The Mermaids Singing (33 page)

He wondered how the police were faring that evening. Carol had called him to say that teams were going out in Temple Fields, trawling the area’s regulars, trying to see if the profile suggestions produced any recognition. With luck, they might get some names that would cross-reference to data already in HOLMES, either from previous criminal records or from the car index numbers whose registered keepers had been fed into the system.

‘The next stop will be Bank Vale station. Bank Vale station next stop,’ the electronic voice from the speakers announced. With a start, Tony realized they had left the city centre far behind and were emerging on the far side of Carlton Park, less than a mile from his home. Bank Vale came and went, and Tony swung round in his seat, ready to make for the exit doors when the next stop was announced.

He walked briskly through the neat suburban streets, past the school playing fields, skirting the small copse that was all that remained of the plantation that had given the Woodside area its name. Tony glanced at the trees as he hurried past, thinking wryly that the path cutting diagonally through the wood would almost certainly be completely deserted. First it was the women walking home alone who had abandoned it. Then it was the children, kept away by anxious parents. Now, in Bradfield, it was the men who were learning the bitter lessons of life in jeopardy.

Tony turned into his street, relishing the quiet of the cul-de-sac. He’d get through the evening somehow. Maybe drive down to the supermarket and buy the ingredients for a chicken biryani. Pick up a video. Catch up on his reading.

As he turned the key in the lock, the phone started ringing. Dropping his briefcase, Tony ran for the phone, kicking the door to behind him. He picked up the phone, but before he could say anything, her voice trickled into his ear like warm olive oil soothing an earache. ‘Anthony, darling, you sound like you’re panting for me.’

He’d managed to avoid thinking about it all the way home, but he knew this was what he’d been hoping for.

Brandon had turned out the bedside light less than a minute before the phone rang. ‘You should have known better,’ Maggie murmured as he dragged himself away from her complaisant warmth and reached for the receiver.

‘Brandon,’ he growled.

‘Sir, it’s Inspector Matthews,’ the tired voice said. ‘We’ve just picked up Stevie McConnell. The lads have just lifted him at the ferry port in Seaford. He was about to get on a ship for Rotterdam.’

Brandon sat up in a tangle of duvet, ignoring Maggie’s protests. ‘What have they done?’

‘Well, sir, they didn’t think there was a lot they could do, being as how he’s on police bail and there’s no conditions for him to breach.’

‘Are they holding him?’ Brandon was out of bed and reaching for his underwear drawer.

‘Yes, sir. They’ve got him in the Customs lads’ office.’

‘What on?’

‘Assaulting a police officer.’ Kevin’s voice somehow summoned up the image of a smirk as disembodied as the Cheshire Cat’s smile. ‘They rang me to ask what they should do next, and since you’ve taken such a personal interest in the case, I thought I should ask you first.’

Don’t push it, Brandon thought savagely. All he said, however, was, ‘I’d have thought it was pretty obvious. Arrest him for attempting to pervert the course of justice and bring him back to Bradfield.’ He wrestled into a pair of boxer shorts and leaned over to pick up his trousers from the back of a chair.

‘I take it we show him to the magistrates this time and ask that they refuse bail?’ Kevin’s voice was so sweet it was on the border of costing him his teeth, and not from decay.

‘That’s what we normally do when we have grounds, Inspector. Thanks for keeping me informed.’

‘One other thing, sir,’ Kevin said unctuously.

‘What?’ Brandon growled.

‘The lads have also had to make another arrest.’

‘
Another
arrest? Who the hell else have they had to arrest?’

‘Superintendent Cross, sir. Apparently, he was trying rather forcibly to prevent McConnell from boarding the ferry.’

Brandon closed his eyes and counted to ten. ‘Is McConnell hurt?’

‘Apparently not, sir, just a bit shaken up. The super has a black eye, though.’

‘Fine. Tell them to let Cross go home. And tell them to ask him to call me tomorrow, OK, Inspector?’ Brandon replaced the phone and leaned over to kiss his wife, who had reclaimed the duvet and was rolled up tight as a hibernating dormouse.

‘Mmm,’ Maggie murmured. ‘Are you sure you have to go in?’

‘It’s not my idea of a good time, believe me, but I want to be there when they bring this prisoner in. He’s just the sort of bloke who might fall downstairs.’

‘A problem with his balance?’

Brandon shook his head grimly. ‘Not
his
balance. Other people sometimes get a bit unbalanced, love. We’ve already had one maverick on the prowl tonight. I’m not taking any more chances. I’ll see you when I see you.’

Fifteen minutes later, Brandon walked into the murder squad room. Kevin Matthews was slumped over a desk at the far end of the room, his head cradled in his arms. As Brandon approached, he heard the soft snore of Kevin’s breathing. He wondered when any of the squad had last had a straight night’s sleep. It was when officers got tired and edgy at the lack of results that the serious mistakes happened. Brandon desperately wanted to avoid his name in lights ten years down the road as the man who masterminded a sensational miscarriage of justice, and he’d go to any lengths to avoid it. There was only one problem with that, he wryly acknowledged to himself as he sat down opposite Kevin. In order to keep his finger on the pulse of the investigation, he had to work the same kind of ridiculous hours that led to the very misjudgements he wanted to avoid.
Catch
22. He’d read that, a few years back now, when Maggie had decided to go to evening classes and take the A Levels she’d never got round to at school. She’d said it was a wonderful book, funny, savage, sharply satirical. He’d found it almost too painful. It reminded him too strongly of the Job. Especially on nights like tonight when previously sane men turned desperado.

The phone rang. Kevin stirred, but didn’t wake. Pulling a sympathetic face, Brandon reached over and lifted it. ‘CID. Brandon speaking.’

There was a momentary, confused silence. Then a strained voice said, ‘Sir? Sergeant Merrick here. Sir, we’ve copped for another body.’

F
ROM
3½″
DISK LABELLED
: B
ACKUP
.007;
FILE
L
OVE
.014

Getting Gareth to Carlton Park was less easy than I’d anticipated. I’d done my reconnaissance carefully, I thought, and I’d counted on being able to drive down the access road used by the gardeners. What I hadn’t taken into account was the long Christmas break. The road was blocked off by two metal posts slotted into the asphalt and locked in place with heavy padlocks. I could probably have squeezed through on the verge, since the jeep would have had no problem flattening the small shrubs that lined the road. But I would inevitably have left tyre tracks and probably tiny traces of paint. I had no intention of allowing Gareth to deprive me of my liberty, so that option was closed to me.

I parked the jeep round the back of the storage shed where the park staff kept their equipment. At least there I was out of sight both from the road and the park. There weren’t many people around at two o’clock on Boxing Day morning, but success is all about taking pains.

I got out of the jeep and scouted around. The shed was out; it had a burglar alarm. But the gods were smiling on me now. Around the side of the shed, there was a low wooden trolley, the kind that porters used to wheel along station platforms in the days when there were railway porters who didn’t think shifting luggage was beneath them. The gardeners probably used it to transport plants round the park. I pushed it back to the jeep and tipped Gareth’s naked body on to it. I tucked a couple of black plastic bin liners round the body and sprayed the axles with a quick blast of lubricating oil to cure a nasty squeak, then stealthily I set off towards the shrubbery.

Again, I was lucky. I saw no one. I steered the trolley round to the rear of the bandstand towards the shrubs that covered the steep slope behind. At the edge of the path, I pushed the trolley on to the grass verge and into the edge of the shrubs. Then, wary of leaving footprints on the soft ground, I clambered on to the trolley and rolled Gareth’s body off the end and into the bushes. I stepped back and jumped down, pulling the trolley after me. The bushes looked a little battered, but there was no sign of Gareth. With luck, he’d remain undiscovered until the postman delivered my Christmas message to the
BEST.

Ten minutes later, the trolley was back in place and I was nosing out of the park’s rear entrance on to a quiet lane opposite the churchyard. Even though the chances of being spotted were slim, I waited until the main road was in sight before I turned my lights on. Unlike Temple Fields, this was exactly the sort of area where some nosy insomniac would notice a strange vehicle in the early hours.

I drove home and slept for twelve hours, waking up in time for an interesting couple of hours on my computer before I went in to work. Luckily, it was a busy night, so I had plenty of complex problems to take my mind off the anticipation of the following day’s
Sentinel Times.

They’d done me proud, in spite of the short time they’d had to deal with my message. They’d obviously got on to the plod right away, and managed to persuade them to take it seriously. They’d given me the front page, complete with a photograph of my message, though without anything that would identify who the card had come from.

KILLER ALERTS
BEST!

The naked and mutilated victim of a twisted killer has been discovered in a city park following a bizarre message sent to the
Sentinel Times.
The killer, who signed himself ‘Santa Claws’, revealed in a grisly Christmas message that he had dumped the body in Carlton Park.
The sick communiqué appeared to be written in blood. It was scrawled on the company Christmas card of one of the city’s leading firms of solicitors.
It was accompanied by a home video of the body’s location, which
BEST
staff immediately recognized from the distinctive bandstand on Park Hill
.
Alerted by
BEST
reporters, police dispatched a squad of uniformed and plain-clothes officers to the area of the park mentioned in the Christmas card
.
After a short search among bushes off the nature trail near the bandstand, as indicated in the video, a uniformed constable discovered the body of a man.
According to police sources, the body was naked. The man’s throat had been cut and his body mutilated.
It is believed that he may have been tortured before his death.
Although this area of Carlton Park is known as a pick-up area for predatory homosexuals, police are not presently connecting this killing with the murders earlier this year of two young men whose bodies were dumped in the Temple Fields ‘gay village’ area of the city.
The body has not yet been identified, and police have not released a description of the victim, who is believed to be in his late twenties or early thirties.
The package, which had been posted on Christmas Eve in Bradfield, arrived at the offices of the
Sentinel Times
in this morning’s post, addressed to the news editor, Matt Smethwick
.
Mr Smethwick said, ‘My first thought was that someone was playing a sick joke, especially since I know one of the solicitors in the firm concerned.
‘Then I realized my friend was out of the country on a skiing holiday, so it couldn’t have been him who posted the package.
‘I rang the police right away, and luckily they took it seriously.’

I should think they did. I’d never been more serious in my life. In spite of what the police were saying, the thought that Gareth was the third in a series must have made the short journey across their minds. It had certainly not escaped the attention of the journalists, who used the latest discovery as an excuse to rehash the killings of Adam and Paul. By the time the City Final edition hit the streets, they’d even found a rent-a-quote academic to spout forth
.

INSIDE THE MIND OF A KILLER

The man the Home Office have chosen to spearhead the hunt for serial killers spoke today about the latest slaying that has terrified the city’s gay community.
Forensic psychologist Tony Hill is one year into a major study funded by the government which will lead to the setting up of a criminal profiling task force similar to the FBI unit featured in
The Silence of the Lambs.
Dr Hill, 34, was formerly the chief clinical psychologist at Blamires Hospital, the maximum-security mental unit which houses Britain’s most dangerous criminally insane offenders, including mass murderer David Harney and serial killer Keith Pond, the Motorway Madman.
Giving his verdict, Dr Hill said, ‘I have not been called in by the police to consult on any of these cases, so I know no more than your readers do about them.
‘I’m reluctant to make a snap judgement, but if pushed, I’d say it was certainly possible, and possibly likely that the murders of Adam Scott and Paul Gibbs were committed by the same person.
‘On the surface, this latest killing looks similar, but there are certain crucial differences. For a start, the body has turned up in a very different sort of location. Even though Carlton Park is also known as a gay cruising area, it’s got a very different ambience from the urbanized Temple Fields.
‘Also, the sending of the message to the
Sentinel Times
is a significant variation. Nothing similar happened in the earlier cases, and the killer makes no reference to previous killings
.
‘That inclines me to think we may be dealing with at least two separate individuals here.’