Beneath the Bleeding

Praise for Beneath the Bleeding:

McDermids previous novels have set the bar vertiginously high but the latest outing for criminal profiler Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan has all the craft, panache and pace that we have come to expect from this outstanding writer

Vintage stuff: unplug the phone, lock the door and prepare to read in a sitting

Guardian

Another intelligent and absorbing offering from one of crime fictions most consistent performers

The Times

If Rankin is the king of British crime, Val McDermid is undoubtedly the queen Hill and Jordan are compelling creations and their encounters fairly crackle. McDermid is a consummate plotter so there are pleasing twists and turns in this first-rate story

Observer

McDermid is at the peak of her murderous craft on the page, McDermid makes criminal profiler Hill every bit as engaging as [Robson Green]

Daily Mirror

The Queen of serial killers in this country keeps her end up few can scoop Val on throat-clutching narrative but at the same time she is marvellous on the sub-plot details I am intrigued by the first appearance of Hills monster mother more of her please

Daily Mail

Peerless one of the worlds finest crime writers, McDermid is currently at the top of her game

Glasgow Herald

Very good McDermid is an old hand at making things believable

Irish Examiner

The novel opens explosively the momentum doesnt slacken this is a book which works on more than one level. It fulfils the criteria of a very good contemporary crime novel in terms of excitement, topicality and its sense of authenticity. but it delivers more than this: the complex and unpredictable relationship between Hill and Jordan lies at the heart of the series and is one of its greatest strengths. McDermids writing gets better and better

Spectator

McDermids usual ingredients of fear, revulsion, ingenuity and heroism this book is all the more gripping because some holds are barred

Literary Review

McDermid is up there with the best

Good Reading

VAL McDERMID

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007

Lines from Four Quartets: East Coker by T.S. Eliot are reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007243280

Ebook edition SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007279401

Version: 2018-07-30

This one is for the members of the wedding, who helped to create the best of memories.

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healers art

From Four Quartets: East Coker

T S Eliot

Praise Title Page Copyright Dedication Friday List 2 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Midnight List 1 Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday List 3 Chapter Three Months Later Acknowledgements About the Author Series Title About the Publisher

Friday

The phases of the moon have an inexplicable but incontrovertible effect on the mentally ill. Ask any psychiatric nurse. For them, its a truth universally acknowledged. None of them volunteers for overtime around the time of the full moon. Not unless they are absolutely desperate. Its also a truth that makes the behavioural scientists uneasy; its not something that can be laid at the door of an abusive childhood or an inability to relate socially. Its an external rhythm that no amount of treatment can override. It drags the tides and it pulls the deranged out of their hampered orbits.

The internal dynamics of Bradfield Moor Secure Hospital were as susceptible to the undertow of the full moon as its name suggested. According to some of its staff, Bradfield Moor was a warehousing facility for those too dangerously crazy to walk free; to others, it was a haven for minds too fragile for the rough and tumble of life on the outside; and to the rest, it was a temporary refuge that offered the hope of a return to a loosely defined normality. The third group was, unsurprisingly, heavily outnumbered and heartily despised by the other two.

That night, it wasnt enough that the moon was full. It was also subject to a partial eclipse. The milky shadows of the lunar surface gradually metamorphosed through sickly yellow to dark orange as the earth moved between its satellite and the sun. For most of those observing the eclipse, it possessed a mysterious beauty, provoking awe and admiration. For Lloyd Allen, one of Bradfield Moors less grounded inmates, it provided proof absolute of his conviction that the last days were at hand and thus his duty was to bring as many to his maker as he could. He had been hospitalized before he had achieved his goal of spilling as much blood as possible so that the souls of its owners might ascend more easily to heaven at the imminent second coming. His mission burned all the brighter within him for being thwarted.

Lloyd Allen was not a stupid man and this made the task of his keepers that much harder. The psychiatric nurses were well versed in low cunning and found it relatively easy to head off at the pass. It was much harder to spot the machinations of those who were deranged but smart. Recently, Allen had devised a method of avoiding taking his medication. The more experienced nurses were wise to tricks of this sort and knew how to subvert them, but the newly qualified, like Khalid Khan, still lacked the necessary canniness.

On the night of the full moon, Allen had managed to avoid taking both previous doses of the chemical cosh that Khan believed he had administered. By the time the eclipse began to be visible, Allens head was filled with a low thrumming mantra. Bring them to me, bring them to me, bring them to me, echoed continuously inside his brain. From his room, he could see a corner of the moon, the prophesied sea of blood occluding its face. It was time. It really was time. Agitated, he clenched his fists and jerked his lower arms up and down every couple of seconds like a demented boxer raising and lowering his guard.

He turned to face the door and stumbled awkwardly towards it. He had to get out so he could complete his mission. The nurse would be here soon with his final medication for the night. Then God would give him the strength he needed. God would get him out of this room. God would show him the way. God knew what he had to do. He would bring them to Him. The time was ripe, the moon was bursting with blood. The signs were beginning and he had a task to fulfil. He was chosen, he was the road to salvation for the sinners. He would bring them to God.

The pool of light illuminated a small area on the top of a low-grade institutional desk. A file lay open, a hand holding a pen resting on one side of the page. In the background, Moby yearned plaintively for the spiders. The CD had been a gift, something Dr Tony Hill would never have chosen for himself. But somehow it had become an integral part of the after-hours work ritual.

Tony went to rub his gritty eyes, forgetting about his new reading glasses. Ow, he yelped as the nose-pieces bit into his flesh. His little finger caught the edge of the rimless glasses, sending them spinning off his face to land askew on the file hed been studying. He could picture the look of indulgent amusement the moment would have provoked on the face of Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan, the Moby donor. His distracted clumsiness had long been a standing joke between them.

The one thing she couldnt tease or taunt him about was that he was still at his desk at half past eight on a Friday night. When it came to reluctance to leave the office until everything possible had been dealt with, she was at least his equal. If shed been around she would have understood why he was still here, going over the brief hed so painstakingly prepared for the Parole Board. A brief theyd chosen blithely to ignore when theyd released Bernard Sharples into the care of the Probation Service. No longer a danger to the public, his lawyer had persuaded them. A model prisoner who had co-operated with everything the authorities had asked of him. The very exemplar of remorse.

Well, of course Sharples had been a model prisoner, Tony thought bitterly. It was easy to behave when the objects of your desire were so far beyond your reach that even the most obsessed fantasist would struggle to conjure up anything remotely like temptation. Sharples would offend again, he knew it in his bones. And it would be his fault in part because he had failed to make his case strongly enough.

He retrieved his glasses and marked a couple of paragraphs with his pen. He could have, should have stated his case more firmly, left no cracks for the defence to slither through. He would have had to assert as fact what he knew to be conjecture based on years of working with serial offenders plus the gut feeling that came from reading between the lines of his interviews with Sharples. But there was no place for shades of grey in the Parole Boards world of black and white. It seemed that Tony still had to learn that honesty was seldom the best policy when it came to the criminal justice system.

He pulled a pad of Post-It notes towards him but before he could scribble anything down, a noise from outside penetrated his office. He wasnt generally disturbed by the miscellaneous noises that made up the soundtrack to life inside Bradfield Moor; the soundproofing was surprisingly effective, and besides, the worst of the anguish was generally acted out far away from the offices where people with degrees and status worked.

More noise. It sounded like a football match or a sectarian riot. Certainly more than he could reasonably ignore. Sighing, Tony stood up, tossing his glasses on the desk as he made for the door. Anything had to be better than this.

Not many people regarded a job at Bradfield Moor as a dream come true. But for Jerzy Golabeck it represented more than he had ever imagined possible growing up in Plock. Nothing much had happened in Plock since the Polish kings decamped in 1138. The only work to be had these days was in the petrochemical refineries where wages were pitiful and industrial disease a way of life. Jerzys narrow horizons had widened eye-poppingly when Poland had acceded to the European Union. Hed been one of the first to board a cheap flight from Krakow to Leeds/Bradford Airport and the prospect of a new life. From his perspective, minimum wage approximated a kings ransom. And working with the inmates of Bradfield Moor wasnt so different from dealing with a senile grandfather who thought Lech Walesa might still be the coming man.

So Jerzy had bent the truth and manufactured a level of experience of dealing with the mentally ill that bore little relationship to the reality of his past as a production line worker in the pickle-canning factory. So far, it hadnt been an issue. The nurses and orderlies were more concerned with containment than treatment. They administered drugs and cleared up messes. Any attempts at cure or mitigation were left to doctors, psychiatrists, therapists of varying schools, and clinical psychologists. It appeared that nobody expected much more from Jerzy than that he turned up on time and didnt shy away from the physical unpleasantnesses that cropped up every shift. That much he could manage with ease.

Beneath the Bleeding - Val McDermid