In the anteroom, away from the clamour, the DC shook his head. “What the hell was that all about?” he demanded. “How did that lunatic get in there?”
Duvall shrugged out of her jacket and inspected the damage with pursed lips. Let the DC slug it out with the media creep; she wasn’t about to get into that particular war.
“He must have had some sort of press credentials,” the Press Liaison Chief stammered defensively. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have been allowed in.”
The DC waved a hand as if seeing off a troublesome wasp. “Never mind that. Who the hell is he?”
Duvall looked up from her torn jacket and took a deep breath. “According to the leaflet, which the world’s press are now in possession of, he’s called Charles Redford and he’s a wannabe thriller writer who thinks the victims stole his plots.”
“Is he for real?” The DC looked bemused.
“That’s what I plan to find out right now. I told them to take him straight down to the custody suite. I’m going to arrest him on suspicion of murder and take it from there.”
“Do we need to arrest him at this point? He could be nothing more than a time-wasting attention-seeker.”
It was, Duvall thought, a long time since the DC had done policing without the politics. “I want this by the book, sir. If he is the killer, I don’t want the slightest chance of it falling down in court on some procedural glitch. I want him under arrest, I want him legally represented and I want him on the record all the way.”
To her surprise, the DCS from Dorset weighed in on her side. “I think DCI Duvall’s quite right,” he said, the edge of a country burr in his voice adding unexpected authority to his quiet bass. “I’d want the same thing in her shoes. And I’d very much appreciate being able to sit in on the interview.”
“I don’t think we can accommodate that,” the DC said dubiously. “A matter of jurisdiction, you know?”
“We’ve got one interview suite with an observation room,” Duvall pointed out. “Surely there would be no problem with our colleague using that facility? I think it could be helpful, sir. Another pair of eyes, another pair of ears.” She didn’t for a moment think the provincial DCS would spot anything that wasn’t obvious to her, but she knew she was still going to need cooperation from Dorset in putting her case together. It would cost her nothing to keep their senior officer happy.
“Fine.” The DC nodded and drew her to one side. “But that’s as far as it goes, Duvall,” he added in an undertone. “This one’s ours.”
Maybe not if he killed her in Dorset, Duvall thought. But if there was a name to be made here, she was determined it was going to be hers. He’d confessed on her patch. He was going to stay hers if it was humanly possible. “I’ll get down to the custody suite, then,” she said.
The two men watched her swing her ruined jacket over her shoulder and stride off confidently down the corridor.
“God help him if he’s wasting her time,” the Dorset man said.
“She’s going to have her work cut out,” the DC said.
“How do you mean?”
“How do we usually weed out false confessions? We catch them out on the details that haven’t been made public. Only, this killer has been using previously published material as his blueprint. He’s going to know all the answers, whether he killed them or not.”
The Dorset DCS drew his breath in sharply. “Oh shit,” he said.
“And I’m not sure if DCI Duvall has worked that one out yet,” the DC added, pursing his lips in a superior smile.
Fiona closed her eyes, blotting out the e — mail on the screen in front of her. Confirmation of what she had been dreading was the last thing she wanted in her face. Eventually, she forced herself to reread Kit’s e — mail. This wasn’t the time for self-indulgence. He needed her support, not for her to whimper in the corner like a scared bunny. She composed herself and hit the reply button.
From: Fiona Cameron [fcameron@psych.ulon.ac.uk]
To: Kit Martin [KMWriter@trashnet.com]
Subject: Re: Bad as it gets
My darling Kit,
I’m so, so sorry about Georgia. You must be hurting, my love, and I wish I could do something to take the pain away. I fear I can be of little use on this particular case, even supposing DCi Duvall wanted my help. It’s already clear to anyone with half a brain that these cases are connected, and you know I don’t get into the touchy-feely wet the bed when he was 9 and tortured the neighbour’s cat stuff. So what could I give them? Not much except common sense. So, my love, it is important that you take extreme care of yourself. I’ll be home at the usual time, or earlier if I can manage it.
I love you. F.
FOURTY-TWO
Charles Cavendish Redford was adamant that he did not want legal representation. He insisted that he knew more about the criminal law than the average duty solicitor and was perfectly capable of withstanding a police interrogation without someone to hold his hand.
It was a decision that pleased Duvall. She knew that even the most newly qualified duty solicitor would caution Redford to say nothing further. But if he wanted to damn himself from his own mouth, that was fine by her. Lacking a solicitor would simply mean there were fewer interruptions to the flow of what Redford wanted to reveal. And if one thing was clear, it was that Redford was a man who was eager to have his say. She’d had to keep shutting him up when the custody sergeant was processing him; the last thing she wanted was for him to get it all out of his system then clam up once they were in the interview room and on the official record.
As soon as he’d been formally arrested, Duvall sent a team of officers to search his house. Another team were given the task of finding out as much as was humanly possible about the life and times of Charles Redford, self-styled pre-published writer. Then Duvall escaped to her office for ten minutes. She tossed her wrecked coat in the bottom of her locker and replaced it with a lightweight black wool jacket that lived there on permanent stand-by. She shot a mist of her favourite perfume into the air and walked through the miasma, feeling its coolness on her skin. Then she sat down with notepad and pencil, sketching out the main points she needed.
Finally, about an hour after the commotion in the press conference, Duvall found herself facing her self-confessed serial murderer across a Formica-topped table. The room was claustrophobically small, the large mirror on one wall seeming to shrink the space rather than to increase it. The normal scents of stale sweat, smoke and fear were overlaid with a layer of her Versace Red Jeans. No Hannibal Lecter, Redford didn’t so much as twitch his nose.
“At last,” he said impatiently. “Well, go on, get the tape running.”
Duvall’s sergeant reached out and switched on both tape decks. For the record, he dictated date and time and details of those present. The DCS from Dorset, ensconced behind the mirror with his own sound feed, was not on the list.
Duvall sized up Redford. Medium height, medium build. His hair and beard were neatly trimmed, his complexion the pasty-white of someone who spends little time out of doors. His eyes were a dark grey-blue, watchful and deep-set. His tweed jacket looked as if it had been expensive when new, but that had been a long time ago. It fitted him well enough to have been tailored for him, but that meant nothing in these days of charity shops sprouting in every high street like mushrooms. The collar of his tattersall check shirt was a little frayed on the inside edge. His long fingers restlessly intertwined in an endless, meaningless sequence. The impression was one of intensity behind a mask of genteel poverty.