by Michael Kerr
Julie took over. “I want to impress on all of you who will be involved, that the last thing we want is for an unarmed civilian to end up in a body bag. I know you all want to...to avenge Angie. But bear in mind the possibility of there being a male relation or lover at one or both of these addresses. Do not discharge your weapons unless you are positive that any occupant is armed and posing a threat. Is that understood?”
There was a mumble of assent.
“The commissioner was ready to take the case off us after Angie was murdered,” Julie said. “He wanted to hand it to the Area Major Investigation Pool. I told him to afford us the courtesy of being professionals, who would not let a fellow officer’s death affect the way we conducted our investigation. And off the record, a bullet would be too quick for this dickhead. He warrants being caged up, to hopefully live a long and unhappy life in a very secure environment.”
Chapter THIRTY-NINE
DC Connie Jacobs peered through the plate glass window at the assortment of overpriced garments and accessories that were presented with the artistic flair that a store such as Harrods prided itself on. She pushed open the door of Avery Fashions, and a bell tinkled to alert the owner. They had verified that it was a one-woman concern, and that there were no employees.
Michele Avery was in a storeroom at the back of the shop, unpacking a batch of newly arrived sequinned ‘party’ purses when the bell jingled to herald the first customer of the day.
“Good morning. Can I help you?” Michele said, rounding the glass-topped and fronted counter, to where a young woman was browsing through a rack of dresses.
“I hope so. This pink shift,” Connie said, “May I take it to the door and see it in daylight? I find that fluorescent lighting can make things look an entirely different colour.”
“Certainly,” Michele replied, accompanying Connie back to the door and opening it.
Connie dropped the dress, grasped the startled shop owner by the waist and bundled her sideways, to where waiting officers took charge of the shocked woman.
Eddie said, “Police,” to Michele. “Who else is inside?”
“N...No one,” she stammered.
Eddie nodded to the ARU officers with him. They entered the shop with guns drawn. More officers were covering the rear of the premises.
After carrying out a thorough search, Eddie phoned Ryan, who was at Chesham with Julie and other squad members. “The shop in Welham Green is clear, boss. No sign that Tyler has been here. And the owner seems genuinely baffled. She’s screaming blue murder and calling us fascist pigs.”
“Lay some of your charm on her, Eddie,” Ryan said. “Leave her sweet, and glad that we had her best interests at heart.”
When allowed to, Michele stormed back into the shop, to stand with her hands on her hips as Eddie followed her in.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Eddie Taylor, Ms. Avery,” he said. “I want you to know that we had cause to think that you were in personal danger.”
Michele looked him up and down, in the way she might have stared at a lice-infested vagrant who had dared to set foot over her threshold.
“What danger?” she said.
“A man who you have been in contact with via computer is a serial killer on the run. There is a strong possibility that he is staying at the home of one of the many women he was groo... er, messaging.”
Michele blushed. “How do you know that I was in touch with him?”
“We found his p.c. and retrieved all the data from the hard drive. He has already raped and attempted to murder one of the women on the list we have.”
“Jesus wept! I thought it was safe having a little innocent fun. I didn’t use my real name, so how would he know where I lived?”
“He’s a computer expert, Ms. He can trace you electronically while you’re online, and access all the details he needs from your Internet service provider.”
Michele frowned. “I thought I could have online contact with total anonymity.”
“Now you know different. And remember, almost all data that is on your computer stays there. Even stuff that you delete or don’t save. It remains in the empty space of your hard drive. It can be recovered.”
“Is that how a lot of these perverts and paedophiles get caught?”
“Yes. They delete incriminating evidence, or think they have. If they were competent enough, they would run a programme that ‘wipes’ the hard drive.
“Why didn’t this man do that?”
“He likes to play games. He had put in what they call a housekeeping programme, and a lot of firewalls...security systems. If someone tries to enter his machine without the proper password and access codes, an autonomous programme is activated, and the information is digitally shredded, unless another expert can break through it.”
“This is very embarrassing,” Michele said.
“Best not to have any contact with personal messaging services, Ms. Sadly, the world is full of nuts who are looking for more than just a relationship in cyberspace.”
“I’ll remember that, Sergeant. And please, call me Michele. Ms makes me feel like an old spinster.”
Eddie grinned. He fancied Michele Avery. She was slim, and pretty in an elfish kind of way. “Why bother with the Internet?” he said. “Surely you could meet someone in the ‘real’ world.”
“I’m twenty-eight, Sergeant―”
“Eddie.”
“Okay, Eddie. Thing is, the ‘real’ world is full of married men and inadequate types who don’t measure up. Does that answer your question?”
“Yeah. And I want you to know that I’m single, and don’t see inadequate stamped on my forehead when I look in the mirror.”
“Are you hitting on me, Eddie?”
“I suppose I am. You want to risk a meal and a drink with a cop?”
“I might. Give me a call in a day or two. I don’t make instant decisions. That’s one of my better faults.”
Ryan called in at a newsagents in Chesham. Asked the buxom woman behind the counter for a pack of Superkings, and enquired if she knew where he could find Beck Hall Farm. Wanted to look up Percy Conway, who he said had been a friend of his father’s.
“I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you,” June Tiddy said. “But Percy died a while back. And Faith, poor dear, has gone very parish pump, as we call it. Keeps to herself most of the time, and doesn’t have a lot do with anyone. Having a conversation with her is hard work.”
I take it she lives alone now,” Ryan said.
“Not if old Owen Wilby is to be believed. He told me that he’s seen Faith going in the farmhouse at night with a man. Owen is a gamekeeper, you see. He spends a lot of time creeping around in the dark, looking for poachers and the like.”
Ryan was tempted to abort, interview the gamekeeper, and reschedule the operation, but decided that Owen Wilby would not know any more than he had told the newsagent. And the last thing he wanted was for locals to know that he had been asking questions. This was a village, and he knew that gossip would spread faster than fleas in a cattery.
* * *
Vinnie Gomez leant his bicycle against the wall, took the brown paper-wrapped package out of the bag, strolled down the path and rapped on the door.
There were now ten officers, including Ryan and Julie, within a few yards of him, hidden behind the trees and a stone wall at the other side of the narrow lane.
No answer. Vinnie knocked again. Spoke into the mike that was pinned to his shirt under the postman’s uniform jacket he was wearing.
“I get the feeling that no one’s home,” he whispered.
Ryan’s voice came through the ear piece. “Try once more, then back off and ride away.”
Vinnie hammered on the door, but there was still no reply. He ambled back to his bicycle and set off down the road.
Ryan made a decision. They approached on the run, all wearing bullet-proof vests, and with guns drawn. Dag Hubbard used a short, hand-held steel battering ram to smash open the door, and th
ey swarmed into the house and checked every room. The house was clear.
“What do you think?” Ryan said to Julie, when they were satisfied that it was unoccupied.
Julie searched the master bedroom. Then the bathroom. Returned to where Ryan was inspecting a semen-stained bed sheet.
“Some of the dresser drawers and the wardrobe in here seem to be too empty. And the lid of the jewellery box on the dresser has been left open. There’s no toothbrush in the holder in the bathroom, and there are whiskers stuck to the side of the wash hand basin. I also found an empty bottle in the waste bin that had held dark brown hair colour. I’m sure that Tyler was here. I think they’ve done a bunk.”
They checked the large shed that served as a garage. There was an old jeep parked in it, and a small patch of fresh oil on the hard-packed earth floor next to it, where another vehicle had recently stood.
Julie got on the phone. Arranged for a crime scene team to come out and process the house, and also requested that a locksmith attend to fix the door.
“You think they’ll be back?” Julie said to Ryan.
“No. And we don’t know what head start they’ve got, or where they’re going.”
“As a supposedly married couple with forged passports, they could have taken a flight out to anywhere in the world,” Julie said. “We might have lost him.”
Ryan felt an overwhelming sense of anger and defeat. Tyler had proved too clever for them up to now. They could check airport passenger lists and view CCTV footage, But Tyler would know that they would. The resourceful killer and his ally would in all probability assume another set of identities and if necessary move on by train or boat to some other location. Tyler knew how to vanish.
It was purely instinctive. He had perceived a threat. His internal radar was detecting the unseen approach of incoming danger. He felt it as a weight of pressure bearing down on him. It was time to move. He booked two return tickets to Miami, although they would not be returning, or keeping the same names. He was leaving outstanding business unresolved, but could live with that. The two cops who had maligned him were not going anywhere. And Emily Simmons and the neighbour who had turned up in time to save her life were of no real importance. He would set up home with the doting Faith in Grand Cayman and review the situation over a period of time.
With all the necessary documents produced, Andy loaded the security identification pass maker and other machines in the back of the Jeep, and Faith drove to a lake that was a quarter of a mile from the main road, only accessible by way of a bumpy trail through thick woods.
They stripped-off, waded out and dropped the equipment in chest-deep water, where it sank into the silt.
“Jesus! That was c...cold, love,” Faith stammered as they emerged from the water shivering.
Andy rubbed her down with a bath towel as she stood under the moonlight, next to the Jeep. “Tightens the skin,” Andy said. “I read somewhere that Paul Newman used to dunk his face in ice-cold water every morning.”
Faith took the towel and dried him. Being outside, naked, and in such a tranquil setting promoted sex. She spread the damp towel out on the ground, lay down on it and beckoned him to join her.
It was after they had noisily coupled that he appeared from the treeline.
“What the bloody ‘ell do you think you’re doin’?” Owen Wilby demanded.
“What comes naturally,” Andy replied, getting to his feet as the gamekeeper drew near, his shotgun broken and crooked over his arm.
“This is private land, son,” Owen said. And to Faith. “You should know better Faith Conway. Percy’ll be turnin’ in his grave if he can see what dirty goin’s on you’re gettin’ up to. Have you no shame, woman?”
Andy crossed the few feet between him and the thin, stooped estate worker, leaned to his left and lashed up and out with his right leg, to make contact with his heel in the man’s narrow chest.
Owen fell back, and the shotgun spun away from him. He had once been kicked by a horse, and had suffered three cracked ribs. The stranger’s foot thudded into his sternum with what seemed equal force, and he thought it might be fractured, such was the power of the blow. He shouldn’t have left Blue, his basset hound, at home, he thought. But the dog had been under the weather for a couple of days.
Without any hesitation, Andy picked up a large piece of weathered rock, knelt next to the gasping man and pounded his skull to a pulp.
Faith watched. She should have been absolutely repulsed by the sight, but felt strangely stimulated. The muscles of her lover’s back and buttocks tensed and were highly-defined by moonlight and shadow as he brought the rock down again and again, sending up dark liquid spurts that splattered against his skin.
Sitting back, breathing heavily, Andy dropped the slick piece of flint to the ground. He blinked his victim’s blood from his eyes and licked it from his lips.
Blood really does look black in the moonlight,” Faith said, crawling over to him on hands and knees, to press up against him as she stared down at the now misshapen and ruined face of Owen Wilby.
“We better bury him, then take another dip,” Andy said.
Faith helped him drag the body into the woods. They rolled it into a deep, natural hollow, threw the shotgun on top, and covered the corpse with leaf litter and a large section of rotting tree trunk, before once more walking into the lake to wash the dirt and blood from their bodies.
Back at the house, they packed. Used Andy’s car to drive to Heathrow, parked in long stay and made their way across to the terminal to check in.
After landing at Miami, they took a cab over the Julia Tuttle Causeway to Collins Avenue on Miami Beach, and Andy asked the cabby to pull in at the Loews Hotel, where he booked a suite on the eighteenth floor with an ocean view.
“You think this will do for a few days, before we fly to Grand Cayman?” Andy said.
Faith crushed him to her. “I can’t believe we are really here, John,” she said, now accustomed to using the name, which was how she had known him on the Internet.. “I expected to spend the rest of my life on that fucking farm.”
“You never know what’s waiting round the corner, babe. Tomorrow we can go to the Miami Mall and buy some suitable clothes, then chill out at the pool before I take you to Escopazzo on SoBe, which is what the locals call South Beach.”
“What’s Escopazzo?”
“The most romantic restaurant in town.”
“I still don’t know why you picked me,” Faith said.
“I decided we should be together when you came downstairs in the altogether and pointed that 12 bore at me. I see a lot of you in me, babe. You’ve just never been in a position to let your true self out. Now you can be who you really are, and fuck anyone who tries to put you down or get in your way. Life is all about getting all you can from it, with as little compromise as possible. No good getting to the end of the road, looking back over your shoulder and realising that you did what was expected of you, led a good, honest, but boring little life, and have nothing to show for it but regrets.”
“Do you ever have regrets, John?”
“No. I look forward, not back. We don’t get a lot of time, so I don’t waste a second of it bewailing, feeling remorse, or rueing anything. I’m not a poet or a preacher. I have only one credo: do unto others, if it enriches life financially and emotionally.”
“I’ve never considered myself as being a selfish or violent person, John.”
“That’s because you were brainwashed into living how society and the people around you expected you to think and behave. The real Faith was oppressed. You’re free now, and can be who you want to be, and do whatever you want to do. To be liberated in heart, mind and soul is real power.”
Down at the reception desk, a young man with almost white-blond hair was checking in. He had followed the couple from the airport, satisfied himself that they had registered, then taken a cab back across Biscayne Bay to an address on 8th Street in Little Havana, where he picked up a late model Ford
Taurus, a Ruger pistol complete with silencer, and a box of soft-nosed ammunition.
Now, back at the Loews hotel, he registered under the alias of Jan Khorkova, and took a lift up to the seventeenth floor. Standing at the window of his room, sipping vodka from the wet bar and looking out at the Atlantic Ocean, he decided to have a good night’s sleep, eat a hearty, calorie-laden American breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, and then complete his business.
Chapter FORTY
The Florida sunshine invigorated Andy. Winters in Britain were a depressing grey, cold and dismal period that dampened the spirit. He determined to spend the rest of his life in sunny climes, where T-shirts and shorts were almost de rigueur. Of course he would still take the odd contract. It wouldn’t suit him to sit back and do nothing. He had contacts in New York, Cleveland and LA. Once he and Faith had set up house in George Town, he would reach out by computer to let potential employers know that he was available. It would be fun to have company: to combine business and pleasure.
They went down for breakfast, then took a cab to the Miami Mall and bought bright, expensive clothes, before having a light lunch in the central food court. Back at the hotel, they spent a couple of hours by the oceanfront freeform pool, before taking a stroll on the white sand beach.
“Is Grand Cayman like this?” Faith said.
“Better. And you will have a house there, with palm trees and the Caribbean on your doorstep. I promise that you will want for nothing, babe. Just never, ever betray me, and your every desire will become reality.”
Back inside the room, They took a shower. When they walked naked through to the bedroom, a man was sitting on the bed, pointing a gun at them.
“Hello, Tyler,” he said. “I thought I would surprise you, so I gave the maid a hundred dollars to let me in.”
“Who are you?” Andy asked the blonde man.
Valentino smiled and pulled up the leg of his cargo pants to reveal the grubby cast.