming smile and said, ‘You’ve thought of everything. This is perfect.’

‘You haven’t seen the house yet. I think you’ll like it.’

All Vance wanted to see right now was the kitchen. He followed Terry through a side door into a utility room furnished with a washing machine and a tumble drier and onwards into a kitchen that was a gleaming monument to modernity. Granite, chrome and tiles were all buffed to a mirror sheen. It took Vance a moment or two to pick out what he was looking for. But there it was, exactly what he needed. A wooden knife block, set to one side of the granite-topped island in the middle of the room.

Vance drifted over to the island, exclaiming all the while at the very perfection of his magnificent new kitchen. ‘Is that one of those American fridges that dispense ice and chilled water?’ he asked, knowing Terry would be impelled to demonstrate its powers. As soon as Terry’s back was turned, Vance slid a medium-sized knife from the block, slipping the handle inside his shirt cuff, holding his arm loosely at his side.

As Terry turned back with a brimming glass of water, ice cubes bumping against the sides, Vance raised his prosthetic arm and appeared to draw him into an embrace of delighted gratitude. Then his other hand came up and plunged the knife into Terry’s chest. Up and under, avoiding the ribs, making for the heart.

The glass of water tumbled to the floor, soaking Vance’s shirt. He flinched as the cold water hit his skin, but didn’t stop what he was doing. Terry made a terrible strangled grunting sound, his face a shocked accusation. Vance pulled the knife back and stabbed again. Now there was blood between them, spreading its tell-tale stain across the front of their clothes. It raced across Vance’s shirt, following the path the water had already made. Its progress over Terry’s sweatshirt was slower, the colour more intense.

Vance pulled the knife free and stepped back, letting Terry fall to the floor. His top lip curled in disgust as Terry twitched and moaned, hands clutching his chest, eyes rolling back in his head. Vance took no pleasure in the killing itself; he never had. It had always been secondary to the pleasures of inflicting pain and terror. Death was the unfortunate by-product of the things he really enjoyed. He wished Terry would hurry up and get it over with.

All at once exhaustion hit him like a physical blow. He staggered slightly and had to grip on to the granite worktop. He had been running on adrenaline for hours and now he’d run out of fuel. His legs felt shaky and weak, his mouth dry and sour. But he couldn’t stop now.

Vance crossed to the kitchen sink and opened the cupboard underneath. As he’d expected, Terry had supplied him with a full battery of cleaning equipment. Right at the front was a roll of extra-strong rubbish bags. On the shelf beside them, a bag of plastic ties. Just what he needed. As soon as Terry was done with dying, he could bag him up, truss the bag and dump him in the back of his own van. He’d work out what to do with the van and its owner at some later stage. Right now, he was too tired to think straight.

All he wanted was to clean up then crawl into bed and sleep for twelve hours or so. His anticipated celebration dinner could wait till tomorrow, when the rest of his fun would begin.

He glanced across at Terry, whose breath was now a faint gasp that brought bubbles of pink froth with each exhalation. What the fuck was taking him so long? Some people had absolutely no consideration.

21

Detective Inspector Rob Spencer looked more like a car salesman than a detective. Everything about him was polished, from his teeth to his shoes. Sam, who liked to think of himself as a pretty smooth operator, had to concede to himself that Spencer probably edged it. Still, Sam wasn’t the one who was about to suffer gender reassignment without benefit of anaesthetic at Carol Jordan’s hands.

When he arrived, Carol was hidden behind the phalanx of monitors Stacey used to keep the inconvenient real world at bay. Stacey had been running the limited data they had on the three murders through the algorithms of the geographic-profiling software that she’d tweaked to her own specifications. She was pointing out the hotspots they’d already identified. ‘Chances are he lives or works somewhere in the purple zones,’ Stacey said, outlining them with a neat laser pointer. ‘Skenby. Obviously. We didn’t need the program to tell us that. But more data will narrow it down.’

Spencer peered around the room, looking a little lost. Paula thought he was trying to find a match for himself and, failing that, the next best thing. He fixed on Sam, but as he approached, Sam picked up his phone and pointedly turned away to make a call.

‘Can I help you?’ Paula said, in a tone that promised the opposite.

‘I’m looking for DCI Jordan’s office.’ Spencer sounded gruff, as if he was trying to assert his right to be there.

Paula gestured with her thumb at the closed blinds that marked off Carol’s territory. ‘That’s her office. But she’s not in it.’

‘I’ll wait for her there,’ Spencer said, taking a couple of steps towards the door.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ Paula said.

‘I’ll decide what’s possible, Constable,’ Spencer said. Paula had to give him marks for bravado. She’d never have dared to make an incursion on Carol Jordan’s turf and attempt to occupy the high ground.

That was when Carol chose to step out from behind the barrier of screens. ‘Not in my squad room, you won’t,’ she said. ‘My office is occupied right now.’ She came closer, leaving less than half a metre between them. Although she was a good twenty centimetres shorter than him, her presence was by far the more impressive. The look in her eyes would have stripped the gloss off a shinier surface than his. Spencer looked like a man who had come face-to-face with his most embarrassing adolescent memory. ‘Normally, I wouldn’t dream of conducting this conversation in front of junior officers,’ she said, her voice sharp as an icicle. ‘But then I don’t normally have to deal with someone who has managed to insult every one of those officers. In the circumstances, it only seems fair to share.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ Spencer said. ‘Obviously I had no idea my remarks were being broadcast.’

‘I’d say that was the least of your worries,’ Carol said. ‘I’ve been an officer in BMP for the best part of seven years now, and I’ve mostly been proud of that. What I heard from you today made me feel glad for the first time that I’m leaving. These are probably the best detectives you will ever work with. And all you can offer them is ill-informed prejudice.’

Spencer flinched. ‘It was meant to be a joke.’

Carol rolled her eyes, irritation and incredulity sharing the billing. ‘Do I look stupid? Do I strike you as the kind of person who’s going to go, “Oh well, that’s all right then”? How exactly is it a joke to demonstrate ignorance and bigotry in front of junior officers? To make it seem acceptable to denigrate your fellow officers for their skin colour or sexual orientation?’

Spencer fixed his gaze somewhere above her head, as if that would help him escape her disgust. ‘I was wrong, ma’am. I’m sorry.’

‘When this case is over, you’re going to have a lot of time to figure out just how sorry. I’m going to talk to HR and make sure you are sent on every available equal ops and multicultural education course for as long as it takes you to understand why your behaviour is unacceptable anywhere in 2011. And to set the ball rolling, you are going to make a personal apology to every member of this squad before you leave here today.’

Spencer was shocked into meeting her eye. ‘Ma’am—’

‘It’s Detective Chief Inspector Jordan to you, Spencer. I’m not the bloody queen. Now, you’ve got a lot of credibility to recover with my team. You can make your apologies before you leave. But meantime, we’ve got some information that should move things along. We’ve ID’d the third victim.’ She turned on her heel. ‘Stacey?’

Stacey walked her chair out from behind the monitors, a tablet computer in her hand. ‘Leanne Considine. She was arrested in Cannes for soliciting.’

‘In Cannes? You mean, like Cannes in France?’ Spencer looked and sounded bemused.

‘The only one I know of,’ Stacey said.

‘But how do you know that? How did you find that out?’

Stacey gave Carol an enquiring glance. ‘Go ahead,’ Carol said.

‘One of the things we’ve done at MIT is build informal relationships with our counterparts abroad,’ Stacey said. ‘I’ve got contacts in seventeen European jurisdictions who will run prints for me. It’s got no evidential value, because it’s unofficial, but sometimes it’s useful for showing us where to look. Her prints and her DNA were a no-show on our database, so I tried my contacts. She turned up in France. Four years ago, though, so not the most current info.’ Stacey pinned Spencer with a look and gave a grim smile. ‘Not bad for a Chink.’

Spencer’s lips thinned to a tight line and he breathed heavily through his nose. Carol’s smile was almost as thin. ‘We do have more,’ she said.

‘Leanne’s address at the time was a student hall of residence here in Bradfield. That gave me a lot of options for back-door searching,’ Stacey said.

‘That’s another thing we do a lot of round here,’ Sam said. ‘Back-door searching. We like to be a bit more subtle than kicking people’s front doors in.’

‘Ideally, we prefer them not to even notice we’ve been in,’ Stacey said drily. ‘Bottom line is, Leanne is from Manchester. She has an undergraduate degree in French and Spanish from Bradfield University. She is currently studying for a PhD on “Inventions of self in the works of Miguel Cervantes”. Whatever that means. And, as it appears, funding her studies by selling sex on the streets of Bradfield.’

‘Some people will do anything to avoid taking out a student loan,’ Kevin said sourly.

‘We can’t all be successful capitalists,’ Stacey said. ‘I’ve got an address for her parents in Manchester. And an address for her here in Bradfield.’

Paula’s mobile vibrated and she checked it out, only half-listening to what was going on around her.

‘Excellent,’ Carol said. ‘Sam, Kevin – once DI Spencer has finished with you, get yourself over to her place and see if she’s got flatmates. Let’s start building up a picture of her life.’ She turned back to Spencer. ‘I’d like you to arrange a Family Liaison Officer for her parents, and take personal charge of breaking the news. They deserve a ranking officer, they’ve lost a daughter. Paula, take yourself off to the university, find whoever was supervising her and talk to them. We need to know where she intersected with her killer, and that means filling in the blanks. Leanne Considine encountered a man who brutalised her and killed her. We need to find him before he finds another victim. And one more thing – so far, we’ve stopped this becoming a media circus. Let’s get it done and dusted before we’ve got the Penny Burgesses of this world crawling all over us.’

22

Kevin thought it was ironic that the student house where Leanne Considine had lived was a scummy shit-tip compared to the home Nicky Reid had shared with Suze Black. In his world, there was something topsy-turvy about a pair of hookers living in a place that was clean and tidy while four graduate students shared what could only be described as squalor. The kitchen worktops were cluttered with dirty mugs and glasses, takeaway food containers and empty wine bottles. Back in the mists of history, someone had thought it was a good idea to put carpet tiles on the floor. Now they were stained and shiny with use. The thought of coming down barefoot in the morning to make a cup of coffee made Kevin shudder inside.

Only Siobhan Carey had been at home when they’d arrived. Kevin had broken the news of Leanne’s death and confirmed the identification with the photo Grisha had supplied them with. He’d expected her to fall apart. Young women mostly did, in his experience. But in spite of clearly being shocked and saddened, Siobhan had stayed calm. No hysteria, no floods of tears, no throwing things at the walls. Instead, she’d texted her housemates, who had made it back inside a quarter of an hour. ‘We were lucky to get this house,’ Siobhan had said while she rinsed mugs and made tea for the detectives. ‘It’s only a ten-minute bike ride from the university library. That’s where we all mostly work. It saves on the heating bills in the winter.’

It was the perfect lead-in. Behind her back, Kevin gave Sam the nod. This was one for him. Siobhan had the air of a young woman who was trying a little too hard. There was something about the artful arrangement of her Primark layers, the care she’d taken with her hair and her make-up, that said she understood she wasn’t going to be the first pick on anybody’s list. Her nose was a little too long, her eyes a little too narrow, her body a little too plump. She’d be grateful for some one-onone attention from a good-looking bloke like Sam. And Sam knew just how to charm the birds out of the trees. Definitely time for Kevin to take a back seat.

‘It seems to get tougher every year, being a student,’ Sam said, his voice like hot chocolate on a cold day. ‘They hike up your fees, they raise your rents, they cane you for having an overdraft … ’

‘Tell me about it,’ Siobhan said.

‘I don’t know how you all manage, especially doing the postgraduate stuff.’ Sam sounded like his heart was bleeding for her.

Siobhan turned to face him, leaning against the counter while the kettle boiled. Her thin cardigan had slipped off one shoulder, revealing a not particularly expert tattoo of a bluebird. ‘I work four nights a week stacking supermarket shelves,’ she said. ‘Friday afternoon, I deliver the local free paper. And every month I end up having to ask my dad for an extra fifty quid to cover the rent.’

‘You’re lucky to have a dad who can afford an extra fifty quid a month. A lot of people can’t find that much to spare these days,’ Sam said.

‘He’s great, my dad. One day I hope I can pay him back.’

When he’s old and sick and needs someone to feed him and change him, Kevin thought. That’s when he’ll be looking for payback. Bet you’re not so keen then, Siobhan. But he said nothing, leaving it to Sam.

‘What about Leanne?’ Sam said. ‘What did she do to make ends meet?’

Siobhan turned away abruptly, saved from answering by the boiling of the kettle. ‘How do you have your tea?’ she said brightly.

‘We both have milk, no sugar,’ Sam said, not sure about Kevin but not really caring. What he wanted was to keep the flow of conversation going, especially since Siobhan clearly didn’t. ‘So – Leanne. Did she have a part-time job too? Or did her family subsidise her?’

Siobhan made a big number out of draining the teabags and pouring the milk. She put the mugs down in front of the two detectives with a little flourish. ‘There you are, guys. Freshly brewed Yorkshire tea. You can’t beat it.’ Her smile was considerably weaker than the tea.

‘How long had you known Leanne?’ Sam said, moving away from what had turned out to be a difficult question. He’d circle back to it, but for now, let her think she’d won.

‘Just over a year and a half. We’re both attached to the Modern Languages department. She was Spanish, I’m Italian. With her doing her undergraduate degree here in Bradfield, she’d already snagged this house and she was looking for people to share. She wanted other postgrads, not undergrads.’ Siobhan sipped from her mug and looked at Sam over the rim. ‘Undergrads just want to drink and party. Postgrads are more serious. We’re spending all this money because we’re really serious about what we’re doing. My first term at Exeter, one of the Hooray Henrys in my hall of residence actually threw up over my laptop. Then he called me a stupid working-class tart when I complained. Frankly, you want to be as far away from wankers like that as possible.’

She was talking too much now, trying to fill the space so Sam couldn’t get back to the hard questions. ‘Totally,’ he said. ‘So you and Leanne got on well?’

Siobhan’s face puckered in consideration. ‘I wouldn’t say we were friends. We didn’t really have much in common. But we got along all right. Obviously. I mean, here we are, second year in the same house.’

‘What about the other two? Have they been here as long as you?’

‘Jamie and Tara? Well, Tara moved in when I did. Then, about six months later, she asked if Jamie could come and live with her. They’ve been together about three years, and he didn’t like the people he was living with. Plus, let’s face it, splitting the bills four ways instead of three made sense. Obviously they have to share a bedroom, but Jamie has first dibs on the living room when he needs somewhere to work.’

‘And he doesn’t mind being the only bloke in a house full of women?’

Siobhan snorted. ‘What’s to mind?’

Sam produced his most silky smile. ‘I imagine there’s a lot more pluses than minuses.’

Before Siobhan could respond to his flirtatiousness, the front door banged shut. There was a clatter of bikes in the hall, then two people in cycling Lycra and rain jackets stormed in, still unfastening their helmets. They were both talking at once as they entered, focused entirely on Siobhan, barely a glance at the two strange men sitting at their kitchen table. ‘Sweetie, this is awful,’ in a woman’s voice, ‘Are you sure it’s Leanne?’ in a man’s voice. Both southern accents, sounding like presenters on BBC Radio 4. They all hugged and murmured, then the new arrivals turned to face Kevin and Sam.

Even with their helmets off, Jamie and Tara were eerily similar. Both tall, broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hips, blonde hair tousled and shining, long narrow faces and pointed chins. At first glance, they looked more like brother and sister than lovers. It took closer inspection to reveal key differences. Tara had brown eyes, Jamie blue. Her hair was longer and finer, her cheekbones higher and broader, her mouth wider and fuller. Siobhan introduced everyone, and they all crammed round the small kitchen table. Jamie seemed more concerned for Tara than devastated by the news about Leanne. Of the three of them, Tara seemed most affected. Her eyes were sparkling with tears, and she kept raising her hand to her mouth and biting down on her knuckle as Kevin shared as little information as possible about Leanne’s death.

Once everyone was settled, this time Kevin took the lead. ‘Obviously in a murder investigation, the first thing we need to establish is the movements of the victim. We believe Leanne died the evening before last. So, can you remember when you saw her last on Tuesday?’

They looked at each other for inspiration. It was hard to say whether they were struggling to remember or making some kind of tacit agreement. But what they had to say showed little sign of collusion. Siobhan had seen Leanne at lunchtime – they’d shared a special-fried rice past its sell-by date that Siobhan had brought home from work. Siobhan had spent the afternoon teaching a seminar. Then she’d gone to work till 11 p.m. Jamie had been working at home before leaving at half past five to walk to the local pub, where he’d been working till midnight. Leanne had still been in the house then. Struggling to keep her tears at bay, Tara explained that she’d spent the afternoon working in the local call centre, where she did six shifts a week. By the time she’d returned at seven, Leanne had left the house. Three friends had come round with pizza just after eight and the four of them had played bridge until Jamie came home. Perfectly shaped alibis that would all have to be checked, but which contained nothing even slightly suspicious. No shifty eye movements, no bad body language, no hesitation in providing names and contact numbers.

So that wasn’t what Siobhan was uneasy about.

‘I’m amazed you find time to study,’ Kevin said conversationally. ‘I see my kids growing up, and it scares me, how hard it’s going to be for them to get through university.’

Jamie gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘It’s a complete nightmare. But what can you do? Like my father says, “Life’s a bitch.” Our generation’s learning that lesson a bit earlier, that’s all.’

Kevin leaned forward, trying to draw them into a conspiratorial huddle. ‘So what did Leanne do to make ends meet?’

Sam hadn’t been wrong in thinking Siobhan didn’t want to go there. Now it appeared that the other two housemates were equally reluctant. ‘I’m not sure,’ Jamie said, his eyes on his tea.

‘We didn’t really discuss it,’ Tara said, her voice shaky and her expression hopeful. There was clearly something more significant than regret going on now.

Sam pushed his chair back, deliberately disrupting the group. ‘That’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve heard in a long time. And believe me, I spend my life listening to criminals shooting me a line.’ Seeing their shocked expressions, he pressed on. ‘You live in a shared house with a woman for a year and a half, and you don’t know what she does to pay the bills? That is crap.’

Jamie straightened his shoulders. ‘You’ve got no right to talk to us like that. We’ve just lost a very dear friend and we’re in shock. If my father—’

‘Spare me,’ Sam said sarcastically. ‘Your friend has just been murdered. Brutally murdered. I didn’t know her, but I saw what he did to her and I am bloody determined to catch him and put him away. Now, if that doesn’t matter to you, just say.’ He twisted his mouth in a ‘please yourself’ expression. ‘Cases like this, the media love to find someone to beat up while they’re waiting for us to make an arrest.’

‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Jamie said, trying to sound tough and failing.

‘We’re only trying to protect her memory,’ Siobhan blurted. The other two glared at her. ‘It’s going to come out sooner or later, guys,’ she said, shooting for pathos and hitting the bullseye. ‘It’s better if we just tell them and get it over with.’

‘She did exotic dancing,’ Tara said flatly.

‘And the rest,’ Jamie added. His attempt to appear a man of the world didn’t even get out of the starting blocks.

‘How do you know that, Jamie?’ Kevin said pleasantly. ‘Were you a customer?’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Tara said. ‘We all know because she told us. We knew she was working in a lap-dancing club up near the airport. At first, she tried to make out she was just working behind the bar, but it was obvious that she had a lot more cash than you earn pulling pints. We were all a bit pissed one night and I asked her straight out if she was … you know, taking her clothes off for men. She said she did lap dancing and admitted that she had sex with some of the men. Off the premises, she said. She’d meet them after work and do them in their cars.’ Tara’s lip curled involuntarily at the thought.

‘That must have been a shock for you all,’ Kevin said gently.

Jamie breathed heavily, puffing out his lips. ‘No kidding! Nobody imagines ending up sharing a house with a hooker.’

‘Sex worker,’ Siobhan corrected him primly. ‘It was Leanne’s choice – and you could never accuse her of bringing her work home. If she hadn’t told us the kind of bar she was working in, we’d never have known, not from anything she said or did round the house. After the shock passed, we all kind of ignored it. It just didn’t come up. It’s like I said. We all got along together but we weren’t really close. We had our own lives, our own friends.’

Sam was watching Jamie to see if there was any sign of a different response. But both of the others seemed comfortable with Siobhan’s account. ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘She once said she never met any men,’ Siobhan said. ‘I know that sounds weird, but she said the men at work were losers and tossers. We were talking about how hard it is to find the time to meet anyone, never mind invest in a relationship, and she said she couldn’t remember the last time she’d met a bloke she even wanted to have a drink with.’

Another dead end. ‘What was the name of the club where she worked?’ Kevin asked.

They all looked nonplussed. ‘I never asked,’ Tara said. ‘It’s not like we were going to turn up for a drink.’

‘What about you, Jamie? It’s the sort of thing a bloke might be more interested in,’ Sam said.

‘Don’t judge me by your standards,’ Jamie said, a sneer on his face and in his voice.

A low chuckle from Sam. ‘I wasn’t. That’s why I thought you might know. Tara, you said it was up by the airport. Can you remember how you know that?’

Tara frowned and rubbed the side of her cheek with her finger. After a few moments when everyone waited expectantly, she said, ‘She asked me if I knew whether there was any bike parking at the airport. She’d got a cheap flight to Madrid, but it was a really early checkin. She said she’d be as well going from work, because it would only take her fifteen minutes to cycle there.’ When she smiled, Sam could see what Jamie saw in her. Her whole face lightened and she gave the first indication so far that she might be fun. ‘So she must only have been a couple of miles away, tops.’

‘Thank you, we’ll check that out. Is there anyone else you can think of that Leanne was particularly friendly with? One of her fellow Spanish postgrads? Any of the lecturers?’

They exchanged looks again. ‘She was sociable enough, but she didn’t have much free time. Like all of us,’ Tara said ruefully. ‘I can’t think of anyone in particular, but she did a lot of Facebooking. She had a lot of mates in Spain.’

‘I know her password,’ Siobhan said. ‘One time when she was in Spain, she couldn’t get online and she texted me to post something on her Facebook page. It was LCQuixote.’

‘Can you write that down for me?’ Sam slipped his notebook across the table. ‘We could do with some photos too, if you’ve got any?’

Jamie stood up. ‘I’ve got some on the computer. I could print you off a few?’ He returned a few minutes later with a handful of prints on A4 paper. One showed Leanne in a strappy sparkly top raising a glass to the camera, head back and laughing. The ruck of people in the background looked like a party in full swing. Jamie pointed to it. ‘I had a birthday party last year, here in the house.’ There were a couple obviously taken in the kitchen where she was wearing a baggy T-shirt and jeans, leaning against the fridge. In one of them, she was sticking her tongue out at the photographer. The last one showed her standing by her bike, helmet in hand, hair loose, grinning. ‘This one was taken a couple of weeks ago,’ he said. ‘She’d just got back from the library. I was trying out the camera on my new phone. Will these do?’

Kevin nodded. ‘It would be helpful if you could email them to us.’ He was pretty sure they’d got as much as they were going to get from the housemates, so he took out his cards and handed them round. ‘My email address is on there. We’re probably going to have to talk to you again,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime, if anything occurs to you, call us.’ He wasn’t going to hold his breath.

Outside, as they walked back to the car, Sam chuckled. ‘What’s so funny?’ Kevin said.

‘Just thinking how well DI Spencer’s bunch of wankers would have handled that interview. Anything out of the mainstream, like a PhD student hooker, and they’re going to be totally flummoxed.’

Kevin scowled. ‘He’s a complete twat.’

Sam shrugged. ‘He just said out loud what a lot of people think. In a way, I’d rather deal with the likes of Spencer. Better to know where you stand than have to deal with the hypocrites who pretend it makes no odds to them. But deep down, they despise you. You know how I love to dance?’

Kevin knew. It was one of the more surprising things about Sam. It sat awkwardly alongside ruthless ambition and a loyalty that barely went beyond self, but there was no doubting it. ‘Yeah,’ he said, unlocking the car and getting behind the wheel.

Sam settled into the passenger seat, hitching up his trousers to avoid bagging the knees. ‘Occasionally, when I ask a woman to dance, a white woman, she’ll just look me up and down and come straight out with it – “I don’t dance with black guys.” It knocks you back on your heels a bit, because most people just don’t say that kind of thing any more. But that’s fair enough, you know. What pisses me off much more than that is when I ask a white woman to dance and she makes some excuse, like she’s too hot or she’s too tired or she’s waiting for a drink. And then five minutes later, I see her on the floor with some complete muppet. That makes me want to go over and say something so cutting she’ll cry all the way home.’

‘So you’re saying you don’t mind what that bell-end Spencer said?’

Sam stroked his goatee. ‘I mind, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. And neither should you. Me and my ginger homie, we are going to show them how a murder investigation is run. And that is the best revenge, my friend.’

23

‘I’m a serving police officer,’ Carol said calmly. Underneath the surface, Tony could hear tightly controlled anger. ‘I don’t go anywhere without a police escort. It’s called my team.’

A long silence. A tightening of lips and shoulders. ‘No, of course they don’t come home with me. But I’m presuming you will be providing cover for Dr Hill? … His house is divided into two flats. He lives upstairs and I live downstairs.’ Tony could imagine how much it was costing Carol to reveal details of her private life to Piers Lambert. ‘Surely the same team is capable of watching two doors in the same building? I thought this was a time of austerity?’ More silence. Carol drummed her fingers on the desk and closed her eyes. ‘Thank you, Mr Lambert.’ And the call was over. ‘Bloody bureaucrats,’ Carol said.

‘Tell me you’ve accepted protection,’ Tony said.

‘I could tell you that, but it would be a lie. Move over, let me get to my filing cabinet,’ Carol said. Tony obediently wheeled himself to one side so she could reach the drawer with the secret stash of vodka. Carol took out a miniature and sloshed it into the cup of coffee she’d walked in with. She sat down on the visitor’s chair and glared at him. ‘What? You heard what I said. Look out there.’ She gestured at the squad room beyond the blinds. ‘The place is awash with coppers. Vance is not going to get near me while I’m at work.’

‘He got out of a prison without anybody stopping him. And now he seems to have disappeared into thin air. Pretty good for a man with a recognisable face and an artificial arm.’

‘For God’s sake, Tony. Vance is not going to walk in here and murder me. And when I’m at home, the team that are watching you can keep an eye on me too. Now, can we just stop talking about this?’

Tony shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It’s what I want.’

‘OK.’ He stared at the computer, closing down the windows he’d already minimised when Carol had walked in to take Lambert’s call. The last thing he needed was for her to see what he was working on. ‘I’m going home, then. Piers told me my guardian angels are waiting for me downstairs in reception. So I don’t have to hang around here any longer.’

‘I won’t be much longer, if you want to hang on and come back with me?’

He shook his head, getting to his feet. ‘My car’s here. Plus I’ve got stuff to be getting on with.’ Stuff which will really piss you off.

Taken aback, Carol said, ‘Oh. I thought we could have a chat about the move. My move. I need to figure out what to do about the excess furniture. Because your house is fully furnished and I’ve got one or two things I want to bring with me. My bed, mainly. Because I love that bed.’

Tony smiled. ‘So bring your bed. The one in your room’s a bit of a monstrosity anyway. I can sell it, or give it away, or put it in the garage so there’s something to put back when you’ve had enough of living with me and need to be on your own again.’ He gave her a nervy, anxious look, seeking reassurance.

She ran a hand through her hair, turning shaggy into spiky. ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ Her smile was uncertain too. ‘We’ve spent years taking very small steps towards each other. We never do anything in relation to each other unless we’re belt-and-braces sure of it. I can’t believe this is going to end in disaster.’

He stood up and moved round the desk to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘We won’t let it. I’ll get someone from the antiques centre round to value the bed. And now, I’m going home. It’s ten o’clock and I’m knackered. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, OK?’

She covered his hand with hers. ‘OK.’

‘I know you think I’m overreacting,’ he said, drawing away and moving to the door. ‘But I know what men like Vance are capable of. And it’s taken us so long to get this far, I couldn’t stand to lose you now.’

Then he was gone.

Vance woke up with a start, heart racing, all his senses on full alert. For a moment, he had no idea where he was, thrashing around in the big bed and getting tangled in the unfamiliar duvet. Then the silence sank in and he remembered. He was not where he expected to be. He was miles away from his confined cell in HMP Oakworth. He was in Vinton Woods, in a house owned by a Cayman Islands corporation whose sole director was Patrick Gordon, the name in one of the passports in the briefcase Terry had given him.

He rolled over and snapped on the bedside lamp. Its white glass shade cast a soft light over part of the room. That was novel in itself. The light in his cell at Oakworth had illuminated every corner, exposing its limits and its limitations. But this glow left things to the imagination. Vance liked that.

The bedding, though, was lamentable. That would have to go. Terry had been working class to the core. He really believed that black satin sheets meant you’d arrived.

Vance looked at his watch and was surprised to see it was barely ten o’clock. He’d been asleep for about six hours, but now he was in that peculiar state of still being tired and yet alert. Something had woken him up, some anxiety that had invaded his dreams, and now he couldn’t quite grasp it. He got out of bed, enjoying the feel of soft, rich carpeting beneath his feet. He had a piss, realised he felt hungry, and padded downstairs to the kitchen. Another freedom to luxuriate in.

He switched on the lights, pleased to notice there was no obvious sign of his earlier violence. He wasn’t naïve enough to think he’d destroyed all the forensic traces of what had taken place, but he wasn’t anticipating any forensic scientists examining the place. To the casual observer, to the estate agent who would soon be selling the place, there was nothing amiss.

Vance opened the fridge and laughed out loud. Terry had clearly done a commando raid on Marks and Spencer. Ready meals, fresh meat and veg, fruit, milk, champagne and freshly squeezed orange juice. He pulled out the fizz and popped the cork one-handed while he decided what to eat. He settled on some Chinese appetisers, but struggled to make sense of the oven controls. Eventually he worked it out, but the edge had gone from his good mood.

As he poured a second glass of champagne, he recalled what lay behind the spike of anxiety that had awoken him. He hadn’t checked the camera feeds. That was mostly because he hadn’t actually explored the house before exhaustion had knocked the feet from under him. If he’d seen a computer, it would have reminded him.

He prowled through the darkened house, not wanting to draw attention by snapping lights on and off. He found a dining room, a TV room, a sitting room and finally, tucked away at the back of the house, a study. The soft moonlight from outside was enough to navigate by and he crossed to the desk, turning on a lamp that cast a pool of light over the dark wooden desk. Terry had clearly run out of imagination by the time he’d got to the study. A big desk, an extravagantly padded leather chair and a credenza were the sole furnishings. A laptop sat on the desk, a printer on the credenza. Vance assumed the oblong box on the window sill that flashed a trembling array of blue lights at him was the wireless router. He’d seen pictures of routers on the Internet, but never the real thing until now.

He flipped open the laptop. Terry had wanted to get an Apple. He said it was better for what Vance wanted. But he knew his learning curve was going to be steep as it was – the computers he’d been able to access in Oakworth had been old and slow, the access to the Internet severely restricted. He couldn’t help laughing. What the fuck were they thinking, letting someone like him loose on computers? If he’d been in charge, he would never have allowed inmates access to mobiles or the net. If you wanted to stop prisoners communicating with the outside world, then ban mobile-phone coverage from the prison. Never mind inconveniencing the staff, if you were serious about keeping a grip on your prisoners, you had to do shit like that. He’d bet you couldn’t get a mobile signal in a gulag.

He could hardly believe how quickly the machine booted up. It was a thing of beauty compared to what he’d grown used to. He went back to the kitchen to fetch the briefcase and opened it on the desk beside the laptop. Vance took out a small address book and thumbed it open at ‘U’ and directed the web browser to the first of a list of urls on the page. It opened an anonymous-looking website that asked for a password. Then he went to the letter ‘C’ and typed in the first string of letters and numbers on the page. ‘C is for camera,’ he said aloud as he waited for the page to open. Seconds later, he was looking at a screen divided into quarters. One quarter was in complete darkness. One showed a brightly lit kitchen; beyond that, a dining area; beyond that still a sitting area with a vast inglenook fireplace. It looked like a barn conversion, judging by the scale and the hammer beams in the ceiling. Another showed the same open-plan space but from the other end. A man was sprawled on a long leather sofa. Greying blond hair, indistinct features, a T-shirt with a logo Vance didn’t recognise, and a pair of boxer shorts. Over to one side, a woman was sitting at a desk, tapping on a laptop. Beside her was a glass of red wine. The fourth quadrant showed the top of an open staircase leading to a gallery bedroom. It was hard to make out much detail, but it looked as if there was a bathroom and a dressing room behind the main area.

Vance watched, fascinated, a self-satisfied smile on his face, as nothing much happened. So many private investigators, so few scruples. Ask around and you could find one who would do more or less anything, as long as you could find a way of dressing it up in some guise that made it sound remotely legitimate. It hadn’t been cheap to get the cameras in place, but it had been worth every penny. He wanted to be sure exactly how the land lay before he took on this act of revenge.

He closed down the window and repeated the process with another access code. This time, the views were external. They showed a large Edwardian house set in a good-sized garden. The cameras showed the approach to the front door, a view of the living room from the outside, a wide shot of the back of the house and the driveway. In the light from nearby street lamps, the house appeared to be empty. The curtains were open, the windows dark. Vance nodded, still smiling. ‘It’s not going to be dark forever,’ he said, moving on to the third access code.

Again, four camera angles. A gravel drive leading to a long, low farmhouse covered in some kind of creeper. Very English. He could see what looked like a stable block in the distance, lit by floodlights. Next, the block itself. He’d seen places like this all over the country; the brick and wooden frontages of stable yards where horses occupied the stalls, paid for by the largesse of rich men and women and tended by ill-paid workers who loved the beasts more than most of their owners ever would. A figure passed across the yard, his movements jagged. A beam of light arced out from one hand. He shone the light jerkily on each door in turn before disappearing from sight. The third quadrant showed the rear of the house, while the fourth was a long shot of the approach to the drive. Parked across the entrance was a horsebox, making it impossible for a vehicle to pass. Vance’s smile grew broader. Anticipation was so sweet.

Reassured by what he had seen, he closed the computer down. There were other sets of cameras waiting to be activated, but now wasn’t the time. If his cameras were picked up on one of his early hits, he imagined the police would sweep all the other possible locations for hidden surveillance. If there was no electronic signal, they would be almost impossible to find. Or so Terry had told him. It would be nice to keep tabs on all his targets all the time, but he was willing to hold back in the interests of keeping ahead of the game.

This time, he took the precaution of carrying the briefcase upstairs with him. Now he had satisfied his curiosity, he was feeling sleepy again. The spy cameras were every bit as good as he had been promised. If he’d had any doubts about whether he could carry out his mission, they were all dispelled. Tomorrow, the next phase would begin.

Tomorrow there would be blood.

The Toyota didn’t look red under the sodium street lights. That was just as well, since the number plates belonged to a tan Nissan. All very confusing for a witness, or even someone trying to analyse a CCTV tape. Not that the driver expected them to be running surveillance of the sex workers’ beats. All that bleating about front-line cuts and budgets – what little money the cops had at their disposal these days was going where the taxpayers could see it. Neighbourhood patrols, turning up at burglaries instead of giving out a crime number over the phone, anti-social behaviour. Orders from on high to make it look good, keep the government on the right side of the voters.

It was total jackpot time for anyone below the Daily Mail parapet – people traffickers, white-collar fraudsters, prostitute killers. Most criminals were probably happy about that. But the Toyota’s driver was pissed off. He wanted to be paid attention to. If his exploits weren’t all over the papers and the TV, what was the point? He might as well not bother.

How could the cops not notice what was going on? Maybe he should start taking photos of his victims with his trademark front and centre. The media would be all over it soon enough if that sort of thing started landing on their desks. Then the cops would have to sit up and pay attention.

Fletcher drove slowly through Temple Fields, Bradfield’s main red-light district. The Vice squad had cleaned it up a lot in recent years, the gay community had annexed whole streets, and there was a lot less sex for sale out in the open than there used to be. The brasses worked inside, in saunas and massage parlours or out-and-out brothels. Or else they’d moved out to other parts of town, like the dual carriageway near the airport and round the back of the hospital building site.

The traffic on Campion Way was heavy, which suited him. It wasn’t usually this clogged so late at night. But some of the cars had yellow scarves hanging from the windows and Fletcher reckoned Bradfield Victoria must have had an evening kick-off. He vaguely remembered they were in the Europa League, which the guys down the pub derisively referred to as, ‘Thursday night, Channel 5. Not football as such.’ He didn’t understand the comment, but he grasped the fact that it was derogatory. He often didn’t really get what the guys in the pub or at work were on about, but he knew the best way to hide his true self was to conceal his bewilderment and act like he was one of the quiet ones who didn’t say much but took it all in. It had served him well over the years. Well enough to fool Margo for long enough to make her his. And once that had stopped working, well, he’d managed to deal with that without it coming back to haunt him, and never had to explain it away because nobody expected him to.

As the cars crawled up the dual carriageway, Fletcher studied every woman he passed who might be working the street. His search wasn’t random; he knew exactly what he was looking for. In his heart, he didn’t expect to get lucky here on the fringes of Temple Fields. He’d thought he would have to cast his net wider tonight.

But just when the traffic began to pick up speed, he saw what he was looking for. It was impossible to stop, so he took the next turning on the left, found a mildly illegal parking spot and doubled back. He wanted so badly to run it was like the pain you get when you need to pee. But the last thing he wanted was to draw attention to himself. So he walked briskly, hoping she would still be in sight when he rounded the corner.

And yes, there she was. Unmistakable, even though he was approaching her from behind. She was clearly working. He could tell by the way she walked; the swivel in the hips, the languid half-turn towards the traffic, the ridiculous heels that bunched her calves into tight knots.

He could feel the blood pounding in his head. His vision seemed to blur at the periphery, leaving her as the only clear element. He longed for her. He ached to take her away from the filth and the depravity that she was wallowing in. Didn’t she know how dangerous it was out on these streets?

‘Mine,’ he murmured softly as he slowed down to match his pace to hers. ‘Mine.’

24

Alvin Ambrose skimmed yet another report that took the search for Jacko Vance no further forward. DI Stuart Patterson dropped into the chair opposite and sighed. His expression reminded Ambrose of his younger daughter, Ariel, a child who appeared to be working up to taking ‘sulking’ as her specialist subject on Mastermind. ‘This is going bloody nowhere,’ Patterson said. ‘Why can’t you find him?’

You, Ambrose noted. Not we. Apparently even the tangential involvement of Carol Jordan in the case had increased his boss’s disengagement from what was going on with his team. ‘I’ve got twenty officers chasing down reported sightings on our patch alone. Other forces all over the country are doing the same. I’ve got another team going through CCTV footage, trying to track the taxi he escaped in. Plus officers talking to the prison staff. The Home Office has dispatched a specialist team to protect the ex-wife. We’re doing everything we can. If there’s anything you think we’ve not got covered, then tell me and I’ll action it.’

Patterson ignored the request. ‘We’re going to look like bloody bumpkins. Can’t even catch a one-armed man as familiar to half the country as Simon Cowell. Carol Jordan’s going to be laughing up her sleeve at us.’

Ambrose was shocked. He was used to a different Patterson, a man who wore his Christianity with subtlety, a man who wasn’t afraid of showing compassion. His bitterness at being passed over had stripped away all his admirable qualities. ‘Carol Jordan had a front-row seat the last time Vance went on the rampage. She’s not going to be doing any kind of laughing any time soon,’ he growled. He wasn’t even going to dignify his comment with the usual, ‘With respect, sir.’

Patterson glared at him. ‘I know that, Sergeant. All the more reason she’ll be on our case.’

Ambrose was spared having to reply by the arrival at his desk of a weary-looking uniformed constable clutching a bundle of paper. ‘I’ve got something on the taxi,’ he said, too tired for enthusiasm.

Patterson sat upright and beckoned the constable. ‘Let’s see it, then.’

‘We’ve found it here in the city,’ he said. ‘It’s turned up in the Crowngate car park.’

‘Good work,’ Patterson said. ‘Alvin, get a forensics team over there to give it the once-over.’

‘That’s already been actioned,’ the constable said, flushing at Patterson’s glare. ‘The chief super was in the control room when the report came in. He actioned it, sir.’

‘Typical,’ Patterson muttered. ‘The one chance we get to look like we’re doing something and the brass nick it.’

‘As long as somebody’s chasing it up,’ Ambrose muttered.

‘We’ve been backtracking it on the cameras,’ the constable carried on uncertainly. ‘We found it entering the parking structure at 9.43 p.m. So we worked back through the road and traffic-light cams. We think whoever drove it into the city nicked it from the car park on the M42 services. Because, see, we checked back on their cameras, and it was parked there mid-morning. It’s hard to see much of the driver, but it could be Vance with a baseball cap on. You can see he’s got tattoos on his arms … ’ As he spoke, he splayed camera stills over the desk. ‘Then he puts on a jacket and walks away. Hours later, a completely different bloke comes down the line of cars. See? It’s hard to be sure, but it looks like he’s trying the doors. And he’s a completely different height and build to the guy who parked it.’

‘Lovely,’ Ambrose said. ‘Cracking job. Can we see where Vance went after he parked the car?’

‘Not so far. He either went to another car, or inside the services building or to the motel. That’s his only choices. We’re working on all the footage right now. Everybody’s being really helpful for once.’

‘Nobody likes a serial killer,’ Ambrose said. Re-energised by the new information, he jumped to his feet. ‘I’m going out there right now with a team. Print me out a sheaf of those shots. And keep me posted with whatever you find out about Vance.’ He looked a question at Patterson, who shook his head.

‘Just send a team, Sergeant. You need to be here, keeping an eye on things.’

‘But sir—’

‘You’re wasted out there. That’s a job for foot soldiers, not for anybody who wants to make a good impression on the new regime.’

Ambrose felt the urge to punch Patterson on the nose, to knock some sense into a man who had taught him much of what he understood about being a good detective. If this was what thwarted ambition did to a man, God spare him from that particular lust. Deflated, he sat down again. ‘Good job,’ he said to the constable. ‘Keep me in the loop.’ Then he reached for the phone. ‘I’d better get a team organised, then.’

‘You better had,’ Patterson said, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll be in the canteen.’

There were two lap-dancing clubs within easy cycling distance of Bradfield International Airport. Both denied ever having employed Leanne Considine. Both managers were stony-faced, clearly well-practised in the art of giving nothing away to law enforcement. After the second knock-back, Sam and Kevin sat in the car grumbling at each other, neither coming up with anything more constructive than waiting in the car park till the girls started coming out. ‘They won’t talk to us,’ Sam said gloomily. ‘We’re going to be sat here for hours, all for nothing.’

‘That’s even supposing it was this club she worked at. We could be totally wasting our time here. There’s a burger van about a mile down the road. We could fuel up to keep us going while we wait.’

Sam sighed. It wasn’t his idea of a good time, but anything was better than sitting here doing nothing. Kevin started the engine and headed for the exit. Sam kept his eye on the club and just as they were about to turn on to the main road, he yelped, ‘Wait! Back up!’

Kevin jammed on the brakes, throwing them both against their seat belts. ‘What the fuck?’

‘Just back up, slowly.’

‘What is it?’ Kevin said, easing the car back towards a parking slot.

‘We’re idiots,’ Sam said, flicking through the photos Jamie had printed for them.

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘Her bike,’ Sam said, pulling out the shot of Leanne with her bike. ‘She rode her bike to work. Remember what Tara said?’

‘So?’

‘So the bike should still be where she left it. And I’m sure I saw a bike in the headlights as you turned. I’m going for a closer look.’

‘Please yourself,’ Kevin said. ‘Give me a shout if you’re right.’

Sam scrambled out of the car and ran across to the back of the club. The building was a U-shaped single-storey brick structure with all the imagination of a five-year-old’s Lego construction. A wooden fence linked the two arms of the U, forming an enclosed back yard where industrial skips for bottles and rubbish were stowed. The gate stood ajar, and it was through the gap that Sam thought he’d glimpsed a bike.

He slipped inside and saw at once he’d been right. The car headlights had caught the reflective fixtures on the back wheel and mudguard; the bike itself was tucked in behind one of the skips, chained to the fence with a heavy-duty chain. Sam compared it to the one in the photo. It was hard to be sure in the limited light, but he thought they matched. He was about to walk back to the car with the news when he heard a door sigh open then click closed nearby. He heard the snap and flare of a cigarette lighter and risked a peek round the edge of the skip.

In the glow of the cigarette, he could see the hard-faced bitch who’d given him and Kevin their marching orders. Sam glanced back to the car. Kevin was leaning against the head rest. He looked like he was taking a nap. It was just Sam and the woman. He considered for a moment. Sam was always driven by what would produce the best result for Sam. Normally, that didn’t include monstering a witness, because there were usually other people around to testify to his bad behaviour. But out here in the dark, behind a dodgy club, it would be his word against hers. And who was the credible one here? She’d already lied to him and Kevin, so he reckoned he was on solid ground.

Light on his feet, he edged round the skips so that he came up behind the woman. He was close enough to smell the heavy musk of her perfume, cut with the cigarette smoke, and still she was oblivious. Swift and sure, he snaked his arm round her throat and jerked her backwards. She stumbled into him, he shifted his hand over her mouth and with his other hand ripped her cigarette from her fingers. No nasty little burns for him.

She was wriggling and struggling, so he wrapped his other arm round her. ‘See how easy it is?’ he hissed into her ear. ‘You come out for a smoke, and there’s an evil fucker waiting for you. That’s what happened to Leanne. Or something very like that.’ He pushed her away, using a perversion of a dance move to swing her around facing him. His other arm pinned her to the wall.

‘Fucking copper.’ She spat at him but he was fast enough to avoid the gob of spit.

‘You lied to me, bitch,’ he said. ‘I could really hurt you, and nobody would believe you. But that’s not what I want. I just want the truth. I don’t want the bastard who killed Leanne to do the same thing to another woman. I’ve just shown you how easy it is. How very, very vulnerable you are. So what happened on Tuesday night?’

‘You wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me,’ she said. ‘I’ll have you for assault, attempted rape, the lot.’

Sam laughed. ‘Like anyone would believe a slag like you.’ He shifted his weight, straightened his fingers and jabbed his stiff hand under her ribs. She gasped with pain and shock. Sam remembered the secret thrill of being bad and tried not to let it ride him too hard. ‘I don’t want to hurt you – but I will. Tell me about Tuesday night.’

‘It was just like any night. Leanne came on about nine and did a few dances. She left around midnight. That’s all I know.’

‘Not good enough.’ Sam jabbed under the ribs again. ‘There’s more than that. What about the CCTV? You’ve got cameras on the car park. You’ve got cameras all over the club.’

She gave a triumphant sneer. ‘They’re wiped. One of the barmen came in this morning and said the filth were showing photos of Leanne all over town, that she’d been murdered. The owner was in and he told me to wipe the tapes. He didn’t want a murdered tart connected to his nice clean business.’ It sounded like her contempt for her boss was on a par with her contempt for the police.

‘Did you look at the tapes before you wiped them?’

She looked away. A guilty look, Sam thought.

‘What your barman didn’t know, because we haven’t told anybody yet, is that the bastard who killed Leanne wasn’t a beginner. He’s done this before. More than once. And if we don’t get him, you can bet he’ll do it again. And since you’re showing him what easy pickings he can get around here, chances are it’ll be one of your girls.’ Sam gave a jeering smile. ‘Or maybe even you.’

The look she gave him was loaded with hate. ‘I took a quick look at the car park tapes around the time she left. I was curious. If one of our clients had anything to do with it, I wanted to know who it was. For safety’s sake. Whatever you might think, I don’t want my girls hurt.’

Sam eased the pressure on her. ‘And what did you see?’

‘I saw Leanne walk out the back door and across the car park to the far corner. She got into a car and the car drove off.’

Sam wanted to punch the air. Or failing that, punch this bitch for the casual way she’d fucked over the investigation into Leanne’s death. ‘What kind of car? What colour was it?’

‘How the fuck do I know what kind of car? Do I look like Jeremy fucking Clarkson? And the CCTV’s black-and-white. So all I can tell you about the colour is that it wasn’t black and it wasn’t white.’

Now he really wanted to go to town on her. ‘I don’t suppose you saw the driver either?’

‘A white blob. That’s all I saw.’

‘Fucking great.’ Sam didn’t bother hiding his disgust. ‘I don’t suppose you took a note of the number either?’ He stepped away. ‘Thanks for your help. I’ll have a uniform swing by for your statement tomorrow.’

Now for the first time she looked genuinely worried. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Look, I’ve told you what I know. Don’t fuck it up for me with my boss.’

Sam gave her a considering look. ‘You’re the licensee, right?’

‘Right. So you’ve got my name and address. It’s not like I can do one.’

‘Come in under your own steam tomorrow. BMP HQ, not Northern Division. Ask for MIT. Have you got that?’

She nodded. ‘MIT.’

‘If you’re a no-show, I’ll be here tomorrow night, mob-handed. Whether you’re here or not, your boss will know all about how helpful you’ve been to the police. Are we clear on that?’

She glared at him, eyes sparkling with frustration. ‘I’ll stick to my end, you stick to yours.’

He heard her swear at him as he walked back to the car, but he didn’t care. She might have wiped the tapes in the club, but her boss didn’t control all the road cameras. Sam was pretty sure that, whatever direction Leanne’s killer had taken, he would be picked up. This killer’s days were numbered and it was all thanks to Sam Evans. Jordan would have to acknowledge this piece of work. She might be on her way out, but Sam was on his way up.

25

A watery sun infiltrated Tony’s kitchen, giving everything a slightly surreal cast. While the coffee brewed, he browsed the news online. Vance’s escape was the headline everywhere, an excuse for a rehash of his crimes and trials. Tony featured in most of the stories, Carol in a few. The media had tried to get to Micky Morgan, Vance’s ex-wife, but they’d arrived at the stud where she and her partner bred racehorses to find a horsebox across the drive and hard-faced stable lads patrolling the perimeter. Nobody had even seen Micky, never mind managed to get a quote. Instead they’d settled for interviewing an assortment of nobodies who had once worked alongside Vance. The prison authorities hadn’t come out of it well either, which was as predictable as morning following night.

There wasn’t much coverage of Leanne Considine’s murder, mostly because as far as the media was concerned she was still identity unknown. Once they discovered who she was and that she had a secret double life, there would be a feeding frenzy. Her housemates would be under siege till they cracked and revealed – or invented – her lurid life. If they had any sense, they’d screw enough money out of the media to pay their university fees.

But for now, she was just a down-page filler for the nationals. Even Penny Burgess had to be content with eight paragraphs. Carol had told him about the press conference, but Penny hadn’t had the nerve to go against what Reekie had said. She’d be furious when she found out the truth, he thought, picking up his espresso and going through to his study. He glanced out of the window, gratified to see the surveillance van still parked on the other side of the street.

The downside of Carol’s refusal to have her own protection was that he was stuck in Bradfield until Vance was either behind bars or deemed not to be a risk. If he went down to the house he’d fallen in love with in Worcester, his protection would come with him. Which would mean leaving Carol exposed and vulnerable here at night. And that was definitely thinking the unthinkable.

The other great unthinkable was what was going to happen between him and Carol. For years, they’d danced a strange quadrille, drawing closer, then being driven apart by events and their own histories. They were like those bar magnets kids used in experiments at school; one moment, the attraction was irresistible, then you switched poles and the force between them made it impossible for them to get close. In the few months since her acceptance of his offer of a home in the house he’d inherited, they’d typically managed to avoid any real discussion of what that might mean beyond the fact. The only thing that was clear was that she would have her own space – a bedroom, a bathroom and a room that would double as a sitting room and home office. Whether this change in geographical circumstance would mean a different kind of change was something neither of them seemed able to broach.

Tony was almost convinced he was ready to try to move forward. Well, moving forward was what pop psychology would call it. He was well aware that what passed for forward motion was often a way of heralding a different kind of change. He didn’t want to damage the quality of his connection with Carol and part of him was still concerned that climbing into bed together would do just that. He’d never had much success with the business of sex. Mostly, he’d been impotent. He could become aroused, though probably a lot less than most men seemed to. But as soon as he got naked with a woman, his penis clocked off. He’d tried Viagra, which had cured the physical symptoms but messed with his head. On the other hand, maybe that had been more to do with the fact that the woman he’d been with was not Carol. Tony let out a deep, heartfelt sigh. It was all so complicated. Maybe they should just leave things be. OK, it wasn’t perfect. But what was?

Meanwhile, the best he could do for Carol was to work behind the scenes to help her team ensure that their last hurrah ended in glory. But before he got stuck into that, he needed to find out what was happening in the hunt for Vance.

He didn’t want to put Ambrose in an awkward spot with his boss, so rather than call him, he sent a text. Tony felt quite proud of himself as he hit the ‘send’ button. When it came to passing for human, he knew he still had plenty to learn. But maybe he was finally picking up a few pointers in the tact-and-diplomacy department.

He’d barely begun to download the files Stacey had left in the Cloud for him when Ambrose called back. ‘Hiya, mate,’ Ambrose said in his low rumble. No names; he was always careful not to compromise himself.

‘Thanks for getting back to me.’ That was one he’d learned by heart; apparently, unless you were a teenage boy, you didn’t just grunt when somebody returned a call. ‘Any news on Vance?’

‘He’s still in the wind. And we’re under siege from the world’s media,’ Ambrose said. ‘We found the taxi he nicked. He left it round the back of the northbound services on the M42. But no sign of the man himself. We’ve got officers going through the CCTV cameras as we speak, but don’t hold your breath. The best definition pictures are from inside the services building. If Vance didn’t go in there, we’re probably fucked.’

‘I suppose it was too much to hope for.’

‘I’m only just beginning to realise what a clever bastard he is. I never paid much attention to the case at the time, I had too much going on in my own neck of the woods. Have you got any tips?’

‘He’s not on your patch any more. I’d put money on it. Whatever his plans are, I’m pretty sure they don’t involve hanging around Oakworth. And he will have plans,’ Tony said heavily.

‘Obviously. You don’t go to those lengths to get out and not be sorted on the outside. Does the name Terry Gates mean anything to you, by the way?’

‘Oh shit,’ Tony groaned. ‘Sometimes I am too stupid to live.’ Even as he spoke, he hoped that wouldn’t turn out to be a prediction.

A humourless laugh came down the phone. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘Fuck. Ambrose, I’m sorry. I should have remembered Terry Gates.’ As he spoke, Tony could see Gates in his mind’s eye. Arms with cables of muscle under the skin, big brown eyes like a trusting animal, an open face that broke into a grin whenever he looked at Vance. Tony recalled watching Gates work his market stall. He knew when to be technical with the blokes, when to jolly the women along to buy tools they’d never known they needed. He was shrewd with the public and yet he was completely blind where Vance was concerned. ‘Why are you asking?’

‘He was Vance’s only regular visitor. He showed up every month, never missed, according to the records. We asked the local lads to give him a knock. And guess what? He’s not where he should be. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him since the morning before Vance broke out. So what’s the score there, Tony?’

Tony closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his hand. ‘Terry had a twin sister, Phyllis, who developed terminal cancer. Back in the day, Vance used to do these hospital visits. It was supposedly his big charity work. At the time, people bought the line that he was giving comfort to the sick. The real reason was a lot creepier. He liked watching the dying. It was as if he fed off the notion that they had no control over anything any more. But like most of the relatives of the patients Vance sat with, Terry never believed there was anything sinister going on. He saw Vance as an angel of mercy who had eased his sister’s passing.’ He straightened up, the flow of his story energising him.

‘He was so locked into that conviction, it was impossible for him to believe Vance was guilty of the crimes he stood accused of. One of the murder charges hinged on a tool-mark. Vance had a bench-mounted vice in his secret hideaway that had a very distinctive defect on one face. And the prosecution had an arm preserved from a murder victim fourteen years before – it had the matching tool-mark in the bone. The obvious inference, taken with all the other circumstantial evidence, was that Vance was the killer. And then along came Terry Gates, who went into the witness box and swore he had sold the vice second-hand to Vance less than five years before. That whoever had owned that vice previously was the killer, not Vance. That undermined the case against Vance on that earlier murder, which made proving he was a serial killer almost impossible, given how little evidence we had.’

‘So Gates actually perjured himself for Vance?’

‘It’s hard to put any other interpretation on it,’ Tony said.

‘He must have really loved his sister.’

‘Too much, I suspect. And after she died, Vance became a kind of surrogate. If he didn’t keep Vance safe, he was letting his sister down.’

Ambrose made a dark, grumbling sound. ‘I don’t get that. The guy’s a serial killer and you perjure yourself to keep him out of jail because he was nice to your sister? People make my head hurt, doc.’

‘Mine too, Alvin.’ He knocked back his espresso in one, blinking and shuddering as the caffeine hit. ‘So Gates still thinks he owes Vance.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘You need to get a warrant for Gates’s house and go through everything. If he’s been Vance’s eyes and ears and hands and legs on the outside, there must be a trail. Vance is smart, but Gates isn’t. He’ll have left tracks. Vance will have told him to destroy everything, but he won’t have. That’s the only place you’ll find a clue.’

‘Sounds like a plan. Thanks,’ Ambrose said. ‘You don’t think Gates will turn up?’

All of his professional instincts told Tony with absolute certainty that Terry Gates would never walk through his front door again. ‘Gates is dead, Alvin. Or as good as. He knows too much.’

‘But why would Vance turn on him when Gates has always been the one on his side?’ Ambrose’s voice was reasonable, not critical.

‘Gates managed to stay in Vance’s corner because he could always convince himself Vance was the persecuted innocent. But whatever Vance has up his sleeve, it’s not going to be pretty. And Gates won’t be able to avoid understanding his involvement. I think when he’s confronted with incontrovertible proof that his hero is a villain, Gates will turn. And Vance is acute enough to get that.’ Tony opened the top desk drawer and poked around the detritus inside, looking for something to crunch. ‘He’ll kill him rather than take the risk. I know it might not look that way, but he’s not a risk-taker. Everything is calculated.’

‘Have you got a team on you?’

Tony glanced out of the window again. ‘There’s a surveillance van outside the house. I’m not planning on going anywhere complicated today. If I go out at all, it will be to Bradfield Moor, which is a bloody sight more secure than Oakworth turned out to be.’ Right at the back, he found an old packet of cinnamon-flavoured Lifesavers. He hadn’t been across the Atlantic for at least two years, but he didn’t think boiled sweets could go off. One-handed, he ripped the packet open and popped one in his mouth. The outside had gone a bit soft, but the heart of the sweet was hard, resistant to his teeth. Tony crunched down on it, letting sugar and spice fill his mouth, making him feel inexplicably calmer.

‘Are you eating something?’ Ambrose said.

‘Will you keep me posted?’

‘I’ll do what I can. Look after yourself.’

The line went dead and Tony stared at a list of files on his screen, taking nothing in. How could he not have taken Terry Gates into account? The oversight shook his faith in himself, making him wonder what else he might have missed. Had he let his concern for Carol interfere with the process of analysis that he so depended on? Without that clarity, he was no use to an investigation. No, scratch that. Without that clarity, he was a liability.

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes tightly closed. He visualised a white cube and placed himself at the heart of it. He breathed deeply and regularly, forcing everything else from the front of his mind. When all he was conscious of was white space, he opened his eyes and placed his hands flat on the desk on either side of the keyboard. ‘You kill women who sell sex,’ he said to the empty room. He reached for his glasses and began the long process of crawling into the labyrinth of a killer’s damaged mind.

26

Carol was working her way through the overnight reports when she came upon Sam’s write-up of his interview with Natasha Jones, manager and licensee of Dances With Foxes. The information was useful – a witness to Leanne leaving the club in someone else’s car could be a crucial brick in the wall of evidence that would put a killer away. And the action Sam had suggested was spot-on: ‘Recommend requisition of traffic-camera data on Brackley Road in both directions from club. Time frame 11 p.m. – 1 a.m. on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Aim: ID car carrying Leanne Considine away from Dances With Foxes lap-dancing club at 673 Brackley Road.’ But there was something off-kilter about the interview report. For one thing, Sam had been out with Kevin but there was no mention of Sam’s sergeant. All in all, it felt evasive and Carol knew Sam well enough to realise that when he was being evasive, there was usually something to evade.

She looked out into the squad room, where Kevin and Paula were on the phone. There was no sign of Sam, so she scribbled a note. ‘My office when you’re done.’ She left it in front of Kevin, who gave her a look of pained resignation. He was in her visitor’s chair inside two minutes.

‘Nice work last night,’ Carol said, leaning back in her chair and resting her feet on her open bottom drawer.

‘Thanks,’ Kevin said cautiously.

‘I’ve seen Sam’s report. You seem strangely absent.’

Kevin crossed his legs, propping his left ankle on his right knee. He drummed his fingers on his left knee. He was as relaxed as an exam candidate. ‘It was Sam’s show. The manager tried to blag us into believing Leanne never worked there. When we were leaving, Sam spotted Leanne’s bike. So he went back to confront the manager.’

‘Where were you?’ Still keeping it light, not quite sure what she was looking for.

‘I was in the car.’

‘What? You couldn’t be bothered following up?’

Kevin pursed his lips. His fingers stopped dancing and clutched his knee. ‘That’s not actually how it went.’

‘So how did it go?’

‘Does it matter? Sam got what we needed. It doesn’t bother me that he followed his nose and came up trumps.’ He shifted in his chair, trying for nonchalant and missing spectacularly.

Carol sized him up. Now she had a clearer idea of what had gone on. Sam had left Kevin in the lurch and chased his own gut instinct. Stupid behaviour at any time, but especially when there was a killer on the loose. ‘You know you should always work in pairs when you’re dealing with people who understand the power of screaming “foul” at every opportunity. Sam left himself exposed, and you shouldn’t have let that happen.’ By Carol’s standards, it was the mildest of reprimands, but it was enough to make Kevin’s milky skin flush dark red.

‘I understand,’ Kevin said, his expression mutinous. ‘I didn’t realise he was going to conduct the interview there and then.’

Carol shook her head, a wry smile on her face. ‘And how long have you been working with Sam?’

Kevin stood up. ‘I take your point.’

Carol followed him into the room, looking for Paula. But while she’d been talking to Kevin, Paula had disappeared. ‘It’s like the bridge of the Marie Celeste in here,’ she said aloud.

‘I’m still here.’ Stacey’s voice came from behind the monitors. ‘I’m looking at footage from traffic cameras.’

‘Shouldn’t some uniform from traffic be doing that?’

‘The truth? I don’t trust them to do it properly. They get bored too easily.’

Carol walked back to her office, unable to keep from smiling. Her bloody-minded, arrogant specialists were never going to be conventional team players. God help the commanding officers who ended up with the members of her squad. It almost made her want to stay, just to see the fun and games.

Vance had only been on the loose for a matter of hours, but that had been long enough for Maggie O’Toul to get her defences in order. So far, the media hadn’t discovered that she was responsible for advocating Vance’s transfer to the Therapeutic Community Wing, but she clearly realised that was going to happen. When Ambrose turned up for their appointment at the Probation Service offices where she was based when she wasn’t at Oakworth, the receptionist acted as if she’d never heard the name. He’d had to produce his ID before she would even acknowledge the existence of Dr O’Toul. It didn’t help his mood.

Maggie O’Toul’s office was a cubicle on the second floor with a view across the street to a former cinema turned carpet warehouse. When Ambrose entered in response to her, ‘Come in,’ she had her back to the door, staring out the window as if something remarkable was happening in the world of carpets. The office was crammed with books, files and papers, yet they were organised in such a way that the overall impression was one of neatness. It wasn’t much like any space where Tony Hill was working.

‘Dr O’Toul?’ Ambrose said.

Slowly, apparently reluctantly, she swung round to face him. She had one of those weakly pretty faces marked by anxiety that always made Ambrose feel like he had the upper hand. He thought her looks were the kind that used to be called ‘elfin’ when Audrey Hepburn was a star. Her face was framed by artificially dark hair in a gamine cut which emphasised the fact that she wasn’t going to revisit fifty. ‘You must be Sergeant Ambrose,’ she said, her voice weary, her mouth turning down at the corners. Her lipstick seemed the wrong sort of colour for her complexion. He didn’t know much about that sort of thing, but he’d always had a good eye for what looked well on a woman. He never thought twice about choosing a gift of clothes or jewellery for his wife, and she always seemed happy to wear what he’d bought. Maggie O’Toul did not look like a happy woman.

Christ, who did he think he was? Tony Hill? ‘I need to talk to you—’

‘About Jacko Vance,’ she interrupted, finishing his sentence for him. ‘Am I to be the scapegoat? The blood sacrifice? The person to stand in the pillory of the Daily Mail?’

‘Spare me the histrionics,’ he said roughly. ‘If you know your job at all, you must know that Vance is a dangerous man. All I care about is getting him back behind bars before he starts killing again.’

She gave a dry little laugh and ran her fingers through her hair. Her nail polish was the same wrong colour as her lipstick, making her fingers look oddly mutilated. ‘I rather think I’m better qualified than you to form an accurate impression of what Jacko Vance is capable of these days. I know it’s hard for you to grasp, but even people who have committed dreadful crimes like Jacko are capable of finding a route to redemption.’

The phrase smacked of a soundbite from a platform presentation. ‘He’s already put one person in hospital today,’ Ambrose said. ‘What I’m looking for from you is not a lecture about how rehabilitated Vance is. Clearly, he’s not. How you square that in your professional world is up to you. But I don’t have the luxury of breast-beating right now. What I need is a sense of how he will behave, where he will go, what he will do.’

She was smart enough to know she’d been thwarted. ‘I sincerely think he is no threat,’ she said. ‘Like all of us, he will lash out if he’s cornered or frightened.’

‘The man he battered senseless was a taxi driver,’ Ambrose said flatly. ‘I can’t readily see how a thirty-four-year-old taxi driver made him feel cornered or frightened. No matter how crap his driving was.’

‘There’s no need to be facetious,’ she said primly. ‘Look, hear me out. I’m not stupid, Sergeant. I’ve been doing this job a long time and I am no pushover. I recommended Jacko for the Therapeutic Wing because in our sessions together he was remorseful and insightful about his past crimes. He fulfilled all the criteria for the community, except for the fact that he would never be eligible for release. But why should someone be denied the best chance to recover from the disaster that is their life simply because they can’t gain a hundred per cent of the benefit from that opportunity?’

Another soundbite, Ambrose thought. He wondered how much of her career Maggie O’Toul had planned to build on redeeming Vance. ‘Tell me, how did his remorse manifest itself?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean. He expressed regret and he unpicked the chain of circumstances that drove him to commit his crimes.’

‘What about atonement? Did he talk about that at all? About the people whose lives he’d destroyed?’

She looked momentarily annoyed, as if she’d missed a trick. ‘Of course he did. He wanted to meet his victim’s relatives and apologise in person. He wanted to make amends to his ex-wife for all the grief he’d brought her.’

‘Can you remember which victims he mentioned?’

‘Of course. Donna Doyle’s family, that’s who he wanted to speak to.’

‘Just them?’

She drummed her fingers quietly on the arm of her chair. ‘She was his victim, Sergeant.’

Ambrose cracked a half-smile. ‘The only one he was tried and convicted for. What about the other girls he abducted and killed? Did he give up their names at all? Did he express any regrets for their deaths?’

‘As you well know, he has always denied those accusations and he was never charged with any other murders.’

‘He was actually charged with one other, but he got off because his pal Terry Gates perjured himself. And he was convicted of killing Shaz Bowman till the Appeal Court threw it out. Did Vance mention them among his sins?’

Dr O’Toul exhaled heavily. ‘I am not engaging in a point-scoring competition with you, Sergeant. I know my competence. I suggest you stick to yours. I’ll say it again: I think Jacko is no threat. I’m disappointed that he has hatched this plot to escape, but I imagine he simply found prison finally intolerable. My guess would be that he will leave the country for somewhere he feels safe.’ She smiled, her cheeks subsiding into an array of concentric curved lines. ‘And I do believe he will live a rehabilitated life.’

Ambrose shook his head in disbelief. ‘You really believe all that, don’t you?’ He stood up. ‘This is pointless. Unless you have a specific notion of where he might be – maybe some place he mentioned, some person he was close to – there’s no point in continuing this interview.’

‘I have no idea where he might go. Nor who he knows on the outside. I do think this is a tremendous waste of manpower,’ she added. ‘I wouldn’t have recommended Jacko for this community if I hadn’t known he was a changed man.’

Ambrose headed for the door, pausing as he prepared to step into the corridor. ‘I hope you’re right. I really hope you’re right. I would love to be proved wrong on this.’ He rubbed the back of his thick neck, trying to loosen the tight muscles. ‘And I think you are right about one thing. There are people out there that Vance has unfinished business with. But I don’t think he wants to atone for what he’s done. I think his plan is to make them pay through the nose for what they’ve done to him.’ Ambrose didn’t wait for a reply. He didn’t even close the door behind him. Maggie O’Toul didn’t deserve the satisfaction of a slammed door.

27

Paula had not gone far. When she’d seen Carol Jordan heading her way, she’d almost panicked, wondering if her boss had by some sixth sense detected that she was speaking to Tony. But Kevin had been the focus of her attention and Paula had wound up the conversation with, ‘If you’re that near, meet me in the Costa Coffee on Bellwether Street. Five minutes.’ And she’d shot off before anyone could ask where she was going.

Now she was sitting with the largest skinny latte the coffee shop could provide, waiting for her partner in crime. He didn’t keep her long, plonking himself down at the table opposite her. ‘You not getting a coffee?’ she asked, half-rising.

He shook his head. ‘Some days, it’s just too hard to choose.’ He frowned. ‘I think the politicians have got it wrong. It’s not more choice we need, it’s less. Too much choice is too stressful. There have been experiments, you know. Rats live longer and healthier lives when they have fewer choices, all other things being equal.’

Sometimes Paula wondered how Carol Jordan coped with any kind of social relationship with him. His capacity for tangential conversation was beguiling, but hard to handle when you wanted to get straight to the point. ‘Did you get all the files?’ she said.

He produced a quirky little smile. ‘I assume so. But that’s one of the unanswerable questions, isn’t it? Because I won’t know about the files I didn’t get. It’s like when you’re doing a lecture and you ask if everyone can hear you. Because obviously, if they can’t hear you, they can’t answer the question, so you’re none the wiser.’

‘Tony!’

‘Sorry. I’m in a funny mood at the moment.’

Paula scowled at him. ‘We all know you and the chief are watching your back in case Jacko Vance comes after you. Hell, so does anyone who can read. So I will cut you a bit more slack than usual.’

Tony ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not used to people knowing stuff about me,’ he said. ‘I’ve had all these phone calls from journalists wanting me to write profiles of Vance. I don’t think they have any idea how dull a profile is. Even if I was interested enough to return their calls, I couldn’t turn what I do into tabloid fodder. Or even Guardian fodder. I only came out of the house because the phone was doing my head in. And then Penny bloody Burgess turned up on my doorstep.’ He shuddered. ‘You’d have to be some sort of masochist to want to be a celebrity.’

‘Is anybody keeping an eye on you?’ Paula asked, suddenly anxious. Tony might be on the far side of odd, but she’d grown fond of him over the years. She’d lost one friend in the course of duty and she knew enough about that kind of grief. Tony had reached out a hand to her then, a hand that had stopped her falling, and she still felt she owed him. There were some debts that could never be paid.

Tony nodded. ‘So I’m told. There’s been a surveillance van outside the house since before I got home yesterday and there’s a very polite young man who’s keeping tabs on me on foot.’ He made a face. ‘It’s reassuring, I suppose. But I don’t think Vance is coming after me. Simple revenge isn’t his style. He’s much more twisted than that. But how precisely the twist will manifest itself, I don’t know. So it’s been quite good for me to have your case to think about. It keeps me from fretting.’ He peered at her, blinking like an owl in the light. ‘Tell me – what’s your take on Carol? How’s she coping?’

‘You’d never know there was anything else going on except for these murders. She’s got her work face on and that’s that.’ She gave a sad little smile. ‘It would kill her to show vulnerability to the likes of us. She needs us to believe in her so she can convince herself she’s indomitable.’

Tony’s eyebrows twitched up and back again. ‘Have you ever thought of a career in psychology?’

‘What? And end up like you?’ Paula laughed out loud.

‘They’re not all like me.’ He mugged at her. ‘Just the good ones. You could do this, you know. You’re better than you know.’

‘Enough, already. What do you make of it? Is it the same killer, do you think?’

‘I don’t think there’s much room for doubt. It’s the same person, Paula. The tattoo is postmortem. It’s signature behaviour. But that’s about all that fits the typology.’ He pulled a spiral-bound notebook from his battered leather briefcase. ‘There’s no clear evidence of him having sex with his victims. Kylie had unprotected sex with four men, we don’t know about Suze because of her immersion in the canal, and Leanne’s body has no traces of semen. There isn’t any at the site either.

‘Then there’s the victims themselves. There’s common ground, obviously. They were all selling sex. They were all, in effect, street hookers. I know Leanne was working in the lap-dancing club, but her acts of prostitution were not controlled by a pimp or in a brothel. So from that perspective, she was in the same category as the other two. But here’s the thing about his victims. It’s like he’s moving up the social scale of prostitutes. Kylie was as low down the pecking order as you can go. Suze had dragged herself off the bottom of the heap. And Leanne – well, Leanne was as near as you can get to a respectable woman. Now, I know there’s a rule of thumb in this kind of crime that says an offender starts with the most vulnerable of victims and grows in confidence with each kill. But in my experience, that confidence doesn’t generally grow so far or so fast. Leanne is a big jump from Kylie. And that’s odd.’

‘Maybe he’s just more emotionally mature than some of the killers you’ve dealt with.’

Tony shrugged. ‘It’s certainly possible. But my gut reaction would be that, if he’s that emotionally mature, he wouldn’t need to be doing this.’ He spread his hands. ‘But what do I know? I just missed a major trick doing a risk assessment of Vance, so I’m not feeling very bloody infallible today.’

‘So is there anything you can tell me that might point us towards the killer?’

Tony looked disconsolate. ‘The only thing—’ He stopped himself, scowling at the table.

‘The only thing …?’

He tutted. ‘I shouldn’t say this. Because it’s based on nothing more than a feeling.’

‘As I recall, your “feelings” have worked out well for us more than once. Come on, Tony. Don’t hold out on me.’

‘It’s as if he’s throwing down a gauntlet. Like, “None of you are safe. It’s not just the bottom feeders, it’s all of you.” Like nobody’s safe on the streets with him around. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, he talked about cleansing the streets. It’s as if this one has a similar ambition. He wants to scare them off the streets.’ He absently picked up Paula’s coffee and took a drink. ‘I don’t know. And there’s something else that’s really bugging me and I don’t know what it is. There’s something about the crime scenes, the murders themselves. It’s bothering me and I don’t understand why.’

‘Well, he’s doing something different every time. That’s unusual, isn’t it?’ Paula took her coffee back.

‘Yes, to the degree he’s doing it. But that’s not what’s bugging me. I’m aware of the degree of difference, that’s all filed away under “unusual but explicable”. There’s something else and I can’t put my finger on it and it’s bloody annoying.’

‘Leave it alone. It’ll come to you when you’re in the thick of something else.’

Tony grunted, unconvinced. ‘It’s weird. I’ve almost got déjà vu about it. Like I’ve seen it all before. But I know I haven’t. I can’t even think of a case in the literature where the killer tattoos his victims postmortem. I wish I could shake the feeling, but it’s bugging the hell out of me. Have you made any progress with the investigation?’

Paula told him about Sam’s discovery the night before. ‘Stacey’s working on it. If there’s anything to be got, she’ll get it.’

‘You might want to ask her to see if she can find any courtyard-style motels between the Flyer and Dances With Foxes. This is clearly territory he’s familiar with. And they do like to stick to where they know. Suzanne Black was drowned somewhere he didn’t have to take her past a receptionist. I don’t think he took her home to his place. He doesn’t take chances like that. But one of those motels where you check in at an office and the rooms are like apartments that open off the car park – that would fit the bill.’

‘Good idea. Thanks.’ She drained her coffee and pushed her chair back. ‘I’m going to miss them all. We’re all going to be tossed to the four winds by Blake. I’ll never get another berth like this again. It’s like the end of an era.’

‘Blake’s an idiot,’ Tony said. Just then, his phone beeped. He patted his pockets till he found it. ‘Message from Carol,’ he said. ‘She wants me to come in so Chris can debrief us.’

‘What’s she been up to? I haven’t seen her since yesterday lunchtime.’

‘She’s been tracking down the other three cops who worked with me and Carol on putting Vance away. They needed to be warned personally, not left to hear about it all on the news.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better get over there.’

‘I’ll give you a ten-minute start,’ Paula said. ‘The last time we went behind her back, she made me feel like a toddler on a tear. And not in a good way. Let’s not give her any reason to start paying attention to us.’

As soon as he walked in the door, Tony realised he was the one who should have stayed behind in the coffee shop. Carol was sitting by Chris’s desk and she looked up when he walked in. ‘That was quick,’ she said. ‘I thought you were planning to stay at home all day?’

‘I was,’ he said. ‘But Penny Burgess came knocking so I thought I’d come in here and hide.’ He nearly elaborated, but stopped just in time. The best lies are the ones with the most truth, he reminded himself.

Chris had dark smudges under her eyes and her hair looked like it had been slept on. Her usually jaunty air was subdued, like a dog that’s been walked to exhaustion. She covered a yawn with her hand and barely raised her eyebrows in greeting. ‘What’s up, doc?’ she managed, in a pale reflection of her normal style.

‘We’re all dancing the Jacko Vance tango,’ he said ruefully, pulling up a chair and joining the two women. ‘He must be rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of us all running around chasing our tails, wondering where he is and what he’s doing.’

‘I just spoke to West Mercia,’ Carol said. ‘They’re coordinating the search. They’ve had even more than the usual spate of so-called sightings everywhere from Aberdeen to Plymouth. But not a single confirmed sighting.’

‘One of the problems is we’ve got no idea what he looks like,’ Tony said. ‘We can be certain he doesn’t look like a caricature of an England football supporter any more. He’ll be wearing a wig, he’ll have different facial hair and different-shaped glasses.’

‘He’s still the one-armed man,’ Chris said. ‘He can’t hide that.’

‘The prosthesis he’s got isn’t immediately obvious. After I spoke to my Home Office contact, I checked it out online. The cosmetic covers they have now are amazing. You’d have to look closely to realise they’re not real skin, and most of us don’t look closely at anything much. And what Vance has got is the best that money can buy.’

‘Thanks to the European Court of Human Rights,’ Carol muttered. ‘So what we know is that we don’t know much. Vance could actually be anywhere from Aberdeen to Plymouth. So how did you get on, Chris?’

Chris straightened up in her chair and glanced at her notebook. ‘OK. Leon’s still with the Met. He’s done well for himself. He’s exactly what the brass want – graduate, black, smart and presentable. And demonstrably not corrupt.’ She grinned at Carol. ‘He’s a DCI now, with SO19.’

Tony snorted with laughter. ‘Leon’s in Diplomatic Protection? Leon, who used to be about as diplomatic as me?’

‘According to my old muckers on the Met, he’s learned to keep his mouth shut and play the game. But he’s got respect, up and down. So I got hold of him on the phone and marked his card.’

‘What did he say?’ Tony said, remembering Leon with his sharp suits and swagger. He’d been smart enough to accommodate lazy, getting by on his wits rather than his work. To have climbed so far, he must have learned to buckle down. He’d have liked to have seen that, a Leon honed by work and responsibility.

‘He laughed it off. But then, he would.’

‘What’s his domestic set-up?’ Carol asked.

‘He’s got an ex-wife and two kids in Hornsey, and he lives with his current partner in Docklands. I tried to persuade him to move them for now, but he won’t have it.’ Chris pulled a face. ‘He said, “If I read an obit for Carol Jordan and Tony Hill, I’ll head for the hills. But right now, I can’t say I’m too worried.” I couldn’t budge him on that.’

‘He does have a point,’ Tony said. ‘Leon’s not near the top in terms of seniority or alphabetical order or geographical order. And given that none of us has a clue how long this is going to go on, he’s probably right not to turn his life on its head just yet.’

‘Unless of course the rest of us make ourselves so hard to hit Vance ends up taking out Leon by default,’ Carol said, acid in her tone. ‘You might want to mention that, Chris.’

Chris looked less than thrilled at the prospect. ‘Simon McNeill isn’t a cop any more. He stayed with Strathclyde for a couple of years after Shaz Bowman’s murder, then he quit to take up a job teaching criminology at Strathclyde University.’

Tony remembered Simon’s unruly black hair, his intensity and his infatuation with Shaz Bowman. Tony had heard on the grapevine that he’d had a breakdown, been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and been gently eased out of the job. ‘Poor sod,’ he said absently. He realised both women were looking at him oddly. ‘I mean, because he was besotted with Shaz, not because he ended up teaching at Strathclyde. Obviously.’

Chris looked amused as she continued. ‘He’s got a long-term partner and four kids. They live out in the country about an hour’s drive out of Glasgow. He seemed quite unnerved by the news. He’s going to talk to his local law enforcement about increased patrols. But he said where they live is at the end of a track – one way in and out. And they have shotguns. He’s taking it seriously, but it sounds like he was already prepared for a siege. He told me that Western capitalism was headed for a cataclysm and then crime would skyrocket. Every man for himself. But he’s made his arrangements.’

It sounded like the PTSD wasn’t entirely a thing of the past. ‘Christ, I hope Vance doesn’t show up there,’ Tony said. ‘There’d be a bloodbath and chances are Vance would be the only one who’d walk away from it.’

‘So that’s two we can’t do much about,’ Carol said. ‘Tell me Kay Hallam isn’t gung-ho or running her own Home Counties militia.’

‘Kay Hallam is why I look like a woman who’s slept in her car. Because I am that woman. I had a job trying to track her down. I struggled to pick up the trail because she left to get married. Mr Right turned out to be an accountant with a practice in the Cayman Islands. The kind of bastard who helps all those loaded gits to avoid paying their taxes like the rest of us.’

Carol whistled. ‘Quiet little Kay. Who’d have thought it?’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Tony said. ‘She had that knack of watching and waiting till she was sure of her ground then she’d mirror your attitudes and position. Everybody always thought Kay was on their side and she always ran into problems with the kind of exercise where you have to nail your colours to the mast and defend your position. When Mr Right swam into her orbit, she’ll have watched and waited, then swum up alongside him and made him feel he’d finally met the one person who really understood him.’ He watched the two women consider his words then nod in agreement. ‘It was what made her such a good interviewer. Paula has the same chameleon knack, but Paula’s also got a personality of her own that she slips straight back into. I never had any idea who the real Kay Hallam was.’

‘She’s a tough cookie under that diffident exterior,’ Chris said. ‘She’s in the UK at the moment. They’ve got a house near Winchester. Her boys are at boarding school there, she’s back for a parental visit. She got the point as soon as I told her what was going on. And she just railroaded me. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Threatened me with everything from the Daily Mail to the Police Complaints Commission. In the end, I had to drive down there and brief the local nick and the two security guards she’d hired from God knows what agency. I don’t know about Vance, but they scared the living shit out of me.’ Chris shook her head in disbelief. ‘Can you believe that I did that?’

‘Not only can I believe it, but if I had her resources, I’d probably do the same thing in her shoes,’ Tony said. ‘Vance is seriously scary.’ He frowned. ‘Chris – didn’t some hack write a book about Vance after the first trial?’

‘That rings a faint bell. Didn’t they have to withdraw it after he won his appeal?’

‘That’s right,’ Carol said. ‘They said it was libellous now Vance had been cleared. It might be worth tracking down the author and seeing if he’s got anything to say. He might have information we don’t have about associates and other properties Vance may have owned.’

‘I’ll get on to it,’ Chris said.

Before Carol could respond, Paula walked into the squad room with the evening paper. ‘Secret’s out,’ she said, brandishing the front page, where a banner headline read, SERIAL KILLER TARGETS BRADFIELD.

28

It was a beautiful day, Vance thought. Never mind that the sky was grey and there was a promise of rain in the air. He was out of jail, driving through the Yorkshire Dales, master of his own fate. By definition, that made it a beautiful day. The car was easy to drive, it had a digital radio that made it amazingly easy to switch between stations, and the GPS navigation meant he couldn’t get lost among the drystone walls and sheep folds. He’d slept well, breakfasted well in front of the laptop, enjoying the coverage of his escape on the Internet. He almost felt sorry for the hapless Governor, nailed by the media like a moth on a pin. The hacks were portraying him as an incompetent fool who’d fallen for Vance’s lies about rehabilitation. The truth, as usual, was more complex. The Governor was at heart a good man, clinging to the last shred of idealism. He desperately wanted to believe it was possible for a man like Vance to redeem himself. Which made him an easy mark for a manipulator as skilled as Vance.

The Governor wasn’t crap. He’d just come face-to-face with a far superior creature.

After breakfast, he’d checked his cameras. This morning, he – or rather, Terry – had had an email from the PI saying he’d finally managed to get the last set of cameras installed. When Vance had used the code, he’d been able to activate them and spy on another location, a late addition to his list, tagged on as a result of the most recent research Terry had carried out for him. It was the perfect little extra to complete phase one of his plans.

But that lay in the future. Now he had to concentrate on the business in hand. Today he was Patrick Gordon, complete with a thick head of chestnut hair and a few artfully applied freckles across his cheeks. The moustache and horn-rimmed glasses completed the job. He was dressed like a posh country dweller – brown brogues, corduroy trousers, Tattersall check shirt and a mustard V-necked sweater. Stockbroker turned Yorkshire gentleman. All he needed was a Labrador to complete the picture.

Just after noon, he pulled into the forecourt of a smart country pub that advertised food and traditional ales. Terry, being the thorough sort, had researched pleasant places to eat and drink near all of Vance’s targets. It was as if he imagined Vance was going on some sort of grand tour, taking lunch and tea with old acquaintances. At first, Vance had thought it a crazy eccentricity, but the more he thought about it, the more appealing it seemed to flaunt himself under the noses of the neighbours.

Only a couple of tables were occupied, one by a middle-aged couple dressed for a walk in the dales, the other by a pair of men in suits. Vance studied the range of real ales, all of whose names seemed based on bad puns or fake dialect, and settled for one called Bar T’at. The barman didn’t give him a second glance when he ordered his pint. He asked for a steak-and-ale pie and settled in a quiet corner where he could look at his tablet computer without being overlooked. The tablet was amazing. He’d found it in the desk drawer this morning and he’d been entranced by what it seemed capable of. It was an awkward size, really – too big for a pocket – but it was much more portable than a laptop. While he was waiting for his food, he tuned in to the cameras that were trained on the barn conversion.

Now it was daylight, Vance could see much more clearly. The area that had been blacked out in the night was revealed as a separate unit within the barn – a sort of self-contained guest flat with a tiny kitchen and bathroom of its own. A door led outside and, on the opposite wall, another presumably led into the main living area of the barn. At any rate, there was a door in a corresponding position there.

But that wasn’t the most interesting element in the quadrant. So close to the camera that it was only possible to see the top of his tousled grey-blond head and one shoulder, a man sat at a long desk. The camera angle wasn’t very helpful, but Vance could just make out the corner of a keyboard and the top edge of a computer monitor. Further along the desk was another keyboard, set in front of a pair of large monitors. It was impossible to make out any detail on the screens, but Vance thought it was probably computer program code. The man wasn’t moving much; in all likelihood he was doing something on the computer.

There was no sign of life anywhere else in the barn. The duvet had been thrown untidily over the bed, and the linen basket was overflowing, a T-shirt hanging over the edge. So the woman wasn’t around. Never mind, Vance thought. He had plenty of time. He closed the window as his food arrived and put the tablet to one side while he tucked in. After years of prison food, any meal would have seemed a treat, but this was a genuine delight. He took his time, then indulged himself with a bowl of apple crumble and thick custard.

By the time he left, the pub had filled with customers. Nobody looked twice at him as he weaved through the throng at the bar and back out to the car park. About half of the men looked like they belonged to the same sartorial club as him. He relaxed into the car, admitting to himself that he had been a little tense on this first public outing. But it had all gone perfectly.

Twenty minutes later, he drove past the converted barn that was the focus of his interest. About half a mile beyond it, he parked on a grass verge rutted with tyre tracks. He took out the tablet and waited for the page to load and refresh. In the short time since he’d left the pub, everything had changed. The man was standing by the kitchen range stirring a pan on the stove, moving rhythmically as if to music. Vance wished he had a sound feed. By the time it had occurred to him, it had been too late to set it up.

Then the bathroom door opened and the woman emerged, dressed in the black and white of a barrister who’s just spent the morning in court. She ran a hand over her head, pulling off some sort of clip and letting her hair tumble over her shoulders. She shrugged out of her jacket and threw it over the banister. She kicked off her low heels and sashayed over to the man, keeping the same beat in her movements. She came up behind him and put her arms round his waist, snuggling into his back. He reached up over his shoulder with his free hand and rumpled her hair.

The woman stepped away and took a loaf out of the bread bin. Knife from the block, wooden board from a recess, basket from a deep drawer. A few strokes of the blade and she placed a basket of bread on the table as the man fetched bowls from a cupboard and ladled a chunky soup into them. They sat down and set about their lunch.

Vance reclined the car seat a little. He needed to wait for the right moment, and that might take a while. But that was OK. He’d waited years for this. He was good at waiting.

Carol took her time reading the Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times’ splash. Sometimes when a story leaked, it staggered into the paper with the wobbly support of rumour and innuendo. This had marched on to the front page with all guns blazing. Penny Burgess had the key elements for a strong story, and she hadn’t put a foot wrong. Well, not unless you counted exploiting the deaths of three women to sell newspapers. But why would it matter, this final exploitation of women whose lives had, in their different ways, been exemplars of the way lives could be so cheaply used? Carol tried not to give in to a familiar disgust and failed.

‘Someone’s leaked,’ Carol said. ‘Comprehensively.’

‘Yeah, and we all know who,’ Paula said bitterly. ‘First they slag us off, then when you call them on it, some resentful little shit decides to try and shaft us like this.’ She stabbed a finger at the paper. ‘Never mind that we wanted it kept close for solid operational reasons. Getting a dig in at the Minorities Integration Team obviously matters more than catching a serial killer.’

Tony took the paper from her and read carefully. ‘She doesn’t even make the assumption that these are sexual homicides,’ he said. ‘That’s interesting. Looks like she was satisfied with what she got from her source without implying there’s more to it.’

‘Fucking Penny Burgess,’ Chris said.

‘Isn’t that what Kevin used to do?’ Sam asked of nobody in particular.

‘Shut up,’ Paula snapped.

‘Yes, Sam. If you can’t be helpful, be silent,’ Carol said. ‘This means that we can’t actually trust Northern with any leads we’re developing. We can still get their uniforms to do the grunt work – door-to-door, showing photos around, that sort of thing. But anything else, we play very close to our chests.’

Stacey emerged from behind her screens with a glossy print in her hands. ‘Does that mean we keep stuff off the whiteboards?’ she said.

‘What sort of stuff are we talking about here?’ Carol could feel the dull beat of a headache starting behind her eyes. Too many decisions, too much pressure, too many balls to juggle; West Mercia was acquiring more of a gloss with every passing day. She did not expect to crave a stiff drink before noon in her office in Worcester. That was not the least of her reasons for moving.

Stacey turned the print round so they could all see it. ‘Traffic-light camera two hundred metres from Dances With Foxes,’ she said. ‘Heading away from town.’ The colour print showed a Toyota that could have been red or maroon, the number plate clear enough to read. The passenger looked like a woman, long hair evident. The driver’s face was half-hidden beneath a baseball cap; what was visible wasn’t clear enough for ID.

‘Is this our guy?’

‘It’s the right time frame. This particular car does not feature on the traffic cam before Dances With Foxes, but it pops up here. So it either came from the club, the carpet superstore next door, or the sunbed-and-nail salon beyond that. I don’t think either of them is open at that time of night. So it’s almost certain that this car came from Dances With Foxes. Two other cars have the same movement pattern in the time window, but neither of them has a passenger. I would say the weight of probability is that this is the car of the man who drove Leanne Considine from the lap-dancing club.’

Stacey always delivered her reports as if she was in the witness box. Carol loved the clarity, though she would sometimes have preferred more adamantine certainty. ‘Great job, Stacey,’ she said. ‘Anything from the plates?’

‘They’re fakes,’ Stacey said succinctly. ‘They belong to a Nissan that was scrapped six months ago.’

‘What about enhancing the driver’s face?’

‘I don’t think there’s enough visible to make it worthwhile. Certainly not for something we could release and hope to get a result from.’

Sam slammed the flat of his hand on the desk. ‘So it doesn’t get us anywhere.’

‘It tells us that the man in the car is almost certainly the killer,’ Tony said. ‘If he was just a punter, he wouldn’t go to all the bother of fitting fake plates to his car. That speaks to forward planning.’

Stacey turned to Sam and bestowed one of her rare smiles on him. ‘Actually, Sam, I don’t think it’s a dead end. We need to come at it laterally, that’s all. Like everywhere else in the UK, Bradfield has an extensive Automatic Number Plate Recognition CCTV network. These days, traffic cops and the security services track car movements on main roads all round the country. On A-roads, they can latch on to any car and follow it in real time. Or as near as damn it. And here’s the killer: all those detailed vehicle movements are stored for five years in the National ANPR Data Centre so they can be analysed for intelligence. Or used as evidence. All we have to do is ask for any records for that plate number after the date the Nissan was scrapped. That could practically lead us to his front door. Or at least give us a good enough likeness for somebody who knows him to recognise him and come forward.’ Her smile broadened. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’

‘Beautiful? It’s better than beautiful,’ Carol said. ‘Can you contact them, Stacey? Impress them with the urgency. Life at stake, all the usual. We need this yesterday.’ The headache was in retreat. As always in this job, a little good news went a very long way. ‘We’re on to something, guys. And this time, it stays inside these four walls.’

29

After the soup, the cheese and biscuits and fruit. Waste of time, all that healthy eating, Vance thought. They were going to be dead soon, regardless of the quality of their diet. He shifted in his seat, trying to get more comfortable. If they both went back to work, it would be a while before he had the chance to take them by surprise. It could be hours. But that was OK. He was from the last generation to believe in deferred pleasure. He knew that all good things come to those who wait. It sounded like one of those mnemonics schoolkids learned – Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, or Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. For him, it had become a mantra.

But this time, he’d guessed wrong. When they finished eating, they loaded their plates into the dishwasher. Then the woman turned to the man and ran her hand over the front of his cargo pants, stepping into him as she did so. His head tipped back and his hands found her breasts, gently moving his palms over them like a mime pretending to meet a window. She kissed his throat and he pulled her close in a tight embrace, pulling her blouse out of her skirt and running one hand up to find skin, caressing her backside with the other. She took a couple of steps forward, making him back up towards the stairs.

They let go of each other. She pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it to the floor. In turn, he unzipped her skirt and she stepped clear of it. ‘Oh my,’ Jacko breathed, seeing her stockings and suspenders. Sex had been the last thing on his mind, but he was already growing hard at the unwitting show the couple were staging for him.

He struggled upright in his seat, realising this could be his best opportunity. If they were fucking each other’s brains out, they wouldn’t be paying much attention to anything else. He grabbed a small holdall from the passenger footwell then got out of the car, still clutching the tablet, and set off on foot towards the barn. There was a path from the road to the main door. He’d seen it on Google Earth. Half his attention was on the screen, the other half on the terrain.

By the time he’d found the path, Vance had had to change screen views because they had made it upstairs to the gallery, a trail of clothing left behind. She was still wearing her stockings and suspender belt, he was down to one sock. Vance stumbled onwards, unable to stop watching as she kneeled on the bed and took his erect cock in her mouth. His hands were in her hair, then he was gently pushing her away, rolling her on to her stomach and entering her from behind, hands on her breasts, mouth biting her shoulder.

Vance broke into an awkward run. This was too good a chance to miss. The door, of course, was unlocked. This was the countryside, in the middle of the day. Nobody locked their doors. He opened it silently then kicked off his shoes. He stepped inside and suddenly the screen had a soundtrack of groans and grunts and half-swallowed words. Vance put down the tablet then took a pair of latex gloves out of the holdall and put them on. Next he took out the same knife that had worked so well on Terry. Noiselessly he mounted the stairs.

When his head cleared the stairway, he could see there was no need for silence. They were fucking like their lives depended on it, and Vance could feel his cock pressing hard against his clothes. Jesus, it had been so long since he had fucked a woman. For a mad moment, he thought about killing the man and taking his place. That would be the fuck of a lifetime. Then caution tripped in. Too many risks, too many chances for things to go horribly wrong. Hard enough to restrain a terrified woman with two strong arms, never mind one.

He climbed the remaining stairs, moving with ease and confidence. He was always at his best in situations where he’d planned ahead. But this was working out even better than he’d expected. He came up behind the couple just as the man moved into the final stages, his buttocks pumping, his breath coming in gasps. She was yelling too, pushing against him, her hand between her legs as she worked to bring their orgasms together.

Vance allowed himself to fall forward on top of them, his good arm snaking round under the woman’s throat. He ripped the blade from one side to the other before either of his victims had even realised what was happening. Blood began to gush from her throat as Vance grabbed the man’s hair with his prosthetic hand and pulled his head back. The man was panicking now, trying to buck Vance off. But the elements of surprise and control were against him. Vance dragged the knife across his throat and at once there was blood everywhere. He stepped back and flipped the man on to his back. The blood foamed and sprayed and fountained from the carotid arteries, driven higher and faster by the increased blood pressure provoked by the vigorous sex. His eyes rolled in panic, then dulled in seconds.

Vance rolled the woman over. She was already beyond help but the blood still spewed out of her neck, her skin visibly paling as he watched. He quickly stripped off his blood-soaked clothes and stood over her, hard and ready. He knew she was dying or dead, but life was so close, this wouldn’t be some weird perversion. Because he wasn’t a pervert. He was very clear about that. He didn’t enjoy killing and he certainly had no interest in necrophilia.

But still. The blood was amazing. And it wasn’t the killing that had aroused him, after all. She’d been responsible for that while she was alive. And yet … He didn’t want to look at that wound and the almost severed head. Her boyfriend had had the right idea. Vance turned her back on her stomach, then, slick with the blood of both his victims, he lowered himself on top of her.

30

Tony followed Carol into her office and hovered in the doorway. ‘I’ll head off home, then,’ he said. ‘Now Penny Burgess has her story, I don’t suppose she’ll be bugging me any more.’

Carol gave him a shrewd look as she sat down. ‘You seemed to be unsurprised by anything in Penny’s story,’ she said. ‘Or by what Stacey was working on.’

Tony’s smile betrayed his nervousness. He knew he should have kept his mouth shut. ‘I guess I’m getting better at keeping my reactions hidden.’

‘Or else you knew everything already.’

He shrugged, trying to look casual. ‘Most of these investigations follow the same basic patterns. You know that better than me.’

‘I suppose,’ she said, without conviction. A movement in the squad room caught her eye and she said, ‘Oh, shit. It’s Blake. And you’re not supposed to be here.’

‘I’m here to talk about Vance,’ Tony said indignantly. ‘That’s Home Office business. Nothing to do with him.’ But he knew that wouldn’t matter if Carol’s boss had come looking for a fight.

Blake was headed straight for them, his expression serious, his pink-and-white skin flushed around the eyes. Carol stood up as he reached the threshold. The Chief Constable nodded at Tony. ‘Dr Hill. I wasn’t expecting to see you.’ There was a surprising lack of hostility in his attitude.

‘I’m working with the Home Office on the Jacko Vance escape. I needed to talk to DCI Jordan. But I’ll be off now,’ Tony said, easing round Blake, hoping to get out before the trouble started.

Blake’s eyes wrinkled in a pained expression. ‘Actually, Dr Hill, I’d rather you stayed.’

Tony and Carol shared a quick glance of bafflement. He couldn’t remember Blake ever welcoming his presence, even when he’d been unequivocally on the side of the angels. Tony edged back into the room.

‘Could you close the door, please?’

Now Tony was seriously worried. Blake was behaving like a man on a grave mission. If that mission involved Tony as well as Carol, the overwhelming chances were that somebody was dead. He closed the door and moved round to lean against the filing cabinet, his arms folded across his chest.

Blake smoothed his perfectly barbered hair in a nervous gesture. ‘I’m afraid I have some rather bad news,’ he said, the West Country burr in his voice more noticeable than usual.

Carol’s eyes flitted to the squad room. Tony could see her checking. All present and correct, apart from Kevin. ‘Has something happened to DS Matthews?’ she said, formality disguising fear.

Blake looked momentarily wrong-footed. ‘DS Matthews?’ He clearly had no idea who she was talking about. ‘No, nothing to do with any of your officers. Carol, I’m afraid there’s been an … incident.’

‘What do you mean, an incident? Where? What’s happened?’ Now agitation was slipping out from behind Carol’s professional mask. Tony straightened up. He could see an ominous sheen of sweat on Blake’s upper lip.

‘Your brother and his partner – there’s been an incursion in their home. A violent incursion.’

Tony felt the shock in his chest, knew it must be worse for Carol. She was on her feet now, eyes wide, mouth moving without a sound issuing from it.

‘Are they alive?’ Tony said, crossing to Carol and putting his arm round her shoulders. It didn’t come naturally to him, but he knew how people were supposed to behave in a crisis. He felt more for Carol than any other human being; the least he could do was what was expected of someone who cared.

Blake looked hangdog. He shook his head. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Carol. They’re both dead.’

Carol slumped against Tony, shivering like a wet dog. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, no.’ The pitch and volume decreased with each word till she was virtually growling the last ‘no’. He could feel the terrible tension vibrating in her as he held her close. She caught her breath, teetering on the edge of a sob, but somehow dragged herself back from the edge.

‘What happened?’ Tony asked, driven towards the story as he always was.

Blake signalled with his eyes that he didn’t want to answer.

‘Tell me what happened,’ Carol cried, turning back to face the Chief Constable. ‘You have no right to keep this from me.’

Blake wrung his hands. Tony had heard the expression, but he’d never seen so vivid a representation of it. ‘The facts I have are very sketchy. Your brother and his partner—’

‘Michael and Lucy,’ Carol said. ‘They have names. Michael and Lucy.’

Blake had a hunted look about him now. ‘I apologise. Michael and Lucy were surprised by an intruder who attacked them both with a knife. It appears to have been very sudden.’

‘This happened at the barn? During the night?’ Tony said. He’d been there for dinner three or four times with Carol. He couldn’t picture it as a crime scene. He certainly couldn’t imagine anyone approaching in broad daylight without being spotted.

‘As I said, I have very few details. But the officers at the scene believe the crime took place within the last couple of hours.’

‘Who found them?’ Carol said, attempting to cling to composure. She was defending herself now, building a wall of ice between herself and the rest of the world. Tony had seen her bulldoze her way through an extreme personal crisis before. He had also seen the aftermath, when the wheels well and truly came off.

‘I don’t know, Carol. I’m sorry. I thought it better to share what little I know as soon as possible rather than wait for more details.’ Blake looked at Tony, seeking help. But Tony was as much at a loss as he was. He couldn’t make sense of what he was hearing. He felt numb, but he knew the impact would hit him before long. Two people he had known were dead. Murdered. And it was hard to resist believing that he knew the culprit.

Carol drew away from Tony and collected her coat from its peg. ‘I need to go there.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Blake said, trying to exert authority.

‘I don’t care what you think,’ she said. ‘My brother, my choice.’ Her voice cracked on the words. She returned to her filing cabinet and took two miniatures of vodka from the drawer. One after the other, she swallowed them without pausing. As the alcohol hit, she clenched her jaw, blinking hard. Then she visibly collected herself and said, ‘Tony, I need you to drive me.’

‘If you’re determined to go, I can have an officer drive you,’ Blake said.

‘I want to be with someone I know,’ Carol said. ‘Tony, will you drive me? Or shall I get Paula to do it?’

It was the last thing he felt like doing. But choice didn’t come into it. ‘I’ll drive you,’ he said.

‘Obviously, you must take whatever time you need,’ Blake said as Carol pulled her coat on and started past him. She moved gingerly, as if recovering from a bad tackle on the sports field. Tony hovered behind her, not sure whether to put his arm around her or to leave her alone. Paula, Chris and Sam stared openly, bemused at what news could have so diminished their boss.

‘Tell them,’ Tony said over his shoulder to Blake as they reached the door. ‘They need to know.’ He nodded towards Chris. If he was right about what had happened to Michael and Lucy, she needed to be aware. ‘Especially Chris.’ He saw the shock on her face, but had no time to deal with it. Carol was the person who mattered now.

31

Every regular pairing has its own codified car behaviour. One always drives, the other is invariably the passenger, or the driving is shared along prearranged demarcation lines, or one drives except when they’ve been drinking. The passenger navigates or stays out of it; the passenger criticises the driving either directly, or indirectly, by drawing their breath in sharply whenever there is the faintest risk of disaster; the passenger falls asleep. Whatever the pattern, it takes a deep crisis to alter it.

Carol passively handing over her car keys and allowing Tony to drive was a measure of how stricken she was. Where she was a confident, assured and fast driver, he was nervous, hesitant and inconsistent. It had never become second nature to him. He still had to think about his manoeuvres and, given how easily he was distracted by thoughts of patients and killers, Carol always complained she felt like she was taking her life in her hands when she had to be his passenger. Today, her life was the least of her concerns.

He programmed the satnav and set off through the late afternoon traffic. Even though the recession had cleared some of the blockages in the city’s rush-hour arteries, their progress was slow. Normally, Carol would have sworn at the traffic and found some route through the back doubles that might not have saved time but had the merit of movement. That afternoon, she simply stared out of the window, eyes blank. She had closed down, like an animal hibernating through the worst of the winter, building up its strength for when it mattered.

Once before he had seen her like this. She’d been raped and brutalised, battered and bruised, beaten but not quite defeated. She’d protected herself with an inward retreat just like this. She’d locked herself away for months, denying herself any comfort that didn’t come out of a bottle, keeping friends and family beyond the curtain wall. Even Tony, with all the skills at his disposal, had barely been able to stay in touch. Just when he’d feared she was slipping away completely, the Job had saved her. It had given her something to live for that he hadn’t been able to provide. It was just another instance of his many failings, he thought, never stopping to ask whether she believed that too.

They’d barely cleared Bradfield when her phone rang. She declined the call without even looking at the screen. ‘I can’t talk to anyone,’ she said.

‘Not even me?’ He glanced away from the road to check her expression.

She’d given him a look he couldn’t fathom. There was nothing related to affection and plenty of ice. She said nothing, simply curling closer into herself. Tony focused on the driving, trying to put himself in her shoes and failing. He had no siblings. He could only imagine what it must be like to have that pool of shared memories at the heart of your childhood. Something like that could fortify you against the world. It could also be the first step on a lifetime journey of distorted relationships and twisted personalities. But everything Carol had said about her brother put them in the former camp.

When he’d first worked with Carol, all those years ago when profiling was in its early stages and she was one of his first champions, she and Michael had shared a loft apartment in a converted warehouse at the heart of the city. Very nineties. Tony remembered how Michael had helped them, offering his expertise in software development. He also remembered the unsettling period when he’d wondered whether Michael himself might be the killer. Luckily, he’d been quite wrong about that. And later, when he’d got to know Michael better, he’d felt embarrassed to have entertained so absurd a thought. Then he recalled how many killers had confounded their nearest and dearest and he felt less bad about his suspicions.

He remembered the first time he’d met Lucy. He’d come back to Bradfield after a brief and ill-fitting excursion into academic life; Carol had returned after the trauma that had nearly destroyed her. She’d moved back into the loft apartment which Michael had been sharing with Lucy. Five minutes in their company and Tony could understand why Carol had only ever seen that as a temporary solution. Some couples fitted so well together, it was impossible to imagine what could possibly drive a wedge between them. After an evening with Michael and Lucy, it was easy to picture them forty years ahead, still together, still delighting in each other’s company, still teasing each other.

And so Carol had moved into the self-contained basement flat in Tony’s house and eventually Michael and Lucy had cashed in on the twenty-first-century property boom and translated the loft into their breathtaking barn conversion on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. One of the reasons for the move had been their desire to start a family away from the pressures of city life. Tony had suspected there would be a lot more pressures, bringing up kids in the middle of nowhere, when every activity from school to play would involve a drive. But nobody had asked him. And now they were dead. The dream of children had died with them.

The smug voice of the satnav told him to take the next turn on the right. To his surprise, they were almost there. He had no recollection of most of the drive and wondered whether that had improved his driving.

They rounded the next bend and the world changed. Instead of a rural landscape where a dozen greens shaded into grey drystone walls, they’d arrived at a destination that seemed all too urban. An assortment of liveried police vehicles, the mortuary van and several unmarked cars lined the road. A white tent extended from the rear of the house, where Tony remembered the main door was. Paradoxically, it seemed more bleak than the surrounding landscape. He braked hard to avoid hitting the nearest car and pulled in abruptly behind it.

It had taken less than an hour from BMP headquarters to the barn, but Carol looked years older. Her skin had lost its bloom, the incipient lines on her face had deepened and grown firm. A soft moan escaped from her lips. ‘I so wanted to believe Blake got it wrong,’ she said.

‘Do you want me to go and find the SIO?’ Tony said, anxious to help but not being sure how to. All the years he’d known her and now she needed him most of all, he was all at sea.

Carol drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I need to see this for myself,’ she said, opening the door to a blast of chill wind.

They’d barely got out of the car when a uniformed officer with a clipboard bore down on them. ‘This is a restricted area,’ he said. ‘You can’t park here.’

Tony stepped forward. ‘This is DCI Jordan. And I’m Dr Tony Hill from the Home Office. Where will we find the SIO?’

The young PC looked perplexed. Then his face cleared as he worked out the solution to his dilemma. ‘ID?’ he said hopefully.

Carol leaned against the car and closed her eyes. Tony took the PC by the elbow and steered him away. ‘That’s her brother in there. She’s a DCI with Bradfield. She’s entitled to every bit of courtesy you can find right now. You’re not going to get into trouble for taking us to the SIO, but I will personally do my level best to make your life a fucking misery if you don’t.’ There was nothing conciliatory in his smile.

Before the situation could develop into a conflict, a tall cadaverous man with a prominent eyebrow ridge and a beaky prow of a nose emerged from the tent and caught sight of them. He waved and shouted, ‘PC Grimshaw? Bring DCI Jordan over here.’

The weight of the world removed from his shoulders, the PC led them past the cars and into Michael and Lucy’s drive. The tall man strode towards them. ‘You know him?’ Tony asked.

‘DCI John Franklin,’ Carol said. ‘We worked together, sort of, on the RigMarole murders. One of the bodies was on his patch. He didn’t like me. Nobody from West Yorkshire likes me. Or you either, come to that. Not after we made them look like fuckwits over Shaz Bowman.’

Franklin reached them, his trench coat flapping with the speed of his approach. ‘DCI Jordan,’ he said awkwardly. He had one of those Yorkshire accents that made every word feel like a bludgeon to the head. However hard he tried, sympathy was always going to elude him. ‘I’m very sorry.’ He looked Tony up and down. ‘We’ve not met,’ he said.

‘I’m Dr Tony Hill. From the Home Office.’

Franklin’s bushy eyebrows rose. ‘The profiler. Whose idea was it to bring you in?’

‘I’m not here in an official capacity,’ Tony said. ‘I’m here as a personal friend of DCI Jordan. I also knew the victims. So, if there’s anything I can do to help … ’

Franklin’s expression was sceptical. A scatter of rain blew across the bare grass surrounding the barn and Carol shivered. ‘We’ve got a mobile incident room coming, but for now … We can talk in my car.’

‘I want to see them,’ Carol said.

Franklin looked worried. ‘I don’t think that’s a great idea. It’s not the way you’d want to remember anybody you cared about.’

She seemed physically to gather herself together. ‘I’m not a child, Mr Franklin. I’ve seen crime scenes that would make most officers lose their appetite for days. I’ve got expertise here. And I know the ground. I’ve got more chance of spotting something that’s out of kilter than any of your officers.’ She indicated Tony with a nod of her head. ‘And he reads a crime scene like you read a newspaper.’

Franklin rubbed his jaw. ‘You’re an interested party, though. The defence would make hay with that.’

‘Do you have any idea what happened here?’ Tony said abruptly.

Franklin bridled. ‘An intruder walked in on the couple. They were in bed, apparently having sex—’

‘Making love,’ Carol butted in. ‘With those two, it was making love. You have no idea how much they cared about each other.’ Her expression was fierce.

Franklin took a moment to rein himself in. ‘As you say. He attacked them from behind and cut both of their throats.’ He raised his eyes to the hills. Tony reckoned he wanted to look anywhere except at Carol. ‘There’s a huge amount of blood. They pretty much bled out.’

Carol turned to Tony and gripped his arm. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought so ever since Blake broke the news. I hoped I was wrong.’

‘But you’re not wrong. You’re too bloody late with it, but you’re not wrong.’

Franklin gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Do you mind telling me what the pair of you are talking about?’

‘Jacko Vance,’ Carol said. ‘That’s who you’re looking for.’

Franklin tried to keep his incredulity under control. ‘Jacko Vance? He only busted out of prison down in the Midlands yesterday. How’s he going to be up here? And why would Jacko Vance murder your brother and his girlfriend?’

‘Because he thinks we’re the reason he spent twelve years in jail,’ Tony said. ‘He’s not big on acknowledging responsibility for his crimes. I thought he would take reprisals against the team who put him away, and his ex-wife.’ He gave Carol a pleading look. ‘I didn’t think he would take his revenge like this.’

Franklin pulled out a pack of cigarettes and bought time by firing one up. ‘So you’ve no evidence as such?’

‘Presumably the SOCOs will find something,’ Carol said. ‘Now, will you let me see the scene?’

Franklin shrugged. ‘I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Likely this is just a horrible coincidence.’ He turned his collar up against a more brutal squall of rain. ‘Come into the tent, we’ll get you suited up.’ He chivvied them ahead of him into the tent, shouting past them, ‘Somebody find suits for the DCI and the profiler.’

As they went through the awkward scramble to get into the white paper suits, Tony tried to speak to Carol. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ he said.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She turned her back to him, pulling on a pair of bootees.

‘I really don’t think it’s a good idea. You wouldn’t let a victim’s family see the body of someone they loved actually at the crime scene.’

‘I’m a cop. I’m used to this.’ She snapped the elastic over her foot and stood up, easing her arms into sleeves.

‘You’re not used to seeing someone you love like this. Let me go first, at least.’

‘What – you’re saying you don’t care enough for it to matter to you?’

‘No, of course that’s not what I’m saying. This is going to give you nightmares, Carol.’

She paused and gave him a level stare. ‘And what kind of nightmares do you think it will give me if I don’t see it for myself? It’s precisely because I know what these scenes look like that I have to see it for myself. Otherwise my imagination will fill in the blanks. And how much sleep do you think I’ll get then?’

He had no answer to that. She was ready before him and she didn’t wait, walking straight across the raised metal plates that indicated the route into the crime scene. Tony scrambled to catch up with her, only succeeding in falling over as he struggled with the suit. By the time he made it past the front door, she was already out of sight.

The main area of the barn looked uncannily normal. Lucy’s jacket hung over the balustrade, her shoes kicked off nearby. There was a T-shirt in a crumpled heap near the table and a skirt pooled by the bottom of the stairs. Apart from the metallic and meaty stink of blood, there was no sign of violence down here.

Tony looked up the stairs and gasped at the sight. The ceiling above the gallery was splashed and streaked and puddled with bright scarlet. It looked as if someone had thrown a bucket of red paint at the roof. ‘You slashed the carotids,’ he said softly. He climbed the stairs, careful to stand only on the protective plates.

The scene that met him at the top of the stairs was grotesque. Michael lay on his back on a bed soaked crimson. Lucy was face down next to him, her hair a web of clotted dark red. There was a dried white streak of sperm across her lower back. Blood stained the walls, the floor and the ceiling. Carol stood at the foot of the bed, colour flooding up her neck to her face. He wanted to weep – not for Michael and Lucy, but for Carol.

‘There’s a photograph missing,’ she said bluntly to the SOCO who was working one side of the room. ‘On the wall, there. You can see the outline in the blood. It was a family photo. Michael and Lucy and me. And my mum and dad. It was taken two years ago at my cousin’s wedding. Michael said it was the best photo of all of us that he’d ever seen. He got prints made for me and our parents, and he hung his copy up here where it caught the morning light.’

She turned and looked directly at Tony. Because of the mask she was wearing all he could see were her eyes, their grey-blue sparkling with unshed tears. ‘Now that bastard Vance has my family photo. He’s taken my brother and he’s taken the picture to gloat. Either that or to make targeting my parents easier.’ Her voice was rising, fury taking over from the shock that had cradled her since Blake had broken the news.

‘This is your fault,’ she raged at him. ‘You dragged me into this in the first place. It was your fight, you and your baby profilers. But you dragged me into it, put me on the front line when it came to nailing Jacko Vance.’

The assault was shocking. Carol had never attacked him like this in all the years they’d known each other. They’d argued on occasion, but it had never gone nuclear like this. They’d always drawn back from the brink. Tony had always believed it was because they both understood the power they had to hurt each other. But all those barriers were gone now, torn down in the wake of what Vance had done here. ‘You wanted to be involved,’ he said weakly, knowing as he spoke that truth was no defence here.

‘And you never tried to stop me, did you? You never thought there might be consequences for me. You never have. All the times I’ve ended up risking everything for you. Because you needed me.’ Now the rage had a mocking edge. ‘And now this. You sat there and did your fucking risk assessment yesterday and you never once suggested that Vance might go after the people I love. Why, Tony? Did you not think I would want to know something like that? Or did it just not occur to you?’

He’d known physical pain. He’d been trussed up naked and left for dead on a concrete floor. He’d faced a killer with a pistol. But none of it hurt as much as Carol’s accusations. ‘It didn’t—’

‘Look at you. Finally, you look upset. Is that what’s bothering you now?’ She stepped close to him and pushed him hard in the chest, making him stumble backwards. ‘The fact that you didn’t predict this? Didn’t work it out? That you’re not as smart as you thought you were? The great Tony Hill fucked up and now my brother’s dead?’ She pushed him again and he had to twist away to avoid falling down the stairs. ‘Because that’s what’s happened. You’re supposed to be the one who can figure out what bastards like Vance are going to do next. But you failed.’ She waved an arm at the scene on the bed. ‘Look at it, Tony. Look at it till you can’t close your fucking eyes without seeing it. You did that, Tony. Just as much as Jacko Vance.’ Her hands balled into fists and he flinched.

‘Pitiful,’ she snarled at him. And turned on her heel, almost running down the stairs. Tony looked down and saw Franklin shaking his head at him. He realised everybody in the barn had stopped what they were doing to stare at him and Carol.

‘Can I ask where you’re going?’ Franklin said, putting out a hand to slow Carol as she drew level with him.

‘Somebody needs to tell my parents,’ she said. ‘And somebody needs to be with them to make sure Vance doesn’t destroy them too.’

‘Can you leave the address with Sergeant Moran over there?’ He pointed to a table set up in a corner of the tent where a woman in a puffa jacket and baseball cap sat at a laptop. ‘We’ll ask the local lads to sit outside till you get there.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You need to be liaising with West Mercia about the hunt for Vance too. I’ll give the details of the investigating officers to Sergeant Moran.’

Tony forced himself out of his frozen state of shock and called down to her. ‘Carol – wait for me.’

‘You’re not coming with me,’ she said. Her voice was like the slam of a door. And he was on the wrong side.

32

The office was a good place not to be. The shadow of what had happened to Carol hung over them all like a pall, Chris thought as she drove down the spine of the Pennines and into Derbyshire. She sipped coffee as she drove. It had cooled to a point where anyone sampling it would have been hard pressed to say whether it was warmed-up iced coffee or leftover hot coffee. She didn’t care. All she wanted it for was its capacity to keep her awake. She was beginning to feel welded into the car seat after yesterday’s excursion to Kay Hallam’s mansion.

In an ideal world, she’d have got her hands on a copy of Geoff Whittle’s banned book about Vance the cop killer and hunkered down in a corner of the office to read it before she went head-to-head with its author. But this seemed to be one of those rare cases where ‘banned and pulped’ meant what it said. There was no readily available copy of Sporting Kill, and even if there had been, there was no time for that kind of homework. Not now that the killing had started. Nobody was blaming Vance publicly yet for the double murder of Michael Jordan and his girlfriend, but everyone in the MIT squad room knew exactly who to hold responsible.

It had taken Stacey approximately six minutes to come up with a current address and phone number for Geoff Whittle, and the information that he seldom left his Derbyshire cottage these days because he was on the waiting list for a hip replacement. Given long enough, Chris suspected Stacey could have found a version of the text online somewhere. But long enough was what she didn’t have.

All these years later and still it felt personal, this pursuit of Vance. Shaz Bowman’s death had changed so much about how Chris viewed herself. It had stripped away the lightness from her, turning her into a more sober and more serious person. She’d stopped looking for love in all the wrong places and made conscious decisions about how she wanted to live, rather than drifting into the next vaguely interesting thing. Working with MIT in Bradfield had offered her the chance to be the kind of copper she’d always imagined she could be. She had no idea how she was going to live up to that now.

The dull browns and greens of the Dark Peak gave way to the broken light grey and silver of the White Peak. Late lambs staggered around, coming right up to the edge of the road that curled down Winnats Pass before skittering away as the car approached. When the sun shone out here it felt like an act of God.

Castleton was a village for tourists and walkers. Chris and her partner came out this way occasionally in the winter with the dogs, enjoying the landscape when it was emptier. Already in late spring, the streets were busy with strolling visitors, stepping off the narrow pavements into the road. Chris took a right in the centre of the village and drove out along the hillside till she came to a huddle of four cottages clinging to the slope. According to Stacey, Whittle lived in the furthest.

Chris parked the car on a grassy verge already churned by tyres and walked back to the house. It was a single-storey cottage built in the local limestone. She reckoned three rooms plus kitchen and bathroom, and not a lot of light. Out here, you could make a small fortune renting out a place like this as a holiday cottage. But as a place to live full-time, Chris reckoned it had major downsides, especially if you weren’t able to get about. Obviously Geoff Whittle’s excursion into true crime hadn’t been as profitable as he’d hoped.

On closer inspection, the cottage was less prepossessing. The paint on the window frames was flaking, weeds were sprouting between the flagstones on the path and the net curtains at the window sagged precariously. Chris raised a heavy black iron knocker and let it crash back into place.

‘Coming,’ a voice from inside called out. There was a long pause, some shuffling and banging, then the door inched open, the aperture limited by a heavy chain. A head topped with wiry white hair appeared in the gap, peering up through grimy glasses. ‘Who are you?’ the man asked in a surprisingly strong voice.

Chris flipped open her ID. ‘Detective Sergeant Devine. Mr Whittle, is it?’

‘Are you my police protection?’ He seemed indignant. ‘What’s taken you so long? He’s been out on the streets since yesterday and I’ve not had a moment’s rest since I saw it on the news. And how come I heard it on the news and not from one of your lot?’

‘You think Vance is after you?’ Chris tried not to sound as baffled as she felt.

‘Well, of course he is. My book told the truth about him for the first time. He managed to suppress it after the fact, but he swore at the time he’d get his own back on me.’ He almost closed the door so he could release the chain. ‘You’d better come in.’

‘I’m not here to protect you,’ Chris said as she followed him into a dim and cluttered kitchen that seemed to double as an office.

He stopped his lopsided slo-mo shuffle and turned to face her. ‘What do you mean? If you’re not here to protect me, what the hell are you here for?’

‘Information,’ Chris said. ‘Like you said, you told the truth about him. I’m here to pick your brains.’

He gave her a shrewd look. ‘Normally that would cost you. But I can sell the story all round town and make more money that way. “Police seek author’s help to track jailbreak Jacko.” That’ll work nicely. Stick a police-budget-cuts angle on it and I might even manage to flog it to the Guardian. Sit down,’ he said, waving vaguely at a couple of chairs tucked under a pine table. He settled into a high wooden carver at the far end of the table. ‘What did you want to know?’

‘Anything that might help us find Vance,’ Chris said, shifting a pile of newspapers on to the floor so she could sit down. ‘Who he might turn to for help. Where he might go for shelter. That sort of thing.’

Whittle rubbed his chin. Chris could hear the rasp of stubble against his fingers. ‘He was a loner, Vance. Not one for mates. He relied a lot on his producer, but he popped his clogs a few years ago. The only other person he might turn to would be a bloke called Terry Gates. He’s a market trader—’

‘We know about Terry Gates,’ Chris said.

Whittle pulled a face. Chris could see dried saliva encrusted in the corners of his downturned mouth. ‘Then it’s hard to say who,’ he said. ‘Except maybe … ’ He gave Chris a shrewd look. ‘Have you considered his ex-wife?’

‘I thought there was no love lost there,’ Chris said, her interest suddenly quickening.

Whittle gave a throaty chuckle full of phlegm and winked. ‘That’s what she’d like you to believe.’

There was still nothing on the radio about his earlier exploits, which surprised Vance. He’d thought that in a world of 24/7 rolling news, someone would have leaked the double murder to a media contact. He hoped they’d taken him seriously when he’d reported it from a public phone outside the pub where he’d had lunch. It would be ironic if it had been dismissed as a crank call.

Obviously, he hadn’t hung around to see for himself. He had work to do and even though he was convinced of the effectiveness of his disguise, he wasn’t about to take silly chances.

After he’d finished with lovely Lucy, Vance had bundled his bloody clothes into a plastic sack. He’d taken a long hot shower, getting rid of all the traces of his victims. He’d removed the family photo from the wall as a final act intended to freak out Carol Jordan, then dressed downstairs in the clothes he’d brought with him – the trousers of a pinstripe suit and a formal shirt. He swapped the wig he’d arrived with for one that was shorter and differently styled. A better match for Patrick Gordon’s ID. He walked back along the path to his car, taking care not to appear hurried or to show any signs of the elation that was pumping through him. Live with that, Carol Jordan, for the rest of your miserable life. The way he’d had to live every day with what she’d done to him, shut up in a prison where he didn’t belong, surrounded by ugliness and stupidity. Let her discover what it was like to suffer. Only she wouldn’t be able to break out of the prison he’d made for her.

He’d dumped the bloody clothes in an industrial skip behind a hotel near Leeds-Bradford airport before parking the Mercedes in the long-stay car park. Like so many things, the system here had changed since he’d gone inside. Now, you had to take a ticket and hang on to it, paying at some machine somewhere else. He wondered how many dim-witted parking attendants had been made redundant, and how much it had added to the sum of human happiness not to have to deal with the surly bastards.

Vance put on the suit jacket and picked up a briefcase. Then took a bus to the terminal, but instead of making for the checkin desks, he headed towards the car-rental counters. The Mercedes could have been spotted, or picked up on traffic cameras, and he wasn’t taking any chances. Using the Patrick Gordon ID, he hired an anonymous Ford saloon complete with GPS and charged it to an account that ultimately wound its way back to Grand Cayman. The ease of the transaction was something else that had changed for the better. He flirted mildly with the woman behind the counter, but not so much that she’d remember him.

Within twenty minutes, he was on his way, the necessities of vengeance transferred from one vehicle to another. If everything went according to plan, he’d have completed his second act of vengeance within hours. Maybe even his third, if he had a fair wind at his back. The only question in his mind was whether he should book into a motel later, or drive all the way back to Vinton Woods. What luxury, to have such options, he thought. For too long, he’d been trapped without anything but the most basic choices, confined within someone else’s rules. He had so much lost time to make up for, thanks to Carol Jordan and Tony Hill and his bitch of an ex-wife. Still, they were all going to be condemned to a lifetime of suffering. Suffering from which there could be no escape.

Vance smiled at the thought as he pulled into a petrol station. There was true satisfaction in what he was doing. When he was safely installed in his Caribbean villa or his Arabian mansion, he’d be able to look back on this and feed off the sheer pleasure of it for the rest of his life. Knowing his victims still felt the pain would just be the icing on the cake.

33

There was no question of following Carol. Tony stood helpless at the top of the stairs, flayed and gouged by her savagery. It felt as if the bond between them had been ruthlessly severed. He was cast adrift, not least because Carol of all people knew exactly how to cause him maximum damage. She was right, too. She’d given him all her trust, taken wild risks for him, put her life on the line for him. And he’d failed.

He should have considered the bigger picture. But he’d been so sure that he remembered all that was important about Vance. He hadn’t talked to the prison psychologist because he’d dismissed her professional value on the grounds that she’d let herself be seduced by his charm. That didn’t mean she didn’t have something valid to say. He hadn’t talked to the prisoner whose place Vance had taken on the temporary release. He’d been too cocksure to think Vance’s dupe would have any useful insights. He’d left it to Ambrose to do the interviews he should have sat in on, at the very least. It wasn’t arrogance to believe that he’d have got more from them, just cold hard fact. And he’d let himself be distracted by Paula’s desire to have Carol walk out the door in a blaze of glory. It had been a desire he shared. He’d always wanted only the best for Carol. He suspected he’d failed more often than he’d succeeded.

He stood by the stairs, gazing at the macabre spectacle, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. It had to be Vance. Tony had never had any difficulty with the notion of coincidence, but sometimes what your brain told you was happening was exactly the way it was. For this to be random was beyond the bounds of credibility.

There was, of course, another possibility. There usually was.

‘Dr Hill?’ Franklin was shouting his name, calling him back to the here and now.

He turned away from the scene and went downstairs. ‘This wasn’t about sex,’ he said to Franklin, who looked incredulous.

‘What do you mean, it wasn’t about sex? According to the preliminary reports, he killed them when they were having sex and then, after he’d slit her throat, he fucked a dying woman.’ Franklin sounded like a man who couldn’t decide between anger and sarcasm. ‘Can you tell me in what sense that’s not about sex?’

Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘Let me put it this way. Michael and Lucy have been together for ten years or so. If you were trying to catch them having sex so you could get off on killing them while they were in the act, would you choose a Friday after lunch?’ Now it was Tony’s turn for sarcasm. ‘Would you reckon that was the best time to find them fucking each other’s brains out, Chief Inspector? Is that the way it works round here?’

Franklin scowled. ‘When you put it like that … ’

Tony shrugged. ‘I think he just got lucky. He came here to kill them and it turned out much easier than he expected. As for the sex – he’s been banged up for a dozen years. Lucy was an attractive woman. Even in death. And he turned her over, so he wouldn’t have to look at her face.’ He looked at the floor. ‘At what he’d done to her.’

‘How do you know he turned her over? She could have been on her stomach all along.’

‘The blood. If she’d been on her front, the blood couldn’t have sprayed as far as it did outwards and upwards.’

‘Suddenly you’re a blood-spatter specialist as well as a shrink.’ Franklin shook his head.

‘No. But I’ve seen a few crime scenes in my time.’ Tony turned away. ‘Take it or leave it, it’s not about the sex.’

‘So what is it about?’

Tony blinked hard, surprised at the urge towards tears. ‘It’s about payback. Welcome to the wonderful world of Jacko Vance, Chief Inspector.’

Franklin looked uncertain. ‘You seem bloody sure of yourself, doc.’

‘Who found them?’

‘There was an anonymous phone call from a box in a village about fifteen minutes’ drive away. The caller was a male, nothing distinctive about his accent. A local patrol car was dispatched. The door was open, our lads came in.’ The corners of his mouth turned down in sympathy. ‘First time for the pair of them. I doubt they’ll sleep tonight. Does that tell you anything?’

‘It’s Vance. The one murder he did outside his serial murders had the same element of spectacle. What he did then, he’s doing again, now. He’s sending a message. It’s targeted at a specific group of people, just like the last time. And he wants to make sure the message comes through loud and clear. He tipped you off once he was well clear of the crime scene, because he wanted it to be fresh when you got here. He wanted Carol Jordan to see the full horror of what he’d done to the people she loved.’ He felt bitterness like a taste on his tongue. He’d been so slow, so stupid.

Franklin looked unconvinced. ‘You don’t think you’re maybe bigging this up, making yourself a bit too important? Maybe it’s not all about you and DCI Jordan. Maybe it is just a random psycho. Or maybe it’s got something to do with Lucy Bannerman. She was a criminal defence barrister, doc. It’s a job where you piss people off quite regularly.’ His accent thickened, giving even more weight to his words.

‘To the extent where this seems like a reasonable response?’ Tony jerked a thumb upwards.

‘You’re the psychologist. People don’t always deliver… what is it you folk call it? “A proportionate response”? Somebody she should have got off gets sent down … ’ He spread his hands. ‘They order it from inside. Or some toerag on the outside decides topping the brief is a way to earn brownie points.’ He moved towards the tent entrance, reaching for another cigarette. Tony followed him into the open, where a light rain obscured the nearby hills. ‘Alternatively, she got some bastard off – a kiddie fiddler or rapist or something where feelings run high – and some Charles Bronson vigilante weighs in to teach the system a lesson.’ Franklin cupped his hands round the cigarette and lit up, taking in a deep lungful of smoke and exhaling it with a dramatic sigh.

‘In all the years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve never come across the murder of a lawyer because somebody didn’t like the outcome of a case. Not outside TV shows, anyway,’ Tony said. ‘That’s pretty lame as an alternative scenario. And so’s the random psycho. Random psychos tend to be sex killers. And I just explained to you why this wasn’t about sex. Saying it’s about Lucy’s job makes about as much sense as saying it was provoked by the violence in the computer games Michael coded.’

Franklin opened his mouth to say something but he was interrupted by one of the technicians calling from inside the barn. ‘Boss? You need to see this.’

‘What is it?’ Franklin threw his cigarette aside with an irritated air and stomped back inside. Tony followed him, figuring any chance to pick up more information about the case was worth taking.

The techie was pointing to where one of the hammer beams of the roof met the wall. A stepladder stood nearby. ‘It’s almost impossible to see it. I saw a tiny flash of light when I was coming down the stairs. You wouldn’t see it in normal lighting, it’s just because we’ve got the crime-scene lamps up.’

‘I still can’t see what you’re on about,’ Franklin said, screwing up his face and peering into the roof.

‘I went up and had a look. It’s a tiny TV camera. We need to do a full electronic sweep. But it looks like somebody’s been spying on them.’

Franklin gave Tony a scornful look over his shoulder. ‘So much for your theory. Vance was banged up until yesterday morning. There’s no way he could be behind this.’

‘You don’t think so? Talk to Sergeant Ambrose at West Mercia about Vance’s contacts with the outside world.’

‘If it makes you any happier, doc, I’ll bear all this in mind,’ Franklin said, condescending. ‘But I’m not putting my next month’s wages on Jacko Vance.’

‘We’ll see whose DNA turns up in the sperm on Lucy’s back.’ Frustrated and fed up, Tony turned away and began to clamber out of his paper suit. There was nothing more for him here. Franklin might pretend to have an open mind, but it was a pretence. He was convinced the answer to this crime lay in Lucy Bannerman’s professional life, and that would be the thrust of his investigation until the undeniable forensics came up with something more than Tony’s conviction based only on experience and instinct.

He was halfway back to the road when he realised Carol had left him stranded.

34

In a little over twenty-four hours, life had been turned on its head for Micky Morgan. News of her ex-husband’s escape had arrived at her farmhouse door in the shape of half a dozen cops who looked like they’d escaped from some TV crime drama. Black outfits, forage caps, stab vests and faces like slabs of granite. Micky was accustomed to being admired and it was disconcerting to have men’s eyes slide off her and show more apparent interest in the layout of her kitchen and back yard. The one in charge introduced himself as Calman. She assumed it was his surname but was too discomfited to ask.

In spite of the fact that her kitchen was big enough for a dozen stable lads to sit round the table eating breakfast, the men in black seemed to fill all the available space. ‘I don’t understand,’ Micky said. ‘How did he escape?’

‘I don’t have much detail,’ Calman said. ‘Only that he impersonated another prisoner who was due to go out on day release.’

‘And he was in Oakworth? Jesus, that’s no distance from here.’

‘It’s about forty-five miles. Which is one of the reasons why we’re so concerned for your safety.’

Betsy had entered from outside just in time to hear Calman’s response. She pulled off her riding hat and shook her head to free her hair. Her face was flushed from riding out and she looked ridiculously fresh compared to the storm troopers mooching round their kitchen. ‘What’s about forty-five miles?’ she said, automatically going to Micky’s side and putting a hand on her partner’s arm.

‘Oakworth Prison. Which, apparently, is where Jacko has just escaped from.’ Micky flashed a look at Betsy that signalled caution. ‘These officers are here to offer us protection.’

‘Do we need protection?’ Betsy said. ‘Why would Jacko want to hurt us?’

‘My orders, Ms Thorne,’ Calman said.

He knows exactly what the set-up is here, Micky thought. He’s been briefed. Someone told him about the subterfuge of marriage we concocted between Jacko and me to save my TV career from the homo-phobic tantrums of the tabloids. Is he here to protect us or to keep an eye on us? ‘I agree with Betsy,’ Micky said.

But that had been before Calman had broken the news of a double murder in Yorkshire that his bosses believe might be Vance’s handiwork. This time, the officer by his side in the kitchen had a gun, a big black affair the like of which she’d never seen outside a TV screen. It screamed incongruity. H&K just didn’t go with Aga. ‘I don’t believe Jacko would do that,’ Micky said. ‘Surely there are other possibilities?’

‘Possibilities?’ Calman said, sounding as if he’d never heard the word spoken before. ‘We like to concentrate on the likely answers. Experience shows that’s usually where the truth lies. We’re going to be giving you blanket coverage. Both driveways will have officers on duty and we’ll have other armed officers patrolling. I know you’ve got your lads out walking the fields. I’ll be talking to them, making sure they know what the parameters for action are. I don’t want you to worry, ladies. I just want you to take care.’

They’d stamped out into the yard, leaving Micky and Betsy to stare at each other across the table. Betsy had spoken first. ‘Has he called you?’ she asked.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Micky said. ‘He wouldn’t be so crazy. And if he was, you think I wouldn’t tell you?’

Betsy’s smile was strained. ‘Funny old thing, loyalty.’

Micky jumped up and rounded the end of the table. She hugged Betsy close and said, ‘You are the only loyalty I have. I only married him because I wanted to be with you.’

Betsy reached up and stroked Micky’s hair. ‘I know. But we both knew there was something off-kilter with Jacko and we chose to look the other way. I was afraid he might expect that of us again.’

‘You heard Calman. They think he’s coming after us, not coming for tea.’ She kissed Betsy’s forehead. ‘They’ll keep us safe.’

She couldn’t see the expression on Betsy’s face, which was probably just as well. ‘Officer Calman and his merry men? If you say so, sweetheart. If you say so.’

The suburban street was quiet at this time of day, parking spaces easy to come by because so many were out at work. Vance drew up a couple of doors down from his target and turned off the engine. He didn’t have camera feeds on this house. He’d decided it was too risky. Carol Jordan was a worthy opponent; he wasn’t going to take chances with her. But his investigator had come up with invaluable information that would make Vance’s next act so much easier.

He took out the tablet computer and checked the camera feeds back at the barn. As he’d expected, Jordan and Hill were there. She was climbing down the ladder from the bed gallery, leaving him behind. It was tempting to watch, but all he needed to know was that they were far enough away for him to have time for his task. He snapped a pair of nitrile gloves over his hands and smiled.

Everything he needed was in another of the lightweight nylon holdalls Terry had obtained for him. One last look round to make sure the coast was clear. Then Vance gently lifted the bag and headed up the path to Tony Hill’s house. He cut round the side of the house, past the side porch that covered the stairway down to Carol Jordan’s basement flat.

At the back of the house, he carefully put down the bag then moved to a small rockery in the corner. One of the stones was fake, its hollow interior containing a key to the back door. The investigator’s notes had read, ‘Hill is a classic absentminded professor. He forgot his house keys on two of the five days I observed him.’ Happy days, Vance thought as he let himself in.

He prowled through the ground floor, allowing himself a few minutes’ grace to get a feel for Tony Hill, the weird little bastard who had thought he could get one over on Vance. Billy No Mates, according to the investigator. Carol Jordan seemed to be the only friend in his life. So the more he hurt Carol Jordan, the more he would hurt both of them.

Under the stairs was the door that had to lead to the basement. There were bolts on the door, but they were undone. So too was the mortice lock. The door opened to the touch. So much for the fiction that theirs was the formal relationship of landlord and tenant. These two were in and out of each other’s space, as unterritorial as a flock of sparrows.

The converse never occurred to him: that here were two people who each respected the other’s privacy so much they had no need for locks to enforce it.

Vance ran lightly down the stairs to Carol’s domain, almost tripping over an elderly black cat who still got up to greet new arrivals in his world. ‘Fuck,’ Vance yelped, staggering, desperate not to drop his burden. He managed to right himself, giving his shoulders a shake.

He placed the holdall on the floor and set off on a tour of the premises. He found what he was looking for in the tiny utility room off the hallway. On the floor, a bowl of dried cat-food and another of water. Next to them, a plastic bin half-full of dried cat-food. Vance gave a little giggle of delight. How beautiful it was when things went according to plan.

He brought the holdall through and unzipped it, closing the door behind him to keep the cat out. First he emptied the cat-food into a carrier bag. He took out a powerful coiled metal spring, held together by a plastic clip. He placed that in the bottom of the bin, attaching the clip to a sensitive mechanism connected to its rim. He took out a pair of acid-proof gauntlets and pulled them over his gloves. Then with infinite delicacy, he opened the polystyrene container in the holdall and lifted out a glass vessel. Clear oily liquid sloshed gently against the sides as he lowered it on to the spring. He removed the lid, exposing the sulphuric acid to the air. Finally, he fixed a photoelectric cell to the mechanism inside the bin and closed the lid.

The next time Carol Jordan opened the cat-food bin, the spring-loaded container of acid would be catapulted upwards into her face. It probably wouldn’t kill her. But the acid would burn into her skin, destroying her features, leaving her disfigured and scarred. She would almost certainly be blinded and in hideous pain. Just the thought of it made Vance feel excited. She would suffer. God, how she would suffer.

But Tony Hill would suffer more, knowing this time he’d failed to stop Vance in his tracks. The perfect double whammy, really.

Kevin was fed up. There were, in his opinion, far too many motels near the airport. And Stacey had apparently tracked down addresses for every last one of them. There was a wide range, both in terms of cost and of facilities. Not to mention willingness to cooperate with a pushy cop at a busy time of day. It was a bastard of a chore and it pissed him off that yet again he was assigned to the scut work. He’d made one professional mistake that had cost him his inspector’s rank, but that had been years ago. It seemed that he was never going to be forgiven. Maybe leaving the MIT behind would finally be the route back to promotion.

He’d split the accommodations into three rough groups. Top of the line were the budget chains, but paradoxically, their front-desk security was often questionable. They were so accustomed to turning a blind eye to groups of students and football fans trying to save money by squeezing eight people to a room that a troupe of lap dancers could have high-kicked their way from the entrance to the lifts without anyone paying attention. The killer would have found it relatively easy to check in with Suze Black without attracting attention, but getting her out might have been more of an issue.

There was one possibility, where one of the lifts went straight down to a basement car park. Kevin thought it was a long shot – there were too many elements of risk for it to fit with the care this killer took in every other aspect of his operations. But he filed it away as somewhere to come back to if he didn’t make any progress elsewhere.

At the opposite end were the places that were little more than glorified guest houses. Kevin didn’t even bother ringing the doorbell of those. Suze Black wouldn’t have got across the threshold alive, never mind dead.

That left a tranche in the middle – privately owned, mostly struggling to keep going in a recession, mostly willing to turn a blind eye to what was going on in their rooms. But still, Kevin reckoned they would mostly also draw the line at a man dragging a dripping corpse across the foyer and out to the car park.

He was on the point of giving up when he finally struck gold. The Sunset Strip had sunk so low beneath the horizon it was hard to imagine how it had ever been a hopeful twinkle in anyone’s eye. It was a two-storey building covered in peeling terracotta stucco, an irregular quadrangle sketched around parking spaces marked out in peeling whitewash. The units were like individual apartments. On the ground floor, you could practically drive right up to your door. Perfect for stashing a dead prostitute in your boot without anybody catching sight of what you were up to.

Kevin parked by the office, which occupied the first ground-floor unit on the left. The fat kid behind the counter looked barely old enough to shave, never mind drink. He had sallow skin, bumpy with subcutaneous spots and eyebrows that bristled in five directions at once. Nondescript brown hair gelled up on the top of his head made him look like a refugee from a comedy sketch show. He barely looked up from the comic book he was reading. ‘Yeah?’ he grunted.

Kevin flipped open his ID. It took thirty seconds for the kid to realise there was something he was supposed to be looking at. He shifted a wad of chewing gum from one cheek to the other and assumed an expression of weary boredom. ‘Yeah?’ again.

This was clearly not a time for small talk. ‘Were you working here on the third?’

More gum shifting, a little light chewing. A hand that looked like an inflated latex glove yanked a drawer open and took out a sheet of paper marked out in boxes. He poked a finger at the third box on the top line. KH, BD, RT. ‘That’s me. RT. Robbie Trehearne.’

‘Do you remember anything particular about that night?’

Trehearne shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘Can I see the register?’

‘What about a warrant? Are you not supposed to have a warrant?’

Kevin took a gamble on Robbie Trehearne being exactly as dim as he appeared to be. ‘Not if you just show it to me.’

‘Oh. OK.’ He put the comic book down and turned the computer monitor on the desk so Kevin could also see it. His fingers flew over the keys with surprising dexterity and a page appeared on the screen, headed with the date. Only the rooms that were occupied appeared. Six rooms were listed, accompanied by names, addresses, car registrations and means of payment. Three of the six had paid cash.