Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  SILENCE: 8 SECONDS.

  Answer me Dougie.

  SILENCE: 7 SECONDS.

  Do you know?

  DI HENDERSON: Was he one of Gein’s victims?

  GOGARTY LAUGHS.

  GOGARTY: No he wasn’t a victim. She doesn’t know. Dougie, she doesn’t know! Tell her.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: We’re not here to talk about Sheriff Schley. Tell me about your victims Brian. Tell me about your dinner parties with corpses.

  GOGARTY: Well, they weren’t a great success to be honest. It’s hard to eat with a decomposing corpse at the table. Disgusting really. After a while I began to fear that the neighbours – well there were complaints, shall I say, and I blamed it on the drains. And I used a lot of incense. But it got a bit out of hand. That’s where the embalming idea came in I suppose. I’m sorry. I’m rambling. There were twenty seven or eight victims in all who I let rot, and I buried their corpses in the garden of my house. Not the house you know about, not the house up in Clerkenwell where you arrested me, the other house.

  SILENCE: 61 SECONDS.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: Which house is that Brian?

  GOGARTY: I thought you’d never ask. I’m talking about my house in Forest Hill. Forty-four Devereaux Road, Forest Hill. It’s off Underhill Road. Near the Horniman. The views are lovely. I live there as Mr Maybury.

  DI HENDERSON: How do you spell Devereaux?

  GOGARTY: D, E, V, E, R, E, A, U, X. Is there someone watching this on a monitor?

  BRIAN GOGARTY BLOWS A KISS AT THE CAMERA.

  Are they looking it up on the A to Z, as we speak? Devereaux. Got that? My house is the one with the green door, off you go lads. You don’t need a search warrant because I’ve been arrested and charged. Am I right about that?

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: You’re right about that Brian.

  GOGARTY: I know my PACE see. By heart. Section Eighteen, that’s the one. And if you want, I can waive my right to be present at the search of my premises, you can just go ahead and toss the place. All you have to do is say, ‘Thank you Brian’.

  SILENCE: 12 MINUTES 3 SECONDS.

  Say ‘Thank you Brian’.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: Thank you Brian.

  GOGARTY: You’re welcome.

  SILENCE: 8 SECONDS.

  BRIAN GOGARTY SMILES.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL STANDS UP, AND PACES AROUND THE ROOM FOR 3 MINUTES 11 SECONDS.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL SITS DOWN.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: Who are these people Brian? The ones you murdered and buried in your garden?

  SILENCE: 9 SECONDS.

  BRIAN GOGARTY: Oh you know. Just people. People I met. People in pubs usually. Lonely people. The ones who don’t get missed. I brought them home when they were pissed. Women mainly but some of them were men. All of them were up for it, for sex I mean. I offered them money for sex see, they weren’t prostitutes, they were just pathetic and extremely hard-up people who thought they could do a sad old man a favour, and earn a bob or two at the same time. So I’d bring them back and I’d cook them dinner and then I’d cut their throats. Sabatier. I used Sabatier knives. In the kitchen, I have waterproof tiles there. Easier to mop up the blood. The knives are still in the house, I clean them thoroughly but I’m sure you’ll be able to find some forensic traces. So as I say, I killed them, and then I let them rot, and then I wrapped the bodies up in plastic, and then I buried them. I did about five a year for six years that way, all through the Butcher of Clerkenwell years, and during the Sniper killings, and the rest. But then four years ago I changed over to the embalming approach. I’ve not had a dinner party since.

  SILENCE: 15 SECONDS.

  And as I say, when they were ripe, I’d bury ’em. In my garden. At night. I always dig at night, with a head torch so I can see what I’m doing.

  SILENCE: 10 SECONDS.

  It’s a big garden, I have a very high garden wall, and professional digging tools. I bury the bodies down there and then I put back the patio stones. You’ll find nineteen bodies in the garden, and another six under the floorboards, two in the hall, three in the living room and one in the dining room. No cellar though, shame really that MO has history behind it.

  SILENCE: 8 SECONDS.

  This is pretty much a coup for you isn’t it? Nearly thirty more murders solved. Forty-four Devereaux Road. Check it out. Find the bodies. What a media coup! You should be glad you stumbled on me the way you did. Are you? Glad I mean?

  SILENCE: 10 SECONDS.

  Answer me you cunt.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: No I’m not glad I met you Brian.

  GOGARTY: You’re glad you caught me though.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: Yes. I’m glad I caught you.

  GOGARTY: I’m not the OCD kind of serial killer you see. I’m not a creature of dull routine. I like it mix it up. Eclectic. That’s the word. Sometimes I embalm, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I rape, sometimes not. Sometimes I get up close, sometimes I shoot ’em from a distance. But on balance, I prefer to get to know my victims. I like to meet them in pubs and chat. Or I meet them online and chat, or I read their Facebook entries. You can learn a lot about someone by reading every single tweet and Facebook post they write. And I use a variety of aliases – am I boring you?

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: Yes.

  GOGARTY: Well you’re honest at least.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: You disgust me.

  GOGARTY: Is that a question? That’s not a question. Get a grip man. Shall I tell you about my murders then? The ones you nicked me for. My Love Chain killings. That’s not boring you too much, is it? There was that gay bloke, he was early on, I answered his ad and tied him up and killed him. There was a murder suicide – I fixed the guy’s car, he lost control and killed himself and his grandkids. There was - oh there were a whole load of them, I don’t remember them all. Age creeps up doesn’t it? You’ll need to show me the photos and I’ll say yes or no.

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: We can do that tomorrow.

  GOGARTY: If I’m in the mood, I’ll tell you. There’s more too, not just the ones over the last ten years. I’ve been killing for decades, you see. Since I was in my twenties, and that was quite some time ago. Not just in London. When I was twenty one years old I killed my girlfriend in Glasgow and put her body in a rucksack and threw the limbs and head and stuff off a mountain. Her name was Alexandria, I think. She was a student. I was a builder. Black economy stuff. Water.

  DI HENDERSON POURS A GLASS OF WATER AND DET. SUPT. RANDALL PASSES IT TO BRIAN GOGARTY.

  BRIAN GOGARTY SIPS THE WATER.

  I can do that, see. Hide myself in plain view. I know how to lie low. I have all the technology you need to switch off CCTV cameras. I know how to clone credit cards. That’s how you couldn’t find me. I’ve been invisible for years.

  SILENCE: 6 SECONDS.

  I use the internet a lot.

  SILENCE: 7 SECONDS.

  That’s how I learned how to embalm people. It’s all there. I taught myself carpentry from the internet. I have a flair for it if I say so myself. I buy and sell internet porn. Come to me for the good stuff eh!

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: Underage stuff?

  GOGARTY: That’s not what I’m here to talk about. Fuck you with your underage bullshit. I’ve never killed an underage girl or boy, I have values.

  SILENCE: 10 MINUTES 3 SECONDS.

  Why do I kill? Is that what you’re wondering? I’ll tell you. I kill for sport. And I kill because I can.

  SILENCE: 5 MINUTES 3 SECONDS.

  I wanted to be caught. That’s the truth. I’m tired of killing. I want the notoriety of a trial. I want books to be written about me. Prison doesn’t scare me, it’s no different to how I’ve been living my life for so many years. No friends. I’m not scared of being hurt by the other cons. And if I am hurt, I don’t care.

  SILENCE: 14 SECONDS.

  I’m not afraid of prison either. I’ll have power in prison, you see. I’ll be Gogarty the serial killer.

  SILENCE: 32 SECONDS.

&
nbsp; Twenty-six bodies in my garden. Are your people searching for them now?

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: Yes.

  GOGARTY: I’ll say no more. I’m done. You’ve had your confession.

  SILENCE: 5 SECONDS.

  Fuck you Detective Superintendent Douglas Randall. Your wife was murdered wasn’t she? I read about it. Throat ripped out by a monster from the Pit. Nice looking girl too, I saw her mortuary photographs you see, there’s a site where you can download them. So I’ve seen her on the slab. Naked. Dead. Just before they cut her open. Very tasty! And I’ll tell you what, if she hadn’t been murdered already, I reckon I’d have murdered her myself. Yeah! I’d have killed her, and then embalmed her, and then I’d have –

  DET. SUPT. RANDALL: You evil fucking -

  CAMERA SWITCHED OFF: INTERVIEW SUSPENDED.

  Chapter 20

  Dougie walked into the incident room with Gina triumphant at his side, and was greeted with a barrage of whoops and loud applause. Catriona opened a bottle of champagne and filled up a pint mug marked GUVNOR. Beer cans were already open. The Murder Wall bore a banner that ran from one end to another. It declaimed: CASE CLOSED.

  Dougie raised a hand and the applause died down to silence.

  ‘Well done, boss,’ said Taff. The fat copper’s cheeks were rosy. Dougie guessed he’d been drinking all through the long interview.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Cracking the bastard.’

  Dougie thought about it.

  The silence became a desolate anxious silence.

  ‘Did I?’ said Dougie. He shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Guv –’

  ‘Seriously –’

  ‘Guv,’ Gina protested. ‘Come on guv, you did it, we did it. Don’t go –’

  ‘It was too easy,’ said Dougie.

  ‘It wasn’t fucking easy!’ Gina bellowed.

  ‘Too fucking easy by far,’ he concluded, and Gina sighed, and shut up.

  The groans from the rest of the murder squad were almost audible, but not quite. Dougie had done this before. It was part of his MO: lacerating self-doubt.

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake, Dougie,’ said Taff mildly, as group spokesman.

  ‘Put that fucking champagne away,’ said Dougie curtly.

  Catriona put the bottle down. She nodded at Seamus, who picked up the full mug of champagne and took it into the kitchen area. He returned a few moments later, having tipped it away. Beer cans were discreetly placed on the floor. The place started to look like a major incident room again, not the scene of a reckless office party.

  Dougie sat down in his favoured chair, with the Crime Wall behind him. His team started to take their own places around the briefing table. Taff, Andy, Ronnie, Lisa, Alliea, Fillide, Shai, Seamus, and Tony. Catriona sat at her desk tablet and turned the holo projector on. The mood was sulky, as if a teacher had told his fifth form class it wasn’t the last day of term after all.

  Seamus pulled the CASE CLOSED banner off the Crime Wall and rolled it up, and put it in the lucky drawer. Then he took the second but last empty seat at the table. Tight-lipped, Gina sat down opposite Dougie in the last empty seat.

  ‘The house,’ said Dougie. ‘Devereaux Road. What have we got on the house?’

  Catriona typed, and a Google Earth holo image of the house appeared above the briefing table. Ordinary two up two down suburban semi on a hill overlooking London.

  ‘We’ve got a team there now,’ said Alliea.

  ‘But what will they find? Brief me on the house. Cat?’

  ‘It’s owned by Mr Gilbert Maybury,’ said Catriona, reading off her screen. ‘Mortgage has been paid off. He’s lived there seventeen years. Here’s a photograph.’

  They looked at their desk tablets at Maybury. Bald, fat, glowering - Gogarty.

  ‘As Alliea said, we’ve got three officers there already,’ said Cat. ‘They effected entry by smashing a pane in the front door. Mr Maybury is on a round the world cruise, according to neighbours. As if! And –’

  ‘Is he though?’ Dougie asked.

  Catriona was flustered.

  ‘Is he what?’

  ‘Is he actually on a round the world cruise?’

  ‘Course not. He’s in the cell downstairs, where you put him after –’

  ‘Is there a Mr Gilbert Maybury on a round the world cruise, with any British or European or American cruise company?’ Dougie persisted.

  Catriona hadn’t thought of checking that. No-one else had thought of it either.

  ‘Seamus, Ronnie, Andy,’ Catriona said, and the three designated officers turned on their desk tablets and began scrolling through websites of cruise companies.

  ‘I’ll take P & O and Cunard for starters,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘Royal Caribbean and Princess,’ bagged Andy Homerton.

  ‘Fred Olson, Star Lines,’ said Seamus Malone.

  Moments later:

  ‘Hello I’m DC Ronald Tindale /DC Andy Homerton/DC Seamus Malone from the Eastern London Major Incident Team I’d like to check your passenger registers for Gilbert Maybury, Golf Indigo Lemur Bravo Echo Romeo Tango, Gilbert, Mike Alpha Yankee Bravo Uniform Roger Yankee, Maybury, who may be on one of your round the world cruises. Please treat as urgent, thank you, no I’d rather hold.’

  The trio of murmurs formed a background hum as the brainstorm continued.

  ‘Your theory, boss?’ said Catriona.

  Dougie frowned.

  ‘My theory? My theory is –’

  He thought about it.

  ‘My theory is, we’ve been fucked over,’ said Dougie. ‘By which I mean rogered. By which I mean, shafted up the arsehole with a sharp rusty spike. A guy as smart as that, duped by a slip of a girl? A student, who writes his name on her arm? I mean, for fuck’s sake. And then, we’re asked to believe the criminal mastermind of the century is tricked into confessing everything by some old hack of a copper called Dougie Randall, with his weary old dog and fucking pony show? I don’t think so. Hence, surmise: it’s a scam.’

  ‘Guv, I don’t buy it. You were in the zone.’ Gina was grim, her pride in him unflinching.

  ‘Bollocks, I was coasting. We must done that routine a thousand fucking –’

  ‘And it’s worked a thousand –’

  ‘ – times, there’s no way he –’

  ‘ – times, and it works, it fucking works.’

  ‘ – would have fallen for it. Not this wily old bastard,’ said Dougie firmly. ‘I know when I’ve got a man by his balls. But this time all I’m holding is scrotal fucking sac. Taff?’

  Taff had something to say. He read it off his e-berry screen. ‘Officers at the scene are still searching, but confirm they have found a set of Sabatier knives in the kitchen.’

  ‘New or old?’ said Dougie.

  Taff typed, got a quick reply: ‘New.’

  ‘You see!’ said Gina triumphantly. ‘Confirmation that we fucked him, as opposed to your supposition of rusty spike up the Five Squad rectal orifice.’

  But Dougie was shaking his head before she got to ‘rectal’.

  ‘Bought on Amazon,’ Dougie said. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘I’m checking,’ said Catriona.

  She ran the trace. ‘Bought on Amazon,’ she confirmed, ‘last Christmas. By Gilbert Maybury.’

  ‘Christmas present?’

  ‘Delivered to his home address. Present to himself.’

  Taff snorted: meaning, he’d done that too, from time to time.

  ‘Lonely fuck,’ said Seamus. He was the gregarious type, and was oblivious to Taff’s moment of quiet grief.

  Catriona scrolled Maybury’s search histories. ‘Two dating sites, lots of big busty porn, a few Asian Babes, Oral galore, plus inter-racial and anal, lonely fuck hypothesis confirmed, guv.’

  ‘Photo,’ said Taff quietly.

  Catriona threw the photo up on the Holo Wall again; fat, bald, glowering. Gilbert Maybury, aka Brian Gogarty.

  Gogarty? They all looked closer.

&nbs
p; ‘When you’ve seen one fat bald bloke –’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The jaw is a bit –’

  ‘No it’s definitely him.’

  ‘The eyes! Gogarty has brown eyes, this bastard has –’

  ‘Hello has anyone heard of colour contact lenses?’

  ‘Fingerprint, DNA,’ ordered Alliea Cartwright.

  ‘Yeah yeah.’

  ‘On it.’

  ‘We’ll get the house swept for prints.’

  ‘We’ll –’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Dougie, making a fierce face, his way of wrestling with a thought.

  The team were hushed, waiting for Dougie to be ready.

  Then he began.

  ‘Surmise: let’s say Maybury is not Gogarty, just looks like him. So, hypothesis: first Gogarty hacks the database of various holiday websites, finds their passenger bookings for the following year. Identifies a single man who has booked a holiday who fits the right fat and bald physical profile. Hacks the fat bald single man’s Amazon account. Learns he owns Sabatier knives. Knows he has a garden, because you can see that on Google Earth. Maybe knows about the porn on the computer too, I believed that story Gogarty told us about being in the internet business, he knows his way around cyberspace. So what does that gives us in real money? Fact: Gogarty confessed to me that he buried twenty plus bodies in the garden or interior of Maybury’s house. Expecting me to cream my underpants with investigatorial glee thus losing all capacity for rational thought, as indeed all you wankers did.’ A swift glare from Dougie: eye-contact was sheepishly avoided by all the team members, especially Gina.