The Torment of Others (40 page)

Tony deepened his voice, aiming for warmth and sympathy. ‘But I don’t think that’s how it was with you, Derek. I don’t think you used the voice. I think the voice used you. And now it’s using somebody else. Face it, Derek, you’re not as special as you thought you were.’

Suddenly Tyler uncoiled and rolled over. He jerked into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, his face inches from Tony. Tony maintained his expression of compassion and concern. Time to play his ace. ‘You’ve been loyal to the voice, but it’s let you down. It’s left you here to rot. It’s found somebody else to do its bidding. It’s betrayed you, Derek. So you might as well return the favour.’

The silence dragged out between them for a long minute. Then Tyler leaned even closer. Tony could feel the heat of the other man’s breath against his skin. I’ve been waiting for you,’ he croaked.

Tony nodded gently. ‘I know, Derek.’

His eyes opened so wide Tony could see the iris as a perfect circle against the white. I’m supposed to be slow. All these doctors, they’re supposed to be clever. But they never got it.’

‘I know.’

‘They all thought it was the voice of God or something. But I’m not daft, you know. I might be slow, but I’m not daft.’

‘I know that too. So whose voice was it?’

Tyler’s lips curled back in a triumphant sneer. The Creeper.’

‘The Creeper?’ Tony tried not to show disappointment. ‘Who’s the Creeper?’

Tyler withdrew a few inches and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You’re so bloody smart, you figure it out.’ Then, in one single fluid movement, he rolled back into his foetal crouch, facing the wall.

If they’d only sussed it out soon enough, it could have been a field day for Bradfield’s opportunist criminals. Every available officer was out on the streets in a kaleidoscope of encounters.

On a corner near the sex shop, putting potential customers off, PC Danny Wells: ‘Have you seen this woman in the past twenty-four hours?’ The photograph of Paula, grinning at the camera on a girls’ night out with her colleagues. ‘Do you recognize this man?’ The video still.
It could be anybody, really
, Danny thought. ‘Listen to this voice. Do you recognize it?’ Play, stop, rewind.

In the newsagent’s down the street from Paula’s pitch, DS Jan Shields. The Asian behind the counter had the air of a man puffed up with righteous indignation. ‘Have you seen this woman?’ Paula’s photo placed on a pile of morning papers. A shake of the head. ‘Do you know this man?’ The video still placed next to Paula. A shrug.

‘How do I know? It could be anybody. It could be you,’ he said insolently.

‘Do you own this property?’

‘No, I just rent the shop.’

‘Only the shop? What about the upper floors?’

‘Flats. Nothing to do with me.’

‘OK. I’m going to need the name and contact details of your landlord.’

The shopkeeper scowled. ‘Why is this your business? Is there a problem?’

‘Yeah, there’s a problem, but it’s probably not yours. Can I see your back room?’

Suddenly his bluster was replaced with apprehension. ‘Why do you want to do that? It’s just a storeroom.’

Jan, not in any mood to argue, leaned on the counter. ‘Listen, I don’t give a toss if you’ve got wall-to-wall smuggled fags back there; that’s not what I’m looking for. Just let me take a look, OK? Then I’ll be out of here. Otherwise, I’ll be on the phone to Customs and Excise right now, pal.’

He glared at her, then lifted the counter flap to let her through. ‘I can explain…’

And in the offices of Bradfield Metropolitan Council, Sergeant Phil MacLeod. He stood at the head of a group of five officers at the reception desk of the local taxation office. The woman behind the desk looked dubious. ‘We shut at twelve today. It’s Saturday,’ she said.

‘Not today you don’t. This is a murder inquiry.’

She looked perplexed and frightened. ‘I don’t know what the procedure is,’ she said.

‘It’s a matter of public record. All you need to do is show me the council tax register for these streets.’ Sergeant MacLeod produced a list of the streets of Temple Fields.

‘I’m going to have to get my boss.’

‘Whatever. Just do it,’ MacLeod snapped.

And in a house converted from former Victorian glory to an aggregate of bedsits, DC Laura Blythe. She knocked on a door. No reply. She walked down a hallway smelling of curry and cabbage and knocked on the next door. A bleary-eyed young man in boxers and a T-shirt opened up. Blythe produced her warrant card. ‘DC Blythe, Bradfield Police. We’re looking for a woman who has been abducted. I wonder if I might take a look inside your flat?’

‘Do what?’ He looked flabbergasted.

‘I just need to satisfy myself that she’s not here.’

‘You think I’ve kidnapped somebody?’ Incredulity and confusion.

‘No, but she went missing very near here and it’s my job to eliminate people from our inquiry. So, can I take a quick look?’

‘You got a warrant?’

Blythe lowered her voice and went for menacing. ‘Don’t make me get one. I’m having a very bad day.’ She produced Paula’s photo. ‘I’m not interested in anything else. Just her.’

He gave a bemused shake of the head and pushed the door open to reveal the scuzzy chaos within. ‘She’s not my type, love,’ he said ironically.

Carol stood in the doorway of Tony’s office at Bradfield Moor. It looked like everywhere he’d ever worked–so crowded with books and paper it was impossible to discern any fundamental architecture. He was like a squirrel, building the same nest around himself year after year. ‘You left a message on my phone? Sounded urgent.’

He looked up from his computer and smiled. ‘Thanks for coming. I thought you’d just phone.’

‘I was already heading out of town. I’m on my way to see Paula’s parents.’ She came in and sat down.

‘Ah.’

‘Quite. So, what have you got for me?’

‘Tyler talked,’ Tony said.

‘You’re kidding,’ she exclaimed.

‘Don’t get too excited.’ He ran through the conversation then looked expectantly at Carol.

She ran her hands through her hair. The Creeper? That’s it?’

He nodded eagerly. ‘I told you Derek Tyler hadn’t got the wit to commit organized offences like this off his own bat. These murders weren’t Tyler’s idea. It was never his set-up.’

‘So we’re back to your theory of some puppet-master pulling Derek Tyler’s strings? And now he’s back at his old tricks?’

That’s one possibility. It would mean he’s found someone as suggestible as Tyler, which can’t have been that easy. But maybe he’s spent the last two years plucking up the courage to do it himself.’

‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘You know how crazy this sounds?’

‘I know. But it’s the one thing that makes sense of all the information we have. Either the ringmaster has someone new to control or he’s doing it himself.’

An anxious thought crept into Carol’s mind. ‘What sort of person would be able to control another person to this degree?’ she asked, almost reluctant.

Tony frowned. ‘You’d be looking at a strong personality. Someone with the ability to charm people, to get under their skin. They’d know a lot about brainwashing techniques. They would probably have developed skills in hypnosis.’

‘Someone like you, in fact?’ Carol tried to make it sound like a tease but failed.

Tony gave her an odd look. ‘They’d have to have better social skills than me,’ he said ironically. ‘But yes, a practising clinical psychologist could probably do it.’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘Carol, what are you not telling me?’

‘Nothing,’ she said with a nervous laugh. This wasn’t the time to mention Evans’ obsession with Aidan Hart. First she wanted to figure out what she thought herself. ‘I need to find the connection to Tyler. Whoever the Creeper is, he was in Tyler’s life back then. And I need to get the teams on the streets asking if anyone’s heard of the Creeper.’

Tony studied her for a long moment, puzzling over her words. Then he stood up and reached for his coat. ‘And I need to think. I’m going back to where Paula went missing.’ He paused on his way out the door. ‘She’s still alive, Carol. I’m sure of it.’

And the kaleidoscope shifted. Inside a chichi pub with bed-and-breakfast rooms on the upper floors, DC Sam Evans. The publican was thirty-something, shaved head, leather waistcoat over a bare torso and leather trousers, polishing glasses with a bar towel. The questions, the photos and the tape. The publican shrugged. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, mate.’

‘So how many rooms do you have?’

‘Eight doubles and two singles.’

‘I’d like to take a look at them.’

‘Four of them are occupied.’ The publican put down his towel.

‘I’d especially like to take a look at those ones.’

The publican leered at Evans. ‘Into voyeurism, are you, pet?’

Evans leaned on the bar. He fixed the publican with a menacing stare. ‘When does your licence come up for renewal? Sir?’

And in a room not fifty yards from the pub, Paula lay glassy-eyed on the bed, the fly captured by the spider. Her mouth was so dry her lips were gummed to the gag. Her captor had been back again to change the tape, but this time he’d left her alone, contenting himself with brandishing the dildo in her face. She had never been so afraid in her life. Her mind was beginning to slip its cogs, strange ideas tumbling over each other in her head. What if this was her punishment for doubting Carol Jordan? What if this was her punishment for being gay? Nothing made sense any more. All she lived for was the opening of the door and for it not to be him on the other side of it.

And on the streets that formed the web around the spider’s prey, life went on in patterns too deep-set to be altered by the heavy weight of the police presence. People were more cautious than usual, but still the regular transactions continued. Dee had already found another fuckpad to entertain her customers in; that afternoon, she was bouncing mechanically on top of an office furniture sales rep whose wife was walking their two children home from school while he grunted under Dee. Honey was scoring a wrap of heroin from Carl Mackenzie, both of them well aware that the cops swarming the streets wouldn’t have cared if it had been a kilo of pure Chinese white.

And a killer was swaggering on the streets of Temple Fields, wrapped in a sense of contemptuous invulnerability.

Alone in the elite squad’s room, Stacey Chen noted the arrival of new email. Seeing there was an attachment, she ran it through her personal virus checker, then, satisfied it was safe to do so, she opened it. It came from Nick Sanders, a ranger in the Peak National Park, and included his log from July as well as a couple of dozen photographs of Chee Dale and Swindale. As she flicked through them, another program activated itself. Stacey had set up a capture program to analyse every JPEG file that her machine encountered, classifying them according to camera serial number when it could be found. She planned to offer the software to the paedophile investigation unit to help them sort files from a variety of sources into associated batches so they could see possible connections between different individuals, but she needed to be sure she’d ironed out any bugs first.

As she turned back to the files she’d been working on previously, one of the SOCOs came in. ‘DCI Jordan around?’ he asked.

‘She’s gone to Manchester. Can I help?’

He dropped a file on her desk. ‘We managed to extract DNA from the contaminated sample on Jackie Mayall. It’s a bit degraded–not good enough to run against the national database for a positive match, but certainly enough for elimination purposes. It won’t nail your guy absolutely, but it’ll give you a decent pointer if you get the right man.’

‘Cheers. I’ll make sure she sees it as soon as she gets back,’ Stacey said absently, her mind already turning back to the task in hand.

She was surprised when she looked back at the screen to see a flashing window in the centre. it said. She sighed. Probably the same old glitch she’d been trying to solve for a week or two now. Instead of reading a group of images from the same source as a single batch, it was picking each of them up individually and telling her they were in fact matches against something already on the system. She’d thought she’d finally ironed it out, but clearly she’d been mistaken. All it would be telling her was that some of the photos in Sanders’ attachment had been taken by the same camera as each other. Hardly earth-shattering stuff, and something she was going to have to work harder to sort out before she could let anybody else loose with the program. With no great hopes, she clicked on the window. And sat there staring, hardly able to believe the evidence of her eyes.

‘Holy shit,’ she muttered, reaching for the phone.

It had taken Tony longer than he would have liked to make it to Temple Fields. As he’d been leaving Bradfield Moor, he’d been collared by Aidan Hart demanding a case conference on one of Tony’s patients. ‘Not now, Aidan,’ he’d said impatiently.