The Mermaids Singing

Tony sighed and picked up his mug. The coffee was cold, but he drank it anyway. In spite of himself, he began replaying past conversations in his mind. As if he hadn’t run through it enough during the early hours of the morning when sleep had been as elusive as the Bradfield serial killer. The woman’s voice buzzed in his ears, inescapable as someone else’s Walkman in a train carriage. He tried to close off his emotions and treat the calls with the intellectual objectivity he brought to his work. All he had to do was shut himself off, the way he did when he was examining the perverse fantasies of his patients. He’d certainly had enough experience of refusing to recognize echoes in himself.

Stop the voice. Analyse. Who was she? What drove her? Maybe, like him, she simply enjoyed digging around in messy heads. That at least would explain how she’d wormed her way through his barricades. She was certainly a different animal from the women who worked for the sleazy telephone sex chatlines. Before he’d started this study for the Home Office, he’d been engaged in a piece of research into those chatlines. A significant number of the recently convicted offenders he had dealt with had admitted they were regular callers to the premium-rate phone lines where they could pour their sexual fantasies, however bizarre, obscene or perverse, into the ears of dismally paid women who were encouraged by their bosses to indulge the callers for as long as they were prepared to pay. He’d actually phoned some of the lines himself, just to sample what was on offer, and to discover, using the transcripts of some of his interviews, just how far it was possible to go before disgust overcame the profit motive or the desperate need to earn a living.

Finally, he’d interviewed a selection of the women who worked the phones. The one thing they all held in common was a sense of being violated and degraded, however some of them dressed it up in the contempt they voiced for their clients. He’d come to several conclusions, but the paper he’d subsequently written hadn’t included all of them. Some he’d left out because they were too off the wall, others because he feared they might reveal too much about his own psyche. That included his conviction that the response of a man who had previously called a chatline to a dirty phone call from a member of the opposite sex would be radically different to that of a woman in the same situation. Instead of slamming down the receiver, or reporting it to Telecom, most of these men would be either amused or aroused. Either way, they’d want to hear more.

All he had to work out now was why, unlike the chatline workers, this woman found telephone sex with a stranger so appealing. What he needed was to satisfy the intellectual curiosity that was at least as strong as his urge to explore the sexual playground she had opened up for him. Maybe he should consider suggesting a meeting. Before he could go any further, the phone rang. Tony started, his hand stopping halfway in its automatic journey to the receiver. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he muttered impatiently, shaking his head like a high-diver surfacing. He picked up the phone and said, ‘Tony Hill.’

‘Dr Hill, it’s Carol Jordan here.’

Tony said nothing, relieved that his thoughts had failed to conjure up the mystery woman.

‘Inspector Jordan? Bradfield Police?’ Carol continued into the silence.

‘Hello, yes, sorry, I was just trying to … clear a space on my desk,’ Tony stumbled, his left leg starting to jitter like a cup of tea on a train.

‘I’m really sorry about this, but I’m not going to be able to make it for ten. Mr Brandon’s called all the squad together for a briefing, and I don’t think it would be politic to miss it.’

‘No, I can see that,’ Tony said, his free hand picking up a pen and unconsciously doodling a daffodil. ‘It’s going to be hard enough for you to act as go-between without making it look like you’re not part of the team. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Thanks. Look, I don’t think this briefing is going to last that long. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Probably around eleven, if that doesn’t interfere with your schedule.’

‘That’s fine,’ he said, relieved he wouldn’t have too long to brood before they could get down to work. ‘I’ve no meetings in the diary for today, so take your time. You’re not putting me out.’

‘OK. See you then.’

Carol replaced the phone. So far, so good. At least Tony Hill didn’t seem a prisoner of his professional ego, unlike several of the experts she’d had dealings with. And, unlike most men, he’d perceived her potential difficulty, sympathized without patronizing her, and had happily gone along with a course of action that would minimize her problems. Impatiently, she pushed away the memory of the attraction she’d felt for him. These days, she had neither the time nor the inclination for emotional involvement. Sharing a flat with her brother and finding the time to sustain a few close friendships took as much of her energy as she could spare. Besides, the ending of her last relationship had dealt her self-esteem too serious a blow for her to enter on another one lightly.

The affair with a casualty surgeon in London hadn’t survived her move from the Met to Bradfield three years before. As far as Rob was concerned, it was Carol’s decision to move to the frozen north. So travelling up and down motorways to spend time together was down to her. He had no intention of wasting any of his valuable off-duty time putting unnecessary mileage on his BMW just to go to a city whose only redeeming feature was Carol. Besides, nurses were a lot less stroppy and critical, and they understood long hours and shift work just as well as a copper, if not better. His brutal self-interest had shaken Carol, who felt cheated of the emotion and energy she’d invested in loving Rob. Tony Hill might be attractive, charming, and, if his reputation was correct, intelligent and intuitive, but Carol wasn’t about to risk her heart again. Especially not with a professional colleague. If she was finding it hard to get him out of her mind, it was because she was fascinated by what she could learn from him about the case, not because she fancied him.

Carol ran a hand through her hair and yawned. She’d been home for precisely fifty-seven minutes in the previous twenty-four hours. Twenty of those had been spent in the shower in a futile attempt to inoculate herself against the effects of no sleep. She’d spent a large chunk of the evening out on the knocker with her CID team, pursuing fruitless enquiries among the nervous inhabitants, workers and regular customers of Temple Fields and its gay businesses. The men’s reactions had ranged from total noncooperation to abuse. Carol felt no surprise. The area was seething with a mass of contradictory feelings.

On the one hand, the gay businesses didn’t want the area swarming with police because it was bad for cash flow. On the other hand, the gay activists were angrily demanding proper protection now the police had belatedly decided that there was a gay serial killer on the loose. One group of customers were horrified to be questioned, since their gay life was a deep secret from wives, friends, colleagues and parents. Another group were happily playing macho men, boasting that they’d never get into a situation where they were slaughtered by some glassy-eyed maniac. Yet another group were eager for details, obscurely and, in Carol’s eyes, obscenely excited by what could happen when one man went out of control. And there was a handful of hardline lesbian separatists who made no secret of their glee that this time, men were the targets. ‘Maybe now they’ll understand why we were so outraged during the Yorkshire Ripper hunt when men suggested single women should have a curfew,’ one had sneered at Carol.

Exhausted by the turmoil, Carol had driven back to headquarters to begin her trawl of the files of the existing enquiries. The murder room was strangely quiet, since most of the detectives were out in Temple Fields, pursuing different lines of enquiry or taking advantage of a few hours off to catch up on their drinking, their sex lives or their sleep. She’d already had a quick word with her opposite numbers on the other two murder investigations, and they had reluctantly agreed to give her access to their files provided she had the material back on their desks first thing in the morning. It was exactly the response she’d expected: superficially cooperative, but, in real terms, calculated to cause her even more problems.

When she’d walked through her office door, she’d been appalled by the sheer volume of paper. Stacks of interview statements, forensic and pathology reports, files of photographs virtually buried her office. Why, in God’s name, hadn’t Tom Cross decided to use the HOLMES computer system for the earlier murders? At least then all the material would be accessible in the computer, indexed and cross-referenced. All she’d have had to do then was to persuade one of the HOLMES indexers to print out the relevant stuff for Tony. With a groan, she closed her door on the mess and walked through the empty corridors to the uniform sergeant’s office. The time had come to test the ACC’s instruction to all ranks to cooperate with her. Without another pair of hands, she’d never get through the night’s work.

Even with the grudgingly granted help of a PC, it had been a struggle to get through the material. Carol had skimmed the investigation reports, extracting everything that seemed to hold the possibility of significance and passing it on to the constable for copying. Even so, there was a daunting pile of material for Tony and her to work through. When her assistant knocked off at six, Carol wearily loaded the photocopies into a couple of cardboard cartons and staggered down to her car with them. She helped herself to full sets of photographs of all the victims and scenes of crime, filling in a form to requisition fresh copies for the investigating teams to replace the ones she’d taken.

Only then had she headed home. Even there, she had no respite. Nelson waited behind the door, miaowing crossly as he wove his sinuous body round her ankles, forcing her to head straight for the kitchen and the tin opener. When she dumped the bowl of food in front of him, he stared suspiciously at it, frowning. Then hunger overcame his desire to punish her and he wolfed down the whole bowl without pause. ‘Nice to see you missed me,’ Carol said drily as she made for the shower. By the time she emerged, Nelson had clearly decided to forgive her. He followed her around, purring like a dialling tone, sitting down on every garment she selected from the wardrobe and placed on the bed.

‘You really are the pits,’ Carol grumbled, pulling her black jeans out from under him. Nelson carried on adoring her, his purr not disrupted in the slightest. She pulled on the jeans, admiring the cut in her wardrobe mirror. They were Katharine Hammett, but she’d only paid £20 for them in a seconds shop in Kensington Church Street, where she went on a twice-annual trawl for the designer clothes she loved but couldn’t afford, even on an inspector’s wages. The cream linen shirt was French Connection, the ribbed grey cardigan from a chain store men’s department. Carol picked a few black cat hairs from the cardigan and caught Nelson’s reproachful stare. ‘You know I love you. I just don’t need to wear you,’ she said.

‘You’d get a shock if he answered you,’ a man’s voice said from the doorway.

Carol turned to face her brother, who leaned against the doorjamb in his boxer shorts, blond hair tousled, eyes bleary with sleep. His face had a strange congruence with Carol’s, as if someone had scanned her photograph into a computer and subtly altered the features away from the feminine and towards the masculine. ‘I didn’t wake you, did I?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Nope. I’ve got to go to London today. The money man cometh.’ He yawned.

‘The Americans?’ Carol asked, crouching down and scratching the cat behind the ears. Nelson promptly rolled over on to his back, displaying his full stomach to be stroked.

‘Correct. They want a full demo of what we’ve done so far. I’ve been telling Carl that nothing looks very impressive right now, but he says they want some reassurance that they’re not just pouring their development money into a black hole.’

‘The joys of software development,’ Carol said, rumpling Nelson’s fur.

‘Leading-edge software development, please,’ Michael said, self-mockingly. ‘How about you? What’s happening down the murder factory? I heard on the news last night that you’d copped for another one.’

‘Looks like it. At least the powers that be have finally admitted that we’ve got a serial killer on the loose. And they’ve brought in a psychological profiler to work with us.’

Michael whistled. ‘Fuck me, Bradfield police enter the twentieth century. How’s Popeye taking it?’

Carol pulled a face. ‘He likes it about as much as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. He thinks it’s a total waste of bloody time,’ Carol said, dropping her voice and affecting Tom Cross’s Bradfield accent. ‘Then when I was appointed liaison officer with the profiler, he perked up.’

Michael nodded, a cynical expression on his face. ‘Two birds with one stone.’

Carol grinned. ‘Yeah, well, it’ll need to be over my dead body.’ She stood up. Nelson gave a small miaow of protest. Carol sighed and headed for the door. ‘Back to work, Nelson. Thanks for taking my mind off the bodies,’ she said.

Michael swung out of the doorway to let her pass and gave her a hug. ‘Take no prisoners, sis,’ he said.

Carol snorted. ‘I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the principle of policing, bro.’

By the time she was behind the wheel, the cat and Michael were forgotten. She was back with the killer.

Now, a couple of hours and a stack of overnight murder team reports later, home seemed a memory as distant as her summer holiday in Ithaca. Carol forced herself out of her chair, picked up the paperwork and walked into the main CID office.

It was standing room only by the time she arrived, detectives normally based in other stations jockeying for position in the crowd. A couple of her detective constables shifted to make room for her, one offering his chair. ‘Fucking brown nose,’ a voice said audibly from the other side of the room. Carol couldn’t see who had spoken, but recognized it wasn’t one of her own team. She smiled and shook her head at her junior officer, choosing instead to perch on the edge of his desk beside Don Merrick, who nodded a morose greeting. The clock read nine-twenty-nine. The room smelled of cheap cigars, coffee and damp coats.

One of the other inspectors caught Carol’s eye and started to move towards her. But before they could speak, the door opened and Tom Cross barrelled in, followed by John Brandon. The superintendent looked disturbingly benign as he marched in. The troops parted automatically before him, leaving a clear path for him and Brandon to walk to the whiteboard at the far end of the room.

‘’Morning, lads,’ Cross said genially. ‘And lasses,’ he added as an obvious afterthought. ‘There’s nobody here that doesn’t know we’ve got four unsolved murders on our hands. We’ve got IDs for the first three bodies – Adam Scott, Paul Gibbs and Gareth Finnegan. So far, we’ve not made any progress on the fourth victim. The lads down the path lab are working on him now, trying to come up with a face that won’t frighten the horses when we release the picture to the press.’

Cross took a deep breath. If anything, his expression became even more benevolent. ‘As you all know, I’m not a man given to theorizing ahead of the evidence. And I’ve been reluctant officially to connect these killings because of the media hysteria that would bring down about us. Judging by this morning’s papers, I was right about that.’ He pointed to several of the newspapers the detectives held.

‘However, in the light of this latest killing, we’re going to have to revise our strategy. As of yesterday afternoon, I have amalgamated the four murder enquiries into one major investigation.’

There was a murmur of support. Don Merrick leaned forward and murmured in Carol’s ear, ‘Changes his tune more often than a juke box.’

She nodded. ‘I wish he changed his socks as often.’

Cross glared in their direction. He couldn’t have heard the remarks, but seeing Carol’s lips move was enough of an excuse. ‘Settle down,’ he said sternly. ‘I’m not finished yet. Now, it doesn’t take much in the way of detective abilities to see that this place is too small for us and the normal activities of the station, so as soon as we’re finished here this morning, we’ll be moving this operation to the former station in Scargill Street, which some of you will remember was mothballed six months ago. Overnight, there’s been a team of maintenance workers, computer whizz kids and British Telecom engineers getting it back to temporary operational status.’

A groan went up. No one had shed a tear when the old Victorian building in Scargill Street had been closed down. Draughty, inconvenient, short of parking spaces, ladies’ toilets – everything except cells – the building had been earmarked for demolition and redevelopment. Typically, there hadn’t been enough money in the budget to push ahead with the project. ‘I know, I know,’ Cross said, cutting across their complaints. ‘But we’ll all be under one roof, so I’ll be able to keep an eye on you. I will be in overall charge of the enquiry. You’ll have two inspectors to report to – Bob Stansfield and Kevin Matthews. They’ll be sorting out your assignments in a minute. Inspector Jordan will be otherwise engaged on an initiative of Mr Brandon’s.’ Cross paused. ‘Which I’m sure you’ll all want to cooperate with.’

Carol kept her head high and looked around. The faces she could see mostly showed open cynicism. Several heads turned towards her. There was no warmth in their stares. Even those who might support the profiling initiative were brassed off that the prime job had gone to a woman rather than one of the lads.

‘So Bob will take over Inspector Jordan’s operational responsibilities for Paul Gibbs and Adam Scott, and Kevin will handle yesterday’s body as well as Gareth Finnegan. The HOLMES team have been called in, and they’ll be starting to input their data just as soon as the boffins have got the wires in place. Inspector Dave Woolcott, who some of you will remember from when he was a sergeant here, will be the enquiry manager in charge of the HOLMES team. Over to you, Mr Brandon.’ Cross stepped back and waved the ACC forward. His gesture was only just on the right side of the border between insolence and politeness.

Brandon took a moment to look around the room. He’d never had to make a more important pitch. Most of the detectives in the room were jaded and frustrated. Many of them had been working on one of the previous murders for months now, with precious little to show for it. Tom Cross’s powers of motivation were legendary, but even he was facing an uphill struggle, not least because of his pig-headed refusal to admit before now that the crimes were connected. It was time to beat Tom Cross at his own game. Bluntness had never been Brandon’s strong suit, but he’d been practising all morning. In the shower, in front of the shaving mirror, in his head while he ate his egg on toast, in the car on the way to the station. Brandon thrust one hand in his trouser pocket and crossed his fingers.

‘This is probably the toughest task of any of our careers. As far as we’re aware, this guy is only operating in Bradfield. In a way, I’m glad about that, because I’ve never seen a better bunch of detectives than we’ve got here. If anyone can nail this bastard, it’s you lot. You’ve got a hundred and ten per cent support from your senior officers, and all the resources you need are going to be made available, whether the politicians like it or not.’ Brandon’s note of belligerence won a murmur of agreement from the room.

‘We’re going to be blazing a trail here in more ways than one. You all know about the Home Office plans for a national task force for profiling repeat offenders. Well, we’re going to be the guinea pigs. Dr Tony Hill, the man who’s going to be telling the Home Office what to think, has agreed to work with us. Now, I know there are some amongst you who think that profiling is a load of crap. But like it or not, it’s part of our future. If we cooperate and work with this guy, we’re a lot more likely to see this task force end up something like we want it to be. If we piss him off, we’re liable to be lumbered with a bloody great millstone round our neck. Is that clear to everyone here?’

Brandon looked sternly round the room, not missing out Tom Cross. The nods varied from enthusiastic to barely perceptible. ‘I’m glad we all understand one another. Dr Hill’s job is to assess the evidence we provide him with and to come up with a profile of the killer to help us focus our enquiries. I’ve appointed Inspector Carol Jordan as the liaison officer between the murder squad and Dr Hill. Inspector Jordan, can you just stand up a minute?’

Startled, Carol scrambled to her feet, dropping her files on the way. Don Merrick immediately got down on his knees and grabbed the spilling papers. ‘For those of you from other divisions who don’t know Inspector Jordan, there she is.’ Nice one, Brandon, thought Carol. As if there were squads of female detectives to choose from.

‘Inspector Jordan is to have access to each and every piece of paper on this enquiry. I want her kept fully informed of any developments. Anyone who is pursuing a promising lead should discuss it with her as well as with their own inspector, or Superintendent Cross. And any requests from Inspector Jordan must be treated as urgent enquiries. If I hear that anybody’s being a smartarse, trying to freeze Inspector Jordan or Dr Hill out of the investigation, I won’t be taking prisoners. The same goes for anybody who leaks anything about this aspect of the investigation to the media. So think on. Unless you’ve got a burning ambition to climb back into uniform and walk the streets of Bradfield in the rain for the rest of your career, you’ll do everything in your power to help her. This isn’t a competition. We’re all on the same side. Dr Hill isn’t here to catch the killer. That’s your –’

Brandon stopped in mid-sentence. No one had noticed the door opening, but the words of the communications room sergeant captured everyone’s attention faster than a gunshot. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir,’ he said, his voice tight with suppressed emotion. ‘We’ve got an ID on yesterday’s victim. Sir, he’s one of ours.’

FROM 3½″ DISK LABELLED: BACKUP.007; FILE LOVE.004

It was an American journalist who said, ‘I have seen the future and it works.’ I know just what he meant. After the dog, I knew Adam wouldn’t be any problem.

I spent the rest of the week in a state of nervous tension. I was even tempted to try one of the tranquillizers myself, but I resisted. This wasn’t the time to give in to weakness. Besides, I couldn’t afford to be anything less than completely in control of myself. My years of self-discipline paid off; I doubt if any of my colleagues noticed anything unusual in my behaviour at work, except that I couldn’t bring myself to do the weekend overtime I usually volunteer for.

By Monday morning, I was at a peak of readiness. I was primed and polished, the perfect killer-in-waiting. Even the weather was on my side. It was a crisp, clear autumnal morning, the kind of day that brings a smile even to the lips of commuters. Just before eight, I drove past Adam’s home, a new terraced three-storey town house with integral garage on the ground floor. His bedroom curtains were closed, the milk bottle still sitting on his doorstep, half a Daily Mail protruding from his letter box. I parked a couple of streets away outside a row of shops and retraced my journey. I walked down his street, satisfied that so far I was right on time. His bedroom curtains were drawn back, the milk and newspaper gone. At the end of the street, I crossed to the little park opposite and sat on a bench.

I opened my own Daily Mail and imagined Adam reading the same stories that I was staring at unseeingly. I shifted my position so I could see his front door without craning round the paper, and put my peripheral vision on alert. Right on schedule, the door opened at eight-twenty, and Adam appeared. Casually, I folded up my paper, dumped it in the litter bin by the bench and strolled off down the street in his wake.