The Death Pictures (3 page)

The director barked a cue into his earpiece, Dan showed the camera the flowers, crouched down to quote one of the tributes, explained what had happened to Jason and Nigel panned the shot to find Emma.

She talked movingly about losing her son, the pain it still caused every day, her anger at the senselessness of his death and appealed for people to take more care on the roads. Her words were as powerful as ever, couldn’t have been better scripted or delivered by Hollywood professionals, Dan thought. After the broadcast he thanked her, then reached into the back of the car and gave her one of the bunches of flowers he’d bought at the petrol station.

He waited until Emma had driven away, then carefully placed another of the bouquets at the end of the line of tributes. It just didn’t do for anyone to suspect that such a hardened hack as him had a soft centre.

Nigel gave him a look, then peered into the back of the car. ‘There’s one bunch left. So who’s that for?’

Dan adopted an enigmatic smile. If he did decide to go and see Kerry tonight, the flowers should soothe his passage into her sheets beautifully.

Dan took Nigel for a quick beer at the Moorland Inn after the broadcast. It was his way of saying thanks for rushing around and making sure the story got on air.

Lizzie called. Not to thank him Dan noted, but to burble about a story for tomorrow.

He sipped contentedly at his pint and held the phone away from his ear, but still managed to catch most of the words.

‘It’s an extraordinary story, one of the best we’ve ever had. It’ll send the ratings soaring. I want top coverage and lots of it. I want reports and live broadcasts. I want emotion. I want poignancy. I want… are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, yes of course. Every single word.’

‘Right, well, you know the story of that dying artist McCluskey and the Death Pictures riddle? It’s that. I want you to mug up on it. I want you to be our expert. I want you all over it. I want you to know it inside out. Are you back home yet?’

‘No, I, err… I’m… checking out another story first.’

‘Right, well, one of the researchers will drop off a briefing at your flat. You’d better read it until you know every detail. Tomorrow’s a big, big day. I want top coverage.’

They finished their pints and Nigel drove them back to Plymouth. Just as Dan climbed out of the car, his mobile rang again. He sighed wearily and was going to ignore it, but Adam’s name flashed up on the display.

‘Hi mate, how you doing?’ he said.

‘Bad. I’ve got a really nasty case and I need your help.’

‘Fire away Adam. I owe you after all the help you gave me on the Bray story.’

‘We’ve got a rape, Dan, and it’s a weird one, very weird. A guy forced his way into a woman’s home and attacked her. It was savage, one of the worst I’ve seen. She’s a right mess.’

Memories of the case they’d worked on together filled Dan’s mind. The shotgun killing of Edward Bray, the notorious businessman, how he’d been allowed to shadow the police investigation, the uncovering of the conspiracy of Bray’s enemies that had led to the murder. How he, a journalist, had seen the vital detail that solved the case. How they’d become unlikely friends and the Chief Inspector had confided in him about the rape of his sister, Sarah, its shattering of a promising life.

It was that which had pushed Adam to become a detective, a sort of legitimised vigilantism, he’d said. No wonder he sounded dangerous.

‘You hear this all the time, Dan and it’s become a classic police cliché, but I’m worried the guy could strike again,’ Adam continued. ‘He did something very odd in the house, which makes me think this is just the start. I need a broadcast to warn women and to get out the description we’ve got to see if anyone recognises him. Can you get something on air for me?’

Dan paused, could imagine Lizzie interrogating him about the story. Who can we interview? What pictures can we show? He knew what she’d want, but didn’t know how to tell Adam.

‘Dan? You there?’ The phone buzzed with the detective’s anger. ‘We’ve got to get this bastard.’

‘Yes, I’m here, mate,’ Dan replied. ‘We can probably help you, but there’s one problem. We have a policy of not doing too much crime. There’s so much of it about we could easily fill the programme every day and leave the viewers scared witless. We just tend to do the major stuff, and only then if we can talk to the people who are really affected. And in this case, that’d mean talking to the victim.’

He heard a hiss of breath over the humming of the phone line.

‘Is she up to talking, do you think?’ Dan continued. ‘We could make her anonymous. I know it sounds daft, but we’d need to hear from her what effect it’s had.’

Silence, a couple of clicks on the line. Dan could imagine Adam squeezing the phone in his grip.

‘She’s in a dreadful way,’ the detective said finally. ‘But she’s trying to be strong. She’s already talking about not letting him beat her and saying she’ll help us all she can. I think she might be up for it. I’ll have a chat when I go back in to see her. I’ll call you later.’

She seemed swollen with her suffering. Her face red, blotched, streaked and stained from the tears. Her head hung loose, lifeless, as though she couldn’t find the strength to support it. Her eyes were narrow lines from the endless tears and flinching as she revisited her torment, again and again. One of her hands hung over the stark, sterile white of the hospital sheets, a fiery diamond lightly gracing the wedding finger, a glittering contrast to her hunched darkness. Her fiancé had been traced, was on his way down from Birmingham and he dreaded the man’s reaction when he arrived, dreaded her seeing it too. He’d find a different woman to the one he’d loved.

Adam could sense the freeze spreading inside her, the shrinking of feeling before it, the blossoming of fear and mistrust in its wake. He’d seen it before, with Sarah, seen what it did to her. A life tainted in one sickening, uncontrolled, attack. She could act a smile now, years on, but she could never feel it.

Rachel would be the same. She would survive, physically recover, allowing friends and family to enthuse about how much better she was looking. They’d all try to instil life back into her. But it was what it did to you inside, the severing of the fragile bond with humanity. No one would ever know that but Rachel. She and the small band of fellow sufferers who’d been violated by a man’s sexual rage.

Adam turned away again, looked out of the window, west, to the sun settling on the springtime fields of the Tamar Valley. Shadows stretched ever longer over the amber glow of the patchwork land. He hardly registered its beauty.

He clenched a fist, breathed out slowly through tightened lips, allowed himself to enjoy a fantasy he knew would stay with him until the case was over. It was how it had been with the other rape investigations. Tracing, chasing, tracking and cornering this man, not the metallic clunk of the handcuffs, but instead his fist planted in the rapist’s face, his knotted knuckles, beating, pounding, time and again, then the hard leather heels of his shoes stamping, pummelling, feeling the dull crack of a skull and smelling a spurt of blood, grinding him into oblivion.

He would get him. Adam almost whispered it to himself. He would. Twice before he’d faced these cases, renowned as some of the most difficult to investigate, let alone get a conviction. What was the current statistic? About six per cent of complaints of rape led to a successful prosecution? Not for him. Two out of two.

But he’d have to be careful. He couldn’t risk another warning, or a closer look at how he’d solved the other cases.

In the first, it’d just been raised eyebrows from the other detectives and a friendly word in the ear from the Assistant Chief Constable. He could still hear the shouting and screaming in the bar and feel the fist flying into his face, his skin splitting under its clubbing impact.

‘We won’t go too deeply into why he assaulted you, eh?’ Hawes had said, an arm on his shoulder in the quiet of a corner of the police station car park. ‘We won’t ask why you happened to fancy a drink in that very same pub he was in. We won’t go into his claims that you’d been following him all day and he lashed out at you in frustration. No one would believe the word of a rapist, would they, eh? We’ll just think it was good luck that you happened to be in the same pub as our prime suspect and he was drunk enough to have a go at you. We’ll overlook our frustration at not being able to take a DNA sample from him because he’d committed no crime. Up until he attacked you that is, eh? We’ll forget how fortunate it was that we could finally take a swab after we’d charged him with the assault. It was just down to luck that it matched the sample taken from the woman he’d raped. No one in the force would ever dream of suggesting you pushed him into attacking you so we’d have grounds to get some DNA from him, eh?’

Adam rubbed at his right eyebrow and the tiny scar Mick Barwick’s fist had left. He was a squat, powerful man and it had meant four stitches. But it was a price worth paying. He’d gladly exchange it for Barwick’s twelve years in prison.

The other case had brought a formal warning. WPC Radcliffe was young and keen and had been up for the operation, but Adam had stupidly forgotten to get the required approval from the Assistant Chief. An oversight, he’d assured the raging Hawes as he stood to attention in his office. It was a detail lost in the intensity of the hunt for their man. Just an oversight, nothing more.

Hawes wasn’t mollified, nowhere close. Jo Radcliffe had been badly shaken by Hill’s attack on her in the park, he ranted. It didn’t matter that there were cops in the bushes, waiting for him and that he’d been arrested before he could do anything more than grab her. It was unacceptable to compromise the safety of an officer without approval from the highest level. DCI Breen would consider himself formally reprimanded and nothing like it would ever happen again.

That was the only stain on his service record, Adam thought, and he’d gladly take it. Neil Hill had got 14 years. They could prove he’d committed two rapes and suspected him of another couple of attacks. That was enough for the judge. A reedy man in his mid 20s with an odd smell of damp, Hill was a classic inadequate who’d never had a girlfriend. He picked only on very thin young women and used masking tape to strap his victims’ hands together as he raped them. He’d developed a way of working and had got a taste for it.

He’d have attacked again unless they’d caught him, again and again. Adam allowed himself to relive the memory of how he’d twisted and jammed Hill’s arm behind his back, dislocating his shoulder. How he’d enjoyed the cracking sound and the man’s agonised scream, how it’d tempted him to push the arm just a little harder. He’d expected to feel some guilt, even a little shock at himself, but jubilation was all that came.

The door swung open, banging into the white wall, juddering on its hinges. Rachel flinched, her eyes widening, looked helplessly across at Adam as though pleading for protection. A young, white-coated doctor stood in the doorway.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ he said sharply, jabbing a pen around the room.

‘I am,’ snapped Adam. He strode from the side of Rachel’s bed to within a foot of the doctor. The man took a step back. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Adam Breen,’ he went on. ‘And you are?’

The doctor held his stare, then looked away to Rachel, lying on the bed. She held one hand over her heart as though trying to calm it.

‘This woman is far too frail to be questioned at the moment,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t hear of it...’

Adam reached out an insistent arm and guided the doctor out of the small private room. His words faded and he followed meekly.

‘Look, doc, it’s this simple,’ whispered Adam into his ear. ‘I need a description of this guy and the details of what happened, then we’ll leave her alone.’

The doctor had a callow complexion and a darkly lined face. He hadn’t introduced himself, but a well-worn blue badge said Andrew Lovell. His eyes were framed with blood red circles and his black hair stuck up in spraying patches. Hell, I wouldn’t want him treating me, thought Adam.

‘I wouldn’t hear of it. She’s only just come in. We need…’

‘It’s like this, doc,’ Adam cut in. ‘This woman has been raped. That’s raped. She hasn’t sprained an ankle, or cut her finger. She’s been raped. The man broke into her home – her own home – and attacked her while her kid was upstairs in bed. That’s upstairs… in bed.’

He checked the doctor’s hand for a ring and saw the silver wedding band. ‘Now I don’t want to scare you,’ Adam continued, ‘but at best that means there’s a guy out there who doesn’t think twice about busting into women’s homes to attack them. I said at best, because I’m hoping he’s gone home, gone to ground somewhere to feel bad about what he’s done. At worst, he’s wandering around the streets now feeling very good indeed and looking for his next victim. And that could be anyone. My wife, my family...’ He paused. ‘Even yours. So we need a description, and we need it now.’

He let the words linger. Doctor Lovell met his stare, seemed to have turned paler. He picked at a piece of paper on his clipboard.

‘Ok then,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes, no longer. She needs sedation and rest.’

She’ll need a lot more than that in the days to come, thought Adam. He walked back to Rachel’s bedside, making a point of closing the door softly behind him.

Back in his flat that night, Dan read through the briefing notes on the Death Pictures. He hardly needed them, knew the story well enough, as did most of the country now. He had one of Joseph McCluskey’s prints on his wall, a silkscreen of a cracked rainbow with a silhouetted female angel above it and a faceless man kneeling below. It was number 377 of 450, signed in pencil by the artist. He’d bought it years ago after an unexpected tax rebate, in the days when they were just about affordable.