Close to the microphone, a laugh, low and generous, drawing the listener in.
I'm sorry, it's just that I can see you now, excited, thinking, ah, he's given himself away, told us more than we should know. But, no. It isn't true and if it were it wouldn't really matter. I could tell you my date of birth, size of shoe, the color of my eyes. Even Nancy could tell you the color of my eyes. She could tell you that much. But it wouldn't matter. There still wouldn't be time
.
So listen very carefully. Don't make any mistakes. Do as I say to the letter and Nancy can return, free and unharmed, to where she came from
.
The day after you receive this tape you are to take two identical bags, each containing twenty-five thousand pounds, to two locations. The bags must be duffel bags, plain black, no markings, and the money must be in used notes, fifties and twenties only. The first location is the Little Chef at the intersection of the A15 and the A631 at Normanby. The second is the Little Chef on the A17 south of Boston. The bags are to be driven to the restaurants in unmarked cars, one driver and one passenger only, neither in uniform. The cars must both arrive at their destinations at a quarter to five in the evening. Park outside and leave the engine running while the passenger takes the bag into the Gents' toilet and leaves it on the floor beneath the hand dryer. As soon as that has been done, that person must get straight back into the car and the car must drive off. There's no reason this should take any more than two minutes and if it does the deal is off. If there are any other police cars in the area, marked or unmarked, the deal is off. If the locations are visited earlier in the day for the purpose of setting up microphones or hidden cameras, the deal's off. Anything, any attempt to detain me, and the agreement is null and void
.
So, remember, nothing bad has to happen here and if it does it will be at your door, your faultâand I'm sure you don't want to live with that. Especially if it means somebody else is not
.
The same low laugh, and then a click, louder than before. Silence. How he loves this, the experts will say, the psychologists, the precision of his orders, the control, like someone moving counters around a board. A man seizing the chance to laugh at others where previously others have laughed at him. About his apparent self-confidence there is a division; to one it is assumed, a delusion to be easily shattered, to another it is realâthe confidence of someone in the process of constructing a world in which he is master, believing this more and more.
But this will come later.
Now, in the room where they have been listeningâSkelton, Resnick, Helen Siddons, Millingtonâno one moves, speaks, swivels in their chair, cares, for several moments, to look anywhere other than at the floor. Nothing bad has to happen here and if it does it will be at your door, your fault. Finally, it is Millington who clears his throat, crosses and recrosses his legs; Helen Siddons who reaches inside her bag for cigarettes. Skelton and Resnick look one another in the eye: a quarter to five tomorrow. Give or take a few minutes, it is a quarter to five today.
Thirty-six
Through the slatted blinds of Resnick's office, the city folded in upon itself in pools of orange light softly washed by rain. He knew all too well the results of profiling in this type of crime, studies carried out initially by the FBI and confirmed here at the Institute of Psychiatry. Four basic types: those needing to compensate for their own feelings of sexual inadequacy; those who experience excitement and pleasure as a direct response to their victim's suffering; the assertive with a need to express more fully their sense of domination; those whose hostility is a reaction to deep-seated anger.
He was also aware that a high proportion of sexually motivated criminals, those who sought to exercise power over their victims, were also obsessed with the police. They read books and articles, followed cases, watched trials, collected anything and everything, from warrant cards to uniforms, they could lay their hands on. As far as Resnick knew, they were fully paid-up subscribers to
Police Review
.
He knew all that, the theory of it, and at that moment it was little help. Twenty-four hours.
It wouldn't really matter ⦠There still wouldn't be time
. And they still had to make sure the voice on the tape was genuine, Nancy's voice.
Resnick turned away from the window towards the telephone.
As soon as she recognized his voice, Dana's face broke into a smile which as abruptly disappeared. “I'm sorry to have to ask you this,” Resnick said, “but if we can avoid it, we'd prefer not to inform her parents before we must.”
All assurances aside, Dana came into the CID room wearing the expression of someone asked to identify a body. She sat in Resnick's office, the tape player between them on the desk, and it was as if the two of them had scarcely met, never touched.
At the first sounds of Nancy's voice, a gasp tore from Dana's body and she began to shake. Resnick paused the tape so that she could regain control. He signaled through the glass and Naylor brought in a mug of tea which sat in front of her, ignored. When he played the tape again, she listened in silence, the tears falling slowly down her face.
“You're sure, then?” Resnick asked.
“Aren't you?”
“It is her voice, there isn't any doubt?”
“No, for God's sake. No. What's the matter with you?”
“Do you want someone to drive you home?” Resnick said from the door.
“It's all right. I'll be fine.” And then, “At least, she's still alive.”
“Yes. That's right.” But the pause before he spoke was too long to allow anything but cold comfort.
Helen Siddons was finishing off a takeaway chicken tandoori, chasing the rice around the foil container with a plastic fork. The ends of her fingers were stained orange-red from where she had used her hands. A bottle of mineral water was almost empty beside the ashtray. Helen had been on the phone to her old headquarters, ordering up the available paperwork relating to Susan Rogel. The copy of the ransom note had already been faxed.
Obey my instructions to the letter
. She could still remember the scorn on the faces of some of her so-called colleagues. Overstepped the mark on this one, hadn't she? Standing beside her car with the wind coming hard off the tops and nothing to show but cracked lips and cold and empty hands.
“You want it to be him, don't you?” Resnick spoke from the doorway. “The same man.”
“I want him to be caught, whoever.”
“But if it turned out that way ⦔
“Then, yes. Great. But you don't have to worry, I'm not about to develop tunnel vision.”
“Am I worried?” Resnick said.
“I don't know you well enough to say. Perhaps you always act like this.”
“Which is?”
Helen made a small shrugging movement with her shoulders. “Suspicious. Resentful. Almost hostile.”
“And that's what I'm being?”
“Where I'm concerned, yes.”
“I don't think so.”
Helen smiled. “Naturally.” There was nothing warm about the smile.
“Those calls that were made to Susan Rogel's parents,” Resnick said. “I don't suppose any of them were taped?”
Helen shook her head. “There's someone coming in first thing. Loughborough University. Make a comparison between the Rogel note and the voice on the cassette. Vocabulary, phraseology, whatever.”
Resnick nodded. The lingering smell of chicken was making him realize he was hungry. Part of his mind was sorting through the contents of the food cupboard, the refrigerator: a snack at bedtime. “See you in the morning, then. Early start.”
“I think I'll stay here,” she said. “Catch an hour in the chair.”
Resnick said goodnight and walked towards the stairs. Outside, he noticed that Skelton's car was still backed up against the fence.
Thirty-seven
Lynn had decided to drive over the night before. She hadn't had too bad a day, a couple of burglaries to check out, both of them big places in the Park, carriage lamps bolted either side of the front door and enough personal jewelry in the main bedroom to take a dozen homeless off the streets full-time. One woman had been pleasant, matter-of-fact, had offered her tea and walnut cake and even made some nice remark about Lynn's hair. At the second house she had spoken to a man, a fleshy-faced barrister who smoked small cigars and made half-hearted attempts to look up Lynn's skirt when she crossed her legs. She could tell from the way he answered her questions about what was missing that the list which finally reached his insurance company was going to be fifty percent speculation.
Oh, and she had called in to see Martin Wrigglesworth, caught him between clients and talked a little about Gary James and his latest outburst. Wrigglesworth had been guarded, looking anxiously over his shoulder like all social workers now, worried that if he intervened too soon and with too little cause, he was likely to end up on the wrong side of a public inquiry. “But what about the kids?” Lynn had asked. Wrigglesworth had fidgeted with the stray hairs of his moustache: “We've taken the boy to the doctor once and he's been cleared. We're going to need something more before we can do that again.” How much more than a badly bruised two-year-old face did you need? Lynn had thought. “You don't think you could find an excuse for dropping by, some time in the next few days?” Martin Wrigglesworth had said he would try. Lynn left, knowing that was the best she was going to get; hopeful still that what would happen was, Michelle Paley would use the number Lynn had left her, make her call.
Lynn had not really been hungry before she left, but neither did she want to break her journey. Unwilling to be more imaginative, she drove out to the McDonald's near the new Sainsbury's, not so new any longer, and sat in the window, looking out into the lights of the passing traffic and trying not to think too hard about the fillet offish she was eating. Twenty-nine percent fresh fish, the advertisements boasted. What was the rest?
She had been aware of a new excitement in the Nancy Phelan business back at the station, out on the fringe of it though, not yet party to what was going on. They'd found a body, someone had said, in the canal by Beeston Lock. She hadn't heard anything to corroborate that. Kevin Naylor had been tying up his paperwork in the CID room and she had asked him. “There's been contact from the bloke who took her, some kind of ransom note, that's all I know.” She had been at her desk when Dana Matthieson had left Resnick's office, pasty-faced and close to crying; something about the way she had looked back at Resnick from the door, as if, Lynn had caught herself thinking, there might be something more between them. Well, biting down into the batter of her fillet offish, so what if there was? What business was it of hers? Five minutes later, she was on the road.
For a moment, as she turned off the road and her headlights swept across the pebble-dashed exterior, Lynn thought the house was in darkness. But there was a light burning in the kitchen and her mother threw open the back door and smothered Lynn in her arms.
“How is he?” Lynn asked as she released herself.
“Oh, Lynnie, it's just awful.”
Her father was in the room at the front of the house, the one that was kept for occasional Sunday teas and special occasions; the last time Lynn could recall seeing her father in there was after her Auntie Cissie's funeral, awkward in his red hands and black suit, anxious to be away from the polite grieving and the sausage rolls, back among his hens.
Now he was sitting, stiff and straight, on a hard mahogany chair, the seat of which he had padded with two cushions.
“Dad, why don't you rest on the settee?”
His eyes looked at her from gray channels of pain. “You know,” he said, wincing a little as he turned towards her, “them buggers won't let me have as much as a glass of milk.”
He had been on a semi-solid diet for two days, this last day allowed only clear fluids, nothing more. Lynn sat on the arm of the settee and reached for his hand. The purgative the doctor had given seemed to have sucked all the life out of him. When she bent to brush her lips against his cheek, it was sallow and cold.
“What's going to happen to your mother?” he said.
“What d'you mean, happen to her? Nothing's going to happen to her.”
“After I'm gone.”
“Oh, Dad, for heaven's sake. It's only an examination, a precaution. You'll be fine, you see.”
The veins on the back of his hand were like maps.
“Dad.”
She took one of the hands and held it against her mouth and his fingers smelled of waste and decay.
“What's going to happen,” he said, “to your mother?”
The hospital was close to the city center and from a distance seemed to have been made from sections of Lego by an unimaginative child. The interior was low-ceilinged and lit by strip-lighting from overhead. Staff walked briskly along corridors, while visitors stopped to peer at the neatly engraved directions, white and green. They shared the lift with an elderly woman sleeping on a trolley, tubes running from a pair of portable drips into her wrist. The porter whistled “Mr. Tambourine Man” and smiled at Lynn with his eyes.
The nurse would have made two of Lynn and left room to spare. She called Lynn's father pet and told him she'd look after him, promised him a nice cup of tea when it was over. “If you'd like to have a word with Mr. Rodgers about the endoscopy,” she said to Lynn.
There were flowers on the desk and a wooden bowl, polished and stained to bring out the natural grain. The abdominal registrar wore a white coat and suit trousers and tennis shoes on his feet; he had octagonal rimless glasses and an accent that had never shaken seven years of public school. He greeted Lynn with a firm handshake and a glance at his watch. “Please,” he said, “sit down.”