Val Mcdermid - Killing the Shadows

The next time she came round, she was naked. She was sitting on a toilet, her right arm handcuffed to a towel rail firmly bolted to the wall. Dazed, confused and in pain, she worked out that her legs were shackled, the chain passing behind the bowl so she was anchored to the toilet seat.

But at least now she knew where she was. Thomas had rented the cottage on a remote Cornish headland to celebrate their first anniversary. They’d spent a week here, walking on the cliffs, watching the birds, cooking simple meals, making love every night. It had been idyllic.

This was a nightmare.

And it had only grown worse.

When she had called out, he had reappeared. Tall and broad, with the muscles of a weightlifter. His dark hair cropped in a crew cut over a face that seemed oddly familiar. She couldn’t figure out where she’d seen him before. But then, his face was unremarkable. Nondescript. If she’d written an inventory of his features, it would have fitted thousands of men. Dark eyebrows, blue eyes, pale complexion, straight nose, average mouth, slightly receding chin. The only strange thing about him was that he was wearing a white lab coat and he had a stethoscope hanging round his neck like a doctor. He stood in the doorway, appraising her.

“Why are you doing this?” Susannah croaked.

“That’s none of your business,” he said. He produced a second set of handcuffs. “If you struggle, it’s going to hurt a lot more.”

She lashed out with her free arm, but he was too quick for her. He gripped her wrist and snapped the cuff round it. He extended her arm and fastened the other cuff round a water pipe. Then he took a roll of elastoplast and taped her wrist and hand to the wall so her arm was immobilized.

As bemused as she was terrified, Susannah stared disbelieving as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff round her upper arm and inflated it. Then he left the room. She recognized the apparatus he came back with. She’d been a blood donor for years. “What are you doing?” she protested as he located a vein and inserted a needle.

“Taking your blood,” he said calmly, with all the assurance of one of the nurses at the blood transfusion centre.

Incredulous, she watched mesmerized as her blood started to flow down the tube and into the container. “You’re mad!” she shouted at him.

“No. I’m just different,” he said, settling down on the edge of the bath to wait.

Susannah stared. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to feed you and make sure you have enough to drink. And I’m going to take your blood.” He got to his feet and started to walk out of the small bathroom.

“You’re a vampire?” she said faintly.

He turned and smiled. Its very normality made it the scariest thing she’d seen so far. “No. I’m an artist.”

When he came back, he was carrying an assortment of paintbrushes, from the finest calligraphy brush to one that was almost an inch across. Satisfied that he’d drawn almost a pint of blood, he detached the apparatus and released the blood pressure cuff, keeping his thumb over the puncture. He applied cotton wool and elastoplast to staunch the bleeding, then stripped away the restraining tape. He unlocked the handcuffs and stepped back quickly so she could not hit him.

“There, that didn’t hurt a bit, did it, pet?” He placed the jar of blood in the sink and walked out of the room. He returned with a can of energy-giving electrolyte drink and a paper plate that held a stack of liver pate sandwiches and half a dozen chocolate biscuits. He put them on the floor, within reach of Susannah’s free left hand. “There you go. That’ll stop you feeling faint. And it’ll help your body replace some of the blood you’ve lost.”

Then he turned his back, as if she had ceased to exist for him. He picked up the jar of blood and stuck the brushes in his pocket. Then he stepped into the bath and stared consideringly at the wall. There were two rows of tiles above the edge of the bath, but above that there was an area of blank plastered wall about six feet square. He selected a medium-sized brush and dipped it into the blood.

Then he began to paint.

Susannah began to sob.

By the time he was on his second cup of coffee, Steve was beginning to wonder if he’d turned into a manic depressive overnight. Less than an hour out of bed and he’d already swung between the poles of nervous anticipation and deep despair more times than he could count.

But then, as he’d commented to Fiona only the day before, these were only the symptoms of mental illness if they were groundless. And he had good reasons for both sets of emotions. His optimism, tempered though it was with his natural wariness, all centred round Terry Fowler. If she was as good at her job as Fiona had promised, and if Joanne had identified the right cases, the Susan Blanchard case might take its first positive move forward in a long time. That would be reward enough. But added to that, he had the prospect of dinner with her this evening. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked forward to a date with a woman with such conviction that it would be fun. He’d better remember to book somewhere for dinner. Not too upscale; he didn’t want them to feel uncomfortable. But not too informal, either; he wanted her to realize that he was taking her seriously. Normally, he’d have asked Kit to recommend somewhere. But that was out of the question today.

For, like his optimism, his pessimism was both professional and personal. There was no escaping the fact that he had done serious damage to his oldest friendship. Fiona had demanded more of him than was in his power to give, but she was bound to feel he’d failed her. Her and Kit both. He’d tried to phone several times the previous evening, but the answering machine had been switched on. Doubtless Fiona had decided they should monitor their calls, and he was clearly not on the approved list.

The trouble was, she was right in emotional and moral terms. But he was right in practical terms. And those two certainties were mutually incompatible. All his adult life, he’d been glad that the job he loved had never turned on him and threatened to destroy something that was important to him. He’d seen it happen with colleagues marriages crumbled, children become enemies, friendships betrayed and he’d always known that, but for fortune, it could have been him.

Now, he’d run out of grace. His oldest friend estranged and his best male friend at risk, and there was nothing he could do about it. It wasn’t even his case. All he knew about what was going on he knew because Sarah Duvall had had the courtesy to tell him. But he had been a senior CID officer for long enough to know that this was the worst kind of case to resolve. No criminal was harder to catch than a killer who killed without apparent connection to his victim, who operated on a logic clear only to himself, who left few traces and who was smart enough to stay several steps ahead of any pursuit. When such killers were caught, it was often almost by accident. Neighbours complained about the smell of the drains; a spot check of a number plate revealed it belonged to another car entirely; a police officer stopped a random speeder.

That Kit’s life might hang by so slender and serendipitous a chance was almost more than Steve could bear to contemplate. How much worse it must be for Fiona, who had already had to live through one such apparently random loss. And now, when he should be at her side, supporting them both, he was the outsider.

Steve carried the remains of his coffee through to the bedroom and contemplated his wardrobe. He couldn’t rely on being able to get home to change before the evening. He chose a lightweight navy wool suit that he knew didn’t easily crease. A white shirt and a blue tie for now; a dark grey shirt, carefully folded and bagged, and a scarlet silk tie for the evening. Fiona had given him the tie, he remembered. Strange that it was the exact shade of Terry’s lipstick. Even in something so basic, the two strands of his life were intertwined.