by Michael Kerr
“I don’t think so. He’ll be in a state of panic, definitely paranoid, and with a need to go to earth like a hunted animal.”
“Which he is,” Matt said. “But why does a seemingly well-adjusted young man make the decision to rape and kill?”
“Hormone’s rule, Matt. It’s a chemical thing, combined with internal psychological factors. He was probably like a time bomb waiting to explode from puberty. A lack of sexual desire on Anna’s part over a lengthy period set him off.”
“Terrific. We’ve got a full-blown sex maniac on the loose, and knowing his identity doesn’t help us to find him.”
“I’d suggest that you put his wife on TV to plead with him to give himself up, but I don’t know if she could handle it.”
“It’s worth a try,” Matt said. “Let’s go back, and you can put it to her. If she agrees, then he may contact us, or her. I’ll be able to arrange a trace on her phone. Who knows, we may just get lucky.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was Saturday evening. Al had a shower and then walked back across the wing to his cell. There was thirty minutes of evening association left before lockup, but he didn’t want to socialise with the other cons on the wing. Over the last couple of days his anger had intensified, and was now a boiling fury. He knew Ricky of old, and was convinced that he was screwing Claudine. He had allowed himself to believe what the cop had told him. Claudine was what was conjured up, wrongly, as the stereotypical Essex girl, and with Al behind bars she would feel safe to fuck Ricky with impunity. Maybe she thought that the gangster would want more from the relationship than a regular extramarital lay. The stupid bitch was wrong. Ricky was a user, a taker, and would intend to give her the cold shoulder before Al walked free.
Sitting on the single bed, Al was lost in thoughts of what he would do when he got out. Claudine was going to admit what she’d done, and then suffer the consequences. He didn’t like to be treated like a fucking idiot. He had visions of Ricky and Claudine in bed, naked, maybe lying back after a sweaty, noisy bout of coupling, to smoke cigarettes and laugh at the thought of him in a cell, having to use his hand if he needed relief.
“Hey man, you okay?” Jimmy Lynch said, leaning against the door frame with a snooker cue in his hand. “You gonna play me a frame for a phone card?”
“Not tonight, Jimmy,” Al said.
“Okay,” Jimmy said, half turning as if to leave, and then twisting back to step forward and bring the fat end of the cue down against Al’s forehead.
Al fell back across the bed. He was dazed, but managed to raise his arm to block the second blow aimed at his face. He sat up and lashed out with his foot, to kick Jimmy hard in the groin.
Maybe if it had just been Jimmy that had been sent to hurt him, he would have got the upper hand, but Willie Draper appeared as Jimmy doubled up, and the blow across the temple from the cue he swung knocked Al out.
He was unconscious for maybe a minute or two, but when he opened his eyes he was flat out on the bed with a cue being held tightly across his throat. Draper was standing at the almost closed door, watching out for screws.
“You’re wonderin’ why?” Jimmy said. “And I’ve been told to tell you. Mr. Lister wanted you warned off. For old times’ sake he said for us not to do any permanent damage. But if you talk to the filth again, we’ll take your eyes out, Al. You wanna be pissed off and blind, that’s fine by us. Do we have an understandin’?”
Al nearly choked against the pressure of the smooth shaft against his Adams apple as he nodded.
Willie stepped over to the bed, grasped Al’s right wrist, lifted his arm and pressed his hand against the wall. He had propped his cue up next to the door, taken a plastic toothbrush with a sharpened end from his pocket, and used it to stab Al in the back of his hand three times, ensuring with each thrust that the point went all the way through to make contact with the brickwork behind it.
Al grunted in agony, but didn’t move as Jimmy and Willie left the cell.
“Nothin’ personal, Al,” Willie said as he closed the door.
Al didn’t see it that way. Pain had a way of concentrating the mind. Lynch and Draper obviously didn’t know him well enough. He’d never let anyone get away with anything in his life. They would both suffer for carrying out Lister’s dirty work. And when he got out, his old friend would wish that he had told Draper to blind him.
Timing was everything. Seconds after Ricky had snorted like a pig as he came into Claudine from behind – leaning forward to grasp and mash her ample tits together to make her cry out – his phone rang. He drew back, to climb off the bed on shaky legs and take three steps to where his jacket was folded neatly with the rest of his clothes on the lid of a pink, padded ottoman. He took his phone from a pocket and accepted the call, but said nothing.
“It’s done,” Jimmy Draper said, having just used the phone on the landing seconds before it was switched off in the main office that was known as the Centre. Association was about to come to an end, and many of the cons where making their way back to their cells on the three-landing-high wing.
Ricky closed his phone and smiled. Al would be as mad as a rabid dog, but he wasn’t stupid, so would keep his mouth shut.
“You wanna drink, baby?” Claudine said as she got off the bed and went to Ricky, to take his slick and now flaccid penis in her hand and squeeze it gently.
“Let’s shower first,” Ricky said. “I’m sweating like a horse. I need to freshen up before I go home.”
“Why not stay?” Claudine said. “The girls are spendin’ the weekend at my mum’s in Dagenham.”
“Tempting,” Ricky said as he walked out of the bedroom and headed to the bathroom. “But you know the situation, doll. I’m a family man with responsibilities.”
“So why are you here fuckin’ me?” Claudine said as she followed him along the landing. “Doesn’t your wife put out for you these days?”
Ricky turned and hit her hard across the face with the back of his hand, hard enough to split her lip, but with measured force, so that he didn’t break her teeth or cheekbone.
Claudine stutter-stepped backwards, lost her balance and fell down on her bottom.
“You need to watch that mouth, doll,” Ricky said. “You’re like a lot of people in my life; bought and paid for. You’ve got a great body, and you know how to use it, but you’re just a dumb bitch, and everything you’ve got is because I pay Al well. I’m looking after you and your kids while he’s doing time, but I can turn the money tap off like that,” and he produced a loud click with his thumb and middle finger. “You’d have to move back in with your mother, and the kids would be in a shitty state school. Is that what you want?”
Claudine got the message. She had thought that Ricky was putty in her hands, and that at sixty he would be more susceptible to her charms; be flattered that she was there for him when he needed a warm, firm and willing bed mate. Now, looking up into his ice-blue eyes, she realised that she was just a lay to him.
“C’mon,” Ricky said, holding the hand he had hit her with out for her to grasp. “Let’s have that shower, and then a nightcap. Just remember that no one pulls my strings, doll. Keep your head straight and you and Al will always have enough cash to live comfortably. I have a problem with folk that have a higher expectation than they should reasonably hope to achieve. Don’t spoil a good thing by thinking that what we do will lead to more than it already is.”
Claudine was sharper than he gave her credit for. She fully appreciated that Ricky was a golden goose, and didn’t intend to queer what was a very lucrative arrangement. He not only paid the bills, but always left her a hundred quid on the dressing table before he left. That made her a whore, she supposed, but could live with it. Several of the girlfriends she had known from when they had been at school together had taken up that profession. Selling your body didn’t necessarily make you a bad person. And she wasn’t on the game, just screwed around with Ricky, and the money he gave her wasn’t asked for but given freel
y, because the prick liked to show that he had plenty of it.
Ricky left by the kitchen door forty-five minutes later and strolled up to the end of the walkway that ran along the rear of the houses. Sammy Clements was parked at the kerb on the road at the end of it. He had dozed for most of the time that his boss had been with Eltringham’s wife, and had the car radio on low.
The rap on the window startled him. Ricky climbed in the back of the 4x4 and Sammy started it up.
“Turn that crap music off and take me home, Sammy,” Ricky said. “I’m fucked, literally.”
It was just after dawn on Monday morning when Chris Nicholls drove through the entrance gate of the King George Reservoir from the A110 on Lea Valley Road in Chingford. Access was by permit only, issued by Thames Water, who also provided a key for those entitled to be on the property.
After stopping to get out of his old Astra and relock the gate behind him, Chris drove along the single lane gravel road to the car park, pausing once to watch a grey heron, which stood motionless at the edge of a reed bed; head tilted to the side, its patience enviable as it waited for an unwary fish to pass within striking range.
This was paradise to Chris. He was a birdwatcher and photographer, and planned on spending most of the day on the east side of the reservoir. He was well prepared, wearing camo gear, and was armed with powerful binoculars, Nikon camera with a 300mm lens and a new tripod. He had sandwiches and a flask of coffee in his backpack and was well practised in keeping still for lengthy periods when there was wildlife about.
Hunkered down in the reeds an hour later watching wading birds, Chris’s attention was distracted by something that was floating almost submerged in the water just a few feet from him. At first he thought that it was a carp, which at one time had been plentiful in this stretch of water, but realised that it was a plastic bag. He hated litter, and especially plastic, that was a danger to the fauna. Employing the tall camera tripod, he stretched forward, snagged the bag with one of the legs and manoeuvred it to within reach and picked it up. It was a translucent ziplock bag with some kind of book inside. Air trapped in the bag had kept it afloat. Opening it, he found that the book was a car manual, with a separate sleeve holding a record of servicing from a garage in Ilford.
Chris wondered why such a strange item would be in the reservoir. This was something that would usually be kept in a glove box. And it was unlikely that someone would purposely throw it in the water. Nissan! Ilford! The make of the car and the area in which it had been serviced caused a bell to ring very loudly in his mind. There had been an item on the news of a killer on the loose, who was from Ilford and drove a Nissan. Could there be a connection? Something else appeared, bobbing in the water. It was one of those cardboard, pine-scented car fresheners shaped like a Christmas tree. Two items that belonged in a car was too much of a coincidence.
Tam took the call from a sergeant at Chingford police station, to be given details of the find. He arranged for the man that had fished the bag and deodoriser out of the water to be kept there until he arrived to question him.
Tam and Errol drove out to Chingford, to park in the yard at the rear of the station. After showing their warrant cards, the sergeant produced the plastic bag and the cardboard tree, which had been dried off and were now in a large manila envelope. They donned latex gloves that a constable found in a file cabinet, and examined the contents. Tam used his phone to take photos of the items and then gave Phil a call and told him what they had, and sent him the pics as jpegs.
“That’s a hell of a break,” Phil said as he studied the images. “Make, model and registration of Gibson’s car. I’ll confirm it with the DVLA, and give the garage in Ilford a bell.”
“With any luck his prints will be on the manual and the cardboard freshener,” Tam said. “All we have to do is work out why they ended up in the reservoir.”
The sergeant led them to an interview room, where a chunky young man dressed in olive drab clothing was reading an RSPB bird book while he waited.
Tam introduced Errol and himself, and Chris asked if what he’d found was helpful.
“Yes,” Errol said. “We’d appreciate you taking us to where you found the items.”
Standing on the embankment next to the now mirror flat surface of the reservoir, which reflected the clouds above it, Chris pointed to the spot where he had fished the bag and freshener from the water.
“It was pretty breezy a few hours ago,” Chris said. “The stuff I found was most likely blown down from further up.”
As they walked back to the pool car, Tam got a call-back from Phil in the squad room, who confirmed that the car was registered to Gibson.
“We’re coming in,” Tam said. “Is the boss there?”
“Yeah, Tam. He’s talking this over with Bartlett.”
Matt was feeling upbeat about the lead. He decided that Beth had been correct in believing that Gibson would not risk travelling too far.
“Where do you reckon the bastard will be heading?” Tom said as he poured them both coffee from the old pot that was now retro and would probably make more than it had cost, should he ever put it on eBay.
“I discussed it with Beth,” Matt said. “From what she said, I believe that he dumped the car in the reservoir, made off into Epping Forest on foot, and is holing up there.”
“He could have driven the car in,” Tom said. “Maybe he couldn’t face being caught and is down there with it.”
“That would be a result,” Matt said, imagining the killer buckled up in the driving seat, drowned, with his hands still gripping the steering wheel, his eyes open wide, unseeing, and his hair being wafted like fronds of weed in the current. “But I doubt it. If you can arrange for a chopper to check the reservoir out, we should find the vehicle. I’m advised that it’s quite shallow, so the car should be visible from the air.”
“I’ll get on it. Adams will have to okay the helicopter.”
“That’ll piss him off. You’d think it was his money that paid for it, not the taxpayers’.”
“Since oh-eight every penny spent is scrutinised, Matt.”
“I know. Values have gone to shit. We’re supposed to make the streets safer, and that’s all that I’m concerned with. I’m not some traffic cop being misused to fine people for petty misdemeanours, or to spend half my life doing paperwork or appearing in court.”
“It’s a big picture,” Tom said. “We do what we can with the resources we’ve got.”
“We don’t do enough,” Matt said. “We’re spread too thin and so serious crime flourishes. The courts are a logjam.”
“I thought that you didn’t do politics?”
“I don’t. But sometimes I need to offload. I feel like we’re swimming in a sewer, against an ever-rising tide of shit that will eventually block it and bring the whole stinking mess to a standstill.”
“Eloquent,” Tom said. “You have a way with words. I’m glad I didn’t have a doughnut with the coffee.”
Matt smiled. He felt a little better for ridding some of the frustration from his system.
As he drained the mug and set it down, his phone chirped. The call was from the stringer, Don Goodwin.
“Yeah, Don,” Matt said.
“You haven’t called,” Don said. “And you held out on me.”
“Over what?”
“The rich guys and their housekeepers being murdered. I have friends in low places, Matt. What can you tell me?”
“That we’re playing it close to our chests. We don’t want the killer warned off. When I can, I’ll give you something to run with.”
“Anything new on the rapist?”
“We’re following a lead. I’ll give you a call later. Okay?”
“Okay, Matt. I’ll be waiting. But if I don’t get something soon I’ll have to sell what I’ve got.”
“Don’t jeopardise this case, Don, or you’ll be like the runt in a litter; the last to get fed, and that’s if you’re lucky.”
“Point taken,�
�� Don said and rang off.
“What’s with you and that old hack?” Tom said.
“We have an understanding,” Matt said. “Believe it or not he writes the truth, which makes him almost a minority of one. He’s freelance now, and comfortably off, so he has no master to bow to, and could hang his pen up tomorrow. That also makes him an asset to us. Most of the mainstream journalists are still climbing ladders and letting ambition and bonuses get in the way of facts and decency.”
Matt went back to the squad room feeling tense, with the rapist uppermost on his mind. He could visualise John Gibson in some out of the way property somewhere in Epping Forest. The bastard was just a few miles northeast of the city, dug in and probably raping some woman who’d been ill-fated enough to have him knock at her door. Or a family could be going through hell, and it was a given that when Gibson decided to move on, they would be murdered.
Sitting at his desk, Matt closed his eyes and fisted his hands. He seemed to always be in races against time. At that moment he had two homicidal individuals on the loose. He knew who one of them was, but not where he was. And he had no idea of the second killer’s identity. He was in what he thought of as the grinder, waiting very impatiently for a break.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Billy wore a black leather jerkin, dark grey chinos, and a black clip-on tie that he had bought on the market especially for the occasion.
Suzy was wearing a navy-blue coat, and a matching floppy hat – that belonged to her mother – over her usual colourful street clothes.
The highly-polished hearse slid along the main drag to the arched frontage of the South West Middlesex Crematorium at no more than walking pace. Billy and Suzy were in a similarly black but much smaller vehicle, following along behind.
The service was scheduled to be held in the Jamieson Chapel, but there was a backlog, and so Billy led Suzy into a waiting room that had a coffee machine.