The Retribution

  Finding the details of Kerry Fletcher’s mother’s death was the work of a couple of minutes. Once she had the woman’s maiden name, running those details against the council tenancy list she’d been accessing earlier that evening was something Stacey could have done with her hands tied behind her back.

  Within ten minutes of taking Paula’s call, Stacey was back on the line. ‘You were right about the sixteenth floor. Pendle House, 16C. Sorry, I should have thought it through.’

  ‘No harm done, we’ve got there now.’

  Stacey screwed her face up as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. ‘I know, and I don’t mind when Dr Hill comes up with stuff that’s outside our area of competence. But we’re supposed to be detectives, we should have come up with that ourselves.’

  ‘The chief would have,’ Paula said, glum in spite of the result.

  ‘I know. I’m not sure I want to carry on being a cop if Blake assigns me to routine CID work.’

  ‘That would be crazy,’ Paula said. ‘Everybody knows you’re a complete geek. Why would Blake not want to make the most of your skills?’

  ‘My parents have relatives whose lives were trashed in the Cultural Revolution. I understand that sometimes people get punished for being too skilled.’ Stacey had never spoken so freely to one of her colleagues before. It was ironic that it was the imminent disbanding of their unit that had liberated her tongue.

  ‘Blake’s not Chairman Mao,’ Paula said. ‘He’s too ambitious not to exploit you to the full. More likely you’ll be chained to a bank of monitors and only allowed daylight once a month. Trust me, Stacey, nobody’s going to unplug you. All the scut work, that’ll be down to the likes of me and Sam, as per usual. And speaking of Sam – don’t you think it’s about time you said something to him?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, Stacey. I am the best interrogator on this squad, nothing gets past me. Ask him out. Life’s too short. We’re not going to be working together for much longer. You might not see him again from one month’s end to the next. Let him know how you feel.’

  ‘You’re out of order, Paula,’ Stacey said weakly.

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m your mate. And I nearly missed out on Elinor because I had my head too far up my arse with work. Then she gave me half a chance, and I grabbed it. And it changed my life. You need to do the same, Stacey. Or he’s going to be gone and you’re going to regret it. He’s a shit and he doesn’t deserve you, but apparently he’s what you want, so do something about it.’

  ‘Don’t you have an arrest to be making?’ Stacey said, recovering some of her spirit.

  ‘Thanks for the info.’

  Stacey replaced the phone and stared at the laptop screen. Then she stood up and walked across to the window, looking down at the parking yard below, turning over Paula’s words in her head. Apparently there were some things you couldn’t figure out by staring into a screen.

  Who knew?

  52

  Vanessa Hill stretched out and refilled her glass, then settled back on her sofa pillows. She loved this sofa with its textured tapestry upholstery, its deep cushions and its high sides. Lounging on it made her feel like a pasha, whatever that was, or a Roman at a feast. She loved to snuggle among the pillows and throws, nibbling at delicate little snacks and sipping wine. She was well aware that the staff at her recruitment agency indulged in lurid water-cooler speculation about her private life. The truth was that what her success and her money had bought her was the right to please her bloody self. And this was what pleased her – her own company, bloody good red wine, satellite TV and an extensive collection of DVDs. It wasn’t as if she got the chance to cosset herself that often. A couple of nights a week, at the most. The rest was devoted to building her empire. She might have a bus pass, but Vanessa was a long way from retirement.

  The episode of Mad Men faded to black and the titles rolled. She considered whether to watch another episode, then decided she’d watch the news and come back to the drama. She switched away from the DVD player and came in at the tail end of yet another bulletin about unrest in the Middle East. Vanessa harrumphed. She’d soon bloody sort them out. None of those men had balls enough to say what they meant. She’d thought it would revolutionise things to have Hillary Clinton running American foreign policy, but mostly it had just been more of the bloody same. Even the newsreaders were looking weary of it all. The only person who seemed to thrive on it was that miserable woman on the BBC who only ever turned up when everything had gone to pot. Vanessa gave a tight little smile that showed precisely where the botox had been injected. You’d run for the hills if you ever saw her coming down your street with a camera crew.

  ‘Former TV presenter Micky Morgan’s racing stud was the scene of a vicious attack earlier this evening,’ the newsreader said, showing a little animation now. Behind him, a split screen showed an apparently idyllic farmhouse and stable block, and a shot of Micky Morgan at her most glamorous, those famously lovely legs crossed and angled across the front of the sofa she was sitting on. Not a patch on Anne Bancroft, Vanessa thought. ‘A stable lad and two horses died in a shocking arson attack at her Herefordshire home. Only the quick response of her staff saved the lives of the remaining valuable racehorses that are boarded at the farm for stud purposes. Another of the stable lads was taken to hospital with smoke inhalation. He’s said to be in no danger.’

  The screen behind changed to show a live shot of a young reporter standing at the end of a driveway with police officers in the background, the wind whipping her hair into wild strands round her head. She had the faintly startled air of a woman who’s been rousted out from watching the X-Factor. She waited patiently for the anchor to bring her in but he still had script to work through. ‘Micky Morgan used to host the flagship lunchtime show Midday with Morgan. She abandoned her TV career after her then husband, fellow TV presenter and former champion athlete Jacko Vance, was revealed as a serial killer of teenage girls. Vance himself made a sensational jailbreak earlier this week when he escaped from Oakworth prison, a mere forty-five miles from his ex-wife’s farm. Over now to Kirsty Oliver at the scene. Kirsty, are the police connecting this attack to Vance?’

  ‘Will, they’re not saying anything officially yet. But I understand there has been an armed police presence here at the farm since news of Jacko Vance’s escape became public two days ago. In spite of that, someone managed to infiltrate the stable yard and set a fire in a hay barn behind the main stable block, which you can see in the background.’ She waved vaguely over one shoulder. ‘The farm remains closed off to visitors and we’ve seen no sign of Micky herself or her partner Betsy Thorne, though we have been told that they are in residence.’

  ‘Nice of you to let Vance know they’re at home,’ Vanessa muttered.

  ‘Thanks, Kirsty. We’ll come back to you if there’s any breaking news from your location.’ Sincere, concerned face. ‘Police have indicated that they wish to question Jacko Vance in relation to two other incidents – the double murder in Yorkshire yesterday morning and another arson attack in Worcester yesterday evening.’ Photographs of two good-looking thirty-somethings appeared behind the newsreader. ‘In a new development, police have identified the murder victims as Michael Jordan, a games software developer, and his partner, criminal barrister Lucy Bannerman. Michael Jordan’s sister is a detective with Bradfield police, and she’s believed to be the officer who arrested Jacko Vance for murder.’ Vanessa hastily put her glass down and pushed herself upright. ‘Carol Jordan,’ she spat, her face as twisted with distaste as it could get these days.

  Few people had ever thwarted Vanessa. Even fewer had got away with it. Carol Jordan was one of that tiny band. She was one of the pieces of grit in the oyster of Vanessa’s life. She could almost bring herself grudgingly to respect the Jordan woman – she had power and was willing to use it, she was ruthless, and she could clearly be single-minded in pursuit of her goal. These were qualities Vanessa hersel
f possessed in overwhelming amounts and she valued them in others. She also suspected that Jordan shared her ability to assess people’s strengths and weaknesses. Where Vanessa used that trait to her own advantage to build her reputation as a shrewd headhunter, Jordan seemed to apply it to bringing criminals to justice. Vanessa couldn’t see the point. Where was the profit in that? It wasn’t that she minded the existence of the police. Somebody had to keep the scum in their place. But it wasn’t the sort of career for anyone who had something about them. And that was why, ultimately, she couldn’t respect Carol Jordan.

  Before she could wander too far down the path of her feelings towards Carol Jordan, the bulletin caught her attention again and this time it transfixed her. The newsreader had done with the murder and was moving along. ‘Vance is also wanted for questioning in another arson attack. Last night in Worcester, this house was razed to the ground.’ A photograph of a smoking ruin appeared on the screen. ‘Luckily, nobody was home when the fire started. Police have not released the name of the householder, but neighbours said the previous owner, Arthur Blythe, died last year and the new owner has spent very little time here.’

  Arthur Blythe. The name Eddie had chosen to live under after he’d recovered enough to walk away from her. As if he’d wanted to lose himself. She’d deserved that house after what she’d had to go through. But he’d left it to the bastard. Why anybody would leave anything to Tony was beyond her. She certainly wasn’t going to. She was going to get through the lot before she shuffled off this mortal coil. In a year or two, once the economy started to pick up its heels, she’d flog the business she’d spent a lifetime building up. And then she would rack up all the experiences in her bucket list – all four tennis grand slams in the best seats, safaris to see all the great beasts of Africa, an up-close-and-personal cruise in the Galapagos, the Cannes film festival, the Northern Lights and a dozen more besides. By the time she was done, there wouldn’t be two halfpennies for Tony.

  The newsreader had moved on to football, but the image of the ruined house was still sharp in Vanessa’s head. It was a funny thing to go for if you were trying to hurt somebody. But Jacko Vance was somebody else Vanessa had a grudging respect for. He was another one who’d made his mind up and gone for it. Never mind that what he wanted was illegal and immoral and half a dozen other glib condemnations that the media would deliver at the drop of a dead body. He was determined to achieve his goals, and if it hadn’t been for Carol Jordan and, presumably, Tony trotting along in her wake like a pet dog, he’d still be doing what he was best at. No wonder he wanted to get his own back. In his shoes, she’d have felt exactly the same.

  Vanessa gave a dark chuckle. If she ever spoke honestly out loud, the water-cooler crowd would wet themselves. If you wanted to get on in this world, you had to be mealy-mouthed. She’d have to admit, Jacko Vance had been impressive on that front too. With all his charity work and his supposed support for the dying, he’d got them all convinced that he was little short of a saint.

  He hadn’t convinced Jordan, though. And it looked like Vance held Tony responsible too. But burning his house down? It said all you needed to know about what a useless waste of space her bastard son was. At least Jordan had people in her life that it would grieve her to lose. All Tony had was a house. And if you thought Tony was the sort of person who would be bothered by losing a physical possession, your research wasn’t as thorough as it should have been.

  Even as that thought flitted into her head, Vanessa felt a cold trickle down the back of her neck. What if the house was just the start? What if Vance’s research had been really shoddy? Carol Jordan had lost her brother. What if Tony was scheduled to lose a blood relative too?

  Tony had just joined the Manchester orbital motorway when his phone rang. He was so shocked to see Carol’s name on the screen he almost swerved into the central reservation, his tyres rattling over the studs on the road’s edge like automatic weapon fire. Thoroughly discombobulated, he stabbed at the phone’s answer button and shouted, ‘It’s me, I’m here. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’d be better if you didn’t leave stupid attention-seeking messages on my phone,’ she said. There was nothing friendly in her voice. ‘Where’s Vance?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said.

  ‘Not much of a profiler, are you?’

  He ignored the insult. He thought she was just trying to wind him up. He hoped, anyway. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at Vinton Woods. I’m staking out the house, but I don’t think he’s there. Where’s Ambrose?’

  ‘Same as me. On his way to where you are.’

  ‘I tried to call him but he’s not answering. There’s only one road in and out of this development. I think they should hold position away from the estate. If Vance gets a sniff of them, he won’t even turn off the main road and we’ll have lost him. And this time there won’t be some convenient clue on Terry Gates’s hard drive.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Tony said.

  ‘I know it makes sense, but I can’t communicate that to Ambrose. I don’t know if he’s blocking my calls, but I can’t raise him. You need to call him and tell him. He’ll listen to you. He thinks you’ve got a handle on what’s going on.’

  She was losing it, he thought. She was losing it and he was still too far away. ‘Even if I can get through to him, he won’t listen to me. I’m not a cop. I don’t have any operational command here. You need to talk to Patterson. Or go further up the chain of command. This isn’t something I can do, Carol.’

  ‘You don’t want to do it, you mean,’ she said, her voice low and bitter. ‘You can’t help yourself, can you? Because you fucked up, now you’re overcompensating. Somehow you’ve got to protect me. You’d rather let Vance escape than have me confront him, because you think I’ll fuck up and get killed. Well, you’re wrong, Tony. I know what I’m doing. If you won’t help, fuck you.’

  The line went dead. Tony smacked his fist on the steering wheel. ‘Masterful,’ he shouted. ‘Fucking masterful.’ His self-disgust plumbed new depths as his rage simmered down. The one good thing was that Vance hadn’t been there when Carol had arrived. The confrontation might only be postponed, but at least it hadn’t happened yet.

  He drove on, his mind racing over what he knew and what the possibilities might be. Why had Vance not returned to his base camp? He’d been on the road a long time. He’d need to rest properly, not in a hotel room where he had no control of his environment. He’d need to change his appearance somewhere nobody would notice that he looked different going out from coming in. The instinct of the predator was always to return to his lair. So why was Vance not in Vinton Woods? Where could he be? And why?

  Tony chewed on the problem as he skirted Manchester and Stockport, Ashton and Oldham and shot out on to the M62. In a few miles, he’d hit the motorway link for Bradfield. He was getting close to Vinton Woods now. He could argue the toss with Carol on the ground.

  But still the question of Vance’s whereabouts nagged him. ‘You want us to live with the pain,’ he said. ‘Most people would think Carol’s the only one who’s had that kind of pain so far. It’s like she got the full dose, but me and Micky, we’ve just got our starters.’ He gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles hurt.

  ‘Even if you meant it to be enough, it all went pear-shaped at Micky’s. Two horses and a stable lad dead, that’s sad, but it’s not really a tragedy, even for Betsy, who loves the horses. You’re not going to be able to let that rest. But not tonight. Not while the place is crawling with cops. You’re going to have to wait.’ He sighed in exasperation. ‘So all the more reason for you to go back to your hole in the ground, the place you think you’re safe. Rest. Regroup. Plan. Then do something to Micky that she’ll carry like a scar for the rest of her life.’ It felt right. It had the shape of Vance’s thinking. It had taken Tony a while to crawl back inside Vance’s mind. But now he was sure. He didn’t just know with his head. He empathised. He understood what made Vance tick, what he needed and what
would satisfy him.

  ‘You thought this was going to be quick and dirty. You’d gallop through your list, and you’d feel vindicated. But now you know it’s not that easy. The suffering needs to be very particular … ’ His voice tailed off.

  If the horses weren’t enough, the house wasn’t enough. In Tony’s world, it was as shattering and disruptive as a bereavement. However, that wouldn’t be how others saw it. Vance might have got it, if he’d been doing the watching and the deciding himself. If he’d seen Tony in the house with his own eyes, he’d have known precisely what he was achieving. But he hadn’t. He’d had to rely on the reports of others. Others who couldn’t creep about inside strangers’ heads with any degree of insight.

  In those circumstances, the house couldn’t be enough. Carol would be the obvious person to take from him. That would rip his heart out, no doubt about it. But Vance couldn’t kill Carol, because her ongoing pain was integral to his satisfaction. And what had happened to Chris, not Carol, would that have been enough? Maybe. But if a disfigured and damaged Carol wasn’t enough, that didn’t leave many options. Tony’s life was not overburdened with friendships. There were plenty of acquaintances, colleagues, former students. There were a handful of people he thought of as friends, but they weren’t close in the way that Vance would need. Besides, from the outside, they probably didn’t appear to be more than workmates. If he went for a drink with Ambrose or Paula, it would look like colleagues having a couple of beers after work. No big deal. Only someone who knew Tony a damn sight better than Vance possibly could would have grasped the importance of those connections. When it came to revenge, they didn’t even register.