‘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.
He stopped his lopsided slo-mo shuffle and turned to face her. ‘What do you mean? If you’re not here to protect me, what the hell are you here for?’
‘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
‘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.’
There was still nothing on the radio about his earlier exploits, which surprised Vance. He’d thought that in a world of 24/7 rolling news, someone would have leaked the double murder to a media contact. He hoped they’d taken him seriously when he’d reported it from a public phone outside the pub where he’d had lunch. It would be ironic if it had been dismissed as a crank call.
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.
Vance put on the suit jacket and picked up a briefcase. Then took a bus to the terminal, but instead of making for the checkin desks, he headed towards the car-rental counters. The Mercedes could have been spotted, or picked up on traffic cameras, and he wasn’t taking any chances. Using the Patrick Gordon ID, he hired an anonymous Ford saloon complete with GPS and charged it to an account that ultimately wound its way back to Grand Cayman. The ease of the transaction was something else that had changed for the better. He flirted mildly with the woman behind the counter, but not so much that she’d remember him.
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.
33
There was no question of following Carol. Tony stood helpless at the top of the stairs, flayed and gouged by her savagery. It felt as if the bond between them had been ruthlessly severed. He was cast adrift, not least because Carol of all people knew exactly how to cause him maximum damage. She was right, too. She’d given him all her trust, taken wild risks for him, put her life on the line for him. And he’d failed.
He should have considered the bigger picture. But he’d been so sure that he remembered all that was important about Vance. He hadn’t talked to the prison psychologist because he’d dismissed her professional value on the grounds that she’d let herself be seduced by his charm. That didn’t mean she didn’t have something valid to
