Killing the Beasts

by Chris Simms

  Killing the Beasts

  by Chris Simms

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Orion

  Copyright © 2005 Chris Simms

  The right of Chris Simms to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Extract from The Divided Self by R. D. Laing © R. D. Laing, 1969. Reprinted by permission of Thomas Publications Ltd.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Once again, to Chops

  My thanks to Nessy

  '... the cracked mind of the schizophrenic may let in light which does not enter the intact minds of many sane people...'

  R. D. Laing, 1927–1989

  You live, you consume, you die.

  Prologue

  Leaning forward on the sofa, she gratefully accepted the stick of gum, unwrapped it and then folded it into her mouth. 'Thanks,' she said breathlessly, looking expectantly at her visitor and eagerly chewing.

  'My pleasure,' came the reply from the smartly dressed man sitting opposite her. They continued looking at each other for a moment longer. 'Now, if you could just get...'

  'Oh God, yes, sorry! It's upstairs.' She jumped to her feet. 'I'm all excited. Sorry.'

  He smiled. 'No problem.'

  She almost skipped across the room, then ran up the stairs. While she was gone the man stood up, walked over to her living room window and checked the street outside. By the time she returned he was sitting down once again.

  'Here,' she said, handing him a small booklet.

  'Great.' He looked up at her with a slightly embarrassed expression.' Do you mind if I have a cup of tea before we get started?'

  'Oh!' She jumped up again, her dressing gown falling slightly open to reveal a flash of upper thigh. 'I'm so rude. Sorry. Milk? Sugar?'

  'Milk and two sugars, thanks.'

  Flustered, she paced quickly down the short corridor to the kitchen, bare feet slapping against the lino as she crossed the room. She plucked two mugs from the dirty crockery piled up in the sink and quickly washed them out. As she waited for the kettle to boil she jigged from foot to foot, occasionally taking a deep breath and running her hands through her spiky blonde hair.

  A few minutes later she walked back in, a red flush now evident on her throat and cheeks. 'Here you go.' She placed a mug decorated with a cartoon snail on the low table in front of the man's knees. Now furiously chewing on the gum, she went to sit down again but, on impulse, veered towards the hi-fi system in the corner and turned up the music.

  'God, I feel like I could dance,' she said urgently, blowing her breath out and running her fingers through her hair once again. 'Is it hot in here? Are you hot?'

  The man looked around the room as if heat was a visible thing. 'No,' he replied with a little shake of his head.

  'I feel hot,' she said, placing her mug on the table, then waving one hand a little too energetically at her cheek and pulling distractedly at the neck of her dressing gown. The man kept his head lowered, pretending to search for a pen in his jacket pocket.

  The girl went to sit down, stumbling against the leg of the coffee table. 'Whoops!' she said with a strange giggle, though panic was beginning to show in her eyes. 'I... I'm dizzy.'

  The room had begun to shift in and out of focus and her breath wouldn't come properly. She leaned forward and tried to steady herself by putting one hand on the arm of the sofa.

  The man watched impassively.

  Now visibly distressed, she attempted a half turn to sit down, but her coordination was going and she missed the sofa, crashing onto the carpet. As she lay on her back, her eyes rolled up into her head and then closed completely.

  The man calmly got to his feet and put his briefcase on the table. After entering the combination for the lock, he opened it up and removed a long pair of stainless steel pincers from inside.

  Chapter 1

  30 October 2002

  Jon Spicer was driving back to the station when he heard the Community Support Officer's call for help on his police radio. The CSO said he was outside a house in which a corpse had just been discovered. He said the dead girl's mother was still inside, refusing to leave her daughter's body. He went on to explain to the operator that his patrol partner was in the kitchen, trying to comfort her. His voice was high and panicky.

  When the address in Berrybridge Road was read out Jon realized he was just a few streets away. Telling the operator he would attend the scene, Jon turned off the main road, cut down a side street and pulled up outside the house.

  As he got out of his car and straightened his tie, the sight of a very young and nervous-looking officer confronted him. The officer was trying to reason with an irate woman, who stood with one hand rocking a buggy, stout legs planted firmly apart. As the officer repeated that she wasn't allowed past, the red-faced toddler in the buggy leaned back, shut its eyes and started to bawl.

  'You can't stop me getting in my own sodding house,' the woman said, holding another chocolate button in front of the angry infant's face. 'The kid wants his lunch – you can hear, can't you?' In an attempt to keep the cold autumnal breeze off him, she began tucking the tattered blanket around his legs, 'It's all right, Liam.'

  Crafty little shit, thought Jon Spicer, noticing how he immediately stopped crying when the button appeared. If his eyes were shut in genuine distress, he wouldn't have known the button was there. Jon had accepted long ago that deviousness was as much a part of human make-up as kindness or joy. What always amazed him was how early people appeared to learn the process of manipulation.

  'Sorry madam, we won't be much longer,' Jon intervened, a placatory tone in his voice. Hoping that, if he and Alice had the baby they were trying for, it didn't turn out like that one, he guided the CSO out of earshot. 'Hello. My name's Jon Spicer.'

  The young officer glanced at Jon's warrant card, saw his rank, and replied, 'CSO Whyte and I'm glad to see you, sir.'

  'You said on the radio that you heard wailing noises from inside the house. Then what?'

  He took out his notebook as if in court. 'Yes, that was at 9.55 a. m. We proceeded up the driveway to the front door, which we found to be ajar. On receiving no response from the person in distress within the property, we proceeded inside and found a middle-aged woman sitting on the floor of the living room hugging a deceased woman of around twenty. My patrol partner, CSO Payne, entered the room and crouched down to check for a pulse. At that point she noticed thick white matter at the back of the deceased woman's mouth.' He looked up and breaking from his notes, said, 'It was hanging open you see, though I didn't catch sight of it myself. When we separated the mother from the body, the dead girl's head lay back on the carpet and I couldn't see in.'

  Jon nodded. 'So you called for assistance. And no one has been in there except you and your patrol partner?'

  'Yes, that's correct, sir.'

  'And this woman has confirmed the deceased is her daughter and that her daughter lives in the house?'

  'Yes.'

  'And no one else lives there?'

  'That's correct.'

  'OK, good work. Well done.'

  A smile broke out momentarily across the young man's face. Then, remembering the gravity of the situation, he reorganized his features into an expression of appropriate seriousness.

  The toddler started its bawling once again. His mum gave in and shoved the entire packet of chocolate buttons into his hands. The crying immediately stopped and Jon thought: another victory to the little people. 'So, we've just got to keep Lucifer and his mum, Mrs Beelzebub, at bay for a bit longer,' he murmured, tu
rning back to the woman.

  'OK madam. I'm afraid, because you share a driveway with your neighbour's house – and she's died in what could be suspicious circumstances – I'm having to declare the driveway and front gardens a designated crime scene. Have you a friend you could stay with just while we search this area in front of the house?'

  'Pissing hell,' said the woman, pulling a mobile from the pocket of her padded jacket and dialling a number. 'Janine? It's me, Sue. That little blonde ravehead next door won't be keeping me awake with any more loud music. She's turned up dead and the police won't let me up the driveway and into my own frigging house. Can I come round for a cuppa and to give our Liam his lunch? Cheers.'

  'Thanks very much, madam,' Jon said, making a mental note of the ravehead description. 'If I can have your number we'll call as soon as access is possible.'

  He jotted it down and she trundled moodily off up the road, the buggy's wheels picking up bits of sodden brown leaves littering the street.

  'Right,' said Jon, looking at the house. 'Have you checked the rest of the property?'

  'No,' said CSO Whyte, looking alarmed that he'd failed in his duty.

  'That's fine,' said Jon. But, having been caught by surprise on a recent murder investigation when the offender had still been hiding in the upstairs of the house, Jon was taking no chances. 'What's your patrol partner's name again?'

  'CSO Margaret Payne. She's comforting the girl's mother in the kitchen.'

  Jon trod carefully across the patchy lawn, eyes on the driveway for any suspicious objects. When he reached the front doorstep he called over his shoulder, 'CSO Whyte, only people with direct permission from me are allowed past, understood?'

  'Yes sir,' he replied, checking down the street as if there was a danger of being charged by a curious crowd.

  Pushing from his mind the information he had been given by the officer, Jon turned his attention to the front door. He saw that there were no signs of a forced entry. He stepped into the hallway, keeping his feet as close to the skirting board as possible. Immediately he was struck by an odd smell – sharp and slightly fruity. For some reason he was reminded of DIY superstores. As he made his way along the hall he examined the carpet for anything unusual. Reaching the doorway to the front room he glanced in. The body of a young white female with bleached spiky hair lay partially on its side by the coffee table. Her pale pink dressing gown was crumpled up around her legs and had partly fallen open at the front, revealing her left breast. He didn't know if it was the lack of obvious injuries, but she didn't look like she was dead. Unconscious perhaps, but not dead.

  He carried on into the kitchen where CSO Payne was sitting, holding the mother's hand across the table. Aware that a six-foot-four stranger with a beaten-up face suddenly stepping into the room could prove unsettling for both women, Jon gently coughed before quietly announcing, 'Hello, my name is Jon Spicer. I'm a detective with Greater Manchester Police.'

  The woman lowered a damp handkerchief and looked up at him. Her face had that emptiness which shock and grief instils, but her eyes were alert. He felt them flickering over his face, settling for a second on the lump in the bridge of his nose, which had been broken in a rugby match.

  'Could I ask your name, please?' he continued.

  'Diane Mather,' she whispered, reaching out and taking a sip of tea from a mug with a snail on it.

  'OK Diane,' said Jon, walking round the table and checking the back door. A bolt was slid across the top and a key was in the lock. 'Has anyone touched this door?' he asked them both.

  CSO Payne answered no and he looked at Diane, who also shook her head.

  'And have you been in any other parts of the house apart from the hallway, here and the front room?'

  'No.' Now she was watching him a little more closely.

  Jon walked from the kitchen. Carefully he climbed the stairs, pausing when his head was level with the landing to check where the doors were. The first led into a little bathroom: no one behind the shower curtain. The next was the spare room, only just big enough for a clothes horse that was adorned with vest tops, socks and knickers. The final room was the main bedroom, fairly tidy except for the middle drawer of the chest in the corner. It hung half open, and a few photo albums and booklets lay haphazardly on the corner of the bed, as if dumped there in a hurry. Jon checked under the bed and in the wardrobe. Satisfied no one else was in the house, he walked over to the bedside table and looked in the ashtray. Amongst the Marlboro Light cigarette butts were a few crumpled bits of foil, dried brown crusts on one side. A plastic tube lay next to the small alarm clock.

  Jon shook his head. From his earliest days as a uniformed officer, he had watched as more and more drugs crept into Manchester. Now, along with the alcohol riots on Friday and Saturday nights, they were dealing with the devastating effects that crack, heroin, speed and God knew what else were having on people's lives.

  At the window he looked down to the road below and saw the CSOs' supervisor had arrived. He went back down the stairs and headed outside.

  'Sergeant Evans,' the older man said, shaking Jon's hand over the police tape now cordoning off the driveway and front garden.

  'DI Spicer, MISU. I was just passing when I heard the radio call.'

  The sergeant nodded. 'So, we have a body inside?'

  'Yup,' Jon replied. 'Apparently her throat is blocked with a load of white stuff. 'Jon looked at CSO Whyte. 'Could it not have been saliva? An allergic reaction or something?'

  The officer looked at him as if he had asked a rhetorical question and was about to supply the answer.

  Sergeant Evans then dropped a question into the silence. 'When CSO Payne checked for a pulse, did she say how cold the body felt?'

  CSO Whyte thought for a second. 'No. She was trying to get the mother away from the body when she spotted the white stuff...' Abruptly, he stopped talking.

  'What?' Jon prompted.

  The officer stumbled slightly with his words. 'She didn't actually check for a pulse. But the mum – she kept on saying,“She's dead. She's dead.” So we just sort of assumed––'

  'Jesus Christ,' said Jon. He went to his car, grabbed a pair of latex gloves from inside and hurried back into the house. In the hallway he spotted a pile of women's magazines by the telephone. One by one he laid them across the living room floor, creating a series of stepping stones that enabled him to get to the girl without treading on the carpet.

  As he got closer to her, he noticed that the strange smell was getting stronger. As he'd noted before, the dressing gown was crumpled, but he couldn't tell whether she had been assaulted, dragged there or the disturbance to her clothing was from where her mother had been hugging her.

  He crouched down and checked for a pulse. The skin was cold to the touch. He let out a sigh, then examined the rest of her more closely.

  No defence wounds to her forearms or hands, no obvious sign of any injury at all. He leaned in for a closer look at her fingers. Apart from being bluish in colour, the nails were fine – no debris under them or damage caused by a struggle.

  Next he looked at her face. Her eyes were shut, a few small red dots around them. Mouth slightly open, lips also a faint blue. No blood, saliva or vomit on her lips. No bruising to her throat. Getting up he made his way back across the magazines and into the kitchen. 'CSO Payne,' he said, pointing to her utility belt, 'could I borrow your torch please?'

  In the front room he switched it on and directed the beam into the girl's mouth. Peering in, he saw the back of her throat was completely clogged with something white and viscous. The substance had completely blocked her airways. Death by suffocation? Some sort of lung purge or bizarre vomit?

  He bent forward so his head was just above the carpet. Holding the torch to one side he swept the beam backwards and forwards across the floor, looking to see if the light picked out any tiny fragments lying on the carpet. Nothing apart from fragments of cigarette ash and an old chewing gum wrapper. Standing up, he noted the bin in the co
rner was full of crushed cans, empty cigarette packets, bits of cigarette paper and other pieces of rubbish. Next to it were a couple of empty three-litre cider bottles.

  Back in the kitchen he sat down and quietly asked the mother, 'Do you know what time it was when you discovered your daughter?'

  'About quarter to ten,' she replied shakily, stubbing a cigarette out in the full ashtray.

  'And you found her in the front room?'

  She nodded once.

  'On the floor?'

  'Yes, lying on her back with her arms out by her sides.'

  'How did you get into the house?' 'I have a key. We were going shopping together in town.'

  'Was the door locked when you arrived?'

  Another nod.

  Keeping eye contact, Jon continued, 'OK, Mrs Mather, it's best you go now and let us take over. Margaret here will accompany you down to the station. We'll need to take a statement. Is that OK with you?'

  'Yes.' Then she whispered beseechingly, 'What happened to my little girl?'

  'We'll find out, Mrs Mather. We'll find out,' Jon said, a note of firmness now in his voice.

  As they stood CSO Payne asked, 'Can we call anyone to meet you at the station?'

  She shook her head and Jon wondered if it was an unwillingness to share with anyone else what had happened to her daughter.

  He led the way back towards the front door, CSO Payne with her arm round the mother's shoulder. He paused in the doorway to the living room, subtly trying to discourage any further contact. 'We'll be as fast as we can, Mrs Mather. You'll have your daughter back as quickly as possible.' No mention of the coming autopsy, the gutting of her corpse, the sifting-through of her stomach contents.

  At the front step he instructed CSO Payne to keep to the grass. Once the two women were back on the street he called out to the young policewoman, 'Oh, your torch. I've left it in the kitchen.'

  She walked back across the grass and into the house. Jon was waiting for her. 'Did you touch anything in here?' he asked, handing it back to her.