Friends to Die For

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘What about his alibi for the time of Michelle Monahan’s murder? Didn’t his neighbour say she was with him?’

  ‘Yes, boss, but she’s an old lady and she’s not well. I think we should double-check it.’

  DCI Clarke nodded. She remained silent for a few seconds. Then she clenched her fist and banged it on the desk in front of her.

  ‘Go get the bastard, Vogel,’ she said. ‘And this time we’re going to nail ’im.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ said Vogel, over one shoulder. He was already on the way to the door.

  Clarke immediately called in the key members of her team.

  ‘I want everything there is on Rory Burns and Georgios Kristos,’ she demanded. ‘Every spit and fart. Photographs – I want every available photograph. Tell forensics I need an expert to run photos of Rory Burns through age-progression software. Get on to Scotland: we need the complete court records and the statements of everyone involved. And we need to find Kristos’s parents in Cyprus, or wherever the hell they are.’

  George seemed unsurprised when Vogel and a team of officers arrived at his flat to arrest him for the third time, even though he had only recently been released from custody. It was almost as if he had been waiting for them.

  He unlocked the door and stood calmly with his arms extended as he was handcuffed.

  ‘I was half-expecting you to turn up again,’ he told Vogel. ‘But you’re not as bright as you thought you were, are you?’

  Vogel ignored that. He formally arrested George on suspicion of two counts of murder.

  George’s eyes seemed to glaze over as Vogel cautioned him.

  ‘Anything you do say may be given in evidence,’ the detective concluded.

  ‘God is jealous and the Lord revengeth, the Lord revengeth, and is furious,’ said George.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

  ‘The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ said Vogel, noting that George was now speaking with a distinct Scottish accent.

  He and two of the uniforms led George to the waiting squad car and bundled him in. George grabbed Vogel by the arm. His eyes bore into the policeman. Vogel had not noticed previously how cold those eyes were. Maybe they hadn’t been that way before.

  ‘The Lord will not acquit the wicked, the Lord hath His way in the whirlwind, and in the storm and the clouds are the dust at His feet,’ said George.

  twenty-four

  I didn’t care. I had completed my task. It mattered not to me what happened to my apology of a body. My soul is omnipotent. I am as He is. And will be for ever and ever. Amen.

  My table thou hast furnished me, In presence of my foes, My head thou dost with oil anoint, And my cup overflows.

  I supposed it was inevitable that eventually I would be discovered. Although, as I had fooled so many for so long, I did wonder, had almost come to believe, that I might yet escape.

  But sometimes I was not even sure I wanted to. There was a part of me that yearned for them all to know what I had done and why I had done it. Perhaps that was the reason I had chosen to carry a picture of my non-existent girlfriend, knowing it could conceivably lead to my being discovered. A doctored picture of the woman who had been my foster mother.

  Now they would know. The whole world would know what I had done.

  There was another reason why I chose to carry with me that doctored picture of Alice Turner, even before I learned about Marlena. Alice was the only woman I had ever really loved. The only human being I ever loved after my mother was taken from me. Along with my mother, I lost all hope of a future, any chance of a normal life. And I was only three at the time, too young to understand. Too young to hate. My father, my weak bloody father, claimed to have suffered a nervous breakdown. Said he couldn’t cope, and gave me away. Just gave me away to the state, asking that I be taken into care.

  He couldn’t cope? What did he think it was like for me, having to cope with what I had become?

  But Alice. My dear sweet Alice. She had nurtured me, cared for me, soothed me, made me feel that I was normal in spite of everything, and that to her I was precious. I’d yet to think about growing into a man, and what that might mean. As a child, with Alice, I felt safe enough. I had perhaps dared to believe I was just an ordinary little boy. And to her, to Alice, a special boy.

  Then I witnessed her betrayal. A quite casual betrayal.

  I overheard her one day, talking to a social worker in the kitchen. They thought I was in the garden, kicking a ball around with the boy from next door, but I’d come back into the house to find a plaster because I’d cut my knee. I was in the hall when I heard the words I shall never forget.

  ‘He was such a disturbed child when he came here,’ said the social worker. ‘And he’s doing so well now.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Alice. ‘But I can’t help fearing for his future. He’s always going to be a freak, isn’t he, out there in the big wide world? My dear, darling little freak . . .’

  I didn’t make a sound. It was as if I was frozen. Then I turned, crept along the hallway out of the house.

  They never even knew that I was there.

  She might have known later though, in the early hours of the following morning. I’ve often wondered if she ever realized what had sealed her fate. What she had done. How she’d left me with no choice but to deal with her disloyalty, her nonchalant derision, in the way that I had.

  I took no notice of the other words she used, not ‘my’, nor ‘dear’, nor ‘darling’. All I heard was ‘freak’. I was a freak to her, as well as to the rest of the world. My sweet Alice thought I was a freak. And that one throwaway comment, never intended for my ears, meant that I would always be a freak to myself. How could I ever regard myself as anything other than that after hearing Alice, lovely Alice, speak of me in that way?

  I never told them. Not any of them. Or not in so many words. If they’d been cleverer, they might have guessed.

  Alice was the second woman to have destroyed my life. I could do nothing about the first evil bitch. Not then. But I could destroy Alice. I could make her life every bit as dreadful, as empty, and as wasted as I knew mine would be. I was only ten, but I had the power. The vengeful God of the Bible I kept always at my side was with me, bestowing upon me steadfast resolution and a will beyond my years.

  I took her eyes so that she would never again see me. And I took her tongue so that she would never again speak of me.

  Alice had been more than a foster mother to me. I’d loved her in a way I do not remember loving even my real mother. But then I have no memories of the time before my devastation. It was Alice who seemed to have been always there for me. She’d been everything to me. Until she betrayed me. The shock of it made me capable of what others might regard as a quite heartless brutality. It wasn’t that. I was not the evil one. Alice had proven herself to be shallow and craven. I did have a heart, then, but she broke it. I knew at once what I had to do. Alice left me no choice. My destiny lay before me. It was written in The Book.

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

  Ironically it was Alice who had sent me to Sunday school. I quickly became a star pupil. I was a clever boy, particularly good at memorizing verse from the Bible. And I took an intense pleasure in the Old Testament. I avidly devoured the messages it held for me. I gloried in them. I knew beyond doubt that so many of them were directed at me alone. They had been written in another age, by prophets and by saints and by scholars, for me to seize upon, to grasp with my whole being, and to obey.

  My one true friend is the Bible. The Good Book has an answer for everything in my world. It tells me that my God will supply every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. That has always been and always will be so. For ever and ever. Should my heart be troubled He provides solace. Should I ever, for a second, question my destiny, He enhances my resolution. He lif
ts me from despair and gives me vigour in all that I endeavour. I am and will always be His avenging angel.

  Vogel travelled to Charing Cross in the back of the squad car with George. He wanted to be close to him. He was appalled and captivated by him. If George spoke, if George moved a muscle, if George crossed his legs, scratched his nose, touched his ear, sneezed or coughed, Vogel wanted to know.

  George Kristos, né Rory Burns, did not look like a monster. Yet he was undoubtedly the most monstrous creature Vogel had ever encountered.

  Kristos did not speak again during the ten-minute journey, nor did he speak in the custody suite. It was only when he was asked to step into an anteroom with an officer in attendance and remove his clothes for forensic examination that he spoke.

  ‘And you shall make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness, from their loins even to their thighs they shall reach,’ he said. And he smiled. A wide gentle smile that did not reach his eyes.

  Vogel felt a shiver run up and down his spine. Clearly George Kristos was some sort of religious maniac. Vogel wasn’t sure that modern psychology recognized such a condition. But the label certainly fitted.

  He waited until George reappeared, now dressed in the regulation paper suit made of recycled materials, which was standard custody issue. Then he instructed the custody officer, Sergeant Andy Pierce, to arrange for George to be placed in a cell where he would be detained until they were ready to interview him. Vogel knew that Clarke and the rest of the MIT team would have been working flat out on the case in his absence, and he wanted to familiarize himself with any new information before proceeding with a formal interview.

  George smiled again. It was a knowing smile. Vogel looked away. He couldn’t wait to see Nobby Clarke and learn what progress had been made.

  When he arrived at the DCI’s office she was engaged in an animated discussion with Pam Jones and Joe Carlisle. Clarke looked up at him, pausing mid-sentence.

  ‘Scotland have done some digging for us. The real Georgios Kristos died when he was seventeen,’ she said.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Vogel.

  ‘And you are not going to believe the rest of this, Vogel,’ she said.

  Vogel thought he might. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

  ‘We now have details of the road accident in which Rory Burns’ mother was killed and he was injured. Apparently, mother and son were walking across a bridge when a motorcyclist who’d been going way too fast suddenly lost control and ploughed into them. The mother was catapulted into the river and swept away on the current. They found her dead body washed up downstream a couple of days later. The boy ended up straddling the front wheel of the bike. It seems the motorcyclist carried on across the bridge until the boy eventually fell off. A witness said the biker just sped off – didn’t even stop to see whether the kid was still alive. The boy suffered appalling injuries to the genital area and lower abdomen. Surgeons had to perform a penectomy and his testes were also removed.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Vogel. ‘He has no penis and no balls. No sexual organs. That would explain why Marlena’s sexual organs were removed – same thing with the two King’s Cross victims.’

  ‘Revenge,’ said Clarke. ‘Revenge for what happened to him.’

  Vogel nodded. ‘Was the motorcyclist caught?’

  ‘Disappeared without trace. The only witness was a fisherman down on the riverbank, a couple of hundred yards away. It was dusk, and he wasn’t close enough to give a description of the biker. Rory Burns was three years old – too young and too traumatized to be of any help. All they could get from him was that there’d been a big wheel and a pink lady.’

  Clarke looked down at a report in front of her, freshly emailed from Edinburgh. ‘“The pink lady went away,” he said. His mother had been wearing a pink coat, so the cops thought the boy must have been talking about her. I think they should have listened more carefully. I think the motorcyclist may have been a woman. I think she may have been the pink lady.’

  Vogel thought fast.

  ‘You think the pink lady was Marlena?’

  Clarke passed a photograph to Vogel. It showed a young Marlena standing alongside a pink Norton motorcycle.

  ‘The SOCOs found it in that suitcase of memorabilia in Marlena’s flat, but nobody thought it had any significance. Do you remember seeing it?’

  Vogel shook his head. ‘Even if I had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me ’til now.’

  ‘Well, it turns out Marlena’s father was from Edinburgh, so she may have had other kin up there. There can’t have been too many female motorcyclists in the early eighties, not riding proper grown-up machines.’

  ‘But wasn’t she supposed to be living in France throughout the eighties, supplying the great and the good of Paris with young women of ill repute?’ asked Vogel.

  Clarke picked up the mug of tea on her desk and took a sip. She pulled a face. Vogel guessed she’d probably let the beverage go cold.

  ‘Maybe she was just visiting Scotland. That would explain why they never caught up with her. A day or two after the incident a couple of uniforms were called to an explosion at an old municipal dump. Someone had set light to a motorcycle. The tank had been full of petrol, so there was damn all left of it. The number plates had been removed and the vehicle identification number destroyed, either during the fire or before. The local plod believed it was the bike involved in the incident that had maimed Rory Burns and killed his mother, but they couldn’t take it any further. The evidence literally went up in flames.’

  ‘But if Marlena had been riding that bike, how did Kristos find out? And when? The Sunday Clubbers had been meeting at Johnny’s Place for two years. He couldn’t have known from the beginning surely. Why would he have waited so long for his revenge?’

  Vogel paused, reflecting on this. ‘That’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it, revenge? And if this theory holds together, it was all about Marlena from the start. Kristos planned to murder her, and all the other stuff was a smokescreen.’

  Clarke agreed. ‘Poor Michelle Monahan was onto something, I reckon. That’s why she had to die.’

  ‘You know what, boss,’ Pam Jones interjected. ‘When Michelle was attacked in Brydges Place, she could well have just come from Kristos’s place. It’s just off the top of St Martin’s Lane, so she’d have had to pass that alleyway to get from there to here.’

  ‘There were lock-picking tools in her pocket,’ interjected Carlisle. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Shit,’ said Vogel. ‘Perhaps she thought he was out and decided to break in. He could have walked in and found her there. But then, why didn’t he kill her there and then?’ He tried to picture the scene in his mind. ‘Maybe he was at home all along. In bed asleep, or in the shower.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Yes, if she’d surprised him, caught sight of him naked – a man with no dick and no balls – she’d have known. And it would have given her a chance to make a run for it.’

  ‘You’re getting carried away, Vogel,’ said Clarke. ‘We haven’t got evidence for any of that.’

  ‘We could at least try checking out whether Marlena had ever talked about having a pink motorcycle,’ said Vogel. ‘And if she did, did they all know about it? Did Kristos know? That would be something.’

  Clarke nodded. ‘We’ve got three of ’em here already, haven’t we? That leaves another three, including Greg Walker. We need him too, but go gently. Ask all three to come in. Don’t arrest ’em, not this time. We need them on our side. Tell them we would like to share certain information before it becomes public knowledge and ask them to come here soon as poss. And tell the three we’ve got banged up – Ari, Billy and Tiny – that they’re about to be released on police bail but we need a final chat. Tell them all that they may be able to help us finally settle this.’

  ‘Right, boss,’ said Vogel.

  ‘Then get a doctor here,’ instructed Clarke. ‘I want Kristos or Burns or whatever his fucking name is fully examined before we go any further. I
f we’re right, his physical condition should confirm that he’s Burns. Custody are about to get the hairdrier big time. Twice now they’ve had him undress and taken his clothes away. You’d think they might have noticed he didn’t have a dick.’

  ‘You know how it is, boss, the prisoners always turn their backs, and nobody looks really,’ said Carlisle, who had been a custody officer before his transfer to CID.

  Clarke flashed him a stony look.

  ‘I don’t give a damn how it is, Carlisle – and when I want your fucking opinion I’ll ask for it,’ she said. ‘Neither do I want any more fucking mistakes, right? And let’s get our prisoner’s genitalia, or what remains of it, photographed and put on record.’

  ‘Right, boss,’ said Vogel again.

  ‘Oh, and go see the bastard in his cell. Tell him what’s happening. Let him realize his big secret is about to be revealed. Let him stew. We’ve still got bugger-all in hard evid—’

  Carlisle giggled.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, grow up, Carlisle, or I’ll have you back in uniform,’ said Clarke, glowering at the DC.

  ‘Our best hope is a confession,’ she continued. ‘Proving Kristos and Burns are the same person will be straightforward enough. Apart from his lack of genitalia, we can run a comparison between the DNA samples we took when Kristos was first arrested and the samples taken when Burns attacked his foster mother back in 1990 – luckily for us, they pulled out all the stops on that one; if it had been a routine case they wouldn’t have bothered with DNA samples back then. We’ll prove he’s Rory Burns, no question of that. But it’s going to be a lot tougher pinning four murders on him. The evidence for the two King’s Cross victims, Marlena and Michelle – it’s all circumstantial. So far anyway.’

  ‘It’s got to be him,’ said Vogel.

  ‘Yep. You know that and I know that. But first the CPS have to be convinced and then a jury. We’ve checked out his alibi for Michelle’s murder, by the way – the neighbour, Marnie. You were right: when pushed, she couldn’t be sure when Kristos was with her that day. Said he usually came round about nine, sometimes before. He banked on that, I reckon.’