Deadly Obsession

by Michael Kerr

  “I didn’t know that,” Jack said. “You think King was in danger?”

  “Personally, yes. Maybe if King had blanked him and not given him his autograph or done the photo thing, he would have just taken a gun out and shot him dead. All the books King has written since nineteen-eighty would never have existed, and Lennon might have grown old disgracefully and made a lot more music. There are a billion possible futures waiting to unfold.”

  “You think Chapman will ever get parole?”

  “I think if he does, some other Lennon fan will be waiting to add a new dimension to the story.”

  Jack said, “The bottom line is that we have an organised predator stalking and murdering randomly. The only clues we have are what he chooses to leave us by way of cryptic messages, and the acts he commits that are linked to some off-the-wall paintings by an artist I’d never heard of before.”

  “At least he wants to communicate,” Lisa said. “Overconfidence is a weakness. He will not be able to envisage the possibility of you ever being able to identify him.”

  “What is he, Lisa?”

  “Part of a growing scourge. A creature that will not stop. He doesn’t have the capacity to restrain himself. There is a psychological mechanism that can suppress the dark side of most people’s nature. We evaluate right and wrong, weigh up the distress that may arise from word or deed, and hold back, or temper any outburst. But he is malfunctioning. He’s like a wild beast out of its cage and on the rampage, and he can’t control the pressures that drive him.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “I agree. But different circumstances make people do things they would not have previously considered themselves capable of. Everyone has a breaking point. Take away a conscience; the ability to morally differentiate between what is and is not acceptable behaviour and you’ve got a walking bomb.

  “People that suffer brain injury can display radical changes to their personalities. It is known that animal instincts, usually kept under control, can run riot when the area of the brain that governs them is damaged. Remove all inhibitions and anyone can become a killer or a sexual predator. Even developing a brain tumour can change a saint into a serious sinner.”

  Jack sighed. He had his own thoughts on escalating violent crime. It was in part – he believed – the result of changing values and less respect for the authority that was necessary to maintain a civilised society. Maybe a capitalist doctrine was an inherent cause for a growing disenchantment. And he laid a lot of blame at the door of television, movies and computer games, which in the main catered for the numb-nuts who needed high body counts, sex, and torture to float their boats. It was no surprise to him that Hannibal Lecter-style movies were box office hits. Or that the graphic violence and aftermath of it in TV shows boosted ratings. What did that say about twenty-first century Homo sapiens?

  “That would only account for a very small percentage of offenders’ behaviour, Lisa. I better go,” Jack said. “It’s late, and...” And he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her, but didn’t dare risk pushing too far, too soon.

  “And what?” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

  “And that away from an official setting, I find myself with a beautiful woman, and have to remind myself that we have a working relationship, not a personal one.”

  “Be yourself, Ryder. He who hesitates is lost,” Lisa said, willing him to take that first giant step.

  There it was, floating between them like a helium-filled balloon. He could pop it and open a new door, or leave it hanging there and walk away from it. This wasn’t a complication he needed. He was scared of where it might lead.

  They just looked at each other. Something pivotal was happening in the stillness of the room. There was a spell being cast that they were both aware of. Lisa wanted to bridge the gap between them; just lean in and kiss him on the mouth. She could sense his reticence, but knew that he wanted her.

  She leant towards him and could smell bourbon and aftershave. It would be now or never. The six-inch space between them would become a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon if the moment was allowed to pass.

  Jack reached out, caressed her cheek, traced the shape of her lips with his fingertip, and then thought what the hell and kissed her.

  They were both transported. Time and space became abstract. There were only gut-wrenching sensations that neither had ever experienced before; not with such intensity. Call it love, or just the coming together of two halves that needed completeness. Whatever it was, it could not be denied or stepped back from.

  “Wow!” Lisa exclaimed, coming up for air.

  “Is that a technical term?” Jack said.

  “Yes. It means you’re a hell of a kisser, Ryder.”

  “You’re no slouch yourself. You want to try it again?”

  She got up, gripped both of his hands and tugged until he climbed to his feet.

  “Yes,” she said. “But not down here.”

  He let her lead him up the spiral staircase and into her bedroom. She did not turn on the light, just proceeded to undress him with an urgency that made her fingers fumble and her breathing quicken.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “WE got a hit on the Mimic, boss,” Phil Jennings said over the phone at ten the next morning.

  “Where are you, Phil?” Jack said through a mouthful of one of the doughnuts that he had stopped-off to buy on the way into work. He had risen early, after a night that had redefined his life in a way he would not have thought possible just twelve hours ago. He was Renaissance man, revived and full of a new, unbounded and almost frenetic energy. One night with Lisa had reinvented him.

  “I’m at Shelby’s; a book shop in Holborn,” Phil said. “The owner has a customer who fits the bill. He regularly orders books on the life and work of artists, including this Bosch character. Mr Shelby here says that the guy is always quoting the poet William Blake, and that he comes across as an oddball. He even bought a book on that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer a while back.”

  “You get a name and address?” Jack said, the remains of the doughnut now crushed in his hand.

  “Name, address, credit card and home and mobile telephone numbers.”

  Jack dropped the pastry into the bin at the side of his desk and licked sugar from his fingers. Picked up a pencil. “Shoot,” he said, and wrote down the details Phil gave him. “Good work, Phil. Come back to the Yard. We’ll get some background on this flake before paying him a visit.”

  Daryl Merrick was usually home from work by six-thirty, but had volunteered to stay back and oversee a late viewing. A local jeweller wanted to pay his respects at six p.m., which meant that it would be at least seven-thirty before Daryl got home. The jeweller, a Mr Arnold Preedy, would get to stand ‒ or sit ‒ and gawp at his mother’s corpse outside normal business hours, because he’d let them organise the whole caboodle, which included a top of the range ‘Eternal’ casket, all floral tributes, the headstone, three limos, and even the catering. A fool and his money are soon parted, Daryl thought, watching the jeweller’s Bentley roll up the drive and stop.

  Stubbing his cigarette out, Daryl adopted a suitably lugubrious expression, which with over ten years in the ‘dismal trade’ he could switch on and off with consummate ease, and opened the door to greet the man and his wife, to then keep his hands clasped together in front of him, to bid them enter in hushed tones that would not have been out of place in a public library. He looked the part, and knew it. He was exactly how people expected a funeral director to be; a doleful yet considerate and supportive professional who they could rely on to make the whole procedure run as smoothly as ball bearings in a tray of oil. The art was in appearing to have all the time in the world, and to have the punters subliminally believing that their dearly departed was the only cadaver in town, and not one of an endless stream that were seemingly being churned out by some factory, in the way that poultry was processed by the millions.

  He led them through to one of the four faux-o
ak panelled rooms in the chapel of rest. Told them he would be outside should he be required, and retreated in a manner that out-humbled Uriah Heep.

  He’d checked the old girl. She looked better than when they’d brought her in. Audrey, the boss’s daughter, could make all but the worst results of road accidents look as if they were just taking forty winks. Audrey loved the work and spent hours tarting them up, washing and styling their hair, cleaning fingernails, and using just the right amount of makeup to give them a healthy glow. It was a show. Bring on the motley, the powder and the paint. Nobody wants to see a loved one looking as white as bacon fat.

  Daryl walked up and down the subtly lit corridor, a little impatient, eager to be rid of the middle-aged pair so that he could lock up and leave. He was hungry, and planned to go home, exchange his charcoal grey double-breasted suit for a sweater and Jeans, and then pop down to his local pub for a bar meal and a few lagers.

  At last, Arnold Preedy and his pinch-mouthed wife re-appeared, thanked him and hurried away. He couldn’t help but think that in the chain of life, the couple were just another two links, soon to be boxed-up and dispatched in much the same manner as the remains of the old woman who they had just been visiting with. There was every chance that they might even wind up in the same cubicle. The inevitability of death made the journey of life and its countless trials and tribulations a little inane. It was difficult for a thinking man not to question the built-in obsolescence that surreptitiously demeaned youth and stamina. The degeneration put him in mind of fruit mouldering in a bowl, or the stop-action photography that was sometimes employed in natural history programmes to show the process of animals’ dissolution speeded up. Earlier in the day, the wife of the stiff in cubicle 3 had shown him a photograph of how her late husband had looked as a much younger man. He had appeared robust and cheerful, unaware that he would soon grow infirm, lose vigour, and become a stooped and crippled octogenarian, just taking up space and breathing air that was wasted on him.

  Daryl locked up and left the building. Got into his car and headed for home, unaware of the nondescript Mondeo that tailed him through the traffic.

  Inserting his key in the lock, he opened the door.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Jack said, walking up behind him as he removed the key.

  Mike and Phil flanked Jack, who held his ID out for Merrick to see. “We need to have a word with you.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Daryl said as he turned to face them, seemingly unconcerned. “I wasn’t speeding, was I?”

  “May we come in?” Jack said. “This shouldn’t take long.”

  Daryl smiled. “Have I a choice in the matter, Inspector Ryder?”

  “Of course, sir. You can opt to accompany us to the station. Your decision.”

  “Then pray enter my humble abode,” Daryl said. “I find this intriguing.”

  Jack ignored the sweeping hand gesture made by the suspect, inviting him to precede him into the dark hallway.

  “After you, sir,” he said. The man was somehow intimidating, though only slightly built and of average height. It was in the fluid way he moved, his composure, and the deadpan expression on both his face and in his heavily lidded eyes. Most people approached by the police would be visibly nervous, even if not guilty of any crime. This individual was impassive, outwardly unfazed by their presence.

  “Take a seat, why don’t you, gentlemen?” Daryl said, nodding to a massive sofa upholstered in purple leather, which matched the colour of the thick pile carpet.

  Jack took in his surroundings. The place was pure Goth-Revival, oppressive and sinister. Arched alcoves guarded ugly black metal wall lights with low watt orange bulbs that allowed shadows to dwell in the corners of the room. But it was the framed prints on the walls that made his pulse pound.

  “Who’s the artist?” Jack said.

  “You don’t strike me as a patron of the arts, Inspector,” Daryl said. “The large print above the fireplace is The river of Life by William Blake. Note that the heads of the figures are disproportionate, approximately a tenth of the body height; an intentional ploy by Blake to lend a spiritual and ethereal effect, lifting them out of the material world into the more fitting world of imagination. I choose to interpret the scene as depicting humanity being swept along in the current, oblivious to the fact that the river is transporting them ever nearer to eternity. You can see the original watercolour in the Tate.”

  “And the others?” Jack said.

  “All by Bosch. Are you familiar with his work?”

  “I’m getting to be,” Jack said. “Can you tell us your whereabouts on the evenings of September the ninth and November the twenty-fifth?”

  “I’m sure I can. But why would I need to? If you suspect me of wrongdoing, then surely I have a right to know of what.”

  “We’re conducting a murder inquiry, sir. I’d appreciate you just answering the questions.”

  “Very well,” Daryl said, and went over to an antique credenza, opened a cupboard door and reached inside. Jack, Mike and Phil tensed. They were all armed, and if Merrick had produced a weapon, then it would have turned into a turkey shoot, with the undertaker’s assistant, the bird.

  “Let’s see,” Daryl said, flipping through the pages of a large diary. “On the evening of Saturday the ninth of September I was entertaining a friend. We ate in, watched a DVD: Before Night Falls, which was in essence a bio of the poet Reinaldo Arenas, then went to bed.” He skipped a couple of pages. “And on the evening of November twenty-fifth I was working late, laying out some old dear who had expired of natural causes earlier in the day. I got home at eleven p.m., soaked in the bath, then retired. I have no proof of being home alone.”

  “I need the name and address of the person you were with on the first night in question,” Jack said. “And if you have no objection, we’d like to have a look around while we’re here.”

  “You’re out of order, Inspector. I’m afraid that any further cooperation on my part will necessitate your divulging just who you obviously suspect me of murdering. I have nothing to hide, but am not used to having my privacy invaded.”

  “Two young women were stalked, then attacked in their homes and strangled,” Jack said. “The only details I will share with you at this stage are, that clues were left at the scenes which led us to believe the killer was intimately acquainted with the work of Bosch.”

  “So any aficionado of Hieronymus is in the frame?”

  “That’s right. Especially if they are single, live alone, and have a record. You were put on probation at the age of seventeen for interfering with a minor. That would be enough these days to warrant your being on the sex offenders’ list.”

  “That was nineteen years ago, Inspector. The girl in question was almost sixteen, sexually active, and tried to seduce me. When I rebuked her, she claimed that I’d molested her. If you’d done your homework, and I’m sure that you haven’t, then you would have known that I am gay. If I was going to stalk and murder anyone, it would certainly not be a woman. And I would have more sense than to lead you to my door with clues.”

  “You wanted to know why we’re here. Now you do,” Jack said. “So make a decision. Do we get to browse, or would you rather go for a ride and spend the night in a cell, while I get a warrant to rip this place apart?”

  “No need to get heavy, Inspector. Go ahead, knock yourself out. As I said, I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide. I tend not to keep bloody weapons or body parts in the house.”

  “Not funny, Merrick,” Mike said.

  “You’re right,” Daryl said, but chuckled. “I’m afraid my funereal sense of humour goes with the job I do. Hanging out with corpses and tearful relatives all day would become depressing if you didn’t adopt a degree of resilience to it. And as for the current murders that you are investigating, I admire your tenacity in trying to shut stable doors after the event, but cannot get too worked-up over a couple of strangers being murdered. Everyone dies. When or how is of no real consequence in the gr
eater scheme of things.”

  Phil stayed in the lounge with Merrick while Jack and Mike did a room by room search. They found no letters, or anything suspicious. There were some hard-core gay stroke mags in a bedside cabinet, along with an almost empty tube of KY and several packs of assorted condoms, which seemed to confirm Merrick’s sexual inclination.

  Jack was going through the motions. The funeral director didn’t fit the bill. The killer may or may not be an aficionado of Bosch, but was undoubtedly heterosexual, unless Lisa’s reasoning was way off course. And he was sure her preliminary profile was on target, like an arrow in the gold.

  “Now what?” Mike said when they were back in the car.

  “Find a decent pub that isn’t full of our lot, and doesn’t have a jukebox,” Jack said. “We’ll go through it again, over a pint.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LISA got home at six p.m., dumped a tea bag and sweetener in a cup, switched on the kettle and went upstairs to get out of her day clothes. She could still smell Jack in the bedroom; a good smell. Proof that she hadn’t dreamed the previous night. Not that she needed any proof. It had surpassed all expectation. The escalation in their relationship had been spontaneous and in some way life changing, affecting her way of thinking. She doubted that she could walk away from what had happened without regret. That the impact of one passion-filled night could be so monumental was both frightening and exhilarating. Perhaps it was the same for every couple that suddenly came together emotionally as well as physically.