by Michael Kerr
“He rightfully taught a badmouthed nigger a lesson, Inspector.”
Matt and Pete could hardly believe what she had said.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Susan said to them both. “Shut yer mouths before one of my cats gets yer tongues. When I was a little girl, back in the forties, the world was a far better place. I didn’t see a darkie until the government shipped ‘em over as cheap labour. And being queer was a crime. Nowadays, the country is burstin’ at the seams with niggers, Pakis, shit-stabbin’ Nancy boys and junkies. I can’t turn on the telly without seein’ lispin’ shirt lifters and fifty shades of brown. This used to be Great Britain, but now it’s a fuckin’ meltin’ pot; a cesspool of everythin’ that used to be abhorred and given no quarter.”
It was crystal clear to Matt why Eddie Foley had gone bad. What chance had he got, raised by a racist, homophobic bigot, who had without doubt patterned his way of thinking from the time he could crawl. The crone made the fictional character of Alf Garnett seem almost tolerant and equitable in his views.
“We still need to talk to your son, Mrs. Platt. Do you know where he is?” Matt said, hardly able to rein in the revulsion he felt for the woman.
“Maybe I do, but you’re the last people I’d tell. My Eddie is a good boy. He knows right from wrong, and isn’t afraid to do what’s necessary.”
“A young girl was abducted, mutilated, raped and murdered, Mrs. Platt. If Eddie didn’t do it, we need to verify that.”
“If he did it, then the slut must have asked for it. Now get the fuck out of my house. I’ve got nothin’ else to say to you two. You’re like everybody else, just prissy-arsed liberals who turn blind eyes to what’s really rotten with this country.”
They left. Matt lit a cigarette as they stood in the fresh air for a while and waited for the cold wind to blow the scent of the house from their clothes. The light rain also felt cleansing.
“She is probably the most despicable person I’ve ever met, boss,” Pete said.
Matt nodded. “She’s a vile old cow. I could almost see the poison oozing out of her pores. She’s about as bad as a person can get.”
“I was afraid of her, boss. That might sound daft. But she gave me the willies. I don’t know if real evil exists, but if it does, then she’s full of it.”
“I believe in evil, Pete. And you’re right. She personifies it.”
“What do you reckon it is?” Pete said as Matt flicked the part-smoked cigarette onto the wet road, to be pounded out by raindrops.
Matt thought about his DS’s question as they drove back towards town. It was an age-old enigma. Evil was universally recognised as being something bad and harmful. The philosophical theodicy of the vindication of divine providence in view of evil’s existence was a little too heavy for him to rationalise. He just believed that evil was the opposite of good, as love is to hate, happiness to misery, and pleasure to pain: a simple part of an individual’s mental blueprint; a disposition. Everybody had different outlooks, and the ability to be cruel or kind. Even Hitler supposedly loved dogs and children. It was his warped belief that some people were inferior that made it easy for him to implement a programme of genocide. And hadn’t the Yanks done the same with the native Americans, proclaiming that the only good Indian was a dead one. Every culture appeared to be capable of dreadful, sordid acts. They qualified and absolved themselves from their deeds, but were no less guilty. Having the might did not give man the right to victimise others.
“What’re you thinking, boss?” Pete said. “You haven’t said a word for ten minutes.”
“What you said about evil. I think it boils down to an absence of goodness. Nothing more.”
“You mean it isn’t something beyond our power to control?”
“I believe we all have choice to use free will. Everybody has a different take on it, and reacts to life in their own way. There has always been evil; it’s part of the whole deal, not a separate entity that we can blame for our actions.”
“So guys like the one that killed Laura Preston are just bad.”
“I think so. Haven’t you ever wanted to really hurt someone, but found the strength to pull back?”
“Yes.”
“There you go. You used restraint, but maybe had evil intent. It’s when you go one step beyond and suppress or bypass the safety mechanism that shit happens.”
“I get the feeling that if Foley is our man, then his mother is as guilty as him. She made him what he is.”
“He still knows right from wrong,” Matt said.
“What if people like him don’t? Maybe evil is born out of not being able to recognise it for what it is.”
“Whatever,” Matt said. “We still need to find them and take them off the street.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY held each other so close that they could both feel the other’s heart pounding. The power of their love for each other was still as strong and fresh as it had been at the first moment they were smitten. Everything was so right and made sense when they were together.
“I love you, Barnes,” Beth said.
Matt smiled. “I know.”
She bit his earlobe, hard enough to make him curse and pull away. “That hurt,” he said.
“So sue me. Or better still, go get a Chinese takeaway while I open a bottle of wine. I’m famished.”
“What do you want?” he said, looping his arms back around her waist and pulling her up tight against him.
“Surprise me,” she said, tilting her face up to kiss him.
He felt himself stir as her tongue slid between his lips.
She felt him harden. Jabbed her tongue in and out provocatively, and then stopped to put her hands up between them and push him away. “Mmmm, you’d better go now, or we’ll starve,” she gasped.
“Spoilsport,” he said, and then reached for his fleece.
“Time to fool around after we’ve eaten and watched a DVD,” she said, heading for the kitchen.
“What DVD?” Matt shouted after her.
“A Beautiful Mind. Have you seen it?”
“No. The last movie I saw was some Woody Allen thing.”
“This is Russell Crowe playing the part of the mathematician, John Nash.”
“A true story?”
“Yes. It’s brilliant. I’ve seen it three or four times.”
“Sounds on a par with watching paint dry.”
“You’ll be surprised. It’s a journey into schizophrenia.”
“And you call that entertainment?”
“Yes, and so will you.”
“If I fall asleep, don’t wake me till the credits roll.”
“Deal. Now go get the food, my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”
“Not funny.” Matt said.
Beth rushed back through from the kitchen with a bottle of Cabernet clutched forgotten in her hand. Her face was white. “I know, Matt. I don’t know what made me say that. It’s just a figure of speech. I didn’t think.”
It had reminded both of them that Laura Preston had had her throat slashed. The remembered sight of her almost bloodless corpse jolted them, dampened their mood and dulled their appetite.
“Hell, we can’t think about every turn of phrase we use before we open our mouths, Beth. I always used to ask for my steak to be cremated in restaurants, until after my mother died. I had to start ordering it very well done, after she was transformed into a box of ashes.”
Matt kissed her again, then left the house and drove to the local Chinese restaurant. He ordered a little of everything, then watched some of the news on the wall-mounted TV while he waited. He was not going to let anything spoil the weekend. Every minute with Beth was precious. And the next day, Sunday, they were going over to Borehamwood to view a detached cottage. They had an unwritten rule, not to let work get in the way. In the main, they stuck to it. The problem arose when they were both working the same case. Like now. The way round it was to set aside a period of determinate length, discuss whatever as
pect of it had come up, then leave it until they were back on the job.
It had been five days since Laura had been found, and they were no further on. The most likely ex-cons had been eliminated from the investigation, and Eddie Foley was still missing. He was their best bet. And his disappearance was, to say the least, suspicious. With no other leads to follow, Foley was the prime suspect. All they had to do was locate him. All known acquaintances had been questioned, but he seemed to have just dropped off the planet. It had been arranged for a photograph and his details to be aired on Crimewatch the following week, but Matt didn’t hold out much hope. Being an ex-cop, Foley would have altered his appearance if he had anything to hide: maybe lost or gained a few pounds, and grown a beard. False ID was relatively easy to get. With so many illegal immigrants flooding in, the industry of supplying forged paperwork was flourishing. The only upside was, that if Foley was the killer, then Beth might be wrong in her belief that there would be more victims. It could have been a one-off act of revenge against Preston.
Back at the house, Matt put aside his thoughts on the case and served up the food. They talked about the cottage they were going to view, and about Christmas arrangements. Beth wanted to spend Christmas day at her mother’s, so they decided to ask Tom if Boxing Day would be okay for them to drop by for a meal.
With a second bottle of wine open, they washed the dishes, before settling in the lounge to watch the DVD.
Matt became engrossed. Maybe because it was the true story of one man’s battle against mental disease. This was a brilliant academic, who suffered from schizophrenia, and yet became able to acknowledge that his delusions were not real, and more, learn to ignore the ever-present images of nonexistent people.
“Well?” Beth said when the movie was over.
“I’m suitably amazed,” Matt said. “I’ve learned something. I knew that many sufferers heard voices, and that they were basically delusional and in many instances paranoid. But this fleshed out my limited appreciation of how real it could be to them. Reading about it doesn’t hit home so vividly.”
Beth nodded. “When a part of your mind can be in some way detached enough to present characters and circumstances that are wholly unreal, to the point where it is impossible to differentiate from actuality, then anything is possible. John Nash somehow found the ability to recognise his illness, treat it as he would any other problem, and educate himself to live with it. I find that awesome.”
“I find it frightening. I’ve always believed that in the main, people are ultimately responsible for their actions. This opens a new can of worms. It seems that any imbalance can take away that responsibility.”
“It bears taking on board that a lot of antisocial behaviour is triggered by more than meets the eye.”
“As a cop, that’s not my problem. My job is to investigate serious crimes, find the offenders, and bring them in. The system deals with them thereafter, not me. I need to keep it simple: catch the bad guys, full stop.
“I realise that. Just be aware that some people have no control over what they do. Murderers like Charles Whitman come to mind.”
“Who’s he?”
“The American sniper. He was a twenty-five-year-old engineering student who went up into the top of the clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin, back in nineteen-sixty-six. He shot forty-six people. Sixteen of them died. He came down in a body bag. The point I’m getting to is, that the subsequent autopsy revealed a tumour in the temporal lobe of his brain.”
“I know where you’re coming from. But he was still responsible for what happened.”
“Had he lived, he would in all probability not have been found competent enough to stand trial. Being responsible requires an ability to be capable of rational thought and conduct, and to be in control of your actions. Mental competence is what differentiates the mad from the bad.”
“I can buy that, but it’s thin ice. Gary Noon was a schizophrenic, but I couldn’t sympathise with a homicidal maniac who treated killing as a game, and was planning to kill you to get back at me.”
Noon had been a sophisticated repeat killer, who, like a cornered rat, had turned on his hunters. Matt had been doggedly closing in on him, working closely with Beth, who was consulting on the case and had produced a psychological profile on Noon. In a final showdown at Beth’s apartment, Matt had somehow turned impending disaster into victory. They had survived. Noon had not.
“I’m not making excuses for people that harm others,” Beth said. “Just pointing out that most human monsters are by their very nature not dealing with a full deck. I treat a lot of criminally insane patients, and many appear rational and well-balanced on the surface. Without fail, at some point, I ask them why they committed the crime.”
“And do you get plausible answers?”
“The reasons given fall into different categories. Schizophrenics will claim that they were told to do it by whatever delusions speak or appear to them. Psychopaths have more varied explanations: that they did it because they could, or that the victim deserved it, and therefore brought it upon themselves. They have no sense of guilt, and do not accept that they have done anything wrong. There’s a lot of physiological evidence about the workings of the brain that puts into doubt the whole notion of free will.”
“Meaning?”
“For example, you’re a smoker. You can decide to stop, but probably won’t. What you want to do and actually do are two different things. There are machinations at work that are compulsive and cannot be denied.”
“On that note, let’s hit the sack and fool around. I don’t want to go to sleep with anything but good thoughts on my mind.”
“Last of the romantics, eh?”
“That’s me. This is our time, and I’m loathe to spend it talking about nutters. Let’s save that for office hours, when we’re getting paid to do it.”
He scrubbed the wall and floor. Jesus! The blood had even left trails across the low ceiling of the cellar. He stopped, just knelt on the rubber mat, closed his eyes and replayed the act that had changed his life forever. He sniffed at the stale air for the smell of the girl; her waste, blood, and the subtle stink of fear that was not imagined, but seemed to exude from the skin of a victim, as garlic will, mingling with sweat.
He dumped the wood-handled brush in the bucket of coppery-coloured hot water and disinfectant, wiped his hands on his naked thighs and then turned on the cassette player to listen to the original tape for the twentieth time. The sound of death in progress was like a work of art. Not a sculpture or painting, but an aural masterpiece, as original and evocative as the Mona Lisa or The Kiss. He had developed a new school of self-expression. Every breath, grunt, word and scream was rich in colour and full of texture and depth. He was amazing. Okay, so it wasn’t totally original. Killers had recorded their deeds before, but had done so without his purpose. He would build an unprecedented library of snuff audios, not movies, that would be far beyond any similar enterprise. This would be his life’s work.
As the taped sound of Laura’s hitching voice begged for life, he opened his eyes and once more saw her lying beneath him. He became aroused, masturbated, then curled up on the mattress and dozed for a while. Who next? Kirstie Marshall of course. She was in her late thirties, but a good looking woman, who he would enjoy. She was married with a daughter, which was an important factor. There had to be loved ones left to suffer. Others on his list of people to kill were men, which offered a new dimension, though he was not gay or even bisexual. But for the moment he would do another woman; indulge himself. Would the filth spot the connection? He thought not. They would soon be looking for a pattern killer who did not exist. He would change his MO after the Marshall bitch was found, and probably take a couple of the men.
Upstairs. He showered, put sweats on and a T on and went down to the living room to settle in front of the TV to watch an old Charles Bronson movie. He liked Death Wish. In fact it was his all-time favourite film. That a middle-class architect took the law
into his own hands and became a vigilante was something he could relate to. There had to be natural justice. If you were wronged, don’t whine, just go out and put things to right. The judicial system could not be relied upon to mete out adequate retribution to those who had offended you.
It was two o’clock in the morning when he woke up. He made a sandwich and poured himself a glass of milk, then went out into the yard, down one of the aisles that was walled on both sides with the carcasses of cars that had been stripped out and were destined to be crushed into blocks of scrap iron. His German shepherd, Hannibal, trotted along behind him, to sit and watch as he climbed up to the wreck of a Ford Mondeo, popped open the glove compartment and retrieved a thick document wallet. He had followed many of the people in his files for months. He knew their habits, and where they worked and shopped and spent their leisure time.
Returning to the house, he spread 8x10 prints – that he had developed and printed himself – out on the table, selecting one of Kirstie Marshall in which she was leaving a supermarket, hand in hand with her daughter. The woman was tall, wore her auburn hair scraped back and fastened in a bushy ponytail. She had a confident air, which he thought bordered on arrogance. He would take great pleasure in humbling her and dismantling the in-control persona she presented to the world. She was a business partner of the estate agents Boulton & Marshall, and left the office every weekday at three-thirty, to be home for her daughter getting in from school. The plan was simple. He would lift her in the small private car park at the rear of the office as she opened her car door. Within seconds she would be anaesthetised and in the boot of the old Sierra he would use. With the days so short, the early advent of dusk would be his ally.
The next day he worked till lunch time, and then fed Hannibal and chained him up before changing from work clothes and setting off for Hampstead.
At three-fifteen he was in place and waiting for his prey to appear. When she did, alone, he drove into the car park, climbed out and took a large box from the boot.
