A couple of other officers were hanging back near the gate. ‘We could just ring the bell,’ one of them said.
‘We don’t want a hostage situation,’ Ambrose said.
‘You’re not going to get a hostage situation,’ Tony said. ‘He’s here for a reason. He’ll kill then leave. If he’s still in there, it’s only because he’s in the process of leaving.’ He gestured with his head towards the narrow passage by the garage. ‘You might want to send one of your lads down there in case Vance is going out the back door.’
Ambrose pointed to one of the officers then stabbed his thumb at the gap. ‘Take a look.’ He gave Tony a perplexed look. ‘Let’s ring the bell, then.’ He pointed a finger at Tony. ‘But you stay behind us. Whatever happens, you stay behind us.’
They walked up to the door, surprisingly quietly for such big men. Tony found enough space between Singh and Ambrose to see what was going on. Ambrose rang the bell then stepped back so he was out of reach of anyone swinging a punch from the doorway.
Tony felt his stomach clench. He was convinced he was closer to Vance than he’d been at any time in the past twelve years. Whether the killer was in the house already or on his way here, this was the place where they’d find him. What the cost of that confrontation might be, Tony didn’t want to consider right now. What he wanted was to see Vance caged again and caged for good. No question about it, he was one of the ones who should never have any kind of freedom. It went against the grain of Tony’s heartfelt conviction that rehabilitation should always be the goal of the judicial process, but every now and again, he was forced to accept that someone was beyond help. Unredeemable. Vance was a walking exemplar whose very existence felt like a rebuke. He and his kind reminded Tony that the system’s failures generally created more fallout than its successes.
A light snapped on behind the glass and they could hear a key turning in the lock. The door inched open and Vanessa’s face appeared in the gap, her hair disarranged as if she’d been roused from a nap. Ambrose and Singh held out their ID and garbled their names and ranks. Tony gave a thin smile and waved at her. ‘Hello, Mum,’ he said, sounding as weary as he suddenly felt.
‘That was fast,’ Vanessa said, opening the door wider to reveal a scarlet stain spreading across her kaftan from chest to mid-thigh. ‘I’ve only just rung 999. You’d better come in.’
Ambrose turned and looked at Tony, wide-eyed with shock. Feeling light-headed, Tony pushed past the cops and stepped inside as Vanessa pulled the door back and invited them in.
She pointed to the barely ajar living-room door and said in a matter-of-fact way, ‘You won’t want to go in there. It’s what you lot call a crime scene. But we can go into the dining room. He didn’t go in there at all, so there’s nothing to contaminate.’ She led the way down the hall to another door and swung it open. ‘Don’t just stand there, come through.’
Ambrose took a step forward and nudged the living-room door further open. Tony edged round so he could see past him. A man was sprawled on the floor like a marionette, legs askew, arms out to the side, a blonde wig adrift above his head. ‘It’s Vance,’ Tony said. ‘I recognise him.’ Vance’s overall was ripped open. His abdomen was bright red and blood had flowed on to the carpet around him. His chest was motionless. Tony didn’t know much about emergency medicine, but he reckoned the paramedics would be wasted on Jacko Vance.
‘She killed him?’ Ambrose said, incredulous.
‘Looks that way,’ Tony said.
‘You don’t seem surprised.’
Tony felt as if he might burst into tears. ‘Nothing about Vanessa has ever surprised me. Let’s go and see what she has to say for herself before the local plods arrive.’
They followed Singh and the other officer into the dining room, where Vanessa had settled herself at the head of the table. When they came in, she said, ‘Tony, fetch me a brandy. There’s a bottle and glasses in the sideboard.’
‘I don’t think you should drink,’ Ambrose said. ‘You’re in shock.’
Vanessa gave him the contemptuous look her staff had learned to fear. ‘In shock, be blowed,’ she said, sounding eerily like Patricia Routledge channelling Hyacinth Bouquet. ‘This is my house and my brandy and I won’t be bossed around by the likes of you.’
‘Believe me, it’s easier to go with the flow,’ Tony said, opening the sideboard and fixing his mother a drink. He took it to her and said, ‘What happened?’
‘He came in through the back door armed with a crowbar and a knife and walked into my living room, bold as brass. Of course, I recognised him.’ She took a sip of brandy and pursed her lips. For the first time since they’d arrived, the mask slipped, revealing age and tiredness normally held at bay by cosmetics and willpower. ‘I’d been expecting him, truth be told.’
‘Expecting him?’ Ambrose sounded as gobsmacked as Tony felt.
‘I do watch the news, Sergeant. And aren’t you a little bit low down the totem pole to be dealing with a murder?’
‘Sergeant Ambrose isn’t here in response to your phone call. He’s here because we have been trying to catch Vance.’
Vanessa gave a dry little laugh. ‘Should have been here earlier then, shouldn’t you.’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘I saw the news and I recognised that house Eddie left you down in Worcester. I’d already heard about your girlfriend’s brother.’
Ambrose gave Tony a startled glance.
Tony sighed. ‘She is not my girlfriend. How many times?’
Vanessa waved a dismissive hand at him and drank more brandy. ‘Then his attack on the ex-wife. I thought to myself, he started on a high with murder, now he’s on a downward spiral and he’s not going to be impressed with himself over two racehorses and a stable lad who didn’t even merit a name check. So I reckoned he might be daft enough to think that killing me would cause that one some grief.’ She tipped her head towards Tony. ‘Stupid bugger.’ It wasn’t at all clear whether she meant Tony or Vance. ‘So I thought, better safe than sorry. I got a knife out of the kitchen drawer and tucked it down the side of the sofa. I didn’t hear him break in at all. The first I knew about it, he was standing in my living room like he owned the place.’ She gave a shiver. Tony thought it was entirely calculated.
