by Michael Kerr
“Fine, Al. I’ll get to it,” Matt said. “By the way, how’s Claudine?”
Al frowned. “Why’re you askin’?”
“Just returning the curiosity. Seems your wife is being well looked after while you’re inside.”
“That’s what friends are for,” Al said. “Being a cop, I don’t suppose you know what friends are.”
“So let’s talk about the gun,” Pete said.
“What fuckin’ gun?”
“The one you shot the guard with during that robbery at Heathrow.”
“Behave,” Al said. “There was never any proof that I shot anybody. I think you two are funnier than Ant and Dec, wastin’ petrol drivin’ down here for nothin’.”
“It’s a nice day out there, Al,” Matt said. “A trip into the wilds of the Kent countryside beats sitting in an office. And did you know that while you’re doing bird in this shithole, your boss is screwing Claudine?”
Al lurched forward across the table and attempted to hit Matt with a right jab. Matt had expected a violent reaction and was ready for it. He grabbed hold of the meaty fist, jerked it sideways as if he was wrenching a door knob open, and watched as Al fell off the chair to crash onto the solid floor.
An officer who’d been standing outside the closed door entered the room and took in the scene. “Everything alright?” he asked.
“We’re good,” Matt said. “Mr. Eltringham just slipped off his chair.”
The young officer shook his head, left the room and closed the door behind him.
Al got up rubbing his right shoulder, which he had landed heavily on.
“Sit down and listen up, Al,” Matt said. “The gun from the robbery is on the street and being used to kill people. We need to know what happened to it: who you passed it on to before you were lifted.”
Al slumped in the chair and massaged his wrist. “Like I said at the trial, I didn’t shoot the guard, and wasn’t carryin’ a gun.”
As prearranged, Pete got to his feet and headed for the door. “I’ll go rustle up some coffee,” he said. “You want one, Al?”
Al nodded. He was wary of the two SCU coppers, but intrigued as to where this might lead. And he had nothing better to do with his time.
“Just you and me now, Al,” Matt said. “What is said in this room stays in this room. I need to find the gun. Helping to stop some psycho who is on a killing spree with it won’t matter to you, so I’ll just get straight to the threats. Your wife is being given money that is unearned income from a known criminal; Ricky Lister. We have video evidence of her accepting packages from one of Lister’s men at the front door of your house every month. I could inform the Inland Revenue and bring a pile of shit down on Claudine’s head. There’s no reason I can think of why she wouldn’t end up in the dock, and there’s no way she could explain where the money came from that she spends so freely, unless she wanted to tell the truth and rat on Lister.”
“Leave my wife out of this, Barnes.”
“No can do,” Matt said. “I’ll go out of my way to help put her inside if I have to. And Lister will be given the word that she rolled over and gave us his name when she was quizzed over the money. Imagine her doing some time, Al, and your daughters in care, not private school. And worst of all, Lister being pissed off.”
Al’s face drained of colour. He found it difficult to hold back and not take a second run at the DI, but somehow kept his temper and stayed in the chair.
“And there’s your parole to think about, Al,” Matt continued. “We can come up with something to lay on you that will keep you inside for the full ten years you’re serving. Early release on licence will be off the menu.”
“You’re a bastard, Barnes,” Al said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Matt replied. “Now tell me the make of the gun and who you sold or gave it to, and we’ll back off. Lie to me, and your family fortunes will take a drastic turn for the worse.”
“And I have your word that Lister won’t know I gave you a name?”
Matt lied with consummate ease, was given a name and left the room a minute later. Pete was at the desk of the small special visits complex, talking to a female prison officer.
“C’mon, Pete,” Matt said. “We got what we came for.”
As they headed back to London, Al was back on B Wing, on the phone and talking to Claudine. His next call would be to Ricky Lister. The cop, Barnes, had set wheels in motion that would in all probability result in people being seriously hurt, or worse.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“So share,” Pete said as Matt drove out of Maidstone. “What did he say?”
“He said that the gun used at Heathrow was an old Beretta M9 nine millimetre semiautomatic. And that it was sold within hours of the robbery to a young guy by the name of Sam Clements, who does some driving and enforcing for Lister.”
“That name rings a bell, boss.”
“You read many books?” Matt asked.
“Not since I was a kid. Why?”
“Because there was a Yank by the name of Samuel Clemens who wrote books, including Tom Sawyer. His full name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”
“I thought Mark Twain wrote that.”
“Clemens was his real name, Pete. Anyway, we need to find his near namesake. He could be the killer, or at least be able to help us trace the gun.”
At six p.m. Eddie Stonehouse was walking along the towpath by the side of Regent’s Canal, heading for Camden Lock. His old mongrel, Elvis, was off the lead, trotting along behind him and stopping frequently to smell all the scents that dogs find so fascinating.
Eddie was daydreaming. Imagining that Claudine from next door was in the sack with him, sitting on him, with her breasts jiggling in front of his face as he held her arse cheeks and…
…The two guys appeared from nowhere. Just seemed to materialise from the bushes at the side of the path and walk up to him.
“Hi Eddie,” a small wiry guy wearing mirrored shades said, stopping in front of him, blocking his way.
“Do I know you?” Eddie said.
“No. But you know an acquaintance of ours,” the second guy – who was maybe six-three, wore a dark, ankle-length gabardine coat and had a bald head – said.
It happened quickly. Shades looked around and, satisfied that there was no one in sight, withdrew a silenced handgun and shot Elvis in the head. The dog made as if to bolt, but dropped to the ground after one step, to kick its back legs a couple of times before becoming still.
Baldy pulled a baseball bat from under his coat and swung it down in a low, wide arc to connect with Eddie’s left shinbone, fracturing it. He hit Eddie another three devastating blows, then stopped as Shades squatted next to where Eddie had fallen down and curled up in a foetal position.
“Can you hear me?” Shades said, removing the designer mirrored sunglasses.
Eddie nodded. He was in a bad place. The pain was excruciating.
“You poked your nose into business that doesn’t concern you, Stonehouse. This is your one and only warning,” Shades said, frisking Eddie and taking his mobile phone and his wallet. “Pretend that your next door neighbours don’t exist. And don’t talk to the filth again about things that could get you whacked. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yeah,” Eddie whispered.
“Good. When you’re asked, say that two young black kids mugged you.”
That was it. Eddie heard footsteps receding along the towpath for a few seconds, and then the rustle of leaves. He wanted to get up, but with a broken leg, several cracked ribs and a fractured wrist, he couldn’t. He just lay on his side and looked across to where the glassy, sightless eyes of Elvis seemed to stare back at him. For the first time since he’d been a kid, he cried.
A few minutes passed before a cyclist stopped next to Eddie, asked him what had happened, and then phoned for an ambulance.
After phoning and discussing the case of the shooter – who selected his victims after interrogating and killing thei
r housekeepers – with Tom, and also telling his DCI how the interview with Eltringham in Maidstone nick had resulted in a lead, and that Don Goodwin was pushing for information on the other case of the serial rapist, Matt got Pete to drop him outside the Punch Tavern on Fleet Street at seven on the dot.
Don Goodwin was already inside, sitting in a gloomy oak-panelled corner that did not benefit from the sky lights built into the vaulted timber ceiling. The old pub had been remodelled to a great extent, although there were still some of the original features and tiling that had survived the Second World War.
“This used to be a great place,” Don said as Matt sat down opposite him. “Back when Fleet Street was the news Mecca of the world.”
“It used to be full of pissed-up hacks,” Matt said. “Quit with the nostalgia and buy me a drink.”
Don grinned, drained his pint glass and went to the marble-topped bar, to return with a large single malt for Matt and a second pint of Adnams Broadside ale for himself.
“What do you think you know?” Matt said to Don after taking a small sip of the smooth malt.
“I know that three young women have been murdered after first being raped, which means that you’ve got a serial killer on the loose.”
“If it’s the same guy,” Matt said.
“You know it is. What can you tell me, to save me writing a piece and using that old chestnut, ‘from a reliable police source’?”
“We got a break, Don. He attacked a couple in Soho. The young man died, but his girlfriend survived. A witness interrupted him as he was raping and strangling her.”
“How near are you to closing it?”
Matt shrugged. “Off the record?”
“I need something, Matt.”
Matt thought it through. Knew that it was too late for Don to use what he had before they broke it, so did a U-turn. “Okay, you can have the scoop. We have a police artist’s sketch that Computer Crime Section has played with and converted into what I hope will be a very close resemblance to the offender. The girl is positive that she’d recognise him if she saw him again. Same goes for the witness. The picture and details will be on the ten o’clock news tonight. Somebody will know him.”
Don looked at his wristwatch and said, “Shit!”
“It gives you a couple of hours to sell the story as an exclusive. And I’ve got the picture on my phone.”
Don smiled. “You want another drink, my friend?”
“Yeah. And you owe me for this, Don. Okay?”
“How long have you known me?” Don said.
Matt grinned. “Too long. When are you going to stop being a newshound, you old bugger?”
“Maybe when you quit the force and get a life.”
Matt finished the second scotch, mailed the pic as a JPEG attachment to Don’s phone, and then got up and shook hands with him before leaving the pub. A framed print of Punch on the wall near the door made him think of the rapist killer. The oil-black eyes of the famous puppet stared out from a long, thin, cruel face.
He took the tube back to the Yard and drank black coffee for an hour before heading down to the car park to drive home. He wanted to unwind: needed to be with Beth. If anything broke on either of the cases he was just a phone call away.
Midnight, and he was restless. Suzy had called round, and they’d had a pizza delivered and watched a Die Hard movie. After a few drinks and a session in bed, Suzy had left. She still lived at home, just a five minute walk from his house in a ground floor council flat with her mother, who was confined to a wheelchair. The old cow had circulatory problems due to diabetes and high blood pressure, and had already lost one leg. She treated Suzy more like a fulltime nurse than a daughter. Maybe he would have to kill her, and by so doing set Suzy free to live her life. There was no hurry. Sandra Beale still smoked forty or fifty cigarettes a day, drank too much vodka, and seemed to be doing everything possible to hasten her own demise. And once she had gone he knew that he would have the problem of Suzy wanting to move in with him. That would cramp his style. He wanted to have the cake and eat it, but too much of a good thing would start to grate. And he didn’t think that Suzy would be happy to just stay over a couple of nights a week. Women – in the main – wanted commitment, and he didn’t love her enough to wake up next to her every morning. In fact he didn’t love her; just liked her a lot. She had a bubbly personality, a great body, and was always ready to get her kit off and make out. No, for the time being he was relatively happy with how things were. To be asked where he was going or how long he’d be gone would piss him off. He enjoyed the freedom he had, and the fact that he didn’t have to sneak around behind Suzy’s back to do his own thing.
Smiling, he went down to the cellar to retrieve his gun, the silencer and a folded piece of copy paper from the metal box in the hidey-hole behind the sink.
Going over to the table, he placed the pistol and silencer on it and unfolded the sheet of paper to study the names and addresses that he had written down. They were in pairs; housekeepers and their employers, and he had put a black line through the first two couples, with a tick at the end, signifying that they had been dealt with.
The third set of names on the list belonged to a woman and man that were now unknowingly on the clock. He would deal with the woman within the next couple of hours, and with the man before he rose from his bed in the morning.
Whistling a happy tune, Billy put the list back in the box and secreted his makeshift safe back out of sight. With the gun and silencer separate in side pockets of the dark-grey jerkin he was wearing, he took the stone steps up to the kitchen two at a time and left the house by the back door, to open the wooden gate in the panel fence that enclosed the yard and look both ways before locking it and strolling down the alley to the street. He determined to walk to the home of his first intended victim near Heston Park, estimating that it would take him no longer than twenty minutes on foot, even allowing for not stepping on cracks between flagstones. It was late, but he was not wearing a Hoodie, was not black, and so did not contemplate being stopped and searched by bored coppers in need of nicking someone and having an excuse to go back to their station. And if he was stopped for any reason whatsoever, then they would not survive the encounter. He was in killing mode, and was not about to allow some dumb copper to find the gun in his pocket. When he was in this mood he felt absolutely invincible and in total control, which he was, for no one knew what he was planning to do.
CHAPTER NINE
Catherine Wade was fast asleep in the bedroom of her first floor flat in a Victorian terrace house on Gilbert Road. She had left James Brodie’s residence in Chelsea at a little after six p.m. and made her way home by tube, to stop and pick up a few grocery items at the small Tesco Express that she called in at for something most days.
After taking a shower and then microwaving and eating a chicken and broccoli pie, Catherine went on the Internet, answered an e-mail from an old school friend in Norfolk, and then just chilled out looking at books and CDs on Amazon before watching some Michael Bublé music videos on YouTube.
Catherine was fifty-five, had been married and divorced twice, resulting in one daughter, now a thirty-year old who had married a Canadian and currently lived in Toronto. Catherine had not yet seen her second grandson, Todd, who was now three, but planned to fly out next year and remedy that.
He entered the house through a rear ground floor window that opened on to a hallway, and made his way upstairs to the landing, to pick the cheap lock on the door to flat three.
Standing in the darkness, he waited and listened. All he could hear was the hum from a fridge. He screwed the silencer onto the barrel of the gun and chambered a round as he moved through the flat.
Catherine woke up slowly. The bedside light was on, and yet she remembered switching it off when she had put her book down after her eyes had grown too tired to read another page.
There was a presence. It was like a pressure wave that did not belong there. For at least a minute she could not mov
e a muscle. There was no sound, but she was positive that someone was in the room. At last her body seemed to free itself of inertia and she turned her head to look around, positive that some nightmare had roused her, leaving her feeling fearful for no good reason.
She gasped at the sight of the intruder. He was sitting in the wicker chair near the window, pointing a gun at her. And he was wearing a balaclava.
“Scream and I’ll shoot you,” he said softly.
Catherine swallowed hard and clenched the duvet with both hands. Somehow found her voice and said, “What do you want?”
“Answers,” he said. “But first, sit up and put your feet on the floor.”
She did as she was bid mechanically, as if she was a robot with rusted metal joints in need of lubrication to loosen them up.
He liked what he saw. She was wearing a long T-shirt with glittery stars on it, and nothing else. The garment had ridden up as she swung her legs out of the bed, and he could see a thick wedge of dark hair at the fork of her shapely legs.
“Take the T-shirt off,” he said.
Catherine obeyed.
He was not disappointed. Her breasts were not large, but that stopped them from sagging too much. His cock was suddenly hard, but he would only look, not touch. He had no intention of leaving any trace evidence. “How old are you?” he said.
“Fifty-five,” Catherine said, convinced that he was going to rape her.
“You don’t look it,” he said. “My mum is a couple of years younger than you, but has white hair and could pass for a woman in her seventies, on a good day. She has dementia.”
“I’m sorry―”
“Shut up, you bitch. You’re not sorry. I’m a total stranger pointing a fucking gun at you. You’re scared shitless, and only sorry that I’m here in your flat.”
He felt a surge of power as tears formed in her umber eyes and escaped onto her cheeks. Being able to dominate and control people was the biggest thrill in the world, like a powerful drug that spiked in his brain to produce a natural high. And wearing the balaclava and latex gloves gave him total anonymity, and was a barrier; the mask protecting him from having to ‘face’ his victim.