A Passion To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 5)

by Michael Kerr

  The blood pattered down onto the sawdust like red rain. Gabriel was suddenly very tired. He needed a hot drink and a few hours’ sleep. He turned the cassette and then the light off, left the workshop, ensuring that the door was locked, and walked slowly up the path to the bungalow. There was no hurry to clean up and deliver Dewey Marvin’s body to a suitable place to be discovered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE search of Rhonda Gould’s house proved unproductive. The red coat that PC Ray Chandler had found was not the parka that the killer had worn, as seen in the CCTV footage. And there was no sign of a false moustache or spirit gum to apply it with, or a single baseball cap.

  “Satisfied?” Rhonda asked Matt as the search team filed out to the transit.

  “Hardly,” Matt said. “I was hoping that we’d find something to tie you to the murders.”

  Rhonda shook her head in despair. “Why are you so convinced that I’m the killer?”

  “Because there are just too many coincidences for me to believe that you’re not implicated in some way. The murders were personal, and we believe that Jeff and Danielle knew whoever murdered them. It happened at their homes, and there was no sign of forced entry. By your own admission you had a key to Danielle’s flat. Perhaps you had one to Jeff’s as well.”

  “Terrific,” Rhonda said. “So until you catch whoever did do it, I’m still a suspect?”

  “You got it, Ms Gould, unless you can point me in the direction of some other woman that had reason to do it.”

  “Why a woman?”

  Matt saw a look in Rhonda’s eyes that dismayed him. It was innocence, pure and simple, or a degree of acting that would merit a BAFTA award. He had been a copper for too long to write-off any lead before he was one hundred percent certain it was a false one, but his gut feeling now told him that this woman was not guilty. The person who’d committed the murders had been disguised, but had traces of red varnish on his or her fingernails. It could be a guy, but he was inclined to believe otherwise.

  Rhonda frowned and two vertical lines materialised between her eyebrows to mar her forehead, dispelling the illusion of youthfulness. And Matt noted that the pupils of her eyes dilated a little.

  “What?” Matt said. “You just had a thought that I think you should share with us.”

  Rhonda said nothing.

  “Please, Ms Gould, help us with this. There’s a killer on the loose that we need to identify and arrest.”

  “A very dear friend and client of mine wears nail varnish: a man. But he wouldn’t harm anyone. He hates violence of any kind, and would probably pass out at the sight of blood.”

  “I need his name,” Matt said.

  “I would hate for him to know that I told you his identity.”

  “There’s no need for me to. We’ll be checking on all of your clients.”

  “Warren Price,” Rhonda said in a hushed voice, as if whispering would keep it a secret. “You probably recognise the name.”

  Matt nodded. Price had been one of the stars of a period TV series, maybe a decade ago, playing the part of a lord of the manor type. He was tall, a little foppish, and would physically fit the bill as the Suicide Killer.

  But what was the motive?

  “Did he know the victims?” Matt asked Rhonda.

  “He’d met them socially at a few celebrity functions, but I wouldn’t say he knew them particularly well.”

  “Did you mention to him that Jeff and Danielle were dispensing with your services?”

  “Yes. I was upset, so I offloaded on Warren. He told me to just put them out of my mind, because if they had no loyalty, then they weren’t worth my shedding a tear over or being concerned about. And that helped. Too many people want to be more than they are, and measure success by money and fame. I think it’s like gold fever. It can turn nice, level-headed individuals into complete prats.”

  They left after Rhonda had given them Warren’s telephone number and address.

  “I think we’re chasing shadows, boss,” Marci said as she drove towards Chiswick, to where Price lived in a small townhouse.

  “We go with what we’ve got,” Matt said. “That’s the only way we’ll get a break.”

  Warren Price was at home. He answered the door and asked them in after they had identified who they were. Warren was a bachelor. He had a part-time housekeeper who came by two days a week to keep the place spick and span. The small lounge was sparsely furnished, with a few tarnished awards in a display cabinet. And there were framed photos on two of the walls featuring Warren posing with other actors: the largest being of him in a pub or hotel bar with the late Richard Harris.

  Matt noted the nail polish on Price’s nails, but dismissed him as the killer. The now ageing actor was thin, stooped and suffering from hand tremors. He also seemed to have difficulty with walking and coordination, and Matt was positive that he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and so limited his questions to asking Warren if he knew of anyone that may have had or held a grudge against the hosts of the City Crime show.

  “I know that Rhonda was very upset,” Warren said. “She told me that they were jumping ship, and was very sad that they had decided to basically sack her. But she understood the greed and ambition that many people in show business harbour. They are very shallow-minded and self-indulgent in the main. Ego rules them. I should know. For many years I was doing well, but always thought that I should have been as famous and rich as the few that really make the big-time. But Shelley knew more than anyone else. And she was very protective of Rhonda. I recall that she was livid with Goodwin and Cooper for planning to leave the agency.”

  “Shelley?” Matt said.

  “Shelley Carmichael. Rhonda’s receptionist come girl Friday, come lover,” Warren said. “They’ve been an item for several years, but Rhonda likes to think that it’s a secret. She doesn’t flaunt the fact that she’s a lesbian.”

  Matt felt cogs coming together and beginning to turn and whir in his mind. Rhonda Gould’s receptionist was young, physically fit looking, and was well above average height for a woman. Could she have committed the murders on behalf of Rhonda, because the TV presenters had upset her lover? He thought it was unlikely but at least a feasible scenario.

  Matt thanked Warren and they left.

  “You think the receptionist is good for it?” Marci said as she drove back through West London to the Yard.

  “She ticks all the boxes,” Matt said. “Find her address and have her put under surveillance, and dig up everything you can about her. We’ll rattle her cage on Monday. I’m calling it a day now.”

  It was dark and beginning to rain when Marci drove down the ramp and parked next to Matt’s Vectra in the basement car park. Matt got out, said goodnight to Marci and was driving away before she reached the lifts.

  He texted Beth as usual to let her know that he was heading home, then drove north and thought about the two cases that the team were running with, but which they still didn’t have anything concrete to show for the time that they’d been working them. The Clown Killer was the big deal. And like many serial killers before him, he needed to grandstand. Contacting Matt would hopefully be something that he would live to regret. The downside was that he had threatened Matt. Others had done the same and tried to make good on the intimidation, by making a run at Beth and him. He didn’t ever want to be in that position again, but had no choice in the matter. Being the lead detective on cases involving multiple, ritual or serial murders brought him close to some of the monsters that he was attempting to identify and arrest. They could be predictable in some of their actions, but totally capricious in other ways. This killer was unlike the majority of his peers. He appeared to have a simple agenda; to seek out and torture then kill those that had taken lives and had not been dealt with by the courts to his satisfaction, or had been imprisoned, only to eventually be set free, having supposedly paid their debt to society.

  Matt wondered if someone close to The Clown had been murdered. Maybe
the perpetrator had not been apprehended, and he had decided that his subsequent actions were necessary and righteous acts to alleviate the anger and grief that he was consumed by. It seemed obvious that he was now obsessed and unable to turn his back on what had become a passion to kill. He was dancing with the devil, unmindful of the fact that the pleasure of it would cost him his soul.

  Matt thought that the use of the masks was his signature. Many of the serial killers he had come into contact with or studied had used signatures, which were a way of stamping individuality on what the perpetrators thought of as great achievements; in some ways their legacy to leave for the police and society in general.

  All Matt and the team could do was garner clues left at the scenes. The signature itself was specific to the killer, setting him apart. The hardest and sometimes most fascinating question is, why did they do it? There had to be some powerful inner motivation at work for them to decide to expend so much time and energy undertaking such destructive acts. That was seemingly obvious with The Clown; he was in his warped way of thinking righting wrongs. Knowing the signature of this flake was not enough. They knew that he was driven to repeat the acts in a ritualistic way, and so had no reason to think that he would not keep going and compulsively continue to murder people. All they were certain of was that his signature would not change, even if it evolved subtly over time. Each killing is in some way an ongoing narrative, offering up a story that Matt would have to figure out if the psycho was to be stopped sooner rather than later.

  He was almost home, and attempted to push thoughts of The Clown away for a while.

  Beth opened the door as he pulled up and switched off the engine. The motion-sensor operated light had come on to flood the driveway and front garden in a dazzling white that reflected off the rain that was now drilling down from unseen clouds above.

  Matt ran for the open door, to hug Beth as he pushed it shut with his heel. They kissed and then walked through to the kitchen hand in hand. As Matt took off his jacket and went through to the utility room to hang it up, Beth unhooked a towel from a rack next to the upright freezer and handed it to him as he returned. He wiped his face and rubbed his hair with it and then opened the door of the washing machine and threw it inside.

  Combing his hair back with his fingers, Matt went over to the coffeemaker and filled a mug from it. Just the smell of it made him feel warmer.

  “Not for me,” Beth said. “I’m going to have a cup of lemon tea. I think I’m getting a cold.”

  “Bad day?” Matt asked as he sat down on the bench and put his mug on the pine table.

  “No, a good day. Every day’s good after the years I worked at Northfield. I’m just beginning to realise what real job satisfaction is.”

  “How’s the little girl doing?”

  “Abby’s broken out of her shell and is doing far better than I could have hoped for. I’m looking for ways to help some of the other children. I think that using an indirect approach could be the way to go.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That with Abby it was using your idea of introducing a stuffed animal as a way to break down a barrier, and it did the trick. Maybe I can apply it in different ways with each child. I plan on thinking of it as a third party principal. Study the individual, get to know what they like more than anything else and employ it, to then be more able to deal with their emotional problems.”

  “Do you have a guinea pig in mind?”

  “That’s not terminology I’d use. I just need keys to unlock doors and be able to enter their worlds. And I plan on starting with an eight-year old boy who was taken from his mother and her boyfriend after being abused by them for years. His name is Martin, and he is both scared of and mistrustful of all adults. Anyway, how was your day?”

  “Same old. We have another suspect in what the media call the Suicide Killer case. But it could be another dead end. We searched Rhonda Gould’s office, and then her home, but came up empty. The woman is loaded, has a pile out at Richmond that’s probably worth at least three or four million, and runs the agency as a pastime. I’m ninety-nine percent positive that she didn’t kill anyone.”

  “So who’s at the top of your list now?”

  “Her receptionist. Seems that she and Rhonda are more than employer and employee, or even just good friends.”

  “You mean they’re gay?”

  “So I’m told by a client and friend of Rhonda’s. Could lead us nowhere, but she needs checking out.”

  “What about The Clown?”

  “No breakthrough, but he called me again.”

  Beth shook her head. “Damn you, Barnes,” she said. “You shouldn’t talk to them, ever, you know that.”

  “I’ve got a case to solve, Beth. I can’t ignore an approach from the killer.”

  “And I suppose you badmouthed him.”

  “Not really. He was just letting me know that he’d abducted somebody else.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “In passing, he told me that I was on his list. I think he was just shooting shit.”

  “So you did call him names? You let him get under your skin and couldn’t resist telling him what you thought of him.”

  “I pushed a little. Nothing heavy. What do you think I should do, compliment him on what he does and ask him to be my friend on Facebook?”

  “You aren’t on Facebook.”

  “It was a metaphor.”

  “You were out of order. You’ve promised me more than once that you won’t go down that path again.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did. You should have let somebody else talk to him. Remember what serial killers are. They are most often of above average intelligence, and they learn from each murder they commit and raise the stakes. They’re like drug addicts that have to up their dose to get the same fulfilment. They are also smug bastards, and take chances because they believe that they can get away with anything.”

  “So he’ll escalate, make a mistake, and we’ll lift him.”

  “Be sure you do before he locks onto you, Matt. I really can’t face being targeted again. I want us to be safe, not under siege.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Matt said, hoping that he was right. “He has an agenda.”

  “Just don’t talk to him again,” Beth said. “Be unavailable if he calls.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  SHE spent the evening and night with Rhonda. They fixed a meal, ate it, and shared a bottle of Prosecco that they finished off as they snuggled up on the settee to watch a DVD. It was the nineties movie, Bound, a lesbian frolic starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. It was pretty hot, and excited them both as they touched each other under the robes they wore. Later, in bed, they made love with literally gay abandon, indulging in oral and also anal and vaginal sex using a dildo. Both enjoyed multiple orgasms, before finishing off with a long tribbing session, popularly known as scissoring, which involved them both interlocking their legs in a position similar to the shape of scissors and pressing their vulvas together, moving in a manner that stimulated and brought them off with cries and moans of pleasure.

  She left at nine-thirty in the morning. It was Sunday, and normally she would have stayed with Rhonda all day, but had promised to have lunch with her parents in Ealing, not far from the film studios. First stop was at her small semidetached cottage in Hanwell. She dressed in fresh clothes and made a cup of mint tea. Having an hour to spare, she listened to Steve Wright’s Love Songs on Radio Two, and just relaxed. Her bottom was a little sore. Rhonda loved to spank her buttocks, hard, and she loved the pain, that was a precursor to the mildly rough sex that they both enjoyed. As for the killings, that was something that she had put behind her, but now gave some thought to. She was above suspicion; just an invisible receptionist to the police. She didn’t register to the majority of callers. Visitors to the agency came to see Rhonda and to them she was just like the receptionists at a doctors’ practice or a dental surgery; someone to give their names to and be asked
to take a seat. She doubted that they would recognise her if they bumped into her in the street ten minutes later.

  And she was not a suspect. What possible reason would she have to kill the two posers that had fronted City Crime? The masterstroke had been pushing the researcher, Wilson, under the train. He had not been a client at the agency. The police would be looking for a common denominator between the three of them.

  Jeff Goodwin had been a pleasure to murder. He was a macho shit who thought he was God’s gift to women.

  Shelley took another sip of her tea, and then closed her eyes and was back in December, walking up to the main door of the apartment block dressed in a parka and jeans and wearing a baseball cap. She had stuck a very realistic false moustache above her top lip, and also worn sunglasses, and kept her head down as she took extra large steps to appear manlier in her movements.

  She pressed the bell for Jeff’s apartment. There was a few seconds delay, and then his voice came through the grill like one of the metallic, muffled voices that announced train arrivals and departures at railway stations.

  “Who’s there?” Jeff said.

  “Shelley Carmichael,” she said. “I have to speak to you, it’s about Danielle.”

  A pause. “Come up,” he said, and there was a buzz and the door lock clicked open.

  Taking off the shades, cap and false moustache, Shelley shook her hair out and used a wet wipe to remove the spirit gum from her top lip as she stuffed everything into the side pockets of the parka as she mounted the stairs.

  The best thing about Jeff was that he was reputedly a womaniser; a sex addict with a one track mind. Rhonda had told her that. He had a paternity suit pending against him, and his name had been linked to dozens of young women since he had found a certain level of fame on television.

  Jeff opened the door of his apartment. He was wearing a grey V-necked tee-shirt, matching sweat pants and black moccasin-style slippers.