The Mermaids Singing (39 page)

Brandon considered for a moment. Then he said, ‘Point taken, Carol. OK, we can pursue it, Dave, but not as a priority. Only as and when we have bodies freed up from the main enquiry. Right, are we all clear what we’ve got to do?’ He looked around expectantly, registering the series of nods. ‘OK, team,’ Brandon said, his voice stern. ‘Let’s go for it.’

‘And may the force be with you,’ Kevin said under his breath to Carol as they emerged from the office.

‘I’d rather have the force than the gutter press,’ she said drily, turning her back on him. ‘Tony, can we find a quiet corner and plan our strategy for this interview?’

‘The only way you’re going to get more out of him is by hypnosis,’ Tony told Carol as they talked in the corridor after an hour with Terry Harding.

‘Can you do that?’ Carol asked.

‘I’ve got the basic technique. Judging by his eye movements and body language, he was telling the truth about what he saw, not making anything up or exaggerating, so he might come across with more detail under hypnosis, particularly if we have pictures to show him.’

Ten minutes later, Carol was back with a sheaf of car brochures that Kevin’s team had scavenged from city dealerships. ‘This what we need?’

Tony nodded. ‘Perfect. You sure you want me to give this a go?’

‘It’s got to be worth a try,’ Carol said.

They walked back into the interview room, where Terry Harding was finishing a mug of coffee. ‘Can I go now?’ he said plaintively. ‘Only I’m due to fly out to Brussels tomorrow and I haven’t even unpacked my bag.’

‘Not much longer, sir,’ Carol said, sitting down to one side of the table. ‘Dr Hill would like to try something with you.’

Tony smiled reassuringly. ‘We’ve got some pictures of the kind of jeep you saw leaving Damien’s garage. What I’d like to do, if you’re agreeable, is to put you in a light hypnotic trance and ask you to look at them.’

Harding frowned. ‘Why can’t I just look at them as I am?’

‘The chances are better that you’d recognize the particular model,’ Tony explained soothingly. ‘Thing is, Mr Harding, you’re obviously a very busy man. Since you saw the incident, you’ve travelled to the other side of the world, you’ve had a series of important business meetings, and you’ve probably not had enough sleep. All of that means your conscious mind has probably filed away the details of what you saw last Sunday. Using hypnosis, I can help you retrieve that information.’

Harding looked dubious. ‘I don’t know. Always supposing you could get me to go under, you could make me say anything.’

‘Unfortunately, that’s not the case. If it was, hypnotists would all be millionaires,’ Tony joked. ‘Like I said, all it does is free up the stuff you’ve buried because it’s not important.’

‘What do I have to do?’ Harding said suspiciously.

‘Just listen to my voice and follow what I tell you,’ Tony said. ‘You’ll feel a little strange, a little spaced out, but you’ll be in control at all times. I use a technique called neuro-linguistic programming. It’s very relaxing, I promise you.’

‘Do I have to lie down, or what?’

‘Nothing like that. And I’m not going to wave a watch in front of you. Are you prepared to give it a try?’

Carol held her breath, watching Harding as an assortment of expressions chased each other across his face. Finally, he nodded. ‘I doubt you’ll be able to get me under,’ he said. ‘I’m a man who knows his own mind. But I’m willing to try.’

‘OK,’ said Tony. ‘I want you to relax. Close your eyes if it feels more comfortable. Now, I want you to go deep down inside yourself…’

Elated with their success, Tony and Carol bounced into the murder squad room. Bob Stansfield was standing by the window, staring out at the rain-drenched street below, his shoulders slumped, a cigarette burning unheeded in his hand. He glanced round and Carol called, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’

Stansfield swung round and said bitterly, ‘You obviously haven’t heard the news.’

‘What news?’ Carol asked, walking over to him.

‘Stevie McConnell topped himself.’

Carol rocked on her heels and stumbled against a desk. Her ears were ringing and she thought she was going to faint. Instinctively, Tony moved forward and steered her into a chair. ‘Deep breaths, Carol. Deep and slow,’ he said softly, leaning over her, staring intently at her white face.

She closed her eyes, dug her nails into her palms and obeyed. ‘Sorry,’ Stansfield said. ‘It knocked me for six too.’

Carol looked up and pushed her hair away from a forehead suddenly clammy. ‘What happened?’

‘Apparently he took a beating yesterday. A sex-case special, by all accounts. So, this morning he tore up his shirt and hung himself. The fucking warders never noticed, on account of they’re playing at work to rule,’ he added savagely.

‘The poor bastard,’ Carol said.

‘There’s going to be hell to pay,’ Stansfield predicted. ‘I’m glad it was fuck all to do with me. At least it won’t be my arse in the fire. I mean, Brandon’s bombproof, so it’s going to be some poor fucker of an inspector who’s going to carry the can.’

Carol looked at him as if she’d like to hit him. ‘Sometimes, Bob, you really fuck me off,’ she said coldly. ‘Where’s Brandon?’

‘Down in the HOLMES room. Probably hiding from the Chief.’

They found Brandon and Dave Woolcott closeted in the inspector’s cubby hole off the main room. ‘We’ve got a positive make, sir,’ Carol said, her initial exuberance flattened by Stansfield’s news. ‘We know what car he was driving.’

Penny Burgess turned off the main road on to the Forestry Commission track that led deep into the heart of the woodland. She was aiming for a car park and picnic area in the middle of the woods. It was one of her favourite spots from which to strike off through the trees and up on to the bare gritstone edges where the wind could blow away all the accumulated dross of the week. She certainly needed it after the last few days of hard graft, big stories and not enough sleep.

The record on the radio finished and the announcer said, ‘And now, over to the newsroom for the headlines on the hour.’ The news ident followed, then a woman said in a voice altogether too bright for her subject matter, ‘Northern Sound news on the hour. A man who was questioned by Bradfield police in connection with the serial killings that have terrorized the city was found dead this morning in his cell at Barleigh jail.’

In her shock, Penny took her foot off the accelerator and pitched forward as the car stalled. ‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, her hand shooting out to twist the volume higher.

‘Steven McConnell is thought to have committed suicide by hanging himself with a noose made from his own clothes. McConnell, the manager of a bodybuilding gym in the city, was arrested last week after a street brawl involving an undercover police officer in the city’s gay village,’ the newsreader continued, sounding for all the world as if she were announcing the results of the Eurovision Song Contest. ’He was released on bail, but rearrested after attempting to flee the country. A Home Office spokesman said there would be a full enquiry into the circumstances of his death.

‘The economy has never been in a better position, the Prime Minister said today…’ Penny turned the key in the ignition and did a perilous five-point turn in the narrow lane before stamping on the gas and shooting back towards the road. It was just as well, she thought, that she’d already decided to dump Kevin. After the story she was about to write, she couldn’t imagine him ever wanting to see her again anyway.

Tony drummed his fingers on the back of the cab’s seat, a curious restlessness possessing him. Leaving Scargill Street hadn’t been easy, but he knew he had no role while the police worked on their one piece of solid evidence. The last thing they needed in that maelstrom of reproach and driven activity was for him to sit around reminding them of all the reasons why he’d never been convinced that Stevie McConnell was their man.

His consolation was that he felt certain that Angelica would phone tonight. As the taxi hissed through the wet and empty streets, Tony rehearsed the conversation. He felt a new confidence, a certainty that tonight he would have no problems, that he had finally wrestled his demon into submission thanks to her strange erotic therapy. He would tell her she had no idea how much her phone calls had meant to him. That she had helped him more than she could know. Satisfied that he had things under control, Tony sighed comfortably and cleared his mind of Handy Andy.

Penny Burgess popped the top on a can of Guinness, lit a cigarette and switched on her computer. After making a handful of phone calls to firm up the version of events she’d heard on the radio, she was fired with the self-righteous enthusiasm that only politicians, journalists and fundamentalist preachers seem capable of harnessing for professional advancement.

She inhaled a long stream of smoke, thought for a moment, then started to hammer the keys.

Bradfield’s serial killer claimed his fifth victim yesterday (Sunday) when gay body-builder Stevie McConnell killed himself in a prison cell.
Police had implied that McConnell was himself the Queer Killer in a cynical bid to force the real killer’s hand.
But their twisted exercise ended in tragedy when McConnell, 32, hung himself with a makeshift rope woven from his own torn shirt. He tied it to the top bunk in his solitary-confinement cell at Barleigh prison and threw himself off, strangling himself.
And last night, a police officer involved in the Queer Killer investigation admitted, ‘We’ve known for several days that Stevie McConnell wasn’t the killer.’
McConnell had pleaded with prison staff to put him in solitary after a barbaric attack by fellow inmates the previous day.
A source inside Barleigh prison said, ’He took a real beating. The word on the grapevine when he arrived was that he was the Queer Killer, only the police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him yet.
‘Prisoners don’t like sex killers, and they tend to make their feelings known. McConnell got a brutal hammering. He was badly beaten up, and sexually assaulted too.’
Warders are said to have turned a blind eye to McConnell’s savage battering. Then yesterday (Sunday) because of a prison officers’ work to rule, he was left unattended in his cell for long enough to end his life. A Home Office spokesman said there would be a full enquiry into the incident.
McConnell managed Bodies gym in the city centre, where the killer’s third victim, solicitor Gareth Finnegan, was a member.
McConnell faced a minor assault charge after coming to the rescue of an undercover police sergeant who was attacked by a third man in the Temple Fields gay village.
He then tried to flee the country while he was out on bail. Police rearrested him as he was about to board a ferry for Holland, and persuaded magistrates to remand him in custody.
A police source revealed, ’What we did made people think that McConnell was the killer, and that’s what we wanted.
‘Serial killers are very vain, and we thought that the killer would be so outraged that we had pointed the finger at the wrong person that he would break cover and make contact.
‘It’s all gone horribly wrong.’
A friend of McConnell’s said last night, ’Bradfield police are murderers. As far as I’m concerned, they killed Stevie.
‘The police really grilled him about the serial killings. They put him under all kinds of pressure.
‘Even though they let him go afterwards, mud like that sticks. He got the cold shoulder at work, and out in the gay bars.
‘That’s why he decided to leg it. It’s a tragedy. Worse than that, it’s a pointless tragedy.
‘This hasn’t taken the police an inch closer to finding the killer.’

Penny lit another cigarette and read through her copy. ‘Pick the bones out of that, Kevin,’ she said softly, hitting the keys that would save the file and transmit it via her modem to the office computer. Then, as an afterthought, she typed:

Memo to newsdesk.
From Penny Burgess, Crime Desk.
I am taking tomorrow (Monday) as time off in lieu of
working extra hours last week and today. Hope this
doesn’t pose too many problems!

‘A Land Rover Discovery, metallic grey or dark blue?’ Dave Woolcott confirmed, making a note on a pad.

‘That’s what the man said,’ Carol agreed.

‘Right. With it being Sunday, I can’t get a full run-down from Swansea on every vehicle like that on our patch,’ Dave said.

‘What we could do, though, is get a team going round the main dealerships and the quality secondhand dealers asking for their records of anyone who’s bought one,’ Kevin suggested. Like all of them, he was fired with an excitement only slightly tempered by the tragic news from Barleigh.

‘No,’ Brandon said. ‘That’s a waste of time and personnel. There’s no guarantee that the killer bought his vehicle locally. We wait until tomorrow morning. Then we go flat out.’

Everyone looked disappointed, even though they recognized the force of Brandon’s argument. ‘In that case, sir,’ Carol said, ‘I’d like to work with Dave compiling lists of computer hardware and software suppliers so we’re ready to roll with that as soon as there are some spare bodies to hit the phones.’

Brandon nodded. ‘Good thinking, Carol. Now, why don’t the rest of us go home and rediscover what our houses look like?’

Tony was stretched out on the sofa, trying to persuade himself he was enjoying the luxury of watching TV when the doorbell rang. The hope of company come to rescue him from his restless boredom catapulted him to his feet and down the hall. He opened the door, a smile already spreading across his face.

The smile died halfway as he registered that he was out of luck. There was a woman on the doorstep, but she wasn’t one of his friends or colleagues. She was tall, bigboned, with heavy, blunt features and a strong, square jaw. She pushed her long dark hair away from her face and said, ‘I’m really sorry to trouble you, only my car’s broken down and I don’t know where there’s a pay phone. I wondered if I might use your phone to call the AA? I’ll pay for the call, of course…’ Her voice trailed off and she smiled apologetically.