Splinter the Silence Read online

  Also by Val McDermid

  A Place of Execution

  Killing the Shadows

  The Distant Echo

  The Grave Tattoo

  A Darker Domain

  Trick of the Dark

  The Vanishing Point

  Northanger Abbey

  The Skeleton Road

  TONY HILL NOVELS

  The Mermaids Singing

  The Wire in the Blood

  The Last Temptation

  The Torment of Others

  Beneath the Bleeding

  Fever of the Bone

  The Retribution

  Cross and Burn

  KATE BRANNIGAN NOVELS

  Dead Beat

  Kick Back

  Crack Down

  Clean Break

  Blue Genes

  Star Struck

  LINDSAY GORDON NOVELS

  Report for Murder

  Common Murder

  Final Edition

  Union Jack

  Booked for Murder

  Hostage to Murder

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  The Writing on the Wall

  Stranded

  Christmas is Murder

  NON FICTION

  A Suitable Job for a Woman

  Forensics

  SPLINTER

  THE SILENCE

  VAL McDERMID

  Copyright © 2015 by Val McDermid

  Jacket design by Marc Cohen/mjcdesign

  Jacket artwork: hand © Andrey Kuzmin/Shutterstock;

  words © kentoh/Shutterstock

  Author photograph © Alan McCredie

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-0-8021-2408-1

  eISBN 978-0-8021-9093-2

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This one’s for Leslie Hills for all the years of friendship – and because you, my dear, like so many of my female friends, refuse to be silenced.

  “I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.”

  —Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope

  “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

  —Audre Lorde

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Also by Val McDermid

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  Acknowledgements

  Back Cover

  1

  Weekends were best. It was easy to avoid working then. So it was easier to watch the women he was interested in. Mostly they didn’t go to work then either, so he had a chance to observe their routines and work out the best way to kill them.

  He was good at watching. His teachers and later his employers had always commented on his attention to detail. How he would never attempt a project until he’d weighed up the risks and the possibilities. The first time he’d killed, he reckoned he’d still been in a state of shock, but even then he’d been able to make a plan and stick to it. Afterwards, he’d understood that act had opened a door to a mission. Now, his mission had assumed central importance in his life.

  Like today. He hadn’t quite made his mind up who was going to be next. He had a couple of names on his mental list and he knew how he wanted to kill the chosen one. It was mostly a matter of figuring out whether the logistics would work. When you were planning on hanging someone, you had to be sure there was something to hang them from. And he was in no hurry. The latest one remained fresh in his mind, a source of deep satisfaction. Perfectly executed.

  This one, though … she ticked all the boxes. But he wasn’t going to be rushed into making a final decision. Not like the first time he’d gone out into the wild, as he liked to think of it. Sitting here now, watching a house where nothing was happening, it was thrilling to summon up the memory. Exciting but unnerving too. So many ways it could have gone wrong.

  She’d been alone. It was so unexpected, he’d forgotten how to walk and tripped over his feet. He grazed his knuckles against the brick wall, a rash of blood spotting the skin. He couldn’t quite believe it, but she really was alone. No minder, no driver, no PA, none of the chattering bitches she used to get her validation from. Just her, jogging down the five steps from her front door to the narrow sweep of gravel that divided her unfairly lovely home from the street where the likes of him were exiled. He half-expected the door to open again, one or more of her retinue to come blundering after her, running to catch up before she reached the gate.

  But no. There was nobody. Only her.

  He looked around wildly, his usual determination to blend in with the streetscape torn into confetti and scattered on the diesel breeze stirring the city air. But nobody was paying a blind bit of attention. Late afternoon in North London; nobody was paying any heed to anyone or anything outside their own tight little knot of concern, least of all to her. It wasn’t as if she was recognisable beyond the Twitterati. To the average person in the street, she was simply another North London thirtysomething. Designer jeans and a fashion hoodie hugging her unexceptional frame rather than hiding it, that year’s must-have leather satchel slung across one hip, multi-shaded blonde dye job caught back in a loose ponytail. Hardly worth a first glance, never mind a second one. Hard to believe anybody had ever taken any notice of anything she’d said or done.

  Oblivious to his confusion, s
he opened the heavy iron gate with the gothic creak he’d grown familiar with lately. She closed it carefully behind herself and started walking.

  He couldn’t quite believe it was happening. For three weeks, he’d been keeping tabs on her whenever he could manage it. And she never ever ventured out alone. Running scared, he’d decided. Not scared enough to shut up, but scared enough to make sure there was always somebody around to watch her back.

  After the things they’d said to her the night before, she should have been hiding under the duvet, cowed into submission. Not striding along the pavement acting like she was the one with the moral high ground instead of acknowledging the truth – that she was a destructive, disruptive, dangerous bitch who deserved everything that was coming to her.

  He’d not planned on dealing with her today. He hadn’t been expecting so golden an opportunity. But he wasn’t going to let it slip away. Who knew when he’d get another chance like that? And it wasn’t like he hadn’t worked it all out in his head a hundred times, testing every element of the plan for weak points and figuring out how to overcome them.

  ‘Get a grip,’ he chided himself under his breath, falling into step behind her, a few metres and a couple of teenage girls between them. He knew it could be a long while till he got her alone again. ‘Get a grip.’

  Taking her off the street had been a lot easier than he’d expected. Women like her – middle class, secure in their status, used to the world running the way they wanted – had a false sense of safety. They trusted people until someone gave them good reason not to. She’d trusted him, because he made himself look and sound like all the other pathetic guys who let their women run the show – whipped into line and made into some bitch’s gutless slave.

  He’d done his research. He knew the names that would make his bullshit credible. She’d believed the tale he’d spun about her radio station needing her in the studio to cover for a sick colleague. She’d got in the car without a murmur. And then he’d shown her the photos on his phone.

  He’d been proud of that. He knew how to plot, how to plan, how to prepare. Her daughter, doing a foundation course at film school, had been laughably easy. He’d pretended to be a photographer doing a project about hostages and protest. He’d got three of them involved, so he didn’t look like a pervert singling out one girl in particular. Then he’d mocked up a series of shots of them apparently being held prisoner and tortured. And now he had a series of carefully edited shots on his phone that provided perfect leverage.

  As soon as he showed her the first shot, she had frozen to stillness. A whimper from behind her closed lips. She’d pulled herself together and said, voice wobbling through an octave or more, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘It’s more about what you want. You want your daughter to come out of this alive, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s a stupid question,’ she said, a flare of anger lighting up her face.

  He wasn’t having any of that. He took his left hand off the gearstick and backhanded her hard across the face. She cried out and shrank away from him. ‘Don’t make me call her babysitter. You won’t like what happens to Madison if I have to do that.’ He snorted. ‘Madison. What kind of fucking name is that? We don’t have any limits. We’ll cut her, we’ll rape her, we’ll leave her so nobody will ever want to touch her again. Except out of pity. So do what the fuck you’re told.’

  Her eyes widened and her mouth formed an anguished O. He had to admit, there was real pleasure in seeing her pay the price for her bitching and whining and moaning. She’d called men like him misogynists. That was the opposite of what they were. Men like him, they loved women. They understood the kind of life that suited women best. They knew what women really wanted. Proper women didn’t want to be out there in the world, having to shout the odds all the time. They wanted to build homes, take care of families, make their mark and exercise their power inside the home. Being women, not fake men.

  After that, it had been easy. Back to hers after the staff had gone home. Into the garage. Wrist cuffed to the armrest to make it look like she was determined not to change her mind. Hose from the exhaust into the car. The book on the seat beside her, a reminder to himself of the roots of what he was doing. He could have changed his mind at any time, could have pardoned her. But what would have been the use of that? Even if she’d changed her ways, it wouldn’t change anything. He took one last look and closed the garage door.

  In the morning, they found her.

  2

  Carol Jordan swirled the last half-inch of port around her glass and thought almost wistfully of murder. To the casual observer, she hoped it looked as if she was fiddling with the stem of her glass. In fact, her grip was so tight she feared it might snap in her fingers. The man on her left, who didn’t look like someone you’d want to punch, leaned forward to make his point more forcefully.

  ‘It’s absolutely not hard to find high net worth individuals if you target your efforts carefully,’ he said.

  And once again, like clockwork, she wanted to punch his narrow complacent face, to feel that sharp nose crunch against her fist, to see the look of utter shock widen his little piggy eyes.

  Instead, she knocked back the last of her drink and pushed her empty glass towards her generous host, who casually poured another liberal slug of Dow’s 2007. The man on her left had already pronounced it ‘probably the best port Dow has ever produced’, as he’d washed down another chunk of Stilton. She didn’t know enough about port to argue but she’d desperately wanted to.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Carol muttered again, trying not to sound ungraciously mutinous. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been at a dinner party of this formality but she hadn’t forgotten the obligations imposed by accepting an invitation to break bread. They’d been drilled into her at her mother’s table. Smile, nod, agree, stay away from politics and never ever start a row.

  Fortunately for the rest of the company, years of serving as a senior police officer had reinforced her mother’s injunctions against politics at the dinner table. When your budget and the very existence of your team was dependent on the largesse of politicians, you soon learned not to express an opinion that might come back to bite you in the neck with all the philanthropy of a vampire. Over the years, Carol had carefully cultivated the art of not holding controversial views lest she let something slip at the wrong moment. She left that to the junior members of her team, who more than made up for her reticence.

  Not that there had been many occasions like this during her career as the boss of an elite murder squad. The demands of the job had consumed her, eating up far more than the forty hours a week she was contracted to provide. Carol hoarded the leftover time for things she wanted to do. Like sleep. Not spend endless hours at somebody else’s table listening to obnoxious rich bastards holding forth about the iniquities of whoever they thought stood between them and their next million.

  But now she had nothing but leftover time. The career she’d defined herself by was over. At moments like this, she had to remind herself that had been her own choice. She could have been Detective Chief Inspector Jordan yet. But she had chosen to be plain Carol Jordan; just another incomer to a rural Yorkshire valley that had been remorselessly invaded by people who had no relationship to the landscape that surrounded them except that they liked it better than the suburbia they’d left behind.

  Her host, George Nicholas, was an exception. His family had built the big Georgian manor at the head of the valley and lived in it continuously for a shade over two hundred years. His was the sort of background of comfortable privilege Carol was inclined to despise. On their first meeting, she’d taken one look at his scrubbed pink skin, his patrician profile and an outfit that could have come straight from a catalogue featuring country gentlemen’s apparel and determined to distrust and dislike him. But she’d eventually been disarmed by the unflappable charm that met her hostility head on and chose to ignore it. That and the bloody dogs.

  Later, she�
��d discovered the reason he believed he’d be the last of his line to inhabit the manor. He’d been widowed three years before when his wife had died in a road accident. He wore his grief lightly but for someone as well schooled in trauma as Carol, it was a clear and present pain.

  Carol cleared her throat and pushed back from the table. ‘I had better be going, George,’ she said. Not a slur or a hesitation to betray the amount she’d had to drink.

  The laughter lines round his eyes disappeared along with the smile the woman next to him had provoked with an ironic aside Carol had only half-heard. ‘Must you?’ He sounded disappointed. She couldn’t blame him. He’d been trying for weeks to persuade her to come over for a meal. And here she was, bailing out at the first opportunity. ‘We’ve not even had coffee yet.’

  Carol aimed for rueful. ‘Flash is still a bit young to be left on her own for too long.’

  He mirrored her regret with a downward twist of his mouth. ‘Hoist by my own petard.’

  ‘Who’s Flash?’ The question came from an older man further down the table whose meaty red face and several chins made him look like one of the cheerier illustrations from Dickens.

  ‘Carol kindly took on one of Jess’s pups,’ George said, the genial host again. ‘One that’s scared of sheep.’

  ‘Scared of sheep?’ The Pickwickian questioner looked as incredulous as he sounded.

  ‘It happens from time to time,’ George said mildly. ‘All a ewe has to do is bleat and Flash puts her tail between her legs and runs. Carol saved the dog from redundancy.’

  ‘And she’s a great companion,’ Carol said. ‘But she’s not much more than a pup. And like all collies, she doesn’t like being on her own for great chunks of time. So I ought to get back.’

  The man she wanted to punch snorted. ‘Your dog sounds more tyrannical than our babysitter. And that’s saying something.’

  ‘Not at all, Charlie,’ George said. ‘Carol’s quite right. You treat a pup reasonably and you end up with the best kind of dog.’ He smiled, his dark eyes genial. ‘I’ll get Jackie to run you home. You can pick your car up when you’re out with Flash in the morning.’

  Carol frowned. So he had been paying attention to how much she’d put away. The thought angered her. What she drank was her business. Nobody could be expected to endure what she had without some sort of support system. She knew she was in control of the drink, not the other way round, in spite of what anyone else might think. Or any one person in particular.