The Wire in the Blood (47 page)

Lee scratched his eyebrow. ‘The nights we were on together, he stuck with it till gone midnight. Then he called in and said he were going for a bevvy to Corcoran’s.’

‘If he’d done that with Di, why would she have been shouting for back-up over the radio?’ Carol demanded.

Lee squirmed, his mouth twisting awkwardly. ‘He wouldn’t have told Di. Not one of the lads, was she?’

Carol closed her eyes momentarily. ‘You’re telling me I’ve lost one of my officers because of traditional Yorkshire male chauvinism?’ she said incredulously.

Lee dropped his eyes and studied the step he stood on. ‘None of us thought owt would happen.’

Carol turned on her heel and marched upstairs, leaving Lee to trail in her wake. This time when she shouldered open the squad-room door, Tommy Taylor jumped to his feet. ‘Guv,’ he began.

‘Chief Inspector to you. My office. Now.’ She waited for him to move ahead of her. ‘You know something, Taylor? I’m ashamed to work in the same squad as you.’ The other detectives in the room suddenly developed total fascination with their routine tasks.

Carol kicked the door shut behind her. ‘Don’t bother sitting down,’ she said, moving behind her desk and dropping into her chair. For this interview, she didn’t need artificial aids like standing while her junior officer sat. ‘DC Earnshaw is lying in the morgue incinerated because you went on the piss while you were supposed to be working.’

‘I never…’ he began.

Carol simply raised her voice and continued. ‘There will be an official inquiry where you can bullshit all you like about radio black spots. By that time, I’ll have statements from every drunk in Corcoran’s. I am going to bury you, Taylor. Until you’re officially drummed out of this force, you’re on suspension. Now get out of my squad room and stay away from my officers.’

‘I never thought she were at risk,’ he said pathetically.

‘The reason we get our wages is that we’re always at risk,’ Carol snapped. ‘Now get out of my sight and pray you don’t get reinstated because there isn’t a cop in East Yorkshire who would piss on you if you were on fire.’

Taylor backed out, carefully closing the door behind him. ‘Feel better now?’ Carol said under her breath. ‘And you’re the woman who said she’d never pass the buck.’ Her head dropped into her hands. She knew any inquiry would lay little blame at her door. It didn’t stop her feeling that Di Earnshaw’s blood stained her hands as much as Taylor’s. And once the identification was official, she was the one who’d have to break the news to her parents.

At least she wouldn’t have to worry about Jacko Vance and Donna Doyle any more. That, thank God, must be someone else’s problem by now.

When Chris Devine had talked about knocking on doors, Simon and Leon had pictured a neat little village with two or three streets. Neither of them had considered the area served by a small station halfway between Carlisle and Hexham. Apart from the straggle of houses that made up Five Walls Halt itself, there were farms, smallholdings, outlying pockets of agricultural cottages now colonized by city commuters, holiday homes and cramped council estates snagged improbably in the distant corners of narrow valleys. They’d ended up in a tourist information office buying Ordnance Survey maps.

Once Kay arrived, they split the area among themselves, agreeing to meet back at the station at the end of the afternoon. It was a thankless task, but one that Kay was more successful with than the others. People always talked more to a woman on their doorstep than they ever would to a man. By late afternoon, she’d got two possible sightings of Donna Doyle. Both put her on their regular evening train home, but neither could be certain of the day.

She’d also discovered the location of Jacko Vance’s hideaway. One of the doors she’d knocked on had belonged to the roofer who’d replaced the black slate roof of the former chapel only five years before. Her oblique raising of the subject and her gossipy questioning about Vance had left him unsuspicious. He would merely mention down the pub that night that women coppers were just like any other women when it came to being pushovers for a famous name with a nice smile and a big bank balance.

By the time the three reconvened, she had added a few more bits and pieces to her store of knowledge. Vance had bought the place a dozen years before, maybe six months or so after his accident. It hadn’t been much more than four walls and a roof, and he’d spent a fair whack of cash on doing it up. When he’d married Micky, the locals had expected them to use it as a weekend cottage, but instead he’d used it more as a retreat; a useful base for the voluntary work he did at the hospital in Newcastle. No one knew why he’d chosen the area. He had no roots or connections to it as far as anyone knew.

Leon and Simon were excited by her information. They had little to offer themselves apart from a couple of dubious sightings of Donna. One put her in the station car park, getting into a vehicle. But the witness couldn’t remember the day, the time or the make of the wheels. ‘It’s no coincidence that witness sounds very like witless,’ Leon said. ‘We’re not getting anywhere with this shit. Let’s go over Vance’s place.’

‘Tony said to stay away,’ Simon objected.

‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea,’ Kay agreed.

‘What harm can it do? Listen, if he picked up the kid here and took her back to his gaff, chances are somebody local might have seen him. We can’t just go back to Leeds now, not knowing this much.’

‘We should call Tony first,’ Simon said stubbornly.

Leon cast his eyes heavenwards. ‘OK,’ he sighed. He made great play of getting his phone out and tapping in a number. Neither of the others thought to check it was Tony’s number. As the ringing tone continued without interruption, Leon said triumphantly, ‘He’s not answering, right? So what harm can it do if we go and check it out? Shit, that kid could still be alive, and we’re talking about sitting on our butts till Christmas? Come on, we got to
do
something.’

Kay and Simon exchanged a look. Neither wanted to contradict Tony’s orders. But equally, they were too infected with the glory of the chase to bear sitting around doing nothing while a young woman’s life might be on the line. ‘All right,’ Kay said. ‘But all we do is take a look around. Right?’

‘Right,’ said Leon enthusiastically.

‘I hope so,’ Simon said wearily. ‘I really hope so.’

Chris Devine sipped a double espresso and drew deeply on another cigarette in an attempt to keep her tiredness at bay. At teatime on a Sunday, the Shepherd’s Bush diner was less lively than a funeral parlour. ‘Run it past me again,’ she commanded Tony.

‘I go to the house. According to your contact’s schedule for him, Vance was supposed to be compering a charity fashion show in Kensington this afternoon, so he’s not going to be in Northumberland.’

‘Are you sure we shouldn’t be hitting his place up there first?’ Chris interrupted. ‘If Donna Doyle’s still alive…’

‘And if she’s not there? We couldn’t start poking around without the locals noticing and probably getting straight on the phone to Vance. And then we’re completely blown. At the moment, he doesn’t know for sure that anybody’s close to him. All he knows is that I’ve been sticking my nose in. That’s the only advantage we’ve got. We have to go straight for the direct confrontation.’

‘What if his wife’s there? He’s not going to risk her hearing anything you might have to say to him about Shaz.’

‘If Micky and Betsy are there, he’ll make damn sure he gets me out of their way before I get the chance to say a word. In away, it’s safer for me if they are around, since I’m more likely to get out in one piece.’

‘I suppose so. You better take me through it, then,’ she said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

‘I tell Jacko I’ve been working independently of the police and I’ve uncovered important video evidence relating to Shaz Bowman’s death that I think he might be able to help us with. He’ll let me in because I’m alone and he’ll figure he can dispose of me the same way he got rid of Shaz if it emerges that I really am a lone maverick. I show him the enhanced video and the stills and accuse him. You are sitting outside in your car with a radio receiver and a tape recorder picking up everything that’s transmitted from the mike in this natty little pen I bought in Tottenham Court Road on the way here.’ Tony wiggled the pen in front of Chris’s nose.

‘You don’t seriously think he’s going to roll over?’ Tony shook his head. ‘I think if he’s alone, he’ll try to kill me. And that’s where you come in like the cavalry, leaping tall buildings with one mighty bound.’ His words were light, but his tone was sombre. They looked bleakly at each other.

‘So let’s do it,’ Chris said. ‘Let’s nail the fucker to a tree.’

It had taken them less than ten minutes to discover it was impossible to stake out Jacko Vance’s converted chapel without being as obvious as a wolfhound in a flock of sheep. ‘Fuck,’ Leon said.

‘I don’t think he picked somewhere like this by chance,’ Simon said, looking around at the bleak hillside opposite the hideaway. On either side of the gravel circle in front of the tall narrow building were fields of sheep held at bay by wire fences. Even in the thickening dusk, it was obvious there was neither human being nor habitation within sight.

‘It’s funny,’ Kay mused. ‘Normally, celebs like a bit of privacy. Gates, walls, high hedges. But you must be able to see this place for miles if you walked over the moors.’

‘Cuts both ways, man,’ Leon said. ‘They can see you, but you get plenty of warning when anybody approaches you. Look at that road. Them fucking Romans didn’t mess about, did they? Any Picts came looking for trouble, you’d see them soon as they hit the horizon.’

‘He likes the kind of privacy where you can’t be spied on,’ Simon said. ‘I reckon that means he’s got a lot more to hide than some starlet sucking his toes.’

‘And I reckon we ought to check out what it is,’ Leon said.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Kay shook her head. Simon said, ‘There is no way I’m going to be party to kicking Jacko Vance’s door in.’

‘Who said anything about kicking his door in?’ Leon said. ‘Kay, you talked to the guy that put the roof on this place. He say anything about locals that work here? Gardener, cleaner, cook? Anything like that?’

‘Oh, yeah, like he’s going to have a cleaner in premises where he’s stashing murder victims,’ Simon scoffed scornfully.

‘This guy loves the double bluff,’ Leon said. ‘He loves putting one over on the stupid old plod. There’s nothing would appeal to him more than having some old dear polishing the secret panel when he’s got some kid chained up behind it. What did the guy say, Kay?’

‘He didn’t say anything,’ she said. ‘But if anybody knows that, chances are it’s the nearest neighbour.’

‘So who does the best Geordie accent?’ Leon demanded, pointing directly at Simon.

‘This is not a good idea,’ he protested. Ten minutes later, he was knocking at the door of the first dwelling they came to, a large square farmhouse that faced out over the moorland towards Hadrian’s Wall less than a mile away. He shifted from one foot to the other.

‘Calm down,’ Kay said. ‘Just flash the warrant card dead fast. They’ll never examine it closely.’

‘We’re going to lose our careers over this,’ Simon muttered through clenched teeth.

‘I’d rather chance that than let Shaz’s killer walk.’ Kay’s frown changed to a radiant smile as the door opened on a small dark scowling man. It wasn’t hard to imagine his Pictish ancestors making Roman lives a misery.

‘Aye? What is it?’

They flipped their warrant cards open and closed in unison. The man looked momentarily confused, then resumed his glower. ‘DC McNeill from Northumbria Police,’ Simon gabbled. ‘We’ve had a report of intruders at Mr Vance’s place down the road. We can’t obtain entry to the property, and we wondered whether you knew if there was a local keyholder?’

‘Did the local man not tell you?’ he demanded in an accent Kay found almost incomprehensible.

‘Why no,’ Simon said, laying on the Newcastle accent. ‘We cannot get hold of him, with it being Sunday, like.’

‘You want Doreen Elliott. Back down the road past Vance’s place, gan down the first turning on the left and her cottage is down the dip. She keeps an eye on the place for him.’ The door began to close.

‘Thanks,’ Simon said weakly.

‘Aye,’ the man said, shutting the door firmly in their faces.

Half an hour later, they had the keys to Jacko Vance’s pied-à-terre in their possession. Unfortunately for them, they also had Mrs Doreen Elliott in the passenger seat of Kay’s car, determined to make sure Jacko’s precious property didn’t come to harm in the clumsy hands of the police. Kay could only hope for the older woman’s sake that they didn’t find what she feared behind Jacko Vance’s heavy wooden front door.

The gate had been released at the mention of his name and Tony walked up the drive, with each step becoming more immersed in the persona he had chosen for the encounter. He wanted Vance to think he was uncertain and capable of being outwitted. He would take control by appearing to be the weaker of the two. It was a risky strategy, but one he felt confident he could handle.

Vance had opened the door wreathed in smiles, greeting him by his first name. Tony could only allow himself to be swept inside, assuming a faintly confused look. ‘I’m so sorry, you’ve missed Micky,’ Vance said. ‘She’s spending the weekend with some friends in the country. But I didn’t want you to go off without taking the opportunity to meet you face to face,’ he continued as he ushered Tony in. ‘Of course, I saw you on my wife’s programme the other day, but I’ve been noticing you at all my events lately. You should have come over and introduced yourself, we could have had a chat before now, saved you coming all the way to London.’ He was the model of charm and suavity, his words flowing calm and mollifying.

‘Actually, it wasn’t Micky I came to see. I wanted to talk to you about Shaz Bowman,’ Tony said, trying to appear stiff and awkward.

A momentary look of puzzlement. Then Vance said, ‘Ah, yes, the detective who was killed so tragically. Right. I had it in mind that it was something altogether other that you wanted to…Are you actually working with the police on the case, then?’