Lethal Intent (DI Matt Barnes Book 2)

by Michael Kerr

  Matt and Pete met up at the top of the crest at the approximate point where the shot had come from. More blood and footprints led across to the other side of the ridge. They cautiously followed the trail, arms aching as they kept their guns out in front of them and searched for Sutton, fully expecting him to suddenly appear from behind a rock.

  After descending slowly for a couple of minutes, Pete stopped and pointed towards where the trail came to an end at a dark circle that was evidently a hole in the ground. They approached it from both sides, and Pete was first to sneak a peek over the edge. He relaxed a little when he saw the crumpled form at the bottom of the pit; leaned forward for a better look, but still kept his gun aimed at the body, his finger tight on the trigger.

  “He’s dead,” Pete said, looking at the terrible visible injuries to the head of the man they had finally caught up with. “It’s over.”

  “Not yet, cop,” Paul slurred, his voice sounding mushy and liquid as he opened his remaining eye and brought up the pistol to bear on Pete.

  The impact of the bullet blew Pete backwards. He staggered on his heels and wind-milled his arms, fighting for balance, but fell over and rolled down the steep slope with a bullet lodged in his stomach.

  Matt threw himself sideways as Paul fired again into the circle of dull grey sky above him.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  JOHN drove as fast as he dare down the snow-covered, single-track road to the main highway. The storm had passed and the moon lit the snowscape in a cold, glittering and eerie light. He tried the phone every few minutes, but there was no signal. The terrain was blocking it. He was in a dead zone.

  “What the hell was all that about?” he said to Beth. “Who was the guy at the tent?”

  “A homicidal psychopath,” Beth said. “He’s murdered a lot of people.”

  “Why weren’t there more police?”

  “Because Matt...Detective Inspector Barnes knew that he had two hostages. He didn’t want to risk any more lives by turning it into a circus. Now that Sutton, the killer, is on his own, we need to make that call and get help.”

  “I can’t get a signal. Maybe when we get to the main road―”

  “We have to stop off on the way. There’s a woman at a house not far from here. I don’t know whether she’s alive or dead.”

  They parked in the driveway, and John helped Beth out of the car and they walked around the body of the dead dog. Snow was covering it like a thin lacy shroud. Beth felt sorry for it, even though it would have torn her throat out if Sutton had given it the command to do so. She could not find it in her heart to blame Hannibal for the way he had been trained, though. It was his owner who knew right from wrong, and had patterned it to be his vicious ally.

  Moving with difficulty, in great pain and against John’s advice, leaning on him for support, Beth entered the stable. Kirstie was in a sitting position on a bed of straw, unmoving, head forward, chin on chest.

  John rushed across to the woman, played the beam of a torch he had found in the glove box of the Discovery over her, and saw the rope around her neck.

  “Hold this,” he said to Beth, passing her the torch and hunkering down to lift Kirstie’s head up and put his fingers to her neck. He could not find a pulse. His fingers were too cold to feel anything. He untied the knot in the rope and gently laid the woman on her side in the recovery position, checking that her airway was clear, even as he shook his head at Beth, signifying that he thought she was beyond help.

  Kirstie had been fast sleep. Exhaustion and the sustained state of stress had caught up with her. Being continually in fear of imminent death over such a lengthy period had taken its toll. She came awake with a start, thought Sutton was next to her, and began to cry as her muscles tensed in readiness for whatever he might be about to do.

  Beth and John gasped in surprise and relief. “You’re safe,” Beth said, moving close but unable to kneel, due to the pain in her leg. “Sutton isn’t here. We’re free.”

  The sudden abatement of fear was almost too much to acknowledge. It filled Kirstie’s whole being. Dare she believe that she would see Dennis and Faye again, to be returned to the life that had been taken away from her by a monster?

  John tried the phone again. It worked. He tapped in the number from the card and asked for Detective Chief Inspector Tom Bartlett. He was asked for his name and his reason for calling. He quickly told the disembodied voice what had happened. Within thirty seconds he was transferred to another line.

  “Bartlett,” Tom said. “I’m told you know the whereabouts of Detective Inspector Barnes.”

  Tom listened and took notes as John quickly relayed the events of the last hour, and of the current situation. His statement was boiled down to the bare facts; of how Paul Sutton was injured and on the run, having shot dead one of the policemen who had been with Matt. John gave specific details of the location of the cottage and the chapel ruins, and said that they needed an ambulance.

  “Put Dr. holder on,” Tom said.

  John handed her the phone.

  “Are you okay, Beth?” Tom said.

  “I’ve been better, but I’ll live. And Kirstie Marshall is going to be fine. It’s Matt and Pete I’m worried about. They’re in pursuit of Sutton, and he’s armed, badly wounded, and has the advantage of knowing the area.”

  “Stay where you are. I’ll get help to you and arrange backup for Matt.

  “Thanks, Tom. Matt―”

  “Matt is well out of order,” Tom snapped. “I’m seriously pissed off that he didn’t call this in. He thinks no one else can cut it. He’s not a team player.”

  “He didn’t want to spook Sutton and end up with Kirstie and me dead, Tom.”

  “That wasn’t his decision to make. If he gets out of this mess in one piece, I will personally see to it that he spends the rest of his career behind a fucking desk.”

  Beth made to defend Matt’s motives, but Tom ended the call. She managed the shadow of a smile. Tom and Matt went back a long way together. The crusty DCI’s anger at Matt’s going it alone masked a deep concern for a good friend.

  “What do we do now?” John said her.

  “Sit and wait for the cavalry,” Beth said. She then went to Kirstie and handed her the phone. “Here, love. You better call your husband and daughter and make their day.”

  Police Constable Barry Evans was listening to the radio, looking forward to the end of his nightshift. He was planning to build a snowman with his son, Terry, when he got home that morning, before he went to bed for a few hours’ sleep And then the phone rang. It was some high-ranking cop from Scotland Yard. Barry followed procedure, took the impatient sounding DCI’s name, racked the phone and called the Yard back.

  All thought of a day off with his family evaporated as he was told that a serial killer was on the loose in his neck of the woods, and of the man and two women who needed medical attention. Fuck! he thought. He didn’t need this. Not in weather that should be in the Arctic. Hell, in any weather. Fortunately – as a lowly PC – he could pass this shit up to hit someone else’s fan blades. This sort of high profile operation wasn’t the run-of-the-mill stuff that he was used to dealing with. Nearby Hereford might be home to the SAS, but armed police and a killer running around the mountains was not the sort of action that he had any experience of. He put the Detective Chief Inspector on hold and passed the ball to Sergeant Janet Davies, sweat popping from his forehead as he off-loaded any decision-making to his superior.

  “I want you to arrange for two ambulances and an armed response unit to attend the cottage and take care of the injured,” Tom said to Janet, giving directions. “The team I’m sending in by air will liaise with them at the scene. Do you have any problems with that?”

  “None whatsoever,” Janet said. “I’ll jack it up and keep you posted. Give me a contact number that I can reach you on.”

  Tom gave her his mobile number, cleared the line and made more calls.

  Matt lay down on the snow and rolled across i
t to inches away from the shaft. He put his gun hand over the edge, pointing the weapon straight down, and loosed off three shots.

  Paul jerked as two of the bullets hit him: one in the stomach, the other in his right lung. He dropped his pistol as the force of the slugs punched him further down into the water. He was now unarmed, and dying.

  Standing up and daring to look over the edge, Matt could see that Sutton was now unarmed and in no fit state to retaliate in any way. It was over. He felt no empathy for the mortally wounded man, only a grim satisfaction at having finally stopped a deranged and cold-blooded killing machine; a psycho who had never himself nurtured any pity for his victims. He looked down into the mutilated face of his nemesis without any desire or sense of duty to try to preserve the killer’s life. And then anger more overpowering than he had ever experienced filled his mind. He wanted more from Sutton for all the people he had murdered, and for taking Beth, who without any doubt he had intended to molest and torture and kill. He raised his arm, pointed the barrel of his gun down and sighted on Sutton’s forehead. He was at the point of crossing a hard line. And at that moment he didn’t care. This would be street justice, no less than the scumbag beneath him deserved.

  “Do it, cop,” Paul somehow managed to whisper from the side of his damaged mouth. “Put me out of my misery.”

  Matt pulled back from the brink of a place he did not want to go. The man’s plea had broken the spell that had so nearly reduced him to the same level. He let his arm fall to his side and relaxed his tight grip on the gun. He smiled down at Sutton and shook his head. “No, you sick bastard. Better to let nature take its course. You don’t deserve an easy out.”

  Matt turned and left the side of the deep hole in the ground, to move quickly over to where Pete was sprawled out like a snow angel. He was sure that his colleague and friend was dead.

  “Is he sorted?” Pete said, a grimace of pain on his pallid face as Matt helped him up into a sitting position and unfastened the DC’s thick car coat and opened his shirt to examine the wound.

  “Not quite,” Matt replied. “He’s getting there, though.”

  Taking off his own jacket, Matt then took his shirt off, popping the buttons in his haste. He bunched the garment up into a ball and held it against Pete’s stomach. “Press on that,” he said, his teeth chattering as he quickly pulled his jacket back on.

  Just yards away, below them, alone and about to die, Paul knew that he was finished. The bullet in his intestines was causing an excruciation he imagined would compare to having rats digging into his body with their snouts, wrenching and tearing his innards with needle-sharp teeth. He wanted it to be over, to be free from the torment and at peace. Gone was his hatred, aggression and arrogance. All that remained – expiring in the gloom, with hard rock and frigid water his deathbed – was a frightened and helpless individual.

  Paul’s vital organs started to close down, their functions slowly failing as he haemorrhaged internally He was drowning in his own blood, which was escaping from ruptured organs and vessels.

  Real or imagined, Paul looked on in horror as Laura Preston appeared before him. The teenage girl he had abducted, abused and killed was standing with her hands clasped in front of her, smiling down at him, though the look in her eyes was full of malice. And then his other victims materialised; grey figures somehow emerging from the walls of the pothole to shamble forward, an assembly of corpses. Hate-filled eyes burned into his with accusation and condemnation.

  Now, at the very end, consumed with a petrifying fear, Paul lost whatever sanity he had ever possessed. A high-pitched scream echoed out off the rock as his bowels and bladder voided their contents. He crossed the boundary from life to death as the rock beneath his body seemed to open up and suck him down into a stygian tunnel, where all manner of dark creatures awaited his arrival into hell.

  A spine-tingling cry erupted from the hole, to be muffled and subdued by the heavy air and snow. And as it was replaced by silence, Matt knew that Sutton had died hard, which was at least some justice for all the abominable acts he had committed throughout his misbegotten life.

  The relief at the arrival of a Sea King helicopter almost overwhelmed him. Pete was now unconscious, in all probability bleeding out. All he had been able to do was Sit next to his colleague and friend and hope that help would arrive in time to save him

  The chopper hovered above flat ground a hundred yards from them, and as well as the crew, Matt could make out figures in black pointing submachine guns from the open door in its side as it landed, before he was temporarily blinded by the snow that the downdraft from the whirling blades blew up in a wide circle.

  EPILOGUE

  IN the aftermath of the operation that had now cost the life of DC Gordon Wright to add to the loss of DCs Mike Henton, Chris Mallory and Dean Harper, Matt tried to convince himself that had they taken any other action, then Beth and Kirstie would have also died at Sutton’s hands. As in the past, he assimilated the hurt of losing members of the team, but still maligned himself with thoughts of how if he had done things differently, then some of those that had died might still be alive. Crime was war, and fighting it would always produce casualties. Damage limitation was the best you could hope for, to be realistic. Thank God, Pete was doing fine. They had stabilised him, and the surgery to patch him up had been a success. None of his major organs had been damaged beyond repair. The tricky part had been removing the slug from where it had lodged centimetres from his spinal cord. A hairsbreadth difference would have left him a paraplegic. Remarkably, he would make a full recovery and be back on light duties within a few weeks.

  Beth had also undergone surgery on her leg and nose. Small price to pay. She had survived, twice now, since becoming involved with Matt and facing death at the hands of cold-blooded sociopaths. Matt had attempted to assure her that he would not allow himself to become a focal point for a killer to latch onto and make it personal ever again. But that was as certain as an alcoholic saying that he would never touch another drop of the hard stuff. A lot fell off the wagon. Truth was, Matt was like an exposed metal rod; a conductor that attracted a force just as lethal as any electrical discharge from above. By close association, she would always be at some risk.

  As time distanced them from the episode, Matt’s and Beth’s spirits became reinvigorated. They chose not to discuss Sutton. They could not dismiss the incident, but were able to put it where it belonged, behind them, and move forward.

  Tom Bartlett had carpeted Matt and called him everything from a pig to a dog, and then some. But he knew that his friend’s decision had probably been the right one. Had he been in Matt’s shoes, then he would have most likely run with it the same way.

  They walked along the riverside path at Borehamwood, to where the cottage they had been hoping to purchase stood. The vendors – Graham and Annette Finch – had taken it off the market for the time being. Graham had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and everything was on hold until they knew what the prognosis was after chemo and radiotherapy courses. It was saddening to Matt and Beth that the couple’s plans to spend retirement in the Sunshine State might turn to straw in the wind.

  “I really saw this as our home,” Beth said, pausing to take in the view of the recently re-thatched property, and also to rest her leg, which was now free of a cast, but not yet up to too much exercise. “I’d almost furnished it, in my mind.”

  “It might still work out, if it’s meant to be,” Matt said.

  “I thought you believed that we made our own luck in life. Is this an unexpected change of philosophy?”

  Matt shrugged his shoulders and took her in his arms. “I’m mellowing. We pick the road we want to tread, but don’t have much control of what might happen along the way. I used to think I was the master of my own destiny. Now I know better. You’ve got to be able to ride out each storm that comes along, and adapt.”

  “What do you see as being our next move?”

  “Short-term, I reckon we should have lun
ch in the village pub, then go back to my place and do some physio on your leg.”

  “That sounds like a ploy to get me slightly pissed and in the sack.”

  “I don’t need a ploy, do I?” You didn’t when my leg was crocked.”

  They kissed, long and hard. Both knew what they had so nearly lost.

  An elderly woman with a grey-muzzled cocker spaniel walked by. She had to step off the path onto the grass to navigate around them, and they heard her tut and chunter under her laboured breath at the inconvenience.

  They laughed and, hand in hand, headed for the pub.

  Tom punched in Matt’s number and closed his eyes, impatient, crushing out a cigarette end on the inside of his waste bin as he waited for his DI to pick up.

  A missing person report was now a murder inquiry. The victim, a sixteen-year-old girl, had been found...in part, discovered by a lorry driver who had pulled into a lay-by to sleep in his cab the previous night, then gone for a leak at dawn. The grisly, disfigured head had been placed on a picnic table to be found, or ravaged by scavenging wildlife. It was the second such find, and had now been designated a case for the SCU.

  Matt set the tumbler of scotch down on the table and answered his mobile. “Barnes.”

  “You busy?”

  “What’s come up?”

  “Bad shit. What else do we get given?”

  Beth watched as the warmth drained from Matt’s eyes. Part of him left her. It would never stop. She knew that someone else’s life had been brutally terminated. A small part of her did not know if she wanted to be a part of it anymore. Surely there had to be a better alternative than to be continually coming face to face with evil in all its many guises. Matt was – by the very nature of his job – a magnet to the aftermath of unnatural death. He courted it, and for a second in Beth’s mind, she felt as though murder was a woman; a love rival who she would always have to share him with. She now fully appreciated why his previous partner, Linda, had walked away.