Thirty-five
A low hiss lasting several seconds, broken by two clicks, evenly spaced. A quarter-second’s silence, almost imperceptible, before the voice.
Hello, this is me. Nancy. I have to tell you that I’m all right. I’m well and nothing … nothing bad has happened to me, so I don’t want you to worry …
There is a slight fade as the voice disappears, the briefest of pauses during which the familiar background hiss can just be heard. The voice itself is pitched low but quite strong, perhaps surprisingly so; there is only a faint tremor at the end of certain words.
I am a prisoner, though, I’m not staying away because I want to but I don’t … because I don’t have any choice …
Most of the time I’m kept tied up, tied up and chained and I have … I have to squat down or lean against the wall or lie on the floor and I wish I could have more …
I am given water to wash with and a bucket to use as a toilet and I’m not hungry, there’s food and water to drink and once a day I get a cup of tea and …
What I want to say to you is this-Mum, Dad, whoever hears this- the person who’s keeping me here; making me do this, you should believe what he says, do what he says. He’s clever, yes, clever, and please, please, if you want to see me again, do whatever he says.
The click of the machine being switched off. Several seconds of constant hiss. The experts who listen to copies of the tape will disagree in their interpretation of the speaker’s state of mind here, one placing her near to the end of her tether, another suggesting a resilience that goes unimpaired. What they agree upon is that Nancy is speaking under duress, that although she does not seem to be reading from something previously prepared, nonetheless she has been fairly carefully rehearsed. Considerable significance is found in the detailed description of her routine as a prisoner, her subservience to her captor, her enforced regression to an almost fully dependent childlike state.
The break in the sound is followed by another double click, similar to before. The man’s voice is slightly distorted, slowed somehow in the process of recording, slurred. And the accent is regional, without being strongly so; enough, just, to blur the edges of received pronunciation. First attempts to place it centered on the northwest, not Manchester exactly but close, a touch softer and less well-defined. Somewhere, perhaps, to the south, towards the Welsh border. There seemed a strong possibility of one naturally absorbed mode of speech merging with another.
I do hope you will pay attention to that advice and listen to me carefully. Of course, I’m sure you will; I’m sure you are, right now, listening to me with such special care, playing my voice backwards and forwards and backwards again, shaking it upside down and inside out to see if you can shake me out.
But you can’t.
Nancy, you see; she’s right. About me, I mean. Oh, not that I’m clever, really clever, that’s not me. I’m not one of those geniuses who go to Oxford at twelve and thirteen to get a degree in Mathematics, no, I wasn’t even especially clever at school, but that’s only because I was never given the right chance. Because no one, you see, ever listened to me, really listened to what I had to say.
And now you will.
Close to the microphone, a laugh, low and generous, drawing the listener in.
I’m sorry, it’s just that I can see you now, excited, thinking, ah, he’s given himself away, told us more than we should know. But, no. It isn’t true and if it were it wouldn’t really matter. I could tell you my date of birth, size of shoe, the color of my eyes. Even Nancy could tell you the color of my eyes. She could tell you that much. But it wouldn’t matter. There still wouldn’t be time.
So listen very carefully. Don’t make any mistakes. Do as I say to the letter and Nancy can return, free and unharmed, to where she came from.
The day after you receive this tape you are to take two identical bags, each containing twenty-five thousand pounds, to two locations. The bags must be duffel bags, plain black, no markings, and the money must be in used notes, fifties and twenties only. The first location is the Little Chef at the intersection of the A15 and the A631 at Normanby. The second is the Little Chef on the A17 south of Boston. The bags are to be driven to the restaurants in unmarked cars, one driver and one passenger only, neither in uniform. The cars must both arrive at their destinations at a quarter to five in the evening. Park outside and leave the engine running while the passenger takes the bag into the Gents’ toilet and leaves it on the floor beneath the hand dryer. As soon as that has been done, that person must get straight back into the car and the car must drive off. There’s no reason this should take any more than two minutes and if it does the deal is off. If there are any other police cars in the area, marked or unmarked, the deal is off. If the locations are visited earlier in the day for the purpose of setting up microphones or hidden cameras, the deal’s off. Anything, any attempt to detain me, and the agreement is null and void.
So, remember, nothing bad has to happen here and if it does it will be at your door, your fault-and I’m sure you don’t want to live with that. Especially if it means somebody else is not.
The same low laugh, and then a click, louder than before. Silence. How he loves this, the experts will say, the psychologists, the precision of his orders, the control, like someone moving counters around a board. A man seizing the chance to laugh at others where previously others have laughed at him. About his apparent self-confidence there is a division; to one it is assumed, a delusion to be easily shattered, to another it is real-the confidence of someone in the process of constructing a world in which he is master, believing this more and more.
But this will come later.
Now, in the room where they have been listening-Skelton, Resnick, Helen Siddons, Millington-no one moves, speaks, swivels in their chair, cares, for several moments, to look anywhere other than at the floor. Nothing bad has to happen here and if it does it will be at your door, your fault. Finally, it is Millington who clears his throat, crosses and recrosses his legs; Helen Siddons who reaches inside her bag for cigarettes. Skelton and Resnick look one another in the eye: a quarter to five tomorrow. Give or take a few minutes, it is a quarter to five today.
Thirty-six
Through the slatted blinds of Resnick’s office, the city folded in upon itself in pools of orange light softly washed by rain. He knew all too well the results of profiling in this type of crime, studies carried out initially by the FBI and confirmed here at the Institute of Psychiatry. Four basic types: those needing to compensate for their own feelings of sexual inadequacy; those who experience excitement and pleasure as a direct response to their victim’s suffering; the assertive with a need to express more fully their sense of domination; those whose hostility is a reaction to deep-seated anger.
He was also aware that a high proportion of sexually motivated criminals, those who sought to exercise power over their victims, were also obsessed with the police. They read books and articles, followed cases, watched trials, collected anything and everything, from warrant cards to uniforms, they could lay their hands on. As far as Resnick knew, they were fully paid-up subscribers to Police Review.
He knew all that, the theory of it, and at that moment it was little help. Twenty-four hours. It wouldn’t really matter … There still wouldn’t be time. And they still had to make sure the voice on the tape was genuine, Nancy’s voice.