A Passion To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 5)

by Michael Kerr

  “Two presenters of the show,” Matt said. “Surely you read about the deaths.”

  “I hardly ever read more than the financial section of The Times, Inspector. And watching television is not something I choose to waste my time on.”

  They left soon after. Matt had seen no trace of guilt in the man’s demeanour. Brent-Soames had checked his diary and given times, dates and places to cover the pertinent periods of the three murders.

  “What’s your take on him?” Matt asked Pete as they headed back from West London to the Yard.

  “I’m sure that he could have arranged for someone to commit the murders. He has a lot to lose. But if he did, he’s too smart to have personally hired a hitman. It would have been handled by a third party. I don’t see how we can tie him to it, do you?”

  “No,” Matt said. “Even if we get to identify and lift the guy in the red parka, he won’t admit what he did, or know who took out the contracts. All we’ll have is circumstantial evidence from CCTV tapes that he was present at all three scenes. I doubt that the CPS would even prosecute him.”

  “Could end up being an unsolved,” Pete said.

  “That’s not an option,” Matt said. “I don’t want to even consider that whoever had three people murdered will get away with it. We’ll keep digging until we find something to lead us in.”

  It was midnight when Matt got home. Beth was curled up on the settee watching a late movie on SKY; some rom-com with no one in it that she had ever heard of. But it was a distraction that she didn’t have to concentrate on as she sipped a glass of cabernet.

  When Matt came in Beth picked up the remote and switched the TV off. He’d sent her a text, as usual, as he headed out to Woodford Wells from the city.

  Beth stood up and they embraced and kissed before saying a word. Just standing and holding each other for a minute was the best way for both of them to alleviate the tension of a busy day.

  “You look tired,” Beth said. “Do you want a drink?”

  Matt nodded. “A glass of what you’re having will hit the spot.”

  “It’s a life saver,” Beth said.

  Matt knew exactly what she meant. He couldn’t help but bring to mind the time that a psycho killer, Gary Noon, had broken into Beth’s flat and forced her to phone him and ask him to call round. It was a trap, but Beth had warned him by using her full Christian name. She had said, ‘It’s Elizabeth, Matt,’ which was like a first warning bell to him, because he had never heard her use it before. The clincher that something was seriously awry was when she said that she would open a bottle of his favourite white wine. She had known that he only drank red. Her quick thinking had almost certainly saved both their lives that night. The same could not be said for Noon. He had fought with Matt, then escaped from the apartment block, to be shot dead by an ARU marksman, Clem Sherwood, who’d put two bullets in his chest as the killer had ignored an order to lay down on the ground with his hands behind his head, and instead had reached inside his jacket, as if to draw a firearm.

  “You’re thinking about Noon, aren’t you?” Beth said.

  He shrugged.

  Beth hugged him again, hard. “I still have nightmares,” she said. “I really thought that he was going to kill us both.”

  “We’ve survived a couple of close calls,” Matt said.

  “Three,” she said. “Gary Noon, Paul Sutton and Lucas Downey. They were all real-life monsters, and the most frightening thing is that a lot more like them are out there.”

  “They’re a very uncommon type of human being, Beth. You know that. It’s my work that brings me into contact with them.”

  “I know. I’d rather you were an ordinary copper investigating robberies and chasing after run-of-the-mill criminals, instead of butting heads with serial killers.”

  “What happened to my wine?” Matt said, not prepared to get into a discussion over his job. He had long since acknowledged that he needed to hunt down the worst kinds of men; those that chose to torture and kill for insane, unfathomable reasons.

  Beth poured a glass of wine for Matt and topped her own up. They sat in the nook in the kitchen, as usual.

  “I had a breakthrough with Abby this morning,” Beth said, easing back off the subject of Matt’s work with the SCU. “Thanks to your idea of taking a cuddly toy in as a buffer between us, or a go-between,”

  “That’s great news,” Matt said. “Is she talking now?”

  “Not yet. But I went into her room and said good morning to her, Eeyore and Tigger, and said that I thought Tigger was putting on a little weight, and that he must be eating too much of something fattening. I said that I knew he didn’t like honey, acorns or thistles, and thought that he must be having too much ice-cream and mashed potato, and his favourite malt loaf with lashings of butter. And Abby smiled. I took her for a walk later, and she held my hand.”

  “Sounds as if the brick wall she built is beginning to crumble,” Matt said.

  “I hope so. I checked on her mother’s mental health, and was told that she is responding to treatment. Maybe there’ll be a happy ending if they both get well and are able to be together again and start over.”

  “Shame how such a powerful thing as the human brain can be so adversely affected by events. We know that disease, accidents or old age takes every one of us eventually, it’s normal. But as individuals we can’t really accept it.”

  “As far as I know we only get to be here once, so we have no experience of anything until it happens to us personally.”

  “That rules out reincarnation, then,” Matt said. “We’re obviously all born brand new, not with refurbished minds in fresh bodies. And we don’t come with a warranty or any assurances of how long we’ll be around.”

  “No, it’s a single ticket to ride,” Beth said. “Let’s have one more drink and go to bed.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THERE were few viable suspects left to interview. All of David and Nancy Madsen’s friends and relations had been checked out and eliminated from the inquiry, as had the majority of the males that either of them had known from their places of work. The short list was now down to four middle-aged men that had been employed by the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works at the time Josie Madsen had been murdered by Neil Connolly. David Madsen had been a Planning and Resource Centre manager at Beckton back then, and if Matt’s theory that The Clown had started his vigilante killings by murdering Connolly when he was released from prison, then one of the four could feasibly be the perpetrator.

  It was Saturday, so Matt allowed himself the luxury of turning in for work an hour later than usual. He and Beth had finished off the bottle of Rioja Reserva, which had spent a couple of years maturing in a Spanish oak cask, but had lasted less than a couple of hours after Beth had opened it. It had been after two a.m. when they had gone to bed, and the wine had made them both a little frisky.

  Getting up at seven a.m. and leaving Beth asleep, Matt had showered, dressed, and then brewed coffee and put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster. By seven-fifty he was on the road and heading into town.

  Pete and Marci were in the squad room. And they had done some in-depth homework on the four remaining suspects. One, Colin Peel, had been convicted of assault a decade earlier, and had received a suspended sentence and a CSO – Community Service Order – to carry out one hundred hours unpaid work under supervision of the Probation Service. He had broken a man’s jaw in a brawl outside a pub, but had, as far as was known, not put a foot… or fist wrong since. He was married with two grownup children, and currently unemployed.

  The second on the list was Russell Leach, who was still working at the treatment works. He was also married, but had no children. Number three was Gabriel Harris, a widower who had retired several years ago, following his wife’s death, which Marci had confirmed had been from natural causes. Last was Steven Muir, the youngest of the four at fifty-two. He had not been in gainful employment for six years. He was a bachelor with no criminal record.

&nb
sp; Pete had used Google Maps to work out the logical order to call at their addresses.

  “C’mon, Pete, let’s go,” Matt said. “We’ll talk to the first one, then find a greasy spoon café and have a fry-up.”

  “What about me?” Marci asked.

  “You told me you were on a diet. You can hold the fort and keep digging. And I’m advised that they do great salads in the canteen, though I’ve never been hungry enough to eat one.”

  They were armed. All members of the SCU were authorised to carry firearms whilst on duty, due to the fact that they specialised in serial murder cases.

  Pete signed out a midsize Toyota from the pool and drove east to the first address, which was in Plaistow. When they reached it he parked two doors up from the bungalow. It was in an avenue of similar post-war dwellings that had probably been built in the fifties, when Britain was recovering from war and things could only get better: when industry was about to boom again, before successive governments seemed to sell out and throw away all that had been fought for and built in the aftermath.

  They walked along a pavement that had large, mature trees growing from its edge; roots cracking the asphalt and pushing it up and out from the thick trunks.

  They were both wearing stab proof vests under their jackets, which were designed to resist knife attacks to the chest, back and sides. They were lighter and constructed differently to bullet-proof vests, which offered protection against firearms but were not effective against sharp-tipped objects such as knives. The majority of stab vests were also needle and slash proof. The Clown cut throats, though, so they would have to be on guard against a sudden, lethal attack.

  Matt pressed the bell push and heard the old style ‘Avon Calling’ chimes from inside.

  A small, slim woman with short steel-grey hair and large, dark brown, sad eyes opened the door and said nothing. She just looked at Matt and Pete and waited for them to speak.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Barnes, and this is Detective Sergeant Deakin,” Matt said. “Is your husband in?”

  A tall man came out through a doorway and approached them. He had the same colour of hair as his wife, and eyes just a shade darker grey than Matt’s.

  “I’m Russ Leach,” he said, addressing Matt. “What’s the problem? Is this about my next door neighbour?”

  Matt just stared at him.

  “I admit I threatened to top her cats, but I had no intention of doing it.”

  Matt frowned.

  “You’re not here about that, are you?” Russ said.

  “No, Mr Leach,” Matt said. “We need to ask you questions about something else.”

  “You’d better come in, then,” Russ said and stood aside as his wife turned and walked back along the hallway.

  Russ led them into a large lounge that had at one time been two separate rooms but now had an archway. “Take the weight off,” he said inclining his head towards the settee and chairs. “I’ll get Ellen to put the kettle on. What do you drink, tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee, black,” Matt said, already feeling that the man was not the killer they sought.

  “Same please,” Pete said.

  The interview didn’t take long. Russ offloaded about Patricia Hobson next door, whom he said kept at least twenty cats, and how, with the exception of the woman, all seemed to pick his garden to shit in. Matt steered him back to the case and asked him about his relationship with David Madsen.

  “I haven’t seen Dave for a few years,” Russ said. “I remember that after Josie was murdered, he and Nancy stopped socialising. And I can understand that. How the hell do you get past your daughter being raped and strangled to death?”

  “How did you feel at the time?” Pete asked.

  “That’s a stupid question,” Russ said. “My heart went out to Dave and Nancy. I attended Josie’s funeral, and they were like empty shells. All the life seemed to have been sucked out of them. When someone that close to you is taken away, a big part of you dies with them.”

  “So you were angry?” Matt said.

  “Angry doesn’t begin to cover it. Everyone that knew the Madsen’s was angry, shocked and terribly sad for them. And I was very pleased to read that Connolly had been murdered, but if you’re here because you think that I did it, you’re wrong.”

  Matt asked the man his whereabouts on the night that Craig Danby and the old lady had been murdered in Danby’s bedsit. Russ had no idea, but his wife, who had taken a seat at the other end of the lounge to listen to the conversation, said that they had been at her sister’s fiftieth birthday do at a pub in Canning Town.

  Pete asked Ellen Leach for her sister’s name, address and phone number, and wrote it down in his notebook.

  “Do you have a dog?” Matt asked the couple as he stood up, ready to leave.

  Russ shook his head. “Maybe I’ll get one, though,” he said. “Something big, ugly and mean that I can set on Patricia’s cats when they come sneaking into our garden.”

  Three to go. Pete drove to Steven Muir’s terrace house which was just off the Romford Road in Aldersbrook.

  There were kids playing in the street, kicking a football around, bouncing it off cars and many of the boarded up houses that would never be inhabited again, officially, but were most likely a haven for the growing number of down and outs that needed roofs over their heads.

  “Looks like this area is going to be redeveloped,” Pete said as he parked next to the kerb and they both climbed out of the Toyota and walked up to the front door of number forty-three.

  “Yeah, there’ll probably be a new shopping park here in twelve months,” Matt said as he knocked at the door. “They’d do better modernising these houses; it would be a lot cheaper than throwing up new rabbit hutches for folk to live in.”

  The door opened no more than three inches, to the full extent that the security chain would stretch. Part of an unshaven face and one watery eye appeared in the gap.

  “Whatever you’re sellin’, I don’t want it, so piss off,” Steven Muir said.

  “Police,” Matt said. “We need a word with you, Mr Muir.”

  A lot happened in a single second. A dog barked from somewhere in the house, Matt got the pungent, skunky smell of marijuana, and Muir slammed the door shut.

  “Get round the back,” Matt said, and Pete took off down the street like Usain Bolt on uppers.

  Matt took a couple of steps back, then shot forward and shouldered the door open, snapping the chain and splintering the old wood of the frame. The door flew back and he reached inside his fleece and drew his gun as he entered. If Muir was The Clown, then he was not going to take the risk of having his throat cut by a knife-wielding psychopath.

  The dog appeared in midair out of the gloom in the narrow hallway. Its front paws hit Matt in the chest and he was knocked backwards, to land with it on top of him. As the jaws darted for his face, Matt grasped the dog by the throat with his left hand and clubbed it across the side of the head with his gun, to no effect.

  A lot of thoughts can go through your mind in an instant. Matt saw that the dog was not a black Labrador, but something far more dangerous; a pale-coloured, muscular beast with a blocky head which led him to believe it was a pitbull. He could feel its enormous strength rippling through it, and knew from the almost doltish look in its dark eyes that it felt absolutely no fear, did not react to pain, and that he was at risk of being severely bitten or even killed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PETE came to the mouth of a narrow alley running between two of the rows of terrace houses. He almost ran past it, but somehow slowed enough to make a sharp left turn and enter it, scuffing the shoulder of his leather jacket on brickwork and nearly losing his balance as he careered across the cobbled ground, using his hand to stop him from slamming into the wall at the other side of the alley.

  These were through terrace, not back to back. Had they been, then Muir would have been trapped. Instead, he left by the rear door to cross the small, walled yard, and had to pause to pull
back the bolts on the top and bottom of the six-foot high wooden gate. He turned right into a wide alleyway and ran as fast as he could, given that he was wearing slippers. One came off, but he kept running.

  Pete and Muir’s paths crossed, and the meeting was explosive. As Pete emerged from the narrower alley, Muir ran full pelt into him and they both grunted in pain and surprise. Pete went down hard on his back, winded, but Muir fared worse, being knocked sideways to smash into a wall and fall down clutching his head, which had impacted with solid Victorian bricks that were hardier than flesh and bone. Blood poured from a deep scalp wound and he dropped to his knees, dazed.

  Ignoring the pain, Pete got up, took two steps and kicked Muir in the stomach as if he was a rugby ball, and as the man folded and threw up on the cobbles, he unclipped his cuffs from his belt and secured his wrists behind his back with them.

  Matt somehow kept his composure. The dog was far stronger than him, and his grip on its throat was slipping as it raked at his chest and snapped its powerful jaws just an inch from his throat. He instinctively pulled his hand from its fur and held it out to the side to distract it, and the ploy worked. It bit him deeply in the forearm, and as it did he brought the gun up, pressed it to the dog’s head and pulled the trigger. The noise of the gunshot in such a confined space almost deafened him, but had the desired effect. The side of the animal’s skull was blown out to take a large portion of its brain through the fist-sized exit wound, to decorate the faded wallpaper in the hallway with a crimson, lumpy covering of blood and gore. The dog slumped sideways and went limp, though its teeth were still firmly embedded in Matt’s arm.

  Pete took deep breaths and waited for the pain in his stomach to subside, then hauled Muir to his feet and held the cuffs as he steered him back to the open gate at the back of his house.

  “You in here, boss?” Pete shouted as he closed the kitchen door behind him, locked it and pushed Muir down onto the floor, where he curled up on his side and was sick again.