Killing the Shadows (2000) (41 page)

“Fine.” The DC nodded and drew her to one side. “But that’s as far as it goes, Duvall,” he added in an undertone. “This one’s ours.”

Maybe not if he killed her in Dorset, Duvall thought. But if there was a name to be made here, she was determined it was going to be hers. He’d confessed on her patch. He was going to stay hers if it was humanly possible. “I’ll get down to the custody suite, then,” she said.

The two men watched her swing her ruined jacket over her shoulder and stride off confidently down the corridor.

“God help him if he’s wasting her time,” the Dorset man said.

“She’s going to have her work cut out,” the DC said.

“How do you mean?”

“How do we usually weed out false confessions? We catch them out on the details that haven’t been made public. Only, this killer has been using previously published material as his blueprint. He’s going to know all the answers, whether he killed them or not.”

The Dorset DCS drew his breath in sharply. “Oh shit,” he said.

“And I’m not sure if DCI Duvall has worked that one out yet,” the DC added, pursing his lips in a superior smile.

Fiona closed her eyes, blotting out the e–mail on the screen in front of her. Confirmation of what she had been dreading was the last thing she wanted in her face. Eventually, she forced herself to reread Kit’s e–mail. This wasn’t the time for self-indulgence. He needed her support, not for her to whimper in the corner like a scared bunny. She composed herself and hit the reply button.

From:
Fiona Cameron [[email protected]]

To:
Kit Martin [[email protected]]

Subject:
Re: Bad as it gets

My darling Kit,

I’m so, so sorry about Georgia. You must be hurting, my love, and I wish I could do something to take the pain away. I fear I can be of little use on this particular case, even supposing DCi Duvall wanted my help. It’s already clear to anyone with half a brain that these cases are connected, and you know I don’t get into the touchy-feely wet the bed when he was 9 and tortured the neighbour’s cat stuff. So what could I give them? Not much except common sense.

So, my love, it is important that you take extreme care of yourself. I’ll be home at the usual time, or earlier if I can manage it.

I love you.

F.

C
harles Cavendish Redford was adamant that he did not want legal representation. He insisted that he knew more about the criminal law than the average duty solicitor and was perfectly capable of withstanding a police interrogation without someone to hold his hand.

It was a decision that pleased Duvall. She knew that even the most newly qualified duty solicitor would caution Redford to say nothing further. But if he wanted to damn himself from his own mouth, that was fine by her. Lacking a solicitor would simply mean there were fewer interruptions to the flow of what Redford wanted to reveal. And if one thing was clear, it was that Redford was a man who was eager to have his say. She’d had to keep shutting him up when the custody sergeant was processing him; the last thing she wanted was for him to get it all out of his system then clam up once they were in the interview room and on the official record.

As soon as he’d been formally arrested, Duvall sent a team of officers to search his house. Another team were given the task of finding out as much as was humanly possible about the life and times of Charles Redford, self-styled pre-published writer. Then Duvall escaped to her office for ten minutes. She tossed her wrecked coat in the bottom of her locker and replaced it with a lightweight black wool jacket that lived there on permanent stand-by. She shot a mist of her favourite perfume into the air and walked through the miasma, feeling its coolness on her skin. Then she sat down with notepad and pencil, sketching out the main points she needed.

Finally, about an hour after the commotion in the press conference, Duvall found herself facing her self-confessed serial murderer across a Formica-topped table. The room was claustrophobically small, the large mirror on one wall seeming to shrink the space rather than to increase it. The normal scents of stale sweat, smoke and fear were overlaid with a layer of her Versace Red Jeans. No Hannibal Lecter, Redford didn’t so much as twitch his nose.

“At last,” he said impatiently. “Well, go on, get the tape running.”

Duvall’s sergeant reached out and switched on both tape decks. For the record, he dictated date and time and details of those present. The DCS from Dorset, ensconced behind the mirror with his own sound feed, was not on the list.

Duvall sized up Redford. Medium height, medium build. His hair and beard were neatly trimmed, his complexion the pasty-white of someone who spends little time out of doors. His eyes were a dark grey-blue, watchful and deep-set. His tweed jacket looked as if it had been expensive when new, but that had been a long time ago. It fitted him well enough to have been tailored for him, but that meant nothing in these days of charity shops sprouting in every high street like mushrooms. The collar of his tattersall check shirt was a little frayed on the inside edge. His long fingers restlessly intertwined in an endless, meaningless sequence. The impression was one of intensity behind a mask of genteel poverty.

“You’ll have sent a team out to search my flat,” he stated, a smirk quirking one corner of his mouth. “What a waste of time. You’re not going to find anything there except old newspapers. The sort of thing anyone might have who was a bit remiss about going to the recycling bank.”

“We’ll see,” Duvall said.

“You’ll see nothing, Detective Chief Inspector Duvall,” he said, almost chewing the words of her title. “What’s your first name? Something pretty and girly that you hate, I bet. Well, Detective Chief Inspector, I am your worst nightmare.”

Duvall allowed herself an indulgent smile. “I don’t think so, Mr. Redford.”

“Oh, but I am. You see, I committed these murders. I’m freely admitting to that. And I’ll tell you how I did them and what I did. But only up to a point. I’m not going to lead you to any physical evidence, I’m not going to tell you places to look for witnesses. Do you have any idea how many tourist beds there are in Edinburgh? That should keep your opposite number in Lothian and Borders amused for a while. No, all you’re going to have is what I admit to, Detective Chief Inspector.” He grinned, showing small even incisors like a child’s milk teeth. “You’re going to have so much fun with the Crown Prosecution Service. No evidence except a confession. Oh, dear me.”

Duvall looked bored. “Fine. So can we get on with the confession?”

Redford looked momentarily hurt. Then he brightened again. “I see what you’re up to,” he said triumphantly. “You’re trying to wind me up by making me feel dismissed. Well, let me tell you, I’ve read enough and seen enough to understand all your tricks, DCI Duvall. You’re not going to put one over on me. Now, I consider myself to be a storyteller, so let’s start at the beginning.”

“No,” Duvall interrupted incisively. “Let’s try a more radical approach to narrative. Let’s pretend we’re Martin Amis or Margaret Atwood. Let’s start at the end, with Georgia Lester.”

“My.” Redford let out a long drawl of admiration. “A literate cop. I shall have to watch my story structure here. But don’t you want to hear why I’ve taken against thriller writers in such a big way?”

Duvall produced his flyer from her plain black no-nonsense handbag. “I am showing Mr. Redford one of the leaflets he distributed at a police press conference earlier this afternoon,” she said for the benefit of the tape. “I presume your reasons are outlined here? You sent them your novels, hoping they’d help you. But not only did they ignore you, you believe that they stole your plots and plagiarized your writing. An accurate summary?” Her tone was brisk. He was so filled with confidence, the best she could hope for was to unsettle him, and she was going flat out for that. She could feel the adrenaline coursing through her, creative tension holding her tight as a bowstring. It was so seldom that an interrogation proved anything approaching a challenge, and Duvall relished the confrontation.

“Well, yes,” he said, an edge of dissatisfaction in his voice. “But I thought you’d want to know more about that. It’s why I started. You should be interested.”

She shrugged. “Motive is much overrated in detective fiction, Mr. Redford. Remember that GP in Manchester? Harold Shipman? Convicted of killing fifteen elderly patients with morphine overdoses. Nobody really knows why he did it, but it didn’t stop a jury putting him away. I’ll leave the motive to the lawyers. I’m interested in the mechanics of what you did and how you did it. And let’s stick to Georgia Lester, eh? You’ll have plenty of opportunity to talk about your other alleged crimes with officers from other jurisdictions in due course. If, that is, you can convince me that you had anything to do with Georgia Lester’s murder.”

Redford sat back and steepled his fingers in the manner of a patronizing academic. “I knew she had a cottage in Dorset,” he began expansively.

“How did you know?” Duvall shot back. She was determined not to let him relax into his tale.

“Hello! magazine did a feature on her last year. There were interior and exterior photographs. The article said the cottage was seven miles from Lyme Regis. It wasn’t that hard to find. So I tracked down the cottage, and then I laid my plans. I made sure I knew what her schedule was”

“How did you find that out?” Duvall demanded.

“It’s on her website. All her public engagements. I knew she went down to Dorset most weekends, and it was easy to work out when she’d be due back in London from the events listing on the web page. Must you keep interrupting?” he demanded peevishly.

“I thought you’d welcome my questions,” Duvall said smoothly. “You say you want me to believe you. You should be grateful that I’m trying to confirm your story with all these details.”

His eyes flashed a momentary anger. “You think you’re clever, don’t you, Duvall? But you’re no match for me. I killed them, and you’re going to have to charge me with Georgia Lester’s murder.”

“Either that or with perverting the course of justice, Mr. Redford. So, you stalked Georgia. What a pathetic little crime that is. How did you capture her?”

An hour later, Duvall left the interview room. She felt drained and frustrated. In spite of her constant hammering of questions, she hadn’t been able to extract a single fact from Redford that hadn’t either been published in the press or couldn’t have been gleaned from a studious reading of Georgia Lester’s text. She let herself into the observation room where the DCS from Dorset was sitting with a notepad on his knee. “What do you think?” she asked.

He looked up and pulled a face. “I think you need something concrete from your search, something that isn’t already in the public domain. He’s given you nothing that a good brief won’t demolish for a jury. He wants his day in court, but he doesn’t want to be convicted, that’s how I see it. And he thinks he’s cleverer than you.”

Duvall leaned against the wall and folded her arms across her chest. “And that might just be where I can trip him up. Reading that flyer, I was struck by how similar some of the language is to the threatening letters that have been sent to some of the crime writers. With the right expert witness, I think I can tie him to the letters, whether or not we find the originals on his computer. And if we can tie the letters to the murders, then we’ve got a way in. It’s going to be a bastard to make it stick, though.”

“Do you think it really is him?”

Duvall pushed herself off from the wall and crossed to the one-way mirror. Redford was gazing up as if he could see her, a confident smirk on his face. “That’s what I keep wondering.”

The DCS tapped his pen on his pad. “It strikes me, reading that flyer, that he’d do just about anything to get his books published.”

Duvall sighed. He had expressed a notion that had already crossed her mind. “You think he’d go as far as murder?”

“I think he’d certainly go as far as confessing to murder.” He shook his head. “I tell you something, DCI Duvall. I’m not going to fight you over who gets this collar.”

Fiona found Kit upstairs in the living room, stretched out full-length on the sofa. On the floor beside him, a bottle held about two inches of red wine. The glass balanced on his chest contained another inch. There was an Australian soap on the TV. His eyes were looking at the screen, but she knew he wasn’t watching it.

“I’ll get another bottle,” she said.

“That’d be a good idea,” he agreed, no trace of the drink in his voice.

When Fiona returned, she sat down cross-legged on the floor beside him and tipped the remains of the bottle into her glass. “I’m more sorry than I can say about Georgia.”

“Me too,” Kit said, shifting his position so he was half sitting, leaning against the arm of the sofa. “I’m also scared. There’s somebody out there killing people like me, and it’s hard to escape the idea that I could be next on his list.”

“I know.” Fiona drained her glass and started on the second bottle. “And there’s nothing I can say or do that will change that. God, how I hate that feeling.” She reached up and gripped his hand.

The silence between them was filled with the inane chatter of the soap’s teenage love interest. More than she had ever wished anything, Fiona wished she could wave a magic wand and remove the sense of threat that clung to them both like a sticky spider’s web, blinding them to everything except its presence. “It was kind of Steve to come and tell you himself,” she said finally. “Especially given the way we left things.”

“He loves you too much to be petty.”

Fiona gave him a quick glance of surprise. She had always thought the burden of Steve’s love was her private secret. It had never been mentioned between them before, and she had assumed Kit had accepted her version of their relationship; a long-standing defiance of the theory that friendship between heterosexual men and women was inherently impossible.

Kit shook his head, a tired smile creeping over his face. “You think I never noticed?”