A Passion To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 5)

by Michael Kerr

  “In the hall,” Matt said.

  Pete rushed to where Matt was still lying next to the corpse of the dog.

  “You okay, boss?” Pete asked.

  “Peachy,” Matt replied. “But I could use a little help to get this shit machine’s teeth out of my arm.”

  Pete knelt down, grasped the dog’s jaws with his hands and wrenched them apart.

  Matt grunted as the teeth were dislodged and came free. He got to his feet and said, “Thanks. Did you get Muir?”

  “Yeah, he’s in the kitchen,” Pete said, closing the front door to prevent people from looking in and seeing the dead dog.

  Back in the kitchen, Pete propped Muir up against the wall in a sitting position, and then frisked him to make sure he wasn’t carrying a weapon.

  “Check the house,” Matt said. “I’ll baby-sit this tosser while you make sure nobody else is home.”

  Pete was only gone a minute. “It’s clear,” he said to Matt, who’d taken his fleece off and was running his wounded arm under the cold water tap. The punctures from the bite were quite deep, but the dog had been dealt with before it could do more extensive damage. Turning the tap off, Matt used a lot of paper kitchen towel to blot the seeping holes, but they continued to bleed.

  “You need to get that bite seen to,” Pete said.

  “I will,” Matt said. “After we’ve had a word with this loser.”

  Pete grinned. “He’s already in deep shit. One of the bedrooms is full of harvested pot drying. It stinks, even though he’s got pipes and a fan system to vent it down into the sewer.

  “Looks like you met Crush,” Steve said, now recovering and looking up at the two cops.

  “Crush?” Matt said.

  “My dog, Crusher. Where is he?”

  “Dead,” Matt said. “He tried to eat me, so I blew his brains out.”

  Anger can drive people to do silly things. Steve had loved his dog above anyone or anything else in life. He came up off the floor fast and ran at Matt, who just hit him once in the chest with the heel of his right hand and put him back down.

  “You’re obviously a lot dumber than you look,” Matt said, pulling the man up into a sitting position again by grasping a handful of his lank hair and yanking him up by it.

  “I’m goin’ to sue you’re arses,” Steve wheezed. “You broke into my house, assaulted me and killed my dog.”

  “Dream on,” Pete said to him. “You opened the door, and when we identified ourselves as police officers you tried to do a runner, and set that illegally-owned brute on us. And you’re growing enough weed upstairs to be deemed a supplier. The unprovoked assault on us both is the icing on the cake and will guarantee that you go down.”

  Steve said nothing.

  “Maybe all this is the least of your worries,” Matt said. “We have evidence that links you to the murders of three men.”

  Steve’s eyes widened. “No way,” he said. “That’s well out of order.”

  “You know David Madsen, don’t you?” Matt asked him.

  “I used to work for a guy called Madsen. So what?”

  “Do you remember that his daughter was raped and strangled to death?”

  “Yeah, vaguely, but what’s that got to do with me?”

  “The guy that did it was released from prison just before Christmas, and someone tortured him and cut his throat.”

  “Great,” Steve said. “But it wasn’t me.”

  “Were you friends with Madsen?”

  “Not really. He was a manager. I was just a maintenance worker; part of his team. Several of us sometimes got together in a pub near the plant, but I wasn’t on his Christmas card list. He was a bit full of his own importance. Not the kind of guy I usually mixed with.”

  “How did you feel when his daughter was murdered?” Pete asked.

  Steve shrugged. “Not half as bad as I do over Crush.”

  Matt knew that it was another dead-end. Muir wasn’t an organised serial killer. He was just a small-time criminal dabbling in drugs.

  Going back out into the hall, Matt phoned DI Tony Underwood at Barking. Told him what had gone down and passed the parcel. It would be a nice little bust for Tony. He ended the call and looked down at the body of the dog. Felt sad that he’d had to shoot it. Owners usually made them what they became. Every pet deserved a caring, responsible owner. Fighting dogs had been bred to be vicious, and so their nature was in the blueprint of their genes. They had been programmed to be what they were. People were the same in many ways. Some of their actions in life were in the DNA. He recalled that Ernest Hemingway, the author, had been born with the predisposition to at some stage end his life. During his final years, the writer’s behaviour was similar to his father’s, who also committed suicide. It was believed that Ernest had suffered the genetic disease hemochromatosis, in which the inability to metabolise iron culminates in mental and physical deterioration. Hemingway’s brother, Leicester, and his sister, Ursula, had also ended their own lives. Seemingly it was in the family’s design, as are so many conditions that afflict human beings.

  Matt and Pete stayed at the house until Tony arrived in a Carlton, with two police cars following on behind.

  One of the uniforms replaced Pete’s cuffs on Muir with his own and handed Pete’s back to him.

  “What brought you to this nonentity’s door?” Tony asked Matt.

  “He worked with David Madsen a long time ago,” Matt said. “We’ve talked to nearly everyone that ever knew him, but not had a hit.”

  “Could be that the killer just selected his victims at random,” Tony said. “He could have read that Connolly had been released and decided to start with him.”

  Matt hiked his shoulders. “That would be a worst case scenario,” he said. “We don’t have any other leads to follow at the moment.”

  Pete drove Matt to the nearest A&E, and after waiting for an hour and drinking two cups of crap coffee from a machine, the dog bite he had suffered was treated with antiseptic and bandaged, and a nurse gave him two jabs: anti-tetanus and antibiotic. He was good to go after taking a couple of pills for the pain.

  “Where next?” Pete said as he started the car.

  “Find a decent pub,” Matt said. “We’ll have a pint and a sarnie before we tackle the last two on the list.”

  He had been given bad news when he phoned the vet. Rascal had suffered some intracranial bleeding. Keith Ratcliff told him that a blood vessel had been ruptured and was leaking, due to the force of one of the blows that Rascal had suffered. It was a serious condition. Apparently the build-up of blood within the skull could have led to pressure that would have crushed delicate brain tissue, or limit its blood flow. Being a potentially deadly condition, Keith had operated, but could not yet determine if Rascal would make it, and said that it would be at least twenty-four hours before he would be able to give an update.

  He had decided to abandon his plan to kill Dewey Marvin for the time being and stick to easier prey. But it was now very personal. The bastard was going to suffer for what he had done to Rascal. The gangster’s other crimes had become of secondary consideration. If his pet died, then Marvin would wish that he had been stillborn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JAY-JAY knocked at the door of the office above the Black River Bar and entered with a big grin on his face when Dewey shouted for him to come in.

  “You look as happy as a pig in shit,” Dewey said. “Have you just got laid?”

  “I got good news, boss. I got de kid dat does stuff on computer for us to run a check on de plate number you gave me.”

  “The Golf?”

  Jay-Jay nodded. “Yeah ’e somehow ’acked into de DVLA an’ got de registered owner’s name an’ address. Da guy you want lives in Romford.”

  “Sweet,” Dewey said. “Take Carl and pick him up. Give me a bell when he’s at the storage unit and I’ll deal with him personally. And be aware that he has a handgun.”

  Jay-Jay went down to the bar and found Carl standing nex
t to the small stage at the far end of the large room. Two of the girls were working the floor-to-ceiling steel poles, squatting, swinging, sliding and performing sexy routines to taped background music. Both of them were topless, and only wore bikini bottoms so that the avid punters crowding the strobe-lit stage had somewhere to tuck banknotes.

  “’Ey, dude, we got a job to do,” Jay-Jay said. “Lose dat boner before you mess up your strides, an’ let’s go.”

  Carl sighed and adjusted his rock hard penis. He had been ogling Sheena for twenty minutes. She was about nineteen, had electric-blue hair and perfectly tanned skin that was oiled, sprinkled with purple glitter, and glinted under the lights. Her breasts were natural, medium size and uplifted, with large nipples that she had darkened with a cherry-red tint. He watched her open her legs and thrust her pelvis forward, to bring her sex up against the pole. Christ! He wanted her so badly, maybe because she wasn’t on the game. A lot of the dancers were, like Bernice, the black girl working the next pole. To Carl, she was too big. She had massive breasts, and enormous glistening buttocks and liked to part them either side of the pole and slide down it. He reckoned that Jay-Jay used her regularly, and accepted that beauty was in the eye of the beholder.

  “C’mon,” Jay-Jay said. “Dere’s a guy dat we need to lift. De one dat took pot shots at de boss.”

  Forty-five minutes later Carl backed the Volkswagen van into the drive and parked. They both climbed out and walked around to the rear of the house and knocked on the kitchen door. Jay-Jay had a silenced handgun in his pocket, and was ready to pull it out and use it if necessary. Both of them were wearing overalls and looked like tradesmen. The best way to do any job was as quickly and smoothly as possible. Any hesitation or furtive movements attracted attention and suspicion.

  He came to the door wearing a plaid shirt and baggy chinos. Opened it and frowned.

  “Who are you?” he asked, giving them the once over and noting that they were wearing workmen’s overalls.

  Carl took a step forward and punched him in the solar plexus, and then brought his knee up to connect with the man’s face as reflex action doubled him up.

  He did what most people did under the same circumstances; dropped to the floor in a foetal position, moaning through split lips that blood dripped from to pool on the welcome mat at the foot of the door.

  There were high evergreen hedges fronting panel fencing at both sides and the bottom of the garden. The rear of the property could not be overlooked by neighbours.

  Jay-Jay used duct tape to secure the incapacitated man’s wrists and ankles, and wound more of it a couple of times around his head to cover his mouth. Within less than five minutes of leaving the van they were back in it, with their captive in the rear, still moaning under a sheet of tarpaulin.

  “That was easier than drowning kittens,” Carl said as he drove out of the area. “He just stood there looking dumber than shit.”

  “Dat’s because ’e felt safe out ’ere in de sticks, Carl,” Jay-Jay said. “’E won’t ’ave thought dat de boss saw ’is car reg. Sometimes you only get to make one mistake in life, an’ ’e’s made ’is.”

  Carl grinned. “You think that Dewey’ll whack him?”

  “Without a doubt. After ’e finds out why de fucker ’eld ’im up at gunpoint.”

  “Do you reckon it was an attempted hit?”

  “I ain’t got a clue. If it was, den whoever put out a contract on de boss is dead meat.”

  Jay-Jay phoned Dewey and told him that the package was on its way to Paddington.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” Dewey said.

  Chris Taylor was finding it hard to breathe with the tape over his mouth. He had been suffering with a cold, and breathing through his bunged up nose was almost impossible. His nostrils were full of snot. He blew out through them as hard as he could, which dislodged some of the mucus and partially cleared them. He was more scared than he ever remembered being in his life. The two men that had abducted him were strangers to him. He’d asked them who they were, but had just been assaulted and was now being taken somewhere. They hadn’t said a word to him. He could hear them talking and heard a few words being spoken despite the engine noise and the thick, heavy sheet that they had covered him with. One said, “You think that Dewey’ll whack him,” and the other replied, “Without a doubt.”

  This was insane. He couldn’t think of anyone that he had given the slightest reason to wish him any harm, ever. This must be a case of mistaken identity.

  The journey seemed to take forever. The van eventually came to a stop with the engine still running, and someone got out. Chris heard what sounded to him like large gates being opened, then the van moved a few yards, stopped again, and he heard the gates close. Within thirty seconds it braked and the engine was turned off.

  The tarpaulin was thrown aside and he was hauled out of the van by his ankles, to fall from the rear of the vehicle onto concrete. His back hit the unyielding ground and pain spiked through his chest, but instinct had caused him to pull forward and up as he fell, saving his head from most of the impact. He couldn’t move; just concentrated on breathing as he was dragged into what appeared to be a garage.

  Jay-Jay towed Chris to the back of the unit as Carl closed the door and then lit the oil lamp. They then unfolded the heavy gauge black plastic to cover the floor, rolling the snorting man onto it as they reached where he lay.

  Carl used a Stanley knife to slice through the tape at Chris’s wrists and ankles, unconcerned as the tip of the blade parted the skin beneath it.

  Jay-Jay squatted next to the moaning man and straight-fingered him in his left eye, hard enough to cause intense pain but not with enough force to pop it from the socket.

  Carl joined in, kicking Chris in the side several times, only standing back when the man at his feet began to make choking sounds.

  “Cut de tape off ’is mouth,” Jay-Jay said. “If ’e croaks de boss will ’ave our balls for breakfast.”

  Carl took the knife from his pocket again, thumbed the blade out, slit through the duct tape and ripped it free.

  Chris took in deep breaths of the stale air and then had a coughing fit which made all of his body hurt. He truly believed that he was going to die, but didn’t know why.

  When Dewey knocked at the door, Carl rolled it up far enough for him to bend down and enter, and then pulled it down again.

  “I’m going to really savour this,” Dewey said, striding over to where the man was lying on the floor.

  He stopped short when he got a look at the man’s face, turned to glower at Jay-Jay and said, “Who the fuck is this?”

  “De guy dat owns de Golf,” Jay-Jay said, now worried because he could tell by Dewey’s expression that something was well wide of the mark.

  “This is not the wanker that pulled a gun on me,” Dewey said.

  “We lifted him at the address we were given,” Carl said.

  Dewey massaged his forehead. He was getting what he termed as a rage headache. “Did you see the car?” he asked. “Or the black lab that fucking bit me?”

  Jay-Jay and Carl both shook their heads.

  “If I wanted idiots on the payroll I’d hire Ant and Dec,” Dewey said. “Sit this germ on a chair.”

  Chris groaned as he was roughly picked up and deposited on one of the two plastic chairs.

  Dewey sat facing him and smiled. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Chris Taylor.”

  “Do you own a light brown Golf car?”

  “No, but I did until a couple of weeks ago. I sold it.”

  “What do you mean, you sold it? Did you trade it in for another car?”

  “No. I advertised it locally, and sold it privately,” Chris said, licking away the blood that was still running from his damaged mouth.

  “It’s still registered to you,” Dewey stated.

  “I only sent the bookwork off a few days ago.”

  “I want the name and address of the man that bought it.”r />
  “It’ll be on the change of owner document that I posted. He paid cash.”

  “Did he show you any proof of who he was?”

  “No. He took the part of the document that he needed to fill in and I gave him a receipt for his money.”

  Dewey lashed out and backhanded Chris, knocking him to the floor. “You’re as stupid as these two,” he said as Carl pulled Chris up and propped him back on the chair. “He could have written down a false name and address.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chris mumbled. “I didn’t think about it.”

  “So think about it now. What did he talk about?”

  Chris closed his eyes, concentrated and brought the events of that day back to mind as clearly as he could. “He liked a framed photograph on my lounge wall. It was of Molly, a dog that I’d had, but she’s been dead for over four years. He said he had a lab called Rascal.”

  “What else?”

  “Something about the weather being rotten, and that he’d be glad when he could start bowling again. That was all. He must have been local, though, because he mentioned the new takeaway on the high street. Asked me if I’d tried it, because he was thinking about taking a curry home.”

  Dewey reached out and Chris flinched, expecting to be hit again. But the big black man just patted him on the shoulder.

  “That should do it,” Dewey said. “The only problem is that you’ve seen the three of us, so I’m afraid―”

  “I haven’t seen you,” Chris said, knowing that he was now expendable and would no doubt be murdered. “None of his happened. I have a wife and son, and I’d like to see them again. You know who I am and where I live. I’m not stupid. Please don’t kill me just because I sold a car to someone that you’re looking for.”

  “I don’t like loose ends,” Dewey said. “But I’m going to trust that you mean what you say. Against my better judgement I’ll let you live. But here’s the deal. If you have a change of heart and mention this to the filth or anyone else, then it’ll be your wife and son that gets to meet my friend here and his Stanley knife, and you’ll have a lifetime to wish that you’d kept your mouth shut.”