The Wire in the Blood Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part One

  Part Two

  Epilogue

  Preview: The Torment of Others

  Stunning Praise for Val McDermid’s Novels

  Also by Val McDermid

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  It’s hard to imagine how I could have written this book without a lot of help from several key people. For their specialist knowledge and willingess to give so freely of their expertise, I’d like to thank Sheila Radford, Dr. Mike Berry, Jai Penna, Paula Tyler and Dr. Sue Black. I owe an apology to Edwina and Lesley, who ran around like headless chickens researching something that was cut in the rewrites. Without Jim and Simon at Thornton Electronics, Mac and Manda, I would almost certainly have had a complete nervous breakdown when the hard disk crashed. But the perseverance and perspicacity of three women in particular got me through to the end. For that reason, this book is for:

  JULIA, LISANNE AND BRIGID

  WITH LOVE

  The trilling wire in the blood

  Sings below inveterate scars

  Appeasing long forgotten wars.

  Four Quartets,

  Burnt Norton

  T. S. ELIOT

  PROLOGUE

  Murder was like magic, he thought. The quickness of his hand always deceived the eye, and that was how it was going to stay. He was like the postman delivering to a house where afterwards they would swear there had been no callers. This was the knowledge that was lodged in his being like a pacemaker in a heart patient. Without the power of his magic he’d be dead. Or as good as.

  He knew just from looking at her that she would be the next. Even before the eye contact, he knew. There had always been a very particular combination that spelled perfection in his thesaurus of the senses. Innocence and ripeness, mink-dark hair, eyes that danced. He’d never been wrong yet. It was an instinct that kept him alive. Or as good as.

  He watched her watching him, and under the urgent mutter of the crowd, he heard echoing in his head the music. ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown…’ The chiming tune swelled and burst then battered his brain like a spring tide against a breakwater. And Jill? What about Jill? Oh, he knew what happened to Jill. Over and over again, repetitious as the barbaric nursery rhyme. But it was never enough. He had never quite been satisfied that the punishment had fit the crime.

  And so there had to be a next one. And there he was, watching her watching him sending her messages with his eyes. Messages that said, ‘I’ve noticed you. Find your way to me and I’ll notice you some more.’ And she read him. She read him, loud and clear. She was so obvious; life hadn’t scarred her expectations with static yet. A knowing smile quirked the corners of her mouth and she took the first step on the long and, for him, exciting journey of exploration and pain. The pain, as far as he was concerned, was not quite the only necessity but it was certainly one of them.

  She worked her way towards him. Their routes varied, he’d noticed. Some direct, bold; some meandering, wary in case they’d misread what they thought his eyes were telling them. This one favoured the spiral path, circling ever inward as if her feet were tracing the inside of a giant nautilus shell, a miniature Guggenheim Gallery compacted into two dimensions. Her step was measured, determined, her eyes never wavering from him, as if there were no one else between, neither obstacle nor distraction. Even when she was behind his back, he could feel her stare, which was precisely how he thought it should be.

  It was an approach that told him something about her. She wanted to savour this encounter. She wanted to see him from every possible angle, to imprint him on her memory forever, because she thought this would be her only chance for so detailed a scrutiny. If anyone had told her what the future truly held, she’d have fainted with the thrill of it.

  At last, her decaying orbit brought her within his grasp. Only the immediate circle of admirers stood between them, one or two deep. He locked on to her eyes, injected charm into his gaze and, with a polite nod to those around him, he took a step towards her. The bodies parted obediently as he said, ‘Delightful to have met you, do excuse me?’

  Uncertainty flitted across her face. Was she supposed to move, like them, or should she stay in the ambit of his mesmerizing stare? It was no contest; it never was. She was captivated, the reality of this evening outstripping her every fantasy. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘And what’s your name?’

  She was momentarily speechless, never so close to fame, dazzled by that spectacular dental display all for her benefit. My, what big teeth you’ve got, he thought. All the better to eat her with.

  ‘Donna,’ she finally stuttered. ‘Donna Doyle.’

  ‘That’s a beautiful name,’ he said softly. The smile he won in response was as brilliant as his own. Sometimes, it all felt too easy. People heard what they wanted to hear, especially when what they were hearing sounded like their dream come true. Total suspension of disbelief, that’s what he achieved every time. They came to these events expecting Jacko Vance and everyone connected to the great man to be exactly what was projected on TV. By association, anyone who was part of the celebrity’s entourage was gilded with the same brush. People were so accustomed to Vance’s open sincerity, so familiar with his very public probity, it never crossed their minds to look for the catch. Why should it, when Vance had a popular image that made Good King Wenceslas look like Scrooge? The punters listened to the words and they heard Jack and the Beanstalk – from the little seed Vance or his minions planted, they pictured the burgeoning flower of a life at the top of the tree right alongside his.

  In that respect, Donna Doyle was just like all the others. She could have been working from a script he’d written for her. Having moved her strategically into a corner, he made as if to hand her a signed photograph of Vance the megastar. Then he did a double take so exquisitely natural it could have been part of De Niro’s repertoire. ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘Of course. Of course!’ The exclamation was the verbal equivalent of smiting himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand.

  Caught with her fingers inches from his as she reached out to take what had been so nearly offered, she frowned, not understanding. ‘What?’

  He made a twisted little moue of self-disparagement. ‘Ignore me. I’m sorry, I’m sure you’ve got much more interesting plans for your future than anything we superficial programme makers could come up with.’ The first time he’d tried the line, hands sweating, blood thudding in his ears, he’d thought it was so corny it couldn’t fool a drunk one sip from catatonia. But he had been right to go with his instincts, even when they had led him down the path of the criminally naff. That first one, just like this next one, had grasped instantly that something was being offered to her that hadn’t been on the agenda for the insignificant others he’d been talking to earlier.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Breathless, tentative, not wanting to admit she already believed in case she’d misunderstood and left herself open to the hot shaming flush of her misapprehension.

  He gave the faintest of shrugs, one that hardly disturbed the smooth fall of his immaculate suiting. ‘Forget it,’ he said with a slight, almost imperceptible shake of the head, disappointment in the sad cast of his eye, the absence of his gleaming smile.

&nb
sp; ‘No, tell me.’ Now there was an edge of desperation, because everybody wanted to be a star, no matter what they said. Was he really going to snatch away that half-glimpsed magic carpet ride that could lift her out of her despised life into his world?

  A quick glance to either side, making sure he wasn’t overheard, then his voice was both soft and intense. ‘A new project we’re working on. You’ve got the look. You’d be perfect. As soon as I looked at you properly, I knew you were the one.’ A regretful smile. ‘Now, at least I have your image to carry in my head while we interview the hundreds of hopefuls the agents send along to us. Maybe we’ll get lucky…’ His voice trailed off, his eyes liquid and bereft as the puppy left behind in the holiday kennels.

  ‘Couldn’t I … I mean, well…’ Donna’s face lit up with hope, then amazement at her forwardness, then disappointment as she talked herself out of it without saying another word.

  His smile grew indulgent. An adult would have identified it as condescending, but she was too young to recognize when she was being patronized. ‘I don’t think so. It would be taking an enormous risk. A project like this, at so delicate a stage … Just a word in the wrong ear could wreck it commercially. And you’ve no professional experience, have you?’

  That tantalizing peep at what could have been her possible future uncapped a volcano of turbulent hope, words tumbling over each other like rocks in the lava flow. Prizes for karaoke at the youth club, a great dancer according to everybody, the Nurse in her form’s reading of Romeo and Juliet. He’d imagined schools would have had more sense than to stir the tumultuous waters of adolescent desire with inflammatory drama like that, but he’d been wrong. They’d never learned, teachers. Just like their charges. The kids might assimilate the causes of the First World War but they never grasped that clichés got that way because they reflected reality. Better the devil you know. Don’t take sweets from strangers.

  Those warnings might never have set Donna Doyle’s eardrum vibrating if her present expression of urgent eagerness was anything to go by. He grinned and said, ‘All right! You’ve convinced me!’ He lowered his head and held her gaze. Now his voice was conspiratorial. ‘But can you keep a secret?’

  She nodded as if her life depended on it. She couldn’t have known that it did. ‘Oh, yes,’ Donna said, dark blue eyes sparkling, lips apart, little pink tongue flickering between them. He knew her mouth was growing dry. He also knew that she possessed other orifices where the opposite phenomenon was happening.

  He gave her a considering, calculated stare, an obvious appraisal that she met with apprehension and desire mingling like Scotch and water. ‘I wonder…’ he said, his voice almost a sigh. ‘Can you meet me tomorrow morning? Nine o’clock?’

  A momentary frown, then her face cleared, determination in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said, school dismissed as irrelevant. ‘Yes, I can. Whereabout?’

  ‘Do you know the Plaza Hotel?’ He had to hurry now. People were starting to move towards him, desperate to recruit his influence to their cause.

  She nodded.

  ‘They have an underground car park. You get into it from Beamish Street. I’ll be waiting there on level two. And not a word to anyone, is that clear? Not your mum, not your dad, not your best friend, not even the family dog.’ She giggled. ‘Can you do that?’ He gave her the curiously intimate look of the television professional, the one that convinces the mentally troubled that newsreaders are in love with them.

  ‘Level two? Nine o’clock?’ Donna checked, determined not to screw up her one chance of escape from the humdrum. She could never have realized that by the end of the week she’d be weeping and screaming and begging for humdrum. She’d be willing to sell what remained of her immortal soul for humdrum. But even if someone had told her that then, she would not have comprehended. Right then, the dazzle and the dream of what he could offer was her complete universe. What could be a finer prospect?

  ‘And not a word, promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ she said solemnly. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  PART ONE

  Tony Hill lay in bed and watched a long strip of cloud slide across a sky the colour of duck eggs. If anything had sold him on this narrow back-to-back terraced house, it was the attic bedroom with its strange angles and the pair of skylights that gave him something to look at when sleep was elusive. A new house, a new city, a new start, but still it was hard to lose consciousness for eight hours at a stretch.

  It wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t slept well. Today was the first day of the rest of his life, he reminded himself with a wry smile that scrunched the skin round his deep-set blue eyes into a nest of wrinkles that not even his best friend could call laughter lines. He’d never laughed enough for that. And making murder his business had made sure he never would.

  Work was always the perfect excuse, of course. For two years, he’d been toiling on behalf of the Home Office on a feasibility study to see whether it would be useful or possible to create a national task force of trained psychological profilers, a hit squad capable of moving in on complex cases and working with the investigative teams to improve the rate and speed of clean-up. It had been a job that had required all the clinical and diplomatic skills he’d developed over years of working as a psychologist in secure mental hospitals.

  It had kept him off the wards, but it had exposed him to other dangers. The danger of boredom, for example. Tired of being stuck behind a desk or in endless meetings, he’d allowed himself to be seduced away from the job in hand by the tantalizing offer of involvement in a case that even from a distance had appeared to be something very special. Not in his wildest nightmares could he have imagined just how exceptional it could be. Nor how destructive.

  He clenched his eyes momentarily against the memories that always stalked on the edge of his consciousness, waiting for him to drop his guard and let them in. That was another reason why he slept badly. The thought of what his dreams could do to him was no enticement to drift away and hand control over to his subconscious.

  The cloud slipped out of sight like a slow-moving fish and Tony rolled out of bed, padding downstairs to the kitchen. He poured water into the bottom section of the coffee pot, filled the mid-section with a darkly fragrant roast from the freezer, screwed on the empty top section and set it on the gas. He thought of Carol Jordan, as he did probably one morning in three when he made the coffee. She’d given him the heavy aluminium Italian pot when he’d come home from hospital after the case was over. ‘You’re not going to be walking to the café for a while,’ she’d said. ‘At least this way you can get a decent espresso at home.’

  It had been months now since he’d seen Carol. They’d not even taken the opportunity to celebrate her promotion to detective chief inspector, which showed just how far apart they’d grown. Initially, after his release from hospital, she’d come to visit whenever the hectic pace of her job would allow. Gradually, they’d both come to realize that every time they were together, the spectre of the investigation rose between them, obscuring and overshadowing whatever else might be possible for them. He understood that Carol was better equipped than most to interpret what she saw in him. He simply couldn’t face the risk of opening up to someone who might reject him when she realized how he had been infected by his work.

  If that happened, he doubted his capacity to function. And if he couldn’t function, he couldn’t do his job. And that was too important to let go. What he did saved people’s lives. He was good at it, probably one of the best there had ever been because he truly understood the dark side. To risk the work would be the most irresponsible thing he could ever do, especially now when the whole future of the newly created National Offender Profiling Task Force lay in his hands.

  What some people perceived as sacrifices were really dividends, he told himself firmly as he poured out his coffee. He was permitted to do the one thing he did supremely well, and they paid him money for it. A tired smile crossed his face. God, but he was lucky.

 
; * * *

  Shaz Bowman understood perfectly why people commit murder. The revelation had nothing to do with the move to a new city or the job that had brought her there, but everything to do with the cowboy plumbers who had installed the water supply when the former Victorian mill-owner’s mansion had been converted into self-contained apartments. The builders had done a thoughtful job, preserving original features and avoiding partitions that wrecked the fine proportions of the spacious rooms. To the naked eye, Shaz’s flat had been perfect, right down to the French windows leading to the back garden that was her exclusive domain.

  Years of shared student dives with sticky carpets and scummy bathtubs, followed by a police section house and a preposterously expensive rented bedsit in West London had left Shaz desperate for the opportunity to check out whether house-proud was an adjective she could live with. The move north had provided her first affordable chance. But the idyll had shattered the first morning she had to rise early for work.

  Bleary-eyed and semi-conscious, she’d run the shower long enough to get the temperature right. She stepped under the powerful stream of water, lifting her hands above her head in a strangely reverent gesture. Her groan of pleasure turned abruptly to a scream as the water switched from amniotic warmth to a scalding scatter of hypodermic stings. She hurled herself clear of the shower cubicle, twisting her knee as she slipped on the bathroom floor, cursing with a fluency she owed to her three years in the Met.

  Speechless, she stared at the plume of steam in the corner of the bathroom where she had stood moments before. Then, as abruptly, the steam dissipated. Cautiously, she extended a hand under the water. The temperature was back where it should be. Inch by tentative inch, she moved under the stream of water. Letting out her unconsciously held breath, she reached for the shampoo. She’d got as far as the halo of white lather when the icy needles of winter rain cascaded on her bare shoulders. This time, her breath went inwards, taking enough shampoo with it to add a coughing retch to the morning’s sound effects.