by Michael Kerr
The conference room was packed with reporters from all the major newspapers and several TV crews. This case had caught the collective imagination of the media and public alike. Some uninspired hack had given Tyler the tag of The Hitman, which was concise, and less outlandish than many of the sobriquets that were attached to serial killers.
The Assistant Chief Constable was at Julie’s side as she stepped up to the lectern and adjusted the microphone.
“Good morning,” Julie said after facing the gathering for a few seconds and waiting for silence. She did not relish this part of the job, but was pleased to hear her voice sound firm and confident. “I am Detective Chief Inspector Julie Brannigan. I want to take this opportunity to update you on the Tyler investigation.”
“You mean, The Hitman?” Freddie Hapscombe of the Daily Express said.
“His name is Andrew Tyler,” Julie said. “And we know that as well as killing people for payment, he is a sociopath and sex fiend who grooms naive women over the Internet.”
“Is Tyler responsible for the attempted murder of Emily Simmons?” Joan Howlett of Channel 4 News said.
“Yes. Emily was in contact with him online. He used an alias. We have no doubt that he is in contact with other women, but will almost certainly use different names. No woman should give her address or phone number to a stranger on the Internet, however genuine he seems to be. There are respectable agencies that vet male members.”
Hapscombe again: “Do you have any idea why he gunned down the first four victims?”
“We believe he was contracted to. We are following leads.”
“Sheena Bryson, The Times. What leads might they be? We understand that he has changed his name. All you seem to have is a description of a man who will now have no doubt also altered his appearance and moved from wherever he lived. How do you propose to locate him?”
Julie gave the veteran reporter a scathing look. “Well certainly not by having our intentions appearing on the front page of the Times, or any other newspaper. Someone out there knows him. They have a neighbour or work colleague who is six feet two or three, thirty-five-years-old, has a Celtic cross tattoo on his left shoulder, and highly distinctive yellow eyes. He may seem personable; just the guy next door, who washes his car and cuts the grass. That is a skin-deep cover. Tyler is a killer; a breed apart whose twisted little mind is fixated on rape and murder. He is out of control; a mad dog who should not be approached by the public.”
“Jeff Deever, Daily Mirror. Do you believe he will kill again?”
“That is one thing we are certain of. He is in some ways a weak-minded individual, in that he is driven by what appear to be insatiable urges that he cannot contain.”
“Are you saying that he is insane?” Deever came back.
“Not in the legal sense.”
“And what might that be?”
“That he is fully aware of the atrocities he carries out. He knows that they are crimes, and covers his tracks. He has a sadistic personality disorder, but does know the difference between right and wrong.”
“Explain sadistic personality disorder in layman’s terms, please,” John Drummond – crime correspondent for ITN News – said.
“I am advised by a criminal psychologist that this is the most dangerous type of pattern or repeat killer. They use extreme violence and cruelty to establish control over another person. I would compare this type to a great white shark, in that they are the ultimate predator outside of any ocean. But a shark, to our knowledge, takes its prey for food, and does not experience pleasure or enjoyment in the act. We are looking for someone who lives to kill. He is obsessed with inflicting both psychological and physical pain for personal gratification.”
“A full-blown psycho,” Drummond said.
“A freak of nature,” Julie said. “For whatever reason, he is evil in the true sense of the word.”
After verbally fencing for another five minutes, Julie made her exit, leaving the Assistant Chief to wrap it up.
Andy paced around the small lounge. He was naked, and his muscled body was perspiring heavily from working-out. Instead of feeling good about everything, he was becoming highly agitated. He screamed aloud at the television: “You supercilious, split-arse cow! Who are you to judge me?”
The female cop looked cool and arrogant in her power suit. But her knuckles were white from gripping the edge of the microphone-laden lectern. He sensed the nervousness beneath a front that might fool most people, but not him. She was taunting him, trying to label him as some sort of pattern killer who had no control over his actions. And she was being far too insulting and personal. To call him a freak of nature; a mad dog with a weak, twisted mind, was inexcusable.
He found a notepad and pen. Scribbled her name down, almost going through the page with the pressure he applied with the ballpoint. She was Detective Chief Inspector Julie Brannigan.
“You’ve made it on to my fucking list, Julie baby. Happy now?” he said, reaching out and tracing her face on the dusty screen with the tip of his finger. “Just because you’re a cop, doesn’t cut you any slack. You’ve got a date with destiny, in the shape of yours truly.” Better. Feeling good. He decided that she would apologise in person for her outburst. Learn a little humility, suffer greatly, and then die.
Ryan went alone. He was logged-in at the main gate and escorted across the yard, through a second security gate and into the secure special visits area. He signed a form and was led into one of a line of rooms reserved for police, solicitors, and any type of visitor who was not making a social visit. The room was little more than a large cubicle with barely enough space for the table and three chairs therein. Ryan sat down and waited.
Fifteen minutes elapsed before Savino was ushered in. His face was a blank sheet. Ryan knew that he had been informed of his daughter’s death. But it was impossible to tell that the gangster had received such devastating news only hours earlier.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Ryan said. “I know how―”
“You don’t have the slightest idea of how I feel, cop, so don’t say it. You’d have to be a father who just got told his little princess had been shot in the fuckin’ head, to have any grasp of how I feel. I know all there is to know about you, Frank Ryan. You’re a single man, with no one in your life to enrich it, or to lose, except for your mother. You got nothin’ but your own arse to worry about.”
“Point taken,” Ryan said. “How come you agreed to see me?”
“Curiosity, Ryan. You know what happened, and choose today to drop by. You remind me of a dog I once had. It was a mean piece of work. Only acted friendly when it wanted fed, or to be let out to crap on the lawn. What do you want?”
“Tyler.”
“Join the club?”
“You lied to me before. You knew he’d changed his name. Gina might still be alive if you’d given him up. Come clean before he starts in on the rest of your family.”
Ray closed his eyes. His face became ruddy with anger, and yet he said nothing.
Ryan carried on: “After we saw you, you arranged for Terry Walsh to blow him away. That means you knew where he was. Right?”
Ray got up. He felt as if someone had their hand inside his chest around his heart, squeezing it hard. He felt ill and wanted to go back to his cell.
Ryan pressed. “You think you can deal with this, Savino, but what if you can’t? You’ve tried to hit him once. Look what happened. And that was when he didn’t expect it. Help me to find him.”
Ray hesitated. “You wired?” he said.
“Frisk me,” Ryan said. “I came here alone to talk man to man, not to try to entrap you. Whatever you tell me today is off the record.”
“What I know will be out of date,” Ray said, sitting back down heavily. “He changed his name to Mark Collins and moved to an egg box in Muswell Hill. Just blended in. I kept tabs on him.”
“And tried to have him hit, rather than let us get hold of him?”
Ray shrugged. “You need
to know that if my boys find him before you do, he’s goin’ to be kept somewhere in extreme discomfort until I get out. He’ll find out firsthand why I’m called ‘The Torch’.”
Ryan made no comment. He would do what he could to find and arrest Tyler. If Savino got to him first, then so be it. The grapevine had it that Ray Savino was an artist with an acetylene torch; could keep his victims alive for weeks if they’d really pissed him off. Tyler was between a rock and a very hard place, but probably thought that he could outsmart all-comers indefinitely.
“Who would he get the paperwork from to resurface with a new ID?” Ryan said.
“I’ll have that end of it looked at,” Ray said. “You need to know that Tyler is colder than snow, Ryan. He grew in prison. Became a monster. He doesn’t scare, or back off from a bad situation. If by some miracle you do find him before me, then shoot first and ask questions afterward. He once told me that he would never see the inside of a prison again. It wasn’t big talk, it was straight from his black heart. If ever someone needed killin’, it’s him.”
“Do me a favour, Savino,” Ryan said. “If you take him out of circulation, let me know. Will you do that?”
“Then you’d owe me a favour, Ryan. You don’t seem the type of cop to be in the pocket of a guy like me.”
“I’m SCU, Savino. We don’t usually cross swords with your type of set-up. My unit is primarily concerned with serial rapists and killers, not organised crime. We try to stop the sort of maniac who would do what Tyler did to your daughter.”
“Maybe you provide a good service,” Ray said. “I don’t like killin’ for the sake of it. Believe it or not, I have some principles. The average law-abidin’ citizen has nothin’ to fear from us. We spend most of our time policin’ each other and tryin’ to keep one step ahead of the law. If we find Tyler, you’ll get a phone call.”
“The address in Muswell Hill,” Ryan said, taking out a note book and pen and pushing them across the tabletop.
Ray wrote it down, then got up and knocked on the interview room door. As the prison officer approached, Ray turned back to Ryan. “You do realise that if you get to him first, then you’ll only be servin’ him up to me on a plate. There’s no nick in the country that he’ll be safe in. One way or another, Tyler gets to die hard.”
Outside the walls, Ryan leant against the Vitari and fired up a cigarette. The air was cold. Diaphanous clouds raced eastwards through a cobalt sky. At that moment, he felt soiled by what he did. His days were a sordid procession of events that ate into his soul. He was becoming disillusioned and oppressed by the sheer weight of mindless violence that he steeped himself in. Right now, he would be happy to be somewhere in the Midwest, astride that Harley, with the wind in his face, an open highway stretching to the horizon, and Julie on the pillion, her arms around his waist.
He wanted to cut and run, but knew that he wouldn’t. Some dreams are just that, flights of fancy that help to make reality a little more palatable. He ground the cigarette end out on the concrete and flipped his mobile phone open. Punched in a direct number to the incident room. Asked Vinnie Gomez to put Eddie on. “Write this address down and head on out there, now,” he said.
“What did you get from Savino?” Eddie said as he wrote.
“Confirmation off the record that he had Terry Walsh try to top Tyler, who was living at the address I just gave you, and calling himself Mark Collins.”
“He’ll have gone to ground again, boss.”
“I know. But he might have left something. All we can do is go with what we have. If Tyler is lucky, we’ll get to him before Savino’s goons sniff him out.”
Back on the wing, Ray used a phone card to make a couple of calls. He then went to his cell and told Winston to make sure he wasn’t disturbed. There were two sides to Ray. Same as everyone. One side of him was now a grieving father, who was finding it hard to maintain his composure. He would not get past this, ever. Gina had been his little angel. He knew that Ryan was right. It had been his misjudgement in underestimating Tyler that had got her killed. He would never forgive himself. But she had to be avenged. He lay back on his bed, laced his fingers behind his head and let what he would do to Tyler run through his mind. The man was going to suffer more than any human being ever had before. He might keep him alive for years in a specially designed chamber, and commit acts on him that would make the torture meted out during the Spanish Inquisition look like horseplay. There were many forms of justice. His was particularly brutal. That was his other side. A side that was a nightmare to behold.
Chapter NINETEEN
It was just a small middle-class circa nineteen-seventy estate with family cars in the drives of semidetached houses and maisonettes. The area was tired and dated looking. Trees grew on verges next to pavements that were being cracked and pushed up by thick roots. People were out cutting postage stamp-size lawns, cleaning windows, coming and going. A handful of kids were in the road on skateboards. It did not seem the type of surroundings in which a serial killer/hitman would make his home. He had blended well, to be totally invisible within such ordinariness.
Eddie parked behind Ryan’s 4x4. He and Julie got out of the car and walked up to where Ryan was sitting sideways in the driver’s seat with the door open, smoking.
“How did the press conference go?” Ryan said to Julie, not showing his surprise at her being with Eddie.
“We got the pertinent points across. They want sensationalism. The papers are only interested in selling copy, and the TV stations are in a ratings war.”
“So what’s new?”
“They’ve tagged him The Hitman. Before long they’ll have ghosts from his past giving interviews: ‘I was at the same school as Andy. He was a bully, and enjoyed dissecting frogs in biology class’. That sort of stuff. And Ruby Tyler has the media camped outside her door. She hasn’t shown her face since her son’s name was broadcast.”
“It always turns into a fucking circus,” Eddie said. “Why do you suppose the masses are so interested in hearing about such bad shit?”
“It’s in the genes,” Ryan said. “It isn’t that long ago since we were hunter gatherers. Life was short, hard, and full of violence. You can take man out of the cave, but can’t take the cave out of man. We still have the same instincts. We just don’t walk around in animal skins, carry flint axes, and rape any female we fancy. But behind the facade of civilisation, we aren’t that much different to our ancestors. That’s why we still fight over territory; why war is taking place somewhere as we speak. People find reasons to kill each other. It’s all part of what we are.”
“So what are individuals like Tyler?” Julie said. “Throwbacks?”
“Maybe. I’m no anthropologist, but I do believe that we’re evolving animals. And we’ve still got a long way to go, if we don’t wipe each other out first, or fall victim to some bacteria that does the job for us.”
“You don’t paint a very pretty picture, boss,” Eddie said.
“We are what we are, Eddie. We’ve developed rules, laws and codes to work to, to be able to live together. But lawlessness is always only a blink away. When we’re hit by any natural disaster, be it a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake, a percentage of the population start looting and raping. They take advantage of any given situation where chaos reigns. There are a lot of Tylers’ who are sleepers. Like bullets in a mag, just waiting to be fired when something triggers them.”
“What did Savino say, Ryan?” Julie said.
“Bottom line was, that if he finds Tyler before us, we can turn our full attention to other cases. And that if we get lucky first, then there’s no prison where Tyler will be safe. Like the Yanks would say, he’s a dead man walking.”
* * *
“He’s not in,” a voice said from the open front door of the maisonette next door to Tyler’s, as they walked up his short path. “I think he must have gone on holiday or something.”
The three of them angled across the lawn of the open plan garden, to where the
old woman was standing, leaning heavily on a walker.
Ryan showed her his ID. “May I ask you your name?” he said.
“Hilda Sykes. Is Mark all right? He hasn’t been in an accident, has he?”
“Would that be Mark Collins?” Ryan said.
“Yes, Officer.”
“We need to contact him, Hilda. Are you positive he’s not in.”
“Yes. I saw him drive off the night before last, I think. I lose track of time these days. Anyway, I haven’t seen him come back. And I usually hear him moving about, or his television. These walls are quite thin.
“What is he like, Hilda?” Julie said.
“A very nice young man. Mark keeps to himself most of the time. But he cuts my grass for me. And he always asks if I need anything from the shops.”
“Is that him?” Ryan said, producing a copy of Tyler’s prison mug shot. The photo had been cropped, and the lower portion with the board and his name and prison number on it was absent.
Hilda took a pair of spectacles from the pocket of the coat she was wearing. Put them on and focused her rheumy eyes on the print. “Yes,” she said after deliberating for a while. “It looks like Mark. His hair is shorter now, and his face is a little fuller. But yes, I would say that is definitely him.”
“Thank you, Hilda,” Ryan said. He walked back across the lawn to the front door of the house that they now knew Tyler had lived at. Julie and Eddie followed him.
“Go around back, Eddie,” Ryan said. “I’ll knock. If by some chance he is still here, be ready for him to try and run for it. And remember, he’s tooled-up.
There was no reply to the door. Julie and Ryan went around the side of the house to where Eddie was standing with his gun drawn.
“Now what, boss?” he said.
“We need to enter,” Ryan said to Julie.
“Without the necessary paperwork?” she said.
“Yeah. I think I heard someone cry out. Maybe he needs help.”