Val McDermid 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Mermaids Singing, The Wire in the Blood, The Last Temptation

‘It’s the photographs I want to look at first, so I might as well come and help,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ Carol said.

In the lift, they stood on opposite sides, both conscious of the other’s physical presence. ‘That’s not a Bradfield accent,’ Tony remarked as the doors slid shut. If he was going to work successfully with Carol Jordan, he needed to know what made her tick, personally as well as professionally. The more he could find out about her, the better.

‘I thought you said you left the detective work to us?’

‘We’re good at stating the obvious, us psychologists. Isn’t that what our critics on the force say?’

‘Touché. I’m from Warwick, originally. Then university at Manchester and into the Met on the fast track. And you? I’m not great on accents, but I can spot you’re a Northerner, though you don’t sound like Bradfield either,’ Carol replied.

‘Born and bred in Halifax. London University, followed by a DPhil at Oxford. Eight years in special hospitals. Eighteen months ago, the Home Office headhunted me to run this feasibility study.’ Give a little to get a lot, Tony thought wryly. Who exactly was probing whom?

‘So we’re both outsiders,’ Carol said.

‘Maybe that’s why John Brandon chose you to liaise with me.’

The lift doors slid open and they walked through the underground car park to the visitors’ parking area where Carol had left her car. Tony hefted the cardboard box out of the boot. ‘You must be stronger than you look,’ he gasped.

Carol picked up the folders of photographs and grinned. ‘And I’m a black belt in Cluedo,’ she said. ‘Listen, Tony, if this maniac is in the Job, what sort of stuff would you expect to find?’

‘I shouldn’t have said that. I was theorizing ahead of data, and I don’t want you to place any weight on it, OK? Strike it from the record,’ Tony panted.

‘OK, but what would the signs be?’ she persisted.

They were back in the lift before Tony answered her. ‘Behaviour that exhibits a familiarity with police and forensic procedure,’ he said. ‘But in itself, that proves nothing. There are so many true-crime books and TV detectives around these days that anyone could know that sort of stuff. Look, Carol, please put it out of your head. We need to keep an open mind. Otherwise the work we do is valueless.’

Carol stifled a sigh. ‘OK. But will you tell me if you still think that way after you’ve seen the evidence? Because if it’s more than a slim possibility, we might need to rethink the way we’re dealing with the enquiry.’

‘I promise,’ he said. The lift doors slid open, as if placing their own full stop on the conversation.

Back in the office, Tony slid the first set of photographs out of their folders. ‘Before you start, could you fill me in on how you want to pursue this?’ Carol asked, notebook at the ready.

‘I’ll go through all the pictures first, then I’ll ask you to take me through the investigation so far. When we’ve done that, I’ll work through the paperwork myself. After that, what I usually do is draw up a profile of each of the victims. Then we have another session with these,’ he said, brandishing his forms. ‘And then I walk out on the high wire and do a profile of the offender. Does that sound reasonable to you?’

‘Sounds fine. How long is all that likely to take?’

Tony frowned. ‘It’s hard to say. A few days, certainly. However, Handy Andy seems to work on an eight-week cycle, and there’s no sign that he’s accelerating. That’s unusual in itself, by the way. Once I’ve studied the material I’ll have a better idea of how in control he is, but I think we’ve probably got a bit of time to spare before he kills again. Having said that, he may well have already selected his next victim, so we’ve got to make sure that we keep any progress we make well away from the press. The last thing we want is to be the catalyst for him speeding up the process.’

Carol groaned. ‘Are you always this optimistic?’

‘It goes with the territory. Oh, and one more thing? If you develop any suspects, I’d prefer not to know anything about them at this stage – there’s a danger that my subconscious will alter the profile accordingly.’

Carol snorted. ‘We should be so lucky.’

‘That bad, is it?’

‘Oh, we’ve pulled in anybody who’s got form for indecent assault or violent offences against gay men, but none of them looks even a remote possibility.’

Tony pulled a sympathetic face then picked up the photographs of Adam Scott’s corpse and slowly started going through them. He picked up a pen and moved his A4 pad nearer to him. He glanced up at Carol. ‘Coffee?’ he asked. ‘I meant to ask earlier, but I was too interested in what we were talking about.’

Carol felt like a co-conspirator. She had been enjoying their conversation too, in spite of a twinge of guilt that multiple murders shouldn’t be a source of pleasure. Talking with Tony was like talking to an equal who had no axe to grind, whose primary concern was finding a path to the truth rather than a way to boost the ego. It was something she’d missed on this case so far. ‘Me too,’ she admitted. ‘I’m probably approaching the point where coffee is a necessity. Do you want me to go and fetch some?’

‘Good God, no!’ Tony laughed. ‘That’s not what you’re here for. Wait there, I’ll be right back. How do you take yours?’

‘Black, no sugar. In an intravenous drip, preferably.’

Tony took a large Thermos jug out of his filing cabinet and disappeared. He was back inside five minutes with two steaming mugs and the jug. He handed Carol a mug and gestured towards the Thermos. ‘I filled it up. I figured we might be some time. Help yourself as and when.’

Carol took a grateful sip. ‘Will you marry me?’ she asked, mock romantic.

Tony laughed again, to cover the lurch of apprehension that shifted his stomach, a familiar response to even the most idle of flirtations. ‘You won’t be saying that in a few days’ time,’ he said evasively, turning his attention back to the photographs.

‘Victim number one. Adam Scott,’ he said softly, making a note on his pad. He went through the photographs one by one, then went back to the beginning. The first picture showed a city square, tall Georgian houses on one side, a modern office block on a second and a row of shops, bars and restaurants on the third. In the centre of the square was a public garden, crossed by two diagonal paths. In the middle was an ornate Victorian drinking fountain. The park was surrounded by a three feet high brick wall. Along two sides of the garden was deep shrubbery. The ambience was slightly seedy, the stucco of the houses peeling in places. He imagined himself standing on the corner, taking in the view, smelling the fumid city air mixed with the stink of stale alcohol and fast food, hearing the night sounds. The rev of engines, the sound of high heels on pavements, occasional laughs and cries borne on the wind, the twitter of starlings, conned out of sleep by the sodium light of streetlamps. Where did you stand, Andy? Where did you watch your ground from? What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? Why here?

The second photograph showed a section of the wall and the shrubbery from the street side. The photograph was clear enough for Tony to make out the little iron squares on the top of the wall, which were all that remained of railings that had presumably been removed during the war to make guns and shells. A section of the bushes showed broken branches and crumpled leaves. The third shot showed the body of a man, face down on the earth, his limbs splayed at strange angles. Tony let himself be drawn into the picture, trying to put himself in Handy Andy’s shoes. How did it feel, Andy? Were you proud? Were you scared? Were you exultant? Did you feel a spasm of regret at abandoning the object of your desire? How long did you allow yourself to drink in this sight, this strange tableau that you created? Did the sound of footsteps move you on? Or did you not care?

Tony looked up. Carol was watching him. To his surprise, for once he didn’t feel uncomfortable to have a woman’s eyes on him. Perhaps because their relationship had so firm a professional base, but without direct competition. The tension in him relaxed a notch. ‘The place where the body was found. Tell me about it.’

‘Crompton Gardens. It’s at the heart of Temple Fields, where the gay village and the red-light district overlap. It’s poorly lit at night, mostly because the streetlights are always being vandalized by the sex vendors who want a bit of darkness to cover their activities. There’s a lot of sex goes on in Crompton Gardens, in the bushes and on the park benches under the trees, in the office doorways, in the basement areas of the houses. Rent, prostitution and casual pick-ups. There are people around throughout the night, but they’re not the sort who are going to come forward about anything unusual they might have seen, even if they noticed it,’ Carol explained while Tony took notes.

‘The weather?’ he asked.

‘Dry night, though the ground was pretty damp.’

Tony returned to the photographs. The body was shot from various angles. Then, following the removal of the body, the dumping ground was pictured in close-up sections. There were no visible footprints, but some scraps of black plastic were lying under the body. He pointed at them with the tip of his pen. ‘Do we know what these are?’

‘Bradfield Metropolitan Council bin bags. Standard issue to businesses, blocks of flats … anywhere wheelie bins are inappropriate. That grade of bag has been in use now for the last two years. There’s apparently nothing to indicate whether they were already there or if they were dumped at the same time as the body,’ Carol said.

Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘You seem to have assimilated a helluva lot of detail since yesterday afternoon.’

Carol grinned. ‘It’s tempting to pretend I’m Superwoman, but I have to confess that I’d already made a point of finding out what I could about the other two enquiries. I was convinced they were linked, even if my boss wasn’t. And in fairness to my colleagues, the inspectors leading the other two enquiries had an open mind. They didn’t object to me making the occasional trawl through their stuff. Ploughing through it all overnight just refreshed my memory, that’s all.’

‘You’ve been up all night?’

‘Like you said, it goes with the territory. I’ll be fine till about four this afternoon. Then it’ll hit me like a sledgehammer,’ Carol admitted.

‘Message received and understood,’ Tony replied, turning back to the photographs. He moved on to the series of shots from the postmortem. The body lay on its back on the white slab, the hideous wounds visible for the first time. Tony went slowly through the whole sequence of pictures, sometimes flicking back to previous shots. When he closed his eyes, he could picture Adam Scott’s intact body, slowly breaking out in wounds and bruises like alien blooms. He could almost conjure up the slo-mo vision of the hands that brought flesh to such a pass. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and spoke again. ‘These bruises on the neck and chest – what did the pathologist say?’

‘Suck marks. Like love bites.’

A head descending, predatory, a bizarre parody of love. ‘And these sections of the neck and chest. Three places where the flesh has been cut away?’ Tony asked distantly.

‘They were removed postmortem. Maybe he likes to eat them?’

‘Maybe,’ Tony said doubtfully. ‘Was there any trace of bruising in the remaining tissues, can you remember?’

‘I think there was.’ Carol’s surprise showed in her voice.