The Wire in the Blood (37 page)

Tony took longer than he needed to finish his mouthful of polenta. ‘You learn to build Chinese walls,’ he said at last. ‘You know but you don’t know. You feel but you don’t feel. I imagine it’s similar to being a news journalist. How do you sleep at night after you’ve been out reporting on something like the Dunblane massacre or the Lockerbie bombing?’

‘Yes, but we’re always outside the event. You have to get inside or you fail, surely?’

‘You’re not always outside the event, though, are you? When you met Jacko, the story invaded your life. You must have had to build walls between what you knew of the man personally and what you reported to the world. When his ex-girlfriend was doing her kiss-and-tell revelations with the tabloids, you can’t have looked at that as just another story. Didn’t it affect the way you viewed your world?’ he said, seizing the first chance he’d had to get her talking about her husband.

Micky pushed her hair back from her face. Twelve years on, he could see the contempt for Jillie Woodrow hadn’t grown less. ‘What a bitch,’ she muttered. ‘But Jacko said it was mostly fiction, and I believe him. So it didn’t really get under my defences.’

The arrival of the waiter let her off the hook and he cleared their plates in silence. Then, alone again, Tony repeated the question.

‘You’re the psychologist,’ she parried, reaching into her bag and producing a pack of Marlboro. ‘Do you mind if I…?’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t realize you did.’

‘Only after dinner. A maximum of five a day,’ she said, a droll twist to her mouth. ‘The control freak’s control freak, that’s me.’

The expression gave him a jolt. The one and only time he’d used the expression, he’d been talking about a compulsive killer who had almost robbed him of his own life. To hear it from her lips was dislocating and strange.

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ she said, inhaling her first mouthful of smoke with an air of sensuous pleasure.

‘Just a stray memory,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of very bizarre resonances kicking around inside my head.’

‘I bet. Something I’ve always wondered is how you
know
when you’re getting it right in a profile.’ She inhaled deeply and blew pale filtered smoke down her nostrils, an expression of interest on her face.

He gave her an appraising look. It was now or never. ‘The same way any of us work out anything about people. A mixture of knowledge and experience. Plus knowing the right question to ask.’

‘Such as?’

The interest was so genuine he almost felt guilty for what he was about to do to their pleasant evening. ‘Doesn’t Jacko mind that Betsy’s in love with you?’

Her face froze and her pupils dilated in a panic reflex. After a long moment she swallowed and managed a faint laugh. ‘If you were trying to wrong-foot me, you certainly succeeded.’ It was one of the best recoveries he’d ever seen, but he hadn’t imagined the confession in her eyes.

‘I’m no danger to you,’ he said softly. ‘Confidentiality is second nature to me. But I’m not a fool either. You and Jacko, it’s as fake as a nine-bob note. Betsy was there first. Oh, there were rumours. But you and Jacko had the most public courtship since Charles and Diana. It killed the gossip.’

‘Why are you bringing this up?’ she asked.

‘We’re both here because we’re curious. I’ve answered all the questions you asked me. You can return the compliment, or not.’ His smile was, he hoped, warm.

‘God,’ she said wonderingly. ‘You have got a nerve.’

‘How do you think I got to be the best?’

Micky looked speculatively at him, waving away the waiter who was approaching with the dessert menus. ‘Bring us another bottle of the Zinfandel,’ she said as an afterthought. She leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘What do you want to ask?’

‘What’s in it for Jacko? Surely he’s not gay?’

Micky shook her head emphatically. ‘Jillie dumped Jacko after his accident because she didn’t want to be with a man who wasn’t perfect. He swore he would never enter into another sexual relationship where his emotions were engaged. He needed a decoy to keep the women away from him, I needed a man to hide Betsy behind.’

‘Mutual benefit.’

‘Oh, yes, mutual benefit. And to be fair to Jacko, he’s never tried to renege on the deal. I don’t know what he does for sex, though I suspect well-paid call girls come into it. Frankly, I don’t care as long as he never embarrasses me.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and gave him the accomplished frank gaze she normally directed at the camera.

‘I’m amazed that someone who’s paid to be curious about other people is so lacking in curiosity about her own husband.’

Her smile was ironic. ‘If there’s one thing that eleven years of marriage to Jacko has taught me, it’s that nobody gets to know Jacko. It’s not that I think he tells lies,’ she said consideringly, ‘just that I don’t think he tells very much of the truth. Different people get little bits of Jacko’s truth, but I don’t think anybody gets it all.’

‘How do you mean?’ Tony picked up the discreetly delivered bottle of wine, refilling Micky’s glass and topping up his almost full one.

‘I get to see Jacko behaving in public like the perfect, solicitous husband, but I know that’s an act. When there’s only the three of us around, he’s so distant it’s hard to believe we’ve all lived under the same roof for the last dozen years. When he’s working he acts like people expect a TV celeb to behave—perfectionist, a bit OTT, yelling at the crew and his PA when things don’t get done just so. But with the public, he’s Mr Charm. Then, when it comes to raising money, he’s a hard-headed businessman. Do you know that for every pound he makes for charity, he earns two for himself?’

Tony shook his head. ‘I suppose he’d argue that he’s generating funds for the charity they wouldn’t get otherwise.’

‘And why should he work for free? Right. Me, when I do charity events, I don’t even take my expenses. But then there’s the other side, the volunteer work he does with people who are terminally ill or severely damaged after accidents. He spends hours by their bedsides, listening, talking, and nobody knows what goes on between them. One time a journalist tried to sneak in a tape recorder to reveal “the secret heart of Jacko Vance”. Jacko found out about it and he smashed the tape recorder. He literally stamped it to pieces. They thought he was going to do the same to the journalist, but the guy had the good sense to make his legs do the walking.’

‘A man who likes his privacy,’ Tony said.

‘Oh, he gets plenty of that. He’s got a house in Northumberland, out in the middle of nowhere. I’ve seen it once in twelve years and that was only because Bets and I were driving up to Scotland and we decided to drop in on him. I practically had to force him to make us a cup of tea. I’ve never felt less welcome in my whole life.’ Micky smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, you could say that Jacko likes his privacy. But that’s OK with me. Better that than hanging around in my face all the time.’

‘He can’t have been very pleased to have the police poking their noses in, then,’ Tony said. ‘After Shaz Bowman’s visit, I mean.’

‘You’re not kidding. It was actually me who called the police, you know. The way Betsy and Jacko reacted, you’d think I’d shopped them on a murder rap. It was a nightmare, trying to make the pair of them see that we couldn’t ignore the fact that this poor woman had been at the house not long before she was murdered.’

‘Just as well one of you has a sense of duty,’ Tony said drily.

‘Well, yes. Besides, at least one other person knew she was coming to the house—that other police officer that Jacko spoke to. It wasn’t as if we could hope to keep it to ourselves.’

‘I feel so guilty about Shaz,’ Tony said, half-turning away. ‘I knew she was worrying away at some theory of her own, but I didn’t think she’d take action on it without clearing it with me.’

‘You mean you don’t know what she was working on either?’ Micky said incredulously. ‘The cops who came to the house didn’t seem to have much of a clue, but I thought you’d be sure to know.’

Tony shrugged. ‘Not really. I know she had some idea that there was a serial killer preying on teenage girls and that he might be a celebrity stalker as well. But I didn’t have the details. It was only supposed to be a training exercise, not the real thing.’

Micky shivered and emptied her glass. ‘Can we change the subject? It’s bad for the digestion, talking about murder.’

For once, he wasn’t about to argue. The gamble had paid off handsomely. And he’d never been greedy. ‘OK. Tell me how you got the Agriculture Minister to admit his involvement with that biotechnology company.’

Carol stared down the three mutinous faces opposite her. ‘I know nobody likes stakeout work. But that’s the way we’re going to catch our man. At least the intervals between his outings are pretty short, so the chances are we’re going to get lucky within a few days. Now, this is the way I want it to work. We’re going to do it single-handed. I realize that makes it tougher, but you know what budgets are like. I’ve spoken to uniform and they’ve agreed to let us have some bodies to cover during daylight hours. Each night at ten, two of you will pick up the surveillance. You’ll each work two nights on and one off. You will each use the other as back-up if it looks like we’ve got something going off. We start today. The first watchers are out there now. Any questions?’

‘What if we get clocked?’ Lee asked.

‘We don’t get clocked,’ Carol said. ‘But if the unthinkable happens, you pull off, call your oppo and swap targets at the first opportune moment. I appreciate this is a tough operation with such a low body count. But I have every confidence that you can pull this off. Don’t disappoint me, please.’

‘Ma’am?’ Di said.

‘Yes?’

‘If we’re really that tight on staffing levels, why don’t we prioritize our two suspects and focus on the most likely with all our resources?’

It was an awkward question, and an intelligent one. It was one Carol herself had debated with Nelson over breakfast that morning. It had taken her mind off a growing fear that was coming to obsess her. ‘Good question,’ she said now. ‘I considered it myself. Then I thought, what if we go for the wrong candidate and we only find that out after another fatal fire?’ She let the question hang in the air. ‘So I decided it was probably better in terms of public policy to opt for thin cover over both suspects.’

Di nodded. ‘Fair enough. I just wondered.’ ‘Right. Sort out the rota among yourselves, and knock off now until ten. Keep me posted. Anything happens, I’m only a phone call away. Don’t keep me in the dark.’

‘When you say only a phone call away, ma’am…’ Tommy drawled suggestively.

‘I want to be there when you make an arrest.’

‘Aye, that’s what I thought you meant.’

His feigned disappointment was aimed at annoying her, she knew. Determined not to show he’d succeeded, Carol smiled sweetly. ‘Believe me, Tommy, you should be grateful for that. Now get out of here and let me get some work done.’ Her hand was on the phone before she’d finished speaking. She hit the first number on a list in front of her, tapping her pad with a pencil as Seaford’s finest trooped out with all the brio of a snail on Valium. ‘Close the door behind you, please,’ she called. ‘Hello? Force control? This is DCI Jordan from East Yorkshire. I need to talk to someone about Mispers…I sent out an information request about teenage girls…’

Tony eased the car on to the slip road, wondering whether he’d enjoy driving more if he had one of those ultimate driving machines he saw in all the glossy adverts instead of a clapped out old Vauxhall. Somehow, he doubted it. But that wasn’t what he was supposed to be thinking about as his windscreen wipers slapped the slanting Yorkshire rain away to reveal a distant prospect of Bradford. At the ring road, he followed the achingly precise instructions he’d been given and eventually pulled up outside a terraced house whose obsessive neatness was matched only by the military precision of its single flower bed. Even the curtains appeared to have been drawn back so that exactly the same amount of lining showed at each side of the window.

The doorbell was a nasty insistent buzz. It opened to reveal a man Tony had spotted at every Jacko Vance event he’d attended. He’d persuaded him and a couple of other camera-toting enthusiasts to part with names and addresses on the pretext that he was doing a study of the phenomenon of fame as seen through the eyes of the fans rather than the famous. It was meaningless drivel, but it made them feel important enough to be co-operative.

Philip Hawsley was first, for no better reason than living nearest. As he followed him into a preternaturally tidy front room that smelled of furniture polish and air freshener, and looked like a heritage museum recreation of lower middle class life in 1962, Tony registered all the signs of the obsessive compulsive. Hawsley, who could have been any age between thirty and fifty, constantly ran his fingers over the buttons of his beige cardigan to check they were all in place. He studied his fingernails at least once a minute to ensure they hadn’t grown dirty since he last looked. His greying hair was cropped in a short, military style and his shoes were polished to mirror radiance. He invited Tony to sit, pointing out the chair he wanted him to occupy, and offered no refreshment, sitting down very precisely opposite the psychologist, ankles and knees pressed firmly together.

‘Quite a collection,’ Tony said, glancing round the room. An entire wall was given over to shelves of video tapes, each labelled with a date and name of a programme. Even from where he was sitting, he could see the vast majority were
Vance’s Visits
. A laminated wall unit held a series of albums and scrapbooks. Half a dozen books sat on a shelf above the unit. Pride of place went to a large framed colour photograph sitting on the wall-mounted gas fire. It showed Hawsley shaking hands with Jacko Vance.

‘A small tribute, but mine own,’ Hawsley said in a prissily camp voice. Tony could imagine all too vividly how he would have been teased as an adolescent. ‘We’re the same age, you know. To the very day. I feel our fates are inextricably linked. We’re like two sides of the same coin. Jacko is the public face and I am the private.’