The Wire in the Blood (36 page)

‘I think she’s genuinely interested in the profiling,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope I can dig some information out of her that we can use.’

‘If anyone can, you can. Tony, I think we’ve got a problem. With Simon.’ Briefly, she relayed her conversation with John Brandon. ‘What do you think? Should we persuade him to turn himself in?’

‘I think we leave it up to him. If you’re comfortable with that? Given that he might well be sitting in your living room again before all of this is over.’

‘I don’t expect it to be a problem,’ Carol said slowly. ‘It’s only an internal bulletin we’re talking about here. It’s not as if there’s going to be a nationwide manhunt with his picture splashed across the papers. Well, not for a couple of days yet, anyway. If it runs into next week and he’s not been home or in contact with his friends and family, it might get more serious, in which case we’d have to persuade him to come in from the cold.’

‘You’re assuming he won’t meekly walk into police HQ in Leeds?’

Carol snorted derisively. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think he’s got too much invested in what we’re doing. And speaking of which, how have the team been doing?’

She filled him in on Kay’s grand tour of the grieving. When she came to the photograph she’d prised from the unwilling hands of Kenny and Denise Burton, Carol heard a sharp intake of breath.

‘The zealots,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Zealots. Fanatics. Jacko Vance’s disciples. I’ve been to three of his public appearances so far, and there’s a few obsessives who show up every time. Just three or four of them. I noticed them right away.’

‘You ever end up on the dole, you could get a job as a spotter for Neighbourhood Watch,’ she said. ‘You could call it Nutter Watch.’

He laughed. ‘The point is, two of them were taking photos.’

‘Gotcha?’

‘Could be. Could very well be. This is very, very good. This might just give us the edge. He’s clever, Carol. He’s the best I’ve ever seen, ever heard about, ever read about. Somehow, we’ve got to be better.’ His voice was soft but keen, charged with determination.

‘We are. There are five of us. He only ever sees things from one angle.’

‘You’re so right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, OK?’

She could sense his eagerness to be active, to be gone. She couldn’t blame him. Micky Morgan would be a real challenge to his skills and Tony was a man who adored a challenge. Whether he obtained fresh information from her or merely used their dinner date to set the cat among Jacko Vance’s pigeons, he would be more effective than anyone else she could think of. But she couldn’t let him go just yet. ‘There’s one more thing…the arsonist?’

‘Oh God, yes, of course, I’m sorry. Any progress?’

She outlined the discoveries of her team, giving a thumbnail sketch of the two suspects. ‘I’m not sure at this stage whether to bring them both in for questioning and try for a search warrant for their homes, or set up surveillance. I thought I’d run it past you.’

‘How do they spend their money?’

‘Brinkley and his wife go in for conspicuous consumption. New cars, household goods, store credit cards. Watson looks like a gambler. He raises cash any way he can and passes it on to the bookies.’

Tony said nothing for a moment. She pictured him frowning, a hand running through his thick black hair, his deep-set eyes dark and distant as his mind moved over the question. ‘If I was Watson, I’d bet on Brinkley,’ he said eventually.

‘How so?’

‘If Watson is truly a compulsive gambler, he’s convinced it’s the next bet, the next lottery ticket that will solve all his problems. He’s a believer. Brinkley hasn’t got that conviction. He thinks if he can just keep ahead of the game, cut down on spending, find some extra cash, he can get out of this mess by some conventional route. That’s my reading of it. But whether I’m right or wrong, bringing them in for questioning isn’t going to get you a result. It might stop the fires, but nobody will ever be charged with them. A search warrant won’t help either, from what you’ve told me about how the fires are started. I know it’s not the answer you want to hear, but surveillance is your best chance of a conviction. And you need to cover both of them in case I’ve got it wrong.’

Carol groaned. ‘I knew you were going to say that,’ she complained. ‘Surveillance. A copper’s favourite job. A budgetary nightmare.’

‘At least you only have to cover the hours of darkness. And he’s operating frequently, so it’s not going to last for long.’

‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’

‘It’s the best I can manage.’

‘OK. Not your fault. Thanks for your help, Tony. Off you go and enjoy dinner. I’m going home to a frozen pizza and, hopefully, updates from Simon and Leon. And, please God, an early night. Sleep…’ The last word sounded like a caress.

Tony laughed. ‘Enjoy it.’

‘Oh, I will,’ she promised fervently. ‘And Tony—good luck.’

‘In the absence of miracles, I’ll settle for that.’

The click of his receiver going down sliced off any chance of her telling him the other thing she’d initiated that day. She couldn’t work out exactly why she’d felt impelled to do it, but her instinct told her it was important. And past experience had taught her painfully that her instinct was sometimes far more reliable than logic. Something had niggled at the back of her mind until, in the midst of all the other tasks for the day, she’d found time to send a query out to all the other police forces in the country. Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan of East Yorkshire Police wanted to hear about any recent reports of teenage girls inexplicably missing from home.

‘Mike McGowan? That’s him, over in the corner booth, duck,’ the barmaid said, gesturing with her thumb.

‘What does he drink?’ Leon asked. But the barmaid had already moved on to another customer. The pub was moderately busy, occupied almost completely by men. In a small East Midlands town like this, there were clear distinctions between pubs where men went to spend their time with women and ones where they went to avoid that necessity. The giveaway here was the large board outside advertising ‘All day satellite sport, giant screens’.

Leon sipped his lager shandy and took a moment to watch Mike McGowan. Jimmy Linden had offered his name as the media expert on Jacko Vance. ‘Like me, Mike spotted him early on and he wrote a lot about him over the years,’ he’d said. When Leon had contacted McGowan’s old paper in London, he’d discovered that the journalist had been made redundant three years before. Divorced, his children grown and scattered round the country, there had been nothing to keep McGowan in the expensive capital, so he’d returned to the Nottinghamshire town where he’d grown up.

The ex-reporter looked more like a caricature of an Oxbridge don than any national newspaperman Leon had ever seen. Even sitting down, he was clearly tall. A mop of grey-blond hair cut in a heavy fringe that flopped over his eyes, big tortoiseshell glasses and pink and white skin gave him the same boyish looks that Alan Bennett and David Hockney turned into trademarks. His jacket was the sort of ancient tweed that takes fifteen years to look wearable then lasts another twenty without any sign of attrition. Beneath it he wore a grey flannel shirt and a striped tie with a narrow tight knot. He sat alone in the narrow corner booth, staring up studiously at a 56-inch TV screen where two teams were playing basketball. As Leon watched, McGowan tapped the bowl of a pipe against the ashtray, automatically cleaning and filling it without taking his eyes from the screen.

When Leon loomed up next to him, he still didn’t take his eyes off the basketball. ‘Mike McGowan?’

‘That’s me. And who are you?’ he said, local vowels as distinctive as the barmaid’s shattering the illusion of lofty academe.

‘Leon Jackson.’

McGowan threw him a quick look of assessment. ‘Any relation to Billy Boy Jackson?’

Astounded, Leon almost crossed himself. ‘He was my uncle,’ he blurted out.

‘You’ve got the same shaped head. I should know. I was ringside the night Marty Pyeman fractured your uncle’s skull. That’s not what you’ve come to see me about, though, is it?’ The quick glance this time was shrewd.

‘Can I get you a drink, Mr McGowan?’

The journalist shook his head. ‘I don’t come here for the drink. I come for the sport. My pension’s crap. I can’t afford a satellite subscription or a screen like this. I was at school with the landlord’s dad, so he doesn’t bother that I make a single pint last the best part of the day. Sit down and tell me what you’re after.’

Leon obeyed, taking out his warrant card. He tried to snap it shut and away, but McGowan was faster. ‘Metropolitan Police,’ he mused. ‘Now what would a London bobby with a Liverpool accent be doing with a retired hack in darkest Nottinghamshire?’

‘Jimmy Linden said you might be able to help me,’ Leon said.

‘Jimmy Linden? Now there’s a name from the past.’ He closed the warrant card and slid it across to Leon. ‘So what’s your interest in Jacko Vance?’

Leon shook his head admiringly. ‘I never said I had an interest in the man. But if that’s who you want to talk about, be my guest.’

‘My, they’re teaching them subtlety these days,’ McGowan said acidly, striking a match and applying it to his pipe. He sucked and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that swallowed whole the feeble spiral from Leon’s cigarette. ‘What’s Jacko supposed to have done? Whatever it is, I bet you never manage to nick him for it.’

Leon remained silent. It nearly killed him, but he managed it. This clever old bastard wasn’t going to put one over on him, he thought, almost convincing himself.

‘I haven’t seen Jacko in years,’ McGowan finally said. ‘He’s not that keen on faces who remember what he was like when he had all his limbs. He hates being reminded of what he lost.’

‘You’d think what he’s got now would be compensation,’ Leon said. ‘Great job, more money than any reasonable geezer could spend, gorgeous wife, house the size of a stately home. I mean, how many Olympic gold medallists got a better deal than that?’

McGowan slowly shook his head. ‘Nothing can compensate a man who thinks he’s a god for the discovery of his vulnerability. That lass of his was lucky she got out from under. She’d have been the obvious choice when it came to making somebody pay for what the gods had done to Jacko Vance.’

‘Jimmy said you knew more about Jacko than anybody else.’

‘Only superficially. I followed his career, I interviewed him. I probably caught a few glimpses behind the mask, but I wouldn’t say I knew him. I can’t think of anybody that did. Really, there’s nothing I want to say about Jacko Vance that I haven’t already put in writing.’

McGowan breathed out another plume of smoke. Leon thought it smelled like Black Forest gateau, all cherries and chocolate. He couldn’t imagine wanting to smoke a pudding. ‘Jimmy also said that you kept cuttings files on the athletes that really interested you.’

‘My, you did get a lot out of old Jimmy. He must have taken to you in a big way. Mind you, he’s always had a lot of respect for black athletes. He reckoned they had to work twice as hard as anybody else to get their start. I suppose he reckoned it was probably much the same in the police.’

‘Or maybe I’m just a good interviewer,’ Leon said drily. ‘Any chance of you letting me take a look at your cuttings?’

‘Any in particular, Detective?’ McGowan teased.

‘I’d be guided by you as to what was interesting, sir.’

McGowan, his eyes firmly on the basketball, said, ‘A career as long as mine, it’d be hard to pick out particular highlights.’

‘I’m sure you could manage it.’

‘This finishes in ten minutes. Perhaps you’d care to come back and look at my files?’

Half an hour later, Leon was sitting in a room in McGowan’s two-bedroomed terrace that managed to be both spartan and cluttered. The only furniture was a battered leather swivel chair that looked as if it had seen service in the Spanish Civil War, and a scarred and scratched gun-metal grey desk. All four walls were covered with industrial metal shelving and packed with shoeboxes, each with a label stuck to the outer edge. ‘This is incredible,’ he said.

‘I always promised myself that when I retired, I’d write a book,’ McGowan said. ‘Amazing how we delude ourselves. I used to travel the world covering the top sporting events. Now my world’s shrunk to the satellite screens in the Dog and Gun. You’d think I’d be depressed. But the funny thing is, I’m not. I’ve never been so bloody contented all my born days. It’s reminded me that what I always liked best about sport was watching it. Freedom without responsibility, that’s what I’ve got now.’

‘A dangerous mixture,’ Leon said.

‘A liberating mixture. Three years ago, you turning up would have had me sniffing a story. I’d not have rested until I’d found out what was going on. Now, it’s hard to imagine how I could care less. I’m more excited about the Vegas fight on Saturday than I could ever be about anything Jacko Vance has said or done.’ He pointed to a shelf. ‘Jacko Vance. Fifteen shoeboxes full. Enjoy yourself, lad. I’ve got an appointment with a tennis match at the Dog and Gun. If you’re gone before I get back, just pull the front door closed behind you.’

When Mike McGowan returned just before midnight, Leon was still working his way systematically through the cuttings. The journalist brought him a mug of instant coffee and said, ‘I hope they’re paying you overtime, lad.’

‘More of a labour of love, you might say,’ Leon said wryly.

‘Yours or your boss’s?’

Leon thought for a moment. ‘One of my mates. Call it a debt of honour.’

‘The only kind worth paying. I’ll leave you to it. Try not to slam the door behind you when you go.’

Leon was half aware of the sounds of someone getting ready for bed: floorboards creaking, plumbing grumbling, a toilet flushing. Then silence apart from the whisper of yellowed newsprint.

It was almost two when he found what he thought he might just be looking for. There was only one cutting, a fleeting mention. But it was a start. When he let himself out into the dark and empty street, Leon Jackson was whistling.

Her eyes were as candid as any he could remember. She pushed the last morsel of the smoked duck on to her fork, speared a final mangetout and said, ‘But surely it has an effect on you, spending so much time and energy getting inside such twisted logic?’