A Passion To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 5)

by Michael Kerr

  “Love,” Matt said. “She has a very unforgiving nature, and when Jeff and Danielle made it known that they intended to find new representation, she saw how much that hurt you, so dealt with them. We don’t know the full story yet. Perhaps she will attempt to implicate you. For all we know she was talked into doing it.”

  “That is an outlandish accusation to make,” Rhonda said. “I want you to leave, now. I have nothing further to say.”

  “No problem, Ms Gould, but be advised that we may be back to ask you more questions. After all you were Shelley’s lover, that’s common knowledge whether you know it or not.”

  Rhonda’s face reddened with anger. She said nothing, just went to the door, opened it and waited until they left, before slamming it shut behind them.

  “You reckon she was in on it?” Pete said to Matt as they walked down the stairs to the street.

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll be interviewing Shelley again and discussing it. Although even if she was behind it, I doubt that her girlfriend would tell us.”

  “You took a risk with the doctored photos,” Pete said when they got back to the car. “Carmichael could have just kept denying it.”

  “People believe what they see with their own eyes, Pete, especially if they are guilty. Shelley was in official custody, and the last thing she expected was to be duped. As far as she knew we had her bang to rights.”

  “Do you think she’ll try for an insanity plea?”

  “Maybe, but it’ll be a waste of time. She’s bad, not mad.”

  “What now?” Pete said as he started the car.

  “A pint and a sandwich at Ron’s place would go down well.”

  Ron Quinn was filling optics behind the counter when Matt and Pete walked into the residents’ bar. He glanced round at them, finished up what he was doing and said, “What can I get you two upstanding officers of the law, that apparently have no crime to solve, seeing as you are standing in my hostelry with the time to and intention of drinking alcohol whilst on duty?”

  “You’re as funny as a road traffic accident, Quinn,” Matt said. “Two pints of your best bitter, preferably from the pump and not the slops tray. And I’ll have a chicken and cheese sandwich.”

  “A meat pie and mushy peas for me,” Pete said.

  It was a little after seven p.m. when Matt arrived home. He had phoned Beth and asked her if she fancied a steak over at Abbots Langly in The Green Dragon, which was their favourite pub. She had said yes with no hesitation.

  Matt showered and put on a clean shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket that he had only worn a couple of times since Beth bought it for him as a Christmas present. Dark grey cowboy boots completed his casual look. Beth had plumped for a cable-knit crewneck sweater, jeans, and a sheepskin coat. It was cold out.

  They took Beth’s Lexus, and she drove, content to drink orange juice and be the nominated driver, so that Matt could have a couple of Scotches. The pub was only fifteen minutes away on a winding country road.

  “Good day?” Matt asked after they had parked, entered the pub and been shown to a corner table, that was well away from the kitchen door that the waitresses used.

  “Every day is a good day at Morning Star. My only regret is that I didn’t walk away from what I did a long time ago. Doing what I can to help children that have been traumatised is the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had…apart from being with you.”

  “Saved yourself by the skin of your teeth saying that,” Matt said and smiled as Beth reached across the table to take his hand and squeeze it.

  “I had another significant breakthrough today,” Beth said. “I used the MBT again.”

  Matt frowned at the acronym. “The what?” he asked.

  “The Matt Barnes Technique. I found a way to reach the little boy who is so fearful of adults. I used a mutual love of sketching to break down a barrier. And the amazing thing is that he is a really terrific artist. His drawings make mine look like rubbish in comparison, and he’s only eight. He has the ability to see something and transfer it almost perfectly onto paper.”

  “That’s great. Without positive help a lot of kids that suffer abuse are affected by it for the rest of their lives, and some even become as bad as their parents or whoever mistreated them.”

  Beth nodded and said, “True. A lot of the criminally insane patients I met had come from horrific backgrounds. All normal feelings had been knocked out of them at an early age.”

  Before Matt could continue the discussion, the meals arrived. They had foregone a starter and both ordered fillet steak with chips, onion rings, egg, mushrooms and peas. Nothing fancy, just tasty food, served up with warm, crispy bread rolls and garlic butter.

  “What kind of day have you had?” Beth asked as she took a break from eating.

  “Rhonda Gould’s receptionist is also her lover, and she’s admitted to being the Suicide Killer, so I’m halfway to being a happy camper. But the bloody Clown Killer is still out there. We haven’t got a clue as to who he is.”

  “You’ll get there,” Beth said. “He’s escalating and making contact. Have you been back over old ground and interviewed the most likely suspects?”

  “We don’t have much in the way of likely suspects. I still think that David Madsen is involved. We know that he isn’t the killer, but the general consensus is that he could have arranged for Neil Connolly to be murdered while he and his wife were in Australia.”

  “If it was just a case of having his daughter avenged, then I’d agree,” Beth said. “But that should have been the end of it, not the beginning of a killing spree.”

  “Whoever did it found his warped calling,” Matt said. “He probably watched all the old Death Wish movies and decided that taking out lowlife was some kind of noble act; he’s on a one-man crusade.”

  “He gets a great deal of pleasure from it,” Beth said as she cut another piece from the lean steak. “I envisage a lonely, middle-aged man. Someone that has decided to do something meaningful before it’s too late. Killing for Madsen, if that was how he started up, gave him the impetus to carry on. He has found purpose that has turned into a passion. I would imagine he was just watching the world go by, and now he feels a part of it again.”

  “A lonely middle-aged man looking for purpose,” Matt said, repeating points that Beth had voiced. “We’ll go through the list we have again and interview anyone that could fit those criteria.”

  They were home at a little after ten and had a nightcap. Matt gave Beth the details of how Shelley Carmichael had killed the two TV presenters because they had planned to leave Rhonda’s agency, and that she had murdered the researcher, Dominic Wilson, to throw them off the scent.

  Matt couldn’t sleep. He was mind hunting The Clown; matching names to faces and recalling some of the men that he had already spoken to. Madsen’s brother Richard kept popping up front and centre. Perhaps the one-legged war veteran was still killing, but not for his Queen and country. But there was no evidence to even bring Richard Madsen in for questioning. He decided that given the green light from Tom he would have him put under surveillance for a while. Hunches sometimes paid off.

  The night was long, and after sleeping fitfully he got up before six a.m., put a robe ‒ that he had owned for over twenty years ‒ on over the T-shirt and shorts he slept in, and tiptoed out of the room so as not to disturb Beth. He went downstairs, made coffee and switched on the heating and then the rewired outside light to illuminate the back garden. Going out onto the deck he was faced by a solitary figure. He stood still and made eye contact with a fox that was becoming a regular visitor. “How’re you doing, boy?” he said to the wary predator, and it cocked its head like a pet dog, as if attempting to understand him, before turning and loping off into the orchard, swivelling its head round several times to be sure that he was not following, before disappearing into the gloom.

  Matt reasoned that the fox was in some ways like the killer he sought. It was feral, apart from society, but within it, adapted to huma
nity and able to manoeuvre without usually being seen, let alone understood. It was opportunist. Its values and actions were outside the perception of other creatures. The man he was hunting would be similar. At face value he would probably appear to be benign, and be capable of blending in with a false face of normality. Was that why he had some kind of fetish for masks? Did he believe that everyone was hiding behind one, because he was?

  After a few minutes the cold drove Matt back inside. It was almost April. Spring would soon be in the air, and the days would become longer and the temperature would begin to rise. Winter was losing its grip, and its icy fingers had hopefully withdrawn for several months.

  Beth had turned the radio on and was pouring herself coffee when he walked back into the kitchen. It was as if she somehow missed him not being in bed next to her, even in her sleep. His absence did not go unnoticed by her subconscious. They were a couple on so many levels. She smiled. It had always amazed her how her parents seemed to be able to communicate without the need to even talk. Just subtle looks and the merest body language was enough for them to exchange feelings and intentions. That was a little scary, but nice. That she and Matt were capable of it, to a degree, was reassuring and convinced her that their relationship was strong. Although being a psychologist, she could read more into actions and the way people thought than the average person. And she recognised that Matt was in some ways as deep as the darkest night. His work and the many horrendous incidents he had been involved with had hardened a part of his psyche, to the extent that he could conceal much of what he thought, and did not readily revisit experiences that if recalled would dishearten him. Perhaps no one ever really knew another person. Her take on it was that everyone had secrets that they would take to the grave with them, good and bad. The whole truth and nothing but the truth was something that people swore to in courts of law, but would renege on if it suited them, by using avoidance and diffidence, if not outright lies.

  “You’re wearing my best robe and my slippers,” Matt said. “What would you say if I wore yours?”

  “That you were a closet transvestite or cross dresser, Barnes. But I think you’d look good in that short pink gown I’ve got with the fluffy collar.”

  Matt grinned and held out his empty mug for Beth to refill. “In your dreams, sweetheart,” he said, impersonating Humphrey Bogart’s voice perfectly. “It would ruin my macho image.”

  “I could take a photo of you wearing it, have it printed up poster-size and get Pete to pin it up in the squad room.”

  “If you did I would have no alternative but to shoot you both. And Pete knows better than to do anything that would seriously piss me off.”

  “Shooting is a bit extreme,” Beth said. “Couldn’t you just tie me to the bed and have your evil way with me?”

  “No, you’d enjoy that.”

  Beth put her coffee mug down on the counter and went to him, just as Rod Stewart started singing Have I Told You Lately That I Love You, which they had decided was their song.

  Matt put his mug down and they held each other and started to smooch round the kitchen. For a few minutes they were apart from all else, together in a universe of their own making, with all problems and other considerations forgotten.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  IT was eight p.m. when he left the bungalow and drove south to a defunct cement works at the end of a narrow gravel-topped road on the outskirts of Aveley. He had explored the site previously and knew that it was totally abandoned; just a blot on the landscape that was awaiting demolition and redevelopment.

  The rusted galvanised wire gates were not even locked. Stopping in front of them he switched off the lights and got out of the car to push them open wide enough to drive through.

  The huge entrance doors to the main structure were missing. He drove into the cavernous belly of the building, along its length into gloominess broken by shafts of moonlight that cut through holes in the roof like torch beams to spotlight the slowly disintegrating concrete floor.

  Dragging the plastic-wrapped body over the rim of the boot as if it were a sack of potatoes, he let it fall, to thud dully at his feet. Removing the covering from the corpse, he folded it up and returned it to the boot, and took out a coiled nylon rope, to tie a slipknot noose and secure it tightly around the ankles of what had been Ian Peterson. To the other end of the rope he fastened a heavy steel chisel, and swung the now weighted rope underarm in perpendicular circles, to then let go and watch as it flew up and over one of the girders that had at one time been a support for the high ceiling of a second floor that was now almost entirely missing.

  The chisel sailed over the girder and fell back down to bounce noisily on the solid floor. He removed the tool and tossed it back in the boot of the Golf, and then took up the slack of the rope and hauled the body up off the ground, wearing thick gardening gloves to ensure that he did not chafe the inside of his fingers or the palms of his hands. When the body was swinging with its fingertips approximately three feet from the ground, Gabriel walked twice around an upright steel support pillar, maintaining the tension as he tied it off.

  Standing back, he smiled. Hanging by its feet the corpse looked quite a gruesome spectacle. There was a little blood staining the mask, and as the body turned lazily, the word carved in the flesh of its back stood out starkly against the dough-white skin, though was obviously upside down, which begged those that would soon gather round to tilt their heads to read it.

  Taking the dead man’s phone from his pocket, Gabriel switched it on and took a photo of what he considered to be a work of art. Damien Hirst, eat your heart out!

  Perhaps he would send the image to the cop, Barnes, just to show him what should be the fate of murderers, paedophiles and rapists.

  Turning to close the boot of the car, Gabriel stopped in his tracks. Shit! A schoolboy error. The corrugated sheeting that the walls and roof of the building was comprised of was still for the most part intact, and the dry dust that had accumulated on the floor made a perfect base to hold the prints of the Golf’s tyres. Shadows filled the shallow but clear tread marks.

  Reversing out of the building, Gabriel parked near the gates and walked back, pausing to break a branch laden with pine needles from a fir tree, to re-enter the factory and sweep away all trace of all tyre and footprints. Perhaps it was unnecessary, because the only way they could be compared was if the police were to have reason to suspect him, and commonsense decreed that should they, then just one spot of blood or a single hair from one of his victims in the garage or workshop would bring about his downfall. But it didn’t harm to be as careful as possible.

  Satisfied that the tracks had been obliterated, he returned to the car, dumping the branch in bushes before driving home.

  The spiking pains in his chest and back and stomach were as he imagined it would feel if someone was using a nail gun on him. The exertions of the evening had been debilitating, and the sense of the creeping, growing disease within his body had never been more profound. He stopped once in a lay-by, attempted to relax and opened the window to inhale cold night air through his nostrils and exhale it through his mouth for a couple of minutes. It made him feel marginally better.

  Once back in the bungalow, he half-filled a tumbler with the powerful pink analgesic, which he thought of as a liquid cosh that knocked the pain into temporary submission, and after fifteen minutes it began to take hold and give him relief.

  With Classic FM on the radio, Gabriel sat in an easy chair and thought about the past, his current physical condition, and the fact that he knew that time was quickly running out. There were still names on his death list, but he was becoming too weak to continue. Perhaps he could just shoot one or two of them, without bothering to abduct and deal with them in the ritualistic manner he had been employing. Or perhaps it was time to stop. The killing had become an obsession, in the way that he had a passion to make objects from wood. But all good and bad things come to an end. He needed to settle his affairs; put his house in order. B
efore he became too weak or ill he would ensure that the bungalow was spick and span, and that everything personal was destroyed. It was amazing just how much dross accumulated over the years. He did not want to think that strangers would be pawing through it after he was gone. And yet he knew that they would if it was there.

  After sleeping for over six hours, he showered, dressed, and began putting what were the material components of his life into plastic bin bags. There were albums full of photographs that he chose not to look through, and paid bills that filled a large drawer in the credenza. There were even letters that Lisa and he had sent to each other when they had been courting, which were in two bundles held together by rubber bands that were almost perished with age. The first was dated July 1976. He had been nineteen back then, and recalled that it had been the longest, hottest summer he could remember. Nine years after that he had made what still rated in his mind as the biggest mistake of his life. He had allowed himself to get involved with a married woman; Nancy Madsen. They had both been weak and let the novelty of sex with another person override the fact that they loved their partners.

  It had been at a mid-December works Christmas party in eighty-five at the Sandbridge Golf Club that they had found themselves together outside the locker rooms, ostensibly to get a little fresh air from the smoke-filled clubhouse. Had the law against smoking been in place back then, the future would have almost certainly taken a different course. Gabriel smiled at the memory of that first clandestine meeting, and closed his eyes to bring it alive in his mind:

  “Hello Gabriel, are you as bored with the shindig in there as I am?” Nancy asked.

  “I’m a little bored with most things at the moment,” he replied as he admired her slim, sexy body. She wore a very short strapless silver cocktail dress that shimmered under the exterior lighting, and was a vision of loveliness to him; someone that he could not help but want to have sex with her.