A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (19 page)

With the bindings to the wrists and ankles removed by a crime scene tech, Nat deftly turned the corpse over onto its stomach and parted the legs.

“There is some tissue damage and blood around the anus,” he said as Matt made to leave.

Matt
walked back to the bedside and inspected the puckered orifice.  “Is it from cigarette burns?”

N
at shook his head.  “No.  I would say she has been sodomised.”

“
There’s an empty Durex packet floating in the loo,” Lenny – who had been listening to the conversation – called from the landing.  “If we get a break and he flushed a tied-off sheath, it might have got snagged-up and be full of DNA-rich semen.”

“
And it could be miles away, floating down a main sewer amid a thousand others, racing shit, tampons and Christ knows what else to a filtration plant, the sea, or wherever the fuck it ends up,” Pete said.

Lenny grinned. 
“Wow, a shithouse poet.”

Pete hiked his shoulders.  He was feeling as tense and as angry as
Matt at the repugnant scene of another mutilated woman who had suffered so much at the hands of a fiend.  A part of him was trying to comprehend how he would feel if it was Marci laying on the bed in that state.  He couldn’t.  And another part of his mind reneged against the tableau and dismissed it, but too late to stop him transposing Marci’s face onto that of Pamela Clough’s.  No one was safe from these degenerates.  They latched on to a chosen type of female who fitted their requirements, and kept killing until they were stopped.  The body count would no doubt stack up, and without intervention could well reach double figures if whoever was doing it did not make a mistake that would lead them to him.  The sense of impotency against the unknown subject knotted his stomach and soured his temper.  Not too long ago, he had been able to distance himself from it all; just do the job and remain emotionally uninvolved.  Not anymore.  Must be getting soft to have actually begun to care about the fate of total strangers.  Empathy he didn’t know he had an ounce of was kicking in to make him feel like he was suffering from food poisoning; sick to the stomach.

“
Come on, let’s go,” Matt said.  “I want you to arrange for uniforms to go door-to-door.  Someone might have driven past him or been out walking their dog and got a good look at his face.”

And the world might be flat, and the moon made of cheese, Pete thought.  He did not believe that the
killer was stupid, and knew that Matt didn’t either.  They were following procedure, hoping for a break that might not come in time to save more lives.  The city was a fucking jungle, as dangerous to move through as any filled with wild and savage animals.  Now that he had someone who he cared for more than he did for himself, his outlook had been modified.  Hence his new-found feelings.  What Matt must have gone through when Beth was twice placed in mortal danger, he could now fully appreciate. His cavalier attitude to life and death had disintegrated when comrades and friends had been murdered.  And being gutshot and believing that he was going to die was an added element.  When tragic circumstances were that personal, it was impossible not to reassess your outlook and be forever changed.  The frangibility of life had in a way deepened his appreciation of it, and caused him to be fearful of all that could steal it away in the blink of an eye.

It was mid afternoon when
Matt arrived at his maisonette.  He had looked through statements that the team had procured to date from Marsha Freeman’s clients.  So far, all of them could account for at least one of the dates that the murders had been committed on.  No one interviewed had fitted the bill.  There were still a few who had to be identified from the videos, who were no doubt listed on the three missing pages of the address book, but he was still absolutely certain in his own mind that the killer had not previously known any of his victims.

Too tired to even make fresh coffee,
Matt stretched out on the settee and let his thoughts drift where they chose, and soon floated on the cusp of sleep, to eventually sink into a soporific, altered state.

The dream was vivid and nostalgic.  He was a young boy in short
trousers, holding his mother’s hand as they walked from sunshine into the cool and shadowy depths of Johnson’s corner shop, just a five minute walk from his childhood home.  He could smell coffee and fruit and spices, and hear the whirring circular blade of the bacon slicer as it cut rashers to a predetermined thickness.  This oasis in a world being overrun by supermarkets in the seventies was one of the last bastions of a way of life that was being obliterated to make way for a more concentrated consumerism.  The small general store was becoming an incongruity; a displaced entity that belonged in the forties, fifties and sixties; where a regular customer could put groceries ‘on the slate’, and purchase cigarettes loose.  It was a meeting place where locals gathered to pass the time of day and swap gossip; before the advent of lottery machines and the facilities enabling you to top-up your mobile phone or have passport photographs taken in a curtained-off booth.

‘
Would you like some liquorice?’  Nancy Barnes asked her son, pointing to the tall glass jar full of black sticks on a crowded shelf.

Even as
Matt made to answer, the scene changed to one where he was laying on the floor of a bedroom at a bungalow in Finchley, with two bullets in him.  He felt an awful, unnatural cold move through him like tendrils of freezing fog.  Death was ready, poised to take him if the chance presented itself.

He woke
, still dog-tired and in no way refreshed.  The dreams quickly evaporated, and yet the trace of them left him melancholy in mind and physically coated in already cooling perspiration.

A hot shower and change of clothes
made him feel a little better.  He was still in reflective mode, but more accepting of what had gone before and brought him to this point in his life.  He knew that, as with everyone, he was the sum of all that had gone before: no more, no less.

He
phoned Beth at Northfield and told her what they had found at the house in Wandsworth, so that she would have more information to work with.  Arranged to see her that evening at his place, then sat and drank coffee before returning to the Yard.  His determination to catch the serial killer was now diamond hard.  He resented the fact that it was beginning to feel personal.  But maybe that was what made him so effective.  He could admit to himself that each case became a cause to champion.

It
was the morning of April the first, all fools day, when he made contact with Nigel Villiers again.

Nigel was at his club in the
Strand, contemplating the crossword in
The Times
and toying with a glass of malt whisky, trying to take his time over the liquor, not the crossword. He felt like a man strapped to a guillotine, waiting, breath held to hear the whoosh of the heavy blade that would rush down to behead him.  Every passing day undermined his ability to function normally.

“
I was asked to give you this, sir,” Parkinson said, proffering a tray with a mobile phone on it.

“
By whom?” Nigel asked the elderly attendant.

“
A cabby, sir.  He said you had left it on the seat.”

He was about to wave it away, knowing that it was not his property, but a sudden realisation dawned.  The blackmailer was making
his move.

“
Thank you, Parkinson,” he said, taking the phone, surprised that his hand did not shake as he lifted it from the Irish linen cloth that protected the silver tray.  “Perhaps I’ll have another Glenmorangie.  Make it a large one, would you?”

“
Certainly, sir.”

Nigel just stared at the small instrument, not surprised when after a minute it rang.
  He accepted the call and held the phone to his ear.

“
Hi, Nige.  Thought I’d forgotten about you?  Or maybe that I’d had a fatal accident in answer to your dreams?”

“
No.  I’m not that lucky.”

“
Well, the time has arrived to part with your ill-gotten money.  But I have a bad feeling about it.  You will almost certainly be wired, and there might even be a tracker fitted to your car.  And don’t tell me that you are not assisting the filth in their efforts to capture me.  I won’t believe you.”

“
What do you want me to do?”

“
I want you to know that the implications of trying to dupe me would be catastrophic. Remember that it will not just be your reputation that is ruined if this goes wrong.  I don’t bear grudges, Nige.  I
settle
any outstanding grievances at the earliest possible opportunity.  Don’t put a few quid before all that you have to lose.  It’s only money, and I’m sure that you can afford it without having to change your lifestyle.”

“
I’ll do whatever you say.”

“
I hope you mean that, for your sake.  Where is the cash?”

“
With me.  I don’t let it out of my sight.”

“
Good.  Now reach inside your shirt and rip off the wire if you have one.”

Nigel carefully undid two shirt buttons, slipped his hand inside and tore the small receiver free.

“I’ve done it,” he said.

“
Smart move.  What I want you to do now is leave the club by the back door, after first calling in the toilet and dumping the monitoring equipment and your other mobile phone and the holdall into a waste bin.  Put the money in your pockets, then make your way up Bedford Street, turn right on Henrietta Street and head for The Piazza.  If you are followed, then it’s goodnight Vienna.”

The line went dead.  Nigel waved Parkinson away as he approached bearing the
malt in a cut glass tumbler.  He picked up the out-of-place bag and walked briskly from the room into the corridor and entered the toilets.  Went into a stall and quickly unbuttoned his shirt again and removed the wire from where it was taped to his chest.  He then unzipped the bag, transferred the cash to his pockets and put his mobile phone and the equipment he had been wearing into it.  Left the stall and pushed the bag into the large waste bin, ensuring that it was covered by paper hand towels.

Leaving the club by an emergency exit that would no doubt trigger an
alarm; he strode quickly up the alley and turned right on to Bedford Street.  It was broad daylight, and he did not feel in any physical danger, just fearful that the police may somehow still be able to monitor his movements and prevent him from making the payoff without intervention that could result in his total ruination.  The farther he walked along the crowded pavement, the safer he felt.

The phone rang again as he neared The Piazza.

“So far, so good, Nige.  Next comes the tricky part.  I want you to get a cab to the Natural History Museum.  When you get there, wait outside until I call back.”

DC Dave Brent felt uncomfortable in his best suit and tie.  He was more used to wearing sweaters and jeans.  He was sitting in the next room to Villiers, nursing a glass of ginger ale and hoping that the guy would not stay for long.  These
gentlemen’s clubs were – as far as Dave was concerned – frequented by the rich and privileged, who all spoke like Charlie boy, and wore wristwatches that would cost him the best part of a year’s salary.  Even the bloody waiters were posh and snooty.  They could smell a mongrel among the pedigrees.  He was in a universe that was apart from the one he belonged to and felt at ease in.  He had a line of sight on the subject through the open double doors.  Villiers had been giving them foreknowledge of his intended movements, and Grizzly Adams had made the necessary arrangements for a plainclothes officer to gain entry to the club.  Villiers was not advised that he was under twenty-four-hour close surveillance.  Matt had not wanted him to be more nervous than necessary, and did not trust the man, who after all was a politician; a breed who, from experience, he knew had as close a bond with truth as oil does with water.

Dave
’s radar went to red alert when an old Jeeves-type went over to Villiers, who took a mobile phone from the tray that was held out to him.  The politician took it and just gazed at it until it rang, then started talking.  Shit!  He watched as Villiers furtively removed the small, disc microphone that had been taped to his chest.

Dave whispered into the mike that was secreted beneath the right lapel of his jacket.
A two-man team were in a van nearby, and had been monitoring and recording everything that Villiers said, until with a sudden crackle, white noise replaced the voices.

“
He just ripped the Mike off,” Dave said.

“
Great,” Harold Quigley said.  “We should have had a camera on you, and we could have watched him.  “Now what?”

“
He’s on the move.  I’ll follow him,” Dave said.  “Patch me through to DI Barnes in SCU, and tell Errol what’s happening.  I need him to follow in the car if Villiers tries to evade us on foot.”

Dave waited until Villiers had come out of the toilet and left the club by the rear, then followed, not daring to take the time to see what he had done with the bag, which he was no longer carrying
, but informing the officers in the van that the toilets may be a pickup point.