The Torment of Others (48 page)

Tony had chosen to sit at the desk Kevin Matthews normally occupied for the good reason that, from her office, Carol couldn’t see what he was doing. She was still busy on the phone, which gave him the freedom to flick through the pages of the phone book. With one ear cocked, he ran his finger down a column of names. God, it was getting harder to read the small print, he thought. Time to have his eyes tested.

It sounded as if Carol was winding up her call. ‘Yes, I do know that everybody thinks their request is a priority. But I’ve got an officer who’s been abducted by a killer…’ A pause. ‘OK. I appreciate it.’

Just in time, he found what he was looking for. He jotted it on a piece of scrap paper and shoved it into his pocket as Carol emerged from her office and headed towards him. ‘Did Jan fill you in?’ she asked.

‘Jan? Fill me in?’ he echoed.

‘Brandon wants a profile. He already told the noon press conference he was calling on the services of a psychological profiler. Which of course the local media will assume is you.’

‘Oh, that. Right. Yes, she did say something,’ he said, aware he was sounding flustered and hoping Carol would put it down to his customary vagueness. ‘I take it you don’t want me to refer to what we discussed last night?’ he asked, hoping that might divert her from noticing anything unusual in his behaviour.

Carol raised her eyebrows. ‘Not if you want Brandon to take anything else you say seriously.’

‘And you? Have you thought about it?’

Carol pushed a hand through her hair. She looked frazzled and unhappy. ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to take me any further forward. I’m sorry, Tony, but unless you’ve got something concrete, I haven’t got time for this now.’

He stood up. ‘That’s OK. I understand. I’m going home. I’ll work better there.’

‘Fine, we’ll talk later,’ she said absently. Her mind was already on the next thing, the phone to her ear, her fingers on the buttons.

Out on the street, Tony hailed a taxi. He pulled the paper from his pocket and gave the driver the address. He sagged back into the seat and stared into the middle distance. So deep in his thoughts was he that he wasn’t even aware of it when he started to speak out loud. Nor was he conscious of the apprehensive eyes of the driver in the rear-view mirror. All that interested him was the process of a killer’s mind.

‘You didn’t get what you wanted,’ he muttered. ‘The bad fairy at the christening gave you a shit deal, and the brains to see how shit it was. So you learn how to take the power, hide the vulnerability. Get your retaliation in first. Hide your weakness behind a show of force. But sooner or later, the cracks start to show. You stop believing in your own publicity. You have to find a way to reassure yourself. A way to take more power to yourself. You become the voice.’ He nodded in satisfaction. It made sense. It had the structure of a logical argument. Pretzel logic, but logic all the same.

‘At first, you take your power from the weak. You find your listener in Derek. You make him do your bidding. You make him take your prey and you control every move of the puppet show. But Derek fucks up and you’re back where you started. And it takes time to carve another will into the shape of your own.

‘But, eventually, you get there. You find another mind you can dominate, another head you can perch inside. And it begins again. And then you get the chance to take on someone your own size. And you can’t resist, can you?’

His reverie was broken by the anxious voice of the taxi driver. ‘You all right, mate?’ he asked.

Tony leaned forward. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But I will be soon, I hope.’

One of the reasons for my success is my ability to think on my feet, to adapt my plans to accommodate changing circumstances. After the time it took to train him, I’d hoped to get more use out of this monkey, but it’s become clear that sooner rather than later he’s going to be fingered–and that presents a risk I’m not prepared to take. I was sure of Tyler, sure he would keep the faith because he had such a personal stake in the work I set him. But this one is weaker. He’ll give me up without even knowing he’s doing it
.

I pull up round the corner from the shithole where he lives. It’s getting dark now, and everyone’s in too much of a hurry to get somewhere warm to pay attention to anybody else. I check the mirrors, just in case anybody’s watching, then remove the gun from the glove compartment, enjoying the heft of it in my hand
.

When the coast is clear, I get out, head down, and walk briskly to my destination. I have a key to the street door and I run up the stairs to the first landing. Two grubby green doors open off it. I reach up with a gloved hand and knock on the door with the number four painted on it
.

I can feel my heart rate speeding up. I’ve never done this face to face before, and I’m curious to see how it will feel. Seconds pass, then the door inches open. Carl is peering out through the gap, dressed only in grey sagging jockey shorts and a crumpled T-shirt. He looks as if he’s just woken up. His expression is suspicious, but when he sees it’s me, his face clears
.

‘Hiya,’ he says, a goofy grin on his greasy face. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

He steps back to allow me to enter. It’s a dank, untidy room. Unmade bed, clothes in piles, Britney poster on the wall. It smells of masturbation and sweat. Every time I’ve been here, it’s depressed me to think this was the best I could do
.

Carl is gibbering something, but this afternoon I’ve no time for small talk. I’m supposed to be somewhere else. I pull out the gun and take pleasure in the panic that spreads across his face. He’s not very bright, but even he knows what a gun means when it’s at his head. I back him towards the bed
.

‘I did what you said. I never told anybody,’ he whimpers. His legs hit the edge of the bed and he tumbles backwards. He scrambles towards the head of the bed. He’s crying now. ‘I promise, I won’t give you up.’

I find the voice within myself. The one I know he is conditioned to obey. ‘Lie down, Carl. Lie down and everything will be all right. I am the Voice. I am your Voice. Whatever I tell you to do is for the best. I am the Voice, Carl. Lie down.’ And it works. His subconscious mind overrides his panic enough for him to do as he is told. He’s shivering and sweating, but he’s doing what he’s told
.

I reach for the pillow and put it to the side of his head. I press the gun barrel into the pillow. His eyes are wide with trust. ‘I am the Voice,’ I remind him. ‘I am your Voice.’ And I pull the trigger
.

Carol looked up from the file she was reading and recognized the man who’d just entered the squad-room as one of the fingerprint technicians. ‘We’ve got a result from AFIS,’ he said.

‘Who is it?’ she demanded, getting to her feet and reaching for the sheet of paper in the technician’s hand. ‘Carl Mackenzie. Twenty-six. Possession of cannabis, possession of ecstasy, indecent exposure…’

‘I know him, he’s a small-time street dealer,’ Kevin said. ‘He hangs out in Stan’s Café.’

‘Last known address, Flat 4, 7 Grove Terrace, Bradfield,’ Carol said. ‘Come on, Kevin, let’s hit it.’ She pushed past the fingerprint officer, shouting for Merrick.

‘He went off to get some sleep,’ Kevin reminded her. ‘I could call his mobile.’

Carol shook her head. ‘Never mind. Stacey, get your coat,’ she called across the room.

The technician stood in the doorway of Carol’s office watching them go. ‘Thanks for all your hard work, lads,’ he mimicked sarcastically.

Carol, Kevin and Stacey pounded pell-mell down the corridor. ‘We’ll take my car,’ Kevin shouted. ‘I’ve got a noddy light.’

Carol nodded agreement as they hurtled down the stairs and into the car park. They piled into Kevin’s car, Carol yanking open the glove box and pulling out the blue flashing light. Fumbling with the connector, she finally managed to plug it into the cigarette lighter slot, then opened the window and slammed it on the roof.

They were already out in the traffic, the rush hour jamming the streets with cars. Kevin leaned on the horn, the light flashed and it gradually dawned on other drivers that they needed to pull over. But it still felt like painfully slow progress.

Carol chewed on the skin by her thumbnail.
Please, God, let us find Carl Mackenzie. And please, God, let him lead us to Paula
.

Tony paid off the taxi and stood for a long moment, taking in the house in front of him. It was a modern detached brick building, part of a depressingly uninspired development on the outskirts of the city centre. It occupied the central plot at the head of a cul-de-sac with an unimpeded view of any car coming up the street. He wasn’t in the least surprised. The Creeper would need to be in control of every possible aspect of her environment.

Jan Shields’ house was even more lacking in personality than its neighbours, if that were possible. White paintwork, white front door, white garage door. Boring block paving on the drive and pathway. A tidy lawn with evenly spaced shrubs and conifers round the edge, all trimmed with obsessive neatness. Nothing that surprised Tony one whit.

He walked up the path and tried the mortice key in the lock. It was reluctant to turn at first, but Tony jiggled it a little and the tongue slipped back into its bed. The first Yale wouldn’t fit, but the second slipped home easily. As the door opened, he heard the insistent beep of a burglar alarm’s warning tone. He looked around for the control box, eventually spotting it behind him. His luck was still running; it was a key-operated system rather than one controlled by an electronic combination. He fumbled with the two small keys, his hands sweating as he jammed the first of them into the lock and turned.

Silence fell. Tony wiped the sweat from his face with both hands and turned to examine the house he believed to be the Creeper’s lair. His evidence for that conviction was not the sort that would cut any ice with a cop. He could imagine Carol’s face. ‘It was the way she spoke about power and vulnerability. Her contempt for the weak,’ he’d say. And then he’d see the struggle on Carol’s face between her desire to believe him and her copper’s dependence on tangible evidence. Actually, there was something else too, but that was equally intangible. From the very beginning the cutting of the wire had troubled him. If Paula had noticed it happening, she’d have kicked off there and then. For her not to have noticed, it must have been done without fumbling. And for it to have been done without fumbling, whoever abducted her couldn’t have relied on a lucky guess. He had to have known. And that narrowed it down to Carol and her team.

At first, he’d been more interested in Chen and Evans. They were the most obvious outsiders because of their racial backgrounds. It wasn’t hard to imagine the resentments building up over the years as they perceived themselves powerless in the face of an organization that was implacably geared towards handing control to others. Chen had seemed particularly appealing because of her obsession with machines. Interacting with people was something that didn’t come easily to her, which, if she was the killer, might tempt her to use the agency of another. There was a coldness in Evans too, a distance that suggested he might enjoy exploiting others for his own ends.

And then he’d realized Jan was not only another outsider but one with a unique connection to Paula. So he’d driven that morning’s conversation in a direction that he hoped would tell him more about her. Which it had done. And then he’d remembered Carol mentioning that Jan had been with Paula when she’d chosen her outfit. Nobody was better placed to make sure the wire was where it was supposed to be. And so he was here, staking everything on his gut instinct.

He flicked on the light switches in the hall. It was a risk, but there wasn’t any point in being here in the dark. The floor was covered in thick cream carpet as far as the eye could see. It extended into the living room and up the stairs and it was spotless. No children or animals here. He looked down at his feet and saw a pair of slippers by the front door. Nothing from the outside world was going to be allowed to soil this place.

He moved through to the living room, standing on the threshold and drinking it all in, moving from first impression to a fuller scrutiny. The room was big, an archway leading from the seating area to a dining space. Two big cream sofas dominated the first part of the room, each replete with four precisely placed burgundy velvet cushions. In front of one there was a glass-and-wood coffee table. On it sat a
Radio Times
and that morning’s paper, each perfectly aligned. The walls were painted a deeper shade of cream than the carpet. Above the fake coal fire hung a reproduction of a geometric Mondrian painting. A flat-screen TV dominated one corner of the room, DVD and video players underneath it.