merit of movement. That afternoon, she simply stared out of the window, eyes blank. She had closed down, like an animal hibernating through the worst of the winter, building up its strength for when it mattered.
Once before he had seen her like this. She’d been raped and brutalised, battered and bruised, beaten but not quite defeated. She’d protected herself with an inward retreat just like this. She’d locked herself away for months, denying herself any comfort that didn’t come out of a bottle, keeping friends and family beyond the curtain wall. Even Tony, with all the skills at his disposal, had barely been able to stay in touch. Just when he’d feared she was slipping away completely, the Job had saved her. It had given her something to live for that he hadn’t been able to provide. It was just another instance of his many failings, he thought, never stopping to ask whether she believed that too.
They’d barely cleared Bradfield when her phone rang. She declined the call without even looking at the screen. ‘I can’t talk to anyone,’ she said.
‘Not even me?’ He glanced away from the road to check her expression.
She’d given him a look he couldn’t fathom. There was nothing related to affection and plenty of ice. She said nothing, simply curling closer into herself. Tony focused on the driving, trying to put himself in her shoes and failing. He had no siblings. He could only imagine what it must be like to have that pool of shared memories at the heart of your childhood. Something like that could fortify you against the world. It could also be the first step on a lifetime journey of distorted relationships and twisted personalities. But everything Carol had said about her brother put them in the former camp.
When he’d first worked with Carol, all those years ago when profiling was in its early stages and she was one of his first champions, she and Michael had shared a loft apartment in a converted warehouse at the heart of the city. Very nineties. Tony remembered how Michael had helped them, offering his expertise in software development. He also remembered the unsettling period when he’d wondered whether Michael himself might be the killer. Luckily, he’d been quite wrong about that. And later, when he’d got to know Michael better, he’d felt embarrassed to have entertained so absurd a thought. Then he recalled how many killers had confounded their nearest and dearest and he felt less bad about his suspicions.
He remembered the first time he’d met Lucy. He’d come back to Bradfield after a brief and ill-fitting excursion into academic life; Carol had returned after the trauma that had nearly destroyed her. She’d moved back into the loft apartment which Michael had been sharing with Lucy. Five minutes in their company and Tony could understand why Carol had only ever seen that as a temporary solution. Some couples fitted so well together, it was impossible to imagine what could possibly drive a wedge between them. After an evening with Michael and Lucy, it was easy to picture them forty years ahead, still together, still delighting in each other’s company, still teasing each other.
And so Carol had moved into the self-contained basement flat in Tony’s house and eventually Michael and Lucy had cashed in on the twenty-first-century property boom and translated the loft into their breathtaking barn conversion on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. One of the reasons for the move had been their desire to start a family away from the pressures of city life. Tony had suspected there would be a lot more pressures, bringing up kids in the middle of nowhere, when every activity from school to play would involve a drive. But nobody had asked him. And now they were dead. The dream of children had died with them.
The smug voice of the satnav told him to take the next turn on the right. To his surprise, they were almost there. He had no recollection of most of the drive and wondered whether that had improved his driving.
They rounded the next bend and the world changed. Instead of a rural landscape where a dozen greens shaded into grey drystone walls, they’d arrived at a destination that seemed all too urban. An assortment of liveried police vehicles, the mortuary van and several unmarked cars lined the road. A white tent extended from the rear of the house, where Tony remembered the main door was. Paradoxically, it seemed more bleak than the surrounding landscape. He braked hard to avoid hitting the nearest car and pulled in abruptly behind it.
It had taken less than an hour from BMP headquarters to the barn, but Carol looked years older. Her skin had lost its bloom, the incipient lines on her face had deepened and grown firm. A soft moan escaped from her lips. ‘I so wanted to believe Blake got it wrong,’ she said.
‘Do you want me to go and find the SIO?’ Tony said, anxious to help but not being sure how to. All the years he’d known her and now she needed him most of all, he was all at sea.
Carol drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I need to see this for myself,’ she said, opening the door to a blast of chill wind.
They’d barely got out of the car when a uniformed officer with a clipboard bore down on them. ‘This is a restricted area,’ he said. ‘You can’t park here.’
Tony stepped forward. ‘This is DCI Jordan. And I’m Dr Tony Hill from the Home Office. Where will we find the SIO?’
The young PC looked perplexed. Then his face cleared as he worked out the solution to his dilemma. ‘ID?’ he said hopefully.
Carol leaned against the car and closed her eyes. Tony took the PC by the elbow and steered him away. ‘That’s her brother in there. She’s a DCI with Bradfield. She’s entitled to every bit of courtesy you can find right now. You’re not going to get into trouble for taking us to the SIO, but I will personally do my level best to make your life a fucking misery if you don’t.’ There was nothing conciliatory in his smile.
Before the situation could develop into a conflict, a tall cadaverous man with a prominent eyebrow ridge and a beaky prow of a nose emerged from the tent and caught sight of them. He waved and shouted, ‘PC Grimshaw? Bring DCI Jordan over here.’
The weight of the world removed from his shoulders, the PC led them past the cars and into Michael and Lucy’s drive. The tall man strode towards them. ‘You know him?’ Tony asked.
‘DCI John Franklin,’ Carol said. ‘We worked together, sort of, on the RigMarole murders. One of the bodies was on his patch. He didn’t like me. Nobody from West Yorkshire likes me. Or you either, come to that. Not after we made them look like fuckwits over Shaz Bowman.’
Franklin reached them, his trench coat flapping with the speed of his approach. ‘DCI Jordan,’ he said awkwardly. He had one of those Yorkshire accents that made every word feel like a bludgeon to the head. However hard he tried, sympathy was always going to elude him. ‘I’m very sorry.’ He looked Tony up and down. ‘We’ve not met,’ he said.
‘I’m Dr Tony Hill. From the Home Office.’
Franklin’s bushy eyebrows rose. ‘The profiler. Whose idea was it to bring you in?’
