Friends to Die For (43 page)

Vogel looked down at a report of the trial which he’d just printed out.

‘
And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot
,’ he recited.

‘Shit,’ said Clarke.

‘After the attack, the boy just stayed in the house waiting for Alice Turner’s husband to get home,’ Vogel continued. ‘He worked shifts, apparently, and she very nearly
bled to death. Poor man found her upstairs. Burns was downstairs, covered in Alice’s blood.’

‘The boy was mentally ill, surely?’

‘It was decided that he was sane enough to have known what he was doing and to stand trial,’ said Vogel. ‘But whereas at the close of the trial of Venables and Thompson the
judge ruled that their names should be released in spite of their ages, Rory Burns’ anonymity was preserved. It leaked locally, though. He spent eight years at a young offenders’
centre, and when he was released there was a public outcry in Scotland, though nothing like the furore over Venables and Thompson.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked Clarke.

‘He was released on licence and sent to some kind of halfway house in Edinburgh . . .’ Vogel paused. ‘That was in 1998, the year of the King’s Cross murders.’

Clarke looked thoughtful. ‘So it could have been him. He just had to get himself to London and back.’

Vogel nodded his agreement. He referred again to the printout: ‘For almost a year Burns reported to his parole officer according to the terms of his licence and appeared to behave
impeccably. Then he vanished. Completely and utterly. Off the face of the earth.’

‘And he’s never been rediscovered?’

Vogel shook his head. ‘There’s a school of thought across the border that some relative or friend of Alice Turner’s caught up with Burns and knocked him off. She had a brother
who’s a bit of a toughie, ex para, always said he’d get him for what he did to his sister.’

‘But you don’t think he’s dead, do you, Vogel?’

Vogel shook his head again.

DCI Clarke stared at her second-in-command.

‘You think George Kristos is Rory Burns.’

It was a statement, not a question. Vogel answered it, nonetheless.

‘Yes, I do, boss,’ he said.

‘Didn’t we check out his background?’

‘Kristos was born in Edinburgh to Greek Cypriot parents. Scottish police told us his family were believed to have returned to Cyprus some years ago. There was nothing to arouse suspicion.
He went to school in Scotland and then drama college in Manchester. It all checked out. He has a passport, national insurance number, tax record, driver’s licence – everything. All in
the name of Georgios Kristos. And no criminal record, obviously. He’s an Equity member as George Kristos, and is generally known as George. So he’d anglicized his name, but that
didn’t seem suspicious either. Particularly not for an actor.’

‘What about his alibi for the time of Michelle Monahan’s murder? Didn’t his neighbour say she was with him?’

‘Yes, boss, but she’s an old lady and she’s not well. I think we should double-check it.’

DCI Clarke nodded. She remained silent for a few seconds. Then she clenched her fist and banged it on the desk in front of her.

‘Go get the bastard, Vogel,’ she said. ‘And this time we’re going to nail ’im.’

‘Yes, boss,’ said Vogel, over one shoulder. He was already on the way to the door.

Clarke immediately called in the key members of her team.

‘I want everything there is on Rory Burns and Georgios Kristos,’ she demanded. ‘Every spit and fart. Photographs – I want every available photograph. Tell forensics I
need an expert to run photos of Rory Burns through age-progression software. Get on to Scotland: we need the complete court records and the statements of everyone involved. And we need to find
Kristos’s parents in Cyprus, or wherever the hell they are.’

George seemed unsurprised when Vogel and a team of officers arrived at his flat to arrest him for the third time, even though he had only recently been released from custody.
It was almost as if he had been waiting for them.

He unlocked the door and stood calmly with his arms extended as he was handcuffed.

‘I was half-expecting you to turn up again,’ he told Vogel. ‘But you’re not as bright as you thought you were, are you?’

Vogel ignored that. He formally arrested George on suspicion of two counts of murder.

George’s eyes seemed to glaze over as Vogel cautioned him.

‘Anything you do say may be given in evidence,’ the detective concluded.

‘
God is jealous and the Lord revengeth, the Lord revengeth, and is furious
,’ said George.

‘I’m sorry, sir?’

‘
The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies
.’

‘I see, sir,’ said Vogel, noting that George was now speaking with a distinct Scottish accent.

He and two of the uniforms led George to the waiting squad car and bundled him in. George grabbed Vogel by the arm. His eyes bore into the policeman. Vogel had not noticed previously how cold
those eyes were. Maybe they hadn’t been that way before.

‘
The Lord will not acquit the wicked, the Lord hath His way in the whirlwind, and in the storm and the clouds are the dust at His feet
,’ said George.

I didn’t care. I had completed my task. It mattered not to me what happened to my apology of a body. My soul is omnipotent. I am as He is. And will be for ever and
ever. Amen.

My table thou hast furnished me, In presence of my foes, My head thou dost with oil anoint, And my cup overflows.

I supposed it was inevitable that eventually I would be discovered. Although, as I had fooled so many for so long, I did wonder, had almost come to believe, that I might yet escape.

But sometimes I was not even sure I wanted to. There was a part of me that yearned for them all to know what I had done and why I had done it. Perhaps that was the reason I had chosen to
carry a picture of my non-existent girlfriend, knowing it could conceivably lead to my being discovered. A doctored picture of the woman who had been my foster mother.

Now they would know. The whole world would know what I had done.

There was another reason why I chose to carry with me that doctored picture of Alice Turner, even before I learned about Marlena. Alice was the only woman I had ever really loved. The only
human being I ever loved after my mother was taken from me. Along with my mother, I lost all hope of a future, any chance of a normal life. And I was only three at the time, too young to
understand. Too young to hate. My father, my weak bloody father, claimed to have suffered a nervous breakdown. Said he couldn’t cope, and gave me away. Just gave me away to the state, asking
that I be taken into care.

He
couldn’t cope? What did he think it was like for me, having to cope with what I had become?

But Alice. My dear sweet Alice. She had nurtured me, cared for me, soothed me, made me feel that I was normal in spite of everything, and that to her I was precious. I’d yet to think
about growing into a man, and what that might mean. As a child, with Alice, I felt safe enough. I had perhaps dared to believe I was just an ordinary little boy. And to her, to Alice, a special
boy.

Then I witnessed her betrayal. A quite casual betrayal.

I overheard her one day, talking to a social worker in the kitchen. They thought I was in the garden, kicking a ball around with the boy from next door, but I’d come back into the
house to find a plaster because I’d cut my knee. I was in the hall when I heard the words I shall never forget.

‘He was such a disturbed child when he came here,’ said the social worker. ‘And he’s doing so well now.’

‘Yes,’ replied Alice. ‘But I can’t help fearing for his future. He’s always going to be a freak, isn’t he, out there in the big wide world? My dear,
darling little freak . . .’

I didn’t make a sound. It was as if I was frozen. Then I turned, crept along the hallway out of the house.

They never even knew that I was there.

She might have known later though, in the early hours of the following morning. I’ve often wondered if she ever realized what had sealed her fate. What she had done. How she’d
left me with no choice but to deal with her disloyalty, her nonchalant derision, in the way that I had.

I took no notice of the other words she used, not ‘my’, nor ‘dear’, nor ‘darling’. All I heard was ‘freak’. I was a freak to her, as well as
to the rest of the world. My sweet Alice thought I was a freak. And that one throwaway comment, never intended for my ears, meant that I would always be a freak to myself. How could I ever regard
myself as anything other than that after hearing Alice, lovely Alice, speak of me in that way?

I never told them. Not any of them. Or not in so many words. If they’d been cleverer, they might have guessed.

Alice was the second woman to have destroyed my life. I could do nothing about the first evil bitch. Not then. But I could destroy Alice. I could make her life every bit as dreadful, as
empty, and as wasted as I knew mine would be. I was only ten, but I had the power. The vengeful God of the Bible I kept always at my side was with me, bestowing upon me steadfast resolution and a
will beyond my years.

I took her eyes so that she would never again see me. And I took her tongue so that she would never again speak of me.

Alice had been more than a foster mother to me. I’d loved her in a way I do not remember loving even my real mother. But then I have no memories of the time before my devastation. It
was Alice who seemed to have been always there for me. She’d been everything to me. Until she betrayed me. The shock of it made me capable of what others might regard as a quite heartless
brutality. It wasn’t that. I was not the evil one. Alice had proven herself to be shallow and craven. I did have a heart, then, but she broke it. I knew at once what I had to do. Alice left
me no choice. My destiny lay before me. It was written in The Book.

And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.’

Ironically it was Alice who had sent me to Sunday school. I quickly became a star pupil. I was a clever boy, particularly good at memorizing verse from the Bible. And I took an intense
pleasure in the Old Testament. I avidly devoured the messages it held for me. I gloried in them. I knew beyond doubt that so many of them were directed at me alone. They had been written in another
age, by prophets and by saints and by scholars, for me to seize upon, to grasp with my whole being, and to obey.

My one true friend is the Bible. The Good Book has an answer for everything in my world. It tells me that my God will supply every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. That
has always been and always will be so. For ever and ever. Should my heart be troubled He provides solace. Should I ever, for a second, question my destiny, He enhances my resolution. He lifts me
from despair and gives me vigour in all that I endeavour. I am and will always be His avenging angel.

Vogel travelled to Charing Cross in the back of the squad car with George. He wanted to be close to him. He was appalled and captivated by him. If George spoke, if George moved
a muscle, if George crossed his legs, scratched his nose, touched his ear, sneezed or coughed, Vogel wanted to know.

George Kristos, né Rory Burns, did not look like a monster. Yet he was undoubtedly the most monstrous creature Vogel had ever encountered.

Kristos did not speak again during the ten-minute journey, nor did he speak in the custody suite. It was only when he was asked to step into an anteroom with an officer in attendance and remove
his clothes for forensic examination that he spoke.

‘And you shall make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness, from their loins even to their thighs they shall reach
,’ he said. And he smiled. A wide gentle smile that
did not reach his eyes.

Vogel felt a shiver run up and down his spine. Clearly George Kristos was some sort of religious maniac. Vogel wasn’t sure that modern psychology recognized such a condition. But the label
certainly fitted.

He waited until George reappeared, now dressed in the regulation paper suit made of recycled materials, which was standard custody issue. Then he instructed the custody officer, Sergeant Andy
Pierce, to arrange for George to be placed in a cell where he would be detained until they were ready to interview him. Vogel knew that Clarke and the rest of the MIT team would have been working
flat out on the case in his absence, and he wanted to familiarize himself with any new information before proceeding with a formal interview.

George smiled again. It was a knowing smile. Vogel looked away. He couldn’t wait to see Nobby Clarke and learn what progress had been made.

When he arrived at the DCI’s office she was engaged in an animated discussion with Pam Jones and Joe Carlisle. Clarke looked up at him, pausing mid-sentence.

‘Scotland have done some digging for us. The real Georgios Kristos died when he was seventeen,’ she said.

‘Jesus,’ said Vogel.

‘And you are not going to believe the rest of this, Vogel,’ she said.

Vogel thought he might. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

‘We now have details of the road accident in which Rory Burns’ mother was killed and he was injured. Apparently, mother and son were walking across a bridge when a motorcyclist
who’d been going way too fast suddenly lost control and ploughed into them. The mother was catapulted into the river and swept away on the current. They found her dead body washed up
downstream a couple of days later. The boy ended up straddling the front wheel of the bike. It seems the motorcyclist carried on across the bridge until the boy eventually fell off. A witness said
the biker just sped off – didn’t even stop to see whether the kid was still alive. The boy suffered appalling injuries to the genital area and lower abdomen. Surgeons had to perform a
penectomy and his testes were also removed.’