A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (29 page)

Waiting
in the darkness.  This was to be nothing short of an execution, and hopefully a double one.  There was no way he could put what had happened down to experience and get past it.  Sometimes an eye for an eye was the only answer.  Yes, he was vindictive.  Always had been.  Just because he was gay and very effeminate in his demeanour, did not mean that he could be treated like dirt by anyone.  Everyone had a limit, and his had been well and truly reached.  Westin had ordered his hoodlum – Mr. Fixit – to humiliate and visit grievous bodily harm on him.  He was just an incidental to them; a nonentity that they believed would suffer in silence, under threat of more pain. That was how men like Westin operated.  They took what they wanted, and had the money and power to get away with anything.  But what Westin had not known was, that Lance had what his mother had always described as an extremely worrying state of mind, in that he could not get past any act in word or deed that he considered unforgivable.  He needed closure and had to retaliate. He found the world and the attendant stress that went hand-in-hand with everyday life almost impossible to cope with.  Conflict was not a state that he could incorporate and live with.  He needed nicety and beauty and softly spoken compassionate people around him.  Even the large amounts of valium he took could not suppress the anxiety that manifested by way of a mood shift that was of Jeckyll and Hyde proportions.  Westin and the lugubrious Arnold Chase had turned his world upside down, and fractured not only his fingers, but his finely balanced mind.

After seeking out and enduring medical treatment on his hand and punctured testicle, Lance had approached a friend with
dubious connections and procured a shiny, nickel-plated Browning Hi-Power handgun and a box of ammunition.  He would not, could not allow the offence against him go unpunished.  And now he was in place, ten days after Chase’s visit.  He had kept watch on the granite edifice and knew the pattern of the mogul’s movements.

It was five-thirty p.m. on the dot when
a top of the range Mercedes came up the ramp from the underground car park and stopped to wait for a break in the traffic.

Lance took a deep breath and rushed forward.  It all happened in
less than ten seconds.

Chase caught the movement from the corner of his eye; saw the photographer approaching, brandishing a gun, and reached under his jacket to draw the illegally owned pistol that nestled in a calfskin shoulder holster beneath his left armpit.

With the muzzle of the gun only two inches away from the driver’s window, Lance pulled the trigger three times.  The toughened glass was not made to a specification that would repel bullets.  Chase was jerked sideways in his seat, to be held upright by the seat belt with blood blossoming from a hole in his forehead and one in his left cheek. The third slug had missed, blown out the passenger window and – after narrowly missing a pedestrian, who felt the draught of the hot lead drilling the air next to his right ear – buried itself in the solid teak entrance door of a solicitors’ offices.

Westin acted without hesitation.  He shunted sideways, opened the rear door and rolled out of the car.  But even as he climbed to his feet, ready to run, Lance had rounded the bonnet and started shooting.  The first shot entered his back and passed through his left lung, blowing him face down on the pavement.

“Your fucking money won’t help you now, Westin,” Lance said, walking up to him and emptying the mag into the back of his quarry’s head.

It was over.
Lance was immediately emotionally drained.  He dropped the gun and just walked away. Headed for the nearest tube station.  Maybe he had overreacted, but who gave a shit. Both of them had deserved exactly what they had just received.  In fact it had been too quick.  They had not suffered enough.  What the hell!  He just wanted to go home now and have a cup of camomile tea to calm his frayed nerves.

Matt
got the call at seven o’ clock from an oppo in CID.  DI Paul Moreton had at one time been a member of the same ARU – Armed Response Unit – team as Matt, and they still met up for the occasional pint.

“
I hear you were questioning Colin Westin,” Paul said.

“
You heard right.  Why?  What interest is he to you?”

“
As of now he’s top of my current workload.  I take it you haven’t heard the latest, eh?”

“
I’m all ears.”

“
He was being driven from his HQ, and both he and his driver got hit.”

“
As in, by another car?”

“
No.  As in by bullets.  Some guy just stepped up and offed them.  The driver, a Yank with a murky past, took two in the head.  But Westin was the main target. He tried to leg it, but got a lung blown out, followed by enough lead in his skull to cover a church roof.”

“
You always exaggerate.  Did you collar the shooter?”

“
Not yet.  A passer-by saw a skinny guy drop the gun and walk away.  Said he seemed as calm as a millpond.  And that he had a slight limp and one of his hands was bandaged up.  Can you believe that that’s all the witness can recall?”

“
Yeah, Paul.  Witnesses are by and large unreliable or just don’t take in details. He will have taken more notice of the vics.”

“
It was a woman.  And get this, she’s a court usher.  You’d think she would be more ‘with it’ than the average civvie.”

“
Any idea who did it?”

“
No.  That’s why I gave you a bell.  I thought you might have some background that would help.”

“
We interviewed Westin over his association with a prostitute who was trying to blackmail him.  She wound up strangled.”

“
The ex-model...Marsha Freeman?”

“
Yeah.”

“
She was a stunner.”

“
Not when I saw her.”

“
I can imagine.  We’ll have to get together for a pint, Matt.”

“
Yeah.  Let’s do it soon,” Matt said with no real enthusiasm.  His life was now too full to include sessions in one of the less than savoury pubs that cops for some reason gravitated to.  With the case, and Beth, his time was spoken for.

When the next call came, Pete picked up.

“SCU.  DS Deakin.”

“
Put Barnes on.”

“
Who’s calling?”

“
The big bad wolf.  Make it quick, plod, or I’ll hang up.”

Matt
was at his desk.  Pete waved his hand to attract his attention.

“
What?”  Matt mouthed.

“
It’s him,” Pete said, cupping the receiver with his hand.

Matt
’s stomach lurched.  He had no choice.  It didn’t matter that he did not want any personal contact with the killer, or that he had not actively sought to bring attention to himself.  Tom was right, you had to deal with what was, and use any means available.

Matt
picked up the phone on the desk next to Pete, and nodded.  Pete put the call through and immediately set the wheels in motion to trace it.

“
Barnes,” Matt said.  “What do you want, to give yourself up and take your medicine like a good boy?”

“
That’s very funny, Barnes.  I wouldn’t want to make it that easy for you.  You’ll have to earn all that taxpayers’ money you take every month under false pretences.”

“
So spit it out.  What hare-brained plan have you dreamed up?”

“
To collect my money.  But before I give you details of how it will go down, you need to know that if it goes wrong again, a young woman in my...care will suffer a great deal as a consequence.  Check out this name and address, cop.  You’ll find that she has dropped out of circulation.  You fuck with me again, and I’ll send you her eyes.”

Matt
jotted down the details he was given, even though the call was being taped.

“
I’ll get back to you,” Lucas said, then hung up.

“
Waterloo Station,” Pete said.  “We’re on it.”

Matt
could not sum up any optimism.  The killer would already be mingling with commuters, on his way out to the street.  He would not have left prints on the phone, or be recognisable on CCTV tapes.

He almost lit a cigarette, but instead, crushed and threw it across the office.  A small shower of dried tobacco flakes rained down.

“Feel better?” Pete said.

“
No.  This bastard is in his element.  He’s not interested in the cash.  He’s declared war on us...or on me.  I sometimes feel as if I’m walking round with a fucking target pinned to my chest.”

Pete grinned and said,
“Careful, boss, paranoia can be debilitating, especially when people
really
are out to get you.”

“
It doesn’t debilitate me, Pete.  It encourages me to find him and get him off my back as quickly as possible.”

“
Looks bad,” Pete said after making a call.  “He used the phone of the missing woman again; Julie Spencer. I’ve arranged for a patrol car to call at the address, and for the uniforms to force entry if necessary.”

“
Let’s go over there,” Matt said.  “We don’t have anything better to do.”

The only upside was that there was no corpse.  The flat had been
unoccupied when the attending PCs broke in after getting no response.

“
Doesn’t look as if anything has been taken,” Pete said, noting that the television, midi stereo stack and other obvious items that could be converted to cash, then drugs, were still in situ.

There was no sign of a struggle. 
Matt believed that she had been lifted en route from the pub to her home.  Most likely in the park.  Women never learned.  They saw the news every day and knew that rapists and other scum were out there picking them off. Why did they persist in believing that it would never happen to them?  The night was not a friendly place for lone women to frequent.  Like it or not, they were no more than prey to a growing number of men who were not able to form normal relationships, or who needed the thrill of new flesh, to take by force and give them a sense of power that they could not satisfy in whatever relationships they might have.

Daniel Short had been such a man. 
Matt recalled how seven women had been found disembowelled and with their throats cut and breasts removed.  The attacks had been carried out in the dead of night in the women’s own homes.  It was obviously the same killer’s work, and he was in some way trying to emulate the horrific crimes of Jack the Ripper.  All the victims were murdered in the East End, in the Whitechapel area, although only one of the unfortunate women had been a prostitute.

Short had even sent the
police a letter to confirm that he was fixated with the nineteenth-century butcher.  It included the lines:

I love my work and will continue with my funny little games
.

.
..My knife is nice and sharp.  I do not wish you good luck in

your efforts to stop my capers.

Yours truly,

Jack.

The wording had been changed, but was a bastardised version of that which had been sent to the police on the twenty-fifth of September 1888: a letter that was attributed to the original ripper.

Some guys are Elvis impersonators.  A lot of people have heroes.  Daniel Short saw himself as a modern-day incarnation of a Victorian fiend.

It was at the scene of the seventh and final murder that Short ran out of luck.  The flatmate of Dawn – not Mary – Kelly, came home late to hear moans and grunts through the flimsy door on the second floor.  At first, Linda Lewis thought that Dawn was screwing some bloke on the settee in the small living room, but a squeal full of shock and pain caused her to be alarmed.  And the gurgling sound that followed almost loosened her bowels.  She dare not use her key and burst in on whatever was happening.  Fear prompted her to skulk away on tiptoe, down the stairs and out onto the street, where she called the police on her mobile phone.

Short had been caught red-handed, literally, at the scene.  Dawn Kelly was dead, but the fiend was still busy, cutting and probing and hacking at the corpse.  He was also chewing raw and bloody flesh.  The Armed Response Unit ordered him to drop the knife he wielded.  Instead, he screamed and ran at them, slashing at the air and spraying them with a mist of blood from his full mouth.  It had taken
four bullets to stop him.  The officer who had discharged his weapon said that Short had staggered back two paces, kept his balance and looked down at the entry holes in his naked chest, before shaking his head as if in disbelief, then falling on his face, dead.

Matt
knew that he was looking for the same type of perverse individual.  This one was not an impersonator, though.  He was an original, who might be far more difficult to trap than Daniel Short.