The Retribution

Val McDermid is the author of twenty-four bestselling novels, which have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over ten million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009 and was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for 2010. In 2011 she received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award. She has a son and a dog, and lives with her wife in the north of England.

Also by Val McDermid

A Place of Execution

Killing the Shadows

The Distant Echo

The Grave Tattoo

A Darker Domain

Trick of the Dark

TONY HILL NOVELS

The Mermaids Singing

The Wire in the Blood

The Last Temptation

The Torment of Others

Beneath the Bleeding

Fever of the Bone

KATE BRANNIGAN NOVELS

Dead Beat

Kick Back

Crack Down

Clean Break

Blue Genes

Star Struck

LINDSAY GORDON NOVELS

Report for Murder

Common Murder

Final Edition

Union Jack

Booked for Murder

Hostage to Murder

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

The Writing on the Wall

Stranded

NON-FICTION

A Suitable Job for a Woman

COPYRIGHT

Published by Hachette Digital

ISBN: 978-0-748-12578-4

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Val McDermid

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Hachette Digital

Little, Brown Book Group

100 Victoria Embankment

London, EC4Y 0DY

www.hachette.co.uk

For Mr David: for reminding me how much fun this is,

for shaking up my ideas and for showing faith.

Contents

Also by Val McDermid

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Acknowledgements

This is my twenty-fifth novel. And still I have to go around picking people’s brains to make it all work. As usual, there are those who prefer to remain anonymous. Their willingness to share their experience never ceases to impress me, and I am grateful for the insight into their worlds.

Carolyn Ryan was generous with her contacts; thanks also to her and Paul for putting up with me on the caffeine-free dog walks. Professor Sue Black and Dave Barclay gave me the benefit of their forensic knowledge, and Dr Gwen Adshead talked more sense about abnormal psychology than anyone else I’ve ever heard.

I just write the books. It takes a small army of dedicated people to get them into the hands of readers. Thanks as always to everyone at Gregory & Co; to my support team at Little, Brown; to the peerless Anne O’Brien and to Caroline Brown who could make the trains run on time if she put her mind to it.

And finally, thanks to my friends and family whose love is really all I need. In particular to Kelly and Cameron, the best companions a woman could ask for.

Nemesis is lame; but she is of colossal stature, like the gods, and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.

George Eliot Scenes of Clerical Life

1

Escapology was like magic. The secret lay in misdirection. Some escapes were accomplished by creating an illusion through careful planning; others were genuine feats of strength, daring and flexibility, both mental and physical; and some were mixtures of both. But whatever the methods, the element of misdirection always played a crucial role. And when it came to misdirection, he called no man his master.

Best of all was the misdirection that the onlooker didn’t even know was happening. To accomplish that you had to make your diversion blend into the spectrum of normal.

Some settings made that harder than others. Take an office where everything ran like clockwork. You’d struggle to camouflage a distraction there because anything out of the ordinary would stand out and stick in people’s minds. But in prison there were so many unpredictable variables – volatile individuals; complex power structures; trivial disputes that could go nuclear in a matter of moments; and pent-up frustrations never far from bursting like a ripe zit. Almost anything could go off at any time, and who could say whether it was a calculated event or just one of a hundred little local difficulties getting out of hand? The very existence of those variables made some people uneasy. But not him. For him, every alternate scenario provided a fresh opportunity, another option to scrutinise till finally he hit on the perfect combination of circumstances and characters.

He’d considered faking it. Paying a couple of the lads to get into a ruck on the wing. But there were too many downsides to that. For one thing, the more people who knew about his plans, the more prospects there were for betrayal. For another, most of the people inside were there because their previous attempts at dissimulation had failed dismally. Probably not the best people to entrust with putting on a convincing performance, then. And you could never rule out plain stupidity, of course. So faking it was out.

However, the beauty of prison was that there was never a shortage of levers to pull. Men trapped on the inside were always prey to fears of what might be going down on the outside. They had lovers, wives, kids and parents who were vulnerable to violence or temptation. Or just the threat of those things.

So he’d watched and waited, gathering data and evaluating it, figuring out where the possibilities offered the best chance of success. It helped that he didn’t have to rely on his own observations. His support system beyond the walls had provided the intelligence that plugged most of the gaps in his own knowledge. It really hadn’t taken long to find the perfect pressure point.

And now he was ready. Tonight he would make his move. Tomorrow night, he’d be sleeping in a wide, comfortable bed with feather pillows. The perfect end to a perfect evening. A rare steak with a pile of garlic mushrooms and rösti potatoes, perfectly complemented by a bottle of claret that would have only improved in the dozen years he’d been away. A plate of crisp Bath Olivers and a Long Clawson stilton to take away the bad taste of what passed for cheese in prison. Then a long hot bath, a glass of cognac and a Cuban Cohiba. He’d savour every gradation on the spectrum of the senses.

A jagged cacophony of raised voices penetrated his visualisation, a routine argument about football crashing back and forth across the landing. An officer roared at them to keep the noise down and it subsided a little. The distant mutter of a radio filled the gaps between the insults and it occurred to him that even better than the steak, the booze and the cigar would be the freedom from other people’s noise.

That was the one thing people never mentioned when they sounded off about how awful it must be to be in prison. They talked about the discomfort, the lack of freedom, the fear of your fellow inmates, the loss of your personal comforts. But even the most imaginative never commented on the nightmare of losing silence.

Tomorrow, that nightmare would be over. He could be as quiet or as loud as he chose. But it would be his noise.

Well, mostly his. There would be other noises. Ones that he was looking forward to. Ones he liked to imagine when he needed a spur to keep going. Ones he’d been dreaming about even longer than he’d been figuring out his escape route. The screams, the sobs, the stammering pleas for mercy that would never come. The soundtrack of payback.

Jacko Vance, killer of seventeen teenage girls, murderer of a serving police officer and a man once voted the sexiest man on British TV, could hardly wait.

2

The big man put two brimming pints of copper-coloured ale on the table. ‘Piddle in the Hole,’ he said, settling his broad frame on a stool that disappeared from sight beneath his thighs.

Dr Tony Hill raised his eyebrows. ‘A challenge? Or is that what passes for wit in Worcester?’

Detective Sergeant Alvin Ambrose raised his glass in a salute. ‘Neither. The brewery’s in a village called Wyre Piddle, so they think they’re entitled.’

Tony took a long draught of his beer, then gave it a considering look. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘It’s a decent pint.’

Both men gave the beer a moment’s respectful silence, then Ambrose spoke. ‘She’s pissed my guv’nor off royally, your Carol Jordan.’

Even after all these years, Tony still struggled to keep a poker face when Carol Jordan was mentioned. It was a struggle worth maintaining, though. For one thing, he believed in never giving hostages to fortune. But more importantly, he’d always found it impossible to define what Carol meant to him and he wasn’t inclined to give others the chance to jump to mistaken conclusions. ‘She’s not my Carol Jordan,’ he said mildly. ‘She’s not anyone’s Carol Jordan, truth be told.’

‘You said she’d be sharing your house down here, if she got the job,’ Ambrose said, not hiding the reproach in his voice.

A revelation Tony wished now he’d never made. It had slipped out during one of the late-night conversations that had cemented this unlikely friendship between two wary men with little in common. Tony trusted Ambrose, but that still didn’t mean he wanted to admit him into the labyrinth of contradictions and complications of what passed for his emotional life. ‘She already rents my basement flat. It’s not so different. It’s a big house,’ he said, his voice non-committal but his hand rigid on the glass.

Ambrose’s eyes tightened at the corners, the rest of his face impassive. Tony reckoned the instinctive copper in him was wondering whether it was worth pursuing. ‘And she’s a very attractive woman,’ Ambrose said at last.

‘She is.’ Tony tipped his glass towards Ambrose in acknowledgement. ‘So why is DI Patterson so pissed off with her?’

Ambrose raised one beefy shoulder in a shrug that strained the seam of his jacket. His brown eyes lost their watchfulness as he relaxed into safe territory. ‘The usual kind of thing. He’s served all his career in West Mercia, most of it here in Worcester. He thought when the DCI’s job came up, his feet were already tucked under the desk. Then your— then DCI Jordan made it known that she was interested in a move from Bradfield.’ His smile was as twisted as the lemon peel on the rim of a cocktail glass. ‘And how could West Mercia say no to her?’

Tony shook his head. ‘You tell me.’

‘Track record like hers? First the Met, then something mysterious with Europol, then heading up her own major crimes unit in the fourth biggest force in the country and beating the counter-terrorism twats at their own game … There’s only a handful of coppers in the whole country with her experience who still want to be at the sharp end, rather than flying a desk. Patterson knew the minute the grapevine rustled that he was dead in the water.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Tony said. ‘Some bosses might see Carol as a threat. The woman who knew too much. They might see her as the fox in the henhouse.’

Ambrose chuckled, a deep subterranean rumble. ‘Not here. They think they’re the bee’s knees here. They look at those mucky bastards next door in West Midlands and strut like peacocks. They’d see DCI Jordan like a prize pigeon coming home to the loft where she belongs.’

‘Very poetic.’ Tony sipped his beer, savouring the bitter edge of the hops. ‘But that’s not how your DI Patterson sees it?’

Ambrose demolished most of his pint while he worked out his response. Tony was accustomed to waiting. It was a technique that worked equally well at work or at play. He’d never figured out why the people he dealt with were called ‘patients’ when he was the one who had to exert all the patience. Nobody who wanted to be a competent clinical psychologist could afford to show too much eagerness when it came to seeking answers.

‘It’s hard for him,’ Ambrose said at last. ‘It’s harsh, knowing you’ve been passed over because you’re second best. So he has to come up with something that makes him feel better about himself.’

‘And what’s he come up with?’

Ambrose lowered his head. In the dim light of the pub, his dark skin turned him into a pool of shadow. ‘He’s mouthing off about her motives for moving. Like, she doesn’t give a toss about West Mercia. She’s just following you now you’ve inherited your big house and decided to shake the dust of Bradfield from your heels … ’

It wasn’t his place to defend Carol Jordan’s choices, but saying nothing wasn’t an option either. Silence would reinforce Patterson’s bitter analysis. The least Tony could do was to give Ambrose an alternative to put forward in the canteen and the squad room. ‘Maybe. But I’m not the reason she’s leaving Bradfield. That’s office politics, nothing to do with me. She got a new boss and he didn’t think her team was good value for money. She had three months to prove him wrong.’ Tony shook his head, a rueful smile on his face. ‘Hard to see what more she could have done. Nailed a serial killer, cleared up two cold-case murders and busted a people-trafficking operation that was bringing in kids for the sex trade.’

‘I’d call that a serious clear-up rate,’ Ambrose said.

‘Not serious enough for James Blake. The three months is up and he’s announced that he’s breaking up the unit at the end of the month and scattering them through the general CID. She’d already decided she didn’t want to be deployed like that. So, she knew she was leaving Bradfield. She just didn’t know where she was headed. Then this West Mercia job came up, and she didn’t even have to change landlords.’

Ambrose gave him an amused look and drained his glass. ‘You ready for another?’

‘I’m still working on this one. But it’s my shout,’ Tony protested as Ambrose headed back to the bar. He caught the glance the young barmaid threw in their direction, a faint frown on her soft features. He imagined they made an odd couple, him and Ambrose. A burly black man with a shaven head and a face like a heavyweight boxer, tie loosened, black suit tight over heavy muscles, Ambrose’s formidable presence would have fitted most people’s idea of a serious bodyguard. Whereas Tony reckoned he didn’t even look capable of guarding his own body, never mind anyone else’s. Medium height; slight of build; wirier than he deserved to be, given that his principal exercise came from playing Rayman’s Raving Rabbids on his Wii; leather jacket, hooded sweatshirt, black jeans. Over the years, he’d learned that the only thing people remembered about him were his eyes, a startling sparkling blue, shocking against the paleness of his skin. Ambrose’s eyes were memorable too, but only because they hinted at a gentleness apparent nowhere else in his demeanour. Most people missed that, Tony thought. Too taken up with the superficial image. He wondered if the barmaid had noticed.

Ambrose returned with a fresh pint. ‘You off your ale tonight?’

Tony shook his head. ‘I’m heading back to Bradfield.’

Ambrose looked at his watch. ‘At this time? It’s already gone ten o’clock.’

‘I know. But there’s no traffic this time of night. I can be home in less than two hours. I’ve got patients tomorrow at Bradfield Moor. Last appointments before I hand them over to someone I hope will treat them like the damaged messes they are. Going at night’s a lot less stressful. Late-night music and empty roads.’

Ambrose chuckled. ‘Sounds like a country music song.’

‘I sometimes feel like my whole life is a country music song,’ Tony grumbled. ‘And not one of the upbeat ones.’ As he spoke, his phone began to ring. He frantically patted his pockets, finally tracking it down in the front pocket of his jeans. He didn’t recognise the mobile number on the screen, but gave it the benefit of the doubt. If the staff at Bradfield Moor were having problems with one of his nutters, they sometimes used their own phones to call him. ‘Hello?’ he said, cautious.

‘Is that Dr Hill? Dr Tony Hill?’ It was a woman’s voice, tickling at the edge of his memory but not quite falling into place.

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Penny Burgess, Dr Hill. From the Evening Sentinel Times. We’ve spoken before.’

Penny Burgess. He recalled a woman in a trench coat, collar turned up against the rain, face arranged in a tough expression, long dark hair escaping from its confines. He also recalled how he’d been variously transformed in the stories under her byline, from omniscient sage to idiot scapegoat. ‘Rather less than you’d have your readers believe,’ he said.

‘Just doing my job, Dr Hill.’ Her voice was a lot warmer than their history merited. ‘There’s been another woman murdered in Bradfield,’ she continued. She was about as good at small talk as he was, Tony thought, trying to avoid the wider implications of her words. When he failed to respond, she said, ‘A sex worker. Like the two last month.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Tony said, choosing his words like steps in a minefield.

‘Why I’m ringing you … My source tells me this one has the same signature as the previous two. I’m wondering what you make of that?’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve currently got no operational involvement with Bradfield CID.’

Penny Burgess made a low sound in her throat, almost a chuckle but not quite. ‘I’m sure your sources are at least as good as mine,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe DCI Jordan is out of the loop on this one, and if she knows, you know.’

‘You’ve got a very strange notion of my world,’ Tony said firmly. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m talking about a serial killer, Dr Hill. And when it comes to serial killers, you’re the man.’

Abruptly, Tony ended the call, shoving his phone back in his pocket. He raised his eyes to meet Ambrose’s assessing gaze. ‘Hack,’ he said. He swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘Actually, no. She’s better than that. Carol’s crew have left her with egg all over her face more than once, but she just acts like that’s an occupational hazard.’

‘All the same … ’ Ambrose said.

Tony nodded. ‘Right. You can respect them without being willing to give them anything.’

‘What was she after?’

‘She was fishing. We’ve had two street prostitutes killed in Bradfield over the last few weeks. Now there’s a third. As far as I was aware, there was no reason to connect the first two – completely different MO.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, I say that, but I know nothing officially. Not Carol’s cases, and even if they were, she doesn’t share.’

‘But your hack’s saying something different?’

‘She says there’s a signature connection. But it’s still nothing to do with me. Even if they decide they need a profile, it won’t be me they come to.’

‘Stupid bastards. You’re the best there is.’

Tony finished his drink. ‘That may well be true. But as far as James Blake is concerned, staying in-house is cheaper and it means he keeps control.’ A wry smile. ‘I can see his point. If I was him, I probably wouldn’t employ me either. More trouble than it’s worth.’ He pushed back from the table and stood up. ‘And on that cheerful note, I’m off up the motorway.’

‘Is there not a part of you that wishes you were out there at that crime scene?’ Ambrose drained his second pint and got to his feet, deliberately standing back so he didn’t loom over his friend.

Tony considered. ‘I won’t deny that the people who do this kind of thing fascinate me. The more disturbed they are, the more I want to figure out what makes them tick. And how I can help them to make the mechanism function a bit better.’ He sighed. ‘But I am weary of looking at the end results. Tonight, Alvin, I’m going home to bed, and believe me, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.’

3

The safest place to hide anything was in plain sight. People only ever see what they expect to see. Those were some of the truths he’d learned a long time before his life had been shrunk by prison walls. But he was smart and he was determined, so he hadn’t stopped learning just because his physical environment had become constrained.

Some people closed down as soon as they found themselves behind bars. They were seduced by a life less chaotic, consoled by predictability. One of the lesser-known aspects of prison life was the high incidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Jails were full of men and women who found a comfort in repetitive behaviour that had never occurred to them on the outside. Right from the start, Jacko Vance had steeled himself against the seduction of routine.

Not that he’d had much routine to start with. There’s nothing prisoners love more than fucking up a celebrity inmate. When George Michael was banged up, the entire wing kept him awake all night roaring tuneless renderings of his greatest hits, altering the words to suit their mood as the night wore on. With Vance, as soon as they were locked in for the night, they’d whistled the theme tune from his TV show, on and on like a track on repeat. Once Vance’s Visits had worn down their patience, they’d started on football-style chants about his wife and her girlfriend. It had been an ugly introduction, but it hadn’t upset him. He’d walked on to the landing in the morning as composed and calm as he’d been the night before.

There was a reason for his composure. Right from the start, he’d been determined he was going to get out. He knew it would take years and he had forced himself to accept that. He had legal avenues to explore, but he wasn’t convinced they would work. So he needed to get Plan B in place as quickly as possible to give him something to focus on. Something to aim for.

The composure was the first step on the journey. He had to prove that he deserved respect without making it look like he was trying to step on someone else’s territory, particularly since they all knew he’d killed teenage girls, which made him a borderline nonce. None of it had been easy, and there had been occasional false steps along the way. But Vance still had contacts on the outside who clung on to their belief in his innocence. And he was perfectly willing to exploit those contacts to the full. Keeping sweet the alpha males inside was often a matter of oiling the wheels outside. Vance still had plenty of grease where it counted.

Keeping his nose clean inside the system was another key element in the plan. Whatever he was up to, he had to make it look like he was sticking to the rules. Good behaviour, that’s what he wanted the prison staff to see. Put up with the shit and be a good boy, Jacko. But that was as much of an act as anything else.

Years ago he’d been watching the TV magazine show his ex-wife used to host when she’d interviewed the governor of a prison where there had been a terrifying riot, with the prisoners effectively taking control of the jail for three days. The governor had had a world-weary air to him, and Vance could still summon up his image when he recalled his words: ‘Whatever you put in place, they’ll find a way round it.’ At the time, Vance had been intrigued, wondering if it might be a hook for a TV programme for him and his team. Now, he embraced what it really meant.

Of course, in prison your options were limited when it came to finding a way round anything. You were thrown back on your own resources. That gave Vance a head start over most of his fellow inmates, who didn’t have much to draw on. But the attributes that had made him the most popular male presenter on British TV were perfectly suited to prison. He was charismatic, handsome, charming. And because he’d been a world-class sportsman before the accident that had ultimately led him to his TV career, he could lay claim to being a man’s man. And then there was the George Cross, awarded for risking his life to save small children after a fogbound multiple-vehicle accident on the motorway. Or maybe it was supposed to be a consolation for losing his arm in the failed attempt to get a trapped trucker out of his crushed cab. Either way, he didn’t think there was another jailbird in the country who had been awarded the highest honour for civilian heroism. It all stacked up in the plus column.

At the heart of his plan had been one simple element – befriend the people who had the power to change his world. The top guns who run the inmates; the officers who choose who gets the perks; the psychologist who decides how you serve your time. And all the while, he’d be alert for the key player he’d need to make it all come together.

Brick by brick, he’d built the foundations for his escape. The electric razor, for example. He’d deliberately sprained his wrist so he could plead the impossibility of a one-armed man shaving any other way. Then there had been the convenience of the Human Rights Act, which had ensured his access to state-of-the-art prosthetics. Because the money he’d made before he’d been revealed as a serial killer of adolescent girls had not been the proceeds of crime, the authorities couldn’t touch it. So his artificial limb was the very best that money could buy, allowing him intuitive control and individual finger movements. The synthetic skin was so good, people who didn’t know any better wouldn’t believe it wasn’t real. If you weren’t looking for fake, you wouldn’t see it. An eye for detail, that was what counted.

There had been a moment when he’d thought all his work had been wasted. But wasted in a good way. To the surprise of most people, the appeal court had eventually overturned the verdict against him. For a glorious moment, he’d thought he’d be walking out into the world a free man. But those bastard cops had slammed him with another murder charge before he could even get out of the dock. And that one had stuck like glue, as he’d always feared it might. And so it was back to the cell and back to the drawing board.

Being patient, sticking with the plan had been hard. Years had trickled by with little to show. But he’d toughed things out before. Recovering from the terrible accident that had robbed him of his Olympic medal dreams and the woman he loved had given him reserves of willpower that few people had access to. Years of training to reach the pinnacle of his sport had taught him the value of perseverance. Tonight, all that would pay off. Within a few hours, it would all have been worth it. Now he just had to make the final preparations.

And then he would teach some people a lesson they would never forget.

4

It was hard to see the victim clearly because of the white-suited forensic technicians working the crime scene. As far as Detective Superintendent Pete Reekie was concerned, that was no bad thing. It wasn’t that he was squeamish. He’d seen enough blood over the years to be pretty much immune to its stomach-churning potential. He could take any amount of straightforward violence. But when he was confronted by the perverse, he’d do all he could to avoid the kind of eye contact with the dead that would leave their broken and profaned bodies etched on his memory. DS Reekie didn’t like sick minds having access to his head.

It was bad enough that he’d already had to listen to his DI run through it on the phone. Reekie had been having a perfectly pleasant evening in front of his giant plasma screen, a can of Stella in one hand, cigar in the other, watching Manchester United cling on to a single goal lead against more stylish opposition in the European Championship, when his mobile had rung.

‘It’s DI Spencer,’ his caller announced. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but we’ve got a bad one out here and I thought you might want to be informed.’

Ever since he’d taken over Bradfield’s Northern Divisional CID, Reekie had made it clear to his minions that he didn’t ever want to be blindsided by some case that the media decided to turn into an audience-grabbing crusade. This was the downside, being dragged away from a key match with fifteen minutes still to play. ‘Will it not wait till morning?’ Reekie demanded, knowing the answer before the question was finished.

‘I think you’ll want to be out here,’ Spencer said. ‘It’s another prostitute murder, same tattoo on the wrist, according to the doc.’

‘Are you saying we’re looking at a serial killer?’ Reekie made no attempt to hide his incredulity. Ever since Hannibal Lecter, every bloody detective wanted to jump on the serial-killer bandwagon.

‘Hard to say, sir. I never saw the first two, but the doc says it looks the same. Only … ’

‘Spit it out, Spencer.’ Already, Reekie had regretfully dumped his can on the table by his chair and stubbed out his cigar.

‘The MO … well, it’s pretty radical, compared to the other two.’

Reekie sighed, backing out of the room, half his mind on the languid centre-forward ambling towards a perfectly calibrated pass. ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean, Spencer? “Pretty radical”?’

‘She’s been crucified. Then stood upside down. Then had her throat cut. In that order, according to the doc.’ Spencer’s tone was clipped. Reekie wasn’t sure whether it was because Spencer was shocked himself or trying to shake his boss. Either way, it had certainly done the business for Reekie. He felt acid in the back of his throat, alcohol and smoke transformed into bile.

So he’d known even before he left the house that he wouldn’t want to look at this one. Now, Reekie stood with his back to the horrible tableau, listening to Spencer trying to make something substantial out of the shreds of information they had so far. As Spencer began to run out of steam, Reekie interrupted. ‘You say the doc’s sure it’s the third of three?’

‘As far as we know. I mean, there could be more.’

‘Exactly. A bloody nightmare. Not to mention what it’ll do to the budget.’ Reekie straightened his shoulders. ‘No disrespect, DI Spencer, but I think this is one for the specialists.’

He saw the dawning light of comprehension in Spencer’s eyes. There was a way the DI could dodge endless hours of unpaid overtime, the perpetual weight of the media monkey on his back and the emotional drain on his officers. Spencer wasn’t a shirker, but everybody knew how souls were shrivelled by cases like this. And there was no need for it, not when there were people with an appetite for this sort of shit. And protocols that demanded certain kinds of case should be shunted sideways. Spencer nodded. ‘As you say, sir. I know my limitations.’

Reekie nodded, stepping away from the bright lights and the soft rustle of movement that marked the crime scene. He knew just who to call.

5

Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan grasped the handle of the bottom drawer on the left side of her desk. This was the price she had to pay for deciding to leave Bradfield. At the end of the month, her seasoned team of experts would be disbanded and she would be on her way. By then, every desk drawer, every filing cabinet, every cupboard in her office would have to be filleted. There would be personal stuff she’d want to take with her – photographs, cards, notes from colleagues, cartoons torn from magazines and newspapers that had made Carol and her colleagues smile. There would be professional material that needed to be filed somewhere within the confines of Bradfield Metropolitan Police. There would be scribbled notes that made no sense out of the context of their particular investigation. And there would be plenty of fodder for the shredder – all those bits of paper that nobody else would ever need to see. That’s why she’d stayed behind to make a start on it after the rest of the team had called it a day.

But glumness set in as soon as she yanked the drawer open. It was stuffed full, case papers layered like geological strata. Cases that had been shocking, terrifying, heartbreaking and mystifying. Cases she’d probably never see the like of again. It wasn’t something she should have to attack unfortified. Carol swivelled in her chair and reached for the middle filing cabinet drawer with its more familiar contents. She helped herself to one of the miniature bottles of vodka she’d collected from hotel mini bars, train buffets and business flights. She tipped the dregs of a mug of coffee into the bin, wiped it out with a tissue and poured the vodka. It didn’t look much. She grabbed a second bottle and added it. It still barely looked like a drink. She knocked it back and thought it barely felt like a drink either. She tipped another two miniatures into the mug and set it on the desk.

‘For sipping,’ Carol said out loud. She did not have a drink problem. Whatever Tony Hill might think, she was in control of the alcohol. Not the other way round. There were points in her past when it had been a close thing, but they were behind her. Enjoying the fact that a couple of drinks took the edge off did not constitute a problem. It didn’t interfere with the standard of her work. It didn’t interfere with her personal relationships. ‘Whatever those are,’ she muttered, dragging a bundle of files from the drawer.

She’d worked her way through enough of the stack for a ringing phone to feel like rescue. The screen of her phone showed a police-issue mobile but she didn’t recognise the specific number. ‘DCI Jordan,’ she said, reaching for the mug, surprised to find it empty.

‘Detective Superintendent Reekie from Northern Division,’ a gruff voice said.

Carol didn’t know Reekie, but it had to be important if someone that far up the pecking order was working so late into the evening. ‘How can I help you, sir?’

‘We’ve got something here that I think is right up your team’s street,’ Reekie said. ‘I thought it best to bring you into it soon as. While the crime scene’s still fresh.’

‘That’s how we like them,’ Carol said. ‘But my squad’s winding up, you know.’

‘I’d heard you were working out your notice,’ Reekie said. ‘But you’re still in harness, right? Thought you might want to get your teeth into one last special one.’

They weren’t the words she’d have chosen, but she understood what he meant. They all knew the difference between the run-of-the-mill domestics and criminal infighting that made up most homicides, and murders that signalled a warped mind at work. Cases where there was any element of mystery at all were relatively rare. So she supposed that ‘special’ wasn’t such a strange word to assign to a murder. ‘Text me the location and I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ she said, replacing the unexamined files and kicking the drawer shut.

Her eye caught the empty mug. Technically she was over the limit. She felt perfectly competent to drive, a line she’d heard from dozens of protesting drunks in custody suites throughout her career. On the other hand, she preferred not to turn up single-handed at a crime scene. If they were going to take a case, there were actions that needed to be initiated then and there, and that wasn’t the best use of her time or skills. She mentally flicked through her squad. Of her two sergeants, Chris Devine had had too many late nights recently preparing a case for a major trial; and Kevin Matthews was out celebrating his wedding anniversary. Reekie hadn’t sounded too worried, so this probably wasn’t worth messing up a rare night out. That left her constables. Stacey Chen was always happier with machines than people; Carol still thought Sam Evans cared more for his own career than the victims they were there for; which left Paula McIntyre. As she dialled Paula’s number, Carol acknowledged to herself that it was always going to be Paula.

Some things never change, Paula thought. Driving to a murder scene accompanied by the rising burn of adrenaline. Every time, she felt the thrill in her blood.

‘Sorry to drag you out,’ Carol said.

She didn’t really mean it, Paula thought. But Carol had always been good at making sure her team never felt taken for granted. Paula’s eyes didn’t leave the road. She drove well over the speed limit, but within her capabilities. Nobody wanted to be remembered as one of those cops who mowed down an innocent member of the public in their haste to reach the dead. ‘Not a problem, chief,’ she said. ‘Elinor’s on call, so we were just having a quiet night in. A game of Scrabble and a takeaway.’ Carol wasn’t the only one who wanted to keep everybody sweet.

‘All the same … ’

Paula grinned. ‘I was losing anyway. What have we got?’

‘Reekie was on an open line, so we didn’t talk detail. All I know is that he thinks it’s right up our street.’

‘Not for much longer,’ Paula said, aware of the bitterness and regret in her voice.

‘It was happening regardless of whether I stayed or not.’

Paula was startled. ‘I wasn’t blaming you, chief. I know whose fault it is.’ She flashed a quick glance at Carol. ‘I was wondering … ’

‘Of course I’ll put in a good word for you.’

‘Actually, I was hoping for a bit more than that.’ Paula took a deep breath. She’d been trying to find the right moment for days, but there had always been something in the way. If she didn’t take advantage of having Carol to herself now, who knew when the opportunity would arise again? ‘If I was to apply, would there be a job for me in West Mercia?’

Carol was caught on the back foot. ‘I don’t know. It never occurred to me that anybody would … ’ She shifted in her seat, the better to study Paula. ‘It won’t be like it is here, you know. Their homicide rate’s negligible compared with Bradfield. It’ll be much more like routine CID work.’

Paula quirked a smile. ‘I could live with that. I think I’ve done my fair share at the sharp end of fucked-up.’

‘Can’t argue with that. If it’s what you want, I’d do my best to make it happen,’ Carol said. ‘But I thought you were pretty settled here. With Elinor?’

‘Elinor’s not the issue. Well, not like you’re suggesting. The thing is, she needs to climb up the next step on her medical career. She heard there’s a good job coming up in Birmingham. And Bradfield to Birmingham is not a commute any sane person would want to do. So … ’ Paula slowed for a junction, scanning the road in both directions before she whipped through. ‘If she’s going to go for that, I need to consider my options. And if you’re going to West Mercia, I thought I might as well trade on my connections.’ She glanced at Carol and grinned.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Carol said. ‘There’s nobody I’d rather have on my team,’ she added, meaning it.

‘I got on really well with that sergeant we worked with on the RigMarole killings,’ Paula said, pressing her point. ‘Alvin Ambrose. I’d be happy to work with him again.’

Carol groaned. ‘I hear you, Paula. There’s no need to push it. And it may not be down to me, in the end. You know how it is right now, the way the cuts are biting into front-line officers.’

‘I know. Sorry, chief.’ She frowned at the satnav then made a tentative left turn into a small industrial estate, prefabricated warehouses with their shallow-pitched roofs lining the curving road. They rounded the final bend and Paula knew she was in the right place. A scatter of police and crime-scene vehicles clustered round the last warehouse on the site, flashing blue lights turned off in a bid to avoid attention. But there was no mistaking the fluttering festoons of crime-scene tape staking out the building. Paula pulled up, turned off the engine and squared her shoulders. ‘This’ll be us, then.’

These were the occasions when Carol understood that, no matter how good a cop she was, it would never be enough. Always arriving after the fact grew harder to bear the longer she did this job. She wished Tony was with her, and not just because he would read the scene differently from her. He understood her desire to prevent episodes like this, events that shredded people’s lives and left them with gaping holes in the fabric of the day-to-day. Justice was what Carol craved, but these days she felt it seldom showed up.

DS Reekie hadn’t said much and she was glad of that. Some things went beyond words, and too many cops tried to keep the horror at bay with chatter. But nothing could keep a sight like this at arm’s length.

The woman was naked. Carol could see several thin superficial cuts on her skin and wondered if the killer had cut her clothes off her. She’d ask the CSI photographer to make a point of getting them in his shots so they could make comparisons if the clothes turned up.

The woman’s body had been fixed to a cross with sturdy six-inch nails through her wrists and ankles. Carol tried not to wince at the thought of what that must have sounded like; the crack of hammer on nails, the crunch of bones, the cry of agony echoing off the metal walls. Then the cross had been propped up against the wall upside down so that her dyed blonde hair skimmed the gritty cement floor, her roots a dark line across her forehead.

It hadn’t been crucifixion that had killed her, though. Carol supposed you’d have to classify the savage slash to the throat as a kind of mercy, but it was a kind she hoped she’d never need. The cut had been deep enough to sever major blood vessels. Under arterial pressure, the blood had travelled an impressive distance, the spray visible on the floor all around except for one patch. ‘He was standing there,’ she said, half to herself. ‘He must have been saturated.’

‘He must be bloody strong,’ Paula said. ‘To shift a wooden cross with a body on it, that’s hard work. I don’t think I could do it.’

The white-suited figure working closest to the body turned to face them. His words were slightly muffled by his mask, but Carol could hear them clearly enough. She recognised the Canadian accent of the Home Office pathologist, Grisha Shatalov. ‘The wood’s only two by six. And there’s nothing of her. I’d say classic addict physiology, except there’s no sign that she was injecting. I bet you could lift and drag her into place without too much effort, DC McIntyre.’

‘How long has she been dead, Grisha?’ Carol said.

‘You never ask the questions I can answer,’ he said, weary humour in his tone. ‘My best guess at this point is that she’s been dead for around twenty-four hours.’

‘The unit’s been empty for about four months,’ Reekie said. ‘The security guard didn’t notice the back door had been forced.’ There was no mistaking his contempt.

‘So how did we find her?’ Carol asked.

‘The usual. Man walking his dog last thing. The dog made a beeline for the back door. It must have smelled the blood.’ Reekie wrinkled his nose. ‘Hardly surprising. According to the owner, the dog charged the door, the door swung open, the dog vanished inside and wouldn’t come when called. So he went in, torch on. Took one look and called us.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘At least he had the good sense to grab the dog before it completely fucked up the crime scene.’

‘But Dr Shatalov reckons she was killed last night. How come the dog didn’t find her then?’

Reekie looked over his shoulder, where his DI was riding point. He’d been silent and still up to that point but knew what was expected of him. ‘They didn’t go that way last night, according to the owner. Obviously, we’ll be checking that out.’

‘Never trust the body finder,’ Reekie said.

Like we didn’t know that. Carol stared at the body, clocking every detail, wondering about the sequence of events that had led this young woman here. ‘Any ID?’ she said.

‘Not so far,’ Spencer said. ‘We’ve got a bit of a street prostitution problem out towards the airport. Eastern Europeans, mostly. She’ll likely be from there.’

‘Unless he brought her out from the city. From Temple Fields,’ Paula said.

‘The first two were local,’ Reekie said.

‘Well, let’s hope Grisha can get her looking human enough to ID via a photo,’ Carol said. ‘You said, “the first two”, sir. You’re sure this is a series?’

Reekie turned back to the body. ‘Show her, doc.’

Grisha pointed to what looked like a tattoo on the inside of the woman’s wrist. It was partially covered with blood, but Carol could still make out the letters. MINE. A message that was repulsive, sick and insolent. And yet, in the back of Carol’s head, a devil whispered, ‘Make the most of this. If you go to West Mercia, you’ll never see a crime scene as interesting as this again.’

6

Against all odds, years of apparently model behaviour had earned Vance a place in the Therapeutic Community Wing at HMP Oakworth in the depths of the Worcestershire countryside. There was no set lights-out time on this wing, separated as it was from the rest of the prison; inmates could turn the light off when they wanted to. And the tiny en suite bathroom gave him a degree of privacy he’d almost forgotten existed. Vance turned out the light, leaving the TV on so he wasn’t working in complete darkness. He spread a newspaper out on the table then painstakingly chopped off his hair with a razor blade. Once it was short enough, he ran the electric razor back and forth till his skull was as smooth as he could get it. Thanks to his prison pallor, there would be no difference in skin colour between the newly shaven skin and his face. Next, he shaved off the full beard he’d been cultivating over the past few weeks, leaving only a goatee and moustache behind. Over the past couple of years, he’d been varying his facial hair dramatically – from full beard to clean-shaven, from chin strap to Zapata moustache – so that nobody would pay attention when he cultivated the look that counted.

The key part of the transformation still lay ahead of him. He reached up to the bookshelf above the table and took down a large-format book, a limited edition collection of lithographs by modern Russian artists. Neither Vance nor the usual inmate of the cell had any interest in the art; what made this book valuable was the heavy paper stock it was printed on, paper so heavy the pages could be slit open and used to hide thin plastic sheets of tattoo transfers.

The transfers had been painstakingly created from photographs Vance had taken on his contraband smartphone. They replicated in exact detail the elaborate and garish body art that covered the arms and neck of Jason Collins, the man who was currently sleeping in Vance’s bed. For Vance was not in his own cell tonight. The distraction he’d created had worked perfectly.

A photograph of Damon Todd’s wife leaning into Cash Costello’s brother at some nightclub bar had been all the currency he’d needed. Vance had casually dropped it on the ping-pong table as he’d walked past during the association period that evening. Inevitably, just as he had planned, someone had picked it up and homed in on its significance straight away. Catcalling and taunts followed and, inevitably, Todd had lost his temper and thrown himself on Costello. That would be the end of their spell on the Therapeutic Community Wing, all good behaviour undone in one uncontrollable flash of temper. Not that Vance cared. He’d never been bothered by collateral damage.

What mattered was that the ruckus had diverted the attention of the wing officers just long enough for Vance and Collins to make their way back to the wrong cells. By the time things had settled down and the screws were making the final round of the cells, both men had their lights out, pretending to be fast asleep. No reason to doubt each was where he was supposed to be.

Vance got up and ran cold water into the basin. He tore out the first prearranged page and peeled the two sheets of paper away from the plastic. He immersed the thin plastic film in the basin, then, when the tattoo transfer began to shift, he applied it meticulously to his prosthesis. It was a slow process, but nothing like as awkward as applying it to his other arm. Yes, the new artificial limb was remarkable. But what it could do was still a distance away from the fine motor control of a living arm. And everything depended on getting the details right.

By the time he’d finished, his head was sweating and fine trickles of perspiration ran down his back and sides. He’d done the best he could manage. Put him side by side with Collins and it would be easy to tell the real tatts from the fake, but unless things went horribly wrong, that wasn’t going to happen. Vance picked up the copies his helper on the outside had had made of Collins’ glasses and slipped them on. The world tilted and blurred, but not too much for him to cope with. The lenses were far less powerful than Collins’ own ones, but a cursory check would demonstrate that they weren’t plain glass. Details, it all came down to details.

He closed his eyes and summoned up the sound of Collins’ nasal Midlands accent. For Vance, that was the hardest part of the impersonation. He’d never had much of a gift for imitation. He’d always found himself sufficient. But for once, he was going to have to lose himself in someone else’s voice. He’d try to keep the chat to a minimum, but he had to be ready to avoid a response in his own warm generic tones. He recalled the scene in The Great Escape where Gordon Jackson’s character gives himself away with an automatic response when he’s addressed in English. Vance would have to be better than that. He couldn’t afford to relax, not for a moment. Not until he was free and clear.

It had taken years to get this far. First, to be admitted to the Therapeutic Community at all. Then to find someone roughly the same height and build who also had a powerful need for what Vance could provide. Jason Collins had been in his crosshairs from the first day the creepy little firebug had walked into group therapy. Collins had been a hired gun, firing businesses for cash. But Vance didn’t need the psychologist to tell him that Collins’ motives had been darker and deeper than that. That he was in the group at all was the proof.

Vance had befriended Collins, uncovered his chagrin at losing his family life, and started to sow the seeds of possibility. What Vance’s money could do for Collins’ three kids, for his wife. For a long time, Vance had felt he was treading water. The crucial stumbling block was that assisting Vance would pile more years on top of Collins’ existing sentence.

Then Collins got a different kind of sentence. Leukaemia. The kind where you have only a forty per cent chance of still being alive five years after the initial diagnosis. Meaning he’d probably never have a second chance to provide a future for his kids or his wife. Even if he got maximum time off his sentence, Collins felt like he’d only be going home to die. ‘They’d let you go home anyway if you were that close to dying,’ Vance had pointed out. ‘Look what happened to the Lockerbie bomber.’ It seemed like a perverse version of having your cake and eating it. Collins could help Vance escape and it wouldn’t matter – they’d still let him out when he was sick enough. Either way, he’d be spending the end of his life with his family. And if they did it Vance’s way, his wife and kids would never have to worry about money again.

It had taken all Vance’s powers of persuasion and more patience than he knew he possessed to draw Collins round to his way of thinking. ‘You all grow unaccustomed to nice,’ his psychologist had once remarked. That had given Vance a powerful tool, and finally he’d cracked it. Collins’ elder son was about to become a pupil at the best independent school in Warwickshire and Jacko Vance was about to walk out of jail.

Vance tidied up, tearing the soggy paper into fragments and flushing it, along with hair wrapped in thin wads of toilet paper. He scrunched the plastic film into little balls and squeezed it between the table and the wall. When he could think of nothing more, he finally lay down on the narrow bed. The air chilled the sweat on his body and, shivering, he pulled the duvet over him.

It was all going to be all right. Tomorrow, the screw would come for Jason Collins to take him for his first day of Release on Temporary Licence. ROTL was what every prisoner in the Therapeutic Community dreamed of – the day they would emerge from the prison gates and spend a day in a factory or an office. How bloody pitiful, Vance thought. Therapy that so reduced a man’s horizons that a day of mundane drudgery was something to aspire to. It had taken every ounce of his skills in dissimulation to hide his contempt for the regime. But he’d managed it because he knew this was the key to his return to a life outside walls.

Because not everyone in the Therapeutic Community would be allowed outside. For Vance and a handful of others, there would always be too high a risk involved in that. No matter that he’d convinced that stupid bitch of a psychologist that he was a different man from the one who’d committed the deeply disturbing murder he’d been convicted of. Not to mention all those other teenage girls that he was technically innocent of killing, since he’d never been found guilty of their murders. Still, no Home Secretary wanted to be branded the person who released Jacko Vance. It didn’t matter what his tariff from the judge said. Vance knew there would never be an official return to society for him. He had to admit, if he was in charge, he wouldn’t let him out either. But then, he knew exactly what he was capable of. The authorities could only guess.

Vance smiled in the darkness. Very soon he planned to take the guesswork out of the equation.

7

The liveried police car made a slow turn at Carol’s direction. ‘Third house on the left,’ she said, her voice a weary sigh. She’d left Paula at the crime scene, making sure things were done the way the Major Incident Team preferred. Carol had no problem with delegation, not with a hand-picked squad like this one. She wondered whether she’d have that same luxury in Worcester.

‘Ma’am?’ The driver, a stolid twenty-something traffic officer, sounded cautious.

Carol roused herself to attention. ‘Yes? What is it?’

‘There’s a man sitting in a parked car outside the third house on the left. It looks like his head’s leaning on the steering wheel,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to PNC the index number?’

As they drew level, Carol looked out of the window, surprised but not shocked to see Tony, as the PC had said, leaning on his arms on the steering wheel. ‘No need to trouble the computer,’ she said. ‘I know who he is.’

‘Do you need me to have a word?’

Carol smiled. ‘Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. He’s entirely harmless.’ That wasn’t strictly true, but in the narrow terms of reference of a traffic cop, it was as close as damn it.

‘Your call,’ he said, drawing in front of Tony’s car and coming to a halt. ‘Night, ma’am.’

‘Good night. No need to wait, I’m fine.’ Carol got out of the car and walked back to Tony’s car. She hung on till the police car drove off, then opened the passenger door and got in. At the sound of the lock clicking shut, Tony’s head jerked back and he gasped as if he’d been struck.

‘What the fuck,’ he said, his voice frightened and disorientated. His head jerked from side to side as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. ‘Carol? What the …?’

She patted his arm. ‘You’re outside the house in Bradfield. You were asleep. I came home from work and saw you. I thought you might not have intended to spend the whole night spark out in the car.’

He rubbed his hands over his face as if splashing himself with water, then turned to her, wide-eyed and startled. ‘I was listening to a podcast. The fabulous Dr Gwen Adshead from Broadmoor talking about dealing with the disasters that are our patients. I got home and she was still talking and I wanted to hear the end of it. I can’t believe I fell asleep, she was talking more sense than anybody I’ve heard in a long time.’ He yawned and shook himself. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just after three.’

‘God. I got back not long after midnight.’ He shivered. ‘I’m really cold.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ Carol opened the door. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going indoors.’

Tony scurried out of his side and met her at the gate to the house. ‘Why are you only coming home just after three? Do you want a drink? I’m wide awake now.’

He could be so like a small child, she thought. Out of nowhere, all eagerness and curiosity. ‘I’ll come in for a nightcap,’ she said, following him to the front door rather than to the side door that led to her self-contained basement flat.

Inside, the house had the still cold air of a space that’s been empty for more than a few hours. ‘Put the fire on in my office, it warms up faster than the living room,’ Tony said, heading for the kitchen. ‘Wine or vodka?’

He knew her well enough not to bother offering anything else. ‘Vodka,’ she called as she squatted down to struggle with the ignition of the gas fire. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d suggested he have the fire serviced so it wouldn’t be a wrestling match to get it going. It didn’t matter now. Within a couple of weeks, the sale of this house and her flat within it would be completed and he’d have the problems of a whole new house to ignore. But then, the problems wouldn’t have the chance to turn into nagging irritations. Because she’d be living there, and she didn’t tolerate infuriating shit like that.

The fire finally caught as Tony returned with a bottle of Russian vodka, a bottle of Calvados and a pair of tumblers that looked as if he’d collected them free with petrol sometime in the 1980s. ‘I packed the nice glasses already,’ he said.

‘Both of them?’ Carol reached for the bottle, flinching at the cold. It had obviously been in the freezer and the spirit slid down the bottle in sluggish sobs as she poured it.

‘So why are you coming home after three? You don’t look like it was a party.’

‘Superintendent Reekie at Northern wants me to go out in a blaze of glory,’ she said drily.

‘That would be a budget buster, then?’ Tony raised his glass in a cynical toast. ‘You’d think it came out of a different pot altogether, not just a different department in the same organisation. It’s amazing how many cases have had “Major Incident Team” stamped on them since the Chief Constable’s austerity drive.’

‘Even more so since the word got around that I’m leaving.’ Carol sighed. ‘This one, though … in less frugal times, we’d have been fighting Northern for it anyway.’

‘A bad one?’

Carol swallowed a mouthful of vodka and topped up her glass. ‘The worst kind. Your kind. Somebody nailed a prostitute to a cross. Upside down. Then he cut her throat.’ She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Northern think he’s done it before. Not like that, obviously. We would have heard before now if he had. But they’ve had two dead sex workers recently. Different methods. One strangled, one drowned.’

Tony was leaning forward in his chair, elbows on knees, eyes as far from sleep as could be. ‘I had a call from Penny Burgess earlier. I think it might have been about this.’

‘Really? What did she have to say?’

‘I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. But she seemed to think I should be involved. That there’s something serial going on.’

‘She could be right. All three of the victims have what looks like a tattoo on the inside of their wrist. “MINE”, it says.’

‘They didn’t connect the first two?’ Tony sounded incredulous.

‘To be fair, they only got the chance to make the connection yesterday. The one who was drowned, she wasn’t in the best condition. Grisha’s not had the body long, and it took a bit of time for them to be sure what they were looking for.’ Carol shrugged, running her fingers through her shaggy blonde hair. ‘It was hard to pick up any significance on the first body – she had other tatts on her arms and torso, no reason to think MINE had any greater significance than the tramp stamp that said BECKHAM.’

‘And this latest one? She’s got MINE on her wrist too? Interesting.’

‘It looks like it. There’s a lot of blood and swelling, because he nailed her to the wood through her wrist—’ Carol shuddered. ‘But there’s definitely something there. So Reekie called me and handed it off to us. They’ll do the footslogging.’

‘But it’ll still come out of your budget. Make you look the extravagant one, not Reekie. The women, the victims – were they local to Northern? Or were they working somewhere like Temple Fields and just got killed outside the city centre?’

‘Both local. Small time, on the street, not indoor workers.’

‘Young? Older?’

‘Young. Drug users, not surprisingly. And of course, because of the way they earned their money, we can’t be sure if they were sexually assaulted.’ She held up a hand. ‘I know, I know. Chances are, sex will come into it somewhere.’

‘Just not always in the obvious way.’ Tony sniffed his glass and made a face. ‘It’s always better where you buy it, isn’t it? This stuff smelled wonderful in Brittany. Now it’s like lighter fluid.’ He took a tentative sip. ‘Tastes better than it smells. So will you be looking at using a profiler?’

‘It would be the obvious port of call. But Blake won’t want to pay for you, and I don’t want to work with the homegrown products of the national academy.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You remember the idiot they sent us on the RigMarole killings? All the emotional intelligence of a brick wall. I promised the team I’d never go down that road again. Better to do without than let the Chief Constable foist another one of those on us.’

‘Would you like me?’ Tony said. His raised eyebrows promised the faintest possibility of double entendre, but Carol wasn’t buying.

‘It’s the sensible option, if we want to get a result sooner rather than later.’ She reached for the bottle and topped up her glass. ‘But there’s no way I’ll be allowed to spend that kind of money.’

‘What if it didn’t cost you anything?’

Carol frowned. ‘I’ve told you before. I refuse to take advantage of our personal relationship—’

‘Whatever it is … ’

‘Whatever it is. You’re a professional. When we use expertise from outside the police service, we should pay for it.’

‘The labourer is worthy of his hire,’ he said, softening the darkness of his tone with a lopsided smile. ‘We’ve had this out before, and neither of us is going to shift our ground. You say tomato and I say potato.’ He waved one hand as if he was batting away an insect. ‘I think there’s a way of doing this that means I get paid and you get my expertise.’

Carol frowned. ‘How do you work that out?’

Tony tapped the side of his nose. ‘I need to talk to someone at the Home Office.’

‘Tony, it may have escaped your notice, but we have a new government. There is no money. Not for essentials, never mind luxuries like psychological profilers.’ Frustrated, Carol sighed.

‘I know you think I live on another planet, Carol, but I did know that.’ He pulled a sad clown face that emphasised the lines his job had carved there. ‘But my go-to guy at the Home Office is above the political fray. And I think he owes me.’ Tony paused for a moment, his eyes drifting to the top left corner of the room. ‘Yes, he does.’ He shifted in his seat and stared directly at Carol. ‘All those years ago, we started something in this city. Reekie’s right. You should go out in a blaze of glory. And I should be there at your side, just like I was that first time.’

8

Dawn came and he had not slept. But Jacko Vance was wired, not tired. He listened to the small noises of the wing coming to life, happy in the thought that this would be the last time he was forced to start his day in the company of so many. He checked Collins’ watch every few minutes, waiting for the right moment to rise and start the day. He’d had to calculate another man’s mentality in all of this. Collins would be eager, but not too eager. Vance had always had a good sense of timing. It was one of the elements that had made him so successful an athlete. But today, much more depended on that timing than a mere medal.

When he judged the moment was perfect, he got out of bed and headed for the toilet. He passed the electric razor over his head and his chin again, then dressed in Collins’ ratty jeans and baggy polo shirt. The tattoos looked spot on, Vance thought. And people saw what they expected to see. A man with Collins’ tattoos and clothes must, in the absence of any contradictory features, be Collins.

The minutes crawled by. At last, a fist banged his door and a voice called out. ‘Collins? Get yourself in gear, time to make a move.’

By the time the door opened, the officer was already distracted, paying more attention to an argument further down the corridor about the previous evening’s football results than he was to the man who emerged from the cell. Vance knew the officer – Jarvis, one of the regular day-shift crew, chippy and irritable, but not someone who had ever taken any personal interest in any of his charges. So far, so good. The screw cast a cursory glance over his shoulder then led the way down the hall. Vance stood back while the first door was unlocked remotely, enjoying the solid clunk of the metal tongue sliding open. Then he followed the officer into the sally port and tried to breathe normally while one door closed and the other opened.

And then they were off the wing, moving through the main administrative section of the jail towards the exit. Trying to calm himself with distraction, Vance wondered why anyone would choose a working environment with sickly yellow walls and metalwork painted battleship grey. To spend your days here without descending into deep depression, you’d have to have no visual taste whatsoever.

Another sally port, then the final hurdle. A couple of bored-looking officers sat behind thick glass windows like bank counters, with gaps where documents could be passed through. Jarvis nodded to the nearest, a skinny young man with a crew cut and bad skin. ‘Is the social worker here for Collins?’ he said.

Not likely, Vance thought. Not if things had gone to plan. Not many women would turn up for work after they’d been wakened in the night by someone trying to smash into their house. Especially since the putative burglar/rapist had taken the precaution of slashing all four tyres on her car and cutting her phone line. She’d been lucky. If he’d been doing the job himself instead of having to delegate it, he’d have slashed her dog’s throat and nailed it to the front door. Some things you couldn’t outsource. Hopefully, what he had managed to arrange would be enough. Unfortunate for poor Jason really. He would have to set off for his Release on Temporary Licence day without the support of someone who knew him.

‘No,’ the man on the desk said. ‘She’s not coming in today.’

‘What?’ Jarvis moaned. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming in today?’

‘Personal issues.’

‘So what am I supposed to do with him?’ He jerked his head towards Vance.

‘There’s a taxi here.’

‘He’s going off in a taxi? Without an escort?’ Jarvis shook his head, mugging incredulity for his audience.

‘What’s the odds? He’ll have all day on the ROTL without an escort, regardless. Just means it starts a bit earlier, that’s all.’

‘What about orientation? Isn’t he supposed to have some sort of orientation with the social worker?’

Crew cut picked a spot, examined his fingernail and shrugged again. ‘Not our problem, is it? We ran it past the Assistant Governor and he said it was OK. He said Collins presented no cause for concern.’ He looked at Vance. ‘You all right with that, Collins? Otherwise the ROTL gets cancelled.’

Vance shrugged right back at him. ‘I might as well go since I’m here now.’ He was quite pleased with the way it came out. He thought it was a decent representation of how Collins spoke. More importantly, he didn’t sound at all like himself. He thrust his hands into his pockets as he’d seen Collins do a thousand times, hunching his shoulders slightly.

‘I want it on the record that I’m not happy with this, no matter what the AG says,’ Jarvis grumbled as he led Vance through the high baffle gate that led to the outside world. He pushed open the door and Vance followed him on to a paved area flanked by a roadway. A tired-looking Skoda saloon sat by the kerb, its diesel engine rumbling. Vance smelled the dirty exhaust, a cloying note in the fresh morning air. It was a combination he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Jarvis pulled open the passenger door and leaned in. ‘You take him to Evesham Fabrications, right? Nowhere else. I don’t care if he says he’s having a bloody heart attack and needs to go to the hospital, or he’s going to shit himself if he doesn’t get to a toilet pronto. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200. Evesham Fabrications.’

The driver looked baffled. ‘You need to chill, mate,’ he said. ‘You’ll give yourself a stroke. I know my job.’ He craned his head so he could see past Jarvis. ‘In you get, mate.’

‘In the front, so the driver can keep an eye on you.’ Jarvis stepped back, allowing Vance to slide into the passenger seat. He reached for the seat belt with his prosthesis, hoping any clumsiness would be put down to the length of time since he’d last been in a car. ‘I don’t want to hear you’ve caused any trouble, Collins,’ Jarvis said, slamming the door shut. The car smelled of synthetic pine air freshener overlaid with coffee.

The cabbie, a shambolic-looking Asian man in his mid-thirties, chuckled as he pulled away. ‘He’s in a good mood.’

‘It’s not a mood, it’s his permanent state,’ Vance said. His heart was racing. He could feel sweat in the small of his back. He couldn’t quite believe it. He’d made it out of the front door. And with every passing minute, he was further from HMP Oakworth and closer to his dream of freedom. OK, there were still plenty of obstacles between him and that steak dinner, but the hardest part was behind him. He reminded himself that he’d always believed he led a charmed life. The years in jail had just been an interruption of his natural state, not a termination. The dice were rolling in his favour again.

If he needed reinforcement in that conviction, it came as Vance took a closer look at his surroundings. The car was an automatic, which would make his life a lot easier. He hadn’t driven since his arrest; getting behind the wheel would be a steep enough revision curve without having to deal with gear changes. Vance relaxed a fraction, smiling as he took in neat fields of spring grass with their tightly woven hedges. Fat sheep grazed, their stolid lambs mostly past the gambolling stage. They passed orchards, rows of stumpy trees covered in blossom that was beginning to look a little bedraggled. The road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was a foreigner’s ideal of the English countryside.

‘Must make a nice change for you, getting out like this,’ the cabbie said.

‘You’ve got no idea,’ Vance said. ‘I’m hoping this is just the start. Rehab, that’s what this has been for me. I’m a changed man.’ Changed, in the sense that he was determined never to repeat the kind of mistakes that got him confined. But he was still a killer; he’d just learned how to be a better one.

Now, he was studying the landscape, matching their route to the map in his head. Seven and a half miles of quiet country roads before they hit the major artery leading towards Birmingham.

Vance had pinpointed three places where he could stage the next part of his plan. It all depended on traffic. He didn’t want any witnesses, not at a stage in his escape when he had no weapon to defend himself. So far, one van had passed them, going in the opposite direction, but there was nothing in sight ahead of them as they climbed a long steep incline. He shifted in his seat so he could catch a glimpse in the rear-view mirror, making it look as if he was taking in the view. ‘Bloody lovely round here,’ he said. ‘You forget, inside.’ Then he jumped, genuinely startled. ‘What the hell is that?’ he demanded.

The cabbie laughed. ‘How long have you been away? It’s a wind farm. Giant windmills. They catch the wind and make electricity. Plenty wind up here, so there’s plenty windmills too.’

‘Jesus,’ Vance said. ‘They’re bloody enormous.’ And, fortuitously, their conversation had made the driver less attentive. The moment was perfect. They were approaching a T-junction, the first of Vance’s possible attack points. The car drifted to a halt, the driver pausing to point out more windmills on the horizon before checking for oncoming traffic.

In a split second, Vance smashed the forearm of his prosthesis into the side of the cabbie’s head. The man yelped and threw his hands up to protect himself. But Vance was remorseless and his artificial arm was a weapon far more solid than the bone and muscle of a human limb. He brought it down again on the man’s head, then swiped it hard against his face, smiling as the blood gushed from his nose. Vance used his other hand to release his seat belt so he could gain more leverage. He moved forward and cracked him across the head again, so hard he bounced off the window. The man was screaming now, hands clawing at Vance.

‘Fuck this,’ Vance hissed. He got his arm behind the driver’s head and rammed him face first into the steering wheel. After the third sickening crunch, the man finally went limp. Vance unfastened the driver’s belt and freed him from its constraint. Still pumped with adrenaline, he jumped out of the car and hustled round to the driver’s side. When he opened the door, the driver slumped towards the road. Vance squatted down and got one shoulder under his torso. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to his feet. All those hours in the gym had been worth it. He’d made sure to build strength and endurance rather than exaggerated muscle; he’d never seen any point in being obvious.

Vance staggered as far as the hedgerow that bordered the road. Breathing heavily, feeling his heart hammer in his chest, he dumped the driver on to the top bar of a metal field gate, then tipped him over on the far side. He grinned at the startled expressions on the faces of the nearest sheep as the cabbie tumbled to the ground, arms and legs flailing weakly.

He leaned against the gate for a moment, catching his breath, letting himself recover from the overdose of fight-orflight hormones. Then he returned to the car, this time to the driver’s seat. He cancelled the right turn on the indicator, slipped the car into drive then turned left, the opposite direction to Evesham Fabrications. He reckoned it would take him about forty minutes to make it to the service area on the motorway and the next stage of the plan.

He couldn’t help wondering how long it would take before someone noticed Jason Collins was still on the Therapeutic Community Wing. And Jacko Vance wasn’t. Before they understood that one of the most notorious and prolific serial killers the UK had ever produced was on the loose. And keen to make up for lost time.

This time, his grin lasted a lot longer than a few minutes.

9

Paula shuffled her papers and stifled a yawn. ‘I’m ready when you are,’ she said, moving closer to the whiteboards that lined one wall of the cluttered squad room. Carol wondered whether she’d managed any sleep at all. Paula would have had to hang around at the crime scene to make sure everything was being done according to the Major Incident Team’s protocols. Then she’d have had to go back to Northern HQ with their detectives and set up the programme of actions for the morning shift to carry out, again according to Carol’s specifications. And now she was charged with delivering the morning briefing to this close circle of colleagues who had learned each other’s ways with as much acuteness as they’d ever paid to a lover.

This was the squad Carol had hand-picked and built into the best unit she’d ever worked with. If James Blake hadn’t walked into the Chief Constable’s job with a personal mission to cut costs to the bone long before the idea occurred to the Prime Minister, she’d have been happy to stick with this bunch till she was ready to collect her pension. Instead, she was about to take another of her leaps into the unknown. Only this time, it felt like she was following instead of leading. Not the most reassuring prospect she’d ever faced.

‘Briefing in five,’ she shouted, giving them time to wind up whatever they were doing. Stacey Chen, their computer specialist, invisible behind her array of six monitors, grunted something inarticulate. Sam Evans, deep in a phone call, gave her the thumbs-up. Her two sergeants, Kevin Matthews and Chris Devine, raised their heads from the huddle they’d been forming over their cups of coffee and nodded.

‘Got all you need?’ Carol asked.

‘I think so.’ Paula reached for her coffee. ‘Northern sent me everything from the first two deaths, but I’ve not had time to go through it in detail.’

‘Do your best,’ Carol said, heading for the coffee maker and fixing herself a latte with an extra shot. Another thing she’d miss. They’d clubbed together to buy the Italian machine to satisfy everyone’s caffeine cravings. Apart from Stacey, who insisted on Earl Grey tea. She doubted there would be anything comparable in Worcester.

And speaking of missing, there was no sign of Tony. In spite of his bold promises, it looked as though he hadn’t managed to deliver. She tried to dismiss the disappointment that threatened her; it had never been a likely outcome, after all. They’d just have to wrestle their way through the case without his help.

Carol crossed back to the whiteboards, where the rest of the team were gathering. She couldn’t help admiring the exquisite cut of Stacey’s suit. It was clearly bespoke, and expensively so. She was aware that the team geek had her own software business independent of her police job. Carol had never enquired too closely, believing they all had a right to a private life away from the shit they had to wade through at work. But it was clear from her wardrobe alone that Stacey had an income that dwarfed what the rest of them earned. One of these days Sam Evans was going to notice the almost imperceptible signs that Stacey was crazy about him. When Sam the superficial put that together with her net worth, there would be no stopping him. But by the looks of it, Carol would be long gone before that happened. One drama she wouldn’t be sorry to miss.

Paula cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. There was nothing bespoke about her creased jeans and rumpled brown sweater, the same clothes she’d been wearing when she’d picked Carol up the night before. ‘We were called in last night by Northern Division. The body of an as yet unidentified female was found in an empty warehouse on the Parkway industrial estate.’ She fixed two photographs to a whiteboard, one of the whole crime scene with the crucified body at the heart of it, the other of the woman’s face. ‘As you can see, she was nailed to a wooden cross then propped up against the wall. Upside down. Gruesome, but probably not enough to involve us on its own.’

She stuck three more photographs on the board. Two were identifiably tattooed human wrists; the other could have been any scrap of material with letters written on it. In each case, the letters spelled ‘MINE’. Paula turned back to face her colleagues. ‘What makes it one of ours is that it’s apparently number three. What links them is the tatt on the wrist. That and the fact that they’ve all been found on Northern’s patch, which isn’t necessarily where you’d expect to find dead sex workers.’

‘Why not?’ Chris Devine was the team member least familiar with the nuances of Bradfield’s social geography, having originally moved up from the Met.

‘Most of the street life happens around Temple Fields in the city centre. Also most of the inside trade,’ Kevin said. ‘There’s a couple of pockets on the main arteries out of town, but Northern’s pretty clean on the whole.’

‘My liaison at Northern’s a DS called Franny Riley,’ Paula said. ‘He told me they’ve had a hotspot lately round the new hospital building site. Half a dozen or so women working the area where the labourers park up. He thinks they’ve mostly been East Europeans, probably trafficked. But our first two victims were both local women, so maybe not connected to that.’ Another photo, this time of a worn-out face with sunken eyes, prominent cheekbones and lips tightly pressed together. Nobody ever looked good in a mugshot, but this woman looked particularly pissed off. ‘The first victim, Kylie Mitchell. Aged twenty-three. Crackhead. Five convictions for soliciting, one for minor possession. She mostly worked on the edges of Temple Fields, but she grew up in the high flats out at Skenby – which is bang in the middle of Northern’s patch, Chris. She was strangled and dumped under the ring-road overpass three weeks ago.’ Paula nodded to Stacey. ‘Stacey’s setting up the files on our network.’

Stacey flashed a smile so quick anyone who blinked would have missed it. ‘They’ll be available at the end of the briefing,’ she said.

‘Kylie’s the usual depressing story. Dropped out of school with no qualifications and a taste for partying. Soon graduated to sex for drugs, then moved on to working the streets to support her crack habit. She had a kid when she was twenty, taken straight into care, adopted six months later.’ Paula shook her head and sighed. ‘As far as the sex trade is concerned, Kylie was a bottom feeder. She’d got to the point of no return. No fixed abode, no pimp looking out for her. Easy meat for someone looking for the worst kind of thrill.’

‘How many times have we heard this story?’ Sam sounded as bored as he looked.

‘Too many times. Believe me, Sam, no one would be happier than me if we never had to hear it again,’ Carol said. The rebuke was clear. ‘What do we know about her last movements, Paula?’

‘Not a lot. She didn’t even have any of the other girls looking out for her. She was notorious for taking no care of herself. She was up for anything, didn’t care about using a condom. The other girls had given up on her. Or she’d given up on them, it’s not entirely clear which way round it was. The night of the murder, she was seen around nine o’clock on Campion Way, right on the edge of Temple Fields. We think a couple of the regulars there warned her off their pitch. And that’s it. Nothing, till she turns up under the overpass.’

‘What about forensics?’ Kevin asked.

‘Traces of semen from four different sources. None of them on the database, so that’s only going to have any value once we’ve got someone in the frame. Other than that, all we’ve got is the tattoo. Done postmortem, that’s why there’s no inflammation.’

‘Does that mean we’re looking for a tattoo artist? Someone with professional skills?’ Chris asked.

‘We need to get some expert opinion on that,’ Carol said. ‘And we need to find out how easy it is to get hold of a tattoo machine. Talk to suppliers, see if we can get a list of recent purchases.’

Sam got up to study the tattoo photos more closely. ‘It doesn’t look that skilled to me. But then, that in itself could be deliberate.’

‘Too soon to speculate,’ Carol said. ‘Who found her, Paula?’

‘Couple of teenagers. DS Riley reckons they were looking for a quiet spot to neck a bottle of cider. There’s an old stripped-out Transit van down there, the nearest the local kids have to a youth club. She was shoved in the front end. Where the engine would be if there was an engine left. No real attempt to hide her. Northern already did a door-to-door locally, but the nearest houses are a good fifty metres away, and it’s their back sides that face the crime scene. No joy at all.’

‘Let’s do it again,’ Carol said. ‘She wasn’t beamed down from outer space. Paula, sort it with DS Riley.’

‘Will do.’ Paula pinned another mugshot to the board. ‘This is Suzanne Black, known as Suze. Aged twenty-seven. Half a dozen convictions for soliciting. Not quite as far down the scale as Kylie. Suze shared a flat in one of the Skenby tower blocks with another sex worker, a rent boy called Nicky Reid. According to Nicky, she used to pick up her tricks in the Flyer—’

‘What’s the Flyer?’ Carol interrupted.

‘It’s a pub round the back of the airport, near the cargo area. An old-fashioned roadhouse kind of place. It dates back to when the airport was just Brackley Field aerodrome in the war,’ Kevin said. ‘It’s not a place you’d take the wife and kids for Sunday lunch, but it’s a couple of steps up from a dive.’

‘Nicky says she had a few regulars,’ Paula continued. ‘Cargo handlers at the airport, mostly. Like Kylie, she had a habit, though her drug of choice was heroin. Nicky says she’d been using for years, that she functioned pretty well. Also like Kylie, she didn’t have a pimp. He says she had a long-standing arrangement with her drug supplier – any trouble with anybody trying to muscle in on her business, he’d sort them. She was a good customer.’ A wry twist lifted one corner of Paula’s mouth. ‘And she put other custom his way too.’

‘When did Nicky last see her?’ Carol again.

‘Two weeks ago. They left the flat together. He went into Temple Fields, she was heading for the Flyer. Next day when he got up, she wasn’t there. No sign that she’d been back. He left it a couple of days, in case she was off with one of her mates or her regulars, though that would have been unusual for her.’ Paula shook her head, faintly bemused. ‘The way Nicky describes it, they had this really domesticated set-up.’

‘Who knew?’ Sam sounded contemptuous.

‘So on the third day, Nicky tried to report Suze missing. His nearest police station happens to be Northern Divisional HQ. To say they were not interested would be a profound understatement. Nicky had a come-apart in reception and nearly got arrested himself. But no action was taken. The body turned up four days ago in the Brade Canal in the course of an angling competition. According to the pathologist, she’d been drowned, but not in the Brade.’

Paula clicked a button on the pointer in her hand and a video window sprang to life on the whiteboard. Dr Grisha Shatalov, the pathologist, smiled out at them in his scrubs. His warm voice with its soft Canadian accent was stripped to tinnyness by the cheap speakers. ‘When we have an apparent drowning, the first thing we look for is whether it really is a drowning. Especially if the victim is, like this one, a drug user. Because sometimes a drug overdose can look like a drowning, the way the lungs fill up with fluid. But I can tell you for sure that, although Suzanne Black was a heroin user, this was not a drug overdose.

‘So now we have to figure out if she was drowned where she was found. Have I told you about diatoms before? Doesn’t matter if I have, I’m going to tell you again. Diatoms are microscopic creatures, a bit like plankton. They’ve got shells made of silicate, and they live in open water. Fresh water, salt water. Lakes and rivers. Every body of water has different diatoms. They’re like a fingerprint, and they also vary according to the time of year.’ His smile grew wider. ‘You guys are fascinated, right? OK, I’ll cut to the chase. When you drown, the diatoms make their way into your tissues. Lungs, kidneys, bone marrow, that kind of thing. We dissolve the tissue in acid and what’s left is proof of what river or lake you drowned in.

‘Well, we did the analysis and there are no diatoms in Suzanne Black’s body. That means one thing and one thing only. She did not die in the canal. She died in tap water. Or filtered water, maybe. We ran some tests on her lungs and we found traces of soap, which to my mind narrows it down to a bath or a deep sink. I hope this little lecture has been helpful.’

Carol shook her head. ‘Smooth-talking bastard. One of these days I’m going to get the prosecution to play one of his cheery little vids to the jury. However, this is really useful information. We’re not looking for a struggle by the canal, we’re looking for wherever he took her for a bath.’

‘Maybe he took her home with him,’ Kevin suggested.

‘He seems to be careful,’ Carol said. ‘I don’t know that he’d have risked that. We need to find out where she took her punters. OK, on you go, Paula.’

‘She was fully dressed when she was found,’ Paula said. ‘She wasn’t weighted down, but the body had snagged on the usual canal debris, so she’d been in the water a while. They didn’t catch the tattoo at first because the skin was so degraded.’

Carol winced at the word. No matter that it would have been used by Grisha himself; it still felt like an adjective that had no place being applied to a human body. ‘But there’s no doubt about it?’

Paula shook her head. ‘Dr Shatalov is clear. It’s a postmortem tattoo and it looks very similar to the ones on Kylie and our Jane Doe.’

‘If she drowned in a bath, there’s a chance someone saw her with her killer. He had to take her somewhere with a bath. A house, a hotel or something,’ Chris said.

‘That’s right. We need to get her photo on the local news, see what that brings out of the woodwork. Kevin, talk to the flatmate, Nicky. See if he has any photos of her.’ Carol frowned, considering. ‘Let’s keep a lid on the connection for now, if we can. Penny Burgess has been sniffing round, but Dr Hill sent her off with a flea in her ear. She talks to any of you, do the same.’ She gave Kevin a direct look, but he was ostentatiously scribbling in his notebook. ‘We’ll get DS Reekie to do the press call, keep MIT out of the picture for now, let the media think this is his. If our killer thinks he’s not caught our attention, it might provoke him into breaking cover.’

‘Or killing again,’ Paula said, shoulders slumped. ‘Because, right now, we’ve got almost nothing you could call a lead.’

‘Any chance we could get Tony to take a look at this?’ Everyone froze at Kevin’s query. Sam stopped fidgeting, Chris stopped taking notes, Stacey stopped tapping on her smartphone and Paula’s expression was fixed at incredulity.

Carol’s mouth tightened as she shook her head. ‘You know as well as I do, we don’t have the budget.’ Her voice was harsher than they were accustomed to.

Kevin flushed, his freckles fading against the scarlet. ‘I just thought … since they’re winding us up anyway, why not? You know? You’re leaving us. What have you got to lose?’

Before Carol could respond to this uncharacteristic defiance, the door to the squad room burst open. On the threshold, hair awry, one shirt tail hanging out, jacket collar askew, stood Tony Hill. He looked around wildly before his gaze settled on Carol. He gulped air, then said, ‘Carol, we need to talk.’

There was no affectionate indulgence in Carol’s glare. ‘I’m in the middle of a murder briefing, Tony,’ she said, her tone chilly.

‘That can wait,’ he said, continuing into the room and letting the door sigh shut behind him. ‘What I have to say can’t.’

10

An hour earlier, Tony Hill had been sitting in his favourite armchair, his games console controller in his hands, thumbs dancing over buttons as he whiled away the time until it was reasonable to expect Piers Lambert to be at his Home Office desk. The warbling trill of his phone broke into his concentration and his car spun off the road in a scream of brakes and a screech of tyres. He scowled at the handset on the table beside him. The best chance he’d had in ages to breach the final set of levels and now it was gone. He dropped the controller and grabbed the phone, noticing as he did so that it was late enough to call Piers. Just as soon as he’d dealt with whoever was on the phone.

‘Hello?’ There was no welcome in his greeting.

‘Is that you, Tony?’ The voice sounded like a Tory cabinet minister – posh with the edges deliberately rubbed off. A man more superstitious than Tony would have freaked out. Tony simply held the phone a few inches from his face and frowned before returning it to his ear.

‘Piers? Is that really you?’

‘Well spotted, Tony. You don’t usually cotton on so quickly.’

‘That’s because you’re not usually in the forefront of my mind, Piers.’

‘And I am today? I’d take that as a compliment if I knew less about the way your mind works. Why am I on your mind?’

There was no specific reason why being on the receiving end of a call from Piers Lambert should have unsettled Tony. But in his experience, when senior mandarins made their own phone calls, it was never the harbinger of joy. ‘You first,’ he said. ‘It’s your phone bill.’

‘I’m afraid I have some rather troubling news,’ Lambert said.

Uh-oh. When men like Lambert used words like ‘rather troubling’, most people would reach straight for ‘nightmarish’, ‘devastating’, or ‘hellish’. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘It’s to do with Jacko Vance.’

Tony hadn’t heard the name for years, but still it held the power to make him feel ill. Jacko Vance was a psychopathic charmer without a trace of conscience. That made him far from unique in Tony’s experience of the dark side of human behaviour. But Vance’s destructiveness had ripped through promise that Tony had known at first hand. Vance had shattered trust in ways that few people could have imagined before his terrible damage became known. Compassion and empathy were the principles Tony had always tried to apply to his professional life. But among the many predators whose activities had threatened to strip those qualities from him, Jacko Vance had come closest. As far as Vance was concerned, the only news Tony wanted to hear was an obituary. ‘What’s happened?’ he said, his voice rough with anxiety.

‘It appears he’s escaped from custody.’ Piers sounded apologetic. Tony could picture his pained smile, his apprehensive eyes and the way he would touch the knot of his tie for reassurance. In that instant, he wanted to grab that tie and pull it very hard.

‘Escaped? How the fuck could that happen?’ Anger overtook him, nought to ninety in seconds.

‘He took the place of another prisoner who had qualified for Release on Temporary Licence. He was due to spend the day at a local factory. The social worker who should have accompanied him wasn’t at work and it appears Vance attacked the driver of the taxi taking him to the factory assignment, then made off in the taxi.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Tony shouted. ‘What in the name of God was he doing anywhere near the category of prisoner who could qualify for Release on Temporary Licence? How could that happen?’

Lambert cleared his throat. ‘He’s been on the Therapeutic Community Wing at Oakworth for a couple of months now. A model prisoner, by all accounts. Has been for years.’

Tony opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, reaching for the right words and failing to find them.

‘There was no indication that Vance had anything planned,’ Lambert continued, his voice smooth and unruffled.

Tony found his voice. ‘Piers, can you explain what the hell Vance was doing on a Therapeutic Community Wing? He’s on a whole-life tariff, for crying out loud. Why’s he occupying a space in a rehab programme designed for people who have come to terms with their crimes? People who are working towards release? People who have a future that isn’t behind bars? Answer me, damn it! Who put him in a place he could exploit? A place he could manipulate for his own ends? The perfect bloody place for someone like him to take advantage of?’

Lambert sighed heavily. ‘There will, of course, be an inquiry. The psychologist who was assigned to him made the case for him to move to the Therapeutic Community Wing. He’s been Category C for a couple of years now, you know.’

‘Cat C?’ Tony exploded. ‘After what he’s done? God knows how many teenage girls mutilated and murdered, and he’s downgraded from Cat A to Cat C?’

‘Technically, he’s serving a single life sentence for a single murder—’

‘Not to mention the murder of a police officer,’ Tony continued, ignoring Lambert’s response. ‘A police officer who was trying to make sure no more girls died.’

‘Nevertheless, we can only punish what we can prove. And the Court of Appeal found the conviction in respect of Detective Constable Bowman to be unsafe. As I said, Vance was a model prisoner. The governor of his previous prison held out as long as he could, but there were no grounds on which the authorities could refuse to reduce his threat category.’ Tony picked up a note of frustration in Lambert’s voice. It was good to feel that he wasn’t alone in his outrage at what he was hearing. ‘His lawyer threatened us with the Human Rights Act, and we both know how that would have gone. So Vance was reduced to Cat C and transferred to Oakworth.’

‘This psychologist – was it a woman?’

‘Yes, as it happens.’ Lambert sounded startled. ‘But entirely competent.’

‘And entirely susceptible to Jacko Vance’s charisma,’ Tony said sadly. ‘If anyone had asked me, I would have insisted that no female staff come into direct contact with Vance. He’s clever, he’s charming and he’s got the knack of making men and women, but women in particular, feel like they’re the only person in the world. He’ll have made all the right noises about remorse and the need to atone, and what harm could it do to move him to a prison community where he could deal with his issues from the past? Even if he was never going to be returned to society, the system owed him that small kindness.’ Tony made a sharp noise of disgust. ‘I could write the script, Piers.’

‘I’m sure you could, Tony. Unfortunately, there’s no mechanism for allowing those involved in tracking down a criminal to have input into what happens to them once they fall within the remit of the prison system.’

Tony jumped out of his chair and began pacing the room. ‘And he managed to impersonate another prisoner well enough to get out of Oakworth? How the hell did he manage that? I mean, Vance is the original one-armed man. He’s got a bloody prosthetic arm. Not to mention the fact that he used to be on prime-time TV. Millions of people could pick him out of a line-up. How come the duty officers didn’t recognise Jacko bloody Vance?’

‘You are out of the loop, aren’t you? Don’t you remember, Vance brought a case under the Human Rights Act against the Home Office—’

‘Yes, he said he was being discriminated against because he wasn’t being fitted with the latest prosthetics. And the court upheld his position. But it’s still a prosthesis, Piers. It’s not an arm like you and I have got.’

‘You don’t know much about state-of-the-art prosthetics, do you, Tony? We’re not talking about some bog-standard NHS artificial limb here. What Vance has got now is almost indistinguishable from what you and I have got. According to the brief I’ve got, he had surgery to reroute nerves, which in turn send messages to the electronics in the arm and the hand. He can move the fingers and thumb independent of each other. Over the top of it, he’s got a bespoke cosmesis, which apparently is fake skin, complete with freckles, veins, tendons, the lot. The whole kit and caboodle cost thousands of pounds.’

‘And we paid for that?’

‘No. He went private.’

‘This beggars belief,’ Tony said. ‘He’s a convicted killer and he gets to have private medical care?’

‘He was legitimately a multi-millionaire. He could afford it and the courts said he had the right to the best treatment available. I know it sounds insane, but that’s the law for you.’

‘You’re right. It does sound insane.’ Tony reached the far wall again and slapped his hand hard against it. ‘I thought the families of his victims sued him? How come he’s still awash with cash?’

‘Because he was clever with it.’ At last, a tinge of anger had crept into Lambert’s voice. ‘As soon as he was arrested, Vance made arrangements to take his money offshore. It’s all tied up in trusts abroad, the kind of jurisdictions where we have no way of discovering who the trustees are or who the beneficiaries of the trusts are. The civil court judgements against Vance can’t be enforced against an offshore trust. But when he needed funds for surgery, the money was made available. It’s hugely offensive, but there’s nothing we can legally do to prevent it.’

‘Unbelievable.’ Tony shook his head. ‘But even if the arm wasn’t obvious, how did he manage to fool everybody?’

Lambert groaned. ‘God knows. What I’m hearing is that the prisoner in question has a shaved head, glasses and distinctive tattoos on his arms and neck. All of which Vance had copied. Someone obviously brought in custom-made tattoo sleeves or transfers with the appropriate designs. The person most likely to realise it was the wrong man was the social worker, and she wasn’t in work today.’

Tony gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Something completely unpredictable happened to her. Her boyfriend was kidnapped or her house blew up or something.’

‘I have no idea, Tony. All I know is that she wasn’t there, so in their infinite wisdom the officers sent him off in a taxi to his work placement. I’m told it’s standard operating procedure in cases like this. Don’t forget, the prisoners who get sent on these placements are on a trajectory towards release. It’s in their interests not to mess up.’

‘This is the most terrifying news I’ve heard in a long time, you know that? There’s going to be bodies, Piers.’ An involuntary shudder rippled across Tony’s shoulders. ‘How’s the taxi driver? Is he still alive?’

‘He has head injuries, but I’m told they’re not life-threatening.’ Lambert sounded dismissive. ‘What concerns me most is that we recapture Vance as swiftly as possible. And that’s where you come in.’

‘Me? I haven’t spoken to Vance since before his first trial. I’ve no idea where his head’s at these days. You’ve got a prison psych who apparently knew him well enough to put him in a Therapeutic Community – talk to her.’ Tony let out a sharp breath of exasperation.

‘We will, of course. But I have huge respect for your abilities, Tony. I was very much on the sidelines when you put a stop to Vance all those years ago, but I remember the impact your work had on the Home Office attitude towards profiling. I want to send you the files on Vance and I want you to provide us with as detailed an assessment as possible of what he’s likely to do and where he’s likely to go.’ Lambert had recovered his poise. His request had all the force of insistence without being obvious.

‘It’d be guesswork at best.’ When it came to the big beasts of officialdom, Tony knew better than to offer any shred of hope that could be used later as a stick to beat him with.

‘Your guesswork is better by far than the considered opinion of most of your colleagues.’

When all else fails, Tony thought, wheel out the flattery. ‘One thing I will say, even without the benefit of the files … ’

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t know where Micky Morgan is these days, but you need to track her down and tell her Vance is on the loose. In Vance’s world view, she’ll still be his wife. It doesn’t matter that it was never a marriage in the first place, or that she had it annulled. As far as he’s concerned, she let him down. He doesn’t like being thwarted.’ Tony stopped pacing and leaned his forehead against the door. ‘As we all found out to our cost the last time. He’s a killer, Piers. Anyone who’s ever crossed him is at serious risk.’

There was a moment’s silence. When Lambert spoke again, there was a gentleness in his voice that Tony had never heard before. ‘Doesn’t that apply to you too, Tony? You and DCI Jordan? You’re the ones who brought him down. You and your team of baby profilers. If you think he’s going after the people he blames for his incarceration, surely you’re at the top of the list?’

It was a measure of Tony’s lack of narcissism that Lambert’s concern had genuinely not occurred to him. Years of clinical practice had taught him to bury his own vulnerability so deep he’d almost lost sight of it himself. And although he knew plenty about the chinks in Carol Jordan’s armour, he was so accustomed to thinking of her as her own worst enemy that he’d all but forgotten there were other threats out there, threats that could undermine her far more comprehensively than her own weaknesses. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said now, shaking his head, not wanting to believe himself a possible target. Because once he admitted that, everything he did would be tainted and skewed by the fear of who Vance might destroy next.

‘I think you ought to be aware of the possibility,’ Lambert said. ‘I’ll have the files uploaded and send you the codes to access them. As soon as we hear anything from the police in North Yorkshire, I’ll be in touch.’

‘I never said—’

‘But you will, Tony. You know you will. We’ll talk soon.’

And he was gone. For a split second, Tony thought about phoning Carol. But news like this was always better delivered face-to-face. He grabbed his car keys and jacket and headed for the door. He was halfway to Bradfield Police HQ when he remembered he’d had his own reasons for talking to Piers Lambert. But even though he thought he truly believed that no individual life was worth more than another, he had to acknowledge that, when it came to it, saving Carol Jordan was always going to trump anything else.

It wasn’t an entirely comfortable conclusion, but it was inescapable.

11

Tony advanced into the room, his eyes fixed on Carol. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I have to speak to you now. In private.’ Seeing how serious he was, Carol’s expression shifted from annoyed to perplexed. Tony had never cried wolf in all the years she’d known him. Whatever the issue was, this was clearly no frivolous interruption. ‘My office,’ she said, gesturing with her head towards the open door. Tony didn’t even break stride. Carol sighed and spread her hands wide in a gesture of helplessness towards her officers. Her team was well used to Tony’s eccentricities, but it was still infuriating to have him walk in as if he owned the place. And whatever happened in it. ‘As I said already: Kevin, talk to Suze Black’s flatmate. Take Paula with you, I think. Sam, talk to Dr Shatalov about a photo we can use to ID her. Chris, work with Stacey to get the whiteboards up to speed with the files. And don’t forget the tattooing machines.’ She glanced over her shoulder and saw Tony was already pacing. ‘I shall return,’ she said wearily.

Carol shut the office door behind her but didn’t bother to close the blinds. She wasn’t expecting the conversation to go anywhere that needed that kind of privacy. ‘This had better be good, Tony,’ she said, dropping heavily into her chair. ‘I’ve got three murders on the board. I don’t have time for anything less than life or death.’

Tony stopped pacing and leaned his hands on her desk, facing her. ‘I think this more than qualifies,’ he said. ‘Jacko Vance escaped from prison earlier this morning.’

Carol’s face blanked with shock. ‘What?’ It was an automatic response. Tony didn’t bother repeating himself. She stared at him for a long moment then said, ‘How could they let that happen?’

Tony made a dismissive noise. ‘Because Vance is smarter than anybody else in a Cat C prison.’

‘Cat C? How could he be in Cat C? He’s a convicted killer.’

‘And the perfect prisoner, according to the Home Office. He hasn’t put a foot out of place all the years he’s been inside. Or rather, he’s covered his tracks so well, that’s what it looks like.’ There was anger in his voice, but he couldn’t be bothered trying to suppress it. If he couldn’t show some emotion with Carol, then there was nowhere in his life he could open a door on what lay within. ‘Not only was he Cat C, he’s been on a Therapeutic Community Wing. Can you believe it? Free association, cells like hotel rooms, group therapy that he can stage-manage like the master manipulator he is.’ He pushed off from the desk and threw himself into a chair. ‘I could lay my head on your desk and weep.’

‘So did someone help him? Did he go over the wall?’

‘Obviously he’s had a lot of help, inside and out. He impersonated another prisoner who was due to go out on a day release. One of those temporary licence things where they’re supposed to learn how to adjust to the outside world.’ He slapped his hands on his thighs. ‘The other prisoner must have been in on it. You remember what Vance is like with vulnerability. He teases it out, then he homes in on it, makes people feel like he’s the heavensent answer to whatever ails them. He’ll have had something to offer that this other bloke needs.’ He jumped up again and started pacing. Carol couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him so physically worked up. Then it came to her. An apartment in Berlin. Where her personal safety had been on the line. It dawned on her that this agitation might have its roots in the same cause.

‘You’re worried about me,’ she said. ‘You think he might come after me.’

Tony stopped in his tracks. ‘Of course I’m worried about you. I remember what you told me. What he said to you the night you arrested him.’

Carol felt a cold thrill at the back of her neck. Vance’s low angry words had chilled her at the time; they’d come back to her in dark and twisted dreams for months afterwards. Sometimes her gift for being able to remember precisely whatever she heard felt more like a curse. ‘You are going to regret this night,’ he’d said. Danger had come off him like a smell, leaving her feeling corrupted and afraid. Suddenly dry-mouthed, she tried to swallow. ‘Surely he’s not going to hang around taking revenge?’ she said, trying to convince herself most of all. ‘He’s going to have a bolthole lined up. Somewhere he can feel in charge of his life. That’s not going to be in this country, never mind anywhere near me.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Tony said. ‘Remember what he did to Shaz Bowman.’

Recalling what Vance had done reminded Carol of the young cop who had been training as a profiler with Tony. Blazing blue eyes, brilliant analyst, impulsive servant of justice. Shaz had uncovered a cluster of potential serial killer victims, which had pleased her bosses. She’d also identified sporting hero and TV star Jacko Vance as the impossibly improbable suspect. Lacking the support of her colleagues, she’d gone her own sweet way, confronting Vance with her suspicions. And he had killed her in the most brutal and dehumanising manner. ‘She was a threat to his security. To his liberty,’ Carol said, knowing it was a weak response.

Tony shook his head, an angry twist to his expression. ‘Nobody was listening to Shaz. Not even me, to my eternal shame. Nothing she had would have convinced a senior officer to investigate Vance, never mind arrest him. He was the big beast in the jungle, and she was a mosquito. He killed her because she’d pissed him off. The irony is that that’s why he ended up in jail in the first place. If he’d left Shaz alone, she’d have been written off as a silly woman with a bee in her bonnet. Killing her was what electrified the lot of us.’

Carol nodded agreement, her shoulders slumping. ‘And he’s not stupid. He must understand that now, even if he didn’t get it at the time. He’s clearly been preparing this escape for years. So why would he risk being recaptured just to get his own back?’ She glanced out of the window at the busy office outside. She badly wanted a drink, but she wouldn’t let her team see her drink on duty. She wished she’d closed the blinds, but it was too late now. ‘Surely he’s not going to stick around just for revenge? All this time in the planning, he must have an escape hatch set up. And surely that’s bound to be abroad? Somewhere without an extradition treaty?’ Trying to convince herself, to keep the fear at bay.

‘He doesn’t look at the world the way we do, Carol. Vance is a psychopath. For years, abducting and raping and torturing and killing young girls was what gave his life meaning. And we took that away from him. That’s been eating away at him ever since. Believe me, making us suffer in return is right up there at the top of his list. I know Vance. I’ve sat across a table from him and seen the wheels go round. He’s going to want retribution – and you are going to be in the crosshairs.’ Tony sat down abruptly, hands gripping the arms of the chair.

Carol frowned. ‘Not only me, Tony. I just arrested him. You were the one who analysed his crimes, his behaviour. If he’s got a list, you’re up near the top too. And not just you. What about those baby profilers who stood shoulder to shoulder to avenge their colleague? They’re in the frame too. Leon, Simon and Kay.’ Fresh realisation dawned and Carol waved at the room beyond the glass. ‘And Chris. I always forget that’s when I first met Chris, because we were working opposite ends of the investigation. Chris will be on his list too. There was nobody more passionate about nailing Vance for Shaz’s murder than Chris. She’s a target. They’re all targets. And they need to be warned.’ Sudden anger surged in Carol’s chest. ‘Why have I not heard about this officially? Why am I hearing it from you?’

Tony shrugged. ‘I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe because I haven’t delivered my risk assessment yet. But you’re possibly right. I’m not convinced they played a significant enough role in Vance’s eyes to be in the crosshairs now. But they do need to be told.’

‘And his ex-wife,’ Carol said. ‘Jesus. Tell me they’ve informed Micky Morgan.’

‘I told them straight off they should warn her,’ Tony said. ‘He’ll perceive what she did as a betrayal. Not only did she fail to stand by him, she chose to humiliate him. That’s how he’ll see it. Rather than divorce him, she went for annulment. You and me, we understand why Vance wanted a marriage of convenience, but as far as your average prison inmate is concerned, not consummating your marriage means only one thing.’ He gave Carol a wry look. ‘That you’re a sad sack of shit who can’t get it up.’

Carol saw the pain in his eyes and felt the twist of the knife. It wasn’t just his impotence that had come between them over the years, but it sure as hell hadn’t helped. ‘You’re not a sad sack of shit,’ she said briskly. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I hear what you’re saying about Micky – the way she went about getting rid of Vance set him up for ridicule, at best.’

‘He’ll have seen that as deliberate,’ Tony said. ‘But I don’t think she’ll be the one he goes for first. What she did was after the fact, if you like. The real villains are the ones who took his life away from him.’

‘Which would be us,’ Carol said. Anxiety was beginning to climb closer to alarm. She really needed that drink now.

‘I think we’ve got a small window of opportunity before he makes a move,’ Tony said. ‘Vance was never one to take risks. He’ll want to be rested and he’ll want to be certain the plans he put in place from prison will work in practice. That gives all of us time to get our lives in order and go into hiding.’

Carol looked bemused. The notion of giving into the fear was anathema. ‘Go into hiding? Are you crazy? We need to be out there, working with the search team.’

‘No,’ Tony said. ‘That’s the last place you want to be. You want to be where he won’t be looking. Halfway up a Welsh mountain, or on a crowded London street. But certainly not with the search team, the very people he’ll be doing his best to keep tabs on. Carol, I want us all to survive this. And the best way is to take ourselves out of harm’s way till they catch Vance and put him back where he belongs.’

Carol glared at him. ‘And what if they don’t catch him? How long do we stay off the radar? How long do we put our lives on hold till it’s safe to come out?’

‘They’ll catch him. He’s not Superman. He’s got no sense of the surveillance society that’s sprung up since he was sent down.’

Carol snorted. ‘You think? The hard evidence that put him away came from the early versions of what we’ve got now. I think he’ll be very conscious of what’s out there. If he was on a Therapeutic Community Wing, he’ll have had a TV, a radio. Maybe even limited Internet access. Tony, Vance will know exactly what he’s up against and he’ll have made his plans with that in mind.’

‘All the more reason to lie low,’ Tony said stubbornly. He slammed his hands down on the arm of his chair. ‘Damn it, Carol, I don’t want to lose anybody else to that sick bastard.’ His face was stripped of defences and she was reminded of how personal Shaz Bowman’s death had felt to him. The blame he’d loaded on his own shoulders had weighed him down for years, not least because the courts had allowed Vance to escape the consequences of that particularly brutal act.

‘You won’t,’ she said, her voice soft and warm. ‘It’s not going to be like last time. But cops like us don’t hide from animals like Jacko Vance. We go out after them.’ She held up a hand to stop him as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘And I don’t say that in the spirit of gung-ho stupidity. I say it because I believe it. If I start letting the fear take control, I might as well quit right now. Never mind a new start. The only thing I should be looking at is early retirement.’

Tony sighed, knowing when he was defeated. ‘I can’t make you,’ he said.

‘No, you can’t. And unless the others have changed a hell of a lot in the past dozen or so years, you can’t make them either. We need to be out there, looking for him.’

Tony screwed up his face in a pained expression. ‘Please don’t do that, Carol. Please. Warn the others, by all means. But just do your normal work. Leave the manhunt to people he’s got no interest in killing.’

‘And you? Is that what you’ll be doing?’

Tony found he couldn’t meet her eyes, even though he didn’t feel he had anything to be ashamed of. ‘I’m going to be a long way away from the front line, preparing a risk assessment. Suggestions about what Vance will want to do. Where he will want to go. I was going to hide halfway up a Welsh mountain with you so I could pick your brains, but that’s not going to happen, is it?’ Again, he was aware of anger creeping into his voice. This time, he clamped down on it, forcing himself to sound genial. ‘So I’ll probably get somebody else to deal with my appointments at Bradfield Moor today and drive back to Worcester so I can work there in peace.’

It wasn’t an option that pleased Carol. She wanted him where she could keep tabs on him. ‘I’d rather you stayed here,’ she said. ‘If we’re not going into hiding, the least we should do is stay close to each other. Avoid giving Vance any opportunity for attack.’

Tony looked dubious. ‘You’re in the middle of a serial-killer inquiry and I’m not supposed to be working with you. If your beloved Chief Constable sees me hanging around in here, he’ll have an aneurysm.’

‘Tough. Anyway, I thought you’d figured out a way round that?’

Tony continued to avoid her eyes. ‘I didn’t get round to it. This other business put it out of my mind. And now I’ve got to work on this Vance assessment. I tell you what: I’ll work in your office with the blinds drawn, then, when I deliver to the Home Office, I’ll get it sorted out. OK?’

Carol surprised herself by laughing. ‘You’re hopeless, you know that?’

‘But you have to promise me something in return …’

‘What’s that?’

‘If he comes anywhere near any of us, you’ll take cover.’

‘I am not hiding up a mountain in the middle of Wales.’ Carol’s mouth set in a firm line.

‘No, I see that. But I’ve still got the narrowboat moored up in the basin in Worcester. We could set sail like the owl and the pussycat. It’d take our minds off Vance.’

Carol frowned. This wasn’t the Tony Hill she’d known all these years. Yes, he’d recently claimed he’d been changed profoundly by discovering the identity of his biological father, understanding the reasons why the man had played no role in his life, and coming to terms with his legacy. But she’d been doubtful, seeing little evidence of any change beyond the superficial decision to leave Bradfield and move into the splendid Edwardian house in Worcester. OK, that had also meant jacking in his job at Bradfield Moor secure mental hospital, but Carol was convinced that giving up work wouldn’t last for more than a few weeks. Tony identified himself too closely with the exploration of damaged minds to abandon it for long. There would be another secure hospital, another set of messy heads. She had no doubt of that.

However, the idea of taking off on an unplanned excursion to anywhere on a narrowboat was entirely out of character, a genuine marker of change. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d even taken his annual leave, never mind actually going on holiday. Maybe he too was feeling the fear gnawing at his heart. ‘We’ll sail under that bridge when we come to it,’ she muttered, getting up and heading for the door. ‘But the first thing I need to do is break the bad news to Chris. Then we have to get cracking on tracking down the others and telling them.’

Tony got to his feet.

‘No, you’re staying right here,’ Carol said, reaching past him and closing the blinds.

‘I need to go home for my laptop,’ he protested.

‘No, you don’t. You can use my computer.’

‘It doesn’t have my boilerplate.’

Carol gave a grim smile. ‘If you mean your standard intro, just use one of your old profiles. You’ll find them in the directory conveniently entitled “profiles”. Sorry, Tony. If this is as serious as you made out, you have to take as much care of yourself as you would like to take of me.’

There was, she thought as she marched into the main squad room, absolutely nothing he could say to that.

12

Vance had found a Boston Red Sox baseball cap in the taxi driver’s glove box. It wasn’t exactly a disguise, but if there was already a description of him out there, the hat wouldn’t be part of it. It was probably enough to give him a few moments’ grace. He was pleasantly surprised by the new service area on the motorway. Back when he’d gone inside, a motorway service area was a depressing necessity, trapped in a 1960s time warp. Now this one at least had apparently been transformed into an attractive open-plan diner with an M&S food store, a coffee shop with twenty varieties of hot drink, and a motel. Who cared about ripping up the countryside? This was a huge improvement.

Vance drove to a quiet section of the car park, as far as he could get from the motel. He checked out the CCTV cameras and made sure he was parked in a position where the number plate couldn’t be seen. Any time he could buy himself was an advantage at this point.

Out of curiosity, he opened the boot. Tucked in a corner at the back was some clothing. He reached in and shook out the folds of a lightweight rain jacket. Perfect. It was a bit tight on the shoulders, but it covered his tattooed arms, which was the most noticeable aspect of his current look. All the better for getting in and out of the motel.

Leaving the keys in the ignition in the hope that someone would steal the taxi, he walked briskly up the paved path to the motel, keeping his face tucked down into the upturned collar of the jacket. As he walked, he could feel the tension in his body. It wasn’t fear; there were no grounds for fear yet. It was a mixture of apprehension and anticipation, he thought. It was a heightened awareness that would keep him safe. Not just for the moment, but for as long as he needed to carry out his plans.

He turned down the last lane of parked cars, studying them as he passed. Halfway down he saw the dark blue Mercedes estate car that he was looking for. Propped on the dashboard was a piece of paper with a number on it. The last three digits were 314.

Vance peeled away and made straight for the motel. He pushed the door open and walked confidently across the lobby to the lifts. None of the people chatting on sofas or drinking coffee at the functional tables so much as glanced at him. The receptionist, busy with another arrival, barely looked his way. Everything was exactly as he expected. Terry had done a good job of setting this up and reporting the salient details during his visits. Vance hit the call button and stepped aboard as soon as the doors opened. On the third floor, he turned left down a corridor that had the sharp chemical tang of artificial fragrance. He walked along the corridor till he came to the door marked 314. He knocked three times then stepped away from the door, ready to run if that proved necessary.

But there was no need to worry. The door swung silently open to reveal the wiry frame and monkey face of Terry Gates, the true believer who had done Vance’s bidding in every particular since the day he’d been arrested. It had been Terry whose lying testimony had cast doubt on his first murder convictions, Terry who had never questioned what had been asked of him, Terry who had never wavered in his belief in Vance’s innocence. For a moment he looked uncertain. Then their eyes met and his face crinkled in a toothy grin. He spread his arms wide, stepping backwards. ‘Come away in, man,’ he said, his Geordie accent obvious even in that short greeting.

Vance quickly crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. He let out a long whoosh of breath and grinned right back at Terry. ‘It’s great to see you, Terry,’ he said, relaxing back into his own honeyed tones.

Terry couldn’t stop smiling. ‘It’s champion, Jacko. Champion. It’s been so depressing all these years, only ever seeing you in them places.’ He waved an arm at the room. ‘How nice is this?’

It was, in truth, a lot better than Vance had expected for this stopping point on his journey back to the luxury and comfort he craved as his right. The room was clean with no stale notes of cigarettes or booze. The decor was simple – white walls and bedding, dark wood panelling behind the bed and the table that doubled as a desk. The curtains were tobacco brown. The only rich colours came from the carpet and the bedspread. ‘You did well, Terry,’ he said, pulling off the hat and shrugging out of the jacket.

‘How did it go? Can I make you a brew? Is there anything you need? I’ve got all your paperwork and ID here in the briefcase. And I got some nice salads and sandwiches from M&S,’ Terry gabbled.

‘It went like clockwork,’ Vance said, stretching luxuriously. ‘Not a hitch.’ He clapped Terry on the shoulder. ‘Thanks. But first things first. What I need now is a shower.’ He looked at his arms with distaste. ‘I want to get rid of these eyesores. Why anyone would do that to themselves is a mystery to me.’ He headed towards the bathroom.

‘Just as well Jason did, though,’ Terry said. ‘With tattoos like that, nobody’s looking too closely at your face, are they?’

‘Exactly. Have you got a razor, Terry? I want to get rid of the goatee.’

‘It’s all in there, Jacko. Everything you asked for, all your regular toiletries.’ Terry flashed him a smile again, ever anxious to please.

Vance closed the bathroom door and set the shower running. Terry was like a pet dog. Whatever Vance asked for, it would be there, on the double. No matter how many demands Vance made, it seemed that Terry still felt like he was the one who owed the debt. It all rested on one simple thing. Back when he’d been a national hero, Vance had spent hours by the bedside of Terry’s twin sister Phyllis as she lay dying from the cancer that had rampaged through her body. Terry had thought Vance was acting out of compassion. He’d never understood that Vance sat by the beds of the dying because he liked to watch their lives leaking away. He enjoyed watching the humanity leach out of them till they were nothing more than a shell. Luckily for him, that had never even occurred to Terry as a possible motive for what he’d seen as an act of profound kindness. Phyllis had always loved Vance’s Visits; having the real thing at her bedside had been the one light in her life as it had wasted away.

Vance removed his prosthesis and stepped into the shower, luxuriating in an endless flow of water whose temperature was entirely under his control. It was bliss. He washed himself from head to toe with an expensive shower gel that smelled of real lime and cinnamon. He scrubbed the tattoo off his neck then shaved the goatee off, leaving the moustache. He stood under the water for a long time, savouring the sense of being master of his own destiny again. Eventually, the tattoo transfer began to slip, slithering down his arm like a Dalí print. Vance rubbed his arm against his chest and stomach, helping it to dissolve into a gluey puddle then to disappear down the drain, flushing away all traces of Jason’s body art.

He stepped out of the shower and wrapped himself in a thick towel. It felt impossibly soft against his skin. Next, he covered the artificial skin of his prosthesis in shower gel and eased the tattoo sleeve off, again letting it dissolve and slip away, leaving no sign of what had happened there. As he dried himself, Vance’s thoughts slipped back to Terry. He’d perjured himself for Vance. Who knew how many criminal offences he’d committed in the past year on Vance’s behalf – everything from obtaining false ID to money laundering. He’d set up the practicalities of Vance’s escape. There had never been even a hint that he might betray the man he still hero-worshipped. And yet …

The fact that Terry was the man who knew too much was inescapable. He’d kept the faith for so long because he’d managed to convince himself that Vance was innocent. It was impossible for him to believe that the man who had made his sister’s last weeks bearable could also be a killer. But this time, it would be different. Vance had plans. Hellish plans. And when the terror started, when the full revelation of his revenge became clear, there would be no wriggle room for doubts. Not even Terry could fly in the face of that coming storm. Terry would have to accept some personal responsibility for the havoc Vance planned to wreak. It would be a terrible moment for him. But there was no escaping the fact that Terry was a man who had the courage of his convictions. Having stood four square behind Vance for so long, the realisation of his error would send Terry straight into the arms of the police. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.

Which incontrovertibly made Terry the man who knew too much. For him to reveal what he had done, to lay out the knowledge he possessed would be the end of everything. That was something Vance couldn’t allow to happen.

13

Detective Sergeant Alvin Ambrose tried not to fret too much as he endured the security checks he had to go through to get into Oakworth Prison. Body scans, metal detectors, give up your phones, hand over your radio … If they took as much care with the people they let out, he wouldn’t be here right now.

Not that he should be here, by rights. True, Oakworth was on West Mercia’s patch and close enough to Worcester to make the escape the indisputable responsibility of the city’s CID. That meant, Ambrose thought, that this assignment should have been handled by his boss. But ever since Carol Jordan’s appointment to the job he’d wanted had been announced, it seemed like DI Stuart Patterson had gone on strike. Everything he could shunt Ambrose’s way was dumped on the sergeant’s desk. And so it was with this. Any hope Ambrose had had of seeing his boss take charge had vanished as soon as the identity of the escaped prisoner was revealed. That Carol Jordan had been involved in his initial arrest had simply cemented what was becoming standard operating procedure in their office.

As far as the head of CID was concerned, Patterson was handling the case. The reality was that Ambrose was fronting it up. Never mind that the prison governor would expect a higher rank than sergeant to be leading the hunt for a dangerous escapee like Vance. Ambrose was just going to have to lump it and rely on his formidable presence to get him through. At least he might be able to call on Carol Jordan’s expertise ahead of her arrival in Worcester. When he’d worked with her before, he’d been impressed. It wasn’t easy to impress Alvin Ambrose.

At last, he was through the checks and through the sally port and trailing down a corridor to an office where a surprisingly young man was sitting behind a cluttered desk. He jumped up, holding his swinging jacket front down with one hand, sticking out the other to greet Ambrose. He was tall and rangy, full of bounce. As Ambrose drew near enough to shake his hand, he could see that his skin was crisscrossed with dozens of fine lines. He was older than he appeared. ‘John Greening,’ he said, his handshake as vigorous as his appearance. ‘Deputy Governor. The boss has gone London, talking to the Home Office.’ He widened his eyes and raised his eyebrows. He reminded Ambrose of David Tennant’s rendition of Doctor Who. The very thought made him tired. Greening gestured towards a seat, but Ambrose remained standing.

‘Hardly surprising,’ Ambrose said. ‘In the circumstances.’

‘Nobody is more embarrassed than us about Jacko Vance’s escape.’

Embarrassed seemed a woefully inadequate word to Ambrose. A serial killer had walked out the front door of this man’s jail. In his shoes, Ambrose would have been paralysed with shame. ‘Yeah. Well, obviously there’ll be an inquiry into a screw-up of this magnitude, but that’s not what I’m here for right now.’

Greening looked peeved. Not angry or ashamed, Ambrose thought. Peeved. Like someone had criticised his tie. Which frankly would have deserved all it got. ‘I can assure you there’s no indication of corruption among our staff,’ he said.

Ambrose snorted. ‘That’s almost worse, don’t you think? Corruption might have got you off the hook with less pain than incompetence. Anyway, I’m here now because I need to talk to Jason Collins.’

Greening nodded stiffly. ‘The interview room’s set up for you. Audio and video streams. We’re all very surprised at Jason’s involvement. He’s been doing so well on the Therapeutic Community Wing.’

Ambrose shook his head in disbelief. ‘A prize student, obviously.’

Greening nodded towards the officer who had escorted him in. ‘Officer Ashmall will show you to the interview room.’

Dismissed, Ambrose followed the officer back into the corridor, through another sally port and further into the labyrinth of the prison. ‘Did you know Vance?’ Ambrose asked.

‘I knew who he was. But I never had direct contact with him.’

That closed down that conversation. Another right-angle turn, then they stopped outside a door. The officer unlocked it with a swipe card and held the door open for him. Ambrose stood just inside the doorway for a long moment, taking in the man sitting at the table that was bolted to the floor. Shaved head, goatee, tattoos. As reported. Collins raised his head to meet Ambrose’s eyes with a flat contemptuous stare. ‘What are you looking at?’ Ambrose had experienced that kind of challenge so often in his years on the force that it bounced off without leaving a mark.

He said nothing. He looked around the room, as if sizing up its grey walls, strip lighting and tiled floor for an estate agent’s brochure. The room smelled of stale bodies and farts. It almost made Ambrose nostalgic for the days of cigarette smoke. Two strides took him to the empty chair opposite Collins and the prison officer left them to it, pointing out the button Ambrose should press when he was done.

‘Jason, I’m Detective Sergeant Alvin Ambrose from West Mercia police and I’m here to talk to you about your involvement in Jacko Vance’s escape.’

‘I know what you’re here for,’ Jason said, his voice sullen and heavy. ‘All I know is that he asked me to swap cells last night.’

Ambrose burst out laughing, a deep hearty roar that filled the room. Collins looked startled and afraid. ‘Do me a favour,’ Ambrose said once he’d recovered himself. ‘Cut the crap and tell me what you know.’

‘I don’t know nothing. Look, it was supposed to be a joke. He reckoned he could pass for me, I reckoned he couldn’t. I never thought it would get as far as it did.’ Collins smirked, as if to say, ‘Prove me a liar.’

‘It must have taken a lot of planning, for a joke,’ Ambrose said sarcastically.

Collins shrugged. ‘That wasn’t my worry. He was the one who reckoned he could get away with it. He was the one had to make it work.’ He gave a thumbs-up sign with both hands. ‘Fucking good on him.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Collins shrugged again. ‘Believe what you like. I couldn’t give a shit.’

‘You know your days on this wing are over, right? You’re going back to Cat A. No privileges. No comfy duvet or private bathroom. No touchy-feely therapy sessions. No prospect of a cushy day out of jail. Not till you’re an old man. Unless you’ve got some information that can cut you a break.’

Collins’ mouth curled in a sneer. ‘Better than information. I’ve got cancer, fat man. I’ll be on hospital wings. I’ll be going home to die, just like the Lockerbie bomber. Nothing you can threaten me with comes close to that shit. So you might as well piss off.’

He wasn’t wrong, Ambrose thought as he pushed the chair back and walked to the door. As it opened to release him from the interview, he turned back and smiled at Collins. ‘I hope the cancer treats you as kindly as Vance treated his victims.’

Collins sneered. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet, copper. According to Jacko, he’s got plans that’ll make the past look like Jackanory.’

14

Chris Devine felt a dark flush of anger rise up her neck. She had always considered herself well tough enough for the Job. Emotional fragility had never threatened her equanimity. For a long time she’d thought she was unshockable. Then Shaz Bowman had died at the hands of Jacko Vance and Chris discovered she could be as devastated as anyone else. But she hadn’t fallen apart. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead she’d used that pain as an impetus to take the fight to Shaz’s killer and join the impromptu team Tony and Carol had assembled to bring Vance down. Nothing had given her more satisfaction in her entire career.

In the half-dozen years she’d spent on the MIT in Bradfield, Chris had thought about Shaz almost every working day. They’d worked together when Shaz had first made it into CID and they’d been a good team then. At this level, they’d have been unstoppable. This was the kind of work Shaz had dreamed of doing and she’d have been good at it.

Mixed with Chris’s regret was an inescapable element of guilt. Even though she wasn’t Shaz’s boss by then, she still blamed herself for not paying close enough attention to what Shaz had been doing; if she hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own concerns, she might have provided back-up and kept the young detective safe. But she hadn’t and it was a failing she lived with daily. Ironically, it had made her a better colleague, a stronger team player.

Even now there was no shred of forgiveness in her heart for Jacko Vance. His very name still had the power to provoke a surge of anger in her, an anger she suspected would only ever be stilled by direct physical violence. Now, listening to Carol Jordan’s news, Chris could feel that familiar rage burn inside her again. Pointless to engage in recrimination. What mattered was putting Vance back where he belonged and making sure he stayed there. ‘How’s the hunt being organised?’ she said, ramming the lid down on her anger.

‘I don’t have any information,’ Carol said. ‘Nobody’s bothered to tell me officially what’s going on. I only know because the Home Office asked Tony for a risk assessment. And he thinks all of us who put Vance away need to watch our backs.’

Chris frowned. She understood the gravity of Tony’s opinion. She wasn’t sure she agreed, though. ‘Makes sense. He couldn’t stand being crossed,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s why he killed Shaz. Even though she was no threat to him. Not really. He had all the power. But she had the bottle to go up against him and he couldn’t tolerate that.’

‘Exactly.’

‘All the same … I can see why he thinks you and him might be in the firing line. But the rest of us? I don’t think we made it on to Vance’s radar. We were just the little people, and guys like Vance don’t have to pay attention to the little people. There’s no spectacle in the little people like us.’

Carol gave a dry laugh. ‘Funny, I never think of you as one of the little people, Chris. I appreciate what you’re saying, but I still want to cover the bases. What I need you to do is to track down the other three who worked with us and warn them that Vance is on the loose and could be a risk to their safety.’

Chris looked up at the corner of the room and cast back into her memory. ‘Leon Jackson, Simon McNeill and Kay … what was Kay’s surname?’

Sam Evans, on his way out of the room, overheard Chris’s last comment and couldn’t help himself. ‘Not like you to forget one of the laydeez, Chris,’ he teased.

‘Some people are just—’ she shrugged. ‘Forgettable, Bill.’

‘Ha, ha,’ he said sarcastically as he let the door swing closed behind him.

‘She was forgettable, though,’ Carol said. ‘I think she did it deliberately. Melting into the background so people would forget she was there and say something they didn’t intend to.’

Chris nodded. ‘She was a good interviewer. Different to Paula, but maybe just as good. But what was her surname?’

‘Hallam. Kay Hallam.’

‘That’s it, now I remember. It’s funny, isn’t it? You’d think after an experience like that, we’d all have stayed in touch. Kept an eye on each other’s careers. But soon as the first court case was over, they all scattered to the four winds. It was like they didn’t want any contact to make it easier to erase the whole thing from the memory banks. Then when we all met up for the appeal and the second trial, it was like a bunch of embarrassed strangers.’

Carol nodded. ‘Like when you run into people at a wedding or a funeral that you were once close to, but it’s been so long it’s too awkward. You can’t recover the way you were but you both know it used to be different and there’s something painful and sad about it.’

It was hard to say who was more surprised by Carol’s comments. They had worked together for long enough for Chris to know just how rare it was to hear Carol Jordan speak so clearly from the heart. Both women guarded their privacy, deliberately avoiding intimacy. Close as this team was, they didn’t socialise together. Wherever they opened their hearts, it wasn’t in the office.

Carol cleared her throat. ‘Kay sent me Christmas cards for three or four years, but I think that had more to do with wanting to be sure I would give her a good reference than a desire to stay in touch. I’ve no idea where she is now, or even if she’s still a copper.’

Chris tapped the names into her smartphone. ‘I’ll get on to it. Maybe the Federation can help. At least they should be able to tell me if they’re still serving officers.’

‘Will they give out information like that?’ Carol said.

Chris shrugged. ‘They’re supposed to be our union. You’d think they’d want to protect us.’ She gave a wicked grin. ‘Besides, I have my little ways. They might not be as pretty as Paula’s, but they get results.’

Carol threw up her hands in surrender as Chris swung round and started hammering the keys of her computer with the force of someone who had learned her skills on a typewriter. ‘I don’t want to know any more,’ she said. ‘Talk to me and Tony when you’re done. And Chris …?’

Chris looked up from the screen. ‘What?’

‘Don’t get so wrapped up in this that you forget to watch your own back. If Vance has got a list, you’re on it too.’ Carol stood up and made for the door.

‘So, with all due respect, guv, where exactly are you going all on your lonesome?’ Chris called after her.

Carol half-turned, a wry smile crinkling the skin round her eyes. ‘I’m going to Northern Divisional HQ. I think I’ll be safe there.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Chris muttered darkly as the door closed behind Carol.

It was unusual for Vanessa Hill to be at a loose end at lunchtime. Just because food was a necessity, there was no reason not to use eating time purposefully. So working lunches were a perennial feature of her calendar. Either out with clients or in the office with key personnel, planning campaign strategies and assessing potential markets. She’d been running her own HR consultancy for thirty years now and she hadn’t become one of the leading headhunters in the country by accident.

But today she was stranded. The insurance broker she was supposed to meet for lunch had cancelled at the last minute – some nonsense about his daughter breaking her arm in an accident at school – leaving her in the centre of Manchester with nothing to occupy her until her two o’clock appointment.

She couldn’t be bothered sitting in the pre-booked restaurant alone, so she stopped outside a sandwich bar and picked up a coffee and a filled roll. She remembered passing a car-wash with valet on her way to the restaurant. It was about time the car had a good going over. There was a time when she did that sort of thing herself on the grounds that nobody else would do it as thoroughly, but these days she preferred to pay. Not that it represented any compromise on standards. If they didn’t do it well enough, she simply insisted they do it again.

Vanessa drove into the valeting bay, issued her instructions and settled down in the waiting room, where a TV high on the wall provided a rolling news channel for its customers. Heaven forbid that anyone should be thrown on their own resources, Vanessa thought. She unwrapped her sandwich, aware of being studied by the fifty-something bloke in the off-the-peg suit that hadn’t been pressed this week. She’d already dismissed him as pointless in a single sweep of her eyes when she walked in. She was practised at sizing people up more swiftly than clients often believed possible. It was a knack she’d always had. And as with all of nature’s gifts, Vanessa had learned to maximise it.

She knew she wasn’t the most beautiful of women. Her nose was too sharp, her face too angular. But she’d always dressed and groomed to make the most of what she had, and it was gratifying that men still gave her the once-over. Not that she was remotely interested in any of them. It had been years since she’d expended any time or energy on anything that went beyond flattery or flirting. Her own company was more than adequate for her.

As she ate, Vanessa kept half an eye on the screen. Lately, the news had felt like a daily retread. Middle East unrest, African unrest, government squabbling and the latest natural disaster. One of her employees had been making everyone laugh round the water cooler the other morning, doing an impression of an overly religious neighbour delivering doom, gloom and the four horsemen of the apocalypse over the dustbins. You could see her point, though.

Now the newsreader seemed to perk up. ‘News just in,’ she said, her eyebrows dancing like drawbridges on fast forward. ‘Convicted murderer Jacko Vance has escaped from Oakworth Prison near Worcester. Vance, who was convicted of the murder of a teenage girl but is believed to have killed many more, disguised himself as a prisoner who was booked on a day’s work experience outside the prison.’

Vanessa harrumphed. What did they expect? Treat prisoners like it’s a hostel and they’ll take advantage. ‘Prison officials have declined to comment at this stage, but it’s understood that former TV presenter and Olympic athlete Vance hijacked a taxi that had been hired to take the other prisoner to his workplace. Over now to local MP, Cathy Cottison.’

A plain woman in an unflattering neckline appeared on St Stephen’s Green outside Westminster. ‘There are many questions to be answered here,’ she said in a strong Black Country accent that Vanessa struggled with. ‘Jacko Vance is a former TV star. He’s only got one arm. How on earth did he fool the prison staff enough to get out in the first place? And how is a prisoner like Vance anywhere near the sort of prisoner who goes out on day release? And how come a prisoner gets in a taxi by himself, without an escort? And how does a one-armed man hijack a taxi without a weapon? I will be putting these questions to the Home Secretary at the first opportunity.’

Vanessa was paying serious attention now. Heads would roll over this. And where heads rolled, recruitment opportunities were not far behind. To her disappointment, the news angle was left behind as they segued into the back story of Vance the athlete, Vance the TV personality and Vance the killer. Her focus began to drift away, then suddenly, a familiar figure appeared on the screen. ‘Psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill, seen here with a police colleague, was instrumental in exposing Vance’s crimes and bringing him to justice.’

Of course. It had completely slipped her mind that Tony had been involved in the Jacko Vance case. Most mothers would have been proud to see their only son featuring so positively in a national news story. Vanessa Hill was not most mothers. Her son had been an inconvenience since even before he’d been born and she’d managed to sidestep anything approaching a maternal response to him. She had set her face against him from the beginning and nothing he had done had changed her position. She despised him and scorned what he did for a living. He wasn’t a stupid man, she knew that much. He had the same knack for insight that she possessed. He could have turned his gifts to good use, made a success of himself.

Instead, he’d chosen to spend his days with killers and rapists and the scum of the earth. What was the point of that? Honestly. Remembering he’d been thwarted by her bastard son almost made her feel like rooting for Jacko Vance. She turned away in disgust and took out her phone to check her emails. Anything had to be better than watching that rubbish on the telly.

15

There was something desperately sad about the flat that Nicky Reid had shared with Suze Black. The worn-out furniture had clearly been culled from the meanest of second-hand shops. The scenic photographs on the walls looked as if they’d been cut out of magazines and slotted into cheap IKEA frames. The carpet was threadbare, its colour lost in the mists of time. But it was both cleaner and tidier than Paula had expected. It felt like a room put together by a pair of kids playing at keeping house.

Nicky caught her observant eye and said, ‘We’re not scum, you know. We try to live a decent life. Tried.’ He pointed to a bowl of oranges, apples and bananas on a side table. ‘Fruit and stuff. Proper food. And we pay the rent.’ He crossed one skinny denim-clad leg over the other and folded his hands over his knee. The campness of the posture undercut his attempt at dignity and Paula felt even more sad for him.

‘I’m sorry about Suze,’ she said. ‘What happened to her is unforgivable.’

‘If you lot had listened when I reported her missing … If you’d taken me seriously … ’ The accusation hung in the air.

Paula sighed. Her tone was tender. ‘I understand why you feel so angry, Nicky. But even if we’d gone on red alert when you reported Suze missing, we’d have been too late. I’m sorry, but the truth is, she’d been dead for some time before even you knew she was gone. I know you feel guilty, Nicky, but there’s nothing you could have done different that would have made any odds to the outcome.’

Nicky sniffed loudly, his eyes bright. Paula couldn’t decide if it was cocaine or grief; judging by Kevin’s body language, he’d already made his mind up.

‘She was great – Suze,’ Nicky said, a wobble in his voice. ‘I’ve known her for years. We were at school together. We used to bunk off and go down the video arcade, hang around smoking and playing bingo with the pensioners.’

‘You both had problems with school, then?’

He gave a scornful little laugh. ‘School. Home. Other kids. You name it, me and Suze managed to get in it up to our fucking necks. She’s the only person who’s still in my life from back then. Everybody else fucked me over then fucked off. But not Suze. We took care of each other.’

Paula reckoned he was relaxed enough now for a harder question. ‘You’re both working the street, right?’

Nicky nodded. ‘Rent.’ He looked up at the cracked ceiling, blinking back tears from big blue eyes that were the stand-out feature in his narrow bony face with its thin lips and chipped teeth. ‘We couldn’t do anything else. Suze tried working in the corner shop, but the pay was crap.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘I don’t know how people manage.’

‘Most people don’t have an expensive drug habit,’ Kevin said, not unkindly.

Nicky flicked at a tear with the tip of his fingers. ‘So fucking sue me.’

‘Suze was doing heroin, am I right?’ Paula said, trying to get back on track.

Nicky nodded and began picking at the skin round his thumbnail. ‘She’s been using for years.’ He flashed a quick look at Paula. ‘She wasn’t, like, off her tits. Just nice and steady, like. She could cope. On heroin, she could cope. Off heroin?’ He sighed. ‘Look, I know you think we’re shit, but we were doing OK.’ He reached for his cigarettes and lit one. As an afterthought, he offered one to Paula, who managed to refuse.

‘I can see that,’ Paula said. ‘I can see how hard you’ve been trying. I’m not here to give you a bad time for any of it. I just need to be sure whether Suze died because of something in her life or because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

Nicky straightened up, uncrossing his legs and gripping the seat of the chair. ‘There was nobody in her life who would want to do Suze a bad turn. I know you think I’m bigging her up because she’s dead, but that’s not how it was. Look, she was a hooker and a heroin addict, but she wasn’t a bad person. She never had a pimp. She just had a dealer who looked after her.’

‘Who was her dealer?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m not going to name names. That would be stupid and I’m not stupid. Whatever you might think. Look, she was a good customer. And she brought other customers to him, so he took care that nobody gave her a bad time. Nobody poached on her pitch. Everybody knew the score. When those fucking East European bitches turned up at the building site, they thought they could work the Flyer when the weather turned shitty.’ Nicky smirked. ‘That didn’t last long. Those Russian fuckers think they’re hard, but they’re not hard like Bradfield hard.’

‘How long had Suze been working the Flyer?’ Kevin asked. He knew Paula didn’t like her flow being interrupted, but he hated feeling like a spare part.

Nicky scratched his head, crossing his legs again. Paula wished she had Tony Hill’s ability to read a person’s body language. She’d recently been on an interrogation course that had devoted some time to the subject but still she felt as if she was only skating over the surface. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘It feels like forever, you know?’

‘Did she have regulars?’ Paula asked. ‘Or was it mostly air-crew passing through?’

‘Both.’ He inhaled deeply and let the smoke flow from his nostrils. ‘Some of her regulars were crew that fly the same route all the time. Like, if it’s Tuesday it must be the Dubai lot. She had a few Arab regulars, coming in and out from the Gulf. Some locals who work the cargo terminal.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know names or anything like that. I never really paid attention. I wasn’t that interested in her punters, if you must know.’

‘Did she have a place where she took them? A hotel room, a bedsit, somewhere like that?’ Drowned in a bath, Paula thought.

Nicky gave a small splutter of laughter. ‘Are you kidding? She was a street-level prostitute. She never worked in a brothel or a sauna. She worked the streets. She fucked them round the back of the Flyer. In their car, if they had one.’ He laughed again, a terrible choked sound. ‘It’s not Pretty Woman, our lives.’

‘What about where these guys were staying? The out-oftowners must have had hotel rooms. Did she go back with them?’

Nicky shook his head. ‘Like I said, Suze was street. She wasn’t going to get past any hotel receptionist with a pulse. Why are you asking about this?’

‘We think she wasn’t killed where she was found,’ Paula said.

‘They said she was drowned. And they found her in the canal. Why would you think she wasn’t killed there?’

‘They found the wrong water in her lungs,’ Paula said. ‘It wasn’t canal water. Wherever she drowned, it wasn’t in the canal.’ She waited while he processed that information. ‘Any idea where that might have been?’

‘No fucking idea at all.’

‘Did she ever mention feeling threatened?’

‘The only time there was ever any bother was with the East Europeans. And like I say, that got sorted out. It was months ago, anyway. If there had been any blowback off that, it would have hit a long time ago. Whoever killed her, I don’t think it was personal. Anybody could have picked her up. Once the Flyer shut its doors, she worked on the street. It’s not like anybody had her back. Out there, she was on her own. It wasn’t like in Temple Fields where I work. We’re team-handed there. Somebody pays attention who I go with. I do the same for them.’ He shook his head. ‘I told her she should find somebody to work with. But she said there wasn’t enough work to go round. I can’t blame her. She was right. Fucking recession.’

‘What? People cutting back on paying for it?’ Kevin said, a hint of sarcasm obvious to Paula.

‘No, copper,’ Nicky said angrily. ‘More people out on the street selling it. We’ve been noticing that, me and Suze. A lot of new faces.’

That was interesting, Paula thought. She wasn’t quite sure why, but anything out of the ordinary couldn’t be disregarded in a murder inquiry. ‘Any trouble from the new faces?’

Nicky ground out his cigarette in an African ceramic ashtray, then lifted the top and dropped the stub neatly below. No overflowing saucers here, Paula noted. ‘There’s been some rucks down Temple Fields,’ he said at last. ‘But not out the arse end of Brackley Field.’ He picked up his cigarette packet and tapped it on the arm of the chair. ‘When will they let me have her body?’

The question came out of nowhere. ‘Are you her next of kin?’ Paula said, playing for time.

‘I’m all she’s got. Her mum’s dead. She hasn’t seen her dad or her two brothers since she was nine. She was in care, same as me. We look after each other. She needs a proper funeral and no other fucker will do it for her. So when do I get to sort it out?’

‘You need to talk to the coroner’s officer,’ Paula said, feeling bad about sidestepping a question that had no easy answer. ‘But they won’t release her right away. With her being a murder victim, we need to hold on to her for a while.’

‘Why? I knew there had to be a postmortem. I mean, I watch TV, right? I understand that. But now that’s been done, surely I can have her back?’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Kevin said. ‘If we arrest someone—’

‘If? Don’t you mean when?’ Nicky jumped to his feet and began to prowl up and down the room, lighting a cigarette as he moved. ‘Or is she not important enough to qualify for “when”?’

Paula could sense Kevin tensing alongside her. ‘Here’s how it goes. When we arrest someone, he has the right to ask for a second postmortem. Just in case our pathologist got it wrong. It’s particularly important when there’s some question about cause of death. Or, like in this case, a forensic issue relating to the body.’

‘Fuck,’ Nicky spat. ‘The rate you lot work at, we could all be dead before you arrest someone.’ He stopped, leaning his head on the wall. In silhouette, he looked like an artist’s rendition of despair. ‘What happens if this twat gets away with it? How long before you decide to give her back to me?’ He was getting worked up now. There would be nothing more of value from Nicky today, Paula realised.

‘Talk to the coroner’s officer, Nicky,’ she said, calm but not condescending. ‘He can answer your questions.’ She stood up and crossed the room to where he stood and put her hand on his arm. Through his long-sleeved top, she could feel hard bone and quivering muscle. ‘I’m sorry about your loss. I promise you, I don’t take any murder lightly.’ She handed him her card. ‘If you think of anything that might be helpful, call me.’ She gave him a thin smile. ‘Or if you just want to talk about her, call me.’

16

Carol glared at Penny Burgess, the crime correspondent of the Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times. It was probably as well for the reporter that Carol was watching the press conference on CCTV and not in the same room. From her earliest days in Bradfield, the reporter had alienated Carol, in spite of her appeals to sisterhood and justice. It infuriated Carol that someone who claimed to espouse the beliefs closest to her own heart could deny them so effectively in her actions. What was almost more irritating was that the woman seemed to be bulletproof. No matter that her career regularly seemed to hit the rocks – there she was, still getting those front-page bylines and showing up in the press room looking as expensively turned out as a London fashion journalist. She’d nearly destroyed Kevin Matthews’ career and his marriage when she’d seduced him into an affair and a series of operational indiscretions, but still she sat there in the front row at police press conferences as if she were made of stainless steel.

Today, she was being as tenacious as ever. Once she got an idea into her head, she was like a serial killer with a victim in her power. She wouldn’t give up until she’d exhausted the possibilities of her prey then finished it off. It was an admirable trait, Carol supposed. Provided you had the judgement to know when the idea was actually worth the pursuit. She’d been driven to the point of public rage by Penny herself; she knew exactly what Pete Reekie was experiencing now. It didn’t help that Penny was actually on to something Reekie wanted to keep under the radar. There was a dull flush across his prominent cheekbones and his brows were drawn down low. ‘As I said right at the start of this press call, the aim of this morning’s exercise is to identify an unknown murder victim. Somewhere out there is a family who are unaware of what has happened to their daughter, their sister, maybe even their mother. That’s the number one priority,’ he said, biting his words as if they were a stick of celery.

Penny Burgess didn’t wait for an invitation that surely wouldn’t have come. She was straight in there, coming back at the point she’d introduced some time earlier. ‘Surely the number one priority is to catch a killer? To stop the death toll rising any further?’

Flustered, Reekie looked around for help. But there was none. ‘That goes without saying,’ he said. ‘But our first step is to identify the victim. We need to know where she encountered her killer.’

‘She encountered him on the streets of Bradfield,’ Penny interrupted. ‘Just like his first two victims, Kylie Mitchell and Suzanne Black. Superintendent, do you have a warning to issue to the city’s street prostitutes while this serial killer is at large?’

‘Miss Burgess, I have already said there is no reason to believe these murders are the work of one man. The women were all killed in markedly different ways and locations—’

‘My source tells me there’s a link between all three crimes,’ Penny Burgess cut in. ‘The killer leaves a signature. Would you care to comment on that?’

Take it back to her, Carol urged mentally. She’s short on details, that’s why she hasn’t run the story.

The same truth had finally dawned on Reekie. ‘Can you elaborate?’ he snapped. ‘Because I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about. I think you’re just looking for a sensationalist angle. Because that’s the only way you can get your editor interested in the murder of a street sex worker. It’s only got value for you if you can spin it into something that sounds like an episode from a TV series.’

There was a shocked silence in the room. Then a cacophony of voices began shouting questions. You’ve gone too far, Carol thought. You’ve really pissed her off now.

The police press officer managed to bring some calm to the half-dozen reporters in the room. Then Penny Burgess’s voice rang out again:

‘Will you be inviting DCI Jordan’s Major Incident Team to contribute to the inquiry?’

Reekie glowered at her. ‘I’ve no intention of discussing operational matters in this forum,’ he said. ‘I’m going to say this one more time, and then this press conference is over.’ He half-turned and gestured towards the cleaned-up image Grisha Shatalov had managed to produce. The woman still looked dead, but at least now she wouldn’t give most people nightmares. ‘We are concerned to identify the victim of a brutal murder that occurred in Bradfield some time between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. Someone must know this woman. We urge you to come forward in strictest confidence with any information about her identity or her movements prior to her death. Thank you for your cooperation.’ Reekie turned on his heel and marched out, ignoring the questions still coming from the reporters.

A few moments later, he burst into his office and threw his papers on a small table by the door. Carol swung round in the swivel chair and pasted a sympathetic look on her face. ‘Bit of a nightmare, Penny Burgess,’ she said.

Reekie glared at her as he subsided into the comfortable chair behind his desk. ‘I still don’t see why I had to deal with her. What’s the point in trying to pretend we’ve not got a serial killer on the rampage? Why can’t we just front up about it? Reveal your team’s on the case?’ He picked up a pen and began tapping it end to end on his desk. She noticed a faint indentation on his finger where a wedding ring should have been. ‘That would reassure people.’

Carol swivelled to face him. Reekie needed his feathers smoothed down; yet another of the political games she hated having to play. ‘But as you pointed out in there, it would get a lot more media attention. Which is a problem on two counts. One: it’s always harder to run an investigation with the world’s press breathing down your neck, and these days the faintest whiff of a serial killer generates the kind of media shit-storm that makes life impossible for investigating officers. Greedy media on a twenty-four-hour cycle means a level of scrutiny that none of us wants to operate under. And two: this kind of killer revels in publicity. He wants to be a star. He wants to be the centre of attention. Take that away from him, and you put him under stress. And stress leads to mistakes. And mistakes are how we catch them.’

‘That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t have to stand up there and lie.’ He kept up the annoying thing with the pen. Carol wanted to snatch it from him, to play the martinet teacher to his sulky small boy. She resisted the urge with some difficulty.

‘You didn’t have to lie. Just not reveal the whole story. The one thing that was a relief to me from that display was that her source isn’t at the heart of the investigation.’

Reekie nodded. ‘I suppose so. If he was, she’d have known about the tattoo instead of having to go all coy about the “signature”.’

‘So we’re in the clear for now.’ Carol stood up. Reekie made no move to shake hands or get to his feet. Clearly he still felt bruised from his close encounter with Penny Burgess. ‘Let me know if your guys on the ground get anything on the ID.’

‘As soon as we hear anything, you’ll know. Let’s stay in close touch on this one, Carol. We don’t want it to get away from us.’

Carol turned and made for the door. They always had to have the last word, to remind her who was the ranking officer. At moments like this, she knew exactly why she appreciated Tony Hill.

17

Tony Hill was well aware that his responses were not the same as those of other people. Take memory, for example. Even though he’d been drinking coffee with Carol Jordan for more years than he cared to consider, he still found himself standing at the counter in coffee shops or in his kitchen, having to pause while he sorted through the database in his head to recall whether she drank espresso or cappuccino. But he was no absentminded professor. He could remember the signature behaviour of every serial offender he’d ever encountered, both as a profiler and a clinician. All memory was selective, he knew that. It was just that the principles that governed his memory were unusual.

So it came as a surprise to him when he sat down to write a risk assessment of Jacko Vance that he had no recollection of ever having formally profiled him. After Carol had left, he’d closed his eyes and tried to summon up a mental image of his report. When nothing materialised, his eyes had snapped open as he realised that his pursuit of Vance had been so out of the ordinary that he’d written nothing down at the time it was happening. Of course, the hunt for Vance had been unusual, in that it hadn’t originated with a police investigation. It had been the result of a training exercise for the aspiring profilers Tony had been working with on a Home Office task force. And once things had started moving, there had been no time to sit back and analyse Vance’s crimes in those terms.

To buy himself some time while he considered what he knew about Vance, Tony found one of his previous profiles on Carol’s laptop and copied his standard introductory paragraphs.

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. Discovering 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.

It didn’t really fit the bill. That was because Lambert wanted a risk assessment, not a crime-based profile. He could keep the second paragraph, he supposed. But the first would have to change. He created a new file and began.

The following risk assessment is based on limited direct acquaintance with Jacko Vance. I saw Vance in public on several occasions and I interviewed him twice: once in his home when he may have realised he was the object of investigation; and a second time after he had been arrested on suspicion of murder. However, I am familiar with the detail of his crimes and have sufficient knowledge of his background to feel confident in preparing an assessment of how he is likely to respond to being on the run, having successfully outwitted the system and escaped from prison.

‘What’s going through your head, Jacko?’ Tony said softly, leaning back in the chair and locking his fingers behind his head. ‘Why this? Why now?’

A sharp knock at the door interrupted his conversation with himself. Paula stuck her head in, a determined look on her face. ‘You got a minute?’ Before he could reply, she was through the door and shutting it behind her.

‘What if I said no?’

Paula gave him a tired smile. ‘I’d say, “tough shit”.’

‘I thought as much.’ Tony took off his reading glasses and studied Paula. There was history between them, a stained and complicated web of connections that had spread out over the years till it had become a sort of friendship. He’d led her through the labyrinth of grief after the death of a colleague who had also been a friend; she’d pushed him into doing the right things for the wrong reasons; he’d made her break the rules then stood in the firing line when Carol had turned her sights on her. Respect was the keystone of their relationship. Just as well, Tony thought, otherwise he might have found it hard to forgive Paula the happiness she’d found with Dr Elinor Blessing, a happiness he doubted he had the capacity for. ‘I don’t suppose this is a social visit?’

‘Can I ask what you’re working on?’ Paula clearly wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Carol must be expected back soon, then.

‘I’m doing a risk assessment for the Home Office. I don’t know if Carol said anything to you guys, but it’ll be public knowledge before too long. Some things you can’t keep quiet. Jacko Vance escaped from Oakworth this morning. Because I was involved in putting him away, they want me to stare into my crystal ball and tell them where he’s going to go and what he’s going to do.’ Tony’s sardonic stare matched his tone.

‘So you’re not working on our case?’

‘You know how it is, Paula. Blake won’t pay for me and DCI Jordan refuses to let me work without being paid. I thought I might be able to call in a favour via the Home Office, but they won’t agree, not now. They’ll want me totally focused on Jacko. No distractions.’

‘It’s just stupid, not making the most of your skills,’ Paula said. ‘You know what we’re working on?’

‘A string of murders that looks like a serial. I don’t know much more than that,’ he said. ‘She tries to keep me out of temptation’s way.’

‘Well, consider me the temptress. Tony, this is right up your street. He’s the kind of killer you understand, the sort of mind you can map like nobody else. And this is MIT’s last tango. We want to go out on a high note. I want to leave Blake with a sour taste in his mouth when the chief goes off to West Mercia. I want him to understand the class of the operation he’s flushing down the toilet. So we’ve got to come up with the right answer, and fast.’ Her eyes were pleading, a contrast with the fierceness of her words.

Tony wanted to resist the draw of Paula’s words. But in his heart, he agreed with everything she’d said. There was no rational explanation for what Blake was doing except that it would save some money to close the specialist unit. His conviction that spreading MIT’s skills more thinly would produce more effective outcomes was, in Tony’s opinion, a crackpot idea that would produce the opposite result. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he said, a last-ditch bid to still the interest quickening in him.

Paula rolled her eyes and tutted. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the smart one? Because we need your help, Tony. We need you to profile the killer so we can make some progress instead of getting bogged down in the mountain of crap this kind of inquiry produces.’

‘She won’t have it. Like I said: there’s no budget to pay me and she won’t exploit me.’ He opened his hands as he shrugged, going for the deliberately cute smile. ‘I’ve begged her, but she won’t take advantage.’

Paula groaned. ‘Spare me the single entendres. Listen, it’s simple. It doesn’t matter what she wants. Because she’s not going to know. Because it’s going to be our little secret.’

Tony groaned. ‘Why am I getting that sinking feeling? Whenever you and I go off on our own initiative, it always ends in tears.’

Paula grinned, her eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘Yeah, but you can’t argue with our results. Every time we’ve gone behind her back, it’s moved the investigation forward.’

‘And she’s ripped us a new one,’ Tony said with feeling. ‘It’s all right for you, you get to go home to Elinor. But I’m supposed to be living with her in Worcester—’ The words were out before he could stop them.

Paula’s face couldn’t make its mind up between astonishment and delight. ‘What? You mean, like now? She’ll have her own flat, like she has now, in the basement?’

Tony closed his eyes and put his fists to his temples. ‘Shit, shit, shit. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.’ He dropped his hands to the desk and sighed. ‘It’s not like it sounds. Sharing the house, that would be a better description. Look, Paula, we didn’t— she didn’t want the team to know. Because you’d all jump to conclusions and then the sideways looks and the cheesy sentimental crap would start and she’d have to kill you all.’ He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in spikes.

Paula just smiled. ‘It’s OK. I won’t say anything. It’s nobody’s business. Frankly, I can’t think of anyone else who’d put up with either of you. And I mean as housemates,’ she added hastily as he opened his mouth to contradict her.

‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

‘So will you help?’ Paula said, closing the subject and getting back to what she really wanted.

‘She’ll kill me,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but not nailing this one will kill her,’ Paula said. ‘You know how she is about unfinished business. Justice not being served … ’

Tony leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘I am going to live to regret this. OK, Paula. Get Stacey to send me the usual package. I make no promises, but I’ll take a look at it after I’ve done the Jacko Vance assessment.’ He straightened up abruptly. ‘And let’s try to keep it a secret for once. Please?’

18

By the time she made it back to the squad room, Carol was ready for some good news. She’d had to fend off a call from the Chief Constable on the drive back from Northern HQ, during which James Blake had shown considerably more concern for the state of his budget than the lives of the women whose circumstances pushed them on to the streets to sell the one commodity of value they had left. Given his passion for cuts, she wondered how long it would be before some bright spark in government headhunted him.

She stuck her head into her office, where Tony was staring into her computer. A small stack of paper sat to one side, a pen on top of it. She could see scribbled notes, complete with asterisks and underlinings. Tony barely acknowledged her arrival, settling for an inarticulate grunt.

‘Any news on Vance?’ she said. She’d managed to put thoughts of the escaped prisoner to one side while she’d been out of the office, but there was no avoiding it now Tony had squatter’s rights over her office.

He shook his head without looking up. ‘Nothing. I rang Lambert a while back. The cameras picked up the taxi when he joined the M5 heading north and they’re tracking forward from that. But you know how hard it is to do that stuff in real time. You just need one crap camera and you’re stuck with a load of options to track.’

‘Do you know who’s coordinating the search?’

‘I thought you’d be up to speed on that. Oakworth’s on West Mercia’s patch, after all.’

‘I’ll make some calls,’ Carol said, leaving him to it and returning to her team to check on their progress. Paula was on the phone at the nearest desk, so Carol pulled up a chair to wait for her to finish.

Paula covered the mouthpiece and said quietly, ‘I’m just talking to my contact at Northern – Franny Riley. I’ll put him on speakerphone so you can listen in.’

Paula pressed a button and a deep Mancunian growl emerged from the tinny speaker. ‘… and that’s why we’re so short-handed.’

‘All the same, Sarge, I’m going to need more bodies than that to do a proper door-to-door and get the photos out on the street.’

‘Paula, I know. Tell me about it.’ In the background, Carol could hear another voice. ‘Hang on a minute, let me put you on hold, my DI’s just come over.’

Whatever Franny had intended, what he actually did was to put his phone on speaker too. Carol immediately recognised the other voice. DI Spencer, the SIO from Northern that she’d replaced as head of the investigation.

‘Are you tied up, Franny?’ Spencer asked. ‘Only, I need you to take a look at the witness statements on that aggravated burglary.’

‘I’m on to MIT, trying to get the door-to-door sorted,’ Riley said.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Spencer said, disgusted. ‘I thought bringing them in was supposed to take the load off us? Ever since they came on board, it’s been do this, sort that, check the other. MIT, what does that stand for again?’ Before Franny could respond, Spencer gave his own answer. ‘I’ll tell you what it stands for: Minorities Integration Team,’ he said, guffawing at his own wit. ‘A pair of lezzas, a jungle bunny, a Chink and a ginger. All led by a gash.’

Carol recoiled in shock. It had been a long time since she’d heard that kind of abuse from a colleague. It was the language of prejudice that was supposed to be history in modern policing. She’d always suspected the canteen cowboys were still riding the range, but they were generally too savvy to show their true colours in front of anybody who might disagree. Apparently it wasn’t just media hype that the old sexist and racist conditioning still existed beneath the surface.

Paula reached for the phone to cut off the call, her face revealing that Carol wasn’t the only one who was horrified. But Carol pushed her hand away and leaned forward. ‘DI Spencer. This is Detective Chief Inspector Jordan. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, your offensive attitudes have been broadcast to my entire team. My office, now.’

There was a long silence. Then the high-pitched tone of a line gone dead. Carol sat back, feeling faintly queasy. She looked around at her team, who had all stopped what they were doing when Spencer’s words had sunk in. ‘DI Spencer will be here shortly to apologise. If any of you experience any obstruction whatsoever from Northern, I want to know about it. No covering anybody’s backs. We’re not going to be stopped from doing our jobs. Now let’s get cracking. We’ve got three murders to solve.’

Stacey delivered one of her rare smiles. ‘And I’ve got something here that might just help.’

19

There was added urgency to Tony’s risk assessment now. As if it wasn’t enough to have Vance on the loose, he needed to free himself up so he could approach his new undercover project with a clear head. And he was going to have to find somewhere else to work. It would be hard to keep his progress secret from the person whose office he had taken over, especially when that person was as acute as Carol Jordan.

I believe Vance suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The key to any understanding of Vance is his need to be in control. He wants an environment where he is in charge. It’s always all about him. He needs to manipulate the individuals around him and to be in charge of the way events unfold. Some controlling personalities use threats and fear to keep people in line; Vance uses charisma to blind them to what he is really about. That’s not just because it’s easier to maintain – it’s also because he needs their adoration. He needs to have people look up to him. It’s what his whole life was about before he went to prison and I imagine it shaped his life behind bars.

He has enormous self-discipline, which dates back to his adolescence. He was desperate to carve a niche for himself where people would respect and admire him. His mother largely ignored him and his father treated him with contempt. He didn’t like the way they made him feel and he was determined to make the world take notice of him. Probably the only thing that kept him from violent criminality in his teenage years was the discovery of his athletic talent. Once that had been identified, it offered him an avenue to the sort of adulation he wanted to experience.

But to realise that goal, he had to acquire self-discipline. He had to train and he had to find a way to organise himself mentally as well as physically. That he had such a phenomenally successful athletic career is testament to how well he succeeded. He was only months away from an almost certain Olympic gold in javelin when he had the accident that cost him the lower half of his throwing arm. At least one psychologist who has interviewed Vance has identified the accident and its aftermath as being a transformative moment, as if Vance had been a mentally healthy individual up to that point. The evidence cited in support of this position is that the destruction of his arm came about as a result of a heroic act.

It’s my contention that Vance has always been mentally disordered. The amputation was a stress point in his life that tipped him over the edge. We have anecdotal evidence of sadistic sexual behaviour before the accident and also of violent cruelty to animals. The level of sadistic torture he exhibited towards his victims demonstrated no learning curve – he was already at a place mentally where this was what he wanted.

Vance has always been very good at hiding his deviant behaviour behind the appearance of candour and charm. That he is physically attractive has always been a significant factor in his ability to convince others that he is not the problem. In the years when he was a leading TV personality, it was often said that women wanted to sleep with him and men wanted to be him. I do not imagine he has lost the power to command that sort of response. I recommend a review of his time in prison and a reassessment of any questionable incidents in his contact circle, particularly any violent or suspicious deaths.

I don’t know the details of his escape from Oakworth, but I would be very surprised if they did not involve collaboration from inside and outside the prison. Although it is more than twelve years since he was sent to prison, he still has a cohort of the faithful on the outside. There is a Facebook group called Jacko Vance is Innocent. As of this morning, 3,754 people ‘like’ this. One of those people – and I use the number advisedly, because Vance doesn’t take chances and having more than one person knowingly involved is taking a chance – has helped him. I recommend checking the logs of his visitors. It would be helpful to know who he has spoken to on the phone, but he will almost certainly have had a contraband mobile for any crucial communications.

Do not rule out any of the professionals with whom he has had contact in prison. Remember Myra Hindley and the prison officer who became her lover. They hatched an escape plan that never got off the ground. Vance is undoubtedly a smarter operator than Hindley ever was. We know that he managed to persuade a prison psychologist that he was a fit and proper person to occupy a place on a Therapeutic Community Wing. Personally, if the only way to keep Jacko Vance off a TCW was to burn down the prison, I’d be there with a can of petrol.

Tony paused and read the last sentence again. It was harsh, no doubt about that. And he hadn’t built his career on slagging off his colleagues. On the other hand, someone who was supposed to be immune to manipulative bastards like Vance had been lulled into putting him where he absolutely shouldn’t have been. Psychologists were trained to understand damage and how it avenges itself; someone had been woefully lacking here and he didn’t feel like covering her back. Not now Jacko Vance was out there and in all probability looking for revenge. Especially since he himself might be one of the targets of his vengeful rage. So he let the words stand, stark in their informality.

There was supposed to be a prison social worker accompanying him to the work placement. It is possible that this individual is also implicated in his escape. If there is a genuine reason for the social worker’s absence, it may also have been engineered by Vance from inside the prison. If, for example, the social worker’s family was under threat of some kind.

Nevertheless, prison professionals must not be above suspicion, both in what has happened and what may happen. Vance has certainly been given support from outside and it is extremely likely that he’s going to continue in that mode.