Blood Axe

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s all that noise?’

  ‘Oh that, I’m out with my sister. What did you want?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you call for a reason? I had a missed call.’

  ‘No reason, just wanted to see how you’re doing.’

  ‘Fine. How’s your investigation going?’

  ‘Slowly.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got a really bad signal here. Shall we talk later?’

  ‘OK.’

  He didn’t mind. He was tired. ‘Let’s talk tomorrow. I just wanted to know you’re all right, that’s all. I miss you.’

  ‘Miss you too,’ she said, and she rang off.

  Ian went to bed. Even though he was tired, he didn’t sleep well. He missed his wife.

  47

  After a restless night, Ian woke up late feeling out of sorts. It was unusual for him to oversleep when he was on a case. He had a vague memory that he had been dreaming about chasing a group of women. His wife had been there, fleeing from him along with the other women. Unsettled, he reached for his phone.

  ‘Hello?’ Bev sounded sleepy.

  ‘I miss you.’

  ‘Is that you, Ian?’

  ‘Who else would it be?’

  ‘At this time in the morning, you’re right.’

  He glanced at his watch. It was ten past eight. He was going to be late for work. ‘When are you coming home?’

  ‘Give me a chance, I’ve only just got here. I’m staying a few days, at least. How’s your case going?’

  He couldn’t say they had made any real progress.

  ‘Well, let me know how you get on.’ She paused. ‘I miss you too.’

  ‘Let me know when you’re coming back and I’ll meet you at the station.’

  Her thanks sounded formal. He had failed to honour such undertakings before, more than once.

  He drove to work and had a full fry-up: eggs, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread, the works. After that, he felt ready for the day, and set off to speak to Beryl’s son. The streets of York were always congested but, once he was out of the city, he was able to put his foot down. He had eaten a good breakfast, the sun was shining, the road was fast, and his beautiful wife would be home soon. Life could be worse. Pulling up outside a small house on a residential estate in Leeds, he hurried up the path and rang the bell. A short fat woman came to the door. Once she knew who Ian was, she gestured to him to follow her along a narrow hallway.

  ‘It’s the police again, Luke,’ she called out.

  Somewhere in the house a baby began to cry. The fat woman waddled past Ian and clambered up the stairs as a tall thin man appeared in the hall.

  ‘Have you caught him?’ he asked.

  Huge boney hands hung limply at his sides, his shoulders were slightly rounded, and he gazed at his visitor with a wretched expression.

  ‘Have you caught my mother’s murderer?’ he repeated in a quiet voice. He had a slight lisp.

  ‘We’re following several lines of enquiry.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means,’ Beryl’s son replied with an unexpected flash of anger. ‘Find out who killed her and lock the bastard up. Prison’s too good for him.’

  His temper appeared to subside almost as soon as it erupted, as though he lacked energy to sustain his anger.

  ‘Mr Morrison, I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. It might help us with our enquiry. We’re keen to discover who committed this crime as quickly as we can. Not only are we concerned to see your mother’s killer brought to justice, but we want to make sure he can no longer pose a threat to anyone else.’

  ‘Is he likely to kill again?’

  Ian hesitated. ‘There’s nothing to suggest he might, but you can never be sure.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Luke muttered. ‘It’s the same one, isn’t it, the killer they’re calling the axe murderer. It was him, wasn’t it? He killed my mother.’

  Ian hesitated again, but there was nothing to be gained from concealing the truth.

  ‘We think so,’ he admitted. ‘It’s looking likely. And he has to be caught before he can attack anyone else.’

  Luke glared at Ian for a moment before ushering him into a small living room.

  ‘If you’d caught him before this, my mother would still be alive,’ Luke said when they were both seated.

  Ian didn’t answer straight away. There was nothing he could say to lessen the other man’s grief. Luke struck him as a bit dim, so Ian spoke slowly.

  ‘We’re doing our best to catch him. I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  According to her son, Beryl had no enemies. She had lived an exemplary life, doing voluntary work to support local charities, attending church, and looking after her family.

  ‘Can you think of anyone at all who might have held a grudge against your mother, for any reason at all?’

  Luke gave a short bark of laughter. ‘You think someone might have held a grudge against my mother? Enough to want to kill her? If you’d ever met her, you’d know how stupid that sounds. My mother was as nice a woman as you could ever wish to meet.’

  According to Luke, his mother had lived a saintly life. He spoke of her in such reverential tones that Ian wondered if he was talking to the right person. Perhaps Beryl’s tubby daughter-in-law would have a different opinion of the woman Luke seemed to idolise.

  ‘You seem very certain she had no enemies.’

  ‘That’s because I knew my mother. In any case, you said yourself it’s the axe murderer who killed her, and he’s already killed other people, hasn’t he? Is he supposed to have held a personal grudge against them all, enough to make him want to kill them all?’

  With a shrug, Ian pressed on. ‘There is just one other question, Mr Morrison. Where were you at around nine o’clock on Thursday evening?’

  Luke had been at work until half past five and had then taken a bus home, arriving back at around six. At around nine he thought he had been in the local supermarket picking up some beer.

  ‘And where do you work?’

  After noting down the names of Luke’s employers, Ian asked to speak to his wife. She too had nothing but praise for her mother-in-law.

  ‘She was very generous to us,’ she added.

  ‘Generous?’

  ‘Yes, she bought so much for the baby, and don’t tell Luke I told you this, but she helped us with the house. We could never have managed it by ourselves. We had to sell the car. I’m not sure what’s going to happen now. His mother’s always looked after him, but his father’s a stingy old bastard.’

  Although it was logistically feasible for Luke or his wife to have borrowed or hired a car and driven out of Leeds to meet his mother on the road, they certainly had no motive for wanting her dead. On the contrary, they had a vested interest in protecting her, as she gave them financial support. Ian thanked them both for their help and left, after expressing his condolences once again for their loss. There was nothing to be gained from staying there any longer.

  48

  Returning to the station, Ian set to work looking into Luke’s background. It didn’t take long to discover he had been charged with ABH three times as a teenager, as a result of which he had attended a juvenile detention centre. Some doubt remained over whether he had mended his ways because a few years later he had been acquitted of assaulting his first wife. She had accused him of battering her, but had later dropped the charges. Two years later they divorced. Bearing this history in mind, Ian re-examined his initial impression of Beryl’s son.

  ‘He did strike me as a bit of an oddball, to be honest,’ he admitted to Ted and Naomi, ‘but he seemed pretty harmless.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound harmless to me,’ Naomi interrupted, shaking her head until her blonde cur
ls bounced.

  Ian took no notice. She knew perfectly well he hadn’t intended to suggest that violence against women was harmless.

  ‘I think he’s a bit slow,’ he continued, ‘and his wife thinks he relies too much on his mother.’

  ‘He sounds like a pathetic creep,’ Naomi snapped.

  Ian wondered if he had been right to ignore her first comment, given the content of their discussion. Her face was slightly red beneath her make-up.

  ‘Just because all men who beat up their girlfriends are morons, it doesn’t follow that all morons are violent,’ he said, hoping he wasn’t being clumsy in his attempt to mollify her.

  Naomi grunted acceptance of his statement and they moved on. The last thing Ian wanted was to fall out with one of his team. Apart from the unpleasantness, there wasn’t time to be distracted from the investigation.

  ‘Admittedly it’s highly unlikely that he would have killed his mother because, according to Luke’s wife, Beryl was helping support Luke and his family. But he clearly has a temper,’ Ian went on.

  ‘If he has an alibi for the time of any of the other murders, presumably we can discount him?’ Ted asked, his dark brows lowered.

  ‘Well, not necessarily. There’s always the chance this could have been a copycat murder,’ Ian said. ‘Luke’s not the sharpest tool in the box. He knows about the axe murderer. Everyone knows about the axe murderer. You can’t turn on the television or walk past a paper shop, without seeing it. Luke’s mother oversteps the mark, angers him in some way, and he decides to kill her, making it look as though it’s another victim for the axe man. It’s not very likely, but we can’t dismiss the theory out of hand.’

  Although Ian hated himself for raising the possibility, it couldn’t be overlooked.

  ‘But first, let’s see what we can dig up about him, before we start on that line of thinking. And if you can find him an alibi for the time of his mother’s death, so much the better.’

  ‘Or worse,’ Naomi replied.

  Ian nodded. It wouldn’t exactly be a positive result if they eliminated Luke from the enquiry, but somehow he didn’t believe Luke was guilty. It took a certain type of person to kill their own mother. While they couldn’t afford to waste time investigating the wrong suspect, they couldn’t simply rely on Ian’s impression of Luke. They needed hard evidence of Luke’s whereabouts on the night Beryl was killed. Without that, a question mark remained against his name, regardless of his financial reliance on his mother. Without Luke as a suspect, there was no one in the frame for Beryl’s murder, only a shadowy axe-wielding psychopath who had so far completely eluded them.

  Naomi went to speak to Meena, a detective constable working as a Visual Images Identification Detection Officer. Leaving Naomi in charge of a team reviewing CCTV cameras that could track Luke’s journey home from work on Thursday, Ian retired to his own office to write up his decision log. In some ways a waste of time, writing the log did sometimes spark off an idea for a new line of enquiry. Even when it did nothing to assist the investigation, it was essential for his own protection that he keep the log up to date. At any point an investigation could go pear shaped, and he needed to be able to defend his decisions.

  With a team checking Luke’s movements to and from his house after he left work on Thursday evening, as far as was possible, Ian finished his log. Next he turned his attention to establishing that Luke stood to gain nothing from her death. So far they only had his wife’s word for that. It took him a while to track down Beryl’s will. Then he had to wait for a sergeant in London to check the details with the firm of solicitors who had drawn it up. Ian was at his desk when the message came through late in the afternoon. Beryl had left everything to her husband. Far from gaining by her death, Luke was likely to face real financial difficulties without his mother’s support. He would probably lose his house.

  The final confirmation of Luke’s innocence came from Meena’s team who had been liaising with the VIIDO office in Leeds. Luke had been seen leaving work at five. He was spotted boarding a bus, which he left around twenty minutes later. He was a short walk from his home. At around half past eight he was sighted on a security camera in his local supermarket, where he bought some groceries and a few bottles of beer, confirming what he had told Ian. A quick check around the local taxi firms and hire car firms indicated that he could not realistically have driven out of Leeds in time to have met his mother and killed her by nine o’clock. There was no record of any telephone calls between the two of them on the day she died, so there wasn’t even any way he could have arranged to intercept her on her journey.

  Ian couldn’t decide whether he should feel relieved or concerned that Luke’s name had been cleared. A copycat murder was shocking enough, but it now seemed they were looking for a psychopath who had so far claimed three victims. In some ways that was even worse. Having escaped detection so far, there was no reason to suppose this killer would stop. All they needed was one lead, one small clue to the killer’s identity. So far Ian had never failed. It was rare, but not unknown, for a murderer to evade capture. Ian hoped this case wouldn’t turn out to be his first failure.

  It was Saturday. Ian finished reading all the notes on Luke and closed the file. Too tired to start on any new line of enquiry, he resigned himself to having a quiet night watching football on the television, and an early night. As he was thinking of leaving, Ted put his head round the door.

  ‘Some of us are going over to Leeds,’ he said. ‘You fancy coming? It won’t be late. Just a few drinks.’

  Ian understood why they were going to Leeds where it was less likely anyone would recognise them. A group of coppers out on the town sometimes attracted unwanted attention. He had been invited to go out drinking with the other lads before, but it hadn’t seemed fair to leave Bev at home on her own in the evening. This time Bev was away, and it was Saturday night.

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  They congregated in the car park. After a brief discussion two of them volunteered to drive. Soon after they set off there was a sudden heavy downpour that eased off into steady rain. Ian cursed. He hadn’t thought to bring a coat but it was too late to change his mind now. He half regretted having agreed to go. He hoped they wouldn’t be out late. On the other hand, it was a useful team-building exercise. He told himself he was doing the right thing, socialising out of work with his colleagues. He could do with a break from work. But as they sped along the road to Leeds, he couldn’t help thinking about Beryl and wondering what had made her stop.

  They reached Leeds and Ian finally began to relax as the atmosphere in the car grew lighthearted. They were a group of lads having a night out. The conversation drifted round to teasing Ted about his relationship with his girlfriend.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ one of the constables asked. ‘She’s a looker. You like her, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Oh God,’ someone else chipped in. ‘Don’t do it, mate. Put a ring on her finger and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Or at least until you get a divorce.’

  A few of them laughed. Ted glanced uncomfortably at Ian, but he was laughing along with the others.

  ‘You’re married, aren’t you?’ the constable challenged Ian.

  ‘So am I,’ a sergeant piped up.

  ‘Yes, and we know who wears the trousers in your house,’ another officer laughed and they all joined in.

  ‘Come on, then, Ian, what’s your advice?’ the constable said.

  Put on the spot like that, Ian couldn’t think what to say without sounding either slushy, or disloyal to his wife.

  ‘Shut up, Jones, you’re pissed and we’re not even there yet,’ Ted said.

  ‘Come on,’ the constable insisted. ‘What made you do it? Why did you tie the knot?’

  Ian shrugged. ‘I asked her and she said yes.’

  They all laughed and the conversati
on moved on. Ian was relieved. They weren’t too drunk to understand that he didn’t really want to talk about his marriage on a rare night out. He sighed, envying them their louche camaraderie. He missed his colleagues in Kent, men he had worked with before his marriage, when he had been free to go out regularly with his mates while Bev spent the evening with her sister or her parents, or sometimes an old school friend. Moving to York had been a mistake. He wasn’t having as much fun as he had expected on his rare night out. More than anything he wished he was at home with his wife, only she wasn’t there.

  49

  Although it was nearly dark he hesitated to go down to the river. The weather was mild. People might be outside in the evening, jogging or cycling along the river path. It would be better to wait for wet weather before venturing out to clean the blood from his axe. In the meantime, he tried to content himself with staying in and admiring his booty. Taking a leather pouch from the tin he kept beneath the floor, he tipped the contents out on to his bed. Patiently he separated out the different items, picking at the chains with a pin to untangle them. With everything neatly separated, and displayed in rows, he sat gazing at the shiny metal. Handfuls of copper and silver coins, gold and silver chains and rings, many with sparkling jewels set in them. It was a start. With Biter’s help the hoard would increase. He reached out and touched one of the thick gold chains, the metal shiny and beautiful. It would be a shame to chop it into pieces. Sliding a forefinger under the chain, he scooped it off the bed and let it swing gently from his finger, glowing in the light from his lamp. He could have sat there looking at it all night, but with a sudden storm Thor’s thunder sent people running for shelter.

  Heavy rain meant it would be safe to go outside and clean Biter. He wanted to polish the blade until it shone as brightly as his golden chains. He gathered his treasures together and dropped them back into the leather pouch. Soon he would need a bigger bag. The best haul had come from the shop. He had been looking for another jewellers, but they were risky. People out alone at night were easier targets. Despite his fear that easy pickings might bring less honour than a dangerous challenge, he understood the need for caution. His enemies were everywhere. He had barely begun raiding yet had already achieved notoriety. His exploits had made the headlines on the front pages of the papers. Television showed the sites where he had carried out his attacks. He wasn’t surprised. It was inevitable that a great warrior’s fame would spread quickly. But the gods were with him. No one would penetrate the many disguises of a shape shifter. He was a warrior. A wolf. A mighty bear in battle. He could adopt any shape he chose. They would never find him.