Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

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Tác giả: Val McDermid
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Chapter 26
live on my own. I don't even have a cat or plants, so nobody has to come in when I'm away. I'm the only one with keys."
"You're sure of that? No cleaning lady, no colleague who drops in to use your system?"
"Sure, I'm sure. I do my own cleaning, I work alone. I split up with my girlfriend a couple of months back and I changed the locks, OK?
Nobody's got keys except me. " Crozier was starting to sound tetchy.
Carol persisted.
"And no one could have borrowed your keys without your knowledge and had them copied?"
"I don't see how. I'm not in the habit of leaving them lying around.
And the car's only insured for me, so nobody else has ever driven it," Crozier said, his irritation clearly mounting.
"Look, if somebody did anything criminal in a car with my number on, they were using faked-up plates, OK?"
"I accept what you're saying, Mr Crozier. I can assure you that if the information you've given me checks out, you won't be hearing from us again. Thanks very much for your time."
Back at the car, Carol said,
"Find me a phone. I want to try Dr Hill again. I can't believe he's gone A.W.O.L. the one time we really need him."
It's laughable. They pick a man who can't even tell whether I've carried out a particular punishment or not and they employ him to help them catch me. They could at least have shown me the respect of employing someone who has some reputation, an opponent worthy of my skills, not some idiot who has never encountered someone of my calibre.
Instead, they insult me. Dr Tony Hill is supposed to be producing a profile of me, based on his analysis of my killings. When this account is published, years hence, after my death in my bed from natural causes, historians will be able to compare his profile with the reality and laugh at the gross inaccuracies of his pseudo-science.
He will never come close to the truth. For the record, I set down that truth.
I was born in the
"Yorkshire port of Sea ford, one of the busiest fishing and commercial docks in the country. My father was a merchant seaman, the first officer on oil tankers. He went all over the world, then he would come home to us. But my mother was as bad a wife as she was a mother. I can see now that the house was always in chaos, the meals irregular and unappetizing. The only thing she was good at, the only thing they could share, was the drinking. If there was an Olympic pairs event for piss heads they'd have walked off with the gold.
When I was seven, my father stopped coming home. Of course, my mother blamed me for not being a good enough son. She said I'd driven him away. She told me I was the man of the house now. But I could never live up to her expectations. She always wanted more from me than I was capable of, and ruled me by blame rather than praise. I spent more time locked in the cupboard than most people's coats do.
Without my father's pay cheque, she was thrown on the resources of the welfare system, which was barely enough to live on, never mind get drunk on. When the building society repossessed the house, we went to live with relatives in Bradfield for a while, but she couldn't handle their disapproval, so we moved back to Seaford, when she turned to the town's other boom industry, prostitution. I grew accustomed to the procession of disgusting, drunken sailors traipsing through the succession of grubby flats and bed sits where we lived. We were always behind with the rent, usually doing a moonlight flit just before the bailiffs got really heavy.
I grew to hate the ugly, grunting copulation that I was a constant witness to, and stayed out of the house as much as I possibly could, often sleeping rough down by the docks. I used to pick on kids that were younger than me to get their money off them so I could afford to eat. I moved schools almost as often as we moved house, so I never did too well there, in spite of the fact that I knew I could run rings round most of the other kids, who were just stupid.
As soon as I was 16, I left Seaford. It wasn't a wrench; it wasn't as if I'd ever managed to make many friends, what with moving all the time. I'd seen enough of men to know that I didn't want to grow up like them, and I felt different inside. I thought if I moved back to a big city like Bradfield I'd find it easier to work out what I wanted. One of my mother's cousins got me a job at the electronics firm where he worked.
About that time, I discovered that dressing in women's clothes made me feel good about myself. I got my own bed sit so I could do it whenever I wanted to, and that calmed me down a lot. I started studying computer science at evening classes, and eventually got some proper qualifications. About that time, my mother got left a house in Seaford in her brother's will.
I got the chance of a job back in Seaford, working in computer systems for the local private phone company. I didn't really want to go back there, but the job was too good to turn down. I never went near my mother. I don't think she even knew I was there.
One of the few good things about Seaford is that it's handy for the ferry to Holland. I used to go there every other weekend, because in Amsterdam I could go out dressed as a woman and nobody batted an eyelid. Over there, I met a lot of transsexuals as well as transvestites, and the more I talked to them, the more I realized that I was just like them. I was a woman trapped in a man's body.
That explained why I'd never had much sexual interest in girls. And although I found men attractive, I knew I wasn't a poof. They disgust me, with their pretence at normal relationships when everybody knows that it's only men and women that can fit together properly.
I went to see the doctors at Jimmy's in Leeds, where they do all the sex-change operations in the north, and they turned me down. Their psychologists were as stupid and blinkered as all the rest of their brotherhood. But I managed to find a private doctor in London who prescribed the hormone treatment I needed. Of course, I couldn't go on working while this was going on, but I spoke to the boss and he said he'd give me a good reference for another job when I'd had the operation and I was a woman.
I had to go abroad for the operation, and it was all much more expensive than I expected. I went to my mother and asked her if she'd mortgage the house to lend me the money and she just laughed at me.
So I did what I'd learned from her. I sold myself on the docks. It's amazing how much money sailors will pay for a travesti. They get out of their heads with excitement at the thought of someone who has breasts and a cock. I wasn't like the other hookers either; I didn't blow it all on drink or drugs or a pimp. I stashed it all away till I could afford the operation.
When I came to Seaford, not even my own mother recognized me at first.
I'd only been back a few days when she took that tragic accidental overdose of drink and pills. Nobody was surprised. Yes, Doctor, you can add her to the list.
With my qualifications, experience and reference, I had no trouble getting a job as a senior systems analyst with the phone company in Bradfield. The money I made from the sale of the house in Seaford bought me my home in Bradfield, and I started the task of finding a worthy man to share my life.
And Dr Tony Hill presumes to understand me, without knowing any of this? Well, in a very short time, I'll share it all with him. Such a shame he won't have the chance to write it down for himself.
The truth is, I am a very particular man in everything relating to murder; and perhaps I carry my delicacy too far.
Don Merrick walked into the HOLMES room munching a two-inch-thick double cheese and Bar-B-Q bacon burger. "How do you do it?" Dave Woolcott asked.
"How do you get those slack Alices down the canteen to cook you edible food? They could burn a cup of tea, that lot, but you always manage to twist them round your little finger."
Merrick winked.
"It's my natural Geordie charm," he said.
"I just pick on the ugliest one and tell her she reminds me of my mother when she was in her prime." He sat down and stretched his long legs.
"I've checked out the half-dozen Discoveries your sergeant gave me. They're all in the clear. Two of them are women, two of them have got rock-solid alibis for at least two of the nights in question, one's got multiple sclerosis, so he couldn't have done the jobs, and the sixth sold his to a dealership in the Midlands three weeks ago."
"Great," Dave said heavily.
"Give the list to one of the operators so we can update the file."
"Where's the guy?"
"Carol or Kevin?"
Merrick shrugged.
"I still think of Inspector Jordan as my guy' nor
"She's off chasing wild geese," Dave said.
"She got a result, then?" Merrick asked.
"Two cross-matches."
"Let's have a look," Merrick said.
Dave rummaged among his papers and found three sheets of paper stapled together. The first listed the two correlations. Merrick frowned and flicked over a page. The second was a print-out of the result of a criminal records search on Philip Crozier. Nothing known.
Hurriedly, he turned to the third page, which listed two Christopher Thorpes. One had a last-known address in Devon and several convictions for burglary. The second had a last-known address in Seaford. There were a string of juvenile convictions; assaulting a football referee, breaking windows at a school, shoplifting. There were half a dozen adult convictions, all for soliciting prostitution. Merrick sucked in his breath sharply and turned back to the front page.
"Fuck," he said.
"What is it?" Dave asked, suddenly alert.
"This here. Christopher Thorpe, the Seaford one?"
"Yeah? Carol reckoned it wasn't the same one as ours. I mean, he's got convictions for being a male prostitute, but this one in Bradfield looks to be married, because the woman at the same address has his surname. And let's face it, you don't get dock land rent boys driving around in serious motors like the Discovery."
Merrick shook his head.
"No, you've got it all wrong. I know this Christopher Thorpe from Seaford. I worked on Vice in Seaford before I came here, remember? I was the arresting officer on two of these charges in soliciting. Christopher Thorpe was halfway to a sex change at the time. He had the tits and everything, he was trying to earn enough money to get the operation. Guess what his working name was?
Dave, Christopher Thorpe isn't married to Angelica Thorpe, he is Angelica Thorpe. "
"Fuck," Dave echoed.
"Dave, where the hell is Carol?"
Angelica stood in front of him, hands on hips, chewing one corner of her mouth.
"You can't, can you? You can't prove it because you know nothing about my life."
"In one sense you're absolutely right, Angelica. I don't know the facts of your life," Tony said carefully, 'but I think I know a bit about the shape of it. Your mother didn't do a very good job of loving you. Maybe she had a problem with drink or with drugs, or maybe she just didn't || understand what a little kid needed. Either way, she didn't make you feel loved when you were little. Am I right? " Angelica scowled.
"Go on. Dig yourself a hole." Tony felt a prickle of fear tingle at the base of his skull. What if he'd got it wrong? What if this woman was the exception to every statistical near certainty Tony had held at the front of his mind during the whole enquiry? What if she was the one serial killer who had come from a happy, loving family? Dismissing his doubts as a luxury he couldn't afford right now. Tony ploughed on.
"Your father wasn't around much when you were growing up, and he never showed you he was proud of his son, even though you did everything you knew how to make him feel that pride. Your mother expected too much of you, kept telling you you were the man of the house, and giving you a bad time when you behaved like the child you were instead of the man she wanted to pretend you were." Angelica's face twitched in a spasm of recognition. Tony paused. "Go on," she grated between clenched teeth.
"It's not easy for me to talk, doubled over like this. Can't you slacken the rope a bit, let me stand upright?" She shook her head, her mouth sulky as a child's. "I can't look at you properly like this," Tony tried. "You've got a fabulous body, you must know that.
If it's going to be the last thing I see, at least let me appreciate it. "
She cocked her head to one side, as if replaying his words to check them for truth or trickery.
"All right," she conceded.
"It doesn't mean anything's changed, though," she added as she moved to the winch and released it. She let out about a foot of slack.
Tony couldn't bite back the scream of pain that shot through his shoulders as the muscles were released from the strain that had stretched them to their limit.
"It'll wear off," Angelica said roughly as she returned to her station by the cam corder
"Keep talking," she instructed him.
"I've always enjoyed fantasy fiction."
He eased himself upright, struggling against the pain. "You were a bright kid," he gasped.
"Brighter than the rest of them. It's never easy making friends when you're so much smarter than the other kids.
And maybe you moved around a bit. Different neighbours, maybe even different schools. "
Angelica was back in control of herself, her face impassive as he continued.
"It wasn't easy to make friends. You knew you were different from everybody else, special, but you couldn't work out why at first. Then as you grew up, you realized what it was. You weren't the same as the other boys because you weren't a boy at all. You had no interest in girls sexually, but it wasn't because you were gay.
No way. It was because you were really a girl yourself. What you discovered was that dressing up in women's clothes made you feel like you'd come home, like this was how you were meant to be. " He paused and gave her a crooked smile.
"How am I doing so far?"
"Very impressive. Doctor," she said coldly.
"I'm fascinated. Carry on."
Tony flexed his shoulder muscles, relieved to discover that the damage so far seemed to be only temporary. The pins and needles that raged across his back seemed no more than a minor irritation after what he'd been through. He took a deep breath and carried on.
"You decided to become the person you were inside, the woman you knew you really were. God, Angelica, I've got so much respect for you, putting yourself through that. I know how hard it is to get the medical profession to take the idea seriously. All the hormone therapy, the electrolysis, living as a half-man, half-woman while you waited for the operations, and then all the pain of the surgery." He shook his head, wonderingly.
"I know I wouldn't have the courage to put myself through all that."
"It wasn't easy." The words escaped from Angelica's lips, almost against her will.
"I believe you," Tony said sympathetically.
"And after all that, to find yourself wondering if it had been worth it after all, when you realized that the stupidity, the insensitivity, the lack of insight you'd identified in men didn't just disappear because you were a woman. They were still the same old bunch of bastards, incapable of recognizing an exceptional woman when they were offered her love and affection on a plate." He paused, studying her face, deciding if the time was right for the big gamble. The coldness had left her eyes, replaced by a look almost of misery. He softened his voice and lowered the volume. Please God, let his training pay off.
"They rejected you, didn't they? Adam Scott, Paul Gibbs, Gareth Finnegan, Damien Connolly. They turned you down."
Angelica shook her head violently, as if by activity she could deny the past.
"They let me down. They let me down, they didn't turn me down. They betrayed me."
"Tell me about it," Tony said softly, praying that his hard-earned techniques weren't going to fail him now.
"Tell me about it."
"Why should I?" she shouted, stepping forward and slapping him so hard he tasted blood as his cheek impacted against his teeth.
"You're no better than them. What about that slag? That blonde bitch, that fucking plonk you've been giving one to?"
Tony swallowed the warm salty blood that filled his mouth.
"You mean Carol Jordan?" he said, playing for time. How should he play this? Should he lie or tell the truth?
"You know full well who I mean. I know you've been with her, don't fucking try lying to me," she hissed, raising her hand again.
"You treacherous, faithless bastard." Her hand cracked him across the face again, so hard he heard his neck crick under the force of it.
Tears sprang to his eyes involuntarily. The truth wasn't going to work. It would only earn him more punishment. Praying he could lie with conviction. Tony pleaded, "Angelica, she was just a fuck, just someone to scratch the itch. You'd got me so horny with your phone calls. I didn't know when you were going to call again, or even if you were." He allowed anger to creep into his voice.
"I wanted you and you didn't tell me how I could get hold of you. Angelica, it's like you with the other ones. I was filling in time, waiting for my equal. You can't believe that a mere cop would answer my fantasies, do you? You should know, you've had one too."
Angelica stepped back, shock on her face. Sensing he had made some kind of a breakthrough. Tony pursued her with his words.
"We were different, you and me. They weren't worthy of you. But we were special. You must know that, from our phone calls. Didn't you sense that we had something extraordinary? That this time it would be different? Isn't that what you really want? You don't want the killing. Not really. The killing only happened because they weren't worthy, because they let you down. What you really want is a worthy partner. What you want is love. Angelica, what you want is me."
For a long moment she stared at him, eyes wide, mouth open. Then confusion took over, as obvious to Tony as a hooker's come-on.
"Don't use that word to me, you worthless scum bag she stuttered.
"Don't fucking say it!" Her voice was a low, throaty scream. Suddenly, she turned on her heel and ran from the room, her heels clattering up the stairs.
"I love you, Angelica," Tony shouted desperately after her retreating footsteps.
"I love you."
Carol and DC Morris stood on the doorstep of the small terraced house in Gregory Street. She didn't need to be a psychologist to read his body language. Morris was fed up at trailing round pursuing Carol's daft hunch.
"They must be out at work," he remarked after their fourth assault on the doorbell.
"Looks that way," Carol agreed.
"Shall we come back later?"
"Let's go on the knocker," Carol suggested.
"See if any of the neighbours are around. Maybe they can tell us when the Thorpes get back from work."
Morris looked as if he'd rather be on crowd control at a student demo.
"Yes, ma'am," he said in a bored voice.
"You take across the street, I'll go for this side." Carol watched him trudge across the street as wearily as a miner at the end of his shift, shook her head with a sigh and turned her attention to number twelve. This was much more the kind of territory Tony had suggested for their killer. Thinking of Tony just made Carol cross again.
Where the hell was he? She really needed his input today, not to mention a bit of support for an idea that everybody else seemed to think was a complete waste of time. He couldn't have picked a worse moment to go on the missing list. It was unforgivable. At least he could have phoned his secretary and not left her having to field his calls and make excuses for him.
There was no bell on the door of number twelve, so Carol bruised her knuckles on the solid wood. The woman who opened it looked like a caricature from a soap opera. In her forties, her make-up would have been over the top for dinner in LA, never mind mid-afternoon in a Bradfield back street. Her dyed platinum blonde hair was piled high in a lopsided beehive. She wore a tight black sweater with a scoop neck revealing a cleavage the texture of crumpled tissue, shiny blue skin-tight leggings, white stilettoes and a thin gold ankle chain. A cigarette dangled from a corner of her mouth.
"What is it, love?" she said nasally.
"Sorry to trouble you," Carol said, flashing her warrant card.
"Detective Inspector Carol Jordan, Bradfield police. I'm trying to get in touch with your next-door neighbours at number fourteen, the Thorpes, but there doesn't seem to be anybody home. I wonder if you happen to know what time they get in from work."
The woman shrugged.
"Search me, love. That cow comes and goes at all hours."
"What about Mr Thorpe?" Carol asked.
"What Mr Thorpe? There's no Mr Thorpe next door, love." She gave a croak of laughter.
"It's easy seen you've never clapped eyes on her.
Any man that married that ugly cow would have to be blind and bloody hard up. So what've you got her for? "
"It's just routine enquiries," Carol said.
The woman snorted.
"Don't give me that fanny," she said.
"I've watched enough episodes of The Bill to know they don't send inspectors out on routine enquiries. It's about time you put that cow behind bars, if you want my opinion."
"Why is that, Mrs ... ?"
"Goodison, Bette Goodison. As in Bette Davis. Because she's an ugly, anti-social cow, that's why."
Carol smiled.
"I'm afraid that's not a crime, Mrs Goodison."
"No, but murder is, isn't it?" Bette Goodison crowed triumphantly.
Carol swallowed, hoping the effect of the word wasn't as visible as it was palpable.
"That's a very serious accusation."
Bette Goodison took a final drag of her cigarette and expertly flipped the dog end across the narrow pavement and into the gutter.
"I'm glad you think so. It's more than your mates at Moorside nick did."
"I'm sorry you feel you've not been well served by my colleagues,"
Carol said in a concerned tone.
"Perhaps you could tell me what you're talking about?" Please God, let this not be a rerun of the Yorkshire Ripper case, where the killer's best friend told the police they suspected he was the Ripper and the police paid no attention.
"Prince, that's who we're talking about."
For one wild moment, Carol had a vision of the diminutive American rock star buried in the back yard of a Brad- field terrace. Pulling herself together, she said,
"Prince?"
"Our German shepherd. Always complaining about him, that Angelica Thorpe was. And she had no grounds. That dog was doing her a service.
Anybody so much as walked down our ginnel and that dog let you know about it. She'd have paid a fortune for a burglar alarm as efficient as that dog. Any road up, a few months back . August, it were, weekend before Bank Holiday, we come home from work, Col and me, and Prince is gone. Now, there's no way he could have got out of that yard, and he'd have gone for anybody that came in. There's only one way he could have disappeared, and that's if he was murdered," Mrs Goodison said, stabbing Carol in the chest with her finger for emphasis.
"She poisoned him and then she got rid of the body so there would be no proof. She's a murderer!"
Normally, Carol would have walked a mile barefoot to avoid this conversation, but she was in pursuit of Handy Andy, and any oddity was something to be grasped eagerly. "How can you be so sure it was Mrs Thorpe?" she asked.
The Mermaid's Singing The Mermaid's Singing - Val McDermid The Mermaid