And then came the treacherous smile that still made his guts clench. The smile that signalled she had the fourth ace up her sleeve. ‘I hear you’re writing a book,’ she said. ‘I doubt your publishers think all publicity is good publicity.’
Dismay curdled his brief moment of satisfaction. How did she do it? How did she always find his Achilles heel? The one hope he was clinging to, the one key that might unlock some sort of future, and somehow she’d winkled it out.
Vanessa read him as she always had. ‘I know you can’t write a nice little note here. So when we’re done, you can sort out a phone call and leave a message on my voicemail that I can play back to Carol.’ She got to her feet. ‘Otherwise I’ll make the call. And it won’t just be you I’ll trash. It’ll be her too.’
7
One of the less obvious effects of austerity has been the increase in the numbers of the visible vulnerable. For predators, it’s been a gift-wrapped opportunity to expand their choice of victims.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Even after midnight on a week night, the Temple Fields district of Bradfield was buzzing. The compact warren of streets attached to the city centre like a carbuncle was the opposite of a chameleon; every time the mainstream caught up with its edginess and innovation, it refused to blend in and adopted the next set of transgressions. Not many years before, it had been the red-light district, dingy streets lit by occasional neons, a poor man’s film noir. It was the place to go for sleaze, and jazz clubs that survived because of the cheap rents.
There had been a couple of gay bars on the fringes. Then when it dawned on entrepreneurs that the pink pound was a thing, over the space of a few years the main drag sprouted a rash of gay bars and clubs so achingly cool that they were eventually colonised by everybody else. Now, in more gender-fluid times, no matter where someone sat on the spectrum, they could find somewhere to hang out where they’d be unexceptional. Mark Conway thought that must really piss off some of them.
It amused him to think that he wasn’t unique either. He wasn’t the first person to trawl the shoals of Temple Fields in search of someone special. Of course, he was looking for recruits, not victims. Not like those others he vaguely remembered. There had been one weirdo who had killed a string of men and dumped their bodies in the area. And another one who was responsible for torturing and killing hookers. The cases had had a lot of lurid publicity because the cops had been working with a psychological profiler. A strange little guy who always looked a bit distracted when you saw him in TV interviews until you noticed how sharp his eyes were when they flickered across the screen.
Turned out the shrink had the same kind of killer inside as the murderers he’d helped to put away. He was safely behind bars himself now. Mark had been aware of him for a long time; he’d almost had one eye on an imaginary rear-view mirror to see if the profiler was on his tail. Now he could afford to relax a bit. He didn’t think the cops would be so quick to hire another profiler in case the next one went rogue too.
But one less foe to worry about didn’t mean he could relax his vigilance. Thus far, he’d covered his tracks so well that nobody had even noticed what he was doing. What that said to Conway was that he was indeed doing the right thing. He was offering salvation to the hopeless. Not everyone was capable of redemption in this life. Growing up under the strictures of the religious brotherhood, he’d absorbed that message loud and clear. What he was doing was the obvious extension of that. The relief he felt after he’d saved another soul from degradation and despair was all the proof he needed.
As usual, he walked into Temple Fields from the car park off Bellwether Square. He cut down an alley, a shortcut for anyone who didn’t mind the smell from the waste bins behind the burger bar and the gastropub, and took a baseball cap from his pocket. He pulled the brim down low on his forehead and swiftly turned his reversible rain jacket inside out, transforming dark red into black. By the time he re-emerged from the CCTV blind spot, respectable Mark Conway had disappeared.
The nights he spent quartering the streets of Temple Fields were a form of talent-spotting. He refused to believe that the one and only person he’d ever recruited from among the junkies and rough sleepers was a once-in-a-lifetime lottery win that would never happen again. Because Gareth had turned out to be a star. So much of a star that he’d been head-hunted two years into what was supposed to be a stellar career under Mark’s wing. Now the ungrateful little shit was based in Singapore, teetering on the upper rungs of corporate life. And Mark had yet to find a replacement.
He was looking for legacy. That was what all the top businessmen wanted, he’d realised early on in his career. It wasn’t enough to be a success. Legendary status didn’t come to men who’d simply made it to the top. What Mark wanted – no, what he craved – was a dynastic succession. But not the usual sort of dynasty. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to see the pattern that dogged business titans and their children. The kids never replicated the drive of their parents. They pissed it all away, secure in the knowledge of the safety net that extreme wealth provided.
No, Mark’s
