‘I discovered while I was working on my DPhil that I hated getting up on my hind legs and talking to an audience, which kind of ruled out academic work. So I went into clinical practice,’ Tony said, slipping easily into a flow of anecdotes about his work. He felt himself relax, like a man walking on a frozen lake who realizes he’s back on dry land.
They spent the rest of the meal on the safer ground of their careers, and Carol asked the waiter for the bill when he came to clear off the table. ‘I’m picking up the tab, OK? Nothing to do with feminism; you’re a legitimate business expense,’ Carol said.
As they walked back to Tony’s office, he said, ‘So, back to work. Tell me about your day.’
The swift switch away from the personal back to the case confirmed to Carol the need to play it cool with Tony. She’d never seen anyone back off so fast at gentle flirtation. It was puzzling, all the more since she sensed he liked her. And she had no doubts about her capacity to attract men. At least tracking Handy Andy with him gave her space and time to build a bridge between them. ‘We got a break this morning. At least, that’s what we’re all hoping.’
Tony stopped abruptly and turned to face Carol. ‘What kind of a break?’ he demanded.
‘Don’t worry, you’re not being ignored,’ Carol said. ‘It’s something that would be a minor detail in most investigations, but because we’ve got so little to go on here, it’s got everybody excited. There was a torn fragment of leather on a nail by the gate in the Queen of Hearts’s yard. Forensic did a rush job on it, and it turns out that it’s very unusual. It’s deerskin, and it comes from Russia.’
‘Oh, my good God,’ Tony said softly. He turned away and took a couple of steps. ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. You can’t get it in this country, and you’d probably need to send someone to Russia to source it, it’s so obscure. Am I right?’
‘How the hell did you know that?’ Carol asked, catching him up and grabbing his sleeve.
‘I’ve been expecting something like this,’ he said simply.
‘Like what?’
‘An outrageous red herring that’ll have the entire police force running around like headless chickens.’
‘You think this is a red herring?’ Carol almost shouted. ‘Why?’
Tony rubbed his hands over his face and ran them through his hair. ‘Carol, this guy has been so careful. He’s been almost clinical in his obsession with leaving no clues. Serial killers have typically got high IQs, and Handy Andy is certainly one of the cleverest I’ve ever come across, either personally or in the whole literature. Yet suddenly, out of nowhere we get not just any old clue, but a clue so obscure that it could only possibly be left by a tiny segment of the population. And you’re standing here telling me you think this is for real? That’s exactly what he’s trying to achieve. I bet the lot of you have been running around like blue-tailed flies all day trying to suss out where this obscure piece of Russian leather came from, haven’t you? Oh, and don’t tell me, let me guess. I bet there’s now a whole squad tracking back through Stevie McConnell’s life trying to establish where the hell he got it from.’
Carol stared at him. It seemed so blindingly obvious when he explained it like that. Yet not one of them had questioned the validity of the leather scrap.
‘Am I right?’ Tony asked, more gently this time.
Carol pulled a face. ‘Not a whole squad. Just me and Don Merrick and a couple of DCs. I’ve spent most of the day on the phone talking to governing bodies in weightlifting and body-building, trying to establish if McConnell’s ever been on a national or regional team that either competed in Russia or competed against Russians. And Don and the lads have been grilling travel agencies trying to check if he’s ever been on holiday there.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ Tony groaned. ‘And?’
‘Five years ago, he was one of a team of weightlifters from the North West who competed in an event in what was then Leningrad.’
Tony took a deep breath. ‘The poor unlucky bastard,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect the idea that this was deliberately planted to have occurred to any of you,’ he added. ‘I don’t mean that patronizingly. I realize how much closer you are to all of this and how desperately you want to catch this bastard. I just wish someone had told me earlier, before it assumed this major significance for everyone.’
‘I did try to phone you this morning,’ Carol said. ‘You still haven’t said where you were.’
Tony held his hands up. ‘I’m sorry. I’m overreacting. I was in bed, asleep, with the phones turned off. I was exhausted after last night, and I knew I couldn’t concentrate on writing the profile unless I had some sleep. I should have checked my answering machine when I got up. Sorry, I shouldn’t have had a go.’
Carol grinned. ‘I’ll let you off this time. Just save the fearsome bit for when we catch Handy Andy, huh?’
Tony pulled a face. ‘Shouldn’t that be “if”?’
He looked so vulnerable and fallible, his shoulders slumped, his head down, that Carol’s impulses overrode the decision she’d taken only minutes before to play it cool. She stepped forward and pulled Tony into a tight hug. ‘If anyone can do it, you can,’ she whispered, rubbing the side of her head against his chin like a cat marking its territory.
Brandon stared at Tom Cross, his face a mask of horror. ‘You did what?’ he demanded.
‘I searched McConnell’s house,’ Cross said belligerently.
‘I thought I said categorically that we had no right to do that? No judge in the land is going to accept that arrest for common assault in the street gives sufficient grounds for suspicion of murder.’
Cross smiled. It was a rictus that would have raised a Rottweiler’s hackles. ‘With respect, sir, that was then. Once Inspector Jordan had established that McConnell had been to Russia, the picture changed. Not a lot of people have had access to obscure Russian leather jackets, after all. It puts him in the frame. And there’s more than one JP around that owes me one.’
‘You should have cleared it with me,’ Brandon said. ‘The last order I gave on the subject was no search.’
‘I tried, sir, but you were in a meeting with the Chief,’ Cross said sweetly. ‘I thought I’d better strike while the iron was hot, being as how we don’t have him banged up indefinitely.’
‘So you wasted more time searching McConnell’s house,’ Brandon said bitterly. ‘Don’t you think you and your men could have been better employed?’
‘I haven’t told you yet what we found,’ Cross said.
Brandon felt his chest constrict. He wasn’t a man given to premonitions, but the sinking foreboding that gripped him now was as palpable as any solid fact he’d ever examined. ‘Think very carefully about what you say next, Superintendent,’ he said cautiously.
A momentary frown of puzzlement flashed over Cross’s features, but he was too full of the message he bore to worry about the ACC’s words. ‘We’ve got him, sir,’ he said. ‘Bang to rights. We found one of Gareth Finnegan’s firm’s Christmas cards in McConnell’s bedroom, and a sweater that’s a dead ringer for the one Adam Scott’s bird says was missing from his house. Plus a traffic ticket with Damien Connolly’s badge number on it. Add that to the Russian connection, and I think it’s time to charge the little arse bandit.’
F ROM 3' DISK LABELLED: BACKUP. 007; FILE LOVE. 010
Of course, the discovery that one has a natural bent for something does not necessarily mean one should pursue it blindly. While I was disposing of Paul’s body, this time in a dark doorway in an alley in Temple Fields, I had already decided who my next target would be. But even after so magnificent an experience as the one I’d just shared with Paul, I had no intention of repeating it with Gareth.
It was going to be third time lucky. Gareth, I already knew, was a man of rich and fertile sexual imagination. Even as I was digitizing Paul’s pathetic performance into the computer, I was mourning the fact that, thanks to Gareth, I would never have the opportunity to perfect the extraordinary talent I had discovered in myself. With the resources at my command, I’ve been making movies like I’ve never seen. The ultimate snuff stuff. If I could have marketed them, I would have made a fortune. I know there’s a market out there. Plenty of people would pay a lot of money to watch Paul fuck me in his death spasms on the Judas chair. And as for what I’ve done with Adam… Let’s just say that no one’s ever seen sixty-nine like it.
As a treat, I went to the cemetery where Adam had been buried a few weeks before. The funeral had featured on the local television news, which I’d video-taped and studied so I could be fairly sure where the grave
