The Retribution (6 page)
When he judged the moment was perfect, he got out of bed and headed for the toilet. He passed the electric razor over his head and his chin again, then dressed in Collins’ ratty jeans and baggy polo shirt. The tattoos looked spot on, Vance thought. And people saw what they expected to see. A man with Collins’ tattoos and clothes must, in the absence of any contradictory features, be Collins.
The minutes crawled by. At last, a fist banged his door and a voice called out. ‘Collins? Get yourself in gear, time to make a move.’
And then they were off the wing, moving through the main administrative section of the jail towards the exit. Trying to calm himself with distraction, Vance wondered why anyone would choose a working environment with sickly yellow walls and metalwork painted battleship grey. To spend your days here without descending into deep depression, you’d have to have no visual taste whatsoever.
Another sally port, then the final hurdle. A couple of bored-looking officers sat behind thick glass windows like bank counters, with gaps where documents could be passed through. Jarvis nodded to the nearest, a skinny young man with a crew cut and bad skin. ‘Is the social worker here for Collins?’ he said.
Not likely, Vance thought. Not if things had gone to plan. Not many women would turn up for work after they’d been wakened in the night by someone trying to smash into their house. Especially since the putative burglar/rapist had taken the precaution of slashing all four tyres on her car and cutting her phone line. She’d been lucky. If he’d been doing the job himself instead of having to delegate it, he’d have slashed her dog’s throat and nailed it to the front door. Some things you
couldn’t outsource. Hopefully, what he had managed to arrange would be enough. Unfortunate for poor Jason really. He would have to set off for his Release on Temporary Licence day without the support of someone who knew him.
‘No,’ the man on the desk said. ‘She’s not coming in today.’
‘What?’ Jarvis moaned. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming in today?’
‘Personal issues.’
‘So what am I supposed to do with him?’ He jerked his head towards Vance.
‘There’s a taxi here.’
‘He’s going off in a taxi? Without an escort?’ Jarvis shook his head, mugging incredulity for his audience.
‘What’s the odds? He’ll have all day on the ROTL without an escort, regardless. Just means it starts a bit earlier, that’s all.’
‘What about orientation? Isn’t he supposed to have some sort of orientation with the social worker?’
Crew cut picked a spot, examined his fingernail and shrugged again. ‘Not our problem, is it? We ran it past the Assistant Governor and he said it was OK. He said Collins presented no cause for concern.’ He looked at Vance. ‘You all right with that, Collins? Otherwise the ROTL gets cancelled.’
Vance shrugged right back at him. ‘I might as well go since I’m here now.’ He was quite pleased with the way it came out. He thought it was a decent representation of how Collins spoke. More importantly, he didn’t sound at all like himself. He thrust his hands into his pockets as he’d seen Collins do a thousand times, hunching his shoulders slightly.
‘I want it on the record that I’m not happy with this, no matter what the AG says,’ Jarvis grumbled as he led Vance through the high baffle gate that led to the outside world. He pushed open the door and Vance followed him on to a paved area flanked by a roadway. A tired-looking Skoda saloon sat by the kerb, its diesel engine rumbling. Vance smelled the dirty
exhaust, a cloying note in the fresh morning air. It was a combination he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Jarvis pulled open the passenger door and leaned in. ‘You take him to Evesham Fabrications, right? Nowhere else. I don’t care if he says he’s having a bloody heart attack and needs to go to the hospital, or he’s going to shit himself if he doesn’t get to a toilet pronto. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200. Evesham Fabrications.’
The driver looked baffled. ‘You need to chill, mate,’ he said. ‘You’ll give yourself a stroke. I know my job.’ He craned his head so he could see past Jarvis. ‘In you get, mate.’
‘In the front, so the driver can keep an eye on you.’ Jarvis stepped back, allowing Vance to slide into the passenger seat. He reached for the seat belt with his prosthesis, hoping any clumsiness would be put down to the length of time since he’d last been in a car. ‘I don’t want to hear you’ve caused any trouble, Collins,’ Jarvis said, slamming the door shut. The car smelled of synthetic pine air freshener overlaid with coffee.
The cabbie, a shambolic-looking Asian man in his mid-thirties, chuckled as he pulled away. ‘He’s in a good mood.’
‘It’s not a mood, it’s his permanent state,’ Vance said. His heart was racing. He could feel sweat in the small of his back. He couldn’t quite believe it. He’d made it out of the front door. And with every passing minute, he was further from HMP Oakworth and closer to his dream of freedom. OK, there were still plenty of obstacles between him and that steak dinner, but the hardest part was behind him. He reminded himself that he’d always believed he led a charmed life. The years in jail had just been an interruption of his natural state, not a termination. The dice were rolling in his favour again.
If he needed reinforcement in that conviction, it came as Vance took a closer look at his surroundings. The car was an automatic, which would make his life a lot easier. He hadn’t driven since his arrest; getting behind the wheel would be a
steep enough revision curve without having to deal with gear changes. Vance relaxed a fraction, smiling as he took in neat fields of spring grass with their tightly woven hedges. Fat sheep grazed, their stolid lambs mostly past the gambolling stage. They passed orchards, rows of stumpy trees covered in blossom that was beginning to look a little bedraggled. The road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It was a foreigner’s ideal of the English countryside.
‘Must make a nice change for you, getting out like this,’ the cabbie said.
‘You’ve got no idea,’ Vance said. ‘I’m hoping this is just the start. Rehab, that’s what this has been for me. I’m a changed man.’ Changed, in the sense that he was determined never to repeat the kind of mistakes that got him confined. But he was still a killer; he’d just learned how to be a better one.
Now, he was studying the landscape, matching their route to the map in his head. Seven and a half miles of quiet country roads before they hit the major artery leading towards Birmingham.
Vance had pinpointed three places where he could stage the next part of his plan. It all depended on traffic. He didn’t want any witnesses, not at a stage in his escape when he had no weapon to defend himself. So far, one van had passed them, going in the opposite direction, but there was nothing in sight ahead of them as they climbed a long steep incline. He shifted in his seat so he could catch a glimpse in the rear-view mirror, making it look as if he was taking in the view. ‘Bloody lovely round here,’ he said. ‘You forget, inside.’ Then he jumped, genuinely startled. ‘What the hell is that?’ he demanded.
The cabbie laughed. ‘How long have you been away? It’s a wind farm. Giant windmills. They catch the wind and make electricity. Plenty wind up here, so there’s plenty windmills too.’
‘Jesus,’ Vance said. ‘They’re bloody enormous.’ And, fortuitously, their conversation had made the driver less attentive.
The moment was perfect. They were approaching a T-junction, the first of Vance’s possible attack points. The car drifted to a halt, the driver pausing to point out more windmills on the horizon before checking for oncoming traffic.
In a split second, Vance smashed the forearm of his prosthesis into the side of the cabbie’s head. The man yelped and threw his hands up to protect himself. But Vance was remorseless and his artificial arm was a weapon far more solid than the bone and muscle of a human limb. He brought it down again on the man’s head, then swiped it hard against his face, smiling as the blood gushed from his nose. Vance used his other hand to release his seat belt so he could gain more leverage. He moved forward and cracked him across the head again, so hard he bounced off the window. The man was screaming now, hands clawing at Vance.
‘Fuck this,’ Vance hissed. He got his arm behind the driver’s head and rammed him face first into the steering wheel. After the third sickening crunch, the man finally went limp. Vance unfastened the driver’s belt and freed him from its constraint. Still pumped with adrenaline, he jumped out of the car and hustled round to the driver’s side. When he opened the door, the driver slumped towards the road. Vance squatted down and got one shoulder under his torso. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to his feet. All those hours in the gym had been worth it. He’d made sure to build strength and endurance rather than exaggerated muscle; he’d never seen any point in being obvious.
Vance staggered as far as the hedgerow that bordered the road. Breathing heavily, feeling his heart hammer in his chest, he dumped the driver on to the top bar of a metal field gate, then tipped him over on the far side. He grinned at the startled expressions on the faces of the nearest sheep as the cabbie tumbled to the ground, arms and legs flailing weakly.
He leaned against the gate for a moment, catching his
breath, letting himself recover from the overdose of fight-orflight hormones. Then he returned to the car, this time to the driver’s seat. He cancelled the right turn on the indicator, slipped the car into drive then turned left, the opposite direction to Evesham Fabrications. He reckoned it would take him about forty minutes to make it to the service area on the motorway and the next stage of the plan.
He couldn’t help wondering how long it would take before someone noticed Jason Collins was still on the Therapeutic Community Wing. And Jacko Vance wasn’t. Before they understood that one of the most notorious and prolific serial killers the UK had ever produced was on the loose. And keen to make up for lost time.
This time, his grin lasted a lot longer than a few minutes.
This was the squad Carol had hand-picked and built into the best unit she’d ever worked with. If James Blake hadn’t walked into the Chief Constable’s job with a personal mission to cut costs to the bone long before the idea occurred to the Prime Minister, she’d have been happy to stick with this bunch till she was ready to collect her pension. Instead, she was about to take another of her leaps into the unknown. Only this time, it felt like she was following instead of leading. Not the most reassuring prospect she’d ever faced.
‘Got all you need?’ Carol asked.
‘I think so.’ Paula reached for her coffee. ‘Northern sent me everything from the first two deaths, but I’ve not had time to go through it in detail.’
‘Do your best,’ Carol said, heading for the coffee maker and fixing herself a latte with an extra shot. Another thing she’d miss. They’d clubbed together to buy the Italian machine to satisfy everyone’s caffeine cravings. Apart from Stacey, who insisted on Earl Grey tea. She doubted there would be anything comparable in Worcester.
And speaking of missing, there was no sign of Tony. In spite of his bold promises, it looked as though he hadn’t managed to deliver. She tried to dismiss the disappointment that threatened her; it had never been a likely outcome, after all. They’d just have to wrestle their way through the case without his help.