The Retribution (22 page)
‘Maybe he’s just more emotionally mature than some of the killers you’ve dealt with.’
Tony shrugged. ‘It’s certainly possible. But my gut reaction would be that, if he’s that emotionally mature, he wouldn’t need to be doing this.’ He spread his hands. ‘But what do I know? I just missed a major trick doing a risk assessment of Vance, so I’m not feeling very bloody infallible today.’
‘So is there anything you can tell me that might point us towards the killer?’
Tony looked disconsolate. ‘The only thing—’ He stopped himself, scowling at the table.
‘The only thing …?’
He tutted. ‘I shouldn’t say this. Because it’s based on nothing more than a feeling.’
‘As I recall, your “feelings” have worked out well for us more than once. Come on, Tony. Don’t hold out on me.’
‘It’s as if he’s throwing down a gauntlet. Like, “None of you are safe. It’s not just the bottom feeders, it’s all of you.” Like nobody’s safe on the streets with him around. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, he talked about cleansing the streets. It’s as if this one has a similar ambition. He wants to scare them off the streets.’ He absently picked up Paula’s coffee and took a drink. ‘I don’t know. And there’s something else that’s really
bugging me and I don’t know what it is. There’s something about the crime scenes, the murders themselves. It’s bothering me and I don’t understand why.’
‘Well, he’s doing something different every time. That’s unusual, isn’t it?’ Paula took her coffee back.
‘Yes, to the degree he’s doing it. But that’s not what’s bugging me. I’m aware of the degree of difference, that’s all filed away under “unusual but explicable”. There’s something else and I can’t put my finger on it and it’s bloody annoying.’
‘Leave it alone. It’ll come to you when you’re in the thick of something else.’
Tony grunted, unconvinced. ‘It’s weird. I’ve almost got déjà vu about it. Like I’ve seen it all before. But I know I haven’t. I can’t even think of a case in the literature where the killer tattoos his victims postmortem. I wish I could shake the feeling, but it’s bugging the hell out of me. Have you made any progress with the investigation?’
Paula told him about Sam’s discovery the night before. ‘Stacey’s working on it. If there’s anything to be got, she’ll get it.’
‘You might want to ask her to see if she can find any courtyard-style motels between the Flyer and Dances With Foxes. This is clearly territory he’s familiar with. And they do like to stick to where they know. Suzanne Black was drowned somewhere he didn’t have to take her past a receptionist. I don’t think he took her home to his place. He doesn’t take chances like that. But one of those motels where you check in at an office and the rooms are like apartments that open off the car park – that would fit the bill.’
‘Good idea. Thanks.’ She drained her coffee and pushed her chair back. ‘I’m going to miss them all. We’re all going to be tossed to the four winds by Blake. I’ll never get another berth like this again. It’s like the end of an era.’
‘Blake’s an idiot,’ Tony said. Just then, his phone beeped. He
patted his pockets till he found it. ‘Message from Carol,’ he said. ‘She wants me to come in so Chris can debrief us.’
‘What’s she been up to? I haven’t seen her since yesterday lunchtime.’
‘She’s been tracking down the other three cops who worked with me and Carol on putting Vance away. They needed to be warned personally, not left to hear about it all on the news.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better get over there.’
‘I’ll give you a ten-minute start,’ Paula said. ‘The last time we went behind her back, she made me feel like a toddler on a tear. And not in a good way. Let’s not give her any reason to start paying attention to us.’
As soon as he walked in the door, Tony realised he was the one who should have stayed behind in the coffee shop. Carol was sitting by Chris’s desk and she looked up when he walked in. ‘That was quick,’ she said. ‘I thought you were planning to stay at home all day?’
‘I was,’ he said. ‘But Penny Burgess came knocking so I thought I’d come in here and hide.’ He nearly elaborated, but stopped just in time. The best lies are the ones with the most truth, he reminded himself.
Chris had dark smudges under her eyes and her hair looked like it had been slept on. Her usually jaunty air was subdued, like a dog that’s been walked to exhaustion. She covered a yawn with her hand and barely raised her eyebrows in greeting. ‘What’s up, doc?’ she managed, in a pale reflection of her normal style.
‘We’re all dancing the Jacko Vance tango,’ he said ruefully, pulling up a chair and joining the two women. ‘He must be rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of us all running around chasing our tails, wondering where he is and what he’s doing.’
‘I just spoke to West Mercia,’ Carol said. ‘They’re coordinating the search. They’ve had even more than the usual spate
of so-called sightings everywhere from Aberdeen to Plymouth. But not a single confirmed sighting.’
‘One of the problems is we’ve got no idea what he looks like,’ Tony said. ‘We can be certain he doesn’t look like a caricature of an England football supporter any more. He’ll be wearing a wig, he’ll have different facial hair and different-shaped glasses.’
‘He’s still the one-armed man,’ Chris said. ‘He can’t hide that.’
‘The prosthesis he’s got isn’t immediately obvious. After I spoke to my Home Office contact, I checked it out online. The cosmetic covers they have now are amazing. You’d have to look closely to realise they’re not real skin, and most of us don’t look closely at anything much. And what Vance has got is the best that money can buy.’
‘Thanks to the European Court of Human Rights,’ Carol muttered. ‘So what we know is that we don’t know much. Vance could actually be anywhere from Aberdeen to Plymouth. So how did you get on, Chris?’
Chris straightened up in her chair and glanced at her notebook. ‘OK. Leon’s still with the Met. He’s done well for himself. He’s exactly what the brass want – graduate, black, smart and presentable. And demonstrably not corrupt.’ She grinned at Carol. ‘He’s a DCI now, with SO19.’
Tony snorted with laughter. ‘Leon’s in Diplomatic Protection? Leon, who used to be about as diplomatic as me?’
‘According to my old muckers on the Met, he’s learned to keep his mouth shut and play the game. But he’s got respect, up and down. So I got hold of him on the phone and marked his card.’
‘What did he say?’ Tony said, remembering Leon with his sharp suits and swagger. He’d been smart enough to accommodate lazy, getting by on his wits rather than his work. To have climbed so far, he must have learned to buckle down.
He’d have liked to have seen that, a Leon honed by work and responsibility.
‘He laughed it off. But then, he would.’
‘What’s his domestic set-up?’ Carol asked.
‘He’s got an ex-wife and two kids in Hornsey, and he lives with his current partner in Docklands. I tried to persuade him to move them for now, but he won’t have it.’ Chris pulled a face. ‘He said, “If I read an obit for Carol Jordan and Tony Hill, I’ll head for the hills. But right now, I can’t say I’m too worried.” I couldn’t budge him on that.’
‘He does have a point,’ Tony said. ‘Leon’s not near the top in terms of seniority or alphabetical order or geographical order. And given that none of us has a clue how long this is going to go on, he’s probably right not to turn his life on its head just yet.’
‘Unless of course the rest of us make ourselves so hard to hit Vance ends up taking out Leon by default,’ Carol said, acid in her tone. ‘You might want to mention that, Chris.’
Chris looked less than thrilled at the prospect. ‘Simon McNeill isn’t a cop any more. He stayed with Strathclyde for a couple of years after Shaz Bowman’s murder, then he quit to take up a job teaching criminology at Strathclyde University.’
Tony remembered Simon’s unruly black hair, his intensity and his infatuation with Shaz Bowman. Tony had heard on the grapevine that he’d had a breakdown, been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and been gently eased out of the job. ‘Poor sod,’ he said absently. He realised both women were looking at him oddly. ‘I mean, because he was besotted with Shaz, not because he ended up teaching at Strathclyde. Obviously.’
Chris looked amused as she continued. ‘He’s got a long-term partner and four kids. They live out in the country about an hour’s drive out of Glasgow. He seemed quite unnerved by the news. He’s going to talk to his local law enforcement about
increased patrols. But he said where they live is at the end of a track – one way in and out. And they have shotguns. He’s taking it seriously, but it sounds like he was already prepared for a siege. He told me that Western capitalism was headed for a cataclysm and then crime would skyrocket. Every man for himself. But he’s made his arrangements.’
It sounded like the PTSD wasn’t entirely a thing of the past. ‘Christ, I hope Vance doesn’t show up there,’ Tony said. ‘There’d be a bloodbath and chances are Vance would be the only one who’d walk away from it.’
‘So that’s two we can’t do much about,’ Carol said. ‘Tell me Kay Hallam isn’t gung-ho or running her own Home Counties militia.’
‘Kay Hallam is why I look like a woman who’s slept in her car. Because I am that woman. I had a job trying to track her down. I struggled to pick up the trail because she left to get married. Mr Right turned out to be an accountant with a practice in the Cayman Islands. The kind of bastard who helps all those loaded gits to avoid paying their taxes like the rest of us.’
Carol whistled. ‘Quiet little Kay. Who’d have thought it?’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Tony said. ‘She had that knack of watching and waiting till she was sure of her ground then she’d mirror your attitudes and position. Everybody always thought Kay was on their side and she always ran into problems with the kind of exercise where you have to nail your colours to the mast and defend your position. When Mr Right swam into her orbit, she’ll have watched and waited, then swum up alongside him and made him feel he’d finally met the one person who really understood him.’ He watched the two women consider his words then nod in agreement. ‘It was what made her such a good interviewer. Paula has the same chameleon knack, but Paula’s also got a personality of her own that she slips straight back into. I never had any idea who the real Kay Hallam was.’
‘Not only can I believe it, but if I had her resources, I’d probably do the same thing in her shoes,’ Tony said. ‘Vance is seriously scary.’ He frowned. ‘Chris – didn’t some hack write a book about Vance after the first trial?’
‘That rings a faint bell. Didn’t they have to withdraw it after he won his appeal?’
‘That’s right,’ Carol said. ‘They said it was libellous now Vance had been cleared. It might be worth tracking down the author and seeing if he’s got anything to say. He might have information we don’t have about associates and other properties Vance may have owned.’
‘I’ll get on to it,’ Chris said.
Before Carol could respond, Paula walked into the squad room with the evening paper. ‘Secret’s out,’ she said, brandishing the front page, where a banner headline read, SERIAL KILLER TARGETS BRADFIELD.
The Governor wasn’t crap. He’d just come face-to-face with a far superior creature.
After breakfast, he’d checked his cameras. This morning, he – or rather, Terry – had had an email from the PI saying
he’d finally managed to get the last set of cameras installed. When Vance had used the code, he’d been able to activate them and spy on another location, a late addition to his list, tagged on as a result of the most recent research Terry had carried out for him. It was the perfect little extra to complete phase one of his plans.
