Lethal Dose; Lethal Justice; Lethal Mind

by Robert McCracken

  ‘Wilson? Wilson?’

  There was a ripple of laughter around the office.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You sound like Tom Hanks, mam,’ said Murray. She looked blankly at her sergeant.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Castaway, the movie?’

  Tara waited for the rest. Not having seen the film, she had no clue what Murray was talking about.

  ‘His mate was called Wilson.’

  She nodded once.

  ‘Right’

  ‘Wilson was a basketball,’ said Wilson. All of it was lost on Tara, and her in no mood for light-hearted banter. With both Wilson and Murray now at her desk she was able to comment on the report she’d just read.

  ‘According to his browsing history, it appears that Maurice Young was into some very strange sites on the internet.’

  ‘They call it the dark web, mam,’ said Wilson. ‘Not your normal subjects in there. Even the porn is very different.’

  ‘Thanks, John. Anyway it seems he made contact through one of the sites he visited. And he’d made arrangements through his email to meet someone. That someone may just be the person who killed him. We need to track them down.’

  Chapter 63

  She peered through the curtain, her garden wet with rain, the single wooden gate securely closed. She had always been thankful for this place. It was hers and hers only. No one had ever shared it. Now it was her refuge. A charming cottage in a quiet picturesque village. She was known here; she’d had the place for more than thirty years, but no one ever bothered her. She’d always come when she’d wanted to be alone, to write, to think about life, her career, her relationships. Even Lottie, her partner of twelve years, had never set foot in the house. Lottie was aware that her lover went off on her own at times, but she never questioned her; happy, it seemed, to remain at their home in Worsley. Besides, Lottie also had a bolt-hole up north to Scotland to stay with her aged mother in Aberdeen.

  On this visit, however, she was afraid. She had the tranquillity of her beloved cottage, but this time it was not enough. She’d never thought it would come to this. After twenty-five years, she’d never thought it would come to anything. Ancient history. Who was there around now to care about what happened back then? But everything changed. When poor Dinsdale had been killed, everything changed. Something had gone terribly wrong. There was someone out there who knew, someone who remembered. Poor Dinsdale, a simple lad, a mummy’s boy way back then. He’d been allowed to do as he pleased under the rule of his father. Anything was allowed at Vera Deitate under the rule of Charles Kirkman. He’d been given girls to play with, to keep him amused while the adults drank wine, snorted coke and fucked. That scar, the stain on his face, was the mark of the devil himself. That’s what he’d been told. And as he grew older he believed he could do as he pleased because the devil was in him. The older girls, women like her, had taken a shine to him. They’d all taken him to their beds. He was a novelty. But despite his opportunities with the older females he’d always go back to the young girls. That’s what got him into trouble. How he had survived prison was a miracle. He was a lost soul when his parents had passed. No one took an interest in him. Except the beast who’d killed him.

  She turned up the heating in her lounge. Hadn’t felt this cold since her days on the Common when the dampness seeped into your bones and all you could do was stand around a campfire warming your hands. But at least she’d felt safe back then. She had friends, many friends. And she was protesting for a better world. Now the missiles were gone, but the world seemed no better for it. Her disillusionment had led her into other things, new thinking, strange beliefs, and then she’d met Dale Hargreaves and through him Charles and Mary. They had revealed a whole new vision to her, a belief that there is another route through this mortal life. And she’d embraced all of it, the rituals, the sex, the belief in mother earth, the celebration of life. But when Charles and then Mary had passed she lost interest in Vera Deitate. Hadn’t been near the place in years.

  Janet had been good to her recently, keeping her informed of what was going on. They were both afraid now, but she had more to fear than Janet. Everything seemed to point back at the night Alastair Bailey was put to death. What else could it be? Someone looking revenge for their human sacrifice. But who was there on that night all those years ago, and now had decided to hit back? She had wracked her brain trying to picture a face, a face of someone who hadn’t approved of their sacrifice. She could scarcely remember Maurice Young, and certainly could not say for sure that he was present on that night. As for this Derek Greasby, she’d never heard of him before his name appeared on the news after he’d been murdered. Janet had been out of her head the night Bailey was killed, stoned and more interested in having the hands of Dale Hargreaves slipping inside her trousers than doing anything to put an end to her husband. She was the one who’d taken pleasure from nailing his hands to the wheel. Taken delight in the screams of pain while her comrades jeered. She’d relished handing the axe to Mary to cleave his head, and she loved the sex with her high priestess when it was over. Now the police were looking for her because these recent killings resembled their execution of an infidel. Janet had pleaded with her to give herself up. She’d been worried for her.

  ‘What if the killer comes after you?’ She’d said when they’d last spoken by phone. ‘At least the police can protect you, Angela.’

  But it was all right for Janet, she’d only been a witness to the killing of her husband. She was in much greater trouble. She’d participated in the killing. She’d ordered that the body of Jones be thrown into the fire and the body of Alastair Bailey to be put on display as a warning to those bastards in the Church of the Crystal Water. She could never go to the police. She would stay put and hope that no one would find her. Already, she regretted not fleeing the country. She wondered if Janet had managed to get away.

  Standing again by her window, she peered once again through her lace curtains. A car pulled up outside her gate. Fear swept through her; she felt a tightening in her chest. They’d found her.

  Chapter 64

  Took me a while longer than I’d hoped to set my plan in motion. Ella worked three days a week in an office in the university, John Moore’s, in a building not far from the Metropolitan Cathedral. She usually parked her people-carrier a few streets away. I decided that the best time to take her was as she walked from her office back to her car in the evening. Only trouble was she didn’t always manage to park in the same street each day. But I hoped for a wet evening with few people about, and I would simply have to work fast.

  And it went like a dream. Ella was one of the easiest snatches I ever had. I took the whole day off work. Set up a meeting with Janek at Lime Street Station and bought as much China White as I could afford. Certainly be sufficient to see off Ella. By early afternoon, I had the van prepared with a mattress, a large wheelie sports bag, gaffer tape, cable ties and syringes: the tools of my trade. Just before five o’clock, I found a parking space in a quiet street that I reckoned Ella would have to walk down in order to reach her car in the street beyond. I was lucky to find a space beside a high garden wall. At least on that side of the street no one was likely to see me shoving a woman into the back of the van.

  Whole thing was as slick as oil on a hooker’s ass. With little effort from me, Ella practically stepped through the side door into the van. Funny thing this time, and I can’t really explain why, but I didn’t want her to recognise me at that point. Before jumping out of the van to grab her, I slipped on a dark balaclava. With her all dosed up and secure I drove her out to Leasowe Lighthouse, scene of my disaster with Tara Grogan when yon big git DS Murray rudely interrupted proceedings. I thought choosing this spot might help re-energise my intentions toward the pretty wee detective.

  Again, it all went like a dream. Ella was great, not as great as Vicki, but it wasn’t bad from the oldest woman I’d ever had and my first ever MILF. You should have seen the surprise
on her face when I pulled off the balaclava. It was precious. Afterwards, however, things got a bit scary.

  I had Ella all packed away in the sports bag, and I headed for Conwy where I’d moored Mother Freedom. It was late by then, nearly two in the morning, because I’d really taken my time over Ella. I hadn’t expected to see many cars on the road. But a mile or so after leaving the lighthouse carpark I noticed headlights in my mirror. Didn’t worry too much at that point, but by the time I was into Wales and the road out to Conwy those same lights were behind me. What the fuck?

  Chapter 65

  He’d been parked in his van for more than eight hours. What the hell was he doing? She was frozen and had at times to switch on the engine to get the heater going. Her back ached from sitting behind the wheel, and her eyes were growing weary from constantly watching the exit of the car park at the lighthouse. She had little food with her, a bag of crisps, a chocolate bar and a bottle of water. But her fear now was falling asleep and missing him drive away.

  She’d been watching him from late afternoon. From the time he’d made his contact with the drug supplier at the railway station to when he’d parked up near the cathedral. There was no way she could have witnessed what he did while parked there, but she was fairly certain he’d abducted someone. Her guess was that it was the woman he’d been stalking who lived in the nice house in Woolton. She couldn’t know for sure. And now, sitting opposite the entrance to the Leasowe Lighthouse carpark, she couldn’t know for sure what he was doing with her. Maybe, strange as it may seem, his meeting with the woman was consensual. A couple having an affair. But it wasn’t difficult to talk herself out of the notion. But if he was raping or killing her, what was taking him so bloody long?

  Her car was partially hidden beside another so she hoped he wouldn’t notice it when eventually he did emerge from the carpark. She had to discover what he would do next. If he had killed the woman, she wanted to know what he did with the body. From her brief knowledge of the man, she was already convinced that this was definitely not his first ever kill.

  Close to two o’clock, and as she fought off sleep, she saw lights appear in the distance, some way down the lane to the carpark at the lighthouse. She realised too that it was the haunt for many lovers in their cars, so she didn’t get too excited as the lights drew nearer. But then they veered to the side as the vehicle pulled onto the road, and she saw it was the van. She let it go for a few seconds then drove off in the same direction.

  Chapter 66

  After three in the morning and this bloody car was still tailing me. I was nearing Conwy, and I hadn’t made up my mind. Should I head for the boat and hope that the car wasn’t really following? That it was just coincidence? Or should I lead the bastards a merry dance through Wales? What the hell did they want from me? Was it undercover police? Or some bloody sicko? I was getting seriously spooked. It’s no joke wandering about the countryside in the middle of the night with a dead body in your van.

  Rather than making for the quayside carpark, I stayed on the Expressway, went through the tunnel and headed out along the coast. All the while I kept a check on my mirror. Those same lights were a hundred yards or so behind. I put my foot down, and for a time the car dropped away. A few moments later it had restored the distance between us. I considered pulling over to let it pass by, but what if it stopped and the peelers wanted a word? I’d be in deep shit.

  Then I thought that if I drove into Bangor I could lose them. I knew the streets pretty well. Many of them are narrow and one way or pedestrianised. I could draw the car into the town centre, speed up and try to confuse the driver.

  When I reached the town I made for High Street and was intending to go as far as the cathedral. I sank the boot. Suddenly the car behind me was out of sight as I rounded a corner. Then a stroke of luck. I came upon an entrance to a modern development of apartments. There was a short tunnel underneath the building that opened onto a square, forming a parking area for the residents. Quickly I made the turn and sped through the entrance. I killed my lights and pulled to the right. Now I was out of sight of the street and hopefully my pursuer would drive on by. In a few minutes I guessed that the car had passed, the driver probably cursing himself that he’d lost me. I sat for another half an hour, trying to relax, hoping the black Mercedes was gone for good. Cautiously, I pulled onto the street, got my bearings, and soon was back on the road to Conwy. I saw no more of the car, and by the time I reached the quayside at Conwy I felt safe enough to stop and organise the transport of poor Ella from the van to Mother Freedom. If anyone was watching me, I saw no sign of them. As the dawn broke I motored Mother Freedom from her birth and out to sea. When I’d finished despatching Ella, I put in at Caernarfon. Finally, I made sure there was no one about when I returned by bus to Conwy, picked up the van and headed for home. Somehow I would have to find out who had been driving that bloody car.

  Chapter 67

  She’d followed the van all the way into Wales. Finally lost sight of him in the centre of Bangor. She realised that he knew he was being followed. He had deliberately tried to lose her. She wondered if he knew that it was her. Was he playing a game? What the hell was he doing driving through Wales in the middle of the night? The only answer she had was that he was intending to dump the body, assuming he had killed the woman he’d taken. Since she’d lost him, she was never going to find out where. Disappointed, she headed back to Liverpool. She’d have to work out a strategy to stop this man from ever taking another woman. He deserved the fate that was coming his way.

  Chapter 68

  It was a simple though chilling question, and Sloan was not being helpful.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said for a second time. ‘I’ve never been in those woods.’

  ‘It is your property, Dr Sloan. Doesn’t your group hold meetings down there?’

  Tara already had the answer to this question. She’d spoken with Elsie Greenwood earlier in the day. The woman had admitted to performing rituals in the clearing where Maurice Young’s body had been found. Sloan was the leader of this church, surely he should know the reason why they had chosen to hold meetings there.

  ‘All right, we do,’ he conceded at last. ‘It holds a significance for the older members of the church.’

  ‘You mean the likes of Janet Malcroft and Angela Sanders?’

  ‘Janet, yes. Angela Sanders is not a member of our congregation.’

  ‘And why is it a significant place?’

  ‘Some believe there is a concentration of energy there. A place where the spirits gather. Years ago, in the time of the Kirkmans, it was customary to scatter the ashes of the departed members there.’

  ‘Only the members?’

  ‘Yes, as far as I know.’

  ‘Not the victims of ritual sacrifice?’

  Carl Sloan scratched at his forehead and sighed. He looked tired and weary from the interrogation. He’d been released on bail and this morning had returned voluntarily to answer more of Tara’s questions. So many more questions had surfaced after the finding of Maurice Young’s headless body in the woods at Vera Deitate. A clearing in the woods that harboured the remains of, so far, countless others. It was Tara’s hope that none of them had got there through being murdered or sacrificed. That all were as a result of a ritual burial following death by natural causes, a strange practice though it was.

  ‘We do not perform human sacrifice, Inspector. Among the remains of our departed you may find the bones of our animal sacrifice, lambs and goats. That is all.’

  ‘Why do you think the body of Maurice Young was placed there?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Was he a member of your church?’

  ‘Not of my congregation.’

  ‘But in the past?’

  ‘I believe he may have been a member in the Kirkmans’ time.’

  ‘Do you think that someone is out to discredit your church, or is seeking revenge for something your church has done?’

  ‘Ridiculous.’<
br />
  ‘Is it really? What about the Church of the Crystal Water?’

  ‘Surely it no longer exists?’

  From the look on Sloan’s face, Tara was thinking that this man was not quite so well informed as she had first thought. Either that or he was a supreme master at hiding the truth.

  ‘Three people have been murdered recently, two of them were likely to have been past members of whatever group used to meet at Vera Deitate. The nature of their deaths indicates a connection to a murder twenty-five years ago which is directly associated with one of your current members, Janet Malcroft. All of the murder scenes had a passage of scripture taken from the Book of Proverbs. Alastair Bailey was said to have been a member of the Church of the Crystal Water, a Christian group supposedly dedicated to the disruption of satanic worship. The latest find of a body was on your property in a place significant to your rituals. And you cannot see that someone is trying to get at your church?’

  Sloan could do little but stare at Tara. Her analysis of the case had stunned the academic to silence.

  ‘Can you think of anyone who is likely to hold a grudge against you, your church, or another member of your group?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t, Inspector.’ Any lingering traces of arrogance from the university lecturer had evaporated. His voice weak, the man was now resigned to a horror he had not previously contemplated.