Tony paused and read the last sentence again. It was harsh, no doubt about that. And he hadn’t built his career on slagging off his colleagues. On the other hand, someone who was supposed to be immune to manipulative bastards like Vance had been lulled into putting him where he absolutely shouldn’t have been. Psychologists were trained to understand damage and how it avenges itself; someone had been woefully lacking here and he didn’t feel like covering her back. Not now Jacko Vance was out there and in all probability looking for revenge. Especially since he himself might be one of the targets of his vengeful rage. So he let the words stand, stark in their informality.
There was supposed to be a prison social worker accompanying him to the work placement. It is possible that this individual is also implicated in his escape. If there is a genuine reason for the social worker’s absence, it may also have been engineered by Vance from inside the prison. If, for example, the social worker’s family was under threat of some kind.
Nevertheless, prison professionals must not be above suspicion, both in what has happened and what may happen. Vance has certainly been given support from outside and it is extremely likely that he’s going to continue in that mode.
He pushed his glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘So much for the straightforward stuff,’ he muttered. Everything he’d written so far should be self-evident to anyone with half a brain. But he’d learned over the years that there was a game to be played here. You had to include the obvious so that those who read the report could congratulate themselves on being as perspicacious as the professional. Then they didn’t feel so aggrieved when you hit them with something they hadn’t expected. Never mind that that was what they paid you for. Deep down, everybody thought what he did was little more than applied common sense.
Some days, he thought they were right. But not today.
Tony rolled his shoulders and laid his fingers on the keys. He took a deep breath, like a pianist waiting for the conductor’s baton, then started typing furiously.
Vance is a planner. He has a bolthole which has been organised by whoever has been working on his behalf on the outside. He will stay clear of his old stamping grounds because he knows that’s where we will look. He will not be in London or Northumberland. Where he chooses to base himself will be dependent on what he plans to do.
This is going to be a temporary base. He will stay here only for as long as it takes to do what he plans to do. He will already have arranged a further destination where he will go to ground and rebuild a life for himself. He would be foolish to try to do this in the UK; I suspect he will have chosen a destination abroad. He has a substantial amount of money at his disposal, so he has a lot of options. It’s tempting to assume he will go for somewhere that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK, but he’s arrogant enough to think he’s not going to be found. There’s nothing in the records to suggest he speaks another language. He needs to be able to communicate in order to control, so he’ll go some place where English is the primary language. The USA is hard to get into, but once you’re there it’s easy to lose yourself, particularly if, like Vance, you’ve got plenty of money and therefore no need to trouble the social security system. He’ll also want to be somewhere he can have access to the best in prosthetics with no questions asked, so again that points to the USA. And, unlike Australia or New Zealand, they tend not to show UK TV programmes, so there’s little chance of anyone spotting him from reruns of Vance’s Visits. There are also possibilities offered by some of the Gulf states, where privacy is highly prized and where English is widely spoken. Normally I’d say follow the money, except that guys like Vance know people who know how to make the money disappear without a trail.
So the big question is what he has planned before he leaves for his ultimate destination. Based on how he behaved towards Shaz Bowman when he thought there was a possibility of her thwarting him, I believe Vance intends to avenge himself on the people he holds responsible for his incarceration.
His prime target will be the police officer who was responsible for tracking him down and arresting him: Carol Jordan, currently a DCI with Bradfield Metropolitan Police. There were other officers involved in the unofficial investigation: Chris Devine, currently a DS in the same force; Leon Jackson, who was a DC with the Metropolitan Police; Kay Hallam, who was a DC with Hampshire; and Simon McNeill, who was a DC with Strathclyde. Given the relatively high profile of my own involvement in the process, I would expect also to be on his list of targets.
Seeing it on the screen in black and white made it seem less real somehow. Just words on a page, nothing to lie awake worrying and wondering about. Really, what were the chances of Vance coming after him like an avenging angel? ‘Whistling in the dark,’ he muttered. ‘And out of tune, at that.’
He carried on typing.
The other main targets will be his ex-wife, Micky Morgan, and her partner Betsy Thorne. In Vance’s world view, they failed to keep their end of the bargain. Micky betrayed him by revealing that their marriage was a sham. She refused to support him in court and never came near him in prison. When she had the marriage annulled because it had never been consummated, she made him a figure of derision and contempt. She became the enemy. Wherever she is, Vance will show up sooner rather than later. Staking out these potential targets may well be the most effective way of snaring Vance.
All of which was very bloodless, very academic. Nothing to do with the screaming in the back of Tony’s brain when the image of Shaz Bowman’s destruction flashed unbidden before his eyes. He didn’t want Piers Lambert to think he was hysterical, but he wanted to make damn sure he paid attention.
Jacko Vance is probably the most efficient and focused killer I have ever encountered. He is vicious and without remorse or compassion. I suspect he has no limits. He does not kill for pleasure. He kills because that’s what his victims deserve, according to his self-righteous view of the world. He has committed a highly organised escape from jail. I don’t think there’s anything significant in the timing. I think it’s simply taken him this long to get everything perfectly in place. And now, unless we take decisive action, the killing will start.
20
Stacey wasn’t the only one who knew how to get information out of a computer, Kevin told himself. He had a twelve-year-old son who used his home computer like an extension of himself. It had been a steep learning curve, but Kevin was determined to keep abreast of his son. Back when he was a boy, his dad had shared his knowledge of what went on under a car’s bonnet and that had been the single thing that had kept them on speaking terms during Kevin’s own adolescence. It seemed to Kevin that the twenty-first-century equivalent of messing about in lock-ups with motors was being able to play World of Warcraft online with your kid. Beyond that, he’d learned how to do slide presentations, how to typeset a poster and how to refine his Google searches. He kept quiet about it in the office, though. He had no desire to tread on Stacey’s toes or to have the limits of his capabilities cruelly exposed.
Ten minutes with Google and another metasearch engine revealed that there was no shortage of businesses that could supply a tattooing machine. Even given the current obsession with body art, Kevin found it hard to believe they could all make a living. He had no tattoos himself; he reckoned they’d look weird on his freckled skin. His wife had a scarlet lily on her shoulder and he’d always admired it, but she’d never fancied another and he hadn’t loved it enough to try to persuade her otherwise.