Kill Chase (A Detective Ryan Chase Thriller Book 1)
Page 21
Tears turned her eyes glassy. “He said it was a mistake and that he had a girlfriend. He told me he wanted to leave, and I needed to drive him back into the city. I told him that I didn’t want him to just go, and that it wasn’t right that he should have sex with me and then abandon me again. He called me a crazy bitch and said he’d walk until he got phone reception. He got up to go, and I picked up a table lamp and hit him over the head with it. Then, when he was unconscious, I dragged him back to the bed and tied his hands to the bed railings with some rope.”
“You said he had a phone. What did you do with it, Clara?”
“I destroyed it. It wasn’t hard. I had plenty of tools in my dad’s workshop.”
“Did Jacob regain consciousness?”
She squeezed her hands together and nodded. “Yes, fairly quickly. Within the hour or so. Then he started shouting, and it frightened me. I didn’t want to go back in there, not until he was quiet anyway. So, I just left him.”
“You left him?” Mallory asked. “For how long?”
“I’m not sure. I lost track of time.”
“Do you think it was hours?” she prompted. “Days?”
“The next time I went in there, he was dead, so I think it might have been days.”
Ryan leaned forward slightly. “What were you doing all that time?”
She cast her gaze down. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“And how did he die?”
A tear slid down her cheek. “Maybe...maybe because I forgot to give him any food or water...”
Ryan exhaled a steady breath and glanced at his sergeant. He knew she was thinking exactly the same thing. The poor bastard. What a way to go.
“What did you do then, Clara?” Ryan asked. “When you discovered Jacob was dead.”
“I panicked. He’d mentioned having a girlfriend, so I knew someone would be searching for him. I thought about burying the body on my land around the cabin, but I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t so much that I was worried about being caught and that the body being buried here would implicate me. It was that I knew every time I came here, I’d think about where the body was buried and what it would look like now, all decomposing and stuff, and I couldn’t do it.”
“You didn’t want to think about the body’s appearance underground, decomposing, so you cut it into pieces instead?”
She nodded. “It was easier that way. I stopped thinking of him as a person and just pieces of meat I needed to get rid of. In smaller pieces, I was able to carry them with me, and just throw another piece away, or bury it somewhere remote, without anyone asking any questions. No one ever thinks a young woman is carrying around a piece of a body. Even when the bag got bloody, I figured if someone asked, I’d say it was a bone from the butcher for my dog.”
“What tools did you use to cut up the body?” Ryan asked.
“A hacksaw from the workshop. It was my dad’s favourite. I just sharpened it every time the blade got blunt. My dad showed me how.”
They had her confession, so they almost didn’t need the physical proof as well, but they had it by the bucketful. Not only had forensics matched the paint flakes found in the severed limbs of the other victims, but there was also a lot of blood traces as well. Clara had cleaned up her messes, but no one could do a perfect job.
“We never found your DNA on the body parts. Why was that?”
She shrugged. “Bleach. I made sure to dunk each piece in bleach before I put it in the carrier bag.”
That would do it.
Ryan folded his arms on the table. “Tell us about the others, Clara.”
“The others?”
“We found pieces of both Matthew Gordon and Luke Braun in the River Avon. We have paint flakes on both bodies that match to those in your father’s workshop, plus blood samples that match both victims as well.”
“The story is much the same with them both. I picked them up while they were drunk and brought them back to the cabin.”
She lifted her gaze to Ryan’s, and he saw something else in her eyes—a glint of disgust and hatred.
“It was always so easy. You men are pathetic creatures. One sniff that you’re going to get laid and it’s like leading a horse to water.” She gave a small laugh. “Even for someone who looks like me.”
There was nothing wrong with Clara Reed’s appearance. She was tall and broad-shouldered, but if she’d ever learned how to carry herself with confidence, she’d have been striking rather than awkward. Ryan imagined that her height and strength must have helped when it came to moving the bodies. Where he would have struggled to imagine a woman overpowering a man, in Clara’s case, it wasn’t too much of a stretch, especially if the man was inebriated.
“We had sex,” she continued, “and when they were passed out, I cuffed their hands to the bed.”
“Cuffed? You’d moved from rope to handcuffs?” That she’d deliberately switched from one to the other meant what she’d done to Luke and Matthew had been premeditated.
“Of course,” she said, matter-of-fact. “They held better. I had one who almost got away from the rope. He hit me, badly actually. That got a little messy.”
Ryan sat up straighter. Who was she talking about? “This one who almost got away,” he said, “was that Luke or Matthew?”
“Neither. It was someone else.”
Beside him, Mallory sucked in a breath.
Ryan leaned forwards slightly. “How many men have you killed, Clara?”
“I’m not sure.”
“More than the three we know about?”
She nodded, but her voice was barely a whisper. “Yes.”
“You need to speak up for the tape.”
“Yes,” she repeated, louder this time.
“Where are the bodies buried?”
She shrugged. “There are pieces of them all over the place. I’m not sure I can even remember where.” She folded her arms on the table and pillowed her temple on her arms. “This all hurts my head. I need a rest now. I can’t think anymore.”
Her solicitor spoke up. “I think this is a good time for a break.”
Ryan nodded. “Agreed. Interview pausing at eighteen-oh-six.” He stopped the recording.
Mallory got to her feet. “I’m going to need a coffee.”
“I’ll come with you.”
They stepped out into the corridor outside, and Mallory let out a long breath and propped herself against the wall. “Jesus Christ. That was one hell of a story.”
“She hunts men down, promises to sleep with them, and then when they try to leave her, she murders them.”
“Like a game of kiss chase,” Mallory said. “Only this time, when she catches them, she kills them.”
Ryan grimaced. “Less kiss chase and more kill chase.”
“I’m going to get that coffee.”
“No fruit tea this time?” Ryan said.
“With how this is going, I’ll be needing alcohol on top of the caffeine.”
He gave a low chuckle. “I’ll be there in a sec.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and Ryan took it out and checked the screen. He had a message from Nikki, asking how he was and encouraging him to call her. He felt bad that things hadn’t worked out between them, but it had only been one date—not even that, really—and it was better that he didn’t take things any further. He’d learned from the experience that his head wasn’t in the right place. He wasn’t sure it ever would be.
He hesitated with his thumb over his contacts, and then, scrolling down, hit ‘call’. Ryan placed the phone to his ear and, after a couple of rings, the woman on the other end answered.
“Donna, hi, it’s me,” he said. “I just wanted to see how you are.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Joe leaned over the form and filled in his name and address.
He’d spent a couple of days in hospital, mainly for shock and dehydration. The police had come in to speak to him and taken a formal statement. He’d had to admit tha
t he’d been faking his homelessness, and that he’d willingly gone to the cabin with a woman he didn’t even know. Shame and embarrassment had heated his skin, and he’d sworn a silent promise to himself that his life would change from now on.
He hadn’t even been able to let himself back into his flat initially, because he’d never had his keys replaced after the three men had taken them after they’d beaten him up on the street that day. At least he’d had the police report to show the lettings agency, and they’d been more than sympathetic and helpful.
He’d taken himself back off the street. Life was already dangerous. Why make it even more so, willingly? He still hadn’t completely given up hope of finding his sister, but those hopes had diminished. If something like that could happen to him—a full-grown man—he didn’t even want to think what might have happened to Kerry as a vulnerable teenage girl on the streets. Maybe she was still alive out there somewhere, but there was also a good chance she wasn’t. And if she wasn’t, what was the point in him sacrificing his own life to find someone who couldn’t be found? Kerry never would have wanted that.
Joe needed to figure out what it was he wanted from life and go for it. Right now, all he wanted was a bed, clean sheets, a good meal, and a door he could lock on the rest of the world.
DI Chase had kept him informed about the case. Clara Reed had confessed to the murders of several men, and a county-wide search had been taking place over the past week to try to locate the bodies. So far, the bodies of six different men had been found scattered around Bristol and the Somerset countryside. Perhaps there were even more out there. They might never know for sure. Clara Reed’s mental health issues and possible dissociative blackouts meant that she may have completely blocked out some of the murders. Perhaps they would come back to her, and she’d be able to give the police exact names and locations of the other victims, or perhaps they’d be lost for good.
Either way, any male from the last ten years who’d gone missing from around the Bristol and Avon area—assuming she hadn’t been inside the mental hospital during those times—was now a possible victim of Clara Reed.
Joe had almost become one of those victims, and he’d thank God every day that he was still alive.
He finished filling out the form to volunteer at the same place Clara had worked and signed his name. He didn’t know what the reaction of the men he’d got to know during his time on the streets would be when they saw him on the other side of the counter, but it felt like the right thing to do. Now that Clara was behind bars, the soup kitchen was a person down.
Besides, maybe this way he might one day come across Kerry or someone who knew her. He could still keep his ear to the ground, but he’d also be helping instead of making himself just another statistic.
And maybe one day, he’d look up and see his sister’s face again.
THE END
Liked what you’ve read?
You can order book two of the Detective Ryan Chase Thriller series, Chase Down, from Amazon now!
HE KNOWS WHERE YOU live...
A young family is found murdered inside their home, all the doors and windows locked, and no sign of forced entry.
Who is responsible for the deaths? Could someone inside the house have committed this terrible act?
Detective Ryan Chase is struggling through his own dark times, his OCD steadily getting worse. But he won’t allow his personal problems to affect his focus on the case. Together with his partner, DS Lawson, he won’t rest until the killer is brought to justice.
A man is out there, one who can see into people’s lives. And he has another family in his sights...
Follow Detective Ryan Chase and his partner Mallory Lawson in book two of this thrilling new crime series.
Acknowledgements
My dad died the week before the publication of ‘Kill Chase’. I was still working on it even while I was nursing him through end stage cancer, which is why I dedicated this book to him. He was always so proud of how well my books were doing, and I hope I’ll continue to make him proud.
I like to think no author is an island, and I had even more people than usual help me with Kill Chase. A couple of special thanks, first to Zoe Knight, whose brother Ben also has Down’s syndrome. She kindly read through my parts with Ollie and helped me with his speech. I really appreciate the help.
Thanks to Sandra Harsant for her help with all things technical about fishing at the start of the book. As someone with no fishing experience what-so-ever, I know I needed it!
As always, thanks to my crack team of editors and proofreaders—Emmy Ellis, Jessica Fraser, and Tammy Payne. I hope we caught all those annoying typos! And thanks to Patrick O’Donnell and all the members of the Cops and Writer’s group. I don’t know where I’d be without someone to answer my constant stream of questions about all things procedural.
Finally, thanks to you, for taking the time to read my books.
Until next time,
MK
About the Author
M K FARRAR HAD PENNED more than ten novels of psychological noir and crime fiction. A British author, she lives in the countryside with her three children and a menagerie of rescue pets.
When she’s not writing—which isn’t often—she balances out all the murder with baking and binge-watching shows on Netflix.
You can find out more about M K and grab a free book via her website, https://mkfarrar.com
She can also be emailed at mk@mkfarrar.com. She loves to hear from readers!
Also by the Author
DI Erica Swift Thriller
The Eye Thief
The Silent One
The Artisan
The Child Catcher
The Body Dealer
The Gathering Man
Crime after Crime series, written with M A Comley
Watching Over Me
Down to Sleep
If I Should Die
Standalone Psychological Thrillers
Some They Lie
On His Grave
Down to Sleep