The Mermaids Singing (25 page)

Carol stared at him. It seemed so blindingly obvious when he explained it like that. Yet not one of them had questioned the validity of the leather scrap.

‘Am I right?’ Tony asked, more gently this time.

Carol pulled a face. ‘Not a whole squad. Just me and Don Merrick and a couple of DCs. I’ve spent most of the day on the phone talking to governing bodies in weightlifting and body-building, trying to establish if McConnell’s ever been on a national or regional team that either competed in Russia or competed against Russians. And Don and the lads have been grilling travel agencies trying to check if he’s ever been on holiday there.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ Tony groaned. ‘And?’

‘Five years ago, he was one of a team of weightlifters from the North West who competed in an event in what was then Leningrad.’

Tony took a deep breath. ‘The poor unlucky bastard,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect the idea that this was deliberately planted to have occurred to any of you,’ he added. ‘I don’t mean that patronizingly. I realize how much closer you are to all of this and how desperately you want to catch this bastard. I just wish someone had told me earlier, before it assumed this major significance for everyone.’

‘I did
try
to phone you this morning,’ Carol said. ‘You still haven’t said where you were.’

Tony held his hands up. ‘I’m sorry. I’m overreacting. I was in bed, asleep, with the phones turned off. I was exhausted after last night, and I knew I couldn’t concentrate on writing the profile unless I had some sleep. I should have checked my answering machine when I got up. Sorry, I shouldn’t have had a go.’

Carol grinned. ‘I’ll let you off this time. Just save the fearsome bit for when we catch Handy Andy, huh?’

Tony pulled a face. ‘Shouldn’t that be “if”?’

He looked so vulnerable and fallible, his shoulders slumped, his head down, that Carol’s impulses overrode the decision she’d taken only minutes before to play it cool. She stepped forward and pulled Tony into a tight hug. ‘If anyone can do it, you can,’ she whispered, rubbing the side of her head against his chin like a cat marking its territory.

Brandon stared at Tom Cross, his face a mask of horror. ‘You did
what
?’ he demanded.

‘I searched McConnell’s house,’ Cross said belligerently.

‘I thought I said categorically that we had no right to do that? No judge in the land is going to accept that arrest for common assault in the street gives sufficient grounds for suspicion of murder.’

Cross smiled. It was a rictus that would have raised a Rottweiler’s hackles. ‘With respect, sir, that was then. Once Inspector Jordan had established that McConnell had been to Russia, the picture changed. Not a lot of people have had access to obscure Russian leather jackets, after all. It puts him in the frame. And there’s more than one JP around that owes me one.’

‘You should have cleared it with me,’ Brandon said. ‘The last order I gave on the subject was no search.’

‘I tried, sir, but you were in a meeting with the Chief,’ Cross said sweetly. ‘I thought I’d better strike while the iron was hot, being as how we don’t have him banged up indefinitely.’

‘So you wasted more time searching McConnell’s house,’ Brandon said bitterly. ‘Don’t you think you and your men could have been better employed?’

‘I haven’t told you yet what we found,’ Cross said.

Brandon felt his chest constrict. He wasn’t a man given to premonitions, but the sinking foreboding that gripped him now was as palpable as any solid fact he’d ever examined. ‘Think very carefully about what you say next, Superintendent,’ he said cautiously.

A momentary frown of puzzlement flashed over Cross’s features, but he was too full of the message he bore to worry about the ACC’s words. ‘We’ve got him, sir,’ he said. ‘Bang to rights. We found one of Gareth Finnegan’s firm’s Christmas cards in McConnell’s bedroom, and a sweater that’s a dead ringer for the one Adam Scott’s bird says was missing from his house. Plus a traffic ticket with Damien Connolly’s badge number on it. Add that to the Russian connection, and I think it’s time to charge the little arse bandit.’

F
ROM
3½″
DISK LABELLED
: B
ACKUP
.007;
FILE
L
OVE
.010

Of course, the discovery that one has a natural bent for something does not necessarily mean one should pursue it blindly. While I was disposing of Paul’s body, this time in a dark doorway in an alley in Temple Fields, I had already decided who my next target would be. But even after so magnificent an experience as the one I’d just shared with Paul, I had no intention of repeating it with Gareth.

It was going to be third time lucky. Gareth, I already knew, was a man of rich and fertile sexual imagination. Even as I was digitizing Paul’s pathetic performance into the computer, I was mourning the fact that, thanks to Gareth, I would never have the opportunity to perfect the extraordinary talent I had discovered in myself. With the resources at my command, I’ve been making movies like I’ve never seen. The ultimate snuff stuff. If I could have marketed them, I would have made a fortune. I know there’s a market out there. Plenty of people would pay a lot of money to watch Paul fuck me in his death spasms on the Judas chair. And as for what I’ve done with Adam… Let’s just say that no one’s ever seen sixty-nine like it.

As a treat, I went to the cemetery where Adam had been buried a few weeks before. The funeral had featured on the local television news, which I’d video-taped and studied so I could be fairly sure where the grave was. After dark, I made my way through the graves, and found Adam’s within twenty minutes. I opened the can of red spray paint I’d brought with me and sprayed ‘WANKER’ on one side of the grey granite, and ‘POOFTER’ on the other side. That should give the police something to occupy their minds.

The following evening, while I was waiting for Gareth to emerge from the firm of solicitors where he was a salaried partner, I whiled away the time with the hyperbole of the
Bradfield Evening Sentinel Times.
This time, I’d made the front page
.

GAY KILLER STRIKES AGAIN?

The mutilated body of a naked man was found this morning in Bradfield’s gay village.
The murder victim had been dumped in the fire-exit doorway of the gay club Shadowlands in an alley off Canal Street in the notorious Temple Fields district.
This is the second time in two months that the body of a naked man has been discovered in the gay cruising area.
Now locals fear a perverted serial killer is stalking the city’s large homosexual community.
Today’s gruesome discovery was made by nightclub owner Danny Surtees, 37, as he arrived for a meeting with his accountant.
He said, ’I always go into the club through the fire door at the side. I park my car in the alley. This morning, the door was blocked by something covered by a couple of black bin bags.
‘When I grabbed hold of the bags to try and pull them away from the door, they just came away in my hands and I saw there was a body under them.
‘He was horribly injured. There was no way he was still alive. I’m going to have nightmares about this for the rest of my life.’
Mr Surtees said the doorway had been clear when he locked up his club just after three this morning.
The victim, said to be in his early thirties, has not yet been identified. Police describe him as white, 5ft 11ins, slightly built, with dark-brown collar-length hair and hazel eyes. He has an old scar from an appendicectomy.
A police spokesman said, ’We believe the man was killed elsewhere and the body dumped in the alley between three and eight a.m.
‘We would urge anyone who was in the Temple Fields area last night to come forward for the purpose of elimination. All information will be treated in the strictest confidence.
‘At this stage of our enquiry, there is no evidence to connect this killing with the murder two months ago of Adam Scott.’
Carl Fellowes, the full-time worker at the Bradfield Gay and Lesbian Centre, said today, ’The police say that they don’t think there’s a connection between these two murders.
‘I don’t know what makes me more worried on behalf of the city’s gay community — the thought that there’s one nutter out there killing gay men, or the thought that there are two of them.’

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. One thing was clear, though. PC Plod was a long way from covering himself in glory over this case. I’d obviously done a good job covering my tracks.

I folded up my newspaper, finished my cappuccino and signalled for my bill. Any minute now, Gareth would emerge from his office and walk through the rush-hour streets to the tram. I wanted to be ready for him. I had something really special planned for him tonight, and I wanted to make sure he was home alone to enjoy it.

10

The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened connoisseur is more refined in his taste.

Penny Burgess topped up her glass of Californian Chardonnay from the bottle in the fridge and walked back through to her living room in time to hear the headlines on the BBC local news. Nothing fresh to worry about, she thought with relief. An armed robbery she could catch up with first thing in the morning. The police were still questioning a man in connection with the gay serial killings, but no charges had been laid yet. Penny sipped her wine and lit a cigarette.

They were going to have to move soon, she thought. By morning, they’d either have had to charge him with something or let him go. So far, no one had got a sniff of the suspect’s identity, which was pretty remarkable. The whole pack had been leaning heavily on their personal police contacts, but for once, the reservoir of information had resolutely refused to leak. Penny decided she’d better take a look at the magistrates’ court lists in the morning. There was an outside chance that the cops had something fairly innocuous to charge their suspect with so they could hang on to him while they dug around for the evidence they needed to make the serial killing charges stick.

As the news cut away to the weather forecast, the phone rang. Penny reached over to the occasional table by the sofa and grabbed the receiver. ‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Penny? It’s Kevin.’

Hallelujah, Penny thought, sitting up and grinding out her cigarette. All she said, however, was, ‘Kevin, my man. How’s it hanging?’ She raked in her handbag for a pencil and her notebook.

‘Something’s come up you might be interested in,’ the police inspector said cautiously.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Penny said suggestively. Her occasional sexual encounters with the very married Kevin Matthews had provided her with more than an inside track on Bradfield Metropolitan Police. He’d turned out to be one of the best lovers she’d ever had. She just wished he could overcome his Catholic guilt more often.

‘This is serious,’ Kevin protested.

‘So was I, superstud.’

‘Listen, do you want this info or not?’

‘Definitely. Especially if it’s the name of the guy you’ve got in custody for the Queer Killings.’

She heard the sharp intake of breath. ‘You know I can’t tell you that. There are limits.’

Penny sighed. It was the story of their relationship. ‘OK, so what can you tell me?’

‘Popeye’s been suspended.’

‘He’s off the case?’ Penny asked, her mind racing. Tom Cross? Suspended?

‘He’s off the
job
, Pen. He’s been sent home pending disciplinary action.’

‘Who by?’ Jesus, this was a story and a half. Just what had Popeye Cross been up to this time? She felt a momentary panic. What if he’d been caught out giving the suspect’s name to one of her rivals? She almost missed Kevin’s reply.

‘John Brandon.’

‘What the hell for?’

‘Nobody’s saying,’ Kevin said. ‘But the last thing he did before he saw Brandon was to carry out a search of our suspect’s house.’

‘A legal search?’ Penny probed.

‘Far as I know he had grounds under PACE,’ Kevin said cautiously.

‘So what’s going on, Kevin? Has Popeye been planting evidence, or what?’

‘I don’t know, Pen,’ Kevin said plaintively. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. If I hear anything else, I’ll call you, OK?’

‘OK. Thanks, Kev. You’re a star, you know.’

‘Yeah, well. I’ll speak to you soon.’

The line went dead. Penny dumped the phone back on the base unit and jumped to her feet. She hurried through to her bedroom, pulling off her dressing gown on the way. Five minutes later, she was running down the two flights of stairs from her flat to the underground garage. In the car, she checked the address in her A-Z, then set off, mentally rehearsing what she was going to say on the doorstep.

It was Tony who had pulled away from the clinch first. His body withdrew from hers in a gesture that rendered four inches forty.

Trying to keep it light, to cover the awkwardness that had sprung up between them, Carol said, ‘Sorry, you just looked like you needed a hug.’

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Tony said stiffly. ‘We use it all the time in group therapy.’

They stood for a moment, eyes not quite meeting. Then Carol moved to Tony’s side, slipped a hand through his unyielding arm and steered him forwards across the university courtyard. ‘So when do I get to look at this profile?’

The conversation was on safe ground again, but Carol was still too close for comfort. Tony could feel the tension inside him, like a cold hand squeezing his chest. He forced himself to speak in a calm, normal voice. ‘I want to do another couple of hours’ work now, and I’ll get stuck into it again first thing in the morning. I should have a draft ready for you by early afternoon. How does three o’clock sound to you?’