The Wire in the Blood (30 page)

Wharton closed his notebook. ‘As I think I should be too, sir. I very much appreciate both of you taking the time to talk to me. If there’s anything else, which I very much doubt, I’ll be in touch.’ He rose and gave his junior officer a ‘let’s go’ jerk of the head.

‘You don’t need to speak to Betsy?’ Micky asked. ‘She shouldn’t be long.’

‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ Wharton said. ‘Frankly, I think DC Bowman’s visit here was almost certainly nothing to do with her death. We just have to tie up the loose ends.’

Vance crossed to the door and opened it to usher them out. ‘A shame you have to be dragged down here when the real work’s waiting for you in Yorkshire,’ he said, his sympathetic smile adding weight to the commiseration in his voice.

Micky said goodbye and watched from the window as Vance saw the police officers off the premises. She wasn’t sure what her husband was hiding. But she knew him well enough to know that what she had just heard was only a distant relative of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

When he walked back into the room, she was leaning against the fireplace. ‘Are you going to tell me what you didn’t tell them?’ she asked, her eyes giving him the shrewd appraisal that could always penetrate his glossy surface.

Vance grinned. ‘You’re a witch, Micky. Yes, I’ll tell you what I didn’t tell them. I did recognize one of the girls whose picture Bowman showed me.’

Micky’s eyes widened. ‘You did? How come? Where from?’

‘No need to panic,’ he said scornfully. ‘It’s perfectly innocent. When she went missing, her parents contacted us. Said she was my biggest fan, blah, blah, blah, never missed a show, blah, blah, blah. Wanted us to put out an appeal for her to contact them.’

‘And did you?’

‘Course not. It wouldn’t fit the format of the programme at all. Somebody from the office sent them a sympathetic letter and we got one of the tabloids to run a story saying, “Jacko begs runaway to phone home”.’

‘So why didn’t you tell Wharton? If you did something for the press, there’ll be cuttings somewhere! They could dig them out and then you’ll be in deep shit.’

‘How? They don’t even know what Bowman was doing, which doesn’t sound like they’ve got her files, does it? Look, Mick, I never met the girl. I never spoke to her. But if I tell DI Plod I recognized her…shit, Mick, you know the police are the leakiest sieve in town. Next thing you know, it’ll be “Jacko in murder quiz” splashed all over the front pages. No thanks. I can do without it. They can’t connect me to a single one of Bowman’s runaways. The king of deniability, remember?’

Micky shook her head, admiring his chutzpah in spite of herself. ‘More like Teflon Man,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Jacko. When it comes to playing the audience like a fiddle, even I can’t hold a candle to you.’

He crossed to her and kissed her cheek. ‘Never try to bullshit a bullshitter.’

Carol walked next morning into her office to find her crew had wrong-footed her by being there ahead of her. Tommy Taylor sprawled in the chair opposite hers, legs wide apart to emphasize his masculinity. Lee had the window cracked open, blowing his smoke out to join the traffic fumes. Di was in her usual position leaning against the wall, arms folded over her badly fitting suit. Carol itched to drag her kicking and screaming to the January sales to kit the woman out in clothes that would both fit and flatter her instead of the expensive and nasty stuff she chose now.

Carol made straight for her bastion behind the desk, flipping open her briefcase as she sat. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Our serial arsonist.’

‘Crunchy nut cornflake,’ Lee said.

‘Actually, not,’ Carol said. ‘Apparently, our firebug is as sane as you or me. Well, me, anyway, since I can’t speak for you three. According to a psychologist whose judgement I trust implicitly, we’re not dealing with a psychopath. The man who’s setting these fires has a straightforward criminal motive. And that points to Jim Pendlebury’s part-timers.’ The three stared at her as if she’d suddenly slipped into Swedish.

‘You what?’ Lee managed to speak first.

Carol distributed copies of the list the fire chief had given her. ‘I want deep background checks into these men. Particular attention to financial details. And I don’t want them to get so much as a sniff that we’re interested.’

Tommy Taylor found his voice. ‘You’re accusing
firemen
?’

‘I think you’ll find we’re supposed to call them firefighters these days,’ Carol said mildly. ‘I’m not accusing anybody yet, Sergeant. I’m trying to gather enough information on which we can base a decision.’

‘Firemen
die
in fires,’ Di Earnshaw sniped mutinously. ‘They get injured, they inhale smoke. Why would a fireman set fires? He’d have to be a real sicko, and you just said this bloke isn’t. Surely that’s a contradiction in terms?’

‘He’s not sick,’ Carol said firmly. ‘Desperate, maybe, but he’s not suffering from a mental illness. We’re looking for someone who’s so deep in debt he’s lost sight of anything except how to get out of it. It’s not that he wants to put his mates at risk; he’s just not allowing himself to include them in the equation.’

Taylor shook his head sceptically. ‘It’s a helluva slur on the fire service,’ he protested.

‘No more so than outside inquiries into allegations of police corruption. And we all know that happens.’ Carol’s voice was dry. She shuffled the case papers back into her briefcase then looked up at them. ‘You lot still here?’

Lee tossed his cigarette into the street below in an eloquent gesture and pushed himself into a slouching walk to the door. ‘I’m on it,’ he said.

Taylor stood up and ostentatiously rearranged the outward evidence of his gender. ‘Aye,’ he said, following Lee and indicating to Di Earnshaw that she should follow.

‘Softly, softly,’ Carol said to the retreating backs.

If spines could speak, Di Earnshaw’s would have uttered a fluent ‘Fuck off.’ The door closed behind them and Carol leaned back in her chair, one hand massaging the tight knots at the base of her skull. It was going to be a very long day.

Tony reached for the phone automatically, mumbling, ‘Tony Hill here, can you hang on a minute,’ before finishing the sentence he was typing into his computer. He looked at the receiver in his hand as if not quite certain how it had arrived there. ‘Yes, sorry, Tony Hill speaking.’

‘This is DI Wharton.’ His voice was neutral.

‘Why?’ Tony asked.

‘What?’ Wharton stumbled, wrong-footed.

‘I asked why you were calling. What’s so strange about that?’

‘Aye, right. Well, I’m calling out of courtesy,’ Wharton said with a brusqueness that contradicted his words.

‘That’s novel.’

‘There’s no need to get clever. My boss would have no problem with bringing you in for another visit.’

‘He’d have to take that up with my lawyer. You’ve had your one free shot. So what was this courtesy you wanted to extend me?’

‘We had a telephone call from Micky Morgan, the TV presenter who, as you may or may not know, is Mrs Jacko Vance. She volunteered the information that Bowman visited their house in London on Saturday morning to interview her husband. So we took a trip down there and spoke to Mr Vance ourselves. And he’s in the clear. Bowman might have made a fool of herself in front of your little clique, but she wasn’t daft enough to repeat her nonsense to the man himself. Turns out all she wanted to ask was if he’d seen anybody at his events stalking these missing girls. And he hadn’t. Not surprising, when you consider how many faces pass his in a week. So you see, Dr Hill, he’s clean. They came to us, we didn’t go to them.’

‘And that’s it? Jacko Vance told you he’d waved goodbye to Shaz Bowman on the doorstep and that’s good enough for you?’

‘We’ve no reason to think otherwise,’ Wharton said stiffly.

‘The last person to see her alive? Aren’t they usually worth a look?’

‘Not when they have no known connection to the victim, a reputation for probity that’s never been challenged and they said goodbye twelve hours before the crime was committed,’ Wharton said, his voice laced with acid. ‘Especially when they’re a registered disabled, one-armed person who’s supposed to have overwhelmed a highly trained, able-bodied police officer.’

‘Can I ask one question?’

‘You can ask.’

‘Was there a witness to this interview or did Vance see Shaz alone?’

‘His wife let her into the house, but she left them to it. Bowman saw him alone. But that doesn’t automatically mean he’s lying, you know. I’ve been in this game a long time. I can tell when folk are telling me lies. Face it, Doctor, you’re well off target. I can’t say I blame you for trying to divert us, but we’re sticking with the people that she knew.’

‘Thanks for letting me know.’ Not trusting himself to say more, Tony dropped the phone back into its cradle. The blindness of the human animal never ceased to amaze him. It wasn’t that Wharton was a stupid man; he was simply, in spite of years in the police service, conditioned to the belief that men like Jacko Vance could not be violent criminals.

In a way, Wharton’s call was what he had been waiting for. The police could not avenge Shaz Bowman and vindicate his own work. It was up to him now, and there was a mordant satisfaction in that. Besides, Wharton’s answer to his question had confirmed Vance as prime suspect in Tony’s eyes. It had to be him. Tony had already eliminated a psychotic fan; now he could eliminate the members of Vance’s entourage. If no one else had witnessed the interview, no one else could have picked up Shaz’s trail after she left the house.

Picking up the phone again, Tony called the number he’d obtained earlier from Directory Enquiries, anticipating this moment. When the switchboard answered, he said, ‘Can you put me through to the
Midday with Morgan
production office?’ Then he leaned back to wait, a grim little smile curving his lips.

John Brandon fiddled with the handle of his coffee cup. ‘I don’t like it, Carol,’ he admitted. She opened her mouth to respond and he lifted a finger to silence her. ‘Oh, I know you’re no more fond of the idea than I am. It’s still a big step, pointing the finger at the fire service. I only hope we’re not making a terrible mistake here.’

‘Tony Hill’s been right before,’ she reminded him. ‘And when you look at his analysis, it makes sense the way nothing else does.’

Brandon shook his head despairingly, looking more like a world-weary undertaker than ever. ‘I know. It’s such a depressing thought, though. To put so many lives at risk for so little. At least when coppers go bent, people don’t usually end up dead.’ He sipped his coffee. The aroma wafted across the desk to Carol, making her mouth water. Normally he offered her a cup; it was a measure of how shocked he was by her report that she wasn’t sharing the fragrant brew. ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘Keep me informed of what your team comes up with. I’d appreciate advance notice of an arrest.’

‘No problem. There was one other thing, sir?’

‘Was that the bad news or the good news?’

‘I think it was the bad news. Depending on what you think of the other matter, sir.’ Carol’s smile held no cheer.

The Chief Constable sighed and half-turned in his swivel chair to stare out across the estuary. As usual, the boss had the best view, Carol thought irrelevantly as an ocean-going trawler slid from one window to the next. ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said.

‘It also concerns Tony Hill,’ she said. ‘You know about the murder on his squad?’

‘Hellish business,’ Brandon said accurately. ‘The worst thing that can happen in this job is losing an officer. But losing one like that…It’s your biggest nightmare.’

‘Especially if you’ve got memories like Tony Hill’s to draw on.’

‘You’re not wrong.’ He looked shrewdly across at her. ‘Apart from our natural compassion, how does this engage us?’

‘Officially, not at all.’

‘But unofficially?’

‘Tony’s having some problems with West Yorkshire. They appear to be treating him and his profiling trainees as their principal suspects instead of an effective resource. Tony feels they’ve dismissed other avenues for arbitrary reasons, and he’s determined that Shaz Bowman’s killer shouldn’t escape simply because the investigating officers are taking a blinkered approach.’

A smile escaped and spread across Brandon’s face. ‘Those his words?’

Carol’s answering smile was complicit. ‘Not verbatim, sir. I didn’t take a contemporaneous note.’

‘I can see why he feels the need to take action,’ Brandon said cautiously. ‘Any investigator would have the same reaction. But we have rules in the police service that prevent officers investigating crimes where they have a personal interest. Those rules exist for the very good reason that crimes close to home distort an officer’s judgement. Are you sure it wouldn’t be best to let West Yorkshire get on with this in their own way?’

‘Not if it means leaving a psychopath on the streets,’ Carol said firmly. ‘There’s nothing wrong that I can see with the way Tony’s mind’s working.’

‘You still haven’t explained what this has to do with us.’

‘He needs help. He’s working with some of his task force officers, but they’re all currently on suspension, so they don’t have access to any official channels. Plus he needs input from an experienced police officer to counterbalance his viewpoint. He can’t get that from West Yorkshire. All they want to do is find a reason to stick him or one of his team behind bars.’

‘They never wanted to host that unit in the first place,’ Brandon said. ‘It’s not surprising they see this as an excuse to shoot it down in flames. Nevertheless, it is their case and they’re not looking to us for assistance.’

‘No, but Tony is. And I feel I owe him, sir. All I’d be doing is a little background digging to provide his team with raw materials like names and addresses. I intend to give him what help I can. I’d prefer to do it with your blessing.’

‘When you say help…?’

‘I won’t be treading on West Yorkshire’s heels. The angle Tony’s interested in is miles away from their inquiries. They won’t know I’m there. I’m not going to drop you in a jurisdictional wrangle.’

Brandon swallowed the last of his coffee and pushed the cup away from him. ‘Damn right, you’re not. Carol, do what you’ve got to do. But you’re doing it off the books. This conversation never happened, and if it all comes on top, I never met you before.’