Chosen To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 4)

by Michael Kerr

  Waiting.

  The silver Mercedes coupé rounded the corner and slid almost silently up to the manned barrier, turned in under the porte-cochère and stopped. The private security guard nodded to the driver without bothering to leave the shelter of the small gate house. A second later, the steel bar swung up and the Merc appeared to upend, before vanishing down a ramp to be seemingly swallowed by the gloom of the underground car park.

  Another car drove by and reversed into a space.

  T smiled. Her minders were never far away. He knew each one by sight, and also the different vehicles they employed to shadow their ward. When the time came, they would not be a problem.

  He was nearly ready, having stalked her for over a month. He thought that he now knew more about Bethany Marchant than almost anyone else. She had favourite people she saw, and special places she went; a real creature of habit.

  When his eyes had adjusted to the low light, he made a note in the log he kept. Wrote: Subject arrived 00.05 hours – Ballantyne House.

  Enough. He’d researched the job thoroughly. It was time to get it on; to assemble a team and take her.

  He drove back across the river to his upmarket flat. Poured three fingers of single malt and went over to the floor-to-ceiling window. Zigzag lines and broken shapes of diffused light reflected off the swathe of darkness below that was the Thames, and to his right he could see Tower Bridge. What a city! He loved London with its vibrant nightlife, the swish clubs, theatres and restaurants, where he could rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Problem being, his once lucrative personal protection business had gone belly-up, and funds were now low. He was in need of a considerable injection of cash if he was to maintain the standard of living he had become accustomed to. Appearances had to be kept up. And he had substantial overheads, and debt that was quickly spiralling out of control.

  Refreshing his drink, T sat in front of the coffee table and studied lists of names, places, dates and times. Allowed himself a smile. Bethany Marchant was a perfect target. She would be his salvation; the way to turn his life around.

  Resorting to committing a serious crime was the only way to go. Something drastic had to be done, and necessity being the mother of invention, he had had to look long and hard at what might be the best way for him to pull off a job that would set him up for the rest of his life. He was not a professional criminal, and had always maintained that you should stick to what you’re good at. But you also had to be able to adapt...evolve. He could do that.

  He tried unsuccessfully to push back thoughts that could still propel him into a bile-black mood. It had been an unprovoked attack on the actor Jason Dean that put paid to Sentinel Personal Protection. Dean had been milking the press and the crowd at a premiere for a movie that he’d only had a supporting role in, and some creep had thrown sulphuric acid in his handsome face. He’d started screaming and running round like a headless chicken as his skin began to dissolve and smoke streamed up from the sizzling, popping flesh. There’s no such thing as total security, and that’s a fact. The police lifted the acid-thrower; some guy with a screw loose, who’d said his girlfriend loved Jason, and that it was fucking up their relationship.

  One black mark, and the company went kaput. None of the A list stars would touch him with a sterilised barge pole. The trust in his capability to protect their sweet-smelling arses evaporated overnight. Okay, he could still make a few grand here and there doing minor protection jobs, running a small agency that provided bouncers for a few gigs and night-clubs. But that wasn’t nearly enough. He had vision, ambition, and the balls to go for it. Wanted to be part of the real jet set, not a pretender on the fringes; a hanger-on. And this one-off caper would be his winning Lotto ticket to a rosy future.

  A book he’d read on the 1981 kidnap of the Great Train robber, Ronnie Biggs, had been the catalyst. A team had gone out from Britain to Brazil, lifted Biggs from a busy restaurant and bundled him into a van. They had somehow got him through departures at the airport trussed up in a bag, and eventually delivered him to the Barbadian authorities. That was one hell of a stunt. That Biggs’s luck held up and he was subsequently released, was incidental. The important thing being, that Biggs was a proven escape artist, was on his guard following a failed prior attempt to return him to Britain, but was, in the final analysis, taken with consummate ease.

  Snatching the woman should be a walk in the park.

  Beth phoned Marty; one of the guys her dad paid to dog her every move. She liked him, though. He had good skin, always smelled of fresh lime, and had a wicked smile. He was big, like a friendly grizzly bear, but competent, and had his shit together.

  “Yes, Ms. Marchant,” Marty said after glancing at the caller ID on his Nokia. “You okay up there?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, Marty. Problem is, I’ve got the heebie-jeebies. I haven’t said anything before, but I can’t shake the notion that someone is stalking me.”

  Marty doubted that. Tailing Bethany Marchant involved being constantly on the lookout for unsolicited attention. But he knew that she was level-headed and not prone to being unduly worried about her well-being. In fact she thought that having permanent bodyguards was a total waste of time, and that her father had more money than sense.

  “What exactly is it that has got you on edge, Ms. Marchant?” Marty said. “Have you noticed some creep showing too much interest in you?”

  “No, Marty. I’m probably being silly. But you know when you have the feeling that you’re being watched, and when you look up, someone is staring at you?”

  Marty did. He wasn’t just hired muscle. He’d been a Redcap, and policing squaddies kept you on your toes. You had to have eyes in the back of your head.

  “Yes,” he said. “How long have you been concerned?”

  “I’m not sure. Ten days or so. And I have absolutely no valid reason to think that someone other than you guys is following me around. In fact I’m sorry I bothered you. You must think I’m a flake.”

  “I’m glad you told me,” Marty said. “And I don’t think that you’re a flake. I put a lot of faith in sixth sense. Much of the time it turns out to be kosher.”

  “You Jewish, Marty?”

  “Yeah, on my mother’s side. But I’m not orthodox, which really rattles her cage,” Marty said. “Try to relax. One of us is always close by. If anyone is on your case we’ll dig him out of the woodwork.”

  “Thanks, Marty,” Beth said. “I feel better already. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Ms. Marchant.”

  Marty Peck got out of the car and walked up and down a two hundred yard stretch of the Embankment. He checked parked cars and looked into every shadowy space and tried to put himself in the place of someone that might be stalking Bethany. The chance of some guy following her around was remote. He would have seen him. But he would tell the other two to be extra vigilant. The last thing he needed in life was for their boss’s daughter to come to any harm.

  Beth felt much better. Just off-loading on Marty had lessened the niggling worry. She had to get a grip, but as usual the night brought with it a real fear; that of ending up becoming like her mother.

  Linda Marchant had been what was loosely dubbed a socialite; a woman prominent in fashionable society. She had been graced with a striking resemblance to Jackie O, as the former – now deceased – First Lady had looked in the latter half of the sixties and early seventies. But Linda’s psychological makeup was flawed. She became schizophrenic in her forties, and attempted to commit suicide on several occasions. Even with drug and counselling therapy her condition deteriorated, and Gregory finally divorced her, unable to contend with his wife’s disconnected thoughts, delusional madness and unpredictable, bizarre behaviour. Linda was now institutionalised, a shadow of her former self, shuffling around a psychiatric ward, listening to piped muzak and no longer concerned with reality; a ship lost at sea, having slipped its moorings.

  Beth blamed her own drinking, drug abuse and general bad behaviour on the fact that
she was a prisoner of her genes. Schizophrenia was known to be in part hereditary. Could her present paranoia be the onset of symptoms? Was she doomed to end up a carbon copy of her mother? No one was fucking following her. It was all in her mind, and that patronising shit, Marty, was humouring her. Or maybe his concern had been genuine. She was no longer sure of anything.

  With the blinds closed to shield her from the darkness of night, Beth stripped down to her underwear, put an old Ronan Keating CD on; Destination, and numbed her frazzled nerves with two lines of coke and a large vodka and tonic. Mmmm. That hit the spot. Jesus, her mind was popping like corn in a microwave. She would cut back on the nose candy and hooch...tomorrow. And like they say, tomorrow never comes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Harper stood in front of the old-style whiteboards and ceremoniously took down the last photograph, which depicted a smiling, gap-toothed teenage girl, and then used a damp cloth to slowly erase the copious notes made with marker pens. It was what he always did when a case was wrapped. It was times like this that being the DCI of a rather elite squad made him glad to be who he was, doing what he did.

  “You look like the cat that got the cream, guv,” DI Joely ‘Jo’ Miller said, coming up to stand at his side, holding a steaming mug of black coffee in each hand.

  “Damn right, Jo,” Harper said, tossing the cloth and taking the proffered mug from her. “We made a difference. Saved the kid’s life. If that doesn’t push all the right buttons, I don’t know what will.”

  Jo grinned. Harper was usually a little taciturn when they were working a case. All business. He held a lot in, and she knew he suffered. The man seemed to have the ability to put himself in the mind of both the perpetrator and the victim. Maybe that was a curse, not a gift. Ongoing cases ate at him, as he gave everything of himself to resolve them without loss of life.

  Shelley Robson had been lifted in broad daylight as she walked home from school along a disused railway line. She was fourteen, but looked younger, at best twelve.

  Had Shelley not stayed back for twenty minutes to discuss a project with the science teacher, then she would have been with a group of other girls, and not been abducted.

  It was Shelley’s mother who had found her satchel at the side of the overgrown track and alerted the local police, who were working the case within minutes of Shelley being reported missing, searching, and checking all known pervs that were on the sex offenders’ list and lived in the area. It had been twelve hours later that the squad had got the call. They specialised in abduction, kidnap and missing persons, and filled-in by investigating cold cases within that criterion. They were the Kidnap Investigation Squad, known by other departments as the Searchers, or Harper’s Hellions.

  Three days passed. Uniforms and dogs were still searching, hoping to find the youngster alive, but almost certain that this would be a body recovering operation.

  Harper was convinced that Shelley had been lifted by someone acquainted with the area. A stranger would have had no idea that the almost overgrown railway track existed. The abductor could have stumbled on it by accident, but that was highly unlikely.

  They had looked at the list of paedophiles again, and Harper had requested the full employment record of each man, to study the files and zero in on Alec Sheen.

  Sheen was twenty-eight. Ten years ago he had been a council worker. DC Ray Slater made inquiries and discovered that Sheen had been part of a crew that collected up the railway sleepers from the decommissioned track. That had been all they’d needed.

  There was no trace of Shelley having ever been inside the man’s flat, but undaunted, Harper considered any other site he may have taken her to. Sheen’s now deceased father had had a patch on an allotment, and Alec had taken it over.

  Harper had been the first through the door of the small hut. It was dark inside, with pieces of blanket hung as makeshift curtains at the window. The amalgamated odours of human waste, sweat and semen assailed his nose. This was no ordinary garden shed. On the floor was a single mattress, and on it, gagged and with her hands and feet bound with duct tape, lay Shelley Robson. And she was alive.

  With a DNA profile and Shelley’s identification, it was fair to assume that Sheen was going to languish in a prison cell for many years to come. And Shelley was going to be okay. She was a gutsy girl, bearing up well, considering that she had been raped repeatedly and made to perform numerous depraved sexual acts. Surviving the ordeal was better than being dead, and she knew it. Harper thought she had what it took to get past it, with a loving family to support her and the professional help she would receive from a rape victim counsellor.

  “Now what, guv?” Jo said.

  “I’ve decided to concentrate our efforts on the Simpson case.”

  Jo nodded. It was a cold case. Maybe a murder. That’s what every member of the team thought, and were determined to prove.

  Julie Simpson had last been seen on a sunny August day in two thousand and five. She had left a hairdressing salon at Wood Green, supposedly to then drive home, and had not been seen or heard from again.

  Several lines of inquiry were vigorously pursued at the time. It was obvious that Julie had dropped out of circulation on purpose, been abducted, or was dead by her own hand or by that of a person or persons unknown. And because it was not thought that she would walk away from her family and friends, murder was the most likely reason for her continued absence. Her husband, Harold, was the prime suspect. It was discovered that he was having an affair with a woman at his place of work, and he didn’t come across as being distraught enough over his wife’s disappearance. Trouble was, that without a shred of evidence, he could not be charged. Julie’s car had been found parked on a cliff top near Dover; the implication being that she had jumped to her death, and that her body had been swept out to sea.

  Now, over eight years later, Harper had gone through a shortlist of unsolved serious crimes and picked out the Simpson case to review and investigate – given time – between live cases that landed on his desk.

  Jo went over to where DC Rupert Stokes was at his machine, his blunt fingers a blur on the keys as he researched files of other cases that he thought Harper might want to give the yea or nay to.

  “He that must be obeyed has decided to go with the Simpson case, Rupe,” Jo said. “So get everything there is on it and make up the boards.”

  “Yo, boss,” Rupert said. “I’m on it.”

  Jo and the team were used to how Harper operated. It didn’t matter if a case was so cold that it was deep frozen, he approached it as if it was current and had happened that very day. The years separating them from the crime were not a consideration. In fact, Harper viewed the passage of time as an advantage. Forensic Science and other tools used in detection had become more refined. Many crimes committed before the advent of DNA profiling in the eighties could now be reappraised. Time could stand still, in that traces of deoxyribonucleic acid trapped in traces of blood, saliva, semen and strands of hair could and did make it possible to identify and convict an offender who’d believed for many years that he was home free.

  “Why the Simpson case?” DC Sean Mulloy asked Jo.

  “Because our illustrious leader looked at a photograph of the missing woman and thought she looked a lot like Janet Leigh, whom I suspect he had a crush on.”

  Sean frowned. “Who?”

  “The actress. She died a few years back. She was the woman that got knifed to death in the shower in that old Hitchcock classic, Psycho.”

  “Never seen it. You telling me that’s the only reason the guv’nor pulled this one out of the hat?”

  “No, Sean. Harold Simpson came across as a cold fish at the time, and was bonking an employee at the printing works he owns.”

  “Sounds good for it.”

  “So let’s get to work. If he did do it, then he’s toast.”

  Harper sipped his coffee as he looked about the office of the basement suite that was the squad’s domain and usually referred to as the Dungeon.
He liked the compact, windowless, permanently fluorescent-lit environs. There were no distractions. It was self-contained, comprising a large open room with desks, computers, and the ‘Wall’, that had the whiteboards screwed to it and was the focal point of their endeavours. In the corner was an ever-bubbling coffeemaker. Another much smaller room was used as a chill-out area, where detectives could take time out, even watch a little Sky sport or whatever on a wide screen TV, and regroup. Harper’s take on concentration was that it could only be maintained at the highest level for relatively short periods, and that a single, salient point could be overlooked if an investigator lost focus for even a few seconds. As a rule, short, intensive spurts promoted the sparks that led to a result. Harper was in many ways unorthodox. But if being unconventional in his methods got the job done, then the brass stayed off his back and let him go his own way.

  Harper was a throwback to the seventies that had spawned him. He wore his dark hair a little long, usually needed a shave, and was most comfortable in old blue jeans and a bomber jacket. His eyes were the soft blue of distant hills, and his craggy face was neither handsome nor ugly, but memorable. At thirty-seven he was still unattached and had no reason to suppose that he would ever be one half of a couple: had never met a woman that he needed to know for more than a fleeting relationship. And affairs of the heart, he believed, were distractions.

  Home to Harper was the renovated gate lodge of a former stately home, Walden House, which now lay in ruin not far from the golf course at Shenley, northwest of the city. All in all, Harper was content. His ragtag squad of hand-picked officers were his family, and they had a bond that many blood relatives would envy. Harper insisted on honesty, integrity and total commitment. Nothing less would do. Not all the officers that came to the Searchers’ basement HQ made the grade, and were returned to Vice, the Sweeney, CID, Drugs, or whichever squad they had come from. Harper would suffer no less than the best.