Friends to Die For

by Hilary Bonner

  Greg hadn’t seen his father since the day he’d walked out. He wasn’t even sure if the old man was still alive. His mother had never got over the betrayal of her husband and sister. She just seemed to pine away, her health gradually declining. Not long after Greg had married Karen, she died. Her heart had given up, the doctors said. Greg knew it hadn’t so much given up as been broken.

  While clearing out the family home, Greg had found his father’s gun hidden away at the back of a cupboard. He had no idea why his father hadn’t taken it with him, or why his mother had not disposed of it. Maybe she hadn’t known how to.

  For reasons he did not entirely understand, Greg had decided to keep the gun. Perhaps it reminded him of the happy times he’d shared with his dad. It brought back memories of those times whenever he took it out of its hiding place to clean and oil it, just the way his father had shown him.

  He picked up the gun and peered into the barrel. It was gleaming. As far as Greg knew, the pistol hadn’t been fired since his father had brought it home. But that was about to change.

  He loaded several of the cartridges into a magazine and inserted it into the handle of the pistol, just as he had seen his father do. Greg was quite confident that the gun was up to the task ahead. He only hoped he was too.

  Late that afternoon George was released. Vogel had attempted to persuade Nobby Clarke that an appeal should be made to magistrates court for a further period of detention. Under the Police And Criminal Evidence Act, magistrates have the power, when it can be effectively argued that a suspect’s further stay in custody is both necessary and potentially productive, to authorize detention in police cells, without charges being brought, for up to four days. But Clarke and her superintendent at Homicide Command refused even to apply for a magistrates order, saying it would be a waste of time. They had no evidence that could convince the court there was sufficient cause to detain George Kristos a moment longer. Vogel had no choice but to concede defeat. In truth, he knew his superiors were right, but he felt he had to at least make the attempt.

  George went straight home. He made no attempt to contact any of the remaining friends. Unaware that some of them would have been unable to take his call in any case because they had been re-arrested, he simply assumed they wouldn’t want to speak to him. Any more than he wanted to speak to them. Besides, the police still had his mobile phone. He did, of course, have a house phone, and it started ringing soon after he returned to his flat. He ignored it. George was in a state of shock. He felt tense and, for perhaps the first time in his adult life, threatened. He needed time to himself. Space to think things through. He was aware that he had become Vogel’s prime suspect, but he had no idea what influence this third violent death would have on the detective’s thinking. After all, there was no way anyone could accuse him of killing Karen Walker. Not when he’d been banged up in a cell at Charing Cross nick when it happened.

  There had been times in the past when I felt that God had deserted me, turned his back on me in my hour of need. My faith had been tested, it had weakened, but He had never forsaken me. For the righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.

  Despite my best-laid plans, I had made mistakes as I sought to fulfil my mission. Mistakes that had resulted in my being delivered unto my enemies and looked set to allow those enemies to reveal me for what I was. That man Vogel, the one poor little Michelle so revered, thought he had the measure of me. But he’d understood me not at all. He thought he was so clever, and yet he had failed to spot so much.

  But neither he nor I could have foreseen the divine intervention that lay in store. For He was watching over me. After all, I am His instrument of destruction. Through my flesh His will is channelled and implemented irrevocably. And so He brought me forth, He delivered me, for He delighted in me. What other explanation could there be?

  Thanks to the hand of God, I was now beyond suspicion in the eyes of Vogel and his self-important cohorts in the Murder Investigation Team. And that was how I hoped to remain.

  The deed was done. I had been avenged. There would be no more pranks, no acts of vandalism afflicting the shattered and scattered remnants of the ill-fated Sunday Clubbers. There would be no more muggings, no more murders.

  It was over. I am a creature apart and will stay that way. A creature it is impossible for others to grasp. I am, it seems, as elusive as ever. My very being is impenetrable. I wonder if they will ever find me now. But in any case, it doesn’t matter. I have triumphed. His power and His glory abide with me.

  Not long after George’s release Vogel received the telephone call from Dr Patricia Fitzwarren which changed everything. She had begun the post-mortem examination on Karen Walker immediately after Greg Walker had left the morgue. She now had the results.

  ‘I’ve checked and double-checked, Vogel,’ she said. ‘It seems quite incredible in view of all that has happened, but there’s no doubt about it: Karen Walker was not pushed and neither did she jump.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ said Vogel.

  ‘Mrs Walker suffered a massive subarachnoid haemorrhage, caused by an aneurism in the brain,’ Pat Fitzwarren announced. ‘You know what an aneurism is, don’t you, Vogel? A bulge in an artery, a swelling. It can cause headaches but generally there are no symptoms significant enough to cause alarm, no warning signs. Indeed, an aneurism doesn’t cause any trouble worth mentioning unless it bursts. And that’s what happened in this case.’

  ‘So are you saying she died of natural causes?’

  ‘No doubt about it. Mrs Walker’s aneurism burst, resulting in a fatal brain haemorrhage, enough to kill her almost instantly even if she hadn’t been unlucky enough to collapse onto the track in the path of an oncoming train. It may not be possible to ascertain whether she was actually dead when the train hit her, but I guarantee she was as near as damn it.’

  ‘My God,’ said Vogel.

  The implications of the pathologist’s verdict were immense. George Kristos had been released from custody not only because of a lack of hard evidence but because it was believed that there had been another murder, one for which he couldn’t have been responsible.

  Vogel was still trying to assimilate what it all might mean, when Parlow came into his office.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Vogel demanded. ‘You’re supposed to be on family liaison duty with Greg Walker.’

  ‘I know, guv. But he didn’t want me with him. Said he needed time on his own.’

  ‘Parlow, for God’s sake, didn’t they teach you anything on that fancy course you went on? What Greg Walker does or doesn’t want isn’t the bloody point. The job’s not just about playing nursemaid to the bereaved. It’s a watching brief. The man’s already threatened to take the law into his own hands. And now it seems his wife wasn’t murdered after all. You’d better go find him. Fast.’ Vogel sprang to his feet and hurried towards the door. ‘First though, let me get Nick Wagstaff – you’re going to need some back-up.’

  ‘Right, guv.’

  Chastened, Parlow followed Vogel into the outer office. Not seeing Wagstaff seated at any of the desks, Vogel shouted his name. A head turned.

  ‘Yes, guv,’ it said.

  Vogel frowned, confused. For a split second he had no idea who was addressing him. Then light dawned. It was Wagstaff. But his former grey hair was now a rather unnatural bright and evenly coloured brown.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Vogel. ‘What have you done to your hair?’

  Wagstaff flushed. ‘It’s the missus, guv,’ he said. ‘Reckoned I was looking old.’

  ‘Right. Well before you retire to your vegetable patch, I need you to team up with Parlow. He’ll fill you in.’

  Despite the enormity of unfolding events, Vogel couldn’t help smiling as he turned towards his office. It was hard to believe that a simple change in hair colour could so dramatically change Wagstaff’s appearance.

  At the door, Vogel turned suddenly. ‘Wagstaff, don’t you usually wear glass
es?’ he asked.

  Wagstaff paused, his arms half in and half out of the coat he was pulling on. ‘The missus again, guv,’ he said. ‘Got contact lenses now. Damn things are bloody irritating to wear too, and if you ask me . . .’

  Vogel had nothing more to ask Wagstaff. He had stopped listening.

  He returned swiftly to his desk and from the top drawer removed the photograph that had been bothering him. He scanned into his computer the picture of a young woman George Kristos claimed to have found in a magazine, then opened it in Photoshop, where he began to adjust the hair colour from blonde to black, then brown. He played with the colours, darkening and lightening them. He added a touch of red, removed it, and settled, for the moment, on a kind of mousey brown. It looked right somehow. Then he changed the style of the hair, made it less contemporary, longer, with some width. He made it curly. That seemed wrong. Didn’t suit the face. He waved it, just a bit. Added a fringe. Removed it. Put it back in again.

  The eyes were blue. He changed their colour too, turning them hazel, then dark brown.

  Finally he added spectacles, experimenting with different kinds of frames. Wire ones, round ones, oval, black ones, red ones. Then he tried tortoiseshell.

  A frisson of excitement began somewhere in Vogel’s lower abdomen and expanded slowly through his body. His mouth was dry. His fingers were trembling. He had it – or at least part of it. He knew who that woman was. And she certainly wasn’t a Polish wannabe student.

  He printed his doctored version of George’s photograph, googled a name, brought up another picture, printed that too, and used the Met’s recently acquired facial recognition software to make the final comparison.

  Then he hurried along the corridor to find Nobby Clarke.

  The DCI was on the phone when Vogel barged through her door. Clarke looked up, unimpressed. Vogel didn’t give a damn.

  ‘It’s urgent, boss,’ he said.

  Frowning, Clarke ended her call. Vogel slapped the three photographs onto her desk: the original photo taken from George’s wallet, the version he had just photoshopped, and, uncannily similar to the second, the third which he’d just downloaded. He tapped it with an extended forefinger.

  ‘Alice Turner,’ he said. ‘Remember her?’

  Then he pointed to the photograph he had doctored. ‘An amended version of the picture of George Kristos’s alleged girlfriend,’ he said.

  Light dawned on Nobby Clarke’s face.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she said. ‘I remember Alice Turner. Who doesn’t?’

  She glanced down again at the pictures before her.

  ‘And that photograph. It was iconic. In all the papers. My God, I can’t believe none of us saw this before. These are pictures of the same woman.’

  ‘Yes, and facial recognition software backs it up. The proportions and so on are identical.’

  Vogel would have bet his life that Clarke would remember Alice Turner. There were images that stuck in your mind forever. The criminals evil beyond comprehension. Myra Hindley, half-pouting, staring challengingly at the camera. Fred West, plump-cheeked and boyish. And then there were the innocent victims, their lack of foreboding making their eternal pictorial presence all the more poignant. Little James Bulger, holding the hand of one of his killers. Milly Dowler doing the ironing. Beautiful Anni Dewani, murdered on honeymoon, in her Indian wedding dress. And Alice Turner. Even after twenty-three years, her face was instantly recognizable.

  Vogel supposed it was the same for everyone, but he always felt these things meant more to police officers. Maybe they cared that bit more. If not, why would you join the police force? Vogel glanced down at the picture. Alice Turner’s kindly eyes seemed to gaze reproachfully back at him. But what happened to her had not been Vogel’s fault. It hadn’t been anyone’s fault, really, except the young bastard who’d attacked and maimed her.

  Alice had somehow survived, but was unable to cope with her terrible injuries. Two years later she committed suicide.

  Vogel had been a probationary PC when it happened, a new recruit. He guessed Clarke must be three or four years older than him, in order to have been a contemporary of Forest’s, and therefore almost certainly a serving officer at the time. The Alice Turner story had sent shockwaves through police forces nationwide. People in all walks of life had been shocked, of course, but the general public had been spared the gruesome details.

  Alice Turner had been brutally attacked at her Edinburgh home. Her tongue had been hacked off and both her eyes gouged out. Her attacker had pounced in the early hours of the morning while she was asleep in bed. Without the advantage of surprise, he would have struggled to overpower her, for he had little physical strength. He was after all, just a boy. A boy ten years old.

  It had been 1990, three years before poor James Bulger was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys. In 1990 the police and the great British public had found it hard to believe that a ten-year-old child could be capable of such violence. The horror of it had transfixed the nation, and Alice Turner’s photograph had featured on every front page and news bulletin. The ‘before’ photograph, that was. And it was impossible to look at it without imagining what the ‘after’ must resemble.

  The press were forbidden by law from revealing the identity of the child responsible. Not only could they not name him, they were prohibited from publishing any details that might lead to him being identified. This meant they could not reveal that the boy in question was Alice Turner’s foster son. But Vogel had known. It had been common knowledge throughout the police forces of the United Kingdom. Even amongst rookies like him.

  ‘And this picture that none of us can forget, albeit significantly altered, was in George Kristos’s wallet?’ mused Nobby Clarke. ‘Turned into the fictional Carla Karbusky. She looks a bit younger than Alice does in the un-doctored photo.’

  Vogel nodded. ‘Alice was forty when she was attacked. I reckon Kristos has deliberately made her look younger and more contemporary. Turned her into someone suitable to be his girlfriend. Also someone you wouldn’t immediately recognize as Alice. But Alice all the same.’

  ‘Pretty damned twisted,’ muttered Clarke.

  ‘No doubt about that, boss,’ agreed Vogel.

  ‘What was the name of the boy? Something Scottish, as I remember . . . Rory, Rory something?’

  ‘Rory Burns,’ said Vogel. ‘As I recall, he’d been badly injured in a motor accident when he was very young. His mother had been killed in the crash and his father couldn’t cope, so little Rory was put into care and eventually fostered by Alice Turner and her husband. He’d been with the couple for about six years and seemed quite settled. I don’t think they ever found out what made him turn on her.’

  ‘“Like a rabid dog” – that was how the prosecution counsel described the boy,’ murmured Clarke. ‘It’s all coming back to me now. Edinburgh High Court, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, boss. Just like Venables and Thompson, the Bulger killers, Rory Burns was tried in an adult court because of the severity of his offence.’

  ‘Didn’t he say something quite chilling when he was arrested, something biblical? It came up in court and was quoted everywhere.’

  Vogel looked down at a report of the trial which he’d just printed out.

  ‘And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,’ he recited.

  ‘Shit,’ said Clarke.

  ‘After the attack, the boy just stayed in the house waiting for Alice Turner’s husband to get home,’ Vogel continued. ‘He worked shifts, apparently, and she very nearly bled to death. Poor man found her upstairs. Burns was downstairs, covered in Alice’s blood.’

  ‘The boy was mentally ill, surely?’

  ‘It was decided that he was sane enough to have known what he was doing and to stand trial,’ said Vogel. ‘But whereas at the close of the trial of Venables and Thompson the judge ruled that their names should be released in spite of their ages,
Rory Burns’ anonymity was preserved. It leaked locally, though. He spent eight years at a young offenders’ centre, and when he was released there was a public outcry in Scotland, though nothing like the furore over Venables and Thompson.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Clarke.

  ‘He was released on licence and sent to some kind of halfway house in Edinburgh . . .’ Vogel paused. ‘That was in 1998, the year of the King’s Cross murders.’

  Clarke looked thoughtful. ‘So it could have been him. He just had to get himself to London and back.’

  Vogel nodded his agreement. He referred again to the printout: ‘For almost a year Burns reported to his parole officer according to the terms of his licence and appeared to behave impeccably. Then he vanished. Completely and utterly. Off the face of the earth.’

  ‘And he’s never been rediscovered?’

  Vogel shook his head. ‘There’s a school of thought across the border that some relative or friend of Alice Turner’s caught up with Burns and knocked him off. She had a brother who’s a bit of a toughie, ex para, always said he’d get him for what he did to his sister.’

  ‘But you don’t think he’s dead, do you, Vogel?’

  Vogel shook his head again.

  DCI Clarke stared at her second-in-command.

  ‘You think George Kristos is Rory Burns.’

  It was a statement, not a question. Vogel answered it, nonetheless.

  ‘Yes, I do, boss,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t we check out his background?’

  ‘Kristos was born in Edinburgh to Greek Cypriot parents. Scottish police told us his family were believed to have returned to Cyprus some years ago. There was nothing to arouse suspicion. He went to school in Scotland and then drama college in Manchester. It all checked out. He has a passport, national insurance number, tax record, driver’s licence – everything. All in the name of Georgios Kristos. And no criminal record, obviously. He’s an Equity member as George Kristos, and is generally known as George. So he’d anglicized his name, but that didn’t seem suspicious either. Particularly not for an actor.’