A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (18 page)

“
Do you want me to come with you?” she said.

“
Have you lost the plot?  We agreed that you don’t put your head up over the parapet for some lunatic to take pot shots at.  I don’t ever want to put you in the sights of one of these animals again.  You’ll get all the paperwork and photographs to work with.”

Beth nodded.  For a second she had actually wanted to be more involved.  Had
been prepared to jump in the deep end again.  Matt was right.  This was the way to play it, with a certain amount of detachment.  She made the coffee while Matt went to get dressed.  Opened the stainless steel door of her new refrigerator, but could still see the old, white fridge, and the broad crimson streak that had been left as Marion Peterson slid down it into a sitting position, to die in a pool of her own blood.  Marion had been a CPN – Community Psychiatric Nurse – who became infatuated with a patient; the killer, Gary Noon.  Marion had become his partner in crime, but on seeing him for what he really was at Beth’s apartment, she had turned on him, and in so doing given up her own life to make amends, by attacking him with a steak hammer, only to be shot and killed.

Beth had also had a new kitchen floor laid, and changed the furniture in the lounge, but could not rid herself of the images of what had happened that night.  She would never be able to disassociate the horror from the surroundings in which it occurred.

Matt drank half the coffee, then hugged and kissed Beth.  “I’ll call you when I get chance,” he said.

Beth locked up after him, put the TV on for distraction and went to shower and get dressed.  She had a meeting at
Northfield to attend at ten a.m., and an evaluation and assessment to do on a disturbed female patient who had murdered her husband and three children while they slept.  It was sometimes very difficult to hold on to the thought that there was a power of good in the world.  The legacy of evil acts throughout human history seemed to have the accumulative influence to overlay all that was admirable and virtuous.  How many movie-goers were in some way pleased that the fictional character of Hannibal Lecter had escaped and was loose to torture and eat body parts of more victims?  And why were so many women captivated by convicted killers, to the extent that they wrote to and visited them in prison, and in some instances married them?  What facet of depravity did people find so attractive?  Even as a criminal psychologist, Beth had no definitive answer to so many questions that she could pose to herself.  Her expertise, however limited, was in the field of understanding the motivational forces that drove disturbed individuals to commit the foulest of deeds, not the flawed personalities of their admirers.  Was the power of evil so strong that it could demand respect as well as produce fear?

Beth used the stairs, for some reason not able to face the claustrophobic confines of the small lift.  She climbed into the Lexus and locked her doors, before setting off into the grey light of a day that had been soured by her daunting reverie.

He
stepped out of the phone box and removed the gloves.  He felt as though he was walking on a cushion of air, above the ground.  What a night!  What a truly magnificent and sublime time he had revelled in.  Pure bliss was the term that came to mind.  He had once more exorcised the ugliness and debauchery that dwelt within the outwardly attractive shell of the host it fed off.  He had decided that people and badness were two separate entities.  The swarms of invisible parasites could latch on to any weak-minded individual and work from within them to feed their every insatiable, lascivious desire.

He arrived home and sat in the
gloom for a while, to close his eyes and use the darkness as a screen to project his latest conquest upon as he masturbated.  He stopped with a jolt, and the picture of the mature, naked redhead spread-eagled on her bed plinked out of existence.  His penis wilted with the rapidity he remembered from being in hospital as a youth with pneumonia.  On the mend, he had been prone to raging erections when the nurses attended him.  One Irish nurse – who he fantasised might shed her starched uniform and jump in bed with him – would pull back the tented sheet and flick the tip of his penis with her finger, causing it to shrivel with the speed of a tortoise withdrawing its head to evade the attention of a predator.  But she had seen his need and visited him in the dead of his last night there, to draw the curtain around the bed and let him fondle her as she took him in hand and gave him relief.  It had been a momentous event, to be surrounded by the noises of other patients’ snoring, wheezing, coughing and farting, as he surreptitiously enjoyed his first sexual encounter.

His hand hurt.  No, not his hand, just one finger.  He got up and turned the light on.
The flesh around the ring he wore was slightly swollen, and he surmised that the bone beneath was bruised.  With growing dread, he went into the kitchen and took a pack of skinned chicken breasts out of the fridge.  Ripped off the cellophane and punched the smooth, pink flesh with his fist, ignoring the pain it generated.  And his worst fears were realised.  There was a deep impression in the plump meat.  He knew at once that each time he had struck a whore, he would have left his mark.  What were the implications?  The police had the means to enhance and identify the shape of the gold wolf’s head.  He would not have left an impression, as he had done in the malleable chicken.  It was not Plasticene he had struck, but resilient living flesh.  And yet he knew that the embossed head would have broken capillaries and caused bruising.  He twisted the ring off and tossed it aside as if it were a hot coal.

Why had the police withheld any mention of this evidence?  Sneaky, like snakes, and any poker player worth his salt, who would not show his hand.  It was reasonable to assume that they would be trying to run down, interview and eliminate the clients of the dead whores.  That should keep them busy for an indeterminable period.  No need to panic.  He may be overreacting, but better safe than sorry.  It didn
’t do to underestimate them.  The fact was, he could not be tied to his victims.  The ring had been an oversight on his part, but would not lead to his undoing; not now that he had realised the implications.  He would hold fire for a while.  Maybe abducting a replacement for Janice was the way to go.  Having a new plaything in the loft was a lot safer than continually going out to hunt for fresh meat.  Every so often, he could get rid of a used one and lift another.  And there was still the outstanding matter of Villiers.  He would have to give the safe collection of the money a great deal of thought.

He picked up the ring and studied the lupine features.  Strange how you could become attached to things.  He was not material, had no ambition to own inanimate objects, and yet admired any good work of art, be it that which he produced, or as in this case, a finely sculpted trinket.  But it would have to go.  He had taken it as payment for a tattoo over three years ago, and knew for a fact that the previous owner had died in a motorbike accident, losing control of his machine on a wet road and melding with his bike and a brick wall at over
ninety miles per hour.

Everything was settled, then.  He would find a new lodger
. Ha!  She would pay dearly for her bed and board.  And he would make plans to relieve Villiers of the money.  Time to grab a couple of hours’ sleep and have sweet dreams of a good time had and even better times to come.  Through the suffering of childhood, he was now well able to appreciate the good things that life had on offer to those prepared to be brave and feed their innermost desires.  He was fearful of nothing.  His time was occupied with stimulating and rewarding pursuits.

Matt stepped out of the Discovery to be met by Pete, who held a Styrofoam cup full of steaming coffee that he had purchased at a nearby petrol station shop.

“
The techies are sweeping the place, and the pathologist is on the way,” Pete said. “I took a look at the vic, and it is the same MO, boss.  She was a redhead, and on the game.  I talked to the old couple who live next door, and they say it was as busy as a bookmaker’s some days.  The vic is one Pamela Clough.  In her forties.  The couple say that she was very pleasant, and that if the adjoining walls had been thicker they would not have had any reason to wish for a better neighbour.  Seems her bed was up against the wall and moved a lot.”

“
Did they hear it banging last night?”

“
Yeah.  And the old boy, Wilfred Green, states that the last bloke who went in never came out.  Says he couldn’t sleep, so went downstairs for a cup of tea and sat at the window.  The noise stopped, but no one left.  He thought they must be asleep.”

“
Did he see a car outside?”

“
No, boss.  But he thinks most of her clients’ park nearby and walk in.  They don’t want their vehicles to be spotted outside the house.”

“
Any sighting of her last caller?”

“
Wilfred’s wife, Eunice, thinks it was a young man in a black car coat and baggy trousers.  But it was dark and her eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

Matt
took the cup from Pete’s hand and sipped at the coffee.  “That’s really crap,” he said, handing it back.  “Dump it and let’s go in and see what we’ve got.”

The woman was stretched like a human X on the bed, her wrists and ankles tied to the top and bottom of the metal bedstead that sported bronze finials atop each post.

Matt and Pete stood in silence at the foot of the bed and studied the corpse of a woman who had been robbed of all dignity, hope and then life itself.  That she had suffered prolonged and harrowing torment at her killer’s hands was blatantly obvious.  Her body and face – and even the soles of her feet – were polka dotted with circular lesions that had without doubt been made by the red hot ends of cigarettes.  An ashtray on the cabinet next to the bed was full of butts burned down to the filter tips, and specks of ash peppered the sheet and her grey-blue skin.

Pete turned away.  His mouth was bone dry, and he felt a coldness invade him.  He had always been able to suppress compassion and view murder victims as little more than evidence.  But it got harder, not easier.  Now
adays, he found himself vulnerable and more affected by the aftermath of a human being’s painful and unjustified demise.

Matt
surveyed the scene, biting back the anger that was blossoming like black petals in his mind.  The woman’s hands were clenched into fists, and dried blood spotted the pillows like red ink on blotting paper, having dripped from where her fingernails had dug into her palms.  The eyes and face were covered by petechiae– the pinpoint haemorrhages that were common in victims who had expired as a result of asphyxia.  And the body was naked, save for the stocking that was knotted at her throat, and a broad length of silver duct tape that covered her mouth.

The
jump-suits of the crime scene officers rustled as they collected up anything that could possibly identify the unknown subject.  Hairs, fibres and the contents of the ashtray were bagged and labelled.  The photographer had recorded the scene from every angle, and the processing of the cadaver and the room was ongoing.

“
Look at her right temple,” Lenny Newton – the officer in charge of the team – said to Matt.

Matt
walked around the bed and leant over to examine the side of the woman’s face.  It was there; the faint but unmistakable mark of the killer.  He was still wearing the wolf head ring.  Matt nodded to Lenny.

They waited until Nat Farley arrived.

“This proves beyond all doubt that smoking can be harmful to your health,” Nat said with his usual stony expression and quirky pathologist’s dark humour, as he examined the multiple burns on the corpse.

Matt
and Pete said nothing, just kept out of the way and let Nat take temperature readings and make his on-scene notes.

“
She was strangled with the stocking, that I would think pinched the carotid arteries and cut off blood flow to the brain,” Nat said.  “And this is novel.  Take a look.”

He had removed the tape from the mouth and was using forceps to withdraw something from it.

The wet feathers were matted and dark yellow, and the small bird was twisted, its back arched and beak wide open.

Nat slipped the dead canary into a zip lock bag and once more probed the open mouth, aided by a penlight torch.
  “There’s bird shit in there, Matt.  It would appear that Tweety was still alive when the killer popped it into her mouth.”

Pete went downstairs and found the empty cage with its door open.

“Looks like it was the victim’s pet, boss,” he said to Matt, returning to stand at the bedroom door.

Matt
was satisfied that Pamela Clough had met her death in the same manner as Marsha Freeman and Kelly Lindon.  He was ready to leave.

“
He’s a player, Pete,” Matt said.  “He wants to impress us with what he does.”

Pete grimaced. 
“He’s impressed me, boss.  I’m shit-scared of the guy, and I’m not a prostitute with red hair.  If I was, I’d quit the game, retrain to be something less risky, and have my hair dyed.  Do you think the canary was significant?”

“
Maybe it was causing a racket, or he might have just thought it would be a fun thing to do; an added spur of the moment touch of madness”