A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (39 page)

He saw the blood on the inside of her thighs and frowned.

“My period,” Julie said, feeling her face redden.

“
No matter.  Sit on me, and then we’ll eat.”

“
But―”

He reached out
and pinched the underside of her left breast hard between his thumb and fingers.  “No buts, Julie.  I’ve just had a very trying evening, and the last thing I need is to come home to a bitch with an attitude.  Understand?”

“
Yes, Wolf,” she said through gritted teeth.  Someone had hurt him, and that pleased her.  His nose was red, swollen, packed with cotton wool. And there was bruising beneath both of his watering, bloodshot eyes.

“
You’re wondering about my face,” he said.  “I killed a woman two hours ago.  She managed to kick me in the nose, and tried to put my eyes out.  She was a game little cow, but still ended up with her throat cut from ear to ear.”

She believed him without reservation.  He had nothing to
gain by lying to her.  Forcing herself to act on automatic pilot, Julie put her hands on his chest.  She could feel his strong, quick heartbeat.  “Lay down,” she said, pushing him back.  She had to somehow instil a desire in him to want to keep her alive, and this was probably the only way she could influence the outcome of her ordeal.  She climbed onto him, caressed his cheeks with trembling fingers and lowered her face to his.  Kissed his mouth with dry lips.  He responded.

Much later, panting and drenched in sweat, they lay in each other
’s arms.

“
Good?” Lucas said, holding her head to his chest.

“
More than good,” she gasped, and was not wholly lying.  How could it be possible for her to derive the slightest pleasure from a man who was holding her as a prisoner, and who she knew had every intention of killing her?  The power of sex was abstruse.  Her libido had taken over.  Animal instinct to mate was a relief from stress.  She had read that at times of crisis and disaster it was a natural reaction; a force so powerful that nothing could dampen it.  She had not believed that, until now.  She would not have previously entertained the thought of being able to give herself so fully and with such enthusiasm to a psycho who meant her nothing but harm.  She felt dirty and ashamed.

Lucas went over to where he had undressed, took a bunch of keys from his trousers pocket and selected the small cuff key.

“C’mon,” he said, releasing her.  “Let’s go take a shower, then I’ll make you a hot meal.” He felt good.  Julie had not faked it with him.  She might be trying to keep him sweet; couldn’t blame her for that.  But she had responded to his lovemaking with total commitment.  For a few minutes she had forgotten the situation she was in and abandoned herself to lust and the gratification that he provided.  Women were such fickle creatures.  Given time, she would not only want him, but love him.  That would be an interesting situation.  Not a first, though.  It was a known fact that prisoners could become emotionally involved with their captors.  Hadn’t that rich Yank heiress bitch, Pattie Hearst, become infatuated with the gang that abducted her?  Even joined them and took part in a bank robbery.  There was a side to almost everyone that with the excuse or opportunity would allow the darkness in their souls to manifest.  Ordinary people could commit the most terrible crimes.  Theatres of war were not the only places where seemingly decent men and women shed the veneer of respectability and allowed their base instincts to surface and be unleashed.  Even Julie could be taught to enjoy not only being a victim, but also to mistreat and murder strangers.  It was all a matter of subtle indoctrination.  She would come to want to do anything to please him.

They sat at the kitchen table in dressing gowns. 
Drank coffee to wash down the meal of bacon, eggs and toast he had made.

“
You look good,” Lucas said, and meant it.  Even with just stubble beginning to shadow her shaven head, she was attractive.  Was it totally beyond the realm of possibility for them to be a couple?

Julie stared into the mug that she held cupped in her laced fingers.

“What are you thinking?” he said.  “Be honest with me.  I won’t punish you for answering me truthfully, I promise.”

She looked intently into his verdant eyes.  Allowed a long silence to pass before answering. 
“That under different circumstances, I would be glad to know you.”

He grinned. 
“You are glad that you know me.  This is the biggest adventure you have ever been a part of.”

“
Knowing that you are going to be murdered isn’t what I would call an adventure.  Put yourself in my position for a few seconds, if you can.  How would you enjoy being chained up in a fucking black cell, waiting to be mutilated and strangled?”

“
What are you saying?  That if you felt safe, then you would be happy to be with me?”

Somehow she held his gaze and nodded. 
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about life...and death.  I haven’t done much worthwhile or interesting.  I work...worked in a poxy laundry, and didn’t have any real friends or much of a future to look forward to. You’ve turned my life upside down, hurt me, and scared the shit out of me.  And yet I wish that we’d met under different circumstances and got to know each other.  You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever met.”

Lucas
shook his head.  “You expect me to believe one word of that crap?”

“
Not really.  You asked me what I was thinking, and I’ve told you.  You’ve taken me away from a mundane way of life that I was sick of.  I needed to escape from it.  I just didn’t figure on doing it in such a dramatic fashion.  I’d rather have won the Lotto and gone to live somewhere warm, and swum in the ocean every day...and met you at a beach bar or a nightclub.”

He needed to think about what she had said.  His acts were a rebellion against his past, carried out to satisfy a need that he did not fully comprehend.  He saw himself as a scarred and unloved outcast.  That Julie was adrift and searching for meaning and fulfilment was important.  They were alike in that way.  Both needing.  And they were compatible.

He did not speak again until they were back in the loft.  He knelt next to her, wound crepe bandage around her other ankle and fastened it with a safety pin before putting the cuff on.  He was gentle, and was treating her as a person, not an object.  A change had come over him, but Julie could not dare to hope that it would last.

“
I’ll get some tampons for you tomorrow,” he said.  “And I’ll give some thought to your future.  The problem is that I’ve never trusted or believed anyone in my life.”

“
It’s never too late to start, Wolf,” Julie said.

“
My freedom is at stake,” Lucas mused.  “You do realise that if I was to be caught, then I would have to take my own life, or spend the rest of it in a prison or mental institution.  And I have no intention of being caged, or doped-up and turned into a fucking cabbage.”

“
Life is a risk, Wolf,” Julie said.  “But we could have something special together.”

He studied her.  Leant forward and kissed her softly on the mouth.  She parted her lips and responded.

He shuffled back away from her and climbed to his feet.

“
I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.  “And call me Lucas from now on.  I’m a man, not a fucking wolf.”

Later, in his bed, t
he phantom voice of his mother came through as loud and clear as an FM station in full Dolby surround sound.
‘Are you totally out of your mind?’

He lay in the darkness and tried to shut her up.  Pushed hard with all the willpower he possessed to stifle any further communication.

‘I’m not going anywhere’.

“
You aren’t real.  Get out of my head,” he ordered.

‘
So why are you talking to yourself, you sad, dysfunctional little bastard’?

He clenched his teeth.  Would not be drawn into an argument with what was only a part of his fractured psyche.

‘I’m still here, Lucas.  You blew it tonight.  Barnes will put it together’.

He couldn
’t stop himself from talking.  “Put what together?  There’s nothing to put together.”

‘
The cop called here. They will check everywhere that she went.  And if they take a close look at you, then that’ll be it.  One look at that wolf’s head on your chest and you’ll be finished’.

It made sense.  They might well cover all the bases, on the off chance that her killer had seen through her act and followed her.  He doubted that they thought there would be a connection, but could he take the chance that they wouldn
’t?

“
So what do you suggest I do?”  Lucas asked himself.

‘
Clean up your mess, boy.  Get rid of the bitch in the attic and put it back how it was.  If the filth latches onto you, they will tear the place apart looking for a spot of blood or a single hair.  You need to make sure that there is nothing that could incriminate you’.

There was no way he would be able to sleep.  He knew that the voice was a part of his mind that somehow policed his actions and brought reason to his behaviour. 
But it was not a conscience like some bloody cartoon cricket.  He was not a marionette without strings.  And he had no conscience.  He offered up no excuse for what he did, even to himself.  You are what you are, and he was at peace with the acts he committed.  Or had been.  His feelings for Julie had begun to modify his perspective and perplex him. Affection or whatever the emotion was that he was beginning to feel was alien to him.  He had thought that his only love of women was for their bodies; to use, tattoo, disfigure and finally render lifeless.  He had punished each and every one for the cruelty – mental and physical – that his mother had visited on him.  And also for Sandra, the wife who had cheated on him and cemented his belief that all women were worthless and incapable of loyalty.

Could Julie be
an exception to the rule?  Was she worth trying to save?  Or was she too much of a liability?  She could be his undoing.  Commonsense urged him to act quickly, dispose of her in the canal and return the purpose-built holding room to a loft full of junk.

‘T
hat won’t be enough.  They’ll examine the circumstances of my murder again, and look at the possibility of it being you who cut my throat, and framed Leroy.  Your victims have in the main been redheads who practised the oldest profession.  You need to vanish and start over.  This place is no longer safe.  Kill the bitch and get the hell away from here’.

Lucas curled up in a tight ball and
thought it through.  Just when he thought he might have found something to cherish, life was conspiring to take it away from him.

None
of Carrie’s neighbours had seen any stranger approach her house.

DCs Mark Jones and Errol Chambers backtracked.  Showed the enhanced stills of the suspect to staff at the tube station in Morden, then drove to Stockwell and repeated the process.

“You have any idea just how many commuters pass through here every day?” Eileen Cully said to Errol.  “I don’t look at people, I just the take the money and issue tickets.  I’d do better looking at photographs of hands.”

They were getting nowhere in a hurry.  This was the basis of police work, wearing down shoe leather and talking to people, hoping to get the break that would bring them nearer to their quarry.

As they had done at Morden, they left Stockwell with a copy of a duty roster given to them by the station manager. All staff that had been on duty on or after five p.m. the previous day at both stations would be interviewed.

“
Let’s grab a coffee,” Mark said to Errol as they came out into the sunlight.  “I need a jag of caffeine to get my wheels turning.”

Mark had been down to his local rugby club the previous evening and hung one on.
  It wasn’t that he was a fanatical supporter of the game.  But it was a gathering place for fellow Welshmen.  He still spoke the language, and had fierce national pride.

“
Okay, boyo,” Errol said in a West Indian/Welsh accent that probably had Richard Burton turning in his grave.  “There’s a Starbucks over there, isn’t it?”

Mark grinned. 
“Stop taking the piss, Errol.  I don’t try to sound like some Jamaican gangsta rapper when I talk to you.”

“
That’s because you are one seriously uncool dude, my man.  You couldn’t rap to save your skin.”

“
I would rather lose my skin than try.  Your idea of music is some no-talent ex-yardie talking bullshit to a moronic beat.  What do you do on a Saturday night, limbo dance and listen to tone deaf morons banging oil drum lids with animal bones?”

“
Better than shagging sheep in the valleys, and belonging to a poncy male voice choir.”

The banter between the two men continued until they were sitting at a counter with their
double lattes.

“
He had to have transport,” Mark said.  “If he followed the transit here, then where did he leave his vehicle?”