The Wire in the Blood (22 page)

Tony resisted the impulse to hit the chubby doctor. ‘She was a police officer,’ he said sharply.

The doctor flashed him a shrewd look. ‘We’ve not met, have we? You new here?’

‘Dr Hill works for the Home Office,’ the local DI said. Tony had already forgotten the man’s name. ‘He runs this new profiling task force you’ll have heard about. The lass was one of his trainees.’

‘Aye, well, she’ll get the same treatment from me as a Yorkshire lass would,’ the doctor said drily, turning back to his grim task.

Tony was standing outside the now open French windows, looking in on the crime scene where a photographer and a team of SOCOs worked their way round the room. He could not take his eyes off the wreckage of Shaz Bowman. No matter how hard he tried, he could not avoid the occasional flashback image of what she had been. It heightened his resolve, but it was a provocation he could well have done without.

Worse for Simon, he thought bitterly. He’d been taken, putty-skinned and trembling, back to police HQ to give a statement about Saturday night. Tony knew enough about the workings of the official mind to realize that the murder squad were probably treating him as their current prime suspect. He was going to have to do something about that sooner rather than later.

The DI whose name he couldn’t remember walked down the steps and stood behind him. ‘Helluva mess,’ he said.

‘She was a good officer,’ Tony told him.

‘We’ll get the bastard,’ the DI said confidently. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

‘I want to help.’

The DI raised one eyebrow. ‘Not my decision,’ he said. ‘It’s not a serial killer, you know. We’ve never seen owt like this on our patch.’

Tony fought to suppress his frustration. ‘Inspector, this is not a first-time killing. Whoever did this is an expert. He might not have killed on your patch or used this precise method before, but this is not the product of amateur night out.’

Before the inspector could respond, they were interrupted. The police surgeon had finished his grisly work. ‘Well, Colin,’ he said, walking over to them, ‘she’s definitely dead.’

With a quick sidelong glance, the policeman said, ‘Spare us the gallows humour for once, Doc. Any idea when?’

‘Ask your pathologist, Inspector Wharton,’ the doctor said huffily.

‘I will. But in the meantime, can you give me a ballpark figure?’

The doctor peeled off his gloves with a snap of latex. ‘Monday lunchtime…let me see…Some time between seven o’clock Saturday night and four o’clock Sunday morning, depending on whether the heating was on and how long for.’

DI Colin Wharton sighed. ‘That’s a bloody big window of opportunity. Can’t you get it tighter than that?’

‘I’m a doctor, not bloody Mystic Meg,’ he said caustically. ‘And I’m going back to my game of golf, if you don’t mind. You’ll have my report in the morning.’

Tony impulsively put a hand on his arm. ‘Doctor, I could use some help here. I know it’s not really your place to say, but you’ve obviously developed a lot of expertise in this kind of thing.’ When in doubt, flatter. ‘The injuries…Do you know if she was still alive, or are they postmortem?’

The doctor pursed full red lips and stared back consideringly at Shaz’s body. He looked like a small boy puckering up for his maiden aunt, calculating how much of a tip it was going to earn him. ‘A mixture of both,’ he said finally. ‘I reckon the eyes both went while she was still alive. I think she must have been gagged or she’d have screamed the place down. She probably passed out then, a combination of shock and pain. Whatever was poured down her throat was very caustic and that’s what killed her. The total disintegration of her respiratory tract, that’s what they’ll find when they open her up. I’d stake my pension on it. Looking at the amount of blood, I’d reckon the ears came off more or less as she was dying. They’re neatly cut off, though. No trial attempts like you usually get with any kind of mutilation. He must have one hell of a sharp knife and a lot of nerve. If he was trying to make sure she’d end up like them three wise monkeys, he went the right way about it.’ He nodded to the two men. ‘I’ll be off, then. Leave you to it. Good luck finding him. You’ve got a right nutter here.’ He waddled off round the side of the house.

‘That bastard’s got the worst bedside manner in the whole West Riding,’ Colin Wharton said in disgust. ‘Sorry about that.’

Tony shook his head. ‘What’s the point in dressing up something as brutal as that in fancy words? Nothing alters the fact that somebody took Shaz Bowman apart and made sure we knew why.’

‘What?’ Wharton demanded. ‘Have I missed something here? What d’you mean, we know why? I don’t bloody know why.’

‘You saw the drawing, didn’t you? The three wise monkeys. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The killer destroyed her eyes, her ears, her mouth. Doesn’t that say something to you?’

Wharton shrugged. ‘Either the boyfriend’s the killer, in which case he’s a certifiable nutter and it doesn’t matter what screwed-up shite was going round his head. Or else it was some other nutter who’s got it in for coppers because he thinks we stick our noses into things that we’d be better off leaving alone.’

‘You don’t think it could be a killer who specifically had it in for Shaz because she was sticking her nose in somewhere it didn’t belong?’ Tony suggested.

‘I don’t see how it could be,’ Wharton said dismissively. ‘She’s never worked any cases up here, has she? You lot aren’t catching live ones yet, so she’s not had the chance to get up some local nutter’s nose.’

‘Even though we’re not catching new cases, we’ve been working on some genuine old ones. Shaz came up with a theory the other day about a previously unidentified serial killer…’

‘The Jacko Vance story?’ Wharton couldn’t stop the snigger. ‘We’ve all had a good laugh about that one.’

Tony’s face tightened. ‘You shouldn’t have heard anything about it. Who let that out of the bag?’

‘Nay, Doc, I’m not for dropping anybody else in it. Besides, you know there are no secrets in a nick. That were too good a joke to keep a secret. Jacko Vance, serial killer. It’ll be the Queen Mum next!’ He spluttered with laughter and clapped Tony indulgently on the shoulder. ‘Face it, Doc, chances are you picked a wrong ’un when you co-opted the boyfriend. You don’t need me to tell you that nine times out of ten we never end up looking beyond whoever the stiff’s been shagging.’ He raised a speculative eyebrow. ‘Not to mention the person who finds the body.’

Tony snorted derisively. ‘You’ll be wasting your time if you try pinning it on Simon McNeill. He hasn’t done this.’

Wharton turned to face Tony, pulling a Marlboro out of its pack with his teeth. He caught it in his lips and lit it with a throwaway lighter. ‘I heard you lecture once, Doc,’ he said. ‘Over in Manchester. You said the best hunters were the ones who were most like the prey. Two sides of the same coin, you said. I reckon you were right. Only, one of your hunters has gone native on you.’

Jacko flapped a dismissive hand at his PA and hit a button on the remote control. His wife’s face filled the king-size TV screen as she handed her audience over to the newsroom for the midday headlines. Still nothing. The longer the better, he couldn’t help thinking. The less accurate the pathologist could be about the time of death, the further it could be distanced from the stupid cow’s visit to his home. As he killed the TV picture and turned to the script in front of him, he wondered momentarily what it must be like to have the sort of life where no one would notice you’d been lying dead for a couple of days. It was never likely to happen to him, he thought, self-satisfied as ever. It had been a very long time since he’d been that insignificant in anyone’s life.

Even his mother would have noticed if he’d disappeared. She might well have been delighted at the prospect, but she’d have at least noticed. He wondered how Donna Doyle’s mother was reacting to the disappearance of her daughter. He’d seen nothing on the news, but there was no reason why she should cause more of a stir than any of the others.

He’d made them pay, all of them, for what had been done to him. He knew he couldn’t take it out on the one who deserved it; it would be too obvious, the finger pointing straight at him. But he could find surrogate Jillies all over the place, looking just as ripe and delicious as she’d been when he’d first pinned her to the ground and felt her virginity surrender to his power. He could make them understand what he’d been through, feel what he’d felt in ways that the treacherous bitch had never comprehended. His girls could never abandon him; he was the one with power over life and death. And he could make them discharge her debt over and over again.

Once, he had believed that there would come an occasion when these surrogate deaths would have purged him for good. But the catharsis never lasted. Always, the need came creeping back.

Lucky he’d got it off to such a fine art, really. All those years, all those deaths, and only one off-the-wall maverick cop had ever suspected.

Jacko smiled a very private smile, one his fans never saw. The means of payment had had to be different for Shaz Bowman. But they’d been satisfying, nonetheless. It made him wonder if it might not be the time to ring a few changes.

It never did to become a slave to routine.

Frustration drove Tony up the stairs two at a time. No one would let him near Simon. Colin Wharton was stonewalling, claiming he didn’t have the authority to allow Tony to collaborate on the investigation. Paul Bishop was out of the building at one of his interminable and ever-convenient meetings, and the Divisional Chief Superintendent was allegedly too busy to see Tony.

He threw open the door of the seminar room, expecting to see the four remaining members of his task force engaged in some meaningful activity. Instead, Carol Jordan looked up from the file of papers in front of her. ‘I was beginning to think I’d got the day wrong,’ she said.

‘Ah, Carol,’ Tony sighed, subsiding into the nearest chair. ‘I completely forgot you were coming back this afternoon.’

‘Looks like you weren’t the only one,’ she said drily, gesturing at the remaining empty seats. ‘Where’s the rest of the team? Playing truant?’

‘Nobody’s told you, have they?’ Tony said, looking up at her with angry eyes in a pained face.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked, her chest constricting. What had happened now to drill more anguish into him?

‘You remember Shaz Bowman?’

Carol nodded with a rueful smile. ‘Ambition on legs. Blazing blue eyes, uses her ears and mouth in the correct proportion of two to one.’

Tony winced. ‘Not any more she doesn’t.’

‘What’s happened to her?’ The concern in Carol’s voice was still more for Tony than for Shaz.

He swallowed and closed his eyes, summoning the picture of her death and forcing all emotion out of his voice. ‘A psychopath happened to her. Somebody who thought it would be entertaining to gouge out those blazing blue eyes and chop off those wide-open ears and pour something so corrosive into that smart mouth that it ended up looking like multicoloured bubble gum. She’s dead, Carol. Shaz Bowman is dead.’

Carol’s face opened in incredulous horror. ‘No,’ she breathed. She was silent for a long moment. ‘That’s terrible,’ she finally said. ‘So much life in her.’

‘She was the best of the bunch. Desperate to be the best. And she wasn’t arrogant with it. She could work with the others without making it obvious that she was the racehorse among the donkeys. What he did to her, it went straight to the heart of who she was.’

‘Why?’ As she had done so often in their previous case, Carol picked the important question.

‘He left her with a computer print-out. A drawing and an encyclopaedia entry about the three wise monkeys,’ Tony said.

Understanding flashed into Carol’s eyes, followed swiftly by a confused frown. ‘You don’t seriously think…That theory she came out with the other day? It can’t be anything to do with that, can it?’

Tony rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. ‘I keep coming back to it. What else is there? The only live case we’ve had anything to do with is your arsonist, and none of them came up with enough to threaten anyone.’

‘But Jacko Vance?’ Carol shook her head. ‘Surely you can’t believe that? Grannies from Land’s End to John O’Groats dote on him. Half the women I know think he’s as sexy as Sean Connery.’

‘And you? What do you think?’ Tony asked. There was no innuendo in the question.

Carol turned the question over in her mind, making sure she had the right words before she spoke. ‘I wouldn’t trust him,’ she eventually said. ‘He’s too glossy. Non-stick. Nothing leaves a lasting impact. He’ll be charming, sympathetic, warm, understanding. But as soon as he moves on to the next interview, it’s like the previous encounter never happened. Having said that…’

‘You’d never have thought of him as a serial killer,’ Tony said flatly. ‘Me neither. There are some people in public life that you wouldn’t feel overly surprised to see on a fistful of murder charges. Jacko Vance isn’t one of them.’

They sat in silence facing each other across the room. ‘It might not be him,’ Carol said at last. ‘What about somebody in his entourage? A driver, a minder, a researcher. One of those hangers-on, what do they call them?’

‘Go-fers.’

‘Yeah, go-fers, right.’

‘But that still doesn’t answer your question. Why?’ Tony pushed himself to his feet and started pacing out the perimeter of the room. ‘I don’t see how anything she said in here could conceivably have made it into Jacko Vance’s circles. So how did our theoretical killer know she was on to him?’

Carol swung round awkwardly in her chair so she could watch him as he crossed behind her. ‘She wanted to be a glory girl, Tony. I don’t think she was ready to let it drop. I think she decided to follow up her idea. And one way or another, she alerted the killer.’

Tony reached the corner and stopped. ‘Do you know…’ was all he had time for before the door opened on Detective Chief Superintendent Dougal McCormick. His bulky shoulders almost filled the frame.

An Aberdonian, he resembled one of the black Aberdeen Angus cattle from his native territory: black curls tumbling over a broad forehead, liquid dark eyes always on the lookout for the red rag, wide cheekbones seeming to drag his fleshy nose across his face, full lips always moist. The only incongruity was his voice. Where a deep roar should have rumbled in his chest, a melodious light tenor emerged. ‘Dr Hill,’ he said, closing the door behind him without looking at it. His eyes flickered in Carol’s direction then looked a question at Tony.