The Torment of Others (54 page)

The minutes ticked by and Tony grew more and more restless. The longer the wait, the more he feared the worst. Four, five minutes at most from the nurses’ station to Tyler’s room. A minute to check, then the walk back. Ten minutes, no more. That’s how long it should take Vincent to get back to him if all was well.

Ten minutes stretched to fifteen, fifteen to twenty. When his phone finally rang, Tony almost dropped it in his haste to answer it left-handed. ‘Hello? Vincent?’

‘It’s me,’ Carol said. Those two words told Tony all he needed to know.

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘I got here five minutes ago,’ she said. The place is in an uproar. They just found Derek Tyler dead in his room. Apparently he swallowed his tongue.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Tony groaned.

‘Believe it,’ Carol said grimly. This case is going belly-up and we’re no nearer to finding Paula. I could weep.’

‘You and me both.’

‘I’ll see you back at the station. Tony–don’t go back in to Jan until I get back, OK?’

‘Yeah. We need to figure out where we’re going with this.’ If indeed there was anywhere left to go.

The police station Stacey had returned to a few hours earlier bore little resemblance to the one she had left. Nothing travels faster than bad news within an organization as driven by information as the police. For days, Paula McIntyre’s abduction had fuelled conversation and ambience alike with a mixture of outrage, hindsight and criticism. Everybody had an opinion. But the news of Jan Shields’ apparent betrayal had delivered a shockwave to Bradfield police that had created something like the moment after an explosion when air and sound have been sucked from the epicentre. Corridors were hushed, movements subdued, faces angry and baffled. When she’d walked into the murder room, Stacey had felt hostile eyes on her, as if by having been present at the event she was somehow responsible for so brutal a blow to the force’s self-esteem. Already, she knew, people would be rewriting history; some searching for ways to exculpate Shields; others who had been close colleagues distancing themselves from her; still others claiming always to have known she was dodgy. The fallout was going to be grim and painful.

Back at her own desk, Stacey dry-swallowed two paracetamol caplets and scrunched her face into an expression of concentration. It didn’t take her long to determine that there was no easy route to the location of the webcam from the image on the screen. It made her stomach churn to see her colleague staked out like that, and she made a mental promise to Paula that she would make sure the images disappeared for good from every computer they’d ever contaminated once Paula was rescued. There was no way the sleaze-bags were going to get their hands on this. Paula wasn’t going to end up as late-night entertainment for scummy vice cops. Or anybody else.

One of the officers from the HOLMES computer team had taken on the task of wading through all the easily accessible files on the laptop’s hard disk. So far, he’d found nothing except a depressing amount of hardcore porn.

Stacey wasn’t interested in what was visible. She knew that a criminal as organized as Jan Shields was not going to have left crucial information in plain view. She would have deleted anything incriminating and, because of her involvement with the paedophile investigations, she’d probably have learned to take basic steps to clean up her hard disk regularly.

That didn’t mean there wasn’t anything to find, and Stacey was determined to find it. After an hour’s intensive investigation, she’d managed to isolate only three stray file fragments. At first glance, they’d looked like gibberish. But Stacey had tools at her disposal and it didn’t take her long to translate the jumbled symbols into splintered words and phrases.

The first fragment yielded nothing of interest. It looked like the remains of an email attachment, probably one of the thousands of jokes that circled the globe, given text such as ‘wim in the pool’ and ‘so god sai’ and ‘out of the fish’.

The second fragment hit Stacey like a shot of vodka. ‘…rent in advan…osit in cash…edsit at !%…tron Lane, Temp…rl Macke…’ While the printer wheezed into life, she ran down the hall to the murder room, where a large-scale map of Temple Fields hung on the wall. She traced the street names with her finger. There it was. Citron Lane. The alley behind the street where Paula had disappeared.

Excitement welling up, she hurried back to her desk. The symbols ! and % were the shifted versions of 1 and 5. She’d got it.

Carol leaned her head on the steering wheel and felt the pain from her stressed muscles spread across her shoulders in a tight series of cramps. She couldn’t get her head round Jan Shields. How much evidence could the woman wriggle out from? She’d clearly used all her experience in the job to figure out the perfect set of excuses and explanations for every aspect of her criminal activity. Carol was used to bluster from captured criminals, but she knew this went far beyond bluster into the realms of a kind of perverted credibility.

All of which she could possibly learn to live with if only she could bring Paula home. But that prospect looked no more likely now than at any point since her abduction.

Wearily she straightened up and started the engine just as her phone rang. ‘Carol Jordan,’ she said dully.

‘It’s Stacey,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve got it, I think.’

‘Got what?’ Carol couldn’t let herself believe.

‘Where Paula is–a bedsit at 15 Citron Lane, Temple Fields. Rented in Carl Mackenzie’s name. We searched it on the night, but it was Sergeant Shields who led the search team and gave it the all clear.’

Carol felt her throat suddenly closing with emotion. Thank you, Stacey,’ she managed to say before she choked up completely. ‘I’ll take it from here.’ She ended the call and dialled Merrick’s number. No reply. Where the hell was he? She didn’t have time to chase him now, but she’d kick his arse when he finally reappeared. Cursing Merrick under her breath, she tried Kevin’s number. He answered on the second ring. ‘Kevin–15 Citron Lane, Temple Fields. Meet me there. Bring a team. Do not, I repeat, do not go in till I get there. Is that clear?’ She ended the call, shoved the car in gear and reached for her radio mike with one hand.

‘DCI Jordan to control. Paramedic unit required at 15 Citron Lane, Temple Fields. Repeat, paramedic unit required at 15 Citron Lane, Temple Fields. Over.’

The radio crackled acknowledgement of her message. ‘And I need someone to get over there with a set of boltcutters,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Did you say boltcutters?’ the radio operator asked.

‘Yeah. The kind that cut through handcuffs.’

The room was on the third floor. As Stacey had said, Jan Shields had been responsible for giving the all clear to the building beyond the gate in the wall. Even if she hadn’t managed to annex that search for herself, it would have been easy for officers in a hurry to miss its existence. At some time in the past, someone had created a double door. When the landing door was opened, it revealed a shallow cupboard with dusty shelves. But on closer examination, hidden under one of the shelves was a keyhole and a countersunk handle. The building was on the list of properties whose tenants were still to be queried with landlords. Another day and they’d have tied Carl Mackenzie’s name to it.

Kevin Matthews and Sam Evans threw themselves at the inner door. It collapsed in a shatter of splinters and dust. Carol pushed her way through and entered ahead of them, heart in her mouth. At first sight, she thought they were too late. Paula lay motionless on the bed, eyes closed, unmoving. The room stank of sweat and piss. ‘Get those cuffs off her,’ Carol ordered, grabbing the corner of the sheet and yanking it free so she could cover Paula’s nakedness. Evans rushed past her, boltcutters in his hand.

‘Oh Jesus, Paula,’ he moaned as he worked the boltcutters on the handcuff chain.

The paramedics crowded in, demanding room to do their job. Carol leaned over Paula and stroked her head. Her skin was warm and feverish, and Carol’s heart sang. She stepped back to let the paramedics work, just as the metal on the second set of cuffs snapped under Evans’ strength.

‘How is she?’ she asked anxiously as the paramedics started their tests.

‘She’s alive. But she’s very weak,’ one said without taking his eyes off her.

‘Don’t you dare lose her,’ Carol said, backing towards the landing. She reached for her phone and called Tony. He answered on the first ring. ‘Tony, we found her. We found Paula.’

‘Alive?’

‘Yes. Alive.’

‘Thank God,’ he sighed.

When she came off the phone, Carol was surrounded by delighted detectives congratulating themselves and each other. The jubilation was so overwhelming that nobody, not even Carol, noticed the face that was missing. They were making so much noise she almost didn’t hear her mobile ringing. She moved back into the room where Paula was being moved on to a stretcher so she could hear the call more clearly.

The voice at the other end was unfamiliar. ‘Is that DCI Jordan?’

‘Yes, speaking. Who is this?’

‘This is Inspector Macgregor. I’m up here in Achmelvich,’ he said, his voice gruff and solemn.

‘Have you got Nick Sanders?’ Carol hardly dared hope. But she could think of no other reason why someone of Macgregor’s rank would be in a hamlet at this time of night unless a major arrest had happened. It was almost too good to be true. They’d found Paula, they had Jan Shields under arrest, and now they’d captured the man who had abused and murdered Tim Golding and Guy Lefevre.

There was a pause. Then Macgregor spoke, his voice packed with reservations. ‘Aye. We do have Sanders in custody.’

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked, sidestepping to let the paramedics past with their burden. She reached out to brush her fingers along Paula’s arm as she passed.

‘DCI Jordan,’ he said, ‘do you have an Inspector Merrick on your team?’

A horrible suspicion formed in Carol’s mind. ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded.

‘Look, I’m awful sorry. There’s no easy way to say this: Inspector Merrick is dead, ma’am.’

Carol felt her legs collapse under her as she slid down the wall in a heap. It was too much to take in, on top of everything else that had happened in the past few hours. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘That can’t be right. He’s supposed to be here. Sleeping. In a motel. That can’t be right.’

‘I don’t think there’s any room for doubt, ma’am. He matches up with the photo ID he was carrying. It looks like he was staking the place out, waiting for Sanders. They had a fight and he took a bad blow to the head. We should have more information in the morning. I’m really, really sorry, ma’am.’

Carol ended the call and let the phone fall back into her pocket. She buried her face in her hands. Then she forced herself to her feet. There would be time for her grief later. For now, she had responsibilities.

She walked slowly to the door, planting one foot carefully in front of the other like a drunk. She took a long, shuddering breath and spoke as clearly and loudly as she could. I’ve got some bad news,’ she began.

Tony was still standing by the one-way mirror. He knew he should be elated at the news of Paula’s release, but all he could taste was the bitterness of failure. He’d finally met his match: a criminal who could withstand his probing, apparently effortlessly. The techniques she had developed to control the minds of others had given her the gift of control over her own responses to a remarkable degree. Perhaps with time he could break down her barriers. But he suspected he wasn’t going to be granted time with her. If this ever went to trial, she would be charming, plausible–and would probably be declared not guilty. If she did lose, she might well end up in a secure mental hospital, but he could guarantee it would be a long way away from anywhere he was practising.

Paula’s survival was a huge consolation, of course. On a human level, it was the best possible outcome. But it didn’t balance the despair he felt as he stared down at Jan Shields’ complacency.

He had no idea how much time had passed when he heard a knock. Tony crossed the room and opened the door. A uniformed constable stood uncertainly on the threshold. I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr Hill. But this just came for you.’ He thrust a small brown envelope at Tony. ‘One of the nurses from Bradfield Moor brought it in.’

Thanks,’ Tony said. He closed the door and studied the envelope. His name was written in straggling capitals across the front. He didn’t recognize the handwriting. He ripped open the flap and pulled out a single flimsy sheet of cheap writing paper. The same straggling capitals filled half the page. Beneath them was an awkward signature which read,
.