A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (30 page)

“
Hey, boss.  You wool-gathering, or what?”

“
Yeah, Pete.  Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.  This isn’t where he lifted her.  She was snatched on the way home from the pub.  Just grab a photograph of her.”

“
You think she’s still alive?”

“
I doubt it.  But if she is, then God help her, because I don’t think we can.”

He
got home late.  Beth was at his place.  He had phoned en route and told her that he was on his way from the Yard.  When he arrived she was curled up on the settee listening to a Nora Jones CD that she had been playing in the car for days.

“
You look all in,” she said when he leant over the back of the settee and kissed her hair.  The fragrance was of lemon; fresh and clean.  She was the only really nice thing in his life.

“
Yeah, I’m bushed,” he said.  “I’ll take a shower.  Wash the day and the sweat away.”

“
You hungry?”

“
No.  But a large JD would hit the spot.”

Matt
shaved and showered in under ten minutes.  Put a baggy and faded T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts on and felt a thousand times better.  He was learning to draw a hard line.  Even imagined being on a beach, using a piece of driftwood to gouge out a furrow in the smooth, wet sand.  Beth had helped him to visualise or conceptualise doing stuff like that, using specific scenarios to help keep the main areas of his life separate from each other.  It reminded him of the artist, Picasso, who had allegedly created a small work of art in the sand and signed it for a woman who wanted one of his much sought after paintings.  “There, my dear,” Pablo supposedly said.  “It’s all yours.  Enjoy it.”  And all the new owner could do was watch as the tide came in and erased the ephemeral masterpiece.

Matt
smiled.  His imaginary line wouldn’t be obliterated by surf.  But it was not etched deeply enough to totally disconnect him from the current case.  It was as he remembered the effect of whatever junk the nurses had shot him up with after his kidney had been removed and his broken femur was pinned.  Enough to reduce the pain to a manageable level.  The present grisly slaying of the women and the hunt for their killer was only put on hold at the back of his mind, simmering on a low light.

The tall glass was misted with condensation.  He picked it up from the coaster and took a long swallow, letting the
cubes of ice rest against his teeth.  It was liquid mellow. An old friend that he rationed himself with these days.  With Beth, he did not need the crutch of alcohol to make it through nights that brought back memories he was now able to put in some kind of perspective.

“
What’s the matter?” Beth said.

He dropped onto the settee next to her and cocked his head to the side as if to say:
‘Are you talking to me?  Everything is cool’, and took another swig of the JD.

“
So tell me, Barnes.  I’m your personal shrink, remember?  And we don’t have secrets.”

“
You lock the bathroom door.”

“
That’s not being secretive.  It’s privacy, when I’m...”

“
He called the Yard again.  Asked for me―”

“
Jesus!  Tell me that you didn’t speak to him.”

“
I didn’t speak to him.”

“
Liar.  You did.”

“
Okay, I did.”

“
I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t let him make this personal.”

“
I have no control over what he decides to do, Beth.  The last thing I want is to have any interaction with any psychos.  My job is to track them down and lift them.  You know how I feel about it...now.”

“
But you spoke to him.  You’re letting him dictate―”

“
I am not
letting
him do anything, for Christ’s sake.  Put your professional hat on for a minute.  He has made contact without my courting his attention.  And you know how this type of nut thinks.  He wants dialogue with me.  I have a duty...a responsibility to do whatever I can to put him off committing any more atrocities.  I can’t be
half
a cop. That would be worse than being no cop at all.”

Beth bit the inside of her lip.  She wanted to tell him that being a cop was a thankless task.  Even many of the law-abiding masses thought of the police as a necessary evil that did not have the ability to stop the rot in society.  But they were wrong.  Officers like
Matt put their lives on the line to protect strangers to them; to – as Matt would say – make a difference.  You could throw the towel in when the going got tough, or grit your teeth, take it on the chin and rejoin the battle. Matt always gritted his teeth.

“
What did he want?” Beth said.

“
To tell me that he has lifted another woman.  He gave me her name and address. Said that if I didn’t want to receive her eyes, then I’d better come through with the money when he phones me again with instructions.”

“
Did it check out?”

“
Yeah.  A twenty-four year old from Bethnal Green has disappeared.  She left a pub alone, to presumably walk home.  She never made it.  And she is a blonde laundry worker, not a redheaded prostitute.”

“
Whatever you do, he’ll still kill her,” Beth stated.

“
Don’t you think I know that?  I have to try and outguess him when we make the drop.  Learn from how he set that kid up at the museum to take the fall.”

“
How?”

“
Just follow the money all the way.  Let it lead us to his door.”

“
To his parlour,” Beth said.

“
Uh?”

“
He’s a tattooist.  That is your biggest lead.”

“
Maybe.  Every tattoo artist in the Greater London area is being checked out.  We don’t have one that looks good for it, yet.”

“
And what exactly are you hoping he will have, the word GUILTY inked on his forehead?”

“
You gave us a profile, Beth.  My team are not stupid.  Any ink jock that falls remotely within the parameters you came up with is being put under a microscope.  Do you have any idea how many of these people do Celtic crap?  It’s fashionable.  And the only calls we’ve had over the wolf’s head ring have led nowhere.”

“
I still believe that you will find him over the river.  He’ll be a one-man operation with a low profile set-up.  Maybe a back street studio.  Nothing grand.  He will not be materialistic.  His needs are not for big boys’ toys.  Look again at any individual who didn’t meet the initial criteria we set.”

“
Okay.  Now let’s leave it.  Fix us another drink while I put a Sinatra album on that will blow you away.”

“
Album?”

“
Yeah.  Some of my best stuff is on vinyl.”

They sat close together. 
Matt put his arm around her shoulder, and Beth leant into him and fell asleep to Old Blue Eyes singing songs for swinging lovers.  Matt’s arm ached.  But it was an ache he could live with.  He did not want to move and waken her.  She was snoring very lightly, and he felt privileged to be her partner.  Still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was too good for him.  And he was scared for them both.  All he seemed to do was attract danger; danger that mushroomed out to envelop anyone close to him.  What he did, or the way that he did it, made him some kind of  jinx.  Men like him should be alone with only themselves to worry about.  But he could not make the choice to not be with Beth.  As long as she wanted him, he would be there for her. Was that selfish?  Yes.  All part of the human condition.

The album finished and
Matt just rested his head back and closed his eyes.  He could hear Beth’s slow, even breathing, the clock ticking, and the hum of the fridge/freezer when the thermostat cut in.  He let random thoughts of his late parents and colleagues form, to torture him, then drift off to be replaced by the present case he was working.  More lives had been brutally and senselessly cut short.  Strange that pain and violence in its most aggressive forms could be part and parcel of the same wonderful world that produced rainbows, sunsets, brightly coloured butterflies, acts of selfless courage, and Beth.  Utopia was just an imaginary perfect place where everything was ideal, but only the dream of it was real.  It would – in his view – never come about on this earth.  Good and evil would forever wage war on each other, using humanity as the weapons of choice as foot soldiers to spearhead their armies.

Beth woke up with a crick in her neck and her mouth parched.  Too much
alcohol dehydrated her.  She needed to drink a large amount of cold water, and was simultaneously urged by her pounding bladder to go for a pee.

“
What time is it?” she said to Matt.

“
Three-thirty.”

“
Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“
I tried to,” he lied.  “It would be easier to raise the Titanic.  You could sleep through a mortar attack...and snore for England.”

“
You’re so romantic, Barnes.  You know how to make a girl feel like a million dollars.”

“
It’s a gift.  You want a cup of coffee?”

“
No,” she said and licked her dry lips.  “I need to go to the loo, and then fill up again with a gallon of cold water.”

It was half an hour later that they went to bed. 
Matt set the alarm for seven, then switched the bedside light off and slid into Beth’s arms.

He got to his office at eight
-thirty that morning.  Tom was waiting for him, sitting behind the desk with a mug of coffee in front of him.  He looked as though he’d had less sleep than Matt.  Something had happened.

“
What?”  Matt said.

“
Thought I’d come down and chew the fat.  We need to be ready to go with whatever this wolf weirdo wants you to do.  And the guy who offed Westin and his goon, Chase, is on his way to the mortuary.”

“
Who was it?”

Tom flipped open a folder. 
“A photographer, Lance Parker.  He called from his home last night and confessed.  Said that he had introduced Westin to Marsha Freeman, and confirmed that she was blackmailing the son of a bitch, and that Westin had sent Chase round to determine whether he, Parker, had been in it with her.  I listened to the taped call.  Parker was bawling like a kid.  Said that Chase had broken his fingers and stuck an ice pick in one of his balls.”

Matt
winced.  Poured a cup of coffee.

“
I know,” Tom said.  “Brings tears to your eyes just thinking about it.  Anyhow, by the time a car got to Parker’s place, he was dead.  In the bath.  He’d cut both his wrists and bled out.  His mobile phone was on the floor next to the tub.”

“
Another solved case to boost the stats.  But it doesn’t help us or Julie Spencer.”

“
You think she’s already dead?”

“
I did.  But I’m not so sure now.  He might keep some of them for a while.  The body we found burned had tattoos that had been done weeks before her death, and some that were fresh.  He might keep the odd one for sex on tap and to be creative with.  I think he knows that without proof of her still being alive, we aren’t going to play.”

“
Wrong, Matt.  Whether she’s dead or alive, he knows we’ll engage with him.  This isn’t about Julie Spencer.  She is unfortunately just a part of a bigger picture.”

Matt
nodded.  Tom was right.  At the end of the day the poor girl was only a side issue.  It was a hard but true fact.  Unless they could run him down, then she would no doubt end up being killed.  No good kidding himself that one life was that important. So why did he think otherwise?  Why did he want to save this woman if she was alive?  The allusion of people being light bulbs came to mind.  Thousands of them were blinking out every day with a predictability that was frightening.  He could not imagine how many people would die in just the short time he would take to drink his coffee.  Some would do it in a hospital bed.  Others would have fatal strokes and heart attacks as they went about their daily business, to be struck down in mid stride or sitting at their office desks, or while watching TV or sat on the loo.  Accidents at home and behind the wheel would account for yet more.  As would natural disasters, like the earthquakes and tsunamis that resulted in many thousands of people being obliterated.  And a few would fall victim to murderers.  You couldn’t embrace it all without going mad.  To continually think that you might not see another day would send you insane.  Maybe life was an asylum.  You existed in it as best as you could; got by until your number came up.  Depressing.  And yet he still latched on to a single stranger’s plight and wanted to put all his effort into rescuing her.  It didn’t add up.  And it didn’t matter that his ambition was illogical.  He was as programmed as the offenders he hunted.  They had to do what they did, and so did he.  He had given up trying to work it out and package it neatly.  What is, is.  He too had a dark side that was always in cold shadow.  It was as much a part of him as the nose on his face.  Living was complicated, though Beth had shown him that however fleeting life might be, there was no excuse to not make the best of it.