He looked up, surprise on his face. Guv? He shifted in his seat, turning slightly to one side. It was the movement of a man unconsciously reducing his target area, assessing the situation before committing himself to fight or flight.
Pop out to the shops and buy us a kettle, a cafetière and a dozen mugs. His eyes hardened as Carols words sank in. Tea and some decent coffee, milk and sugar. Oh, and some biscuits. Were not going to win any popularity contests in the canteen, digging over what other officers will see as their failures. We might as well entrench ourselves here.
Can we get some Earl Grey tea? Stacey Chens contribution sounded more like an order than a request.
Dont see why not, Carol said, turning away and heading for her office. Shed learned something already. Evans didnt like what he saw as menial work. Either he considered it to be womens work or he thought it was beneath his capabilities. Carol stored the information away for future reference. She had almost reached the door when Merricks voice reached her in a protest.
Maam, do you know why the files on Tim Golding and Guy Lefevre are in here? he demanded indignantly.
Carol swung round. Who? She was aware of a sudden stillness in the room. Paulas stare was wary, while the others expressions varied from surprised to incredulous.
Merricks genial face had tightened. Tim Goldings the eight-year-old who went missing nearly three months ago. Guy Lefevre vanished into thin air fifteen months before. We turned the city upside down looking for them. We even got Tony Hill to draw up a profile, for all the good it did.
It was Carols turn to feel surprise. Tony had said nothing to her about profiling, never mind profiling in Bradfield. But then, he had been uncharacteristically quiet since theyd discussed whether she should take up John Brandons offer. Hed encouraged her to accept the job, but since shed told him of her decision to go ahead, his emails had been curiously bland and noncommittal, as if he was deliberately making her stand on her own two feet. Whats your point, Don? she asked.
Tim Golding was my case, he said angrily. And I was the bagman on Guy Lefevre. Theres nothing we left undone.
Now you understand why were going to be the station pariahs, Carol said gently. There are another half-dozen SIOs out there smarting because cases they couldnt close have been passed on to us. I wouldnt be surprised if Tim Goldings case had been put in deliberately to keep us on our toes. So even though I have every confidence that you did all you could, were still going to treat this case just like the others.
Merrick scowled. All the same, maam
There are people in this organization who would probably be very happy to see us fail. If you let this wind you up, Don, youre playing into their hands. Carol gave him her warmest smile. I trust you, otherwise you wouldnt be in this room. But were all capable of missing something, no matter how much we think weve covered all the ground. So I dont want the officers reviewing this case to keep their thoughts to themselves for fear of offending you. Like I said earlier: no secrets or lies.
Carol didnt wait for a reaction. She walked into her office, leaving the door open. Was this the first sign that someone was out to undermine her squad and, by extension, their new Chief Constable? She knew she fell too easily into mistrust these days, but shed rather be too cautious than blithely oblivious to someone putting the shaft in. After all, it wasnt paranoia if they really were out to get you.
Shed barely settled behind her desk when Don Merrick appeared in the doorway carrying a file. A word, maam?
Carol gestured towards the visitors chair with her head. Don sat down, holding the file to his chest. Tim Golding, he said.
I hear you, Don. Hand it over.
He pulled it even closer to him. Its just that
I know. If anybodys going to poke their nose into your case, youd rather it was me than one of the new faces. Carol reached a hand out.
Reluctantly, Don shifted forward in his seat and extended the file towards her. We couldnt have done more, he said. We just kept hitting brick walls. We couldnt even give Tony Hill enough to go on to make a profile worthwhile. He said himself it was a waste of resources. But I couldnt think of anything else to try. Thats why its ended up as a cold case this early on.
I wondered about that. It seems very soon to consign it to the back burner.
Don sighed. There just wasnt anywhere else for us to go with it. Weve still got a couple of DCs keeping an eye on it, feeding the press whenever they decide to take another crack at it. But nothing actives happened for at least a month. Dons misery was written all over him, from the hangdog eyes to the slump of his shoulders.
It provoked a sympathetic echo in Carol. Leave it with me, Don. I dont expect Ill see anything youve missed.
He got to his feet, a rueful look on his face. Thing is, maam, I remember when I was working the case that I wished you were around. Just so I could run it past you. You always had the knack of seeing things from a different angle.
What is it they say, Don? Dont wish too hard for what you want because you might get it.
Tony Hill leaned forward and gazed intently through the observation window. A neat, balding man sat folded in the chair bolted to the floor. He looked somewhere in the region of fifty, though his placid expression went some way towards erasing the lines etched into his face. For a fleeting, incomprehensible moment, Tony thought of a childs lollipop, tightly wrapped in cellophane, Sellotape wrapped around the stick.
His stillness was preternatural. Most of the patients Tony encountered had difficulty with immobility, never mind tranquillity. They twitched, they fidgeted, they chain-smoked, they fiddled with their clothes. But this manhe checked the notesthis Tom Storey had an almost Zen-like quality. Tony glanced through the notes again, refreshing his memory from the previous evenings reading. He shook his head, fighting his anger at the stupidity of some of his medical colleagues. Then he closed the folder and headed for the interview room.
He felt the spring in his step, even in that short journey. Bradfield Moor Secure Hospital wasnt generally associated in peoples minds with the notion of contentment, but that was precisely what it had given Tony for the first time in months. He was back in the field, back in the world of messy heads, back where he belonged. In spite of his constant efforts to assume a series of masks that would help him blend in, Tony knew he was an outsider in the world beyond the grim institutional walls of Bradfield Moor. It was a feeling he did not care to examine too closely; it said things about him that he wasnt entirely comfortable with. But it was impossible to deny that the exercise of empathy was what gave meaning to his days. There was nothing quite like that moment when the tumblers of someone elses brain clicked into place for him and allowed him to penetrate the knotted logic of another mind. Really, truly, nothing.
He pushed open the door to the interview room and sat down opposite his latest challenge. Tom Storey remained immobile, only his eyes shifting to connect with Tony. In his right hand, he cradled a heavily bandaged stump where his left hand had been until a few days previously. Tony leaned forward and arranged his face into an expression of sympathy. Im Tony Hill. Im sorry for your loss.
Storeys eyes widened in surprise. Then he gave a small snort. My hand or my kids? he said sourly.
Your son and your daughter, Tony said. I imagine the hand feels like a blessing.
Storey said nothing.
Alien Hand Syndrome, Tony said. First recorded in 1908. A gift for horror-film scriptwriters: 1924, The Hands of Orlac- Conrad Veidt played a classical pianist who had the hands of a killer grafted on after his were destroyed in a train accident; 1946, The Beast with Five Fingers, another pianist; 1987, Evil Dead II the hero takes a chainsaw to his possessed hand to stop it attacking him. Cheap thrills all round. But its not so thrilling when youre the one with the hand, is it? Because when you try to explain what it feels like, nobody really takes you seriously. Nobody took you seriously, did they, Tom?
Storey shifted in his seat but remained silent and apparently composed.
The GP gave you some tranquillizers. Stress, thats what he said, right?
Storey inclined his head slightly.
Tony smiled, encouraging. They didnt work, did they? Just made you feel sleepy and out of it. And with a hand like yours, you couldnt afford to relax your vigilance, could you? Because there was no telling what might happen then. How was it for you, Tom? Did you wake up in the night struggling for breath because the hand was round your throat? Did it smash plates over your head? Stop you from putting food in your mouth? Tonys questioning was gentle, his voice sympathetic.
Storey cleared his throat. It threw things. Wed all be sitting eating breakfast, and Id pick up the teapot and throw it at my wife. Or wed be out in the garden and the next thing Id know, Id be picking up stones from the rockery and throwing them at the kids. He leaned back in his chair, apparently exhausted from the effort of speech.
I can imagine how frightening that must have been. How did your wife react?
Storey closed his eyes. She was going to leave me. Take the kids with her and never come back.
And you love your kids. Thats a hell of a dilemma for you. Youve nothing to fight back with. Life without your kids, its not worth living. But life with your kids places them in constant danger because you cant stop the hand doing what it wants. Theres no easy answer. Tony paused and Storey opened his eyes again. You must have been in complete turmoil.
Why are you making excuses for me? Im a monster. I killed my children, thats the worst thing anybody can do. They should have let me bleed to death, not saved me. I deserve to be dead. Storeys words tumbled over each other.
Youre not a monster, Tony said. I dont think your kids are the only victims here. Were going to run some physical tests. Tom, I think you may be suffering from a brain tumour. You see, your brain comes in two halves. Messages from one part reach the other across a sort of bridge called the corpus callosum. When thats damaged, your right hand literally doesnt know what your left hand is doing. And thats a terrible thing to live with. I cant blame you for being driven to the point where you thought killing your children was the only way to keep them safe from whatever you might do to them.
You should blame me, Storey insisted. I was their father. It was my job to protect them. Not kill them.
But you couldnt trust yourself. So you chose to end their lives in the most humane way you could. Smothering them while they slept.
Storeys eyes filled with tears and he bowed his head. It was wrong, he said, his voice choking. But nobody would listen to me. Nobody would help me.
Tony reached across the table and laid his hand on the bandaged stump. Well help you now, Tom. I promise you. Well help you.
Carol arched her back and rotated her shoulders, swivelling round in her chair to stare out of the window. Across the street stood a white Portland stone building with a fine neoclassical portico. When shed last been in Bradfield, it had been a bingo hall. Now it was a nightclub, its cold neon tubes spelling out Afrodite in fake Greek script. Buses rumbled past, advertising the latest movies and console games. A traffic warden stalked the metered parking, his computerized ticket machine held like a truncheon. A world going about its business, insulated from the unpleasantness that was her stock in trade. Shed read the material on Guy Lefevre and now she was close to the end of Tim Goldings file. The words were starting to blur. Apart from a half-hour break for lunch, shed been reading solidly all day. She knew she wasnt the only one. Every time shed raised her head, the rest of the squad had been equally engrossed. Interesting how their body language seemed to reveal so much more of their personalities than the slightly awkward and guarded conversation over the lunchtime sandwiches Stacey had fetched from the canteen.
Don sat hunched over his desk, one arm round the file like a kid who doesnt want anybody copying his work. He wasnt the quickest wit Carol had ever worked with, but he made up for it with his stolid persistence and total commitment to the team. And if there was one person whose loyalty she could depend on without question, it was Don. Hed proved himself in the past, but she hadnt realized until this morning how important that knowledge was to her.
Kevins wiry body sat erect in his chair, papers neatly aligned. Every now and again he would pause and stare into the middle distance for as long as it took to smoke a cigarette. Then he would scribble something on the pad next to him and return to his reading. Carol remembered how hed always seemed so buttoned up. It had made it all the harder to believe when hed gone off the rails. But like most repressed individuals, when he had finally broken the rules hed been more reckless than the wildest risk taker. And it had led him into betrayal. Carol told herself that hed never make that mistake again, but she was still reluctant to trust. She hoped he couldnt see that in her eyes.
Sam Evans was hunched in the chair opposite Kevin, his jacket carefully arranged on a hanger hooked over a filing-cabinet drawer handle. His shirt was crisp and white, the careful creases of the iron still clean cut on his sleeves. He and Kevin had staked out smokers corner on the opposite side of the room to Stacey and her computers. Evans reading style seemed almost nonchalant, as if he were drifting through the Sunday papers. His expression gave nothing away. But occasionally his hand would snake into his trouser pocket and emerge with a minidisk recorder. Hed mumble a few words into it then slip it back out of sight. Carol didnt think much was getting past him.
Paula, conversely, was a spreader. Within half an hour of starting, the whole of her desktop was covered in stacks of papers as she sorted through the file in front of her. But in spite of the appearance of untidiness, it was clear she knew where everything was. Her hand moved, apparently independent of her eyes, confidently picking up the next piece of paper she needed. It was as if she had a mental map of her arrangement, a neat grid stamped firmly on her brain. Carol wondered if that was how she worked interviews; slotting every piece of information into its own socket till the connections linked together and lit up like a completed circuit.
Stacey couldnt have been more different. Even her dress style was at odds with Paulas casual T-shirt and jeans. Staceys suit fitted as if it had been made to measure, and the fine polo-neck sweater beneath it looked like cashmere to Carols eye. A surprisingly expensive outfit for a detective constable, she thought. When it came to work, it was almost as if Stacey resented the presence of paper. Shed balanced the file she was studying on a pulled-out desk drawer to leave her work surface clear for interaction with the machine. The twin screens of her computer system held most of her attention. She would swiftly scrutinize the file material, then her fingers would fly over the keys before she cocked her head to one side, ran her left hand through her glossy black hair and clicked a mouse button. Manipulable virtuality was seemingly what she craved over reality.