by Michael Kerr
“I don’t know. I’ve just got a bad feeling. This is personal. He isn’t going to let Laura go. He’s just turning the screw. He’s getting off on the power he has over the chief.”
Ray saw a figure up ahead, sitting on a bench a hundred yards away. This was it. The bastard wanted to meet him face to face and gloat. He would go through the motions of believing whatever he was told about when and where Laura would be released, then walk away and leave the mopping up to the team.
Taking deep breaths, Ray made ready for the confrontation and walked more upright, trying to give the impression that he was not coming unglued.
The figure didn’t move or even look his way as he approached. The guy was wearing a baseball cap, bulky parka and sunglasses. Shadows prevented him from seeing any features beneath the long bill of the cap.
He was twelve feet away before the penny dropped. It wasn’t a man. It was a woman...a girl. It was Laura.
Even before he reached her, Ray knew in his heart that she was dead. He knelt down in front of her, already crying as he pulled the shades from her face and was met by glazed, unseeing eyes.
“No, Princess, no!” he moaned, embracing her and putting his face to her ice-cold cheek.
The mobile rang, sounding very loud in the quiet gardens. He fumbled it from his pocket. Didn’t speak, just listened in a grief-stricken daze.
“It was never about the money, you dumb bastard,” the glee-filled voice said. “It was about you getting your life fucked up. You might want to play the tape I made of Laura’s last few minutes. It’s a real tear jerker.”
Ray was still holding the body of his daughter when Marci and Phil got to him. They had moved in slowly, guns drawn, staying back as he appeared to make contact with the figure on the bench. But the chief’s actions made them aware of what had happened. Even then, Marci had held off, contacting Tom for instructions.
“Looks like the chief’s daughter has been dumped for him to find, boss. What do you want us to do?”
“Secure the scene. I’m on my way.”
Ray was still next to Laura, holding her, when Tom, Matt and Beth arrived.
“You need to be with Glenda,” Tom said, putting a hand firmly on Ray’s shoulder. “You know what has to be done, and Laura can’t be hurt anymore.”
Oh, yes. Ray knew exactly what would happen now. The area would be taped off, a tent would be erected around the bench, and crime scene investigators and the Home Office pathologist would arrive to make an on-scene examination of the victim. It would be quite a while before his baby was tagged, bagged and taken off in a meat wagon to be stored in a mortuary drawer, prior to being subjected to an autopsy. He knew the procedure backwards, but had always been able to distance himself from it. The violent death of strangers gave police and all other emergency service personnel the luxury of being detached. A certain level of desensitisation allowed them to view the victims of accidents, suicide and murder in a compassionate but professional way. But nothing could prepare you for the sudden, brutal, unnatural loss of a loved one.
It was Marci who led Ray to her car, helped him into the passenger seat and even belted him in. He had withdrawn into himself. The escalating shock had even frozen the flow of tears. He was grey in the face, staring into the middle distance, his features expressionless. Marci knew that this was something the chief and his wife would somehow have to accommodate and live through. How? God only knows.
They waited. A uniform brought them lidded, plastic cups of coffee, and they settled on a bench almost opposite to where the forlorn corpse of the young girl was seated.
“It was never a kidnap,” Matt said, breaking the uncomfortable silence and drawing Tom and Beth from their maudlin thoughts. “Whoever this animal is, he took her to kill, to do something that would hurt the chief more than anything else would.”
“We’ll get him,” Tom said. “We already have a suspect; Eddie Foley. When we lift him, this could be a wrap.”
“Too late to save Laura, though,” Beth said.
Neither Tom nor Matt could think of an adequate response. It was true. The horse had bolted. But they still had to lock the stable door. There was no way of knowing if this was the end of the matter, or just the beginning.
The gardens were soon full of police. A forensic team foraged out from the body searching for any trace evidence. An incitent was put up around the bench, and what seemed like a thousand flash photographs were taken. Then, as if on cue, when all the props were in place, Rita Mendoza, the duty pathologist arrived to make an initial examination. She was with the corpse for a lengthy period. Matt knew Rita; had been at several crime scenes she’d attended and was acquainted with how she worked. She liked to be left alone for awhile, until she had carried out her work and been given time to evaluate the situation. She was petite, looked vulnerable, but was as tough as granite and had an appetite for life that seemed at odds with her chosen profession. Matt opted to believe that her daily dealings with the dead gave her a sustained sense of how suddenly life could be discontinued, and so had bestowed her with the incentive to live her own to the full.
After a while, the canvas flap was pushed back and Rita beckoned Matt and the others over.
Rita gave Matt and Tom a tight smile, then waited to be introduced to Beth, whom she had never met.
“This is Dr. Beth Holder, a criminal psychologist,” Matt said.
Beth went to shake hands, but saw Rita’s hands encased in freshly stained surgical gloves.
“Okay, from the top and in language that you’ll understand,” Rita said. “The victim’s left carotid was severed with a sharp implement, which I believe will prove to be the serrated blade of a knife, and the middle finger of her right hand had been removed by some type of double-bladed cutters, at least twelve hours prior to death. And I found bruising around her pubic area that suggests to me that she was raped ante mortem. There are no visible signs of semen, or any other wounds. She died of arterial blood loss. Bad news is that the the body was then carefully washed. You can smell the disinfectant.”
“How long has she been dead?” Matt said.
“Temperature readings and the initial stages of rigor, given the weather, point to a guesstimate of ten hours, give or take. I’ll be able to tell you more after I get her on the table.”
“Thanks, Rita,” Matt said. “Okay if we go through her clothes now?”
“Yes. I’ve done all I can here. I’ll have her moved when you’re ready.”
Matt hunkered down and went through the pockets. There was only one item, a C90 audio cassette. It was labelled, and the two words written with gold marker pen chilled his guts: LAURA’S LAMENT.
Back at the Yard, Matt and Beth went into Tom’s office. Tom took the tape from Matt and inserted it into one of the decks of his large combined Sony CD, radio and cassette player. He pressed play, and after several seconds a shriek cut through the silence, startling all of them. The girl was hysterical, and the sobbing, hitching, high-pitched screams carried on for over a minute, before there was an audible click. Another click, followed by the rasping voice of Laura’s tormentor, talking to her, telling her that he was about to kill her.
Beth wanted to run from the office as she heard the girl plead with him to no avail.
“Nooo!” The single protracted word was full of pain and terror; a pitiful cry. The splashing sound that followed brought ghastly images to the three listeners’ ears. And like an American bible-belt TV evangelist, her killer’s voice boomed: ‘Oh Jesus! Praise be, and thank you Lord for what I am about to receive’.
The unmistakable rhythmic sounds of mattress springs complaining, intimated that the poor girl was being raped. They could hear laboured, quickening panting, and the liquid, strangulated whoops of Laura’s breathing, which suddenly stopped, signalling her demise.
An interminable ten seconds passed: “Er, th..that’s all folks,” the fiend said, affecting a voice that was remarkably like that of the cartoon rabbit, Bugs Bunny.
Even after the click, that they knew was the end of the recording, all three of them were rooted to the spot. They had in essence attended the murder scene by proxy. It could have been no worse if the killer had taken video of his crime. The imagination conjured up its own graphic footage, that reality would be hard put to equal.
“The chief must never hear this,” Tom said stonily, pricking the bubble of silence that encapsulated them. “And if the press get hold of it, I will personally shoot whoever is responsible for the leak. I want everyone who has a need to listen to it, to know that.”
“He’s grandstanding. That was cabaret to him,” Beth said. “You’ve got a game player with a mean streak. He won’t stop. This is a vengeful psychopath who has the potential to be a repeater.”
“It may have just been Ray that he wanted to punish,” Tom said. “This might be the end of it.”
“No, Tom. He’ll need that high again. Think of him as an actor, singer or comedian. He will only truly feel alive when he is on stage performing, with an audience to bounce off. There will be more murders, and definitely more tapes, until you stop him.”
CHAPTER SIX
THEY couldn’t trace Eddie Foley. He’d skipped from the address he had been living at in Stoke Newington. Matt and Pete Deakin called at the block of high-rise flats in Wanstead where his ex-wife, Maureen, lived.
The two lifts were out of order. It was a long haul up to the tenth floor. The stairwell was as cold as a meat locker, its concrete walls gaudily decorated in graffiti from aerosol cans, and the stink of urine was heavy in the stagnant air. They saw at least a dozen discarded spikes and a couple of used, tied-off condoms. It was a shame that people chose to live this way. It was conflicting to the Midas touch, in that a percentage of the inhabitants could turn gold or anything else worthwhile they touched to shit.
“What do we know about her?” Matt said, pausing on the fifth floor landing to catch his breath and light a cigarette. How antithetical was that?
“Maureen was always a wild one, boss,” Pete grinned. “Rumour has it that she was a bike. Most of Foley’s mates had ridden her. And she’s been lifted a few times for soliciting over the last couple of years.”
They reached the tenth, knocked at number 108 and waited. Matt hammered for over a minute before a voice answered from behind the door.
“Who is it, for fuck’s sake?”
“Police, Maureen. We need to talk to you,” Matt said.
“About what?”
“About your ex. Open the door.”
“I got nothin’ to say.”
“This’ll take five minutes, Maureen. The other way means you coming down to the station. You choose.”
The sound of two bolts being withdrawn and the Yale lock being turned back caused Matt think how unsafe urban life had become. When he was a kid, his grandmother only locked up at night. People trusted their neighbours. Now, community spirit was almost a thing of the past. This was a jungle, full of risk and real danger.
“Come in, why dontcha?” Maureen said after eyeballing Matt’s ID before slipping off the security chain.
They followed her down a short hall and into a lounge that was sparsely furnished but clean, bright and homely. Matt thought the shapely bottle-blonde looked a lot older than her thirty-nine years. She wore a champagne-coloured satin wrap, loosely belted over a skimpy, body hugging nightie. Her breasts looked far too large for her small frame, and Matt decided that with a suitable wig, she could have made a living as a Dolly Parton look-alike, instead of hooking. Her figure was still good.
“So stop starin’ at my tits, ask your questions, an’ get the ‘ell outta here,” Maureen said, lighting a cigarette and curling up on an easy chair with her legs tucked under her.
“We need to locate Eddie. He’s gone to ground,” Matt said.
Maureen laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “The bastard paid me a visit when ‘e got out. Raped me for old time’s sake, broke my arm, took what cash I ‘ad an’ pissed off. I ‘aven’t seen ‘im since. With a little luck, ‘e’s died of bowel cancer.”
“You know him, Maureen. Give us a little help here if you really want him in the shit,” Matt said.
“Why. What’s ‘e done now, killed somebody?”
“He’s a suspect in a current inquiry,” Pete said. “We need to eliminate him from―”
“You need to eliminate ‘im, period,” Maureen said with a scowl on her face. “Eddie’s a cruel, vicious bastard. ‘E beat the shit out of me for years. ‘E ‘as a problem with drink, an’ women. ‘Is mother was a cow to ‘im. ‘E sees the old bitch in every other woman, an’ gets back at ‘er through mugs like me.”
“Why did you stay with him for so long?” Matt said.
“ ‘cause I was petrified of ‘im. The bastard ‘ospitalised me four times, an’ promised that if I ever talked or walked, ‘e’d kill me, an’ ‘e wasn’t one to make idle threats.”
“Where would he go, Maureen? Where would he hide?” Matt said.
“Maybe with ‘is mother. She ‘ad a lot of power over him. She married again in the eighties, but the bloke died a year later. Last I ‘eard she was livin’ in Romford, ‘Er name is Platt, now. Susan Platt.”
“Thanks, Maureen,” Matt said, taking a card from his wallet and placing it on the arm of her chair. “If you hear from Eddie, do us all a favour and give me a bell.”
“Is there a reward for information leadin’ to his arrest?” she said.
“Yeah, peace of mind, darlin’. You’ll sleep better if he’s back inside for the rest of his natural. Isn’t that enough?”
Maureen smiled. “See yourselves out, gentlemen. An’ let me know if you nail the bastard.”
It was a lot easier and quicker going down ten flights of stairs than climbing up. A little boy, no more than five, was taking a dump on the fourth floor landing. They gave him as wide a berth as possible and hurried on by without a word. Public health and safety in this context was not their problem.
Outside the sixties-built tower, a cold wind cut through them. They leaned into it and hurried back to the Vectra.
“What now boss, Romford?”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “But stop at a decent pub. We can get Foley’s mother’s address while we have a pint and a sandwich. My stomach’s growling for food.”
They both had ham and cheese sandwiches and a pint, then left the pub and drove to the address Pete had obtained over his phone from a DC in the squad room. It was almost two when they got to Romford. The sky was low; a ceiling of lead, and the first drops of rain began to fall as they stopped at the kerb, two doors up from the pebble dashed fifties bungalow.
Matt had a bad feeling. He walked up the cracked, concrete path and felt that he was being watched by something maleficent; maybe the house itself. There were grey net curtains at the grimy windows, and the squat dwelling seemed to be somehow malformed, out of true, and in a state of long-term neglect. He was comforted by the weight of the 9mm Beretta that lay snug below his left armpit in its soft leather shoulder rig. After rapping on the flaking and blistered dark-brown paintwork of the door, he stepped back smartly, almost knocking Pete on his arse as the door was jerked open, startling him.
“What do you want?” the toothless hag who opened it asked, her voice mushy through sunken lips that were unsupported by dentures.
Matt swallowed hard at both the sight of the woman and the rank, acidic smell of cat piss that hit him like a warm, invisible mantle.
“Mrs. Platt?” he said.
“Yeah, and you’re the Old Bill. Why’re you at my door?”
“We need to ask you about your son, Eddie,” Pete said.
“So ask.”
“May we come inside?” Matt said.
She shrugged her stooped, narrow shoulders and moved to the side to let them pass. The hallway was full of cats. Matt and Pete suffered them around their legs as they followed the old woman through to a gloomy reception room. Maybe going inside was a bad idea.
&
nbsp; “I’ll make us a nice cup of tea,” Susan said, leaving them standing in the middle of the room, to vanish through a door like the Pied Piper, with a swarm of cats, not rats, in her wake.
“Jesus, boss,” Pete whispered. “Shall we do a runner. I think we just found out what became of Baby Jane. This old biddy makes Bette Davis look like a fairy godmother.”
Matt grinned, then winced as a Persian cat the size of a spaniel sunk its claws through his jeans, into his leg. He pulled it off by the scruff of its neck and tossed it aside as it twisted in his grasp and attempted to sink its fangs into his hand.
It was Pete’s turn to grin. “You’ll need rabies shots if we manage to get out of this place alive boss,” he said.
It was a nightmare. Susan Platt insisted that they sit down. She placed cracked cups and saucers on a stained coffee table between them; poured tea from a pot with a broken spout and asked them if they took milk and sugar.
Matt studied the woman’s face. They knew that she was seventy-three, although she looked to be in her late eighties. Her hair was yellow-white, thinning, and had not seen brush, comb or shampoo in a very long time. Her hollow cheeks and thin nose were a mass of blackheads, and a sharply defined patch of purple skin on her right temple could have been a naevus or melanoma. But it was her eyes that disturbed him more than any other aspect of her unkempt appearance. They were dark, almost black, and shone with the beady sparkle of a bird’s. He felt like a fledgling in a nest, under the darting beak of a magpie; no more than a morsel to be gulped down and be done with.
“What’s yer name?” Susan said as she poured milk from the mouth of a cow-shaped jug.
I’m Detective Inspector Barnes, and this is Detective Sergeant Deakin,” Matt said. “We need to talk to Eddie.”
“Why? He’s served his time.”
“He made threats against someone at the trial. Now something has happened, and―”
“And you’re houndin’ him. You wrongly imprisoned him, and you still want to punish him.”
“Mrs. Platt, Eddie nearly killed a man. That’s why he went to prison.”