The Wire in the Blood

He took a deep breath and turned to face them. ‘But there could be another scenario lurking in there. If there is, it’ll be our job to find it.’

Excitement started like a slow burn in Shaz’s gut, powerful enough to dim the memories of what she’d read about Tony’s last close encounter with a killer. This was her first chance. If there were undiscovered murder victims out there, she would find them. More than that, she would be their advocate. And their avenger.

Criminals are often caught by accident. He knew that; he’d seen programmes about it on the TV. Dennis Nilsen, killer of fifteen homeless young men, found out because human flesh blocked the drains; Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, despatcher of thirteen women, nicked because he’d stolen a set of number plates to disguise his car; Ted Bundy, necrophiliac murderer of as many as forty young women, finally arrested for speeding past a police car at night with no lights. This knowledge didn’t frighten him, but it added an extra frisson to the adrenaline buzz that inevitably accompanied his fire-setting. His motives might be very different from theirs, but the risk was almost as great. The once soft leather driving gloves were always damp with his nervous sweat.

Somewhere around one in the morning, he parked his car in a carefully chosen spot. He never left it on a residential street, understanding the insomnia of the elderly and the late-night revels of the young. Instead, he chose the car parks of DIY stores, the waste ground beside factories, the forecourts of garages closed for the night. Secondhand car pitches were best; nobody noticed an extra car there for an hour or two in the small hours.

He never carried a holdall either, sensing it to be suspicious at that time of night. A policeman spotting him would have no cause to think he’d been out burgling. And even if a bored night-beat bobby fancied the diversion of getting him to turn out his pockets, there wouldn’t be much to arouse suspicion. A length of string, an old-fashioned cigarette lighter with a brass case, a packet of cigarettes with two or three missing, a dog-eared book of matches with a couple remaining, yesterday’s newspaper, a Swiss Army knife, a crumpled oil-stained handkerchief, a small but powerful torch. If that was grounds for arrest, the cells would be full every night.

He walked the route he’d memorized, staying close to the walls as he moved silently down empty streets, his blank-soled bowling shoes making no sound. After a few minutes, he came to a narrow alley which led to the blind side of a small industrial estate he’d had his eye on for a while. It had originally been a ropeworks and consisted of a group of four turn-of-the-century brick buildings which had recently been converted to their present uses. An auto electrician’s sat next to an upholstery workshop, opposite a plumbing supplier and a bakery that made biscuits from a recipe allegedly as old as the York Mystery plays. He reckoned anyone who got away with charging such ridiculous prices for a poxy packet of gritty biscuits deserved to have their factory razed to the ground, but there wasn’t enough flammable material there for his needs.

Tonight, the upholstery workshop was going to go up like a Roman candle.

Later, he’d thrill to the sight of yellow and crimson flames thrusting their long spikes into the plumes of grey and brown smoke billowing up from the blazing cloth and the wooden floors and beams of the elderly building. But for now, he had to get inside.

He’d made his preparations earlier that day, dropping a carrier bag into a rubbish bin by the side door of the workshop. Now he retrieved it and took out the sink plunger and the tube of superglue. He walked round the outside of the building until he was outside the toilet window, where he stuck the plunger to the window. He waited a few minutes to be certain the contact adhesive had hardened, then he gripped the plunger with both hands, braced himself and gave a sharp tug. The glass broke with a tiny tinkle, the fragments falling on the outside of the window, just as they would if it had exploded from the heat. He tapped the plunger smartly against the wall to shatter the circle of glass, leaving only a thin ring still glued to the rubber. That didn’t worry him; there would be no reason for any forensic expert to reconstruct the window and reveal a missing circle of glass at the heart of the shards. That done, he was inside within a few minutes. There was, he knew, no burglar alarm.

He took out the torch and flipped it quickly on and off to check his position, then emerged into the corridor that led along the back of the main work space. At the end, he recalled, were a couple of large cardboard boxes of scrap material that local handicraft hobbyists bought for coppers. No reason for fire investigators to doubt it was a place where workers might hang out for a sly fag.

It was a matter of moments to construct his incendiary device. First he opened up the cigarette lighter and rubbed the string with the wadding which he’d previously saturated with lighter fluid. Then he put the string at the centre of a bundle of half a dozen cigarettes held loosely together with an elastic band. He placed his incendiary so that the string fuse lay along the edge of the nearest cardboard box, then laid the oily handkerchief beside it with some crumpled newspaper. Finally, he lit the cigarettes. They would burn halfway down before the string ignited. That in its turn would take a little while to get the boxes of fabric smouldering. But by the time they’d caught hold, there wouldn’t be any stopping his fire. It was going to be some blaze.

He’d been saving this one up, knowing it would be a beauty. Rewarding, in more ways than one.

Betsy checked her watch. Ten minutes more, then she would break up Suzy Joseph’s junket with a fictitious appointment for Micky. If Jacko wanted to carry on charming, that was up to him. She suspected he’d rather seize the opportunity to escape. He’d have finished filming the latest Vance’s Visits the night before, so he’d be off on one of his charity stints at one of the specialist hospitals where he worked as a volunteer counsellor and support worker. He’d be gone by mid-afternoon, leaving her and Micky to a peaceful house and a weekend alone.

‘Between Jacko and the Princess of Wales, you get no peace these days when you’ve got a terminal illness,’ she said out loud. ‘I’m the lucky one,’ she went on, moving from bureau to filing cabinet as she cleared her desk in preparation for a guilt-free weekend. ‘I don’t have to listen to the Authorized Version for the millionth time.’ She imitated Jacko’s upbeat, dramatic intonation. ‘“I was lying there, contemplating the wreck of my dreams, convinced I had nothing left to live for. Then, out of the depths of my depression, I saw a vision.”’ Betsy made the sweeping gesture she’d seen Jacko deploy so often with his living arm. ‘“This very vision of loveliness, in fact. There, by my hospital bed, stood the one thing I’d seen since the accident that made me realize life might be worth living.”’

It was a tale that bore almost no relationship to the reality Betsy had lived through. She remembered Micky’s first encounter with Jacko, but not because it had been the earth-shaking collision of two stars recognizing their counterparts. Betsy’s memories were very different and far less romantic.

It was the first time Micky had been the lead outside broadcast reporter on the main evening news bulletin. She’d been bringing millions of eager viewers the first exclusive interview with Jacko Vance, hero of the hottest human story on the networks. Betsy had watched the broadcast at home alone, thrilled to see her lover the cynosure of ten million pairs of eyes, hugging herself in delight.

The exhilaration hadn’t lasted long. They’d been celebrating together in the flickering glow of the video replay when the phone had interrupted their pleasure. Betsy had answered, her voice exuberant with happiness. The journalist who greeted her as Micky’s girlfriend drained all the joy from her. In spite of Betsy’s frostily vehement denials and Micky’s scornful ridicule, both women knew their relationship was poised on the edge of the worst kind of tabloid exposure.

The patient campaign Micky had gone on to wage against the sneak tactics of the hacks was as carefully planned and as ruthlessly executed as any career move she’d ever made. Every night, two separate pairs of bedroom curtains would be closed and lights turned on behind them. The lamps would go off at staggered intervals, the one in the spare room controlled by a timer that Betsy adjusted to a different hour each night. Every morning, the curtains would be drawn back at diverse times, each pair by the same hands that had closed them. The only places the two women embraced were behind closed curtains out of the line of sight of the window, or in the hallway, which was invisible from outside. If both left the house at the same time, they parted at the bottom of the steps with a cheerful wave and no bodily contact.

Giving the presumed watchers nothing to chew on would have been enough to make most people feel secure. But Micky preferred a more proactive approach. If the tabloids wanted a story, she’d make sure they had one. It would simply have to be a more exciting, more credible and more sexy story than the one they thought they had. She cared far too much for Betsy to take chances with her lover’s peace of mind or their relationship.

The morning after the ominous phone call, Micky had a spare hour. She drove to the hospital where Jacko was a patient and charmed her way past the nurses. Jacko seemed pleased to see her, and not only because she came armed with the gift of a miniature AM/FM radio complete with earphones. Although he was still taking strong medication for his pain, he was alert and receptive to any distraction from the tedium of life in his side ward. She spent half an hour chatting lightly about everything except the accident and the amputation, then left, leaning over to give him a friendly peck on the forehead. It had been no hardship; to her surprise, she’d found herself warming to Jacko. He wasn’t the arrogant macho man she’d expected, based on her past experience with male sporting heroes. Nor, even more surprisingly, was he wallowing in self-pity. Micky’s visits might have started out as cynical self-interest, but within a very short space of time she was sucked in, first by her respect for his stoicism, then by an unexpected pleasure in his company. He might be more interested in himself than in her, but at least he managed to be entertaining and witty with it.

Five days and four visits later, Jacko asked the question she’d been waiting for. ‘Why do you keep visiting me?’

Micky shrugged. ‘I like you?’

Jacko’s eyebrows rose and fell, as if to say, ‘That’s not enough.’

She sighed and made a conscious effort to hold his speculative gaze. ‘I have always been cursed with an imagination. And I understand the drive to be successful. I’ve worked my socks off to get where I am. I’ve made sacrifices and I’ve sometimes had to treat people in a way that, in other circumstances, I’d be ashamed of. But getting to where I want to be is the most important thing in my life. I can imagine how I would feel if a chain of circumstances outside my control cost me my goal. I guess what I feel for you is empathy.’

‘Meaning what?’ he asked, his face giving nothing away.

‘Sympathy without pity?’

He nodded, as if satisfied. ‘The nurse reckoned it was because you fancied me. I knew she was wrong.’

Micky shrugged. It was all going so much better than she’d anticipated. ‘Don’t disillusion her. People distrust motives they can’t understand.’

‘You’re so right,’ he said, an edge of bitterness in his voice that she hadn’t heard there before, in spite of the ample reason. ‘But understanding doesn’t always make it possible to accept something.’

There was more, much more behind his words. But Micky knew when to leave well alone. There would be plenty of opportunity to broach that subject again. When she left that day, she was careful to make sure the nurse saw her kiss him goodbye. If this story was to be credible, it needed to leak out, not be broadcast. And from her own journalistic experience, gossip spread through a hospital faster than legionnaire’s disease. From there to the wider community only took one carrier.

When she arrived a week later, Jacko seemed remote. Micky sensed violent emotions barely held in check, but couldn’t be sure what those feelings were. Eventually, tired of conducting a monologue rather than a conversation, she said, ‘Are you going to tell me or are you just going to let your blood pressure rise till you have a stroke?’

For the first time that afternoon, he looked directly into her face. Momentarily, she thought he was in the grip of fever, then she realized it was a fury so powerful that she couldn’t imagine how he could contain it. He was so angry he could barely speak, she realized as she watched him struggle to find the words. At last, he conquered his rage by sheer effort of will and said, ‘My fucking so-called fiancée,’ he growled.

‘Jillie?’ Micky hoped she’d got the name right. They’d met briefly one afternoon as Micky had been leaving. She had the impression of a slender dark-haired beauty who managed sultry rather than tarty by an inch.

‘Bitch,’ he hissed, the tendons on his neck tensing like cords beneath the tanned skin.

‘What’s happened, Jacko?’

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, his wide chest expanding and emphasizing the asymmetry of his once perfect upper body. ‘Dumped me,’ he managed at last, his voice thick with anger.

‘No,’ Micky breathed. ‘Oh, Jacko.’ She reached out and touched the tight fist with her fingers. She could actually feel the pulse beating in his flesh, so tightly was his hand clenched. His rage was phenomenal, Micky thought, yet his control seemed in no real danger of slipping.

‘Says she can’t cope with it.’ He gave a grating bark of cynical laughter. ‘She can’t cope with it? How the fuck does she think it is for me?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Micky said inadequately.

‘I saw it in her face, the first time she visited after the accident. No, I knew before that. I knew because she didn’t come near me that first day. It took her two days to get her arse in here.’ His voice was harsh and guttural, the heavy words falling like blocks of stone. ‘When she did come, she couldn’t stand the sight of me. It was all over her face. I repelled her. All she could see was what I wasn’t any more.’ He pulled his fist away and pounded it on the bed.

‘More fool her.’

His eyes opened and he glared at her. ‘Don’t you start. All I need is one more silly bitch patronizing me. I’ve had that fucking nurse with her artificial cheerfulness all over me. Just don’t!’

Micky didn’t flinch. She’d won too many confrontations with news editors for that. ‘You should learn to recognize respect when you see it,’ she flared back at him. ‘I’m sorry Jillie hasn’t got what it takes to see you through, but you’re better off finding that out now than further down the road.’

Jacko looked astonished. For years now, the only person who’d spoken to him with anything except nervous deference was his trainer. ‘What?’ he squawked, his anger displaced by baffled astonishment.

Micky continued regardless of his response. ‘What you have to decide now is how you’re going to play it.’

‘What?’

‘It’s not going to stay a secret between the two of you, is it? From what you said, the nurse already knows. So by teatime, it’s going to be, “Hold the front page.” If you want, you can settle for being an object of pity – hero dumped by girlfriend because he’s not a proper man any more. You’ll get the sympathy vote, and a fair chunk of the Great British Public will spit on Jillie in the street. Alternatively, you can get your retaliation in first and come out on top.’

Jacko’s mouth was open, but for a moment no words came. At last, he said in a low voice that fellow members of the Olympic squad would have recognized as a signal for flak jackets, ‘Go on.’

‘It’s up to you. It depends whether you want people to see you as a victim or a victor.’

Micky’s level stare felt as much of a challenge as anything that had ever faced him on the field of competition. ‘What do you think?’ he snarled.

‘I’m telling you, man, this is the sticks,’ Leon said, waving a chicken pakora in a sweeping gesture that seemed to include not only the restaurant but most of the West Riding of Yorkshire as well.

‘You’ve obviously never been to Greenock on a Saturday night,’ Simon said drily. ‘Believe me, Leon, that makes Leeds look positively cosmopolitan.’

‘Nothing could make this place cosmopolitan,’ Leon protested.

‘It’s not that bad,’ Kay said. ‘It’s very good for shopping.’ Even outside the classroom, Shaz noticed, Kay slipped straight into the conciliatory role, smoothing down her hair as she smoothed down the rough edges in the conversations.

Simon groaned theatrically. ‘Oh please, Kay, don’t feel you need to glide effortlessly into bland womanly stuff. Go on, make my night, tell me how terrific Leeds is for body-piercing.’

Kay poked her tongue out at him.

‘If you don’t leave Kay alone, us women might well consider piercing some treasured part of your anatomy with this beer bottle,’ Shaz said sweetly, brandishing her Kingfisher.

Simon put his hands up. ‘OK. I’ll behave, just as long as you promise not to beat me with a chapati.’

There was a moment’s silence while the four police officers attacked their starters. The Saturday night curry looked like becoming a regular feature for the quartet, the other two preferring to return to their former home turf rather than explore their new base. When Simon had first suggested it, Shaz hadn’t been sure if she wanted to bond that closely with her colleagues. But Simon had been persuasive, and besides, Commander Bishop had been earwigging and she wanted to avoid a black mark for being unco-operative. So she’d agreed and, to her surprise, she’d enjoyed herself, even though she had made her excuses and left before the nightclub excursion that had followed. Now, three weeks into the Job, she found she was actually looking forward to their night out, and not just for the food.

Leon was first to clear his plate, as usual. ‘What I’m saying is, it’s primitive up here.’

‘I don’t know,’ Shaz protested. ‘They’ve got plenty of good curry houses, the property’s cheap enough for me to afford something bigger than a rabbit hutch, and if you want to go from one part of the city centre to another, you can walk instead of sitting on the tube for an hour.’

‘And the countryside. Don’t forget how easy it is to get out into the countryside,’ Kay added.

Leon leaned back in his seat, groaning and rolling his eyes extravagantly like a terrible caricature of a Black and White Minstrel. ‘Heathcliff,’ he warbled in falsetto.

‘She’s right,’ Simon said. ‘God, you’re such a cliché, Leon. You should get off the city streets, get some fresh air into your lungs. What about coming out tomorrow for a walk? I really fancy seeing if Ilkley Moor lives up to the song.’

Shaz laughed. ‘What? You want to walk about without a hat and see if you catch your death of cold?’

The others joined in her laughter. ‘See, man, it’s primitive, like I said. Nothing to do but walk about on your own two feet. And shit, Simon, I’m not the one that’s a cliché. You know I’ve been stopped driving home three times since I moved here? Even the Met got a bit more racially enlightened than thinking every black man with a decent set of wheels has to be a drug dealer,’ Leon said bitterly.

‘They’re not stopping you because you’re black,’ Shaz retorted as he paused to light a cigarette.

‘No?’ Leon exhaled.

‘No, they’re stopping you for being in possession of an offensive weapon.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That suit, babe. Any sharper and you’d cut yourself getting dressed. You’re wearing a blade, of course they’re going to stop you.’ Shaz held out her hand for Leon to give her five and, amid the hoots of laughter from the other two, he made a rueful face and hit her hand.

‘Not as sharp as you, Shaz,’ Simon said. She wondered if it was only the heat of the spices that was responsible for the scarlet flush across his normally pale cheekbones.

‘Speaking of sharp,’ Kay chipped in as their main courses arrived, ‘you can’t get anything past Tony Hill, can you?’

‘He’s smart, all right,’ Simon agreed, sweeping his wavy dark hair back from his sweating forehead. ‘I just wish he’d loosen up a bit. It’s like there’s a wall there that you get right up to but you can’t see over.’

‘I’ll tell you why that is,’ Shaz said, suddenly serious. ‘Bradfield. The Queer Killer.’

‘That’s the one he did that went well and truly pear-shaped, yeah?’ Leon asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘It was all hushed up, wasn’t it?’ Kay said, her intent face reminding Shaz of a small furry animal, cute but with hidden teeth. ‘The papers hinted at all sorts of stuff, but they never went into much detail.’

‘Believe me,’ Shaz said, looking at her half-chicken and wishing she’d gone for something vegetarian, ‘you wouldn’t want to know the details. If you want to know the whole story, check out the Internet. They weren’t constrained by technicalities like good taste or requests from the authorities to keep things under wraps. I’m telling you, if you can read what Tony Hill went through without having second thoughts about what we’re doing, you’re a fuck of a sight braver than I am.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then Simon leaned forward and said confidingly, ‘You’re going to tell us, aren’t you, Shaz?’

He always arrived fifteen minutes ahead of the agreed time because he knew she’d be early. It didn’t matter which she he’d chosen, she’d turn up ahead of schedule because she was convinced he was Rumpelstiltskin, the man who could spin twenty-four-carat gold out of the dry straw of her life.

Donna Doyle – no longer the next one but rather the latest one – was no different from the others. As her silhouette appeared against the dim light of the car park, he could hear the clumsy childish music crashing in his head. ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water …’

He shook his head to clear his ears, like a snorkeller surfacing from a coral reef. He watched her approach, moving cautiously between the expensive cars, glancing from side to side, a slight frown creasing her forehead, as if she couldn’t work out why her antennae weren’t pointing her to his precise position. He could see she’d done her best to look good; the school skirt that had obviously been folded over at the waist to show off shapely legs, the school blouse open one button further than parent or teacher would ever have allowed in public, the blazer over one shoulder, hanging thus to obscure the backpack of school supplies. The make-up was heavier than the night before, its excess weight catapulting her straight into middle age. And her hair glinted glossy black, the swing of the short bob catching the dull gleam of the car park lights.

When Donna was almost level, he pushed open the passenger door of the car. The sudden interior light made her jump even as she registered his shockingly handsome profile cutting a dark line through the bright rectangle. He spoke through his already lowered window. ‘Come and sit with me while I tell you what all this is about,’ he said conversationally.

Donna hesitated fractionally, but she was too familiar with the open candour of his public face to pause properly for reflection. She slid into the seat next to him and he made sure she saw him carefully not looking at the expanse of thigh her moves had revealed. For the time being, chastity was the best policy. Her smile was coquettish yet innocent as she said, ‘When I woke up this morning, I wondered if I’d dreamed it all.’

His answering smile was indulgent. ‘I feel like that all the time,’ he said, building another course of bricks on the false foundation of fake rapport. ‘I wondered if you’d have second thoughts. There are so many things you could do with your life that would be a greater contribution to society than being on TV. Believe me, I know.’