A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (12 page)

Matt
was almost lost for words.  Westin was right, he hadn’t dug deep enough into the man’s background.  But despite what the details of the long ago kidnap were, he was still convinced that Westin was more than capable of looking out for himself, and would not have involved the police to handle Marsha, had she actually made a move on him.

“
What do you think, boss?” Pete asked as they left the building.  “You believe a single word he told us?”

“
Yes.  I believe that his son was kidnapped and murdered.  And I also believe that a part of Westin – the good part – died a little when it happened.  There is a side to him that is totally ruthless and not above carrying out any act to protect him and get anything he wants, by whatever means necessary.  I think he was meeting Marsha on the pretence of paying her off.  Maybe she got in his limo and maybe she didn’t.  I doubt it.  We can check CCTV.  But if she had, then the address book and her body would never have been found.”

“
So you think he’s in the clear?”

“
Only because someone else got to her first.”

“
He needs to be looked at in depth, boss.”

“
Not by us, Pete.  We have a killer to find.  Whatever Westin might be guilty of, I don’t think he had a hand in Kelly’s or Marsha’s deaths.”

“
Fat cats like him put themselves above the law.  They need to be made accountable.”

“
Men like Westin make their own laws.  They have the clout to buy people.  It’s called power.  He’s got the juice to make things happen, good or bad, and doesn’t have to answer to anyone.”

“
Where does that leave us?”

“
Initially, with three pages of missing names to run down.  Whoever is on video but not in the book is a priority.”

“
But you don’t reckon it will be one of them, do you?”

“
No.  I think it’s unrelated; a psycho who is targeting prostitutes with red hair.  He may stalk them, but doesn’t know them.”

“
Are you going to ask Beth to come on board when she gets back?”

“
Not officially.  I might ask for some pointers as to his personality, but I don’t want her in the spotlight, not after what she’s been through over the past year.  I have no intention of putting her at risk again.  There are other psychologists on the consult list who we can use.”

“
They’re not in her class, boss.”

“
Like I said, I’ll show her the paperwork.  She doesn’t need to be on the team.”

Colin was seething.  When the two shoddily dressed nonentities left his office, he paced up and down and tried to suppress the hot anger that was smouldering in his mind.  Only the knowledge of how hard Trudi – as he had known her – had died, gave him a certain sense of relief.  She had been a good lay, who had catered to his perverse need for a certain level of pain.  That she had filmed their escapades was inexcusable.  If she had not been murdered, then he would have had Arnold interrogate her before making her vanish permanently.  The evening that she was due to meet him with the book was to have been her last.  It was ironic that someone else had lifted her and punched her ticket.  Bad timing.  He now knew from his contact at the Yard about the damning, embarrassing tape, and that the two cops would have watched it and probably laughed at the sight of him bending over the bed to be caned, and then having crocodile clips attached to his nipples, and an eight-inch dildo rammed up his rectum.  Jesus H Christ!  His penance and humiliation to Jay’s memory was supposed to be a private experience.  It helped offset the terrible guilt that he would never be able to fully rid himself of.  A certain level of humbling at the hands of a whore gave him temporary respite from his concealed anguish.  It was not something he had enjoyed. Any pleasure derived from the treatment he demanded would have defeated the object of the sessions.

He stopped next to the desk, lifted the phone and punched-up
Arnold’s extension number.

Arnold Chase plucked up the phone before the first ring had time to fade.

“Yes, sir.”

“
Get your ass up here, Arnie.”

Arnold
slipped his jacket on, checked the knot in his tie, and hurried out of his office to summon the lift.  He despised Westin, but was paid handsomely to guard him and run errands, and the perks of the job included world-wide travel by private Lear jet, and staying at the finest hotels.

Arnold
had been head-hunted from presidential protection duties.  He had been agent-in-charge of guarding the first lady’s shapely ass, then the president’s.  But the private sector, in the form of Colin Westin, offered far better pay and conditions than the agency.  At forty-four, Arnold was a rangy six-footer with a lined face and salt and pepper crew-cut.  He was highly-trained in both armed and hand-to-hand combat, and to date had personally killed seven men and one woman for Westin.

“
Come,” Colin shouted when Arnold knocked on the door.

“
Problem, sir?”  Arnold asked, feigning measured concern.

“
Yeah, Arnie.  You remember the guy who connected me with the dead hooker?”

“
Sure do.  It was that mincing little photographer, Lance Parnell.”

“
Right.  He introduced me to her.  Said she was sound.  Find out if he was setting me up, and if he was, get rid of him.”

“
What if he wasn’t?”

“
Then hurt him for being a god-awful judge of character.”

It
was seventy-two hours later that Tom dropped the paperwork pertaining to a Jane Doe onto Matt’s desk.

“
What now?” Matt said.  “Not another high profile case to spread us even thinner on the ground?”

“
Same case.  Pour me a cup of coffee while I run through the salient points.”

Matt
got up and went over to the coffeemaker.

“
What we have here is a murder that at face value seems to bear no similarity to the case,” Tom began.  “The victim, who has yet to be ID’d, is a female in her late teens or early twenties.  And the only way we know that is due to the pathologist’s assessment of the skull, pelvis and other bones, and odontology’s inspection of the teeth.  The woman was strangled, and forensics says the trace of material recovered from her neck is synthetic and matches nylon used in the manufacture of tights.”

“
What do you mean, recovered?” Matt said, placing a mug of black coffee in front of Tom.

“
The body had been dumped in a railway shed at Grove Park, and set alight.  Petrol was used, but the skin on her back was still intact.  There were cigarette burns on her buttocks and anus.  It had to have been him.”

“
Anything else?”

“
Yes.  Tattoos.  Every square inch of her remaining skin was tattooed.  We should be able to find out who did the work, if it was done at a parlour.  All these guys recognise each other’s handiwork.”

“
Tell me she was a redhead.”

“
She was a redhead.  There was some underarm hair still recoverable.”

“
Did we get a phone call to lead us in?”

“
No. A bird watcher was tramping around on the embankment and got the smell of roasted flesh and petrol, so followed it in and found her.”

“
We need to know who she was, and why he needed to burn the evidence, rather than show it off.”

“
Maybe it was someone who could be linked to him.  Or even his wife or girlfriend.”

“
Whatever.  That’s three now.  And for all we know he could have killed a dozen and got rid of the bodies.”

Tom finished his coffee. 
“Are you going to give Beth a chance to get inside his head, Matt?”

“
I’ll run it past her when she gets back.  But anything she comes up with will be channelled through me, and off the books.  If she wants to put something together, fine. But I don’t want her name in the frame.”

Tom nodded. 
“Grizzly is pressing.  He wants to know what progress we’re making.”

“
What Adams wants or doesn’t want counts for shit, Tom.  He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, so let him sweat.  If he didn’t have a lot of dirt on some of the other prats upstairs, then he would be suspended pending an internal inquiry.  I don’t have any time for the old boys’ network.  They’re dead wood that needs cut out.”

“
I’ll tell him we have several leads to follow,” Tom said, making for the door.  “And when you speak to Beth, say hello from me.  She should have been a cop, Matt, not a shrink.”

“
I think our line of work is something she sees as a necessary evil to fight an even greater evil.  It isn’t something she would want to set the alarm to get up and do for a living.”

“
How does she put up with a guy like you?” Tom said.  “You and the worst kind of violence are like two peas in the same pod.  Can she go the distance with a murder cop who feeds off crimes committed by psychos?”

“
I don’t feed off them.  It’s finding and stopping them that matters.  And Beth works with convicted nut jobs, trying to work out what motivates them.  She knows that someone has to be out there hunting them down.”

“
But maybe not the man she loves.”

“
Leave it, Tom.  You’re beginning to fly too close to the wind.  We all have to do what works for us.”

“
It was me that knocked at your door and broke the news to Linda that you’d been shot and might not make it, remember.  I shared a hospital waiting room with her for hours while they worked on you.  It isn’t fun to see someone disintegrate in front of your eyes.  She loved you so much that I knew it was over, Matt.  She couldn’t envisage a future with you.  She would have been waiting for the knock at the door and some jerk like me standing there with the look on his face that said:  yes, love, he finally got himself blown to kingdom come.”

“
Are you trying to get me to pack it in and find a desk to hide behind?”

“
No. I know you better than that.  I’m just pointing out that you need to compartmentalise.”

“
Is that what you do?”

“
Yeah.  I don’t let each area of my life leak into the others.  You drop a carrier bag full of groceries, and there’s a good chance of being left with a mess.  You end up with a worthless pile of crap to clean up or walk away from.  Maybe you can salvage a few items, maybe not.  But no one can put a broken egg back together.”

“
Sounds like you’ve been reading Confucius. Are you full of colourful analogies like that?”

“
I’ve just reached an age where I can look back and choose to learn from experience and long gone events.  I drive home after every shift and leave all the bad shit behind me.  I use the journey to power down and look forward to what really matters, which is being with Jean.  I don’t let the sleaze of what we do into my house, Matt.”

“
You’re lucky to be able to do that.  I want to, but I can’t.  Everything is all part of the whole.  I still have nightmares over what happened to members of the squad.  I repeat their names in my head and picture them: Donny Campbell, Bernie Mellors, Keith Collins and Tony Delgado, who were all gunned down by Gary Noon.  And Mike Henton, Chris Mallory, Dean Harper and Gordon Wright, who Paul Sutton murdered in cold blood.  At the end of the day it’s about people, Tom.  The ‘serious’ prefix of the unit is right on the money.  What I am is the sum of every experience I’ve been through.  I think it must be a difficult and pointless exercise trying to pass yourself off as being more or less than you are.  I only know one way to live.”

“
You used to like saying, ‘live for today’, and ‘shit happens’.  Are those philosophies you’ve ditched?”

“
No.  You can only deal with the here and now, and shit does happen.  That doesn’t mean I can look at each brand new day as a blank page.  I don’t have the qualities necessary to stand apart from what I’m involved in.  Supposedly great military leaders have and do send young men and women to certain death, detached or oblivious to the fate of those individuals.  They delude themselves into believing that what they do is for some greater good.  They may in rare circumstances even be right, but that still makes them a rare breed.  To be able to be detached and dispassionate are traits we find in almost every multiple killer.  I might come across as thick-skinned and driven, but I operate with fervent compassion for the victims, and an equally strong hatred for the offenders.  I try not to let it be personal, but it is.”

“
Enough said,” Tom sighed.  “Get a couple of the lads on this tattoo angle.  I’ve arranged for flyers of the artwork to be printed up.  And, Matt, all the tattoos on the body were recently done.  Some were still scabbed over.”