Deadly Obsession

by OMJ Ryan

  Clever bastard, thought Phillips.

  Sims limped heavily, very unsteady on his feet. Anderson appeared to be in no rush, holding Sims from behind as he moved in unison, edging sideways and staying out of the snipers’ sights. As they reached the side of the van, Anderson began to step backwards, clutching Sims closer still.

  Something flashed into Phillips’s mind about the Dennehy murders. Rushing back to the car, she jumped in the passenger seat and closed the door to block out the noise, then grabbed the radio. ‘X-Ray Eleven, this is Mike Charlie One. What can you see beyond the van? From where we are, it looks like the brow of a hill. What’s behind that hill?’

  ‘This is X-Ray Eleven. It looks like a drainage ditch of some kind. But if that’s his escape route, he’ll struggle to get through it. The water level appears very high.’

  Phillips recalled Entwistle’s briefing on Dennehy earlier that evening: at the time of her arrest, Dennehy had been nicknamed the Peterborough Ditch Murderer – because she dumped the bodies of her first two victims in drainage ditches outside the Cambridgeshire city. ‘X-Ray Eleven. How far away is the ditch from the suspect’s position, now?’

  ‘About forty feet.’

  Phillips leapt from the car and shouted to Jones and Bovalino, ‘There’s a drainage ditch on the other side of that hill. He’s gonna kill Sims and throw him in it, like Dennehy.’ Without waiting, she raced to Matthews’s position. ‘Can you get a shot?’

  ‘No, Ma’am. He’s tucked in right behind the hostage. If we shoot, we could kill them both.’

  As Jones and Bovalino appeared at her side, Phillips turned back to face Sims and Anderson, still moving slowly backwards through the mud. She was certain that as soon as Anderson crested that hill, Sims was as good as dead. She also knew that if they went in after him, mob-handed, Anderson wouldn’t hesitate to slit Sims’s throat before they could reach him. In that moment, she felt completely helpless, bereft of ideas.

  ‘Guv, if TFU can’t get a shot, we should go in after him!’ Jones shouted in her ear.

  ‘It’s too risky. As soon as he feels threatened, he’ll kill Sims.’

  ‘So what else can we do?’

  Phillips stared at the two men moving backwards through the field, ever closer to the brow of the hill and almost certain death for Sims. Suddenly, she knew exactly what she had to do. She turned to Jones and Bovalino. ‘It’s me he’s been playing games with. My attention he seems to crave. I’m going in.’

  ‘No way!’ Jones protested. ‘Not again, Guv.’

  ‘We can’t let you do that, boss,’ added Bovalino.

  ‘We don’t have a choice. Every murder so far has been an exact copy of the historical crime. This time he’s copying Joanna Dennehy. She stabbed her victims and threw them in a ditch. That's exactly what he’s gonna do now. I have to go in alone. It’s the only way Sims is coming out alive. Plus, one of our own is lying in the back of that van, probably bleeding to death. We can’t wait any longer.’

  ‘So how do you plan on stopping him all by yourself?’ asked Jones.

  ‘I’ll talk him down. Make him see sense.’

  Jones continued, ‘And what if this has been Anderson’s plan all along? To draw you out so he could kill you?’

  ‘I don’t believe it is. He’s a stickler for detail, and Dennehy never attacked women. Only men. And besides, if he does come after me, at least the TFU have the chance at a clear shot.’ She offered a weak smile, but in truth, she was terrified. ‘We need to hurry. Get me a stab vest and get rid of that bloody helicopter. I need to be able to talk to him.’

  The field fell eerily quiet as the helicopter moved higher into the sky. Search lights from the TFU vehicles had replaced the spotlight from overhead, so the ground remained illuminated.

  Having pulled on her wellies from the boot of the car, and with a stab vest secured around her torso, Phillips raised her arms in surrender and stepped off the track and into the mud, moving slowly in the direction of the van.

  Up ahead, about twenty yards beyond the stranded vehicle, Anderson stopped and pulled the knife tighter to Sims’s throat. ‘Stay where you are!’ he shouted to Phillips.

  Stopping for a second, she kept her hands in the air. ‘I just want to talk, Gabriel.’

  ‘You must think I’m bloody stupid or something.’

  ‘I’m unarmed. I just want to talk. Please, Gabriel. No one wants to hurt you.’

  ‘Well then, tell them to put down their weapons.’

  ‘If I tell them to do that, can I come a bit closer?’ asked Phillips.

  Anderson glanced at the team of men, rifles at the ready, and nodded. ‘Ok.’

  Keeping her hands in the air, Phillips turned to face the team behind her. ‘Everyone, drop your weapons.’

  Matthews and his men didn’t respond.

  ‘Do it now!’ roared Phillips. ‘That’s an order.’

  This time, the team reluctantly complied.

  Phillips turned back around and worked her way through the sticky mud until she was within ten feet of Anderson.

  ‘That’s close enough!’ Anderson shouted.

  Phillips stood still.

  Sims groaned weakly, and Anderson pulled the blade tighter against his throat. ‘One more sound out of you and you’re a dead man,’ he growled in his ear.

  From her position, she could see that Sims was in a lot of pain and still losing blood from a deep gash in his left thigh. His skin appeared ashen in the spotlights, his clothes soaked from the torrential rain. Anderson, on the other hand, looked surreal with his beanie, long hair and facial tattoo, his wide eyes almost black. He was totally unrecognisable from the quiet, unassuming doctor Phillips had met at the Manchester Central Surgery just a few weeks ago.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Phillips,’ Anderson leered. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this.’

  ‘Do you mind if I put my arms down? They’re killing me,’ said Phillips.

  ‘No pun intended,’ Anderson chuckled to himself.

  Phillips ignored him. ‘Lachlan needs urgent medical attention, Gabriel.’

  ‘Not where he’s going, he doesn’t.’

  ‘And where exactly is that?’

  Anderson nodded backwards, behind him. ‘In the ditch.’

  ‘Why do you want to do that?’

  ‘Because that’s how this ends, Jane.’

  Phillips paused and stared deep into his wild eyes. ‘How what ends?’

  ‘The game, of course. Which I am winning.’

  ‘Why is winning this game of yours so important to you, Gabriel?’

  ‘Call me Gabe.’

  ‘If that’s what you want, Gabe. So, please, tell me why winning is so important to you?’

  Anderson’s face twisted with rage. ‘Because I’ve been as loser my whole life! Constantly told I’m weak. Not good enough. Pathetic.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Him! That bastard!’

  ‘Who, Gabe? Tell me who said those things to you, Gabe.’ She deliberately repeated his name in an attempt to build a rapport.

  ‘My father, of course. That vicious, nasty piece of work. From the moment my mother died, it started. “You’re not good enough. You’re a useless piece of shit.”’ Anderson began imitating his father. ‘“Why did your mother die and you get to live? You’re a pathetic boy! A total fucking loser!” Well, I showed him, didn’t I? He’s not laughing now. Mr High-and-Mighty Detective Sergeant Sonny. The man who cared more about total bloody strangers than his own son. Well, at least that’s what I thought I was, until he revealed his big secret a few days ago!’

  Phillips frowned as the image of Bert’s maggot-infested body – dead for at least a month – flashed in her mind’s eye. ‘What do you mean, his big secret?’

  ‘He finally told me the truth. Finally came clean about why he’s despised me for so long.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘It turns out that, after crying myself to sleep as a child, night a
fter night, year after year, wondering what I’d done to deserve the beatings, the insults, the mental abuse, I’m not even his fucking son. My saint of a mother wasn’t such a saint, after all. She had an affair, and I was the result.’

  ‘You said your father told you this a few days ago. Where was that?’

  ‘At home. In bed. Barking his orders, as usual. Telling me what a shit son I am, how I’m never there. That he could die and I wouldn’t care.’ Anderson pointed at himself. ‘I spend most of my life at that house. I have a baby boy I never see because of him.’

  ‘Why, Gabe? Why are you always at Bert’s house?’

  ‘Taking care of him, of course. The stubborn old shit got cancer, but refused to get treatment in hospital. Doesn’t trust doctors after Mum died in hospital, so I’ve had to look after him at home, sorting out his bed baths, turning him to avoid bed sores, feeding him, even syphoning off extra morphine from all the different practices I work at to ease his pain. How dare he tell me I don’t care? I’m the only fucking reason he’s still alive.’

  Phillips’s eyes narrowed. ‘Gabe. Your father’s dead.’

  Anderson laughed nervously. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘I’m telling you, Gabe. He’s dead.’

  You’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not, I promise you.’

  Anderson scoffed. ‘What? So he died in the last few hours, did he? How convenient.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. In fact, our forensic team believe he died over a month ago.’

  Anderson’s lip began to tremble as he pulled the knife back against Sims’s throat. ‘You’re lying!’

  Phillips raised her palms in surrender. ‘You don’t need to do that.’

  ‘You’re lying, deliberately trying to fuck with my head.’

  Phillips’s mind flashed to the images on her phone of Bert’s ravaged dead body. If she showed him them, would they cut through his delusion, or would they just worsen the situation, make him even more volatile? She decided it was worth the risk.

  ‘I can prove I’m not lying, Gabe. I can prove that your father’s dead. If you’ll let me.’

  Anderson’s eyes darted between Phillips and the rest of the officers, who remained in position a hundred yards back on the track.

  ‘My phone is in the right pocket of my coat. I’m going to pull it out,’ she said calmly.

  Anderson pulled the knife even farther back against Sims’s throat. ‘It’s a trick. You’ve got a weapon in there!’

  Phillips remained stoic. ‘It’s not a trick, Gabe. I’m right-handed, so I’m going to use the fingers on my left hand and pull it out slowly from my right pocket. That way, there’ll be no sudden movements, I promise.’

  Anderson paused, then eventually nodded. ‘Slowly. But anything funny, I’ll cut Sims from ear to ear.’

  Phillips reached across her torso with her left hand and slowly pulled out the phone from the opposite pocket. ‘See. I meant what I said, Gabe—’ She held it lightly in her fingers. ‘—no funny business. I just want to show you some pictures of your father.’

  Anderson nodded again.

  Phillips carefully moved the phone to her right hand, keyed in the password, and opened up the photos she’d taken of Bert’s body just a few hours ago. She turned the screen so Anderson could see it. ‘We believe that this is the body of Bert Anderson, discovered by me and my team at his home this afternoon. Just after you fled.’

  Anderson blinked furiously as his mouth fell open. Once again, he tightened his grip on the knife against Sims’s neck, but his hostage remained silent, his breathing laboured.

  ‘They’re fake! I just spoke to him today.’

  ‘No you didn’t, Gabe. Look at the picture again. Look at the bed, the TV, the chest of drawers, the unopened packets of cigarettes. That’s your dad’s room in the basement of his house, and that’s your dad’s body attached to the IVs and oxygen that you set up. Look at his wedding ring. If it’s faked, then where’s the living, breathing Bert who normally occupies that bed?’

  ‘You’ve kidnapped him!’

  ‘No we haven’t, Gabe. This isn’t Hollywood. We’re the Greater Manchester Police. We don’t kidnap people.’

  Anderson stared at her in silence.

  ‘I need you to listen to me very carefully. You’re not well. Gabe. Our experts think you may have had a breakdown, which means you’re suffering from delusions. Your mind has been playing tricks on you. All those abusive conversations with your dad in the last month, filled with hate and ridicule, they weren’t real. None of it was real.’

  Anderson seemed to wince in pain as the words landed.

  ‘Trust me, Gabe. For the sake of your son Noah, and how he’ll think of his dad when he’s all grown up, you really need to try and understand what I’m telling you.’

  A flicker of recognition passed across Anderson’s face at the mention of his son’s name.

  Phillips spotted it; the chink in the armour she needed. ‘This persona you’ve been living the last few weeks – the Copycat Killer – that’s not Noah’s dad. And neither is the little boy who suffered all that abuse dished out by Bert. Noah’s dad is Dr Gabriel Anderson. A man who saved lives, not took them.’

  Anderson’s grip on the knife began to soften.

  Phillips pressed on. ‘It’s time to stop the killing, Gabe. For Noah’s sake. Put the knife down and let Lachlan go so we can save his life, and the life of Officer Hastings, lying bleeding in your van.’

  Anderson shook his head. He took a step back and released his grip on Sims, who dropped to his knees, then fell sideways into the wet mud.

  Phillips raised her right hand in clenched fist, signalling to the TFU to hold their positions. ‘It’s finished, Gabe. Nobody else needs to die.’

  Anderson moved his gaze to Phillips. His eyes appeared totally different now, and his face was suddenly soft and full of remorse. Staring down at the knife in his hand, he began to weep. ‘Oh my God. What have I done?’ He dropped to his knees next to Sims.

  In that instant, Phillips rushed towards Anderson and grabbed the knife. He didn’t flinch. Instead, he sobbed like a child, the rain soaking his heaving body. Even the sounds of the TFU team rushing towards him made no difference. He remained on his knees, eyes closed as he wept and moaned.

  A moment later, he was secured in cuffs by the TFU, pulled to his feet and frog-marched back towards the awaiting patrol cars.

  Phillips grabbed her radio. ‘We have two men in urgent need of medical assistance.’ She took a knee next to Sims and felt for his pulse.

  Jones and Bovalino appeared a split second later.

  ‘I think Sims is in shock. We need to get him to a hospital,’ she said. ‘Bov, check the back of the van for Officer Hastings.’

  As Bovalino moved quickly through the mud to the vehicle, Jones dropped to his haunches and removed his coat before placing it over Sims in an effort to keep him warm. ‘Jesus, Guv. How the hell did you get Anderson to give himself up?’

  Phillips locked eyes with Jones through her rain-soaked glasses. ‘I just appealed to the man, Jonesy, instead of trying to fight the monster. None of us are born evil. Sadly, that’s just one of the unwelcome gifts of a fucked-up life.’

  59

  Thursday, March 18th

  Carter placed the drinks on the table and dropped into the booth opposite Phillips. It was their second after-work drink at the Metropolitan Pub in as many weeks.

  Phillips smiled as she took a sip of her Pinot Grigio. ‘You need to be careful, sir, meeting strange women in pubs. People will talk.’

  Carter chortled. ‘Just one strange woman, Jane, and I think it’s time you called me Harry away from the team.’

  The wine was already beginning to relax Phillips, a feeling that had deserted her in the last five weeks as they pursued Anderson, the so-called Copycat Killer. She felt good as she set her glass down on the table between them. ‘So, how’s things with Mrs Carter?’

  He took a swig from his pint
of lager. ‘Softening.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, she’s getting fed up of being at her mum’s. As much as they adore each other, looking after the twins under the watchful eye of a “mother who knows best” is starting to grate on Fran. The falling-outs are happening on a daily basis now. So, I’m pretty sure she’ll be coming back in the next week or two. Then it’s down to me to try and be at home a bit more.’

  Phillips nodded. ‘Which is all very well and good until someone like Anderson comes along and bodies start turning up left, right and centre.’

  ‘True,’ said Carter. ‘And on the subject of Anderson, how’s the psych evaluation going?’

  ‘Too early to say. It’s only been a couple of days, but, based on Harris’s view of him, my guess is he’ll plead temporary insanity brought on by the trauma of his father’s death.’

  ‘Which, according to Chakrabortty, he actually caused by pumping him full of morphine!’ Carter added.

  ‘It does certainly look that way, but proving it is another matter. Anderson’s the only one who knows what really happened to his father, and mentally, he’s completely shut down. Even though his fingerprints are all over his wife's throat, he refuses to believe he killed her, or that she’s actually dead.'

  ‘Could just be a convenient excuse?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe, but whatever happens, he’s never going to be allowed to walk free. If he is deemed fit to stand trial, we’ve enough evidence to bury him. If not, then he’ll end up in Broadmoor for the rest of his days.’

  Carter took another mouthful of lager. ‘Your preliminary report mentioned Anderson was linked to the second victim, before they met in the pub, through his son. How so?’

  ‘Yeah. Entwistle was working through the family’s history when he spotted Noah had been admitted to the children’s ward at Wythenshawe Hospital with jaundice, not long after he was born. Turns out one of the nurses who cared for him was Gillian Galloway.’

  Carter shook his head. ‘Why kill someone who looked after your own baby?’

  ‘Who knows what was going on in his mind, but it does at least explain why Galloway didn’t do a runner when Anderson turned up at the pub for their Tinder date – as opposed to Conrad, the beach bum.’