‘What’s his domestic set-up?’ Carol asked.
‘He’s got an ex-wife and two kids in Hornsey, and he lives with his current partner in Docklands. I tried to persuade him to move them for now, but he won’t have it.’ Chris pulled a face. ‘He said, “If I read an obit for Carol Jordan and Tony Hill, I’ll head for the hills. But right now, I can’t say I’m too worried.” I couldn’t budge him on that.’
‘He does have a point,’ Tony said. ‘Leon’s not near the top in terms of seniority or alphabetical order or geographical order. And given that none of us has a clue how long this is going to go on, he’s probably right not to turn his life on its head just yet.’
‘Unless of course the rest of us make ourselves so hard to hit Vance ends up taking out Leon by default,’ Carol said, acid in her tone. ‘You might want to mention that, Chris.’
Chris looked less than thrilled at the prospect. ‘Simon McNeill isn’t a cop any more. He stayed with Strathclyde for a couple of years after Shaz Bowman’s murder, then he quit to take up a job teaching criminology at Strathclyde University.’
Tony remembered Simon’s unruly black hair, his intensity and his infatuation with Shaz Bowman. Tony had heard on the grapevine that he’d had a breakdown, been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and been gently eased out of the job. ‘Poor sod,’ he said absently. He realised both women were looking at him oddly. ‘I mean, because he was besotted with Shaz, not because he ended up teaching at Strathclyde. Obviously.’
Chris looked amused as she continued. ‘He’s got a long-term partner and four kids. They live out in the country about an hour’s drive out of Glasgow. He seemed quite unnerved by the news. He’s going to talk to his local law enforcement about increased patrols. But he said where they live is at the end of a track – one way in and out. And they have shotguns. He’s taking it seriously, but it sounds like he was already prepared for a siege. He told me that Western capitalism was headed for a cataclysm and then crime would skyrocket. Every man for himself. But he’s made his arrangements.’
It sounded like the PTSD wasn’t entirely a thing of the past. ‘Christ, I hope Vance doesn’t show up there,’ Tony said. ‘There’d be a bloodbath and chances are Vance would be the only one who’d walk away from it.’
‘So that’s two we can’t do much about,’ Carol said. ‘Tell me Kay Hallam isn’t gung-ho or running her own Home Counties militia.’
‘Kay Hallam is why I look like a woman who’s slept in her car. Because I am that woman. I had a job trying to track her down. I struggled to pick up the trail because she left to get married. Mr Right turned out to be an accountant with a practice in the Cayman Islands. The kind of bastard who helps all those loaded gits to avoid paying their taxes like the rest of us.’
Carol whistled. ‘Quiet little Kay. Who’d have thought it?’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Tony said. ‘She had that knack of watching and waiting till she was sure of her ground then she’d mirror your attitudes and position. Everybody always thought Kay was on their side and she always ran into problems with the kind of exercise where you have to nail your colours to the mast and defend your position. When Mr Right swam into her orbit, she’ll have watched and waited, then swum up alongside him and made him feel he’d finally met the one person who really understood him.’ He watched the two women consider his words then nod in agreement. ‘It was what made her such a good interviewer. Paula has the same chameleon knack, but Paula’s also got a personality of her own that she slips straight back into. I never had any idea who the real Kay Hallam was.’
‘She’s a tough cookie under that diffident exterior,’ Chris said. ‘She’s in the UK at the moment. They’ve got a house near Winchester. Her boys are at boarding school there, she’s back for a parental visit. She got the point as soon as I told her what was going on. And she just railroaded me. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Threatened me with everything from the Daily Mail to the Police Complaints Commission. In the end, I had to drive down there and brief the local nick and the two security guards she’d hired from God knows what agency. I don’t know about Vance, but they scared the living shit out of me.’ Chris shook her head in disbelief. ‘Can you believe that I did that?’
‘Not only can I believe it, but if I had her resources, I’d probably do the same thing in her shoes,’ Tony said. ‘Vance is seriously scary.’ He frowned. ‘Chris – didn’t some hack write a book about Vance after the first trial?’
‘That rings a faint bell. Didn’t they have to withdraw it after he won his appeal?’
‘That’s right,’ Carol said. ‘They said it was libellous now Vance had been cleared. It might be worth tracking down the author and seeing if he’s got anything to say. He might have information we don’t have about associates and other properties Vance may have owned.’
‘I’ll get on to it,’ Chris said.
Before Carol could respond, Paula walked into the squad room with the evening paper. ‘Secret’s out,’ she said, brandishing the front page, where a banner headline read, SERIAL KILLER TARGETS BRADFIELD.
28
It was a beautiful day, Vance thought. Never mind that the sky was grey and there was a promise of rain in the air. He was out of jail, driving through the Yorkshire Dales, master of his own fate. By definition, that made it a beautiful day. The car was easy to drive, it had a digital radio that made it amazingly easy to switch between stations, and the GPS navigation meant he couldn’t get lost among the drystone walls and sheep folds. He’d slept well, breakfasted well in front of the laptop, enjoying the coverage of his escape on the Internet. He almost felt sorry for the hapless Governor, nailed by the media like a moth on a pin. The hacks were portraying him as an incompetent fool who’d fallen for Vance’s lies about rehabilitation. The truth, as usual, was more complex. The Governor was at heart a good man, clinging to the last shred of idealism. He desperately wanted to believe it was possible for a man like Vance to redeem himself. Which made him an easy mark for a manipulator as skilled as Vance.
The Governor wasn’t crap. He’d just come face-to-face with a far superior creature.
After breakfast, he’d checked his cameras. This morning, he – or rather, Terry – had had an email from the PI saying he’d finally managed to get the last set of cameras installed. When Vance had used the code, he’d been able to activate them and spy on another location, a late addition to his list, tagged on as a result of the most recent research Terry had carried out for him. It was the perfect little extra to complete phase one of his plans.
But that lay in the future. Now he had to concentrate on the business in hand. Today he was Patrick Gordon, complete with a thick head of chestnut hair and a few artfully applied freckles across his cheeks. The moustache and horn-rimmed glasses completed the job. He was dressed like a posh country dweller – brown brogues, corduroy trousers, Tattersall check shirt and a mustard V-necked sweater. Stockbroker turned Yorkshire gentleman. All he needed was a Labrador to complete the picture.
Just after noon, he pulled into the forecourt of a smart country pub that advertised food and traditional ales. Terry, being the thorough sort, had researched pleasant places to eat and drink near all of Vance’s targets. It was as if he imagined Vance was going on some sort of grand tour, taking lunch and tea with old acquaintances. At first, Vance had thought it a crazy eccentricity, but the more he thought about it, the more appealing it seemed to flaunt himself under the noses of the neighbours.
Only a couple of tables were occupied, one by a middle-aged couple dressed for a walk in the dales, the other by a pair of men in suits. Vance studied the range of real ales, all of whose names seemed based on bad puns or fake dialect, and settled for one called Bar T’at. The barman didn’t give him a second glance when he ordered his pint. He asked for a steak-and-ale pie and settled in a quiet corner where he could look at his tablet computer without being overlooked. The tablet was amazing. He’d found it in the desk drawer this morning and he’d been entranced by what it seemed capable of. It was an awkward size, really – too big for a pocket – but it was much more portable than a laptop. While he was waiting for his food, he tuned in to the cameras that were trained on the barn conversion.