The Wire in the Blood (50 page)

‘So now he’s somewhere between London and Newcastle?’ Carol asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘You’re not going to make it in time, are you?’

‘No.’

‘But I could?’

‘Possibly. Probably, if you stuck the blue light on. I can’t ask you to, but I…’

‘There’s nothing for me to do here. I’m off duty, and nobody’s going to call out the CID leper tonight. I’m better off doing this than sitting here feeling sorry for myself. Get me some directions. I’ll call you when I get near Newcastle.’ Her voice was stronger and firmer than it had been at the start of the call. Even if he’d wanted to argue, he realized it would have been pointless. She was the woman he’d taken her for, and she wouldn’t walk away from a challenge.

‘Thanks,’ he said simply.

‘We’re wasting time talking.’ Abruptly, the line went dead.

The price of Tony’s skill was the empathy he brought to situations like this. He understood precisely what Carol was going through. Very few people ever experienced a justified sense of responsibility for the death of another human being. Everything Carol had been certain of had suddenly shifted on to shaky ground and no one who had not shared a similar experience could help her back to terra firma. But he understood and he cared enough to try. He suspected that his phone call had, serendipitously, been the first step in the right direction. Hoping he was correct, Tony stared into the narrowing tunnel of red lights and carried on driving north.

On the exact location of the entrance to the basement shelter, Mrs Elliott was rather more vague. ‘It’s under the flags somewhere. He had a couple of lads from Newcastle over to install it so that you cannot see it just by looking.’

The three police officers glared in frustration at the metre-square stone slabs that made up the floor. Then Simon said, ‘If you can’t see it, how do you get down there?’

‘Our Derek said they’d installed an electric motor,’ Mrs Elliott said.

‘Well, if there’s a motor, there’s gotta be a switch,’ Leon muttered. ‘Si, you start on the right-hand side of the door. Kay, you start on the left. I’ll go up to the sleeping gallery.’ The two men moved away and started flicking switches, but Kay was held back by Mrs Elliott’s hand on her sleeve.

‘What do you need to find the shelter for?’ she asked. ‘I thought you said there was supposed to be a prowler? They’re not going to be down there.’

Kay dug out her most reassuring smile. ‘When we’re dealing with a celebrity like Mr Vance, we have to be especially careful. A prowler in his house could be a lot more serious than a straightforward burglar. If someone was stalking him, for example, they could be hiding in waiting for him. So we have to take this extremely seriously.’ She covered the woman’s hand with her own. ‘Why don’t we wait outside?’

‘What for?’

‘If there is someone down there, it could be very dangerous.’ Kay’s smile felt strained. If Donna Doyle was trapped in the cellar, discovering her would be a revelation that would give even the stolid Doreen Elliott nightmares for the rest of her life, Kay knew. ‘It’s our job to protect members of the public, you know. How do you think my boss would react if I let you be taken hostage by some nutter with a knife?’

Mrs Elliott let herself be led into the tiny porch with only a single backward glance at Simon and Leon moving round the room snapping switches on and off. ‘You think it’s a stalker, then?’ she asked avidly. ‘Up here?’

‘It wouldn’t necessarily be someone from around here,’ Kay said. ‘These people are obsessive. They’ll follow a celebrity for weeks, months, learning every detail of their life and routine. Have you seen any strangers hanging around?’

‘Well, we get the tourists and the hikers, but mostly they’re only here for the wall. They don’t hang about.’

Before Kay could say more, her phone rang. ‘Will you excuse me? I’ll only be a minute,’ she said, slipping back inside to take the call. ‘Hello?’

‘Kay? It’s Tony. Where are you?’

Oh, shit, she thought. Why me? Why couldn’t he have phoned Leon? ‘Er…we’re inside Jacko Vance’s house in Northumberland,’ she said. Simon glanced across at her, but she waved to him to continue his search.

‘What?’ Tony exclaimed, outraged.

‘I know you said to wait, but we kept thinking about Donna Doyle…’

‘You broke in?’

‘No. We’re perfectly entitled to be here. A local woman has a key. We informed her there had been reports of a prowler and she let us in.’

‘Well, you’d better get out asap.’

‘Tony, she could be here. This place has got a sealed basement. Vance told the builders he wanted a nuclear shelter.’

‘A nuclear shelter?’ His incredulity was palpable.

‘It was a dozen years ago. People still believed Russia was going to nuke us,’ Kay reminded him plaintively. ‘The point is, she could be down there and we wouldn’t hear her, not even standing right above her. We’ve got to find the door.’

‘No. You’ve got to leave it. He’s on his way there. He’s chartered a plane, Kay. He’s probably coming up there to make sure he’s not left any loose ends. Kay, we need to catch him in the act. We need to stake the place out and watch him go down there to an untouched crime scene.’

As he spoke, Kay looked on in amazement as the ground moved only feet away from her. Silently, a single slab tilted and swung open in response to a switch flicked by Simon. As the fetid air escaped, Kay gagged. Recovering herself, she said, ‘It’s too late for that. We’ve found the door.’

Simon was already at the opening in the floor, peering down a set of stone steps. His groping hands found a switch and flooded the area with light. A long moment passed then he turned to Kay, his face the colour of putty. ‘If that’s Tony, you better tell him we’ve found Donna Doyle, as well.’

He drummed his fingers gently against the arm rest, the only movement in a body still as a lion preparing for the pounce. He didn’t even brace himself against the jolts of the pockets of turbulence the small twin-engined plane hit occasionally, but let his body shift with the movement. Once upon a time, he used to bite the nails of his right hand when he was nervous. Losing his arm had been an extreme cure for a bad habit, he was fond of saying wryly in public. Now, he had cultivated stillness, understanding that nervous tics made nothing happen faster or easier. Besides, stillness was much more unsettling for everyone else.

The engine note changed as the pilot prepared to land. Jacko peered out of the window, staring down at the smudge of suburban streetlights through the fine rain. He’d left Tony Hill standing. There was no way he could have beaten the aircraft. And he had no back-up, Jacko knew from his own discreet inquiries, confirmed by what both Micky and Tony himself had admitted.

The wheels hit the runway and jolted him against his seatbelt. A slight swerve, a correction, then they were heading for the flying club hangars at a gentle taxi. They had barely come to a standstill when Jacko had the door open. He jumped to the Tarmac and looked around, his eyes searching for the familiar shape of his Land Rover. Sam Foxwell and his brother were always glad to earn the twenty quid he paid them whenever he needed the Land Rover brought to the airport and when he’d spoken to them from the car phone, they’d promised to have it there for him.

When he couldn’t spot it, he felt a shiver of panic. They couldn’t have let him down, not tonight of all nights. The pilot interrupted his thoughts, pointing to the side of the hangar in deep shadow. ‘If you’re looking for your Land Rover, I think it’s tucked round there. I noticed it when I was taxi-ing.’

‘Cheers.’ Jacko dug into his pocket and took a twenty-pound note from his money clip. ‘Have a beer on me. See you soon, Keith.’

As he thundered along the narrow Northumberland side roads that were the quickest route to the place he considered his real home, he reviewed what he had to do in the couple of hours’ grace he had before Tony Hill could possibly arrive. First, check if the bitch was still alive and if she was, see she didn’t stay that way. Then, take the chain saw to her, get her bagged and into the Land Rover. Clean the basement with the high-pressure hose and set off for the hospital. Would he have time? Or should he simply disable the motor that opened the door on its swivel? After all, Hill had no way of knowing about the basement shelter and the local police were not going to mount a search on his say-so, not when it would offend an upstanding local taxpayer like Jacko Vance. And there was no guarantee that Tony Hill would even show up.

Maybe he should just settle for making sure she was dead and leave the clearing up for later. There would be a certain delight in entertaining Tony Hill only feet away from his latest victim. His mouth twisted in an ugly snarl. Donna Doyle would have to be his last victim for a while. Damn the man. Tony Hill should have let sleeping bitches lie. Jacko had plans for Tony Hill, though. One day, when it had all gone quiet and Tony Hill had resigned himself to the fact that he’d failed, that plan would go into action and he’d wish he’d never stuck his nose into someone else’s business.

The headlights sliced through the deep darkness of the countryside, breasting the hill that rolled down to his sanctuary. Where there should have been nothing but blackness, light spilled out over the cropped moorland grass and the grey gravel of his drive. Jacko stamped on the brakes and the Land Rover screamed to a jittering halt. What the fuck?

As he sat there, mind racing, adrenaline pumping, a pair of headlights on full beam crept up behind him, angling across the narrow road so there was no possibility of going backwards. Slowly, Vance took his foot off the brake and let the Land Rover cruise down the hill towards his home. The lights shifted and fell into convoy behind him. As he grew closer, he saw a second car parked diagonally just beyond his gateway, effectively blocking the road beyond.

Vance drove on to his property, the cold grip of fear in his stomach focusing his mind. When he rolled to a halt he jumped out of his vehicle, every inch the outraged householder, and confronted the young black man standing in his doorway. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside, sir,’ Leon said deferentially.

‘What do you mean? This is my house. Has there been a burglary or what? What’s going on? And who the hell are you?’

‘I’m Detective Constable Leon Jackson of the Metropolitan Police.’ He held out his warrant card for inspection.

Vance switched the charm on. ‘You’re a long way from home.’

‘Pursuing an investigation, sir. It’s amazing where a line of inquiry can take us in these days of electronic communications and efficient travel networks.’ Leon’s voice was impassive, but his eyes never left Vance.

‘Look, you know who I am, obviously. You know this is my place. Can’t you at least tell me what the hell is going on?’

A horn beeped and Vance turned to see the car that had followed him down the hill stop just outside the gate, blocking the road in the opposite direction. He was hemmed in completely. Jesus, he hoped the bitch was dead. Another young man got out of the car and walked across the gravel. ‘Are you from the Metropolitan Police as well?’ Vance asked, forcing himself to maintain his professionally beguiling mode.

‘No,’ Simon said. ‘I’m from Strathclyde.’

‘
Strathclyde?
’ Vance was momentarily confused. He’d taken someone from London a few years ago, but he’d never brought anyone down from Scotland. He hated the accent. It reminded him of Jimmy Linden and all that meant to him. So if there was a cop here from Scotland, they couldn’t be tracking the girls. It was going to be fine, he told himself. He could walk away from this.

‘That’s right, sir. DC Jackson and myself have been working on different aspects of the same case. We were in the area and we had a report from a passing motorist of a prowler here. So we thought we’d better check it out.’

‘That’s very commendable, officers. Perhaps I could go inside and check to see if anything’s missing or broken?’ He moved to edge around Leon, but the policeman was too fast for him. He extended his arm, blocking Vance, and shook his head.

‘I’m afraid not, sir. It’s a crime scene, you see. We need to make sure nothing interferes with it.’

‘A crime scene? What on earth has happened?’ Concerned, try to sound concerned, he warned himself. This is your house, you’re an innocent man and you want to know what’s happened on your property.

‘I’m afraid there’s been a suspicious death,’ Simon said coldly.

Jacko made himself take what looked like an involuntary step backwards, covering his face with his hands to make sure no sign of the relief that flooded him was visible to the police. She was dead, hallelujah. A dead woman could never testify. He pasted an expression of worried anxiety on his face and looked up. ‘But that’s terrible. A death? Here? But who…How? This is my home. Nobody comes here except me. How can there be someone dead here?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to establish, sir,’ Leon said.

‘But who is it? A burglar? What?’

‘We don’t think it was a burglar,’ Simon said, trying to keep the lid on the rage he felt face to face with the man who had killed Shaz and who was trying to pretend he had nothing to do with the putrefying mess in his cellar.

‘But…the only person who has keys is Mrs Elliott. Doreen Elliott at Dene Cottage. It’s not…It’s not her?’

‘No, sir. Mrs Elliott is in excellent health. It was Mrs Elliott who let us in to the property and gave us permission to search. One of our colleagues has taken her home.’ There was something in the way the black cop held his stare when he said this that sent a tremor of fear skittering round Vance’s nerves. The message coming through loud and clear between the spoken words was the unspoken warning that his first line of defence had crumbled. This was not an illegal entry and search.

‘Thank God for that. So who is it?’

‘We can’t speculate at this point, sir.’

‘But you must be able to tell me if it’s a man or a woman, surely?’

Simon’s lip curled. He could hold back no longer. ‘As if you didn’t know,’ he said, his voice thick with angry contempt. ‘You think our heads button up the back?’ He turned away, his hands balling into fists.