of his brown leather jacket, breath streaming out in a line of fog. ‘It’s good for you. Builds character.’
Kings Park stretched away on both sides of us, the grass crisp with frost. Blue shadows reached down from the granite wedge of Castle Hill, the ruined battlements jagged against the pale sky. A blade of sunlight pierced the gloom – serrated around the edges where trees gouged it – making the Kings River sparkle.
The smell of onions frying in grease oozed through the cold air, thick and sweet and dark, spreading out from the burger van at the edge of the car park. PC Cooper had almost made it to the front of the queue.
Huntly stood with his back to the rest of us, staring out across the river, arms folded, camelhair coat wrapped around him, polished brogues sticking out at ten-to-two. Sulking.
Jacobson turned to Alice. ‘Well? What do you make of our Dr Docherty?’
‘He’s a lot shorter than he is on TV.’ She wrapped one padded arm around her padded waist, the other hand fiddling with her hair where it poked out from the hood of her Arctic jacket. ‘On the basis of what we know so far, it’s reasonable to be cautious and say this might not be the Inside Man. The papers are full of Laura Strachan’s impending “Miracle Birth” – maybe someone saw that and it sparked a fire inside them, I mean if you’re sitting at home full of rage and impotence and looking for some way to vent everything on a world that hates you, and then you see all this stuff about the Inside Man and maybe you think: that’s what I’ll do, I’ll be just like him only better, and it’ll make the angry things in my head leave me alone for a while …’
She turned, eyes narrowed, mouth pinched. ‘But it’s not going to work because this isn’t my fantasy, this is someone else’s, but until I try I don’t know what I really want, and maybe there’s something about it that makes me feel powerful and in control and aroused for the first time in years and I take that one thing and I relive it over and over in my mind till it’s polished sharp, and I go out and I do it again, only properly this time.’ She let go of her hair, looked up at me. ‘I mean, if it was me, that’s what I’d do.’
I nodded. ‘So you’re saying it isn’t him?’
‘That depends on the next body. If it’s someone else the MO will diverge as he experiments, trying to find his personal groove. If it stays consistent it’s probably him.’ She turned to Jacobson. ‘At the press conference Detective Superintendent Ness wouldn’t answer the question: did he send a letter about Claire Young?’
‘Well … yesterday was Sunday, so if he posted it after he killed her, it wouldn’t get collected till today, and it won’t be delivered till tomorrow. If we’re lucky, we’ll find out before the paper prints it.’
Alice shuffled closer. ‘Superintendent, can I speak to the original survivors and review the victimology reports? I want to look at the Inside Man letters too. The photocopies in the case file are barely readable. I’ll need access to the originals.’
He patted her on the shoulder. ‘For you, anything. And please, call me Bear.’
Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have laughed. ‘Seriously? Thought that was meant to be a joke. You want us to call you “Bear”?’
‘Dr McDonald has pleased me by putting that jumped-up publicity-hungry TV tart in his place this morning. Bernard?’
Professor Huntly kept his gaze on the water, still sulking.
‘You made the boy from SCD who asked about the phone call look like a moron. So you’re forgiven for yesterday.’
Huntly raised one shoulder, stared at his shoes. ‘Thank you, Bear.’
Jacobson poked me in the chest. ‘So far all you’ve done is limp about, taking up space and eating Sheila’s pizza. You can call me, “Sir”, “Guv”, or “Super”.’
One step forward and I was inches from his nose, looming. ‘How about I call you—’
‘Ash …’ Alice tugged at my sleeve. ‘Remember what we talked about? Going to see the deposition scene? I think we should really go now, don’t you, I mean there’s a lot to get through today and we all want to do our best for the investigation so we can stay out of prison, don’t we? Please?’
And miss a chance to rip the little git’s face off and …
Don’t be so bloody stupid.
Blink. Step back. Deep breath. ‘Right.’ I forced a smile into place and patted Jacobson on the shoulder. ‘Sorry, still getting used to not being inside. You know.’
Jacobson tilted his head back, grinning up at me. ‘And you can take Bernard with you. He doesn’t drive.’
Huntly cleared his throat. ‘Can we at least wait for my sausage sandwich?’
‘… quite ridiculous, surely it’s appropriate to observe a decent period of mourning.’ Sitting in the back seat, Huntly took another bite of his sausage buttie, tomato sauce oozing out of the roll and onto his fingers. He chewed, with his mouth turned down, as if it was full of ashes. ‘You didn’t see me jumping into bed with the first person I saw, did you? Civilized people just don’t do that.’
Alice clicked on the car radio. ‘Maybe some music will cheer you up?’
‘… have confirmed that the family of four found dead in the wreckage of their burning home in Cardiff on Wednesday were subjected to a brutal hammer attack. Local news now, and the search for missing five-year-old Charlie Pearce continues as police—’
She switched the thing off again. ‘Maybe not. We could play I-spy?’
Outside the Suzuki’s window, Oldcastle ground its way through the rush hour. Cars, vans, and buses crawled along the streets in a slow-motion metal conga line, blaring horns making a post-dawn chorus.
Huntly gave a big, theatrical sigh. ‘I spy something beginning with bleakness, darkness, and lonely crushing cold. Give up? It’s the rest of my life.’
I ground the tip of my cane into the passenger footwell. Gritted my teeth. ‘How about we all just sit in silence till we get there?’
Alice looked across from the driver’s seat and grimaced at me, both eyebrows up.
He shifted, leaning forward until his head poked through the gap between the seats. Enveloping everything in his sausagey breath. ‘Have you ever loved someone, Henderson? I mean, really, really loved them? And then … then they’re just gone, and there’s nothing you can do to bring them back?’ He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. ‘God: the agony.’
Alice stared at me, mouth hanging open. ‘Err … Actually, maybe we should—’
I slammed my hand on the dashboard. ‘Bus!’
‘Eeek!’ She stamped on the brakes, wrenched the wheel to the right, nearly battering into a taxi coming the other way. We screeched to a halt in the middle of the road.
An old woman with a tartan shopping trolley stopped on the pavement to gape, her Westie terrier barking at the car – tail stiff and upright.
The taxi driver
