by Michael Kerr
What an arsehole, Shelley thought. From the bulge in his pants he was obviously not wearing underpants. He had a semi hard on. His arousal would make this even easier.
Standing to one side, Jeff beckoned her to come in and she walked past him. She was a looker, even with the big padded jacket on.
“Can I get you something to drink, Shell?” he asked.
“No thanks,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come. If Rhonda knew that I had she would fire me.”
“Relax,” Jeff said. “Nobody is going to know that you came to see me. What is it that brought you here? You mentioned Danielle.”
“I overheard a call between her and Rhonda. I’m a bad girl and sometimes listen in to break the monotony of sitting filing my nails out in reception.”
“And what exactly did you hear?”
“That the studio was going to minimise your airtime and maximise Danielle’s. They thought that she was the one with star quality, and that you needed to be less of a presence on the show.”
Jeff had believed her. Unbeknown to Shelley he thought that Danielle spent far too much time in the producer’s office giggling and ingratiating herself with Jo Francis. They were all the same, conniving bitches. He should be the lead presenter on City Crime. He had a large fan base. But it was wheels within wheels. Maybe Danielle was gay and sucking up to the skinny old witch in more ways than one.
“And why are you telling me this?” he asked Shelley.
“Because I like you, and I think you should know what they’re planning behind your back,” Shelley said, unzipping her parka and letting it fall open to show her unfettered breasts.
The bulge in his pants expanded, tenting them.
“God it’s so hot in here,” she said. “I need some fresh air.”
She knew that Jeff didn’t want her to leave. And there was nothing he could do about the problem with the studio until he went back in to work the following morning. But she reckoned he thought he could sure as hell take care of a more pressing problem. He wanted her, that was obvious, and he probably thought that a session in bed would ensure that she would keep him in the picture with whatever future phone conversations Rhonda and Danielle had.
He took a coat from a wall-mounted art deco rack on the wall next to the door and said, “Come with me. There’s a roof garden. You can cool off up there, and then we can have a drink and talk some more.”
He let her go first, followed her up the stairs to the door that opened out onto the roof. She stopped at the top and reached behind her to fondle his stiff cock through the soft material of his pants. He gasped, and she smiled to herself.
Out on the roof, she walked over to the wall that enclosed it and looked at the illuminated skyline.
“It’s a terrific view from up here,” she said as he joined her.
“Yes,” he said, not in the least concerned with the vista of London by night.
She stepped behind him, to thrust against him, and he pushed back. She reached around him, touched him again, and let him enjoy a few final seconds of pleasure, before withdrawing her hands and shoving him violently in the back, to send him off the roof. He didn’t even have time to scream before she heard his body thud onto the concrete below.
Shelley opened her eyes and drank a little more of the mint tea, which she had allowed to become hardly more than lukewarm as she had relived the murder of Goodwin. It was time to go. Her mother would give her hell if she was late for lunch.
Matt got up at seven-thirty and set the coffeemaker going and switched on the radio for some middle-of-the-road background noise on Smooth. The rich aroma of the coffee spread throughout the cottage as the pot heated up and started to wheeze and bubble. He was wearing his dressing gown, nothing else. This was a day he intended to spend some quality time with Beth and not let the job get in the way of living. Their love for each other had changed them both. He thought of her as his best friend, his true love, and the woman that he wanted to wake up next to every morning. As he poured a cup of coffee, Jason Mraz started to sing I Won’t Give Up, and the words caused him to pause and listen and think. It was a song about the strength of love, and how two people had to adapt, accept their differences and be able to bend without the world caving in. You had to learn to appreciate what was at stake and pull together to make it work. He felt his love for Beth swell inside him. She was the hub of his life now, and he could not envision her not being there; the most important reason for every breath he took. With crystal clarity he knew that without her he would fade away: without her he would no longer be whole.
He unlocked the kitchen door and walked out onto the deck to welcome a chilly but fine morning. Standing at the rail, unmindful that the soles of his feet were cold on the dew laden Balau tropical hardwood decking ‒ which had been recycled from reclaimed railway sleepers’ ‒ he sipped his coffee and let memories of his life flicker through his mind. Donny Campbell’s broad face appeared with a big smile on it, and then the expression turned to one of shock and pain as his eyes widened and blood dribbled out of his open mouth. The murder of his DS and the other team members at the bungalow in Finchley still came back to haunt him. It was one of those episodes that would be with him for the rest of time. Loss was like having a tattoo; you were marked for life by it. The killer, Gary Noon, had been shot and died, but that was of little solace. It was a result, but didn’t bring any of his many victims back to life. The only positive aspect was that the psycho hitman had been stopped from murdering anyone else.
“Hey, Barnes, what are you doing out here?” Beth said from the open doorway. “You’ll freeze your family jewels off.” She had not attempted to creep up behind him and wrap her arms around his waist, because he tended to react strongly to being surprised, and had once brought his elbow back into her stomach when she had done it. She had been winded badly, and Matt must have said he was sorry at least forty times as she recovered. But she appreciated that he instinctively responded to any unexpected physical approach. It was a built-in defence mechanism.
He went to her, and she slipped her hands inside his robe and around his waist. The belt came undone and he unintentionally flashed her as the robe came apart to disclose his nakedness beneath. They both smiled. The cold had shrunken what he chose to call his bits.
“They need to be warmed up,” Beth said, kneeling down, unmindful of the cold, damp decking, to take him in her mouth.
He held on to the almost empty cup and just stood still and let it happen. His knees began to shake, and then he gasped with pleasure. Unexpected nice surprises were what kept relationships fresh.
Beth led him into the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee for herself and freshened his.
“So what’s the plan for today?” she asked.
“Nothing that will top that,” Matt said, closing and belting his robe. “I was thinking that we could walk along the river path and have a pub lunch.”
“I’d like that. And then we can work it off by demolishing the old garden shed. I’ve ordered a new one.”
Matt grimaced. The old shed was full of cobwebs and mouse droppings, and rusted tools that had belonged to the previous owner of Orchard Cottage, including an old lawn mower that was probably Victorian and would be worth putting on eBay, or taking along to an Antiques Roadshow for evaluation.
The day flew by. They watched TV in the evening and were in bed before midnight and asleep by one a.m.
Monday morning.
All the team were in the squad room. Matt and Tom sat side by side on the edge of a table in front of one of the whiteboards. The others were at their desks, quiet for a change, waiting to hear what Matt had to say.
“We’ve got a lot of supposition but no hard facts,” Matt began. “As you all know The Clown has been in contact. He shot dead two known employees of Dewey Marvin, left them in a lockup in Paddington, and abducted Marvin. He phoned me to gloat. All we know is that he is armed and obviously extremely dangerous. Marvin’s car, a late model Mercedes, was found in the yar
d of a derelict factory near the railway on Freshwater Road in Chadwell Heath. That shows local knowledge. Everything still points to this guy living in the Romford area. I very much doubt that we’ll find trace at the lockup or from the car, so we need to go back over old ground and dig even deeper. Let’s stick with the premise that he has some connection with David and Nancy Madsen.”
“Do you think that Marvin’s a lost cause?” Tam asked.
Matt nodded and said, “Definitely. He’s most likely dead now. I’m sure that The Clown will make contact again and tell us where to find the body.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
HE slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, slid his feet into his slippers and stood up. Glancing at the alarm clock he saw that it was ten a.m. He’d been asleep for over eleven hours. Scotch and more of the heavy-duty liquid painkiller had knocked him for six. But he still felt exhausted. He went through to the bathroom and peed. There was blood in it. That was a first. But there was no discomfort. He flushed, went into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. Loneliness pervaded him. There was a void. He still missed his wife, and now he missed Rascal as well. Killing Marvin hadn’t changed anything that really mattered. Life and death just marched on relentlessly, one following the other. He remembered a quote from somewhere and whispered it: “Life asked Death, ‘Why do people love me but hate you’? Death replied, ‘Because you are a beautiful lie, and I am a painful truth’.” That in itself was a lie he realised, now that he was on the cusp of dying. Living was a trial, with more ugliness than beauty running through it like a thread that to a greater or lesser extent incorporated heartbreak and suffering along its length. Death was the final reward that some people embraced and were ready to receive, whereas others fought to their last breath against the inevitable, loath to have come to the end of something that they had subconsciously always known was fleeting. All he now had left to savour was revenge, which was nice to anticipate, although once it had been satisfied there was an empty feeling. It was like being really hungry and imagining a plate full of your favourite food. You could salivate thinking about a large, juicy steak with all the trimmings, but once you’d eaten it you were just full. The need for it had been satisfied.
He pushed away all logical thought regarding the meaning of life, which in essence was, to him, without much validity, due to hardly anything that transpired between cradle and grave being of much importance in the greater scheme of things. His view was that life was little more than an accident that had resulted on this grain of sand in the universe. All the necessary elements had just come together to conjure it up: a cosmic cocktail or more aptly, soup.
He brewed tea, sat down and allowed himself to consider right and wrong, attempting to rationalise the ethical and moral principles that governed his thoughts and actions. Was what he had done wrong? And if so, in who’s eyes or minds? Everything was subjective. Had the now ex-navy SEAL who had shot Bin Laden in the head three times committed a crime? Should the mass murderer have been shown mercy and treated with any respect, or had he forfeited all rights? Gabriel decided that you had to go with your own concept of what was right and wrong. You could only live your own life. Everyone danced to a different beat, be it with the devil or not.
He finished a second cup of tea and then put on old work clothes that he would burn later. Opened the kitchen door and let the cold air and weak rays of the sun play on his face for a minute, before walking down the path to his workshop.
He could smell the blood. It soon became sour. But due to his presence of mind to tie off Dewey’s cock and wedge the bung up his arse, there was no other mess, and so the stink of death was minimal.
Rigor had passed and the corpse was loose limbed again. Gabriel cleaned the body with undiluted disinfectant, and then placed a plastic sheet over the bed of a large load trolley, which was open at both ends, wheeled it across to the bench and, after cutting through the tape that still held the body to the bench top, pulled it over for it to fall onto the trolley. He then squeezed a liberal amount of super glue onto the inside of the mask, to press it hard against Dewey’s face and hold it there for over a minute.
The effect was pleasing. The now glazed eyes stared out from the mask. Dewey almost looked alive, if you ignored the gaping wound to his throat.
With the body wrapped in the plastic, Gabriel began the cleanup, which was in the main a case of shovelling up the blood-soaked sawdust and then mopping the floor. He would burn the sawdust and Dewey’s clothes later, and wait till evening before he dumped the body. It made him smile to think that the cop, Barnes, would once more be frustrated, and have no clues to follow. The police were running around trying to catch their own tails, like Rascal had done as a pup.
He was totally knackered. Went back to the bungalow and lay down on his bed and was asleep within sixty seconds.
Beth noted that Martin was at ease with the other children, but shied away from any close contact with adults, including her. He would answer questions, and was at all times respectful, but kept adults at a distance that Beth realised was just beyond arms’ length, most likely because being within reaching distance had on many occasions resulted in him being grabbed and beaten. And he could not abide being in confined spaces, which Beth knew was because he had been locked in a cupboard under the stairs at home for periods of several hours and sometimes days at a time. The record of abuse against the boy ‒ both mental and physical ‒ was sickening. When the Children’s Services of the local council ‒ accompanied by police ‒ had eventually forced entry to check on him after numerous reports from neighbours that they had heard him screaming, and the fact that he had needed hospital treatment on eight separate occasions for injuries that his mother blamed on his clumsiness, they found him locked in the cupboard, naked and with only an empty water bottle and a bowl that had traces of cat food in it.
Martin’s mother, Cindy, had given her young son no physical or emotional succour, and was a woman that had no maternal instincts whatsoever, admitting later to having never felt any love for her son. Her boyfriend was an ex-inmate who had a long record of assault and grievous bodily harm charges. He was twenty-nine, and had spent eight of those years in prison.
Beth was appalled. How terrible must it have been for Martin to be raised with no love, no nearness or comfort; just persistent torture that he had no way to defend himself against in his formative years? She had seen firsthand how the psychological damage could affect people. Her position at Northfield had graphically illustrated how abuse could mould the psyche and manifest in negative ways. Many of her adult patients had, as children, come to regard pain and suffering as somehow normal, which warped their personalities and led them to being as bad as or even worse than their abusers. A plant that is not afforded enough sunlight or given nutrients or water will become stunted, then wither and be much less than it should and could have been. It’s the same with people; growing up without any appropriate level of affection can lead them to having no empathy for others. They are barren of what are considered to be normal emotions, and have an outlook that can at best be thought eccentric and at worst extremely dangerous. Hopefully, Martin was still young enough to be emotionally saved.
Beth was doing her stint in the dayroom at lunchtime, where some of the children gathered after eating, before those of school age went back to one of the two classrooms. This was a good opportunity to observe them, to see how they related to each other and assess their general behaviour.
Martin sat next to a window with a sketchpad and pencil. And there it was; a building block. Beth was not an accomplished artist, but she did sometimes enjoy sitting out on the deck at home and drawing mainly what she could see. She determined to start drawing in the dayroom, and to make sure that Martin knew that they shared a common pastime.
Abby was leaving later that day. She sought Beth out, hugged her and said, “I love you, Beth,” and then held up Tigger for Beth to take back.
“I love you too, Abby,” Beth said. “And
I think that Eeyore and Tigger should stay together, so please look after him for me.”
Abby was actually happy. She was now well along in the process of acceptance of what had happened to her father. It was another case of life going on, and she had come through a terrible experience and was adjusting to the reality of it. Her mother was also doing well. Abby would be with her grandparents for a while, but Beth was positive that things would work out.
“Will you come and see me?” Abby said.
“Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away,” Beth said. “Maybe we could take your grandma and granddad to that ice cream parlour in The Pavilions.”
“Yay, that would be wicked,” Abby said, and the smile on her face was worth a king’s ransom to Beth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MARCI had been busy. She had driven out to the school at which Shelley Carmichael had been a pupil, to talk to the headmistress and some of the teachers. It was a long shot. Shelley was thirty-six now, and had left the school at sixteen; twenty years ago. Only four of the staff from back then still taught at the school, and Anita Murray, the current headmistress, had only been there for eight years.
“I am obviously not at liberty to disclose the files on any individual pupil, past or present,” Anita said to Marci. “But I have no objection to you speaking with the staff members that may or may not remember the girl.”
The first teacher that Marci spoke to said that he had no recollection of Shelley. The second vaguely remembered her as being something of a loner. “She kept to herself and didn’t seem to have any friends,” Donna Carter said. “She wasn’t a team player in any sense of the term.”
It was the third teacher, Andrew Bradley, who made the trip worthwhile.
“I hadn’t been in post for long when I came across Shelley,” Andrew said. “I was about twenty-eight and she would have been fifteen. As I recall she was a tall blonde girl and looked several years older than her age.”