A Deadly Compulsion (12 page)

“Thanks.  Next time I call by I’ll bring cakes from Betty’s, and we can pig out.  How does that sound?”

“You sure know how to make an old man happy.  I’ll even stop working to eat them.”

Laura winced.  “Last of the romantics, eh, Brian?”

Only three of the men that were checked-out fitted Jim’s profile.  One had claimed to have been in Canada for the last six weeks, visiting his sister and brother-in-law.  The second had no such checkable alibi for the pertinent dates, and had seemed very nervous and tight-lipped.  The fact that he was confined to a wheelchair – paralysed from the waist down – and had been in that condition since a motorcycle accident back in oh-seven, was his saving grace.  It was the third guy who interested them the most. He was too cool, slightly arrogant, and proved to be very vague when asked his whereabouts at specific times on relevant dates.

“The Canada story was on the level,” Hugh said as Laura studied the reports on the three suspects, who all resided within the area Jim had indicated.  “He was in Winnipeg, Manitoba for six weeks.  He’s clean.  And the second guy will never walk again, and doesn’t drive.  So without an accomplice, he’s in the clear.  It’s the last one, Derek Cox, who rings all the right bells.  He lives alone on a smallholding.  He’s six-two, built like a brick shithouse, has hair the colour of corn, and eyes as blue as Paul Newman’s were. The uniform that spoke to him says that he came across as evasive and unhelpful.  He wasn’t fazed at all and appeared to find the situation quite humorous.”

“Tell me about him, Hugh.”

“He sells organically grown produce and plays around with stocks and shares via the Internet.  He has no real friends, no social life to speak of, and even the people in the village only see him when he drives through.  He never uses the local pub or shops. The guy’s a shadow.  Oh, and both of his parents are dead.  They bought it in a house fire that he walked away from with just mild smoke inhalation.  That was twenty years ago.”

“Bring him in,” Laura said.  “Let’s talk to him, and if we don’t get alibis that check out I’ll get a warrant and we can take his place apart.  Maybe we just got lucky.”

TRISH
sat alone and sipped at her glass of medium dry dealcoholised white wine.  The Mousseux was as near as she permitted herself to get to alcohol.  She had seen what booze could do to people and their careers, and was not going to allow herself to be ruled by the bottle, as her mother had been.  Trish had watched her mum, Hilda, turn into a lush and age prematurely as she slurred and staggered through the last fifteen years of her life.  Liver failure had taken her on her forty-eighth birthday, and Trish had been relieved when the source of her continual embarrassment had finally been reduced to ash, to be spread somewhere in the rose gardens of the crematorium in Hull, where all the late and never lamented Pearsons’ wound up.  Blood may or may not be thicker than water, but the effects of gin proved stronger than both and had quickly driven Trish from home, hating a mother who, to her way of thinking, was a weak-willed and pathetic specimen of human detritus.

As a child, Trish had been heartbroken and bewildered when her father walked out.  Later, she understood why he had left.  It had not been another woman who’d enticed him away, but his inability to live with a chronic alcoholic.

The Studio Bar was a cubby-hole compared to the likes of those at any of the major television companies.  And as Trish sat nursing her drink in the shabby and dimly lit lounge, she decided that it would be advantageous to her career to let Jason Godwin screw her.  Godwin had been drooling around her for months, copping the odd feel and making it clear that he was in lust with her.  He was an executive producer at the station, and had been offered a lucrative deal by Channel 4.  If he was prepared to take her along with him, and look after her interests, then spreading her legs was a small price to pay.  She could fake orgasms as easily as she feigned emotions for the camera.  Jason might just prove to be her best chance of getting the hell out of this one horse town and attaining the fame that she deserved, on national TV.  It pissed her off to see some of the wooden, over-the-hill newsmongers making fat salaries.  Her only fear was of letting the little shit dip his wick, to then tire of her before moving on.

Timing was everything.  She needed to keep him interested and thinking with his cock, not his head.  Touch wood, so far it was working.

“Trish, sweetheart, why not come down south with me?  You know I adore you,” Jason said, appearing as if conjured up by her thoughts of him.  She was not to know that he was determined to get into her panties before leaving Yorkshire, without her.

Trish fluttered her eyelashes.  “Jason, darling.  You know how much I love my job.  I want to be with you, but I couldn’t function down there without work.  I’d have to be sure that there was a contract for me.  I already front a show, so I wouldn’t want to have to start again from square one.”

“I’ll have a word with Gerald Archer,” Jason purred, dropping into a seat opposite her.  “He pulls the strings at C4.  If he says jump, the only question is, how high? I’ll show him some of your best material, including VT of this serial killer stuff that you’re currently involved with.”

Under the table, Trish stroked his leg with the side of her foot, and watched his eyes roll back a little as beads of sweat escaped from the front of a toupee that seemed to squat precariously on his head like the pelt of a dead animal.  What remained of his hair at the sides was ash-grey, in stark contrast to the ginger tom-coloured rug that was taped or glued to his bald pate.

“I think we should spend the weekend at your place in the Dales and chill out,” Trish said, her shoe now off, and her toes caressing the bulge at his crotch as she wondered whether he removed the wig and put it on a poly-head on his dressing table before humping.  The thought of him standing naked and then ripping the piece off before leaping into the sack almost made her choke on the wine.

Jason had a large Scotch before heading back to the production office to tie up some loose ends for the following morning’s six a.m. breakfast news.  Trish had almost made him come in his boxers, then upped and gone, leaving him on the edge of more than just his seat.  He knew the bitch was trying to play him like a fish on a line, but she was a challenge.  What she didn’t know was, that he would be gone the following Tuesday, and that the weekend at his rented cottage in the Dales would be the last time she would ever set eyes on him.  She was a good regional presenter, but that was as far as she was going.  She just didn’t have the indefinable zing that it takes to command a national desk; that X factor that you either had or hadn’t.  Being attractive and competent was a requisite, but not enough.  True, the camera liked Trish, but didn’t love her.  He was surprised that she was still naïve enough to believe that sleeping with a boss would open up anything more than her own shapely legs.  It was apparent that ambition and the lure of fame and greed lent credence to at least some blondes being dumb.

Trish left the building and followed the paved path to the small car park that lay beyond a landscaped belt of mainly conifers that were set among strategically placed rocks in a bed of weed-smothering shredded bark.  She was reasonably confidant that Jason would keep his word.  He was besotted.  And after a weekend of her energetically catering to his every need, however deviant, he would undoubtedly want more.  She would own him, emotionally, and dump him as soon as she was set up.  She knew that Gerald Archer was in his late-sixties, and married, which to her made him a prime target for the flattery and not so subtle charms of a good looking woman who was young enough to be his daughter.  Older men were susceptible, needing to prove that they were still desirable, still in the game, and still had the power to pull.

The first spots of rain dappled the concrete as she stepped off the path and angled across to her Scorpio, that was now, at eleven p.m., one of only a dozen cars still standing under the yellow glare of the perimeter lights.

Jogging as the dark sky began to hurl spears of summer lightning at the earth; Trish triggered the remote on her key fob and heard the metallic clunk as the door lock buttons popped up.

“Ms Pearson,” he shouted as she pulled open the door and slid into the driver’s seat.

She hesitated, squinted into the rain, then recognised him and relaxed a little.

“Yes?” she said when he reached the car, his jacket collar up against what was now a heavy downpour.

“I’ve got a lead on the Tacker that I think the media should know about.  Are you interested?”

“Get in,” she said, surprised, but eager to hear anything that would be a scoop and give her a high profile.  Something like this could help her career as much if not more than fucking the brains out of Jason, who was currently the station’s resident trouser snake.  Everyone needed a stroke of luck as well as talent, and this could be her big break.  The Tacker was beginning to make Sutcliffe – The Yorkshire Ripper – look like a saint.  Sutcliffe had battered mainly prostitutes to death, but hadn’t put the fear of God up the general public like this one.  The Tacker was a nightmare, who made even the worst fictional serial murderers appear lightweight.  This was reality, not a Hannibal Lecter, who was just a figment of the author Thomas Harris’s dark and fertile mind, and ultimately a good vehicle for the acting talents of Anthony Hopkins.  Fate had put her in the middle of one of the biggest ongoing crime stories for years, and being out in the sticks at this moment in time might just give her the chance to strike the mother lode.  She could stay on top of it for as long as the killer remained free and continued to mutilate and murder teenage girls.  So far, she had only suffered one setback; the ballsy female cop.  The bitch had fucked-up what was going to be a scathing attack on the police’s shortcomings, by somehow turning the interview around.  She had said her well rehearsed drivel on air and then walked, leaving Trish looking like a dumb rookie.

“So what have you got for me?” Trish asked, turning to face him, her dismay at the rain dripping off him onto her soft, leather upholstery subdued at the prospect of being given a titbit that she might turn into tomorrow’s lead story.

“Not here,” he said.  “I can’t afford to be seen with you.  And I can’t be quoted.  What I have to tell you is going to blow this case wide open.  Drive me to my car.  It’s parked out on the Fulford road.”

As she drove, he told her that the police knew the identity of the killer, and even gave her details of the depraved acts of mutilation that the victims had suffered, which had not been disclosed to the media. “He bites their nipples off, cuts their throats, and hangs them up to bleed out.  I can also tell you that he’s left-handed, and that he has killed at least a dozen more girls than you or the press know about.”

“So who is he?” Trish said, following his directions and making a left into a lane adjacent to Fulford Golf Club, before parking behind his car.

He smiled.  “You’re talking to him, you stupid cow,” he said, smashing his fist into her temple with enough force to bounce her head off the side window, causing her to groan and sink forward, conscious but with no control over her body; as a boxer, whose limbs turn to mush after a punch rattles brain against skull and robs him of all cohesive functions.

He hit her again and dispelled all thought.  Bright colours fizzed behind her eyes, then dimmed to blackness.

Reaching over her and turning off the lights and ignition, he pushed the release on the safety belt’s buckle and pulled her down across his lap, taking a reel of duct tape from his jacket pocket and quickly winding a length tightly around her head, once...twice...three times, covering her mouth, before biting through the tape and drawing her wrists behind her back to pinion them.  He then pushed her sideways, unmindful of her head thudding into the door as he lifted her ankles up and bound them together.

After opening the front side window, he climbed out of the car, walked the couple of yards to his Mondeo and opened the boot.  Looking about him, he checked that the tree-lined lane was deserted before going back to lift his latest acquisition out of the Scorpio and transfer it. He then emptied the contents of a two gallon can of petrol into the Scorpio, soaking the seats and carpet in both front and rear.  The entire operation had taken less than a minute.

Reversing into a driveway, he headed back to the main road, but not before first pausing alongside Trish’s car to strike a bunch of matches on the sandpaper strip of the Swan Vestas box and throw them into the open window.

Accelerating away, he was back on the Fulford road, heading for the A64 and well away from the scene when the Scorpio’s petrol tank exploded and briefly lit the night sky in his rearview mirror.

As usual, Pam Garner had gone to bed early, to read a few pages of a paperback before becoming drowsy and putting the book on top of the small chest of drawers, to then switch off the lamp and go to sleep.

The thunderous detonation jarred her awake as her bedroom window imploded, and Pam was only saved from being peppered by a thousand shards of flying glass by the heavyweight cotton canvas curtains that billowed in under the shockwave, now as punctured as the heavens were by twinkling points of light.  She leapt out of bed befuddled and ran out onto the landing, not knowing what had happened.  Stopping at the top of the stairs to assess the situation as her head cleared, she realised that there was no smell of smoke, or the roar and crackle of hungry flames in the house.  She reasoned that whatever had happened was outside, and that she was in no immediate, life-threatening danger.  Walking back into the bedroom, she smoothed her nightdress down, put her slippers on and slowly approached the window with her feet crunching on the fragments of glass that had ripped through the material to fall down onto the carpet.  Pulling back one of the curtains, just an inch, she looked out and was met by the flickering orange glow that emanated from a burning car in the lane, just twenty yards away from her house.  Relieved, yet concerned, Pam rushed down the stairs, to telephone the emergency services for only the second time in her life; the first being when her late husband, Graham, had collapsed and died six years ago from a ruptured aorta.  She recalled punching in the wrong digits three times with a wayward and shaking finger before managing to hit 999, as Graham made whooping noises and vomited blood onto the fitted lounge carpet that had only been laid the week before.

At first it was assumed that the burnt-out car had been stolen, and that joy riders had torched it.  It was registered as being owned by one Trish Pearson of Hadley Court; a chic riverside apartment complex that overlooked the river and the city centre.  A uniform called at the address, but there was no one home.  It would be a further twenty-four hours before Trish was reported missing by her employers.  And neither friends – of whom there were very few – nor colleagues had any idea of her whereabouts.  She had just vanished into thin air.

She drifted slowly up from cold, black depths into shallower, greyer layers of awareness. Her lungs burned, aching in her chest, and in a panic-filled dream, as if she were a diver running short of life-sustaining oxygen, she kicked her feet and stretched her fingers for the surface, reaching for the effulgence and sweet air that was above her, almost within her grasp.

Pain drilled into her head, and a bright shaft of light found her face, making her close her eyelids tightly against the dazzling glare.  She was now conscious, and terror began to worm into her brain.

“You’re not my mother,” a voice stated from the gloom beyond the cold sun of the torch’s beam.  “You’re just the smug talking-head off the TV who thinks that I’m a sick piece of trash, a mad-dog killer and a cowardly, twisted little man.”