by Michael Kerr
“Did she say anything, Ken?”
“No, Jack. But she looked...confused. She might work with mentally ill criminals, but isn’t used to being at the sharp end, up close to the blood and guts. I think theory and reality have come together and knocked her for six. Nothing can prepare most civvies for what she’s seen and been through.”
Jack dropped the half-smoked cigarette on to the wet grass and slid his foot over it before heading over to the narrow track where Peter Bryant was sitting in his car. He knew that what he’d done had driven Lisa away: that she considered his work essential was not the issue, but she now probably viewed him in the same way that she rated a vermin exterminator or funeral director. His profession was not pleasant. Not something she wanted to be a part of. He thought that being with him would now feel to her like a non-smoker trapped in a small room with a sixty-a-day addict. Who wants to get lung cancer by association?
He climbed into the rear seat of the car and slammed the door.
“You okay?” Peter said, looking at him through the rearview mirror.
“No”, Jack said. “I need a cup of coffee.”
EPILOGUE
AMONG other emotions, Dawn felt a powerful sensation of relief. A broken collarbone, and having the side of her head shaved and a few stitches had been small price to pay after suffering being stalked, raped, abducted, and facing almost certain death at the hands of a fucking maniac who had shot her. She was glad that the man was dead. She would never have felt safe again if he had survived. The apartment was up for sale. She couldn’t bear to live in it; could still feel him in it, and had vivid flashbacks of the two police officers being murdered in the lounge. She needed new surroundings. Everything would be fine. Time was a great healer. She determined to get her life back on track, and was surprised to find that she had the capacity to put it all behind her and move on, as if the episode had been a play or TV drama that she had had a role in.
Jack drove up to York and collected Sharon and Danny the day after he returned from Cornwall. They were now back home, and safe.
Some of the paperwork and debriefing would have to wait. He was getting flak for emptying his gun at McBride, although he had only struck him with four of the bullets. Seems the brass upstairs thought he had lost the plot, and maybe to a degree he had, but didn’t give a fuck. None of the over-the-hill grey men in greyer suits knew the difference between shit and chocolate flavoured Angel Delight. And now he was on paid suspension, which was fine by him. He might not go back, even though Ken had assured him that there would be no backlash. Trouble was, he didn’t know what to do with all the free time. He was drinking too much Jim Beam and rereading well-thumbed hardboiled detective novels. He’d phoned Lisa twice in the ten days since the incident. Even met her once for coffee, but the dynamics were all screwed up. She’d seen something in him that was getting in the way of what he thought they’d had together. And he couldn’t change enough to make it right. He was who he was.
Another thing that got up his nose like the smell of an open sewer was Randy Gant walking. Someone had managed to put the frighteners on Tyrell and Foster. They were now both going to go down for wasting Joey Lewis, having withdrawn their statements and saying that Gant was not implicated. And the drug charges might not stick. A hard fact of life is that the bad guys can and do win. Good doesn’t always triumph over evil in the real world. But Gant would get his. They all did, eventually.
Lisa needed space. She hadn’t stopped loving Jack, but there was a part of his personality that she considered being as cold and lethal as the predators and murderers that she assessed as being psychologically damaged. Within him was a capacity to take life, and for whatever reason and however legally justified it might be in his role as a police officer, it disturbed her. When McBride had been holding her as both hostage and human shield on that cliff top, she had looked into Jack’s eyes and seen death in them. She had known that he would shoot her captor. He’d wanted to kill the man, and not just to save her. It was almost murder, because he had assumed the role of judge, jury and executioner. Even if she had not been in danger, he would have shot it out, as if he was no better than McBride. She could not forget that as the killer cop had released her and fallen, Jack had rushed forward to the cliff edge to fire more shots, even as the man hurtled to certain death on the beach far below. Jack had been out of control. Or maybe he had been in total control, which was even worse.
The phone calls with him were difficult. And when they’d met for coffee she’d felt nervous and was not able to find the right words. Part of him was a stranger to her.
It was a few days later that she went to spend a day in Windsor with Aunt Virginia. She told her everything, as if metaphorically needing a shoulder to cry on.
“You love the man,” Virginia said in a matter of fact tone of voice, having listened patiently to Lisa’s outpouring. “And you know it. So why not go with your heart and stop moralising. It sounds to me as if the bastard that killed all those people got a well deserved taste of his own medicine.”
“But Aunt Virginia, if―”
“Try cutting but and if out of your vocabulary, pumpkin, and get on with things as they are. I get the feeling that this Jack Ryder is the one, so don’t let him go. Take it from an old woman who has been there, messed up, and didn’t even get the fucking T-shirt. You really don’t want to be sitting around full of regrets in thirty years. Perfect doesn’t exist, my dear. You have to take as near to it as you can get. Accommodate and compromise, and never go to bed angry. That’s always been my credo. More tea?”
Lisa didn’t sleep that night. Just drank too much wine and replayed all the good times with Jack: making love, building Frank the snowman, discussing everything from pot-boilers to old movies, and locations where they could go together on holiday. She knew that he loved her. It suddenly clicked into place like the whirring wheels of a fruit machine coming to a juddering stop. Her mind had pondered, considered and weighed up all the pros and cons. She dismissed logic and went with that age old emotion that makes the world go round…Love.
At nine o’clock on the seventh of January, Lisa called the hospital and spoke with Ed Kotechi; told him that she wanted some time off. Ed knew what she’d been through, had expected a reaction, and agreed with her that a break was what she needed.
Parking the Lexus outside the block of flats in Holland Park, Lisa smiled when she saw that Jack hadn’t got rid of his old Ford Sierra yet. He kept threatening to, but she believed he was too attached to it. It took her a few minutes to summon up the courage to get out of the car and walk across the pavement to the main door, where she stood with her finger poised over the doorbell. What if he was distant; had thought it through and decided she wasn’t worth the effort. Her aunt’s words echoed in her mind. She took a deep breath and pressed the bell.
Jack came out of the ground floor flat, opened the front door and smiled broadly. “You look cold,” he said, standing aside to let her in. “You want a cup of coffee? I’ve just made fresh.”
“That would be good,” she said. And then they were holding each other as if for life itself.
She kissed him so hard that their teeth clashed for an instant. She broke off and said, “You busy for the next couple of weeks, Ryder?”
“Why, what do you have in mind?”
“I thought we could drive to the airport and fly out to Miami, to pick up a swish convertible and explore the Keys.”
“When?”
“Now seems like as good a time as any. Or maybe after we drink that coffee and fool around for awhile. I packed a case. It’s in the boot.”
“Sounds like a fun thing to do,” Jack said. “You pour the coffee while I go and get my passport.”
END
About The Author
I write the type of original, action-packed, violent crime thrillers that I know I would enjoy reading if they were written by such authors as: Lee Child, David Baldacci, Simon Kernick, Harlan Coben, Michael Billingham and their
ilk.
Over twenty years in the Prison Service proved great research into the minds of criminals, and especially into the dark world that serial killers - of who I have met quite a few - frequent.
I live in a cottage a mile from the nearest main road in the Yorkshire Wolds, enjoy photography, the wildlife, and of course creating new characters to place in dilemmas that my mind dreams up.
What makes a good read? Believable protagonists that you care about, set in a story that stirs all of your emotions.
If you like your crime fiction fast-paced, then I believe that the books I have already uploaded on Amazon/Kindle will keep you turning the pages.
Connect With Michael Kerr and discover other great titles.
Web
www.michaelkerr.org
Michael Kerr’s official site
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https://www.facebook.com/MichaelKerrAuthor
Kindle Store
http://www.michaelkerr.org/amazon
Also By Michael Kerr
DI Matt Barnes Series
A REASON TO KILL
LETHAL INTENT
A NEED TO KILL
CHOSEN TO KILL
A PASSION TO KILL
RAISED TO KILL (Sample at end)
The Joe Logan Series
AFTERMATH
ATONEMENT
ABSOLUTION
ALLEGIANCE
ABDUCTION
The Laura Scott Series
A DEADLY COMPULSION
THE SIGN OF FEAR
Other Crime Thrillers
DEADLY REPRISAL
DEADLY REQUITAL
BLACK ROCK BAY
A HUNGER WITHIN
THE SNAKE PIT
A DEADLY STATE OF MIND
TAKEN BY FORCE
DARK NEEDS AND EVIL DEEDS
Science Fiction / Horror
WAITING
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE STRANGE KIND
RE-EMERGENCE
Children’s Fiction
Adventures in Otherworld
PART ONE – THE CHALICE OF HOPE
PART TWO – THE FAIRY CROWN
DI Matt Barnes 6 – Raised To Kill (Sample)
PROLOGUE
HIS heart rate quickened, his mouth became dry, and he began to tremble as he drew near to the place of past evil; a place where he had suffered pain and anguish that still haunted him in vivid nightmares.
It was almost midnight on a chill Friday evening in October, and yet even with the heater in the car turned to maximum he was still cold to the bone. He was under no obligation to ever visit Gladstone House again, but could not resist the strange need and morbid fascination that drew him to a structure that had in its time been a Victorian lunatic asylum and then an orphanage.
Parking the dark-blue Ford Mondeo in the lane that ran alongside the eastern boundary of the now fire-damaged building, he switched off the ignition and grasped the steering wheel tightly as he took deep breaths and attempted to find some measure of composure. After a while, feeling more relaxed, he removed his now aching fingers from the wheel, to flex them for a few seconds before taking a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one, as he let old memories – that still felt as fresh as new mown grass – enter his mind. He took deep drags, filling the car with blue-grey smoke that seemed to cling to the windscreen, as if attempting to pass through the glass and amalgamate with the dense fog that was closing in, thicker by the minute.
Exiting the car, he discarded the half-smoked cigarette and ground it out with the sole of his shoe, before opening the boot and changing his outer clothing and shoes for a hooded fleece, baseball cap, jeans and trainers, which he took from a large plastic ziplock bag, along with a pair of leather driving gloves and a switchblade knife. This was his killing kit. After folding his regular clothes neatly, he closed the boot lid and thumbed the remote to lock the car.
With the hood of the fleece up over the cap that covered his shaven head, he walked slowly along the lane, hands deep in his jeans pockets. Less than a minute later he reached a point where an ancient oak tree stood like a giant sentinel among a copse that screened a high wall enclosing the forty-acres of parkland and the main building at its centre, which had always reminded him of a stately home.
Wending his way through the trees, his feet were cushioned by damp leaf litter that gave almost soundlessly under the thick soles of the Nikes. He reached the wall and walked twenty yards due west until he came to an arched gateway set into the crumbling brickwork. The rusted wrought iron gate was locked, but no barrier to him. On a previous visit he had used bolt cutters to cut through the hasp on the padlock and fasten his own lock to the chain. Unlocking the gate, he closed it behind him and headed out across the unkempt grass to approach the fire-gutted building, which appeared to grow and move towards him through the fog; a black and malformed creature that seemed alive, malevolent, and eager to consume him.
Stopping, he faced what had once been a place of living hell for him, where he had suffered so much hardship and pain, both physically and mentally. He was not scared of the building itself, but of the memories of the secret cruelty that the custodians had meted out to him and so many other boys within its walls.
Gladstone House was now a smoke-blackened and empty shell. Most of the roof and underlying floors had given way and fallen to form a small mountain of rubble at ground level. Back on the evening that he had torched it, he had beaten a hasty retreat to watch from over a mile away, to laugh loud and long until tears streamed from his eyes, as flames shot into the night sky and pillars of dense black smoke belched out to join them. Windows overheated and exploded outwards, and the noise of the crackling blaze carried to where he became over stimulated and began to masturbate at the sight of the inferno that he had been wholly responsible for generating. But it was not enough. The destruction of the orphanage had left him wanting, and over the ensuing two years he had been drawn back time and again to relive the past and plan for the future. Since he had run away ‒ from what now was no more than a blot on the landscape ‒ he had not enjoyed a happy or satisfactory passage of time; just a lengthy period of total disenchantment.
Inside, sitting amid the rubble and charred timbers, he visualised how the building had once been, and was filled with mental pictures of his fellow sufferers, and with a hatred and renewed determination to seek out more of the guardians that had been empowered to provide comprehensive support, counselling, education and residential training over the years for so many needy minors, but instead had abused their positions by preying on the most vulnerable in society: children that had, for whatever reasons, been abandoned.
He stayed for less than half an hour, and soon after was back in the car and driving south from Epping Green to join the M25 and head east, to leave the motorway at junction 28 and make his way to Harold Hill, where a now elderly man by the name of Jonathan Clegg lived in a detached bungalow on Straight Road, just a short walk from Dagnam Park.
This was to be Clegg’s last night alive. His past was catching up with him in the shape of a man that he had not seen for over fifteen years: a boy back then, whom he had no memory of, and so did not give a second’s thought to.
CHAPTER ONE
IT was six a.m. He thumbed on the security lights to illuminate the back garden before opening the door to the deck and stepping out into the cold, early morning air. The chairs were wet due to the water droplets from low-lying fog, which was almost dense enough to render the trees of the orchard invisible, rebuffing the broad shafts of the lights.
Taking a mouthful of black coffee from a white ceramic mug, Matt Barnes walked over to the hardwood rail and revelled in the silence. Living in the cottage out at Woodford Wells, northeast of the city, was one of the best decisions that he and Beth had ever made. This was a place he could escape to from the urban sprawl, to relax in rural surroundings that he found therapeutic; an antidote to the work he did as a detective inspector running the SCU, which was the Special Crimes Unit, wholly eng
aged in solving serial murders and rapes within the Greater London area.
As he looked out towards the pond, which was mirror smooth and the same slate grey as his eyes, Matt smiled. He heard the light footfalls behind him, but decided to act surprised.
“You know I’m creeping up on you, don’t you, Barnes?” Beth said.
Matt nodded. “Yeah, but how did you know I knew?”
“Body language. A slight tension when you heard the decking give.”
“Clever girl,” Matt said, turning to face her. “You should be a copper.”
“No way. One detective in the family is enough. What are you doing out here in this freezing fog?”
“Just enjoying the tranquillity of it.”
Beth stepped in close, kissed him on the lips and then said, “Aren’t you cold?”
“A little,” Matt said. Truth was he was warm enough in his thick dressing gown, but his left thigh ached. Damp and cold made his femur protest. Having it shattered by a bullet was the reason for the discomfort. But he never complained. That he had survived, minus a kidney, was something to be thankful for. You needed to be positive, and he was. The shooter, Gary Noon, was long dead, and so there were no loose ends. The soreness of his leg was a reminder of colleagues lost on that fateful day: a physical hurt that kept the emotional pain fresh and up front in his mind, not to ever be eroded by the passage of time.
“Come on in and I’ll freshen your coffee,” Beth said. “And you can tell me all about the new case that you’re working.”
