Paula pushed past them and looked in. The only thing it was possible to take in was on the double bed. The remains of a woman’s body appeared to float on a sea of red. She had been slashed to ribbons, her flesh flayed from the bones in places. Just as Tony had predicted, the only intact part of her was her head. Splashes and drips of blood dotted the walls like a modern art installation. Paula turned away, an overwhelming sense of waste choking her. Tony had been right about something else too. There had been an issue of urgency. And they hadn’t been nearly urgent enough.
Kevin was reciting the words of the caution over Fletcher’s prone body. One of the tactical squad was on his radio calling for a full crime-scene technical team, another was on the phone to Superintendent Reekie reporting on what they’d found. If this was a blaze of glory, you could stick it up your arse, Paula thought.
The two cops by the bedroom door backed into the living room. Paula followed them into the dusty disarray and gave the TV an empty glance. ‘It was Match of the Day, after all,’ she said wearily. ‘My mistake.’ Next to the TV, a framed photo had pride of place. A few years younger, it was true, but there was no doubt that the woman on the bed was Kerry Fletcher.
‘She should have come home,’ Fletcher shouted. ‘None of this would have happened if she’d just come home.’
Tony shot up the exit ramp, his tyres squealing as he hit the roundabout and dragged the car round till he was tearing back on to the motorway in the opposite direction. As soon as he could prise a hand off the wheel, he reached for his phone and hit the redial to speak to Ambrose. And went straight to voicemail. The same thing that had happened to Carol.
‘Please, no,’ he wailed. ‘This is crap.’ The phone beeped. ‘Alvin, this is Tony. I know where Vance is. Please, call me back as soon as you can.’
Another five miles back to the M62, then a few more miles to the Halifax turn. What if he was too late? How easy would that be to live with?
His phone rang, shaking him out of his introspection. The voice was crackly and remote. ‘Dr Hill? This is DC Singh. I’m dealing with DS Ambrose’s phone because he’s driving and doesn’t want to be distracted. You say you know where Vance is?’
‘Put Alvin on. This is important, I don’t have time to explain it from scratch.’
There was a crackly confusion of speech. Then Ambrose’s voice boomed out. ‘What the fuck, doc? I thought Vinton Woods was a definite.’
‘That’s where he’s based, not where he is right now.’
‘So where is he right now?’
‘I think he’s at my mother’s house,’ Tony said. ‘He wants blood, Alvin. Bricks and mortar’s just a start. And the only blood I’ve got is my mother.’
‘I’ve got a whole team on their way to Vinton Woods. How can you be sure he’s not there?’
‘Because Carol Jordan is and she says the house is empty.’
‘Can you trust her?’
‘Yes.’ Tony didn’t even have to think about that one. She might not want to be in the same room as him, but that didn’t mean she’d start lying to him about the important stuff.
‘And you think he’s at your mother’s house? Have you got any evidence to back that up, doc?’
‘No,’ Tony said. ‘Just a lifetime of experience dealing with fucked-up heads like Vance. I’m telling you, he wants blood on his hands. He killed Carol’s brother and my mother is the logical next move.’ There wasn’t any point in trying to explain Vance’s likely misunderstanding of the relationship between Tony and Vanessa. ‘I’m on my way there now. I’m probably about fifteen minutes away.’
There was a long interval of static, then Ambrose said, ‘Give DC Singh the bloody address, then. And don’t do anything stupid.’
Tony did the first part of what he’d been told. ‘How far away are you?’ he asked DC Singh.
‘We’re on the M62, a couple of miles before the Bradfield exit.’
He was still ahead of them, but only just. And Vance was a long way ahead of all of them.
54
There were a few cars parked on the quiet Halifax street. Not all of the houses had drives that could accommodate all their vehicles, especially on a Saturday night when people came round to eat dinner and complain about the government. That suited Vance. Nobody would notice one extra parked among the locals. He slotted in between a Volvo and a BMW three houses down from Vanessa Hill and opened up a window on his smartphone that showed the live camera feed from her living room. The image was small and lacked resolution at that size, but it was clear enough to let him see she was still curled up on her regal sofa watching TV.
It was hard to imagine Tony Hill at ease in that room, focused as it was on meeting the needs of one person alone. Where did he sit when he visited? Did they camp out in that sterile kitchen, or was the conservatory the place where Vanessa gave some consideration to the comfort of her guests? Or was it more that her son had inherited his lack of casual social skills from her? Over the years, Vance had replayed his encounters with the strange little man who’d chased him down based on instinct and insight rather than robust forensic evidence. He’d often wondered if Hill was autistic, so awkward was he in social encounters that were not based exclusively on drawing information from the other person. But maybe it was less interesting than that. Maybe he’d grown up with a mother who had no interest in social encounters in the home, so Hill hadn’t learned how to do it at an early enough age for it ever to have become second nature.
Whatever the dynamic here, it wasn’t going to exist for much longer.
Vance gave a last look round to check there was nobody about, then he got out of the car and took a holdall from the boot. He walked briskly up the street and turned in at Vanessa’s gate as if he lived there. He walked past the Mercedes, his rubber-soled shoes silent on the block-paved driveway. There was a gap between the 1930s wooden garage and the house, barely wide enough for an adult turned sideways. Vance slipped into the space and sidestepped his way to the back garden. He hadn’t had a chance to scout out the back of the house; he didn’t even know whether there were security lights. But for once, he was willing to take the risk. It wasn’t as if his target was much of a challenge. An old woman with a bottle of wine inside her wasn’t exactly going to be on full alert if her back garden lights suddenly came on. Even if she noticed, she’d write it off as a cat or a fox.
But as he emerged, no light flooded the patio. All was still, silent but for the distant hum of traffic. He put down his holdall and squatted beside it. He took out a paper overall like the ones worn by the CSI teams and struggled into it, almost falling over as he tried to get his prosthetic arm inside without dislodging any crucial connections. Plastic bootees over his shoes, blue nitrile gloves on his hands. He wasn’t trying to avoid leaving forensic traces. He didn’t care about that. But he wanted a quick getaway and he didn’t want to be soaked in blood on the short drive back to Vinton Woods. That would be the kind of carelessness that deserved to be punished by a random road accident.
Vance stood up, rolling his shoulders and flexing his spine to make the overall settle on his body. He hefted the crowbar in his hand and set the knife down on the sill of the window by the back door. He took a good look at the door, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, and smiled. Someone had replaced the original solid wood door with a modern one whose glass panels rendered it a lot weaker. Luckily, they’d gone for wood rather than UPVC. Contemporary wooden doors were made of soft wood that splintered and broke relatively easily. This was not going to be much of a challenge.