Wages of Sin (20 page)

Agnes Blake smiled with satisfaction. ‘That's what I mean, our Lucy. Discipline! I expect it's just what they need. If Percy puts them back on the straight and narrow, they'll be grateful to him in the years ahead.'

Percy Peach beamed with satisfaction at the thought of the tattooed yobbos who would be saved by his firmness. ‘Social worker in disguise, I am, Mrs B. Cruel only to be kind, that's me. I only wish I had people around me who were as intelligent as you, able to take the long-term view and see that I'm really a bright angel in heavy disguise!'

Even the smiling Mrs Blake was taken aback for a moment by this unlikely image, and Lucy took advantage of this to say contemptuously, ‘Some angel! More like a Japanese warlord he is, the way he lays into them. You haven't seen him at work, Mum! Reduces burly young thugs to tears, he does. Well, nearly to tears, anyway.'

The two faces on the other side of the table beamed at her in delighted unison at this evidence of huge talent, and she sensed that she was never going to win this argument. Percy winked at her and bit into her mother's fruit cake. There was a moment of contented silence from the duo before Agnes Blake switched effortlessly into the minor key and said plaintively, ‘Anyway, we'll never know how good a father he'd make if he's never given the chance, will we, Percy?'

Lucy thought that the question would shatter his air of content, but he said with scarcely a pause, ‘That's quite right, Mrs B. You hit the nail on the head with your usual precision. If a man's never been tested, it's not fair to judge him, is it? At the moment, I have to do the best I can to be an unofficial father to the shattered young humanity that passes through my world.' He cast his eyes contentedly at the ceiling and assumed the most seraphic of his many smiles.

Lucy couldn't help herself. She burst out laughing at the absurdity of the thought and said, ‘Bloody hell, Percy!'

‘Language, our Lucy!' said Agnes Blake primly.

Two of the people in the room were enjoying her birthday tea very much indeed.

Only a single, shadeless, sixty-watt bulb lit up the deserted caretaker's room at the end of the church youth club. Father Devoy pulled on the dark-blue anorak he always wore for these nocturnal expeditions.

He pulled the hood up over his head as he went out into the night. Though it was the coldest night of the winter so far, this was for concealment, not warmth. The sky was clearer than he would have wished, much clearer. The stars seemed to give almost as much light as the dim street lighting in the narrow side streets of the town, and the sliver of moon seemed unnaturally bright. There was not a cloud to be seen; he had never prowled the streets before on a night as clear as this.

A prowler: that is what he was now. Or what this other side of the priest who operated by day was. He tried to hurt himself with that word ‘prowler', to lacerate the man who took over when he went out on to the streets of Brunton like this. But it was too late for that now: there was no hurt from the word: it was merely an accurate description. John Devoy moved forward with no more than a grim tightening of the mouth.

He was not sure what he was going to do, why he had ventured out so soon after his last night of sin. Impulse had driven him, an impulse that was so strong that he had scarcely attempted to resist it. Was it going to be always like this now, then? Had he lost the will to fight the Devil? Would he have no control over his actions as this lust moved into the very blood of his body, coursing obscenely through his veins, preparing to tighten like a vice-like grip upon his very soul?

John Devoy stood for a moment in the darkness of the doorway of a closed corner shop, hearing the faint sound of Asian music from the back of the building, wondering for a moment how his life might have differed if he had been born into that other and very different culture. But then the blood pounded anew in his temples, driving out that speculation, pounding away all rational thought, until his only release was in physical movement.

His steps took him to where he felt he had always been heading. There was an inevitability about this, a feeling that something outside himself had brought him here, was leading him onwards, would release him only when he had finished what he must do tonight. He was becoming calmer with his movement. It was a cold calm, which seemed to make his body more than naturally strong.

And then he sighted the girl.

She was exactly where he had thought she would be. His sense of fulfilling a destiny, of acting at the behest of some agency outside himself, grew as he glimpsed her. He had always known she would be there, despite the coldness of the night. Evil did not yield to climate.

He was in no hurry, now that he was here. His limbs felt suddenly light, as if he was floating on water, letting the current buoy him up and take him where it would. One of the street lamps was broken, and he stood in the shadows beneath its standard for a moment, watching the girl move uncertainly along the kerb, seventy yards ahead of him. Uncertainly. Was there hope still, even for a whore, if she was uncertain in what she did, if the Devil did not have her yet securely in his goatish grasp?

John Devoy moved smoothly forward, as if on wheels powered by some unseen force.

He was almost upon her before she turned, flashing her thigh through the slit in her skirt. ‘Looking for a bit of fun, love?'

The same words she had used to him on Friday. Was that only three tortured nights ago? She reached for his hand, tried to draw it beneath her skirt, to press it throbbing against the warmth of her hidden, private, exotically scented parts.

And for a moment he almost let her. Then he snatched his hand back before she could control it, as if her touch had been red-hot. ‘I haven't the money. Not tonight!' he gasped hoarsely.

Toyah Burgess was disturbed at the desperate note in his voice. She thought she might have seen him before, but she couldn't be certain of that; he had the light behind him, and the hood of his anorak over his head. She could see nothing of his face, and that made him infinitely more sinister. She said uncertainly, ‘You'll get value for money, love. That's what counts, isn't it?'

The same words again! Exactly the same! How many other men had heard those words in the last three nights as the whore practised her trade? The words she had used for him, the words he had thought at the time were individual. He said, ‘You shouldn't be doing this. I've come to save you from yourself.'

Toyah Burgess was suddenly afraid. They still hadn't caught the man who'd killed that girl ten days ago, not half a mile from here. She said, ‘Look, mister, I'm a working girl. If you haven't got the money for it, get on your way and leave me to earn a living.'

‘You don't understand. I'm here to save your immortal soul. To save the souls of the deluded men who go with you.'

A religious nutter. That was all she needed, with the cold biting into her bones and a murderer lurking in the town. Toyah said, ‘Look, mate, not everyone shares your beliefs, do they? Some men want a good time, and I'm one of the girls who can give them a good time. Simple as that, you see. You're wasting valuable working time for me, so if you don't want the goods, will you please piss off!'

So young, and so far gone in sin! John Devoy flicked the hood of the anorak back, saw her shy away for an instant as if he had struck her, and was riven with pity for the sinner. He spoke urgently. ‘You must listen to me! There is still time for you. The Lord is merciful, but you must heed His message.'

Toyah Burgess was suddenly annoyed with him. ‘I'm not doing anyone any harm. I'm bringing pleasure to people. Helping lonely men to get their ends away is a social service. You can't see it, mate, but it's probably preventing rape and violence, if you only knew it.'

‘The wages of sin is death. I'm here to give you that message. To prevent you spending the glories of your body where they should not be spent. To prevent you from spreading your corruption among others.'

She backed away from him as his voice rose, and he moved forward after her, so that the light of the street lamp fell harsh and full upon his face. Toyah knew the man now. He had been with her on Friday night, had spent himself within her, violently, urgently, with a desperate release.

She saw the grey hairs at his temples, silver in the white light of the lamp. Yet his face in its vehemence still looked youthful, almost boyish. She was unnerved by this strange mixture of the biblical and the juvenile, wanted to look up and down the street to see if any relieving presence might be at hand. Yet something prevented her from taking her eyes from this man's face. She was aware how feeble her own voice sounded against his ringing conviction as she said, ‘Look, let's just agree to differ, shall we? You go your way, and I'll—'

‘No! We can't agree to differ, this is far too important. You must see that your immortal soul is in danger. You are acting as an instrument of the Devil, and taking fallible men with you into perdition.' His eyes were wild, and he lifted his hands suddenly towards her head.

Too suddenly, for before she could move, he had his hands on the thin chiffon scarf she had donned as her only concession to the cold. She felt his fingers touch her cheeks, then run up and down her throat. They were surprisingly warm, when she had expected them to be icy. ‘Please leave me alone!' she said, her voice breathy with the fear she could no longer control.

‘I cannot do that! You must see that I cannot do that. You are not only a sinner, but the occasion of sin in others. We men are but weak vessels at the best of times. We need protection from the wiles of Satan. The temptation must be removed from our paths if we are to survive.'

His eyes glittered with conviction in the harsh white light of the street lamp. He was looking not at her but past her, as if he saw some demon that must be exorcized. Toyah Burgess felt his hands fastening upon the thin stuff of her chiffon scarf, felt it tightening about her throat, strove in vain to discover words which would bring him back to her.

A car turned into the street, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards away from the pair who stood frozen as statues beneath the street light. Toyah did not dare turn to watch it: its lights seemed to her to be advancing towards them with a dreadful slowness. She tore herself from beneath those awful hands, turned her back upon her challenger, moved as quickly as she dared away from him.

Something told her not to try to run. In her tight skirt and high heels, she could never outdistance a pursuer. And somehow she knew that if she ran, she would be pursued. Her heart thumped in her chest, in her temples, in her ears, so that she could hear nothing else as she marched as quickly as her dress allowed down the street.

But he was not following her. She was at the corner of the street before she risked looking back. He was still beneath the street light, motionless, staring down at his hands as if they belonged to someone else.

P
each rang Tucker on the internal telephone. ‘The forensic audiologist is here, sir. Shall I bring him up?'

‘Er—'

‘He's a busy man, sir. Has to be away in quarter of an hour. But you said you wanted to see him.'

‘Did I? I'd really rather you dealt with—'

‘The voice expert, sir.' Peach took pity on Tucker and himself. There was no time to be wasted this morning, even on making a fool of Tommy Bloody Tucker. ‘The man who's going to give us an opinion on how genuine that Birmingham phone call was.'

‘Ah!' With that single syllable of understanding, Peach could almost see the relief on his chief's face from two storeys below him. ‘The man who's analysed the tape of that phone call on Saturday night. Well, don't keep him waiting there, bring him straight up here. And you'd better wait and hear what he has to say yourself, DCI Peach.'

Silly sod's switched into his assertive mode, thought Peach without rancour. He took his bearded visitor up the stairs and ushered him into the Chief Superintendent's room.

Tucker announced himself as the man in charge of ‘this most interesting case' and outlined what he thought had happened so far in the investigation. Even with some notable omissions, this took some time, and the man with the beard and the expert knowledge eventually glanced at his watch. ‘I have to be at the University by ten o'clock,' he explained apologetically.

‘Well, what is it you have to tell us?' asked a ruffled Tucker.

‘Not a lot. In my opinion, the caller was a genuine Midlander. Almost certainly a man brought up in Birmingham or within ten miles of the city.'

‘Ah! You realize that this may mean that we have a serial killer on our hands? There have been two similar murders in the last year in the Birmingham area.'

He spoke so aggressively that the bearded expert said, ‘I can only tell you that this voice was not a hoax, in the sense that the man was not in my view assuming an accent. What you make of that information is a police matter.'

Tucker nodded sagely and stroked his chin, almost as if he wished for a moment that he too had a beard to give him extra gravitas. Then he stood up and donned the cloak of diplomacy he reserved for important members of the general public. ‘It is most gratifying when citizens recognize it as their duty to come forward to offer their expertise like this,' he said unctuously.

‘I didn't. Chief Inspector Peach asked me for an expert opinion. I've been paid for my services. The voice on the tape is that of a man who's spent most or all of his life in Birmingham; he's probably between twenty and forty-five, though I couldn't be positive about that if I was under oath in court. And now, unless you've any further questions, I must be on my way.'

The forensic audiologist had already formed an accurate opinion of Tommy Bloody Tucker's talents. Peach smiled at him appreciatively as he showed him out. When he returned, Tucker was drumming his fingers on his desk. ‘I'll get in touch with our colleagues in the Birmingham CID. Tell them the man they haven't caught there is spreading his net wider. Ask them to check carefully on all the lorry drivers and commercial travellers they've interviewed in connection with those two murders down there.' His nose was lifted higher than usual, as if he had caught the scent of the quarry and the hunt was on.