The unscrupulous investigator Terry had hired for Vance had provided details of the alarm system. Disappointingly, he’d failed to discover the code to disable it. That wasn’t the end of the world. It would just make life a little more complicated. Vance went back to the car and returned with a backpack. He peered through the windows, making sure he had the right rooms. His first choice was a living room with plenty of flammable furnishings and wooden shelves full of vinyl and CDs that would provide plenty of fodder for the fire once it had taken hold. The other was a study lined with bookcases stuffed with hardbacks and paperbacks. Again, a perfect source of fuel for the blaze.
Vance took out a plunger with a suction cup on the end and fixed it firmly to one of the small panes of glass in the study window. Then he took a glass cutter and carefully excised the pane from its frame, holding the plunger tight with the prosthesis. He edged it free, then poured two containers of petrol through the gap. He repeated the exercise at the living-room window, then threw the remaining petrol over the trellis and the fat stems of the clematis. He bunched some sheets of newspaper together, pushing them almost all the way through the window before he ignited them with the lighter. The petrol vapour by the window whooshed into flame and it spread almost instantly across the carpet.
Vance grinned in delight. He stuffed bundles of newspaper between the trellis and the plant stems, then lit those, watching long enough to be sure that the fire was going to catch. Finally, he set light to the study, enjoying the way the flames sped along the floor in the shape of the petrol splashes.
He’d have liked to stay, but it was too dangerous. He’d go back to the motel and watch the fire take hold on the cameras. He wasn’t going to phone this one in. He didn’t want the fire brigade to arrive too soon, and someone was bound to spot it eventually. It would take a while – the house wasn’t overlooked at the back – and that suited Vance. Nothing less than complete gutting would do.
He walked briskly back to the car and drove sedately out of Tony Hill’s driveway.
After her second near-miss in half an hour, Carol admitted belatedly to herself that she probably shouldn’t be driving. But she’d had no choice. This was news that had to come from her. She couldn’t let her parents find out from a stranger. This was her responsibility in every sense and she had to shoulder it. She pulled off the motorway at the next services and ordered hot chocolate and a blueberry muffin to raise her blood sugars and combat the state of shock that still had her in its grip.
She stirred her drink compulsively, unable to remember ever feeling this bleak. After the rape, when she’d been convinced she couldn’t be a police officer any more, she’d thought it was impossible to descend any lower. But this was far worse. Before, she’d been determined to restore the damage done to her. This time, she could be as determined as she liked, but it wouldn’t bring back her brother or her friend.
Carol had never needed a wide circle of friends. She’d always been content with a small group of intimates, a handful of people she could trust with everything that mattered. Michael had always been one of those; with only a couple of years between them, they’d managed a closeness denied to many siblings. When he’d got together with Lucy, Carol had been afraid that she’d lose that straightforward sharing they’d always known. She’d been afraid that she and Lucy would become competitors for his attention. At first, it had been sticky. There were always going to be jagged edges between a senior cop and a defence brief. But the more they’d seen of each other, the clearer it became that they were kindred spirits. Their professional lives were both underpinned by a desire for justice; what divided them became less important as time passed. And so Lucy had ended up as one of that close circle. And now, in one day she had lost two of the people she loved most, and sent a third into exile.
She picked at her muffin, tearing it apart with agitated fingers. She’d never been so angry with Tony. He should have seen the possibility that Vance’s revenge would take as perverse a form as his previous crimes. There had never been anything straightforward about the way his mind had expressed itself. No reason to think prison would have changed that. It was obvious to her now, but she wasn’t the psychologist here. It should have been obvious to Tony from the get-go.
Carol finished her drink and got back on the road. Progress was horrendously slow. Nobody would choose to drive down the M1 on a Friday night unless they had to. The traffic congealed in unpredictable clots, then suddenly the jam would disperse and everyone would hammer the pedal to the metal till they hit the next blockage. The faces that were lit up by passing headlights were frazzled, enraged or bored. Nobody looked cheerful or happy to be there.
She’d just passed the turning for Nottingham when she remembered her poor old cat, Nelson. There was no way she’d be getting home tonight, and at seventeen, Nelson was too old to be left without fresh food and water overnight. Normally, she could have asked Tony to take care of him. But right now she never wanted to speak to Tony again. There was a spare key in her desk drawer, she thought. Paula could be relied on not to snoop if she had access to Carol’s flat. Once upon a time, she probably would have. Carol was pretty sure Paula had been a little bit in love with her for a long time. But being with Elinor had damped down those feelings. Now she could trust her just to feed the cat.
Wearily, she scrolled down to Paula’s number on the car’s computer screen and tapped the mouse. Paula answered on the second ring. ‘Chief,’ she said. ‘We’re all so sorry.’ There was no doubting her sincerity.
‘I know,’ Carol said. ‘I need you to do something for me.’
‘Anything. That goes for all of us. Anything we can do to help.’
‘I’m not going to make it home tonight. There’s a key to my flat in my desk drawer. I need you to feed Nelson.’
There was a momentary pause. ‘Just feed him?’
‘Food and water. There’s some cooked chicken and rice in the fridge in a plastic box. And dried food in a plastic bin on the floor.’
‘Carol … ’ Paula spoke gently. Carol was taken aback. She couldn’t remember Paula ever using her name.
‘What?’ She sounded more abrupt than she’d intended. But she didn’t think she could handle kindness right now.
‘The word is that Vance might have killed Michael and Lucy.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t want to seem paranoid, but … well, I could take Nelson back to ours. You wouldn’t have to worry about him then.’
For a moment Carol couldn’t speak. Her throat seemed to close in a precursor to tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said, not sounding like herself at all.
‘No problem. Do you have a cat carrier?’
‘The cupboard under the stairs. You don’t mind?’
‘I’m glad there’s something I can do to help. If there’s anything else you need, just say. That goes for all of us,’ Paula said. ‘Even Sam.’
Carol almost smiled. ‘I’m on my way to tell my parents. I’ve no idea when I’ll be back. I’ll talk to you soon, Paula. Thank you.’
There was nothing more to be said and Paula was smart enough to know it. Carol drove on, turning over what she knew about Vance and his history. But nothing helpful surfaced. The last time she’d felt this powerless, she’d spent months trying to find solace in the bottom of a bottle. The one thing she did know right now was that she was determined she wasn’t going there again.
By the time she left the motorway, the traffic had thinned out. Her parents had retired to an Oxfordshire village a couple of years before, hoping to indulge their twin passions for gardening and bridge. Her father enjoyed watching the village cricket team and her mother had taken to the Women’s Institute with puzzling glee. They’d suddenly become caricatures of middle-class middle-Englanders. Neither Carol nor Michael had grown into adults who had anything in common with their parents, and last time she’d gone to stay, Carol had run out of things to say depressingly early in the visit.