‘I know my rights. If you want me to come down the station, you can arrest me. Otherwise you can fuck off.’ Fletcher smirked, catching the look between Kevin and Paula. It was as if he knew how little evidence they had and he wanted to taunt them.
Part of Paula wanted to arrest him on suspicion of murder. Her years of experience told her he had something he wanted to keep hidden. But if she did that, the clock would start ticking and they’d only have thirty-six hours to question him before they had to charge him or let him go. ‘I think you should invite us in,’ Paula said in her toughest voice.
‘I don’t think so,’ Fletcher said. There was a determination in those four words that provoked Paula beyond bearing. She knew they were right and she wasn’t going to let him slip through their fingers.
Paula put her hand to her ear and tilted her head towards the hallway. ‘Can you hear that, Sarge? Somebody shouting for help?’ She moved forward till her leading elbow was touching Fletcher’s chest.
Now Fletcher showed some edginess. ‘It’s not shouting for help. It’s
‘I think you’re right, detective,’ Kevin said, moving in behind her. Fletcher was going to have to yield or be pushed aside. He spread his legs and stood his ground. Kevin turned and shouted down the landing, ‘We’ve got someone in here shouting for help.’
And then it was all a blur of noise and movement and black. Paula flattened herself against the wall as the tactical squad batted Fletcher to the ground and cuffed him. They poured into the living room at the end of the hall like they expected Osama bin Laden’s ghost to be hunched over the gas fire. Two of them slipped back into the hall and busted into the first room. Paula saw the corner of a bathroom before the two men backed out and slammed open the door opposite. They stopped on the threshold and one said, ‘Oh, fuck.’
Paula pushed past them and looked in. The only thing it was possible to take in was on the double bed. The remains of a woman’s body appeared to float on a sea of red. She had been slashed to ribbons, her flesh flayed from the bones in places. Just as Tony had predicted, the only intact part of her was her head. Splashes and drips of blood dotted the walls like a modern art installation. Paula turned away, an overwhelming sense of waste choking her. Tony had been right about something else too. There had been an issue of urgency. And they hadn’t been nearly urgent enough.
Kevin was reciting the words of the caution over Fletcher’s prone body. One of the tactical squad was on his radio calling for a full crime-scene technical team, another was on the phone to Superintendent Reekie reporting on what they’d found. If this was a blaze of glory, you could stick it up your arse, Paula thought.
The two cops by the bedroom door backed into the living room. Paula followed them into the dusty disarray and gave the TV an empty glance. ‘It was
‘She should have come home,’ Fletcher shouted. ‘None of this would have happened if she’d just come home.’
Tony shot up the exit ramp, his tyres squealing as he hit the roundabout and dragged the car round till he was tearing back on to the motorway in the opposite direction. As soon as he could prise a hand off the wheel, he reached for his phone and hit the redial to speak to Ambrose. And went straight to voicemail. The same thing that had happened to Carol.
‘Please, no,’ he wailed. ‘This is crap.’ The phone beeped. ‘Alvin, this is Tony. I know where Vance is. Please, call me back as soon as you can.’
Another five miles back to the M62, then a few more miles to the Halifax turn. What if he was too late? How easy would that be to live with?
His phone rang, shaking him out of his introspection. The voice was crackly and remote. ‘Dr Hill? This is DC Singh. I’m dealing with DS Ambrose’s phone because he’s driving and doesn’t want to be distracted. You say you know where Vance is?’
‘Put Alvin on. This is important, I don’t have time to explain it from scratch.’
There was a crackly confusion of speech. Then Ambrose’s voice boomed out. ‘What the fuck, doc? I thought Vinton Woods was a definite.’
‘That’s where he’s based, not where he is right now.’
‘So where is he right now?’
‘I think he’s at my mother’s house,’ Tony said. ‘He wants blood, Alvin. Bricks and mortar’s just a start. And the only blood I’ve got is my mother.’
‘I’ve got a whole team on their way to Vinton Woods. How can you be sure he’s not there?’
‘Because Carol Jordan is and she says the house is empty.’
‘Can you trust her?’
‘Yes.’ Tony didn’t even have to think about that one. She might not want to be in the same room as him, but that didn’t mean she’d start lying to him about the important stuff.
‘And you think he’s at your mother’s house? Have you got any evidence to back that up, doc?’
‘No,’ Tony said. ‘Just a lifetime of experience dealing with fucked-up heads like Vance. I’m telling you, he wants blood on his hands. He killed Carol’s brother and my mother is the logical next move.’ There wasn’t any point in trying to explain Vance’s likely misunderstanding of the relationship between Tony and Vanessa. ‘I’m on my way there now. I’m probably about fifteen minutes away.’
There was a long interval of static, then Ambrose said, ‘Give DC Singh the bloody address, then. And don’t do anything stupid.’
Tony did the first part of what he’d been told. ‘How far away are you?’ he asked DC Singh.
‘We’re on the M62, a couple of miles before the Bradfield exit.’
He was still ahead of them, but only just. And Vance was a long way ahead of all of them.
54
There were a few cars parked on the quiet Halifax street. Not all of the houses had drives that could
