by Limey Lady
It was a third tramp, staring numbly over the fire, not believing what he was seeing. This third down-and-out was much older than Ginger and Wolfman. He had to be fifty at least. He was clutching an ASDA carrier bag in each hand and looked bemused; must have been under the mistaken impression that this was the party to be at.
The killer's thoughts were clearer than they had ever been. Leaving the gags, he took hold of one of the stakes and drew it out of his jacket, keeping it on the tramp's blind side.
‘Good evening,’ he said warmly. ‘Why don't you join us for a drink?’
The tramp seemed rooted to the spot. He only turned to run as the killer leapt the fire, and by then it was too late. Dropping his carriers, he managed a couple of shambling steps. Then the killer was on him, bringing the stake two-handed from over his head, slamming it down between unprotected shoulder blades.
THHHWUNKKK!!
The feel and sound of the stake smacking into flesh was incredibly satisfying. The killer stood panting over the writhing tramp and realized he had a raging hard-on. Just like first time out. As he struggled to regain control of his breathing it became evident that he had cum in his pants and still had a raging hard-on.
I could fuck the WORLD tonight! Nobody could stop me!
He pulled the hammer out of its secret pocket and used it to thump the stake all the way through the tramp's back before kicking him over. The sharp end of the stake now protruded from the bastard's chest, pointing crookedly skyward, like some mad tribute to Chesterfield.
Following the routine as best he could, the killer shot his unexpected victim twice in the stomach before cutting open his clothing and carving a deep H into his torso (cursing the stake for getting in his way), followed by a much smaller X into his forehead. He then drew another stake from his supply and, centring it on the X, used the hammer to drive it through the tramp's brain, into the ground.
The reaction was underwhelming.
Within a minute the tramp was disappointingly dead. The stake through the chest must have been too much to bear. He hadn't had enough in him for wriggling and groaning, never mind any orgasmic bucking, twisting and writhing.
Leaving the corpse the killer turned back to the fire, glancing into the discarded carrier bags in idle interest. One was packed with strong, own-brand lager. The other was stuffed with a massive multi-buy packet of Monster Munches.
Tonight's top monster looked slowly around, deciding he had the all clear. He listened hard and heard nothing. Sniffed and breathed in only cool, sweet air.
It was time to get cracking. There was work to be done yet.
*****
The bad taste had been in Rick’s mouth ever since yesterday’s brief. Ignoring it, he inched open a super-sized door and had a look out into the corridor. All was well. No sign of Ivan’s security team, only CCTV, and they’d been sufficiently pre-warned about that.
Not that they would have been taken by surprise by a few cameras. It was just nice to know what to expect in advance. That was why getting this far had been so quick.
Ivan’s bedroom suite was on the fourth floor. The fifth floor was occupied by a dozen members of his security team. Another dozen occupied the ground floor, with six more floating here and there in-between. There were thirty of them altogether, working in shifts; Russian gangsters, mostly, but also bolstered by a handful of Brits. Despite appearances, only a fraction of the whole bunch had military experience: two of the Brits had been squaddies and three of the Russkies were believed to be ex-Spetsnaz.
Fuck that, though. If it comes to a contact we’ll be in the shit, whatever it says on the other side’s CVs.
Working together to beat the surveillance, the two intruders made their way along a deeply carpeted corridor that Louis XIV would have been proud of, silently gaining entry into the target room. Rick let Judd go first then, after a final check over his shoulder, followed him inside.
The carpet in there was deep too. Long, thick curtains covered bullet-proof windows. The room smelt of expensive perfume and was quiet as the grave, in spite of the six-lane highway outside. Quiet and, as the spooks had promised, deserted. Apparently Anna used it as a boudoir, but not very often . . . and not ever at this time of night.
Rick flicked his torch on, flashing the reduced beam left, illuminating the connecting door to Anna’s suite. Then he moved it right, illuminating the one into Ivan’s.
According to the spooks, Anna didn’t have any automatic sleeping rights in Ivan’s bed. According to Beefy, she wouldn’t have fucking-well wanted them. Like Ivana, Anna had to be half the oligarch’s age, if that. Not to mention capable of pulling the film star of her choice.
Wonder how he lets her know? Rick tried not to snigger. Didn’t sultans use to have some sort of card system? Numbered tiles . . . something like that?
Judd had opened the door into Ivan’s massive bedroom; very, very slowly. Rick waited, breathing as softly as possible until he returned, flashing his torch twice to confirm that part of the mission had been completed.
Cue entry to Anna’s lair. Moving as slowly as Judd, Rick eased open the door, to avoid any sudden change in air pressure as much as noise. It was pitch black inside. The only sound that of light breathing. Ten seconds and he was at her bedside. Clamping the drugged pad over her face took just two seconds. One surprised jerk and Anna was still. He swiftly took hold of her, throwing her weight over his shoulder before carrying her through the deserted boudoir and into Ivan’s room.
Ivan was in bed, as completely zonked as his “London wife”. Rick could see that from the steady light of Judd’s headlamp, which he’d aimed onto the man’s face. He gently lowered Anna beside the oligarch then, considerably less gently, ripped the thin nightdress off her.
‘What do you think?’ he hissed.
‘Fit,’ Judd hissed back.
‘Not that. Are you certain it’s her?’
‘Yes. I’m certain beyond any doubt.’
‘Fuck,’ said Rick. ‘I knew you’d say that.’
Judd patted him on the arm. ‘Are you sure about this?’
Rick scowled. The objective was to deliver Ivan a message. Thirty man security team or no thirty man security team, he could be got at. And not only here in London; if he didn’t wise up and break off his latest Iranian love-in, he’d get more of the same back in Moskva.
Or rather, Ivana would.
‘Sure I am.’ He pushed the other man away. ‘Signal Beefy. We’ll be out in five.’
‘This is bollocks,’ Judd muttered.
Taking no notice, Rick gripped Anna by the jaw. Her skin felt soft and smooth through his thin latex gloves.
Fucking message, he thought.
Then he snapped her neck with a single sharp twist.
Chapter Eleven
(Monday 7th April 2008)
‘Okay,’ said Jack Carlisle, staring meaningfully at the four plainclothes officers with him in the meeting room. ‘The first thing we do is get everyone on the same song sheet. These dead guys are not tramps. They are not down-and-outs or rough sleepers. They are human beings. I want everyone out there to know we care. What’s more, I want everyone to know we are going to catch the bastard who’s killed them.’
‘Everyone knows that already,’ said Marsh.
‘Maybe they do, but when you leave this room I want you to speak to every last copper on the team, whether they’re on board or not. I do not want anyone outside the Job to get the impression we aren’t all trying our damnedest.’
Nobody replied although there were a couple of puzzled expressions.
‘Put it this way,’ Carlisle enlarged, ‘any wrong impressions and there’ll be a whole lot of new murders round here that won’t need investigating . . . because I’ll have done them. Understand?’
‘Understood,’ said Waterman, with the slightest of smiles.
‘Sir,’ said Marsh and Wilkes together.
‘Is this because of the Ripper?’ asked Ayling.
Carlisle didn
’t try to hide the sigh. Ayling wasn’t really a twat; he just did a good impersonation.
‘Can’t have the bad PR they got last time,’ Ayling went on. ‘Nobody cared because they were only pros . . .’
‘I bloody care,’ Carlisle cut in. ‘Between you and me, I’ve hardly slept since I got the Micky Johnson case. It’s hung over me night and day.’
‘Your special case,’ Waterman said softly.
‘If you like, yeah, it’s my special case.’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘Every copper has one. Even useless prats like Ayling.’
‘Thank you,’ said Ayling, with a broad grin.
‘Thirteen years without sleep,’ said Wilkes. ‘No wonder you look like shit.’
‘I’ve noticed the deterioration,’ Waterman added.
‘Enough!’ This time Carlisle’s laugh was warmer. He fished a piece of A4 out of one of the files on the desk in front of him and slid it across to Marsh. ‘You can brief everyone with that as well, while you’re at it.’
‘Press release,’ Marsh said. ‘Are you doing the conference?’
‘Not this one. They’re sending someone far prettier.’
‘Waterman, you mean?’
‘I don’t do press conferences,’ said Waterman, taking the piece of paper from Marsh before he’d finished reading, absorbing its contents in a glance. ‘Not saying much, are we?’
Carlisle looked at her before answering. Waterman was one of the toughest coppers he’d ever met, as well as one of the best. And, although undeniably good-looking, she never stooped to using sex to win her everyday battles. The only feminine assets she needed to use were more basic: insight; intuition . . . things like that.
‘Don’t you think it’s enough?’
‘It’s enough to get whoever reads it out grilled to death,’ she said.
Ayling took the release when she handed him it, skimming through the text while Wilkes read over his shoulder.
‘Can’t see what more there is to tell them,’ he observed.
‘It’s all they’re getting,’ Carlisle said after a final look at Waterman. ‘Micky Johnson’s killer has struck again. And we’re going to get him.’
‘Excuse me asking,’ said Marsh, ‘but do you know something we don’t?’
‘I know manpower isn’t an immediate problem. It won’t last, but we’ll make the most of it while we can. That bastard was lucky first time out. He can’t possibly be so lucky again.’
‘I’m sensing there’s nothing to be found on the scene,’ Wilkes said. ‘Not even spent casings. It’s as if he was never there.’
‘He was there all right,’ Carlisle growled. ‘And we’re going to find traces of him. Or rather, Marshy is.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. I want you there until you’re satisfied the forensic boys have bagged everything there is to bag. Then I want you standing over them in the lab while they microscope everything ten times.’
‘We’ve already done that.’
‘Maybe you have, but without finding anything. So you’re going to do it all again. I want you to expand the area. Go over the entire plot together with all the approaches. Sieve through six inches of topsoil. And have every drain and manhole within two hundred yards checked while you’re at it.’
‘Sir,’ Marsh said, unenthusiastically.
‘Wilkes and Ayling . . . I want you supervising the rest of the team through all the usual routines. We’ll review progress later this afternoon. I’ll allocate specifics when we know exactly which way the wind has started to blow. Waterman . . . You see what sense you can make out of those carvings he does on his victims. And find out how many more potential victims we have.’
‘Homeless human beings, you mean?’
‘For the purpose of this exercise, I think we can call them rough sleepers.’
‘Then there are twenty-three.’
He stared at her. ‘There can’t be that many in Shipley.’
‘Not in Shipley, sir, in all of Bradford.’
‘Bollocks. Who told you that?’
‘Bradmet told me. That was a result of their spot check a few months ago. Although they admit they may have missed some of the ones with good hiding places.’
‘Twenty-three in all Bradford . . . that’s nonsense,’ Wilkes said. ‘That Sally Ann place up Leeds Road must sleep forty or more.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Waterman, ‘but they aren’t rough sleeping, are they? They’re indoors of a night.’
‘So it’s the way they tell ‘em.’ Carlisle snorted. ‘Just like unemployment numbers. What did they say about Shipley?’
‘They say there are none, sir. They seem to think everyone drifts away to the city centre.’
‘Okay. Organize our own count for tonight.’
‘Wouldn’t have thought they’d be too many out tonight,’ Ayling put in. ‘If I was sleeping rough I would definitely be drifting away from Shipley right now.’
‘Well let’s make sure we try, anyway.’
‘Consider it done,’ said Waterman. ‘I’ll get everyone to keep an eye out afterwards as well. On the assumption things will be back to normal in a day or two.’
‘Our man,’ Marsh said. ‘What do we call him?’
‘”Bastard” sounds good to me,’ said Ayling.
‘Mr Bastard it is then. Thing is, he’s a case, isn’t he?’
‘He shoots them,’ Wilkes objected. ‘There’s nothing hard about that.’
‘I meant with the planning and execution.’ Marsh hesitated.
‘Go on, Marshy. We’re all listening.’
‘He goes there, armed with a silenced gun. He disables three men. Somehow stops them yelling out. Then has the nerve to stay on the scene, what . . . ten minutes? Maybe as long as quarter of an hour?’
‘Having nerve doesn’t make him clever. And he’s gone ballistic. There’ll be some trace of him there, somewhere. We’ll get him.’
The three male officers left the meeting room but Waterman lingered while Carlisle stuffed papers back in his files.
‘Any news on the stakes?’ she asked, hopefully.
‘They’ve gone off for tests. For what good it’ll do.’
‘At least we’ll get confirmation they’re from the same source.’
Carlisle shrugged. The new collection of stakes looked like an exact match to the one used years ago on Johnson. They did not, however, have any markings to confirm they were a match. More to the point, they did not give the slightest clue where they’d come from.
‘Hopefully we’ll get confirmation they’re from the same source. I’m not sure that’ll help, though. If only they’d barcoded the bloody things.’
‘If only.’ Waterman smiled. ‘Let’s hope they were made by Acme Steelworks in 1993; sold exclusively to Acme Marquees in 1994. Only ever used for Bingley Show . . .’
‘Life just couldn’t be so simple.’
‘I know it couldn’t. Those marquees go up at least a week before the show. Absolutely anybody could go in that park after dark. Lift a dozen stakes . . .’
‘God’s sake, Waterman, what are you trying to predict, another massacre?’
‘I sincerely hope not.’ She paused a second. ‘How do you reckon he stopped them yelling out?’
‘Some sort of gag, I suppose.’
‘Ball gags, if you ask me.’
‘Ball gags?’
‘You know, like in bondage games. They’re quick and easy to fit.’
‘Are they now?’
‘So I’m told. Shall I try to find out if anyone’s made a bulk purchase?’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Okay, I will. But don’t build your hopes up. Most of that stuff is bought off the Net.’
‘Your knowledge and attention to detail never fails to amaze me, as does your eagerness to please.’
‘Think nothing of it.’ Waterman dazzled the universe with half a smile. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘you didn’t give me much to do.’
‘In that case . . .’
‘Oho!’
‘Find out where those . . . homeless guys got all that booze from.’
The woman officer frowned. ‘Do you reckon that’s a factor in why they got killed?’
‘Not really. It just bugs me that homeless guys have a better social life than I do.’
*****
