Her Cold Eyes Read online

  First published 2018

  by Black & White Publishing Ltd

  Nautical House, 104 Commercial Street

  Edinburgh EH6 6NF

  www.blackandwhitepublishing.com

  This electronic edition published in 2018

  ISBN: 978 1 78530 203 9 in Epub format

  ISBN: 978 1 78530 190 2 in paperback format

  Copyright © Tony Black 2018

  The right of Tony Black to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form,

  or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise, without permission

  in writing from the publisher.

  This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters

  and incidents portrayed in it are of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events

  or localities is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  Ebook compilation by Iolaire, Newtonmore

  For John McCormack

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  2009

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  2011

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  2015

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  2016

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  2017

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Six Days Ago

  30

  Epilogue

  ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’

  – Ephesians 6:12

  Prologue

  ‘Don’t cry,’ I tell myself. ‘Don’t cry, don’t give them that.’

  So, I try not to cry. I always try not to cry, but sometimes there’s nothing can stop it.

  There’s nothing else I can do, because they have this control over me. They always have that, their power. All I have is the one last piece of myself they can never reach.

  ‘Don’t . . . Don’t do it,’ I say inside.

  I go deeper, to the place they can’t follow. Though sometimes they try, and I lose my way. I should be able to shut them out, to push them back, but I’m weaker now, weaker than I was.

  ‘Don’t let them, Abbie, don’t.’

  They’ve taken everything else, everything I had, and everything I was. I have nothing left except the one place I can go to hide from them: my heart.

  Mum’s there, and my little brother. Sometimes it’s Papa’s place, with the paddling pool and the playhouse out back on a hot summer’s day. Tyler’s soaking me with the hose and laughing, smiling. Little Maxie’s barking, jumping away from the spray, and there’s ice lollies and blue skies and smiles and . . . and I know I’ve let them in.

  A tear.

  Small.

  Rolling from my eye onto my cheek. As insignificant as an ant, it seems, but carrying the world I hold inside me.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  They see the tear now. Him, the one that’s on me now, is angry.

  I feel him going deeper, pressing harder. He wants to hurt me; they all want to hurt me because they know I’m not broken.

  A hand presses my face and a thumb pushes my eyelid open. It’s him; he wants me to watch what they’re all doing to me, to see their staring eyes. They want me to understand just what it is they are, and why they have to hurt me.

  ‘No.’ I turn away.

  ‘Yes!’ He comes closer, his face touching mine. He’s sweating, his heart pounding faster on top of me. ‘You belong to us now.’

  I say nothing. The tears stop because he has me in their grip now. They are my focus again, and I can’t find my way back inside myself.

  I can’t escape any more.

  He grits his teeth. Dirty teeth, decayed and grey, cracked at the edges. His skin is waxy and lined, old. He wheezes and is angry because he’s done this a thousand times before, to a thousand other girls like me, and he knows I’m not broken.

  But, soon I will be.

  I’ll be broken.

  I know I will be.

  Or I’ll be dead.

  1

  As he turned into King Street station, Detective Chief Inspector Bob Valentine braced himself for the usual rigmarole of locating a parking space. The sighing, followed by head-shaking at vehicles overlapping the white lines. But today it didn’t happen. He dropped into first, feeling the front tyres negotiate the small kerb between road and car park. At once Valentine realised he wasn’t driving the old Vectra with the bloodstains on the back seat. It was gone, even if the memories of his near-fatal stabbing were still very much with him.

  He put the car into his allotted space near the entrance and stepped out. It had been a routine of his, an almost masochistic one, to look in the back window of the Vectra at the dark mark made by his spilled blood and remember he was lucky to be alive. Did it keep him alert? Sharpen his guard? He doubted it; people were strange, they did things for lots of reasons but rarely did they understand any of them.

  In the foyer Jim Prentice looked up from his copy of the Mirror and tucked it below the front desk. He stood up, made a display of brushing his epaulettes and stood to attention. It would have been an impressive piece of theatrical mockery if he hadn’t betrayed himself with a snigger.

  ‘Give it a rest, Jim,’ said Valentine.

  A salute worthy of Benny Hill followed. ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Is she in?’

  ‘Dino, you’re kidding, aren’t you? Monday mornings are for the hoi polloi, the huddled masses . . . which makes me surprised to see you.’

  His recent promotion had come as a surprise to Valentine, like most of the big happenings in his life, so it made sense that the ranks would be equally shocked. The desk sergeant’s jokes masked a deeper truth, however, and Valentine knew there was no justice attached to his promotion. If there were, a decent, hard-working copper like Jim wouldn’t be sitting behind the front desk of the station. There was no way to balm over the injustice – he couldn’t give his promotion away or share it around; all he could do was his best.

  ‘I’ll have to bear that in mind, Jim. I’m still getting used to this malarkey,’ said Valentine.

  ‘I hear it’s heady air up there, Bob. Watch it doesn’t bend your head.’

  ‘There’s no danger of that.’ Valentine headed for the stairs. ‘Anything in for me to look at by the way?’

  ‘All quiet on the western front, Chief.’

  ‘It won’t stay that way.’

  ‘No. It never does.’

  At the top of the stairs Valentine glanced into the Murder Squad’s open-plan office. DS Phil Donnelly was sitting at his desk, on an early phone call. He seemed to be the first detective in this morning; it would have been an ideal moment to have the chat about the DI’s job going to Sylvia McCormack, but it could wait. Valentine had forgotten about the hidden consequences of taking a promotion, and the ripples of resentment it could cause in the squad. Do
nnelly was a fine operator but he wasn’t ready; of course that was not something a committed professional with a family to support ever wanted to hear.

  The DCI went into his office and turned on the lights. It was a small room, larger than the bare cubicle with windows which he usually occupied at the far end of the main incident room, but no bigger than an average bedroom. There was a desk and chair, a set of shelves with glass doors, and a wire coat-stand that had probably been put in when the building went up.

  Clare would want to decorate if she saw the grey walls, but in her current mood a visit was some way off. He raised his briefcase, placed it on the desk and removed a picture of his daughters. Valentine held the picture for a moment; in it, Chloe and Fiona were a couple of years younger. It was a favourite image; they looked so happy, smiling and laughing like they didn’t have a single care in their heads. He laid down the picture frame and stared. Family was treasure, he thought, there really was nothing else.

  After setting up his PC and finding himself locked out of his email he was distracted by a knock on the door. He turned to face the entrance, wondering if he should yell ‘come’ like the CS but instead rose and turned the handle himself. A woman in a black trouser-suit stood in the hallway, clutching a blue folder.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Valentine?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Dr Carter, we spoke on the phone.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The assessment, you better come in.’

  She walked to the middle of the room and looked around. ‘Oh, dear . . .’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘You appear to have only one chair.’

  Valentine nodded. ‘You’re right, leave it with me. Take off your coat, you can hang it on the stand – I have one of those. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He crossed the hall to the Murder Squad’s office. DI McCormack had turned up now and was sitting with her back to DS Donnelly, who was staring at his computer screen. The mood was tense, and lacking in industry.

  ‘Morning, Sylvia.’

  ‘Ah, morning, boss.’

  Valentine tipped his head in Donnelly’s direction. ‘How’s he getting on?’

  ‘Search me, hasn’t said a dicky bird.’

  ‘I should have a word, y’know, the talk. But, I have a meeting . . . and I need to pinch a chair.’

  ‘Take your pick.’ McCormack waved a hand over the room.

  When he returned to his office, wheeling a newly claimed chair, the doctor was standing with her arms folded, peering through the venetian blinds.

  ‘Found one,’ said Valentine.

  ‘It’s not the most fabulous view you have here, a car park and a block of council flats.’

  ‘We have our sights in Auld Ayr too, beautiful Burns Country, don’t you know.’

  ‘I’ve seen the West of Scotland crime stats; if there’s sights out there they’re window dressing.’

  ‘You might be right.’ Valentine positioned himself behind the desk and made an apse of his fingers. ‘So, what do you want from me?’

  Dr Carter sat opposite, opening an A4 pad and tapping the nib of a pen on the desk. ‘It’s pretty straightforward, a standard psych assessment. I’m sure you’ve been through this sort of thing before.’

  ‘Yes, after the . . .’ he ran fingertips over his chest … ‘stabbing.’

  ‘I saw that in your file.’ Her tone rose. ‘Must have been horrific for you.’

  ‘It wasn’t a high point of my career, let’s put it that way.’

  The doctor turned to her notes. ‘You had fifty pints of blood . . . Fifty!’

  ‘That sounds about right.’

  She continued reading from her notes. ‘Entry below the diaphragm into left ventricle. Angiography. Thoracotomy. Heart–lung bypass . . . And you officially died on the operating table.’

  ‘That happened, too.’

  The doctor withdrew her pen and used it to flick her fringe. ‘I’m amazed you survived, and appear so blasé about the whole incident.’

  ‘I try not to dwell on it.’

  She turned back to her notes. ‘You had some therapy, I see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been over the notes and, well, you’re obviously in possession of some advanced coping mechanisms by this stage. But I will need to delve a little deeper to write my report. It’s a standard thing, you understand.’

  Valentine eased himself back in his chair and crossed his arms; it felt like an unusually defensive posture for him so he corrected it, placing his hands, palms down, in front of him. ‘What would you like to know, doctor?’

  ‘Well, let’s start at the start, shall we? Can you tell me something about your childhood?’

  ‘My childhood? Are you serious, you really want to delve that far back?’

  ‘Just a little, yes,’ she said. ‘Do you have any childhood memories that you can recall? Perhaps if you could give me one memory that you can call your oldest memory, most people have one like that. Do you have one?’

  Valentine’s gaze wandered, settling in the corner of the room. An indistinct patch where the grey walls met the white ceiling tiles. He was searching for something in his clutch of memories that he knew was there, but was very rarely accessed. There were memories he returned to but few from childhood that he dwelled on. It wasn’t that he couldn’t face those memories, it wasn’t a hard time for him, but because he never felt the need. Valentine was a practical man, a police officer, a father. He had no place in his life for the days of his childhood.

  ‘Inspector . . . Do you have one?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I was just thinking.’

  ‘Just go on, when you’re ready.’

  Valentine brought his gaze down from the corner of the room and looked at the doctor. ‘Well, I must have been about three or four, it was before school.’

  ‘Carry on.’

  ‘It’s summer, one of those burning hot days of summer, in the seventies. And I’m playing in the back garden.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no, not really. I’m alone but I’m aware my parents are nearby.’

  ‘Do you see them?’

  ‘I don’t. But I know they’re there. I’m running about, I’m in swimming trunks and bare feet; it’s very sunny, very hot. I don’t know what happens, or how, but I end up being lifted onto a stool and I’m reaching up to the whirly where we dry the clothes – it’s one of those old spinning ones.’

  ‘I know the type, yes.’

  ‘And I’m laughing, having the most joyous time. Spinning on the arms of the whirly. I think Dad’s turning the thing, it’s great fun for me. I do a full loop and come to rest on the stool.’

  Dr Carter stopped writing and looked up. ‘How does it end?’

  ‘Dad goes in, probably a match on or something.’

  ‘Are you alone now?’

  ‘No, Mum’s still there but she’s pottering about, pulling weeds and so on. The stool’s been moved to the path but I put it back under the whirly and start to swing round myself. Nobody sees me, I’m being sneaky.’

  ‘Do you think you’re doing wrong?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely. But I don’t care, it’s too much fun.’

  ‘What happens next?’ She returned to her notepad and continued writing down his memory of the event.

  ‘Everything changes. It’s not a sunny day any more, I’m screaming, hurt.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve come off the whirly. My feet reach the stool but it topples and I fall. I land on the concrete flags and I’m hurt. My knees bleed, my chin too, blood everywhere. I see Dad come running from the back door and Mum calls out to me. It all turns to chaos, to horror, very quickly.’

  Dr Carter stopped writing and put down her pen. She looked at the picture of Chloe and Fiona. ‘Are they your daughters?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re lovely.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The mood in the office had shifted, and Valentine se
nsed it. ‘Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ she smiled thinly, ‘no, not at all.’

  ‘What does my memory tell you?’

  ‘A memory like that, at that age, tells me that you’re a man who understands the security family provides.’ She leaned forward, touching the rim of the desk. ‘But what does it tell you, Inspector?’

  ‘Don’t operate without proper backup.’

  The doctor laughed. ‘Well, I suppose that too.’

  Valentine rose. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t even offered you a coffee.’

  ‘Coffee would be lovely, thanks.’

  2

  The vending machine wheezed and returned to rest in its low-power mode. It was still dispensing coffee from the nozzle when Valentine reached in to rescue the flimsy, overloaded plastic cup.

  ‘Bugger.’

  Two concentric drips landed in the middle of his shoe. It wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d worn the black Oxfords, but the favoured option earlier that morning had been the tan brogues. He knelt down to dab the offending area with a handkerchief, something that did nothing for the shoe, except perhaps spread the damage to a wider area and make him grind his back teeth.

  ‘I don’t expect genuflection on arrival every morning, Bob, but if this is your new thing I’m flattered.’ The chief superintendent descended into bellicose laughter as the lash of her joke reached Valentine.

  He rose to face her. ‘The machine’s bust; it sprayed my bloody shoes.’

  CS Martin glanced downward. ‘Nasty business, they’ll stain, y’know. Try talcum powder, might lift the moisture out. But on your own time, we’ve got a lot on today.’ She edged past him, shuffling a rolled-up newspaper under her arm as she went. ‘Come into my office, I need to brief you.’

  ‘But I’ve got the psychologist assessing me, for the promotion board.’

  ‘Forget that, the paperwork’s already done. My office, right away.’

  ‘Can you give me five minutes?’

  ‘Five minutes. And I’m counting.’

  Valentine wiped the base of the coffee cup and delivered it back to Dr Carter with an apology for having to leave in a hurry. She seemed resigned, and familiar with the drill, like someone who had grown used to seeing their work being taken less seriously than it ought to be.