The Mermaids Singing

9

We dry up our tears, and… discover that a transaction which, morally considered, was shocking, and without a leg to stand upon, when tried by principles of Taste, turns out to be a very meritorious performance.

‘OK, Andy, it’s showtime,’ Tony said to the blank screen of his computer. After Carol had dropped him off, he’d stumbled upstairs, kicking off his shoes and letting his quilted baseball jacket lie where it fell on the landing. Pausing only to empty his bladder, he’d burrowed under the duvet and fallen into the deepest sleep he’d known for months. When he’d woken, it had been after noon. But for once, he felt no guilt about the work he should have been doing. He felt refreshed, excited, elated even. Searching Stevie McConnell’s house had given him a new certainty that he really did understand what he was doing. He had known, with absolute clarity, that Handy Andy did not live like that. And although it wasn’t something he could admit to anyone outside the tight circle of fellow profilers, there was a real rush in realizing that he could probably find his way into Handy Andy’s head and map a path through the tortured labyrinth of his unique logic. All he had to do now was find the key to the door.

In the office, Tony powered his way through the remaining piles of documents, making notes as he went along. Then he closed the blinds and told his secretary to hold all his calls. He moved his own chair round the desk so that it faced the visitor’s chair. On the desk to one side, he placed his tape recorder, still switched off. He walked over to the door and stood with his back to it, contemplating the room. Some poem he’d once read echoed in his mind. Something about a road that divided in a wood, and the importance of choosing the branch less travelled by. For as long as he could recall, his fascinations had led him down the road less travelled by. It was the road that his patients walked, the dark path that led into the undergrowth, away from the dappled sunshine of the broad path. ‘I need to understand why you chose that road, Andy,’ Tony murmured. ’This is what I do best, Andy. You see, I know what draws me to that road. But I’m not like you. I can go back when I want to. I can choose the sunny path. I don’t have to be here. All I’m doing is studying your footsteps. Or at least, that’s what I tell the world.

‘But we know the truth, don’t we? You can’t hide from me, Andy,’ he said softly. ‘I’m just like you, you see. I’m your mirror image. I’m the poacher turned gamekeeper. It’s only hunting you that keeps me from being you. I’m here, waiting for you. Journey’s end.’ He stood for a moment longer, savouring the admission he’d made to himself.

Finally, he sat down in his chair and leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands loosely linked. ‘OK, Andy,’ he said. ‘It’s just you and me. We’re going to skip the preliminaries; all that stuff where we do the verbal arm wrestling and you eventually decide to talk to me. We’re going straight for it. First off, I want to say how impressed I am. I’ve never seen a cleaner job. I don’t just mean the bodies, I mean the whole thing. Sweet as a nut, you did it. Never a witness. Let me rephrase that. Never anybody seeing any significance in what they saw or heard, because there must have been people who saw or heard something, but they didn’t make the connection. How did you manage to be so invisible?’ He pressed ‘record’ on the cassette recorder, then stood up and stepped across to the other chair.

Tony took a deep breath and deliberately relaxed his body. He used breathing techniques to put himself into a light state of trance. He instructed his conscious mind to let go, to allow his higher self to access directly all he knew about Handy Andy and to answer for him. When he spoke, even his voice was different. The timbre was rougher, the tones deeper. ‘I blended in. I took care. I watched and I learned.’

Tony swapped chairs again. ‘You obviously did a good job of it,’ he said. ‘How did you choose them?’

Back into Andy’s chair. ‘I liked them. I knew it would be special with them. I wanted to be like them. They all had good jobs, a nice life. I’m good at learning things, I could have learned to be like them. I could have fitted into their lives.’

‘So why kill them?’

‘People are stupid. They don’t understand me. I was the one they always laughed at, then they learned to be afraid of me. I don’t like being laughed at, and I’m tired of people being wary of me, like I’m some animal that’s going to go for them. I gave them a chance, but they didn’t give me any choice. I had to kill them.’

Tony sank back in his own chair. ‘And after you’d done it once, you realized that was the best thing in the world.’

‘I felt good. I felt in control. I knew what was going to happen. I’d planned it all out, and it worked!’ Tony surprised himself by the degree of enthusiasm that came out. He waited, but nothing more seemed to emerge.

He returned to his own chair. ‘Didn’t last for long, did it? The pleasure? The sense of power?’

In Andy’s chair, he felt at a loss for the first time. Usually, he found role play loosened up his ideas, let his thoughts flow free. But something was clogging this up. That something was clearly at the heart of the issue. Tony moved back to his own seat and thought about it. ‘Serial killers act out their fantasies in their crimes. The crime itself never lives up to the fantasy, so it has limited power. Its details are incorporated into the fantasies, which are then realized in a second, often more ritualistic killing. And so on. But as time goes by, the fantasies have less and less staying power. The killings have to get closer and closer together to keep the fantasies fuelled. But your killings don’t get closer together, Andy. Why is that?’

He moved across, not hopeful. He allowed his mind to blank, letting his consciousness drift off, hoping it would come up with an answer that might satisfy his idea of Andy. After a few moments, Tony felt himself slipping away from consciousness. All at once, from what felt like a long way away, a deep chuckle rumbled through him. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ his own voice mocked him.

Tony shook his head like a diver coming to the surface. Dazed, he got to his feet and snapped the blinds open. So much for alternative techniques. What was interesting, however, was the point at which his brain had snagged. This was one of the factors about Handy Andy that was unique. The gaps stayed constant. Even allowing for his use of a camcorder, it was still remarkable.

The line of thought restored Tony’s earlier vigour and he decided to take a side trip to the university library’s media-studies section where he went through the back numbers of the Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times for the appropriate dates. A careful scrutiny of the entertainments pages revealed little in common between the four evenings in question, unless he was prepared to consider that the local art cinema always showed classic British black-and-white comedies on Mondays. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine Passport to Pimlico fuelling homicidal sexual fantasies. Finally, just after seven, he was ready to start on the profile.

He started with the usual caveat.

The following offender profile is for guidance only and shouldn’t be regarded as an identikit portrait. The offender is unlikely to match the profile in every detail, though I would expect there to be a high degree of congruence between the characteristics outlined below and the reality. All of the statements in the profile express probabilities and possibilities, not hard facts.

A serial killer produces signals and indicators in the commission of his crimes. Everything he does is intended, consciously or not, as part of a pattern. Uncovering the underlying pattern reveals the killer’s logic. It may not appear logical to us, but to him it is crucial. Because his logic is so idiosyncratic, straightforward traps will not capture him. As he is unique, so must be the means of catching him, interviewing him and reconstructing his acts.

Tony continued the profile with a detailed account of the four victims. He included everything he’d gleaned from the police reports about their domestic circumstances, employment history, reputation among friends and colleagues, habits, physical condition, personality, family relationships, hobbies and social behaviour. Next, he wrote a short resume of the pathologist’s report on each man, the nature of their injuries and a description of the crime scenes. Then he began the crucial process of organizing and arranging his information into meaningful patterns so he could start to draw his conclusions.

None of the four victims had any history of homosexual relationships, as far as can be ascertained. (We cannot exclude a secret homosexual/bisexual orientation, but there is no evidence in any of the four cases to suggest this.) Yet each body was dumped in an area known primarily for its use by the gay community. In particular, the bodies were dumped in spots which are notorious for the consummation of casual sexual encounters. What does this say about the killer?

1. He is a man who is not comfortable with his own sexuality. He deliberately chooses men who are not openly gay-identified. It may well be that he has made a sexual approach to his victims in the past and has been rebuffed. The killer is almost certainly not an out gay; he probably represses his own sexuality at some personal cost. He probably grew up in an environment where masculinity was highly prized and praised and homosexuality condemned, possibly on religious grounds. If he is in a sexual/domestic relationship, it will be with a woman. And he will almost certainly have sexual problems within that relationship, probably ones of potency.

Tony stared bleakly at the screen. Sometimes he hated the way his job constantly forced him to confront his own problems. Did his own sexual failings mean he was really stuck on the road less travelled by? Was there going to be a night when some woman went too far, when her determination to translate his problem into a comment on her womanhood tipped him over the edge? For Tony, it was a scenario that was all too vivid. That’s why Angelica was safe. When she drove him to distraction, he could slam the phone down, rather than slap her face. Or worse. Best stay out of risk, he thought. Don’t even think about thinking about Carol Jordan. You’ve seen it in her eyes, she’s interested in more than your mind. Don’t even think about it, fuck-up. Get back to work.

2. He despises those who express their homosexuality openly. At least part of his motivation in using these dumping grounds is to show his contempt for them, as well as to frighten them. He’s also demonstrating his superiority; ‘Look at me, I can come and go among you and none of you know me. I can desecrate your places, and you can’t stop me.’

3. He is nevertheless familiar with areas where gay men go to socialize and to pick up sexual partners. It may be that his job takes him into the Temple Fields area from time to time, perhaps to make deliveries or to provide some service to businesses. He is fascinated with the gay culture, to the extent that he has scouted out the specific area in Carlton Park where gay cruising goes on.

4. He has a high degree of self-control. He is driving into a populous area and dumping bodies without behaving in a way that draws attention to himself.

‘Tell me about it,’ Tony said bitterly. He got up and stalked a path from the window to the door. ‘I could have written the manual.’ Ever since the bullies had started to pick on him, the smallest boy in the street and in his class, he’d learned the harsh lessons of self-control. ‘Never show you’re hurt, it only encourages them. Never show they’ve hit the mark, it only reveals your weak points. Learn to be one of the lads. Learn the vocabulary, learn the body language, acquire the attitude. Mix it all together and what do you get? You get a man who hasn’t got the remotest idea of who he is. You have a consummate actor, a human impostor who can take on local colour like a chameleon.’ The miracle was that it fooled so many people. Brandon clearly thought he was a good bloke. Carol Jordan obviously fancied him. Claire, his secretary, thought he was the best boss she’d ever had. He was passing for human, all right. The only one he couldn’t fool was his mother, who still treated him with the thinly disguised contempt which was all he’d ever known from her. His fault his father had left them, and no wonder, according to her. She’d have dumped him in some children’s home if it hadn’t been for her need to keep in with her parents, the ones who held the purse strings. As it was, she’d dived head first into a career as soon as she’d been able to persuade her mother to mind little Tony. He’d done his best to be good, as Granny had instructed him, but it wasn’t always easy. She wasn’t a bad woman, just constrained by her own upbringing into the belief that children should be seen and not heard. His grandfather’s response to domestic tyranny was to escape to the betting shop, the bowling green and the Legion. Tony had swiftly learned self-control the hard way. Was that what had happened to Andy, too? Rubbing his hand across eyes surprisingly damp, Tony threw himself back into his chair and started typing frantically.

5. His domestic and work situation allows him to be free on Monday evenings, and he does not expect to be spotted in Temple Fields by anyone who knows him. This throws up several possibilities: he may have chosen Monday nights specifically because it’s his night off work or because his wife/girlfriend is away from home on Monday nights; he may have decided to kill on Mondays because the first time was a Monday and it worked out for him and now has superstitious power; or he may have decided to keep on killing on Mondays in the hope that it will skew the investigation. He is obviously intelligent, and such careful planning should not be presumed to be beyond him.

Tony paused for thought, flicking through the pages of notes he’d made. He wasn’t thinking like Handy Andy yet, but the elusive mind was getting closer and closer. He wondered again if his involvement in the twisted logic of killers was a surrogacy, the only thing that prevented him from joining their number. God knows, there were times when the inevitable drive that surged through their heads seemed attractive. And there were times enough when he’d felt murderous rage, though it was usually turned against himself rather than the person he was in bed with. ‘Enough, already,’ Tony said aloud, and returned to the glowing screen.

The offender is an organized serial killer, who is managing to maintain a constant eight-week gap between killings. This consistency is unusual in itself, since the normal pattern is that the space between murders decreases as they lose their power to satisfy the killer’s fantasies. One reason for the maintenance of this gap may be that he spends so long stalking his victim before the kill. Thus the delights of anticipation, coupled with the savour of his previous kills, acts as a brake. I also believe that the killer is using his camcorder to record his activities and that this is also fuelling his fantasies between kills.

Tony stopped to consider what he had written. The stumbling block. His analysis probably looked good enough to convince the lay person, but he was far from satisfied with it. But no amount of dredging of his mind or his data could come up with a better explanation. With a sigh, he continued.

What is the primary intent of his killings? We can rule out killing in the course of criminal activity, such as armed robbery or burglary. We can also rule out emotional, selfish or cause-specific killings, such as self-defence, compassion, assassination or domestic disputes. This places the killings in the category of sexual homicides.

The chosen victims all fall into the low-risk category. In other words, they all had occupations and lifestyles that didn’t make them vulnerable targets. The flip side of this is that the killer has to take high-level risks to capture and kill them. What does this tell us about the killer?

1. He is operating under extremely high stress levels.

2. He plans his kills very carefully. He cannot afford to make mistakes, because if he does, his victims will escape and put him at risk, both physically and legally. He is almost certainly a stalker. He chooses his victims carefully, and studies their lives in detail. Interestingly, so far he has not been thwarted in his choice of evening. Is this a result of careful planning, prearrangement or just luck? We know that the third victim, Gareth Finnegan, told his girlfriend he was going on a lads’ night out, but none of his male friends or colleagues seemed to know anything about it, and it is not clear whether he was abducted from his home or if the contact took place at a prearranged point. It may be that the killer has had prior arrangements to meet each of his victims, either at their homes or elsewhere. He may even be posing as an insurance salesman or something similar, though I feel it’s unlikely that he would have the people skills to do such a job successfully for a living.

3. He likes the extra excitement that walking out on the high wire gives him. He needs that buzz.

4. He must have some areas of emotional maturity in his make-up that allow him to hold himself under control in these highly stressful situations. This may also allow him to buck the poor work-history pattern so common among serial offenders. (See below.)

Most serial offences demonstrate a degree of escalation, indicating the killer’s need for more thrills, better execution of his fantasies. Like a roller coaster, each high needs to be bigger to compensate for the inevitable low that has preceded…

Tony looked up, startled. What was that noise? It had sounded like the door to the open-plan outer office, but at this time of night, there shouldn’t be anyone on this floor. Nervously, he pushed himself away from the computer desk, steering his chair across the carpet on silent castors till he was behind his desk and out of the pool of light shed by the lamp beside the computer. He held his breath and listened. Silence. The tension gradually began to ooze away. Then, abruptly, a line of light appeared under his office door.

The metallic taste of fear gripped Tony. The nearest thing to an offensive weapon on his desk was a chunk of agate he used as a paperweight. He snatched it up and moved stealthily out of his chair.

When Carol opened the door, she was taken aback to find Tony halfway across the room, hefting a rock in his hand. ‘It’s me,’ she yelped.

Tony’s arms dropped to his side. ‘Oh shit,’ he said.

Carol grinned. ‘Who were you expecting? Burglars? Journalists? The bogeyman?’

Tony relaxed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You spend all day trying to get inside some nutter’s head and you end up as paranoid as he is.’

‘Nutter,’ Carol mused. ‘Now would that be some technical term you psychologists use?’

‘Only inside these four walls,’ Tony said, walking back to his desk and putting the agate back where it belonged. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘Since British Telecom don’t seem to be able to connect us, I thought I’d better come round personally,’ Carol replied, pulling up a chair. ‘I left a message on your machine at home this morning. I assumed you’d already left for work, but you weren’t here either. I tried again around four, but there was no reply from your extension. At least, I assume that’s why the switchboard operator said, “I’m putting you through now,” and I ended up in a black hole. And, of course, now the switchboard have all gone home and I never thought to ask for your direct line.’

‘And you a detective,’ Tony teased.

‘That’s my excuse, anyway. Actually, I couldn’t face another minute in Scargill Street.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘Only if I can talk with my mouth full,’ Carol said. ‘I’m starving. Could you go a quick curry?’

Tony glanced at his computer screen, then back at Carol’s drawn face and tired eyes. He liked her, even though he didn’t want to get close, and he needed her on his side. ‘Just let me save this file, and I’m out of here. I can come back later and finish this.’

Twenty minutes later they were attacking onion bhajis and chicken pakora in an Asian cafe in Greenholm. The other customers were students and those of the terminally right-on tendency who hadn’t quite adjusted to the fact they were no longer studying anything except political correctness. ‘It’s not exactly Good Food Guide, but it’s cheap and cheerful, and the service is quick,’ Tony apologized.

‘Fine by me. I’m more egg on toast than Egon Ronay. My brother got the gourmet genes in our family,’ Carol said. She glanced quickly around her. Their table for two was less than a foot away from the next. ‘Did you bring me here deliberately so we couldn’t talk about work? Some psychologist’s ploy to refresh my mind?’

Tony’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t even think of that. You’re right, of course, we can’t talk about it in here.’

Carol’s smile lit up her eyes. ‘You can have no idea how much pleasure that gives me.’

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Tony broke the silence. That way, he stayed in control of the subject. ‘What made you decide to be a copper?’

Carol raised her eyebrows. ‘Because I like oppressing the underprivileged and hassling racial minorities?’ she tried.

Tony smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’

She pushed her plate to one side and sighed. ‘Youthful idealism,’ she said. ‘I had this crazy idea that the police should be there to serve and protect society from lawlessness and anarchy.’

‘It’s not such a crazy idea. Believe me, if you dealt with the people I used to handle, you’d feel relieved that they weren’t on the streets.’

‘Oh, the theory’s fine. It’s just the practice that’s such a bummer. It all started when I read sociology at Manchester. I specialized in the sociology of organizations, and all my contemporaries despised the police force as a corrupt, racist, sexist organization whose sole role was to preserve the illusory comfort of the middle classes. To some extent, I agreed with them. The difference was that they wanted to attack institutions from the outside, whereas I’ve always believed that if you want fundamental change, it has to come from inside.’

Tony grinned. ‘You little subversive, you!’

‘Yeah, well, I guess I didn’t realize what I was getting into. David knocking out Goliath was a piece of piss compared with trying to change things in the police.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Tony said with feeling. ‘This national task force could revolutionize the clear-up rate on serious crimes, but the way some senior officers carry on, you’d think I was setting up a scheme to allow paedophiles to retrain as child minders.’

Carol giggled. ‘You mean, you’d rather be back in the locked ward with your nutters?’

‘Carol, sometimes I feel like I’ve never left. You’ve no idea what a refreshing change it is to work with people like you and John Brandon.’

Before Carol could reply, the waiter arrived with their main courses. As she spooned out lamb and spinach, chicken karahi and pilau rice, Carol said, ‘Does your job create the same problems with having a private life as the police service does?’

Instantly defensive, Tony answered with a question. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Like you said earlier, you get obsessed with the job. You spend your time dealing with shitheads and animals – ’

‘And that’s just your colleagues,’ Tony butted in.

‘Yeah, right. And you come home at night after dealing with broken bodies and fractured lives and you’re expected to sit down and watch the soaps and act like normal people do.’

‘And you can’t because your head’s still plugged into the horrors of the day,’ Tony finished. ‘And with your job, you have the added complication of shift work.’

‘Exactly. So, do you get the same problems?’

Was she asking out of idle curiosity or was this an oblique way of finding out about his private life? Sometimes Tony wished he could just switch off the part of his head that had to analyse every statement, every gesture, every intricate piece of body language and just revel in the pleasure of eating dinner with someone who seemed to enjoy his company. Suddenly aware that he had left too long a pause between the question and the answer, Tony said, ‘I’m probably even worse at switching off than you. Men generally seem to get much more obsessive than women. I mean, how many female train spotters, stamp collectors or football fanatics do you know?’

‘And that interferes in your personal relationships?’ Carol persisted.

‘Well, none of them have ever gone the distance,’ Tony said, struggling to keep his voice light. ‘I don’t know if that’s down to the job, or to me. Mostly, the last thing they’ve screamed at me as they walked out the door hasn’t been, “you and your bloody nutters”, so I guess it must be me. How about you? How do you handle the problems of the job?’

Carol’s fork continued its journey to her mouth and she chewed and swallowed her mouthful of curry before she answered. ‘I’ve found that men aren’t very sympathetic towards shifts unless they do them too. You know, you’re never there with the tea on the table when they’ve got to rush out to that vital squash match. Add to that the difficulty of getting them to understand why the job drives you inside your head and what are you left with? Junior doctors, other coppers, fire fighters, ambulance drivers. And in my experience, there aren’t many of them who want a relationship with an equal. I guess the job takes too much out of us for us to have much left over. The last guy I was involved with was a doctor, and all he wanted to do when he wasn’t working was sleep, fuck and party.’

‘And you wanted more?’

‘I wanted the occasional conversation, maybe even a movie or a night out at the theatre. But I put up with it because I loved him.’

‘So what made you end it?’

Carol stared down at her plate. ‘Thanks for the compliment, but I didn’t. When I moved up here, he decided that driving up and down the motorway was a waste of good shagging time, so he dumped me for a nurse. Now it’s just me and the cat. He doesn’t seem to mind the irregular hours.’

‘Ah,’ Tony said. He had heard the real pain under the surface, but for once, all his professional skills didn’t seem adequate to the response.

‘How about you? You involved with anyone?’ Carol asked.

Tony shook his head and carried on eating.

‘Nice bloke like you, I’d have thought you’d have been snapped up ages ago,’ Carol said, the tease in her tone covering something Tony wished he was imagining.

‘Ah, but you’ve only seen the charming side. When the moon’s full, I sprout hair on the palms of my hands and bay at the moon.’ Tony leered melodramatically at Carol. ‘I am not what I appear to be, young woman,’ he growled.

‘Oh, Grandmamma, what big teeth you’ve got!’ Carol said in falsetto.

‘All the better to eat my curry with,’ Tony laughed. He knew this was the point where he could have moved the relationship forward, but he had spent too long constructing his defences against precisely these moments of weakness to let them down that easily. Besides, he told himself, he had no need of a relationship with her. He had Angelica and bitter experience had taught him that was all he could handle and still function.

‘So how did you get into this soul-destroying line of work?’ Carol asked.

‘I discovered while I was working on my DPhil that I hated getting up on my hind legs and talking to an audience, which kind of ruled out academic work. So I went into clinical practice,’ Tony said, slipping easily into a flow of anecdotes about his work. He felt himself relax, like a man walking on a frozen lake who realizes he’s back on dry land.

They spent the rest of the meal on the safer ground of their careers, and Carol asked the waiter for the bill when he came to clear off the table. ‘I’m picking up the tab, OK? Nothing to do with feminism; you’re a legitimate business expense,’ Carol said.

As they walked back to Tony’s office, he said, ‘So, back to work. Tell me about your day.’

The swift switch away from the personal back to the case confirmed to Carol the need to play it cool with Tony. She’d never seen anyone back off so fast at gentle flirtation. It was puzzling, all the more since she sensed he liked her. And she had no doubts about her capacity to attract men. At least tracking Handy Andy with him gave her space and time to build a bridge between them. ‘We got a break this morning. At least, that’s what we’re all hoping.’

Tony stopped abruptly and turned to face Carol. ‘What kind of a break?’ he demanded.

‘Don’t worry, you’re not being ignored,’ Carol said. ‘It’s something that would be a minor detail in most investigations, but because we’ve got so little to go on here, it’s got everybody excited. There was a torn fragment of leather on a nail by the gate in the Queen of Hearts’s yard. Forensic did a rush job on it, and it turns out that it’s very unusual. It’s deerskin, and it comes from Russia.’

‘Oh, my good God,’ Tony said softly. He turned away and took a couple of steps. ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. You can’t get it in this country, and you’d probably need to send someone to Russia to source it, it’s so obscure. Am I right?’

‘How the hell did you know that?’ Carol asked, catching him up and grabbing his sleeve.

‘I’ve been expecting something like this,’ he said simply.

‘Like what?’

‘An outrageous red herring that’ll have the entire police force running around like headless chickens.’

‘You think this is a red herring?’ Carol almost shouted. ‘Why?’

Tony rubbed his hands over his face and ran them through his hair. ‘Carol, this guy has been so careful. He’s been almost clinical in his obsession with leaving no clues. Serial killers have typically got high IQs, and Handy Andy is certainly one of the cleverest I’ve ever come across, either personally or in the whole literature. Yet suddenly, out of nowhere we get not just any old clue, but a clue so obscure that it could only possibly be left by a tiny segment of the population. And you’re standing here telling me you think this is for real? That’s exactly what he’s trying to achieve. I bet the lot of you have been running around like blue-tailed flies all day trying to suss out where this obscure piece of Russian leather came from, haven’t you? Oh, and don’t tell me, let me guess. I bet there’s now a whole squad tracking back through Stevie McConnell’s life trying to establish where the hell he got it from.’

Carol stared at him. It seemed so blindingly obvious when he explained it like that. Yet not one of them had questioned the validity of the leather scrap.

‘Am I right?’ Tony asked, more gently this time.

Carol pulled a face. ‘Not a whole squad. Just me and Don Merrick and a couple of DCs. I’ve spent most of the day on the phone talking to governing bodies in weightlifting and body-building, trying to establish if McConnell’s ever been on a national or regional team that either competed in Russia or competed against Russians. And Don and the lads have been grilling travel agencies trying to check if he’s ever been on holiday there.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ Tony groaned. ‘And?’

‘Five years ago, he was one of a team of weightlifters from the North West who competed in an event in what was then Leningrad.’

Tony took a deep breath. ‘The poor unlucky bastard,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect the idea that this was deliberately planted to have occurred to any of you,’ he added. ‘I don’t mean that patronizingly. I realize how much closer you are to all of this and how desperately you want to catch this bastard. I just wish someone had told me earlier, before it assumed this major significance for everyone.’

‘I did try to phone you this morning,’ Carol said. ‘You still haven’t said where you were.’

Tony held his hands up. ‘I’m sorry. I’m overreacting. I was in bed, asleep, with the phones turned off. I was exhausted after last night, and I knew I couldn’t concentrate on writing the profile unless I had some sleep. I should have checked my answering machine when I got up. Sorry, I shouldn’t have had a go.’

Carol grinned. ‘I’ll let you off this time. Just save the fearsome bit for when we catch Handy Andy, huh?’

Tony pulled a face. ‘Shouldn’t that be “if”?’

He looked so vulnerable and fallible, his shoulders slumped, his head down, that Carol’s impulses overrode the decision she’d taken only minutes before to play it cool. She stepped forward and pulled Tony into a tight hug. ‘If anyone can do it, you can,’ she whispered, rubbing the side of her head against his chin like a cat marking its territory.

Brandon stared at Tom Cross, his face a mask of horror. ‘You did what?’ he demanded.

‘I searched McConnell’s house,’ Cross said belligerently.

‘I thought I said categorically that we had no right to do that? No judge in the land is going to accept that arrest for common assault in the street gives sufficient grounds for suspicion of murder.’

Cross smiled. It was a rictus that would have raised a Rottweiler’s hackles. ‘With respect, sir, that was then. Once Inspector Jordan had established that McConnell had been to Russia, the picture changed. Not a lot of people have had access to obscure Russian leather jackets, after all. It puts him in the frame. And there’s more than one JP around that owes me one.’

‘You should have cleared it with me,’ Brandon said. ‘The last order I gave on the subject was no search.’

‘I tried, sir, but you were in a meeting with the Chief,’ Cross said sweetly. ‘I thought I’d better strike while the iron was hot, being as how we don’t have him banged up indefinitely.’

‘So you wasted more time searching McConnell’s house,’ Brandon said bitterly. ‘Don’t you think you and your men could have been better employed?’

‘I haven’t told you yet what we found,’ Cross said.

Brandon felt his chest constrict. He wasn’t a man given to premonitions, but the sinking foreboding that gripped him now was as palpable as any solid fact he’d ever examined. ‘Think very carefully about what you say next, Superintendent,’ he said cautiously.

A momentary frown of puzzlement flashed over Cross’s features, but he was too full of the message he bore to worry about the ACC’s words. ‘We’ve got him, sir,’ he said. ‘Bang to rights. We found one of Gareth Finnegan’s firm’s Christmas cards in McConnell’s bedroom, and a sweater that’s a dead ringer for the one Adam Scott’s bird says was missing from his house. Plus a traffic ticket with Damien Connolly’s badge number on it. Add that to the Russian connection, and I think it’s time to charge the little arse bandit.’