The Wire in the Blood (6 page)

‘Now you’ve seen the operation, I take it you’re a bit more willing to accept that when we say a fire’s a query arson, we’re not talking absolute rubbish?’ Pendlebury’s tone was light, but his eyes challenged hers.

‘I never doubted what you were telling us,’ she said calmly. ‘What I doubted was whether we were taking it as seriously as we should.’ She snapped open the locks on her briefcase and took out her file. ‘I’d like to go through the details on these incidents with you, if you can spare me the time.’

He cocked his head to one side. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘Now that I’ve seen the way you run your operation, I can’t believe the idea of a serial arsonist hasn’t already crossed your mind.’

He tugged at the lobe of one ear, sizing her up. Finally, he said, ‘I was wondering when one of your lot would notice.’

Carol breathed out hard through her nose. ‘It might have been helpful if we’d been given a nudge in the right direction. You are the experts, after all.’

‘Your predecessor didn’t think so,’ Pendlebury said. He might as well have been commenting on the price of fish. All of the enthusiasm he’d shown earlier for his job had vanished behind an impassive mask, leaving Carol to draw her own conclusions. They didn’t make a pretty picture.

She placed the file on Pendlebury’s desk and flipped it open. ‘That was then. This is now. Are you telling me you’ve got query arsons that predate this one?’

He glanced down at the top sheet in the file and snorted. ‘How far back would you like to start?’

Tony Hill sat alone at his desk, ostensibly preparing for the following day’s seminar with the task force officers. But his thoughts were far away from those details. He was thinking about the psychopathic minds out there, already set in the moulds that would generate pain and misery for people they didn’t even know yet.

There had long been a theory among psychologists that discounted the existence of evil, ascribing the worst excesses of the most sociopathic abductors, torturers and killers to a linked series of circumstances and events in their past that culminated in one final stress-laden event that catapulted them over the edge of what civilized society would tolerate. But that had never entirely satisfied Tony. It begged the question of why some people with almost identical backgrounds of abuse and deprivation went on not to become psychopaths but to lead useful, fruitful lives, integrated into society.

Now the scientists were talking about a genetic answer, a fracture in the DNA code that might explain this divergence. Somehow, Tony found that answer too pat. It seemed as much of a cop-out as the old-fashioned notion that some men were simply evil and that was that. It evaded responsibility in a way he found repugnant.

It was an issue that had always held particular resonance for him. He knew the reason he was so good at what he did. It was because for so many of the steps down the road that his prey had taken, he had walked in their footprints. But at some point he could never quite identify there had come a parting of the ways. Where they became hunters at first hand, he became a hunter at second hand, tracking them down once they had crossed the line. Yet his life still held echoes of theirs. The fantasies that drove them were about sex and death; his fantasies about sex and death were called profiling. They were chillingly close.

It sometimes seemed chicken and egg to Tony. Had his impotence started because he was afraid the unfettered expression of his sexuality might lead him to violence and death? Or had his knowledge of how often the sexual urge led to killing worked on his body to make him sexually inadequate? He doubted he would ever know. However the circuit worked, it was undeniable that his work had profoundly affected his life.

For no apparent reason, he recalled the spark of uncomplicated enthusiasm he’d seen in Shaz Bowman’s eyes. He could remember feeling that way too, before his fascination had been tempered by exposure to the horrors humans could inflict upon each other. Maybe he could use what he knew to give his team better armour than he’d had. If he achieved nothing else with them, that alone would be worthwhile.

In another part of the city, Shaz clicked her mouse button and closed down her software. On autopilot, she switched off her computer and stared unseeingly as the screen faded to black. When she’d decided to explore the resources of the Internet as her first stop on the road to disinterring Tony Hill’s past, she’d expected to come across a handful of references and, if she was lucky, a set of cuttings in one of the newspaper archives.

Instead, when she’d input ‘Tony, Hill, Bradfield, killer’ as key words in the search engine, she’d stumbled upon a darkside treasure trove of references to the case that had put his face on the front pages a year before. There was a grisly handful of websites entirely devoted to serial killers which incorporated Tony’s headline case. Elsewhere, journalists and commentators had posted their articles on that specific case on their personal websites. There was even a perverse rogues’ gallery, a montage of photographs of the faces of the world’s most notorious serial killers. Tony’s target, the so-called Queer Killer, featured in more than one guise in the bizarre exhibit.

Shaz had downloaded everything she could find and had spent the rest of the evening reading it. What had started out as an academic exercise to figure out what made Tony Hill tick had left her sick at heart.

The facts were not in dispute. The naked bodies of four men had been dumped in gay cruising areas of Bradfield. The victims had been tortured before death with a cruelty that was almost beyond comprehension. After death, they had been sexually mutilated, washed clean and abandoned like trash.

As a last resort, Tony had been brought in as a consultant, working with Detective Inspector Carol Jordan to develop a profile. They were moving close to their target when hunter became hunted. The killer wanted Tony for a human sacrifice. Captured and trussed, he was on the point of becoming victim number five, the torture engine in place, his body screaming in pain. He was saved in the nick of time not by the arrival of the cavalry but by his own verbal skills, honed over years of working with mentally disturbed offenders. But to claim his life, he’d had to kill his captor.

As she’d read, Shaz’s heart had filled with horror, her eyes with tears. Cursed with enough imagination to create a picture of the hell Tony had lived through, she found herself sucked into the nightmare of that final showdown where the roles of killer and victim were irrevocably reversed. The scenario made her shudder with fear and trepidation.

How had he begun to live with that? she marvelled. How did he sleep? How could he close his eyes and not be assailed with images beyond most people’s imagination or tolerance? Little wonder that he wasn’t prepared to use his own past to teach them how to manage their futures. The miracle was that he was still willing to practise a craft that must have pushed him to the edge of madness.

And how would she have coped if she’d been the one in his shoes? Shaz dropped her head into her hands and, for the first time since she’d heard of the task force, asked herself if she hadn’t perhaps made a terrible mistake.

Betsy mixed a drink for the journalist. Heavy on the gin, light on the tonic, a quarter of a lemon squeezed so that the tartness of the juice would cut the oily sweetness of the gin and disguise its potency. One of the principal reasons that Micky’s image had survived untainted by scandal was Betsy’s insistence that they trust no one outside the trio that held their secret close. Suzy Joseph might be all smiles and charm, filling the airy sitting room with the tinkle of her laugh and the smoke from her menthol cigarettes, but she was still a journalist. Even if she represented the most accommodating and sycophantic of the colour magazines, Betsy knew that among her drinking cronies there would be more than one tabloid hack ready to dip a hand in a pocket for the right piece of gossip. So Suzy would be plied generously with drink today. By the time she came to sit down to lunch with Jacko and Micky, her sharp eyes would be blurred round the edges.

Betsy perched on the arm of a sofa whose squashy cushions engulfed the anorectically thin journalist. She could keep an eye on her easily from there, while Suzy would have to make a deliberate and obvious shift of position to get Betsy in her line of sight. That also made it possible for Betsy to signal caution to Micky without being seen. ‘This is such a lovely room,’ Suzy gushed. ‘So light, so cool. You don’t often see something so tasteful, so elegant, so—
appropriate
. And believe me, I’ve been in more of these Holland Park mansions than the local estate agents!’ She twisted round awkwardly and said to Betsy in the same tones she’d have used to a waiter, ‘You have made sure the caterers have all they need?’

Betsy nodded. ‘Everything’s under control. They were delighted with the kitchen.’

‘I’m sure they were.’ Suzy was back with Micky, Betsy dismissed again. ‘Did you design the dining room yourself, Micky? So stylish! So very, very
you
! So perfect for
Junket with Joseph
.’ She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette, giving Betsy an unwanted view of a creped cleavage that fake tan and expensive body treatments couldn’t entirely disguise.

Being commended on her taste by a woman who could without any indication of shame wear a brash scarlet and black Moschino suit designed for someone twenty years younger and an entirely different shape was a double-edged compliment, Micky felt. But she simply smiled again and said, ‘Actually, it was mostly Betsy’s inspiration. She’s the one with the taste round here. I just tell her what I want the ambience to be like, and she sorts it out.’

Suzy’s reflexive smile held no warmth. Another wasted opening; nothing quotable there, it seemed to say. Before she could try again, Jacko strode into the room, his broad shoulders in their perfect tailoring thrusting forward so he appeared like a flying wedge. He ignored Suzy’s fluttering twitters and made straight for Micky, descending upon her with one enveloping arm, hugging her close, though not actually kissing. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, his professional, public voice carrying the thrum of a cello chord. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ He half-turned and leaned back against the sofa, giving Suzy the full benefit of his perfectly groomed smile. ‘You must be Suzy,’ he said. ‘We’re thrilled to have you here with us today.’

Suzy lit up like Christmas. ‘I’m thrilled to be here,’ she gushed, her breathy voice losing its veneer and revealing the unmistakable West Midlands intonation she’d devoted herself to burying. The effect Jacko still had on women never ceased to astonish Betsy. He could turn the sourest bitch Barsac sweet. Even the tired cynicism of Suzy Joseph, a woman who had the same relationship to celebrity as beetles to dung, wasn’t sufficient armour against his charm. ‘
Junket with Joseph
doesn’t often give me the chance to spend time with people I genuinely admire,’ she added.

‘Thank you,’ Jacko said, all smiles. ‘Betsy, should we be heading through to the dining room?’

She glanced at the clock. ‘That would be helpful,’ she said. ‘The caterer wants to start serving round about now.’ Jacko jumped to his feet and waited attentively for Micky to get up and move towards the door. He ushered Suzy ahead of him too, turning back to roll his eyes upwards in an expression of bored horror for Betsy’s benefit. Stifling a giggle, she followed them to the dining-room door, saw them seated and left them to it. Sometimes there were distinct benefits in not being the official consort, she reminded herself as she settled down with her bread and cheese and
The World at One
.

There was no such relief for Micky, who had to pretend she didn’t even notice Suzy’s vapid flirting with her husband. Micky tuned out the boring ritual dance going on next to her and concentrated on freeing the last morsels of lobster from a claw.

A change in Suzy’s tone alerted her that the conversation had shifted a gear. Time for work, Micky realized. ‘Of course, I’ve read in the cuttings how you two got together,’ Suzy was saying, her hand covering Jacko’s real one. She wouldn’t have been so quick to pat the other, Micky reflected grimly. ‘But I need to hear it from your own lips.’

Here we go, Micky thought. The first part of the recital was always hers. ‘We met in hospital,’ she began.

By the middle of the second week, the task force office felt like home to the entire team. It was no accident that all six of the junior officers chosen for the squad were single and unattached, according both to their records and the unofficial background checks that Commander Paul Bishop had pursued in canteens and police clubs up and down the country. Tony had deliberately wanted a group of people who, uprooted from their former lives, would be thrown together and forced to develop team spirit. That at least was something he seemed to have got right, he thought, looking around the seminar room where six heads were bowed over a set of photocopied police files he’d prepared for them.

Already, they had started to form alliances, and so far they’d done well to avoid the personality clashes that could split a group beyond salvaging. Interestingly, the associations were flexible, not fixed in rigid pairs. Although some affinities were stronger than others, there was no attempt to make any of them exclusive.

Shaz was the one exception, as far as Tony could tell. It wasn’t that there was a problem between her and the others. It was more that she held herself apart from the easy intimacy that was growing between the rest. She joined in the jokes, took part in the communal brainstorming, but somehow there was always distance between her and her fellows. He sensed in her a passion for success that the rest of the squad lacked. They were ambitious, no denying that, but with Shaz it went deeper. She was driven, her need burning inside her and consuming any trace of frivolity. She was always first there in the mornings and last out at night, eagerly snatching any opportunity to get Tony to expand on whatever he’d been talking about last. But her very need for success made her correspondingly more vulnerable to failure. What he recognized as a desperate desire for approval was a blade that could be used against her with devastating effect. If she didn’t learn to drop her defences so she could use her empathy, she’d never achieve her potential as a profiler. It was his job to find a way of making her feel she could relax her vigilance without risking too much damage.