The Retribution (26 page)

Tony forced himself out of his frozen state of shock and called down to her. ‘Carol – wait for me.’

‘You’re not coming with me,’ she said. Her voice was like the slam of a door. And he was on the wrong side.

In an ideal world, she’d have got her hands on a copy of Geoff Whittle’s banned book about Vance the cop killer and hunkered down in a corner of the office to read it before she went head-to-head with its author. But this seemed to be one of those rare cases where ‘banned and pulped’ meant what it said. There was no readily available copy of
Sporting Kill
, and even if there had been, there was no time for that kind of homework. Not now that the killing had started. Nobody was blaming Vance publicly yet for the double murder of Michael Jordan and his girlfriend, but everyone in the MIT squad room knew exactly who to hold responsible.

All these years later and still it felt personal, this pursuit of Vance. Shaz Bowman’s death had changed so much about how Chris viewed herself. It had stripped away the lightness from her, turning her into a more sober and more serious person. She’d stopped looking for love in all the wrong places and made conscious decisions about how she wanted to live, rather than drifting into the next vaguely interesting thing. Working with MIT in Bradfield had offered her the chance to be the kind of copper she’d always imagined she could be. She had no idea how she was going to live up to that now.

The dull browns and greens of the Dark Peak gave way to the broken light grey and silver of the White Peak. Late lambs staggered around, coming right up to the edge of the road that curled down Winnats Pass before skittering away as the car approached. When the sun shone out here it felt like an act of God.

Castleton was a village for tourists and walkers. Chris and her partner came out this way occasionally in the winter with the dogs, enjoying the landscape when it was emptier. Already in late spring, the streets were busy with strolling visitors, stepping off the narrow pavements into the road. Chris took a right in the centre of the village and drove out along the hillside till she came to a huddle of four cottages clinging to the slope. According to Stacey, Whittle lived in the furthest.

On closer inspection, the cottage was less prepossessing. The paint on the window frames was flaking, weeds were sprouting between the flagstones on the path and the net curtains at the window sagged precariously. Chris raised a heavy black iron knocker and let it crash back into place.

‘Coming,’ a voice from inside called out. There was a long pause, some shuffling and banging, then the door inched open, the aperture limited by a heavy chain. A head topped with wiry white hair appeared in the gap, peering up through grimy glasses. ‘Who are you?’ the man asked in a surprisingly strong voice.

Chris flipped open her ID. ‘Detective Sergeant Devine. Mr Whittle, is it?’

‘Are you my police protection?’ He seemed indignant. ‘What’s taken you so long? He’s been out on the streets since yesterday and I’ve not had a moment’s rest since I saw it on the news. And how come I heard it on the news and not from one of your lot?’

‘You think Vance is after you?’ Chris tried not to sound as baffled as she felt.

‘Well, of course he is. My book told the truth about him for the first time. He managed to suppress it after the fact, but he swore at the time he’d get his own back on me.’ He almost closed the door so he could release the chain. ‘You’d better come in.’

‘I’m not here to protect you,’ Chris said as she followed him into a dim and cluttered kitchen that seemed to double as an office.

‘Information,’ Chris said. ‘Like you said, you told the truth about him. I’m here to pick your brains.’

He gave her a shrewd look. ‘Normally that would cost you. But I can sell the story all round town and make more money that way. “Police seek author’s help to track jailbreak Jacko.” That’ll work nicely. Stick a police-budget-cuts angle on it and I might even manage to flog it to the
Guardian
. Sit down,’ he said, waving vaguely at a couple of chairs tucked under a pine table. He settled into a high wooden carver at the far end of the table. ‘What did you want to know?’

‘Anything that might help us find Vance,’ Chris said, shifting a pile of newspapers on to the floor so she could sit down. ‘Who he might turn to for help. Where he might go for shelter. That sort of thing.’

Whittle rubbed his chin. Chris could hear the rasp of stubble against his fingers. ‘He was a loner, Vance. Not one for mates. He relied a lot on his producer, but he popped his clogs a few years ago. The only other person he might turn to would be a bloke called Terry Gates. He’s a market trader—’

‘We know about Terry Gates,’ Chris said.

Whittle pulled a face. Chris could see dried saliva encrusted in the corners of his downturned mouth. ‘Then it’s hard to say who,’ he said. ‘Except maybe … ’ He gave Chris a shrewd look. ‘Have you considered his ex-wife?’

‘I thought there was no love lost there,’ Chris said, her interest suddenly quickening.

Whittle gave a throaty chuckle full of phlegm and winked. ‘That’s what she’d like you to believe.’

Obviously, he hadn’t hung around to see for himself. He had work to do and even though he was convinced of the effectiveness of his disguise, he wasn’t about to take silly chances.

After he’d finished with lovely Lucy, Vance had bundled his bloody clothes into a plastic sack. He’d taken a long hot shower, getting rid of all the traces of his victims. He’d removed the family photo from the wall as a final act intended to freak out Carol Jordan, then dressed downstairs in the clothes he’d brought with him – the trousers of a pinstripe suit and a formal shirt. He swapped the wig he’d arrived with for one that was shorter and differently styled. A better match for Patrick Gordon’s ID. He walked back along the path to his car, taking care not to appear hurried or to show any signs of the elation that was pumping through him. Live with that, Carol Jordan, for the rest of your miserable life. The way he’d had to live every day with what she’d done to him, shut up in a prison where he didn’t belong, surrounded by ugliness and stupidity. Let her discover what it was like to suffer. Only she wouldn’t be able to break out of the prison he’d made for her.

He’d dumped the bloody clothes in an industrial skip behind a hotel near Leeds-Bradford airport before parking the Mercedes in the long-stay car park. Like so many things, the system here had changed since he’d gone inside. Now, you had to take a ticket and hang on to it, paying at some machine somewhere else. He wondered how many dim-witted parking attendants had been made redundant, and how much it had added to the sum of human happiness not to have to deal with the surly bastards.

Within twenty minutes, he was on his way, the necessities of vengeance transferred from one vehicle to another. If everything went according to plan, he’d have completed his second act of vengeance within hours. Maybe even his third, if he had a fair wind at his back. The only question in his mind was whether he should book into a motel later, or drive all the way back to Vinton Woods. What luxury, to have such options, he thought. For too long, he’d been trapped without anything but the most basic choices, confined within someone else’s rules. He had so much lost time to make up for, thanks to Carol Jordan and Tony Hill and his bitch of an ex-wife. Still, they were all going to be condemned to a lifetime of suffering. Suffering from which there could be no escape.

Vance smiled at the thought as he pulled into a petrol station. There was true satisfaction in what he was doing. When he was safely installed in his Caribbean villa or his Arabian mansion, he’d be able to look back on this and feed off the sheer pleasure of it for the rest of his life. Knowing his victims still felt the pain would just be the icing on the cake.

He stood by the stairs, gazing at the macabre spectacle, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. It had to be Vance. Tony had never had any difficulty with the notion of coincidence, but sometimes what your brain told you was happening was exactly the way it was. For this to be random was beyond the bounds of credibility.

There was, of course, another possibility. There usually was.

‘Dr Hill?’ Franklin was shouting his name, calling him back to the here and now.

He turned away from the scene and went downstairs. ‘This wasn’t about sex,’ he said to Franklin, who looked incredulous.

‘What do you mean, it wasn’t about sex? According to the preliminary reports, he killed them when they were having sex and then, after he’d slit her throat, he fucked a dying woman.’ Franklin sounded like a man who couldn’t decide between anger and sarcasm. ‘Can you tell me in what sense that’s not about sex?’

Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘Let me put it this way. Michael and Lucy have been together for ten years or so. If you were trying to catch them having sex so you could get off on killing them while they were in the act, would you choose a Friday after lunch?’ Now it was Tony’s turn for sarcasm. ‘Would you reckon that was the best time to find them fucking each other’s brains out, Chief Inspector? Is that the way it works round here?’

Franklin scowled. ‘When you put it like that … ’

Tony shrugged. ‘I think he just got lucky. He came here to kill them and it turned out much easier than he expected. As for the sex – he’s been banged up for a dozen years. Lucy was an attractive woman. Even in death. And he turned her over, so he wouldn’t have to look at her face.’ He looked at the floor. ‘At what he’d done to her.’