Val Mcdermid - Killing the Shadows

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?”

“I suppose so. I presumed because you never objected to him that you took it at face value,” she admitted.

Kit reached for the bottle and topped up his glass. “Why should I have minded? It’s not as if he’s ever been any kind of threat. I’ve always known you didn’t love him. Well, you do love him, obviously, but like a friend. And he’s never tried to tell me how I should be treating you. So why should there be a problem?”

Fiona laid her head against his thigh. “You never cease to surprise me.”

“Good. I’d hate to think you had me sussed.” He released her hand and stroked her hair. “You’re a very good reason for staying alive, you know. I’m not going to take any chances.”

Fiona grasped the offered opportunity. “So first thing in the morning, we’re going to call a security firm and get you fixed up with a minder.”

“Are you serious?” His tone was a mixture of incredulity and outrage.

“Never more so. You can’t live like a hermit, Kit. You know it’ll drive you stir crazy within a couple of days. You’ll get frustrated and bad-tempered, you won’t be able to work and then you’ll do something that you think is safe, like going for a walk on the Heath. You’ll expose yourself.” As he started to argue with her, Fiona held up her hand in an adamant gesture. “I’m not going to argue, Kit. Your safety’s the most important consideration, but you’ve still got to be able to live.”

“Fair enough. But a minder? I’ll feel like a complete plonker.”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

Before Kit could say more, the final credits of the soap faded and the familiar urgency of the Six o’clock News theme swelled from the TV. Fiona swivelled round to watch the screen. “Let’s see what they’re saying about Georgia,” she said.

The newscaster gave his trademark sombre smile and launched into the news. Good evening. The remains of missing mystery writer Georgia Lester have been discovered in a freezer in London’s Smithfield Market. And in a dramatic development, a man has confessed to her murder at a police press conference.

The rest of the headlines were lost on Fiona and Kit. “What the fuck?” Kit breathed.

They didn’t have long to wait. Georgia was the first item in the main bulletin. City of London Police called a press conference this afternoon to announce that a search of Smithneld Market had ended with the discovery of Georgia Lester’s remains. Their grisly find came in the early hours of this morning as police worked through the night following a new line of inquiry. Ms Lester went missing somewhere between her cottage in Dorset and her London home ten days ago. Since then, concern has been voiced for her safety. But the revelation was overshadowed by the events of the press conference itself. Over now to our reporter Gabrielle Gershon.