A Passion To Kill (DI Matt Barnes Book 5)

by Michael Kerr

  “You know all about brutality,” Marci said, and then folded Shelley up with a punch to the stomach. “That’s for being a murdering psychotic cow, and for throwing a kettle full of nearly boiling water on me.”

  Matt, Pete and Phil just nodded and said nothing. Sometimes people need a little more than the law will allow. Assaulting a restrained and helpless suspect was a definite no-no, especially in these days of people having more rights than rocks in a quarry. But what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve. Same as in the old days, you wrote your reports, made sure that they were airtight, and got on with the reality of doing the job, which sometimes called for unorthodox measures. That was what Matt had in his elite team; a group of officers that would stick together like horse glue through thick and thin and support each other come hell or high water. There were too many wimps and whistleblowers in the force these days; officers that did not have the ethos of camaraderie that was necessary to fight the scum that was proliferating like a disease in society.

  Matt decided not to charge the woman with assault on three officers, yet. He told Pete and Phil to take her in for questioning, so that they could hold her without charge or a lawyer for thirty-six hours. The time in a police cell, after having her injuries examined by a medical officer, would give her time to mull things over.

  When the ambulance arrived, Marci protested but finally relented and went to have her burns treated, while Matt stayed at the cottage and made himself a coffee while the search was carried out.

  Thank God that amateur criminals and murderers made mistakes.

  Shelley had got rid of the baseball cap and the false moustache and spirit gum, but had kept the quilted red parka. It didn’t cross her mind to dispose of it. Wearing it to push Goodwin off the apartment building roof and Wilson off the platform had not resulted in any significant contact with them. And she had taken it off before murdering Danielle, knowing that she would probably be spattered with blood. To her way of thinking there was absolutely no way that the police would have any reason to even question her, let alone consider her a suspect. She had no motive to murder Rhonda’s clients. And dealing with Dominic Wilson had been inspirational, because he was not on Rhonda’s books. The police would be running around in circles, sure that some London gangster that the City Crime team had been investigating was responsible. She now knew that she had been wrong to assume that she would not be investigated.

  Officer Dean Slack found the jacket. It was not hidden, just hanging with other clothes in a wardrobe in the small spare bedroom.

  Matt was elated. It was a vital link to the killings. Surely there would be some trace on it. If not, it was still strong circumstantial evidence that would impress a jury.

  Leaving the team to continue searching the cottage, which he knew would be thorough and take hours to complete, Matt drove back to the Yard, after first phoning Beth, rather than texting her.

  “What’s with the call, Barnes?” Beth said. “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s better than all right. We just lifted the so-called Suicide Killer. I need to go back to the Yard, so it’ll probably be late when I get home.”

  “No problem,” Beth said. “I’ll watch a movie, have a glass of wine and make you a bite to eat when you turn up.”

  “Turn up? That makes me feel like a bad penny or a late bus.”

  “More like a girl waiting for a guy on their first date: standing outside a cinema in the rain and wondering if he was going to show when the time they’d arranged to meet came and went.”

  “I won’t be a no-show. Save some of that wine for me.”

  “You know what you can do.”

  “Yeah, be careful. I always am.”

  Beth laughed and ended the call. What she really intended to do was practise her sketching. It had been a few years since she had done much, and she wanted to impress Martin Beatty.

  Sitting in the kitchen nook with a couple of pencils, several sheets of A4 copy paper and an eraser, Beth drew a few animals and birds from memory, and also a reasonable likeness of Buzz Lightyear from a magnet of the Space Ranger on the fridge door. Without any intention to do so, she began sketching Matt’s face, and spent an hour on it, to surprise herself with the end result. She had captured his strong features, and had even managed to give his eyes the intensity that they usually had in reality. There was a degree of tension in his expression, which had been set into near permanence by the job he did.

  Matt fully intended to let Shelley Carmichael sweat for a few hours. Tomorrow would be soon enough to interview her formally and hope for a full confession. He needed time to formulate his questions, and Beth would be able to help him. She knew how people like Shelley thought, and would tell him what emotional triggers to pull for maximum effect.

  It was midnight when Matt finally got home and trudged up to the front door. Beth opened it, hugged him and they kissed.

  A small saloon car drove by as Matt closed the door behind him and took his leather jacket off.

  Gabriel was feeling a little high as he passed Orchard Cottage. He had probably taken too much of the gloop, and shouldn’t have washed it down with a very large whisky chaser, but had.

  The day’s endeavours had been very worthwhile. He had gone back to the pub in Tower Hamlets, and the young guy he’d bought the gun from was there, sitting at the bar on a stool and nursing a pint. Gabriel walked up to him and said, “Are you ready for another?”

  Bobby emptied the glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded.

  Gabriel ordered the drinks and paid for them.

  “Let’s go and sit at a table,” Bobby said, believing that the man was back for more coke.

  They settled in a quiet corner and Gabriel said, “I need some information; a guy’s address.”

  “Who?”

  “A cop. Can you get it?”

  “I can get most things. Write his name, rank and where he’s stationed at down on a beer mat. Give me a couple of hours and then come back.

  Gabriel went to the bar and borrowed the almost blunt stub of a pencil and returned to his seat and wrote ‘DI Matt Barnes, Scotland Yard’ on a dry coaster and handed it to Bobby.

  Bobby took the round mat and stuffed it in a pocket of his army surplus greatcoat, which had tarnished brass buttons and looked like something that would have been cool on Carnaby Street back in the sixties.

  Gabriel finished his Scotch and left.

  Bobby made a call on a burner phone to a detective sergeant at the Met who he was a confidential informant for. The availability of prepaid phones was a real pain in the arse for the police and other organisations. They allowed users to be anonymous, and were therefore a perfect way to facilitate criminal or terrorist activities. The prepaid SIM card was sold in shops like any other goods, with no need to register them at the point of sale, unlike post paid phones that required a credit check on the user before entering into a contract. The prepaid service could be topped up using cash, and so there was no way to determine the identity of the user.

  Detective Sergeant Jack Henley was at his desk when he got the call from Bobby.

  “I’ll call you back in five,” he said and ended the call. He was very protective of Bobby. The ex-con was a real asset, and his information had always been on the mark and resulted in some first class collars that Jack was happy to get full credit for.

  Jack stood up, stretched and slipped his jacket off the back of the swivel chair and put it on. He was ready for a coffee and a smoke, so took a lift down to the street and lit up as he walked to a nearby café.

  Jack was old school; almost sixty with thin, greying hair and carrying an extra forty pounds that he could ill afford. But smoking, drinking too much booze and eating junk food had been a big part of his life, and now he was nearing retirement and had decided he was getting too old to change his habits. He’d been a cop since he was twenty-one, and had seen a lot of good and bad changes over almost four decades. He still held on to the old w
ay of policing, and knew that he was a dinosaur. Back in the day, criminals had a much harder time. What happened behind closed doors was all part and parcel of doing the job. He’d had no qualms over beating the shit out of someone he knew was at it, if it resulted in a confession. Yes, suspects got stitched up like kippers with false statements and planted evidence. Today he would be called a bad or rogue cop, but back then he was one of many, especially when he got out of uniform and became a detective.

  Stopping outside the café and flicking the cigarette end away, he phoned Bobby back.

  “What have you got for me?” Jack said when Bobby answered.

  “I need some details on a copper, Mr Henley,” Bobby said.

  “I thought we had an understanding,” Jack said. “You give me what I need and I keep you out of trouble and pay you a few quid. This isn’t a two-way arrangement.”

  “It could lead to somethin’,” Bobby said. “The cop’s name is Barnes, Matt Barnes. He’s a DI.”

  “And who wants to know about him?”

  “I don’t know his name, but I could follow him and find out.”

  “And what makes you think I give a shit?”

  “Because I sold him a shooter. Maybe he has some grudge against this Barnes.”

  “Selling fucking guns to people is out of order, you wanker.”

  “You know what I’m like, Mr Henley. I get by doin’ what I can.”

  Jack was up for a lot, but didn’t approve of idiots like Bobby selling firearms on the street. He would have to seriously lean on Bobby to convince him to stick to peddling drugs and suchlike, or maybe end the relationship, which would in all probability result in Bobby’s body being found floating in the Thames. That would be the only certain way to ensure that the grass kept his mouth shut.

  “Barnes is with the SCU,” Jack said. “I know him well enough to pass the time of day with. I’ll check him out and call you back with his address.”

  “Thanks, Mr Henley.”

  “Just make sure that you follow the creep you’re getting it for. Don’t fuck up, Bobby. I need to know who he is.”

  Back at the Yard, Jack went into the canteen. Fortune was in his favour. He spotted Pete Deakin sitting alone at a table, so bought a cup of coffee and ambled over. “Hey, Pete, how’re you doing?”

  “Fine, Jack,” Pete said after swallowing the mulch of bacon and bread that he’d been chewing. “Time that you lot was out of here, isn’t it?”

  “It’s running late,” Jack said, knowing that Pete was talking about the Met relocating to the Curtis Green Building on Victoria Embankment. “We should be gone soon and have a home of our own, away from all you specialist units.”

  “I thought you were retiring,” Pete said.

  “I am, soon, and I’ll be throwing one hell of a party to celebrate. I plan on sending out invitations to just the guys and gals I’d like to be there.”

  “Don’t forget me,” Pete said. “I’m up for a good shindig.”

  “So write your address down.”

  Pete wrote his address in the back of his pocket notebook. As he did, Jack said, “Is Matt still at that maisonette in Harrow? That’s the last address I’ve got for him, and I’d like him to be there.”

  “That’s well out of date. He and his partner live out of town now,” Pete said and wrote, Barnes, Orchard Cottage, Woodford Wells beneath his own address, tore the page out of the notebook and handed it to Jack.

  “Thanks, Pete,” Jack said and moved the conversation on to an idiot that had attempted to rob a post office in Shoreditch and inadvertently shot himself in the foot with a sawn-off shotgun and lost all his toes.

  “Most of these morons do our job for us,” Pete said.

  “Too true. Good job that the majority of them are semi retards,” Jack said. “Nice bumping into you, Pete. I’d better go. I want to sneak a smoke outside before I go back to the grindstone.”

  Pete finished his bacon sarnie and went back to the squad room. He had almost forgotten even talking to Henley by the time he was once more standing in front of the whiteboard with details on it of The Clown and his victims to date.

  Outside in the car park, Jack phoned Bobby and said, “Orchard Cottage, Woodford Wells,” and pressed the end call button.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  UNBELIEVABLE. He had driven through the village earlier, then made another pass and drove down the lane next to Orchard Cottage and out the other end onto a narrow road that ran along the side of a river. He wanted to know the layout of the area, should it prove necessary to leave in a hurry.

  It had worked out fine. He had gone back to the pub as arranged and for two hundred quid Bobby had given him the cop’s address. It crossed his mind to be extra careful and kill the young man, but decided that being terminally ill he didn’t need to. Nothing and nobody was a threat to him any longer. He was playing a game, but knew that the final whistle would soon be blown. The art of dying was to make the most out of the time you had left. Sitting around moping wouldn’t change a damn thing.

  And now, as the midnight news came on the car radio, he was passing the cottage again and saw Barnes enter. He kept driving. Decided to give it an hour and then carry out his plan.

  “So who’s the Suicide Killer?” Beth asked Matt as he poured a glass of wine and took a large drink of it as though it was beer and not a reasonably priced wine that deserved to be sipped and appreciated.

  “Shelley Carmichael, who is Rhonda Gould’s receptionist and also happens to be her lover,” Matt said. “And she has rep. As a schoolgirl she pushed another girl out of a window, apparently out of jealousy. When we turned up with search warrants and she knew that we were onto her, she went berserk, threw a kettle full of hot water at Marci, a breadboard at me, and kicked Phil in the balls as she did a runner.”

  “But you got her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is Marci?”

  “She’ll be okay. Thank God the water wasn’t boiling. Phil may be a little swollen and walking bandy-legged for a day or two, though.”

  “Has the receptionist admitted to being the killer?”

  “No. I plan on interviewing her in the morning. I’m letting her stew overnight, it’ll give her time to think it over and lick her wounds.”

  “What wounds?”

  “She’s a big, powerful woman. After she’d hit me with a rake and tried to take my gun off me, I had to fight back. I think her nose got broken, and then when I chinned her she bit the end of her tongue off.”

  Beth winced at the thought of it. Matt told her about the chase and of the scuffle in the bunker on the golf course, and as he did he pulled the legs of his jeans up to show her the red marks and swelling on his shins where the handle of the rake had connected.

  “Do you think she’ll admit what she’s done?” Beth said.

  Matt hiked his shoulders. “It would be a wrap if she did, but she’ll probably deny everything. All we have so far is a red parka, and if there’s no trace on it we have no hard evidence.”

  “You’ll have to play her. It would appear from what she did as a schoolgirl that she becomes uncontrollably jealous and protective of her relationships. It follows that she murdered the two presenters because they were upsetting Rhonda Gould by intending to leave her agency.”

  “What about the young researcher?”

  “He was just a red herring to throw you off the scent.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Matt asked as he refilled their wine glasses.

  “Bring her out. Tell her that you suspect that it was all Rhonda’s idea, and that she used the power of Shelley’s love to talk her into doing it for her. Make it sound as if you blame Rhonda, not her, and that you intend to make sure that her lover gets life for arranging the murders.”

  “You think it could work?”

  “Depends how much she cares for Rhonda. It’s worth a try.”

  They finished what was left in the bottle and went to bed. It was one a.m., and so they just kisse
d and got as close as two spoons and went to sleep.

  He watched as the last light upstairs went out, and then retraced his steps to the car to sit and wait another half hour before driving slowly up the lane to park next to a side gate set between hawthorn hedging. He pulled on latex gloves, entered the back garden and looked across to where a table and chairs stood on a large deck. To his right was what he decided was a small orchard.

  Keeping close to the hedge, he made his way down to the side of the large cottage and used the late Dewey Marvin’s straight razor to cut through the cables clipped to the wall, ensuring that the motion sensor security light and another outdoor light would not come on. He smiled. The darkness was a true friend to creatures of the night that ventured out to hunt and kill, like owls, foxes and a very small percentage of people. Rats enjoyed the gloom, and also street girls that patrolled their patches, swaggering along ill lit pavements to attract prowling kerb crawlers.

  Beth woke up at six a.m., went to the loo and then slipped a thick robe on and went downstairs. After switching on the central heating, she brewed herself coffee and decided to go out on the deck before sitting in the nook and finishing a sketch she had begun before Matt had arrived home.

  Opening the right hand curtain a couple of inches, she unlocked the double glazed doors, and then went to the side of them to thumb the rocker switch for the outside light. It didn’t come on. The bulb must have blown. Replacing it was a job for Matt.

  As she walked out onto the deck, Beth froze at the sight of the man that was no more than six feet from her. The shock of seeing him caused her to drop the mug of coffee, which shattered on the cedar boards, spraying her ankles with the hot liquid and ceramic shards.

  She stood transfixed for a few seconds, unmoving, as was the man sat facing her on one of the garden chairs, naked and with an old-fashioned straight razor open and held in his hand.

  The flight or fight mechanism took a long time to kick in. Beth thought that if she moved it would trigger a swift and deadly attack. But the adrenaline finally pumped through her and she reacted and backed away on shaking legs until she was once more in the kitchen and slammed the door shut and locked it as she shouted for Matt at the top of her voice.