by Conrad Jones
“I am sorry!” She sobbed in pain. “I was trying to explain!” Her explanation was cut short by a stinging slap to the right cheek with the back of his hand. She felt a tooth crack and the inside of her mouth split against the edges of her teeth. The taste of blood filled her mouth and she tried desperately to hang onto consciousness. She felt desperate in the knowledge that if she failed to answer his questions, he would kill her. “Please let me explain!”
“You filthy whore!” He screamed. “You think you’re smarter than me don’t you?”
“No!”
“You do!” He twisted her hair painfully.
“I’m sorry!” she sobbed. Her words were nothing more than an incoherent blubbering. “I’m sorry. I was trying to explain what he told me, that’s all. I didn’t mean to offend you!” She put her head to her knees and covered her face with her arms. “I’m sorry!”
“Shut up,” he shouted. Her sobbing subsided. “I said, shut up!” Janice held her breath to quell her cries. “Don’t you dare talk to me as if I’m stupid, you dirty skanky bitch!”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” she sobbed. “Honestly, I don’t.”
“Good,” he hissed. His breathing was labored and she could see sweat forming on his forehead. “Now, you tell me exactly what he said about Lacey Taylor’s murder and I mean everything.” He loomed over her as he spoke. “Look at me. Look me in the eyes, so that I can see if you’re lying to me.” He took the survival knife from its sheath and pushed the serrated edge against her throat. She could feel the jagged cold steel pressing into her skin. Whatever her answer was now, she knew that this was the end. If she lied, he would know. If she answered him honestly, then his psychotic episode would escalate. Of that she was certain. The pressure beneath the knife increased and she felt a trickle of blood run from below her ear, down her neck and onto her shoulder.
*******
Jim Stirling watched the onslaught on screen and slammed his fist against the desk. “Send them in, Guv!” He turned to Alec. Tears streaked his face and the tendons in his neck looked like wires ready to snap. “Give the order!”
“We can’t breach the barricade, Jim,” Annie touched his arm as she spoke. “He’ll kill her if we enter the house.”
“Our only choice is to wait for him to step away from her,” Alec sighed. “As soon as she is clear of him, we’ll take the shot, I promise you that!”
“He’s going to slit her throat, Guv!” Stirling was shaking. “Send them in!”
********
Janice wiped spittle from her mouth with the back of her hand. She tried to control her breathing but she could feel panic gripping her. “They found her body not far away from the others,” Janice blubbered. His eyes drilled into hers as she spoke. Her tears blurred her vision but she could feel the intensity in his glare. “She was the same as the others.”
“What do you mean?” He hissed.
“She had the tubes taped to her face, so that she could breathe under the sand,” she sobbed as she spoke. “Jim said that the tubes made them look like prawns.”
Brendon’s face contorted into a mask of evil. He raised the huge blade and roared with anger. “A fucking prawn!” He screamed and kicked her in the chest with the sole of his foot. Janice flew backwards on the chair. Her head cracked against the floor with a thud. She screamed too, their voices mingled to a cacophony of fear and rage, panic and anger. Janice was flat on her back attached to the chair. Brendon stood back and turned his face to the ceiling; his arms were raised in the air. He screamed as loud as he could, so loud he felt his head would explode. “Bastards!”
******
“Take the shot!” Alec ordered.
“Aim high and take the shot.” The order was repeated on the comms
Janice heard his deafening screaming and then her face and body were splattered with blood and viscera. A globule of grey matter ran down her cheek. She saw Brendon Ryder’s head and chest explode outwards as bullets pierced the back of his skull and then smashed their way out of his face. Blood, bone and breeze-block showered the interior of the room as the wall and Brendon Ryder disintegrated beneath the burst of machine-gun fire.
Chapter 55
18 Months Later
Geoff Ryder sat in an interview room beneath Canning Place. It was cramped and smelled of sweat. Claustrophobia made him feel like crawling up the walls. He wanted out but he couldn’t just walk out of the custody suite. He was stressed to the limit about being there. It brought back too many bad memories. His years of defending the Ryder family had included regular visits to the police headquarters but this time the pressure was intense. Never in his wildest dreams did he envisage being there under these circumstances. He just never thought it could happen. His sense of invincibility had been shaken from him. He always felt that he could wriggle and manoeuvre out of anything but not this time. This time there was no getting out of it with a technicality.
The death of Brendon Ryder, no matter how shocking, had been a type of blessed relief. With his demise, the murders of eleven people were buried and laid to rest. That took the pressure off his mother, the extended family and Geoff himself. The police weren’t looking for anybody else. They were convinced that Brendon Ryder was a serial killer. That aside, here he was waiting for detectives yet again but this time he couldn’t explain things away. They had the woman. They had the DNA and they had witnesses. Sweat trickled down the small of his back and he felt incredibly nervous.
The door opened and Jim Stirling ducked into the room, shifting his bulk with remarkable ease for such a big man in an enclosed space. He looked at Geoff with a stern expression and nodded a silent greeting. His face was stony as he dropped a photograph onto the table and pointed to the battered face of a woman. Her eye was black, six stitches clearly visible along the eyebrow. The cheek was bruised a purple colour and was swollen as if she had a golf ball in her mouth. Her top lip was split, the cut reached upwards towards the left nostril. “She’s a mess,” Stirling said. “This pretty much says everything doesn’t it?”
“What can I say,” Geoff shrugged and a shiver ran down his spine. There was no getting away from it. The woman was badly hurt and he would have to deal with the fallout. He touched the photograph and felt a burst of adrenalin spreading through his veins. His fingers touched the split lips and he could almost taste her blood in his mouth. “My client has suffered a lot of abuse because of her son’s crimes. This woman attacked her in Tesco and she’s defended herself with a large tin of potatoes in her hand and it has caused a lot of damage.” Geoff shrugged and smiled. “If the CPS proceed, we’ll plead not guilty, via self defense and diminished responsibility.” He smiled thinly. “I believe that the woman was a relative of one of the Butcher’s victims. She recognised my client and attacked her without provocation. There are only losers on this one, Detective.”
“She can’t react like this or she’ll finish up in jail,” Stirling warned gruffly. “She’ll end up with an assault conviction on her record, if she cops for it and apologises profusely.”
“I’m sure if we throw in some voluntary counselling, we can convince the CPS to opt for the lower end of assault.”
“It will still go on her record.”
“I know,” Geoff Ryder agreed. He sighed and smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. How is your wife now?” He added.
“She’s fine,” Stirling seemed uncomfortable discussing Janice with a member of the Ryder family. “She’s enjoying being a mum. She’s a natural.”
“Good, good,” Geoff said genuinely. “I’m glad no long term harm was done to them. Truly I am.”
Stirling nodded and turned for the door. Ryder’s kind words held little to no meaning at all to him. “We’ll get Mrs Ryder charged, processed and then you can take her home. I can see no point in holding her any longer. You can take her home once we’re done.”
“Thanks very much,” Geoff said extending his right hand. Stirling shook it and then ambled back through the
door. Geoff breathed a sigh of relief as he left. The last thing that he wanted was attention from the police. He had had to wait a long time. A very long time indeed but now that the focus had shifted, he could indulge himself once more. He had missed it. There had been times when he didn’t think that he would be able to contain his urges but he had been strong. Brendon had nearly ruined everything with his amateurish attempt at hiding Keegan and Lacey Taylor, near to his beloved Iron Men. Luckily, his blunder had allowed Geoff to point the finger of guilt for the women in his direction. Recovering Lacey’s body and altering her to make her the same as the others hadn’t been the chore that he thought it would be. In fact it had been enjoyable.
The entire sorry string of events had been a trauma which he had overcome, but now he was free to continue to create. The brief intermission had given him time to evolve as an artist. The things which turned him on at the beginning of his journey didn’t give him the same rush anymore. He shuddered when he thought about the first women. As a law student he had been advised to invest in properties, so that they could be used as tax write offs later in life. Geoff bought the property at Breck Road via a limited company. He remortgaged it and sold it on to himself several times, eventually selling into John Ryder’s portfolio at a huge profit. The girls in the basement were his teething rings. He dabbled in death and fumbled with their murders. Looking back, he cringed at his unsophisticated methods. He learned a lot from their suffering and blowing the building up had saddened him a little, but he had to slow down the investigation and muddy the waters.
Making his victims suffer became an obsession. Extending their torture was his fascination. Killing the Bissells showed him a new level of terror. It had given him a taste for something that he hadn’t experienced before. Their love for each other added an entire new dimension to the horror. Watching each other suffering increased their anguish to levels that he couldn’t achieve with a single victim. It had intensified his pleasure. It opened his eyes. He hadn’t realised why the Iron Men had fascinated him so much. Yes, he empathised with their loneliness, their desolation and daily entombment by the advancing waves, but what he had missed was their joint anguish. Not only did they suffer individually, they had to watch the suffering of others in the knowledge that what had befallen those further out, was in fact about to befall them too.
It was the same with his new victims. He had to select couples to feel their terror. Watching the fear on the face of a loved one, while he hurt the person closest to them, was priceless. Never had he witnessed such dread as they watched their loved ones suffer, heard them screaming, watched them bleeding and writhing in agony. Never had he seen such desperation in a human’s eyes, or heard such sweet pain in their voices as they begged and pleaded for the life of another. It was the sweetest sound ever. And then when he stopped and they realised that it was their turn to experience the pain while their loved one watched the same things happening to them, their fear reached new depths. It took him to a dark place, an evil place. Another Place.
Author Biography
Conrad Jones is a 49-year-old Author, who has 13 novels and has been published by Constable and Robinson, Champagne Books and Thames River Press. The Soft Target Series has six books following an ex-Special Forces operative, who battles crime and the first book, ‘Soft Target’ is permanently free to download. The Hunting Angels Diaries, A Child for the Devil (Always 77p/99c), Black Angels and Nine Angels is a horror series. The Detective Alec Ramsay Series, including the Best Selling ‘The Child Taker’ has five novels to date. You can find more about Conrad’s novels at.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/j/conrad-jones/
https://www.facebook.com/conradjonesauthorpage
