by Michael Kerr
“What about Caroline’s flat? Is it still under surveillance?”
“Yeah. No one has been near it.”
“It’s a paper chase, Barney. You need to look for addresses at Cain’s. When you find the right one, you’ll know it. He isn’t going to abduct her and then drive around aimlessly. He’ll want to spend some quality time with her. I would imagine that he’ll keep her alive for several days, maybe even longer. If he had just wanted to kill her, then you would have found her at the bungalow, mutilated and dead.”
“What does he want from her, sex?”
“Everything. He wants everything from her. It’s all about power, control and domination, remember? He doesn’t just want to rape and kill her. He needs to possess her completely, body, mind and soul; to make her return the love that he believes he feels for her. If she cottons on to the game and has the balls to play it, then she’ll be able to buy some extra time.”
“If he loves her, then he might not kill her.”
“Oh, he’ll find a reason to kill her. Even if she is able to live up to his expectations, which is doubtful. In the end, when he truly believes that he owns her totally, then he will freeze that moment forever by destroying her.”
“What makes these sick bastards the way they are, Mark? Did you ever work that one out?”
“It was another Mark, Twain, that said that like the moon all men have a dark side. I choose to believe that many sociopaths are born evil with no control over their actions. It might be a chemical imbalance in their brains, but the bottom line is that the safety valves that most of us use to repress our baser instincts are nonexistent in these freaks. I don’t buy the pitch that they all get that way purely because of abuse or deprivation in their formative years. It may account for some of them, but not the majority. I once had dealings with a guy who raped and then chopped up over twenty teenage girls. It turned out he was a twin. His brother was an Assistant District Attorney, married with three kids; a regular guy. Both men had enjoyed a stable, middle-class upbringing. But even as a kid, this creep had tortured animals and got his rocks off hurting his peers. I sometimes believe that evil is an entity that cohabits with some people from birth, or before. It’s like a virus. They’re gripped by it, and it runs its course.
“Then again, I could be totally wrong. Psychiatrists talk about how parts of the brain can be wired-up wrong, or suffer physical or emotional damage that alters personality. There are areas of nerve cells that govern social behaviour and emotional response.”
“Which reminds me, Mark, we found Holden’s face. Cain left it for us in a flat opposite the crime scene. He’d watched us while he sipped tea and waited for us to leave. He tied up and gagged the elderly tenant. Even phoned the police when he’d quit the area. The old girl said that he was gentle, but seemed a little intense.”
“Intense! She was one lucky lady.”
“She said he called her, ‘grandma’.”
“Old age does have its compensations, then. If she’d been younger and a redhead, I think she would have seen a different side of him.”
“Yeah, he’s full of surprises. I’ll keep you up to speed.”
“Good...One other point. How did Cain know not only where the safe house was, but details of where the men were positioned?”
“I don’t know. He may have been watching the bungalow for a while and clocking all the procedures.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“What now?” Amy said as Mark put the phone down.
“The heat’s off us for a while.”
“How come?”
“Cain just capped three protection officers at the bungalow.”
“Caroline?”
“He took her. But there was no blood or sign of a struggle. It looks as though he made her get dressed and abducted her.”
“How do we find him?” Amy said as she tried to imagine the terrible plight that Caroline was in.
“It might be impossible. Barney’s checking for any addresses left at Cain’s house. But the truth is, he could be holed up anywhere; a hut in a forest; a lockup garage, or any abandoned, empty building. Remember Donald Neilson?”
“The Panther?”
“Yeah. He hid in tunnels under the ground, like a fucking rat. He abducted a girl; Lesley Whittle, and she was found hanging naked in a drainage shaft. Cain will without doubt be au fait with all M.O.s of past serial killers.”
“But the Panther wasn’t a serial killer.”
“I know. That was just an illustration of what unlikely places can be used as lairs by these animals. And Neilson had killed in cold blood while robbing post offices. He was a sociopath who murdered without compunction. Had he not been caught, he would have kept killing.”
“Are you saying that there is nothing we can do?”
Mark shrugged. “Just hold tight and wait for the wave to break.”
“That’s not good enough. That won’t stop him from―”
“He’ll turn up, Amy,” Mark said, taking her in his arms. “Whether it will be in time to save Caroline is anyone’s guess. Sometimes all you can do is pray for some luck. Barney and his team are doing all that they can.”
“Let’s go to my place. I need more space.”
“There’s still an element of risk, honey. He’ll know your address.”
“He found a safe house, dealt with armed officers, and walked away with a woman. In my book, that says that we’re not safe unless we pack up and catch the next plane out of Heathrow.”
“Do you want to do that?”
“No. I don’t intend to run away from some lowlife who may be satisfied now that he has his prime target stashed somewhere. I want to go home, feed the squirrels and pretend that everything is better than it really is.”
“You make the coffee, then. I’ll go and tell our minders the new game plan.”
“Thanks,” Amy said. “And dress first. You might give the old dear downstairs a funny turn if you go outside in that robe.”
“I don’t think the sight of my legs would cause her any permanent emotional damage.”
“It wasn’t your legs I was worried about. It looks windy out there. Those two cops might end up nicking you for indecent exposure.”
“You’ve got a dirty mind. And you’re obviously insanely jealous of Mrs Cicero.”
“I am not jealous of the widow downstairs, even if she is a sucker for a Yank accent. And as for having a dirty mind...guilty as charged,” she said, reaching out to slip her hand inside his robe.
“Aghh! Your hand’s cold.”
“Be brave. It’ll soon warm up.”
“I can’t raise Gary, boss,” Mike said, cocking his wrist and frowning as he looked at his watch for the umpteenth time.
“It’s only eight-fifteen,” Barney said.
“He was due in at eight, and he’s always early,” Mike said, hitting the redial button and trying to will Gary to pick up. “He would have phoned if something had come up.”
Alarm bells started to ring in Barney’s head. Ross had said that each and every member of his team was at risk. Until the safe house got hit, he had thought it an extreme and highly unlikely supposition. But how had Cain known so much?
“Get local uniforms to check out Gary’s place, Mike,” he said with an edge of urgency in his voice. “If he isn’t home, tell them to do a door-to-door.”
Mike’s brow furrowed. “You think―”
“I don’t think anything, yet. But we need to be sure that he’s okay, right?”
Within thirty minutes, Mike got a call-back with news that made him believe the worst. Gary could not be located. A neighbour was certain that Gary’s car had not been outside the house overnight. It was subsequently located in the car park of his local pub, and the landlord affirmed that Gary had called in the previous evening, but that he had not actually seen him leave the premises. It had to be assumed that something had happened to him between the rear door of the pub and his car.
“Do you really
think that he was snatched, boss?” Mike said, finding it hard to believe.
“Yeah,” Barney said. “I think Cain got to Caroline through Gary.”
“That means―”
“That in all probability, Gary is dead.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“I know. It just gets worse at every turn. All we can hope is that he’s in the sack with some bird. Contact the rest of the team, Mike. I don’t want them to hear this second-hand. Tell them what might have happened.”
While Mike made calls, Barney paced the office, feeling more frustrated than he had for more than four years, since the Fisher case. He recalled that it had been at noon on a red-hot day in mid July when Andrea Fisher had gone missing. He had headed up the hunt for her, and after twenty-four hours had got that lead-in-the-gut feeling that they were looking for a body, not searching for a lost but still living nine-year-old.
Andrea had set off from where she lived in a terrace house in Putney, to walk less than a hundred yards to a shop at the corner of the street. She had not returned, and her divorced mother was hysterical with fear for her daughter’s safety.
At first, they had hoped that the ex-husband had abducted Andrea. He was the prime suspect, after it became known that he had fought unsuccessfully for custody. But he was eliminated within hours. At the time Andrea had vanished he had been in a snooker hall across town, and at least a dozen other players and drinkers confirmed his alibi.
Within six hours they had picked up a registered sex offender who had only been released from prison two months prior to the crime, and had previously lived in the next street to the Fishers’. Although in a halfway house, the suspect had a certain amount of free time, and Barney was convinced that some of it had been spent with the missing minor.
Graham Balfour was thirty-six, and had been molesting young girls since being a fourteen-year-old. Barney believed that perverts like Balfour, who could not control their urges, should all be physically or chemically castrated, and locked up ad infinitum. But even monsters had rights and kept being given the chance to fuck up law-abiding people’s lives, until they pushed the envelope so far out of shape that some judge eventually saw the light and was given no choice but to hand down a meaningful, lengthy sentence. They had tried to sweat Balfour, but he would not be drawn, and with no physical evidence he was back on the street within forty-eight hours.
It had been a week later that Andrea’s body was found. Two lads had seen bubbles rising to the surface of the local canal, and then watched as a large black bin-liner breached like a whale. They had thrown stones at the partially air-filled bag, only stopping when a pale, bloated arm slipped out through a tear in the plastic.
Hairs, fibres and DNA samples found on and in the corpse linked Balfour to the murder. Faced with the overwhelming amount of forensic evidence recovered, he broke down and admitted that he had abducted, raped and strangled the little girl. He had weighted Andrea’s body with a breeze block, before pushing it out into the canal, where it had sunk into the oily, polluted and stagnant water. The weight had been insufficient, and the trapped air and resulting body gases had finally brought Andrea up, to bear witness against her killer.
“The super wants a word,” Mike said for a second time.
Barney left his bitter reverie, took the proffered phone, and thought how best to placate his irate boss.
“My office,” Clive ordered, and slammed the receiver down.
Barney went up in the lift, reflexively twisting his wedding band. He closed his eyes and tried to get a handle on the rage that was cramping his stomach. He needed at least an hour by the side of his fishpond to put him in the right frame of mind to deal with Pearce without blowing up big-time. He visualised the Koi rising to the surface to take the food pellets from his hand. It helped a little, but not enough.
“Yes, Clive?” he said, entering the superintendent’s office without knocking.
“Sit,” Clive ordered, without looking up from the open folder in front of him.
“I’m not a fucking dog, Clive. I don’t sit, roll over, or lick my own balls on command.”
Clive brought his pudgy fist down too hard on the top of his desk and could not help but wince at the instant, bruising pain. “I’m going to ignore that kind of remark, Barney. I know you’re having a bad day, but―”
“A bad day! Is that how you see having an officer abducted and probably tortured and murdered? It’s a fucking horrendous day.”
“Enough,” Clive said, his face turning puce, and his eyes bulging. He appeared to be in imminent danger of having a stroke or heart attack as his anger reached critical point. “We don’t know that DC Shields has come to any harm, yet. What we do know is, that three armed officers have been murdered, and that the Sellars woman has been snatched.”
“And you’re getting it in the neck, so you’ve stopped me doing my job and summoned me up here to hand the shit parcel to. Right?”
“Let’s just look at what we’ve got, Barney,” Clive said, his voice softening. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”
Barney nodded, and Clive used his intercom to ask his secretary to rustle up coffee for two.
Barney slumped into the chair that he had been standing next to. “We know who the killer is. We just don’t know his whereabouts, yet,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to locate him.”
“Such as?” Clive said.
“Searching his house for any leads. And computer section is looking at his machine. There may be something on it or the hard drive. It’s just a matter of time, Clive. Believe me, we’ll lift him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The house was cold. Amy switched on the central heating and the coffeemaker before going out into the back garden to fill the depleted bird feed holders with peanuts and seed. She also pressed hazelnuts into the drilled holes of a log, which was screwed to the rustic post that held the bird table aloft. She smiled, thinking back to when Mark had blamed a totally fictitious weevil infestation for his failure to buy any nuts. Being home, in the comfort of familiar surroundings – and her habits within it – filled Amy with an erroneous sense of normality. She could immerse herself in routines that forced back and lessened the unwanted thoughts of Cain, and the vile acts that the man had committed.
Mark poured the coffee. Walked over to the kitchen door and looked out to watch Amy juggle with brown paper bags and feeders.
A hoar-frost still clung tenaciously to every surface. The temperature was so low that it would no doubt persist for much of the morning, until slightly milder air dispatched it.
Finding a large Perspex jug in a wall unit, Mark filled it with water and went out to join her. He removed a thin layer of ice from the ornamental, pre-cast concrete birdbath and filled it to overflowing.
“That should hold them for a while,” Amy said, breaking up some stale bread and scattering it on the stiff, white-coated grass.
Mark grinned. “Yeah, it’ll be cat heaven in a few minutes.”
“Uh?”
“You attract the birds, and Sylvester will come running for his takeaway Tweety Pie.”
“What are you saying, that I shouldn’t feed them?”
“No, Amy. I just accept that the birds are a magnet to predators. It’s called nature. There’s nothing you can do about it. For the odd bird lost, the many will survive.”
“It’s all life and death, isn’t it?” Amy mused, dropping the last two slices of bread to the ground intact, her prior enthusiasm instantly depleted.
“Yeah,” Mark said. “Everything has its day. It’s all short term, so you have to make the most of now, and not dwell too much on what’s gone, or what’s up ahead.”
“The philosophy doesn’t make it any less depressing,” Amy said, heading back to the house. “Wrap it up anyway you like, but it still sucks.”
“I don’t know. Being alive wouldn’t be so precious if we were immortal. It’s the knowledge that you’re on a journey that has a beginning, middle and endi
ng that makes it so meaningful.”
“Say that to me again in forty years time. See if it’s as meaningful when you’re wrinkled, balding, and full of aches and pains, wishing that you could do a tenth of what used to be a walk in the park.”
“You’re saying we’ll still be together in forty years?”
“Unless you get the hots for some young piece of skirt half your age and go walkabout, yes.”
“I don’t think I could find another mug like you to put up with me.”
Amy punched him on the biceps. Mark grimaced and pretended that it had hurt him.
Once back inside, they paused to kiss, as out in the garden the birds appeared and started to feed, and a lone squirrel ran along the top of the panel fencing, eager to prise a nut from the log, to no doubt attempt to relocate in the rock-hard ground.
Savouring the hot coffee, they skirted around the issue that was foremost on their minds.
“Why did you join the FBI, Mark? What made you want to be involved with violence and death?” Amy said.
“TV,” he replied with a rueful expression. “As a kid I watched all the cops and robber shows on the tube. It was the mystique about the men in grey suits who usually wore shades that hooked me. Fidelity, bravery and integrity seemed ideals that went hand in hand with an adventurous life. I just got channelled. The only other line of work that appealed to me was being an oceanographer, like Hooper, the character that Richard Dreyfuss played in Jaws.”
“Why did you decide on the bureau, and not a life on the ocean wave?”
“I get seasick.”
They both laughed, and the mood that had threatened to darken the day, lightened.
“Sounds like you wanted a gung-ho, macho career?”
“At first, yeah, to a degree. But that soon wore thin. The weight of responsibility to try and make a difference brought me down to earth.”
“You found it a noble cause, then?”
“I came to believe that there is a dark side that has to be opposed. And before you say it, I’m no Luke Skywalker. If utilizing whatever skills I had to fight the good fight was being noble, then I suppose I’m guilty as charged, ma’am. You were a cop. Why did you do it?”
