Prologue
We are all creatures of habit. Even murderers. When things work out for us, we fix on some talisman to credit for the success. Lucky pants; not shaving; performing the same actions in the correct sequence; having the identical breakfast; walking on the right side of the street. When murderers reveal their talismans to us, we call it a signature.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
Eight years previously
Murder had been far from Mark Conway’s mind that Saturday afternoon. Although he liked to consider himself an expert on the subject, he was also capable of compartmentalising the different elements of his life. And today, he was all about football. He stood in front of the glass wall of Bradfield Victoria’s boardroom, absently swirling the red wine in its generous goblet, gazing down at the crowds pouring into the stadium.
He knew what they were feeling. Conway had been one of the rank and file himself once. Match day meant superstitious rituals. Since the afternoon twenty years ago when the Vics had won the League Cup, he’d always worn the same pair of black socks with Snoopy dancing on each ankle. He still did, though these days he hid the inappropriate graphic beneath thin black silk. Multi-millionaire businessmen didn’t wear novelty socks.
Match day also meant a low thrum of anticipation in the chest and the stomach. Even for games that had no bearing on league position or the next round of the cup, the excitement fizzed inside him, electric in his blood. Who would be picked for the team? Who would referee the game? What would the weather hold? Would the end of the afternoon bring rapture or stinging disappointment?
That was what it meant to be a fan. And although Mark Conway was now a member of the board of the club he’d followed from boyhood, he remained just that – a fan. He’d shouted himself hoarse as they climbed up – and memorably once, tumbled down – through the divisions to their current position in sixth place in the Premier League. There was only one thing that thrilled him more than a Vics’ victory.
‘Fancy our chances today?’
The voice at his shoulder made Conway turn away from the view. The club’s commercial director had come up behind him. Conway knew the motive; the man was already trying to confirm pitchside advertising for next season and he’d want to get Conway’s name on a contract and his money in the bank sooner rather than later. ‘Spurs are a tough side to beat these days,’ Conway said. ‘But Hazinedar is on great form. Four goals in the last three games. We’ve got to be in with a shout.’
The commercial director began an exhaustive analysis of both teams. He had no gift for small talk and within a couple of sentences, Conway’s attention had drifted, his gaze moving round the room. When he caught sight of Jezza Martinu, his lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. Now there was a man who could have served as the avatar of fandom. Jezza was his cousin; their mothers were sisters. Family legend had it that ‘Vics’ was the first word Jezza had uttered.
‘Excuse me, would you?’ Conway drained his drink and stepped past the commercial director. He crossed to the bar, where the young woman serving the drinks abruptly ignored everyone else who was waiting and poured him a fresh glass of wine, delivering it with a quick tight smile. He moved through the thronged boardroom towards his cousin. Jezza was clearly excited, rabbiting away to the poor bloke he’d cornered over by the buffet table. Bradfield Victoria was his obsession. If there had been a church where Jezza could worship the club, he’d have been its archbishop.
When Mark Conway had told his cousin he’d been invited to join the board, he’d thought Jezza was going to faint. The colour had drained from his face and he’d staggered momentarily. ‘You can join me in the directors’ box,’ Conway went on to say. Tears sprang up in his cousin’s eyes.
‘Really?’ he’d gasped. ‘You mean it? The directors’ box?’
‘And the boardroom before and after the game. You’ll meet the players.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening. It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.’ He pulled Conway into a hug, not noticing the other man flinch. ‘You could have chosen anybody,’ Jezza added. ‘Somebody you wanted to impress. Somebody from work you wanted to reward. But you chose me.’ He squeezed again, then let go.
‘I knew what it would mean to you.’ Which was perfectly true.
‘I can never repay you for this.’ Jezza roughly wiped his eyes. ‘God, Mark, I love you, man.’
This was the moment he’d planned for. It had taken a significant investment and a lot of smarming up to people he despised to get that coveted seat on the board. But he knew that once he’d handed Jezza Martinu the golden ticket, his cousin would do anything to keep it. The final element in his insurance policy in case his ambitious plans didn’t pan out. Conway smiled. It looked sincere because it was. ‘I’ll think of something,’ he said.
But he already had.
1
When a small group of FBI agents came up with the idea of offender profiling, the one thing they knew for sure was that they didn’t know enough about the minds of those who kept on killing. And so they went looking in the one place where they could be sure of finding experts – behind bars.
From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL
It was the smell that hammered home his whereabouts as soon as he woke. There was no prospect of drifting out of sleep with that momentary sense of dislocation, that half-awake wondering, Where am I? Home? Hotel? Somebody’s guest room? These days, as soon as consciousness arrived, so did the miasma that reminded Dr Tony Hill that he was in jail.
Years of talking to patients in secure mental hospitals and prisons meant he was no stranger to the unpleasant cocktail. Stale sweat, stale smoke, stale bodies, stale cooking, stale farts. The sourness of clothes that had taken too long to dry. The faintly vanilla musk of too much testosterone. And under it all, the harsh tang of cheap cleaning chemicals. In the past, he’d always been glad to escape from the smell of incarceration and back into the outside world. These days, there was no escape.
He’d thought he’d get used to it. That after a while, he’d be inured to it. But six months into his four-year sentence he was still brutally aware of it every single day. Because he was a clinical psychologist, he couldn’t help wondering whether there was some deep-seated reason for what had begun to feel like hyper-awareness. Or maybe he simply had a particularly acute sense of smell.
Whatever the reason, he had grown to resent it. Not for him those half-asleep moments where he could imagine himself waking in his bunk on the narrowboat that had become his base, or in the guest suite in Carol Jordan’s renovated barn where he’d spent time enough to consider it a second home. Those dreamy fantasies were denied him. He never doubted where he was. All he had to do was breathe.
At least now he had a cell to himself. When he’d been on remand for weary months, he’d had a succession of cellmates whose personal habits had been a particularly arduous punishment in themselves. Dazza, with his tireless commitment to wanking. Ricky, with his phlegm-choked smoker’s cough and perpetual hawking into the steel toilet. Marco, with his night terrors, screams that woke half the landing and provoked even more screaming and swearing from their neighbours. Tony had tried to talk to Marco about the bad dreams. But the aggressive little Liverpudlian had leapt up and gone nose to nose with him, denying via most of the swear words Tony had ever encountered that he had ever had a bastarding nightmare.