by Conrad Jones
“Looking around, nothing,” Alec touched her elbow. The ridges in his forehead deepened. “Maybe they knew something. The best thing we can do for them is to catch the bastard and lock him away for life. Come on, we’ve got a job to do,” he said guiding her towards the bedrooms. “I’ll take this one, you take the other.”
Annie breathed deeply and then exhaled. She tried to expel the cloying aroma of death from her lungs but it wouldn’t budge. She knew from experience that it would stick to her for days. There wasn’t a soap on the planet which could cleanse the stench from her nostrils. A dull ache niggled from behind the eye patch. She knew that it would build and build and become more intense as the day progressed. If she didn’t take her painkillers now, there would be no stopping it. The doctors had told her to expect it. She waited for Alec to step into the bedroom, before taking out her pills and slipping two from the bottle. She placed them under her tongue and then swallowed them one at a time. Her throat felt dry and the capsules took long seconds to slide down into her stomach. Annie pulled herself together, pushed away from the wall and stepped into the other bedroom.
Her jaw dropped open as she looked around. There were black and white images of the Iron Men on the wall above a single bed. A crumpled pillow and navy blue sleeping bag were the only bedding. The mattress was mottled with stains; lots of them. She stepped in and looked behind the door. That wall was covered in coloured images of the familiar statues. Some were from magazines, but most of the images were photographs. Whoever took them was a keen photographer and Gorman’s Iron Men were obviously their favourite subject. Clothes were discarded in piles, mostly tracksuits, dirty sport socks and boxer shorts. A walnut veneer dressing table stood to her right. It had an oval mirror which was attached to a swivel, fixed to the back of it. A brush sat next to a tin of deodorant and a bottle of Aramis. Although it was sparse, it looked lived in. The clothing was akin to Brendon Ryder’s style. Next to the bed was a pizza box with one slice remaining. It looked days old, rather than weeks. Three empty quick noodle pots sat on the window ledge and an ashtray overflowed with ash and handmade filters. The sweet smell of cannabis lingered around the bed and that part of the room. The sleeping bag and minimal number of grooming items made it feel like his presence was only supposed to be temporary, yet the dirty laundry showed that he had been staying there for some time.
“Nice pictures,” Alec’s voice made her jump. “Obviously a fan of Crosby Beach?” Alec mused. “It looks like someone was staying here doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Annie agreed. “The clothing, aftershave, smell and small mountain of pot noodles next to the bed make me think they had a male guest.”
“Don’t women eat pot noodles?”
“Not while there is any alternative available.”
“It would appear that the Bissells offered Ryder a safe haven?”
“And look at the thanks they got for it,” Annie said flatly. “Maybe the media surge spoiled the arrangement. The Bissells saw something on the television and confronted Ryder, or maybe he realised that he couldn’t stay here any longer and didn’t want to leave witnesses.”
“We need something that tells us where he has gone to.”
“A doorway at the end of the hall leads through to the shop and the garage. We’ve found the BMW, Guv,” Stirling announced from the doorway. “It’s in the service bay. The other side of the bay where you think the door was opened recently,” he paused and raised his eyebrows, “is empty now, but there’s an oil patch where a vehicle has been parked and someone changed the oil. I looked around and there’s an old oil filter on the bench and an empty box for a new one. The box says the filter fits all Mercedes vans including the Vito.” He grinned. “Tibbs was telling us the truth about the van that he saw at Crosby Beach.”
“So it’s been hidden here ever since.” Annie said. “Gary Bissell must have been the man that Tibbs saw with Ryder.”
“Bissell didn’t have a boating accident,” Alec scoffed. “Ryder topped him and dumped him in the river.”
“And then when the shit hit the fan, he sought refuge from his grieving parents,” Annie snapped. “I really hope that he doesn’t come quietly when we find him. If anyone deserves a bullet between the eyes, it’s that bastard.”
“Well, we know that he is here in the country and that he’s driving a white Vito. Get that out to all points,” Alec ordered. Stirling took out his mobile to pass on the information to headquarters. He looked at the screen and a strange mewing sound came from his throat. Alec wasn’t sure if he was joking. “What’s wrong?” Stirling grabbed for the door handle to steady himself. His knees seemed to buckle slightly. He wobbled visibly and his face turned purple. He held up his hand as if to say ‘hold on a minute I’m struggling here’, and his eyes narrowed as he looked up from the screen. His other hand flung the mobile away as if it had suddenly become white hot. Alec couldn’t fathom what had happened. “Jim?”
“Are you okay?” Annie frowned confused by his catatonic state. “Jim what is it?”
Stirling pointed to the phone on the floor. Annie stepped forward and picked it up. “That bastard,” Stirling growled. “The fucking bastard,” he screamed and swung a huge fist at the bedroom door. The impact sent fragments of hardboard flying across the room. His arm disappeared to the elbow and he had to tug hard to retrieve the limb. “I’ll kill the bastard,” he snarled like a wounded animal and punched another huge hole in the door. Annie looked at the screen and showed it to Alec. Uniformed officers ran into the room, startled by the sound of violence. “No!” Stirling roared and turned his face to the ceiling. “No, no, no. no, no,” his roar became a pitiful whine.
The screen showed an image of a young woman bound and gagged. She was sitting with her knees up, her ankles taped and her hands fastened behind her. Blood trickled from both nostrils. Her eyes were wide open and full of terror, black mascara streaked her cheeks. The face of Brendon Ryder grinned over her shoulder, part of his arm visible. He had taken the bizarre ‘selfie’ using her phone. “Brendon Ryder has taken Janice Stirling,” Annie said to the panicked officers. They looked at each other confusion on their faces. “Jim’s wife!” She explained. “Brendon Ryder has taken Jim’s wife and she’s six months pregnant.”
Chapter 48
Janice tried to remain calm for the baby’s sake. She was far from calm but trying to control her breathing helped. The alternative was to lose control and panic and that would cause distress for her unborn child. The journey from the supermarket had been a nightmare so far. She tried kicking and screaming to raise the alarm but the bastard stopped the van, punched her hard in the nose and tied her up like a stuffed pig. The congealing blood in her nose combined with the gag made breathing very difficult. She was frightened that if she panicked, she would suffocate. Her childhood was dotted with panic attacks, which she had learned to control as she reached adulthood. Controlling her breathing and taking herself away to another place helped but the urge to scream until her voice snapped was overwhelming. If she hadn’t been pregnant, she didn’t think that she would have got into the van. She wasn’t scared of being shot, if she died then she died, but she couldn’t be so blasé with her child’s life. Six months earlier, she would have run. He may have caught her; he may have beaten her and he may have shot her. All those things would have been far better than allowing him to force her into the van. He was a serial killer, a psychopath, a nutcase, a fruitcake, a fucking raving lunatic but he had a gun pointed at her baby. She had no choice. At the time, the chance of survival if she cooperated was far greater than if she resisted.
A series of sharp turns and violent bumps in the road bounced her around the back of the van. Janice knew they were speed ramps, which was a good thing, as speed ramps indicated they were in a built up area. She had no idea where they were but there had been traffic noises all the way until they hit the ramps. It had been quiet since then. She felt the van take another sharp turn and then it stopped. A door opened but the
engine was still running. He had climbed out of the van for some reason. She cocked her head and tried to listen for clues. Metal rattled and she heard the sound of heavy chains being dragged and pulled. All sorts of images ran through her mind. Was he going to wrap her up in chains and dump her in the river? Maybe he would chain her to a dungeon wall and leave her to rot in the dark. There was a clang similar to a garage door opening. It would make sense if he had stopped to open a garage door, but what was he planning to do once they were inside? The sound of his footsteps stopped the nightmares from flashing in her head for a moment and she felt him climbing back into the driver’s seat. The door slammed shut with a thud.
“We’re here,” he shouted chirpily. He could have been talking to his kids in the back seat on the way to the zoo for a day out. Anger rose in her throat. She wanted to shout back but the gag was painfully tight. Wherever they were, she wasn’t as happy that they had arrived as he was. Janice wished that she had a gun or a knife or a hammer, or anything that she could use to kill the bastard. She wouldn’t hesitate. She wouldn’t blink and she wouldn’t give him a second thought when he was dead. Jim had waffled on about the murders for hours on end. The case had been his life for over a year. He lived and breathed it. She wished that she hadn’t listened so intently. The detail had fascinated her but now she was in the clutches of the Butcher, knowing what he had done to all those women was not a bonus. He pulled their teeth out for God’s sake! Janice hated the dentist. She always had since she was a kid. How did those poor women suffer that amount of pain without dying of a heart attack? She couldn’t fathom it. Tooth after tooth after tooth; the enamel and dentine splintering and cracking, exposing the nerves. The ripping and tearing of the roots from the gums and all that blood. How could she survive such torture? She didn’t think that she could and she was certain that her baby wouldn’t. If she got one chance, no matter how slim, to run, then she would take it. An agonisingly slow lingering death would cause her baby to suffer unnecessarily and she couldn’t do that. He would have to put the gun down at some point and when he did, she would use every ounce of strength in her body to escape. She would run, kick, scratch and bite anyone that came into striking distance.
The van stopped and the engine died. There was silence for a while. She waited for him to move but nothing happened. Then she heard a beep and another polyphonic sound. He was using a mobile, texting or something. She couldn’t tell which. She hoped to God that he had sent that picture he had taken to Jim. He said he was going to. Jim would go ballistic. He would be sick with worry, but he would look for her. She knew that he would search day and night until he found her and when he did, she wanted to watch what happened to that bastard. Jim would pull off his arms and legs one at a time and Janice would film it and replay it for him while he bled to death. She prayed to a God that she didn’t believe in that Jim would work out where they were and come and find her. Her emotions were swinging from intense anger to devastating despair. Part of her wanted to kill him but the other part was happy to comply with anything he said, if it meant that she could survive and bring up her baby with Jim.
“Your husband is very rude,” Brendon chirped. “You should see the message he has just sent to me. Very abusive, he’s got a warped mind.” Janice heard the driver’s door open and felt the vehicle rocking as he climbed out. The side door slid open and she could see cracks of light seeping through the blindfold. “They know where we are. He’ll be here soon enough,” he said grabbing her ankles. He dragged her painfully across the van and grabbed a handful of her hair. He pulled her upright, tearing some of the hair from the scalp. Janice whelped. She was determined to be brave but she was both in pain and terrified. He twisted her head violently and ripped off the blindfold.
Janice looked into his piggy eyes. They were like marbles, glassy with a glint in them but also cold and lifeless. She prayed that his weren’t the last eyes that she would look into. He grinned and pulled her hair tighter still. She could smell tobacco on his fetid breath and feel its warmth on her cheek as he spoke. He looked at her intently, studying every line. “I bet you were half decent ten years ago. Still, I wouldn’t pay to fuck you, not a chance.” He dragged her to her feet. “I don’t mind paying for a decent looking woman, but you, nah!” He snorted. He bent low and grabbed her around the thighs, picking her up over his shoulder. Her body weight was centered on her stomach. She let out a muffled scream and kicked out. “Fucking hell!” He dropped her onto her feet. “Worried about squashing the piglet, I bet?” He looked into her eyes and she could see the amusement in them. He took an evil-looking hunting knife from a sheath which was strapped to his leg and licked the flat of the blade. It was over a foot long and had a razor-sharp blade on one side and a wicked serrated blade on the other. The jagged teeth were split like a wood saw, designed to rip and tear flesh. He held the cold steel to her face. Janice tried to lean back but he had her in his grip. The blade felt cool and sharp against her skin. She could smell the oil that he had used to sharpen the blade with, as he ground it against a whetstone repeatedly until it could shave the hair from his skin. It had a compass built into the handle, which she thought was odd. He slid it against her cheek a few millimetres and she felt the sting as it sliced. She squeezed her eyes tightly together so that he couldn’t see her pain and prayed that death would come swiftly. She felt a warm trickle of blood run from beneath her eye. “Don’t be awkward, or I’ll have to hurt you. Okay?” She kept her eyes closed. “I said okay?” he shouted in her face.
Janice snapped her eyes open and nodded furiously that she understood. He took the lethal blade away and grinned. Emotion replaced adrenalin. She tried to fight the rising sobs, but they beat her and escaped her lips. Her legs trembled and felt like jelly. She couldn’t hold her own body weight. Tears flowed from her eyes, mingling with her blood and the smeared mascara. Sobs racked her body and she felt like she was suffocating. She couldn’t get her breath. Her body began to twitch and writhe. She had never had a seizure but she was pretty sure she was having one now. Her eyes rolled back into her head and a clucking noise came from her throat. She felt herself falling backwards onto her arms. As she hit the floor, the pain in her shoulders was excruciating. Janice felt her teeth clamping down hard on the gag and her body went into involuntary spasm. The sensation of suffocating combined with fear was too much. Her body went into a state of sheer panic.
“Fucking hell!” Brendon muttered as he watched her twitching violently on the floor with a sense of curiousness, surprise and frustration. “You’re no good to me dead, stupid bitch.”
He reached behind her, unfastened the gag and then rolled her onto her side. Removing the gag had an instant impact on her. She opened her mouth and sucked huge gulps of air into her lungs. There was a wheezing sound as her brain tried to compensate for the lack of oxygen, by forcing her lungs to work overtime. She spluttered and coughed as her heart rate settled and her limbs stopped trembling. Pins and needles set into the extremities and a layer of cold sweat formed on her skin. Her throat felt dry; her lips were numb and she needed to drink. “Water,” she mumbled. Her voice was barely audible.
“You can have some water when we get upstairs,” he snapped as he slipped the huge blade into its sheath. He slammed the door of the van closed with a bang. Janice realised that they were in a garage of some kind. The floor was bare concrete and the ceiling was open wooden joists, which appeared to be supporting a floor above. In the far corner, a staircase climbed upwards. Brendon took the knife out again and cut the binding from her ankles with a single slice. He dragged her to her knees but she was still very weak; too weak to stand. “Get up!” he growled, pulling painfully hard on her forearm. “Move or I’ll gut you here.”
Janice stamped her feet to get the circulation going and made an effort to walk but her legs were like lead. She didn’t like the idea of climbing stairs. The higher they went, the more difficult it would be for Jim and the police to rescue her. Brendon tugged her, half pulling and h
alf carrying her to the bottom of the staircase. “Walk, you stupid bitch!” He paused and snarled at her before dragging her upwards. She tried to make it as difficult for him as she could without becoming a dead weight and making him angry. Janice was thinking about escape and the stairs were not a good sign. Not many buildings in the city had garages beneath. She knew that some of the developments near the river did. They were tall, to offer views of the water. Riverside townhouses, the architect called them. If they were in a townhouse then there could be three or more floors. She really didn’t want to be dragged up to the upper floors where escaping would be virtually impossible. Jumping through a window wasn’t beyond her physical ability although she didn’t fancy that from more than a floor up. Her options flashed before her eyes as they climbed. Brendon flicked on the light and took a bunch of keys from his pocket. He supported Janice with one hand and unlocked the door with the other. Dragging her through the door, he released her while he turned to lock it behind them. She dropped to her knees and looked around. The beige carpet was thick and was mostly wool in content. Janice didn’t know much about carpets but she knew an expensive one when she saw one. Thick curtains blocked out the light from the windows and black and white prints of Liverpool’s landmarks decorated the walls. A black leather corner settee dominated the far end of the room and a huge plasma screen was attached to the wall in front of it. The room was clean, neat and tastefully furnished. Behind them she saw a dining table with black veneer and six matching chairs around it. Brendon dragged the table up against the door and then piled the chairs on top of it. He stacked them so they filled the space between the door and the rear wall. There was no way that the door could be forced open. He clapped his hands together and sneered. “Even your fat husband won’t break that down,” he snorted. “Get up,” he said gruffly. Janice thought about running at the curtains as fast as she could but she didn’t know what was behind them and she was too weak. For all she knew, it might be a solid wall behind them. She would have to wait for her moment.
