The Retribution (5 page)

Vance had befriended Collins, uncovered his chagrin at losing his family life, and started to sow the seeds of possibility. What Vance’s money could do for Collins’ three kids, for his wife. For a long time, Vance had felt he was treading water. The crucial stumbling block was that assisting Vance would pile more years on top of Collins’ existing sentence.

Then Collins got a different kind of sentence. Leukaemia. The kind where you have only a forty per cent chance of still being alive five years after the initial diagnosis. Meaning he’d probably never have a second chance to provide a future for his kids or his wife. Even if he got maximum time off his sentence, Collins felt like he’d only be going home to die. ‘They’d let you go home anyway if you were that close to dying,’ Vance had pointed out. ‘Look what happened to the Lockerbie bomber.’ It seemed like a perverse version of having your cake and eating it. Collins could help Vance escape and it wouldn’t matter – they’d still let him out when he was sick enough. Either way, he’d be spending the end of his life with his family. And if they did it Vance’s way, his wife and kids would never have to worry about money again.

Vance tidied up, tearing the soggy paper into fragments and flushing it, along with hair wrapped in thin wads of toilet paper. He scrunched the plastic film into little balls and squeezed it between the table and the wall. When he could think of nothing more, he finally lay down on the narrow bed. The air chilled the sweat on his body and, shivering, he pulled the duvet over him.

It was all going to be all right. Tomorrow, the screw would come for Jason Collins to take him for his first day of Release on Temporary Licence. ROTL was what every prisoner in the Therapeutic Community dreamed of – the day they would emerge from the prison gates and spend a day in a factory or an office. How bloody pitiful, Vance thought. Therapy that so reduced a man’s horizons that a day of mundane drudgery was something to aspire to. It had taken every ounce of his skills in dissimulation to hide his contempt for the regime. But he’d managed it because he knew this was the key to his return to a life outside walls.

Vance smiled in the darkness. Very soon he planned to take the guesswork out of the equation.

‘Ma’am?’ The driver, a stolid twenty-something traffic officer, sounded cautious.

Carol roused herself to attention. ‘Yes? What is it?’

‘There’s a man sitting in a parked car outside the third house on the left. It looks like his head’s leaning on the steering wheel,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to PNC the index number?’

As they drew level, Carol looked out of the window, surprised but not shocked to see Tony, as the PC had said, leaning on his arms on the steering wheel. ‘No need to trouble the computer,’ she said. ‘I know who he is.’

‘Do you need me to have a word?’

Carol smiled. ‘Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. He’s entirely harmless.’ That wasn’t strictly true, but in the narrow terms of reference of a traffic cop, it was as close as damn it.

‘Good night. No need to wait, I’m fine.’ Carol got out of the car and walked back to Tony’s car. She hung on till the police car drove off, then opened the passenger door and got in. At the sound of the lock clicking shut, Tony’s head jerked back and he gasped as if he’d been struck.

‘What the fuck,’ he said, his voice frightened and disorientated. His head jerked from side to side as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. ‘Carol? What the …?’

She patted his arm. ‘You’re outside the house in Bradfield. You were asleep. I came home from work and saw you. I thought you might not have intended to spend the whole night spark out in the car.’

He rubbed his hands over his face as if splashing himself with water, then turned to her, wide-eyed and startled. ‘I was listening to a podcast. The fabulous Dr Gwen Adshead from Broadmoor talking about dealing with the disasters that are our patients. I got home and she was still talking and I wanted to hear the end of it. I can’t believe I fell asleep, she was talking more sense than anybody I’ve heard in a long time.’ He yawned and shook himself. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just after three.’

‘God. I got back not long after midnight.’ He shivered. ‘I’m really cold.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ Carol opened the door. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going indoors.’

Tony scurried out of his side and met her at the gate to the house. ‘Why are you only coming home just after three? Do you want a drink? I’m wide awake now.’

He could be so like a small child, she thought. Out of nowhere, all eagerness and curiosity. ‘I’ll come in for a nightcap,’ she said, following him to the front door rather than to the side door that led to her self-contained basement flat.

He knew her well enough not to bother offering anything else. ‘Vodka,’ she called as she squatted down to struggle with the ignition of the gas fire. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d suggested he have the fire serviced so it wouldn’t be a wrestling match to get it going. It didn’t matter now. Within a couple of weeks, the sale of this house and her flat within it would be completed and he’d have the problems of a whole new house to ignore. But then, the problems wouldn’t have the chance to turn into nagging irritations. Because she’d be living there, and she didn’t tolerate infuriating shit like that.

The fire finally caught as Tony returned with a bottle of Russian vodka, a bottle of Calvados and a pair of tumblers that looked as if he’d collected them free with petrol sometime in the 1980s. ‘I packed the nice glasses already,’ he said.

‘Both of them?’ Carol reached for the bottle, flinching at the cold. It had obviously been in the freezer and the spirit slid down the bottle in sluggish sobs as she poured it.

‘So why are you coming home after three? You don’t look like it was a party.’

‘Superintendent Reekie at Northern wants me to go out in a blaze of glory,’ she said drily.

‘That would be a budget buster, then?’ Tony raised his glass in a cynical toast. ‘You’d think it came out of a different pot altogether, not just a different department in the same organisation. It’s amazing how many cases have had “Major Incident Team” stamped on them since the Chief Constable’s austerity drive.’

‘Even more so since the word got around that I’m leaving.’ Carol sighed. ‘This one, though … in less frugal times, we’d have been fighting Northern for it anyway.’

Carol swallowed a mouthful of vodka and topped up her glass. ‘The worst kind. Your kind. Somebody nailed a prostitute to a cross. Upside down. Then he cut her throat.’ She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Northern think he’s done it before. Not like that, obviously. We would have heard before now if he had. But they’ve had two dead sex workers recently. Different methods. One strangled, one drowned.’

Tony was leaning forward in his chair, elbows on knees, eyes as far from sleep as could be. ‘I had a call from Penny Burgess earlier. I think it might have been about this.’

‘Really? What did she have to say?’

‘I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. But she seemed to think I should be involved. That there’s something serial going on.’

‘She could be right. All three of the victims have what looks like a tattoo on the inside of their wrist. “MINE”, it says.’

‘They didn’t connect the first two?’ Tony sounded incredulous.

‘To be fair, they only got the chance to make the connection yesterday. The one who was drowned, she wasn’t in the best condition. Grisha’s not had the body long, and it took a bit of time for them to be sure what they were looking for.’ Carol shrugged, running her fingers through her shaggy blonde hair. ‘It was hard to pick up any significance on the first body – she had other tatts on her arms and torso, no reason to think MINE had any greater significance than the tramp stamp that said BECKHAM.’

‘And this latest one? She’s got MINE on her wrist too? Interesting.’

‘It looks like it. There’s a lot of blood and swelling, because he nailed her to the wood through her wrist—’ Carol shuddered. ‘But there’s definitely something there. So Reekie called me and handed it off to us. They’ll do the footslogging.’

‘Both local. Small time, on the street, not indoor workers.’

‘Young? Older?’

‘Young. Drug users, not surprisingly. And of course, because of the way they earned their money, we can’t be sure if they were sexually assaulted.’ She held up a hand. ‘I know, I know. Chances are, sex will come into it somewhere.’

‘Just not always in the obvious way.’ Tony sniffed his glass and made a face. ‘It’s always better where you buy it, isn’t it? This stuff smelled wonderful in Brittany. Now it’s like lighter fluid.’ He took a tentative sip. ‘Tastes better than it smells. So will you be looking at using a profiler?’

‘It would be the obvious port of call. But Blake won’t want to pay for you, and I don’t want to work with the homegrown products of the national academy.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You remember the idiot they sent us on the RigMarole killings? All the emotional intelligence of a brick wall. I promised the team I’d never go down that road again. Better to do without than let the Chief Constable foist another one of those on us.’

‘Would you like me?’ Tony said. His raised eyebrows promised the faintest possibility of double entendre, but Carol wasn’t buying.

‘It’s the sensible option, if we want to get a result sooner rather than later.’ She reached for the bottle and topped up her glass. ‘But there’s no way I’ll be allowed to spend that kind of money.’

‘What if it didn’t cost you anything?’

Carol frowned. ‘I’ve told you before. I refuse to take advantage of our personal relationship—’

‘Whatever it is … ’

‘Whatever it is. You’re a professional. When we use expertise from outside the police service, we should pay for it.’

Carol frowned. ‘How do you work that out?’

Tony tapped the side of his nose. ‘I need to talk to someone at the Home Office.’

‘Tony, it may have escaped your notice, but we have a new government. There is no money. Not for essentials, never mind luxuries like psychological profilers.’ Frustrated, Carol sighed.

‘I know you think I live on another planet, Carol, but I did know that.’ He pulled a sad clown face that emphasised the lines his job had carved there. ‘But my go-to guy at the Home Office is above the political fray. And I think he owes me.’ Tony paused for a moment, his eyes drifting to the top left corner of the room. ‘Yes, he does.’ He shifted in his seat and stared directly at Carol. ‘All those years ago, we started something in this city. Reekie’s right. You should go out in a blaze of glory. And I should be there at your side, just like I was that first time.’