Mike laughed. “Tell that to my wife.”
CHAPTER 13
Rivers scanned the death notices in the local newspaper, making pertinent notes on a small notepad. George Moulton, aged 82 years, died in the City General, funeral service at Acton Parish Church on Friday 21st at 10.30 a.m. Joyce Carroll, aged 93 died at home, service at St Michael’s Church on Monday 24th at 11.40 a.m. Wolfe Weaver, aged 35 years, at home in Little Herbert, committal at Crematorium on Thursday 20th at 11 a.m.
People didn’t realise how much valuable information they were giving away when they made the announcements in the local newspapers. By using a phone book or various paid for internet services, Rivers could soon find the deceased’s address – of course he always ignored common names such as Smith and Jones. Then all he had to do was search Google Street View to check out whether the property looked like it would contain anything of value. If it was a terraced house in a gritty area, he discounted it as it wouldn’t be worth his while. If it was a large residence in an affluent area, then he did a little more research. He could also check Google Earth, which he used to check whether the property was overlooked, the surrounding terrain and also to plan various escape routes. Technology was a wonderful thing.
He leaned back in his leather director’s chair and laced his fingers behind his head. His robbery the other day had netted him nearly £2,000. Some of the money he used to live on, the rest he saved. He now had a tidy nest egg squirreled away.
On the desk in front of him was a laptop computer, the newspaper, a phonebook, notepad and four pens. He scribbled a few notes in the pad and then put the pen down, adjusting its placement so that it aligned with the other pens. There was a single bookcase on the wall to his right, filled with various books on history and thriller paperbacks by authors such as Koontz and Deaver. All of the books were lined up in alphabetical order.
The large bay window in front of him looked out on the paved back garden. A small patio table and a stack of four chairs stood in the shade of next door’s large beech tree. He hated that tree, hated the way it decorated his patio with leaves in the autumn.
Rivers picked up the phone book and scanned through it for G. Moulton. Luckily, there was only one listed and he phoned the number using a pay as you go mobile phone that couldn’t be traced.
The call was answered on the seventh ring.
“Hello,” a woman said.
“Ah, hello, could I talk to George Moulton please?”
“No, I’m afraid he … he passed away the other day.”
“My condolences. I had no idea.” Rivers disconnected the call. Bingo. He jotted down the address next to the name, then looked for Joyce Carroll. Of course, if the phone was registered in her husband’s name, then he wouldn’t find it, but some names were so unusual, there were only one or two listed anyway.
There were nine listed. None of them had the initial J, so he rang through them all until he struck gold.
Next he looked for W. Weaver. There were eighteen Weaver’s listed, but none with the initial W. He called them all anyway, without success. Ten of them didn’t answer, and of those that did, they didn’t know a Wolfe. Of course, not everyone was listed in the phone book. That meant he had to utilize the next tool in his arsenal, the internet. There were various avenues open to him. One was a search of the local electoral register.
He looked at the name again. Wolfe Weaver. Something about it was familiar. Then it came to him. Unless there were a couple of people with the same unusual name – which he doubted – he was an artist who had some involvement with that serial killer case last year.
Thirty five. Jesus. He had died young.
The death notice didn’t give any details as to how he had died, but if it was the artist, he imagined the house would probably be full of valuable stuff. The man was loaded. He recalled that after the serial killer case, Weaver had started exhibiting and selling a lot of work. How ironic if he had died so young and couldn’t take advantage of his newfound wealth.
Rivers right palm started to itch and he scratched it. Left to lose. Right to gain, he thought, smiling to himself. This was going to be sweet.
CHAPTER 14
The man stared down at the river, watched the small eddies swirl around in the muddy water that pumped around the city like a bloody artery. The sound of traffic could be heard in the distance.
He held his hands out over the edge of the stone bridge, stared at the cracks and crevices across his palms. A map of violence. Remembering what he had done, he felt nothing. No guilt. No shame. No remorse. Nothing. The only thing he felt was empty, and hungry.
Looking beyond his hands, he could see himself reflected in the water, a dark smudge against a grey sky.
He turned and started to walk along the path that followed the course of the river. Further up ahead he heard voices, laughter, and through the hedge to his side, he saw a play area with swings, slides, roundabouts and climbing frames. There were a few children playing, their parents sat around watching. A little girl, her dark hair in bunches, screamed in delight as she careered down the slide.
The scream set something off in the man’s head that put him on high alert. He narrowed his eyes and ducked behind a tree. He equated a scream to pain. In his mind’s eye he saw a man lined up against a chipped and stained wall, his eyes blindfolded. Then shots rang out and bullets pierced his body, throwing arabesque splashes of blood across the wall. The bullets that missed the man chipped the brickwork, sending up little puffs of dust.
Then he saw a man kneeling, his head on a block. Next an executioner stepped forward, raised an axe and brought it down with a thud, severing the man’s head from his shoulders with one blow. Blood jettisoned out like the froth from a bottle of champagne, a celebration of death.
He saw more images, his visions a cerebral kaleidoscope. A naked, dark skinned Asian woman being tortured, long needles forced beneath her fingernails, her scream like that of a wild beast. Sweat dripped down her body, ran between her breasts. The torturer then proceeded to slide the long needles through her breasts, turning them into obscene pincushions. The woman’s face was scrunched up in agony, her eyes dark pits of hatred for the man torturing her.
The vision excited the man, and after a moment he realised there was a bulge in his trousers that had nothing to do with the woman’s nakedness. He came out of his reverie and looked back at the children. Now he needed to sate another hunger.
Feed
Eat
Starve
Emaciated
Gaunt
Skeletal
Bones
Blood
He crept through a gap in the hedge, ran across the open space and leaned his back against the side wall of a public convenience. His breath came in short sharp bursts, his heart pounding, part exhilaration, part exertion.
He peered around the corner, stared at the screamer as she scampered back up the steps to the top of the slide before launching herself down again.
She was dressed in jeans and a My Little Pony t-shirt, and was probably about five years of age. He didn’t know who she was with, but a couple of parents were sitting chatting on a bench about twenty feet away from the slide. The man wondered how much blood there was in such a small body.
Killing would satisfy the pressure-cooker urge threatening to make him explode, but she wasn’t fair sport. He needed more of a challenge. He closed his eyes, took a couple of deep breaths. Perhaps one of the parents would do.
The man’s palms grew slick with sweat and he rubbed them along his thighs. A sudden loud bark originated beside the man and he looked down to see a pit bull terrier standing with its legs braced wide apart, teeth bared.
The barking drew the attention of the parents seated on the bench and they stood up and looked towards the toilet block. The man grimaced and scuttled backwards. He glared at the dog and then walked away without looking back.
CHAPTER 15
Rivers looked at the three story property, marvel
ling at how well designed it was. With its slanted roof, it looked almost like some strange pyramid. Statues adorned the front lawn, but they were cracked and split, seemingly held together by moss and fungus. Rivers guessed it was some artistic thing.
He had performed his usual checks and found that the house was ideally positioned for what he had in mind. The nearest neighbour was hundreds of yards away, their property hardly visible through the trees in the distance.
He glanced at his watch, 10:55 a.m. The funeral was scheduled to take place in five minutes, and although he had been monitoring the property for a couple of hours, he hadn’t seen a soul, so the procession was probably starting out from somewhere else.
The wind whistled around his car and he tapped the steering wheel. He’d give it another couple of minutes and then he’d go and ring the doorbell. If no one answered, then the job was on.
Seconds ticked over into minutes and eventually Rivers exited his car and jogged back along the road. He proceeded up the drive, an excuse about needing some water for his radiator already prepared in case anyone answered. When he reached the porch, he rang the bell and then waited. When no one came to the door, he rang the bell again, then satisfied that the house was empty; he walked around the side of the property. He had found long ago that if you acted as though you belonged somewhere, then people didn’t challenge you. It was only when you started acting all suspicious and guilty that the trouble started.
The back of the house seemed taller than the front and it sloped down at one end. A large bay window was surrounded by a series of small circular windows that distracted the eye. Just beyond the house was a shale Zen garden punctuated by three tall rocks, and in the distance, across the rolling lawn, was a small crescent shaped plot of tall trees.
Rivers could hear water trickling somewhere and he recalled spotting a small stream at the foot of the garden when he perused Google Earth.
He had noticed an alarm on the front of the property, but it was situated where it would be impossible to reach without a ladder, so he couldn’t deaden it with foam. This time, he was going to have to bypass it.
But of course to do that, he had to know what sort of security was in place. People put too much trust in their alarms, little realising that they could be compromised. Whether it was a magnetic switch or a passive infra-red detector, they all had their weak spot.
Rivers first had to ascertain what he was up against. The system would undoubtedly be a local system that sounded the alarm, rather than a monitored system that alerted the police or a security agency. Many of the former systems actually advertised the fact, hoping that it proved more of a deterrent, but they actually gave the burglar helpful information that could be used to deactivate them.
Rivers removed his backpack, opened it up and withdrew a compass. He held it in his fingers and slowly moved it around the patio doorframe. The needle pointed due north and stayed steady as he swept it along the bottom and sides of the frame. To check the top, he held the compass upside down and slowly moved it from left to right. Just before he reached the end, the needle twitched and swung around to point at the house, indicating the presence of a magnetic switch.
As Weaver probably had some expensive items in his house, Rivers expected that the magnetic contacts were only the first line of defence. He put the compass back in his backpack and withdrew a battery powered drill with a long masonry bit and drilled a hole in the brickwork above the contacts. Then he took out a fiberscope, which was a flexible fibre optic bundle with an eyepiece on one end and a lens on the other, and pushed it through the hole to allow him to see the magnetic contacts. Luckily, the wires were visible, which allowed him to push a homemade crimp tool that he had designed himself through the hole. Using the fiberscope to see what he was doing, he pulled the wires together and then crimped them with a gel filled crimp with crocodile teeth that made contact with the wire within the plastic sheath, shorting the circuit.
Rivers smiled to himself at his own ingenuity, then he packed his stuff away and took out his lock pick set. Minutes later, he was inside the house.
He walked along the corridor, puzzling over some of the paintings on the wall, which showed large splashes of colour against dark backgrounds. Of course, none of them were worth stealing, because unless he stole to order for someone who wanted one, he wouldn’t be able to sell them on as they were likely to be traced. No, he needed small, easily fenced merchandise.
At the end of the corridor, he entered a workshop full of statues. They were some of the most grotesque looking things Rivers had ever seen, fashioned to look like mutilated corpses. He shook his head. Did people really pay good money for these? If so, he was in the wrong line of work.
A couple of the pieces were covered by a large, white sheet, but Rivers didn’t have time to investigate. The clock was ticking. Anyone related to the deceased would probably be attending the funeral, but he couldn’t be certain no one else would call at the house, so he needed to act fast.
He made his way across the room when a loud bang emanated from behind him. Rivers spun around and his heart leapt into his throat when he saw a man with a ponytail standing beside the door, arms folded across his chest.
Rivers’ tongue felt as though it had expanded to fill his throat. His eyes went wide and he shook his head. It wasn’t possible.
He recognised the man from a picture he’d seen on the internet. “Wolfe Weaver. You’re … you’re supposed to be dead.”
Wolfe held his arms out, looked at them and then shook his head. “’Fraid not.”
Rivers didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he wasn’t hanging around to find out. He started running, heading towards the door at the rear of the room when one of the white sheets moved, billowing up like a ghost right before his eyes. Rivers let out a gargled breath and skidded to a stop. The sheet sailed through the air, revealing a man hidden underneath.
“You took your time. I was starting to sweat like a pig underneath there.”
Rivers tried to swallow, but he couldn’t work up enough saliva to wet his throat. He glanced around the room, looking for an escape route, then fuelled by fear, he ran.
He slid underneath a table cluttered with chisels and mallets, exited the other side and rolled to his feet, then vaulted over a bench without breaking stride. There was a strange statue in the middle of the room, with its limbs splayed out. Rivers ran towards it, diving the last few feet and placing his hands on the splayed limbs and then bringing his legs through, between his arms, to land feet first on the other side.
The man from under the sheet had run across to block his path, so Rivers sidestepped and ran at a 45 degree angle to the wall to his right, performing a Tic-Tac move, which involved practically running up the wall, and then somersaulting to his side over the man barring his way. As he passed overhead, he saw the man looking up at him, his mouth open in surprise.
Rivers landed on his feet, knees bending to take the strain, and then he ran on, powering forwards, his legs pistons of muscle and sinew.
A blur of movement caught his eye, but he didn’t have time to work out what it was when something struck him across the chest. Pain blossomed from the spot where he had been hit and radiated throughout his body. He gritted his teeth, his upper body virtually stopped dead while his legs carried on moving, sending him flying before landing painfully on his backpack, the contents of which gouged his skin.
Rivers grunted and clutched at his chest to quell the pain, brought his knees up to his stomach as he rolled onto his side, groaning.
He heard footsteps approaching and peered up through narrowed eyes to see Wolfe standing over him, a broom in his hands, the handle of which he deduced had been used to hit him with.
The other man walked up beside him. “The Obituary Man, I presume.”
“What are you on about?”
The man withdrew a police ID. “My name’s Prosper Snow and you’re nicked.”
Rivers stomach contracted, but he tried not to le
t the emotion show on his face. Although he had contemplated being caught, he never thought it would happen – was something that happened to those less proficient, those who probably deserved to get caught by their stupidity. He clenched his jaw.
“You’ve got it all wrong.” Rivers held up his hands in supplication. “I … I saw the door was open and came inside to investigate.”
“Get up.”
Rivers didn’t move.
“I said, get up.”
“I can’t. I think he broke my fucking ribs. I’m going to sue.”
Prosper and Wolfe grabbed Rivers underneath each arm and jerked him to his feet. Rivers stared at his captors, wincing as Wolfe squeezed hard.
“Hey, this is fucking police brutality.”
“If I was a police officer, then you might have a point,” Wolfe said.
Rivers saw Prosper glare at Wolfe.
“Hold on.” Rivers stood up straight. “I can make you a deal.”
“Deal?” Prosper snapped. “You’re in no position to be offering deals. You’ll be going to prison for a long time.”
“There must be something.” He paused. “Look, I can pay you.”
Prosper wrinkled his nose. “Are you trying to bribe me?”
“But—”
“But nothing.” Prosper withdrew a pair of handcuffs.
“What is this anyway, some sort of setup? Wolfe was supposed to be dead.”
Wolfe grinned. “And don’t I make a lovely corpse?”
Prosper exhaled slowly. “Well, there is one chance you can save yourself.”
Rivers skewed his lips. “Save myself?”
Prosper nodded. “I can use someone with your … gift.”
“Gift?”
“Breaking and entering.”
Rivers frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m giving you a get out of jail free card.”
“For doing what?”
“Let’s just say that if you do one job for me, then I’ll let you go.”
Prosper Snow Series Page 32
