A Passion To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 5)

by Michael Kerr

  Alfie knelt in front of her and unbuckled his belt and dropped his jeans to his knees. And as Judy reached out and held his cock in one hand and cupped his balls in the other, he reached under the thick jumper she was wearing to feel her small tits, and run his thumb tips over her distended nipples.

  “Do it Alfie, fuck me,” Judy gasped, opening her legs wide in readiness.

  Alfie put one hand under her buttocks, and she rose up as he thrust his stiff penis into her hot centre, and they both groaned with pleasure.

  Gabriel watched from deep shadow. They were too engrossed with sex to be aware of anything. He took the gun from one pocket and the silencer from another, screwed them together and then slowly unzipped a pocket of the backpack and removed the smooth, white Papier Mache mask and placed it on his face with the elastic around his head to hold it in place, then placed the backpack on the floor.

  Judy made a snorting noise as she came, and her muscles seemed to lock and her body stiffened for ten or fifteen seconds before she sank back, now totally relaxed and feeling fulfilled. Alfie slipped from her, and she moved back and sat up, to snort again, this time due to fear, not pleasure.

  Alfie saw Judy’s mouth open wide to form a scream that terror locked in her throat, and he could see that she was staring at something behind him. Whipping his head round he believed for a moment that he was facing the ghost of Charlie the tramp. He could not move; just stared in disbelief at the apparition that was holding a handgun.

  A muffled voice from behind the mask said, “Are there any more of you?”

  Alfie shook his head as he knelt stock-still and peed on the blanket.

  “Who else knows where you are?”

  “N…No one,” Alfie said. “It’s our secret place.”

  “Not any more,” Gabriel said as he raised the gun and aimed it at Alfie’s forehead.

  “No, don’t shoot him, please,” Judy shouted in a shrill voice that cut through the sound of the wind like a sharp knife. “You’re wearin’ a fuckin’ mask. We don’t know who you are.”

  Gabriel paused with his finger tight on the trigger. This young couple were not people that he wanted to kill. But what could he do? There was no way that he could let them go. He should have climbed back over the rubble in the doorway and waited till they had left. Too late now. You had to deal with events as they came up. Whatever course of action he decided on, he could not stay at the chapel. Or could he?

  “Where’s your car, and what make is it?”

  Alfie pointed north. “It’s a Mazda. I parked it on a track about five hundred yards from here.”

  “Throw me the keys.”

  Alfie found them and tossed them to the gunman.

  Gabriel plucked the keys out of the air with his left hand. The gun in his right hand remained rock solid, locked on its target.

  “Get dressed and then walk to the other end of the chapel,” Gabriel said. “Bring the blanket, and be aware that if either of you make any sudden moves, I’ll shoot you.”

  Judy Myers and Alfie Smith were both eighteen. Their life experience did not extend to being threatened by a man wearing a mask and pointing a gun at them in an isolated location. There was nowhere to run to, and no one to call for help. They both felt as if they had been absorbed into a horror movie of the type that they sometimes felt thrilled and scared by on TV. But this was real. They were at the mercy of what Judy thought of as the bogeyman. She began to cry, positive that this monster was going to torture, kill and probably eat them. Her imagination ran riot with a gory assortment of terrifying scenarios.

  The narrow doorway at the rear was blocked by a steel barred gate, which unbeknown to Gabriel had been installed over thirty years ago to prevent people climbing up the stone-stepped stairway behind it, to a small bell tower, or down to a large basement that had at one time been a favourite place for down and outs to keep out of the weather.

  “Pull it,” Gabriel said to Alfie. “See if it’s locked.”

  Alfie grasped the bars and heaved once, twice, and at the third attempt the gate moved a fraction. He tried again and it opened a few inches, to be stopped by bricks and broken slates on the ground in front of it.

  “Clear that crap out of the way and open it,” Gabriel instructed, and Alfie did.

  “See my backpack over there?” Gabriel said.

  Alfie looked to where the man had pointed, and nodded.

  “Walk over to it very slowly, lift it up and come back here with it.”

  Alfie reached the backpack and picked it up. He saw that there was an opening behind it in the wall, and that the lower part was filled with rubble, but he knew that he could probably just dive up and over it and be free.

  “Do it, son,” Gabriel said as the youth hesitated. “Find out whether you’re faster than a bullet. Maybe you’ll make it, but if you do I’ll disembowel your girlfriend, after she’s given me your address. And then we’d meet again when you least expected it.”

  Alfie trudged back to stand next to Judy.

  “Good decision,” Gabriel said. “Tell me your names.”

  “Alfie.”

  “Judy “

  “Okay. Open the side pocket on the right of the backpack, Judy, you’ll find a torch. Make your way down the steps behind the gate, nice and slow, and you follow her Alfie with the backpack held in front of you. And keep the torch switched on when you get to the bottom, Judy, because if it goes off I’ll start shooting.”

  The basement ran the length of the chapel with stone support pillars in two rows. The ceiling was also held up by solid oak beams. It looked exactly the same as Gabriel remembered it from back when he was twelve or thirteen.

  Taking the torch from Judy, Gabriel told them to sit with their backs against a wall and empty their pockets. “Who’s going to miss you both tonight?” he then asked them both.

  “My Mum thinks that I’m staying over with a girlfriend,” Judy said.

  “I live in a flat with two other guys,” Alfie said. “We don’t keep tabs on each other.”

  “That’s good,” Gabriel said as he unbuckled the flap on top of the backpack and took a reel of duct tape from it. “I want you to tape Alfie’s wrists together nice and tight behind his back, Judy. And then do the same with his ankles.”

  Five minutes later he had them both bound and lying face-to-face with tape around their waists and necks. He then lit a couple of large candles and switched off the torch. There was enough light from the flickering flames for him to see as he emptied the contents of the backpack on to the rough, paved floor. All he needed to do now was hide Alfie’s car, which he would use to get away from the area in a couple of days time. But the youngsters were a problem. He would have to give their future or lack of it some serious consideration.

  It was half an hour later when Gabriel returned to the basement. He had hidden the Mazda from view, and then collected kindling to make a small fire. Being below ground there was no chance of it being seen, and there were other pieces of wood scattered around the basement that he could use to keep it burning low throughout the night.

  He had removed the mask after coughing and tasting blood. There was no need to hide his features from the couple; the police knew his identity now, but had no idea where to look for him.

  He didn’t bother with the tent. Just covered Judy and Alfie with the blanket and put the folded backpack beneath their heads. They had done him no harm, and so he took no satisfaction in their discomfort.

  After drinking a large dose of the painkiller, he built up the fire and then climbed in the sleeping bag, zipped it up and dozed with the gun in his hand.

  “What can we do?” Judy whispered to Alfie as they lay cheek to cheek, shivering from the cold and trembling with fear.

  “I’m trying to cut through the tape around my wrists on the edge of a paving stone,” he whispered back.

  It took Alfie a long time to make a nick in the edge of the duct tape on the exposed corner of the rectangular stone slab. He had to keep sto
pping as his fingers ached and his right hand cramped. But once he had made a start he soon had his wrists free. Feeling around the floor under cover of the blanket, he eventually found a piece of what he at first thought was a small shard of glass, but it wasn’t, it was a thin sliver of slate. He was now feeling more optimistic.

  “Turn round slightly to face the fire,” he said to Judy. “I need to be able to see him while I try to cut us free.

  They twisted and shuffled to one side, until Alfie could see the man in the sleeping bag. He was facing them, but his eyes were closed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  MATT pulled into an American-style diner on the A127. It was set back among pine trees; a long one-storey white building with a large painting of the Stars and Stripes flag front and centre above the entrance.

  “Let’s grab a burger and coffee,” Matt said. “I doubt that Harris is at some old ruined chapel, but if he is, let’s give him time to get settled and feel safe. As far as he’ll be concerned no one will know where he’s gone.”

  “Suits me,” Pete said. “I’m starving.”

  They were led to a booth, handed menus, and asked the waitress for coffee. When she came back to them with a pot and filled the ceramic mugs with strong, black java, they both ordered fully-loaded half pound cheeseburgers without fries. As they waited for the food they both took in their surroundings, appreciating the Yank-themed diner’s interior decoration and the sixties rock and country music that was being played on a stylish, iconic Wurlitzer jukebox which had the animated bubble tubes, revolving colour columns and a revealed record changing mechanism behind a polished glass dome.

  “If Harris is there, what’s the plan?” Pete asked Matt.

  “We check the place out the same way we’d clear a house room by room. We know that he’s armed, highly motivated to remain free, and that he will shoot without hesitation, so we go in wearing vests and with weapons drawn. If he poses a threat, we shoot him.”

  “Sounds like a walk in the park,” Pete said. “But I still think he’ll have stolen a car and be a hundred miles away from here by now.”

  “I don’t buy that. He’s an Essex boy. He may decide to move on, when he thinks the heat has died down, but not initially.”

  “If it comes to it, do you think he’ll make a fight of it?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? He murdered Dewey Marvin and two of his men, so he isn’t faint-hearted when it comes to the crunch.”

  They stopped talking as the waitress appeared and set the burgers down in front of them. For the next ten minutes they just ate, drank fresh coffee and listened to the likes of Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly and Frank Sinatra on the jukebox.

  The light was failing when they set off for the southern edge of Hockley woods. Errol phoned and brought them up to speed with details of Harris. By all accounts he was a quiet, law-abiding man who used his woodworking skills to make furniture to supplement his private pension, and also made toys for, in the main, a local children’s hospice.

  “On the face of it he’s a regular guy,” Errol said.

  “But we know different, don’t we?” Matt replied.

  Matt parked the Vectra in a long lay-by that looped behind the road and was screened from it by a broad swathe of landscaped ground that had been planted with both broadleaf and evergreen bushes and trees. There were several picnic benches dotted about, and Matt was sure that in daytime there would be a mobile snack bar to cater for peckish motorists. He took a black, rubberised torch from the glove box, and they both donned Kevlar vests from the boot.

  Errol led them in by phone. He’d got Google Earth of the area up on his screen and had pinpointed what looked to be a ruin in the woods, to zoom in on it and identify it as the remains of a chapel. He told Matt that from the lay-by they needed to head north for approximately half a mile.

  Pete was first to see the ruin through breaks in the foliage. They stopped while Matt phoned Errol and told him that they had arrived and that they would be switching off their mobiles while they moved in and searched the building.

  They checked their handguns and ensured that bullets were chambered and ready to go.

  Alfie reached behind Judy and used the piece of slate to cut through the tape that bound her wrists, and then worked carefully on the tape that was around their necks, but still managed to nick himself. A couple of minutes later they were free from each other. Now what? Alfie thought. Above the crackle and splutter of the slightly damp wood of the fire, he could hear their captor snoring.

  He knew that he would only get one chance. If he messed up, then he was positive that the man would shoot them. So what was there to lose? He was convinced that the maniac would at some point rape Judy, and probably him too. A guy wearing a mask and in possession of a silenced pistol wasn’t your Mr Average. This was a full-blown nut job, and so doing nothing wasn’t an option. If Judy and he were to survive this situation, then it would be decided by what happened during the next couple of minutes.

  There was a wrist-thick piece of timber sticking out from the fire. If he could move fast enough, he should be able to grasp it, take two steps around the fire to where the man’s head was protruding from the sleeping bag, and brain him with the burning end of what he would employ as a wooden cudgel. He would just hold it two-handed and keep hitting him full force with it. And then he would retrieve his mobile and phone the police.

  He counted to three under his breath before throwing the blanket back and getting to his feet, to rush to the nearby fire, bend and withdraw the piece of wood and raise the flaming weapon above his head as he stood over the man.

  Gabriel heard the movement, readied himself and twisted his head sideways and fired the gun through the sleeping bag as the fiery length of wood whistled down in a glowing arc.

  Alfie felt the shock through his hands and arms from the impact of the makeshift weapon hitting the ground. Sparks flew from it, and as they did a blow to his left shoulder spun him around. The noise of the fire had masked the dull report of the bullet leaving the end of the silencer, and so Alfie had no idea that he had been shot as he fell down next to Gabriel.

  Judy screamed. She wanted to go to Alfie but was too scared to move.

  Gabriel climbed out of the sleeping bag, walked over to where Alfie was moaning and pressed the now hot end of the silencer against his temple.

  “Please don’t shoot him again,” Judy whimpered.

  Gabriel hesitated, and after a few seconds he lowered the gun. “I should kill both of you,” he said. “If you try anything else, I will.”

  A couple of minutes later they were trussed up with tape again, separately. He dragged the boy across to the wall behind the fire and left him lying on his side. There was a lot of blood running out from the bullet’s exit wound. Perhaps he would bleed out. Whatever. Not his problem. The dumb kid had tried to brain him, so deserved what he’d got. Maybe come morning he would kill him if he was still breathing, and the girl, and take their car. But for now he had to think of somewhere else to go and hide for a few days. The teenagers were local, and at some point they would be reported missing and the local area would be searched. It was no longer safe to stay at the chapel.

  They decided to split up as they approached the front of the building. Matt would go to the left and Pete to the right.

  The loose plan was to climb in through the crumbling stone window frames and check the place out. Neither of them believed that Harris would have come here, but they had to know that to be a fact. So far they had nowhere else to look for him.

  “Don’t shoot a vagrant for Christ’s sake, or we’ll be front page news tomorrow for all the wrong reasons,” Matt said before they moved forward.

  “We’d have to bury him and leg it,” Pete said.

  Matt smiled. “How come I think you mean that?”

  “Because I do,” Pete replied, grinning impishly.

  They took their time. There was hardly anywhere for someone to hide. It was as they met up at the rear of the chapel
that both of them heard a noise followed by a muffled scream.

  Matt and Pete moved to either side of a barred gate. It was unlocked and Matt could smell wood smoke. The rusted hinges screeched like a banshee as he had to jerk hard to open it. Stone steps led both up and down behind the gate, but the faint noises he could still hear were coming from below ground level. With his gun held forward, two-handed, Matt carefully led the way down the steps with Pete directly behind him on the narrow stairway.

  As he reached the open doorway leading into a basement, Matt stopped and listened. All he could now hear was the crackle of what was probably damp wood burning. The subterranean vault was eerily lit by the wavering shadows created by flickering flames.

  He had a choice, shout out a warning to Harris or whoever was there, or enter through the doorway, ready to shoot if necessary. He was sure that the scream he had heard was made by a female. Was it Harris down here? Did he have a hostage?

  It was a hard call, but had to be made. Matt entered the vault and moved to the side with his back against a cold, damp brick wall. Pete stayed back in deep shadow, covering Matt, his finger tensed on the trigger of his Glock 17.

  Matt saw him through the flames of the fire that had been set on the stone floor. He was hunched behind it with what appeared to be a blanket wrapped around him. And his face was white. No, it wasn’t his or anyone else’s face, it was mask.

  “Armed police,” Matt said. “Put your hands up where I can see them. Make it slow, and be aware that if you’re holding a gun and don’t drop it, I will shoot you.”

  The only response was a grunting sound, not just from the seated figure but from somewhere off to the left. He took in the whole scene. There was what appeared to be an empty sleeping bag three or feet from the now dying fire, and some kind of rucksack standing next to it.

  One slow step at a time Matt advanced toward the figure, and knew that Pete would now be circling behind him, ready to shoot the masked man, who he was convinced was Gabriel Harris; The Clown.