The Retribution (35 page)
Both of the companies she’d tracked immediately also had websites. They specialised in providing off-the-shelf companies in countries whose financial regulatory systems were less than transparent. Carol printed out the scant information on each and put them to one side.
She rang the number attached to the third appointment of the day and found herself listening to the recorded message of the City of Westminster Archives Centre. Curious now, she accessed their website. Halfway down the list of site contents, she saw what she thought might have been a likely target for Gates – General Register Office Indexes. If Vance was building new identities, he’d need ID. In the bad old days, a criminal looking to construct a new identity only had to go to St Catherine’s House or, later, the Family History Centre in Islington, where the records of births, marriages and deaths were kept. There, they could find the death certificate of someone around the same age as them, preferably one who had died as a baby or a young child. From there, they could backtrack to the birth certificate and then order a copy of it.
Armed with a birth certificate, other layers of genuine ID could be built up. Driver’s licence. Passport. Utility bills. Bank accounts. Credit cards. And there was a whole new identity that would pass muster in an airport or a ferry terminal.
But terrorism had closed many of those doors, making it all a lot harder. The certificates were kept away from public gaze. All that was available were skeleton details, attached to an
index number that you had to have before you could order the certificate itself. It took a lot more time and patience to set the scam in motion, and it left a paper trail. Carol quickly typed out a suggested action for Monday morning and forwarded it to Ambrose. Some lucky sod was going to have to get on to the General Register and find out whether Terry Gates had commissioned any birth, marriage or death certificates. That would at least provide a starting point for possible aliases for Vance.
Of course, these days nobody bothered with the slow patient layering of a real ID. Forgery had become so sophisticated that providing the forger with a name, a date of birth and a photograph was enough for them to come up with a whole suite of documents that looked entirely authentic. But you still had to have a genuine starting place in case anyone checked. Carol would have bet a month’s salary that Terry Gates had gone to the Westminster index to find a plausible ID for Jacko Vance. Maybe even more than one.
Checking details like the ones on Terry Gates’s SIM card was infinitely quicker and easier, thanks to the resources of the Internet and the databases the police could access. A few years back, what Carol achieved inside a couple of hours would have taken several detectives days of footslogging and questioning people who operated on the fringes of the law. Even though the only human being she’d managed to talk to was an old mate on the Fraud squad, she had a pretty clear idea of what Terry Gates had been doing. Company formation, ID documents, private banks, a private investigations firm that was definitely dodgy and an ex-solicitor who specialised in crawling through the Land Registry to sell property information to scummy tabloid hacks. It pointed to two distinct operations. The first was to create new IDs and set up conduits for Vance to be reconnected with his money. The second goal was clearly directed at tracing and tracking other individuals. Presumably Vance’s vengeance targets. A bunch of detectives
were going to be very busy indeed come Monday morning if they hadn’t found Vance by then. At least by that time they would have a clearer idea of the extent of the payback Vance had planned.
She’d almost finished a detailed note for Patterson when Stacey Chen walked in. She looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of a weekend supplement with her perfectly coordinated designer leisurewear and a Henk case. Carol knew, because she’d googled it, that the sleek black carbon-fibre carry-on cost more than ten grand. There was a time when she’d wondered whether Stacey was on the take. Then she’d done a bit more digging and discovered that just one of the software applications Stacey had developed in her spare time had made her over a million a year for the past five years.
Carol had once asked Stacey why she bothered with the day job. ‘What I do at work – if I did it as a private citizen, I’d be arrested. I like having a licence to dig around in other people’s data,’ she’d said. She’d also thrown a quick expressionless glance at Sam Evans, which was an answer of a different kind.
Stacey spotted her and headed over. ‘Thanks for coming,’ Carol said.
‘It sounds a lot more interesting than the Bradfield cases,’ Stacey said. ‘So far, that’s just been routine processing. Though Paula has come up with something that definitely has data-mining prospects.’
‘Really?’ Bradfield had slipped off Carol’s radar completely in the past twenty-four hours. Stacey’s comment reminded her that she had responsibilities elsewhere. ‘She hasn’t said anything to me.’
Stacey’s face gave nothing away. ‘We all thought you had enough on your plate. And it’s such a weird idea, Paula wanted to check it out before she made a big deal out of it.’
‘So what is it?’ Anything to distract her, even if it was a case that felt a million miles away.
‘There’s been another body, did you know about that?’
Carol shook her head. ‘Someone should have told me that, at least.’
Stacey gave Carol a quick run-down on the case. ‘Because this was so distinctive, so bizarre, the connection was indisputable,’ she concluded. ‘There was an obscure American TV series in the late nineties called
Maze Man,
and these killings mirror the murders in the first four episodes. And there’s a fan site run by a guy in Oklahoma. Paula was going to call him to see if he had any contact with other fans in the UK, but I told her he might clam up. These anoraks are often very protective of each other, they see themselves as lone heroes standing up against the tide.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Us being the tide, in this case. Weirdos. Anyway, I suggested I take a look at the site first. They might have a forum, or a visitors’ book, or a Twitter feed that I can raid. I’ll poke about and see what I can find.’ She smiled, dissolving her sternness. ‘There’s always a back door.’
‘Very interesting. And Paula came up with this all by herself?’
Stacey busied herself with the Henk, hefting it on to a desk and opening it. ‘Apparently.’
With anyone else, Carol would have written this off as displacement activity. With Stacey, it was hard to be sure. Still, her instincts said there was something a little off in Stacey’s account. ‘Would I be crazy if I said it sounds a lot like the way Tony’s mind works?’
Stacey gave her a look. ‘Paula’s a big fan, you know that. Maybe his way has rubbed off on her.’
Carol knew the brick wall of loyalty when she ran into it. ‘Terry Gates’s computers are over there.’ She pointed to the table. ‘See what you can do with them. Don’t ignore the Bradfield cases either. His cycle is definitely speeding up.’
Stacey shrugged. ‘I can set programs running on the Gates
hardware and work the Oklahoma stuff while I’m waiting for results. With luck, I’ll have something for you later today. If not, tomorrow.’
Stacey’s reassuring competence was exactly what Carol needed right then. It was good to know somebody was on top of things. But if Tony Hill was interfering with the Bradfield cases, she wanted to know. Her brother’s murder had demonstrated that Tony wasn’t the operator he used to be. The way she felt right now, she didn’t think she could ever work with him again. And the last thing she wanted was to be blindsided by him. ‘Thanks, Stacey,’ she said vaguely, already looking for Ambrose and the answer to her next question. Where exactly was Tony Hill?
He couldn’t help feeling a twinge of regret. He’d have been a perfect fit for this multimedia universe. Twitter and Facebook and the like would have suited him much better than a lot of those idiots who basked in the public’s adoration these days. Something else Carol Jordan and Tony Hill and his bitch of an ex-wife had robbed him of. Maybe he should set up a Twitter account to taunt the police with. Vanceontherun, he could call himself. It was tempting, but he’d have to pass. If he’d learned one thing behind bars, it was that everything you did in cyberspace left a trail. He had enough on his plate without the
elaborate covering of his tracks that would be involved in thumbing his electronic nose at the authorities. Enough that they knew he was out there and doing his thing.
It was mid-morning when he woke, and he was gratified to find a selection of photographs of the fire on a local news website. Arson was apparently suspected. Well, duh. There was no mention of Vance, and whoever had written the report hadn’t bothered to find out anything more about ‘the owner, Dr Tony Hill’ who wasn’t available for comment. One thing made Vance’s antennae twitch. In the background of one shot, he could see the distinctive head of the cop who’d been on TV talking about his escape. Polished dark skull, watchful eyes, a face that looked like it had encountered a few fists over the years. And here he was at the fire.
Someone was making the right connections. Which was fine by Vance. They could connect the dots as much as they liked, but he was always going to be one step ahead. Take right now, for example. The safest place in the country for him was Worcester. Because they’d be convinced he was long gone. This was the one place they wouldn’t be keeping an eye out for him. He could have walked through the Cathedral Plaza shopping mall without raising an eyebrow. The idea made him laugh with delight.
But safe though he was here, he had no intention of hanging around. He had places to go, people to see. And none of it was going to be pretty. But first, he had to put his final preparations in place. He paid a visit to his cameras. The barn was dead; presumably the police had found a camera and swept for the others. That was why the cameras at Tony Hill’s house and Micky’s farm were on the outside – the police would be looking in all the wrong places. It seemed he’d been right again.
Vance checked out the suite of images from the stud farm in Herefordshire where his treacherous ex-wife and her lover had created their new lives. He’d done Micky and Betsy a
huge favour when he’d married Micky. The rumour and gossip that had swirled around Micky was hindering her ascent to the very pinnacle of TV presenting. That had died a death when they’d tied the knot. Obviously she must be straight, for why would Vance marry a lesbian when he could have had his pick of beautiful, sexy women? Cynics tried to shoot the line that Vance was also gay. But nobody believed that. He had a heterosexual track record and never a whisper that he swung both ways.
Of course, the marriage had been a sham. What Micky got out of it had been clear from the start, and she’d been so keen to accept the benefits that she’d chosen not to question his excuse for wanting it. He’d spun her a line about wanting protection from the fans who stalked him, convinced her that what he liked was the nostrings contract between himself and the high-class hookers he used for sex, and promised her he would never embarrass her with some tacky encounter with a kiss-and-tell nobody. That was easier to believe than the truth – that he wanted cover for his other life as a serial abductor and killer of teenage girls. Not that he had ever shared that truth with Micky.
He’d kept to his side of the deal. He expected her to stick to her end of the arrangement in return. But as soon as things got sticky, instead of providing the alibis he needed, she’d washed her hands faster than Pilate. There was nothing that infuriated Vance more than people who didn’t honour their debts. He always kept his word. The only time he’d promised and failed to deliver was when he swore to the British people that he would bring home an Olympic gold medal. But they hadn’t seen it as a let-down, because the reason had been so heroic.
He wished they’d been able to understand his other actions in the same light. He’d done what he had to do. It might not have been the reaction most people would understand, but he
wasn’t most people. He was Jacko Vance and he was exceptional. Which meant he was an exception, outside the petty rules the rest of them had to live by. They needed the rules. They couldn’t function without them. But he could. And he did.
Vance checked out the images one by one, watching them intently, zooming in where he could. The shape of the protection that was in place soon became clear. The police were staking out the road approaches to the farm in both directions. The drive was still blocked by a horse box. A police Land Rover stood at the entrance to the back drive, three officers visible inside it. Two pairs of officers in the forage caps of firearms officers patrolled the perimeter of the house itself, their Heckler and Koch automatics carried at port arms.
It looked like the yard itself was being protected by the stable hands, a group of men who appeared to have been manufactured out of pipe cleaners, wire and plasticine. A couple of them had shotguns broken over their arms. What interested Vance was that they all dressed in variations of the same outfit. Flat caps, waxed or quilted jackets, jeans and riding boots. The cops didn’t look twice when one of them walked out of the house and headed for the stable block. Or vice versa.
Which would have been interesting if he’d been aiming to get inside the house. But his plans were very different. And from the looks of this set-up, eminently likely to be successful. Vance showered and dressed and checked out with half an hour to spare. Nothing to attract attention.