by Michael Kerr
Going back into the house, he made himself a cup of tea and settled to wait. He employed the darkness as a cloak to conceal his iniquitous conduct from the eyes of the world. It was his ally; a friend that aided and abetted him.
Funny. He already missed the convenience of having a subject in the house with him. But he would soon procure a fresh one. He absolutely never kept anything that belonged to the tarts he killed. He had no need of souvenirs. He had forgotten about the pages he had ripped from the posh whore’s address book. But as a rule he was ultra careful.
The taking of the slut, who was now wrapped up like a fish supper in his van, had been the inspiration for all he had done since. Before abducting her he had been consumed by a rage that threatened to consume him for almost two years. He had needed to vent it, or knew that he might self-destruct. His brain had felt like a tyre’s inner tube being pumped up to a pressure it could not sustain.
Sandra had made him what he was. She could have been his salvation, but had been no better than his fucking mother. They were all the same; a wanton, filthy species that fed off and used men. He had somehow survived his nightmarish childhood: found a deep well of strength that protected him from the ill-treatment meted out by his whore of a mother and her crackhead pimp boyfriend, Leroy Brown. They had used him as a punch bag in an attempt to alleviate their own frustration and dissatisfaction with the lives that they felt trapped in and could not escape from, but had fashioned for themselves, and so deserved. He had been blessed with an almost inhuman tolerance to pain, being able to close down the neural pathways that received messages of physical discomfort. In the end, the lack of response to being held down and branded with cigarette ends, and punched, kicked and subjected to all manner of abuse, had made further violence against him a pointless and unrewarding undertaking. By the time he was thirteen, he was just tolerated, and in the main ignored by the wretched couple who he had the misfortune to have as his custodians.
He still rated the day he had murdered his mother as his finest hour. It had been late one evening shortly before Christmas in oh-four when the unpremeditated act took place. The episode coalesced in his mind. He was back in time, watching the television in the front room of a council semi on a slum estate in Catford.
His mother was not the good-looker she had once been. Cigarettes, too much crack, and an overall despair at her lot in life had hardened her features. She had felt ill and not worked that evening, and Leroy was not amused. He was hurting, needing a fix, and his main source of income was sitting on her arse instead of lying on her back and earning money
The ensuing argument quickly turned into a shouting match, and Leroy stormed out of the house, threatening to permanently shut her the fuck up if she didn’t get her shit together.
It was like a light being switched on in his head to produce a sudden and illuminating flash of inspiration. He could rid himself of them both at a stroke.
He went into the kitchen and saw the knife and fork on the plate of congealing chicken curry that Leroy had picked at and then dumped on the drainer. He employed a piece of paper towel to pick the knife up by its handle, and placed it in the cupboard under the sink, hidden behind a plastic bottle containing bleach and a box of soap powder. He then waited, watching as his mother got loaded on cheap vodka and passed out on the settee.
It was two a.m. when Leroy came back. He was spaced-out and had to crawl up the stairs to bed.
It was time. He went for the knife. Took up his position behind the settee. This was his chance at a new life. He could erase what was and start again. His hand began to shake, and the kitchen towel rustled. Christ, he’d nearly fucked-up. Leroy was left-handed. He transferred the knife to his left hand, and using his right to pull his mother’s head back by her thick, red hair, he drew the blade across her stretched throat, exerting as much pressure as he could.
She was too drunk to properly appreciate what had happened. As he stepped back, out of her sight, she reached up, gagging as she tried to draw air in through her severed windpipe. He looked on, fascinated and horrified as she lurched forward off the settee and began to crawl across the carpet on her hands and knees. Where the fuck did she think she was going?
Reaching forward and gripping a handful of the hearth rug’s matted nylon pile, Brenda emitted a low whistling exhalation. Her head dropped down and she became still in a fitting position of supplication; her bottom raised up and facing him. He waited for a couple of minutes. He was sure that she was dead, but a loud release of wind riveted him to the spot. He had not expected a corpse to fart.
From there on in it was plain-sailing. He crept upstairs and into his mother’s bedroom, where Leroy was sprawled across the bed face up, still dressed and snoring like the pig he was. Carefully placing the knife in the man’s left hand and allowing blood from it to drip onto the no-good, drugged-up bastard’s clothing, he then retreated, went into the bathroom and flushed the bloody wad of paper towel, and finally returned to where the body of his mother was still knelt in parody of a praying Muslim. He hugged the corpse and rolled it over onto its side – an act that would explain any blood on his clothes – and then phoned the police and was suitably hysterical as he reported the murder.
The case was cut and dried from the start. Leroy was so out-of-it that even he thought he might have topped Brenda, though he vehemently denied it. Trouble being, for Leroy, that his record included two counts of GBH and one of aggravated assault. One of the grievous bodily harm charges had been for using a Stanley knife to cut the ear off a hooker who’d held out on him. It was a slam dunk. Bad, bad Leroy Brown went down for life, for a crime he had not committed. Who said life is fair?
He smiled and put the memories aside for a while. All that he had done was like an epic movie. He could watch it over and over, dipping into a scene he wished to replay. In his case, it was a whole lot more than a two-dimensional medium. He could recall the atmosphere, sight, smell, sound, touch and taste of any and all instances in his life; just conjure it up like a regular Gandalf.
It was time to get on with the job at hand. Although he savoured the thought that when Leroy eventually got parole, then the dumbfuck nigger was dead meat. He was safe behind bars, but was on a leash that grew shorter with each day he served. It was good to have something to look forward to. The pimp came under the heading of unfinished business, to be punished in a more fitting and permanent manner. All i’s had to be dotted and t’s crossed. It didn’t do to leave loose ends. And he never forgave or forgot.
The drive out to Grove Park was uneventful. He observed the speed limits and had checked that all his lights were working. It wouldn’t do to be stopped by some overzealous cop. Not with a body in the back of the van. It would result in him having to use the sawn-off 12 bore shotgun that he kept under his front seat for use in the event of extreme emergencies; when on forays that carried the attendant risk of being discovered. It was a last line of defence, only to be employed if capture was otherwise inevitable. He was extremely cautious, but knew that the best laid plans could turn pear-shaped. The chaos theory dictated that even the most painstaking attention to detail could not take into account unknown factors that might present themselves. Life was unpredictable at the best of times. You had to be ever ready and prepared to overcome adversity, and he was.
The dense profusion of gorse bushes at the side of the lane shielded an incline that led down to a rusted railway track in a disused siding. There was a small, brick built building, no more than a shell, its windows and door missing. It was to this out-of-the-way location that he dragged the remains of Janice Clayton. He cut the bag open to let the body spill out, before unscrewing the top from a two gallon can and saturating the evidence with petrol.
Backing out, he reached into a pocket of his overalls, took out a book of matches and tore a clump from the cardboard cover to strike and toss into the makeshift crematorium. The fume-filled air seemed to ignite before the matches landed on the sodden hair of the corpse’s head. The blast
rocked him on his feet and singed his eyelashes, eyebrows and the front of his short, carroty hair. The sharp intake of breath he took was too hot, and he turned away and began to run back towards the embankment, to lunge into the foliage and make his way back up to the van.
Jesus wept! He should have stood a lot farther back, or jumped to the side, away from the doorway. If he had been any nearer he would have suffered third degree burns. He coughed up phlegm, made to spit it out, and then swallowed it instead. Saliva was loaded with DNA. Leave nothing. He would give the body enough time to burn, then phone the police and tell them where to find his latest victim. This deserted area would soon draw the authorities in droves, to pick over what he had dumped and burned for them to be suitably appalled by.
He drove west to Sydenham. Stopped in an alley and changed the plates on the van, then headed up towards Brixton and finally east on the 202 and A2 to Blackheath. The stink of petrol was on his clothes. He would get rid of them.
Home. The needle jets of the shower made his face burn. He stepped out and dried himself, carefully patting the reddened skin of his face. He felt a little melancholy. The house seemed empty without the presence of his late tenant. But it was for the best. Keeping prey at home was a luxury that he had enjoyed, but knew was an unnecessary risk. But he had enjoyed it being there for him when the anger at what Sandra had done demanded instant appeasement.
“Sandra whore Scott,” he said. “One day you’ll pay in person for fucking with other men and my head.”
None of what was now happening in his life might have taken place if she had not fornicated behind his back. She had been his wife and his life. He had somehow survived his childhood, and prospered emotionally from being free of his mother and the dipshit who he had stitched up like a prison mailbag. Ha! Matricide was no big deal. They say that blood is thicker than water. Not true. You don’t get to pick your relations. And most murders are committed by spouses or family members. That was what made it impossible for the ‘filth’ to zero in on him for his current acts. They needed motive and suspects and hard evidence. And that was the only reason that Sandra was still alive. He had wanted to rip her lungs out with his bare hands, but somehow curbed the almost unbearable need to kill her. She would get hers, down the road a few years. Each and every breath she took was courtesy of him. If he acted too quickly, then he would lose everything. He would be the prime suspect. No sweat. All good things come to those who wait. There was a right time and place for everything. And until he felt it safe to deal with the promiscuous bitch, he would take other whores who bore the mark of libidinous lust. Could it be that in some perverse way he had been attracted to Sandra because of the long and almost Titian-red abundance of hair that was the exact shade of his mother’s? Could such an attribute in someone who had been so hurtful and unloving, act in the way a fancy lure will entice a fish to the barb of a hook? Had he been trying to reinvent his mother as a better person, who would worship and adore him? Maybe. But if so he had failed miserably, learning to his cost that they were all marked by the devil’s paintbrush. He had determined to seek them out, hear their contrition, and send them back to the hell that had spawned them. Their destruction alleviated the sense of injustice that gnawed away at his psyche, threatening to devour him if it was not fed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stumpy – as Pete had unkindly nicknamed the dwarf at the apartment block in Pimlico – kept up a barrage of questions as he accompanied Pete and Errol up to the sixth floor, to where a uniform was sitting on a plastic contour chair outside the door of Marsha’s apartment.
“Thanks, Stum...er...Mr. Sumner, we’ll take it from here,” Pete said as the little man made to accompany them along the corridor.
A forensic team had swept the apartment, but Pete and Errol still donned gloves. They did not want to contaminate a scene that may yet throw up further clues.
“So where do we look for a bunch of video cassettes?” Errol said. “They must take up a fair bit of room.”
“Not if they’re on flash drives or those mini-tapes. But there should be a camera. Was one found?”
Errol had brought a copy of the inventory listing everything taken from the apartment. Ran his finger down it and shook his head.
“Start in the kitchen,” Pete said. “I’ll turn the lounge over.”
It was ninety minutes later that Pete entered the bathroom. There was only one obvious place to look that was big enough to stash a camera and associated equipment. He checked the screws that secured the side panel of the bath. Slot, not cross headed. He made a trip to the kitchen – where Errol was on his knees, removing facia boards from the front of units to look behind them – and took a knife from the cutlery drawer. Back in the bathroom, Pete used the rounded tip of the knife’s blade to remove the screws. The gloomy space beneath the tub appeared to be devoid of anything but a coating of dust and small pieces of ceramic wall tile. But in a corner behind the water pipes that connected up to the base of the taps, in shadow as black as pitch, the beam from Pete’s penlight torch spotlighted an oblong shape. Laid flat out on the vinyl-covered floor, he stretched his arm out to retrieve it.
Bingo! It was a nylon carrying case of the type that held video cameras. Sitting with his back up against the rim of the bath, Pete pulled open the Velcro fastening to reveal the camera, batteries, leads, and most important, mini DV tapes crammed into every available space.
“I think we hit the jackpot,” Pete said to Errol, holding up the bag as he walked past the kitchen door to the lounge. “Let’s have a quick shufti and see if this is what we’re after.”
Pete inserted a battery, turned on the camera and opened up the LCD screen, then selected a tape at random, loaded it and pressed the play button.
A title appeared first: John McAllister. 15/Nov/09.
“Not the journalist who’s always ranting on about police brutality and civil rights?” Errol said, his broad smile revealing the small diamond that was imbedded in his left front incisor.
“We should know any second,” Pete said as the writing faded and Marsha’s bed materialised. An image of the woman who he had last seen laying dead on the floor of the lockup walked into view and sat down on the edge of the bed. She stared straight at the camera while unfastening the black lacy bra and unleashing her enhanced but nonetheless magnificent breasts.
Errol sucked in his breath. “I think I’m in lust,” he said.
The man appeared in front of her, his broad and hairy back to the camera. He was naked, and as he went to her, she turned sideways and manoeuvred him into a position that disclosed his features.
“It is that bastard who badmouths us,” Errol said with feeling.
They watched as Marsha stage-managed the resulting session. McAllister ended up taking her from behind, facing them as he held on to her breasts as if for dear life. His face turned beetroot red as he moved faster and faster. Following a series of grunts and a strangled outcry, he finished up and stayed as still as a statue for almost half a minute, then withdrew and lay back on the bed, chest wheezing, due to both the exertion, and to lungs that were working at forty percent capacity, having suffered irreparable damage from thirty-five years of trying to filter the toxins inhaled by way of sixty cigarettes a day.
“I thought he was going to have a heart attack on the job,” Errol said.
Pete grinned. “Wishful thinking, Errol. Although I can think of a thousand worse ways to go.”
“Did you notice if he was wearing a ring?” Errol said. “I was too busy watching the action.”
“He was wearing nothing but a smile,” Pete replied.
“Are we gonna get a beer and popcorn and watch the lot, then? Or give the boss a bell and let him see Marsha earning her daily bread?”
“I’ll give him the good news. The punters in her address book will have a hard time denying their involvement, if they’ve been caught on candid camera.”
After Pete switched off the video and put it back in the bag, they went into
the bedroom and quickly found the space on a shelf in the wardrobe where the camera had been set up to capture all that took place on top of the duvet. Only an inch gap between two of the mirror-faced doors would have been necessary to take the footage.
Pete sat on the edge of the bed and punched up Matt’s number on his mobile phone.
“Yeah, Pete?”
“We got some great home movies to watch, boss. The resolution of this stuff is unbelievable. You can see the hairs on―”
“I get the picture. Meet me back at base in a couple of hours and we’ll go through it.”
Matt had been about to phone Airscape and set up an interview with Colin Westin, who was entered in Marsha’s address-come-appointment book as being due to see her on the night that she had died. The call from Pete decided him to hold fire. Westin would most likely be on video, and would without doubt be more approachable if he knew there was photographic evidence linking them. Matt decided to have another coffee and maybe take it downstairs, where he could go outside and enjoy a smoke with it. It crossed his mind that he might quit the coffin nails. Only one of his team, Dave Brent, smoked. It was getting that he felt like a bloody criminal when he lit up. There was a stigma attached to it now. Maybe he only still indulged because it was an almost taboo practise. There was a perverse pleasure in bucking the system. Beth would read a lot into that. She always looked for the thinking behind the reason for any action. And maybe he was just pretty shallow. He took it one day at a time as a rule, and didn’t worry too much about a future he would only see a limited amount of. He wished Beth could loosen up a tad. She spent too much time looking for problems that might or might not exist. Best to negate them one at a time when they arose.
The phone on the desk next to him rang, startling him out of thoughts that would no doubt have soured his mood for the rest of the day.
“Barnes.”
“My office, now,” Tom said with an urgency implying that all was not well; that the fan was on high speed, and about to be hit by a large amount of the brown stuff.
