The Wire in the Blood (25 page)

The important thing now was to plan. Imagine every contingency and work out in advance how best to deal with it. Planning was the secret of his success. It was a lesson he’d almost had to learn the hard way. The first time, he’d not really worked out the eventualities ahead of time. He’d been intoxicated by the possibilities he saw opening in front of him, and he’d not realized how necessary it was to project all the conceivable outcomes and work out how to deal with them. He’d not had the Northumberland cottage then, relying foolishly on a tumbledown walkers’ hut that he remembered from hill-walking expeditions in his youth.

He’d thought no one would be using the place in the dead of winter and knew he could drive right up to it on an old drovers’ track. Because he dared not leave her alive, he’d had to finish her off the night he’d taken her there. But it had been almost dawn by the time she’d taken her last breath. Shaken and exhausted by the effort of confining her, carrying the heavy vice that would crush her arm to a bloody pulp, then killing her with a wicked ligature made from a guitar string (symbolic, if he’d but considered it, of another of the accomplishments he’d lost), the planned burial had been beyond him. He decided to leave her where she was and come back the following night to deal with the carcass.

Jacko sucked his breath in at the memory. He’d been on the main road, only a couple of miles from the turn-off to the track, when the local news bulletin announced that the body of a young woman had been discovered by a group of ramblers within the past hour. The shock had nearly sent the Land Rover off the road.

Somehow, he’d controlled himself and driven home in a lather of clammy sweat. Amazingly, he hadn’t left sufficient forensic traces for there to be any trail leading back to him. He was never questioned. As far as he knew, he was never even considered. The previous connection was so minimal as to be insignificant.

He’d learned three crucial things from that experience. Firstly, he needed to find a way to make it last so he could savour her suffering as she went through what he’d endured.

Secondly, he didn’t actually enjoy the act of killing. He liked what led up to it, the agony and the terror, and he loved the sense of control that having been responsible for taking a life gave him, but despatching a strong, healthy young woman was no fun. Far too much like hard work, he had decided. He didn’t much mind whether they died of septicaemia or despair, he preferred it when he didn’t have to do it himself.

And thirdly, he needed a place of safety, both metaphorically and literally. Micky, Northumberland and the voluntary work with the terminally ill had been the tripartite answer. For the six months it had taken to put that answer together, he’d simply had to be patient. It hadn’t been easy, but it had made the next one all the more sweet.

He wasn’t about to give up on that sweet and secret pleasure just because Shaz Bowman had thought she was smarter than him. All it would take was a little bit of planning.

Jacko closed his eyes and considered.

Carol took a deep breath and knocked on the door. A familiar voice told her to come in and she walked into Jim Pendlebury’s office as if there had never been a moment’s tension between them. ‘Morning, Jim,’ she said briskly.

‘Carol,’ he said. ‘Come with some news for me?’

She sat down opposite him, shaking her head. ‘I’ve come for the list of part-time firemen we spoke about last night.’

His eyes widened. ‘You’re not still entertaining that daft idea in the cold light of morning?’ he said scornfully. ‘I thought you must just be humouring your guest.’

‘When it comes to criminal investigation, I’d back Tony Hill’s ideas over yours any time.’

‘You expect me to sit back and help you turn my men into scapegoats?’ he said, his voice low. ‘When they’re the ones who stand at risk every time we get a call-out?’

Carol sighed in vexation. ‘I’m trying to put an end to that risk. Not just for your firefighters, but for the poor sods like Tim Coughlan who don’t even know they’re taking a chance. Don’t you understand that? This isn’t a witch-hunt. I’m not out to frame the innocent. If you think that’s what I’m about, then you certainly don’t know enough about me to have the right to turn up at my home unannounced and uninvited and expect to cross the threshold ever again.’

Long seconds dragged past while they stared each other down. Finally, Pendlebury shook his head in resignation, his mouth a thin line. ‘I’ll give you the list,’ he said, loathing every word. ‘But you won’t find your arsonist on it.’

‘I hope not,’ she said calmly. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t want this to be one of yours, any more than I enjoy the prospect of uncovering police corruption. It undermines all of us. But I can’t ignore the possibility now it’s been pointed out to me so convincingly.’

He turned away and walked his chair over to a filing cabinet. He pulled out the bottom drawer and took out a sheet of paper. With a flick of the wrist, he floated it across the desk to her. All it contained were the names, addresses and telephone numbers of Seaford’s twelve part-time fire officers.

‘Thank you,’ Carol said. ‘I appreciate this.’ She half-turned to go, then looked back as if struck by an afterthought. ‘One thing, Jim. These fires. Do they all come under one division or are they more spread out?’

He pursed his lips. ‘They’re all on Seaford Central’s patch. If they hadn’t been, you wouldn’t be walking out the door with that bit of paper.’

It confirmed what she’d already thought. ‘I figured it might be something like that,’ she said, her voice offering armistice. ‘Believe me, Jim, there’d be nobody happier than me if all your lads check out.’

He looked away. ‘They will do. I know those lads. I’ve trusted my life to them. Your psychologist—he knows nothing about it.’

Carol walked to the door. As she opened it, she looked back. He was staring intensely at her. ‘We’ll see, Jim.’

The steel-capped heels of her brown boots clattered on the stairs as she ran down to the anonymous security of her car. The pain of Jim Pendlebury’s conviction that she would scapegoat a fellow member of the emergency services cut deep. ‘Damn it,’ Carol said, slamming the door closed behind her and jabbing the key angrily at the ignition. ‘Damn it all to hell.’

Working on the principle that any psychologist worth his salt would see straight through any attempts at manipulation, they’d clearly decided to dispense with finesse. They had, however, paid Tony the compliment of rank. Detective Chief Superintendent McCormick and Detective Inspector Colin Wharton rubbed shoulders at the narrow table in the interview room. The tape was running. They hadn’t even bothered with the spurious reassurance that it was for his benefit.

They’d run through the discovery of the body first, their questions clearly directed at tripping him up in his assertion that he’d never been to Shaz’s flat before and had no idea which windows were hers. Now they were moving into areas for which there was less obvious justification. Tony was not unprepared. He’d fully expected to be given a hard time. For one thing, he wasn’t actually a cop, so if they were looking for a scapegoat, he’d be a preferable choice to one of his team. Add to that the local force’s resentment at having to hand over space and resources to a bunch of outsiders led by a Home Office boffin they regarded as one step away from a leader of Satanic rituals, and he was inevitably on a hiding to nothing. With this in mind, he’d been running alternative scenarios on the projection screen inside his head almost before his eyes had opened. Concern about the interview had preoccupied him through breakfast, in spite of Carol’s best efforts to reassure him that it would be no more than routine.

On the train back to Leeds he had stared out of the window without registering anything except that he had to find a way to convince his interrogators that they should be looking outside Shaz’s circle of friends and colleagues for whoever had done this to her. Now he was faced with the reality, he wished he’d caught a train to London instead. Already the muscles in his shoulders were cramped into tight knots. He could actually feel the creeping rigidity climbing up the back of his neck and into his scalp. He was going to have one hell of a headache.

‘Take us right back to the beginning,’ McCormick said brusquely.

‘When did you first meet DC Bowman?’ Wharton demanded. At least they weren’t playing ‘nice cop, nasty cop’. They were both comfortably displaying their true colours as oppressive aggressors.

‘Commander Bishop and I interviewed her in London about eight weeks ago. The exact date is in our office diary.’ His voice was blank and even, kept so by willpower alone. Only a Voice Stress Analyser could have detected the micro-tremors skittering beneath the surface. Luckily for Tony, the technology hadn’t penetrated that far.

‘You interviewed her together?’ McCormick with the question this time.

‘Yes. Following the interview, Commander Bishop withdrew and I administered some psychological tests. Then DC Bowman left and I did not see her again until the start of the task force’s training period.’

‘How long were you alone with Bowman?’ McCormick again. Wharton was leaning back in his seat, fixing Tony with a professional blend of speculation, contempt and suspicion.

‘It takes about an hour to carry out the tests.’

‘Long enough to get to know somebody, then.’

Tony shook his head. ‘There’s no time for casual conversation. In fact, that would be counterproductive. We were aiming to keep the selection process as objective as possible.’

‘And the decision to take Bowman on the squad was unanimous?’

Tony hesitated for a moment. If they hadn’t already talked to Paul Bishop, they would. There was no point in any diversion from the truth. ‘Paul had some reservations. He thought she was too intense. I argued that we needed some diversity on the team. So he agreed to Shaz and I conceded on one of his choices that I was less enthusiastic about.’

‘Which one was that?’ McCormick asked.

Tony was too smart to walk into that one. ‘You’d better ask Paul about that.’

Wharton suddenly leaned forward, thrusting his heavy blunt features towards Tony. ‘Find her attractive, did you?’

‘What kind of question is that?’

‘About as straightforward as you can get. Yes or no. Did you find the lass attractive? Did you fancy her?’

Tony paused momentarily, assembling his careful response. ‘I registered that her looks would have made her appealing to a lot of men, yes. I was not myself sexually attracted to her.’

Wharton sneered. ‘How could you tell? From what I’ve heard, you don’t respond like most red-blooded blokes, do you?’

Tony flinched as if he’d been struck. A tremor ran through his taut muscles and his stomach grew turbulent. The inquiry that had inevitably followed the case he’d worked with Carol Jordan the year before had had to be told of his sexual problems. He had been promised absolute confidentiality, and if the reactions of the police officers he had encountered since were anything to go by, he had been granted that. Now, overnight, Shaz Bowman’s death seemed to have stripped him of that right. He wondered momentarily where they’d gained their information, hoping this didn’t mean his impotence would now be common gossip. ‘My relationship with Shaz Bowman was purely professional,’ he said, forcing his voice to stay calm. ‘My personal life has nothing to do with this inquiry whatsoever.’

‘That’s for us to decide,’ McCormick stated baldly.

Without pausing, Wharton continued. ‘You say your relationship was purely professional. But we have statements that indicate you spent more time with Bowman than you did with other members of the squad. Officers would arrive of a morning to find the two of you deep in conversation. She would stay behind at the end of group sessions for a word in private. A very close relationship seems to have sprung up between you.’

‘There was nothing untoward between Shaz and me. I’ve always been an early starter in the morning. Check it out with anyone who’s ever worked with me. Shaz was having some problems mastering the computer software we’re using so she came in beforehand to put in some extra time. And yes, she did stay behind after group sessions with questions, but that was because she was fascinated with the work, not for any seedy ulterior motive. If your murder inquiry had taught you anything at all about Shaz Bowman, you’d know the only thing she was in love with was the Job.’ He took a deep breath.

There was a long moment’s silence. Then McCormick said, ‘Where were you on Saturday?’

Tony shook his head, mystified. ‘You’re wasting your time with this. You should be using us to catch the killer, not trying to make it look like one of us is guilty. We should be talking about the meaning of what this killer did to Shaz, why he left the picture of the three wise monkeys on the body, why there was no sexual interference with the body nor any forensic traces.’

McCormick’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m interested that you’re so definite about the absence of forensic traces. Now how would you happen to know that?’

Tony groaned. ‘I don’t
know
it. But I did see the body and the scene of crime. From my experience of psychopathic killers, I reckoned it was the most likely scenario.’

‘A police officer or someone who works closely with the police would recognize the significance of forensic evidence,’ McCormick said cannily.

‘Everybody who has a TV set or who can read recognizes the significance of forensic evidence,’ Tony countered.

‘But they don’t all know how to erase all traces of their presence like people who are accustomed to watching SOCOs avoiding the contamination of evidence at a crime scene, do they?’

‘So you’re saying there was no forensic evidence?’ Tony challenged, latching on to the one piece of information that seemed significant.

‘I didn’t say that, no,’ McCormick retorted triumphantly. ‘Whoever killed Sharon Bowman probably thinks they didn’t leave a trace. But they’d be wrong.’

Tony’s mind raced. It couldn’t be finger or shoe prints; that would be completely at odds with the organized precision of this killer. It might be hairs or fibres. Hair would only be useful if they had a serious suspect to match it against. Fibres, on the other hand, could be tracked down by a forensic expert. He hoped West Yorkshire used the best. ‘Good,’ was all he said. McCormick scowled.