Chosen To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 4)

by Michael Kerr

  Gill said she was sure that Ruth had mentioned that Maureen had been under the weather, but glossed over it, and said that she was calling primarily to ask if Sheila could come up with an idea of something special that Gill could buy Ruth for her birthday, which was the following Friday.

  Off the phone, Gill had begun to worry. Why would Ruth have lied to her? What possible reason could she have to say that a close family member had suffered a stroke? It didn’t make sense, and so she had put a sign in the window of the shop’s door that said she would be back in two hours, and driven out to the Magic Cottage, as she knew Ruth called the house in the forest.

  John was becoming anxious. “Who the fuck is it?” he said.

  Ruth recognised Gill through the frosted glass in the top half of the kitchen door. “It’s my business partner, Gill,” she said.

  The persistent bitch could prove to be a threat to him. The loud rapping on the door continued. Some people just didn’t know when to give up and fuck off. The woman’s doggedness decided him to deal with her, if Ruthie could not convince her that everything was fine.

  “Answer the door,” he said to Ruth, using the sickle to slice through the tie and free her hands. “But don’t let her come inside. Tell her something that she’ll believe, and get rid of her. Keep it in mind that you and Dougie boy are going to die hard if the police start nosing around.”

  Ruth shouted, “Coming,” and slipped on a cardigan that had been hung on the back of the chair. The long sleeves covered the red welts on her wrists.

  “God, you look fucking terrible, hon,” Gill said as Ruth opened the door.

  “Thanks,” Ruth said. “What brings you out here?”

  “You told me that Doug’s mother was ill. When I couldn’t contact you I gave your mum a call, and she said that Maureen was fine, and that she had talked to her on the phone last night. What’s going on, Ruth?”

  “It’s personal,” Ruth said. “I just needed some space.”

  “So put the kettle on and let’s talk about it. A problem shared is a problem halved.”

  Gill almost shouldered Ruth out of the way to gain entry, to be faced by a slim, unshaven man holding a shotgun; the black maws of its barrels pointing at her stomach.

  “Get down on your knees,” John said. “Or I’ll blow the shit out of you.”

  Gill dropped to her knees and stared up into Ruth’s face, as if it was her friend’s fault that she was now being threatened.

  What to do? This tall, well-spoken, attractive-looking woman with a mane of golden hair and a little too much makeup on her face was a problem he could have well done without. It messed up the dynamics. He was in a comfortable routine with Dougie and Ruthie and didn’t need the extra complication.

  No one moved or spoke for twenty seconds. John broke the static tension. He stepped forward and whipped the shotgun’s barrels across the side of Gill’s head with enough force to knock her out. Blood ran freely down her cheek from the split skin.

  Ruth wanted to attack him, but even as she tensed and readied herself to leap on his back, he swivelled round and levelled the twelve gauge at her.

  “Don’t even think about it, Ruthie,” he said. “Just lay face down on the floor with your hands behind your back.”

  He dragged Gill’s limp body across to the woodshed by the hair, entered and walked over to the stack of split logs. Ruth was still in the kitchen, now bound to a water pipe, and he had locked the back door and taken the key, just in case anyone else turned up.

  When Gill came round she threw up onto the layer of sawdust that she was lying on. Her skull was pounding as though a drill bit was eating into it. Her vision was blurred, and she could smell wood. She attempted to reach up to her head, but her hands were tied behind her.

  “Get up onto your knees,” John said.

  Gill obeyed. She wanted to turn her head to face him, but was sure that he would hit her again. She looked straight on. With her peripheral vision she could see her clothes in a pile a few feet away. She was naked.

  The ends of the cold steel barrels touched the small of her back, and Gill stiffened in terror as they slid down between her buttocks to stop against her vagina. The pressure made her moan, not in pain or with any pleasure, but at the mind-numbing thought that he would pull the trigger.

  The barrels moved to the inside of her right thigh, and the muscle began to twitch rhythmically like the tic on a horse’s flank, in time with the fast beating of her heart, that thudded in her ears.

  She allowed the barrels to nudge her legs apart, and then did the only thing she could; braced herself to be either shot or raped.

  He dropped to his knees, placed the shotgun ‒ that he had been holding one-handed ‒ on the ground, placed the sickle next to it and unzipped his trousers, to push them down, before picking up the sickle again and reaching forward with it to hold it in front of her face for her to see, before holding it against the side of her neck as he inched forward on his knees and used his other hand to guide himself inside her.

  Reflexively clenching her muscles to stop his cock from invading her, Gill scrabbled forward, attempting to detach herself from him.

  John was in another world; a place that he could only enter when he was in this high state of arousal and taking a woman against her will. The more she struggled, the more stimulated he became. He reached around her body with his left hand to grasp her breast, to find the nipple and grind it between finger and thumb. She cried out, unintentionally spurring him on. He leaned forward and bit her in the back, and his teeth gouged and chiselled a long blood-filled trench in the perspiring flesh as he viciously raked open the smooth skin. At the moment he began to ejaculate, he jerked the curved blade into her throat, drawing it across from left to right, to slice through her arteries and windpipe.

  He held on tight as the dying woman reared up and bucked and flailed in her death agony, and the rasping, gurgling sound that erupted from her mouth was almost an epiphany to him; a fulfilling realisation that he had discovered the meaning of life, and that this moment was the pinnacle of all that he had done before. He had reached a height that he may never ascend to again. Even as with a last convulsion the woman’s body slackened and crumpled beneath him, he found himself tumescent again, in part due to the jets of blood that had pumped from her severed neck to lace the air and him and the ground in a warm, crimson, clinging film. He could even taste it on his lips, and licked them as he took the fresh corpse, adding necrophilia to his list of crimes.

  Dressed, he stood and looked down at the state of death that he had created from life. The finality of what he had done gave him a sense of peace. Noise, movement and fear had now departed from this humble shed and given way to a cathedral-like silence that instilled him with an almost spiritual feeling of deep joy.

  He removed a few dozen logs and folded and rammed the body into the space, to place the clothing it had worn over it and then pile some of the logs back to obscure it completely from sight. Utilising a spade taken from the wall, where two nails had held it aloft by its T-handle, he shovelled up the blood-soaked sawdust and deposited the sodden mess into a corner, to cover up with empty hessian sacks, before sprinkling fresh sawdust on the ground from a heap that he supposed would have been taken out and burned at some juncture.

  Back inside the house, he washed the blood from his hands, ignoring Ruth completely, and then went into the living room to sit down and consider the new problem that he now needed to deal with. The dead woman may be missed by someone, or have even told an employee that she intended to visit Ruth. As for her car, that could be hidden from view. It would all work out. It had to.

  Going upstairs, he dumped his blood-spattered clothes in the waste bin in the bathroom, had a shower and then went into the main bedroom to open the wardrobe and select a check shirt, corduroy trousers and clean socks and boxer shorts that belonged to Doug.

  “What have you done to Ruth?” Doug said, his voice almost breaking with palpable anguish.

>   “Nothing, yet,” John said as he got dressed. “We had a caller. Some dumb bitch called Gill, who is now in your woodshed, stashed behind some logs.”

  “You killed her?”

  John said nothing.

  “Are you going to kill us, too?”

  “No. If neither of you give me cause to harm you, then you can get past this…situation. We’ve all got lives we want to get on with.”

  He went back downstairs and into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Gill?” Ruth said.

  “I set her free,” he replied, sitting on a chair and staring at her with the hint of a smile on his face.

  “I don’t believe you. You had blood on your clothes.”

  “It’s true. The instant that she stopped breathing she was as free as a bird.”

  “Gill’s dead?” Ruth said in a whisper, knowing that her friend had been murdered, but wanting to believe that it couldn’t be true.

  “I had to, Ruthie. I’m not prepared to end up with a house full of fucking hostages. She should have gone away while she had the chance, or you should have kept her out of the house. Now I’ll have to leave here.”

  “Why?” Ruth said, knowing without a doubt that he would kill her and Doug, or kill Doug and take her along with him as a human shield.

  “Because your late friend probably told someone where she was going.”

  “I don’t think so. Gill is…was single and lived alone. And we don’t have any staff at the shop.”

  He thought it over. Just sat and closed his eyes and considered what would be the best course of action.

  “I’ll risk staying for another day or two,” he said. “I’ll go and hide her car, and then let you make something to eat. I’m starving.”

  It didn’t take long to conceal the Audi next to Ruth’s Micra in the thick undergrowth. He then revisited the woodshed to collect more of the plastic ties, and on a whim, fitted the shotgun between the jaws of a large vice that was bolted to a workbench, to then find a hacksaw and shorten the barrels to make the weapon less cumbersome. He needed to replace the blade twice to get the job done.

  Back in the house, he cut Ruth free and told her to make bacon and eggs with toast and coffee. “You can even make some for Doug,” he said.

  As usual, Ruth would have to feed her husband. John was not about to take the risk of the man making a bid, however futile, to disarm him and gain the couple’s freedom. He had seen the propensity for violence in Doug Porter’s eyes, and instinctively knew that he was strong and capable.

  It was a couple of hours’ later that he switched on the TV in the living room and used the remote to scroll for the BBC News channel. Ruth was bound to the pipe in the kitchen again.

  The balding, bespectacled talking head was sombrely relaying news of yet another suicide car bomber in the Middle East, who had blown himself to a most likely nonexistent paradise, taking a total of thirty-nine men, women, children and three babies with him, and wounding more than fifty others with flying shrapnel that imbedded in bodies and caused grievous injuries. People killed for many reasons, he knew that. He had no aspiration to go to heaven or hell, though, and basically believed that dead was dead, and that there was nothing to fear beyond it. It was life that was full of pain and suffering, which everybody had to somehow face at one time or another and get beyond the best way that they could.

  He let the newscaster’s voice fade as his thoughts drifted. He had always believed that he would live out whatever a normal life was, paying bills and getting by, enjoying a few holidays and being with Anna and Naomi, working hard to improve their lot. He had never envisaged becoming what he now was; a wanted fugitive who had found himself in a position in which he had lost everything. All he had left was his freedom, which he would not give up. He knew that he was not now viewed as a person, but as a depraved killer, and the frightening conclusion he came to was that he had ceased to be the man he had always believed himself to be, and was everything they thought.

  The narrow moving banner of breaking news at the bottom of the screen caught his eye as his name appeared: …WANTED KILLER JOHN GIBSON AT LARGE IN EPPING FOREST. PUBLIC WARNED NOT TO APPROACH THIS HIGHLY DANGEROUS FUGITIVE…

  He sat with his mouth open, paralysed with paranoia as the loop of news items went round like a slow moving carousel.

  Footage of a police spokesman standing in front of the iconic revolving sign outside New Scotland Yard making a statement was shown.

  “John Gibson is a repeat rapist and killer,” Tom Bartlett said to camera, “and is believed to be lying low in an area of Epping Forest that we have now surrounded and are searching. His car was recovered from King George Reservoir, and it is assumed that he will have found shelter by way of breaking into a property. It is highly likely that he is holding hostages. If you have noticed anything out of the ordinary, or have found relatives or people you know in the area to have suddenly become impossible to contact, then call the incident room now on the number being shown below. Be advised that this man,” and a photo of John appeared on screen, “is desperate and dangerous. Do not approach him under any circumstances.”

  There followed an even bigger shock for John to assimilate: a recorded plea for him to give himself up to the police, made by his wife.

  “Please phone me or the police, John,” Anna said. “I know that you must be ill to have done these awful things. Don’t make it any worse. Think of your daughter, and...” Anna broke down in tears. The camera stayed on her for a few seconds as a WPC handed her some tissues.

  He threw the remote at the screen. It bounced off and came apart, and his face once more appeared on the TV. Anna had taken the photo at Christmas. He looked a little drunk, which he had been, and the sneer on his face was not particularly pleasant. Getting up and going over to the set, he switched it off.

  Now what? He was trapped. He couldn’t leave by car or on foot. He imagined thousands of police moving through the forest, checking all the properties and closing in on him. He would have to sit it out and rely on Ruth and Doug to act normally and be able to convince the police that they were fine, and that they had seen no one. But what about the fucking cars? He would park the Micra back out front next to the Jeep. But the dead bitch’s Audi was a problem. If it was discovered it would be linked to the woman now in the shed, whom they would obviously not be able to locate. The body! Another big problem. But they were looking for him, not a body. He supposed he could bury it. The floor in the shed was not concrete or boarded, it was no more than hard packed earth. He would have to start taking chances now, and quickly.

  One thing at a time. He went outside and moved Ruth’s car. His initial panic had lessened. He was miles away from where they had got lucky and discovered his car. Searching the forest for him was like looking for a needle in a haystack. It was logical that they would start from the reservoir and move out from it, calling at every likely property where he may be taking refuge. To leave the area would be impossible at the moment. Road blocks would be in place. But if he could keep his nerve and didn’t bolt, he could wait them out. Let them pass by like a storm, and then reassess the bind that he was in.

  He freed Ruth and followed her upstairs, to let her sit on the bed next to Doug, and then told them exactly what he had done, and that the authorities knew that he was somewhere in the forest, due to his car having been recovered from the reservoir. He found that he could be absolutely honest with strangers. Maybe if he had been able to talk as frankly to Anna, then he would never have embarked on a raping and killing spree, and would still be leading life as a husband, father and breadwinner. But if was a little word with more negative significance than any other word he could think of.

  “You’re in London’s largest open space,” Doug said. “The forest covers about six thousand acres, and parts of it are only accessible on foot. It stretches twelve miles from Manor Park in East London to a little north of Epping.”

  “Which means?”

  “That you could have gone off i
n any direction, and that they’re guessing that you’re even still in the area. You could have stopped a car on a B road and got a lift to anywhere in the country.”

  “So why do you suppose they think that I’m still in the forest?”

  Doug shrugged. “They’re going with what they have, hoping that you’d feel safer under cover than making a run for it.”

  John liked what he was hearing from Doug. The man seemed to be intelligent and practical. He decided that he had time to make the body and the car vanish. With the couple’s help he would be able to stay here for as long as need be. They would have to fend off any inquiring phone calls as to why they were not at work. But it would all fall into place if he didn’t panic. He knew that if it came to it, he would not allow himself to be arrested. Better to just shoot the couple and then stick the now shortened barrels of the shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

  “Okay,” he said to Doug and Ruth. “Here’s what we’ll do...”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Matt looked at the up-to-date details on the whiteboards as he talked to Lloyd Mercer on the phone.

  “There’s no DNA match on the database to the blood sample recovered from the crime scene, Matt,” Lloyd said. “The guy hasn’t got a record.”

  “Damn. I was hoping the blood would be a case breaker,” Matt said. “Thanks anyway, Lloyd. It looks as if we’re in for a hard slog with this one.”

  Matt read through everything they had on the ‘Housekeeper Killer’ again, and for the umpteenth time studied the 8x10 colour prints of the cold-blooded bastard’s victims. It was frustrating. They had slugs that they could match to the handgun used, and even knew that the gun had been fired by a con serving time, who had said that he’d sold it on to Sammy Clements, another lowlife who worked for Ricky Lister.