A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes)

by Michael Kerr

  “He sounds a little nervy, boss,” Pete said. “Do you think he still feels safe?”

  “I don’t know. I want officers watching his place as of now.”

  Matt called Beth at Northfield. Brought her up to speed.

  “Put the tape on for me,” Beth said.

  Matt rewound it, stabbed the play button on the small, twin-decked machine and held the receiver two inches away from it. Fumbled a stick of gum from its silver-paper covering and wadded it into his mouth. He had graduated from sucking on an unlit cigarette. Chewing gum was a stress depressant. Not as calming as lighting up, but better than nothing. He was beginning to think of himself in the same light as an alcoholic, who was a teetotaller, but would never be cured and probably always one drink away from falling off the wagon.

  “He sounds keyed-up; a little overwrought, Matt. He has a heightened and abnormal capacity to suspect and mistrust others; a mental derangement with delusions of persecution. In his case, paranoia is well-founded. He knows that everyone is after him. You need to take what he said about other serial killers seriously. He wants to leave his mark on the world in a big way. Maybe go down in history as the most prolific killer in modern times. He has obviously studied other mass murderers, to even know of Chikatilo and Camargo.”

  “I’ve heard of them Beth, but the details escape me.”

  “In the mid-eighties, Daniel Camargo escaped from prison in Colombia, fled to Ecuador and embarked on a reign of terror. He was a rather pleasant if weedy looking fifty-three year old, who went on to rape, kill and mutilate seventy-one young girls. And between nineteen seventy-eight and ninety in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, an apparent model soviet citizen and respected, hard-working party member, Andrei Chikatilo, murdered at least fifty-five women and children. In the majority of cases, he cut their tongues out and then decapitated them. As for Bundy, he’s almost a celebrity serial killer. The interesting thing about him was, that he was a charming, intelligent and handsome law student. Police believe that he committed forty-two murders during a period of nine years.”

  “What do you think Downey will do, Beth?”

  “I believe he’ll walk away from it. Just drop out of sight and adopt a new identity. Once he has changed his appearance you will be looking for a man who no longer exists. And when he has built himself a new and credible persona he will start up again. If you know who he is, why haven’t you lifted him?”

  “We only just put it together. I’ve got officers on the way to his place now. And we need to take him in the open. If Julie Spencer is still alive, then I don’t want her being held as a human shield.”

  “Keep me posted, Matt. And be aware that he may do what you least expect. His way of thinking will not be governed by any logic that you might employ.”

  Back in the isolation of the loft, Julie almost believed that he would not kill her. But only almost. She was not prepared to be overconfident. This might be the game he had played with previous victims. They may have clung to false hope that he purposely engendered, and believed that he would spare them. She had to help herself, and not become complacent. She experienced an overwhelming presentiment of impending doom. Had she been in possession of something heavy, and a knife, then she would have taken desperate measures. She had been horrified to see a news story concerning a young man who had been climbing and had an accident. He had ended up with a large, immovable boulder trapping his foot, and knew that he would perish in the wilderness if he could not free himself. Only now could Julie properly appreciate his being able to break the bones of his ankle with blows from a rock, before cutting through the flesh, muscle and tendons to perform self-amputation. He had somehow contained the bleeding and made his way down the mountain. Survival can take great courage to secure.

  The safety pin!

  She stared at her bandaged ankle as though it was a two-headed dog. Leant forward and removed the steel fastener with shaking fingers. Houdini she wasn’t, but now had a tool to pick the lock of the handcuff that held her foot as secure as any boulder.

  With the pin straightened out, she jabbed it into the small keyhole and poked it about, half expecting the cuff to spring open. It didn’t.

  An eternity passed. She sobbed with frustration and examined the now bent end of the pin. It was not going to work. An escapologist would have been at liberty in seconds, but she did not understand the workings of the simple mechanism.

  A sheen of sweat coated her body to form droplets that ran down, over and between her breasts, to make it appear as if rain was falling on the scene of the wolves that Lucas had tattooed on her torso.

  Her finger and thumb ends were sore from working the bent pin into the lock, but she persevered. Shit! The pin stuck. Seemed to be wedged and would not move. She could not withdraw it. What would he do to her if he came up and saw that she had been attempting to escape? She forced away thoughts of having more fingernails removed, but other and even more degenerate forms of torture crowded her mind. She knew beyond any doubt that there was no vile act he was not capable of committing.

  Brute force did not work. She tried to relax, held the pin lightly, and ever so gently waggled it to and fro, to gasp aloud in surprise and glee as with a dull click the cuff sprang open.

  Now what? Cover her tracks in case he came back before she could escape. She bent the pin back into shape as best she could and forced the now blunt and hooked end through the crepe bandage. If it came to it, she could quickly snap the cuff back on. He would be none the wiser, and she now knew that given time, she could release herself again. Her morale was sky-high. She felt as free as any eagle soaring atop thermals that kept it aloft. But she now had to exit the house. Was he in? Only one way to find out.

  Tiptoeing across the plastic, she went behind the screen he had built and knelt down next to the ladder and trap door. Turned the catch and felt her heart miss a beat as the door dropped down with a loud creak. She froze. If he had heard her, then surely he would come bounding up the stairs.

  Nothing. The house was silent. And she knew the layout. The first floor had been made into a flat, where he lived above the studio and back kitchen on the ground floor. If she could make it to the street, she would be out of his clutches. She was so close to getting her life back.

  Lowering herself down through the trapdoor, Julie hung by her hands for a second, then let go, bending her knees to absorb the impact as she hit the carpeted landing and dropped into a crouch, hands on the floor in front of her. She bit back a cry of pain as her injured finger made contact. Took deep breaths and strained her ears, but could only hear sounds from outside, in the world that she had been stolen from.

  Pushing the wooden trap back up, at full stretch, she was able to turn the catch and secure it.

  With bated breath she made her way along the landing. The bathroom door was open wide enough for her to see that it was unoccupied. The door opposite it was ajar. She peeked around it. His bedroom. She ventured inside. Went across to a dresser and opened the top drawer. Socks and briefs. It was in the second drawer that she found a stack of T-shirts and a pair of denim shorts. She wriggled into the shorts. They were a little tight around her bottom, reminding her that Lucas was well-muscled, but slim. The black T-shirt was long and baggy, but her body was drenched with sweat, and the garment clung to her. She could see the shape of her breasts and the outline of her nipples through the now damp material. She plucked the cotton away from her skin. Time to get the hell away from this evil place, and phone the police. A future of working her fingers to the bone in the laundry was now more appealing than it had ever been. And she determined to always take a cab to and from the pub in hours of darkness, or not venture out at all. This experience had made her fully appreciate how unsafe it was to put herself in a vulnerable position.

  At the bottom of the stairs she had a choice; turn left into the kitchen, or right into the tattoo parlour. There was no wasp’s buzz sound of the machine he used. She knew he was out. Probably in Boots, buying her s
ome tampons.

  She reached out and took hold of the door handle to the studio. Straight onto the street would be safer than venturing out back where it was more private, and therefore more risky.

  The door opened, and she went through, into the curtained-off area where she had been forced to lay on the padded gurney and suffer him working on her with the needle.

  She was suddenly livid. It was totally unacceptable that he should be able to just select human beings at will, to steal them and use them as he saw fit. He deserved more than a prison sentence. The bastard should pay with his life for his vile actions. But she was not about to try to seek retribution. She was terrified of him, and had been privy to witnessing firsthand that he was all but invulnerable to pain.

  A sound behind her. A key turning in the lock of the kitchen door. She looked across to the lock under the handle of the door that was her way to freedom. No key. It would be locked. All she could do was hide, hope that he went upstairs, and then go out through the kitchen.

  She eased the door to the hallway shut and ducked under what she thought of as his operating table. It would work out. She had not got this far to fail. He would have to kill her to get her back in the loft. Some things were worse than death.

  Lucas carried a two gallon can full of petrol. Knew that he had to be quick. All that he would take from the house was money that he had stashed away. He would not even allow himself the time and pleasure of strangling Julie. The fire would kill her. Such a pity. He could not risk taking her with him. They could have been so good together. But he would look on the bright side. With no encumbrances, he could start afresh. No good weighing yourself down with excess baggage. Women were ten a penny. There were so many of them out there for him to choose from.

  He stepped into the hall and froze. He could smell her. How could that be? The individual stink of her sweat was in the air about him. He closed his mouth and took a deep breath through his nostrils, filtering out the faint smells of the petrol and stale cooking odours. No doubt. The clever bitch had somehow removed the cuff and got out of the loft. Was she still here or already talking to the police on a neighbour’s phone? This was turning into one of those shit-awful days that come along out of the blue to fuck with your head and complicate life. But he could handle it. He always had been able to cope with bad stuff, and was better for having suffered a little in life. It had made him resilient.

  He was on the clock. Opened the door to the studio. He had the key to the front door on a fob in his pocket. She hadn’t escaped through the back or front downstairs. He backed-up and confirmed that the kitchen windows were still locked from the inside. She was still here, hiding. Or maybe she had jumped out of a first floor window, but he couldn’t imagine her doing that. And all the windows were locked and double glazed. He rushed over to the kitchen door, locked it and removed the key. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he called in a singsong voice as he unscrewed the cap from the can and began to pour out the contents. “I know you’re here, Julie. Give it up, now, or when I find you I’ll gut you like a pig in an abattoir.”

  Julie clamped her hands to her mouth and prayed that he would go upstairs. It would only take her seconds to rush out from hiding, pick up a chair and throw it through one of the plate glass windows. She could smell the strong, nose-burning stink of petrol. What was he doing?

  Oh, sweet Jesus, NOO! His legs appeared next to the table, just inches away from where she was cowering.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  As the unmarked Mondeo pulled up to the kerb within sight of Ink Magic by Lucas, Marci saw the black clouds of smoke erupting from where the windows had blown out. They were too late, and both Marci and Phil knew it.

  Marci exited the car and ran towards the burning building. Phil called the emergency services and then tapped in the squad room’s number on his mobile. Got put through to Matt.

  “Yeah, Phil?” Matt said.

  “He torched the place, boss. Must have felt at risk and decided to run.”

  “Okay, Phil. See what you can find out and get back to me.”

  Marci felt totally helpless. She could not get within twenty yards of the tattoo parlour. The heat was tremendous, and no one without breathing apparatus would be able to enter the wall of dense smoke. If the Spencer woman was inside, then she was dead.

  Phil ran down an alley to come out at the rear of the terrace. The garage in the small back garden of Downey’s property was also ablaze. He lifted his jacket up to cover his face and shield him from the heat, and approached the open back door. Took a deep breath and was about to enter, only to be hauled backwards by Marci, who wrapped her arms around his waist and jerked with such force that they both fell to the ground.

  “No, Phil,” Marci shouted, to be heard over the crackling voice of the conflagration. “There’s nothing we can do. No one is coming out of there alive.”

  Matt felt that he had personally blown it. He had not convinced Downey that they had no clue as to his identity. Something had spooked the killer and decided him to take flight.

  “You always come up with some half-baked reason to take it on your own shoulders, Matt,” Beth said that evening as they sat in the bar of the Kenton Court Hotel.

  “My case. The buck stops with me,” Matt said too tersely. He saw Beth’s hurt look and reached across the table and put his hand over hers. “Sorry, love. We were so close to him, and now I feel like we’ve slid down a snake back to square one.”

  Beth turned her hand to clasp his palm. “Not true. You know who he is, and all about him. He’s on the run, and sooner or later you’ll find him.”

  Matt swirled the ice around in the large measure of JD that Ron had set in front of him. Took a long sip and let the small, glacial cubes rest against his top lip for a few seconds. Beth was right. They had done the work and zeroed in on Downey. That he had panicked was not due to any fault of him or the team.

  “He didn’t know that you were on to him, Matt,” Beth offered. “He was rash in following Carrie home. I would think that he saw through her act and decided to question, then murder her. I believe she put up a fight. You said that when he picked his van up from the car park, the attendant thought his nose was broken. Setting her house on fire was an attempt to destroy any trace evidence. What he did was impulsive, and I think he would be astute enough to know that you would look at every business she called at during her shift. He knew that you would close in. His personality dictated that whatever you said to him on the phone would not make him feel safe.”

  Matt sighed. “We have CCTV footage of him from the NCP at Stockwell, and the crime scene investigators are sure that if he lost any blood at Carrie’s, that they’ll be able to retrieve DNA. We have enough evidence to put him away, but don’t know where to begin looking for him. He might find an off button and just stop.”

  “That won’t happen, Matt, and you know it. He has a need to kill. It isn’t something he can just turn off. Once he has set himself up with a new identity, he’ll start again. He has the warped ambition to be more than just a serial killer. He wants to be remembered as the most successful, infamous son of a bitch to have ever lived and terrorised society. He knows that if he murders enough women, he’ll be immortalised, and that his name will be up there near the top of the leader board of evil.”

  Beth finished her Chablis, and Ron appeared as if by magic and set a fresh drink in front of each of them.

  “On the house,” Ron said. “You two look like you need to hang one on and loosen up.”

  “You might be right, Ron,” Matt said. “But I need to stay sober.”

  “The Wolf case?”

  “Did someone leave their Evening Mail for you to pick through?”

  “No. It was on the box. Some guy wearing a flash suit and a fake tan was standing outside the Yard, saying how it would only be a matter of time before this Wolf character was in custody.”

  “Adams,” Matt muttered.

/>   “Colleague of yours?” Ron said.

  “No, Ron. He’s a Detective Chief Superintendent, who might not be one for too much longer. A tosser who looks the part for press releases. I doubt he’s capable of even catching a cold.”

  “Not on your Christmas card list, eh?”

  It was late when they got back to Matt’s place. While Beth brewed fresh coffee, Matt went through the file the team had put together on Downey. There was nothing to point him in any particular direction. It appeared that Downey was a loner: No surprise there. He was a professional tattoo artist, registered with the health authority. There was little in the way of a paper trail. He had never applied for a passport, and was not a member of any organisation or club. Neighbours in Bertram Street and the owner of a local mini-mart stated that he was uncommunicative, not given to pass the time of day, or be lured into conversation.

  Downey’s late mother, Brenda, was the only lead. The team were trying to trace any other living family members, hoping that they would acquire more insight into the killer’s mental state. There was always the outside chance that he kept in touch with them.

  “There you go,” Beth said, placing a mug with a beaming, yellow smiley face on it down on the coffee table in front of Matt.

  “Thanks,” he said, putting the file aside and grasping her by the hips, to pull her close and nestle the side of his face against her stomach.

  “I love you, Beth,” he whispered. Even the sound of her name on his lips made him feel good. He loved everything about her. Hadn’t found one single thing that he would want to change.

  She moved against him, pushed him back with her hands on his shoulders, and knelt on the settee with one leg either side of him.

  He rose up beneath her.

  “Wait,” she said huskily. Got off him and turned the lights out. He stood up and they collided in the darkness; began to slowly remove each other’s clothing, pausing to touch and kiss.