The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Part 54

He paused. "Did they ever catch the driver?" He waited long enough for her to answer. She didn't, her eyes remaining fixed on the mess he called his face. "Did they?"

He knew the answer, of course.

Even in the dim light he could see her eyes sparkle.

He'd have liked to thank her for doing that for him.

"Oh my f.u.c.k," she said. "It never occurred to me."

He put on a puzzled expression, hoped she could see past the scarring enough to make it out.

"You did it, you f.u.c.ker."

"No," he said. "G.o.d, no, I wouldn't-"

"I'm not blaming you," she said.

"Well," he said, and waited.

"He asked for it."

"Well," he said.

"I wish I'd had the b.a.l.l.s to do it myself."

Freddy put his cap back on, angled it so that it hid the bad side of his face. "Can I buy you a drink? Somewhere quiet. Somewhere dark?"

Freddy married Karen two years later. Six weeks after their marriage he discovered a freckle on her shoulder one night when they were sharing a bath. The freckle grew rapidly over the next couple of days. By the time she went to see her doctor, it was dark and hard and the size of her thumbnail.

She lasted just under a month.

Neither of her children made it to the funeral. Her sister, Edie, turned up late, drunk. That was the only way she could be in the same room as Freddy without freaking out at the sight of him. So she told him.

Freddy spent that summer sunbathing, something he'd never done before. He went to the south of France, lay around on the beaches soaking up the sun, not giving a f.u.c.k how many kids he scared. His freckles returned, though, and with them, his depression.

He went back home, stared at the walls for a week and a bit. One night he went out, bought a bottle of whisky and some paracetamol, and booked himself into a top-floor room in a high-rise hotel.

Couple of hours later, full of drink and pills, he walked out on to the balcony.

One hundred and fifty-five. One hundred and fifty-six . . .

Freddy sits in his wheelchair and stares at his reflection in the mirror. He gets angry if the nurses try to move him. He can't help it. Not even his mother can interrupt him while he's counting his freckles.

One hundred and fifty seven.

When he's done, he'll start over again. Got to keep checking, Karen says.

Not that he's got anything else to do. Everything below his neck is dead. But that doesn't matter.

Sometimes he feels Karen touch his cheek, her fingertips outlining his old wounds. When he closes his eyes he feels her lips on his brow. Sometimes she whispers to him. "Keep counting," she says. "I think they're fading, Freddy."

HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

Val McDermid.

I.

A CHRYSANTHEMUM BURST of colour flooded the sky. "Oooh," said the man, his blue eyes sparking with reflected light.

"Aaah," said the woman, managing to invest the single syllable with irony and good humour. Her s.h.a.ggy blonde hair picked up colour from the fireworks, giving her a fibre-optic punk look at odds with the conservative cut of her coat and trousers.

"I've always loved fireworks."

"Must be the repressed arsonist in you."

Dr Tony Hill, clinical psychologist and criminal profiler, pulled a rueful face. "You've got me bang to rights, guv." He checked out the smile on her face. "Admit it, though. You love Bonfire Night too." A scatter of green and red tracer raced across the sky, burning after-images inside his eyelids.

DCI Carol Jordan snorted. "Nothing like it. Kids shoving bangers through people's letter-boxes, drunks sticking lit fireworks up their backsides, nutters throwing bricks when the fire engines turn up to deal with bonfires that've gone out of control? Best night of the year for us."

Tony shook his head, refusing to give in to her sarcasm. "It's been a long time since you had to deal with rubbish like that. It's only the quality villains you have to bother with these days."

As if summoned by his words, Carol's phone burst into life. "Terrif c," she groaned, turning away and jamming a finger into her free ear. "Sergeant Devine. What have you got?"

Tony tuned out the phone call, giving the fireworks his full attention. Moments later, he felt her touch on his arm. "I have to go."

"You need me?"

"I'm not sure. It wouldn't hurt."

If it didn't hurt, it would be the first time. Tony followed Carol back to her car, the sky hissing and fizzing behind him.

The smell of cooked human flesh was unforgettable and unambiguous. Sweet and cloying, it always seemed to coat the inside of Carol's nostrils for days, apparently lingering long after it should have been nothing more than a memory. She wrinkled her nose in disgust and surveyed the grisly scene.

It wasn't a big bonfire, but it had gone up like a torch. Whoever had built it had set it in the corner of a fallow field, close to a gate but out of sight of the road. The evening's light breeze had been enough to send a drift of sparks into the hedgerow and the resulting blaze had brought a fire crew to the scene. Job done, they'd checked the wet smoking heap of debris and discovered the source of the smell overwhelming even the fuel that had been used as an accelerant.

As Tony prowled round the fringes of what was clearly the scene of a worse crime than arson, Carol consulted the lead fire officer. "It wouldn't have taken long to get hold," he said. "From the smell, I think he used a mixture of accelerants petrol, acetone, whatever. The sort of stuff you'd have lying around your garage."

Tony stared at the remains, frowning. He turned and called to the fire officer. "The body did it start off in the middle like that?"

"You mean, was the bonfire built round it?"

Tony nodded. "Exactly."

"No. You can see from the way the wood's collapsed around it. It started off on top of the fire."

"Like a Guy." It wasn't a question; the fireman's answer had clearly confirmed what Tony already thought. He looked at Carol. "You do need me."

Tony smashed the ball back over the net, narrowly missing the return when his doorbell rang. He tossed the Wii control on to the sofa and went to the door. "We've got the post mortem and some preliminary forensics," Carol walked in, not waiting for an invitation. "I thought you'd want to take a look." She pa.s.sed him a file.

"There's an open bottle of wine in the fridge," Tony said, already scanning the papers and feeling his way into an armchair. As he read, Carol disappeared into the kitchen, returning with two gla.s.ses. She placed one on the table by Tony's chair and settled opposite him on the sofa, watching the muscles in his face tighten as he read.

It didn't make for comfortable reading. A male between twenty-five and forty, the victim had been alive when he'd been put on the bonfire. Smoke inhalation had killed him, but he'd have suffered tremendous pain before the release of death. He'd been bound hand and foot with wire and his mouth had been sealed by some sort of adhesive tape. For a moment, Tony allowed himself to imagine how terrifying an ordeal it must have been and how much pleasure it had given the killer. But only for a moment. "No ID?" he said.

"We think he's Jonathan Meadows. His girlfriend reported him missing the morning after. We're waiting for confirmation from dental records."

"And what do we know about Jonathan Meadows?"

"He's twenty-six, he's a garage mechanic. He lives with his girlfriend in a flat in Moorside-"

"Moorside? That's a long way from where he died."

Carol nodded. "Right across town. He left work at the usual time. He told his girlfriend and his mates at work that he was going to the gym. He usually went three or four times a week, but he never showed up that night."

"So somewhere between what, six and eight o'clock? he met someone who overpowered him, bound and gagged him, stuck him on top of a bonfire and set fire to him?"

"That's about the size of it. Anything strike you?"

"That's not easy, carrying out something like that." Tony flicked through the few sheets of paper again. His mind raced through the possibilities, exploring the message of the crime, trying to make a narrative from the bare bones in front of him. "He's a very low-risk victim," he said. "When young men like him die violently, it's not usually like this. A pub brawl, a fight over a woman, a turf war over drugs or prost.i.tution, yes. But not this kind of premeditated thing. If he was just a random victim, if anyone would do, it's more likely to be a homeless person, a drunk staggering home last thing, someone vulnerable. Not someone with a job, a partner, a life."

"You think it's personal?"

"Hard to say until we know a lot more about Jonathan Meadows." He tapped the scene-of-crime report. "There doesn't seem to be much in the way of forensics at the scene."

"There's a pull-in by the gate to the field. It's tarmacked, so no convenient tyre tracks. There's a few footprints, but they're pretty indistinct. The SOCOs think he was wearing some sort of covering over his shoes. Just like the ones we use to preserve the crime scene." Carol pulled a face to emphasize the irony. "No convenient cigarette ends, c.o.ke cans or used condoms."

Tony put down the file and drank some wine. "I don't think he's a beginner. It's too well executed. I think he's done this before. At least once."

Carol shook her head. "I checked the database. Nothing like this anywhere in the UK in the last five years."

That, he thought, was why she needed him. She thought in straight lines, which was a useful attribute in a cop, since, however much they might like to believe otherwise, that was how most criminals thought. But years of training and experience had honed his own corkscrew mind till he could see nothing but hidden agendas stretching backwards like the images in an infinity mirror. "That's because you were looking for a burning," he said.

Carol looked at him as if he'd lost it. "Well, duh," she said. "That's because the victim was burned."

He jumped to his feet and began pacing. "Forget the fire. That's irrelevant. Look for low-risk victims who were restrained with wire and gagged with adhesive tape. The fire is not what this is about. That's just window dressing, Carol."

Carol tapped the pile of paper on her desk with the end of her pen. Sometimes it was hard not to credit Tony with psychic powers. He'd said there would be at least one other victim, and it looked as if he'd been right. Trawling the databases with a different set of parameters had taken Carol's IT specialist a few days. But she'd finally come up with a second case that fitted the bill.

The body of Tina Chapman, a thirty-seven-year-old teacher from Leeds, had been found in the LeedsLiverpool ca.n.a.l a few days before Jonathan Meadows' murder. A routine dredging had snagged something unexpected and further examination had produced a grisly finding. She'd been gagged with duct tape, bound hand and foot with wire, tethered to a wooden chair weighted with a cement block and thrown in. She'd been alive when she went into the water. Cause of death: drowning.

A single parent, she'd been reported missing by her thirteen-year-old son. She'd left work at the usual time, according to colleagues. Her son thought she'd said she was going to the supermarket on her way home, but neither her credit card nor her store loyalty card had been used.

Carol had spoken to the senior investigating officer in charge of the case. He'd admitted they were struggling. "We only found her car a couple of days ago in the car park of a hotel about half a mile from the supermarket her son said she used. It was parked down the end, in a dark corner out of range of their CCTV cameras. No b.l.o.o.d.y idea what she was doing down there. And no joy from forensics so far."

"Anybody in the frame?"

His weary sigh reminded her of cases she'd struggled with over the years. "It's not looking good, to be honest. There was a boyfriend, but they split up about six months ago. n.o.body else involved, it just ran out of road. Quite amicable, apparently. The boyfriend still takes the lad to the rugby. Not a sc.r.a.p of motive."

"And that's it?" Carol was beginning to share his frustration. "What about the boy's real father?"

"Well, he wasn't what you'd call any kind of father. He walked out on them when the lad was a matter of months old."

Carol wasn't quite ready to let go of the straw she'd grasped. "He might have come round to the idea of having some contact with the boy."

"I doubt it. He died in the Boxing Day tsunami back in '04. So we're back to square one and not a b.l.o.o.d.y thing to go at."

Carol still couldn't accept she'd reached the end of the road. "What about her colleagues? Any problems there?"

She could practically hear the shrug. "Not that they're letting on about. n.o.body's got a bad word to say about Tina, and I don't think they're just speaking well of the dead. She's been working there for four years and doesn't seem to have caused a ripple with other staff or parents. I can't say I share your notion that this has got anything to do with your body, but I tell you, if you come up with anything that makes sense of this, I'll buy you a very large drink."

Making sense of things was what Bradfield Police paid Tony for. But sometimes it was easier than others. This was not one of those occasions. Carol had dropped off the case files on Jonathan Meadows and Tina Chapman at Bradfield Moor, the secure hospital where he spent his days among the criminally insane, a clientele whose personal idiosyncrasies he did not always find easy to distinguish from the population at large.

Two victims, linked by their unlikelihood. There was no evidence that their paths had ever crossed. They lived thirty miles apart. Carol's team had already established that Tina Chapman did not have her car serviced at the garage where Jonathan Meadows worked. He'd never attended a school where she'd taught. They had no apparent common interests. Anyone other than Tony might have been reluctant to forge any link between the two cases. Carol had pointed that out earlier, acknowledging that her counterpart in Leeds was far from convinced there was a connection. Tony's instincts said otherwise.

As he read, he made notes. Water. Fire. Four elements? It was a possibility, but admitting it took him no further forward. If the killer was opting for murder methods that mirrored fire, water, earth and air, what did it mean? And why did it apply to those particular victims? Tina Chapman was a French teacher. What had that to do with water? And how was a garage mechanic connected to fire? No, unless he could find more convincing connective tissue, the four elements idea wasn't going anywhere.

He studied the file again, spreading the papers across the living room floor so he could see all the information simultaneously. And this time, something much more interesting caught his attention.

Carol stared at the two pieces of paper, wondering what she was supposed to see. "What am I looking for?" she said.

"The dates," Tony said. "October 31. November 5."

Light dawned. "Hallowe'en. Bonfire Night."

"Exactly." As he always did when he was in the grip of an idea, he paced, pausing by the dining table to scribble down the odd note. "What's special about them, Carol?"

"Well, people celebrate them. They do particular things. They're traditional."

Tony grinned, his hands waving in the air as he spoke. "Traditional. Exactly. That's it. You've hit the nail on the head. They're great British traditions."

"Hallowe'en's American," Carol objected. "Trick or treat. That's not British."

"It is originally. It came from the Celtic Samhain festival. Trick or treat is a variation of the Scottish guising tradition. Trust me, Carol, it only got to be American when the Irish took it over there. We started it."

Carol groaned. "Sometimes I feel the internet is a terrible curse."

"Not to those of us with enquiring minds. So, we've got two very British festivals. I can't help wondering if that's the root of what's going on here. Tina died like a witch on the ducking stool. Jonathan burned like a bonfire Guy. The murder methods fit the dates." He spun on his heel and headed back towards Carol.

"So I'm asking myself, is our killer somebody who's raging against Britain and our traditions? Someone who feels slighted by this country? Someone who feels racially oppressed maybe? Because the victims are white, Carol. And the killer's paid no attention to Diwali. OK, we've not had Eid yet, but I'm betting he won't take a victim then. I'm telling you, Carol, I think I'm on to something here."

Carol frowned. "Even if you're right and frankly, it sounds even more crazy than most of your theories why these two? Why pick on them."

Tony trailed to a halt and stared down at what he'd written. "I don't know yet." He turned to meet her eyes. "But there is one thing I'm pretty sure about."