Val McDermid - Val McDermid 3-Book Thriller Collection - The Mermaids Singing, The Wire in the Blood, The Last Temptation

And I’m glad I did. I caught up with what I had missed, and eagerly awaited each new title thereafter. This edition rightly celebrates her first major award-winning book, but she’s far from a one-hit wonder. In fact any or all of her books could or should have won awards, because she’s remarkably consistent. As a reader I remember vaguely trying to work out how and why, and then later as a writer myself I revisited the question with greater professional urgency. I lacked the academic vocabulary and habit of mind to get deeply into it, which frustrated me, because something was happening I needed to know about: over and over again, she was making me extremely annoyed whenever I had to put her book down, to eat or talk or go to the toilet or go to work. That’s a rare and subtle art, perhaps beyond academic vocabulary anyway, but beyond precious to a reader like me.

Eventually I met her in person, and started to figure it out. She’s extremely intelligent – practically a prodigy as a youngster – but, gloriously, she feels absolutely no need to prove it all the time. Which means everything in the books serves the books, not the author. No look at me! No I did lots of research! I know things you don’t! Which gives the books a rare and self-sufficient integrity. For instance, occasionally she’s accused of being ‘bloodthirsty’, to which I say, no, she isn’t. She’s honest. Crimes are usually sordid and disgusting, and to present them otherwise is disingenuous. Everything in the books is there because it needs to be. No other reason, either good or bad. No inhibition, no pandering, no caution.

And, I learned, her upbringing was a little isolated and a little provincial, in much the same way as mine, at much the same time. As a kid I used books as a lifeline. I remember the simple ecstasy of losing myself in stories, living them, being them, and I’m absolutely certain she did the same. I’m certain she remembers the feeling. And I think her deep intellectual self-confidence now allows her to induce that same feeling in her readers. Nothing extraneous gets in the way. An academic analysis of plot or character or setting would miss the point – this is a writer still in love with reading, still in love with story, still in love with the elemental rush of immersion in a different world, and now smart enough and honest enough as an adult to keep making it all happen for others. For which I’m extremely grateful as a reader, and extremely admiring as a colleague.

Lee Child

New York 2015

For Tookie Flystock, my beloved serial insect killer.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’

T. S. Eliot

The soul of torture is male

Comment on exhibit card

The Museum of Criminology and Torture,

San Gimignano, Italy .

All chapter epigraphs are taken from

‘On Murder considered as one of the fine arts’

by Thomas De Quincey (1827)

Contents

Cover

Title Page VAL McDERMID THE MERMAIDS SINGING

Copyright

An Introduction by Lee Child

Dedication

Epigraph I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ T. S. Eliot The soul of torture is male Comment on exhibit card The Museum of Criminology and Torture, San Gimignano, Italy .

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

You always remember the first time. Isn’t that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder. I will never forget a single delicious moment of that strange and exotic drama. Even though now, with the benefit of experience and hindsight, I can see it was an amateurish performance, it still has the power to thrill, though not any longer to satisfy.

Although I didn’t realize it before the decision to act was forced upon me, I had been paving the way for murder well in advance. Picture an August day in Tuscany. An air-conditioned coach whisking us from city to city. A bus-load of Northern culture vultures, desperate to fill every moment of our precious fortnight’s package with something memorable to set against Castle Howard and Chatsworth.

I’d enjoyed Florence, the churches and art galleries filled with strangely contradictory images of martyrdom and Madonnas. I had scaled the dizzy heights of Brunelleschi’s dome surmounting the immense cathedral, entranced by the winding stairway that leads up from the gallery to the tiny cupola, the worn stone steps tightly sandwiched between the ceiling of the dome and the roof itself. It was like being inside my computer, a real role-playing adventure, working my way through the maze to daylight. All it lacked were monsters to slay on the way. And then, to emerge into bright day and amazement that up here, at the end of this cramped ascent, there was a postcard and souvenir seller, a small, dark, smiling man stooped from years of lugging his wares aloft. If it had really been a game, I would have been able to purchase some magic from him. As it was, I bought more postcards than I had people to send them to.

After Florence, San Gimignano. The town rose up from the green Tuscan plain, its ruined towers thrusting into the sky like fingers clawing upwards from a grave. The guide burbled on about ‘a medieval Manhattan’, another crass comparison to add to the list we’d been force-fed since Calais.

As we neared the town, my excitement grew. All over Florence, I’d seen the advertisements for the one tourist attraction I really wanted to see. Hanging splendidly from lampposts, gorgeous in rich red and gold, the banners insisted that I visit the Museo Criminologico di San Gimignano. Consulting my phrasebook, I’d confirmed what I’d thought the small print said. A museum of criminology and torture. Needless to say, it wasn’t on our cultural itinerary.

I didn’t have to search for my target; a leaflet about the museum, complete with street plan, was thrust upon me less than a dozen yards inside the massive stone gateway set in the medieval walls. Savouring the pleasure of anticipation, I wandered around for a while, marvelling at the monuments to civic disharmony that the towers represented. Each powerful family had had its own fortified tower which they defended against their neighbours with everything from boiling lead to cannons. At the peak of the city’s prosperity, there were supposedly a couple of hundred towers. Compared to medieval San Gimignano, Saturday night down the docks after closing time seems like kindergarten, the seamen mere amateurs in mayhem.

When I could no longer resist the pull of the museum, I crossed the central piazza, tossing a bicoloured 200-lire coin in the well for luck, and walked a few yards down a side street, where the now familiar red and gold hangings adorned ancient stone walls. Excitement buzzing in me like a blood-crazed mosquito, I walked into the cool foyer and calmly bought my entrance ticket and a copy of the glossy, illustrated museum guide.