‘But it’ll still come out of your budget. Make you look the extravagant one, not Reekie. The women, the victims – were they local to Northern? Or were they working somewhere like Temple Fields and just got killed outside the city centre?’
‘Both local. Small time, on the street, not indoor workers.’
‘Young? Older?’
‘Young. Drug users, not surprisingly. And of course, because of the way they earned their money, we can’t be sure if they were sexually assaulted.’ She held up a hand. ‘I know, I know. Chances are, sex will come into it somewhere.’
‘Just not always in the obvious way.’ Tony sniffed his glass and made a face. ‘It’s always better where you buy it, isn’t it? This stuff smelled wonderful in Brittany. Now it’s like lighter fluid.’ He took a tentative sip. ‘Tastes better than it smells. So will you be looking at using a profiler?’
‘It would be the obvious port of call. But Blake won’t want to pay for you, and I don’t want to work with the homegrown products of the national academy.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You remember the idiot they sent us on the RigMarole killings? All the emotional intelligence of a brick wall. I promised the team I’d never go down that road again. Better to do without than let the Chief Constable foist another one of those on us.’
‘Would you like me?’ Tony said. His raised eyebrows promised the faintest possibility of double entendre, but Carol wasn’t buying.
‘It’s the sensible option, if we want to get a result sooner rather than later.’ She reached for the bottle and topped up her glass. ‘But there’s no way I’ll be allowed to spend that kind of money.’
‘What if it didn’t cost you anything?’
Carol frowned. ‘I’ve told you before. I refuse to take advantage of our personal relationship—’
‘Whatever it is … ’
‘Whatever it is. You’re a professional. When we use expertise from outside the police service, we should pay for it.’
‘The labourer is worthy of his hire,’ he said, softening the darkness of his tone with a lopsided smile. ‘We’ve had this out before, and neither of us is going to shift our ground. You say tomato and I say potato.’ He waved one hand as if he was batting away an insect. ‘I think there’s a way of doing this that means I get paid and you get my expertise.’
Carol frowned. ‘How do you work that out?’
Tony tapped the side of his nose. ‘I need to talk to someone at the Home Office.’
‘Tony, it may have escaped your notice, but we have a new government. There is no money. Not for essentials, never mind luxuries like psychological profilers.’ Frustrated, Carol sighed.
‘I know you think I live on another planet, Carol, but I did know that.’ He pulled a sad clown face that emphasised the lines his job had carved there. ‘But my go-to guy at the Home Office is above the political fray. And I think he owes me.’ Tony paused for a moment, his eyes drifting to the top left corner of the room. ‘Yes, he does.’ He shifted in his seat and stared directly at Carol. ‘All those years ago, we started something in this city. Reekie’s right. You should go out in a blaze of glory. And I should be there at your side, just like I was that first time.’
8
Dawn came and he had not slept. But Jacko Vance was wired, not tired. He listened to the small noises of the wing coming to life, happy in the thought that this would be the last time he was forced to start his day in the company of so many. He checked Collins’ watch every few minutes, waiting for the right moment to rise and start the day. He’d had to calculate another man’s mentality in all of this. Collins would be eager, but not too eager. Vance had always had a good sense of timing. It was one of the elements that had made him so successful an athlete. But today, much more depended on that timing than a mere medal.
When he judged the moment was perfect, he got out of bed and headed for the toilet. He passed the electric razor over his head and his chin again, then dressed in Collins’ ratty jeans and baggy polo shirt. The tattoos looked spot on, Vance thought. And people saw what they expected to see. A man with Collins’ tattoos and clothes must, in the absence of any contradictory features, be Collins.
The minutes crawled by. At last, a fist banged his door and a voice called out. ‘Collins? Get yourself in gear, time to make a move.’
By the time the door opened, the officer was already distracted, paying more attention to an argument further down the corridor about the previous evening’s football results than he was to the man who emerged from the cell. Vance knew the officer – Jarvis, one of the regular day-shift crew, chippy and irritable, but not someone who had ever taken any personal interest in any of his charges. So far, so good. The screw cast a cursory glance over his shoulder then led the way down the hall. Vance stood back while the first door was unlocked remotely, enjoying the solid clunk of the metal tongue sliding open. Then he followed the officer into the sally port and tried to breathe normally while one door closed and the other opened.
And then they were off the wing, moving through the main administrative section of the jail towards the exit. Trying to calm himself with distraction, Vance wondered why anyone would choose a working environment with sickly yellow walls and metalwork painted battleship grey. To spend your days here without descending into deep depression, you’d have to have no visual taste whatsoever.
Another sally port, then the final hurdle. A couple of bored-looking officers sat behind thick glass windows like bank counters, with gaps where documents could be passed through. Jarvis nodded to the nearest, a skinny young man with a crew cut and bad skin. ‘Is the social worker here for Collins?’ he said.
Not likely, Vance thought. Not if things had gone to plan. Not many women would turn up for work after they’d been wakened in the night by someone trying to smash into their house. Especially since the putative burglar/rapist had taken the precaution of slashing all four tyres on her car and cutting her phone line. She’d been lucky. If he’d been doing the job himself instead of having to delegate it, he’d have slashed her dog’s throat and nailed it to the front door. Some things you couldn’t outsource. Hopefully, what he had managed to arrange would be enough. Unfortunate for poor Jason really. He would have to set off for his Release on Temporary Licence day without the support of someone who knew him.
‘No,’ the man on the desk said. ‘She’s not coming in today.’
‘What?’ Jarvis moaned. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming in today?’
‘Personal issues.’
‘So what am I supposed to do with him?’ He jerked his head towards Vance.
‘There’s a taxi here.’
‘He’s going off in a taxi? Without an escort?’ Jarvis shook his head, mugging incredulity for his audience.
‘What’s the odds? He’ll have all day on the ROTL without an escort, regardless. Just means it starts a bit earlier, that’s all.’
‘What about orientation? Isn’t he supposed to have some sort of orientation with the social worker?’
Crew cut picked a spot, examined his fingernail and shrugged again. ‘Not our problem, is it? We ran it past the Assistant Governor and he said it was OK. He said Collins presented no cause for concern.’ He looked at Vance. ‘You all right with that, Collins? Otherwise the ROTL gets cancelled.’
Vance shrugged right back at him. ‘I might as well go since I’m here now.’ He was quite pleased with the way it came out. He thought it was a decent representation of how Collins spoke. More importantly, he didn’t sound at all like himself. He thrust his hands into his pockets as he’d seen Collins do a thousand times, hunching his shoulders slightly.