by Gavin Graham
He wasn’t finished with her yet.
It was time to bring out the wheel.
Chapter 49
Isolating Samara
“Samara Cleland?” the policeman enquired.
“Yes?” the young girl answered the door in her bathrobe. She was dark-haired and attractive in a semi-goth way.
“I’m with Glasgow CID, I need to talk to you about an urgent matter, a murder enquiry.”
“A murder enquiry? Is this about the book I wrote?”
“Yes. We have reason to believe that the man you wrote about it in your book is actively abducting women in Glasgow, holding them prisoner at his home and torturing them, and making video tapes of their murders. Can we talk?”
“Shit. You have to be kidding me, right?”
“No. Do I look like I came to tell jokes?”
“Look, it’s just a book, it was probably just all talk. I didn’t even believe him. I thought he was just delusional, full of stories, that it was all in his head. I thought at the very worst he’d just done it the once, you know, killing that girl at school and burying the body. But, to be fair, I didn’t even believe that for a second.”
“Why write the book then?”
“I needed the money.”
“Did he tell you where he buried the girl’s body all those years ago?”
“Yeah, he did, I can take you there.”
“If we can link him to that case then it’ll be a start. But, we need you to tell us who he is, are you willing to co-operate in helping us identify this man?”
“Of course. His name is Spector. Spector Gladwell.”
The Detective took a deep breath and sighed with deep satisfaction. “We’ll need to keep you at a safe house until he’s brought in. Are you OK with that?”
“Sure. Thank you. Can you just give me a few minutes to pack a bag?”
“Aye,” he said with a smile. “Gather some things and let’s get you to a safe place…”
Chapter 50
The Breaking Wheel (Murder 4)
He was excited as he felt the heat of the blue flame warming the backs of his legs.
He injected her with a drug that sedated her completely. It made it easier to fixate her limbs to the spokes of the wheel, and, he also considered it to be much more effective when the viewer of a snuff film got to watch a live human being get roasted alive in that state. There is just something eerie and chilling about the whole thing. You see the eyes move and blink and slight movements and sounds are detectable as the wheel turns and burns and the body is charred alive.
You see the skin blister and smoke.
Everything changes colour.
The hair.
The eyeballs.
The fat.
The bone.
The innards.
It all melts away until all you are left with is a blackened, stinking corpse.
The camera was running.
He was a thing to behold…his staff hard…naked…the lucid sheen of his chrome skull mask somehow terrifying. He stood before the camera and showed his verses to the cops, to the world, so that all of them would know His name and His Bible of Kink. Verse 4: Rise now and worship…Lucifer has risen…kill according to known methods as I flourish in the shadow of torture and death…seize the serpent and provoke her with promises of painful sexuality…go forth and take her as she needs to be taken…she is yours to do with as you please…be not modest nor shy…gorge…be it vulgar and uncouth…suck at the juices of life as it is the nectar of our sweetest fruit…watch her as she dies…this is divine…this is eternal…see beauty in death for there is more beauty in death than there is in life…let the river flow…the river of evil…let the flame burn aglow until it grows into a raging fire…in this moment you may see the goddess where she lays in wait for you upon a hidden plateau of gold and diamonds…this is of another dimension…her pale breasts are large and bare…her tongue slippery and wet for your lips…her sex taut and warmly stewed in her own nectar…she’s magnificent in her nudity and only bows to the boldness of murder and sadomasochistic violation…she is of innocence yet thrives in sin…violence and murder is the only language that she understands…she secretly worships those who belittle and destroy the would-be serpentine whores…those child torturers…those harlots who beg for pain as they have killed…to be slapped sore and a little bit more…voluptuous and vulgar in their hollow tease…she wants you to test those of her ilk…her bosom is rapturous…she will reward herself unto you…her hair will be like silken gold as she walks into your dungeon of pain…she’s provoking you and daring you…know her…take her…she’ll show you sex as you show her murder…slain whores…pain is the ultimate currency…seduce…isolate…fuck…whip…terminate them with sharp steel…cut deep into the flesh…raw displays of violent power…they are destined to drown in their own blood…to die as their children die…do in me these acts of redemption and I shall do them in you…I promise this gift of her flesh and blood and all you must do now is take it…you will drown in the sins of her body as I have done…these sacrificial lambs will know too that we are all-powerful…she will look into your eyes and see what she saw in my eyes…that the Archfiend in Death is all-knowing…for she had known and died with The Candy Man…that there is nothing to fear but fear itself…that in death she might be free as I am liberated in her passing…this is the royal secret…it will be known perhaps to many now as you read and recite my gospel…verse by verse…yet only the few will understand…only the bold will act…so…come and join me…kill with me…be free…
The ‘wheel’ was purchased on-line and was an old-fashioned cart wheel. He’d moulded it to the specification of an old-fashioned tradition of punishment and execution. The method he preferred most (many uses and abuses of the method have been recorded throughout history), as you may have guessed, was the ‘slow-roast’ method…
He’d leave her to burn.
She’d die slowly and painfully.
He now had other fish to fry.
McGreavy was getting closer to him, so close that he could almost smell the whisky on his breath, so he’d deal with Samara before it was too late.
Chapter 51
A man emerges from the shadows of fear
Silvia had hung up the phone and told the Inspector to sober up.
Mac was perched on the end of a bar stool…pissed…staring at a sketch of what he now believed could be the killer’s face; it was their biggest lead yet.
He heard a voice.
A man was stood at his back; he didn’t like that. “Excuse me, are you Mac McGreavy? Detective Chief Inspector, Mac McGreavy?”
“Who’s asking?” he turned and growled at a man in a corduroy blazer.
“My name is Bob Cleland, I can’t find my daughter and think she might be in serious trouble, I just wanted to talk to you before I went to the police.”
“Why would you want to be talking to me? I know who’s taken her, it’s The Candy Man, the one they’re talking about on the news. I know you must be working on the case, this is your field, your speciality.”
“I’m no longer a copper. I got put on the scrap heap.”
“Spare me the crap, with all due respect, Inspector. I have means and ways of knowing what goes on in this city, it is part of my job, as an Investigative Consultant.”
“Just repeat what you said?”
“I said it is part of my job to…”
“No, no, the other thing, about The Candy Man…”
“Yes, I know exactly who he is, I’ve met him, I’ve been as close to him as you are to me now.”
Mac frowned and stared the man down with eyes that were fuelled with disbelief yet hope, the credibility of the man seemed to be steadfast and true, his eyes were burning with genuine desperation. He took out his phone and showed him the facial profile that had been sketched out by Silvia. “Is this him?”
“Yes. That’s him. So, you’re already onto him, then?”
“We’re close. We�
��re really close. Tell me everything that you know about him.”
“His name is Spector Gladwell.”
“Spector?” McGreavy frowned and it dawned on him. Something was sinking in. The mask he wore with the open, screaming mouth was not a skull mask that looked like a ghost, no, it was a ghost masked that looked like a skull.
A ghost.
A spectre.
Spector.
He’d been feeding them clues all along and they hadn’t picked them up.
“Yes. My daughter had dated Spector. She was always a bit silly and naïve in the romance department, picking boys that need fixing, some women are born with that instinct. You know?”
“Well, dating a serial killer is a tad extreme, to be fair…”
Mac looked around the pub, conspiratorially, as though he’d just been approached by a Russian spy, eyes darting from table to table, to the barman and the ned at the fruit machine. He hastily took his pint and the beer stool screeched as he got off it. “C’mon, let’s go somewhere more private to talk, you wanting a drink?”
“Aye, I think that would be a good idea, whatever your having will be fine for me.”
“Frank,” Mac yelled at the gigantic tattooed barman. “I need to take this in the back room, two more pints, and bring a bottle of Bells. I’ll settle the bill later.”
“No bother at all, Mac, Lisa will bring the drinks through the now.”
“C’mon,” Mac ushered the mysterious stranger through to the back room where the Masonic Lodge was located and they took a table next to a stage that was dimly lit by an orange glow that burned from plastic covered filaments on the overhead beams. “Right, so, what’s this about? Your daughter has been taken by this guy?”
“Not quite.”
“I thought you said she went missing?”
“She’s in hiding I think, paranoid to the bone, thinks he’s on to her and is coming to kill her. Before, when they were together Spector got Samara pregnant, she wanted to get rid of it and get the abortion, but, she didn’t want to tell him. He hates women, thrives on hurting them, gets the highest forms of pleasure from seeing them in agony.”
“How did the relationship come to be?”
“They met at University but Spector was going to drop out and everyone could see it. He was a heavy drinker and was always distracted by other things. He used to go off on his own and he’d come back and people would find him hiding in corners and shadowy places just staring at them. He was just a complete weirdo. Samara suspected that all he really wanted in life was a woman with a decent job to keep him whilst he went around doing his own thing. She lost interest, but, it was too late and she’d gotten herself pregnant.”
Spector was the guy, he had to be, the pieces of the puzzles were falling into place perfectly.
The clues.
It was written in the verses of his Bible of Kink.
“You said he was into weird stuff?”
“He told her that he’d been killing women since he was at school, just to scare her, trying to be the big hard case. Told her he’d raped a girl in the back of his dad’s car, killed her, and buried the body. We never went to the police but I know now exactly where he buried his first victim all those years ago and I now believe that his confession was real,” the man spoke as he took a folded newspaper from his back pocket and put it down on the table before Mac. He stabbed a thick finger down on the face of his daughter. “That’s her. That’s her biography of the so-called nameless killer. She doesn’t reveal his identity in the book. She just refers to him in the book as Mr. X.”
“Killer X. So back then you didn’t believe his confessions were real?”
“No. My daughter was into having weird sex sessions where she wanted boys to say that they’d done really bad things. It was just a scene, a phase, you know a lot of girls get into BDSM stuff but this was more of a morbid fetish that she had. She’d been doing that with many boys, not just Spector, so there was no reason to think that it was real. That is, until…”
“Until, what?”
“The ropes and the knives.”
“Knives?”
“Yes, blades with blood stains, he told her he never used the same steel twice when he killed. He wanted to keep it bloodied and store it away as a souvenir. He kept items of underwear in a drawer that had been unwashed for years, with stains, you know? Sexual fluid marks on them. When Samara asked him about it he’d just casually responded by sniffing them to inhale what smell of muck remained and telling her that they were the rags of dead cunts. He used to whisper in her ear during sex that they’d never find her body. In time, she began to genuinely fear him, and to fear for her own personal safety.”
“What a sick bastard,” McGreavy spoke with half an ounce of sympathy, an undertone of severe distaste behind it, evermore eager to understand what made this monster tick.
“He used to tell her that if she ever took his spawn away she’d end as a dead whore in the gutter. That’s why we had to disappear.”
“Why did you come back?”
“To face reality. She’s been on heavy antidepressants, afraid to leave her bedroom, having extreme anxiety attacks. Her psychiatrist told her that to move on she must slay the demons of her past. We agreed together that we’d not live in fear anymore and that if the time came to work with the police then that is what we’d do. That’s why I’m here, Inspector, now is the time to go after this psycho and stop the killing once and for all.”
“Help me, tell me all that you know about him, and I will do my utmost to catch him before he gets to your daughter.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“How so?”
“I know where he lives and I’m pretty certain that’s where he keeps his victims and holds them prisoner…”
Mac stood briskly from the table and grabbed his mobile to call for a driver.
“One thing I must add,” the man said.
Mac raised an eyebrow.
“He knows that Samara is the weak link in his murderous campaign. It killed him that he couldn’t track her down and end her life. He’s been waiting for this moment, he’ll be ready, he’ll have his escape planned so just be ready for that.”
Chapter 52
The Russian angle
The media response had been almost instantaneous and Spector Gladwell’s face was plastered all over the news channels.
The Detective saw the headlines as his phone rang: POLICE ARE ONE STEP CLOSER TO CATCHING THE CANDY MAN AS PAST VICTIMS OF ABUSE COME FORWARD WITH NEW INFORMATION.
He recognised the number.
It was him.
The Russian.
“Yes, Vladimir?” he answered.
“What is this shit all over the news about the man who likes to torture innocent women?”
“It’s OK. Everything will be fine.”
“We have a deal, OK? Don’t forget…”
“I know, Vladimir, I’m following his tracks. I know his next move already. He’s going after a girl and I know who she is. I’m sat in my car right outside her flat. In fact, here she is, she’s coming right to me. In just a few seconds she’ll be sat right next to me in my car. I’m going to use her as bait and reel our man in like a slippery little fishy.”
“Ah, a slippery fishy, you say? Then, I guess I won’t be needing to break your slippery little legs yet, Mister policeman?”
“Everything is fine, Vladimir, just be patient.”
“Patience, patience…you westerners love to talk about patience like it is noble and virtuous to just sit around waiting for things to happen. In Russia, we make things happen, we do not wait. So, patience is not something I have in abundance, but for this piece of shit I will make an exception.”
“Thank you, Vlad…”
“Don’t thank me, I don’t pay you for gratitude, I pay you for results. Just bring me The Candy Man. I want to deal with him before McGreavy gets to him. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“I want
the City of Glasgow to know that there is a new law and it is the law of a King – Vladimir, The King. Is it understood?”
“Yes. Perfectly. I must go now, Vlad, I have a fish to catch…”
Chapter 53
Storming residence evil
Two cars were situated around the sides of the residence as the police went in hard and heavy.
The battering ram demolished the front door of a respectable looking house on a highly respectable suburban street at the posh end of Bearsden.
The media had been tipped-off which enraged Mac but he had his eyes on the big prize.
Armed men arrested a middle-aged woman and a young man whilst the female believed to be Gladwell’s wife assured officers that he wasn’t at home.
The access door to the basement looked more secure than it actually was and a demolitions expert soon had both doors off the hinges.
Mac went down alone and the first thing he saw was the freshly-killed corpse of a woman he barely recognised as being the niece of Professor Sinclair. Her skin was charred and her skeleton-like face was twisted in a wide-eyed scream that suggested a grotesque level of pain and suffering as her life was taken. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry Alistair. I’m so, so sorry,” he just stood and took it all in, the body, the smell of death, the papers strewn all over the floor with verses of The Candy Man’s Bible of Kink.
He saw the camera and it was still rolling.
A heaving clunk echoed from upstairs and a wall of heavy steel bars dropped before the guards so that Mac was now imprisoned in the serial killer’s basement.