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

I only realized how smoothly everything had gone up till now when things started to move in directions I hadn’t predicted and didn’t like. I suppose I’d made the mistake of underestimating the stupidity of the forces opposed to me. I’d never thought there was much brain power shared out among the officers of Bradfield police, but the latest developments shook even me. They arrested the wrong man!

Their incredible lack of intelligence and perception was matched only by the media, following uncritically like sheep. I couldn’t believe it when I picked up the Sentinel Times to read that a man was in custody helping police enquiries into my killings. The arrest came after a street assault involving a police officer. How on earth could they imagine that someone who had taken as much care as I had would end up in some street brawl in Temple Fields? It was an insult to my intelligence. Did they really think I was some out-of-control street yob?

I read and reread the article, unable to credit the depths of their foolishness. Anger burned inside me. I could feel it in my guts like indigestion and wind cramps rolled into a spiky ball. I wanted to do something vicious and dramatic, something that would prove to them how wrong they were.

I worked out with my weights till my muscles were trembling from effort and my kit was saturated with sweat, but still the anger refused to abate. I stormed upstairs to my computer and worked on the videos of Damien that I’d imported into my system. By the time I’d finished, we’d performed sexual gymnastics that the Russian national team would have been proud of. But nothing satisfied me. Nothing took the anger away.

Luckily, unlike them I’m not stupid. I know how dangerous uncontrolled anger could be for me. I needed to harness my anger, to be creative with it and make it work for me. I forced myself to channel my rage into constructive pathways. I planned in meticulous detail how I would capture Dr Tony Hill, and what I would do with him when I got him. I’d be keeping him in suspense – literally.

Squassation and strappado. The Spanish Inquisition knew exactly how to make the most of what was available. They simply harnessed the most powerful force on the planet, the force of gravity. All you need is a winch, a pulley, a few ropes and a lump of stone. You fasten the victim’s hands behind his back and run a rope from them through the pulley. Then you tie the stone to his feet.

In his book The Horrid Cruelties of the Inquisition, published in 1770, John Marchant described this efficient torture most eloquently:

He is then drawn up on high, till his head reaches the pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sudden he is let down with a jerk, by the slacking of the rope, but is kept from coming quite to the ground, by which terrible shake, his arms and legs are disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock which he receives by the sudden stop of his fall, and the weight at his feet stretching his whole body more intensely and cruelly.

The Germans added a refinement that attracted me. Behind the victim, they placed a spiked roller, so that as he descended, the rollers cut into and excoriated his back, leaving his body a bloody, dislocated mass. I considered reproducing this effect, but even after a lot of juggling with the layout, I couldn’t come up with a design on the computer that I was satisfied would work smoothly, unless I cuffed his hands in front of him, which makes the squassation and strappado far less effective. Keep it simple, that’s my motto.

While I was planning and constructing, I took steps to draw my web even tighter around Dr Hill. He might think he could climb inside my head, but he’d got things the wrong way round.

I couldn’t wait to get started. I was counting the hours.

16 (#ulink_bcef33bf-1d74-5864-85b8-5feb701c3f74)

‘Now, Miss R., supposing that I should appear at about midnight at your bedside, armed with a carving knife, what would you say?’ To which the confiding girl had replied, ‘Oh, Mr Williams, if it was anybody else, I should be frightened. But as soon as I heard your voice, I should be tranquil.’ Poor girl; had this outline sketch of Mr Williams been filled in and realized, she would have seen something in the corpse-like face, and heard something in the sinister voice, that would have unsettled her tranquillity forever.

When the phone rang, Carol’s first reaction was outrage. Ten past eight on a Sunday morning could only mean work. She stirred, a long, low growl of discontent making Nelson’s ears prick. Carol’s arm appeared from under the covers, groping around on the bedside table. She connected with the phone and grunted, ‘Jordan,’ into it.

‘This is your early-morning alarm call.’ The voice was far too cheerful, Carol decided, before the identity of her caller registered.

‘Kevin,’ she said. ‘This better be good.’

‘It’s better than good. What would you say to a witness who saw the killer drive away from Damien Connolly’s house?’

‘Say again?’ she mumbled. Kevin repeated his announcement. The second time round, his voice catapulted Carol into a sitting position, on the edge of the bed. ‘When?’ she demanded.

‘The guy walked in late last night. He’s been out of the country on business. Brandon interviewed him. He’s called a meeting for nine,’ Kevin said, excited as a Christmas child.

‘Kevin, you bastard, you might have called me before now …’

He chuckled. ‘I thought you needed your beauty sleep.’

‘Bollocks to beauty sleep …’

‘No, I’ve only been in five minutes myself. Can you bring the doc in with you? I just tried calling him, but there was no reply.’

‘OK, I’ll swing round by his place and see if I can raise him. He seems to have a habit of switching the phones off. Fancy thinking he could get away with a decent night’s sleep. You can tell he’s not a copper,’ she added. Carol replaced the phone abruptly and headed for the shower. The thought that Tony might have switched off his phone because he was with the woman on the answering machine crossed her mind. The idea made her stomach hurt. ‘Silly bitch,’ she muttered to herself as the water cascaded over her.

By twenty to nine, she was leaning on Tony’s doorbell. After a couple of minutes, the door opened. Bleary eyed, struggling with the belt of his dressing gown, Tony peered out at her. ‘Carol?’

‘Sorry to wake you,’ she said formally. ‘You weren’t answering your phone. Mr Brandon asked me to pick you up. There’s a meeting at nine. We’ve got a witness.’

Tony rubbed his eyes, looking bemused. ‘You better come in.’ He walked down the hall, leaving Carol to close the door behind her. ‘Sorry about the phones. I was late getting to sleep, so I switched them off.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you hang on while I have a shower and a shave? Otherwise, I’ll make my own way in. I don’t want you to be late on my account.’

‘I’ll wait,’ Carol said. She picked the paper off the mat and flicked through it, leaning against the wall, alert for the telltale signs of a third person’s presence. She felt unreasonably pleased when she heard none. Even though she knew her reaction was childish, it didn’t mean these responses were going to stop overnight. She was just going to have to learn to disguise them until they died away, as she felt sure they would eventually, starved out of existence by Tony’s lack of interest.

Ten minutes later, Tony reappeared in jeans and rugby shirt, hair damp and neatly brushed. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘My brain doesn’t work until I’ve had a shower. Now, what’s all this about a witness?’

Carol told him the little she knew on the way to the car.

‘That’s great news,’ Tony enthused. ‘First big breakthrough, isn’t it?’

Carol shrugged. ‘It depends how much he can tell us. If the guy was driving a red Ford Escort, it doesn’t take us a lot further forward. We’d need something solid to cross-match. Maybe something like the computer angle.’

‘Oh yes, the computer theory. How goes that?’

‘I discussed it with my brother. He reckons it’s perfectly feasible,’ Carol said coldly, feeling patronized.

‘Great!’ Tony enthused. ‘I really hope that works out. I wasn’t trying to pour cold water on it, you know. I have to work with the balance of probabilities, and your idea’s way beyond my parameters. But it’s the kind of investigative brainwave that we’re going to need on the national task force. I really think you should seriously consider signing up when we get the show on the road.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be comfortable with the idea of working with me after this,’ Carol said, eyes firmly fixed on the road.

Tony took a deep breath. ‘I’ve never met a police officer I’d rather work with.’

‘Even if I do trespass on your personal space?’ she asked bitterly, hating herself for picking at the hurt like an old scab.

Tony sighed. ‘I thought we’d agreed we could be friends? I know I …’

‘Fine,’ she interrupted, wishing she’d never opened up the conversation. ‘I can do friends. What do you think of Bradfield Victoria’s chances in the Cup?’

Startled, Tony twisted in his seat and stared at Carol. He saw a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. Suddenly, they were both laughing.

The latest government threats to the prison service meant the officers at HM Prison Barleigh had started to work to rule. That in turn meant that prisoners were banged up for twenty-three hours in every twenty-four. Stevie McConnell lay on his side on his bunk bed in the cell he had to himself. Following the attack that had left him with two black eyes, a couple of cracked ribs, more bruises than he could count, and the kind of sexual damage that made sitting down an option too painful to contemplate readily, he had asked for and been granted solitary confinement.

It didn’t matter how much he protested that he wasn’t the Queer Killer. Nobody cared, neither cons nor screws. He’d realized that the warders held him in as much contempt as his fellow prisoners when he’d heard the sounds of slopping-out all along the wing. But no officer had unlocked his cell door to allow him to empty the stinking bucket of his sewage that sat in the corner, its smell insistent and somehow more disgusting than any of the dozens of public toilets where Stevie had picked up strangers for sex.

As far as he could see, his prospects were bleak. The very fact that he was behind bars was enough to condemn him in most people’s eyes. Probably the whole world was convinced that the Queer Killer had taken his last victim now that Stevie McConnell was in jail. After he’d been released following his first stretch of questioning, he’d been painfully aware that everyone at work, staff and clients, were giving him a wide berth, refusing to meet his eyes. One drink in a Temple Fields bar where he’d been a regular for years had been enough to show him that gay solidarity had mysteriously deserted him too. The police and the press clearly thought he was their psychopath. And until they caught the Queer Killer, Bradfield wasn’t going to be a welcoming place for Stevie McConnell. The decision to move out to Amsterdam where an ex-lover ran a gym had seemed to make sense at the time. It hadn’t occurred to him that they’d be tailing him.

The irony that this had all happened to him because he’d rushed to the defence of a police officer in the first place was not lost on Stevie. He gave a bitter bark of laughter. That big Geordie sergeant was probably counting his blessings that he’d been smacked with a half-brick, figuring that that was the only thing that had saved him from being the Queer Killer’s next victim. The reality was that Stevie McConnell was the only victim around that night. And it wasn’t going to get any better. Even his shocked family didn’t want to know, according to his solicitor.

Lying there, examining his future dispassionately, he came to a decision. Grimacing with pain, Stevie rolled off the bunk and took off his shirt, wincing at the stab of pain from his ribs. With his teeth and nails, painstakingly he unpicked the seams that held the denim together. On the sharp end of a bed spring, he ripped the edges of the material so he could tear it into thin strips, which he plaited together for extra strength. He tied one end of the makeshift ligature round his neck in a tight noose, then climbed on to the top bunk. He fastened the other end of his short rope to the bottom rail of the upper berth.

Then, at seventeen minutes past nine on a sunny Sunday morning, he threw himself head first over the edge.

Like an ailing company which has won a life-saving tender against all odds, Scargill Street was buzzing with excited activity. At the heart of it all was the HOLMES room, where officers stared into screens, manipulating the new information, evaluating the new correspondences the system was throwing out.

In his office, Brandon held a council of war with his four inspectors and Tony, all of them clutching a photocopy of Brandon’s notes on his interview with Terry Harding. The ACC had only had five hours’ sleep, but the prospect of movement on the enquiry had given him a new energy, betrayed only by the heavy shadows around his deep-set eyes. ‘To recap, then,’ Brandon said. ‘At about quarter past seven the night Damien Connolly was killed, a man drove out of his garage in some kind of big four-wheel drive jeep, dark in colour. He got out of the jeep to close the garage door, and that’s when our witness got his best look at him. The description we’ve got is white, five ten to six feet, aged between twenty and forty-five, possibly with his hair tied back in a ponytail. Wearing white trainers, jeans and a long waxed coat. Overnight, the HOLMES team have been going through the vehicles clocked in Temple Fields that fit the description. Most of these drivers have already been interviewed, but they’re all going to be followed up and questioned more thoroughly now we’ve got Terry Harding’s evidence. Bob, I want you to take charge of that, and I want alibis checking too.’

‘Right, boss,’ Stansfield said, flicking the ash off his cigarette with a determined motion.