A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (42 page)

He was on the clock.  Opened the door to the studio.  He had the key to the front door on a fob in his pocket.  She hadn
’t escaped through the back or front downstairs. He backed-up and confirmed that the kitchen windows were still locked from the inside.  She was still here, hiding.  Or maybe she had jumped out of a first floor window, but he couldn’t imagine her doing that.  And all the windows were locked and double glazed.  He rushed over to the kitchen door, locked it and removed the key.  She wasn’t going anywhere.

“
Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he called in a singsong voice as he unscrewed the cap from the can and began to pour out the contents.  “I know you’re here, Julie.  Give it up, now, or when I find you I’ll gut you like a pig in an abattoir.”

Julie clamped her hands to her mouth and prayed that he would go upstairs.  It would only take her seconds to rush out from hiding, pick up a chair and throw it through one of the plate glass windows.  She could smell the strong, nose-burning stink of petrol. What was he doing?

Oh, sweet Jesus, NOO!  His legs appeared next to the table, just inches away from where she was cowering.

As
the unmarked Mondeo pulled up to the kerb within sight of Ink Magic by Lucas, Marci saw the black clouds of smoke erupting from where the windows had blown out. They were too late, and both Marci and Phil knew it.

Marci exited the car and ran towards the burning building.  Phil called the emergency services
and then tapped in the squad room’s number on his mobile.  Got put through to Matt.

“
Yeah, Phil?” Matt said.

“
He torched the place, boss.  Must have felt at risk and decided to run.”

“
Okay, Phil.  See what you can find out and get back to me.”

Marci felt totally helpless.  She could not get within twenty yards of the tattoo parlour.
The heat was tremendous, and no one without breathing apparatus would be able to enter the wall of dense smoke.  If the Spencer woman was inside, then she was dead.

Phil ran down an alley to come out at the rear of the terrace.  The garage in the small back
garden of Downey’s property was also ablaze.  He lifted his jacket up to cover his face and shield him from the heat, and approached the open back door.  Took a deep breath and was about to enter, only to be hauled backwards by Marci, who wrapped her arms around his waist and jerked with such force that they both fell to the ground.

“
No, Phil,” Marci shouted, to be heard over the crackling voice of the conflagration. “There’s nothing we can do.  No one is coming out of there alive.”

Matt
felt that he had personally blown it.  He had not convinced Downey that they had no clue as to his identity.  Something had spooked the killer and decided him to take flight.

“
You always come up with some half-baked reason to take it on your own shoulders, Matt,” Beth said that evening as they sat in the bar of the Kenton Court Hotel.

“
My case.  The buck stops with me,” Matt said too tersely.  He saw Beth’s hurt look and reached across the table and put his hand over hers.  “Sorry, love.  We were so close to him, and now I feel like we’ve slid down a snake back to square one.”

Beth turned her hand to clasp his palm. 
“Not true.  You know who he is, and all about him.  He’s on the run, and sooner or later you’ll find him.”

Matt
swirled the ice around in the large measure of JD that Ron had set in front of him.  Took a long sip and let the small, glacial cubes rest against his top lip for a few seconds.  Beth was right.  They had done the work and zeroed in on Downey.  That he had panicked was not due to any fault of him or the team.

“
He didn’t know that you were on to him, Matt,” Beth offered.  “He was rash in following Carrie home.  I would think that he saw through her act and decided to question, then murder her.  I believe she put up a fight.  You said that when he picked his van up from the car park, the attendant thought his nose was broken.  Setting her house on fire was an attempt to destroy any trace evidence.  What he did was impulsive, and I think he would be astute enough to know that you would look at every business she called at during her shift.  He
knew
that you would close in.  His personality dictated that whatever you said to him on the phone would not make him feel safe.”

Matt
sighed.  “We have CCTV footage of him from the NCP at Stockwell, and the crime scene investigators are sure that if he lost any blood at Carrie’s, that they’ll be able to retrieve DNA.  We have enough evidence to put him away, but don’t know where to begin looking for him.  He might find an off button and just stop.”

“
That won’t happen, Matt, and you know it.  He has a need to kill.  It isn’t something he can just turn off.  Once he has set himself up with a new identity, he’ll start again.  He has the warped ambition to be more than just a serial killer.  He wants to be remembered as the most successful, infamous son of a bitch to have ever lived and terrorised society.  He knows that if he murders enough women, he’ll be immortalised, and that his name will be up there near the top of the leader board of evil.”

Beth finished her
Chablis, and Ron appeared as if by magic and set a fresh drink in front of each of them.

“
On the house,” Ron said.  “You two look like you need to hang one on and loosen up.”

“
You might be right, Ron,” Matt said.  “But I need to stay sober.”

“
The Wolf case?”

“
Did someone leave their
Evening Mail
for you to pick through?”

“
No. It was on the box.  Some guy wearing a flash suit and a fake tan was standing outside the Yard, saying how it would only be a matter of time before this Wolf character was in custody.”

“
Adams,” Matt muttered.

“
Colleague of yours?” Ron said.

“
No, Ron.  He’s a Detective Chief Superintendent, who might not be one for too much longer.  A tosser who looks the part for press releases.  I doubt he’s capable of even catching a cold.”

“
Not on your Christmas card list, eh?”

It was late when they got back to
Matt’s place.  While Beth brewed fresh coffee, Matt went through the file the team had put together on Downey.  There was nothing to point him in any particular direction.  It appeared that Downey was a loner:  No surprise there.  He was a professional tattoo artist, registered with the health authority.  There was little in the way of a paper trail.  He had never applied for a passport, and was not a member of any organisation or club.  Neighbours in Bertram Street and the owner of a local mini-mart stated that he was uncommunicative, not given to pass the time of day, or be lured into conversation.

Downey
’s late mother, Brenda, was the only lead.  The team were trying to trace any other living family members, hoping that they would acquire more insight into the killer’s mental state.  There was always the outside chance that he kept in touch with them.

“
There you go,” Beth said, placing a mug with a beaming, yellow smiley face on it down on the coffee table in front of Matt.

“
Thanks,” he said, putting the file aside and grasping her by the hips, to pull her close and nestle the side of his face against her stomach.

“
I love you, Beth,” he whispered.  Even the sound of her name on his lips made him feel good.  He loved everything about her.  Hadn’t found one single thing that he would want to change.

She moved against him, pushed him back with her hands on his shoulders, and knelt on the settee with one leg either side of him.

He rose up beneath her.

“
Wait,” she said huskily.  Got off him and turned the lights out.  He stood up and they collided in the darkness; began to slowly remove each other’s clothing, pausing to touch and kiss.

Embracing, standing amid the discarded clothes, Beth thought that they might be in a place apart from the rest of creation.  All that existed was the blackness and the touch of
Matt’s body.

N
othing infringed upon their thoughts and actions for over an hour.

“
That was something else,” Matt said, sitting up, breathing heavily.

Beth grinned. 
“Yeah.  How will we ever top that?”

“
I’ll settle for coming close.  I don’t think I even knew what century I was in for a while.  There was nothing but you and me, and sensations that I didn’t think could exist.”

“
That’s how I felt, Matt.  Every time we make love it gets better.”

“
Practise makes perfect.”

“
Who said that?”

“
I just did.”

Beth laughed. 
“You up for any more practise tonight?”

“
You mean this morning?”

“
Whatever.”

“
Yeah, but let’s go to bed for round two.  This floor isn’t as user-friendly as the mattress.”

Hand-in-hand they padded through to the kitchen, shared a tumbler of iced water, then went up to the bedroom to try
to recapture the nerve-shredding pleasure that they had enjoyed in the darkened lounge.

Pete met Matt at the door to the squad room.

“
Brenda Downey had a sister, boss.”

“
Had, as in past tense, meaning she’s dead?”

“
No.  I mean, well, we know that Brenda is dead, but her sister is still alive.”

“
And by the smug look on your face, I take it you’ve got an address?”

“
Of course.  I’m a detective, aren’t I?  That’s what I do, detect.”

“
Okay, Columbo.  Share.”

“
Marjory Walters, née Downey.  She’s married to the property tycoon, Vincent Walters.  They live out at Maidenhead.”

“
Give her a bell, Pete.  We need to talk to the lady.  She might be able to tell us something we don’t know about her crazy nephew.”

“
I already phoned her, boss.  A maid answered.  When I asked if Mrs. Walters was in, she said yes, but wanted to know who was calling.  I decided not to tell her.  I got the feeling that we’d get stonewalled if we tried to make an appointment.  Thought it would be better if we just turned up on the doorstep.”

“
I’ll drive,” Matt said, turning and heading back to the lift.  “Give me a potted history of the old bird on the way.  What else do we know?”

“
The team are chasing down the guy who sold Downey the van.  And just before you arrived we got confirmation that there were no human remains at Bertram Street.  What the techies did find was a pair of handcuffs in the loft.  One cuff was fastened to a chain, and the other was open.  They’ll check for Julie Spencer’s DNA.  Looks as though he took her with him.”

The lift door juddered open. 
Matt stepped inside and hit the button for the basement level car park.  Couldn’t work out why Downey would take Julie with him.  She would just be excess baggage to slow him down.

“
How do you figure it, Pete?”

“
Who knows what greases his wheels, boss?  He might feel safer from us with a hostage.  Or she might be happy to go along with him.  By all accounts, Julie was more than a little fond of spreading them.  She has the reputation of being a bike.  She worked long hours for poor pay, and hadn’t got much going for her.  She wasn’t into any meaningful relationship that we know of, and thought that a good night out was getting pissed and laid.”

“
She could be playing him, Pete.  Trying every trick in the book to keep on his good side, if he has one.  She may have more about her than her lifestyle suggests.  Let’s work on the theory that she is a prisoner.  That if she could escape, she would.”

As
Matt drove west, out through Chiswick to pick up the M4, Pete briefed him on Marjory Walters.

“
I checked her out, boss.  As Marjory Downey she had a couple of dozen convictions for soliciting, way back in the early eighties.  Unlike her sister, she moved on.  Opened up a dating agency, and then a couple of massage parlours.  We don’t know where she met Walters, but I’d be surprised if he knows about her past.  That’s about it.  She lives in a pile like Highgrove these days, gets chauffeured about in a stretch limo, and has pads in the south of France and West Palm Beach.”

Matt
parked on the expanse of gravel drive that fronted the large Georgian residence.

The maid who opened the door to them was a dowdy specimen, with a thick waist and a doughy face.  Not a pretty sight.  One of her pale, hooded eyes drifted disconcertingly to the right. 
Matt guessed that Marjory must do the hiring and firing of domestic staff, and was not about to have cutesy young blondes with hourglass figures running around the place.  With her history, she knew that the average man was not above being swayed, especially if some crumpet was on tap, living in servants’ quarters at the top of the house.