‘Have you seen them go at it like that before?’
The woman shrugged. ‘He’s been trying to freak her out about there being a serial killer out there.’ She curled her lip in disdain. ‘Like we don’t know there are bastards out there who get off on hurting us. You don’t do this job if you’re worried about health and fucking safety. We all know it, all the time. We just try not to fucking think about it.’
‘What did he do then, her dad?’
She tossed her cigarette end on the pavement and ground it out. ‘He did what he was told. He fucked off. Now I’d like you to do the same.’ She waved her fingers at Sam in a shooing motion. ‘Go on, you’re ruining my trade.’
Sam backed away and watched the woman totter to the kerbside on insanely high heels. What he’d learned didn’t take them much further forward. But it was corroboration. And when you were building a case, sometimes that was the best you could hope for.
51
There was something blissful about the way the blue light carved a line through the traffic. Cars and vans scuttled sideways like crabs when they spotted her. Carol especially loved the ones who were pulverising the speed limit till they saw her in their rear-view. Suddenly they’d brake and slew into the middle lane with an air of, ‘Who, me, guv?’ When she passed them seconds later, they’d always be staring resolutely straight ahead, their vain pretence glaringly obvious.
Sometimes people genuinely didn’t see her. They were lost in music or Radio 4 or some football phone-in on Talk Sport. She’d get right up behind them then give them a blare on the horn. She could actually see one or two of them jump. Then they’d jerk the wheel and she’d be past them, so close she imagined them swearing.
It was exhilarating, this feeling of finally taking action. It felt like forever since she’d stood in the barn looking down at Michael and Lucy’s bodies, a viscous sea of time that dragged at her feet and stopped her making any progress. She wanted to move forward, to bury the horror. But she couldn’t even start while Jacko Vance walked free. At liberty, he was an affront to her sense of justice.
It wasn’t death that Carol wanted to mete out. She knew a lot of people in her shoes would be satisfied with nothing less. But she didn’t believe in capital punishment, or even private vengeance that ended up with bodies on the floor. She and Vance were oddly at one on this point. She wanted him to live with the consequences of what he had done. Every day, she wanted him to know he was never going to look at an unfettered sky again.
And she wanted him to know who had put him back behind bars. Every day, she wanted him to hate her more.
Vance couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in Halifax. It must have been back when he was making his hit series, Vance’s Visits. He knew he must have been there before, because he clearly recalled the spectacular road curving down from the motorway round one side of the bowl of hills that cradled the town itself. Tonight it was a basin of lights, sparkling and twinkling below. It must have been hellish in Halifax after the Industrial Revolution. All those wool mills, spewing out smuts of smoke and clots of coal dust, filling the air with noxious fumes and filth, and nowhere for it to escape to, held tight in the embrace of the hills. He could understand the working man’s attraction to getting out to the dales and the moors to breathe clean air, to feel like a human being and not just a part in the vast machine.
He swept down from the high motorway into the valley below, keeping an eye out for a possible temporary base. He needed somewhere with wi-fi, so that he could check that his target was where he hoped she would be. It was too late for coffee shops, always supposing Halifax had anything so cool. And he didn’t want an Internet café, where people could peer over your shoulder and wonder why you were looking at CCTV pictures of a woman in her living room when she was clearly well past the age of sexual fantasy.
As he rounded a bend, he saw the golden arches of a McDonald’s. He remembered Terry telling him that, when all else failed, you could always count on McDonald’s. ‘Coffee, grub, or the Internet, you can get it there.’ Vance shuddered at the thought. Even when he’d pretended to have the common touch, he’d drawn the line at McDonald’s. But maybe for once he could make an exception. There must be a quiet corner where he could drink coffee and get online.
At the last minute he swung into the entrance and parked the car. He grabbed his laptop bag and went inside. The restaurant was surprisingly busy, mostly with teenagers who were fractionally too young to persuade even the most short-sighted bartenders that they were old enough for alcohol. Their desperate need to feel cool had driven them out from houses where Match of the Day was the natural late-night Saturday fare into the unforgiving glare of McDonald’s lighting. They slouched around the place with their milkshakes and colas, the boys with baseball caps at any angle except the conventional, the girls with an astonishing amount of flesh on display. Vance, who considered himself a connoisseur of teenage girls, felt faintly queasy at the sight. He had no interest in girls who had no sense of dignity. What was there to break down when the girls had already given everything away?
Vance bought a cup of coffee and found a table for two in the furthest corner. Although it was near the toilets, he could angle his screen away from prying eyes. Ignoring his drink, he quickly booted up and ran through his camera sites. Nothing at all at Tony Hill’s house, though the gateway had been boarded up and ‘Danger! Keep Out!’ signs had been posted. From the other camera shots, he could see why. The building was gutted. No roof, no windows, just a partially collapsed shell.
The third scene was the one that made him want to shout abuse at the screen. But Vance knew he had to maintain the appearance of calm. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention to himself. Teenagers were notoriously solipsistic, but even so, it only needed one sharp-eyed observer to create all sorts of problems. Still, seeing the stable block still standing filled him with rage. While he watched, Betsy herself came into shot with an armed policeman, a pair of spaniels at her heels. She was gesturing to various aspects of the relatively undamaged stable block as they walked, clearly having an animated conversation. She didn’t seem to be suffering at all, the bitch. He wanted her on her knees, weeping and tearing her hair out, locked into painful mourning. Maybe next time he should do the dogs. Cut their throats and leave them on Micky and Betsy’s beds. That would show them who had the power. Or maybe he should just do Betsy.
He took a deep breath and clicked on to the last set of active camera feeds. Clockwise, it showed the driveway and frontage of a detached stone-built villa that looked somehow unmistakably Northern. It wasn’t a big house – it looked like three reception rooms and three bedrooms, but it was solid and well maintained. In the driveway, outside a detached wooden garage, was a two-seater Mercedes.
Next was a modern kitchen that had the pristine air of somewhere that’s only ever used to reheat meals supplied by Waitrose or Marks and Spencer. The lights under the wall cabinets were on, casting a cold glow on pale wood worktops. Beyond the kitchen the ribs of a conservatory loomed pale through the darkness.
In the third view, a camera with a fish-eye lens had obviously been mounted in a corner of the half-landing on the stairs. It was possible to see up to the head of the stairs and through an open door that led to a bedroom, and also down the stairs to the front door, whose stained glass glowed faintly, backlit by the street lights outside.