Friends to Die For (44 page)

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Vogel. ‘He has no penis and no balls. No sexual organs. That would explain why Marlena’s sexual organs were removed – same thing with the two
King’s Cross victims.’

‘Revenge,’ said Clarke. ‘Revenge for what happened to him.’

Vogel nodded. ‘Was the motorcyclist caught?’

‘Disappeared without trace. The only witness was a fisherman down on the riverbank, a couple of hundred yards away. It was dusk, and he wasn’t close enough to give a description of
the biker. Rory Burns was three years old – too young and too traumatized to be of any help. All they could get from him was that there’d been a big wheel and a pink lady.’

Clarke looked down at a report in front of her, freshly emailed from Edinburgh. ‘“The pink lady went away,” he said. His mother had been wearing a pink coat, so the cops
thought the boy must have been talking about her. I think they should have listened more carefully. I think the motorcyclist may have been a woman. I think she may have been the pink
lady.’

Vogel thought fast.

‘You think the pink lady was Marlena?’

Clarke passed a photograph to Vogel. It showed a young Marlena standing alongside a pink Norton motorcycle.

‘The SOCOs found it in that suitcase of memorabilia in Marlena’s flat, but nobody thought it had any significance. Do you remember seeing it?’

Vogel shook his head. ‘Even if I had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me ’til now.’

‘Well, it turns out Marlena’s father was from Edinburgh, so she may have had other kin up there. There can’t have been too many female motorcyclists in the early eighties, not
riding proper grown-up machines.’

‘But wasn’t she supposed to be living in France throughout the eighties, supplying the great and the good of Paris with young women of ill repute?’ asked Vogel.

Clarke picked up the mug of tea on her desk and took a sip. She pulled a face. Vogel guessed she’d probably let the beverage go cold.

‘Maybe she was just visiting Scotland. That would explain why they never caught up with her. A day or two after the incident a couple of uniforms were called to an explosion at an old
municipal dump. Someone had set light to a motorcycle. The tank had been full of petrol, so there was damn all left of it. The number plates had been removed and the vehicle identification number
destroyed, either during the fire or before. The local plod believed it was the bike involved in the incident that had maimed Rory Burns and killed his mother, but they couldn’t take it any
further. The evidence literally went up in flames.’

‘But if Marlena had been riding that bike, how did Kristos find out? And when? The Sunday Clubbers had been meeting at Johnny’s Place for two years. He couldn’t have known from
the beginning surely. Why would he have waited so long for his revenge?’

Vogel paused, reflecting on this. ‘That’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it, revenge? And if this theory holds together, it was all about Marlena from the start.
Kristos planned to murder her, and all the other stuff was a smokescreen.’

Clarke agreed. ‘Poor Michelle Monahan was onto something, I reckon. That’s why she had to die.’

‘You know what, boss,’ Pam Jones interjected. ‘When Michelle was attacked in Brydges Place, she could well have just come from Kristos’s place. It’s just off the
top of St Martin’s Lane, so she’d have had to pass that alleyway to get from there to here.’

‘There were lock-picking tools in her pocket,’ interjected Carlisle. ‘Remember?’

‘Shit,’ said Vogel. ‘Perhaps she thought he was out and decided to break in. He could have walked in and found her there. But then, why didn’t he kill her there and
then?’ He tried to picture the scene in his mind. ‘Maybe he was at home all along. In bed asleep, or in the shower.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Yes, if she’d surprised
him, caught sight of him naked – a man with no dick and no balls – she’d have known. And it would have given her a chance to make a run for it.’

‘You’re getting carried away, Vogel,’ said Clarke. ‘We haven’t got evidence for any of that.’

‘We could at least try checking out whether Marlena had ever talked about having a pink motorcycle,’ said Vogel. ‘And if she did, did they all know about it? Did Kristos know?
That would be something.’

Clarke nodded. ‘We’ve got three of ’em here already, haven’t we? That leaves another three, including Greg Walker. We need him too, but go gently. Ask all three to come
in. Don’t arrest ’em, not this time. We need them on our side. Tell them we would like to share certain information before it becomes public knowledge and ask them to come here soon as
poss. And tell the three we’ve got banged up – Ari, Billy and Tiny – that they’re about to be released on police bail but we need a final chat. Tell them all that they may
be able to help us finally settle this.’

‘Right, boss,’ said Vogel.

‘Then get a doctor here,’ instructed Clarke. ‘I want Kristos or Burns or whatever his fucking name is fully examined before we go any further. If we’re right, his
physical condition should confirm that he’s Burns. Custody are about to get the hairdrier big time. Twice now they’ve had him undress and taken his clothes away. You’d think they
might have noticed he didn’t have a dick.’

‘You know how it is, boss, the prisoners always turn their backs, and nobody looks really,’ said Carlisle, who had been a custody officer before his transfer to CID.

Clarke flashed him a stony look.

‘I don’t give a damn how it is, Carlisle – and when I want your fucking opinion I’ll ask for it,’ she said. ‘Neither do I want any more fucking mistakes,
right? And let’s get our prisoner’s genitalia, or what remains of it, photographed and put on record.’

‘Right, boss,’ said Vogel again.

‘Oh, and go see the bastard in his cell. Tell him what’s happening. Let him realize his big secret is about to be revealed. Let him stew. We’ve still got bugger-all in hard
evid—’

Carlisle giggled.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, grow up, Carlisle, or I’ll have you back in uniform,’ said Clarke, glowering at the DC.

‘Our best hope is a confession,’ she continued. ‘Proving Kristos and Burns are the same person will be straightforward enough. Apart from his lack of genitalia, we can run a
comparison between the DNA samples we took when Kristos was first arrested and the samples taken when Burns attacked his foster mother back in 1990 – luckily for us, they pulled out all the
stops on that one; if it had been a routine case they wouldn’t have bothered with DNA samples back then. We’ll prove he’s Rory Burns, no question of that. But it’s going to
be a lot tougher pinning four murders on him. The evidence for the two King’s Cross victims, Marlena and Michelle – it’s all circumstantial. So far anyway.’

‘It’s got to be him,’ said Vogel.

‘Yep. You know that and I know that. But first the CPS have to be convinced and then a jury. We’ve checked out his alibi for Michelle’s murder, by the way – the
neighbour, Marnie. You were right: when pushed, she couldn’t be sure when Kristos was with her that day. Said he usually came round about nine, sometimes before. He banked on that, I
reckon.’

‘Well, that’s something, boss.’

‘Not enough. Just go put some fear into the bastard, Vogel. He’s too damned cool for my liking.’

‘Yes, guv,’ said Vogel.

He was getting up to leave when Clarke’s desk phone rang. She listened for a few seconds, then gestured for Vogel to wait.

‘We’ve had a call from a woman who works in the Covent Garden Veterinary Surgery,’ she said. ‘Apparently she’s only just seen a newspaper report mentioning that
Michelle had been mugged and her face disfigured not long before she was murdered. Says she put two and two together and reckons it was Michelle, wearing heavy make-up, dark glasses, and with a
baseball cap pulled down over her face, who visited the surgery on the morning of her murder. She was asking about the medical history of George Kristos’s dog.’

Vogel looked at Clarke enquiringly.

‘The dog was terminally ill, Vogel. And Kristos knew it. He’d been taking the creature to the vet regularly. It had cancer of the liver.’

‘Christ, so Kristos was about to lose his dog anyway. This is getting better, boss.’

‘Yep. But still not enough for a conviction. Let’s just see if we can’t break Kristos. Clinch it.’

Vogel left the room, taking Joe Carlisle with him.

He told Carlisle to get a doctor to the station to examine Kristos as soon as possible, to contact Bob and Alfonso, and to pass on DCI Clarke’s message to Ari, Billy, and Tiny in their
cells.

Hoping that Parlow and Wagstaff would call in soon with news of Greg Walker, Vogel was just about to head off to the cells to begin the process of trying to break Kristos when Carlisle halted
the phone call he was making and called after his DCI.

‘Guv, they reckon it’s going to be a couple of hours before they can get a doctor here,’ said the DC. ‘Apparently there’s been some sort of emergency . .
.’

Vogel set off for the cells, cursing under his breath. On the bright side, a two-hour delay would give him time to talk to the Sunday Clubbers. And it would mean Kristos would have plenty of
time to stew.

When the detective entered his cell, George Kristos was sitting bolt upright on the stone bench that served as a bed. His eyes instantly fixed on Vogel’s. It was as if he had been staring
at the door, waiting.

The cold gaze unnerved Vogel. He had to remind himself that he was the one who was supposed to be doing the unnerving. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Vogel had an idea of something that
might intimidate Kristos far more than the prospect of being tried for murder.

‘We have arranged for you to be seen by a doctor,’ he said. ‘Information has come to our attention that makes it necessary for you to undergo a full medical examination before
we formally interview you again.’

He knew that his language was stilted and awkward. It was deliberate. Vogel studied Kristos carefully. Was there just a flicker of something indecipherable in his eyes? Was the man blinking a
little more quickly?

‘Unfortunately it could be as long as two hours before an appropriate doctor can attend. Until that time you will be detained in this cell. Food and drink will be brought to you at the
requisite intervals. Is that clear?’

Kristos inclined his head slightly. Were his hands trembling? Vogel wasn’t sure of that either. Perhaps he had begun to imagine things.

‘I shall see you later then, Mr Kristos,’ said Vogel as he left the cell.

This time there was no reaction at all.

I will never allow myself to be violated again. The surgeons were as bad, in some ways, as the woman who had destroyed me. I still found it hard to believe that they could
not have saved some part of my manhood.

I read, many years later, of transplants and reconstructions, but after what I had been through I would never again put myself at the mercy of the medical profession. They had left me like
this. Not even half a man. And as I had grown into what would have been puberty, in a young offenders’ centre, with vandals and rapists and idiots, neither they nor anyone else knew of my
inner agony. They did not realize that I too had sexual feelings. That the torture of adolescence was also mine. Testosterone raged inside me, just as it did in the bodies of my fellow inmates who
passed for normal.

The last time I saw a doctor was when I was seventeen, the year before I left the young offenders’ centre. The ignorant bitch sat there in her white coat and stethoscope and told me
that as I had lost my testicles as well as my penis, I would not suffer from any sexual desires I may be unable to satisfy.

Was she not aware that it is not only the testes which produce male hormones? The adrenal glands also do so. Not enough to deliver any sort of sexual satisfaction – especially in one
who lacks the required equipment – but enough to drive me mad with sexual frustration. Particularly in my teens.

I have not been near a doctor since. My knowledge of my condition, and the drugs I have used to manage it, have all come from the Internet.

When they let me out of that dreadful institution, a place where everyone knew what had happened to me, where the staff and the inmates all knew that I was a freak, I vowed that I would
reinvent myself. I would learn how to pass for normal. I thought if I could become an actor I could teach myself to perform off stage as well as on.

And, indeed, my whole life since I was eighteen has been a performance.

But first I had to acquire a new identity. As long as I remained Rory Burns I would always be the freak with no balls and no prick. I would never be able to get beyond that.

The whole time I was in the Edinburgh halfway house, I was just awaiting the right opportunity, obeying my licence to the letter, reporting like a good boy to my probation officer, behaving
myself perfectly – apart from the small matter of my two visits to King’s Cross.

Although I had no money, I was clean and tidy and well-mannered, so it was easy enough for me to hitch-hike to London. I’d read about King’s Cross and how the prostitutes lurked
there, wanton and lustful, worthless in the eyes of the Lord. Unable to find the one who had been responsible for my destruction – the evil bitch Marlena having yet to be revealed unto me
– I needed to release the anger within. I needed to vent my wrath, to worship at the altar of retribution. With my sacrificial blade I violated their secret places and ripped out their
womanhood. And then I returned to the halfway house.

It was only after I sacrificed my second victim that I found out she was not a prostitute. She was a student nurse from Sweden who had strayed into that place of depravity by accident. I
watched the girl’s parents on television, weeping as they told of how she’d wanted only to devote her life to God. She had been pure – a virgin as I was and would always
remain.

God showed me His wrath then. I began to have violent headaches. I would wake up in the night in a terrible sweat and quaking with fear. Sometimes pains would course through my whole body. I
knew that God was punishing me for causing the death of one of His chosen children. I listened to His voice. I vowed I would never again give in to my base urges. There must be no more wanton
killing. Instead I would dedicate my life to becoming someone else.