The screen behind changed to show a live shot of a young reporter standing at the end of a driveway with police officers in the background, the wind whipping her hair into wild strands round her head. She had the faintly startled air of a woman who’s been rousted out from watching the X-Factor. She waited patiently for the anchor to bring her in but he still had script to work through. ‘Micky Morgan used to host the flagship lunchtime show Midday with Morgan. She abandoned her TV career after her then husband, fellow TV presenter and former champion athlete Jacko Vance, was revealed as a serial killer of teenage girls. Vance himself made a sensational jailbreak earlier this week when he escaped from Oakworth prison, a mere forty-five miles from his ex-wife’s farm. Over now to Kirsty Oliver at the scene. Kirsty, are the police connecting this attack to Vance?’
‘Will, they’re not saying anything officially yet. But I understand there has been an armed police presence here at the farm since news of Jacko Vance’s escape became public two days ago. In spite of that, someone managed to infiltrate the stable yard and set a fire in a hay barn behind the main stable block, which you can see in the background.’ She waved vaguely over one shoulder. ‘The farm remains closed off to visitors and we’ve seen no sign of Micky herself or her partner Betsy Thorne, though we have been told that they are in residence.’
‘Nice of you to let Vance know they’re at home,’ Vanessa muttered.
‘Thanks, Kirsty. We’ll come back to you if there’s any breaking news from your location.’ Sincere, concerned face. ‘Police have indicated that they wish to question Jacko Vance in relation to two other incidents – the double murder in Yorkshire yesterday morning and another arson attack in Worcester yesterday evening.’ Photographs of two good-looking thirty-somethings appeared behind the newsreader. ‘In a new development, police have identified the murder victims as Michael Jordan, a games software developer, and his partner, criminal barrister Lucy Bannerman. Michael Jordan’s sister is a detective with Bradfield police, and she’s believed to be the officer who arrested Jacko Vance for murder.’ Vanessa hastily put her glass down and pushed herself upright. ‘Carol Jordan,’ she spat, her face as twisted with distaste as it could get these days.
Few people had ever thwarted Vanessa. Even fewer had got away with it. Carol Jordan was one of that tiny band. She was one of the pieces of grit in the oyster of Vanessa’s life. She could almost bring herself grudgingly to respect the Jordan woman – she had power and was willing to use it, she was ruthless, and she could clearly be single-minded in pursuit of her goal. These were qualities Vanessa herself possessed in overwhelming amounts and she valued them in others. She also suspected that Jordan shared her ability to assess people’s strengths and weaknesses. Where Vanessa used that trait to her own advantage to build her reputation as a shrewd headhunter, Jordan seemed to apply it to bringing criminals to justice. Vanessa couldn’t see the point. Where was the profit in that? It wasn’t that she minded the existence of the police. Somebody had to keep the scum in their place. But it wasn’t the sort of career for anyone who had something about them. And that was why, ultimately, she couldn’t respect Carol Jordan.
Before she could wander too far down the path of her feelings towards Carol Jordan, the bulletin caught her attention again and this time it transfixed her. The newsreader had done with the murder and was moving along. ‘Vance is also wanted for questioning in another arson attack. Last night in Worcester, this house was razed to the ground.’ A photograph of a smoking ruin appeared on the screen. ‘Luckily, nobody was home when the fire started. Police have not released the name of the householder, but neighbours said the previous owner, Arthur Blythe, died last year and the new owner has spent very little time here.’
Arthur Blythe. The name Eddie had chosen to live under after he’d recovered enough to walk away from her. As if he’d wanted to lose himself. She’d deserved that house after what she’d had to go through. But he’d left it to the bastard. Why anybody would leave anything to Tony was beyond her. She certainly wasn’t going to. She was going to get through the lot before she shuffled off this mortal coil. In a year or two, once the economy started to pick up its heels, she’d flog the business she’d spent a lifetime building up. And then she would rack up all the experiences in her bucket list – all four tennis grand slams in the best seats, safaris to see all the great beasts of Africa, an up-close-and-personal cruise in the Galapagos, the Cannes film festival, the Northern Lights and a dozen more besides. By the time she was done, there wouldn’t be two halfpennies for Tony.
The newsreader had moved on to football, but the image of the ruined house was still sharp in Vanessa’s head. It was a funny thing to go for if you were trying to hurt somebody. But Jacko Vance was somebody else Vanessa had a grudging respect for. He was another one who’d made his mind up and gone for it. Never mind that what he wanted was illegal and immoral and half a dozen other glib condemnations that the media would deliver at the drop of a dead body. He was determined to achieve his goals, and if it hadn’t been for Carol Jordan and, presumably, Tony trotting along in her wake like a pet dog, he’d still be doing what he was best at. No wonder he wanted to get his own back. In his shoes, she’d have felt exactly the same.
Vanessa gave a dark chuckle. If she ever spoke honestly out loud, the water-cooler crowd would wet themselves. If you wanted to get on in this world, you had to be mealy-mouthed. She’d have to admit, Jacko Vance had been impressive on that front too. With all his charity work and his supposed support for the dying, he’d got them all convinced that he was little short of a saint.
He hadn’t convinced Jordan, though. And it looked like Vance held Tony responsible too. But burning his house down? It said all you needed to know about what a useless waste of space her bastard son was. At least Jordan had people in her life that it would grieve her to lose. All Tony had was a house. And if you thought Tony was the sort of person who would be bothered by losing a physical possession, your research wasn’t as thorough as it should have been.
Even as that thought flitted into her head, Vanessa felt a cold trickle down the back of her neck. What if the house was just the start? What if Vance’s research had been really shoddy? Carol Jordan had lost her brother. What if Tony was scheduled to lose a blood relative too?
Tony had just joined the Manchester orbital motorway when his phone rang. He was so shocked to see Carol’s name on the screen he almost swerved into the central reservation, his tyres rattling over the studs on the road’s edge like automatic weapon fire. Thoroughly discombobulated, he stabbed at the phone’s answer button and shouted, ‘It’s me, I’m here. Are you OK?’
‘I’d be better if you didn’t leave stupid attention-seeking messages on my phone,’ she said. There was nothing friendly in her voice. ‘Where’s Vance?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said.
‘Not much of a profiler, are you?’
He ignored the insult. He thought she was just trying to wind him up. He hoped, anyway. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at Vinton Woods. I’m staking out the house, but I don’t think he’s there. Where’s Ambrose?’
‘Same as me. On his way to where you are.’
‘I tried to call him but he’s not answering. There’s only one road in and out of this development. I think they should hold position away from the estate. If Vance gets a sniff of them, he won’t even turn off the main road and we’ll have lost him. And this time there won’t be some convenient clue on Terry Gates’s hard drive.’