The Mermaids Singing

  Synopsis:

  Up till now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different — this one’s on the loose. In the northern town of Bradfield four men have been found mutilated and tortured. Fear grips the city; no man feels safe. Clinical psychologist Tony Hill is brought in to profile the killer. A man with more than enough sexual problems of his own, Tony himself becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills where he has to use every ounce of his professional skill and personal nerve to survive.

  The Mermaids Singing

  Val McDermid

  The first book in the Tony Hill / Carol Jordan series

  Copyright © Val McDermid 1995

  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)

  FROM 3½″ DISK LABELLED: BACKUP.007; FILE LOVE.001

  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.

  How can I begin to describe the experience? The physical reality was so much more overwhelming than photographs or videos or books had ever prepared me for. The first exhibit was a ladder rack, the accompanying card describing its function in loving detail in Italian and English. Shoulders would pop out of their sockets, hips and knees separate to the sound of rending cartilage and ligament, spines stretch out of alignment till vertebrae fell apart like beads from a broken string. ‘Victims,’ the card said laconically, ‘often measured between six and nine inches taller after the rack.’ Extraordinary minds the inquisitors had. Not satisfied with interrogating their heretics while they were alive and suffering, they had to seek further answers from their violated bodies.

  The exhibition was a monument to the ingenuity of man. How could anyone not admire the minds that examined the human body so intimately that they could engineer such exquisite and finely calibrated suffering? With their relatively unsophisticated technology, those medieval brains devised systems of torture so refined that they are still in use today. It seems that the only improvement our modern post-industrial society has been able to come up with is the additional frisson provided by the application of electricity.

  I moved through the rooms, savouring each and every toy, from the gross spikes of the Iron Maiden to the more subtle and elegant machinery of pears, those slender, segmented ovoids which were inserted into vagina or anus. Then, when the ratchet was turned, the segments separated and extended till the pear had metamorphosed into a strange flower, petals fringed with razor-sharp metal teeth. Then it was removed. Sometimes the victims survived, which was probably a crueller fate.

  I noticed unease and horror on the faces and in the voices of some of my fellow visitors, but recognized it for the hypocrisy it was. Secretly, they were loving every minute of their pilgrimage, but respectability forbade any public display of their excitement. Only the children were honest in their ardent fascination. I would have happily bet that I was far from the only person in those cool, pastel rooms who felt the surge of sexual desire between their legs as we drank in the exhibits. I have often wondered how many holiday sexual encounters have been spiced and salted by the secret recollection of the torture museum.

  Outside, in a sun-drenched courtyard, a skeleton crouched in a cage, bones clean as if stripped by vultures. Back in the days when the towers stood tall, these cages would have hung on the outer walls of San Gimignano, a message to inhabitants and strangers alike that this was a city where the law exacted a harsh penalty if it was not respected. I felt a strange kinship with those burghers. I too respect the need for punishment after betrayal.

  Near the skeleton, an enormous metal-shod spoked wheel leaned against the wall. It would have looked perfectly at home in an agricultural museum. But the card fixed to the wall behind it explained a more imaginative function. Criminals were bound to the wheel. First, they were flayed with scourges that ripped the flesh from their bones, exposing their entrails to the eager crowd. Then, with iron bars, their bones were broken on the wheel. I found myself thinking of the tarot card, the wheel of fortune.


  When I realized I was going to have to become a killer, the memory of the torture museum rose before me like a muse. I’ve always been good with my hands.

  After that first time, part of me hoped I wouldn’t be forced to do it again. But I knew that if I had to, the next time it would be better. We learn from our mistakes the imperfections of our actions. And luckily, practice makes perfect.

  1

  Gentlemen, I have had the honour to be appointed by your committee to the trying task of reading the Williams’ Lecture on Murder, considered as one of the Fine Arts; a task which might be easy enough three or four centuries ago, when the art was little understood, and few great models had been exhibited; but in this age, when masterpieces of excellence have been executed by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style of criticism applied to them, the public will look for something of a corresponding improvement.

  Tony Hill tucked his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. There was a fine web of cracks around the elaborate plaster rose which surrounded the light fitting, but he was oblivious to it. The faint light of dawn tinged with the orange of sodium streetlamps filtered in through a triangular gap at the top of his curtains, but he had no interest in that either. Subconsciously, he registered the central-heating boiler kicking in, readying itself to take the edge off the damp winter chill that seeped in round door and window frames. His nose was cold, his eyes gritty. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a straight night’s sleep. His concern about what he had to get through that day was part of the reason for the night’s interrupted dreams, but there was more than that. Much more.

  As if today wasn’t more than enough to worry about. He knew what was expected of him, but delivering it was another story. Other people managed these things with nothing more than a short-lived flutter in the stomach, but not Tony. It required all his resources to maintain the façade he’d need to get through the day. In circumstances like these, he understood how much it took out of method actors to produce the fraught, driven performances that captivated their audiences. By tonight, he’d be good for nothing except another vain attempt at eight hours’ sleep.

  He shifted in bed, pulling one hand out and running it through his short dark hair. He scratched the stubble on his chin and sighed. He knew what he wanted to do today, but equally, he was well aware it would be professional suicide if he did. It didn’t matter that he knew there was a serial killer loose in Bradfield. He couldn’t afford to be the one to say it first. His stomach clenched on emptiness and he winced. With a sigh, he pushed the duvet back and got out of bed, shaking his legs to unfurl the concertina folds of his baggy pyjamas.

  Tony trudged off to the bathroom and snapped on the light. As he emptied his bladder, he reached out with his free hand and switched on the radio. Bradfield Sound’s traffic announcer was revealing the morning’s projected bottlenecks with a cheerfulness that no motorist could have equalled without large doses of Prozac. Thankful that he wouldn’t be driving that morning, Tony turned to the sink.

  He gazed into his deep-set blue eyes, still bleary with sleep. Whoever said the eyes were mirrors of the soul was a true bullshit merchant, he thought ironically. Probably just as well, or he wouldn’t have an intact mirror in the house. He undid the top button of his pyjama jacket and opened the bathroom cabinet, reaching out for the shaving foam. The tremor he spotted in his hand stopped him short. Angrily, he slid the door shut with a loud crack and reached up for his electric razor. He hated the shave it produced, never leaving him with the fresh, clean feeling that came from a wet shave. But better to feel vaguely scruffy than to turn up looking like a walking illustration of the death of a thousand cuts.

  The other disadvantage of the electric razor was that he didn’t have to concentrate so hard on what he was doing, leaving his mind free to range over the day ahead. Sometimes it was tempting to imagine that everybody was like him, getting up each morning and selecting a persona for the day. But he had learned over years of exploring other people’s minds that it wasn’t so. For most people, the available selection was severely limited. Some people would doubtless be grateful for the choices that knowledge, skill and necessity had brought Tony. He wasn’t one of them.

  As he switched off the razor, he heard the frantic chords that preceded every news summary on Bradfield Sound. With a sense of foreboding, he turned to face the radio, tense and alert as a middle-distance runner waiting for the starting pistol. At the end of the five-minute bulletin, he sighed with relief and pushed open the shower curtain. He’d expected a revelation that would have been impossible for him to ignore. But so far, the body count was still three.

  On the other side of the city, John Brandon, Bradfield Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) stooped over the washbasin and stared glumly into the bathroom mirror. Not even the shaving soap covering his face like a Santa Claus beard could give him an air of benevolence. If he hadn’t chosen the police, he’d have been an ideal candidate for a career as a funeral director. He was two inches over six feet, slim to the point of skinny, with deep-set dark eyes and prematurely steel-grey hair. Even when he smiled, his long face managed to sustain an air of melancholy. Today, he thought, he looked like a bloodhound with a head cold. At least there was good reason for his misery. He was about to pursue a course of action that would be as popular with his Chief Constable as a priest in an Orange Lodge.

  Brandon sighed deeply, spattering the mirror with foam. Derek Armthwaite, his Chief, had the burning blue eyes of a visionary, but there was nothing revolutionary in what they saw. He was a man who thought the Old Testament a more appropriate handbook for police officers than the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. He believed most modern police methods were not only ineffective but also heretical. In Derek Armthwaite’s frequently aired opinion, bringing back the birch and the cat-o’-nine-tails would be far more effective in reducing crime figures than any number of social workers, sociologists and psychologists. If he’d had any idea of what Brandon had planned for that morning, he’d have had him transferred to Traffic, the present-day equivalent of Jonah being swallowed by a whale.

  Before his depression could overwhelm his resolve, Brandon was startled by a banging on the bathroom door. ‘Dad?’ his elder daughter shouted. ‘You going to be much longer?’

  Brandon snatched up his razor, dunked it in the basin and scraped it down one cheek before replying. ‘Five minutes, Karen,’ he called. ‘Sorry, love.’ In a house with three teenagers and only one bathroom, there was seldom much opportunity for brooding.

  Carol Jordan dumped her half-drunk coffee on the side of the washbasin and stumbled into the shower, nearly tripping headlong over the black cat that wound himself round her ankles. ‘In a minute, Nelson,’ she muttered as she closed the door on his interrogative miaow. ‘And don’t waken Michael.’

  Carol had imagined that promotion to detective inspector and the concomitant departure from the shift rota would have granted her the regular eight hours’ sleep a night that had been her constant craving since the first week she joined the force. Just her luck that the promotion had coincided with what her team were privately calling the Queer Killings. However much Superintendent Tom Cross might bluster to the press and in the squad room that there were no forensic connections between the killings, and nothing to suggest the presence of a serial killer in Bradfield, the murder teams thought differently.

  As the hot water cascaded over Carol, turning her blonde hair mouse, she thought, not for the first time, that Cross’s attitude, like that of the Chief Constable, served his prejudices rather than the community. The longer he denied that there was a serial killer attacking men whose respectable façade hid a secret gay life, the more gay men would die. If you couldn’t get them off the streets any longer by arresting them, let a killer remove them. It didn’t much matter whether he did it by murder or by fear.

  It was a policy that made a nonsense of all the hours she and her colleagues were putti
ng in on the investigation. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money that these enquiries were costing, particularly since Cross insisted each killing be treated as an entirely separate entity. Every time one of the three teams came up with some detail that seemed to link the killings, Tom Cross dismissed it with five points of dissimilarity. It didn’t matter that each time the links were different and the dissimilarities the same tired quintet. Cross was the boss. And the DCI had opted out of the strife completely, taking sick leave with his opportunistic bad back.

  Carol rubbed the shampoo to a rich lather and felt herself gradually wake under the warm spray. Well, her corner of the investigation wasn’t going to run aground on the rock of Popeye Cross’s bigoted prejudice. Even if some of her junior officers were inclined to grasp at the boss’s tunnel vision as an excuse for their own uninspired investigations, she wasn’t going to stand for anything less than one hundred per cent committed action, and in the right direction. She’d worked her socks off for the best part of nine years, first to get a good degree and then to justify her place on the promotion fast track. She didn’t intend her career to hit the buffers just because she’d made the mistake of opting for a force run by Neanderthals.

  Her mind made up, Carol stepped out of the shower, shoulders straight, a defiant glint in her green eyes. ‘Come on, Nelson,’ she said, shrugging into her dressing gown and scooping up the muscular bundle of black fur. ‘Let’s hit the red meat, boy.’

  Tony studied the overhead projection on the screen behind him for a final five seconds. Since the majority of his audience had expressed their lack of commitment to his lecture by pointedly not taking notes, he wanted at least to give their subconscious minds the maximum opportunity to absorb his flow chart of the criminal profile generating process.