by Conrad Jones
His time with forensics was enjoyable. He loved the smell of death. Some of the crime scenes he had photographed were fascinating. It was amazing what one human could do to another, and he employed some of the killing techniques he had witnessed himself. That was fun. Experimenting was educational. He was amazed by the human body’s resilience: if it is fed and watered, it will repair and regrow; its healing capability is nothing short of miraculous. The human spirit, however, is much weaker, and he discovered that breaking the spirit was easier than breaking the body. Things at that time were perfect. It was disappointing when his websites were discovered and traced back to him. Fucking photographs again. He couldn’t leave them alone.
When he was fired, he knew the spotlight would be put on him. That twat, Alec Ramsay, was already sniffing around. He knew he was having him followed. It was time to go away, so he borrowed some money from his darling mother and went to Thailand. Being an only child had its advantages. He had money but it was always better to spend hers. His mother doted on him and gave him whatever he asked for. Silly bitch. South East Asia had opened a whole new world of filth for him. The poverty meant that people would do pretty much anything for a handful of dollars and there was a lucrative market for depraved images, and he had thousands and thousands of them. His library was growing all the time. Of course, all good things come to an end; he wasn’t sharp enough to move to the dark web before they were onto him and the money trail got him. Leaving Phuket had been a trauma. He paid a local sergeant to turn a blind eye while he headed to the port and boarded a boat to Phi Phi Lai. The island was an hour from Phuket. He stayed there for a month and then became bored of the busy, narrow lanes crammed full of tourists. Another boat took him to Ko Lanta, which was quieter. He became a tourist, drinking heavily and sleeping late, waiting for something different to happen. It was Groundhog Day in the sun.
There were times when he’d thought being arrested would be preferable to the monotonous fun. He craved depravity, and missed the stench of decomposition and the games of cat and mouse with the police. It was a small island and everyone knew everyone else. The social circles were incestuous. After one particularly heavy drinking session, he decided to strangle the girl he had paid to take home. He needed to kill someone and she was there. His usual checks and balances were skewed by alcohol. She fought like a tiger but eventually passed out. He had thought she was dead and went to sleep. When he woke up the next morning, he had a panic attack. He couldn’t believe what he had done. There was no dead body in the bed next to him, but there could have been. There should have been. It was luck that she’d survived.
The girl had made a holy fuss about it and threatened to go to the police, but the bar owner, an Australian guy, paid her to shut up. Frankie made a joke of it, saying it was a sex game, but he could tell by the change in attitudes towards him that no one believed him. The local girls wouldn’t go anywhere near him and the ex-pats were cool in his presence. He was close to leaving when some casual acquaintances invited him to the south of the island for a few days. It was the perfect chance to escape the accusing eyes for a while. Things would calm down eventually and it would be forgotten. That was the trip that changed his life and gave him an opportunity. They had stopped at too many bars along the way, drinking in the sunshine. To say they were over the limit would be a massive understatement. His friends were racing each other when the accident happened. The crash was catastrophic, but he had been fifty yards behind the others. He had hired his scooter from another bar and it was old and slow. By the time he’d caught up with them, they were either dead or dying. The bus driver ran off down the hill to get help, and the kid ran off with his dog. There he was, standing over the headless body of Noel Cook, in the middle of nowhere; it was an opportunity he couldn’t miss. He rolled the head like a bowling bowl, down a steep gulley into a stream, planted his driving licence on Cook, and stripped the bodies of valuables and hotel keys. His life as Frankie Boyd had ended. A few hours later, he had a large sum of cash and a dozen credit cards, and was on a boat heading back to Phi Phi. He had stayed there for a while, keeping his head down and planning his journey home.
He had made his way to Cambodia by sea. Flying home from there was safer: he could avoid Bangkok immigration checking his passport photograph. Going home seemed to be the natural thing to do. He wanted to go home as a different person and start again. He had enough money to live for twelve months or so, without struggling, plus his photographs would bring him residual income. It was the perfect opportunity to live a normal life without looking over his shoulder all the time. He stayed away from his old haunts and grew facial hair. Nobody would remember the odd crime scene photographer he used to be.
Everything was good for a while, but he soon realised being Noel Cook was boring as fuck and became restless. He was considering going back to crime, and then he met Cathy. Cathy was a section manager at the local supermarket and sometimes worked shifts. She was pretty, intelligent and hardworking, and he’d fallen in love with her in a heartbeat. They were the perfect couple when they were alone. It was a whirlwind romance and they fell for each other hook, line and sinker. The problem was her baggage: she had kids, and an ex who didn’t want to be her ex. Her ex-husband had hated him with a passion. Their two kids were still young, six and eight, and he was still deeply in love with Cathy and tried everything to put her off being with Noel Cook. Her kids weren’t keen either and they sided with their dad. The kids were a massive stumbling block, but she stood up to her ex and, after seven months dating, he moved into her home. His life became as normal as normal could be. He won the kids over and they began to warm to him being there. The urges faded and he supressed the darkness within him. Everything was perfect, until the predator hunters targeted his website. The dirty bastards. They groomed him, and bought bits and pieces, before upping their orders and asking for darker material each time. He didn’t see the deception and he walked right into their trap. They passed all their information to the police, and their cybercrimes unit followed the money trail to his IP address. He could still see Cathy’s face when they smashed in her front door and stormed up the stairs to arrest him. The guns had frightened the life out of her and the kids. She was devastated. When she was told that Noel Cook was to be charged with the manufacture and distribution of indecent images of children, she was sick in her hands. He could hear her sobbing as they dragged him into a van. Dirty bastards.
Frankie had tried to contact her from remand but got nowhere. A week later she slapped a court injunction on him, put her house up for sale, and moved back in with her ex-husband. Losing Cathy broke him. He blamed himself, he blamed karma, he blamed the police and the press, but, most of all, he blamed the predator hunters. They would pay dearly and he wouldn’t rest until they were six feet underground; he would kill them all, even if it took him a lifetime.
Movement brought him back to the present.
Jane Hill came out of the supermarket holding a single carrier bag. He checked his watch; she was right on time. His plan was simple: Jane would arrive home at four o’clock, with her children, and she would drive the people carrier into the garage; the doors would close automatically. He would be waiting in the kitchen for them. They would be like rats in a trap. Kevin Hill would arrive home at six thirty, by which time his family would be bound and gagged and well on their way to being broken. He would taser Hill when he stepped through the door, and take them to his cellar. He could take his time there without being disturbed. Everything was going to plan. It was time to teach Kevin Hill what it is like to lose the woman you love and the kids you treasure. He would protect them with his life; watching them in distress would break his heart. Hill would suffer as he had, but worse. Much worse. What he had in mind for Hill would be his finest moment. He was looking forward to it so much, he could feel himself growing hard. His heart beat faster, he needed to calm himself. One wrong move and it would all come crashing down. Calm down, Frankie. It’s time to go to work.
36
Chichester Street was noisy. There were students on both sides of the road, singing and generally being drunk. They were staggering home from the George and Dragon. It was kicking out time, the perfect cover for a forced entry. Uniformed officers sealed off the top and bottom of the street and signalled when it was safe to proceed. Braddick watched the forced entry unit approach number 5. It was a run-down Victorian terrace, four storeys high, with sandstone steps leading up to the front door. It was the only house in the street with no lights on. The paintwork was blistered and peeling, and one of the windows had been broken and was patched up with a bin bag. The other houses had been kept in good condition to attract students to rent them, number 5 was dilapidated in comparison. They had tried to contact the owner of the building, but to no avail. Looking at it, the building was hardly his pride and joy.
The order was given and the front door disintegrated beneath the weight of the big key. The entry team poured inside and Braddick listened to the shouts of ‘clear’ from inside as they searched each floor. Torchlight flashed behind dirty curtains. There was a moment of silence then an armed response officer gestured him in.
‘No one home?’ Braddick asked.
‘Someone is home, but we won’t get a lot out of him. You had better come and see for yourself,’ the officer said, his face drained of colour.
Braddick walked up the steps and into the hallway. Low wattage bulbs cast long shadows on the stairs; a threadbare runner covered terracotta tiles that were cracked and broken. He could smell death. The living room door was open and he looked inside. An analogue television stood in one corner and an old hi-fi stack was in the other – every student’s dream, in the eighties. The suite was faded and worn and black mould covered the armchairs. Thick drapes stopped any light from seeping into the room. The smell of damp and must was oppressive. Fungus was growing on the exterior wall, beneath a poster of a whale diving. He walked back into the hallway and looked up the stairs. A corpse has hanging from the second-floor bannister rail: the neck was broken, the teeth bared. Braddick reckoned the man had been dead for weeks.
‘Is that your man?’
‘No,’ Braddick said, shaking his head. The corpse looked to be Asian. ‘Although, I have a feeling our man might have had something to do with him being here.’
‘None of the rooms have been occupied in a long time,’ one of the entry team said. ‘Cook’s room is at the top of the stairs.’
‘Check him for ID,’ Braddick said, climbing the stairs two at a time. Sadie followed him. A uniformed officer put on rubber gloves and checked the pockets of the corpse.
Braddick stepped into the room that had been rented by Noel Cook. A single mattress was bare and stained with damp. The floorboards were dark and dusty. A small rug next to the bed was the only sign of furnishings. The drapes were thick and heavy and ripped at the bottom. He looked behind the door.
‘Sadie,’ he said, ‘look at this.’
‘Fucking hell,’ she said.
The wall behind the door was covered from floor to ceiling with photographs: Danny Goodwin, John Glynn, Thomas Green, and David Rutland. The others were strangers to him. There were dozens of faces. It sent a shiver down his spine. Had he already killed them, or were they targets? The hunters being hunted, unaware of how close a killer was to them.
‘We need to get these to the office and cross-check them against the dead members of the group.’ Braddick studied some of the faces. Boyd had taken the photographs up-close. He was skilled, that was obvious. To take shots like that, without the subject being aware, was a talent. He looked around again. The room had been vacated in a hurry, probably around the same time the body in the stairwell stopped breathing.
‘The victim is Ahmed Ashkani,’ a uniformed officer said from the doorway.
‘That figures,’ Braddick said. ‘He’s the landlord. No wonder we couldn’t reach him.’
‘Another faked suicide?’ Sadie asked.
‘It certainly looks that way,’ Braddick agreed. ‘Get Graham Libby down here, he’ll know if it is or not. Not that it matters. We still have no idea where Frankie Boyd is. We need to find out who all these faces are and warn them that Boyd is on a mission.’
Alec pulled up on the main road and looked at the farm track opposite. It was dusty, and pitted with rocks and boulders; a strip of grass ran up the middle. There were no street lights, but he could see a light burning in the farmhouse at the top of the lane. He gauged it was a half mile or so away. The tingle was driving him mad. He had to take a look at the place. Something was bothering him and he couldn’t put his finger on it; instinct had told him to come here. Braddick had found the arrest report for Noel Cook and it was a baby step to trace an address, but it didn’t feel right. Frankie Boyd was not likely to be sitting at home with his feet up, watching Netflix, or whatever psychopaths watch these days. He would be executing plan B. The Liverpool Echo had exposed his crimes and he had reacted badly. Killing Danny Goodwin the way he did, confirmed what Alec had always suspected about him. He had madness behind his eyes, the kind of madness that left him devoid of empathy or sympathy. Boyd would be well aware it was only a matter of time before the net closed in, and that this time would be the last. He would go away for life. They would throw away the key. That made Boyd’s options limited: he was cornered, and cornered animals are dangerous and unpredictable. Boyd was evil, total evil. What would a totally evil man do, if he knew he didn’t have long before he would be killed or locked up for the rest of his days? That was a question with many answers, none of them good. He could choose to escape, but that was almost impossible. Both his identities were now flagged to every law enforcement agency in the land, and would be worldwide by the morning. He was going nowhere. Would he try to cause as much damage as possible before they dragged him away, or would he hide until they came to arrest him and go quietly? He didn’t think Boyd would go quietly, it wasn’t his style.
Alec shivered. It wasn’t cold yet but he felt a chill touching his bones. Were his instincts warning him to go home and be a retired detective, safe and warm in his bed? Evil was radiating from that farmhouse. He checked his watch and his phone; the phone had a signal and it was fully charged. He zipped up his coat and trudged up the lane. The single light was still burning in the farmhouse window, drawing him to it like a moth to a flame.
37
Nicola Hadley’s heart was going to break. The doctor had told her that the man she had known as Richard Vigne, was actually Ralph Pickford. It was difficult for her to comprehend. Her dad hadn’t been there, thank heavens. As a long-distance lorry driver, he could be away for days at a time. He would have flipped out and become angry and aggressive, and that would have increased her angst. His first reaction was always aggression. He said it was because he was protecting his daughter, and there was nothing wrong with that, but it made her anxious. Right now, her anxiety was off the scale. The news of Pickford’s death had hit her hard. She was crushed. Her brain felt numb and the drugs weren’t helping at all. She was on the verge of having a panic attack, a coiled spring inside her was ready to release.
Her father had questioned their decision to tell Nicola the truth, but the doctor thought it was better for them to tell her, rather than risk her finding out from the newspapers or on television. She had wanted to tell her in a controlled environment, where Nicola’s reaction could be monitored and professionals were on hand. As she explained the situation, she re-enforced the fact that Pickford had not dumped Nicola; she deemed that as being very important. Emotionally, that information should make her feel better about herself: it wasn’t her fault. It meant he hadn’t rejected her, or stopped loving her – he had died. She seemed to think Nicola should see this as a positive, that she hadn’t been dumped, and he had still loved her when he drove under the back of a stationary lorry and cut himself in half. Like that mattered. Nothing mattered. It had all been a big lie anyway. She hadn’t even known his real name.
Lying in bed, dwellin
g things over, things were falling into place. The clock on the wall ticked slowly. Every minute seemed to be an hour. She looked again and the hands hadn’t moved. The sleeping pills weren’t working. She had asked the doctor for an injection of stronger drugs – they always worked – but the doctor told her she was too weak for them; her heart wasn’t strong enough. She said the pills would work, but they were slower to act. They had spoken about her future treatment plan, and the doctor arranged for a support worker to stay with her while her psychiatrist offered her grief counselling. She had taken everything in her stride. What other choice did she have? Ralph Pickford was dead, and that was that. The name didn’t mean anything to her, even if it was his real name, Richard had been her lover. She couldn’t swap the name in her head. It would not sink in. Richard had never existed and Ralph was dead, they were the facts. She was ill and suffering mental trauma about a lost love who never existed. It twisted her fragile mind into knots. With hindsight, she wished she hadn’t let her father talk her into having the abortion. She thought about her baby, and what might have been, every day. Thinking about it made her terribly sad. She had killed their child – Richard’s child, not Ralph’s. They had talked endlessly, mostly on the Internet, about having more children, and had hoped to get married when she was old enough. She thought she could replace the pain of aborting their baby, with the birth of another child. That was the hope she had clung to; she’d thought the pain would go away. It hadn’t gone away and, now he was dead, it never would. Hope had gone too. Without hope, what did she have? The thought of becoming Mrs Vigne, Mrs Richard Vigne, was her only ambition. There was nothing else. She had wanted to be Mrs Vigne, with a gaggle of little Vignes running around her feet. That had been her dream, but her dreams had been lies. Richard had never existed. Every word out of that man’s mouth had been a lie. She thought about the times they had shared with each other. It had all seemed so right. Not now. Now it all seemed so wrong. Her hopes and dreams were gone. Her baby was dead, and so was Richard. She knew what she had to do. Before the night was done she would join them, and be with them forever.