Slowly, over the years, she had put her distinct feminine touch on most of the rooms of the house, using Ben's money of course, but he didn't mind. It kept her happy and occupied, which was easier than living with a woman who was unhappy and bored.
Ben held the pregnancy test in his hands, twiddling it round, not knowing that this piece of equipment had, months ago, been placed in the path of another woman's urine, none other than the wife of his disloyal friend, David.
He couldn't believe how complicated his life had become in less than forty-eight hours. What was he to do now? Just this afternoon, he had resigned himself to the fact that he was born to be a murderer, to follow in the footsteps of his father. But now there was a further complication, a baby.
He had always wanted to be a father, he knew that. He recognised the special bond that he and his father had always had between them, and believed that that was what life was about. He truly hoped that having a son, or a daughter, would make his life complete; that it would fill the void that he often felt in his life.
It wasn't the job that would sometimes get him down, although he knew that some of the business that he had done was not always as ethical as he would have liked. It wasn't even the fact that Natalie could be a difficult bitch when she didn't get her own way. He just wanted a family, to replicate his father's greatest achievement, a happy home.
Yet now he knew, everything he had once thought he understood about his father, his home, his family, was false.
So how important was a baby?
Natalie had put on a great show, tears, screaming, pleading, and Ben had fallen hook, line and sinker for it all.
He believed her when she said she had been with David just three times. She said three times because once or twice wouldn't have been believable. In truth, she had met David over twenty times.
He believed her when she said it was always safe sex, which was false, after David was given a clean bill of health by the clinic, and Natalie took the pill religiously, and preferred sex without condoms anyway.
But the big one, was the one that made Ben think he was at fault for this recent blip in their relationship, with his bout of depression, the neglect of his girlfriend, the way he spurned her sexual advances and left her needing and seeking that special attention from elsewhere.
She apologised for using David to satisfy her needs, but knew that David and Ben no longer saw each other, and thought that it would just be until Ben got his life back together, pulled his socks up and got on with things.
Then she asked him to marry her.
Natalie had gotten on her knees in front of him, pulled out a small jewellery box and said that it was time to do things correctly, in the proper manner.
‘I chose it myself,’ she said, smiling cheekily, as she opened the box and gave it to Ben.
He took out the ring, inspected the shining diamond set on a platinum ring and nodded his head, then slid off of the sofa, down onto his knees and there they were, kneeling in front of one each other, staring into each other’s eyes.
He slipped the jewellery onto her ring finger.
‘No more cheating,’ he said.
‘I promise,’ she replied. ‘And let's do it soon, before I start to show. I don't want a big bump ruining the wedding photos.’
Typical Natalie, thought Ben.
They hugged for a brief moment, then Natalie, wanting to seal the deal, gently pushed Ben down onto his back, undone his trousers, and pleasured him orally.
An hour later, Natalie had prepared herself some food and sat alone in the kitchen, eating, after Ben had declined the invitation to join her. She knew he was still a million miles away from the Ben that she first fell in lust with, but she didn't care. At this point, he had forgiven her, on the surface at least, for her infidelity, he believed she was pregnant and he was the father, and accepted the marriage proposal without too much fuss at all.
Was she really that good at manipulating? Was he just too weak and confused over the whole affair and just agreed so as to not rock the boat further? Did he just want the easy life?
Natalie preferred to think that she could keep him wrapped around her little finger, like most men. It pleased her to think like this, that she was all powerful, almost as much as the thought of marrying him and getting her filthy little hands on his inheritance.
His inheritance…
Natalie had to make a decision about the letter that she'd opened, it was dated, so she knew she had to do something fast. Could she just get rid of the letter, hope that the solicitors send another one without phoning Ben about the first one, thus arousing his suspicion as to where the first letter went, or just give the Ben the letter, say that she opened it by mistake, and be done with it.
She figured that with the pregnancy story going down so well, that it wouldn't matter too much if he was sceptical about her change of heart about children and marriage, the decision had been taken out of his hands as she was carrying his child.
She finished her food and put her plate in the sink, then went and fetched the letter, the letter that told Ben he was to receive a life-changing amount of money in the very near future.
‘I'm sorry,’ she said, as she handed over the envelope, ‘I opened it by mistake earlier on.’
She sat down beside Ben, who hadn't moved from the front room since he'd been told of the baby. He opened the envelope and read the letter. Natalie noticed the lack of excitement, or shock, or anything whilst he read the letter. She put her arm around him.
‘Look, I know the baby is out of the blue, and the last month or two have been difficult for us, but this is a chance for a new beginning. Your dad left you this money and he wanted you to enjoy it. So enjoy it,’ she said, as she moved in to cuddle him, until a loud knock at the front door interrupted her advances.
Ben answered the door and his heart stopped beating.
Summers, Kite and two uniformed officers stood before Ben, and invited him to the station to answer some questions. He wasn’t under arrest, but it would be useful if he would accompany them and help with their enquiries, as his boss had just been murdered, and he was seen at the office just yesterday.
Summers looked at Ben as a thousand thoughts whizzed around his head.
‘What was he thinking?’ she thought. ‘Was the shock on his face due to the news of Charles Peacock’s death? Or the fact the police had already found their man?’
She was sure she had seen his face before, as Ben reluctantly agreed to go to the station. He told Natalie not to wait up, it was clearly routine procedure and there was nothing to worry about.
Natalie looked out of the kitchen window as they descended the steps and Ben was ushered into the back of a police car, noticing the worried look on his face as it happened. She watched as the two non-uniformed police talked briefly before getting into a different car and following their colleagues down the road and into the distance.
Ben couldn’t be responsible for the death of Charlie, she thought, even if he did lose his job rather unfairly. Ben was no killer. He was too soft to do something like that.
Natalie’s phone rang, it was David. She’d already ignored two of his calls earlier that day.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, abruptly as she answered the call.
‘You’d better watch your tone, you conniving little cunt,’ replied David. ‘Tanya said that you think you’re pregnant. No fucking way. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I want a piece. You’re going to meet me tonight, you’re going to suck my cock, and then we’re going discuss why you are involving my wife in one of your schemes!’
‘Fuck you, David,’ Natalie shouted down the phone.
‘If not, Natalie, Ben will know everything about you and your business. We’ll find out just how much he loves his little Natalie once he knows you’ve fucked half the city,’ he said.
Natalie hung up the phone.
So far, she had convinced Ben that she had made a mistake, but if David followed through with his t
hreat, all would be lost. She couldn’t risk that, and within moments dialled David’s phone.
‘Ok,’ she said, ‘I’ll come and meet you. Give me thirty minutes.’
34
Upon arriving at the station, after viewing the crime scene of Charles Peacock, Kite was annoyed not to have the information he had requested from the Office of National Statistics. He had instead an email promising the info first thing in the morning.
But, he had also received an email from the secretary of CEM, which contained a detailed report on the times and length of calls for all the staff in the office that day.
Charlie had a good team, or he did when he was alive, all the workers had been hard at it. They were all driven salesmen who wanted to earn money, not leaving their phones hung up for more than a few minutes at a time, which was hardly enough time to make a coffee, and certainly not long enough to follow their boss down to the car park and stab him to death.
What interested Kite more was in the main text of the email, the secretary had mentioned that a certain Ben Green, who had not worked for around two months at CEM, had been into the office the day before, and she had heard the exchange between him and Charlie.
'Ben left the office without saying a word to anyone, he was clearly upset,' she stated.
After showing the email to Summers and discovering that Ben lived almost 'dead' centre in the crime hot-spot, they made the decision to pay him a visit.
At the time, Summers felt that this could be him, that this could be the guy who murdered her father. That feeling didn't change when standing at his door, watching the panic run over him when asked to come to the station.
Ben sat in the interview room on his own, sweat poured down his face as he talked to himself. He could clearly hear the voice of his alter ego, calmly telling him that there was nothing to worry about, for once being the voice of reason.
Ben was certain he hadn't killed Charlie, he knew he was going mad but that isn't something you could just choose to forget. Somebody else had done it, it was just a coincidence.
However, he did know that just the day before he had committed a double murder, and although he'd had a couple of ideas about how to resolve this problem, being in a police station and getting grilled by detectives until he could potentially break down and confess his sins wasn't one of them. He'd preferred to think about fleeing the country before he was found out, or even ending it all, certainly a lifetime in prison wasn't an acceptable option.
He’d declined the offer of a DNA test, ‘to help rule him out of their enquiries,’ as was his right.
Summers and Kite looked at Ben through a one-way mirror. This is our guy, they thought, watching the man gently sob before them.
They entered the room, sat opposite Ben and formally introduced themselves. A uniformed officer stood by the door and remained silent. Kite slid a box of tissues over the table to Ben, who took one out and dabbed dry his face.
'Leave this to me,' said the voice in his head. 'Trust in me, Ben'.
Kite did the talking, Summers was happy to observe and learn as much from Ben from his mannerisms, his body language and thoughtful eyes before answering any of their questions.
Ben had let himself go into an almost trance-like state, moving all consciousness aside and letting his evil-self take centre stage, effortlessly fending off any accusations or insinuations that came from Kite.
Ben felt as if he was regaining control when he sensed the frustration in Kite's voice. He admitted he didn't like Charlie, that Charlie had been rude and sacked him with no diplomacy, had even mocked Ben about the death of his father. None of this mattered, even if it was all true; just as it was true, in Ben's mind, that he hadn't killed Charlie.
There was no need to panic, Ben realised this now.
But was he wrong? Kite made a pretty good case as to why Ben could be the killer.
‘You've had some mental problems we believe, since the death of your father, are you still taking your medication?’ he asked.
‘No,’ replied Ben, as a matter of fact.
‘And you know, without an alibi, and with a motive, such as Charlie's behaviour towards you; letting you go from CEM, and the crude talk about your father, some would say that you are in an awkward position,’ said Kite.
‘It wasn't me,’ stated Ben.
‘Some might even say that you had the right to be angry at Charles, or Charlie, as you call him. He'd let you down, hadn't he?’
Ben leaned in and put his elbows on the table, shaking his head, more relaxed than ever knowing that the detective was chasing shadows.
‘It wasn't me,’ he said.
‘Mr Green,’ said Summers, the first words she had spoken to the man she now suspected was her father’s murderer, ‘can you tell me where you were yesterday morning?’
Ben's face went pale.
‘I'm… I'm sorry,’ stumbling on his words, ‘I thought we were here to talk about Charlie.’
‘Are you the killer known as The Phantom?’ she asked.
‘No, I am not,’ he replied, sharply, as he leaned back in his seat, head down and clasping his sweaty hands together.
Summers and Kite glanced towards each other. They had noticed an obvious reaction to her questions, but this gave them more questions than answers.
'Snap out of it!' screamed the voice in Ben's head.
The door to the interview room opened and a uniformed officer called Summers outside for a word. Kite examined Ben as he sat there in silence, until Summers poked her head around the door and called Kite out to join her.
Ben rubbed his temples and talked over the situation with his inner self.
'They have no evidence, or we'd have been arrested. The real killer did this, we just got too close. So The Phantom wasn't my father? Or was it us? Did we kill Charlie? Have we gone so far, I don't know what I'm doing anymore?'
Ben jumped as the door reopened and the female detective walked back into the room.
‘You're free to go,’ said Summers, as she dropped her contact card onto the table in front of Ben. ‘But don't go too far. I think we'll need to talk again at some point.’
Ben pocketed the card and left the room, then left the station and took in a deep breath of fresh air as soon as he got outside. That was too close. No matter what his mother had tried to convince him, this was not the life for Ben Green.
Summers and Kite had grabbed their jackets and were heading back to the car. There had been another murder, bearing all the hallmarks of The Phantom.
35
David had walked out of his house and into the darkness, wearing his jogging gear and carrying a black bin-liner full of household rubbish. He had told Tanya he was going for a run, to clear his head after seeing on the news about his friend Charlie being murdered. In fact, he was only jogging to the end of the road, where he would meet Natalie for blackmailed sex, then force her to explain what she was up to, or he'd threaten again to ruin her chances of keeping Ben.
That was his plan anyway. He should have known better.
David had known that Natalie was a tough cookie, willing to stop at nothing to get what she wanted. She had no shame and no morals. This made her dangerous, and he underestimated how dangerous.
David opened the lid of the garbage bin at the end of the driveway, dropped in the bag of rubbish then let the lid drop back down. He then turned and faced the direction where Natalie said she would be waiting, but suddenly heard a noise from behind the bin.
Before he had the chance to react, an arm had smothered his face from behind, and a knife dug into his neck, and then dragged along until his Adam's apple had been split in two and blood flowed effortlessly from the slit.
Air squeezed through the hole in his neck as he tried to scream, tried to yell for help, ‘Tanya,’ but only a gasping and gurgling could be heard. He collapsed to his knees then was pushed to the ground and fell with a twist. He was facing up, and made a feeble attempt of covering his open wound with his already limp hand
s.
Natalie had read and heard enough about The Phantom killer to know that the number of stab wounds could range from ten anywhere up to fifty. Being a keen student of detail, she went to work on her victim.
David, for the last few moments of his life, stared into the eyes an angry prostitute, the woman he lusted over for so long, as she stabbed away at his chest and face, piercing his heart numerous times.
Back at home, Natalie had put her clothes in a metal bin and set them alight in the garden, before showering and scrubbing herself from head to toe, with such ferocity she almost lost blood herself.
She had never thought of killing a person in her life. She wasn't raised like that.
Natalie was an only child, who had always been given what she wanted when growing up. But her parents had her when they were getting old, and by the time she'd left school, her father had retired due to illness, and her mother stayed at home to look after him. The money had dried up, and she didn't do well enough at school to get a good job, not good enough to afford her the luxuries that she believed she deserved, so she took matters into her own hands.
Nothing stood in her way, she made enough to buy her what she wanted when she wanted, although she never thought long term and bought property or invested anything, and up until this day she still had the same attitude that she developed as a late teenager.
'Nobody will stop me getting what I want. I will do whatever it takes to overcome the obstacles in my path.'
David had made himself an obstacle.
At this point, Natalie had a clear plan of action, and if she were to succeed, she wouldn't have to worry about money for a long time.
Marry Ben. It was that simple.
After that, the money, which would to an extent be half hers, or would at least be accessible to her, would allow her to have the clothes, the shoes, the bags and jewellery as and when she pleased. So superficial, yet exactly what she lived for.
Then there was the sex. She wouldn't need to sell her body anymore, maybe just choose a random guy or girl whenever it took her fancy for a one night stand.
Son of a Serial Killer Page 9
