Хилари Боннер - Deadly Dance

‘Dawn’s safe, boss,’ he said. ‘We’ve just found her and she’s alive. You can tell the Heathrow lads to move in on Willis, or whatever he’s calling himself today. And they can move just as hard as they like.’

The relief was clear in Hemmings voice when he spoke again.

‘Thank God,’ said the DCI.

‘But please boss, can you make sure I’m the one to talk to Willis first?’ asked Vogel.

‘He’s yours, David,’ said the DCI.

Willis was arrested on suspicion of three counts of murder and brought straight back to Bristol, where he was processed at Patchway and held in a police cell.

Within four hours of Dawn Saslow being found, Vogel — backed up by Polly Jenkins — was ready to conduct the first interview. Freda Heath, whose expert opinion was much-needed, had dropped everything to make the journey from London as soon as Vogel contacted her. She might be NHS and overworked, but she wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.

‘You do realise this is psychiatric history in the making,’ she told Vogel excitedly.

‘It wasn’t my first thought,’ responded Vogel drily.

DS Nobby Clark travelled to Bristol with the professor. After all, the extraordinary suspect now in custody had murdered on her patch too.

Willis was already sitting in an interview room, when the four entered. Vogel studied him carefully while PC Jenkins made the usual formal pronouncement of date, time and those present, for the video record.

Willis looked like, well, he looked like Willis, thought Vogel. Nothing more or less. Albeit Willis in a custody suit. Other than that he looked pretty much as usual.

It was Willis who spoke first and it really was Willis, or as near to Willis as was ever likely to be seen or heard again. Willis’s voice with more than a hint of Lancastrian.

‘I don’t understand boss, what’s all this about?’ he asked, as he straightened the sleeves of his suit and turned them back so that they formed neat cuffs of equal size. ‘I was heading off with Saslow, to see that walk-in at Avonmouth, and the next thing I knew I’d been arrested.’

‘Is that really your only memory of today, Willis?’ asked Vogel.

‘Yes, boss. Of course it is.’

‘Do you remember where you were arrested.’

‘Course I do. I was in my car. A load of armed heavies pulled me over. They were none too gentle, either.’

‘Yes. But do you remember the location of your car at the time you were pulled over?’

Something flitted across Willis’s eyes. One of those involuntary events Freda Heath had described to the DI, perhaps.

‘Uh no. Not exactly.’ Willis suddenly seemed confused. Unsure.

Vogel glanced towards Freda Heath. He’d already asked her to intervene and indeed to take over the questioning, if she felt he were muddying psychiatric waters. She shook her head very slightly and gestured for him to continue.

‘Do you remember if anyone was with you in the car?’

Willis frowned. He seemed to be really concentrating, making an effort to answer truthfully.

‘I’m not sure. Uh, yes. Dawn Saslow was with me, wasn’t she? But…’

Was there a kind of panic in Willis’s eyes. Vogel couldn’t tell for certain.

‘But… she wasn’t there when I was pulled over.’ Willis clenched both his fists and held them briefly in front of his mouth, before lowering his hands and placing them on the table before him.

‘Why was that?’ he asked, almost curiously. Vogel glanced at Freda Heath again.

‘Might you have left Dawn somewhere?’ Freda asked in a level tone.

Willis looked at the professor as if seeing her for the first time.

‘Why would I have left her anywhere?’ he asked, sounding bewildered.

‘Could you have hurt her, perhaps? Might you have done that, DS Willis?’

‘What? Hurt Dawn? Why would I do that?’

The words sounded normal enough, but Willis’s eyes no longer seemed focused on anyone or anything in the room. His chest began to heave, as if he were having trouble breathing or as if he were struggling to control forces within himself. His eyes rolled back into their sockets. His tongue protruded slightly from his mouth. He lifted his hands from the table and let his arms fell loosely by his side. Then he sprang to his feet and threw both arms in the air.

The two uniformed constables on duty by the door stepped forward. Vogel and Nobby Clarke both indicated that they should hold back.

‘I am Aeolus,’ said the man, who had previously been known to them only as Willis. ‘I am Aeolus. I control the winds. The winds of fortune. The winds of change. I am all powerful. This Willis is merely my servant.’

The voice was immediately different, more educated and with the hint of Latin accent that Vogel had noticed on the phone. His eyes blazed. If Vogel hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was with a kind of righteousness. So, when Willis was Aeolus, he was aware of his other identities. Or at least some of the time he was, at any rate. Freda Heath had suggested that might be so.

‘And the others, Leo, Al, Saul, are they also your servants?’ Vogel continued.

‘When I call upon them they are there.’

‘But why, you Aeolus, so powerful, why do you call on these…’ Vogel paused, wondering how far too push this. Again he glanced towards Freda Heath. The professor gestured for him to continue. Was she reading his mind, Vogel wondered? Well that’s what psychiatrists were supposed to be able to do, wasn’t it? Or was it? Vogel didn’t have the faintest idea. He went for it anyway. The man he had thought to be a perfectly ordinary police detective was staring at Vogel. Silent. Expectant. Challenging?

‘Yes?’ he queried.

‘… these pathetic apologies for men,’ Vogel continued. ‘A serial paedophile, a twisted closet gay, an inadequate sexual misfit, who dreams of having a family but cannot even perform the sexual act…’

It happened very quickly. Again there was the moment of almost total muscular relaxation. Then the man, who had once been Willis, threw himself across the desk that separated them and tightened his hands around Vogel’s neck.

‘You think you are better than me, you jumped-up piece of filth,’ he yelled. ‘You think you’re the special one. I can have any woman I damned well want. They flock to me. I know how to court them. I know what they want…’

The two uniforms leapt forwards, grabbed the suspect and pulled him off the DI. This time nobody protested. They pushed him back onto his chair and now stood on either side of him, each with a hand on one shoulder.

Willis slumped in his seat. Vogel coughed a couple of times and took a drink of water from the one glass that had survived the unexpected onslaught. The voice Willis had just used had held more than a trace of Wiltshire. A rural burr. That must have been Saul speaking, Vogel thought, just as Sonia had described him.

‘Yes, but you can’t give it to them though, can you?’ Vogel remarked, continuing to pressurise. ‘That’s your problem, isn’t it? You can’t do it. You can’t fuck.’

Willis/Saul/Leo/Al, the man who believed he was Aeolus, raised his head and stared at Vogel. There was ice in his eyes. Vogel wondered if he would try to attack again, but he didn’t. Instead, his lips cracked into a kind of leer.

‘They have to be the right age,’ he said. ‘If they’re young enough I can do it.’

The accent was now Scottish. Melanie Cooke had told her friend, Sally, that Al spoke with a Scottish accent. So this was Al, Vogel thought. Vogel watched him pull repeatedly at the collar of his suit, at the back of his neck. What was he doing, Vogel wondered? Then he realised. He was trying to put a non-existent hood over his head. Al was always hooded, even in the summer. All the reports about him indicated that. This was Al all right.