A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (22 page)

He drove back through town, cross
ed the river and stopped to change plates before completing his journey home and garaging the van.  All the complications of the day dissolved.  He had a new project.  This one would keep him employed for weeks, or months if necessary.

Julie had at no point lost consciousness.  She lay on the hard floor of the vehicle and knew that she had been abducted.  The fear closed in and held her as transfixed as the duct tape.  She believed that had this been a rapist, then she would have been dragged into the bushes, away from the road, to be assaulted and hopefully left alive.  This was far more sinister.  Where was he taking her, and for what purpose?  The thought of two teams of randy pool players, and even Barney the dog, was now a preferable scenario to what was happening.  She had rarely thought of her own death.  It was still an abstract
: not a consideration of most young and healthy people.  Her grandma, Nellie, had died less than twelve months ago, but that was expected.  The old girl had been nudging ninety, was suffering from senile dementia, and had been hanging by a thread for years.  The last time Julie had seen her was in the care home she had been taken into to die.  She had not known Julie; just sat in her wheelchair drooling and talking to someone called Benjamin, who Julie found out later, from her mother, had been Nellie’s pet cat, back in the forties.  Benjamin had survived the Blitz, only to be ripped to bits by two greyhounds that had been owned by the chimney sweep next door.

Had grandma Nellie felt as trapped in that perfidious
old body as Julie now felt, bound and gagged in the back of a stranger’s van?

It
was now April.  They had no new leads and had failed to glean any further information from Terry McCall.  He had opted out by tearing a pillowcase into strips, braiding them, and garrotting himself by twisting the handmade noose until it cut off the blood supply to his brain.  When he had passed out and his hands had relinquished their grip, the slipknot he had fashioned did not loosen.

Beth was at
Matt’s maisonette.  She had studied all the paperwork, plus the autopsy protocols of the Pamela Clough murder, and had evaluated the crimes and the scenes where they had been committed. With the information and her creative, analytic ability, Beth developed a profile with critical offender characteristics.

“
It reads well.  But there’s nothing to give us a direction to go in,” Matt said after he had read the unofficial report twice.

“
Sorry.  I’m not good enough to come up with his name and address.”

“
You know what I mean,” Matt said, fingering the unlit cigarette that hung from his lips. “I get the drift.  We have another sociopath who is not capable of feeling compassion, guilt or remorse for his acts.  He is white, in his twenties or early thirties, and was abused as a child.  He is a ritual killer, in that he has used cigarette ends to burn his victims, then strangled them all with tights or stockings.  You suggest that because all the victims were redheads and on the game, that someone significant in his life is the inspiration for his actions.”

“
Are you going to light that cigarette?” Beth said, handing him a glass of JD on the rocks and curling up next to him on the settee.

“
I don’t know.  I keep thinking that as long as I keep an open mind and don’t tell myself or anyone else that I’ve given smoking the elbow, then I’m under no pressure. The second I say I don’t smoke anymore, then I’ll want one all the more.”

“
That makes sense.  How long before you think you can wean yourself off sucking on them?”

“
How long is a piece of string?”

“
What decided you to stop?”

“
I didn’t.  I ran out and couldn’t be bothered leaving the house to buy any.  It struck me that they were a part of what I do that I
don’t
like.  So I’m seeing how long I can go without, but not telling myself that I can’t smoke.  If I decide to fire one up, then so be it.”

“
It is a kind of weird thing to do?”

“
What, trying to quit the weed?”

“
No.  Smoking it.  Taking dried, shredded plant leaves rolled up in paper and setting them alight so that you can suck the resulting toxins into your lungs.”

“
Most things can be viewed in the same way.  Having your ears, nose or anywhere else pierced to stick baubles in is a bit native.  Or having someone disfigure you with tattoos could be interpreted as being weird.  There was a thing on TV about people who want to look like animals.  One guy had long whiskers screwed into his face, got his teeth filed to points, and had implants to alter the shape of his face.  Another even had his tongue split down the middle to make it forked.  Why would anyone want to be another species, and go to such lengths to superficially resemble them?”

“
For the same reason that someone has to paint pictures, or collect teapots, or do anything that could be viewed as excessive behaviour.  A love for something can become compulsive.  A lot of what people do is irrational if you put it under a microscope.  And I think the tattooed corpse that had been burned is the way to go with this case.  It was evidence that the killer wanted to eradicate.”

“
The others weren’t tattooed.”

“
No matter.  Some of the work on the Jane Doe was fresh.  It had been done shortly before she was murdered.  And it was of a professional standard.  The killer could well be a tattoo artist.”

“
Would he spend so much time decorating her skin with high-quality designs, then stub cigarettes out on her , and then set fire to her?  Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“
The two acts are unrelated.  I suspect he was disfigured with lit cigarettes as a child, probably by his mother.”

“
Because?”

“
Because the pain and fear and misery of how he was treated have patterned him.  A part of his psyche needs to make retribution for what he had to endure.  His mother would have been a prostitute, and it goes without saying that she was a redhead.”

“
Past tense.  You think that she is dead?”

“
It’s an assumption based on his actions.  His emotional state is as disfigured as I imagine his body to be.  He grew up without any measure of love or affection, and was abused.  He cannot get passed it and move on, so continually needs to punish a mother he hated.  His victims are surrogates for her.”

“
Neat conjecture.  But why would he only tattoo one of the vics?”

“
The autopsy report found that she had been malnourished to a degree just short of starvation.  And the artwork he did on her would have taken weeks to complete.”

“
Are you saying that he kept her somewhere for a long period of time?”

“
It looks that way.  He used and abused her, and when he could physically and mentally gain no further pleasure, he tried to burn the evidence, to prevent anyone seeing the tattooing.  I have the feeling that he might have replaced her.  He still needs to kill, but also likes to have one alive, always nearby and available to vent his ever present anger.”

“
If you’re right, then that narrows it down to him being a professional tattooist.”

Beth nodded. 
“A young, single man, probably with red or ginger hair.  If you can find artwork that matches what survived the amateur cremation, it’s case solved.”

Matt grinned. 
“Good job I already have officers calling at every tattoo parlour in the city.”

“
Put more on it, Matt.  You’ll turn him up.”

“
And he won’t be expecting us.  We put it out that the body was totally beyond being identifiable.  He will believe that his work was destroyed.”

“
Good.  Let’s drop it now.  I’m starving.  Do you want to go shopping, or shall we get a takeaway?”

“
Shopping?  Like in supermarket and trolley shopping?”

“
Yes.  Domestic bliss.  You can be in charge of the trolley, and I’ll fill it.”

“
I’ve got food in.”

“
You’ve got half a loaf of stale bread, a piece of cheese that a mouse would turn its nose up at, and a few cans of soup, beans and the like.”

“
So what do you want to do, shop, eat out, or pick up a Chinese?”

“
We’ve never done a shop together.  I think it would be fun.”

“
I don’t see it that way.  When we sell our places and get to live under one roof, you should order groceries on the ‘net.  It’ll save queuing and the hassle of people crashing into your ankles with their wonky-wheeled trolleys, and of listening to kids bawling if they can’t have sweets.”

“
Deal.  When are we going to go house hunting again?”

“
We could pick up some details and go give a few places the once over on Sunday.”

“
I’d like that.”

Matt
put his drink down on the coffee table, tossed his cigarette after it, and put his arms around Beth.

“
Let’s drive over to Tottenham and have a bar meal at Ron’s, then pick up a few essentials on the way back,” he said.

“
Sounds good.  I’ll drink tomato juice, or we’ll both get wrecked and have to stay over.”

“Why, if it isn’t Mr. Gabriel and the lovely Beth,” Ron Quinn said as they entered the small residents’ bar of the Kenton Court Hotel.  “Will you be checking your handgun in before ordering?”

Ron had become
Matt’s friend– or as near to a friend that anyone would ever get to Matt apart from Tom Bartlett.  The giant west countryman had helped Matt in the past, when he had been hiding out at the hotel from a psycho, a Yank hitman and the Santinis’, who were all trying to locate and kill him.  He had stayed under the alias of John Gabriel, but Ron had soon figured out who he was.  The newspapers had run with the story of how Matt had been the only survivor of an attack on the bungalow where a grass, Lester Little, was being kept under police protection.  The photo of Matt and the fact that he was wearing a full leg cast, was enough to jog Ron’s memory and realise who his paying guest was.  Even though Matt had pointed out that his being at the hotel might put Ron at personal risk, the big man had insisted that he stay, and had given Matt a lot of unsolicited help.

“
I’ll keep my weapon, landlord.  But I promise not to shoot the place up, as long as you don’t water the scotch down.”

Ron came out from behind the bar, hugged Beth and kissed her on the cheek, before slapping
Matt across the back with a hand as big as the proverbial shovel.

Matt
was slightly winded.  “You don’t know your own strength, you big ox” he gasped, flexing his spine to see if any vertebrae had been crushed.

“
Don’t be such a wimp,” Ron said.  “That was just a friendly tap.  And don’t call me landlord.  I’m no lord, and I don’t have any land.  I’m an hotelier.”

“
Whatever, Quinn.  Why not just get back to the business side of the counter and pour the drinks.  Mine is a double malt, Beth is on diet Coke with ice, and have one yourself.”

Ron flashed
Matt a wide grin as he went to get the drinks.  “Are you two on a case?” he said.  “If so, tell me all the gory details that you can. I’m a sucker for true life crime.”

The small residents
’ bar was empty, save for the three of them.  A large log was crackling in the grate, and the lighting was low; not dismal and oppressive, but warm and homely.  Ron brought the three glasses out and placed them on a table in the nook to the right of the fireplace, sat down and beckoned them to join him.

“
The main event at the moment is a psycho who stubs his cigarettes out on working girls, then strangles them with tights or stockings,” Matt said.  “Just your average twenty-first century serial killer.  If I gave you any more details than that, I’d have to shoot you.”

“
I read about the murders in the paper,” Ron said.  “How do you prioritise them?  Someone seems to be getting topped every day of the week.”

“
A lot of murders are domestic, spur of the moment acts, Ron.  Or killings committed by thieves and armed robbers who panic.  And the number of gang-related incidents is on the increase.  There are thousands of firearms on the street.  Having a ‘piece’ is getting to be as common as carrying a mobile phone by some factions of society.  It’s almost a fashion accessory.  It used to be just knives, but time moves on.  Kids with guns were a rarity, but not anymore.  The unit I’m with gets the heavy stuff.  Repeaters are our worst nightmare.  They prey on strangers to them who happen to fit certain criteria.  If they aren’t stopped, they keep going.  There’s no off button.”

“
Do you think you’ll find this one?” Ron said, totally enthralled, in the way that most people are attracted to violence; detached from it, abhorring it, but finding something in their psyche drawn to it, feeding a deep, suppressed instinct that they do not admit to possessing, even to themselves.  How many traffic jams were caused, not just by an accident, but by drivers slowing down in an attempt to see the aftermath of serious injury and death.  A small kernel of primitive barbarity was part of the human condition, enduring from when man first stood upright and killed to eat, to ward off competition, and to protect what territory and possessions he deemed to be his property.  Modern Homo sapiens were not too far removed from their hunter-gatherer forebears.