Val Mcdermid - Killing the Shadows

But she had been believed eventually. Everyone, from Steve to Sandy Galloway, had assured her there was no chance of her facing charges, but it had taken anxious weeks for the official notice to reach her.

She wasn’t sure what she felt. Part of her believed she deserved some sort of punishment for taking the life of another human being. But her rational self kept telling her how foolish it was to imagine that anything formal could assuage that particular guilt. And she couldn’t deny that she felt a sense of remission that she wouldn’t have to relive those terrible seconds when she had to make a life and death decision that, ultimately, had been no choice at all.

It was ironic that the only person who would ever appear in a courtroom in connection with Francis Blake’s murders was the false confessor, Charles Redford. He was languishing in prison awaiting trial, charged with perverting the course of justice, threats to kill and offences under the Protection from Harassment Act. On the same wing as Gerard Patrick Coyne, due to face a jury for the murder of Susan Blanchard. The proximity of the two men who linked the crimes of Francis Blake provided a satisfying symmetry to Fiona.

The sound of footsteps on the path broke into her thoughts. She turned her head and saw a familiar figure approaching. Fiona looked back across the city lights, unwilling to appear eager for company.

Steve cleared his throat. “I thought I’d find you here. Kit said you’d gone out for a walk.” He stood by the bench, uncertainty on his face.

“Did he also mention I didn’t want company?”

Steve looked embarrassed. “His actual words were, ‘You’re taking your life in your hands, mate. She’s off doing a Greta Garbo.’”

She sighed. “Now you’re here, you’d better sit down.” They’d rebuilt most of their bridges over the previous weeks, but the sense that Steve had somehow betrayed her still lurked in Fiona’s heart. That was something else she wanted to disappear from her consciousness, along with the memory of killing Blake.

Steve sat down beside her, keeping his physical distance. “Kit also told me the news.”

“You didn’t know already? I assumed that’s why you came,” Fiona said.

“No. I came because I finally managed to get Sarah Duvall to give me a copy of Blake’s journal. He started it while he was in prison, and kept it right up until a couple of days before his death. It was written in code, but it was pretty simple, and Sarah got it transcribed. I thought you’d be interested in seeing it.”

Fiona nodded. “Thanks.”

“It covers all the practical stuff of how he laid his plans and carried them out. How he gave the Spanish police the slip when he was supposedly over there in Fuengirola. It turns out he has a cousin who lives in Spain. This cousin lent Blake his car, and simply stayed at the villa when Blake was over in the UK and Ireland, killing Drew Shand and Jane Elias. They looked similar, and as long as the Spanish cops saw someone answering Blake’s description when they cruised past the place a couple of times a day, it never occurred to them that it wasn’t him.”

Fiona nodded listlessly. “I see.”

“He was able to enter the UK and Ireland by ferry without a problem because, of course, there was no general alert out for him. He’d got all the background information he needed from the Internet and from published material about his targets. He even managed to track down Kit’s bothy via Land Registry records. He was a clever bastard. He covered all his bases. The only mistake he made was not taking account of the CCTVs in Smithfield.”

“That’s fascinating, Steve. But does this journal answer the important question?”

“You mean, the motive?”

“What else?” Attempting to understand had kept her awake more nights than she could count. She knew there had to be some coherent motivation in Blake’s actions, even if it only appeared reasonable to him. But why he should want to take revenge on thriller writers for what had happened to him had eluded her so far.

“It’s twisted, but it makes a kind of sense,” Steve said.

“Don’t they always?” Fiona said ironically. “So, what’s the story?”

“Blake was eaten up with the desire for revenge for what happened to him. But he knew if he took direct vengeance, he’d never get away with it. The more he brooded, the more he realized that there were people other than the police he could blame.”

“Thriller writers?” Fiona protested. “I still don’t see it.”

“He reckoned that if the police had never called in a psychological profiler, he’d never have had his life destroyed. But he also decided that the main reason profilers get taken seriously is because they’ve been turned into infallible heroes. And who turned them into heroes?”

Fiona sighed deeply. “His victims all wrote novels where the profiler was responsible for tracking down the killer. And their work inspired films and TV that took the idea to a much wider audience. So, ultimately, they were the ones to blame.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Steve agreed.

“And seeing Susan Blanchard’s murder had made him realize it wasn’t such a hard taboo to break,” Fiona said, half to herself. She looked up at Steve. “Does he talk about her murder?”

“Endlessly. How much it excited him. How it made him understand that killing was the most powerful thing one person could do to another.”

“It always conics down to power,” she said softly. Fiona got to her feet. “Thanks, Steve. I needed to know that.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“Would you like to come back for dinner? I’m sure Kit’s half expecting you.”

Steve stood up. “I’d love to, but I can’t.” He stared down at the ground, then looked up to meet her quizzical look. “I said I’d meet Terry for a drink.”

Fiona’s smile was one of genuine pleasure. “Not before time,” she said, stepping forward and hugging him. “I was getting really bored with telling the pair of you how much you’d misunderstood each other.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not saying I forgive her for what she did. But we both reckon we should at least listen to what the other has to say, now the dust has settled.”

Fiona looked out over the Heath. “Is that what’s happened?” “Isn’t that always what happens after the world gets turned upside down?” Steve said. “Even if it takes a while, the dust always settles.”

Dear Lesley,

I’m writing to say goodbye. If you’d still been around, you’d know that I turned into the kind of psychologist who doesn’t really believe in this kind of therapeutic device, but since I agreed that I’d have post-traumatic stress counselling, I feel honour bound to do what the professional recommends, no matter how foolish and selfconscious it makes me feel. It’s amazing how little we understand of what provokes our responses. Even trained professionals like me lack insight when we’re dealing with our own motivations. But what I’ve come to realize is that your death and the manner of it has never left me, no matter how hard I’ve tried to pretend otherwise. Its legacy has been one of pain and guilt. I felt guilty because I encouraged you to go to St. Andrews instead of joining me in London. I felt guilty because I survived and you didn’t. I was your older sister and I was supposed to protect you, and I failed. I felt guilty because I didn’t manage to push the police into uncovering your killer. And I felt guilty because I couldn’t stop what happened to Dad after you died. As well as that, there has been the pain of loss. At every milestone in my life, I am conscious of your absence; I wonder what you would have achieved and how your life would have been. I watch Caroline changing and growing, making mistakes and getting things wonderfully right and I think about how you would have handled them differently. Sometimes I look at Kit and wish more than anything that you two could have known each other. I know you’d have liked each other. The two people I love best in the world. How could you not? I can feel the time together we’ve missed, the happiness lost to us, and it tears me up. I miss you so much, Lesley. So many of my best memories have you in the centre of the picture. You were the one with the gift of optimism, the giver of grace. I was so proud of you, and I never told you. I loved you so very, very much, and I never told you. You died without knowing how much you were cherished, and that’s another bitter regret for me. Because the guilt and pain have been so strong for so long, I’d lost any sense of the blessing you were while you were alive. What I’m trying to do now is to take the good things from the recesses of my memory and put them in the foreground, in the hope that they’ll gradually swamp the hurt and stop it shaping the way I view the world. What I also have to accept is that the other legacy of your murder has been my professional life. Because of you, I chose to move in a particular direction. It was as if I felt that, having failed you, I had to try to do what I could to stop something similar happening to anybody else. I suppose I was looking for a kind of redemption. So I have to acknowledge that when Kit went missing, my subconscious probably grasped at this as an opportunity for finding my own salvation by saving him. In hindsight, I could have, should have done more to force the police into action. But at some level, I accept now that I almost wanted them to reject me, so that I would have to walk the high wire. I did not expect that it would leave me with blood on my own hands and a different kind of guilt. And when I saw the man I love staring death in the face, none of those considerations came into play. I simply acted without thought or hesitation and did the only thing it was possible for me to do. But I still wake up at night to the sound of a gunshot and the nightmare memory of Francis Blake’s head exploding in my face. The one outstanding item, according to my therapist, is my need to reconcile myself with you. That’s what this letter is meant to be about. I suppose what I have had to come to terms with is that it is impossible for me to change the past. I have had to accept that what happened to you and to us as a family is not my responsibility but rather the responsibility of the man who took your life. I guess I was afraid that if I admitted that to myself, I would have no reason to carry on doing what I do so well. I was wrong. What I do is worth doing for its own sake. I probably would never have chosen it if you had not died as and when you did. But that should not be a millstone around my neck. It is, like my friendship with Caroline, a gift your death gave me. Understanding that and accepting it are two different things, of course. But one will almost certainly lead to the other, and this letter is a step in that journey. And so, I take my leave of you. I will never forget you or stop loving you. What I hope is that I will stop feeling that I owe you something I can never pay.