A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (25 page)

Dressed again, with his captive
’s belongings and hair in a large carrier bag, and her mobile phone in his pocket, he left the house and drove first to a nearby canal, to park and walk along the deserted moonlit towpath, stopping twice to pick up old bricks from its border, which would soon be knee-high in the nettles and bracken that were already emerging from the dead leaves and rotting vegetation.  New life sprouting amid the dissolution.  Sitting at the edge of the canal, feet hanging down and his heels against the rusted pilings that reinforced its banks, he placed the bricks in the bag with the clothing, handbag and hair, squeezed out the air and knotted the top, before punching holes in the plastic with his car key.  Once satisfied that the bricks would weigh the evidence down, he tossed the bag out onto the oily, motionless surface of the stagnant water, to watch it sink into the filthy, neglected and disease-ridden artificial watercourse.  A few bubbles burst on the surface as the bag slid beneath it to be carried down to the slime that had swallowed much refuse and many secrets since Victorian times.  Lucas chose to imagine that the thick mud held weighted corpses and weapons, as well as the more mundane plethora of defunct refrigerators, bicycles, shopping trolleys and appliances that were dumped by riffraff that were not concerned with the environment; pigs happy to live in shit of their own making.

He took Julie
’s phone from his pocket, thumbed it on and punched in the number of New Scotland Yard.

It took less than fifteen seconds to be put through to the incident room dealing with the murdered whores.

“This is Detective Constable Brent, sir.  I understand you have some information for us.”

“
Wrong, DC Brent.  My information is for the cop who was in charge of the operation at the Natural History Museum, no one else.  I’m talking about the dummy that was waving a gun around.  You know who I mean?”

“
Yes, but he’s not on duty. I―”

“
No buts, dickhead.  I’m the man you are after.  Give me a direct number to reach you on.  I’ll call back in five minutes, and I strongly suggest you have him on the line.”

He memorised the number he was given and s
witched off the phone.  Got to his feet and walked back along the towpath towards where he had parked the van.  After exactly five minutes, he called again.

Beth
turned the conversation around.  The three of them had gone through almost the entire bottle of malt whisky, and it went without saying that they would be staying the night as Ron’s guests.

“
Why Elvis, Ron?” Beth said, having heard nothing but Presley’s voice issuing at low volume from wall-mounted speakers for over two hours.

“
Beats me,” Ron said.  “I always liked his voice, and seemed to build a collection of his albums without consciously doing it.  He’s a part of my past.  A girlfriend I had way back used to have videos of all his naff movies.  He must have grown on me.  I felt a sense of personal loss when he bowed out on the sixteenth of August, nineteen seventy-seven.  He was a real legend before he died, and has become an even bigger one since.  It shows that even a poorly educated truck driver from the back of beyond can rise above all expectation and make his mark on the world.”

“
So you’re a real die hard fan?” Matt said.

“
I suppose so.  It isn’t something I’ve ever tried to pull to pieces and make sense of.  A lot of things just are.  And the big events and passing of people who were larger than life in sport, politics or showbiz bring it home to me that I’m only a very inconsequential part of whatever this thing called life is all about.”

“
Most of us need familiar landmarks and surroundings to feel secure in,” Beth said.  “It’s a way to hold on to the idea of continuity and permanence.  When someone we know or has been in some way important to us dies, then a part of us is diminished, and we are reminded that all too soon we will be nothing but a memory to others.”

“
Are you trying to depress me?” Ron said.

“
No, Ron. Just saying it how it is.”

The big man scratched at his beard and nodded. 
“The trick to getting by is to not take it too seriously,” he said.  “I don’t view anything that happens as being personal.  When my father was dying of cancer, he said that it was just a bad roll of the dice.  He looked on life as a poor gamble with the odds stacked against him.  He considered all the awful stuff as being the ‘House’, and knew that in the end, the house always wins.”

“
Is that how you see it?” Beth said.

“
Yes.  The older I get, the more I look back over my shoulder instead of forward.  I remember the boy and young man I used to be, who thought that the future was always going to be better than the present turned out.  I think that the majority of young people are looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.  They eventually wise up to the fact that there isn’t one.  Trouble is, without the dream of it, we only have cold, hard reality staring us in the face.”

“
This is too heavy for me,” Matt said, turning his empty glass upside down on the tabletop to signify that he was done.  “You need to just go with the flow, do what needs doing, and not worry too much about what might happen tomorrow.  Whatever is waiting along the road will be there for you to deal with when you reach it.  Why knock yourself out over something you can’t outguess.  If you have a dream, work towards it.  Whether you attain it or not is beside the point.  It’s the process that counts.  You have to have a good reason to get out of bed every morning.”

“
I’ll drink to that,” Ron said, finishing his own scotch.  “The show must go on, eh?”

“
Yeah,” Matt said.  “It’s the only game in town.”

Ron gave them a key to a room on the first floor.  They went
up, quickly undressed and climbed into bed, to snuggle up between the cold sheets.

Even as
Matt held Beth close and thought to start foreplay that would lead to their making love, the electronic signature music of his mobile phone pierced the silence.  He reluctantly got out of bed, fumbled the phone from his jacket pocket and dropped it on his foot.  It bounced off, and he had to go to the door and turn on the light to find it. He snatched it up from the faded carpet and sat on the end of the bed to answer it.

“
Barnes,” he said.

“
It’s Dave, boss.  I just got a call from a guy who wants to talk to you.  He said he would get back to me in five minutes.  Implied he was involved in the Freeman case, and that he was watching when you arrested McCall.”

“
You got a trace ready to go?”

“
Yeah, boss.”

“
Okay, hang up.  I’ll call back by land line and you can patch me through to him.”

“
What?” Beth said as Matt walked around the side of the bed, picked up the receiver of the room phone, stabbed 9 for an outside line and phoned the incident room.

“
Nothing yet,” Dave Brent said.

“
I’ll hold.”

“
What’s happening?” Beth asked again.

“
Some guy called the Yard and asked for me.  He could be a crackpot, but he told Dave Brent that he was the person that we’re looking for.”

“
Asked for
you
?”

“
For the officer in charge of the case.  Appears he was at the museum and saw me holding my gun to McCall’s head.”

“
Don’t talk to him, Matt.  You know what will happen.  He’ll latch on and be in your life...and mine.”

“
He won’t talk to anyone else.  I’ll play it cool.  But I
have
to speak to him. You know that.”

“
I’m putting him through now, boss,” Dave said.  “We’re running a trace.”

“
Hello,” Matt said, his eyes still locked on Beth’s. She was looking at him as she might if he had just shot her pet dog, had she owned one.

“
What’s your name, cop?”

“
Detective Inspector Matt Barnes.  What’s yours?”

“
Very funny.  Let’s make this quick.  I know you’ll be having this traced, so the quicker I get off and throw the phone away, the better.  All you need to know, Barnes, is that I hold you totally responsible for stealing my money.  You―”

“
Your money?” Matt interjected.  “Since when was it your money?”

“
I did a deal with Villiers.  You stuck your nose in and queered it.  Someone owes me fifty grand.  I’ve decided that it may as well be you.”

“
Did you set McCall up for the murders you committed?”

“
That was the idea.  I thought that if he did get lifted, then you would nail him for my mischief.  Thing is, when I read that he’d topped himself, I didn’t see anything about him being a killer, just a junkie who was being held for questioning in respect of attempted blackmail.”

“
When did―?”

“
Enough, Barnes.  I want my money and my ring back.  I’ll call you again, soon.  And if you decide not to pay, then another tart will be served up.  And then another, until you realise that I mean business.”

Matt
was about to tell the anonymous killer to go and fuck himself; that he had more chance of getting a knighthood than of receiving a penny, but the line went dead.

Lucas removed the SIM card from the mobile, threw the phone out into the canal
– for the murky water to swallow up; another secret to hoard, until the day that a dredger might be employed to divulge the gathered bric-a-brac and sundry items – and crushed the card before flicking it into the spreading ring of concentric circles.  Maybe this would be a fitting resting place for his new acquisition, when he eventually tired of it.  Weighted down in a heavy duty plastic bag with its guts slashed open to prevent gases building up and maybe bringing the abomination to the surface, the body would rot in its own juices, to become just a sack of soup and bones.

He made his way back to where he had parked the van.  Considered that he may have been a little impetuous in letting the police know that he was still alive and well.
They would have tried to convince themselves that the no-hoper he had employed to wear his ring and collect the money was the killer they sought.  With him now dead, it would be easy for them to fit him up for it.  But where was the fun in that?  He was not about to stop, and did not want a pathetic individual like McCall to have the infamy that belonged to him.

Back home, Lucas needed to be busy.  He put
a heavy metal CD on in the studio and went to work.  The place was looking tired and in need of a makeover.  He unscrewed and took down the wallboards that were overlaid with photographs and designs to advertise his artistry with the needle.  He would wash the walls and ceiling, scrub the floor, and redecorate.  A coat of paint would not go amiss.  He was wide awake, and his brain was racing with plans for the future, and of the unknown experiences waiting for him to convert from imagination to reality.

It was morning by the time he had scrupulously cleaned every surface.  It would have been safe to eat off the sparkling floor, though the food would have been tainted as a result of the copious amounts of pine-scented disinfectant
that he had used.  He had even begun painting.  One wall was now jade green.  He looked at his wristwatch.  He would have to shower and eat something.  There was a customer due in forty minutes; a professional footballer who wanted a Celtic cross on his chest.  Word of mouth was bringing a more elite clientele to his door.  He would have to charge more. As a rule, people with too much money expected to pay top prices.  It made them feel that what they were getting was exclusive.

The bell above the door jangled and two men entered as he was putting the lid back on the paint
can.

Cops didn
’t have a smell, but they had a look about them; hard, suspicious eyes that took in everything, and a sense of arrogance, based on the mistaken belief that they were safe behind some protective shield that being enforcers of obtuse laws imparted.  But they were not safe; not from him.

Errol and Mark were getting a little weary of calling at tattoo parlours.  People who wanted to be indelibly decorated with drawings on various parts of their anatomy were imbeciles in Mark
’s book.

“
Good morning, sir,” Mark said, showing his warrant card to the man who was wearing a paint-spattered grey tracksuit.

“
Is it?”  Lucas said as he tore a few sheets of kitchen towel from a roll to wipe his hands with.  “What can I do for you gentlemen?  Perhaps a Welsh dragon on your arm, DC Jones?  And how about Nelson Mandela’s face on your left buttock, Officer?” he said to Errol.

Errol set the man with a cold stare that was loaded with the desire to knock the sardonic smile off his face.  The shaven headed young man stared back with undisguised glee at having
irritated him.